#salemsims tutorial

The tools I use most I've highlighted below:

I won't outline their uses just now, but we'll be going over them as we use them.

Different creators like to split their blender window up in different ways, but this is my preferred setup when I'm working:

I use the yellow half of the screen as a render preview/3D workspace

I use the blue half for shader editing, posing, etc.

You can set yours up like mine or find what's comfortable for you.

When you first open blender, you'll be greeted by the default cube, lamp, and camera.

Delete them! You can do this two ways:

Click and drag your mouse over all 3 and delete or Select all 3 in the side menu and hit x on your keyboard

Step 1: Importing our Sim

After deleting the default items, we'll import our sim. This tutorial assumes you've already ripped your sim (if you haven't, check here for how to do so!)

Now, let's import.

Click file -> import -> collada (dae) Select your DAE and click "import"

Your sim will look a little... off (thick eyelashes and a weird shine), but that's okay we're going to fix it! Your sim might also look solid white. If that's the case, make sure you're in the right mode. You can adjust modes by clicking on one of the four circles in the top right of the screen.

These are your viewport modes.

Wireframe (far left) - good for mesh editing Solid (middle left) - good for posing Material Preview (middle right) - what we work in most, shows everything with textures (color) Rendered (far right) - this shows your render preview We'll be working mostly in Material Preview

You can also switch between modes by hitting z on your keyboard then selecting which one you want I'll be using mostly keyboard shortcuts but I'll show you how to do both as we go along

Step 2: Adjusting Our Sim's Textures

Let's fix our sim's textures.

First. set up your workspace. Separate your workspace into two windows (as shown in the picture above with a yellow half and a blue half) and select "shader editor" in your right-side window. Like this:

Next, navigate to your Outliner and click the little dropdown beside "rig"

Under "rig" you'll see your sim's body parts listed. We're going to select "Body" When we click "Body", these colored blocks will appear in our shader editor window.

These are called Nodes. We use Nodes to adjust textures for various items in blender (sims, walls, furniture, etc). To add a new Node, you can select "add" in the top bar, or hit Shift+A on your keyboard and add in the node you need.

We're going to add in a Mix Shader and a Transparent Shader (both found under the Shader tab) and adjust our nodes this way:

Snug the Mix Shader between the Principled BSDF and the Material Output. Now we have to connect our Nodes and adjust our Principled BSDF. For the sake of this tutorial, I'll show the basic Node & Shader adjustments, but we'll go into each of them in a later tutorial.

Adjust your Principled BSDF like this, then connect your Node lines exactly like this:

You'll see that our SIm's body looks a bit different from her head, hair and shoes. That's good! Now we need to duplicate that texture to the rest of our sim.

Navigate to your Outliner again, and use Shift+Click to select the rest of the body parts in the list Don't select pose or rig.001 and make sure the Body is selected first EDIT: You'll only see "body" if your sim has a full body outfit on! If they have a shirt and pants, you'll have "Bottom" and "Top" instead! In this case, select "bottom"!

Now, hover your cursor over your sim/the 3D viewport window, and press Ctrl+L on your keyboard. This brings up the Link/Transfer data window. Select "Link Materials"

Our sim is looking better, but her eyelashes are still dark, let's fix that now.

In your Properties area, navigate to Material Properties (the little red ball)

Change your Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed We will always set Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed

Now our sim looks right!

Step 1: Import your sim into blender and pose

For this tutorial, I'm going to use my lovely Lilith! When appending clothing, it's best to use a mostly naked/fully naked sim. It can be hella weird having nude ripped sims on your computer but trust me, it'll make this process SO MUCH EASIER and your end results better if you don't have clothing on your sims. Why is this? Any clothing applied to your sim in game is permanently attached to their mesh in blender. Meaning you cannot delete off any piece of clothing that's already there. Because of this, I recommend fully nude sims free of any clothing, jewelry or other accessories. However, fully nude sims aren't Tumblr friendly so I'm using a topless, underwear-d Lilith 🤣

Here's Lilith, imported, nodes adjusted, and posed. I won't cover how to do this here, as I already have in THIS TUTORIAL (3 parts, all linked). So let's get on to the fun

Step Two: Adding Hair

Adding hair and clothing works the exact same way as appending a prop to your sim, with a few additional steps. Like with props, export the mesh and texture for your hair, then append them in blender. For this tutorial, I'm using Lamz' Katrina hair. Just like with anything else, append all of the studio meshes:

Once you import them, it'll look a bit messy.

