Phantomhive's Lair

Hi guys, this is just a tutorial for the pose pack creator.

If you’re trying to learn this then it means that you already know the basics of S3PE and the basics of editing pictures.

- What does this “pose pack creator” thing do?

It helps you make your cool poses POSELIST compatible with thumbnails and all that jazz you need. It might seem kinda tricky at first but you’ll see that it’s a piece of cake, it’s just that if you are a sillyhead like me you’ll forget how to use it from time to time. (this tutorial is for me too)

- Will this tutorial teach me how to make poses?

NO and don’t message me about it. I don’t care if Milkshape/Blender doesn’t work for you; there are many tutorials out there already.

Let’s get started then.

What do we need to get started?

Poses, of course.

First you need the poses for your pose pack so go make them or get the ones that you already made. Once you’re done exporting them, go and test if they work in game (hopefully they do) Once that’s done and you think they are good enough to share, take the preview pictures and the pictures that you are going to use for the thumbnails.

What? You need an editing program?

Okay, you can either buy/pirate Photoshop (no, I won’t help you with that) or get one these programs for free:

GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/
PHOTOSCAPE: http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php
PHOTOPLUS: http://www.serif.com/free-photo-editing-software/

Examples

Those were an example of how I mostly do previews of my poses. Try to make the preview shots easy to the human eye and make sure they actually show the pose. We don’t care how cool your sims are, we just want to see the poses. Also try to write the codes (a_thisisapose1) somewhere so people who don’t use pose lists can enjoy your poses too.

Are you done? Let’s go to the next step then.

POSE PACK CREATOR

Download this tool from here: http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforum/index.php?topic=948.0 (lol, there’s already a tutorial.)

Anyway once the download has finished, export the files into a new folder.

Inside the .rar

There are 24 files in that .rar, don’t forget anything.

Open “PosePackCreator.exe”

You’ll see this:

You’re probably like: OMG WHAT IS THIS. Calm down, it’s easy.

CLIP: You have to upload there the exported file from the software in which you created your pose.

Mine, for example, was named:

- S3_6B20C4F3_00000000_33D058B976F9C8A0_a_doa1%%+CLIP.animation

I bolded the code I wrote for my pose when I exported (a_doa1), that’s how you’ll identify one pose from the other ones you made.

Thumbnail: Those are the little icons that will distinct your pose from the others inside the poselist. I’ll show you how to make them right now.

The other options are pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll show you how to complete them later.

Thumbnails

This is a thumbnail:

This is another thumbnail:

Shocking, I know.

As you can see thumbnails are small as can be, so please just pose your sims in a plain background. That way the poses can be easily identifiable inside the pose list.

Thumbnails must be 59 x 60 pixels and be saved as .png or you’ll fuck everything up. See how the MUST is bolded? You also have to name them in a special way that I’ll tell you later.

This is how I do my thumbnails in Photoshop.

- I create a new file with the appropriate size:

Once it’s done, I open in another project the picture that I'm going to use as thumbnail. Select it all and copy it.

Go to the 59x60 pixels project window and paste the image you just copied.

HO SHIT, what’s going on?!

Calm down, It’s just that you pasted a picture way bigger than 59x60 pixels into a 59x60 pixels project. See “Layer 1?” That’s our picture. We have to reduce its size now.

Go to Edit – Free Transform or just push CTRL + T while selecting Layer 1.

Once you’re done that you’ll see something weird like this:

That’s our picture, see how big it is?

Okay, while pressing ALT use your mouse to get your picture smaller. Use the little square.

This square.

Anyway, you must have noticed that you can’t see your picture anymore in that little square. Drag it back there and keep getting it smaller until you like what you see.

Ok, I think that’s good and identifiable enough. We need to save it now.

Thumbnails must have a certain name and be saved as .png or all this will be in vain. I repeat, they MUST be saved as .PNG.

As I said, thumbnails have to be named in a special way. That special way is this:

codeofyourpose_thum

If we translate this to my code pose (a_doa1) it should be:

a_doa1_thum

Another example if the code for my pose were to be a_faalq_pose23 then my .png thumbnail should be named:

a_faalq_pose23_thum

Understood?!

REMEMBER TO SAVE THEM AS .PNG AND WITH THE _THUM.

