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Tutorial: Custom Paintings and Photographs using S3PE to swap Images

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aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
edited March 8 in Nominated Threads
tumblr_mx1a5ju0x11sas9gmo1_r3_1280.gif"width=650"

Hi everyone!

I figured out something this last month and I think it is high time I share with everyone here. I hope you all don't mind. This stems from ZooProfessor3's ZooU on Custom Artwork using CAP and Photography. I recommend that Zoo U highly for anyone who wants to introduce CC-free and shareable custom artwork into their game! This alternative technique is for those who can use S3PE (it is easy to learn -- I promise!) in order to get a higher resolution image. Replacing paintings is also compatible with the base game.

A little background: I like doing default overrides of non-CAStable textures in the game, such as rabbitholes and billboard images, using S3PE to swap out the images. So, I used that to introduce images into the game instead of CAP as in the course, and took pictures of the images to make them shareable in lots. I feel really silly about this now, as there is a MUCH more direct way of altering those images and it seems pretty obvious to me now. I'm sure plenty of people know must know this is possible, but I definitely did not. It occurred to me one restless night, and I was so excited, I couldn't get to sleep until I'd tried it out and proved to myself it worked. It works.

Edited to Add: I would love to see pictures of what you do with this and links to creations where you use custom artwork! Please feel free to post questions, too!

Without further ado, I present to you a tutorial on how to swap out Painting Still Lifes and Photographs with custom artwork using S3PE (and a DDS-capable graphics program).
Post edited by EA_Solaire on

Comments

  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited November 2013
    This tutorial is also hosted on my Tumblr here, if these pictures drop out for some reason.

    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo10_r1_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo1_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo2_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo3_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo4_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo5_r2_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo6_r1_1280.png"width=650"
    tumblr_mx1tfyTs4Q1sas9gmo7_r1_1280.png"width=650"

    Tips and Disclaimers:
    - You should be able to do this, add your custom paintings to a lot, and export it for sharing. It should show up in other people's games without introducing CC content.
    - This does not require you or the anyone who uses your lot to have a mod. All it requires is for you to have S3PE and the ability to edit DDS.
    - _IMG files may drop out of a save just as any of your in-game images may sometimes disappear over time. Keep a backup of your lot with the custom artwork if you are concerned about that.
    - Rumor has it that collectibles such as paintings and photographs can cause problem in CAW worlds, so, use with caution if you are a world creator. I would really appreciate feedback on this as I would like to include this kind of custom art work in worlds. Is it stable? This needs testing.
    - The TravelDB.package inside your save game folder has all the custom images in that game. Theoretically, you could alter ANY of the! That includes cell phone photos, Prom photos. Any custom image. This also means you can swap out a painting and watch your sim paint your custom painting instead of the still life or portrait. HOWEVER, I find that to get the images to show up, I have to replace the images in the TravelDB.package, open the game, do a Save As, exit, and then reopen the game for them to show up. This also needs testing.
    - You can increase the resolution of any of your images by DOUBLING the texture size (ie. 512x256 to 1024x512)

    Credits:
    Peter and Inge Jones for S3PE
    Mod the Sims for various how-tos on default image replacement (If you want to know how to do default replacement of the normal, non-custom skill paintings, there are tutorials there).
    And ZooProfessor3 for the inspiration. Thank you!
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited November 2013
    Oh my goodness, thank you so so much! I am really looking forward to trying this out :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

    I'm tired of making patterns, importing them into my game, getting lighting right, having my sim stand around taking multiple copies, etc... I think your method going to be a real game changer to me, and to many other people too.

    You are so kind to share this tutorial, and thank you for making it so clear and detailed. Did you mention this to Zoo? I bet she will be super excited about your discovery!
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited November 2013
    Hi! I am so thrilled that this makes sense and that it might be useful to you. I can't wait to share this with Zoo. She left a note that she probably wouldn't be online until next week due to Thanksgiving activities. I don't want to mob her! But, come Monday? Yeah, I'll be hunting her down. Her technique changed the game for me, for sure. She created a monster :twisted: haha!

    I might do a you tube video to help get the word out, and also to go through the actually process of fitting the images, because it can be a bit of a fiddle. And I might make some templates for the textures in order to make it easier for people to frame/distort their pictures correctly.

    I would love to know how this works for people. I should say, anyone who wants to post pictures or who needs help, please post away! I want to get this technique down. How do we say it? Testers needed!
  • Rflong7Rflong7 Posts: 36,584 Member
    edited November 2013
    Hi :D

    Awesome~I'm bookmarking so I can share this. :thumbup:

    While I really hate to recolor the rabbitholes, it's fun to do billboards and some of the other objects. Now you've shown us how to do pictures- Fabulous. :mrgreen:
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited November 2013
    Rflong! Brilliant.

    I am so excited to see what you do with this!!! :D
  • samj6samj6 Posts: 750 Member
    edited November 2013
    This is awesome, thank you so much for sharing ami :D I look forward to trying this out :mrgreen:
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited November 2013
    Thank you Rosemow and Samj!
  • yanti68yanti68 Posts: 19,017 Member
    edited December 2013
    Oh WOW! :D This is such a helpful tutorial. You have explained everything so nicely. Thank you for sharing.*Hugs* :D I am bookmarking this thread. :D
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited December 2013
    Thanks, Yanti! I hope people find it easy and useful :)
  • saitouamysaitouamy Posts: 1,104 Member
    edited December 2013
    Thank you so much for sharing wonderful tip, ami!
    Very detailed explanation with step by step pictures helps me a lot :D And all the screenshots looks so, so beautiful!
  • ZooProfessor3ZooProfessor3 Posts: 9,847 Member
    edited December 2013
    Wow, Ami, this is awesome!

