Hi everyone! I think I asked this before, but I can’t find the post. Can you tell me some easy ways to make portraits and family pictures to put in my sims houses? Or point to any easy tutorials? I say easy, what I really mean is ‘ways to do it without Photoshop’ lol. If I can do it without PS, or use any other FREE photo editor, then that would be good :D I have tried making sims take photos and paint portraits of other sims but I don’t like the look of them as framed pictures. I don’t mind using poses to pose them and take the screenshots myself, I just get stuck as to what to do with the screenshots afterwards. Thank you for any tips 🖤

Thank you all for your help! I think I made my first custom picture! LOL Everyone makes it look so easy but my lateral brain just doesn't follow straight forward instructions so well so I have to have more than one way to do something, pick them apart and compile them in my own way so I'll get it! Oh, and can you believe it I did it in old Photoshop Elements 6?? I still had it installed and found a dds plugin for it. I did install GIMP and practised on it but I have to admit, Photoshop Elements is much better :)  

@amuhav​ Thank you for your instructions, I practised them in GIMP :) Once I knew what I was doing I tried them in PSE :) @mspoodle1​ Thank you so much for the links, I 'liked' them before, I can't believe I forgot them. The first text tutorial worked for me, I can never follow video tutorials. @cas-sims​ lol everyone says its so easy, but I always struggled to do them :) Here is my first attempt! I took a screenshot of a sim who works in the library reading with a toddler. I thought it was cute :)

Now I want to do some more! :) 

So to be clear, when they’re done how do you install them? Just the same as normal .packages? Do you keep them together in the Mods>Packages folder or install them in CCM in a collection?

How to manage CC for a smoother game - and other sims 3 tips

Hi there! So I’ve been on this CC cleanout surge recently and I learned a few things along the way, I thought I would share. It’s a long ass text post, sorry…

Keep reading

Great tips here :) And, yes! 😃

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nostalgiagamez

LOL @ the captions. :) I got a good laugh from your posts.

:)

Yes the joys of default replacements from @napoleonfrost <3 

:D

That’s so clever. Do you use any cooking mods? I use my own so my sims can starve if they get the wrong foods :D

That’s a great idea! 

I give all my new sims 3 boxes to get them started. Even in the main hood, where otherwise I don’t use this mod. 

And honestly I never thought anybody else would find this mod useful. But glad you are using it guys <3 

I would love to know how other people use your ration box, Ani :)

I love all your mods, but I especially love the Ration Box! I have so many uses for it - and yes, I use Icarus' Use Any Ingredient mod so they can substitute one ingredient for another for the recipe, and the rule is they HAVE to use some or all of the ingredients that come from the box in the one week I play them - whether they like it or not lol

I recolour the boxes too, so brown ones are the food bank box as I said to @nostalgiagamez, eligible sims must have one of Sandy’s inventory cards or something similar as a food token to get one.

Green ones are for beginner gardeners - they have to plant the plantable ingredients from the box and use up the rest as fertilizer or discard as compost (using your compost mod :)

Red boxes are for cooks/bakers. Blue boxes are for anglers to use the produce as bait :)

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desiree-uk reblogged your post and added:

I redid the sharpness and clicked the gpu scaling.

And ran the game. I have reshade installed and it starts fine for me. Not sure why it’s crashing for you. But here are some comparison images.

this is with Reshade - 

without - 

Idk even know if you can see the difference but without Reshade everything is crispy. It’s the only way I can describe it. It is sharper but not sure it’s better. lol But the option doesn’t even work with Reshade because it totally overrides the effect and smooths everything out  (with the settings I have enabled). 

Lovely! I can see the difference when I look at the trees, it’s very slight, but I see it. I think ReShade is more defined, though.  Nvidia Image Sharpening won’t work for me at all, I don’t know why - my game works with ReShade just fine so I’ll go back to it. 

I’ll probably try it again soon, I’m sure there’s something simple I’m overlooking ;p 

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desiree-uk replied to your photo

Lol I know. :) They also added a while ago DSR smoothness to the Global Settings and Image Sharpening update before last. But the Image Sharpening is actually listed in the TS3W program settings. I turned both on. I have no idea what to set it at. Don’t know what gpu scaling means. Nvidia didn’t give any directions other than. Hey we did this and this is what it can look like. lol I turned it on but I’m guessing that doesn’t really do anything unless you bump it up or I need to turn gpu scaling on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I’m going to fiddle with it next time I go in game and see if I can make it work. If you check it, let me know what you set it to.

