When I started making poses for The Sims 4, I would use pose accessories made by other creators and link to them in my sets. The problem with this was that the accessory wasn’t guaranteed to always be available. Creators delete their blogs without warning all the time, rendering my poses unusable.
This frustrated me so I learned how to make my own accessories. Today, I’m going to show you how I convert in-game objects into pose accessories!
Table of Contents
What You Will Need
- Blender 2.70 (you can also use 3.3 if you have updated to S4S Star)
- The Sims 4 Studio
- Any image editing software. I use Photoshop CS6 but Paint.NET is a great free alternative.
- Knowledge of how to use Blender and S4S. This is not a beginner tutorial. You should already know your way around these programs.
- These resource files. You’ll need them later.
Select Your Accessory
- Open S4S. Type in your Creator name and choose CAS > Create 3D Mesh
- Press CTRL+SHIFT+C to bring up the cheat console and type in object-preview
- Find an object you want to turn into a pose accessory. If you want to use a debug object, check the Show Debug box.
- Export the mesh and diffuse texture and close the window.
- Find a base game CAS accessory. I recommend the eyeball ring. It’s base game and compatible with long sleeves.
- Export the mesh.
Make Your Accessory
- Open the CAS accessory in Blender and append the object you want to convert to an accessory
- Delete the original CAS accessory and rename the new object to s4studio_mesh_1
- Move the object you appended to the Sim’s hand where it feels natural for them to hold it
- Switch to Edit Mode and select the entire object
- Under the Scene tab, in the S4Studio CAS Tools section, set the Type to GEOM and the Cut to 0000. IMPORTANT: If you are using Blender 3.3, you will not see a Type option here. That is fine. Just change the cut number to 0000.
- Under the Object Data tab, in the Vertex Groups section, delete everything listed.
- Click the + to add a new group, and rename it to either b__L_Stigmata (left hand) or b__R_Stigmata (right hand)
- Click Assign. The object will not move with the hand unless you assign it. If you don’t see the Assign button, make sure the object is still selected in Edit Mode.
- In the UV panel, select Open. Open the file called UVGuideForSims from the resources you downloaded at the start of the tutorial
- Make sure the object is still selected in Edit Mode. You should see its UV map on the UV Guide. Resize as necessary and move to fit completely inside the Hat section. R rotates, G moves, S resizes.
- Select UVs > Export UV Layout and save it.
- Open your image editing program. Open the UV layout and the object’s original texture. Move and resize the texture layer as necessary to fit perfectly over the UV map. Delete the UV layer and save as a .png file.
Final Touches
- Open the package file containing the original CAS accessory. Import your new mesh for all LODs.
- Import the diffuse texture you just edited. Under Shadow and Specular, import the blank Shadow and Specular files included in the resources linked at the beginning of the tutorial.
- In the Categories tab, customize whatever you like. Age group, CAS category, gender, etc. I recommend unchecking Enable for Random.
- Save the package file, move it to your Mods folder and test in CAS. If done correctly, your accessory should be attached to the Sim’s wrist and move with the Sim.
And now you have a new pose accessory to use in your pose sets!
