The general WIP thread for animators.

[wild_guy]

@Nelandros looks like some mistake in sim positioning, but I need to see the blend file to tell what is wrong exactly.

Edited September 9, 2023 by wild_guy

[Beebavel]

Genuine question:

If I added sounds on my blend file project, will it play on sims 4 WW?

(having some trouble adding the right moan effect with TS4SoundTool lmao ?)

[wild_guy]

4 minutes ago, Beebavel said:

If I added sounds on my blend file project, will it play on sims 4 WW?

How can you add sounds to blend file? It doesn't work this way. You add sounds to imported clips in S4PE, as clip events.

[Beebavel]

9 minutes ago, wild_guy said:

How can you add sounds to blend file? It doesn't work this way. You add sounds to imported clips in S4PE, as clip events.

Ohhhh, I see. Thanks! I was trying to add sounds on my animations using TS4SoundTool and S4PE but the tickcount/timecode/ticklength really confuses me a lot ?

[KatsuKitty]

5 hours ago, Beebavel said:

Ohhhh, I see. Thanks! I was trying to add sounds on my animations using TS4SoundTool and S4PE but the tickcount/timecode/ticklength really confuses me a lot ?

Hey if youre confused

all you have to do are 2 steps if you simplify it

 

1. open your blend file and pick which frame you want the sound to start on

 

2. multiply the frame you picked by   0.03333334   and then put the value you got into the "timecode" part of the event

 

 

and then every time you make a new sound event the unkown1 value will go up by one

 

just look at other animators package files and look at how they set up sound, that's how i learned how to add sound at least ( i hope this helped a bit)

[Beebavel]

21 minutes ago, KatsuKitty said:

Hey if youre confused

all you have to do are 2 steps if you simplify it

 

1. open your blend file and pick which frame you want the sound to start on

 

2. multiply the frame you picked by   0.03333334   and then put the value you got into the "timecode" part of the event

 

 

and then every time you make a new sound event the unkown1 value will go up by one

 

just look at other animators package files and look at how they set up sound, that's how i learned how to add sound at least ( i hope this helped a bit)

Thanks! 

 

[lanoix]

Does anyone know how to import a control rig properly? Basically I'm trying to use dagger control rigs for male and female but when I append the 2nd rig I get all these geometrical shapes that are usually hidden all over the scene. Is there a good way to do this?

[Swee3]

53 minutes ago, lanoix said:

Does anyone know how to import a control rig properly? Basically I'm trying to use dagger control rigs for male and female but when I append the 2nd rig I get all these geometrical shapes that are usually hidden all over the scene. Is there a good way to do this?

 

Read here

 

 

[lanoix]

9 hours ago, Swee3 said:

 

Read here

 

 

Thanks.

[shrike60]

Hello Everyone,

 

First I'd like to say thank you to everyone who responds and tries to help on this thread.  I've spent a few days reading through this and other threads, and can happily say that I've successfully been able to get a basic test animation into the game and it works.  This only took several days and probably 40 hours worth of trial and error and reading other people's problems to fix the couple of issues I was having.

 

Now I would like my animation to include an object, but I don't know how to make S4S clips out of the object.  I can get the object into blender and create it's own baked blend file.  The character rigs are then put through S4S to create the clip files to put into the package file.  But how do you make the animated object blender files into clip files?  I'm missing something simple.  Thank you in advance for your help.  

 

Shrike

[KatsuKitty]

6 hours ago, shrike60 said:

Hello Everyone,

 

First I'd like to say thank you to everyone who responds and tries to help on this thread.  I've spent a few days reading through this and other threads, and can happily say that I've successfully been able to get a basic test animation into the game and it works.  This only took several days and probably 40 hours worth of trial and error and reading other people's problems to fix the couple of issues I was having.

 

Now I would like my animation to include an object, but I don't know how to make S4S clips out of the object.  I can get the object into blender and create it's own baked blend file.  The character rigs are then put through S4S to create the clip files to put into the package file.  But how do you make the animated object blender files into clip files?  I'm missing something simple.  Thank you in advance for your help.  

 

Shrike

the object is imported as a character rig as well, so when you import it just treat it as a character rig, if that makes any sense.

