If you’re like me and are constantly working on different projects/learning new things/playing other games, you may have forgotten the keyboard commands for Body Shop when you come back to it. This is not a tutorial as such, just a guide on all keyboard commands that people can refer to (including me!).

F3

Free Camera

By holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse you can move the camera around the sim

By holding down the right mouse button and dragging the mouse you can zoom in and out

By holding down both mouse buttons and dragging the mouse you can pan around the viewport

Press F3 to get back to “normal” view

F5

Change viewport background, default is black

You can create your own background by making and saving a single colour or patterned background. Name it userBkg.bmp and save it to: \My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\. Any time you would like the default background back, remove your saved .bmp

Press F5 again to return to the original viewport

F6

Press this to put your sims in a different rigid pose where the arms are moved upwards at the sides. This is useful when creating skins to see the seams at the sides properly

Pressing any thumbnail or changing age/gender/bodytype will take your sims back out of the pose. Unfortunately, pressing F6 doesn’t work

F7

Zoom out to far view if you are in close-up mode

F8

Zoom in on the face of the sim, use F7 to zoom back

F9

Removes the interface and you see the sim in a full viewport. You can use the left mouse button (drag at the same time) to turn the sim around

Press F9 to get the interface back

Alt + Enter

Press these to go into full-screen mode (I love this!) and press the same to get back to the normal view mode.

As the Sims 2 runs on a 3D engine, each object in the game will be affected by the lighting (sun or indoor) and shadows in the game. Therefore, each object you clone from will always have it’s own values for how it is affected by either. One example to explain this would be to clone a counter and also a fridge and put the same textures on them both. You might think they should look the same in the game but they don’t. This is due to the fridge having different values for reflection and surface lighting than the counter in the original objects.

Material Properties, Useful When Making Sets

a) This tutorial requires you to have working knowledge of SimPE
b) Object Workshop = OW

1. Okay, open your counter in SimPE
2. Find the definitions by clicking on Material Definition under File Types at the top left and then clicking on the Material Definition in the Packed Files frame next to the File Types frame.
3. To get the exact numbers from the counter, you need to open the _clean material definition.
4. (To see if you have the clean one, you can check under Texture Image in the Plugin View before going to the Material Definitions)

Write down the numbers next to the following Properties:

1. deprecatedStdMatInvDiffuseCoeffMultiplier
2. reflectivity
3. stdMatDiffCoef
4. stdMatSpecCoef
5. stdMatSpecPower

The next steps:

1. Then open up your fridge, click on Material Definition and go to Plugin View.
2. Change the above mentioned values to those you wrote down from the counter, hit commit and ctrl s your file (save it by holding down those keys)
3. Fire up your game and put both side by side. Perfect. =)

The reason why we changed the fridge’s values instead of the counter’s is because it has a reflectivity map (texture) so that it shines and reflects more in the game. Of course, if you want a shiny reflecting matching counter instead, you can use the properties of the fridge on the counter and this technique can be applied to any object(s) you edit with SimPE.

Have fun!

If you ever try to recolour the chrome fridge to a non-reflective surface texture, you will notice that it doesn’t look anything like the texture you made outside of the game. Most of the time the reflectivity map contained in the object's core is responsible for that. Read the tutorial for more info and a step by step guide on how to remove/edit it.

Deleting Reflectivity Map And Editing Values in Texture

1) This tutorial requires you to have working knowledge of Object Workshop in SimPE.
2) Object Workshop = OW.

If you rely solely on Object Workshop to recolour textures then this is the way to get rid of the reflection map reference and texture. In this example I am using a fridge. This tutorial would also apply to any other object you want the reflectivity map removed from.

We'll take, for example, the expensive fridge. Object Workshop only gives you the option to recolour the chrome material. If you want to make wood material or patterned materials then the chrome map may bother you because it looks different to what you expect in the game.

1. First of all, open OW inside of SimPE, find the expensive fridge.
2. Create a new .package file (with the default colour options) and give it a name.
3. Note: If you want, you can export the image and re-texture it before editing out the reflectivity map and references to it.

If you test the file before you edit any properties, you will be disappointed with it’s appearance in the game. It will look really awful. It will be way too light and won’t match the other pieces of furniture with the same texture. This is because the file you can re-colour from in OW refers to a reflection map which gives it that "shine" in the game - although I find it way too light myself. Don't dare put that chrome fridge outside; it will turn gold…. or any other yucky colour.

Next steps:

1. If you ran the game, shut it down. Run SimPE and open your file again.
2. Under File Types, click on Material Definition and then in the right pane (Packed Files), click yet again on Material Definition.
3. Go to Plugin View and look at the Properties list. What you need to find is as follows:
4. 
5. Look to where it says stdMatEnvCubeTextureName: reflectionkitchenhighcontrast-envcube
6. Click on it and in the pane next to this window, click on delete.
7. Hit Commit and save the file by holding down the keys Ctrl and s.
8. Where it says stdMatEnvMode: reflection: click on that and in the right pane; change the value to "none" (without the quotes).
9. Hit Commit again and save your file once more. See image below:
10. 
11. Now where it says stdMatEnvCubeCoef, change it to 0,0,0 in the Property pane under Value.
12. Hit Commit, save your file again.
13. Please check your File List in the Plugin View. It's a tab next to the Properties tab. If you still see the reflectionkitchenhighcontrast-envcube map there along with the object map, click on the reflection map and delete it in the pane next to the File List. Again, commit and ctrl-s.

I will note here that I've found that changes sometimes don't stick, so be sure to check your files after you've saved them by clicking on something else and going back to the plugin view after clicking on Material Definition again.

It's that easy. Wood textures & other patterns will now display correctly.

Test. Have fun. =)