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Lizzielilyy's avatar
Lizzielilyy
Seasoned Veteran
2 years ago

SimLit Top Tips - How to Make it Look Good

I thought I'd make a thread to share tips and tricks about writing SimLit for seasoned and beginner player/writers! I thought a good first topic would be making your SimLit look its best when playing TS3 specifically, so let's hear your best advice!

I'll start;


  • Use Tab to remove the interface and any notifications from your screenshots. This also gives you more freedom when moving the camera as it will move with your mouse which helps create the perfect angle. It's especially useful to move into tab mode when selecting subjects for portrait or still life painting as well as Sim photography
  • Use hideheadlineeffects on cheat to get rid of plumbobs, thought and speech bubbles, and skill meters so your photos can look that bit more like a photograph!
  • Use the lighting squares from buydebug (use the cheat testingcheatsenabled true and then buydebug on) to create light without having a light fixture dangling into your photo and obscuring subjects. This also helps if you need a particular scene but the game time is wrong.


What do you use to make your gameplay illustrate your writing in the best way?
  • texansky's avatar
    texansky
    Seasoned Traveler

    I use a photo editor now to reduce the size of any shots I plan to publish by 50% to keep each image at 500k or less. I also use it to brighten the images so they show up better when viewing my blog from a phone.

    I didn't do that on my wix blog and ran out of space for images.
  • Those are all great tips, especially about the lighting. I might use that tip at some point!
  • Lizzielilyy's avatar
    Lizzielilyy
    Seasoned Veteran
    @scribbly_sims I definitely need to give ReShade a go at some point, it sounds amazing!

    @texansky that's really clever, I often wonder what I will do if I run out of space :joy:

    thank you both for contributing!

    @Sims4MagicalTales I'm glad they're useful :)
  • AlinaHarrison's avatar
    AlinaHarrison
    Seasoned Newcomer
    This is wonderful info for anyone that wants to create more dimension and depth to their storytelling! I use all the tips that you mentioned and they make for some great screenshots <3

    The other thing I use is ReShade to create more ambient lighting and also to create some depth in my photos, blurring the background etc! It's a bit of a finicky program to use at first but it really gives an edge to your photos!
  • AlinaHarrison's avatar
    AlinaHarrison
    Seasoned Newcomer
    @lizzielilyy it's definitely worth it! Depth of field is the one effect that still has my head scratching sometimes but this video really helped me with a lot of questions I had: https://youtu.be/-N995KqSPeQ?si=S_yhl4zwDOLVF6FV

    Also if anyone ever has any qs regarding ReShade please don't hesitate to contact me or @ me in this thread!! Always more than happy to help out any way I can <3