What I'm Working On #019

Hey! I'm back with another weekly update. :) This has been a shorter week for me as I was out of town for a few days, but still productive.  

Spinning Wheel

This week for the spinning wheel, I rigged and made the basic animation.  I also looked into how to make existing recipes accept yarn or thread instead of only wool.  It's a bit hard to see in this picture, but there is a bit of string that retracts and you can see in the Sim's hands.  The wheel and the smaller wheels animate, along with the pedal.

Ballet

For the ballet mod, I made and textured a barre that attaches to the wall, and began making the practice animations.  

I also mentioned a few weeks ago that I was working on making a tutu that would be compatible with the animations of the mod.  Initially I had a difficult time figuring out weights because I was trying to make the tutu deform automatically, but not too much because we don't want it to lose its shape.  Then I realized that I can just animate the skirt bones and have the tutu weighted specifically to those and to the pelvis.

You can see in the first one that the tutu holds its shape, but on high kicks like that it clips straight through.  With the skirt bones animated, it looks much better, and also means that I'll hopefully be able to give the tutu a bit of bounce with jumps and lifts. 

This was just a quick proof of concept, I know I need to clean up the tutu itself a bit. :) The one caveat is other cc tutus might look a bit weird if they don't have the same weights - but just like when making other cc, if you copy the weights from the one that will come with the mod it should be possible for other cc makers to make ones that are compatible (and probably a lot prettier than I know how to make!).

Updates/Lookahead

Now that I'm back in town, I am working on finishing updates for the Blacksmithing mod and some of the other instruments.  I hope to have these finished up sometime this weekend. <3

I also have had a few Simmers ask about bug reporting when you don't have Discord or a Patreon membership. With that in mind, I've made a Google Form for easily reporting bugs.  

You can absolutely still reach out on Patreon or Discord with bug reports - but this form sends me an e-mail and I'll get a ping directly that there's a problem. It also asks all of my usual follow up questions, so it will help me get the most complete information and hopefully streamline the process.  Thank you to everyone who helps me identify issues in my mods - I really do want to make these as good as I possibly can, and every bit of help is always so appreciated. 💕

Finally, I just wanted to mention what the next two months will look like.  March will have the Spinning Wheel and Ballet mod of course, and on March 1st there will be a new patron poll for a small mod which will release in April.  The choices as of now are a toddler music bundle, a functional grandfather clock, or more afterschool activities.  If you have an idea of something you'd like to be in the poll, drop a comment.  These are skewing a bit modern because April will also hold the next content update for Regency Romance, which will be focused on adding a historic dancing skill. 🎻

Until next time, ~JS