JoshQ

View File Impossible Boots Victoire plus Platforms This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 3274 (platforms: 3290) 3 color channels (4 on platforms) Will elevate young adults and adults 6 “units” above ground, 5 to teens; platforms will elevate 8 and 7 respectively Only available in .package format Defects: Boots look “weird” on CAS, in-game looks fine The zipper looks stretched, not a big deal unless you zoom in Because the main texture (and mesh) lacks any kind of detail I recommend to use patterns on these just be aware some of them won align behind the leg Rough edges here and there There’s a “line” on the leg/feet seam similar to the Impossible Feet but unless you zoom directly it’s almost invisible Potential clipping with floor, chairs, beds, etc. and animation misalignment under normal simming. This can also can happen on custom animations and poses and also might cause leg/feet extreme bending (I usually don’t have problems on my game while using Passion or OKW, but I cannot guarantee yours) 3D accessories that contain morphs, like necklaces and alike from the game and other creators, might interfere with the boots and cause severe deformation, don’t use both at the same time Notes: I made this CC simply to experiment with bone assignments and morphs, because everything went better than expected I decided to share it, with that said, I’m aware the design is nothing to write home about but the same happened with my first pair of original heels Based on the mesh from Impossible Boots with Warmers I extracted the zipper texture and normalmap from afBodyRaceShorts You can mix this CC with most skirts made by EA (and probably from other creators), pants with volume around the calf and below will clip This is an original mesh created with a combination of Metasequoia, Blender and Milkshape 3D Boots are compatible with the default body, MedBod and posibly any other custom mesh that follows the original proportions Credits: Electronic Arts for zipper textures Submitter JoshQ Submitted 08/27/2017 Category Shoes  

This isn't a detailed guide for that go to modthesims, thesimsresource, tumblr, youtube, etc. I'm just sharing whatever I've learned while making stuff. Part 1 (Tools) here Part 2 (How CC works) here Part 3 (Textures) here Part 4 (Meshing: General Info) here If I omitted something or need more help let me know. Part 4.2, Meshing: UV Maps As I wrote in part 4.1 your clothes will share the same texture space with the rest of the body, for accessories like stockings, underwear, etc it’s not an issue, the same for collars, earrings, glasses, hats and whatnot; also thousands of custom clothes had been made with this “limitation” for years, the tricky part comes when you want to make sexy stuff like corsets with the chest exposed or a revealing mini-skirt. The UV map is divided on tops, bottoms and feet; each has a space dedicated for the body and an extra space for whatever you’re doing. The fast approach would be to just use the extra space by resizing your custom textures to this fit this area, the problem is that some patterns won’t look right, at all; also your textures will be stretched to hell and back. Green: tops, blue: bottoms, red:feet (image is not “pixel perfect” but close enough) One alternative is to make more space so you can accommodate your textures with little or none scaling. You can start by deleting the body sections that are going to be hidden behind your clothes, in the case of a corset you delete the navel and part of the back but even then this might be not enough. What I do is to delete one of the arms and duplicate the opposite, then on the clone I apply a “mirror” modifier; now both arms will share the same texture space and that leaves us with an extra area we can use. This is how “Horror Mistress EDIT” works: I deleted the arm and cloned it and then deleted half of dress and cloned it too, thanks to this I just had to scale the textures 10% to fit without further modification On general this can cause some shading problems specially on EVERY seam, I fix most of them using the “Align Normals”, “Extended Manual Edit” or “Wes H’s Merge Tools” plug-ins on Milkshape. Also when two meshes share the same UV map it causes some weirdness on CAS, once you get in-game everything should look OK. The same technique can also be applied on legs, torso and feet just be aware that if you use a detailed custom skin these body parts will look “oddly symmetric” or just weird so don’t go overboard. Clothes, shoes an accessories can also suffer from this but it’s not as evident. This is a fully functional MedBod Top but if you look at the UV map you can see it only has one arm and half the torso, you can use the unused space for your clothes textures Even if you don’t use them is recommended to “align” your mesh to use patterns, this is one of TS3 biggest strengths (although poorly optimized) and gives you and whoever downloads your CC limitless customization (unlike TS4...). I ignore how it actually works but it seems the game duplicates a pattern, a 128x128 square, over your multiplier texture and according to the areas delimited by the mask texture. To more or less match that I made this image: The black lines represent the size of a base pattern: 128x128, and to further help I also included yellow lines at every 64 pixels and light blue at 32. Below you can see how I use it to align patterns for the CC I make: What happens if you have to scale down your UV, but want it to show patterns properly? In TSRW, in the section when you select the colors for the mask there’s a cell called “Tilling” followed by two values separated by a comma: “4,4”, if you change it to 6,6 or 8,8 you will “scale down” the pattern (The Impossible Heels use 8,8) at 10, 10 and at least in my game patterns look blurry so YMMV.

