Pose Boxes

It's been a while since I've posted here! But I haven't really been playing the game. It's a lot of work to get a story chapter out every week with pictures. Which is a shame because one of the fun parts of TS3 happens to be getting the pictures, and I've been breezing through that part to just be sure I have something up every week.

So I have started testing out the pose player. I've got the updated version now, and it's pretty awesome. You can add poses to a list to be used again and again. And instead of looking for a specific box like in TS2, you just have the one box and you type in the name of the pose you need. Sometimes this can be really handy or really not handy. Many poses do not have any sort of description, so it's hard to know what pose it is until you use it.

Many artists include the picture of a pose with the name beside it, so I've been keeping the pictures that come with the pose files. I've also got a notepad file where I'm putting in the names of poses. If I can, I put in the description too just to help me out.


The other day, I saw this pose pack and I had to use it. (I knew exactly who for too.)





I've been wishing to pose them forever on the floor of the meadow. In my head, they used to meet on the meadow and then just lay side by side. The closet I could imagine were the TS2 animations of sky watching (and later on cuddling under the clouds/stars). Nothing like that at ALL in TS3. Why would they take that detail out among the ones they did take out? Maybe Generations will put it back in?

Anyway, this is what I came up with.

Using the earlier link floor pack from Club Crimsyn. It's not bad, but here's the thing- the artist can mold the faces. And since there is no over lay yet, the face that goes with the pose is just the face with the pose. This isn't really Brandon's face. So that's the main issue I've got with the poses on pose boxes. Even if the pose looks great and natural because of the care an artist took (and these poses were pretty neat), they will still look stiff and unnatural because of the faces.

And I really deal with faces.

So I decided to give is another shot with a different pose pack from My Blue Book. Pose Set 003- Couple Poses. She says she worked hard on them, and it really shows. I think she did a great job with it considering how difficult it must be to pose one sim, let alone two and get them to line up!


My favorite picture:



It's adorable, but still those faces frozen like that.

But then I suppose my own attempts at couple posing like this have been the same for the most part. It's why I end up having weird camera angles to hide strange eyes or the fact that two sims may be going through one another. Like the first couple of pictures in this chapter.


But still, my favorite pictures of Pat and Brandon happen to be the standard EA animations. Catch them between animations, move them around a little and you have unique poses with unique faces and they will generally turn their heads to face each other. The Pose Player will also play those standard animations, so I still need to do even more experimenting.

I guess I just don't see myself becoming a major poses downloading whore. Though I do note the good ones I like and see possibility for future reference.

Test pictures

So I've mentioned before that after I create a character, I give them a test run in the sim world to see how well they match up with the character I see in my head. Some come out perfectly the first time, and some I have to edit quite a bit.

Pat is one of those that came out fully formed, perfectly. While looking for pictures of her body, I ran across the original test shots I ran her through after I made her. These were also Brandon's test shots as an adult.






But, of course, it wasn't until these pictures below that I was absolutely SURE I had them down perfectly.



Love LOVE this shot, because it looks like he's trying to cajole her into doing something. I would bet he does this to her from time to time when they're alone, just the two of them. They aren't often alone, not if Pat has her way. But if he stops by when they're cleaning up or closing, I can see Rita (Pat's mom) excusing herself and taking Melissa with her. (I think she'd make it very obvious that she was leaving them alone, and she'd invite Melissa in on this very obvious not so secret secret. I can imagine Melissa giggling about it even if she isn't completely sure what is going on and needs her grandmother to explain it to her which would bring up some awkward questions from Melissa later I'm sure.)







And of course, he wins here. Did she ever really have a chance?


Kyrene was made at the same time, and so Brandon was also used for her test shots.


Kyrene's first try. So not her. It was her eyes, so I sent her back to CAS.








What I love about Kyrene's sim is how expressive her face is. She can look dangerous, sultry, and sad with very little facial movements.

Body shapes or Shirtless men!

*ahem* Well, one of the plus sides of TS3 is the ability to sculpt the bodies as well as the faces. So without much more needing to be said (it's really all in the title of this post) I'm going to start with our main three guys: Henry, Brandon and Jimmy.



Right away, I can tell it's hard to tell the differences. One of the problem with TS3 men is that they all have muscle definition around the shoulder, the forearms are shaped the same, the backs have the same (for lack of a better word) dents. It's just the mesh it seems. These are things that don't change no matter how flabby a male sim is or how muscular.

What does change is the upper arm, the shape of the torso, width of the body.

Here's a comparison where you can see the arms. Jimmy actually has a smoother arm. He's less muscular than Brandon and Jimmy. In my head, Brandon is much more compact, somewhat short but blocky. Henri is tall, but it's clear Brandon gets his muscles from Henri. Meanwhile, of the three of them, Jimmy is actually a bit more lithe. (But only of the three of them.)

Here's a shot from the back. See what I mean? The body mesh will all have the same depth of the spine regardless of muscle mass when I'd expect that Brandon's spine would probably be a bit deeper than Jimmy's. Well, it almost looks like it is, but I think that's just because of the angle of the light.

From this picture, you can see the curve to their backs. Brandon and Henri both have waists that are more defined. Jimmy's more straight up and down. His waist is actually a bit thicker than Brandon's. And Henri, being the oldest actually has the thickest waist, but I couldn't easily get a comparison shot of that. You'll have to trust me on that.


Oh, well actually, this is a good comparison shot of the waists. What I mostly wanted to show here is that Aaron is a giant.

Aaron is taller than Henri and as muscular as Brandon. His waist is actually a bit smaller though, despite that he's older. I imagine that Aaron moves fast and he's strong.

Another comparison shot of the torsos. Jimmy's starting to look flabby next to those three.



