Tutorial: Animation Alchemist

Welcome to this tutorial. The goal is to provide information about Animation Alchemist, a program made for The Sims. With it people can change the animations an object uses. One can clone a Plant and change the animations of watering it, for example. That's exactly what will be done now.

First thing to do is to clone a Plant. In this demostration, I cloned the Jade Plant. You can alter graphics and such yourself, using a program like Transmogrifier. In the screenshots, I'll simply use the Jade Plant.

What you need is the object file with the object you want to edit. This is an IFF file. You also need Animation Alchemist, which you can download at this site: http://iffedit.simprograms.com and The Sims Character Studio, for viewing animations. You can get that at this site: http://www.simprograms.com

What we'll do is start Animation Alchemist. When you start it, don't be alarmed. It's just loading the animations from the game. After it loads, you'll end up in a window like this:


Figure 1: Startup window.

As you can see, everything is still disabled. You are now to open your object. In this example, I open the Jade Plant:


Figure 2: Opening an object file.

After clicking "Open" we'll see this:


Figure 3: After opening the Jade Plant.

Ok, now you're wondering what to do right? Well, this is why Character Studio comes in handy. Open that up. The Animation Alchemist can be used at the same time Character Studio is running, so you don't have to worry about closing the program. After Character Studio is loaded, take some time and match the animations with the animations the object has in Animation Alchemist. Make a descion on what animation you want to switch. You can switch all of them if you'd like, but in this tutorial, I'm focusing on watering the plant. Now, after you picked a animation from Character Studio you want to replace, take a look at it's name. For this tutorial, we are using A20 - Toliet1 - Standinggo1loop.


Figure 4: Character Studio running with the animation.

Now what you want to do is to find that animation in Animation Alchemist. You can find a complete listing of animations under the checkbox sign. You don't need to worry about that checkbox, since you don't need it. Be sure you only select Adult animations since your using an A20 under STR# List. If you using C20, then be sure to use only Child Animations. Adult Animations begin with the letter A, and Child Animations begin with the letter C. Don't let this confuse you. After you have found A20 - Toliet1 - Standinggo1loop in Animation Alchemist, look to the right of the Animations and you will see the Objects Animations. In this, you will be replacing animation #1 and animation #3. You don't need to worry about the number's either, it's just an easy way of letting you select animations.


Figure 5: #1 and #3 are the animations we will be swapping.

Ok, now in the lower leftside of the program, you will see a little button called Set. After you selected A20 - Toliet1 - Standinggo1loop and #1, hit Set. #1 has now been replaced with A20 - Toliet1 - Standinggo1loop. Now, do the same with the #3 animation, and hit set. Your new Object Animations should look like this:


Figure 6: Your new Object Animations.

Ok, your done editing the Adults animations! If you would like, you may do the same for the Child animations, but be sure they start with a C. All you do is follow the steps and volia, the Child can now take roll with the new animation. Before you leave, make sure you save your file. Now it's ready for some in-game testing.


Figure 6: Let's hope Bella never finds out about this.

Well, hope you had fun and learned a few things. There are a few more tools you can use like the Menu Editor to change the Pie menus to make it say "Whizz" or something funny like that. Have fun editing!

Tutorial by Judhudson@knology.net