So perhaps I can be a teeny bit over ambitious?

[aelia]

So much so that I kinda burnt myself out for a while there :P That, coupled with various RL bullshittery (ie, jobseeking, various family members with various heath issues - everyone is fine thankfully, but damn, DNW - and suchlike) leads to absent me.

(it's likely now that I find that nobody noticed my absence and I have just revealed myself as a self important arse. but hey :P)

However on the subject of being over-ambitious, the GoS theme is evil. Even though I did vote for it.

Other than the insanely, and I mean insanely, over-ambitious idea I first had, and I will come to that in a moment, I get the bright idea that what the sims community really needs, is more clutter in the way of cut/loose flowers.

The kicker? I've never meshed objects before. I'm not even very good at recolouring the damn things.

So, I start off relatively simply by deciding to mess about with the Wood For Sims (oh hai gutter) flowers. I figure I'll just rip out one flower, lay it down and that'll be it. OMSP's can do the rest. But no, I decide that I need at least three or four different options for them lying down (thankfully so far they are low-poly), and that I cannot not have any standing up for the purposes of vases.

Then I decide that they need to be master/slaved. Fine. So not only am I object meshing for the first time, but I'm fucking about with some scary simpe shit while I'm at it.

Then I decide, out of sheer idiocy that as a joke, I will extract and do the same for the plant that incidentally is reminicant of a part of the human anatomy. Because, really, at heart I am twelve years old.

WHY DID NONE OF YOU BASTARDS TELL ME HOW ADDICTIVE EXTRACTING THIS CRAP IS???

I'm now on my twentieth flower, and am still merrily looking for more. WHY??

(However the longer I spend doing this, the less time I have to spend contemplating mucking about with custom crops to emulate my favourite TS1 mod. (downloads > regular simmies, then scroll down to 'gardening the c & c way if you are curious)

I am however, after/during this certainly going to be recolouring Lethe's wonderful greenhouse set, and perhaps, and it's a very large perhaps, if I do not start to despise object meshing, I might try to recreate some of the simpler objects from possibly the best TS1 site that ever existed, ever. It would certainly give me some much needed experiance in 3D meshing from scratch to slap on the old resume :D

And just to prove that I am not merely full of waffle, have a picture of a daffodil in progress.

Comments

[curiousb]

I'm guilty of exactly the same thing - starting what initially seems to be a reasonably simple project, then getting carried away with repositorying, tinkering with subsets, making things recolourable and then of course making the recolours themselves...

It'll be worth it in the end (just keep telling yourself that!) - and the daffodil is looking good, and very spring-like. :)

Oh, and I used to love Persimmon Grove too - such a gorgeous site!

[aelia]

Ahaha, glad I am not the only one then :D Makes me feel better :)

Glad you like it too, I hope I can get it working!

Persimmon Grove love ftw :D

[curiousb]

I'm sure you will - it's just a case of following the tutorials to the letter (in my case it usually only goes wrong because my ability to read, absorb and follow instructions temporarily abandons me). I'm still learning all this stuff myself, but feel free to give me a shout if I might be able to help at all - I rather enjoy playing in SimPE (not sure if that's healthy though). Good luck!

[eefje00704]

Ooh pretty flower! I can't wait to see the rest. This theme is going to be amazing.

Now, when you say custom crops, would that mean like the seasons crops, or like the pre-seasons Echo crops? If it's like the seasons crops, I sure hope you go back to contemplating this ...

[aelia]

Hee, thanks :D

The later, i never much liked Echo's crops. They were a reasonable work-around pre-seasons (fuck yes hyphernation!) but I much prefer the seasons crops.

(I kinda wish they were more like the unleashed crops from TS1, but sadly it was not to be)

I will see what I can do :D

[eefje00704]

That would be the ultimate awesomeness. I've always wanted custom seasons crops and I've never found any. I'd already come to the conclusion that it simply wasn't possible.

[aelia]

There used to be a couple floating around - there was a pumpkin one somewhere, and I know I used to have a cow-plant one (that one is somewhere on SimsCave irrc)

I've always wanted them too, so fingers crossed it's not *too* difficult!

[eefje00704]

I have the pumpkin, but it's not quite the same as the seasons plants. You can't sow it, it comes as a pumpkin patch of dirt in which the pumpkin then grows (I suppose, I haven't actually tried it out). At least, if we're talking about the same pumpkin. I don't think I have the cowplant.

Anyway, I'll keep both fingers and toes crossed that you can pull it off. Can I ask what crops you would like to do, if you can make it work?

[aelia]

Was it the pumpkin done by simslice? I always wanted to try it out, but the booty never seemed to have it.

The cowplant one was done by the guy who used to do all the Star Wars vehicles I think? I haven't used it in game for a long time, but if I remember correctly, it had it's own seperate sowable plot, where only it could be planted, but I'm pretty sure it worked in the same way as the seasons plots.

Oh heaps :D First thing I'd try, and to kinda limit how much meshing I would have to do, so that I could concentrate on getting it right would be to try and convert a flower plot to a crop - I've always wanted to have a flower farm going (or any farm really - I play faaar too much Harvest Moon XD) but after that I'd probably branch out a lot. I definately want at least a mango tree in game, and probably some boring things like lettuce and carrots and the like (Embarrassingly I can't remember what crops are actually in game! XD)

Wow. Long comment is long. Sorry 'bout that!

[aquilegia]

I noticed you were awfully quiet! I'm glad your family members are okay.

I have only dipped a toe into extracting things before I ran far, far away (for the time being); making clothes and skintones has me quite obsessive enough as it is. XD My potential-extracting-obsession? Pulling things out of other games that no one has yet poked at. I've thusfar had a dig through Fable's files (oh man it has some neat mushrooms), and I'm considering seeing if there's anything tasty in Dungeon Siege.

... Um, yes.

I'm looking forward to those flowers (heh, if you don't drown under your own project). Even the plant reminicent of a part of human anatomy, because at heart I am also 12 years old. :D

[aelia]

Thanks :)

Oh God. I am incredibly grateful that most of the non-sims games I play are of the old school pixel variety, or flash based, otherwise I'd really be in trouble! I've oft though wondered how much of say, Age of Empires type games are pixel based and how much are 3d models, becaues there would be a lot of scope for neighbourhood deco in there :D

So far - and here I rather supertitiously touch wood - things are going okay. I've got the daffodil meshes done (I do wish we could grow them here!) and now it's time to see just how scary it is to put back together!

[curiouscrow]

I know you were gone! *stalk, stalk* :P

Those flowers look gorgeous! Can't wait to see how they turn out and all the options that you're working. And wow at all the hard work you're putting into it! O_o

[aelia]

Aww :D

Thanks :D Hopefully I won't go too overboard with them (well, more so than I already have)

[quinctia]

Meshing flowers looks like fun, though!

I probably should attempt object meshing again, because it wasn't the actual shape construction that threw me off--it was the fact that I kept attempting to make things that were part glass, and transparencies were being mean to me. Getting more comfortable at solid things and mapping and texturing them would be easier.

Hmm...if there is a decent mesh with small, multiple flowers, that could be textured for all sorts of things...hyacinth, lily of the valley, lilacs.

[aelia]

Oh it is :D

Haha, but where is the fun starting off with simple, sane things to do? Much more fun to jump in the deep end with the most complicated thing you can think of!

(At least that's how my brain works XD)

I'll keep an eye out for one of those too :D