This isn't a detailed guide for that go to modthesims, thesimsresource, tumblr, youtube, etc. I'm just sharing whatever I've learned while making stuff. Part 1 (Tools) here Part 2 (How CC works) here Part 3 (Textures) here If I omitted something or need more help let me know. Part 4.1, Meshing: General info Because meshing involves lots of info I will proceed dividing the subject in several parts I’m counting you already read the previous parts or at least you are somewhat familiar with the modding tools. You can also start reading most of the tutorials located on modthesims. Inside the spoiler I included links to some of them plus informative posts: Clothes aren’t “standalone” it includes body parts like neck, hands, legs and more depending how revealing they are and to make things trickier both share the same texture space/UV map; the only exceptions are hair and 3D accessories like watches, necklaces, earrings, glasses and alike. Yes, you can make an accessory jacket or even a full dress BUT this game is known to blurry textures from accessories and even with the HD mod and/or 4k textures the results can look plain ugly. Left. AfBodyRomanticSlip’ Mesh; Right. Its UV map Also your mesh needs to be adapted to at least to 3 body shapes or “morphs” besides the “base” one: fat, thin and fit, the fifth one is optional and its meant for pregnant sims. The SAME MESH must be adapted for every morph or TSRW will throw an error. Cmar’s Mesh Toolkit and TSRW can autogenerate morphs if used with a reference mesh but the more complex your mesh is the more difficult will be for the tool to generate them correctly so most of the time you’ll need to make corrections manually afterwards. Morphs form AfBodyRomanticSlip, from left to right: group_base, group_fat, group_thin, group_fit Talking about weight, every vertex has a bone value/bone paint/bone assignment allotted that is used by animations and sliders, cherry on top? There’s a limit on the number of bones you can include in your clothes, anything above 60 will provoke weirdness no matter what, the easiest way to deal with it is to divide you mesh in at least “two groups” (check most “full body” clothes made by EA to see an example of this). Mesh Toolkit/TSRW can also help you with bones but the same limitation applies This is how Sexy Rabbit works: (highlighted in red) the neck, tail, cuff and legs are separated in one mesh group, leaving the whole upper torso in a second one The game uses two Levels Of Detail: LOD2 and LOD3, there’s some conflicting info around how the game uses them but it seems both are invoked depending on the camera distance and map view. As I said on the first part of this “guide” you only need to worry about LOD 2, for 3 you can “recycle” parts from the rest of the game. LODs aren’t linked meaning you don’t forcibly need to create LOD2/LOD3 for a piece of CC to show in the game, but it’s preferred to do so. Some 3D accessories (like glasses, earrings, rings and alike) don’t use morphs and some of them use a fourth LOD for better detail LODs used on Impheels Gala, from left to right: LOD1, LOD2, LOD3. Depending on your garment you will have to take care of seams on the neck, hip and ankles for every morph and LOD; this is the only part where you can’t deviate from the original sim-body design otherwise you will have visible and very nasty gaps on those areas or small but very annoying white dots. In short, every vertex located on the seams must coincide on the same place ALSO they need to share the same bone values or won’t synchronize during any kind of animations. Mesh Toolkit has a tool to fix seams but I can’t say if it works because I prefer to fix seams directly on Milkshape. Vertices on the top of the “Impossible Feet” coincide in position and bones value with those located on the legs I heard several times there’s also a limit on the number or polygons you can include on a mesh, it seems it’s around 10k BUT I had seen all type of custom garments surpassing this limit from 20k necklaces to 40k shoes or 70k blouses so honestly I don’t know. Obviously a “slim” mesh is going to be easier to manipulate and fix if necessary but also modern tools like maya, modo or marvelous designer can modify gigantic meshes without effort. If you ask me I prefer to be on the “safe side”, specially with clothes because clipping is a VERY BIG problem that can cause countless headaches... So in resume compared to other games The Sims 3 is not that complex to mod (if I did it so can you!) but the more ambitious you are the more you will be jumping through hoops to achieve it.

