mrrakkon's Sims (and stuff)

[carlrich]

Hi mrrakkon,

 

Love your work with my favourite sim being Veronica Guajardo. Any plans to introduce any new sims soon?.

 

Also I'd like to have a go at creating my own realistic sims is there any advice yo could give me?.

 

Thanks

[DarkAudit]

8 hours ago, mrrakkonn said:

If you try to load a sim or lot that uses items (CC or otherwise) you don't have, those items just won't show up. So you typically just have to find something to replace them with. That's all really. 

When Maxis released the Pleasants to the gallery, I had just acquired the base game. So when I tried to put them in first saves, they were bald and naked. Same as what happens if you load a cc-heavy save with an empty mods folder.

[mrrakkonn]

20 hours ago, carlrich said:

Hi mrrakkon,

 

Love your work with my favourite sim being Veronica Guajardo. Any plans to introduce any new sims soon?.

 

Also I'd like to have a go at creating my own realistic sims is there any advice yo could give me?.

 

Thanks

 

Thank you! I've got stuff that's coming but I've been kept busy lately so haven't really had the time to finish up stuff for upload. When I get the time to put something up I'll do it though. 

 

As for advice on making sims, I'm sure I've made some posts on it so I'll see if I can find it. But here's a short version: use reference pictures and try to make your sim's features using those as a guideline, get both a shot from the front with as neutral an expression as possible and a side profile shot if possible. Choose your presets (head shape, chin, jaw, nose, eyes, mouth) before you make any further edits, you are constrained by the presets you choose to use. Familiarize yourself with how all the face sliders work, for instance by trying to make a sim face from reference, learn how sliders work differently in normal and detailed edit mode. Use skin details and face overlays fi you need and want to, but don't rely on them to get the appearance you want, sculpt the facial features first before you begin applying any overlays and such. Distinctive features are better than whatever you or others find  to be "ideal" and "perfect" ones. 

[killoweg]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:51 AM, mrrakkonn said:

 

Thank you! I've got stuff that's coming but I've been kept busy lately so haven't really had the time to finish up stuff for upload. When I get the time to put something up I'll do it though. 

 

As for advice on making sims, I'm sure I've made some posts on it so I'll see if I can find it. But here's a short version: use reference pictures and try to make your sim's features using those as a guideline, get both a shot from the front with as neutral an expression as possible and a side profile shot if possible. Choose your presets (head shape, chin, jaw, nose, eyes, mouth) before you make any further edits, you are constrained by the presets you choose to use. Familiarize yourself with how all the face sliders work, for instance by trying to make a sim face from reference, learn how sliders work differently in normal and detailed edit mode. Use skin details and face overlays fi you need and want to, but don't rely on them to get the appearance you want, sculpt the facial features first before you begin applying any overlays and such. Distinctive features are better than whatever you or others find  to be "ideal" and "perfect" ones. 

I also found the genetics CAS tool useful; sometimes I use your Sims as template (because they're so GOOD), and combined with custom sliders you can create some very unique Sims.

 

 

[carlrich]

@mrrakkonn - thanks dude

@killoweg - nice Sims

[getsu44]

Is there a all-in-one downloader for this?

[iraiken]

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your creations with us, your sims are so uniquely charming and are the only custom sims I've ever bothered to download. I can't stand typical magazine cover looking sims with massively alpha looking hair etc. You have found the perfect combination of CC and maxis match in my opinion.

 

Hopefully you continue as a creator for a long time, I'm looking forward to the Landgraab release.

Is there any chance you might start creating/overhauling more complete families instead of releasing more individual female sims as you've made quite a lot of those already and although they are no doubt the most fun to create I think your world save would benefit more from the former.

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

 

[mrrakkonn]

@iraiken Thank you, I appreciate the compliments! The Landgraabs are (or were as per my last post, which was a couple of weeks ago now) pretty much done, but I've just been caught real busy these past weeks and not really had the time to spend on Sims 4 in my free time so they're still at the same place as when I made that post unfortunately. I'll get back to it soon I think. You'll know when. 