    Do I understand you correctly, this WOULD show up in uploaded lots?

    What happens to the images that you replaced? What I mean is, if I replaced one of the paintings that my Sim had painted (say the painting that looks a little like The Birth of Venus), does that mean that in my game, unless I change it again, my Sims won't be able to paint the one that looks like The Birth of Venus but will paint something I put in as a replacement instead?

    I'm just trying to understand if we are actually ADDING things our Sims can paint or if we are replacing some things for other things.

    I have never messed with S3PE but this makes me want to learn it.

    What program did you use to edit your images?

    THANK YOU for letting us all know about this!

    Zoo
    oow785m
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited December 2013
    Hi Zoo!! :)
    I am so happy you made it over here! I've been looking forward to this !

    These are additional paintings, not replacements of the default paintings. They are replacements of unique image that are added to the game when you paint a still life or portrait or take picture.. The images for the skill paintings that aren't custom (meaning any one of the 1000 + images for beginner up to masterpiece paintings) are safely locked away in the Program files and can't be modified without making a mod. This means that we can copy those image files from the Program File, replace them, and then put them as a .package in our mods folder, and, for example the Venus painting can look like a Picasso if we want. We can then share that lot, and it will still show up as the Venus painting in the game of the person who downloads the lot, unless they also have the override mod.

    This is a bit different. Like photographs, custom painting images that are generated by the in-game camera, such as photographs and portraits and still lifes, all have unique images that are attached to the object data for that unique object. The images are stored with the lot data (the .package file in your library if you save to the bin) or the game data itself (the TravelDB.package in the saves folder). No one else will have that same image/object file in their game, so when you share that custom painting or photograph, the image is copied along with the object id for the unique painting. By replacing these unique image files with your own images of identical format (and keeping the numeric identifier in the name of the image), the game doesn't read this custom content any differently than game-generated content. It can be shared without introducing any custom content into another person's game, exactly like sharing the photographs as we did, with no requirement of any mod. And all your original skill paintings will still show up exactly as they would before.

    I hope that makes sense! It is so much fun when you get it to work :)
    And I used Photoshop with an NVIDIA dds plug in, but Gimp is free and you just have to download the free DDS plugin to go with it.
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    (never mind - I worked it out :) )
    Post edited by Unknown User on
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • sherrylynn8779sherrylynn8779 Posts: 2,102 Member
    edited June 2014
    Ermergerd!I am going to have to seriously try this out!!!
    My Twitter:: My Facebook:: Gallery Name: sherry_lynn1979
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    .
    Post edited by Unknown User on
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    Got it! :mrgreen:

    Screenshot-14-2.jpg"width=640"
    Post edited by Unknown User on
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    Thank you, Rose! I'm so pleased with it and very grateful for this tutorial.
    Post edited by Unknown User on
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • sherrylynn8779sherrylynn8779 Posts: 2,102 Member
    edited June 2014
    That is gorgeous, GC! It kind of reminds me of the herb/flower identification guide that Katniss' father started and Katniss was working on throughout the trilogy! :)

    Great Work! I can't wait til my brain is less groggy to be able to try this!
    My Twitter:: My Facebook:: Gallery Name: sherry_lynn1979
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    Thank you, sherrylynn :-)

    After some confusing maths and a little bit of improvisation I finally worked out the dimensions I needed to get everything in frame and in proportion for the middle-sized canvas - that one has a lot of stuff it crops out! I want to increase the resolution and darken the borders a bit (the outer border is too light and there is an innner border where the flower picture stops but you can't even see) but otherwise I am happy with it!
    Screenshot-15-1.jpg"width=640"

    And here is the small painting:
    Screenshot-13-3.jpg"width=640"

    The medium photograph:
    Screenshot-14-3.jpg"width=640"

    And here is my favourite, the large photograph. I used the higher resolution, and I included a trim right at the edge of the picture to make it look like the frame is fancier than it actually is.
    Screenshot-15-2.jpg"width=640"

    Now I've seen this I think I will go back and do all the others in the higher resolution.

    Ok, I promise to stop clogging up your thread with posts now! I just wanted to show you my first few attempts!
    Post edited by Unknown User on
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    Hi aminovas,

    I've been doing some testing and it seems that doubling the resolution causes issues with custard. It makes it recognise the picture as a 'texture replacement'. Thought you'd like to know! :)

    xx
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • aminovasaminovas Posts: 1,523 Member
    edited June 2014
    Hello hello!

    Gosh I've been away from the forums for months :oops: :oops:

    It is SO fun to sign back on and see some activity here! I haven't seen ANYONE posting their results from this here or on tumblr, so THANK YOU so very much Greencats for sharing your handiwork! They are lovely! I can't wait to see them in one of your beautiful builds.

    *waves to everyone* hope you are all doing well! hugs!

    edit to add: Greencats, the BORDER on the painting looks so fantastic. It really looks like a cc object. I hadn't thought of that at all. Super cool.
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    dp :oops:
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com
  • GreenCatsGreenCats Posts: 9,318 Member
    edited June 2014
    I am so glad you like them. I am very grateful for this tutorial - it's no exaggeration to say it's revolutionized the way I decorate!

    Just a couple more pictures :oops:

    Screenshot-6-6.jpg

    Screenshot-2-7.jpg

    Screenshot-11-4.jpg
    You can still find me on my old My page (http://mypage.thesims3.com/mypage/GreenCats), and see more of my game-play pictures and CC-free uploads at gcsims.com

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