View File Misc Accessories Pack No.1 This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions UPDATE: I forgot to enable some of the accessories for Base Game all the 3D accessories except the dog/cat ears are affected, because of this the thumbnail wont show or the whole accessory won’t appear if you don’t have the “Seasons” expansion. I remade the zip and the modified files are inside the “fixed” folder, just replace your previously downloaded files with these ones no further action required. Sorry! ------------ Main picture, from left to right and starting from the top: AccessoryAntennaEp11BotSpencer AccessoryChokerEP3BraceletHeavy AccessoryCoretMesh_GlovesEDIT AccessoryS3Medieval_TwistBangCrown AccessoryS3PetsCatEars AccessoryS3PetsDogEars AccessorySimpleChokerN01_LARGEsize / ...MEDIUMsize / ...SMALLsize AccessoryStockingsN27 AccessoryStockingsN25 AccessoryStockingsN26 AccessoryStockings_MedBodStripes AccessorySupernaturalWitchHat AccessoryTextureChokers (2 variations, same package) General details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Located on the accessories section Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims 3D accessories have LODs but not morphs Polycount: majority are low-poly, except for AccessoryS3Medieval_TwistBangCrown it weights 1734 (texture accesories use 0 polygons) 1 to 4 color channels Only available in .package format Defects: Every accessory works I just didn’t invest in quality so most look dull plus pixelation, texture stretching, clipping during normal simming and custom animations, etc, etc, etc. EP3BraceletHeavy, will clip on overweight sims and looks too big on thin SimpleChokerN01_SMALLsize, clips on the front on the neck with MedBod AccessoryStockings_MedBodStripes, as the name says the stockings were made using MedBod’s legs as reference that means the stripes won’t look good on the default body, also closed shoes recommended AccessoryS3PetsCatEars, the front looks weird Notes: This pack has what I call “15min exercises”, little pieces of CC that I just make for practice, to test new techniques or because of boredom Headband, pet ears and hat are compatible with the hat sliders You can install all three versions of SimpleChokerN01 at the same time or any combination Everything can be used on the default naked body, MedBod and any other that follows the default UV map and body proportions of course My spider sense tells me some of these were already made by other creators… Credits: EA for meshes and textures where applies Submitter JoshQ Submitted 08/06/2017 Category Accessories  

View File ImpHeels Shion This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 5426 4 color channels Will elevate young adults and adults 9 “units” above ground, 8 to teens Only available in .package format Defects: Shoes look “weird” on CAS, in-game looks fine Rough edges here and there Potential clipping with floor, chairs, beds, etc. and animation misalignment under normal simming. This can also can happen on custom animations and poses and also might cause leg/feet extreme bending (I usually don’t have problems on my game while using Passion or OKW, but I cannot guarantee yours) 3D accessories that contain morphs, like necklaces and alike from the game and other creators, might interfere with the shoes and cause severe deformation, don’t use both at the same time Notes: Based on Paradisi This “surge” in releases is because I decided to somewhat clean my “to-do” folder some of those projects just need very little to be completed and none or few testing, after that I’ll return to lazy turtle mode This is an original mesh created with a combination of Metasequoia, Blender and Milkshape 3D Every single pair of “Impossible Heels” is compatible with the default body, MedBod and any other custom mesh that follows the default leg seam Friendly reminder: if you see my CC behind a paywall or anything remotely similar ask your money back Submitter JoshQ Submitted 08/05/2017 Category Shoes  

View File Impossible Boots with Warmers This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 3416 4 color channels Will elevate young adults and adults 6 “units” above ground, 5 to teens Only available in .package format Defects: Boots look “weird” on CAS, in-game looks fine Clipping around the calf on MedBod but it isn’t that distracting at least at normal game distance I copied the bones from the Impossible Heels to the lower section of the warmers this avoids the boots clipping through it but, in exchange, it will weirdly bend the ankle depending on how much it's rotated by an animation, custom or default Hard edges here and there Potential clipping with floor, chairs, beds, etc, etc. 3D accessories that contain morphs, like necklaces and alike from the game and other creators, might interfere with the shoes and cause severe deformation, don’t use both at the same time Notes: Boots are based on Devi and were mixed with the warmers from afBottomShorts_Warmer After some tests with skirts and pants made by EA I found the majority will play nice, exceptions are skirts below knee and pants with volume both will clip (wide skirts might be safe) Yes, I didn’t want to wait for winter to release this Credits: Electronic Arts for warmer’s mesh and textures Submitter JoshQ Submitted 07/30/2017 Category Shoes  