Yeah, I see DSR Smoothness in Global Settings, I left that off, but it's not in ProgramSettings/TS3w.exe. I completely forgot to look over the settings after the last update before this weeks one, I didn't see Image Sharpening until yesterday and I thought 'Hm, interesting'

Now I have to work out why the game is crashing with it enabled (with and without ReShade installed) Any ideas? The game won't even start! :(

Lovely people, how do you organize your CC - by creator or by type? And what is your organization method as a whole?

I asked this question too lol. Well, mostly about mods, but the answers I got were great and they’re useful for cc too! Maybe you might find some tips for yourself :)

How I Play - Sims 3

What I love about the Sims 3 is the freedom to play anyhow you wish! Want to live in an alien/futuristic world? You got it! Want to rewind to medieval times? Go for it! Want to simulate real-life? Then you’re in the same club as me 😊

For those in the realism club, I’ve spent some time geeking out on my page sharing all the inside details for a more fun realistic game-play. 

If you’re interested in geeking out with me a bit, have a read and leave a comment telling me how you play!

HOW I PLAY

TUTORIALS

PS: It’s a WIP, so check back every now & then for updates! Reblog to share the fun!

- Love Shai ❤

Wow, you have it all thought out! Fellow geek! Love it :) You play very similar to me, although it will take a whole long post to show how I play lol. In my head I already have systems, rules, regulations and penalties! They just need to be put in writing - which I will do eventually ;p. I may even throw in a few ROS with a dice! Yes, I'm extra :D I don't play anything supernatural either, but I do want to include some alchemy into my game too, in the form of a health and herbal shop or a pharmacy. Great idea! @simsarahsarah‘s gameplay is excellent! She makes rotational play possible and fun! :)

WCIF help!

Hello! I can’t find a mod to make the playpen and the walker for toddlers less cheaty. It annoys meso much that it makes all their motives go up, and that they learn to walk so fast! Does anyone know where I could find one? 

lilidebergerac

@desiree-uk Thank you Desiree! I'd like to try with the retuner but I don't understand how... Is there any tutorial somewhere?

Retuner is quite easy to navigate once you know where everything is, it’s just easier to install a mod lol. But Retuner is pretty good! 

One of the best pages to look at is @Simsarahsarah's page with all her NRaas settings, especially the Retuner page.

Sarah says:

‘Make sure on the Retuner mod you change this settting to TRUE: City Hall/Computer > NRaas > Retuner > Show Object Menu = True (Adds a Retuner option to all objects in-game. This provides a list of all ITUN’s available for the currently active sim so you may not see all available interactions for the object.)’

Then you can click on the playpen and change whatever settings you want, such as the advertised output etc. If you want more specific settings, I’ll go in game now and find them. Be back in a mo:)

Edit: Ignore previous info about using Retuner on the playpen, it doesn’t work. See the comments below ;)

Wk 22 - Wed - Yr 5

Hmmm…I went into Edit Town mode to see if I could change the Fenderson’s Lot Type back to normal residential but the “Change Lot Type” button doesn’t appear on occupied houses. :-(

Think this means I’ll have to evict the sims first, change it, then move them back again. Oh what a bummer! Wish I’d noticed this before I had Justine buy the place. :-(

Edit: Since writing the above and adding this post to my queue, I’ve had a response from phoebejaysims telling me that the ATS3 doorbell I added to the house is actually a clone of the Apartment Callbox! Well, no wonder I was having problems! I’ve now deleted the doorbell and will see what happens the next time a visitor comes over. Many thanks to @phoebejaysims for spotting that doorbell! :-)

@simsarahsarah @phoebejaysims, Just trying out these bells in game before I edit them. I placed one on the front of a house, the most un-looking apartment type I could find lol (a cottage :) And although it doesn't become an apartment as such, like the one you'd get if you manually changed it in Edit Town, you get the 'Welcome! You have access to my residence, come on up' notice. I don't mind that to be honest, at least the sim doesn't have to go the door to let you in, you just walk in. Strange though, I didn’t get the notice Sarah got about being buzzed in with any of them, they just pressed the bell and waited for the notice. 

