^ answer to Smorbie's post quoted above:

I've worked with and made animation rigs before, and they're usually a whole lot more complex than the TS2 rigs we do have, which is basically just a jointed skeleton. Proper rigs often got control panels for face movements, handles for moving joints more naturally and for moving several joints at once, and they're often also jointed together through inverse kinematics, meaning you could move the hand to grab something, and all the other joints would follow. You can grab the foot, and the knee bends naturally, or lock the feet to the ground and move the body down in a squat instantly by moving the upper body control down. You could also make the character hold on to a static object while the rest of the body moves (think of it more as a string doll - move the string for the hand, and the entire arm moves more or less naturally).

In TS2, we only have access to the skeleton with forward kinematics (more like clay animation, where you have to move all the joints for each frame, and adjust for height and such). It works in an in-to-out way, in that the torso/hip part has the weight, so if you move the "master" bone, the entire skeleton also moves, making it hard to for instance make a sim squat (because the legs follow the torso, and go underground, and have to be moved back up). Without the controls of whatever rig EAxis is using, we can't animate in a natural way. Instead, you have to move each joint. It's extremely difficult to make seemingly simple things like a walking cycle, because you can't get bodyparts to properly "stick" to a surface or item while moving other body parts, like you can do in a well-made rig.

You also can't make sims pick up items or make sims move with items without using existing commands in BHAVS (for animations in movies and such you'd have special tools you can link the skeleton to, for instance one in the hand to stick a cup to (hand controls the cup movement), and one in a car seat to make the character move with the car (car is controllable). Sims do have certain points on their bodies for such items,behaving a bit like slots (if you've ever tried to put a small vase or sculpture on a sim with Moveobjects and Snapobjects, you'll see all those "slots" in action), but I don't think it's possible to make custom ones.

I'm not sure if other programs give you access to more of the rig controls, but I doubt it. They're often very technical, and part of the program used to make the game (or movie, or whatever). The programs might have available controls for custom-made rigs, but it probably won't be able to make those available to use for a TS2 animation.

If we had something that could enable IK animation for TS2, it would open up a lot of possibilities. If we also had something that could stick sims to objcts that could be animated and moved around in a controlled way without having to use vehicles or radio-controlled cars as bases, then that would've been superb. Sadly, we don't - for the moment, anyway...

Videos explaining forward and inverse kinematics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a9qIj7kwiA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGuR4xyi7MQ

For animation, they're often done in a 24 frames per second rate, with variations depending on medium they'll be shown in, speed (more frames=slower, fewer=faster), material of the characters, and/or technique. With computer animations, you can often skip animating some of the frames because the joints can be moved from A to B with a visible flow (as an example, Disney with their drawn animations would have their best artists draw maybe 6 or 12 frames of a second, and they'd employ "inbetweeners" to draw the middle frames - but in 3D animation, the program can calculate the "inbetween" frames without the keys having to be set. So if you set keys for a joint at frame 1 and 4, the program calculates the mid stages in frame 2 and 3. May not work very well for the TS2 skeleton, though).

I read that others have seen this with their CC,and I see it with mine.. Before I renamed, it took my initial loading screen 15-17 minutes to finish. It now takes 9-11, and I have a third of my folders left to rename. I have also been deleting certain files I no longer want (though not very many!), getting rid of empty folders (the ... ?), trying to clean up really long folder names (they didn't show up well on Clean Installer, and I had done this repeatedly: Longfoldername1, Longfoldername2, Longfoldername3 ... I couldn't see the 1, 2 or 3), fixing unnecessary subfoldering (For instance, Folder A had four subfolders; each with only one file. Honestly, you don't need to get THAT specific!). In short, doing a little tidying as well.

Are all aliens technically related? like not just the ones born through abductions. Like Stella Terrano, I know she doesn't have a family tree, but wouldn't she technically be related to all other aliens, too? I guess I assumed because of their breeding process (?), it would just be more likely that she would share a parent with other aliens, but again, we don't know her family tree so IDK!

The short answer is NO. In more detail, I am sure that the various Aliens were created to not be related to Stella, since Chloe and Lola are related to each other, but not to Stella for example. You can create your own Aliens in CAS, I have a number of them that I created this way. The Aliens you create will not be related to other Aliens in the game. The only ones that are always related by default are the Alien Hybrids born from Alien Abductions, but one can have a Multi-Polinator mod that gives you a number of different Polinators if you want. I don't have one of those, though I can figure that it means that all of the Aliens from Abductions will not be related, just some of them.

I just wanted to note that Mac keyboards, of the US QWERTY variety at least, do not have an Insert Key.

I don't think you can insert text or over write in the way you would on your PC, you can insert if you move the cursor to where you want to insert or if you want to over write you would double click the word or double click again to do the sentence or a block of text like a paragraph.

However I know about pressing Tab again to get out of what ever that mode is called. I usually don't use the Tab key myself btw, I use my track ball to move the focus around.

I renamed my CC getting rid of everything except "0-9", "a-z", "A-Z", "-" and "_" ... loading screen takes few minutes more now. Its not even 1GB of CC tho.

First loading might be slower, because everything is different and information needs to get loaded into the cache files. Removing caches or adding a bunch of CC will usually make the game load slower, but you'll usually notice that second loading is faster (even if you restart the game after deleting caches, while in the same computer session - happens to Bodyshop, too).