View File Body N04 for MedBod This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For young adult and adult femsims Located on the Body category Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 4184 and 4072 4 color channels, 2 variations Only available in .package format Defects: Although I was able to reduce pixelation compared to Body N03 it’s still present at full zoom (hopefully you don’t have a macro photography fetish) Stretching, deformation and more when combined with sex animations and/or “larger” sims I’m almost sure I completely eliminated clipping on the neck at least on everyday simming, but I didn’t test every single custom sex animation so it could still happen Most patterns won’t align on the neck seam 3D collars, necklaces and alike can clip with the neck or rest of the body Ugh, mixed the thumbs for the Barbie Boobs version, don't worry you'll be able tell the difference, sorry! Notes: First variation has a boob window, second one doesn’t This time I used the neck portion from afTopCHNinspired and created a new set of textures Added a “Barbie Boobs” version (in short it lacks 3D nipples and it’s intended to be used with skins that has nipples painted out-of-position), you can install any version or both without problems Compatible with EA’s footwear, every single pair of shoes from me and any other CC that respects the original vertex coordinates on feet seam and UV map Also you can use texture accessories but it will appear below the fabric Credits: Electronic Arts for the neck mesh Submitter JoshQ Submitted 07/23/2017 Category Clothing  

View File ImpHeels Gala This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 6206 4 color channels, 2 variations Will elevate young adults and adults 10 “units” above ground, 9 to teens Only available in .package format Defects: Shoes look all-kinds-of-weird on CAS, in-game looks okay(ish) The UV on the ankle straps is not aligned you’ll notice it when using geometric patterns Some rough edges here and there Potential clipping with floor, chairs, beds, etc. and animation misalignment under normal simming. This can also can happen on custom animations and poses and also might cause leg/feet extreme bending (I usually don’t have problems on my game while using Passion or OKW, but I cannot guarantee yours) 3d accessories that contain morphs, like necklaces and alike from the game and other creators, might interfere with the shoes and cause severe deformation, don’t use both at the same time Notes: Gala took longer than expected it has parts from at least 3 other heels that didn’t made the cut, in retrospective it would’ve been easier to start from scratch This is a mesh created with a combination or Metasequoia, Blender and Milkshape 3D Every single pair of “Impossible Heels” is compatible with the default body, MedBod and any other custom mesh that follows the original vertex position at the leg-feet seam Submitter JoshQ Submitted 07/22/2017 Category Shoes  

View File Accessory Necklace “EP7Party” EDIT This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Located in the “Accessories” section, eyewear slot Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs Polycount: 1224 2 color channels Only available in .package format Defects: Choker looks a little bit weird on CAS Also on CAS your sim skin/extra accessories might get blurry after selecting the choker, in-game everything should look fine The mesh doesn’t quite follow the contour on the back of the neck Some clipping under normal simming, under custom sex animation the clipping varies from none to very visible depending on the position Notes: I started this project a loooooooong time ago and in the end I opted to make a new mesh using the main texture as guide, why? Because the original uses a transparency effect that has problems with custom hair (at least on my edits), making my own mesh removes the need to use the effect Instead of generating morphs (because it conflicts with the Impossible Heels) I made three sizes: “medium” based on the base morph, “large” on the fat morph and “small” on the thin morph. Depending on your sims weight you can use the one that fits her the best Every package is independent so you can install all or any combination without fear of conflict Compatible with MedBod, the default body and probably other custom bodies If you want to use the choker and glasses, or any other accessory on the same slot, at the same time you’ll have to install Nraas Mastercontroller and activate the “Multiple accessories per location” option I have the small feeling someone else already did this... Credits: Electronic Arts for the textures Submitter JoshQ Submitted 07/15/2017 Category Accessories  

