After the Calling

I pretty much ignored sit-poses in my last tutorial because they are just terrible and needed too much attention. But I took a second look, and decided sitting isn’t as complicated as I was making it out to be. I mean who says that? “Sitting is hard man! You gotta do all this… sitting!” Yeah, let’s pass.

Since I’ve stopped playing the game, using it almost exclusively as a storytelling device, I been trying to find a way around the sims’ most un-lifelike aspects. Although this is far from a complete guide, as some of my methods are kind of tedious and really not worth it, I compiled an easy list of techniques to make your sitting sims look a bit more realistic.

Absolutely necessary for this bit are the following:

• JD’s Animboxes
  http://www.jd-movies.com/moviemakinghelp.php

Kind of necessary:

• SilentLucidity’s shiftable, angled, etc. OSMPs
  http://www.modthesims2.com/member.php?u=2134630
• Decorgal’s talk hacks, specifically her sit-talk hack
  http://www.decorgal.com/designs/download.php?list.8
• And her Modeling Pose box with face overlays
  http://nene.modthesims2.com/browse.php?f=414&u=28532
• Treeag’s freezer clock (If not this, then excellent timing)
  http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=303295

Not necessary but helpful:

• Look At Me Now hack from maybesomethingdunno’s Fourth Wall Options
  http://www.modthesims2.com/download.php?t=268960
• AnoeskaB’s object rotators
  http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims2-sets-objects/title/Object%20Rotators%20-%205%20degree%20angle/id/816644/
• Slow motion cheat (slowmotion 0-5)

And if you haven’t already read goodbye_sun’s posing overlay tutorials (here and here), you need to go do that. Just in general. Right now. Get over there.

I wrote this tutorial with the assumption that you know of moveobjects and boolprop cheats to place and angle your sims.

My characters Rowanne and Garcia will be doing the honors. Their expressions were set using Decorgal’s modeling posebox with face overlays.

Okay! Gripe: sims look like this when they talk.

Result: Angry swearing while trying to create realistic looking pictures.

One possible solution: Table top conversations

If the static legs piss you off, then you can cover them up with a table. Nightlife has some really really, ruheally great table animations that you can exploit for your usage.

Setting the facial expression with Decorgal’s modeling pose box with facial overlays will demolish those cartoonish face-animations, while leaving the eyes unaffected. Even so, some of the given face anims are not terrible. My favorite animation for pose-harvesting are the “propose” animations, particularly the “proposer reject”.

If you use the “look at me now” hack, you can keep the animation arms and have your sim look where you want them to… to an extent.

The other dining animations in Nightlife offer a great range of things you can do to give a table top animation some realism

Animations here are Embarrassed Look Around, Feed Bite -ee,  One of the flirt animations, … and propose animations… I might overuse those a bit.

Also available in the JD’s nightlife animbox are bar overlays, which can give a regularly seated sim a more relaxed look.  The bar overlays include, drumming fingers, brush hair from face (or something like that), and scratch side (not pictured).

Some of the best bar animations are not available for overlay. To this, answer with a shiftable OMSP.  Silent Lucidity created OMSPs that allows for objects to be lowered underground.  You use it to lower a sim from a barstool to a regular chair.

With the table replacing the bar counter, you can now hold all bar interations at the table. In the picture below, Rowanne is on an unshifted OMSP and Garcia is on an OMSP shifted down.  Close up, you’re none the wiser.

The legs on that bar pose are overlayable, but the upper half of the body skews to the left. If you don’t mind playing around with it, and leaning the sim against something, you can use a number of different upper body animations and get an open legged something or other pose.

Now get them talking!

Garcia: Drum fingernails
Rowanne: Propose – er (same for accept or reject)

“Mr. Hazard, tell me why I shouldn’t strive for world domination,” Rowanne demanded, folding her hands impatiently above the table.
“Well, I’m not the authority on this sort of thing, but it does sound a bit evil,” Garcia replied.
“Nonsense. You wouldn’t know evil if it bit you on the neck and sucked your blood.”
Garcia sighed. Despite his calm demeanor, he was getting fed up with this woman.

