New or Edited Objects in CAW

[Parhelion]

I got it into my head that I wanted a highway in my world, so I was following the Highway Tutorial found on the Sims 3 Community Forums. In the process, I ran into a curious problem: I found that the retaining walls in the game didn't quite suit me -- they all either have weird bends in them, or they all had their own traffic signs (making the piece I wanted useless, and the piece I was forced to use give the impression that my city's engineers were terribly ADD).

So, question one: Has anyone built any retaining wall sets for use? (Long shot, but hey. :D)


Question two (and beyond):
I may be forced to make my own, and I know squat diddily about this. I've been looking over the object creation tutorials, but they are all geared towards regular in-game objects.

Is there a tutorial for creating CAW objects? Other than what goes on inside meshing software, is it the same general process as regular objects?

CAN you even create brand new CAW objects?

Another post (Recoloring Bridges) mentioned you had to repackage the changes into your CC framework in CAW. I do not understand what this means. Is this a downloaded framework, or does this just mean something like "drop these in the right folder"?

If you create new CAW objects and use them in a world, do you have to do something special when packaging the world in order to share it?

[armiel]

Hi there,

first, I don't think I've seen any custom retaining walls for CAW. Best way to find out if there are any is google :P

Then there is no specified tutorial for making objects for CAW. The process is the same as making in game content, you just need to tick a few more flags to make the object show up in CAW, a tutorial on that here (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=453818).

Yes, you can create new CAW objects - just clone something that is already in CAW, that's the easiest way.

Finally, your question about CC framework. You need to have CC framework for CAW set up, so that you can use CC in CAW. Info and tut about that here (http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:CAW_Framework). For sharing your world, downloader must have the custom object you have made to make it show in the world. Objects can also be imported directly in to the world files to make sharing easier, but that way they will only work in that world. So objects you want to use in many worlds are best to upload separately.
I'm assuming the repackage thing you are talking about means importing the resources directly in the world file. This is what Simsample did in her world, and I have been recolouring trees and rocks too in a world I'm making that I want to show like that just in the specific world, so I have recolored the textures and imported them in to the world file.

[Parhelion]

Thank you! This was very helpful.

[High Plains Gamer]

So, question one: Has anyone built any retaining wall sets for use? (Long shot, but hey. :D)

Yup! But I have not uploaded them anywhere and really have no plans to do so. Primarily because they are sooooooo simple to make; it insults the intelligence of other gamers to upload such basic objects. And paritially because I make them to custom lengths to fit specific spots in my world. And partially because I want other gamers to learn how to make items like this, and this is a great beginners project.

You start with a cube. There is a cube primitive in Milkshape. Then you stretch the vertices to the exact shape you want. For length, you might want to make a number of pieces in multiples of 20 squares. For height, it depends. I usually figure that a wall section is about 3 squares high. You want some depth, at least a square.

The textures is a simple concrete texture. Concrete textures can be found all over the place. UV mapping is not a big issue because all sides have the same texture.

If there ever was a simple project to start making objects with, this is it. All you are doing is texturing a cube. Then enabling it for CAW.