But that's ok we're going to fix it! Like with any appended object, delete the bone_bone_shape and the rig, so. you're only left with your sim and the studio meshes. Add in your texture nodes and adjust like we do with any object. It should look like this:

Link the materials and join the meshes into one, and you should have something like this:

But as you can see, the hair isn't aligned. To fix this, navigate to the Modifiers tab (like we did with jewelry/props) and set the object to your sim, like this:

Now her hair should be... actually on her head! 😂

Let's add some clothing then I'll show you some handy tricks I use to achieve more realism in my renders. I'm going to use the same dress I used in her render here to keep things simple. It's Evellsims' Trapped Dress.

Step Three: Adding Clothing

We'll follow the exact same steps we did with the hair. Export the mesh and texture from Sims 4 Studio and append in blender.

Just like before, it's not in line and needs the nodes adjusted. Follow the same exact steps, adjust the nodes, link materials, join, and append. After following all those steps you should have something like this:

You might be wondering why I still have a censor bar here... That's because appending clothing doesn't automatically take the same shape as your sim's body like it does in cas. (I can't show it cause Tumblr but... her tits are out 🤣 just trust me) Different framed sims will require more or less work depending on their body shape. Curvy sims will require a lot, whereas petite ones like Lilith may only require a little bit of manipulation. Additionally, some poses and clothing aren't as compatible as you'd hope. Fabric can do some weird things, so sometimes you'll have to do more or less manipulation and it's a bit of a tossup. This makes appending clothing in blender a massive job, but for certain projects it works way better than dressing your sim in cas, particularly when you want to manipulate the clothing in some way (by mimicking a breeze, or gravity, etc) or if you're a masochist like me and you want to always do more work.

Step Four: Sculpting Hair & Clothes

By far my favorite part of the render process (even though it's tedious as fuck and takes an age) is sculpting. I use sculpting to fix clothing and hair and mimic gravity and weather. Here are a few examples of what sculpting can do (other than simply making clothes fit):

To use the sculpt tool, select from this dropdown:

From the new sidebar tools, select Elastic Deform, here:

I've covered the Tumblr-sensitive bits so you can see what you'll be working with. It's not unusual to have gaps in the clothing that need filling or adjusting, like this:

Using the sculpting tool set to elastic deform, you just have to click and drag the fabric to where you want it. Be sure you're editing the clothing mesh and not your sims body! Always select the mesh you want to sculpt from your outliner panel so you don't accidentally click and drag your sims skin! Here's a before and after, make sure you're putting your cursor against the right angles.

There are a few gaps on the back of her dress too. Here they are before and after sculpting:

It takes some time and practice to get good at this, but once you do there's no limit to what you can accomplish! There are other methods that yield similar results (like shrink-wrap, but I've never gotten it to work for me) but this is my favorite and what I'm most used to. You can sculpt any mesh, so go wild!

That's all I have for today.

Homework:

Navigate to Render Properties and select "Cycles" in the Render Engine dropdown

If you have an older system, leave CPU selected If you have a newer or beefier computer, select GPU complete I render on a MacBook Pro, so I'll select GPU

Under Sampling -> Viewport, make sure you click on the Denoise, this will clean up our render preview so we can more easily see what the final result will look like

Under the same Sampling tab, adjust your Max Samples to match mine (32 in the viewport and 128 in the render window, this will speed up your render time)

Click into Output Properties and select "Render Region" and "Crop to Render Region", and change the frame rate to 50fps In the Output tab, change the Color Depth to 16 Nothing will change in our 3D Viewport, but the settings are ready to go

Step 2: Adding Lights

Right now, if we were to change our mode to Rendered, we'd have nothing but a black box. This is because our sim is in a cube with no light source Let's add some lights! For portraits, I like to use a combination of Spot and Point lights You add in lights the same way you add in the camera and the cube, either by clicking "Add" in the top menu or with Shift+A on your keyboard and selecting Light -> Spot or Point I'm going to add a Spotlight first I like to add in lights in Rendered view, but be careful using rendered view as it ups the chances that your Blender will crash

I added in a spotlight but it appears that nothing happened Objects are added into Blender at the Cursor point. I never adjusted mine so it's at the center of the axis, meaning below my sim's feet and outside of the box Using G and X,Y,Z, I'm going to move my spotlight up

Now the light is above her, but I want it shining on her, so I'm going to rotate it forward Rotate objects using the R key and X,Y,Z directions on your keyboard

That's not bad, but I want more dynamic light. I'm going to add two more spotlights for 3 point lighting

