How to Make a Deco Sim
I know there's already a lot of tutorials out there about this, but this is a request from a good friend who, like me, hates video tutorials, and they were confused by some of the other tutorials for this.
UPDATE: 25/07/25: I have had at least 3 hits from ChatGPT on this blog. If this is a result from one of you running this through ChatGPT to summarise it - DO NOT RUN ANY OF THIS BLOG THROUGH AI. I explain things at length to ensure CLARITY OF INSTRUCTION. If you screw up your project because you let your misinformation robot friend summarise the thing I spent HOURS writing, don't come crying to me asking for further help. And don't ask your misinformation robot friend for help either - READ THE DAMN TUTORIAL.
WARNING: DECO SIMS CAN BE PRETTY HIGH POLY!
1. Putting our Sim into a chosen pose
2. Turning the Sim into a Deco Sim object
YOU WILL NEED:
- Blender (Download this one specifically, 2.79 since it's what I'll be using.)
- SimRipper (We'll use this to rip a Sim from your game for the deco sim.)
- Sims 4 Studio (Needed to make the deco sim.)
- A pose pack that you want to use to pose your Deco Sim
- Blender 2.79 manual (optional)
- Any art program
- Andrew's Pose Player- to 'play' the pose and test it.
(If you already have WickedWhims/WonderfulWhims and want to use the Pose Player built into that, then you can do that too.)
First off, we have to rip the Sim we want to turn into a Deco Sim using the SimRipper program. How to do this is already outlined in this tutorial. Follow the first step to ripping a .dae file of your Sim.
Once you have the .dae file of your Sim, then we can begin!
1. Putting our Deco Sim into our Chosen Pose
- Click the plus symbol next to where it says 'rig'. See the upside-down triangle shapes with head, feet etc? You're going to right-click all of them and delete them, so you are just left with the rig armature and no body parts.
- Now, go to File, then down to Import > Collada (.dae) and import the .dae file you saved from the Sim Ripper.
- Right-click the rig.001 and click Delete.
- See the Lamp with the shape next to it that looks like a curve and arrow? Delete it, if you want. It makes things too bright for me, so the extra light can be deleted if you want to.
- When you delete the rig, you'll see a triangle-shape icon object named after your Sim. Click it, and then click the wrench icon just underneath the box.
- If all has been done correctly, you'll see this Armature box. See the empty 'Object' selection box, you'll want to select it, then change it to 'rig' on the little drop-down. That will 'snap' the Sim model to the rig movements. Excellent, your Sim is in the pose of the armature that you saved from the pose pack! Now click the 'Apply' button. Only do this once you're satisfied with the pose you've chosen!
Next to the wrench icon is a black upside-down triangle with white dots on the points. Click it, and then you see the Vertex Groups box? Keep clicking the minus button until all of those vertex groups are deleted.
Now, delete the rig. If you've done it all correctly, your Sim will keep the pose.
Finally, save this .blend file.
2. Turning the Sim into a Deco Sim object
- You'll see a bunch of objects come up. Type in 'knight' in the search box, then select the golden knight statue named 'Knight of the Octagon Table Suit of Armour.' (I imagine any basic decorative object will do, but I always use this one.) Click it, then save the .package file.
- Press Tab key to go into Edit Mode. Press A until the entire mesh comes up glowing in blue - this will ensure that the Sim mesh is deselected. If the mesh is already highlighted in blue when you go into Edit Mode, then leave it that way.
- Press Tab key to come out of Edit Mode.
- Click Tab to go into Edit Mode. Press A until the entire knight statue is glowing in orange. This means the knight mesh is selected.
- Press Tab to come out of Edit Mode.
- Right-click your Sim's mesh.
- Then, right-click the knight statue. You MUST do it in this order. They should both be highlighted on the box on the right and with an orange outline.
- Click CTRL + J. This will merge the meshes, so you will be left with the studio_mesh_1 (the knight/deco sim combo) and the studio_mesh_0 (the shadow).
Now we're going to sort the texture out. Remember the upside down black triangle icon where the Vertex Groups were? Click that again, and scroll down until you can see this:
Where the UV maps are:
If you select the uv labelled (sim name)-mesh-map-0, you'll see your Sim comes up looking normal. This is the UV map we need.
- Delete the uv_0 and the uv_1, then delete the (sim name)-mesh-map-1. as well, using the minus symbol.
Now, rename the (sim name)-mesh-map-0 to uv_0.
Decimating the mesh to lower polys
The chances are that your Deco Sim is quite high-poly, and high-poly objects can slow down older computer models. Lower poly objects also just generally help to run the game more smoothly. So we're going to try two things:
- Tab to go into Edit Mode. At the bottom you'll see a tab called Mesh. Click it, go up to Clean Up and then Remove Doubles. At the top it'll tell you how many vertices were deleted. Tab out of Edit Mode to make sure it didn't make any unwanted changes.
Now, click the Wrench icon again. Click the button that says 'add modifier' (it should appear just above where it has the 'Armature' box) and then select Decimate, and this box will show up.
Keep it set to Collapse. As you can see, 41K poly is pretty high, and for the sake of cleanup I'm going to lower it.
