Pose Making Tutorial Using Blender

So! I was asked to make a tutorial for pose making! This tutorial will show you how to make a pose, make that pose into a package, AND make that package poselist compatible!




Before we get started, there are some thingies you need to download.
Blender - the program we will actually make the pose in (get 2.65 for your OS)
Rigs for blender - super big deal. Without these you won't be able to do ANYTHING. (UPDATE: View the information from Kilhian at the bottom of the tutorial!)
Poseplayer -make sure to download BOTH FILES in the download section
S3pe - for making the pose into a package
Animation plug-ins for blender - UPDATE: View the information from Kilhian at the bottom of the tutorial!

Step 1: Take that zipped "cliprigs" file you downloaded from my drive account. Make a folder somewhere you can find it. I have mine in Documents -> sim stuff -> cliprigs. Once you have that folder, put the zipped file inside and extract it. You should have a whole bunch of rigs now. Yay! Now, you should also make a folder here that you will be putting your poses (not packages) in. And you could also put your pose package folder in here. It's up to you.
Next (same step because reasons): Take the "addons" file you downloaded from me. (I have no idea how to do this if you have a mac. Sorry) Open up any windows explorer window, and type %appdata% in the address bar.

that should take you to the appdata - roaming folder. If you've installed blender (which you should have), you will see "Blender Foundation" open up that mofo. Then "Blender". Then "2.65". Then scripts. Inside that folder, you should only see "addons" I want you to delete that. (Unless you use it for other things and already have addons...) Then move my zipped "addons" folder into this location and unzip it. That way you should have all my addons.


Step 2: Open up blender. This is what you should see:

 Of course, you will have different "Recent" or none at all. Now, click out of that box, and you will see a cube. Ignore it.

STEP 2.5 because I'm a dork and forgot this one:  The point of this step is to get your addons installed. It is a pain in the ass, but necessary.  Go to file -> user preferences. Click on Import/export:

then make sure all the ones that I have checked in the screenshot below are checked on yours. If not, check them.

Then ***IMPORTANT*** you need to click "Save as Default" at the bottom of this window. Otherwise you will have to do this, EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU OPEN BLENDER. Okay, now you can leave that window. :)


Step 3: Click File -> Open and navigate to the folder where you put the rig files. Choose one of them to open. For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be using the afRig.blend rig. That's the one for an adult female. It seems to be the most used rig. :)

Now you should open blender file. You should see this lovely thing:

Or the rig of whatever age and gender you chose :)

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Break time coz I'm gonna teach you some things you need to know:

VIEW: This panel is useful for when you want to snap right to a view. You can see that there is a front, back, left, right, etc. Of course, blender offers much more than just the compass rose type directions you see here, but you can use your scroll wheel on your mouse to do that.

POSEMODE BOX: Okay, the main thing here is that you want this to be on pose mode while you are posing. There are other options which are used for other things, like meshing, but you won't be using those to make poses. So just make sure it says "Pose Mode".

LITTLE CHECKYMARK SPHERE THINGY: That's how much detail/what your rig looks like. I suggest you play around with it, to see the various options. I mostly use the Texture setting, but the solid setting can be useful if your textures are getting all wonky.

How to click on joints: Right click on whichever joint you want. Sometimes blender likes to pretend you clicked on a different joint, so just click until you get to the right one. Remember, Ctrl+Z works in blender!

How to move joints: the "r" key allows you to rotate a joint. Pres "r" and then move your mouse around to rotate. Whichever direction you are facing when you press "r" determines how the joint will bend.
I would recommend only using "r" but if you drag with the left mouse button, you can also move joints entirely. This often looks awkward and unnatural.

*** Important! REMEMBER THAT JUST BECAUSE BLENDER LETS YOU MOVE A JOINT DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD. Legs do not bend backwards without breaking. There is only so many different ways a spine can bend before it snaps. Remember anatomy! ***
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Back to posing!