My thumbnail.

Keep doing this with the other pictures for your other poses and proceed to the next step.

Finally using Pose Pack Creator

Well, hoping that you understood that in CLIP you have to upload the file that your pose creating software created and that in THUMBNAIL you have to upload the .PNG image we just created (and that belongs to the pose) then the Pose Pack Creator should look like this:

"Creator" should be blank too.

I put my pose under CLIP and the thumbnail that belongs to that pose under THUMBNAIL.

Anyway, under Pose Name you can either leave it blank like it says there or do something a bit smarter like this:

If you’re doing a pose pack of 2+ poses then I recommend thinking about the name you’re going to use for your pack (like songs, like your dog, whatever) and start naming your poses like I do.

I’ll name my pose pack “Tasty Booty” so I’ll start naming my poses like this:

TB - Feminine Stand 1

- Why “TB” at the start?

It stands for “Tasty Booty.” The other stuff I added was just as a reference to the pose.

- Why is this a smarter move?
Because if you have more than 2 poses they’ll appear one under another in the pose list instead of all separated. That's because the first two letters are the same, “TB”

If you didn't understand a thing of what I just said then I’ll let this picture speak for itself:

WTSH

See what’s at the start of the name of the poses?

“WTSH - …”

How was my pose pack named?

“When The Sun Hits” = “WTSH”

Well, hopefully you understood and now we are moving onto the SHORT DESCRIPTION.

I basically just write something that describes the pose a little, like for what gender is supposed to be aimed; you can see an example in the picture above.

In this case the description for doa_1 is going to be:

Feminine stand grabbing right arm for light clothed sims

Well, the next thing to fill is CREATOR. I don’t think I need to explain that to you…

ONCE YOU’RE DONE!

It should look something like this:

Yay!

Click ADD TO LIST and see what happens:

Notice something different?

Our pose is now “on the list” WE R POPULAR, just kidding.

Don’t click on Save Pose Pack yet, KEEP DOING WHAT WE DID WITH YOUR OTHER POSES.

Are we done yet?

Once you finished doing the thing above to your other poses then things should look something like this:

You’re allowed to save your pose pack now.

The program will ask you to name your file (It’s a .package, it’s your pose pack. Be proud of your baby) do that and save the file somewhere easy enough to find it. I named my file “faalq_Tasty Booty_fake pose pack”

Is it really over?

Nope, it’s not over. Go test them in game, you never know when things go wrong.

I just opened up my game with my new .package for my new three poses and look! Everything worked as planned.

If you followed the instructions correctly then your stuff should work too. If they don't, keep trying. There's something you're missing.

THAT’S IT GUYS. If it worked, pat yourself on the back. Hope you actually learnt how to use this useful tool.

BYE.

Listening to:

Hi there,
I managed to create a new pose because I'm ill right now and I don't have anything to do. I might put a random pose pack up for download.

Let me show you what I've got. The preview picture is kinda funny, just look at that huge face. SMUG

Anyway, as you can see it is a "girly" pose. You can use it on males though, that's up to you. Here it is in-game:

It turned out really good IMO.
I was a bit scared at first because my ginger sim looks a bit cross eyed, well... maybe not cross eyed, but she looks weird.

She looks good in certain angles though.

Anyway, I found out that she looked derpy because of her facial structure. She has tired looking eyes, it's because of the shape.

I noticed that because I tested the same pose on my other sims and it looked good.

Oh well, I still think Elle (derpy sim) is gorgeous.
Alright then, I'll show you some extra details and some random things like always.
nakedsimsahead

In the following picture we can see that the arm looks a bit weird. I really don't know why... it looked perfect in Milkshape. I think it's something related to TS3, even some animations made by EA tend to have this problem with the articulations.

It's not THAT terrible, but it still bugs me.

Here you can see the detail on the hands. I really like how the fingers turned out, but there's something about the pose itself that disturbs me. Maybe I find it a bit stiff or I don't know. I tried the pose in real life to see if it's painful and it's not haha (I always try to do that with the poses I create.)

You can finally see the legs. They might look a bit funny here, but they look great.

Here's a complete profile shot.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. This pose doesn't work properly with some clothes as it'll "glitch." Just look at this picture, I couldn't explain what I wanted to say.