[shrike60]

On 11/2/2023 at 6:45 PM, KatsuKitty said:

the object is imported as a character rig as well, so when you import it just treat it as a character rig, if that makes any sense.

Yes, OK, thank you.  Fantastic.  That gave me the confidence to know I was doing something wrong in Blender.  I'm ecstatic to say I have it working now.  It only took the entire day, half my sanity and my neighbors wondering why my computer won't just work so I can stop pleading so loudly with it, but WOOO HOOOO!!  I'm probably 50 hours into this and I haven't even learned the art of animating yet.  LOL  I'm hoping that part comes a little easier.

 

So now as I begin the real work of making my first real animation, now that I have confidence it will see the light of the game, I have another question...

 

For my second animation, instead of creating a new package, I will open and import into my already existing shrikeanimations.package, but what about the XML?  Do I add onto the existing XML or just import a new one for the new animation and the package editor will take care of it?

[KatsuKitty]

4 hours ago, shrike60 said:

Yes, OK, thank you.  Fantastic.  That gave me the confidence to know I was doing something wrong in Blender.  I'm ecstatic to say I have it working now.  It only took the entire day, half my sanity and my neighbors wondering why my computer won't just work so I can stop pleading so loudly with it, but WOOO HOOOO!!  I'm probably 50 hours into this and I haven't even learned the art of animating yet.  LOL  I'm hoping that part comes a little easier.

 

So now as I begin the real work of making my first real animation, now that I have confidence it will see the light of the game, I have another question...

 

For my second animation, instead of creating a new package, I will open and import into my already existing shrikeanimations.package, but what about the XML?  Do I add onto the existing XML or just import a new one for the new animation and the package editor will take care of it?

glad you got it working haha im sure your first animation will turn out great !

 

just add onto the existing XML, 

[hanminglover]

Hi everyone! I'm trying to add the "Edited Male and Female Rig for Blender 3.3" from the WickedWhims website to my custom sim on Blender. I actually make gay nsfw machinimas so I only need male rigs, but I want to start filming it on Blender, when I try to add the rig to my Sim (Used SimRipper to get him) it doesn't work at all!!

I read everything and I'm not sure what I did wrong, it simple doesn't work, I try going to pose mode, tried to grab the hand pressing G and it doesn't move  nothing does and if it does it feels "incomplete/unnatural".

 

Also the rig is a lot of black dots, I'm used to rigs that are more complete, like this photo. Did I do something wrong with the Wicked Whims rig?

@KatsuKitty you saved so many people's life in this thread, do you know how to attach the rig to my collada.dae sim so I can animate him? >_<

Thank you ♥

Edited November 26, 2023 by hanminglover
실수

[KatsuKitty]

On 11/25/2023 at 4:32 PM, hanminglover said:

Hi everyone! I'm trying to add the "Edited Male and Female Rig for Blender 3.3" from the WickedWhims website to my custom sim on Blender. I actually make gay nsfw machinimas so I only need male rigs, but I want to start filming it on Blender, when I try to add the rig to my Sim (Used SimRipper to get him) it doesn't work at all!!

I read everything and I'm not sure what I did wrong, it simple doesn't work, I try going to pose mode, tried to grab the hand pressing G and it doesn't move  nothing does and if it does it feels "incomplete/unnatural".

 

Also the rig is a lot of black dots, I'm used to rigs that are more complete, like this photo. Did I do something wrong with the Wicked Whims rig?

@KatsuKitty you saved so many people's life in this thread, do you know how to attach the rig to my collada.dae sim so I can animate him? >_<

Thank you ♥

sorry i got a notification for this and i dont have the answer for this question

im sure someone else will help you though ^^

[Swee3]

On 11/25/2023 at 9:32 PM, hanminglover said:

Hi everyone! I'm trying to add the "Edited Male and Female Rig for Blender 3.3" from the WickedWhims website to my custom sim on Blender. I actually make gay nsfw machinimas so I only need male rigs, but I want to start filming it on Blender, when I try to add the rig to my Sim (Used SimRipper to get him) it doesn't work at all!!

