Some useful tips to film with the Sims 3

If you are going to make Machinima* with the Sims 3, there are some useful things to know about.

*I've noticed a lot of people don't know what Machinima means. Machinima is a term used for movies filmed in a virtual space, such as video games. The word Machinima comes from Machine and cinema. Get it? Machine > Sims 3 (For example), cinema > film.


Basics

When you're in your game, and you want to start filming, you press ''V''. This makes the game record everything you see. When you're done with your shot, you press ''V'' again to stop filming.

Your recorded video will be saved here:

Documents>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3>Recorded Videos


Video Capture

You should also know about the Video capture settings. You can access these through the options screen.

It's all self-explanatory, but there's something I'd like to add:

When you're going for the best quality, you need to put video capture size to ''large'' and video capture quality at ''Highest (uncompressed)''. This does however demand a lot more from your computer, so be cautious not to strain it too much resulting in your footage becoming choppy.


If you want, you can also manually change the size at which your footage is recorded. For this, you need to go to:

Computer>Local Disk>Program files>Electronic Arts>The Sims 3>Game>Bin>Sims3

ATTENTION EXPANSION-/STUFF PACK OWNERS:

If you have a stuff pack or expansion pack installed, you need to alter this file in the directory of the newest game instead. If you have the Sims 3 + World Adventures, for example, instead of going to the 'The Sims 3' directory you go to the 'The Sims 3 World Adventures' directory. If you have the basegame + WA + High-End Loft Stuff, you need to go to the 'The Sims 3 High-End Loft Stuff' directory.

This will probably be an on-going trend, so be sure to keep that mind.

This ini file (Sims3, which you can open with Notepad, for example) contains the recording properties, which are on top of the list.

Let's assume you want to increase the recording size, so you'd get HD images on youtube. For this you'll edit the numbers behind ''Large'' to 1280x720. When done, you simply save the file.

Make sure that you have the recording size in-game set to large, or whatever value you edited the numbers for (And also keep in mind that increasing these values will make filming more demanding on your computer).

It doesn't matter what resolution your game is set to, because the recorded footage will automatically be converted to the assigned resolution.



Editing

This is the real technical part. There's a whole mirage of editing programs out there, one being easier to use than the other.

For starters, windows movie maker is a good tool. It doesn't offer much tools to edit your video, but it's a good way to learn your way around editing. You should have this on your computer if you're using Windows.

Also, with the new Sims 3 website you have a similar editing program on there. You can read more about it here.

I use Sony Vegas 8, which offers quite a lot of tools, yet isn't too complicated.


First person camera mode

This allows you to control the camera more freely, and position it at places you wouldn't be able to by using the default camera.

You can access this by pressing ''TAB" on your keyboard.

There's multple ways to move around, but I use the WASD keys to move.

W is forward
A is left
S is back
D is right

To zoom in and out, you can use Z to zoom in, and X to zoom out.

To ''roll'' the camera left or right you press Shift + A or D.

You might have seen some movies where they've used impressive pans, these can be done by using preset angles, or some insane camera control :p.

To make the movement faster or slower, you'll need to edit the camera file. You can read more about that here.

Preset angles

If you want the camera to smoothly move from one point to another, you can use preset angles to do so.

I believe this is only possible when using first person camera mode, but I'm not sure because I never use anything else.

To begin, you'll need to save at least one angle. You can do this by simultaneously pressing CTRL+5/6/7/8/9. Any of those numbers will do, but anything lower than 5 or higher than 9 doesn't work.

When you've saved one angle to a number, you move your camera to anywhere else in the world.

Now, when you're at a different angle and want the camera to move to the saved one, you press the number (NOT control too, or you'll save the angle you're at now) you've assigned to that angle. If you did everything right, your camera should ''jump'' there now!

You can assign angles to every number, which makes for a total of 5 different angles to jump between at one time!


Making Sims do what you want them to

This is the biggest obstacle with The Sims 3 at the moment. Because of the lack of hacks and animation boxes, we can't easily make them do what we want them to do. Therefor, you'll have to rely on your timing and really get to know each animation there currently is.

Edit: There are some hacks around now which allow you to play animations on command. One such hack is the 'Chaos Mod Painting', by 'ChaosMageX'.

It has all kinds of neat features that are useful for us Machinima-makers. Check it out here: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=356513