I promised that if i had any advice i would post it so here goes…
Merola’s Multi-Painting
This is the most valuable object for me. It allows you to set personalities, aspiration, needs, etc. Not only can you fill up needs, you can drain them too. Ever since I found this hack, I have not made a movie without it.
Visible Ceiling Tile
This is an awesome invention. I think filming without showing ceilings gives you the best framing of shots but there are times when you do far shots that the ceiling does show. Although this tile is a pain to install since you have to put one over every square, it’s so worth it.
No School Hack
I hate filming with kids and teens because they have to go to school or the social worker will take them away. I couldn’t help but film with kids in The Visitors series so I found this hack that keeps the school bus from coming and makes filming much easier. When you install this, you’ll get a prompt for the school bus to which you’ll just choose “Delete.” You can remove this hack if you like to just play (which I never do) and after a few gameplays, the bus finally comes back.
Buyable Lighting Bolts and Oddities (Rain mod)
This hack has the rain and lighting mods. The rain is an awesome effect for movies. You’ll find this hack in the collections folder. You place the rain on your lot and it rains for a several hours. If you have a large lot, you have to place the rain on different areas of the lot. Be sure to save before using this hack in case the rain doesn’t stop and you have to exit the game.
Microphone
I’d been looking for a microphone forever and finally found this one which I used for Speed of Sound. It functions like the mirror allowing your Sim to practice speech or romance. If you are creative with your shots, you can make it look like your Sim is actually singing. Pretty cool, eh?
Unlocked Outfits
This has the downloads for some of the locked outfits in the game. Even though you can do this in CAS, it is useful for when you are already in game.
Sleeping ZZZ’s and Trigger Nightmares
The thing that shows up in my movies that I dislike are those zzz’s coming out of Sims when they sleep. Now there’s a solution and you can get rid of those zzz’s by installing this hack. The only time it doesn’t get rid of zzz’s is when the Sims pass out and you’ll have to continue to use still shots for those. Also, you can now trigger nightmares! No longer do you have to spend many Sims days making your Sims suffer to trigger nightmares. The hack basically looks like the in-game plant with the blue vase. You put it on your lot and you can click on it and it will allow you to trigger nightmares. They have nightmares pretty instantly when you trigger it.
Remove Musical Notes and Halo from Instruments
This hack was requested by a bunch of us movie makers and thanks to the help of Daysies, we were able to get it filled! This hack removes those notes and blue halo from the band instruments for more realism. It also removes notes from the Karaoke machine.
Remove Coffee Jitters
This is another hack a bunch of us requested and Daysies helped us get it fulfilled. This hack removes the silly shaking Sims do after they drink a cup of coffee. Why they have to get the jitters in the first place, who knows! There is also an opposite hack which gives the Sims extreme jitters but I haven’t used it in my game.
PREPARING YOUR PC FOR FILMING
Defrag your computer drives regularly and especially before filming.
Turn off any unnecessary programs that are running, before filming – check your Sims 2 manual for how to do this and which programs to shut down. We even film with our virus software temporarily disabled. Extra programs running, such as MSN Messenger, can affect the final picture quality.
OPTIMISING YOUR GAME READY TO FILM
1. Go to Camera Options and disable Video Sound Capture, this is very important as it improves the picture quality.
2. Go to Graphic Performance in your game options and check you have shadows and reflections on etc, if your computer can handle these settings. If, your computer can’t handle the higher settings whilst setting up a scene, then run some of these on medium. When you’re ready to start recording, you can switch to the higher settings and turn smooth edges on.
FILMING DO’S & DONT’S
1. Common newbie mistakes: Never show plumbobs, relationship points, thought and speech bubbles (unless your story requires these things). If you have the Nightlife EP, use the showheadlines off cheat to stop the bubbles and relationship points.
If you don’t have the Nightlife EP, an easy way to film without showing the plumbbob, is to have a “dummy” or spare sim on the lot and have them selected as the playable sim, so your actor doesn’t have the plumbbob over his/her head.
2. Cartoon-Like Extras: We recommend that you remove certain cartoon-like animations from your shots, unless you’re film requires a more “cartoon” style of course! As of writing this tutorial there isn’t a hack to remove the ’spinning stars’ around the head after the slap interaction unfortunately. However there are solutions for the ’sleeping zzz’s’ – TwoJeff’s Movie Making Tools, which also can be used to trigger a nightmare and removing the musical notes from instruments and stereos – Numenor’s No Visual Effects (see Useful Objects for links)
3. CameraMan Mode: Always film in Cameraman mode with the walls and roof up, making good use of the preset angles, and ceiling tiles…never show the sky through indoor rooms.
4. More is better: Always record much, much, more footage than you think you will need, dialogue and lip-syncing (note that the Sims 2 doesn’t come with a lip synching tool, you have to match up the mouth movements with any dialogue or singing) is always easier to edit the more footage you have to work with, and you may have captured something or someone in your shot that you didn’t intend to.
5. Free Will: Turning free will OFF in the game settings options will make your Sims a little easier to control.
6. Use Your Imagination: Filming Sims 2 machinima requires alot of imagination and creativity. Much of what you see in other movies is infact ’smoke and mirrors’, clever tricks sometimes using the moveobjects [on/off] cheat, such as in ‘Scars and Souvenirs’, when the actress is sat on the bed, or lining up the synchronised dancers in ‘Move Over Darling’.
7 disable game sound – in your game options turn off sound recording, as recording with the audio on can seriously affect the video quality.