This is looking better, and you can see where my lights are and how they're oriented Now let's adjust the background Select your cube in the Outliner panel and navigate to Material Properties Click "new" in the bar Then navigate to your Shader Editor window and you'll see a Principled BSDF Node is here

We're not going to do anything too fancy here, just change the color of the cube and some aspects of how it looks Change the color of your box using the color wheel then adjust your nodes to everything is set to zero except roughness

You should have something like this (of course use whatever color compliments your sim best)

I don't want the background to be super flat, so I'm going to adjust the Metallic value on mine Now I have this:

I like the lighting but I think it might be a little too bright Let's adjust it a little In your Outliner panel, select one of the spotlights then go to "Object Data Properties" (the little lightbulb)

I'm going to adjust the Power to 5 and click off multiple importance and click on shadow caustics, like this:

Do the same for all three spotlights and you should have something like this:

That's better, but let's draw attention to her face with a Point light Add in a point light the same way as a spot (shift+A, light -> point) or Add in the top bar) and move it in front of her face

This is obviously way too bright, so let's adjust it like we did for the spotlights I've changed the radius and adjusted the power to 8, as shown here:

Here's the result:

That's much better! Normally at this point I would probably change her hair and add in jewelry and make minor adjustments to this and that, but for the sake of this super simple beginner render, we're ready to go! Before you run your render, save this file somewhere easy to find. I'll be using the same file for future tutorials!

Step 3: Rendering!

Once you've done all the setup, rendering is actually super easy Make sure you switch your 3D viewport back to Material Preview (rendering while in rendered mode has a tendency to make blender crash) Then go up to the navigation bar and select Render -> Render Image

A new window will pop up, and your render will begin!

Rendering time will depend on how complex your scene is and how many assets you've added in. Ours is very simple so mine says it'll take about 6 minutes

And it's done! Save your render and either post it or edit it in your favorite photo editor!

UPDATE 7/17/23

As you can see, my render was looking very glowy. I didn't know why (there was no glare node in the compositing settings or anything that would cause this, or so I thought), until I adjusted the roughness values on my sim.

Now it looks like this:

So if yours is looking glowy, adjust the roughness to 0, then back up to 10 and that should fix it!

Homework:

Your Render School homework is to create a simple portrait render using these tutorials and tag me in it! I can't wait to see what yall make!

Please leave any questions in the comments below or send an ask and I'll help as best I can!

Let's start by adding furniture into our scene. Usually I'd build a room first but I know many of your were asking how to do this so I'll cover this first!

Step 1: Exporting Meshes and Textures from S4S

Appending furniture and decor to a scene works the same way as appending jewelry to a sim. First we have to prepare it for blender in Sims 4 Studio. If you're using a piece of furniture from the game, select "Object" in Sims 4 Studio. It may load slowly so be patient!

Then you'll see the game's full catalogue:

Filter and sort as needed to find what you're looking for. For this tutorial I'm going to remake (and revamp) one of the first blender scenes I've ever made, which looked like this:

So I'll export the fireplace first. It's from Vintage Glamour, so I'll filter my S4S by Vintage Glamour, and here it is:

Highlight the fireplace then click "Next" Name the package anything, but make it easy to remember. If you need another swatch in the future you can always open the fireplace directly in S4S instead of searching for it each time. Save it somewhere easy to find! Once opened, you'll see this:

To render furniture, we need to export the Mesh and Texture files. I'm in the habit of exporting my mesh first, so we'll do it that way. Click the "mesh" tab and you'll see this:

Click "Export Mesh" and save the .blend file somewhere easy to find! I typically keep the .package, .mesh, and .png (texture) files all in the same place. I find it easier while working in blender. Do whatever makes sense to you just make sure to stay organized! After saving the mesh, navigate to the Texture tab and do the same thing:

Export the texture and save it somewhere easy to find. Repeat this process for all the furniture you'll need for your scene.

Step Two: Appending Furniture Items into Blender & Applying Textures

Now let's go into blender. As always, delete the default cube, lamp, and camera, then set up your workspace in whatever way is comfortable for you. I like to set mine up like this:

Now, just like with jewelry, let's append our fireplace in. Go to File -> Append and locate your fireplace .blend file. Open the file, then the Object folder, then select all "studio_mesh" files you see:

You should then have something like this:

Delete the bone_bone and rig as always, then also delete the footprint, which for me was the first studio_mesh in my Outliner list.

Then you'll have the fireplace by itself:

Navigate to the Shader Editor in your preferred workspace, then to the "Material Properties" tab.

