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How to Improve Gallery Pictures

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  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    @surfingrockets I would think that would be based on which door you have set as the "front" door, which goes along with Joolster's request.

    I hope you're wrong @joolster, because those realist pants are too tight for me! :o I think your request goes along with option 3, because if options 1 or 2 are chosen, the creator will be able to select their own "front" position. Just a note too that simmers who own Get Together have a couple of horizontal 30x20 lots in Windenburg that they could place their builds on in order to get a proper front position as a workaround.
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • JoolsterJoolster Posts: 6,417 Member
    @BryonyRae

    We can dream, right? :D I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed, so I'll keep my expectations low, hehe.
  • SakuraLeonSakuraLeon Posts: 272 Member
    Hello all! I feel what we need within the game are -

    For lots -

    I think we need at least 3 picture options to choose from, from different angles.

    The option to add room views if you want them.The picture for the room could be the same as the pictures we have for rooms now.

    I think the front door used as the side the picture is taken from is a good idea.

    I think we should be able to choose the distance the pictures are taken from, or at least have pictures that will show the right amount of the lot.

    Also I think any world objects or flora should not have any effect on the picture itself.

    For rooms -

    I think we should have a zoomed in option to choose the angle the picture is taken from, so its not just floating in space.

    And for bigger rooms I think we should have the option for more than one picture as for bigger rooms you can hardly see any of it.

    And for sims -

    I feel that we should have the option for a full length view of a single sim.

    A bigger variety of EA/Maxis own poses.

    Multiple pictures choices for the second picture.

    And to have a close up for the second picture, as its so hard to see any detail in the faces as it stands.

    Thanks everyone!!! Happy Easter!!! x :)
  • jol1990jol1990 Posts: 257 Member
    edited March 2016
    As a creator of higly detailed builds, i spent lots of time in my builds. from 5 to 20 hours. When you save that lot and you see that the angle the gallery is making pictures makes your house like boring ugly house whilst you know its just the angle of the shot, you just feel a bit sad.

    I had multiple builds i put my heart and soul in. But because of the gallery pictures those builds just failed because they didnt catch the soul and the effort put in the builds because it was a very bland picture of the front or there is a tree or a rock in the way!

    Just the ability to just change the FIRST picture of the front in a slight perspective angle would be an amazing change already. I already brought up this idea months ago via a picture. But they didnt act on it then either.

    Now we have a way to change our pictures they flag it as cc but we only want to use that tool because we want our builds to be seen as intended. not as a dull boring front view! Most of the pictures used in the gallery are also completely useless and show allmost no information.

    Just let us change our pictures when uploading a gallery and it will become such a better place! The gallery already has enough issues with it being flooded and good builds being lost in an ocean of squares. Just lets us make pretty pictures so our builds at least make a chance on that ocean of builds.

    heres the concept i made way back. I tried to put this to their attrention in 2014 already... they did nothing with it.

    B5GilBlCUAA7YxH.jpg:large

    I am so tired of making my builds the way they look just to look good on gallery pictures. It limits our creativity because you allways have to think, Will this look good in the gallery? in the back of your head. So tired of it.
    Just an example of a build that suffered from this bad picture issue.

    00.jpg
    If only i could change the angle of this house it would have shown so much potential.. now it looks like a dull block due to the gallery and it doesnt show of any of the interior.. just useless.

    also.. just a brainwave. Why isnt the live picture mode not available in build mode for making pictures? Now we need to move sims in to make proper pictures or you need to use the awkward in tight spaces build camera o.o
    mETeT9z.jpg

    Check out my buildings on the gallery under my name or on my building showcase! http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/794210/j0l1990-s-building-showcase/p3
    To find me on the gallery, look for J0L1990 thats the number 0, not an O!
  • RemittanceGirlRemittanceGirl Posts: 9 New Member
    As a Mac user, the Sims Tray Importer never worked for me (there is a mac version, but it doesn't have the thumbnail functionality the PC version had), and I admit to feeling like of like a second class citizen in the gallery world, because I was stuck with the abysmal lot shots native to the game. But really, the Tray Importer was developed because Maxis weren't addressing their user's needs. And I think @BryonyRae 's suggestions for built-in thumbnail functionality make a huge amount of sense. Still, considering Maxis STILL hasn't fixed the annoying 'put away' glitch, I have little hope. I can do without the Easter Eggs and the Grow Fruit - if feels like superficial distraction from the real issues.
  • melaniehonmelaniehon Posts: 6 New Member
    wht cant we get custom content in the gallery like sims 3 on build mode?
  • BlueBlack007BlueBlack007 Posts: 4,480 Member
    I do not like the custom content on the Sims 3, cause in order to get some of that, we have to buy Sim Points in order to get the stuff, and some of us do not have the money to buy Sim points, so I hope they do not do that for Sims 4.
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    @jol1990 I like the minimalist design of your proposed change to the UI. I do remember seeing it on Twitter in the past. :D I also agree with you. I have scrapped builds myself based on the fact that they looked so flat or bland in the Gallery image when I tested them. It's rough when you have to consider rebuilding on a diagonal just to get a better viewpoint for the camera. Yeah, we've asked for TAB in build mode before in our Build Mode Feedback thread; it would be handy.

