Hey folks, even though I’ve been quiet on this blog since the release of Late Night, I’ve still been Simming away, mostly working on Living Sims forum challenges and building some homes for Rflong7’s Winter Wonderland world. At the same time, I’m also re-doing Riverview and filling it almost entirely with my own houses and Sims. I don’t want it to have rabbitholes, so most of the inhabitants will be self-employed. Here’s where I’m really missing Open for Business…*wistful sigh*
Anyway, more on that later! For now I wanted to share some pics I posted at Living Sims for the Small Quarters 4.0 – The Sound of Little Feet challenge. The challenge was to design a home for at least one adult and one child, and the footprint of it had to be a specific size and shape. It could only be one story, and it had to contain a playspace for the kid/s out in the living area, as well as a “grown-up” space for the parents.
I’ve been wanting to try my hand at a 1950s-style Storybook Ranch for a long time, and I thought the layout given for the challenge would be just about perfect.
I ended up moving in a young married couple and their twin girls, so I had to really cram a lot of stuff into a fairly small house. I also wanted to make it look realistic and lived-in, so I went kind of nuts with the clutter. It was fun, though. :-)
Hope you’re all having fun with whatever you’re doing! I’ll be posting my Winter Wonderland homes (re-done for a non-winter environment) soon, so look for more stuff coming up.
Wow! You really DID go nuts with the clutter! But I LUV it. jenba, I am SO jealous at how crisp and clear your pictures are. How do you do it?! What is your SECRET?! Is it your in-game camera settings? Is it your external graphics program! SPILL!! I must know, my precious!! :OD))
P.S. Love the house. ;O)
Heya Ange!! I’m glad you like the house; I had fun making it (although it took me way longer than it should have…I am slooow). As for my pics, I don’t know, it must be my card? I think I have an Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT… I have all my graphics settings on high except for mirrors/reflections and maybe trees. I use the in-game camera to take my shots, and I crop and resize them in Photoshop. Sometimes I use the “Sharpen” filter, but I didn’t on these. Then I do “save for web” so they don’t take up a lot of space or take too long to load. That’s it!
Forgot to add that maybe lighting plays a role…I’m very finicky about my lighting! I’m always adding lights, turning some off, changing the brightness or the color, etc. It can make a huge difference in pictures. Even the time of day and the angle of light coming through the windows can change things. I also have a dDefinder’s lighting mod installed right now for darker nights and longer shadows outdoors; it also makes the sky oranger during sunset and gives some foggy/cloudy days. It’s pretty cool but only works for Riverview/Sunset Valley/Barnacle Bay, far as I know.
Where do you save your pictures? Maybe that’s what it is. Mine go from my computer through Flock (because I can bulk upload without them getting out of order) and into photobucket. There’s no real settings for “save for web”. *boggles* I guess it’s just one of those things? It will forever be a mystery. :O)
I don’t think the “save for web” would make a difference, really, since it compresses the picture to save space, and the compression probably reduces the quality slightly. I just save my pics to my computer hard drive and then upload them to my webspace via FTP. What kind of video card do you have?
GeForce 9800 GTX+
You’ve seen my website, right? See how the faces look kinda blurry? Or is it just me?
Hm, that card is comparable to mine, I think. I think your pics look great, but I do see what you mean about a slight blurriness to the faces. I think some of that might be the way Sims look outdoors — the shadows do weird things to their faces. What do you have your graphic settings set to?
You are so amazing with the building and decorating! What a beautiful home. It really does look lived in.
Your project for Riverview sounds like fun! I miss OFB too, but have you seen this? It’s a step towards sims being able to run their own businesses. You put down a treasure chest in their business and they can sell goods and make money from it.
Thanks, Lunarfox! I have actually played around with that mod a little bit — I downloaded some other mods that would allow me to cook on a community lot so I could build a bakery/coffeeshop and allow my Sim to “go to work” there and make pies, serve coffee, etc. I couldn’t get it to work, though — the food she made there was non-draggable, so I couldn’t put it into the treasure chest and make it buyable. If she made the food at home, though, and put it in the treasure chest there, it would show up as buyable at the register in the bakery. I guess that means it would show up at all Food registers in town? I’ll have to experiment with that. Have you been able to set up any shops with it?
I say this every single time… but AMAZING! I love this, it looks so freaking real it’s almost ridiculous! Love the clutter. I’ve never had the patience for it, but it does make things look ten times better.
The lighting is superb, too. It’s amazing how big lighting is in TS3. It can make things look awful or incredible. I always forget how truly customizable the lighting is… need to remember that!
Hey Mao! Thanks so much for your comment. Yeah, the lighting in TS3 seems to be its own beast, really. I have so much yet to learn about it, but it’s fun to mess around with it.
Hey, Jen! Awesome house, as usual. I think the only thing I like about Sims 3 is your blog, because I had so many problems with mine (tried to reinstall the other day, and got the same nonsense as last time). I was going to attempt the Prosperity Challenge for Sims 2 (and a few others, too, now that I’ve kicked my dependence on Merola’s Multi-Painting), when Pike River happened, and I couldn’t leave the TV. A guy I knew at primary school lost, my Ma’s cousin’s husband lost, and 27 men I didn’t know personally. A bad fortnight for us Coasters.
Oh Scally, I’m so sorry to hear that you lost people you knew in the Pike River accident. That’s just awful. I can understand you not leaving the TV while that was going on. I hope everything is going OK for you.
Goodness, Jen – I missed this on the forum – it’s beyond awesome! I love that it looks like a real home that’s lived in and loved , and not something that’s been staged. Its truly a family home :o)
I hope you decide to share some photos of your Riverview, I’d love to see your version in full technicolour ;o)
Thank you so much, Lily! I will definitely share some pics of my Riverview at some point…it’s a very slow project since I keep getting sidetracked by other things, but it’s nice to have my own little town that I can work on when I feel like it.