The Bentform CollectionOne thing that The Sims 2 is short on is massive sets of coordinated items; there'll be a few objects in some style, some more in another, but not usually enough of any particular look to really do a whole themed house with. I decided to tackle making a whole collection of co-ordinated items as a good project for learning how to use SimPE, a fan-created package editing program. For inspiration on the shapes used, I wanted to duplicate the "bent plywood" look of furniture from the 60's. And, to make recolouring the collection easy, I wanted all of the items in the Bentform Collection to share the same texture file. These two goals work well together, as the shapes lend themselves nicely to a plain wood-grained texture, allowing me to have my texture incorporate a large area of otherwise undetailed woodgrain. I map the pieces to this area so that different portions of the grain are being used on different areas of each object; it helps to prevent the unrealistic noticeable repetition of pattern that might otherwise occur with the pieces. This project is still underway. There are some parts of the house - notably the kitchen - that I don't want to tackle before finding a way to get the game's bone data to and from 3DS Max (I want my cupboards to really open, darnnit!). So far I've done a dining set, occasional tables set, home office set, bedroom set, and a set of some bedding-matching items. Here are screenshots of the various sets.  The dining set. All objects in the collection pull their texture from the files for the dining table.  Occasional tables. I may re-work the coffee table to be more in line with the shapes of the other two tables. Shown with the Art Deco loveseat.  Home office set. The bookcase pulls its book texture from a Maxis bookshelf.  Bedroom set. The bedding mesh is a Maxis model, and the beds pull their bedding textures from a Maxis bed.  The bench cushions and the drapes pull their textures from a Maxis bed. The drape mesh was based on a Maxis object, wth several extraneous parts removed, and re-mapped to use the bedding texture layout in a suitable manner. Additional Bentform items:
 Copyright 2005 - Sonya Roberts |
