As someone who writes written tutorials, seeing written tutorials being put behind paywalls has spurred me into action to re-write some of the tutorials that were lost when I deleted Tumblr (the 2 non-accidental times and the 1 accidental time).
ERROR EDITS:
- 22/05/25 - Accidentally referred to a LOD 3 when there isn't one. I meant to say 'LOD 2'.
I used SimmerKate's tutorial to learn how to do this, so this tutorial will have a lot of similarities to hers - but this tutorial covers a fair few differences - some fixes for issues I had because I did it using a vector image as opposed to turning text into a mesh - that don't appear in that video, and this also covers decimating the mesh to keep polycounts low. I also know some people get on better with written tutorials hence why I am making this, but most of the credit to what appears here goes to this person's video. Anyway, enough with the long intro, it's starting to get like one of those cupcake recipe life-stories.
YOU WILL NEED:
- Blender (I am using 2.79) (This tutorial will assume you have basic knowledge of Blender's control system)
- Inkscape (Free program for vectors). I am using Version 1.4.2 for this.
- Sims 4 Studio
- A vaguely-simple silhouette image.
- An art program that can handle transparency like Photoshop, GIMP, Paint Tool SAI etc. You must know how to use Rectangle Select in this program, or the Lasso Select tool.
BE SURE TO SAVE AT REGULAR INTERVALS!
I recommend making a folder for your light project to store all meshes and the UV image for ease.
Step one: Find an image!
Pixabay is a good place to look. I've decided to make one of a bird, so I will be using this bird by Mohammed-hassan. If you're feeling artsy you could make your own, but I'm a lazy fuck, so I'm using someone else's art. Make sure you have permission to use the image you're using, preferably use something which is meant for free use or Creative Commons. No AI art, by the way!
Try to find something fairly simple-shaped that won't lose too much detail when we decimate the mesh later (to lower its poly count and assure a smooth-as-possible game experience.) I recommend saving this as .png.
Step two: turn it into a vector
Now we're going to use Inkscape to turn this .png into a vector image so we can import it into Blender. This post describes the difference between a raster image and a vector image well. Raster images are your standard .pngs, .jpegs etc. that become pixellated as you size them up and down. As vectors are made of geometrical shapes and curves and such, you can change the size of them without it becoming pixellated or losing too much detail. We need an .svg file to import it into Blender.
When you first open Inkscape 1.4.2, it will come up with a sort of splash screen and launcher.
Go to the 'Time to Draw' tab, and then down to 'Open' and open the .png of your silhouette. A little popup box will come up. Leave all checkboxes as is and click 'Okay'.
Click the big image of the bird in the middle. Then, the image will duplicate on the little section on the bottom right-hand of the screen. Once it appears there, click the 'Apply' underneath it. This will turn the .png into a vector image complete with curves and paths and all the good stuff. To make sure it worked properly, click the highlighted (with a red circle) button on the left-side bar and little squares will trace the image.
If this is what you get, awesome! Now Save this file as an .svg file.
Step three: Finding a suitable base object in Sims 4 Studio
Open up Sims 4 Studio, go down to 'Object', highlight the little 'Create 3d Mesh' check box then click the blue Object button.
Search 'wall light' and look for the one that's highlighted below in blue.
Click Next, Save the .package file. Yipee!
Go to the Meshes tab. Make sure the drop-down is set to Lod 0 (High), then Export Mesh. Name it Light LOD 0 or something. This will be our maximum-detail mesh.
Now, my least favourite bit...
Step Four: Blender (ugh)
Open this light mesh up in Blender. Now for the fun (not) part.
I recommend pressing 5 on the NumPad to put the view in Orthographic mode.
- Go to Import > Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg) and open the .svg file of the bird.
- Once you've done this, you won't see it at first, but you'll see Curve come up in the right-hand box.
If you adjust the 3d viewport so you're viewing it from above, you'll see it. It'll probably be pretty small.
- Go back to the 'front-on' view of the light (where you couldn't see the bird before).
- Select the Curve on the right-hand box.
Drag that little circled plus-sign towards the 3d viewport to bring out an extra menu, and scroll up it until you see the options for Location, Rotation etc. displaying the bars with the X,Y and Z axis on.
- Under the Rotation section, change the X to 90 degrees. You should see your image now from the front view. Use the S key to scale it bigger until it's the size you want it.
Before we move it into place, we need to make it less flat. So:
- Go to the Curve tab, which is shown circled below in the screenshot.
- Go to the Extrude bar near the bottom. Change the thickness to 0.03-0.05, then turn the 3d viewport to view at an angle to make sure it's now a 3d shape.
Now it's a 3d shape, we're going to move the 3d viewport around, and use the red, green and blue axis arrows to pull the bird into the right position.
- First off, select the s4studio_mesh_0 mesh (the triangle in the right-hand box with the other objects in) and use the S key to scale the shadow mesh as small as possible.
- Then use the above arrows and moving the 3d viewport around so that your vector is backed up against the 'wall' (the red arrow shows the line representing the wall in Blender, it's very faint). You want it as close as possible. Too far and your light will look embedded in the wall, too far the other way and it will appear floating off the wall.