Step 4: Um... not really any easy way to explain this... MAKE YOUR POSE! I'm going to make mine really simple, just to give you an example.

 Make sure this is what you want your pose to look like, you can tweak it later, but this is how it will look in your game when you test it!

Step 5: Select a joint, as you can see, I selected the foot in the above picture. You probably already have one selected, but make sure. Then hit the "a" key on your keyboard until you see this:

All her joints are blue! This means that you have selected ALL of her joints. Good job!

Step 6: (sorry no pictures of this because the screen cap wouldn't let me.) Hit the "i" key on your keyboard. A little menu should pop up. If it goes away, just hit "i" again. Find the menu item that says "LocRot" Click on that. The box to the left should go from this:

 To something like this:

GOOD!

Step 7:  Click File -> export -> sims 3 animation. This step uses the plug-ins we installed earlier, so if you do not have sims 3 animation under your export tab, then you messed up. Go back and try again. If all goes well, a little box should pop up with a space for a file name.

 Name it and then hit OK.

***IMPORTANT: Your filename can be ANYTHING you want. it can be a_supercalifragilisticexpialidocious if you want, but people who don't use poselist will probably hate you so much if you call it that. The important thing is that you have "a_" at the front of your filename!!!!!!! If there is no "a_" it will not work. This goes for all ages and genders! ALL NAMES MUST START WITH "a_"!!!!!!!!******

Step 8: Save it to your non-packaged pose folder.

Obviously, mine is much more full than yours is lol. But basically all you need to do here is click the "save Sims 3 animation" button

YAY! You're done with blender for now! Now open up S3PE!

Step 9: When you open up s3pe, this is what you should see (that rhymed!)

Step 10: File -> New
Step 11: Resource -> Import -> Import from file
Step 12: Navigate to your non-package pose folder. You should see this:

Your pose should be the only one in there right now. If you have more than one, it will likely be the first. But anyway, you can see the filenames.
Step 13: Once you open your pose, you should see this box pop up:

DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING. Just click OK!
Step 14: File -> Save As...
Step 15: Navigate to your packaged pose folder, which should be empty right now. I always save my poses as what I saved their file name as. It makes it easier to remember. I suggest doing that.

Step 16: Hit save. Now you have a packaged pose. Put that in your packages folder and load up your game!

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In order to make your pose visible in the pose list, you will have to make it pose list compatible. LUCKILY, cmo is about the bestest person in the world and packaged a tutorial with the creator file! OMG HOW COOL.
So just open up the notebook file that says "How To" that comes with the poselist kit that I told you to download, and you'll be making poselist comp poses in no time!

Enjoy!

direct any questions regarding this tutorial to my tumblr ask: www.habbiesims.tumblr.com/ask

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Commentary from Kilhian, that I figured might be useful to you!
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Nice tutorial, except this part:
'Your filename can be ANYTHING you want. The important thing is that you have "a_" at the front of your filename!!!!!!! If there is no "a_" it will not work. This goes for all ages and genders! ALL NAMES MUST START WITH "a_"!!!!'

I agree that both male and female adult starts with a_, but child poses start with c_ and toddlers with p_
And people should avoid to use 'basic names' such as a_pose01 like I have seen many times. I even saw someone who used it twice.

Sure I have some wrongly named poses in my game and they 'work', but the more you have the more it affects the game, causing it to load slow, lag, ...

Apart that, probably once of the most complete guide I have seen :)

The official site for A's rigs and animation + OrangeMittens' tutorials has been moved there:
http://sims3cliptool.wordpress.com/downloa/
But you can find the files (current and older) here:
http://code.google.com/p/s3py/downloads/list?can=2&q=&colspec=Filename+Summary+Uploaded+ReleaseDate+Size+DownloadCount

Oh and to finish, actually Cmo since made a tool to make it list compatible, which is nicer:
http://www.den.simlogical.com/denforum/index.php?topic=948.0

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Thanks Kilhian! :)