    @melaniehon I think that would be a different discussion. This discussion is focused on non CC methods to improve Gallery shots. Note that you can certainly see creations with custom content on the Gallery in TS4 now. Just go to the "Advanced" option on the bottom of the left panel, and then click on "Include Custom Content." To actually download the CC used in a creation, the creator will have needed to list his/her source(s) for you, or you could also message the creator to find out what was used and where to get it.

    @BlueBlack007 Again, a different discussion, but in TS3, the points you bought were for official Sims store content, not custom content.
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • BlueBlack007BlueBlack007 Posts: 4,480 Member
    Hmm, I think your right bout that now that I looked back, thanks forgot bout the store stuff, :), My Bad.
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    So @SakuraLeon are you saying that you would prefer option 3, where camera positions are preset, over options 1 and 2 where you would choose the orientations yourself?

    Regardless of the option chosen, I too would love an option to hide world flora/fauna, as even when you're taking your own shots, it sometimes gets in the way.

    Same question to you re: rooms? Would you rather have presets or set up your own shots?
    Good idea to have more than one image for a room in order to get different angles on it, although this may run into a limitation of how they have designed rooms in the Gallery...

    I'm adding your sims requests, but I'm confused about what you mean for "Multiple pictures choices for the second picture." Choices of what?
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • SakuraLeonSakuraLeon Posts: 272 Member
    I dont prefer that the camera positions are preset. I just feel its slightly more realistic that we just get more options for the pre-set picture.

    And again the same with rooms, I would love something similar to Tray Importer, however I feel its more realistic that we would just get different angle options generated by the game, similar to what we have now for sims.

    Regarding sims you have the main picture, then the second one that shows gender, age range and traits. I mean have multiple pose choices for that one too, and possible a close up shot to show more detail. :)
  • HattysHattys Posts: 132 Member
    @BryonyRae I've been thinking about possible solutions to the problem over the past few days, if the user positioned the camera angle at the exact place they wanted the photo before pressing 'save lot to my library' and it automatically saved it, would that be an easy fix or more complicated than the other suggestions? Personally, the first photo is the most important to me, if the others are fixed it would be an added bonus but I don't particularly mind them being taken from a birds eye view, it means we can see everything that the plot includes
    25495095684_496c1f1eb7_c.jpg
    My Youtube link: here
    My Gallery link: here


  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    Thank you @Hattys, it's nice to have you join the discussion. :) Currently, in order to save your build, you have to be in build mode, and this can create some problems in getting the right angle/perspective. I'm thinking in particular of the way the camera has a tendency to bounce up in build mode as you approach different distances/angles.

    However, your idea got me thinking... What if we could use the preset camera positions as we do currently when filming videos?

    For those who may not be familiar with that process, camera presets can be created by pressing CTRL plus a number from 5-9. You can pretty much position the camera anywhere you like, as zoomed in or out as you like, press the control combination, and the game saves that to a file called VideoCameraStates. Then, you simply press the corresponding number, say 5, and the camera pans to that position. There's more to it, such as controlling the speed, etc., but that doesn't pertain to this discussion.

    What does, is the idea that if we set these camera positions for a build, Maxis could perhaps then access that file when we press "Save" to take the pictures from each of those positions that have been set. This could be done in the background and would simply overwrite the default shots. The nice thing here would be that people who are unaware of (and don't care about) choosing their own shots, would not be presented with anything new in the User Interface or anything disruptive to the current process. The players who are interested could learn about how to use the camera presets and just set them up when they are ready to save and share the lot. It might be prudent to have an option in the game options to allow people to toggle whether to use the system this way or not, but I don't think it would be necessary. Note that the camera presets file can be deleted at any time, and then those presets go away.

    Now this idea is really applicable only to lots and possibly rooms. It doesn't solve any issues with sims, of course, but really, because they are created in an entirely different interface, I don't know that there is any idea that would work universally for all creations.
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • petalbotpetalbot Posts: 1,423 Member
    If they are discouraging the use of the tray importer for custom thumbs, then I like option 1. The more freedom to the creator, the better.