I read everything and I'm not sure what I did wrong, it simple doesn't work, I try going to pose mode, tried to grab the hand pressing G and it doesn't move  nothing does and if it does it feels "incomplete/unnatural".

 

Also the rig is a lot of black dots, I'm used to rigs that are more complete, like this photo. Did I do something wrong with the Wicked Whims rig?

@KatsuKitty you saved so many people's life in this thread, do you know how to attach the rig to my collada.dae sim so I can animate him? >_<

Thank you ♥

 

I guess what happened to you is that you try to animate the rig that provides turbo as if it were a control rig, it doesn't work like that, download the dagger's rig

[Flaccid_Plasticine]

Hi everyone!

I'm not good at english, so i'll probably make 20 mistakes in every letter. But i really need your help and hope you'll understand this nonsence(

I watched and read a few tutorials about constraints and some other usefull things, but they were mostly concentrated on specials and can't give more common picture. So i hope someone can give advice about making smooth anim using dagger controll rig.

1. For example, a girl must roll her butt at the start of anim. I make elliptical path behind her butt, clamp a sphere to it and make move around, them damp a hip controller to sphere . OK, it works amazing, BUT! How to "free" hip controller from a sphere at the next step of anim and at the same time save the previos butt-roll-motion? F.e. she rolled her butt and then starts another action

2. Is there easy way to fix male hands on girls hips temporarily? i mean, to fix his hand controllers in a distance by her hip controller so while she is turning her butt his hands remains on it.
I know it all could be done by hard work with key frames and usual actions, but if there is a way to simplify the process - imho, it's a sin not to use it.

[Mia Moore X]

2 hours ago, Larry Karter said:

Hi everyone!

I'm not good at english, so i'll probably make 20 mistakes in every letter. But i really need your help and hope you'll understand this nonsence(

I watched and read a few tutorials about constraints and some other usefull things, but they were mostly concentrated on specials and can't give more common picture. So i hope someone can give advice about making smooth anim using dagger controll rig.

1. For example, a girl must roll her butt at the start of anim. I make elliptical path behind her butt, clamp a sphere to it and make move around, them damp a hip controller to sphere . OK, it works amazing, BUT! How to "free" hip controller from a sphere at the next step of anim and at the same time save the previos butt-roll-motion? F.e. she rolled her butt and then starts another action

2. Is there easy way to fix male hands on girls hips temporarily? i mean, to fix his hand controllers in a distance by her hip controller so while she is turning her butt his hands remains on it.
I know it all could be done by hard work with key frames and usual actions, but if there is a way to simplify the process - imho, it's a sin not to use it.

I have an idea. To answer you first question, you can animate the influence of a bone constraint. This basically tell Blender how strong the constraint is on the bone. By setting the influence to 0, the constraint will have zero power over the bone. To animate the property, click on the icon that is to the right of it (it starts off as a dot). The dot will change into a diamond. A whole diamond with a yellow bar means you've made a keyframe in the timeline! You can utilize this to basically toggle the bone constraint in an animation. So you can have the influence be 1.00 on frame 100, but turn it down to 0.00 on frame 101 to "turn off" the bone constraint.

 

To answer your second question, that might be a little advanced for me. I've never done something like that before. But if I had to guess, you would need to create a bone in the female control rig (name is something like C_WaistBind) and then use the Transformation constraint (its pretty simple to use, just do a quick google search). And bind the male sim's hands to the newly made C_WaistBind bone

[Mia Moore X]

Hey, I've tried to do some animations of my own for some fun but I can't seem to get my animation to play in-game? When I try to get my sim to do it, they just do the A-Pose and nothing else happens. I've tried baking the animation from the control rig to the actual rig, using the recommended settings (clear constraints, visual keying, and choosing "Pose" for the bake data). I tried deleting the control rig before importing to Sims4Studio. I tried tweaking the XML file by removing everything that said "REMOVE IF NOT USED". Nothing seems to work, what am I missing?

