Auntie Betulia's Canning Kitchen - Upgrade - progress

[simsfreak]

After spending hours on this, Made a few mistake on layers in Blender, but I was able to go around it. This is my progress.

This is how I personally see Auntie Betunia's Canning Kitchen. They come in Three different flavors. Red, Green and Blue. (Yellow maybe) lol

 

[simsfreak]

Notes:
1. I was successfully able to import sprites to the game with accurate coloring/texturing. (Except for the edge of that Apple basket). I did not reduce the quality of my colors at all. The colors and textures are exactly as I render them in Blender. The color at the top frame holding the preservers is not an error, I am using a 'Toon' contrast, that is just the light which I could easily increase or decrease.
2. I created a dark outlined around the Preserver itself so it will stand out for any errors. -- So I could see the errors.
3. The New Preserver created is much taller than the original one. I am unable to see how tall this item are and then translate that in "Blender" time... LOL
4. I hope to find in Volcanic Aunt Betulia's Preserver -- So I can mimic the original in how it works as far as that is a concern. I am not a coder, doing it from scratch is out of the question. The only way I can go around this is by having in Volcanic Aunt Betulia's Preserver, Not only I can edit it with the new sprites, but there are other sprites I would need to add in order to complete the interaction from start to end. It mimics to perfection the previous one.

I can be creative and grab a few interesting interactions from other items knowing how slow I can be is not such a good idea. Lol


Things I would like to add to the current preserve, not only the style but:

• Different Apple Preserve Flavors, at your own choice. Before you start you click on it and choose which Apple Preserver you would like to do? Gala Apples, Granny Apples, Azul Apples; then your will automatically start.
• You will be able to choose different styles of Preserver Modern, Country, Anime ... so forth.
• I want to implement different choices all the players can have a different style for all that matter is a concern if they wish or have the original Aunt Betulia's Preserve Station. I do not want to replace it completely is just a different choice. Coloring the old Betulia will not give justice to it either.

 

[Raeven]

Nice model
Don't forget to leave room for the cutting board by your basket of apples. You also want to line up your burners with the original since the cooking animations dictates where the pot should be.

If you plan on hacking the station with additional goods, you might want to wait until Volcanic can clone object. Re-writing everything by hand would bea killer. And in this case there's some bits you cannot recreate yet as Volcanic hasn't got editors for some things. Are you planning on having a reason for choosing one type of preserve over another? Or is it simply a role-play choice?

 

[simsfreak]

Nice model
Don't forget to leave room for the cutting board by your basket of apples. You also want to line up your burners with the original since the cooking animations dictate where the pot should be.

If you plan on hacking the station with additional goods, you might want to wait until Volcanic can clone object. Re-writing everything by hand would be a killer. And in this case, there are some bits you cannot recreate yet as Volcanic hasn't got editors for some things. Are you planning on having a reason for choosing one type of preserve over another? Or is it simply a role-playing choice?

Yes, I can resize the apples and burner. Cloning objects will be wonderful. And yes re-writing everything will be a killer. In all honestly, I just saw this as well maybe If I change this and that or add something extra to the preserve will look different and fun.

 

[Raeven]

For a simple roleplay touch, you'd not need to change any BHAVs at all, just add 2 more interactions to the pie menu that have the different labels but use the same coding (the way fridges say "make breakfast/lunch/dinner but are all cooking exactly the same meal). Changing the interactions pie menu is done in Tree Tables.

The color at the top frame holding the preservers is not an error, I am using a 'Toon' contrast, that is just the light which I could easily increase or decrease.

I was very curious about this so I went looking in Blender for what you might mean and found a shader called "Toon" - Is that what you used?

I'm about to break down and use all textures, even for the plain painted surfaces because I can't seem to get gloss and fresnel effects to behave properly in that scene, but maybe the Toon shader is what I need? That's be neat. I'd probably have looked right past that thing for ages if you'd hadn't mentioned it LOL

 

[simsfreak]

Correct I used Toon, any item you click you can choose the intensity of the "dark outline" which I think it looks great. Very Cartoonish. There is also a "Cel Shading" which is adorable to do If you can make it work in FreeSO that would be nice. I just haven't had the chance to make it work.


I am almost there, to make it same size as the original but let me tell you is not an easy job for me. I have tried and failed so many times.

There are many things missing in that sprite, but I am at a point I need to hit the size correctly... I'm having issues with a shade that I get when I turn my view I need to fix it.

IS nighttime and no light can illuminate sprites

 

[simsfreak]

For a simple roleplay touch, you'd not need to change any BHAVs at all, just add 2 more interactions to the pie menu that have the different labels but use the same coding (the way fridges say "make breakfast/lunch/dinner but are all cooking exactly the same meal). Changing the interactions pie menu is done in Tree Tables.

Correct!