 

I've got several families coming up, including some for my own sims (that is not Maxis overhauls) that I haven't uploaded before and they'll be eventually completed and uploaded for the purpose of adding to my world (though they'll ofcourse also be available for upload here). 

 

Here's one of the families I posted some pictures of here earlier, https://www.loverslab.com/topic/127124-mrrakkons-sims-and-stuff/?do=findComment&comment=2964472, Maryam Khoroushi's family.

 

[iraiken]

24 minutes ago, mrrakkonn said:

@iraiken Thank you, I appreciate the compliments! The Landgraabs are (or were as per my last post, which was a couple of weeks ago now) pretty much done, but I've just been caught real busy these past weeks and not really had the time to spend on Sims 4 in my free time so they're still at the same place as when I made that post unfortunately. I'll get back to it soon I think. You'll know when. 

 

I've got several families coming up, including some for my own sims (that is not Maxis overhauls) that I haven't uploaded before and they'll be eventually completed and uploaded for the purpose of adding to my world (though they'll ofcourse also be available for upload here). 

 

Here's one of the families I posted some pictures of here earlier, https://www.loverslab.com/topic/127124-mrrakkons-sims-and-stuff/?do=findComment&comment=2964472, Maryam Khoroushi's family.

 

Great stuff, I'll stay posted.

 

Stay safe man.

[mrrakkonn]

As they're still a bit off here's (I think at least a week before I'm able to get back to uploading stuff) I figured I could give a bit of a preview of how they're looking and how I've chosen to represent them.

 

So in Sims 4 we've got the Landgraab family living in Oasis Springs, Nancy Landgraab and her husband Geoffrey along with their teenage son Malcolm. These same sims are also in Sims 3, with Malcolm as a child. In my version I've chosen to base the adults on their sims 3 version, where Geoffrey is a friendly and mild-mannered doctor, while Nancy is a ruthless businesswoman, Malcolm retains his Sims 4 characterization mostly. 

 

      

 

Now I get alot of inspiration from my reimagined Maxis sims by looking at the wiki (to compensate for not really having played any of the older games, besides a very little bit of Sims 3) and it turns out the Landgraabs have appeared multiple times in games across the series, in many different versions. In Sims 2 for instance there is a Malcolm Landgraab IV who lives alone in a big mansion and is the descendant of Malcolm Landgraab III, II and so forth. So to begin to represent this portrayal I generated a father for Nancy, also called Malcolm Landgraab. 

 

 

In his final implementation in my world, this guy will likely be dead, primarily there as an ancestor and a potential ghost. 

 

But there's more portrayals yet. On the gallery is a Landgraab family with teen Malcolm from Oasis Springs aged up, married to "Mom" Landgraab and with two children called Dudley and Mimi. These are characters from one of the Sims handheld or console games (can't quite remember now). Though I realize that Maxis with this specified that Oasis Springs Malcolm is the evil tycoon Malcolm Landgraab who appears in other games, I decided to have some fun and instead include these as separate sims to expand the family yet more. 

 

         

 

So we have another Malcolm Landgraab, Nancy's older brother, who's married to Mom and has two useless layabout kids in Dudley and Mimi Landgraab. In their characteriation from the handheld games, Dudley has essentially been disinherited due to his lazy, irresponsible nature and lives in a trailer, while Mimi is a socialite of sorts living in the city and more interested in partying and wastign away her family's money than anything else (Mimi has red hair in the gallery version, but I made her blonde like she was in her first apperance, though she doesn't otherwise look that much like how she looked in either game). I've decided to drop Johnny Zest from the picture and have Dudley Landgraab take his place living in a trailer in Oasis Springs.

 

In a way teen Malcolm (Nancy's son) is his uncle and grandfather's true heir (as Dudley and Mimi are pretty useless). Like in base game Sims 4 he'll be a teen sim, but I'm strongly considering aging him up to a young adult and putting him in university once I get to the point where I add my other college student sims. I also think it'd be flavorful to add a building or two to Britechester named after members of the Landgraab family to mark this as a place where they've got serious clout and influence. 

