The general WIP thread for animators.

[Mimi-e]

On 10/29/2022 at 7:59 PM, SilentFred said:

Hi fellow experts,

 

I just tried out Blender 3.3 with potential animations.
But I just can't find a setting where to find the checkbox or similar to activate the rigs's associated mesh...

 

Any tip?

 

Attached images to show what I mean. Meshes are displayed in Blender 2.78 by default I guess...

How can I activate the same in 3.3?

 

Thanks for your help guys!

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Sorry, by mesh did you mean textures (color)? If so, please make sure that you have your 3d viewport set to Material Preview 

It should be on your right side, maybe hidden if the window it's too small. Just mouse scroll to find it.

 

If this doesn't fix it, you probably need to manually add the textures to the meshes. I can help you with that too.

 

(btw that animation is looking interesting! I hope to see it finished)

Edited November 5, 2022 by Mimi-e

[SilentFred]

On 11/5/2022 at 7:40 AM, Mimi-e said:

Sorry, by mesh did you mean textures (color)? If so, please make sure that you have your 3d viewport set to Material Preview 

It should be on your right side, maybe hidden if the window it's too small. Just mouse scroll to find it.

 

If this doesn't fix it, you probably need to manually add the textures to the meshes. I can help you with that too.

 

(btw that animation is looking interesting! I hope to see it finished)

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I have set it to the material preview. Unfortunately the textures are not shown. 
Is there a way to set up Blender to load associated textures if contained in the file? At least in 2.78 the textures appear right away.

I would love to step up to Blender 3 since it runs more smoothly on Mac M1…but it gives be hard time to get started.

 

 

[Mimi-e]

49 minutes ago, SilentFred said:

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I have set it to the material preview. Unfortunately the textures are not shown. 
Is there a way to set up Blender to load associated textures if contained in the file? At least in 2.78 the textures appear right away.

I would love to step up to Blender 3 since it runs more smoothly on Mac M1…but it gives be hard time to get started.

 

 

 

Hey, you're welcome! I haven't been able to make old files open the textures right away, but they are usualy in the .blend file so it's a matter of setting up the Material.

 

I just opened my copy of WW's rig from July 19 and the textures are indeed there, just disconnected.

Select any of the sim's mesh/geometry (body) parts, and enter Edit mode. Go to Materials in the Properties editor and you should see that the material is colored, but your sim isn't. That's because you need to click on Use Nodes

 

Spoiler

 

It will turn white, but don't worry. Now go to/create a Shading Workspace, it should have a Shader Editor. Shft A there, Texture > Image Texture. Click on the Image Icon, select BaseTexture. Link the Texture node to the Color input in the Base Color input. It should look like this:

 

Spoiler

 

I had clicked on Top, and for some reason all parts but the bottom updated correctly. To fix that, click on the part that's white, and from Edit mode, Materials, click on the Material Icon, and change the one showing to the one you just used Nodes on

 

Spoiler

 

Repeat for any other actor that may be having the same issue. And I'm guessing the bed should be fixed the same way.

 

I have no idea how to add textures to materials without nodes on Blender 3, I don't know if the option is just gone or I have been unlucky finding instructions for that. So what I suggest to avoid doing this for every animation is to open the Male and Female .blend files, do this, then save them. That way the materials should show right away next time you add them to the animation file.

 

Good luck, let me know if it works!

[SilentFred]

Hey Mimi-e it works like a charm!!

Not very intuitive to fix but as you said - setting it up as a „master“ file and keep going from there for future animations..

 

You really made my day!

[notallinsane]

I used dagger's control rig, how would I go about applying the animations to the female rig?

I missed this step and in game it just shows my female T posing

[YammiJammi]

Hiya, went away from animating but decided to give it another try. I'm starting to use keyframes but it's not doing what I need it to do. So I select the sim and press 'a' then 'i' to start animating but when I move the timeline to add another she goes back to the default T pose.

 

 

What am I doing wrong?

[Kyle Woohoo]

@YammiJammi did you add the keyframes after each posing? And did you do this for all bones? I realized that when I move a single bone and I add the keyframe only for the active bone (which means without making all bones active by pressing "A") it does not work. I need to locrot all bones again (so press A, then i and then choose "Location and Rotation" which adds the keyframes for all bones).

 

Another hint: I usually use Automatic keyframes which makes the animation and posing process much easier in my opinion. This always automatically adds the keyframes for all bones which location/rotation has changes when you changed something. You don't need to insert the keyframes on your own.