    I've been following the gallery closely since the ability to change pictures came about in order to see how things were playing out. I did notice that creations with changed pictures never got max is favorites, but it never really occurred to me that it may have been because they considered them to be CC. What a bummer.

    I'm just curious, does anyone know why they decided to start marking creations with custom pictures as custom content? In TS3, when you download a creation from the Exchange via the launcher, the custom thumbs, don't come along for the ride. All you get is the creation with the default thumbs (thumbs are only be downloaded to your computer if you bypass the launcher and choose the save as function instead). I've not downloaded any TS4 creations that have custom thumbs. Do the custom thumbs stay in place when something is downloaded from the gallery? If that is the case I can kind of see why they might want to mark them as CC. Although marking them as CC, in my view goes a little too far, as CC traditionally hasn't included custom thumbs in its definition, and therefore is misleading the downloader into believing that CC in the traditional sense is present.

    Anyway, here is to hoping they can come up with a decent solution to the issue. :) Thanks for creating the thread.
    sigg.gif

  • svlynsvlyn Posts: 4,409 Member
    Not only that petabolt they just went through my whole gallery today and hand tagged pre-patch Tray Importer images as CC. This would not bother me if I was just sims out of my head. But I do likenesses. My sims lake me a very long time to make and they are some of the best likenesses in the gallery. For Maxis to just to hide them makes me want to leave. But i will not this time because of threads like this. I think it's really important for us to have an official image changer for us showcase our creations. This is very positive thread and gives me hope for the future of this game.

    Has anyone thought of how to make sims look better, I was thinking they make the camera work to make snap shots of sims and we can post them up in the gallery?
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    @petalbot Oh, you and me both! I'd love to get maximum freedom. However, we have also been waiting such a long time for a tool, that it might be worth it to sacrifice some flexibility for at least some improvement(s). I don't want to be short sighted here, but I'm also already past impatient!

    I didn't remember that about TS3 - wish that was the case here, but I think the files do indeed transfer. And yes, from that perspective, I can see it too now. It was definitely a confusing move for those of us who were used to the Image Replacer in TS3 and expected the same sort of response in TS4. Heck, I was wondering why someone hadn't come out with a tool like it ages ago.

    @svlyn I hope you'll consider re-uploading them, if you're concerned about the CC tags. I know it's a bummer to have to go through the rework, not to mention the letdown of not having them look as good as they just did moments ago, but I hope to see creators push through this setback.

    I'm not sure if I understand your idea? Are you talking about maybe having a separate method of uploading screen shots that you would then somehow connect to the Gallery?
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • svlynsvlyn Posts: 4,409 Member
    Yes i was thinking of using the camera as a means to get poses on a background so we can take a picture of our sims with backgrounds. Not sure if Maxis would listen to this idea.
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    I think they're much more likely to consider an in-game solution for the pictures. Anytime you have something that links to somewhere outside of the Gallery, there's a risk associated with 1) what it is - the image could be inappropriate, could get deleted, etc. and 2) the web site itself that's being linked to - could have viruses, etc. I just can't see them allowing it.
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • svlynsvlyn Posts: 4,409 Member
    edited March 2016
    No i mean the ingame camera. But then it in the get to work expansion, so not everyone has it.
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    Oh, right, that's kind of our option 2 for build mode. But you make a good point - I had forgotten that photography was a GTW only feature. Darn it, won't work then, although maybe they could build a solution that uses the same type of system...
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
  • PurpleKachinaPurpleKachina Posts: 4,159 Member
    Some sort of camera function is a must in my opinion. Wouldn't mind the filters either, just for fun.

    I would NOT be happy with say, just being able to zoom in/out on the default image... !
  • doertespielerdoertespieler Posts: 4 New Member
    There are at least a thousand easy ways of making build thumbnails look better, but as we are printing the money for EA its designers may spend their time on painting easter eggs and design useless stuff like that. There is no need to meet our demand, we'll buy the next pack anyway. Do you really believe all your a.m. efforts will have any effect? This discussion is just to calm us down and hereby reduce frustration.
    Millions of only-playing Kids/Teenies are EA's target group, not us, a minority of creative builders, we are only seen as a ressource for the very target group. Accept it or provide resistance, up to you.
  • catloverplayercatloverplayer Posts: 93,362 Member
    BryonyRae wrote: »
    Over on Twitter, @TheSims stated that we should post suggestions for improvement to gallery images here. I am coming at the issue from the perspective of a builder. There are several problems with the existing system:
    1. Gallery shots are taken from fixed perspectives that may wind up being too close or too far away, depending upon the size and shape of the structure.
    2. The angle of the shots does not work for some type of builds, hiding elements, like roofing, that balance the structure.
    3. Neighborhood objects such as trees, rocks, or even other buildings often wind up obscuring some or all of the images.
    4. Interior shots are so zoomed out that very few details can be ascertained and anything you have done that may be special or subtle cannot be seen.
    There may well be more complaints; feel free to add your own!