 

As for "Mom" Landgraab she's an aged up version of sim you might have seen me post pictures of in the female sim sharing thread. I figured that a fun characterization for her would be as a former super model trophy wife who still enjoys a bit of fading fame. I'll be uploading a separate young version of her, since I think there are people who want to have this sim. I named her Virginia Buckingham after one of the Landgraab ancestors in Sims 2, as I thought it sounded like a pretty damn good "model name". I also had the name "Hannelore" suggested to me as that was the name of the sim who was essentially this character in a family in Sims 3, but in the end I decided that I liked Virginia Buckingham better. 

 

      

 

[mrrakkonn]

And here's my version of the Alto family (again drawing several different portrayals together), though they are much more solidly WIP at the moment, so I'm not going to bother writing anything up for them like I did for the Landgraabs above 

 

Nick, Bert, Vita, Holly

         

 

Alfonso, Lopita, Ashley

      

[Sims Saga]

On 5/12/2020 at 4:29 PM, mrrakkonn said:

Hey so some good news! I might have managed to scrounge together a bit of time over the last couple of days and the next ones and I might be able to upload some new stuff soon, this will be my version of the Landgraab family, whcich will include a sim I'vce posted pictures of that I think some people are interested in. Might not be today, but definitely soon. And I'll also update my save to include them as soon as I have their house ready as well. 

 

Also some other stuff. Most of you you know I use height sliders for most of my screenshots (and I usually work around clipping and misalignments using camera angles and TOOL, or temporarily changing sims' heights). Up until now I had been setting all my sim heights with the assumption I had decided on that the default height was about 5'9" or 5'10" there about, but I had never really actually measured it or compared it to objects. 

 

Turns out other people have though and googling it it actually turns out adult sims are supposed to be more in the range of between 6'0" and 6'1" or exactly 6' tall as the first google result says. So I think I've decided to more or less reset my sims' heights using this new assumption. Compared with a child sim (who is probably supposed to be around 4') it does perhaps look a bit more reasonable, I chose one of my taller male sims (6'4") and one of my shortest female sims (~4'11"-4'12") as comparison, on the left is with my old assumption and on the right with the new exactly 6' tall baseline.

 

 

As you can see the relative height difference between the adults is unchanged, but they are both shorter compared to the child sim. There's a couple of benefits, first in that this is probably better scaled comapred to objects in the world, and second that I will have to make less use of very high sldier values for taller sims. The second is good becuase with the slider I'm using very tall sims become stretched and you can't really make them as wide, they become tall and somewhat thin or stretched, so this is better for tall and muscular sims. 

 

Not really of much interest to anyone who doesn't use the same height slider that I use, but I'm probably going to be moving all my sims over to this new scaling I've worked out rather than the old one, which means any updated or new sims will be using the new height scaling. Also the stated heights of some of my sims are going to change somewhat with this because I stilll want to keep it all in the 13/25/38/50/... intervals for my slider values which, with a different 0-value means that some of the heights thes values correspond to will change. For instance Linnie is more like 4'11/4'12 now with the new scaling rather than 5'0", and there's a couple of other changes as well. I even made a table...

Hi! Sorry if I didn't understand, but you do use an height slider in the game AND modify height differences between your sims by distorsing pictures? (sorry for my English)

 

I want to know which height slider mod do you use and why you don't share it with your  downloadables files?

 

 

[mrrakkonn]

14 hours ago, MadFrenchPsycho said:

Hi! Sorry if I didn't understand, but you do use an height slider in the game AND modify height differences between your sims by distorsing pictures? (sorry for my English)

 

I want to know which height slider mod do you use and why you don't share it with your  downloadables files?

 

 

The height slider mod I use is linked in the main download description. It's old and replaces the foot slider instead of adding a new custom slider. I have my reasons for still using it, mostly becaue I feel like it makes it much easier to input precise values and I can freely take it in and out of my game without clearing out the slider values for the sim heights. Download it if you want or use another slider if you prefer that, in which case you'll have to set the sim heights yourself. 

 

As for the first question, height sliders don't work well with most paired animations and poses, but I like to use the height slider for pictures so I use various tricks in order to try to hide clipping and misalignment as best as I can for the pictures. 