[Flaccid_Plasticine]

5 minutes ago, Mia Moore X said:

I have an idea. To answer you first question, you can animate the influence of a bone constraint. This basically tell Blender how strong the constraint is on the bone. By setting the influence to 0, the constraint will have zero power over the bone. To animate the property, click on the icon that is to the right of it (it starts off as a dot). The dot will change into a diamond. A whole diamond with a yellow bar means you've made a keyframe in the timeline! You can utilize this to basically toggle the bone constraint in an animation. So you can have the influence be 1.00 on frame 100, but turn it down to 0.00 on frame 101 to "turn off" the bone constraint.

 

To answer your second question, that might be a little advanced for me. I've never done something like that before. But if I had to guess, you would need to create a bone in the female control rig (name is something like C_WaistBind) and then use the Transformation constraint (its pretty simple to use, just do a quick google search). And bind the male sim's hands to the newly made C_WaistBind bone

I got the first point, thanks a lot! I'll try it a bit later.

The second thing is a bit harder for me, because I haven't learned yet how to do such a thing especially with Dagger's rig. I've been trying, and that time the chaos has swallowed the entire universe. But if you think about the same, maybe it worth to learn more and try again.

Anyway thanks a lot for your ideas) it seems like a plan. I'm a complete noob in blender, but i want to use besier lines from the start, because  animation with them looks much more harmonious and realistic

[Flaccid_Plasticine]

9 hours ago, Mia Moore X said:

I have an idea. To answer you first question, you can animate the influence of a bone constraint. This basically tell Blender how strong the constraint is on the bone. By setting the influence to 0, the constraint will have zero power over the bone. To animate the property, click on the icon that is to the right of it (it starts off as a dot). The dot will change into a diamond. A whole diamond with a yellow bar means you've made a keyframe in the timeline! You can utilize this to basically toggle the bone constraint in an animation. So you can have the influence be 1.00 on frame 100, but turn it down to 0.00 on frame 101 to "turn off" the bone constraint.

 

To answer your second question, that might be a little advanced for me. I've never done something like that before. But if I had to guess, you would need to create a bone in the female control rig (name is something like C_WaistBind) and then use the Transformation constraint (its pretty simple to use, just do a quick google search). And bind the male sim's hands to the newly made C_WaistBind bone

Sorry, what version of blender do you use?  I don't have this "diamond" in my 2.7( If I disable influence, it turns off for the whole anim in contempt of key frames(

[Mia Moore X]

14 hours ago, Larry Karter said:

Sorry, what version of blender do you use?  I don't have this "diamond" in my 2.7( If I disable influence, it turns off for the whole anim in contempt of key frames(

I'm using Blender 4.0 to animate. I have Blender 2.76 since Sims4Studio requires it, but I'm more comfortable with the newer versions of Blender. Now I'm starting to wonder if that's why my animations don't work? Because I'm not using 2.76? I would test that but the new update for TS4 broke WW... So I'll need to wait for an update on that

[wild_guy]

15 hours ago, Larry Karter said:

I don't have this "diamond" in my 2.7

2.7 sucks (by secret), consider using 3.6.x

26 minutes ago, Mia Moore X said:

I'm using Blender 4.0 to animate. I have Blender 2.76 since Sims4Studio requires it, but I'm more comfortable with the newer versions of Blender. Now I'm starting to wonder if that's why my animations don't work? Because I'm not using 2.76? I would test that but the new update for TS4 broke WW... So I'll need to wait for an update on that

S4S doesn't support Blender 4 at the moment, how are you going to use it then? See the S4S requirement.

Edited December 6, 2023 by wild_guy

[Mia Moore X]

16 hours ago, wild_guy said:

2.7 sucks (by secret), consider using 3.6.x

S4S doesn't support Blender 4 at the moment, how are you going to use it then? See the S4S requirement.

So I was aware S4S needed an older verson of Blender, which is why I have 2.76 but I guess I never realized that  would actually need to use that version of Blender to animate with ?I thought I only needed an older version just to import the adult rigs. But I will download 3.6 and that instead. Hopefully 3.6 supports forward compatibility. If not, I can bake my animation and export it as an fbx and work from there. Thank you

[Mia Moore X]

I wanted to come back and using 4.0 was the issue. I switched to Blender 3.6 and I can see my animation in game now. Thanks wild_guy!