#pottery mod

So first of all, it's not going to include all the things I originally planned to do for the first release. This is because it's taking a long time and I'm honestly a bit sick of it. I have some other WIPs and updates I want to work on, so I'd rather release some version of the pottery mod before working on other stuff again instead of delaying it more. Hopefully it won't feel incomplete, but it isn't going to be especially fleshed out.

What it will have:

animated pottery interaction

about 10 converted TS4 ceramics to craft with 10 converted TS4 glazes each (+ a version that's fully CAStable)

glazing and firing interaction with a kiln

basic 5 level pottery skill with one tracked stat

What it won't have but was originally planned (i.e. prioritised for the next update):

all of the sims 4 animations for crafting pottery (the ones with props and low/high skill variations, it does have the main set of animations)

perfect converted animations (has some issues, mainly with the skirt bones)

all the ts4 ceramics (there's a few more for me to convert still)

sims 2 ceramics

skill challenges + rewards

self-employed pottery career

Further things I thought about for future updates:

more complicated/realistic pottery process (clay ingredient, learning to throw on the wheel before being able to make stuff, maybe needing to dry out clay before glazing, possibility of pot collapsing + can be recycled or repaired, different intermediate prop objects for WIP ceramics to better match the final item)

pottery business mechanic (though existing business mods might work already)

pottery related wishes

?? probably more stuff I forgot about but might remember at a future point

there are some small imperfections with the objects that if they bother me/other people enough then I can fix them too

I think that's everything I want to say so here are some screenshots!

I think most of the coding for the first version is done, the interactions are looking pretty good from start to finish. I have to add some skill related stuff but not too much. Now it's mainly converting the sims 4 ceramics, adding the glazes as material states, and some more animations/sound effects to finish off.

I got a bit stuck with the Material State Editor tool so that put me off the whole thing, but worst case scenario I can add them manually... There's plenty to do in the meantime though so I should give it another go before I do that.

I've converted most of the ceramics, and just have the sculptures and a couple of vases left. Here are the objects I've converted so far: bulbous vase, candle lantern, cake stand, planter pot, oil burner, candle holder, and tea set.

With a special mention of the tea set which I'm rather proud of. I separated the tray, cup, and pot, so they are separate objects which need to be crafted on the wheel individually. The tray is a decor object with slots to put 3 cups and the tea pot on. If ani's Tea Mod is installed, the cups and tea pot will use the scripts from that mod and be functional. You can put some cups inside the tea pot to be used when the tea is poured. If you don't have the mod, they will just be decor objects looking very cute on the tray.

The vases will have slots in them, so arrangements from my flower arranging mod can be put into them (like the bulbous vase in the screenshot above). I have an interaction in the unreleased v2.0 which allows you take the arrangements out of the default vase, so instead they're just attached to a small square which can then be put in a vase. You can then interact with the arrangement as normal, throwing them out when dead, but leaving the vase as is. That's a different mod update though, I really need to get Flower Arranging V2.0 released officially...

Anyway the pottery mod will still take a while to complete but I am getting through it :p I was really excited for pottery and I still would really like to have the finished mod, but all of the parts to it are a bit of a slog TBH. But I shan't complain any more! The collection of converted ceramics growing is nice to see at least...

Interaction

I have a Make Ceramic interaction, with the converted sims 4 pottery wheel, where you can pick the ceramic to make and the sim will sit at the wheel, and make it! I still have more animations to convert but I might not do all of them for simplicity's sake.

Skill

Currently just have a basic pottery skill, which will determine which items your sim can make, but I could add a couple of skill stats and maybe challenges.

Objects

I've also made some progress on converting the sims 4 pottery objects, but it will also be easy to add other objects to the XML file if you want.

Glazing

I also have an XML set up for selectable glazes, so you can pick in game which sims 4 glaze you want for the sims 4 objects, as well as a default one which will be fully CAStable. It's therefore possible to add selectable glazes to other objects, but you'll need to be comfortable adding the textures as material states rather than regular presets. But CASt has you covered anyway :p

Kiln

The kiln object is where you finish the ceramics, either choosing a sims 4 glaze or a normal CAStable version. Sims 4 has the kiln process be almost instant, but I have it so the ceramic will take a few hours to finish and your sim can come and pick it up later - like the nectar machine from WA.

Still to do:

Finish converting the sims 4 ceramics

Set up the glazes for them

Add more pottery animations

Skill improvements

Add sounds to wheel and kiln

Mod in action:

I think it's at a stage where I could technically use it to add all the material states to the ceramics for the pottery mod, so I'm guessing that's what I'll be doing soon, although there are still some features I want to add to the tool. And it's not super user-friendly yet. Plus I've been getting corrupted memory crashes for some reason :p I think it's to do with the DDS display and changing it too quickly but I'm hoping it will fix itself when I redo how the images are displayed...

Not exactly pretty but most of the buttons are functional and work as intended! At least I think so - using the ceramics as guinea pigs will be the real test...

The last thing I was working on was an update to the cooking menu mod to make it more versatile so it can be used for other cooking mods. I'd really like to return to that too and get that version finished.

To share my simmy woes, I've been pretty uninspired from sims 3 and modding and I'm not exactly sure how my current/future modding projects will go. I haven't been into actually playing the game for ages which doesn't help, because nothing makes you want to make mods like wishing you had some feature in the game... So send some simmy vibes my way please