You also want your vector to be as 'centred' as possible in comparison with the base wall light, so it's easy to place in-game.
Once you are happy with the size and placement, we are going to turn this Vector curve into an actual mesh.
Near the bottom towards the left, you'll see a little drop-down (well...up) menu.
Object > Convert To > Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text.
You can leave the mesh as-is without touching the polys if you're not bothered about poly count, but if you want to share your CC, have a lower-end PC or want to optimise your CC, we're going to need to make sure it's as low-poly as possible. The Curve's icon will now change into the upside-down triangle. Huzzah, we have a mesh!
The first few lights I made this way had 'crunchy' edges with slits in them as well as crinkly-looking fronts. To prevent this, we need to 'clean up' the faces by doing Limited Dissolve on it, which will essentially keep the front face completely flat as we decimate.
- With the new Curve mesh highlighted, press Tab to go into Edit Mode.
- Press A. The blue-glowing-outline mesh will now become an orange-glowing one.
- Where 'Object' was before, you will now see the drop-down(up?) menu Mesh. Go to:
Mesh > Clean Up > Remove Doubles. This gets rid of extraneous vertices. When I ran this it got rid of over 11k of them. X_X
Click Tab to come out of Edit Mode and go back into Object Mode.
Now, click the Wrench icon underneath the box with all the objects. Click Add Modifier, then Decimate.
Drag the Ratio bar down. It will keep losing quality. At first you won't notice the quality loss, but eventually you'll notice the edges will start getting more jagged. Go until you are happy with the amount of detail that the mesh has then click Apply. I stopped at 3112 Polys.
- Press Tab to go into Edit Mode again. Make sure your mesh is glowing orange and selected with A.
- Go to the Mesh tab > Clean Up > Limited Dissolve.
The front face is much flatter now. You might still see a couple of edges across the face, but don't worry, we've done what we can to help prevent the mesh looking too crinkly when the light is switched off.
Now, follow these steps CLEARLY as we're going to be merging the bird mesh with the light mesh, whilst also deleting the original light mesh.
- Select the Bird mesh. Tab into Edit mode. Make sure it is NOT selected (Glowing blue outline)
- Select the Light mesh (the one ending in studio_mesh_1). Tab into Edit mode. Make sure it IS selected (glowing orange.)
- Tab to come OUT of Edit Mode and IN to Object Mode.
- On the box on the right with all the objects, left-click select the 'Curve' mesh. THEN, shift-click the 'studio_mesh_1' mesh. With your cursor INSIDE the 3d grid area, press CTRL + J and this will join the meshes together. Make sure you are NOT left with the Curve mesh, and ARE left with both Studio meshes.
Tab into Edit Mode with the studio_1 mesh selected. If you did all the above correctly, the bird will have a blue outline and the base light orange outline. If so, press Delete > Faces and you will just be left with the bird. Tab back into Object Mode, and OUT of Edit Mode.
Now to double-check some small stuff:
- Next to where it says 'Object Mode' you'll see a small sphere. Click it, and change it to 'Solid'.
- Change 'Object Mode' to 'Vertex Paint'. Vertex paint affects various in-game properties of an object. Double-check it is all WHITE as this is what we need for the lights. (If you have followed this tutorial to a T, then it will be, it's just nice to double check). You can also move the 3d viewport around to look at your mesh from all angles so you can see if there's any imperfections you don't want. Mine looks fine (to me).
Now we need a UV Map. DREADED, usually, but this time it'll be easy.
- Tab back into Edit Mode and make sure the mesh is glowing orange and selected with the A key.
- On the menus on the side, you'll see one called Shading/UVs. Click it.
- On the menu that appears, to go the UVs mini-header, select Unwrap and Project from View. You'll see the shape of your mesh appear on the grid box on the left-hand side of the screen.
Once this is done, we need to save a copy of that UV image. We are almost done with Blender Bullshit.
Underneath the UV image on the left is a dropdown called UVs. Select it, and then click 'Export UV Layout' at the top and call it 'vector UV' or something.
MAKE SURE YOU SAVE THIS! Call it Light Mesh - LOD 0 or something.
Now, we have to make the lower LODs. This is the levels of detail meshes as you zoom out, and as you zoom out, you need less detail.
Tab back out into Object Mode, then go to the Wrench icon again and Add Modifier > Decimate with the studio_mesh_1 mesh selected.
For LOD 1, I usually set the Ratio number to about 0.60 - 0.70.
Save it as Light Mesh - LOD 1.
For LOD 2, I usually set the Ratio number to 0.30-0.40. You really do not need much detail at all as this LOD is for when you really zoom out.
Do this and save it as Light Mesh - LOD 2.
We also need Shadow LODs otherwise it's going to look funky in-game. This is easy-peasy.
Open up the LOD 0 Mesh.
- With the studio_mesh_1 selected, Go to the little icon with the shapes.
- The menu that appears will have a section at the bottom labelled 'Cut'. It will say '1'. Change it to '0'.
- Save it as Light Mesh - Shadow LOD 0.
- Repeat this step with the LOD 1 and 2 meshes.
