Thursday, January 08, 2004

The Palm House, Kew Gardens, London, England http://www.strategyplanet.com/thesims/sas/CulturalHF/PalmHouse/PalmHouseTheme.htm This is absolutely one of the most amazing real-life architectures created with The Sims and Transmogrifier that I've ever seen, by Persimmon Grove and Kiri's SimThing for Everyone. There's even more wonderful stuff like this at the Cultural Heritage Foundation. -Don With the permission of the Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this theme celebrates the wonders of not only the Palm House, but the Temperate House, Dome and Formal Gardens of Kew in this prestigious time of it gaining World Heritage Status. You can read more about this important event here. Founded in 1759, the original botanical gardens at Kew were created for Augusta, Princess of Wales, around her home, Kew Palace. The site featured an orangery (precursor to the modern greenhouse), a pagoda, and an archway designed by the architect Sir William Chambers. Augusta's son, King George III, employed landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown to extend the gardens in 1766. Lancelot Brown acquired the peculiar nickname "Capability" from his habit of telling clients that their gardens had "great capabilities" - and in his talented hands, they certainly did. To say that Brown was successful in his profession is an understatement of the highest order. He was greatly sought after by the aristocracy, and it is estimated that he was responsible for some 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Great Britain. So numerous are his designs & so widespread was his influence, that it is almost hard to find a prominent country house that did not have a garden designed by "Capability" Brown at some time. 10:27:17 AM     The Bunny Wuffles School of Sims Transmogrification http://www.strategyplanet.com/thesims/sas/bwsost/bwsost.htm Here's a great site with helpful information about using The Sims Transmogrifier: Here, I offer complete step-by-step tutorials in the first principles of object making for the complete novice in both Adobe Photoshop and The Sims Transmogrifier, and some special guest tutorials - one off tutorials in specific tasks - not necessarily Transmogrifier - written by guest tutors, along with some masterclasses on key skills in Photoshop & TMog and some stand-alone workshops on specific tasks for complete beginners to TMog which improve gameplay. The workshops assume little or no previous knowledge in either Photoshop or Transmogrifier, so as to be of use to you whatever level you are at. One thing I have learned is that different people use different methods in their object making. Some know short cuts that others don't; some use different programs or sources of textures to others. These tutorials show the way I make my objects, and as soon as I learn a new skill, I am anxious to pass it on! But by no means am I trying to imply that these are the definitive and only ways of making or amending objects; just an easy way to start off. The tutorials have all been tested by people with no previous experience in the skills used to complete success - in fact, the first brown chair one was written for me when my flamingo was still safely pink and my unopened copy of Photoshop 5.5 was covered in long gathered dust and woefully out of date. Finally, my tutorials are really meant to be done in the same order they are presented as I often refer back to skills learnt in previous ones using terminology I introduced in them earlier. A brown chair may not be the most exciting thing in the world to you, but doing that tutorial will teach you how to mask off parts of an object while colouring another - an essential thing to know! Great stuff! Lots of cool tutorials for beginners to masters, and links to useful resources. -Don 9:55:53 AM     RSS 2.0 Sims Module, and MySim tool for Radio UserLand Thanks to the guidance and patience of Dave Winer, I'm designing an RSS 2.0 module for describing The Sims objects, which will make it easier to advertise and distribute Sims object online, and enable the development of automated tools for assisting in this process. The first tool I'm developing for blogging Sims objects is the "MySims tool" for Radio Userland. It lets you drag and drop a Sims object into a directory to publish it on your blog. It automatically creates a preview and a description, pastes the text into a blog entry, and uploads the preview and Sims object to your blog along with the descriptive text, so people can see, read about and download your objects. Naturally I will integrate this with the ShowAndTell ActiveX control, so you can view live objects on blogs, and other tools like RugOMatic, so you can easily create object by dragging and dropping text and images, then automatically publish them online! -Don 9:30:53 AM     ShowNTell ActiveX Plug-In for Previewing Sims Objects I'm developing another Transmogrifier based tool called "ShowNTell", which is an ActiveX control for displaying a live preview of a Sims object file on a web page (or wherever you can plug in an ActiveX control). You can drag-and-drop iff files into the window to view them, change the rotation and zoom, and read the name, price and description. It also gives you control over the background color and grid, to match your web page and objects. "What is ShowNTell for?", you might ask. I want to make it easy for people to distribute and download Sims objects over the web, as well as view and manage their own objects offline. Players should be able to quickly look at objects before installing them and restarting The Sims. ShowNTell displays a live interactive preview of a Sims object, right on the web page! -Don 9:18:14 AM     Transmogrifier Assistant Tools Here's an interesting site that has some Transmogrifier assistant tools, including Object Masker, Object Splitter, and Object Splitter SE -- some great products of quite alot of hard work: http://www.btinternet.com/~petea_uk/sims/index.htm Pete the webmaster says: I've just added my first object to the Site - an Everwhite Snowman. In addition Object Splitter SE has received a minor upgrade that gives a bit more control over the palette generation.  Please note that the palette on the pixel channel image that is created is far from perfect and I would suggest that you actually use a 3rd-party paint package to generate the palette for this channel from the 24-bit bitmap image (that can now be generated as well). cya pete ;-) Here's is Pete's main site: http://www.pa-sy.com -Don 9:04:14 AM     The Greatest Object Ever http://sympatheticreactions.hypermart.net/elsim.htm The El Sim parody site is running a funny story about a great new Sims object, showcasing The Sims Transmogrifier at its best ;-) : T-mo at its best El Sim Furniture Award of the Month -Rr El Sim was simply astounded when it found out perhaps the greatest object ever.  Although originally it was set to be a normal brown chair, in fact it was transmogrified, cloned, shellacked, beaten, warped, beveled, and finally touched up in Adobe Photoshop to get the final look which is so eloquently portrayed.  Thumbs to the maker RaydeeoShack34 for this amazing New Object. RaydeeoShack34 is quoted to say, "With this new object, it bumps my website up to 21122 downloads.  And those are just re-colourings and shadings of objects.  My New New New Object area has just started with this first object.  I've been trying to learn blueprint, okay not really, I've just been asking for object makers in the TSR Forum to join my site, but nobody has responded yet.  Imagine that."  This guy needs RugOMatic! -Don 8:39:06 AM

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