    Possible Systems for Improvement for Lots:
    1. When saving the lot, prompt the user to take one or more screen shots for use in the gallery. Allow them to go into TAB camera mode in order to get the zoom and angle they desire. Send these shots directly to the library file as part of the saving process.
    2. When saving the lot, use something similar to the in game sim photography system (I am referring to when the sims use a camera to take pictures in GTW) to enable the user to take one or more screen shots for use in the gallery. Send these shots directly to the library file as part of the saving process. This method would be less desirable than the first, as the player might not have as much flexibility to get the shots at the angle/zoom they'd like. It would still be better than the current system though!
    3. Change the lot saving process to match the sim saving process in CAS, where the player can cycle through different preset camera angles of the build and select the one they find most favorable. This would be the least desirable option, as unless great care is given to the different preset angles, some of the current problems might still exist (zoomed too far out, objects obscuring the build, etc.). However, at least it would provide some options and player choice, where there currently is none.
    4. Use the camera presets file (located in VideoCameraStates) to determine positions/angles to take shots and overwrite default shots with those shots (see pg. 2 for details). This would be a fairly flexible system - up to 5 shots of the creator's choice, very non-intrusive, and perhaps more easily implemented than some of the others.

    Additional Considerations
    • If possible, let the creator take a maximum of 8 pictures (8 is the current maximum); prompt them for the number of pictures they want to take within that limit.
    • If possible, allow the creator to select a time of day for each image (make use of the functionality already present in build mode to set the time of day).
    • Add a "skip" function that is available throughout the process; if the creator clicks "skip," the game generates the default gallery shots that it ordinarily would. This functionality is necessary because many creators save to their library as part of a testing process or to save while it's a work in progress, and they do not care about gallery images at that point.
    • Consider also adding a game option that would toggle the creator driven imaging system off. When the system is introduced, you'd probably want it off by default so as not to confuse people who are used to the current process. Patch notes could alert interested creators that the option now exists, and they would find it very quickly. :)
    • If option 3 is selected, enable the game to select the "front" of the lot based on which door has been selected as the "front" door. This will aid in the many cases where people build on sizes like a 30x20 and select the 30 width as their front side, but the game has designated the 20 width as the front (currently only those who have Get Together can use lots where the 30 width is the front).
    • Allow builder to hide world objects that may get in the way of the picture(s), i.e. neighborhood trees, lampposts, etc.

    Suggestions for Improvement for Rooms:
    • Ability to zoom in
    • Allow for more than one image, so that more detail can be shown in large rooms.

    Suggestions for Improvement for Sims/Households:
    • Add 3D rotation for headshots in order to allow a focus on distinguishing features.
    • Add the ability to choose the sim's expression (or cycle through available expressions).
    • Add the ability to choose the sim's pose (or cycle through them).
    • Add more Maxis poses to select from
    • Add ability to show (at least) one outfit per category, with a choice of poses for each.
    • For "family portraits" provide a choice of group poses/arrangements, and if possible the ability to choose the position and outfit of each sim.
    • Add a variety of selectable backgrounds (like in the photo studio object).
    • Options to create a full length view of a sim
    • Ability to zoom in to take close-ups/headshots

    More? Please feel free to discuss other ideas and options, and I will add them to the list. Suggestions for rooms and sims are also welcome.

    Like all these they need to be intergrated in all 3 versions of the gallery in game,online and mobile.
  • doertespielerdoertespieler Posts: 4 New Member
    Ok, I'm not allowed to post screenshots, but please have a look at #Den Nederlanske Drom by #linepedersen27 and explain to me the difference between preview and foto shown, of course without cc-tagging.
  • BryonyRaeBryonyRae Posts: 5,181 Member
    It's another glitch with the Gallery camera system that happens sometimes @doertespieler. It was not caused by anything external (and no doubt the builder wishes that the image was not obscured by that foreground house).
    Visit my blog to see my creations: http://bryscreations.wordpress.com or search the gallery by my OriginID or #bryscreations
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