Difference between revisions of "MTS2:Creator Guidelines/Sims"
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This page is split into separate sections for easier readability. Please make sure to review ALL sections before submitting your sim! | This page is split into separate sections for easier readability. Please make sure to review ALL sections before submitting your sim! | ||
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===Types of Sims=== | ===Types of Sims=== | ||
Revision as of 17:41, 29 May 2011
Contents |
Introduction
So you've made a Sim that you want to share! Here are the guidelines you must follow in order to share your Sim at MTS. Please take the time to read through all of these guidelines as some key items have changed and may affect your upload. Pay close attention to what is required, and your upload will spend less time in the moderation queue and be more likely to get approved. Thanks!
This page is split into separate sections for easier readability. Please make sure to review ALL sections before submitting your sim!
Types of Sims
General Quality
| Quality of Your Custom Content |
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If you have made your own content for your sims (for any category), please make sure you have thoroughly reviewed the Body Shop Creator Guidelines as the included custom content you have made is expected to follow the same guidelines and be up to the same quality standards as if you had uploaded it separately, not on a sim. |
| Creator Feedback |
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Please utilize our Creator Feedback Forum for great tips on how to get your sim looking perfect. Note that using the Creator Feedback Forum is not a guarantee of acceptance, but it is helpful to have other people offer tips and suggestions. |
Required Screenshots
Certain screenshots are required when you upload your sim - and they must be big and clear enough to see what you've made!
| Neutral Face Closeup |
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Show a close-up of your sim's face with a neutral expression. While it may look a little boring, sims' faces distort quite a lot when they make expressions so having a good idea of what your sim actually looks like normally is necessary. Extreme facial expressions like big smiles, open mouthed animated talking, laughter, etc., can distort the face and can make an interesting sim just look like another goofy sim. If your sim normally wears a mask, veil, or other item that covers their face, please remove it for the required face closeup shot.  |
| Body Shot |
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Show a further-away shot of your sim from a distance. This can be from at least their hips and up or you can show the sim from head to toe. If you have made the sim's outfit, make sure to show them head to toe, to show off the outfit you've made. |
| Comparison Picture (If Based on Other Characters) |
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If your sim is based on a celebrity, anime character, cartoon character, game character, etc., then you need to include at least one picture of the original person or character for comparison purposes. Please provide at least one plain basic comparison pic of the character or celebrity - just a photo of them. Simmerized (combining the sim's face with a photo in Photoshop) or divided pics (left side is sim face, right side is real face split down the nose) provided for comparison are not acceptable. You can, however, put two pics side-by-side like the below example with similar poses and expressions as this will best show how close your likeness is. |
| Adult Comparison (Required for Child Sims!) |
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If your sim is younger than a teen (that is, a child or toddler) please include one picture of your child sim as an adult. This is simply so downloaders know what to expect when the child sim grows up - sometimes adorable children and toddlers become hideous adults. A child sim that becomes a hideous adult is not a disqualification for approval - it merely lets people know that they probably shouldn't let your child sim age. :) |
| In-game Picture |
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In order to see what your creation looks like in-game, we require in-game screenshots. You must actually load the game and take your screenshots there. We do not accept Body Shop pics, texture pics, SimPose, 3D program pics, etc., without the required in-game pics too. Please don't try to cut out backgrounds or fake in-game pics. We can definitely tell the difference. For best results, put your sim on a lot. Create-a-Sim screenshots are acceptable, but the lighting in CAS is pretty bright and you may not be able to get detail pics and that sort of thing, too.  |
| Close enough |
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| Well-lit |
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 At the same time, make sure you don't use too much light: if you put light-coloured item under a bright light, it can wash out and lose a lot of the detail of what you've made.
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| Big Enough |
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The larger your pics, the better! Tiny pics won't show enough detail to see what you've made.
