#sims3tutorials

Set Up

School outfits: You do not have to use uniforms but if you do I recommend Dresscode mod.

This is the best football mesh I could find with shoulderpads.

The cheerleader uniform can be used with any cc clothes you have with a cropped tank top and skirt. Just set teens to use adult clothes in NRAAS MC CAS menu.

So the only functional rooms should be classrooms with desks and white board (you can also transmogrify blackboard cc into the uni whiteboard), and a cafeteria with cafeteria helper mod.

All the other rooms you typically add on a school lot should be purely for deco or locked for classroom schedule changes.

And admin offices should have deco pc's to eliminate the chances of sims going to use those computers.

You can place custom role generator markers, and use custom sliders to reduce the size of some of the sims.

This is because I believe I changed the age of the custom role sims who were sent to the high school lot in the past and the mod created new sims to come to those markers who were adults.

So I keep them as adults but change their outfits to make them look like teens, and make them shorter (or taller depending) so they can blend in with the world's teen population.

 I typically make 3 cheerleaders, 3 goths, 3 jocks, and 3 nerds. You can transmogrify deco objects in the school instead of having the weird white x marker in the middle of the floor.

 I also suggest having these sims come in during separate hours in the morning or you'll get a slight lag freeze in the morning when everyone is going to school. Cheerleaders, nerds, and jocks can come in earlier, and goths or potheads can come in much later.

With Flotheories relax to sit mod, these sims will autonomously sit in the available seats in the classrooms. Since they are adults they do not have the push for objects like how teen sims do. So they will sit there either quietly or talking, as long as you don't mind them chattering you should be fine. You can also click available seats in the classrooms and send the sims to come and sit. They will sit for 2 hours, so you may or may not have to do so again.

This is varied because they may want to go to the cafeteria and get food, in which I don't mind because once the teen and child sims get hungry they will autonomously go to the cafeteria to get food anyway. 

And they all tend to get hungry around the same time (11:30 or 12:00 pm) which is a good time to have school lunch in game, anyway. 

You can either call them back into the classrooms after lunch or let them do their own thing. 

Some of the sims will come back to sit on their own (because this lot will only have eating and sitting options available during those school times), some may use the bathroom. 

But eventually they will come back to sit. Unless you’ve unlocked other rooms where they can do other things.

I also recommend leaving some of these sims on the lot afterschool as well as creating another role marker for afterschool "teachers". This is for when you sign your kids up for afterschool programs, the UC mod will keep them on the lot until the club times are done. 

You can either open up certain rooms like a music room, or gym, have them do their homework in the library of the school lot, etc. 

The other assigned sims will continue to do various things around the school and with the opened rooms they may or may not join in. 

This just adds more immersion so your child/teen sims aren't the only sims left on the lot afterschool.

For school staff I use deco people as hallway monitors, principal, nurse, librarian, and cafeteria cook.

Transmogrify any custom buffet (I typically go for a university or school themed buffet table) into ITF food distributor, then transmogrify the cafeteria helper into a poster or any misc object in the cafeteria room.

Room idea's for the realistic school:

Math room. Desks and chair, uni white board. Any kind of deco to signal a math room.

History room. Same as above.

Simlish (english writing) room. Same as above.

Cafeteria. Cafeteria Helper. ITF food fridge. Tables and chairs.

Welcome Center/check in center. Could be by or in the lobby. Purely Deco.

Admin offices. Conference room or smaller rooms. Principal office. Purely Deco.

Nurse office. Purely Deco.

Teacher break room. Purely Deco.

Science Room. Chemical station. White board. Science Deco. Lock this room, because it's functional. Open this room one day every week or every other week, and close the other classrooms. This sends sims to this classroom more to simulate a change in class schedule.

Alternatively, you can lock and unlock rooms after lunch to simulate a change in class schedule daily as well. It's minimal maintenance but more immersive.

