Tutorials:Taking Totally Bitchin Pics/Stage Performance or Singing

Having it look like your sim is a real rock star or singer can be difficult, especially since Maxis for some reason put in bands in University, but forgot to give them a singer! However, if you're clever with these tricks, you can create a very convincing look in pics that makes it seem like your sim is singing along with a band.

1. First, you will need Nightlife to have the karaoke machine. Purchase it and place it on your lot. Then direct your singer to Sing Solo. You'll need to unpause to allow them to begin the interaction.

2. Then, move your sim up to the stage, and move the karaoke machine somewhere out of the way. The little blue circles of the sound coming out of the speakers will stay where the karaoke machine was for a moment, but don't worry about them, they'll go away once you unpause.

Now you can take pics of your sim just like that if you want - they'll continue to do the karaoke machine animations (including ones that will look a little strange without it in place, like jumping off one of the pieces of the machine). If your sim does not have maxed creativity, you'll get the blue skill bar above their head, which doesn't come off with the cheats to remove other above-the-head graphics. For that, I tend to use the InSIMenator as it has a skills adjustor that you can use to instantly max out your sim's creativity skill.

You can always turn on the snapobjects/allow45degreeangle cheats so you can place your sim exactly how you want them, too.

3. That's the most basic, easiest way to take these pics. Your sim holds the mic and does the regular karaoke machine animations. But what if you want your sim to sing into a stand-up mic? You can still use the karaoke animations, but you'll need to get rid of the mic in the hand, and put in another one.

Start by zooming in pretty close to your sim, and with moveobjects on, click on the mic. You may catch your sim instead of the mic the first couple tries, so that's why you zoom in very close. When you've got ahold of the mic, you'll see a pic like the one at right.

Press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete the mic. Now your sim will sing with the karaoke animations, but without the mic.

4. I'm using a decorative retro microphone made for me by cokenasmile. You can get a lower-poly version that she released of it at MTS2. There are more microphones listed here: Content List: Decorating Themes: Clutter and Functional Home Decor: Study, Office, and Art or Recording Studio.

First, move your sim out of the way, and then place the microphone you want to use - otherwise if you try to place the mic close to the sim rather than the other way around, the microphone will try to snap into the hand slot you just removed the karaoke mic for, which is not what we want.

5. Then, pick up your sim and shift them toward the mic. Having the snapobjectstogrid cheat turned off is essential here.

That's just my sim from the previous pic, in the same pose, moved close to the mic. Not half bad, but her hand isn't in the right position.

6. Now is when patience comes in. Turn on the slowmotion cheat to around 4, unpause, and watch. Pause when your sim's hand and the rest of their body and face are in a good position. If your sim stops animating, bump up and lock their motives (maxmotives, motivedecay off) and start your sim singing at the karaoke machine again, then get them back into position and continue watching for the right pose.

You may have to pick them up and move them to get their positioning exactly right. For example, just unpaused from the previous pic, here's my sim in a lovely pose to grasp the support for the microphone:

7. And the same pose, just with the sim moved into place, at a bit of a different angle.

Here are some good things to remember while grabbing that perfect pose:

• You can rotate your sim using the allow45degree cheat using the , and . keys on your keyboard. People move around the mic as they perform - the mic itself generally stays in about the same place and the performer moves. Rotate your sim to get the best lighting, then play with your camera angle.
• You can use the middle mouse button to change your camera angle and swing your view around, even if you've picked your sim up and you're holding onto them at the time. This makes it very helpful to make sure your sim's face and hand aren't clipping into the microphone from a slightly different angle.
• Your sim doesn't have to be tightly grasping the mic, just gently around it. You can also use poses that make it look like the sim is holding onto the top of the mic, especially if you're using a more modern style one.
  

8. Below are just some fairly quickly-snapped pics, rotating the sim around the mic and repositioning her as she got into a usable pose, showing the use of this technique. Of course, you can do these very same poses with a handheld mic just leaving the karaoke mic in place, or a more modern microphophone (as linked above), but aren't they pretty?

Other options:

This is just my favourite method for getting singing pics, as the sim looks great doing it and I've done it successfully before. However, there are some other options that don't require Nightlife that you may want to look into:

• Use Cokenasmile's Retro Microphone which is functional - in that you can do practice speech and practice romance animations with it. You can also just use that item as a decorative piece, as I did above with the karaoke machine, but the practice speech and romance animations are animated speaking poses, and if you are clever with angles and pausing on just the right spot, you can get some great shots using it.
• Use decorgal21572's Standing Talk/Conversation Hack to pose your sim, as shown above, with a decorative microphone, and then have them do one of the talk animations. Open-mouthed, animated talking looks a lot like singing.
• Use the Entertain - Freestyle animation from University to get your sim to rap. The animation styles aren't generally appropriate to a torch singer like I have shown above, but they can be good for rock stars and rappers.