This isn't a detailed guide for that go to modthesims, thesimsresource, tumblr, youtube, etc. I'm just sharing whatever I've learned while making stuff. If I omitted something or need assistance let me know. Part 1 (Tools) here Part 2 (How CC works) here If I omitted something or need more help let me know. Part 3: Textures Here is a writeup about how DDS compress an image, the article is very old but so is this game so the info remains relevant. Recommended tutorial by Saliwa and these by TJ Streak: NaughtySims_Tutorial_forSims3.zip Also the SimsWiki has a nice collection. The easiest way to avoid your textures look like crap is to make them at 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 resolution mixed with the HQ mod, the downsize is the game will struggle to process them unless you have a monster CPU/GPU (and probably even then you will notice lag). What I do for stockings and lingerie is to generate the textures at 2048x2048 and then scale them back in photoshop or paint.net that reduces some hard edges and looks way better than generating textures at 1024 from the start. Here are the guides I use to make clothes, the UV map was generated in Blender using the default body and feet (is 99.62% compatible with MedBod/Impossible Feet and might be with other custom meshes). The full body mesh is used to test the textures and to find misalignments on seams or any other kind of problems, sadly most defects appear once you’re in-game... s3_fembody_guides.zip Another way to reduce contrast (read why in the Gamasutra article) and at least in the multiplier is to change the background of your clothing, like this: But wait, won’t that appear on the game? No because the alpha is what dictates what appears and don’t and is not affected by DDS compression (also check the base silky stockings as example): Using the alpha channel on your mask can also help to eliminate artifacts when you’re working with small details (check Stockings Set E2 as example). Remember you can activate/deactivate color channels in TSRW so you can combine them depending on your needs. After trying several programs Fireworks is still my favorite to create vectors that later can be exported as PNGs and then to DDS in Photoshop and similars; Inkscape comes in second place just because the interface can be tricky to learn and also because it has performance issues on Windows (less so in W10). Another tool that might become useful is Gravit Designer is free and you can download a standalone version, I need to do more testing but I’m liking it so far.

View File ImpHeels Empress This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 6710 4 color channels Will elevate young adults and adults 6 “units” above ground, 5 to teens Only available in .package format Defects: Shoes look “weird” on CAS, in-game looks fine Patterns will look kinda bad on the strap behind the ankle Blockiness here and there Potential clipping with floor, chairs, beds, etc. and animation misalignment under normal simming. This can also can happen on custom animations and poses and also might cause leg/feet extreme bending (I usually don’t have problems on my game while using Passion or OKW, but I cannot guarantee yours) 3d accessories that contain morphs, like necklaces and alike from the game and other creators, might interfere with the shoes and cause severe deformation, don’t use both at the same time Notes: This is an original mesh created with a combination or Metasequoia, Blender and Milkshape 3D These and every single pair of “Impossible Heels” are compatible with the default body, MedBod and any other custom mesh that follows the original vertex position at the leg-feet seam Credits: Toes from Sexy Feet by Blooms Base Submitter JoshQ Submitted 06/25/2017 Category Shoes  

View File Body N03 for MedBod This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For young adult and adult femsims Located on the “Body” category Enabled for naked, everyday, formalwear, sleepwear, swimwear, athletic, career, outerwear, validformaternity Disabled for random sims All LODs and morphs Polycount: 4194 3 color channels Only available in .package format Defects: For beginners the textures look awful at full zoom and without the HD Mod Even when I included a normalmap the straps will look “flat” on dark colors Patterns won’t align between the body and neck seam I did a lot of stuff to avoid clipping on the neck while using animations but I cannot guarantee it wont happen Texture stretching and deformation depending on your sims size and animation Collars, necklaces, chokers and alike might clip with the neck Notes: Body can be used by petite and cowtits sims I extracted the neck from afBodyCHNJacketSkirtInspired and joined it to MedBod. The reason is painting over the neck is a PITA and 9 times out of 10 it looks bad and that’s why I’m not including and “accessory” version, with a mesh you almost can control texture stretching I made a very small modification to the hips to make the tush a little more round You can mix this clothes with the Impossible Heels, EA’s shoes and any other footwear that follows the original UV map and legs seam Can this be ported to the default body? Yes. You only need to adapt the vertices on the base of the neck and maybe reassign bones on those. You will notice I deleted a portion of MedBod’s neck as a method of reducing clipping, do the same with your custom or original body mesh. Textures shouldn’t require any modification even you can create your very own just be careful on the chest-neck union Friendly reminder: you can use s3pe to add or remove clothing categories Credits: Electronic Arts for the neck mesh Submitter JoshQ Submitted 06/24/2017 Category Clothing  

View File Stockings Set E This CC is offered completely free You’re allowed to modify it in any way, shape or form imaginable; asking me for permission is not necessary I don’t take requests nor commissions Details: Base game compatible For teen, young adult and adult femsims Located in the Accessories category, legwear slot Enabled for naked, everyday, sleepwear, formalwear, career, outwear and validformaternity Disabled for random sims E1 and E3 use 4 color channels, E2 and E4 use 3 Only available in .package format Defects: Pixelation and general ugliness the closer you look (specially on E1) Dark and saturared colors will look flat E4 was made for the Impossible Feet, that means that shoes made by EA and other creators will show some deformation around the ankle or worse Stretching depending on yous sims' size and on animations (most from the game look fine, custom sex animations? not so much) Notes: Compatible with the EA's body, MedBod and any other custom mesh that follows the default UV coordinates (except E4) E1 was made with Affinity Designer E4 was made by painting directly over the mesh using Photoshop CC Submitter JoshQ Submitted 06/18/2017 Category Accessories  

Making stuff for Sims 4 is easier (at least the stockings part) and the tools are more advanced, the problem is the game still lacks compared to S3 and EA has a lot of bugs to fix plus other things so is just a matter of patience.

