Snapping tutorial for my dearest Gemma

Alrighty hon. I've got lots of pics for you and little arrows and, I hope, a nice clear explanation. However, we'll see just how clear it is after we're through. Before we begin, right now this tutorial is assuming the poses are already finished. I can add instructions if this is not the case though. Just let me know.

Step one: Open blender with a nice clean rig. I will be starting with the Adult Female rig, but you can start with whatever rig you need.

Now for pictures!

Step two: Click File:

When that menu drops down you will select Import and when the submenu comes up select Sims3Animation

Like So.

This is the next screen you will see. Navigate to wherever your animation you want to make snap (that corresponds to the rig you've got open. I had a nasty booboo earlier when I accidently imported the male pose into the female rig. What a face! Actually, it seems I've got pics of just that. See below to see how I put her in his pose. Ha!) Anyhow, Select the animation you will be using and then click Import Sims3Animation in the upper right. NOTE: However, if you are starting the pose from scratch you need to import your blank pose  and then pose your rig . You don't have to finish it right now either. You need the blank pose in place to make the pose keep it's position in game. If you did not start your animation with blank pose you will sometimes have to repeat this process a time or two before it takes.


(Here, briefly, we are going to diverge: First Gemma: This link is for you Go and grab these. Download them. Then you need to create a new folder in your Clip Tool Rigs folder. Title it: Blank Poses Originals and unzip this into it. Then create another folder titled Blank Poses Copies. In the blank poses folder you need to select the rig size. So I titled one of the rigs a_gemma_adultblankpose. You are going to have to look inside the file name to see that ok? The original name is something like this: S3_6B20C4F3_00000000_5C13BF8552873E1C_a_gemma_adultblankpose%%+CLIP.animation Only there is no bolding to point out what you are looking for. Before you import your premade animations you need to import this. Really. Then go ahead and import the premade animation. Now it will work to snap. There is one in there premade for adults, children, and toddlers. Anyhow, this is where I got the how to on that file. I also included the original package for you if you want to attempt that yourself.)

So here's our animation looking all happy but wait! It's not in a good spot. So we need to move her. The easiest way is to grab her crosshairs and move her. So lets select her crosshairs.

Right there in the middle. Then grab the red arrow (Not the one I drew on) and click and hold and drag her where ever you want. I'm going to move her to our right (her left) since that's where she's going to be in this pose anyhow. We'll still have to move her again so it doesn't matter if it's an exact science.

Now she's moved out of our way so we can get the Male Rig in here. Or whatever other rig you'll be using. NOTE: IF STARTING WITH ONE RIG YOU CANNOT REIMPORT THE SAME RIG!!! Really. If you're starting with the afrig.blend you cannot reimport it. It will give you an error. However, who says you can't copy that rig, rename it, and plug in the copy? ;) But just an FYI here.

(Really, if you're wanting a two female pose, or a two toddler pose you need to make a copy of the rig, rename it [I suggest something like afRig-copy.blend or afRig2.blend] and have it in your Clip Tool Rigs File folder.)

To get our second rig in so that things will snap we're going to go to the File menu and then we're going to select Append.

Your Blender should automatically open up your Clip Tool Rigs file, if it doesn't, then that's where you need to go. From this menu select the rig of the second sim you want in this pose. For this example I need the Adult Male Rig. so I'm going to double click on the amRig.blend file. I don't know if you need to double click on that or not. It's most likely just my ADD needing the double click.

Anyhow, this is the next screen you will get once you've selected your second (third fourth fifth etc.) rig. From these folders we're going to select Object.

The files that come up next have lots of names. You want the files that begin with whatever letters your rig starts with. So if you're using the toddler rig you're looking for all the files that begin with 'pu'. This is eyes, hair, scalp, teeth, etc. In our example with the male rig, we're selecting all the files that begin with 'am.' To select them all at once hold down the shift key while clicking. Once you have all of them selected click the link/append from Library button in the upper right.

You may need to give your machine a second to think about what you've just done (contemplate the ANSWER Hahahahahahahaha!) it depends on your machine how quickly this works. Anyhow, now that we're back we have that wonderfully orange Male Rig and the female rig. Note that the female rig is currently selected. We need to select him.

Click on him until you get him highlighted. Now, at the bottom of your screen (It's probably not quite in the same place as mine is, but the toolbar will look the same) You're going to see a box that says either Pose Mode, or Object Mode. If you have him correctly selected you will see Object mode. Click on that and this menu will pop up. Select Pose Mode. Now you can pose him!

So, again, his animation is already complete so we're going to import his animation.

Ack! What happened? Well, because I created both of these animations in the same appended screen and saved them in the middle they both snapped to the middle. lol. (Also, silly me accidentally put her in his pose. Oops. So I'm changing her back to her animation) So we're going to grab ahold of one of the rigs and move them over as we did earlier. Note: Grabbing the Arrow instead of using the g key means you move along the axis that coordinates with the arrow you've grabbed. This makes your movements a lot more precise for later on. I like to keep my poses aligned with these arrows if possible for ease of posing in game.


Anyhow, rotate your rigs until they are where you want them. Check lots of angles to make sure you're not clipping.

So, now I've got my rigs all lined up with each other and in position (I'm not entirely happy with this, I don't think either of them are leaning forward enough, but I want to test this in game before I make further changes. So this is just for demonstration purposes.) Yay for lined up rigs!

So with his rig selected I'm going to hit a until all of his joints turn light blue.

And then hit I and select LocRot from the menu that pops up.

Now I'm going to select her rig and do the same. Hit a until all of her joints are light blue, and then hit I, and select LocRot. Note: Do not Export your rigs until you've done the LocRot on both of the Rigs! If you do export, the rig you did not do LocRot to will revert to it's original position when you imported it (or created it) and you'll have to position it all over again!

But for this demonstration we've done LocRot on both rigs. So with hers selected I'm going to go ahead and export her rig.

Remember to name it something unique!

Save that animation!

When it's finished saving that particular rig you'll come back to find this again. Hit CTRL+Z and they'll move back to the position of the last LocRot. Not a problem.

So now select the other rig and export it. You might get something that has a .001 at the end of the original pose name. Just get rid of it if you do.

Like So. Now create a package of your poses and test them in game. They should snap together now. If they don't, do the same steps again until it will work. Trust me, I know. lol. The next shown pose didn't snap at first. Now it does because of the steps above. As noted earlier though, you can begin to create your poses this was as well as import premade poses. The ones I've made starting like this I haven't had to snap. Just know, that if you start with the blank pose you won't need to repeat these steps. If you start like this (remembering to import the blank pose before you pose your sims) you will have already done all of this without the need to rinse and repeat.

Like on this one. It's so nice that they snap together with the lacing of those fingers and all. Also, my poses snap onto that loveseat all nicely because of these steps. Ease of positioning! A story tellers dream!

Ok deary, I hope that helps a little.