I was very curious about this so I went looking in Blender for what you might mean and found a shader called "Toon" - Is that what you used?

YES

I'm about to break down and use all textures, even for the plain painted surfaces because I can't seem to get glass and fresnel effects to behave properly in that scene, but maybe the Toon shader is what I need? That's neat. I'd probably have looked right past that thing for ages if you'd hadn't mentioned it LOL

Where you see TOON option there is Gloss and Glass option as well. You can play with those

 

[Raeven]

I'll have to play around with that, thanks! The funny thing is I lept telling people that I need to make things "more cartoony" and I STILL didn't notice the "Toon" shader.

An alternative way to put an outline on your stuff is Freestyle line. I used .1 (or maybe even .01) pixel size to make it a light grey outline on things when I was looking for ways to sharpen my image (before I started changing the lighting). I am not using it now soI can't remember if the FreeSO exporter script's A sprites ended up wonky using it but it is something you can look at when you are in an experimenting mood (then again perhaps the Toon Shader uses it already and has it built in)

For sizing - yeah it can be a little tedious at first and the canning station is an unusual height. But other items like counters and tables are a consistent size so you wont need to figure that out every time. Coffee tables are half of that height and chair seats should be around the same as coffee tables (not exactly but I was able to make a coffee table/chair combo object in TS1 and the Z's seemed to work out fairly well.)

EDIT/CORRECTION: I have since added a chair to my table and the seat height was definitely taller than half of the table height.

Try putting your graphics onto a rug object. This will allow you to place it on exactly the same tiles as the maxis canning station and compare heights more closely.

IS nighttime and no light can illuminate sprites

Correct. Lighting only effects walls and floors. Sorta a bummer. You can build a room, though, and place your objects in that. It'll be much more lit up than the outdoors and wont have te orange tint at dusk and dawn.

 

[Raeven]

Tried the Toon shader out ... LOVE. IT.
You rock! So glad you pointed it out; I was trying to recreate the same look by going around the world in the wrong direction!

Where you see TOON option there is Gloss and Glass option as well. You can play with those

Yep, was using the gloss shader and it was overpowering everything. I could only kinda sorta get it to help by tinting the gloss instead of leaving the reflection white and even then it just didn't do what I wanted in this scene (even when I changed the lighting and the world settings around).
Fresnel also acted pretty bizarre creating an unattractive (and nonsensical) halo around everything (which it also doesn't normally do)

I also noticed that when I used the normal shaders, my Preview sphere (in the materials tab) would look very VERY different than my when rendered in the viewport.
But using Toon instead of Diffuse/Gloss, the preview is matching my viewport nicely, shadows and highlights are doing what I expect. I love it. Looks like it makes good metals too but I only took a quick peek at that since the object I have been testing all of this on is a simple farmhouse table, pine top (image-texture. I'm lazy.) with legs painted with chalk or milk paint (shader) for that nuevo-farmhouse feel.

 

[simsfreak]

Tried the Toon shader out ... LOVE. IT.
You rock! So glad you pointed it out; I was trying to recreate the same look by going around the world in the wrong direction!


Yep, was using the gloss shader and it was overpowering everything. I could only kinda sorta get it to help by tinting the gloss instead of leaving the reflection white and even then it just didn't do what I wanted in this scene (even when I changed the lighting and the world settings around).
Fresnel also acted pretty bizarre creating an unattractive (and nonsensical) halo around everything (which it also doesn't normally do)

I also noticed that when I used the normal shaders, my Preview sphere (in the materials tab) would look very VERY different than my when rendered in the viewport.
But using Toon instead of Diffuse/Gloss, the preview is matching my viewport nicely, shadows and highlights are doing what I expect. I love it. Looks like it makes good metals too but I only took a quick peek at that since the object I have been testing all of this on is a simple farmhouse table, pine top (image-texture. I'm lazy.) with legs painted with chalk or milk paint (shader) for that nuevo-farmhouse feel.

Sorry im at work so answer is brief blender have fantastic ways to play with color and texture there is unlimited possibilities it will b nice to see what u come out with

 

[simsfreak]

I spend hours because i like to give different effects to what I do. If u have it use it is my motto.
I love volcanic I personally have to respect we are generating sprites out of a high end program s awesome. If u come across in editing and after importing the sprite in volcanic doesnt look great is not the sprite issue or the conversion. I have taken the same sprite on another object and is flawless . volcano is never a problem.

P.S. I noticed thru volanic all sprites,I noticed that there are faulty grainy sprites and they forgot to delete and clean it even though in the game the are not activated

 

[simsfreak]

This is a small preview of behind the scenes (using volcanic) what happens when I was trying to remove something impossible and I tried to fail. If you look at the GIF you can see two separate sprites Left and Right. I am moving them to hide a shadow the Sprite for some reason created after Rendering.

