djehmli's Blog

It has been over a year since I tried to seriously play the Sims and I must say it has become extremely frustrating.

I have a custom built gaming computer which allows me to play extreme graphic games like Skyrim and Tera at max settings without a hiccup.

Load up the sims without any custom content installed and spend some time in CAS making a sim and have it lock up 20 minutes later.  Worse if I am running custom content.

Playing with every expansion and stuff pack, the majority of my CC comes from here and if I don't enter CAS I can play for a couple of hours before it freezes.  Even DEP doesn't save it from freezing.

Still, I play for as long as it will let me, and I still make patterns, even if it is just for myself.  I don't dare stay in CAS, if at all, to set up screen shots if I still want to play the game.

All griping aside, Seasons is still fun, Sims is still fun and I get to see my niece enjoying the game as well.

Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Holiday Season

Hey all,  I wanted to give everyone a heads up as to where my pattern creativity has disappeared to.  It's still there, and the hundreds of patterns sitting on my hardrive still waiting to be converted are a daily reminder.

But, in October of last year I got to join the long line at the unemployment office.  Ever since then I've basically become self employed. It's not easy, and I probably would never had done it on my own but it sure beats what I got let go from :)

I am enjoying myself and learning new things, but it isn't leaving me a heck of a lot of time to work on hobbies.  So I apologize for not being so um 'fruitful' in my offerings here for the past few months but as things settle down I'll be able to get back into the swing of things.

Quite of few of you have been extremely supportive during this time period, you know who you are, and I greatly appreciate it.

So lots of smooches to everyone who's downloaded and enjoyed my work, may your Sims be fruitful in their own way ;)

I am fascinated by Architecture, specifically ornate architecture, and luckily where I live, in this tri city area there are wondeful examples around just about every corner.  Unfortunately, like any city, my home town had the growing pains where folks moved out of the inner city, into the farm lands, and the inner city became ghettos.  Beautiful homes from the late 1800 and early 1900 are being systematically destroyed because of in fighting between the preservation societies and the city councils.

  Due to this stupidity homes that could be saved due to their historical significance have been left to rot, as required mainenance is not being allowed.  Over 72 victorian homes were on the preservation list, 49 of them were released to be demolished in August because they are now beyond the ability to preserve.  Like Detroit, soon our inner city will revert back to the river fronts and fields that they once were.

Below is an article about a mansion called the Webber House, it is a perfect example of this stupidity that continues today.  Please take an interest in your own home towns history and architecture, so much craftman ship and knowledge has already been lost, help stop it if you can.

Essay is copy write Public Libraries of Saginaw

She was 82 years old when she died. Children cried when they realized she was gone. It had been a four-year struggle to survive, but she didn't make it. Seventeen years after the death the newspaper still found that there were persons who remembered and mourned the death of "The Queen" as they described her.

The "Queen" had been the residence of William L. Webber and his family at 536 Millard in Saginaw. William L. Webber, who had been the attorney for Jesse Hoyt, made his home in the elegant mansion together with son-in-law James B. Peter. Originally, the mansion was being built by Chester B. Jones, but construction had been halted prior to the purchase of the property by attorney Webber. Mr. Jones, who had been a member of the East Saginaw Board of Education, had suffered some personal misfortunes. It is surmised by historians that these tragedies probably kept him from finishing the home. William L. Webber asked son-in-law James B. Peter if he thought the mansion would be adequate to serve both the Webber and Peter families as a residence, and they continued the construction project. In later years a legendary story about the original owner evolved, and the mansion became known as "Jones Folly." Most historians dismiss portions of the legend itself as folly.

The account of the fight to save this mansion from the wrecking ball is itself of legendary proportions. However, the Committee to Save the Webber Mansion lost the battle. Never before had the possible destruction of a mansion caused so much public controversy. The home in which the last surviving Webber family member was residing had been acquired by the Saginaw Board of Education about 1934 and was being used for office space. Made of brick and stone with 18-inch thick walls and 10-feet high double doors, the "Queen" and property occupied half a city block and was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Inside were marble fireplaces. There were 16 large rooms and several small rooms, among them a law library and a study on the third floor. Also on the third floor James W. Peter, Webber's grandson, kept a trapeze for workouts. There were servant quarters and a tower room. William Atherton, the caretaker for twenty-two years, used a special opening in the tower wall from which to hang the U.S. flag on holidays. At this home the Webber family had entertained William Howard Taft and other dignitaries. Webber, Peter, and Jones were three men who had been involved with the development of East Saginaw's educational system and library resources. It was an unfortunate day when the preservation committee brought suit against the Saginaw Board of Education over the rescue of the trio's former home. One resident called the destruction of this home an act of "official vandalism." It was reported that no architectural salvage company rescued its treasures and that everything went to a landfill. But over the years, some books from the Webber home had found their way into the collections of the Hoyt Public Library. And today Saginawians can find copies of East Saginaw council proceedings or books of city ordinances which bear the name William L. Webber on the inside cover. It has been said that people have forgotten about the Webber house, but even today there are Saginawians who read the history and see the pictures and ask, "How could they?"