You should have 6 meshes. The regular bird mesh LOD 0, LOD 1 and LOD 2, and the three Shadow LOD meshes.
Step Five: Importing Meshes, Adding Colour, Texture and Stronger Light
Now to import! Back to Sims 4 Studio. Import all of the LODS as follows:
- Light Mesh LOD 0 - Import into LOD 0 (High)
- Light Mesh LOD 1 - Import into LOD 1 (Medium)
- Light Mesh LOD 2 - Import into LOD 2 (Low)
The textures will look funky. We'll be sorting this out.
And do the exact same with the Shadow LODs.
If your Shadow LODs don't appear, you probably didn't set the CUT number of the _studio_mesh_1 to 0.
Your Shadow LODs should appear grey, and your regular LODs will appear with the original light's texture.
Open up your art program and open the UV .png up.
- Use either Rectangle Select or Lasso Select to select the area ALL THE WAY AROUND the UV, and then fill it COMPLETELY with white. Once that's done, Save.
- You can just fill the entire 'canvas' in with the white colour, but the reason I say to just Rectangle Select around the UV instead is to keep file size to a minimum.
- After that, delete EVERYTHING in the image so it's completely transparent. Save this as 'transparent'. We'll need it to blank out the Normal map and prevent any weird shadows or Normal-map bumps on the mesh.
Now, go back to Sims 4 Studio and select the Textures tab. Make sure you have a regular LOD and not a Shadow LOD selected before you do this, otherwise the Diffuse, Specular and Normal won't appear.
- DIFFUSE: Import the white blob / rectangle. Use the arrow keys to twirl the mesh around so you can be sure it's ALL covered in white.
- NORMAL: Import the 'transparent' .png file you made.
- SPECULAR: Import the 'transparent' .png file you made.
- OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED: Go into the Tags tab, Colours at the top and change 'Grey' to 'White'. Save the .package file.
Change the swatch colour (the little squares at the top on the right) to white as well, for completion's sake.
We're going to make the light more intense.
Go into the Warehouse tab at the top.
Click 'Lights' in the table, then on the right, find 'Lights' and click the 'Edit Items' button.
On the right-hand side, you'll see a box with Colour. You can change it to whatever colour you want if you want a slightly more 'muted' light, but if you want more intense neon-like lighting, then wait until the next step. I have changed the greyish colour to white. LET THERE BE LIGHT.
Change Intensity to something around 120-130. I always go for 120. Again, if you want softer, more muted lighting, you can keep it to 90-100-ish if you prefer. Click Save, then save the .package.
Don't forget to change the name and description of your item in the Catalogue tab. Then, we shall test in-game... and viola! It worked! I hope.
- The top one is the normal white bird light.
- The bottom left has been changed to blue using the in-game Change Colour and Intensity setting, but it's a bit muted, and the edges are still white.
- The bottom right is the light when it's off.
If you like this, pat yourself on the back and go and take a break to eat, hydrate and potentially doom-scroll on your phone.
HOWEVER, if you want a more Neon-y effect, then stick for one last easy step...
Step six: Make different colour lights as separate .packages
For the neon effect, we also need to change the colour of the Light in Warehouse tab as well as change the colour of the mesh's texture. This will require separate .packages if we want each one's actual 'Light' bit in the Warehouse tab to be different colours. So we can repeat less steps, we're going to:
- Copy the finished .package file
- Paste it into Documents > Sims 4 Studio > Mods.
- Make sure you have textures with the colours you want to use. You want really bright colours to maximise the neon effect.
Here is a VERY rough palette of the colours I used for my neon light sets. I sometimes include a Warm White option as well, as is shown next to the orange, but sometimes I can't tell the difference in-game and sometimes I can.
Change the white rectangle Texture .png to whatever colour you want to use (let's go red).
- Close Sims 4 Studio, then open it again.
- Click Object > Standalone Recolour.
- Change the Content drop-down to Custom, select your wall light, then click Next and save the .package file. I suggest naming it whatever your wall light was called but with the new colour at the end of it.
NOTE: TO MY KNOWLEDGE, if you do this, you will need the base white wall light in your Mods folder if you want to also use the separate colour .packages that are standalone recolours of the original as you need it for the mesh.
- Change the Item Description name to add whatever colour the new light's colour is, then go to Tags and change the Colour tag accordingly.
- Go to Texture tab, and import the newly-coloured rectangle into Diffuse. The bird will change colour.
- Go to Warehouse > Light > then to the Lights section on the right and 'Edit Items'... and change the Light colour to the exact same (as close as you can get) colour of the one you used on the texture.
Save this .package into your Mods folder, and test in-game.
We have the white light, the white light made red using the in-game Change Colour and Intensity, and then we have the much brighter, more vibrant...
Showing its lighting on other objects.
I hope this tutorial helped, and I'm sorry this is the third time I've made this tutorial but it does mean this one doesn't include the mistakes of the previous ones. Go forth and make lights using vectors!
You can download this white bird light from SFS or MediaFire. DO NOT PAYWALL ANY EDITS OR RECOLOURS OF THIS LIGHT, NO CURSEFORGE AND NO ADFLY. My Terms of Use apply. The polys are 2.5k highest.