So then my next thing was to show you Alex between Brandon and Aaron. Alex is one of the guys who's actually very lithe. He's young, but he's scrappy. Ignoring the fact that his skin tone is ripped, and only looking at the shape of his torso, there's not much to him. I imagine that Alex is very wiry. He's young, but he hasn't had a very easy life. He's got one of the thinnest waists because he's one of the youngest. He also isn't actually very muscular in CAS. See the line of his torso is pretty straight compared to Brandon's.


A side comparison makes it more clear I think. I'd also like to point out how pinchable Aaron's butt is right here. I am pretty sure that was intentional on my part when I was sculpting him. I gave him a little bit more butt because it makes his waist look more defined.


Of course my two favorite guys. Mitchell is actually taller than Angel and thicker. Angel is the older one, but he's naturally more agile because of his power (or ability I suppose would be more accurate). Angel has more muscle mass though. You can see it in his arms.


Poor Mitchell. I can hear him asking in my head, "Can I put my shirt back on now? It's cold."


With the guys, the differences are subtle. Even when it comes to heights, it's hard to make changes that are drastically different. I find that if you make them too tall, they look weird. The original slider hack I'd been using that was by Delphy extends the sim skeleton similar to the way we used to in TS2, but I find that's not a good way to do it. It ends up distorting the body and distorting the skin on the body.

Jonha had some sliders in testing here which break the sliders down, so instead of one slider, you have to use a minimum of three- one for the torso, one for the legs, and one for the arm length. It's a pretty clever system actually, since in real life people don't always have the same proportions. (Like Jay and I noticed a while ago we have almost the same torso length but his legs are way longer making him 6' to my 5'4".)

But as always, the fun ones to play with are really the girls.




I think the differences are obvious. Paula, coming from the Neutral area where her biggest concerns were studying and hanging out with friends, is an average size. She's got a little belly, she's wider, and her boobs are big because she has some weight to her.

Maria is the smallest. She's more of an athletic body. Her breasts are smaller, her waist is less defined, she has less of a butt. I see her always being like this even when she's older.

Kyrene is more voluptuous of course. She has hips and breasts. She's muscular, and she's not skinny. But it's unfair to compare her to these two since she is a full grown woman. You can compare her to Pat though.

With Pat, I flat out admit I spent some time on her butt. I have no good reason for it but that I'm rather proud of the way she came out. She's got a waist and hips that flare out a bit. I imagine she's young, but she's healthy and strong.


Looking for pictures of Pat, I've come across some Brandon and Pat ones I should probably share one of these days. They were the original test shots that let me know I had Pat down perfectly.

Let's NOT do that again!

But I probably will.

This update probably had the largest cast of characters so far. And by that I mean actual characters I care about, not just background characters.

Maybe this will only be amusing to me, but what the heck. More behind the scenes fun so you can see what I put up with when working with these sims. Sometimes it's very much like working with my cats.

So these shots are actually before Chapter 22. I moved all the sims I would need to a special lot, and then had to wait. The sun was setting, and there's no way to turn back time in game or set the hour (unless that's a feature of one of my hacks that I don't know about which is possible).

With a lot of time on their hands and all needs static, these are the tales of the sims behind the stories.


Let's start with these two. I left them alone, and they were the ones that started everything. They were flirting up a storm, and no one had any objections to it. Luckily. I just knew that things were out of control when these two started up.

I hoped around watching the others for a bit. Angel and Mitchell were chatting around back. These two are always drawn to each other. If there's a group of sims, I am sure to find these two near each other.



And just because we never get enough Angel:


Also around back, Maria and Paula were chatting when Maria stopped to do something that confounded Paula.



From this angle, it's still not clear. (Kidding of course. It's actually the start of the martial arts idle. I just love Paula's face and thought bubble, and the way Maria looks like she's guarding something precious.)


The brothers were having one of their normal conversations.



It may look like Brandon's calling Jimmy a blockhead, but he's actually telling his brother that he's upset and that's how he made him feel. Because Jimmy was insulting him again.

Meanwhile these two were still at it:


Get a room!


I then had the boys spar for the fun of it.


Henri happened past. (He's still at the normal apartment lot that Paula's always on.) He didn't look impressed. Perhaps he'd have some tips to share if he wasn't standing on the other side of the fence?


Paula was also watching. I think she was a little concerned because Brandon got his butt beat.


I guess she was cheering kinda loud, because Jimmy came over to have a talk with her.


She looks a tad worried. But as they talk, she finds he isn't all that bad.



And it even ends in smiles.



And then Jimmy calls her a yeti. (Or maybe her mother or her mother's family. It's all the same to him.)




How hurt does she look? Nice Jimmy! (But is it bad that her hurt face makes me laugh? She's so cute. She's like, "A yeti? I'd never say anything like that to you.")

Morning FINALLY came, and I needed to make sure that these silly sims would stay out of the shots I needed for the first chapter.


THAT is how you corral some sims.

So remember how Alex tackled Paula?


Yeah, that was a romantic move. I was very surprised that it worked. Sometimes my teens and adults refuse to play along and humor me even after I tell them that it's going to be completely innocent. But these two were all game for it. I don't think Paula could say yes fast enough.


Well, there was someone who didn't like this obvious mischief between an adult and a teen. Thanks to Awesome Mod, Alex actually got arrested. I had to reset sim to get him back for the next update.


And I will leave you with a randomly snapped picture from the most recent update.


These were just random idles, but I'm sure that Paula's just made a joke that Alex couldn't get and she finds rather funny. I would guess this happens a lot, but there's still a charm to it. They're each in (and from) their own worlds, and somehow it still feels like it works for them even if Paula has to try and explain her jokes (which never works out very well).