Art Room. Easels. No white board, instead place a uni podium stand (transmogrify it into a desk or rug in front of a painting to simulate the teacher showing the students how to paint). Same as above, open this room throughout the week or after lunch.

Gym. Gym equipment. Same as above, lock or unlock.

Music room. Music equipment. Same as above.

Storage room. Purely Deco.

Assembly room. Stage with podium stand. Seats all throughout the room. Lock all functional rooms in the school so all sims will be sent to the assembly room. You can have this be all day for an important announcement or "special guest" event. You can also place a big TV screen on the stage to simulate an educational film for the students.

Computer Lab. Functional PC's. Lock other rooms to send sims to this room.

Library. Tables and chairs. Bookshelves. Functional PC's. Up to you to lock or unlock. Some students may get a pass to go to the library during class.

School dances, Proms, and events:

You can either set up an empty room on the school lot, or have a premade room somewhere else in town.

Create a party and invite all the teen sims in the world to that party, make it formal or costume party, etc.

You can set up a prom room at something like a Hotel lot. And keep that room locked all year round until the party starts, can do the same for this room in the school lot.

This makes it so you can have several school based party events with more control over what happens during these dances. 

Like a school dance king and queen, have them relax in the throne chairs for two hours throughout the party. Use this mod to turn off EA Proms altogether.

Spring Fling (Formal wear). 

Valentines Dance (Formal). 

Prom (Formal). 

Winter wonderland dance (Formal). 

Costume Halloween Party Dance. 

Talent Show, everyday wear (with Karaoke, band items, and comic mic on a stage).

You can create a separate sports field lot somewhere close to the school or anywhere else in town. Then set up the lot with seasonal lot marker during Spring with various outdoor activities. 

Invite all the teen sims to the lot as an outdoor party. 

This can simulate a Field day or Olympic sport day.

This sports field can also double for school sports team nights. 

So a basketball court lot. 

And the same field day lot during Fall (so no objects are obstructing) with a soccer goal at both ends. 

Whatever sims will auto play on the basketball court or soccer goal.

 And you can use Flotheories sit mod to make everyone else you invited relax for 2 hours.

Field Trips. Can be afterschool or on the weekend. Museums. The Zoo. City Hall. Can all be lots used more for this roleplay style.

I recommend getting the always throw great parties lifetime wish so you don't suffer from the negative moodlet from these events.

How to roleplay more schoolwork for sims:

This mod makes it so everyone can work from home. You can have teen sims work from home to simulate doing homework for several classrooms. While they may have one journal for the entire day, this can just be assigned by one classroom.

You can also have your teen sims practice writing, or create a nonfiction book titled "Math 101, Math 102" etc. While the book will be published and your teen sims will collect royalties. so this may not work as an alternative. However, you can pretend this is an allowance given to your teen sims for good behavior.

The journal mod does this much better imo. And to make creating a book more interesting, you can have a sim create a poetry book or homework helper book. That way if they collect royalties on it, it makes a bit more sense.

This mod allows sims to study skills online. This can simulate them learning what classrooms are available. Math = logic. Writing = writing. History = logic. Music = music. Art = painting, sculpting.

You can also have a school testing day. This will be once or twice a year, preferably midterms and finals. Open the computer lab, and close all the other rooms.

So as not to OP your skills, I combine a

slower skill learning mod

, and

skills lose progress mod

. This makes this play more challenging and doesn't max out skills as quickly or maybe even at all. 

You do not have to have your teen sims do this indefinitely, they may only do this for 30 minutes to an hour at home or the library or afterschool on the school lot, although with the various clubs they can just practice physically in the rooms that are now unlocked and available to use.

This Parenthood set from ATS

, can simulate big projects for sims to do. You could place the chess board items in the library so that sims may randomly work on it. 

But I'd mostly set this up somewhere on the home lot. 

And a project can be assigned maybe once or twice throughout the year. 

Typically in the beginning of the school year (Fall) or right before summer or after holiday break (Winter).

This is best to set up for a science fair event. 

