There's a draft of the tut here: http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?...tings_in_Sims_3 . What's missing is screenshots, and the instructions on setting the price and catalog name/description (which involves creating a new STBL, and cross-referencing it with the painting object). Working on that with snaitf, may take a couple days because our schedules have to coincide.

Still, you can get a functioning painting with the steps already there

From the tutorial...

HUH? Where do I type in this unique code? Where do I find an Encode button? I have Fsum Frontend running and I see not how to do either thing. So I'm stuck here. Did I download the wrong program? I clicked the one you liked to.

lol ok, I should probably not have linked that tut till it was done Hang on, almost finished with the stbl stuff. We found an easier method

Eeeeeeee! Easier is good.

But I used Snaitf's generator for the hex code stuff. And guess what!

OH YEAHHHHH! :D

I'm so happy.

I'll be awaiting the new tutorial with easier methods & catalogue customization with bated breath. But thank you so much for what you gave me/us. I was so unsure about every step I took that I was certain the picture would not turn up in buy mode.

When I replaced the hex values with the painting I selected though, it only replaced 4 values, not 7. I guess it's different for every painting?

Woot coltraz gratz Yeah the process is kind of error-prone, I was shocked when mine came out properly too

Tut should be done tonight, finished going through everything with snaitf.

Just a couple things: I tried changing the catalogue descriptions and neither of them worked when I tested. They simply retained their default name and description. I followed the instructions properly. I also cleared my cache files and tested them again.

The other thing is that if you use CAST on the paintings, the images themselves change. It's kind of cool sometimes, but if you want a light frame, then your image also needs to be light/washed out. Is that supposed to happen/unavoidable?

Maybe I am using the wrong compression. The tutorial says to use DXT5, but in GIMP I have three DXT5 options. Alpha Exponent, YCoCg, and YCoCg Scaled. Which of these should I be using? The alpha one makes my final product look SLIGHTLY transparent. The other two make it look almost invisible but for some outlines.

Not sure Coltraz, will have to look into this :/ I don't have GIMP atm, will pick it up. Try an option with less compression?

Also, after coming in on the home stretch with the current version of our tut, have just had it pointed out to us that Peter Jones has just released an alpha version of an object cloner THis could reduce the steps required drastically, if it actually works, so project is on hold till we test it out.

I used no compression - just left it as default. The images no longer go transparent. I still had no luck with altering the catalogue description but that's not extremely important to me.

The thing with no compression is it takes up a LOT of video memory. A single uncompressed 512x512 texture takes up around 1.5mb. Bump that up to 1024x1024 and one little texture takes around 5mb. Even on modern video cards, that's a significant chunk, considering that has to co-habitate with all the other video data TS3 needs.

Using DXT1 compression (Which is actually much better for this application than DXT5, with identical results) reduces that to a mere 170kb for 512x512 and 682k for 1024x1024. (DXT5 compression doubles that number to offer better transparency quality, but for paintings there typically isn't any transparency anyway.)

Thanks Tiger, didn't know that

NP There aren't a lot of places that really explain the difference between the different compression types, so it's easy to assume that since DXT5 is greater than DXT1, that 5 must be better. I probably wouldn't really understand it either if I hadn't had to write my own decompression code to deal with DXT1 and DXT5 awhile back.

Tut finally up. Discussion thread here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...d=1#post2707877

I used Tiger's method (post #25) and it was quick and easy. I also like the fact that other sims are not able to re-paint the same paintings than my artist sim. Other nice thing is that you do not have to exit the game to get it done, just exit to the main menu (the one where you select town/family) and the game reloads the save game when you reload your family. If there would be possibility to refresh data from save game during the play, the replacements could be done on the run. Nice.

One comment though, what probably is obvious to old modders, but got me stumbling for a long time. Between the steps 6 and 7, use the filters (e.g filter with instanceid) in the S3PE to find the original painting DDS and export it as a base for the new DDS.

I tried several times, but I was not able to import DDS freshly created in Gimp, even though I had the correct size and settings for the file. After I had the exported DDS as a base, everything went fine.

geez all this and I just want some posters...
I don't understand this at all! I've never done my own custom content so I have no idea what you guys are talking about and how to do it. Could someone take me from the very very beginning? Or, like, make a YouTube video or something? I'd understand that way better.
I wanna buy it not paint it, btw

Well first thing is making a custom poster is a different process... look under custom objects.

I'm not sure how to do it but it can't be that hard. Go over the object creation tutorials and think about it. Also if you have some poster items that other people created you can use S3PE to open up the packages and take a look inside at how the person put them together.

You could start by looking for more recent info than this thread... from THREE YEARS AGO... which takes me down memory lane (I miss Snaitf and Tiger!) but is not current You gotta watch it when you turn stuff up with Google -- always check the dates. We have much better tools now, though it is still not completely mindless

Try this very nice tutorial by Orangemittens: http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php...e_Object_Images