[bisexualvending]

Is there like, a general Animator FAQ doc somewhere? I feel like I have a bunch of small questions that I'm sure have been asked over and over again, but I don't know if I want to go searching through 56+ pages of stuff to find the answers. Alternatively, has anyone done a video tutorial on the process of getting the animation from the blend file into the game? 

 

Any time I try to search for WW tutorial stuff, of course Algorithms tm and The Internet only want to show me things from a user perspective, and not creative tutorials lmao

[Mimi-e]

4 hours ago, bisexualvending said:

Is there like, a general Animator FAQ doc somewhere? I feel like I have a bunch of small questions that I'm sure have been asked over and over again, but I don't know if I want to go searching through 56+ pages of stuff to find the answers. Alternatively, has anyone done a video tutorial on the process of getting the animation from the blend file into the game? 

 

Any time I try to search for WW tutorial stuff, of course Algorithms tm and The Internet only want to show me things from a user perspective, and not creative tutorials lmao

 

I'm guesssing you've already tried TD's tutorial ,but I'm going to share it in case you haven't yet, here. You can also try the search button on the forum, and tell it to look for it on this thread only.

No, right now there's no compilation of tips anywhere. That's actually hard work, organizing all information in an accesible manner. I'm doing something akin to it, but I'm far from starting on animation, as I'm doing it from zero and you need a lot of steps before that. But if you feel motivated to do so, go ahead, we all would be grateful!

 

If you want to learn animation from a creative perspective, why look for WW? You should be looking at regular animations tutorials, so you learn the ropes of Blender. After that, you can focus on sex animations. There's plenty of twitter accounts that have wonderful, inspiring content.

 

All that said, what do you need help with?

EDIT: I forgot this thread. The images are saddly broken on the first post, but there are tips and links there too.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Mimi-e

[bisexualvending]

2 hours ago, Mimi-e said:

 

I'm guesssing you've already tried TD's tutorial ,but I'm going to share it in case you haven't yet, here. You can also try the search button on the forum, and tell it to look for it on this thread only.

No, right now there's no compilation of tips anywhere. That's actually hard work, organizing all information in an accesible manner. I'm doing something akin to it, but I'm far from starting on animation, as I'm doing it from zero and you need a lot of steps before that. But if you feel motivated to do so, go ahead, we all would be grateful!

 

If you want to learn animation from a creative perspective, why look for WW? You should be looking at regular animations tutorials, so you learn the ropes of Blender. After that, you can focus on sex animations. There's plenty of twitter accounts that have wonderful, inspiring content.

 

All that said, what do you need help with?

EDIT: I forgot this thread. The images are saddly broken on the first post, but there are tips and links there too.

I know how much work it is to compile such a thing, which is why I was asking about it; it took me about 2 weeks to find out this thread exists because searching this website is not as intuitive for me, so I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a giant thread I was missing somewhere. It'd be a shame for whoever was doing all that hard work to not have it used!

 

The reason I'm asking here is because my questions are not learning blender or animating in general, they're specifically for WW. For example,

When making multi-stage animations, is it going to be easier to do each stage as it's own animation or do one large animation and then chop it into bits? CAN you chop a large animation into bits when exporting?
and

When placing sims on a bed, should you move their base points to the top of the bed, or leave their base on the level it spawned in and just move the rest of them on top of the bed?

Another thing I've been wondering is if there's a list of "most often used sound/visual effects and what they're used for" since I can tell that a lot of people re-use the same in game sounds over and over again, but I have no idea what those sounds are (especially sims-vocals wise) and the full lists are huge. 

and then the real thing I was hoping for a video tutorial for is all the parts POST animating in blender. I keep trying to follow the tutorial on saving everything and yet must be messing up somewhere because I can't get it in game. : / I know it has to be me missing some step most likely in the programming bit... which is why I was hoping someone had that all recorded, so I can follow along even MORE meticulously. 

 

Thanks for the link to the other thread, there's def tips in there I've immediately zoomed in on and am excited to try. 

[BitterBlue]

18 hours ago, bisexualvending said:

When making multi-stage animations, is it going to be easier to do each stage as it's own animation or do one large animation and then chop it into bits? CAN you chop a large animation into bits when exporting?

 My answer only pertains to blender and multi-stage animations. 

 

Personally, I've found it easiest to first have an idea of what you want the complete scene to look like and section it into 600/800/etc frames, To make the animation flow better I'll complete the first part of the animation then just copy the file and change the name to part 2 and then just use the end of the animation of Stage 1 on Stage 2 (This obviously only works if you have a looping animation or a simple repeated action like thrusting/fingering/etc at the end.

 

[georgesmyth79]

Hi, I'm probably being stupid - but I can't get the animated anus to work. It looks fine in Blender, but doesn't show up in game - everything else does.