You can either create a science fair room on the school lot but keep it locked for most of the school year, or create another science fair room in another part of the world.

 I recommend in a community center or Hotel. Just one room.

 Here you can place the science board's and completed projects on various tables throughout the room. 

And create a party to invite teen sims and their parents and teachers to the lot.

Things you wanna use:

TSRW: CLICK ME!

Some basic TSRW knowledge!

I won’t explain the meshing/export bits. I will explain how to use groups in this tutorial though! Like duplicating them in TSRW. And uhm… some stuff that most people don’t know about which is the reason I’m writing this tutorial as well! :D

1. Boost up your TSRW and select a decoration piece (I usually go with the Cowplant) You could use the tissue box as well but that one is not recolourable, although you can give it a mask when importing it in TT3 (texture tweaker)… aand i’m rambling again!

2. Usually you want to check how many groups that you might have! Let’s take a look!:

- Allright group 0 is the shadow map, so that makes one group. 

- Group 1 is the glass, though if you look closely you can see that I used 2 spheres, this is because I wanted a glass shader, and glass shaders don’t really like textures, so I usually try to avoid that. So make sure the outer sphere is the glass one

- Group 2 is the inner sphere. This sphere will have the animated snow!

- And group 3 (Which I selected) is just that one group that doesn’t need anything special

Now you don’t have to do it in this order, in fact it’s just a small explanation about why I grouped certain things this way, and why there are 2 spheres. 

3. ‘But how do I find an object with 4 groups?!’ Simple! You don’t! BUT! That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it yourself! In order to get more groups, you want to select the group that uses your mesh. NEVER the shadow map! 

In this case, Group 1 is the non-shadow map mesh, so I want to duplicate that one. But there are cases where Group 0 is the non-shadow map mesh. So do check if it’s the right one! 

Click yes when the pop up message pops up!

4. Duplicate it 2 times since we have 4 groups!

Your mesh tab should look like this:

- Now import your mesh and your textures! 

5. THE GLASS SHADER Let’s add some shaders! I’ll start with the glass shader, so go to the group that needs the glass shader and click on ‘material’ and the 3 dots button, now another window should pop up.

- Expand the ‘shader’ tab. It should be set to ‘phong’ or ‘phong alpha’ by default, but we want to change it to either ‘glass for objects’ or ‘glass for objects translucent’. I usually go with Glass object and delete most of the things TSRW generates after it will ask you if it could fill the recommending settings. So make sure you delete anything but not these settings:

(In case you’d want to know how to delete certain settings, just right click on the thing you want to delete and select ‘remove’.)

-Select the ‘Done’ button

6. THE ANIMATED TEXTURE’S SHADER

Aaaand there we are! Let’s make some animated snow! :D Let’s go to the group that you want to give an animated texture

- Go to the shader/material tab again by clicking that 3 dots button again.

- Switch it to Phong alpha and click ‘Yes’ to make the changes.

- Make sure you keep the settings listed here:

(NOTE: Your Diffuse map will show you the multiplier that all groups share, I’ll explain later on how to make an individual diffuse map, it’s okay to delete the diffuse map as well, we’ll be adding this one).

7. BUT WHAT DO I DO IF SOMETHING’S MISSING? LIKE FOR EXAMPLE, AVERAGE COLOR?!

Weelll lemme tell you the secrets of shader settings! :D So, ever strumbled across this page?: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Sims_3:Shaders

And you were like ‘What the hell is this all suppose to be?’ or did you close the page because ‘AAH TO MANY NUMBERS’? Well this page is pretty interesting when you’re working with shaders and the settings that we’ve been removing. Right now we’ll be adding some! :D

“But… but… what does it all mean?!” Let’s get started!

Let’s scoll all the way to ‘phong’ and let’s take a look at all those numbers and settings:

All right so you can ignore the IDs. They might be interesting for some people, but not in this case. The things that ARE interesting however are the names and types. 