The Ratio bar's number is 1.0, and you pull it up or down to adjust poly count.
Keep lowering the Ratio bar until you are happy with the poly-count-to-model-detail ratio. I lowered mine to 11,858 polys. Click Apply. Now, save this .blend file as LOD 0 or something like that.
Now we're done here, back into Sims 4 Studio.
- With the knight statue set to LOD 0 on the Meshes tab, click Import Mesh and import the LOD 0 blend file you just saved. It might take a bit longer depending on the detail of the model, but if you followed everything right the model will import. It will import covered in the knight's texture - don't worry, we're going to change that now.
Sorting textures, etc
- Go to the Textures tab.
- Click 'Diffuse' and then click the blue Import button.
- Go to where you saved the .dae file earlier, then find the file named '(simname)-diffuse.png' and import it.
The problem with a lot of deco sims is that people don't change the Specular layer, so they look like shiny plastic, and therefore don't blend with a scene because they don't look like people that are a part of the scene as much. So, click Specular on the Textures Tab, click Export, and save the .png file.
Then, open up the .png file in any art program, colour the ENTIRE specular layer image black, and then Import it into the Specular tab. This will remove 90% of the shine and will give a matt look, making it it blend in better as part of a crowd in a scene and will look less like a random statue and is more immersive. It will still have some shininess to it, but not as much.
We also need to sort out the Normals map. This adds extra details onto the 3D model that allow for more detail without adding polys, so we don't want this on our Sim.
I once tried using the Normals map that comes with the .dae file that SimRipper spits out, but it looked weird when I did it on some deco sim wolves I made. So, download this cleared Normal map that I cleared up for you and Import it into the Normals map to get rid of the knight statue details.
Now save this .package file, and change the name of the item in the Catalog as well so you can find it in-game.
Making the other LODs and the Shadow LODs
We aren't quite finished yet, however. We need to make the Shadow LODs, and also the other LODs.
The LODs control the level of model quality and detail that is visible when the view is further away, or on lower settings. These should be lower poly for those reasons, since it is designed to reduce stress on the game and PC by not rendering things at max when it's not needed.
- Open up your LOD 0 blend file.
- Go to the wrench icon and Add Modifier > Decimate.
- Lower the Ratio bar to...Well, it depends on how much detail you can get away with lowering, and there isn't really a definite agreed amount on how much lower quality each LOD needs to be.
- For LOD 1, I usually lower the Ratio bar's number from 1.0 to about 0.8.
- LOD 2, the very low detail, I will lower it from 1.0 to about 0.5 or 0.6.
Do your LOD 1 first, then click Apply.
When you're happy with your LOD1 level of detail, click Apply and then save the .blend file as LOD 1.
Then, repeat the same step - Add Modifier > Decimate. Lower the Ratio bar to your desired amount again (it doesn't need to be too high since LOD 2 is mainly for distant zooming-out), then click Apply and save this .blend file as LOD 2.
Now, let's go back into Sims 4 Studio.
- In the Meshes LOD dropdown:
- Select LOD 1, Import the LOD 1 mesh.
- Select LOD 2, Import the LOD 2 mesh.
The Shadow LODs are next, and these are easy. These need to be changed otherwise the shadows will look weird because they'll be the shadows of the knight statue.
All we have to do is change the CUT number in each of the 3 .blend files we have.
Click the shapes icon, change the CUT number from 1 to 0, then Save. Do this for all LODs.
Once you've done this, import all of these LODs into the corresponding Shadow LODs in the meshes tab. You'll know you've done it right when a silhouette matching your Sim comes up.
Last step: In Sims4Studio, go to the Tags tab next to the Meshes tab, scroll down until you see a tickbox saying 'Never receives snow' and make sure it's ticked, then Save. This will stop it from having snow land on it in-game.
Now to save, and test in-game!
If you get the Weird Shadow Issue
I hit a snag when making this tutorial, and I had a weird shadowing issue. I have seen this come up on some of my CC but never anything I've made.
This is apparently caused by SSAO shadows bug that came up after an old patch.
Easy fix: Turning off SSAO in your game
If you don't want to fiddle with the Warehouse then you can try this instead to just get rid of dynamic shadows from your game. Back up your GraphicsRules file first.
More complicated fix: removing SSAO from the .package file
If you have a similar shadow issue after making sure all of the Shadow LODs have been imported, then this guide by Peacemaker will show you how to fix it. It's a little complicated since it involves digging through Warehouse, but they have laid it out in easy to follow steps.
I missed one of the LODs, here's how I edited the Low Detail LOD that is on the one called 'Model' and not 'Model LOD'
- Click Model in Warehouse
- select 'Edit Items' next to 'Lods' under the 'Data' tab
- Click LowDetailFlags None
- Click 'Edit Items' next to 'Meshes' and repeat the steps to get rid of SSAO as outlined in the above tutorial.
Be sure to make a backup copy before going into the Warehouse and editing anything!
NOTE: I tried this, and it didn't fix the issue. I don't know if I missed a LOD possibly, but I went through the .package about 5 times making sure they were all set from SSAO Intensity 1 to 0 and nothing changed.
After disabling SSAO by editing the GraphicsRules.sgr (the simple fix)