No that happened to me too. I have a pretty good rig and loading takes less than 5 minutes (currently just over 3) anyway but when I tried renaming all sorts of stuff, it did slightly slow down my loading times. I had 6-7 GB of stuff at the time. I think it makes a difference if your computer is struggling to load in a decent time but makes little or no difference (or even slightly negative difference) if it isn't. I tested it at the time - with the original downloads folder in (I backed up before I went on a renaming spree) and with the newly renamed folder. I deleted groups.cache each time so both downloads folders were starting from the same point. It was consistent over several loads - i.e. I did it several times with both folders.

my question about Hood Replacer's "terrain" option; did some testing. it is both shape and color.

unrelated::
sim adoption; would generated characters get only "townified" sim parts?

Since I reinstalled Photoshop on my new computer I lost all my colour actions and now I can't remember how to do them. Can anyone link me to a tutorial please?

Not to sound stoopid ... but what are color actions?

I still haven't mustered up the desire to actually open the game since it last crashed over a week ago, but as usual I find myself looking at discussions and wanting to play.

One thing that's bugged me is why one of my Sims, Finn Fairchild, has blond hair, when none of his predecessors showed, nor (to my prior knowledge) carried, it. I figured it had something to do with his grandfather + great-grandfather being PlantSims. I assumed it started there. As far as I've read, there is a sort of "Plant Inseminator", as PlantSims don't appear to be exact clones of their parent.

I went into SimPE and dug around the family tree. I discovered that Finn's great-great-grandmother, Natalie, carried blonde hair. She must have gained this trait upon transitioning into a PS, because she was CAS-made with brown hair. Her PS son (Finn's great-grandfather) had black hair and carried blond, whereas his twin sister had black hair and carried brown. Where did they get the black hair from? Their PS inseminator, I take it?

That leads me back to the original PS in this family: Do Sims that become PlantSims (or any occult) receive random recessive traits, despite being made in CAS? I flipped through a few other CAS-made Sims of mine and their dominant + recessive traits, such as hair, skintone, and skintone range, were identical, as expected.

Why did she receive blonde specifically? She had brown/blonde (which should've been/originally was brown/brown) and her kids got black/blond and black/brown. They must have gotten the black hair from their PS "father", but where did her blonde come from? Are there multiple PS inseminators (I don't have a mod for this as I don't generally play supernatural Sims), or are some aspects of the PS DNA randomized? Could she have gotten ginger instead of blonde, or do all 1st gen PlantSims carry blonde?

Could you pretty please post a screenshot of your renaming program with those alternatives selected? I am having a hard time figuring out the Bulk Renaming program.

I found that deleting the thumbnails folder from time to time can help with loading time, if you like to add/remove CC a lot like I do.

Each time you test something in game, the catalog thumbnail for that item is cached, and if you remove the item then that thumb information is still there.

Of course, the first time you play the game after deleting there will be a slight lag when you first open each catalog object category, as the thumbs build again. But henceforth there should be no lag.

Don't delete the thumbnail files- just delete the entire folder (documents\ EA Games\ The Sims 2\ Thumbnails) as then when you load the game the thumbnail templates will be copied over from the game install files. If you just delete the thumbnail files, the game will have to rebuild all of the Maxis content thumbs too, which will cause significant catalog lag at first.

Actions are automated actions that modify a picture or part of a picture in a specific way. You take your picture, or a layer, tell the program to use the action and it'll change the colors for you, in the same way every time you use that specific action. That's what pooklet colors are, you make the recolor in volatile and then the automated actions produce all the other colors for you. It's a quick way to make copies of something in many different colors, and to make sure that every time you do that the shades come out the same way.

what's a GUID? i'm getting errors for albany capp saying "you sent me a crappy GUID please fix it"

I think GUID stands for Globally Unique Identifier.
a possible solution for the error might be to replace the character's file with another version of the character. for pre-made characters, that other version could be located in Program Files directory or in the pack's disc. Albany Capp; he is a base game pre-made.

Most likely a CC problem; have you removed some content lately, or installed anything new? Last time I saw this was when i removed a career a sim was using.

my last question rephrased::
when an adopted character is generated, would its starting sim parts (clothing, hair, etc) be townified sim parts?

Yes, as long as the child is generated by the adoption pool. Children taken from families or put in the adoption pool by the player won't generate new CAS items, and will look the same as they did when put in the pool.

What is a good free photo place to use while MYP is down?

What's the highest floor level you can set to cheat before the game crashes?

As far as I know, 16.

I created a new hood and ran Hoodchecker on it. I got 90 instances of "Sim has no character file." I found an old post from Mootilda that said these could be caused by Multi-PT mods, Multi-Ideal-Plantsim mods and animated animal mods, but I have none of these. I wondered if they might be townies waiting to spawn, but I'm surprised I couldn't find something to confirm that, if that's what it is.

I got a similar number (counted 89) in Greater Pleasantview, my megahood made entirely from Tarlia's cleaned hoods.

If I'm getting all these in a new hood in which I have not placed a single Sim, lot or decoration, can I just safely ignore them in other hoods that have been played (and in which I have definitely not done any VBTs)? I'm not seeing any signs of corruption in-game (touch wood!), but just wondering why Hoodchecker is picking up all these file-less Sims.

Imgur is my favorite.