Reference - Blog Posts

I did this recently for myself so I might as well share. This is TS2 facial expression swatch and also some expression combos (in case you don't know - Decorgal's pose overlay hack allows you to apply and blend various expressions / animation loops)

And also, a tip - you can easily edit the pose hack STR to get better angry expression -> I replaced "Eyes Closed (S)" with annoyed face animation, which is a little twitchy (not suitable for movie recording - head movement) but still better than original adult angry face. BTW I actually managed to edit c-annoyed animation so Sims don't squint the eyes as much , you can download the annoyed animation replacement HERE (SFS)

I could use more evil or seductive expressions, TS2 game is seriously lacking those ;/

May I add, skip Chrome for browsing, if you haven't done so. Firefox is much better anyway.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Architecture in Assassin's Creed

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32 idee su Architecture in Assassin's Creed | assassins creed, assassins creed unity, hagia sophia

9 ago 2016 - Photos and images of all the great buildings drawn and built in Assassin's Creed world. Some advice?. Visualizza altre idee su

For those who’ve been concerned about losing quality with smaller texture sizes, I thought this might be worth showing. This is a texture I made just for this purpose in 2048x2048 and then resized it. All textures were built with DXT3 format and file sizes are the compressed ones. In my opinion 1024x1024 looks the best in-game. 512x512 is what Maxis originally used for this sofa and it would be a better option performance-wise, though.

These pictures were taken with a full HD display, meaning that it can show resolutions up to 1920x1080 (but not anything beyond that) and with a game that’s set up to use that resolution too. Please keep in mind that the lower your game’s resolution is, the less likely you would notice a drastic difference between 512x512 and 1024x1024 textures in-game.

Oh, that's interesting. first time I'm hearing that claim. Now i understand what happened. in my legacy edition copy, I did notice a change to the graphic settings, but thought it was done by someone else, not EA. on the log it states that I have a slightly different card than what I actually have, and it did surprise me they didn't add mine to the pool, i was wondering what's that about. I tried to add mine manually, worrying its absence would cause issues, but it didn't change when I've added mine. I had no problems with it, so I just left it as it is.

Side note: I left this copy for testing (and forgot about it actually), I don't play it if I can help it, so there are hardly any mods on it.

Okay, I compared the Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr with the Ultimate Collection

They did EXACTLY what my brother has been saying for months but people have been debating him over it and didn't want to believe him

The new video cards.sgr doesn't include ANY new graphics cards. Wanna know why? Because the game doesn't fucking care. He has been saying for months that it doesn't care and that adding it via GRM doesn't do anything, it can actually potentially make it worse.

What they DID do is take out all the hacky stuff in the Graphics Rules.sgr to prevent the game from turning on and off certain settings depending on your hardware and software config. That's what I did as well, months ago, because he said it is the smarter solution.

Experimenting with Replacing the Default Sims 2 Face Mesh

So, after uh, whew, months(!) of experimenting with attempting to change the default face mesh in Sims 2, I’m here to basically share what I’ve found to be possible, what I still am struggling to get working, and what parts of my findings are still useful for a LOT of modding and custom content purposes, even if I couldn’t achieve my initial goal. I’m really tired of this project and I’d rather move on to doing stuff that are more doable (and more quickly doable) for my gameplay goals, rather than trying to do what seems to be a gargantuan task for my level of skills. 

In this post I’ll mostly focus on what is doable *in principle*. There’s lots of subtleties and tricks in getting things to look decent (well, at least I think I got it to look decent) which I won’t go into. Or try not to. I go into tangents a lot.

I’ll also not go into step-by-step details. Mostly because I suck at it but also because this post will be super long anyway. If you wanna know, ask!

For those who just want a brief summary: What I could get to work: a default replacement face mesh, with working templates and sliders, for adult sims. Though the procedures are the same for the rest of the ages.

What I still have trouble with: Basically, getting the game to recognize different parts of the face. This means applying the templates to different parts of the mesh, and, of course, genetics, don’t work yet. I have ideas about what could get it to work, but I’ve failed to do it so far.

Awesome things you could still do: My major finding here is that face animations can be applied to *any* CAS object. Clothing, accessories, and of course, nude skins (see below, this was an outfit with a bit that changes with eyes, proof of concept). This means that you can have specific sims with additional face parts and/or accessories and clothing that respond to face animations, or alternatively, you can have skin tones/body morphs that have face pieces which will not mix together between the parents, but are still heritable (with some limitations)

Oh, and full disclosure, the tools I used were simPE and blender 2.9. Nothing else. Don’t know how to do other stuff.

Thank you @simnopke , @rudhira , @withlovefromsimtown​  and many others for your help and encouragement in all this! I think there’s potential for some really good modding here.

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I also would like to add Bill Shannon as a great source of reference poses for cool crutch positions. He is a wonderful dancer and disability activist and I love his work so much. Hope you enjoy this visual breakdown of some of the poses of Shannon Technique!

Crutches poses

I feel like a lot of people don’t quite get what a butler is. The role tends to get rounded off to ‘male servant’ pretty regularly in some media, whereas actually butlers are typically not just servants but chief servants. The butler was generally in charge of either all male servants or just all servants, period, in the household of an aristocrat or other very wealthy person. This meant that butlers have often been fairly powerful and influential people, and sometimes even had a manservant or two of their own.

(Also, fun fact: Mary Roberts Rinehart, the early 20th century mystery writer who is widely credited with popularizing the whole ‘the butler did it’ trope was nearly murdered by one of her own servants, a chef whom she had passed over for promotion to butler. He came at her with a pistol, but it jammed, allowing her chauffeur time to wrestle it away and restrain him.)

A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)

Disclaimer: Though I have been using a cane for 6 years, I am not a doctor, nor am I by any means an expert. This guide is true to my experience, but there are as many ways to use a cane as there are cane users!