Click the minus beside the diffuse texture to get rid of it. Then click the "New" button that appears once the diffuse is gone.

Nodes will appear in your shader tab!

Like we did with jewelry, add in an Image Texture node, a Mix Shader, and a Transparent BSDF. Connect and arrange them exactly like I have here:

Make sure you add in your texture file in the Image Texture node (click open, then navigate to your .png file we exported from S4S). Change the blend mode to Alpha Hashed in your properties window, like this:

And make sure you're in Material Preview mode (I wasn't) by pressing Z on your keyboard and selecting "Material preview"

Now you should have something like this!

In Part Two, we'll add in the walls of the room and maybe a window!

Some notes before I leave you:

Using CC works the same way, you can add it into the custom content folder in S4S OR you can double-click the package file and open it in S4S that way.

Some objects, like trees, have more than one texture. I'll do a separate mini tutorial on that if yall need but basically you'll export both texture files and then apply them to the proper parts of the object (for a tree, for example, the leaves and trunk are often separate texture files)

Step 1: Exporting Poses for Blender

Before we can pose our sim in blender, we need to prepare the pose. I'll be using this pose set by @roselipaofficial for this render! Download your pose and open it in Sims 4 Studio. Click "Clips" at the top

For my render, I'm going to use Pose #3 When you select your pose, the Clip Name will change (Each creator names their poses differently) Before we export, make sure you're set to the right rig! Blender does terrifying things if you export to the wrong rig. I'm posing an Adult Female sim, so we're good to go! Export the pose and save it somewhere that's easy to find! Now let's go back to Blender

Step 2: Posing Our Sim

In Blender, click on "Pose" in your Outliner Then hover over your sim/3D viewport area and hit I on your keyboard (not L) to open the Keyframe menu Select "Location & Rotation"

In your right-side workspace, change your editor type (window) to Nonlinear Animation This is where we'll pose our sim!

You'll see rig and rigAction. Click the little dropdown arrow next to rigAction, then you'll see a highlighted orange track

Now let's add in our pose Click File -> Append and navigate to where you saved your pose Double click your pose file, then elect the "Action" folder Double-click the file that comes up under "Action," that's your pose

It'll appear as though nothing happened... but it did! In your Nonlinear Animation window, click "Add" and select "Add Action Strip" Make sure your rigAction line is highlighted orange like mine is!

Select the Roselipa pose we added from the list, and TA DA! Our sim is posed!

Step 3: Setting up our Scene

I always add in my camera before doing anything else, that way I can adjust as necessary based on what I want the final render to look like. To add in a camera, you can either select "Add" in the top bar of your 3D viewport window, or hit Shift+A on your keyboard and select "camera"

You'll see that a camera has been added to our Outliner, and we can see it in our 3D Viewport (If you still have a lamp in your Outliner like I do, go ahead and delete it now, we don't need it)

I personally like to move my camera around in real time so I know where it's going. To switch to camera view, click the little camera icon in the right toolbar of your 3D Viewport You'll see that our camera is in a weird spot, but that's ok we're going to fix it

I want a portrait, so I'm going to switch the resolution settings. To do this, go to Output Properties and change the resolution values. The default is 1920x1080, but I like higher resolution renders personally, so I'm changing mine to 2080x2920. Only go up in resolution if your computer can handle it!

Now let's move our camera I like to use the Axis directions on my keyboard to get the camera where I want it Select your camera in the Outliner, then hover your mouse over the 3D Viewport Using the "G" key (the shortcut for move), combine G and "X, Y, or Z" on your keyboard to move the camera where you want it This will be fiddly at first but you'll get better with practice! I've set my camera up like this:

For basic portrait renders, I like to just use lights and a simple cube Remember the default cube we deleted in the beginning, we're going to bring it back now Add it in the same way as the camera, either by selecting "Add" in the top menu and choosing Mesh -> Cube, or by pressing Shift+A on your keyboard and selecting Mesh -> Cube I use keyboard shortcuts, so I'll add mine with Shfit+A like so:

You'll probably have something like this, your sim floating in a box

Use the same method you did to move the camera ("G" plus axis directions (X,Y,Z) to move it up and use "S" on your keyboard to scale it up To scale up, hit "S" then move your mouse outward Then center the box over your sim We want to have something like this:

Click into Camera view (click the camera on the right) and you should have something like this:

In Part 3, we'll adjust our render settings, add lights, and render!

I'd wanted to include those in part two, but Tumblr is yelling at me about my photo limit.