This isn't a detailed guide for that go to modthesims, thesimsresource, tumblr, youtube, etc. I'm just sharing whatever I've learned while making stuff. If I omitted something or need assistance let me know. Part 1 (Tools) here. Part 2: How CC works? First, what's the difference between a sims3pack and a package? Both are containers but the former supports encryption so EA use it to sell stuff, also sims3packs are installed via the launcher while a package can be copied or deleted directly from the "Mods" folder (just remember to clear your cache afterward). Back to how CC works: in short you clone a garment from the game and replace its textures and/or meshes, in the process you modify the internal hash so the game recognizes it as a complete new object or if you use the same hash the game replaces the original with yours. Tops, Bottoms, Shoes and Full Body clothes are composed of meshes and textures, accessories like stockings only use textures but some accessories also use a mesh. The best way to determine what clothes to clone is to open them in TSRW and check what they use, also you can export them to examine it closely. Can you make your own package from zero? If you're an expert maybe, otherwise cloning is easier and at least on TSR Workshop is straightforward the only thing you need to take care of is the name you input here: The more complex name you choose the less chances the hash it produces is going to conflict with someone else CC, so instead of selecting "My stuff123" as name you should always try to be descriptive. When you clone with s3oc the program will generate a hash using your computer's name or the one you select on the "Creators Name..." under the "Settings" menu (sadly some of those packages are incompatible with TSRW). The information below is not essential, is just for those who want to know a little more: Now lets open one of my CC with s3pe: The extensions located on the "Tag" column tell us what kind of files we are looking some are self-descriptive: CASP: this controls the categories for the CC and more, is tempting to try to experiment but it's best to leave it alone if you don't know what you're doing (talking from experience...) _IMG: the textures the CC use GEOM: this is the main mesh and its LODs BGEO: the mesh group for every body type: fat, thin, fit and special (aka pregnant) BOND: this file has coordinates for every bone available so you can controls its position according to the CC you're making, also best to left alone if you don't know what you're doing THUM: is the thumbnail you will see on CAS, normally is a 256x256 png pic. In its absence the game will generate its own ICON: is the thumbnail you will see on the launcher, TSRW automatically generates it I don't know what the rest does but in the time I've been doing clothes, accessories and body replacements I never had the need to modify them. One way to better distinguish each resource is using Cmar's Mesh Toolkit, go to "Package Tools" and then to "Name Those Files", select your package and then "Add Names" a window will appear with the name of the original item the CC was based on (in this case afShoesAnkleCHiHeelRound00_pumpLeather) just press "OK". Now you can overwrite the package or generate a new one, once open in s3pe the "Name" column will have a description: Packages generated by s3oc are already named. So using s3pe can you replace everything including meshes right away? Yes and No. Remember we're cloning a pre-existing piece of clothing that has its own characteristics on meshes and textures. Meshes alone need their own bones and morphs to work correctly and all the textures (overlay, mask, multiplier, specular and normalmap) need matching UV coordinates or hilarity will ensue. So unless you're an expert modder (and for reference I'm not even close to be one) is best to use s3pe for preview or extract meshes and textures and to make basic edits to CASP. EDIT: I made a mistake, indeed you can make CC with only s3pe mixed with s3oc and paint.net/gimp. You just need to select objects or clothing with very simple or "static" textures, like for example a painting. I cloned "Painting Fishing" in s3oc (select "include thumbnails") and exported this texture using s3pe (don't change the name): Using paint.net or gimp you can change the original paint to whatever you want: Once finished save it as DDS and overwrite the file: Then just drag it back to s3pe and press Enter. Because we used the same name as the original s3pe will replace it: You can do the same for the thumbnails or just allow the game to generate them (I prefer to make my own for easy finding), finally save your package and its ready to use. In Part 3 I will talk about textures and clothing in detail.