To say I was stupified when I saw the invitation for Featured Artist is an understatement, did I drool and fret over Select Artist?  I'd be lieing to say I was not, but I never considered Featured.  I have all of you to thank for that.  The great thing about the type of items I enjoy converting from Real Life to the Sims is the never ending supply of ideas and inspirations.  It is absolutely fascinating seeing and hearing what some of you come up with when you use them.

I hope I do not disappoint you in the future, and please, continue to let me know what you would like to see.

I haven't given up on the meshing, I am just a perfectionist, which means I trash alot of my stuff when I probably shouldn't because it's just not 'right' yet.  Devil is in the Details!

I few of the falling down queen anne style homes in my area are being restored at the moment, you are probably going to see alot of that influence in the next few months.

Again, thank you sooooo much for all your support and feedback!

J

Thank you, all of you for your support and encouragement.  And thank you TSR for the honor of being chosen as a Select Artist, I am over joyed to be part of such wonderful group of artists.

Most of all I thank my Niece Kalikins, she was the one that introduced me to the sims originally (thank goodness!  That was alot of xmas and birthday gifts covered!) and it was her encouragement to submit my first patterns that got me addicted to creating for others as well as myself.

As I head out the door to start my holiday vacation, this was a wonderful gift to receive from all of you.  Thank you again, and may you all have a safe and wonderful weekend!

<hugs all around>

I am getting more familiar with my 3D program, which is blender.  Learning the key board short cuts sure makes designing fly. Starting to feel like I am playing the keyboard like a piano to an internal design voice.  As I've said in the last blurbs, I haven't even attempted to link any thing through import export or cloning into workshop then the game.  I am mainly concentrating on learning how to create my own meshes,  so I expect my learning curve to be steep for a while.  I am kinda the type of person who opens the box then reads the instructions later :)

Below is a render of the porch railing I have developed and put together and one of the ginger bread pieces, I am still having issues where certain regions touch together that I have to work out. I also will be dipping my toes into the UV mapping soon.  Then... <drum roll> importing from workshop the clone item.  I know if I was using milkshape, alot of that is already documented.  Obviously I like doing things the hard way as Workshop directly to Blender back to Workshop scripts are still being worked on.

Is this style of porch railing appealing to fellow Simmers?

 After almost two weeks of solid study and reading fun, I finally made a porch column that is almost perfect.  I have a few issues with the bottom (haven't created the base yet) and a couple odd pokey things that didn't disappear when I removed duplicate vertexes.  But!  At least it is standing straight and not leaning... (remembering that I can lock on the z axis would be really nice to remember, I actually had to put a sticky note on the corner of my monitor)

Once I figure out what I broke with the pokey thing, and can lathe up columns at will, I will start working with the import/export to Milkshape, then see what happens when it's applied to a clone.  I am still foggy on what I need to make sure follows the .obj file, so more reading for me!

Here is a picture of the alpha column.

First, The chair came out real nice, second, the UV map was.. interesting to say the least.  Show the chair Julie! Um nope.

So learning to mesh from scratch is turning out to be fun.  My stance is better to learn how to build from the ground up, then just altering a ready made mesh for now.  If I don't know how to fix my own mistakes, it will be highly probable that I will miss important items in a ready made model.

Meshing has also made me vulnerable to what can be a really bad habit.  If you use Photoshop or Paintshop Pro you may identify with the plugin, filter, brush, tubes and texture fetish where you just cannot seem to get enough for your collection.

Well.. I am finding myself starting to do the same for import/export scripts, Textures, Tools, and scale objects. I wasted my lunch googleing my way through the internet for tools and scripts. <grins sheepishly>

Back to my chair this afternoon.  It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be, and the built in uv mapper in blender wasn't as scary/difficult a time as I had trying to figure out one of the recommended stand alone products. 

The more I mess around with this, the more ideas that start flowing through my head.  Stay tuned, you never know what this mad scientist might come up with.

<waves Goodbye>

I am playing with meshing.  Since I haven't opened up a mesh tool since Lightwave 6 (a college class that required me to recreate my car) I am a bit behind the eightball.

I have Milkshape and Blender, and for me, blender is more intuitive.  Don't ask why, it just is.  So I'll put up with the extra import export pain in the ascii later.

In today's tutorial I got to meet... well I call him George.  The Blender Wiki has such fun tutorials. (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro)

George started out as a simple cube, then something that resembled a bad day with scrabble ending with a cherry on top.  Finally his George ship began to take a really rounded shape.  The poor man's hips could put mamma Sincinelli to shame, and that belly! His feet were a bit short and his head defintely askew.  But he was my george in all his glorious jelly belly yumminess.

Now off to more challenges, supposedly next I am to create a hat, I wonder if George likes flowers?

<walks off whistleing>