Please don't just take a small pic and size it up in your graphics program to get bigger pics - this only makes the dimensions larger but doesn't add any detail and just gives you a blurry, pixellated larger pic, not a nice clear one. |
| Maximum Number of Inline/attached screenshots |
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You may now upload up to 100 pics! Of course, please keep it to a reasonable quantity... only things like huge sets, full worlds, etc. should have that many pics! Remember, you can always collage several different images together into one image if you have a bunch of stuff to show off, or want to show multiple angles of an item. For the bonus photos, we recommend you use a spoiler tag to hide the images, then people can click on it to see them. Their pages will load faster if all the images aren't downloading at once. [spoiler=interior rooms]http:// wheveremypictureis/picture.jpg[/spoiler] The 'interior rooms' can be replaced by whatever grouping you want to present, 'hidden garden', 'pool views', 'master suite', 'kids room', etc. You may place as many photos within a spoiler grouping as you'd like.
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| No pay content in screenshots |
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| Do not use pay content in your screenshots! Do not use pay hair in your screenshots!
You MUST use free or EA/Maxis items in your screenshots! MTS promotes and supports free content, and using pay content in screenshots is basically like free advertisement for paysites. This includes pay content you found elsewhere for free - if it was pay originally, it's still promoting pay content. We strongly recommend taking pics with neutral backgrounds, just showing off what you've made and nothing more. Not only does this look nicer for uploads, it also eliminates any possibility that you may inadvertently include pay items in your screenshots. As per the news item of November 2010, do not use pay items in your upload. A pay item is an item that you'd have to donate money to access if you went to the original creator's website. It doesn't matter if you can get it for free through a file sharing site - it's still a pay item. Don't use pay items in your screenshots either, even if they are not included. Links for "optional" or "recommended" content may be included as long as they are free sites only. If you need free hair for a model in your pics, MTS has an extensive collection of free hairstyles in our Downloads section. You can also look in the TS2 Hair Gallery or TS3 Hair Gallery for more free hairstyles to find something you'll like. We STRONGLY recommend that you credit the hair (and other content) used in your screenshots in the text of your upload post. With hundreds of hairstyles out there, it's very difficult for our upload moderators to know every hairstyle on sight, and if we have to hunt down where the hair is from to see if it's pay or free, it may take longer for your upload to be approved. Make it easy on us and at least say something like, "Hair from XM Sims (free)" in the text of your post under a little section for model credits.
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| Screenshot tips |
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| Camera Controls:
Take some time to just play around with the camera. It can take a while to get used to the camera controls, and even once you are experienced in their use, it may be challenging to get the shot you want with the constraints on the controls. If you haven't taken many sim pictures before, here is a list of camera controls:
Using Print Screen: If you have enough RAM to run Photoshop or another graphics editing program at the same time as TS2/TS3, you may want to take screenshots yourself, without the use of a program to store them for you. To do that, simply press the Print Screen or PrntScn key on your keyboard - it's usually off toward the right, over the arrow keys, above Insert and Delete. This will copy your current screen to your Windows clipboard, as if you had selected and copied it as an image. Then open any graphics editing program, create a new document the size of your monitor's resolution, and paste into that document. Your screenshot should appear in the document.
There are many programs available, free and pay, that will take screenshots for you by using a hotkey, and save them to a folder - just like The Sims 2 with the C key, but with options for much better quality settings. A quick Google search for 'free screenshot program' will also bring up many other options, which may have other features that are of interest to you.
Many simmers struggle with getting their images to be clear, crisp and under the maximum file size while keeping the image size larger than 800px by 600px. After getting your images from the in game camera or using a print screen program you will need to resize them and compress them into a jpeg image. Many graphics programs have a built in optimizing feature. Here are a few common ones: |
Packaging Your Sim
You'll need to properly package your sim so others can download it and use it in their games.
Credits for Included or Pictured Content
You are responsible for providing accurate descriptions, links, and credits for all pieces of custom content included with or pictured on your sim.
Adult Content/Nudity
We do not allow adult content at MTS - please read the following to know what constitutes adult content.
Right Info/Right Files
All the fiddly bits - description, title, putting your file into a rar or zip, etc.
Additional Stuff
- If your upload is rejected or marked as changes required and you're not sure why, ask in Creator Issues.
- If you're not sure whether your neighborhood is ready for uploading, use the Creator Feedback Forum to get feedback on it.
