Posts Tagged ‘skn files’

Hi guys. Found something else that might be of interest to some. Some of you might be into the whole skinning thing. That is, creating skins (2D bitmaps) for your Sim characters. Most of you might make them in Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop, then fire up SimShow to see your work, edit, rinse, repeat, etc. etc. You might be interested in checking out a tool called Ultimate Unwrap3D. This program lets you load up the SKN file (and bitmap) and edit it in the program, showing you the results immediately. Yet another tool for your collection and if only I had enough time to write all the tools in the world. Unfortunately, it isn’t freeware and the save feature is disabled in the demo but if you want to take a look you can check it out here. Also remember to grab the Sims plug-in to load up your SKN files. Let me know how it works (and if it works, some programs claim to work with SKN files but fail miserably with the UV mappings that Maxis uses). Enjoy.

Thought I would pass on some news that hit a couple of mailing lists regarding Vacation and perhaps some issues you might have with speed etc. This apparently comes from Maxis but I don’t know the source. I finally picked up a copy of Vacation today so I’ll be poking around tommorow and doing some updates to programs as well as a wealth of other goodies going on right now. Here’s the posting. Hope it helps:

“…here is a list of what I know so far and you can pass on this information:

- The Sims Vacation loads faster from .far files than .iff files. This is true.

- Lowering Hardware Acceleration will help with DirectX 8. It will not help and should hurt if you have DirectX 6 or DirectX 7.

- Turning off Anti-Virus protection will help incredibly. If your Anti-Virus Software has the option to not scan certain file types on read then setting it not to scan .iff, .bmp, .cmx, and .skn files will help.

- Though Windows XP is supported with The Sims Vacation, no changes were made specifically for Windows XP. Right clicking on sims.exe in the windows explorer, selecting properties, then the compatibility tab, and selecting Windows 98/ME compatibility will help some users.

- Avoid Zooming in and out unless needed. Changing Zoom level requires reloading all the art of the objects.

- When entering a lot, scroll around the lot first. This will cause all the art to load for the objects on the lot, The Sims actually loads the art when the object is first on the screen.”

Merry Christmas! Oh wait, not yet. Sorry, got ahead of myself there. Too much roasting my chestnuts on an open fire today (hmm… that didn’t come out quite right). Never mind.

I’ve updated the File Formats section (that I said I would 3 months ago, better late than never right?) with a description of the SKN files. I know, I know. This isn’t much of a mystery as MilkShape can import it and various Sim tools can modify them (like BodyMesh) but there it is. I’m just working on the CMX file which describes the suits, skeletons and practices for a Sim then onto the other animation formats. Maybe armed with this someone will put together a character animation program? Well, check out Simpose-ium as Clive has some basic support for this now. Enjoy.