Anyway, I've scripted one with 'Sims3.Gameplay.Objects.Decorations.Mimics.PaintingHomeSweetHome' (I just used the same script Sandy used on her city street numbers, since they're small :) It works as expected, the sim is greeted at the door and let in. The only difference is the animation, when the bell is left as Sandy made it, the sim actually rings the bell where its placed, but edited, they don't touch it. So I think I might leave them as they are and just change each one as I want with icarusallsort’s Transmorgy mod :D

@desiree-uk  

With reference to my post here, these are my Nvidia Control Panel settings. Many thanks for offering to look at them for me. I really don’t know what I’m doing here - just took these settings from various posts I’ve seen at MTS.

Can you see anything wrong? :-)

Great! I think most of those settings are fine for your card :) 

My eyes are drawn to 3 settings that you could try, say one at a time (if one doesn't sort the flashing lines, then try the next one and so on)

Incidentally, when you say flashing white lines, is it on specific items, like shiny stuff, or on terrain or just on random things?

1. MFAA - you've set this to 'On'. Try disabling this. MFAA is better for old games, but Sims 3 is quite a modern game for this setting (unbelievable I know lol) So stick with SuperSampling AA for now and try it out - that's better for sharpness as well. If this has no effect, then you can enable it again. It’s more a matter of preference really :p

2. Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias - you’ve set this to ‘Allow’ - try ‘Clamp’, if available - Global Settings/Clamp) - since AF is enabled (at top at 16x), this setting doesn’t need to be enabled.

The last one is the one I think may have something to do with this...

3. Trilinear Optimisation - you've set it 'On' - Try 'Off'. Because you've set the AF at 16x (near the top), the optimisation is just hindering the image quality if you're worried about performance. AF doesn't impact on your system in a negative way. You have a good card, so let it do its thing. The T-optimisation has some funny side effects anyway, that’s what I noticed in my game, so I disabled it.

So yeah, try those 3 options one at a time. Let me know how your visuals fare. If by some weird fluke none of those work (I doubt that will happen lol) then we’ll deal with it some other way lol

Side note: If you want, try using D3Doverrider to enable Triple Buffering and V-Sync - Nvida CP doesn't seem to have no effect on Sims 3 :)

Just need to say a BIG thank you to @desiree-uk for her post on Nvidia graphics settings- it has made a huge difference! To me anyway! I don’t know how this looks to all of you???

(Top one is only re-sized and framed, the bottom has a photoshop action applied)

Ooh, the pics look great! I’m glad my Nvidia settings are useful to you, Nina 🖤(and others!) 

The Sims 3 | Performance & Bug Fix Guide 2018

Great guide to setting up your Sims game, or even making it run faster.

Lots of stuff I’ve never thought of before.

Some good info but….

Very useful guide! I think I’ve done all of these except Steps 5 and 6, so I’ll try them and see what happens :)

(To @mspoodle, Thank you for the mention re the Nvidia settings. I’ve changed these settings so many times and yet I still go back to my original settings lol)

Made a sim, Preethi, and then game crashed. Yay.

Does anyone know how much difference RAM makes for custom content? I couldn’t find a definitive answer. Obvs the game can only use 4GB but the only downgrade on this newer comp was RAM and I never thought it would make this much of a difference. Just want to check if anyone thinks that would fix my problem where CC and Store stuff is making my game crash and menus slow to open.

I have 8GB RAM, i7 6700HQ 2.6GHZ, and GTX 1060 (laptop)

Thanks again, there are such helpful people on here!!

Some other things to try: * I know it seems obvious, but remember to clean out the 'CurrentGame.sims3' after each crash :p * Move out saved sims, recorded videos, screenshots, custom songs/mp3s out of their folders (in Documents folder) into backup folders. Those files can be very large for the game to read on a regular basis. * DCBackup: clear out all files except ccmerged. * Make sure ccmerged is updated and place a copy into the ovverrides folder for store content extracted as packages. * Do you have a file and a folder in the 'ContentPatch' folder in Documents?

Great tips here for decorating in Sims 3! Thank you, Jenba 🖤