- Names

You might recognize some of the names, like bloomfactor. It’s in our TSRW’s shader list’s settings! But we’re also looking at some settings that aren’t in there. Those settings are compatible with the ‘Phong’ shader. For example, Phong has ‘Transparency’ and in the ‘Simskin’ shader it isn’t listed. This is because transparency isn’t compatible with the ‘Simskin’ shader. Bummer, I know right? But you can always switch it to a shader that is compatible with transparency! Like simhair, and the phong and the phong-alpha shader, etc. 

So that’s why the names are important, and to find the correct shader in TSRW’s list which we will soon discuss.

- Types

Types are really hard to explain if you don’t have the correct window in front of you. But the types are REALLY important. Because, it will show you the correct settings for when you want to add a settings. so let’s move on to actually adding stuff!

- Adding

- Click the +add button:

Look! Another window! :D

Did you recognize the ‘Type’? It’s exactly what you think it is! Imagine the ‘Property’ to be name, because it really is just that. And the name values are part of the ‘Type. 

All right, so let’s add some shader settings. First I want to look at the shader list, and remember the shader setting we want to add. In this case, we want to add a texture! :D

- So let’s expand the ‘Property’ and find the Diffuse map and click it: 

But now it’s time to freak out! Because when you expand the ‘Type’ button, and look up the type that the shader setting has, you’ll notice there is not texture listed. No! Don’t freak out! It took me a while to get the correct settings for this as well- hell I had to ask someone if they knew, and this is the correct type for textures:

But TSRW won’t let you go until you change the Num values! Why are they there? Well, let’s take the ‘DiffuseUVSelector - Float3′ for example. ‘Float’ Is a type, so you want to choose that one as a ‘type’. But what’s the 3 for? Well, see for yourself! Because when you expand the ‘Num values’ you’ll see a 3!

So your property would be ‘DiffuseUVSelector’, your type would have been ‘Float’ and your ‘Num values’ 3!

(if it just says ‘Float’ or if there is no number, just choose 0)

But what about textures? You want to set those to 4! So for textures (Yes all textures, masks, specular maps, overlay, multiplier, etc). Your setting should always be this (besides the property of course):

Soooo why are we adding a new Diffuse map after deleting the original one? 

Well we want to have an individual image for the snow! :D Nobody wants the face of Mortimer and Bella (Or something else) to scroll/animate across the entire glass! D: We want snow! :D

- Click OK!

So too lazy to make your own snow? Well here is the snow texture: http://simfileshare.net/download/144111/

So you can either use this texture or maybe another texture! But I would recommend using a 1024x1024 sized one with snow flakes (Or maybe even flowers!) 

- Import your image in the diffuse map we just created!

8. Animate your texture!

Phew that was long! But let’s get to the exciting part! The reason why I explained how to add stuff is not just because of the Diffuse map, but we also need a ‘Uv scoll speed’ setting. Usually it’s set as 0, which means you have a non-moving/animating texture. But, when you change the values to 0.2, it will scroll for 0.2 seconds. My snowglobe is set as 0.126.

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE! So, 0.126;0 is what you’ll see when checking my settings, but the ‘;’ is more like a ‘wall’ or like a line. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the X and Y axis in general (it will come back to you when you’re familiar with UV mapping or meshing) But the X axis is the horizontally line (Left, right) and the Y is the vertically (Up, down). So in this case the 0.126 is the X axis and the 0 is the Y axis. 

Now I didn’t know how to fix the snow for going horizontally after looking at it after the release of the TS2 to TS3 set. In fact, I turned the UV map around even though I didn’t had to, so I thought it would be nice to share that with you!

- Add the UV scroll speed with it’s correct settings

- Change the value to  0;0.126 (or maybe another value, you can always play around with it! 0.2 is super speed! Check out @davidmont‘s awesome twinkle lights! You can create awesome things with uv speed scroll: https://davidmont.tumblr.com/post/71243029766/here-david-once-again-twinkly-twinkly-strange

And you’re basically done! :D That’s how you make an animated snowglobe with infinite snow!