 

I'm guessing it has to do with Sims4Studio - in the Tutorial Creating WickedWhims Animations Package [3], it says to:

Go to the "C:\Users\name\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods" folder and place the TURBODRIVER_WickedWhims_Override_Sim_Rig.package file in there. This will assure the custom rig is used.

 

I don't have this file (and can't find it), is this what is causing the issue? 

 

Where do I get this file?

 

Thanks!!

[Mimi-e]

17 hours ago, georgesmyth79 said:

Hi, I'm probably being stupid - but I can't get the animated anus to work. It looks fine in Blender, but doesn't show up in game - everything else does.

 

I'm guessing it has to do with Sims4Studio - in the Tutorial Creating WickedWhims Animations Package [3], it says to:

Go to the "C:\Users\name\Documents\Sims 4 Studio\Mods" folder and place the TURBODRIVER_WickedWhims_Override_Sim_Rig.package file in there. This will assure the custom rig is used.

 

I don't have this file (and can't find it), is this what is causing the issue? 

 

Where do I get this file?

 

Thanks!!

 

https://turbodriver.itch.io/wickedwhims/devlog/139568/converting-blender-animations-to-clips-2

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Mimi-e

[georgesmyth79]

I have that - it contains two blend files - not a package file.  So S4S still uses the default female rig when importing animations.

[Mimi-e]

15 minutes ago, georgesmyth79 said:

I have that - it contains two blend files - not a package file.  So S4S still uses the default female rig when importing animations.

 

I literally just downloaded it and installed it myself to test it before sending the link. The circled Download sends you to a mega archive named 'TURBODRIVER_WickedWhims_Override_Sim_Rig .package'. If by any chance you are being linked somewhere else, all I can think of is cleaning your browser cookies.

 

A note tho, I tried it and at first it didn't work. I had to close S4S and open again for it to properly load.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Mimi-e

[georgesmyth79]

Wow that was strange - cleaned up the browser and downloaded the right file this time ?

 

Thanks!

[s4u.]

Hello everyone! I’m painfully stuck and don’t know, what to do. Can anyone help please?

 

I can’t bake male animation for some reason. I use rigs uploaded by Simite btw.

 

Spoiler

1. I’ve been told, that for baking I should use only female/male rig and not control rig, however when I select (in this case) only female rig, I have no keyframes there. When I select both I can bake it tho and it works in-game perfectly.

 

 

2. When I try to click on male rig, it is greyed out and I can’t change mode from object to pose.

 

 

3. Then I figured out, that if I enable viewpoints, it is not greyed out anymore and I can change it to Pose Mode.

 

 

4. When I click on male rig, it is same case like with female - no keyframes.

 

 

5. In order to see keyframes I have to again select both (in this case) male rig and male control rig, however I can’t bake it like with female model for some reason!  Anyone know how to fix it please?

 

 

[Khlas]

26 minutes ago, s4u. said:

Hello everyone! I’m painfully stuck and don’t know, what to do. Can anyone help please?

 

I can’t bake male animation for some reason. I use rigs uploaded by Simite btw.

 

  Hide contents

1. I’ve been told, that for baking I should use only female/male rig and not control rig, however when I select (in this case) only female rig, I have no keyframes there. When I select both I can bake it tho and it works in-game perfectly.

 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/female.png.baf51df47b11946efa18d139286e477e.png

 

2. When I try to click on male rig, it is greyed out and I can’t change mode from object to pose.

 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/1200017323_male1.png.ebefd589e501fa18e54b19f305d75e19.png

 

3. Then I figured out, that if I enable viewpoints, it is not greyed out anymore and I can change it to Pose Mode.

 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/516730193_male2.png.603ac7d1e2c905311f2eeca2415a3a2b.png

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/15197646_male3.png.9fefdb9d5d02aaa6f8b0aa454633dd83.png

 

4. When I click on male rig, it is same case like with female - no keyframes.

 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/1741790599_male4.png.8fede7fa55d64be86b2f6aa9b1aaba8e.png

 

5. In order to see keyframes I have to again select both (in this case) male rig and male control rig, however I can’t bake it like with female model for some reason! /cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/resources/emoticons/frown.png Anyone know how to fix it please?

 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/3aaef5e69f3daf88bb93e8484e6d2081ecc68263c84d56671965381fee192c20/1280/https://static.loverslab.com/uploads/monthly_2022_12/2581425_male5.png.4fe93df29a6103ce8668ccfb722cab3b.png

 

Make the male rig selectable in visibility , then click on it. You need to select it, it has to change color when it’s selected (orange color). Then you will

be able to bake.