This guide will not include: White canes for blindness, crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs as I have no personal experience with these.

This is meant to be a general guide to get you started and avoid some common mishaps/misconceptions, but you absolutely should continue to do your own research outside of this guide!

The biggest recurring problem I've seen is using the cane on the wrong side. The cane goes on the opposite side of the pain! If your character has even-sided pain or needs it for balance/weakness, then use the cane in the non-dominant hand to keep the dominant hand free. Some cane users also switch sides to give their arm a rest!

A cane takes about 20% of your weight off the opposite leg. It should fit within your natural gait and become something of an extension of your body. If you need more weight off than 20%, then crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair is needed.

Putting more pressure on the cane, using it on the wrong side, or having it at the wrong height will make it less effective, and can cause long term damage to your body from improper pressure and posture. (Hugh Laurie genuinely hurt his body from years of using a cane wrong on House!)

(an animated GIF of a cane matching the natural walking gait. It turns red when pressure is placed on it.)

When going up and down stairs, there is an ideal standard: You want to use the handrail and the cane at the same time, or prioritize the handrail if it's only on one side. When going up stairs you lead with your good leg and follow with the cane and hurt leg together. When going down stairs you lead with the cane, then the good leg, and THEN the leg that needs help.

Realistically though, many people don't move out of the way for cane users to access the railing, many stairs don't have railings, and many are wet, rusty, or generally not ideal to grip.

In these cases, if you have a friend nearby, holding on to them is a good idea. Or, take it one step at a time carefully if you're alone.

Now we come to a very common mistake I see... Using fashion canes for medical use!

(These are 4 broad shapes, but there is INCREDIBLE variation in cane handles. Research heavily what will be best for your character's specific needs!)

The handle is the contact point for all the weight you're putting on your cane, and that pressure is being put onto your hand, wrist, and shoulder. So the shape is very important for long term use!

Knob handles (and very decorative handles) are not used for medical use for this reason. It adds extra stress to the body and can damage your hand to put constant pressure onto these painful shapes.

The weight of a cane is also incredibly important, as a heavier cane will cause wear on your body much faster. When you're using it all day, it gets heavy fast! If your character struggles with weakness, then they won't want a heavy cane if they can help it!

This is also part of why sword canes aren't usually very viable for medical use (along with them usually being knob handles) is that swords are extra weight!

However, a small knife or perhaps a retractable blade hidden within the base might be viable even for weak characters.

Bases have a lot of variability as well, and the modern standard is generally adjustable bases. Adjustable canes are very handy if your character regularly changes shoe height, for instance (gotta keep the height at your hip!)

Canes help on most terrain with their standard base and structure. But for some terrain, you might want a different base, or to forego the cane entirely! This article covers it pretty well.

Many cane users decorate their canes! Stickers are incredibly common, and painting canes is relatively common as well! You'll also see people replacing the standard wrist strap with a personalized one, or even adding a small charm to the ring the strap connects to. (nothing too large, or it gets annoying as the cane is swinging around everywhere)

(my canes, for reference)

If your character uses a cane full time, then they might also have multiple canes that look different aesthetically to match their outfits!

When it comes to practical things outside of the cane, you reasonably only have one hand available while it's being used. Many people will hook their cane onto their arm or let it dangle on the strap (if they have one) while using their cane arm, but it's often significantly less convenient than 2 hands. But, if you need 2 hands, then it's either setting the cane down or letting it hang!

For this reason, optimizing one handed use is ideal! Keeping bags/items on the side of your free hand helps keep your items accessible.

When sitting, the cane either leans against a wall or table, goes under the chair, or hooks onto the back of the chair. (It often falls when hanging off of a chair, in my experience)

When getting up, the user will either use their cane to help them balance/support as they stand, or get up and then grab their cane. This depends on what it's being used for (balance vs pain when walking, for instance!)

That's everything I can think of for now. Thank you for reading my long-but-absolutely-not-comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when writing or drawing a cane user!

Happy disability pride month! Go forth and make more characters use canes!!!

Sketch

I almost forgot to posted this.

This character is Kate she’s my Oc/persona character that represents me in real life well without the cat ears and tail obviously!

Kate is one of my mascots for this account, my YouTube account Olivia The Cat, and Instagram Olivia The Cat Official.

You’ll probably see some more posts of her at some point in this account.

Here is her Reference/ Meet the artist. I already post this on Instagram. So I decided to post it here. 

Don’t mind the third picture, it’s supposed to show bags underneath her eyes. I have it in real life i’m always tired even when I sleep good at night.

For personal reasons with my health which I’m not comfortable sharing right now!

I plan on working on more references for the rest of my OC characters!

Couple of characters you haven’t met yet if you want to learn more of my other characters I recommend checking out my Instagram account: Olivia The Cat Official.



Collection of images and memes for anyone who doesn’t know what to draw (edit: I added way more ❤️)

my ink ran out.

Stel’s long deserved ref sheet is finally done yEEHAW- 27h over the span of nearly 4 months, I already want to tweak things nooooo

Desperately trying to sort out Stel’s design before Art Fight :’D

Sootspot finally got her much needed redesign! :’D

Final 2.0 redesign for Stel wOO

I could have drawn a normal number of spots but nOoOoooOooo

Nemo! You sooty coughing wheezing child tAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Lupine and Crow are, surprise surprise: both dead

Murder flirter murder flirter murder flirt-

Domino, a squirrel in a cat’s body

Blizzard you absolute wizard-

Puddlestar? Puddlemom!

Bee! Aka the literally just a cat who’s stuck with Lacuna

I,, could not resist making an Ampwave,,,

New Redraw Challenge

Redraw your Ocs from THIS reference.