How to Make Poses: Tools, Tutorials, and Tips

There's a lot of threads floating out there asking questions about how to make poses, and troubleshooting when things don't go as planned; I've decided to try and condense all those threads into one so it's easier for those of us who would like to help to keep track of what's going on.

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WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
- Blender
- s3pe
- Rigs and Blender Sims 3 Animation Plug-Ins (Horse rig is called ahrig.blend; follow the link to see how to install the plug-in.)
- Most recent version of Pose Player (5-1-12 or later)
- Blank_Poses.package (Archive of all Base Poses)
- Optional, but incredibly helpful: cmomoney's tool for Pose List Creation ***

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TUTORIALS:
- Basic Pose-Making Tutorial by orangemittens
- 3-part Video Tutorial by Kaleeko

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Making Horse Poses in 12 Simple Steps:

1.) Open up the "Blank_Poses.package" file in s3pe (download link in the tools section above).

2.) Once open, find a clip file called: ah_Creator_HorsePoseName (You may need to put a check-mark in the 'Display: Names' box at the bottom of the window to see the names.)

3.) Right click this file, and go down to "Export and rename...", and replace "Creator" with your name and "HorsePoseName" with the name of the pose; for example, "ah_Kaleeko_HorseLove01" (Make sure to keep the 'ah_' prefix.)

4) Back in Blender, open up the horse rig. (The file called ahrig.blend)

5.) Go to File->Import->Sims 3 Animation--find the ah_YourName_PoseNameHere you just made, and double click to open it.

6.) Make all the adjustments you want to the rig in order to make your pose.

7.) Hit "a" until all the joints on the rig turn blue; this means they're selected. Hit "i", then in the menu that pops up, hit "LocRot"

8.) Go to File->Export->Sims 3 Animation, then double-click the "ah_YourName_PoseNameHere" file again to save the pose into that file you made.

9.) Go back into s3pe, go to File->New, then Import->File; Import the ah_YourName_PoseNameHere clip--BUT BEFORE YOU HIT OKAY, make sure "Keep Resource Name" is checked, and change the group name from 0x00000000 to 0x48000000 . Hit okay.

10.) Save the package. (The name of the package does not matter.)

11. ) Move the package into your mods folder.

12.) In game, type in "ah_YourName_PoseNameHere" into the pose player.


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FAQs:

1. What clip do I need to export in order to create horse poses?

In s3pe, find and open: C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Pets Limited Edition\GameData\Shared\Packages\FullBuild0_p10.package

Within this file, you'll find a clip called "ah_simbin_simpose_neutral01"--you can use that, or any other single-frame horse animation. There are several, it does not matter which you use.

OR, you can much-simply just download my Blank_Poses.package, and use the ah_Creator_HorsePoseName CLIP within.


2. I can't import my clip into Blender / my plug-in isn't working.

It's possible you did not install it properly. Ensure that:

a) you did NOT un-zip the contents of the file before trying to install it. You must select the .zip file for install, as is when you download it.

b) the account name on your computer does not have any special characters in it; having special characters in the path name when trying to install plug-ins seems to cause issues with the program and getting the plug-ins to work properly.

3. My horse's pose is showing up distorted in game--what did I do wrong?

It could be any number of reasons, but the most common problems are:

a) Your Pose Player or s3pe are not up-to-date; make sure to download the newest versions of both. (For s3pe, make sure to get the 'unstable' version.)

b) When you imported back into s3pe to create a package, you did not change the group #. It is originally 0x00000000, for animal poses it must be 0x48000000 .

c) If you changed the clip's name at any time during or after import into the package, you must click the "CLIPIID" button to reset the instance number. (To do this, double-click the clip file; the button is to the right of the resource name, next to VN64.) Even if you did not change the clip name, you can test if the instance number is incorrect by hitting 'CLIPIID'; if it changes, it was not set properly. An incorrect instance number will cause the pose not to play, so double-check this if your pose is deforming.

4. I'm trying to make a pose list for my pose pack (tools/instructions to do this on the Pose Player's page), but it's not showing up. Any ideas?

a) Make sure there are no typos in the XML list. one misplaced tag or < > could result in a dysfunctional list.
b) Don't use any 'special characters' in your list such as &; this will cause problems.
c) Make sure both the s3sa and XML are named appropriately (89612948924.dll , or whatever; including the '.dll' extension on both.)
d) Make sure the links to the thumbnails all end in _thum, and all are linked to appropriately in the XML.
e) Ensure that your _KEY file has not been deleted or renamed; if it has, you may need to start over with a fresh .package.

*** SPECIAL NOTE about the Pose List Generator: This is NOT supported to automatically change the Group # of animal poses; you will need to manually open the package with s3pe and edit the group # of all the horse poses for them to work properly in-game. (Refer to #4b for the Group Number.)

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If you have any other questions, please ask them there. I will continue to add to this post as more questions develop or more tutorials surface.

Thanks!