[Kashked]

Dang, if I just had known that you were doing the Landgraabs extension and Altos I wouldn't have bothered doing the exact thing myself for my game.  

 

Small lore-tip, although I'm not sure if it is doable with imported characters, but you could integrate it into your world... If you stay with the "Geoffrey Landgraab is a really good guy" that Sims 4 have going, make sure to make another of the sims you create be Johhny Zest's father (if you keep him in). People *assume* that he is Geoffrey's son, since the Landgraab household is the only Landgraabs represented in the game, but he doesn't strike me as the sort of person to disown his son for wanting to go another path in life. I made a brother for Geoffrey in my game, and made HIM the father, and set their relationship to despised manually because EA couldn't be bothered with adding any relationships outside of the household until Eco Lifestyle. It is implied that there are LOTS of Landgraabs around, from the name of the elementary school to the founding of the techy university, so Geoffrey, who isn't actually that big of a deal, should just represent a rather minor branch of that great family.

 

And the only way to simulate rivalries in the Sims 4 is using clubs, unless you want to edit A LOT of relationships manually. I have a "Landgraab Clan" and a "Totally Legitimate Businessmen"-club for the Altos and other criminals in my game set up so they will end up being mean and fighting with eachother out in the world if they happen to run into eachother.

[TriggerBlade]

3 hours ago, Kashked said:

make another of the sims you create be Johhny Zest's father

Mrrakkonn said Dudely would essentially be replacing Johnny Zest.

[Kashked]

3 minutes ago, TriggerBlade said:

Mrrakkonn said Dudely would essentially be replacing Johnny Zest.

 

Ah, missed that...

 

On 6/5/2020 at 12:04 AM, mrrakkonn said:

I also think it'd be flavorful to add a building or two to Britechester named after members of the Landgraab family to mark this as a place where they've got serious clout and influence.

 

Reading through your post more carefully this time, the Landgraabs go way back to the medieval era (Admiral Landgraab, well, grabbed land from natives), and they are noted as having started up Foxbury University, so it might be mostly there you should have those buildings. The university of Breichester is older, and Landgraabs are old money, so I made all my Landgraabs have Breichester degrees, not noting that little detail in my world.

[mrrakkonn]

@Kashked I was not aware of the Foxbury Institute connection, that's interesting. Good that I haven't really implemented anything there yet, though I do have some residences almost good to go from way back (a mixed residence building in Foxbury and a pretty neat fraternity house at UBrite). I'll find out how I'll go about it eventually. 

 

By the way I'm kind of waiting for custom careers to get fixed before I update and upload anything, I've been playing around a bit in the game these past few days but only doing stuff in CAS or taking pictures. 

[Kashked]

4 minutes ago, mrrakkonn said:

@Kashked I was not aware of the Foxbury Institute connection that's interesting. Good that I haven't really implemented anything there yet, though I do have some residences almost good to go from way back (a mixed residence building in Foxbury and a pretty neat fraternity house at UBrite). I'll find out how I'll go about it eventually. 

 

By the way I'm kind of waiting for custom careers to get fixed before I update and upload anything, I've been playing around a bit in the game these past few days but only doing stuff in CAS or taking pictures. 

 

It's noted somewhere that it was started up about 50 years ago after a sizable donation from the Landgraabs. I want to say it's in the "University information", but it might just be in the town description or one of the building blurbs. The timelines match up so Malcolm Landgraab the Elder would likely be the one who donated.

[mrrakkonn]

Here's another few things I've been working on in CAS when I've had the time. I've mentioned earlier that I was goingto chang the Altos characterization to make them involved in organized crime (using Basemental Gangs) instead of just the normal business career. 