As you can see I was successful in Importing My design for the "New Aunt Betulia's Look" and I am editing the errors that I couldn't fix... But I know how is done now! And is many hours ...and a lot of work.

I was able to maintain the old codes, and even though you see her cutting in mid-air is... that's fixable. All I need to do is replace the old with the new... the rest is history.

P.S. The program did not crash once... I must have been doing something right. Kudos!

 

[Raeven]

The shadow looks like you have a white floor tile attached to your canning station. I assume this was to help position the tile properly inside of volcanic. You can tell the material to not accept shadows if you want to keep the white floor tile.

Looks like it is coming along wonderfully! Good job

 

[simsfreak]

The shadow looks like you have a white floor tile attached to your canning station. I assume this was to help position the tile properly inside of volcanic. You can tell the material to not accept shadows if you want to keep the white floor tile.

Looks like it is coming along wonderfully! Good job

The thing that trips me here is, The shadow must have come after the rendering because I able to see it in the Sprites results. I recreated another one, I am working on it right now. This is almost the final result. Because I am fresh on this editing scenario, I need to pick and choose and hit/miss type of situation I have going. If I knew how the structure was then it was different.

Example: Let see I just want to edit the item, just change the texture, for example. Is not as simple, The view which the sprite is imported is the opposite view, that you need... In my case, I have to turn the item around because I will be using the empty part of it...LOL
I saw whoever wrote the original coding and whatever, More than one person did it, they did it and it worked but did it in a different way adding extras or not...but the end result was the same. or had extra sprites unused and didn't clean up leaving the person like me wondering what the hell is this doing in here also?

It hasn't been easy for me because I am pulling everything apart pretty much and seeing how everything works.

I am waiting for daylight. So, I can put a picture of how it looks and what is missing now.

 

[Raeven]

Rhys' script seems to do rendering a little differently, yep. Part of that makes it a lot faster than rendering on screen and I'm still amazed at how the Ground Plane is eliminated even though the light bouncing off of it is in the sprite. Pretty awesome. And leads to a few confusing things, yeah.

It hasn't been easy for me because I am pulling everything apart pretty much and seeing how everything works.

yep! That is how it's done. It can be a little slow the first time you are learning a new object but after that you've got that head start which is pretty nice.

The canning station is a more complex object. Along with the basic canning station there are dynamic sprites that appear and disappear while the object is in use.
The left tile uses dynamic sprites 200 through 207 in addition to sprite 100
The right tile uses sprites 300 through 314 in addition to sprite 101
Hope that helps.

I am waiting for daylight. So, I can put a picture of how it looks and what is missing now.

You can actually zoom out to the world map and re-enter the house to reset the time. I've had that mess up a patch, though so would not do it for a final test.
Or, of course, make a room as I suggested earlier. The wall concentrate the light in a smaller space making your lamps more effective. The bigger the room, the more lamps you need. And the outdoors is a HUGE room.

You can see the difference in Rhys' post here:
http://forum.freeso.org/threads/freeso-official-blender-sprite-exporter-v1-1.2326/#post-22288
His "FreeSO" object is placed both in (1) and outside (3) of the room . Dramatic difference!

 

[simsfreak]

Too tired tonight, But I appreciate those measurements. It will help me. This is almost the end result.​

► I have to save Sprites to a specific folder and not leave it in the default folder, it gets messy.
► The developers who created this default on this Aunt Betunia's ... One word to say... Messy inventory. Compared to the Gnome, which if you see it, is very organized and to the point, not all over.
► Rotating shows I am missing woodcutting on 2 sides I believe.
► Previous mention, a few sprites which are needed to complete my mission.... are missing because I need to be able to save successfully different sprites to a specific folder. New sprites saving in the same folder will re-write the previous one.
► I want the Plumbob to change colors as it progresses on the Jams.

 

[Raeven]

No, not messy, just more complex and dynamic. The gnome bench is a MUCH more basic object. It does not have as many moving parts, the left and right sides are always in sync, so nothing needs to be changed dynamically. Nothing moves while the Sim is actually working. Every once in a while the block of wood graphic changes to show progress but that is it. In the canning station you have things moving independently on the left and right sides. They needed to use dynamic sprites to pull that off otherwise there would be a TON of sprites to show everything that happens and the file size would be obscene. Plus you'd have a LOT more work changing it.

New sprites saving in the same folder will re-write the previous one.

What I do is rename the folders right after they are made. I leave the tile id (0_0 etc) and just add a word to the end that tells me what that one is.

You've added quite a lot of little detail! Nice. I had to laugh out loud when I saw you added "FreeSO". Adorable! I'm not sure but I think the Blue might match the blue walls from the game. I am not sure if those walls made it into TSO, but I know the matching window with the blue shutters did. It is a charming blue and the game can definitely use a bit more of it!

 

[simsfreak]

Thanks to Task #2 The Colorful Plumbob was created. Ty Rhy