Garcia: Brush hair out of face (or something like that)
Rowanne: Feed bite – er – reject

“How long are we going to sit here?” Garcia asked, rubbing his eye in irritation.
Rowanne reached over and pulled his hand from his face. “We can stand up when the tutorial is over. Now don’t make me eat you alive, because you know I’ll do it. Okay, love?”

Table-less Conversations

For those sims who don’t want to be constrained by the limits of table, there are some leg actions available to get away from that perfect right-angle at the knee.

Ankles Crossed

This can be found in decorgal’s sit/talk hack under Action Chair. It is overlayable and great for a bit of normalcy. Especially if you put a slouch on it. (Excuse my defuct alphabet skills)

Even with the normal, static legs, a good slouch can liven things up. There are a few ways to get your sim to slouch. 

Use the “Reaction Emotion” animations in decorgal’s sit/talk hack, notably the “Sad” interactions, in order to get the look of slouching (B). If you’ve set your sims legs, the sims will remain slouched at the end of the animation and be completely overlayable. Although, many animations look kind of stupid while slouched, so you should stick with the sad anims. Sad sniffle is a good one for a chair with an arm (D).

Another slouch is from the exasperated animation. No matter the position of the legs, the sim will appear to be leaning forward onto the edge of the couch or chair. (C) If you use the look at me now hack immediately before you do the animation, you can make your sim look in the direction that you want them to.

If you want your sim to have a more leaned back appearance, have them ”wink”  (this can be found in decorgal’s sit/talk hack under Action Pos and in the Nightlife Animbox overlays). The animation will lean them backward, and they will stay like that, still completely overlayable. You can see on the side a rub neck animation without the lean, and below it, the same animation leaned back. I admit, it’s a bad example and the unleaned version looks better, but work with me.

Seated Animations

This is the cool part. Every single expansion pack has it’s own seated animations in some way shape or form. I can’t list all of them, but here are a few of my favorites.

From Open For Business, the Makeup Chair animations:

These animations have to be lowered down using a shiftable OMSP, but are awesome nonetheless.

From Apartment Life, the Slide animations:

You have to finaggle these also with the shiftable OMSPs. I didn’t do a great job here, but in another chair, she might have looked better.

From Freetime, the Sewing Machine animations:

So with these animations, there is not much you can do from afar, or from the front. I tried to play with it a little bit, you can usually fix stuff by stick a girl on someone’s lap, but these pictures are kind of crap. What is really awesome about the sewing animations is what you can do from behind the seat, or from really really close up.

As you can see in the corner shot, this animation is lame for wide shots. But up close? ROMANCE!

From Bon Voyage, the Hammock animations:

Both of these had to be lowered a smidge with an OMSP.

And (WITH APOLOGIES TO PENELOPE, BUT JUST THE IDEA OF OPENING THE GAME TO RETAKE THIS PHOTO IN CONTEXT WAS LIKE DEATH BY TOOTHPICK) this is also a hammock shot angled a bit.

ANGLED POSES

I don’t think you guys understand just how serious I am about Silent Lucidity’s angled OMSPs. You can do ANYTHING with them. Something unseated can be easily angled into a chair. I’ll use Bon Voyage’s sun bathing animation as an example.

As Garcia stands up from sun bathing, I angled him back 33 degrees and stuck him on a chair. Of course from a far, he looks deficient, but with some camera work, you can get a decent seated shot out of him.

You’re still not getting it. ANYTHING. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.

Case in point.

Rowanne is getting up from a cuddle. Garcia is getting up from sunbathing (?). Both are angled and/or shifted a couple of degrees.

Here’s your assignment. Take an animation. Any animation, and just shift it backwards or forwards or to the side or something. You just created a new pose. Hot damn.

Okay back to reality. My goal here was just to show you that you can create a more normal looking conversational situations. Rowanne is accepting a marriage proposal, and Garcia is winking with his legs crossed. And they look a lot better than the Maxis offerings.  TRY IT!

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 These methods are simply founded in imagination. I can only insist that you try to find ways to use animations outside of what they were originally made for.

I’m still learning myself, and could not have figured any of this crap out without the information at simshaven and modthesims2.

So big thank you to awesome community members and creators who made it possible to even do this sort of thing.

All the methods, poses, and models I used here have been, or will be used in my sims story After the Calling. Thanks to everyone who has supported it and inspired me to write this tutorial!