 

Referring to my previous post:

On 6/5/2020 at 12:29 AM, mrrakkonn said:

And here's my version of the Alto family (again drawing several different portrayals together), though they are much more solidly WIP at the moment, so I'm not going to bother writing anything up for them like I did for the Landgraabs above 

 

Nick, Bert, Vita, Holly

         

 

Alfonso, Lopita, Ashley

      

 

Nick Alto will be the head of the Cosa Simstra, while his brother Bert (a crooked lawyer by his original characterization) will be his right-hand-man. Alfonso won't be directly part of the gang but will know most of the members to reflect criminal collections. Alfonso is also goign to he the owner of the strip club I'm placing in my world. In Sims 3 where he appears he's some kind of resort mogul, I decided that my version of more of a nightlfie mogul and I'm going to imply that he owns at least Club 503 and probably a couple of other places if they get in, by way of putting pictures of him in the club, maybe mentioning him in the lot descriptions and maybe having 2 or 3 levels of fame and such. 

 

I've also begun putting together the rest of the Cosa Simstra gang, creating them in various ways and with various references. I'm going to put together a full gang (2 bodygards, 2 enforcers, 3 gang members) and probably also a dedicated bartender (probably an elder I think, might also make some family for him as this guy as well and variously put them in the gang or bartending) for the gang hideout. Here's the members I've currently put together the basics of. Names might be pending, but some of these are based on characters from old sims games. 

 

         

 

Giuseoppi Mezzoalto, Vincenzo Grosso, Rollo Tommasi (took the name from the movie L.A. Confidential), Tommy Cappelletti (generated as Alisha Cappelletti's brother). 

 

EDIT:

 

Jimmy "the Neck", he's a mob bodyguard from one of the handheld or console games, probably about as close as I can get it while still having something of a "realistic" appearance, in contrast to his appearance in the game where he is full on cartoonish. 

    

EDIT2: Made some edits to him and think I got a better look (right picture).

[Kashked]

13 hours ago, mrrakkonn said:

I've mentioned earlier that I was goingto chang the Altos characterization to make them involved in organized crime (using Basemental Gangs) instead of just the normal business career.

 

Good call, the Altos are an obvious reference to the Sopranos after all.? Are you going to double it down and have them in the criminal career as well as heading a basemental gang?

 

(For anyone not getting the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soprano , both Alto and Soprano are musical terms, and for those even more out of the loop, "The Sopranos" was an TV-series about mobsters)

[mrrakkonn]

37 minutes ago, Kashked said:

 

Good call, the Altos are an obvious reference to the Sopranos after all.? Are you going to double it down and have them in the criminal career as well as heading a basemental gang?

Some of them are going to be in the criminal career, but I decided that the most appropriate career for Nick Alto was to be self-employed (that is custom job title and no hours) as a "Legitimate Businessman". Bert Alto will be a lawyer. 

[MasterMax66]

Always very beautiful your Sims, but Giuseoppi is not a real Italian name. The right name is Giuseppe.

[mrrakkonn]

6 minutes ago, MasterMax66 said:

Always very beautiful your Sims, but Giuseoppi is not a real Italian name. The right name is Giuseppe.

I'm just going off a character from the handheld games and it's spelled like that there https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Giuseppi_Mezzoalto. it's not really that unreasonable, alternate or mispelled versions of names happen all the time, so I'm likely going to keep it like that to emphasize the character I based him on. 

[fish75]

On 6/4/2020 at 5:04 PM, mrrakkonn said:

 

 

 

As for "Mom" Landgraab she's an aged up version of sim you might have seen me post pictures of in the female sim sharing thread. I figured that a fun characterization for her would be as a former super model trophy wife who still enjoys a bit of fading fame. I'll be uploading a separate young version of her, since I think there are people who want to have this sim. I named her Virginia Buckingham after one of the Landgraab ancestors in Sims 2, as I thought it sounded like a pretty damn good "model name". I also had the name "Hannelore" suggested to me as that was the name of the sim who was essentially this character in a family in Sims 3, but in the end I decided that I liked Virginia Buckingham better. 

 

      

 

 

Looking forward to when you get around to releasing her into the wild, I have a male sin that would gladly let her be his trophy wife and spend his money as long as she puts out for him and only him.  

[Sims Saga]

 

Hi! As I've got a new laptop and lost all my previous Sims saves, I'm literaly downloading all of your sims this time as I love your work! And I also plan to play with your world!

I just noticed I've not seen the left girl beyond your shared files, do you plan to release her or is she available in your old files?