#kinda tutorial?

Toxic’s How to make Lusaut Pretty Sorta Tutorial Thing!

Right so Lusaut is a character who looks VASTLY different from his actual ‘default’ look in-game. All of what I do to take screenshots of him is just straight up using the Color Filters and Lighting in-game to make certain features of his pop. Specifically his hair, claws and eyes. I do not tweak any of my screenshots in any art programs.

I’m sharing this since I know @skyysinger was interested in them and I wanted to show how I really do this as a quickie thing in case anyone wants to try it! This is a good way to make certain features pop on your characters especially those who have more vivid hair colors! Just tweak the lighting to work with their hair basically!

First shot is default, no filters or anything added. Second is with the filter I picked out for Lusaut (In this case I went with Colored Marker 1) and I worked on putting the lighting out to get the added effects that I wanted. Basically making his hair get the red color that I enjoy so much about him. Depending on what I am going for I will usually have the lighting either type 1 or type 2 and I always keep it low on the sliders. If you make it too bright you lose a lot of the detail in the hair and it makes the hair just look like a glowing BALL of color.

That’s it really, there’s nothing fancy after that! Just get your pose, angle your camera and set your lights to how you want them so that you can get the effects you want! Add some limb darkening, play around with that depth of field. HAVE FUN WITH IT! At the end are some other examples of the Filters that I prefer and use with Lusaut. Most of the time I either use any of the following: Bright 2, Bright 4, Colored Marker 1, Pastel 3 or Strengthen Effects. It depends on where he is, the brightness of the area itself and just what makes his hair pop out the most really. 

There you have it! How I make Lusaut go from Low Quality to a sorta HD Feel! Enjoy and have fun if you try this method! Also SHOW ME IF YOU DO! I would LOVE to see and so would Lusaut!

This is not a tutorial on how to use CC magic. There are several of those already. I highly recommend this one by Nonasims (as it was the one I used). Some people seem to find that one difficult to use though, so @gruesim created a video tutorial that some might find easier.

This is intended to be tips for navigating the quirks of the program, beyond what’s covered in most tutorials.

Tip #1: I do not recommend taking the short cut of simply placing .package files into the ‘cc magic > content > packages’ folder. While this can sometimes work, if you do it this way the game may not catch duplicate files, and you will still have to make sure to rebuild.

Tip #2: CC magic is a really great program, but it can make mistakes, especially if overloaded. Try to install new CC in batches limited to 100 or 200 at a time, and rebuild each time you add more. It also helps to close the program once in a while, and then re-open it, if you’re doing a lot of installing or moving things around.

Tip #3: Rebuild each time you make changes, and try not to make too many changes at one go. If you import some new stuff, it'll show up under 'default'. You can sort some of that before rebuilding, but I recommend not sorting into more than 3-5 categories before rebuilding (depending on how many items you have in those categories). If you change a lot of things without rebuilding in between, this can lead to errors. Remember to always rebuild after removing items as well, before you start installing new ones. 

Tip #4: To force rebuild one category without doing a complete rebuild, disable and then re-enable a single item in the category you want to rebuild. This can help fix errors without doing a full rebuild.

Tip #5: New categories are disabled by default for all configurations. So if you make a new category, make sure to go enable it for the configuration you want to use it in. (Also make sure you have the right configuration selected when doing your last rebuild before you go in-game. Changing configurations requires rebuilding.)

Tip #6: Once in a while, something will glitch, and an item of CC will be 'detected' when you open/refresh cc magic, that is already installed. When this happens, you end up with two of this item, but it's likely neither will show in-game. Delete both from CC magic, and then take the original out of your recycle bin and try again. Usually on the second try it will work. If it continues to fail to install properly, you may want to put this particular item in your packages folder instead.

Tip #7: If you are into converting your own patterns to .package format, CC magic will catch it if you try to install any which have the infamous Materializing Materials issue, and notify you of which pattern has the issue. It will only give this notification when you FIRST install it though, so pay attention!

Tip #8: Most of the time, CC magic will catch it if you try to install something you have already previously installed (often even if the file names are different). It won’t notify you of this though, it’ll just reject the duplicate and throw it into your recycle bin.

Tip #9: If you are installing an updated version of a file you already have installed, this is the one use-case where it might be more beneficial to use the shortcut mentioned in Tip #1 (Only IF the file name is the same.) Otherwise, be sure to uninstall the older version first. If you don’t, CC magic may reject the new version as a duplicate and throw it out.

Tip 10: Once in a while, when you add new items to CC Magic, the rebuild icon will pop up, but your new items will not actually show in ‘default’. There are a couple of ways to resolve this. I usually just rebuild, then shut down CC magic and restart. After restarting, everything should be there as usual.

Tip #11: Category names are important. Remember your sims game needs to look inside each folder that is named after a category, so try to create category names without special characters other than _ underscores, and with no spaces. (If you do accidentally create a category name with an ‘illegal’ character, and find that CCMagic crashes and will no longer open, check your log files in Documents/ElectronicArts/CCMagic/Logs to find a mention of the illegal character. You can use a MYSQL browser like SQ Lite to remove/replace the ‘illegal’ character so that CCMagic will run fine again.)