Here you can find some stuff that I find useful. Things such as links to software I use, useful mods, and other things like that. If there’s anything you’d like to know about stuff I use, feel free to ask.
My Stuff:
Photo Tutorial: A tutorial in which I talk about photos. My photos. And how I take them. It’s in the name.
Photo Editing Tutorial: A tutorial showing how I edit my photos using my software of choice, PhotoScape and Krita.
Magic effects (.pdf)
This is a list I made because I thought it might save someone a little time. These are codes I gathered for my own sake – Champion of Moonlight is pretty heavy on fog emitter effects, and having to search and guess my way through a long list was a pain. This has a collection of codes I’ve either already used or might use in the future with a description of what they are. I imagine it might be useful for someone else doing magic related stuff. I’ll update it as I add more.
For more of my stuff, have a look at posepacks and old posepacks.
Handy Mods:
Shiftable Fog Emitter – This makes it so that the fog emitter you can find in the debug menu can be moved up and down. It’s absolutely crucial for magical duels!
Pose Player and Pose Player Add-On: Pose player I use to pose my sims. The add-on is crucial – it allows you to click your sim to pose instead of having to control that sim. Gotta love controlling sim’s lives! Another underrated feature in it is the ‘Look at…’ interaction – if you have two poses that don’t quite look at each other. This can fix it. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but I use it A TON.
OMSP, OMSP Resizer, Tipsy OMSP: The OMSP I use for placing things on tables when it’s otherwise not possible. The OMSP resizer is for resizing objects – it’s great because I’ve found a lot of items that seem oversized for the world. The tipsy one is great for making a big ol’ mess of things, like when you need chairs and plants to fall over.
Leave the Door Open: This mod lets you leave a door open. Should sorta speak for itself. It’s really great for many things. Like things where you need an open door.
Various Mods from Nraas: Obviously. I use them for everything from changing clothes, cheating skills higher, having larger households, removing tourists and ice cream vans, story progression… Hell, if it wasn’t for Nraas Overwatch, I wouldn’t be able to play the game in the first place.
No Drift/Lower Level Free Cam Mod and No Drift/Lower Level Camera Mod: Mods that make it so the camera doesn’t hop and skip and bounce all the damn time. Also allows to move it much lower and further away.
I also use a million and a half mods to remove annoying elements/actions from the Sims, but there are a too many for me to be bothered to list them. If there’s anything that bothers you, such as the sims playing in sprinklers constantly, ask away; it might bother me, too 🙂
Defaults, Sliders, and Visual Tweaks:
HQ Mod + No Glow: This mod not only makes your close-up pictures look like they have been kissed by a beautiful angel, it also removes the stupid glow to the light. It can be a little hard on your computer. For info on how to install see here and click here for a good comparison of the game with/without HQ.
High Resolution Shadows: A mod that does exactly what you might expect. It makes shadows stand out and look sharp as can be. Because I have the HQ mod, it’s not the download I’ve used – I had to edit graphicrules.sgr myself. The download has instructions for how to do it.
Blue Skies & Sunshine Lighting Mod (Lucky Palms Water): There are few things I love more than the beautiful, vibrant skies of this lighting mod. I wouldn’t live without it.
StarField (goodbye big stars) by ShojoAngel: A mod that replaces the stars in the sky.
Realistic Clouds by Nixil: Exactly what it sounds like! A mod that replaces the clouds with more realistic ones. It looks amazing, if you ask me.
aWT Eyeball Mesh Fixed by Buhudain: Replacement eyeball mesh. It makes the eye look much more crisp and removes the EA highlight. I use them in conjunction with the eye sliders from Fanaskher’s collection (which is further down this list).
aWT’s Eyeball Mesh/Slider for kids and toddlers by Buckley: Pretty much what it says – the toddler/child version of the above eyeball mesh + sliders.
From the Stars Default Eyes: My default eyes, as the name would suggest. They have a pretty, but not too intense highlight and look really great with the eyeball mesh.
Moonskin93’s Sclera as Costume Makeup: My default eyes don’t come with a nicely shaded sclera, so I use this. It’s linked in the text near the bottom of the post.
Eskin Fresh Default: My default skin. Makes everyone look pretty as a picture.
Blush Baby by Chisami: The default skin I use for babbies. ‘Cause those little buggers look like pixelated nads without it.
Default Replacement Eyebrows and Beards by Simple Life: Because there’s no need to have a shabby beard or eyebrows.
Default Replacement Teeth: Basically – nice teeth. Work with any default replacement eyes and they don’t have a black line around them, which I like.
Fanaskher’s Slider Collection: I use most of the sliders that are available for download here. There are sliders for pretty much everything you might like – arms, legs, hips, different face sliders, butts… All really great for making unique looking sims. And butts. It also includes eyeball sliders which are useful along with the eyeball mesh.
Sunken Eyeball Slider: I use this slider because of the eyeball mesh. It’s too sunken for my taste, so I use this to move it further out.
Software:
Delphy’s Sims 3 Pack Multi-Extractor: I use this little piece of software so I don’t have to install CC through the launcher.
Photoscape: Super duper neat, free photo editing software. Really easy to use, with a lot of great photo frames and filtres. It’s also very lightweight so your computer will likely run it just great. I use it to edit some of my pictures and for adding frames to the pictures in my story.
Affinity Designer: I use this for adding text to pictures, as well as making graphics and such for the blog and story. I also use it for creating patterns. It is not free. A free alternative, which isn’t too bad, is Inkscape.
Krita: A free program that is just amazing for artists. Has tablet support and you can pretty much do everything artsy your heart could desire. I draw in this a lot, but for this blog, I’ve used it for some of my dividers and some of my ‘previous/next’ buttons. The text tools in it are absolute rubbish, though, hence Inkscape.
Blender: Free 3D software that I use for creating poses along with a free add-on. Find tutorials and downloads for that here.
ReShade: Free post-processing software. It lets you add awesome effects to the Sims 3 (and a ton of other games!). It can be kind of hard on your computer.
Resources for writers:
Books, podcasts, etc.:
Writing Excuses: A great podcast for writers. Every episode is around fifteen minutes long and covers a topic in writing – character arcs, villains, character motivation, and so on. It’s hosted by, among others, Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette-Kowal, who are two of my favourite writers. Speaking of Sanderson…
Write About Dragons: A Youtube channel full of lectures about fantasy writing and all lectures are by Mr. Sanderson. They cover a wide range of topics, and I’d venture that there are also video covering topics that are relevant even if you don’t write fantasy.
Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels (How to Write Kissing Books): A really great book I stumbled on that helps you write great romance arcs. It’s written in a very breezy, funny tone, and can be read in about an hour.
Websites:
BehindtheName: This is a brilliant website for looking up names and their origins. I use it to look up names (like – is this even a proper name?) and for when I need names of origins other than English (I.e.: Arabic and Italian). Their Random Renamer is great as well, and one I use often when I play Sims 3 and want a random name for my sims.
Fantasy Name Generators: An absolutely massive collection of name generators for all kinds of things fantasy related. Normally, I’m not one for using generators too much, but they’re a great inspiration. I’ve used the Witch Name Generator for Champion of Moonlight.
TV Tropes: Tread with care. TV Tropes is well known for ruining your life. Beware the many, many tabs that’ll soon grace your browser. When it’s not ruining my life, I use it to look up tropes that I like/dislike. TV Tropes will tell you common uses of that trope, inversions of them, and what to do to avoid unfortunate complications. If you like playing with common writing tropes, it’s perfect for that.