 

you don’t need to select bones if you do a visual keying bake only. Just selecting the base rig is enough. You may need to hide the control rig if it annoy you 

Edited December 16, 2022 by Khlas

[s4u.]

20 minutes ago, Khlas said:

Make the male rig selectable in visibility , then click on it. You need to select it, it has to change color when it’s selected (orange color). Then you will

be able to bake.

 

you don’t need to select bones if you do a visual keying bake only. Just selecting the base rig is enough. You may need to hide the control rig if it annoy you 

 

I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to do it. Isn’t orange color for object mode tho? I’m total beginner in blender, so I don’t understand many functions, I always try to google everything first and solved many issues I had like that, but I just can’t find anything on this. Could I send you my animation and you do it and then tell me what exactly you did please? This is basically last step, what is stopping from releasing my animations and it drives me crazy.

Edited December 16, 2022 by s4u.

[Khlas]

7 minutes ago, s4u. said:

 

I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to do it. Isn’t orange color for object mode tho? I’m total beginner in blender, so I don’t understand many functions, I always try to google everything first and solved many issues I had like that, but I just can’t find anything on this. Could I send you my animation and you do it and then tell me what exactly you did please? This is basically last step, what is stopping from releasing my animations and it drives me crazy.

sure but there’s no reason if you follow what I said above to not make it work. 
 

in object mode it’s red when selected, not orange. You can bake in object mode if you want, it doesn’t change anything. But it should work when in pose mode. It’s just not selected in your screenshot 

Edited December 16, 2022 by Khlas

[s4u.]

10 minutes ago, Khlas said:

sure but there’s no reason if you follow what I said above to not make it work. 
 

in object mode it’s red when selected, not orange. You can bake in object mode if you want, it doesn’t change anything. But it should work when in pose mode. It’s just not selected in your screenshot 

Yes I would love to follow it, I just didn’t know what to click on.  Nevely sent me video and showed me how to do it. So it is not a problem anymore. Thank you for your help tho, I appreciate it.

[Mimi-e]

In case anyone else has this problem: S4u was selecting the control rig, not the bone rig. The correct one has no "male" name, it's just "rig", as I circled below, and appears on his first screenshot as visibility off. It should look just like the female one does here, a bunch of balls, blue if unselected, orange when selected.

 

Spoiler

 

What we have to bake is the bone rig, that is what gets baked so the game can understand the animation. The control rig is only a tool to make moving the bone rig easier. For that, as Khlas was saying, you need to turn visibility on. Indeed, it is the control rig that was annoying/confusing here. All the other screenshots show the control rig instead of the bone one.

[s4u.]

On 12/17/2022 at 4:04 AM, Mimi-e said:

In case anyone else has this problem: S4u was selecting the control rig, not the bone rig. The correct one has no "male" name, it's just "rig", as I circled below, and appears on his first screenshot as visibility off. It should look just like the female one does here, a bunch of balls, blue if unselected, orange when selected.

 

  Hide contents

 

What we have to bake is the bone rig, that is what gets baked so the game can understand the animation. The control rig is only a tool to make moving the bone rig easier. For that, as Khlas was saying, you need to turn visibility on. Indeed, it is the control rig that was annoying/confusing here. All the other screenshots show the control rig instead of the bone one.

That one is actually for double-bed. Male Rig is above, problem was that even with visibility on, it wasn’t usable and still greyed out, I had to turn on Viewports in order to select it. There is also bit confusion with coloring, when I’m baking it, I actually have to select it and it turns blue, orange for me is either for Object Mode or unselected Pose Mode.

[Mimi-e]

5 hours ago, s4u. said:

That one is actually for double-bed. Male Rig is above, problem was that even with visibility on, it wasn’t usable and still greyed out, I had to turn on Viewports in order to select it. There is also bit confusion with coloring, when I’m baking it, I actually have to select it and it turns blue, orange for me is either for Object Mode or unselected Pose Mode.

Ah! I had an idea after reading this. I went to check, and it turn out that @Simite uploaded the .blend files with the rig switched off in Viewports. That's correct, and useful for working with a control rig so you don't touch the bones by mistake, but then it won't bake if you don't switch it back on, as you saw.

Simite, if you read this, would you mind making a note on the download page? So newcomers know that they need to toggle it on before baking.

(And yes, there's confusion with coloring, I get confused there. My eyes could not stand the orange against grey and I customized them to something that felt better, so sorry if I made it worse.)

[dakexdd]

en el menú WW del juego en el objeto correcto, pero cuando se ejecuta la animación, mis sims simplemente entran en t-pose y no hacen nada.

Edited December 23, 2022 by dakexdd