This is a HUGE topic - there is literally an entire library's worth of information on creating Sims custom content. As a question it frustrates me enormously because so many people write to us asking questions like 'please teach me how to make my own custom content, only can you explain it really simply and quickly please because I read a tutorial and it didn't help/was boring/didn't make sense' or words to that effect.

Most sites that do provide some pointers on custom content creation tend to provide tutorial listings. Certainly in the past I have tried posting a tutorial list, but it ran out of date so quickly that it became simply too time consuming to maintain, plus once people had exhausted the tutorials they often didn't know where to go from there. Instead here I'm opting for explaining an approach that I, and countless other community artists have used to learning custom content creation. 

If you are looking for something you can run up in just a few minutes then the ONLY thing you may be able to produce is a wall or floor and that assumes that you already know your way around a graphics program. Most of us who do create things like new meshes for Sims or furniture have spent literally YEARS learning our craft, and in most cases quite a lot of money so we may have limited patience with people who expect to make something awesome without time or effort or who expect it to be explained to them instead of going out and finding out the information for themselves.

It sounds patronizing but so many people haven't the first clue what a search engine is for or how to use one, but without the most basic skill of being able to search for tutorials and resources online you don't have a chance, its most certainly how other artists learned, by searching for tutorials, its how I learned. If you're flummoxed by it all then I'd recommend this as a starting place - otherwise get a book or take a course. Seriously!

Plus I guarantee you will get further towards your goal in one hour by typing an appropriate search phrase into your search engine of choice than you ever will by posting vague 'how do I make my own custom content' questions to this or any other website. There's nothing wrong with asking specific questions from those who do know, but I would strongly advice that you seek out places that are specifically geared up for teaching, i.e. ModTheSims2 Create forums. As with so many things, we don't provide help of this sort, not because we wish to be mean or unhelpful, but because its a question we've been asked by literally thousands of people over the years, giving one-to-one tuition to so many individuals would be completely impractical, its not the purpose of this site and it would be a huge waste of our time to repeat tutorials that are already available elsewhere. 

I have deliberately NOT included many tutorial links in this topic for 2 reasons. Firstly so I don't have to go back and update it every time one of them changes and secondly so that if you are serious about doing this you'll have to go looking for yourself. When we had a tutorial listing too many people would try the recommended tutorial and then come back and complain to me that it was too difficult or out of date or didn't cover enough stuff etc, instead of simply going back to their Search Engine results and trying a different link! 

There is LITERALLY NO SUBSTITUTE for spending time and following instructions carefully. The more technical and complicated areas of content creation are full of areas where if you miss a step or rush through something you WILL FAIL. If you start out expecting instant results you are really absolutely guaranteed to be disappointed - expect to get it wrong the first 10 times and you may be pleasantly surprised when try 2 or 3 actually works out for you. Seriously!

If you haven't the patience to read through a long tutorial or even to read through this short advice topic here, perhaps custom content creation is not for you? There is virtually NOTHING useful you can learn in an instant on this extremely ENORMOUS subject. It IS difficult and it takes a lot of time. If you think in terms of months and years you are in the right arena.

Don't just assume something is a no-go because you don't get it right the first time or couldn't follow the tutorial - try another example, try a different tutorial - try your project over again because you might have missed a step! Check the DATE on the tutorial you are following, some technical tutorials on meshing for Sims 2 are out of date as the methods change often as the various tools are still in development. Look for new additions, if the tutorial is in a forum then READ the comments attached to it. If someone else found a problem then you can find that sooner rather than banging your head against a brick wall doing the same thing simply because the amendment isn't in the tutorial. 

Again, another issue that comes up here time and time again, people who say things like 'I want to make clothes but I can't find Bodyshop on my computer', or 'I made a dress but now I can't find the file', or 'I found a tutorial at ModTheSims2 but I don't know how to open it'. LEARN how to use and navigate your computer, READ instructions! If you actually don't know how to do basic things like find an installed program, open a Word document or PDF file, if you don't know how to unzip something or how to install custom content then you need to learn all those things before you can start to make your own content. Why? Because you can't follow the tutorials until you know these things! Get a Windows for Dummies book or take a basic computer course! Seriously, if you don't know how to install a new program or find a file you want to work on you're not on the starting line - even as a fresh-faced newbie Sim creator in 2003 I started out with nearly 20 years experience of just using computers and doing basic graphic design! You don't need a Computer Science degree, but a basic 'clue' is required, which again leads back to rule number 1 - if you don't know how to do something, SEARCH FOR AN ANSWER! The internet is a wonderful place when used well.

Don't give up at the first try, start simple and be patient with yourself. You may want to create an awesome new car or want to make wonderful new hairstyles, but if you've never opened a graphics program before then start with something less ambitious! If you spend some time working your way up from simple textures for walls, texturing furniture or clothes, doing a few small mesh adjustment projects and learning about UV maps and models etc, before you get to the hardcore tutorials then you'll be in a much better place with that background knowledge. 

If you already know your way around your graphics program, SimPE etc, then it'll seem much less scary and intimidating when you get to the advanced stuff AND you'll almost certainly get better quality results using all the other skills you've learned along the way. As dreadfully trite as this sounds, knowledge is a journey and this isn't really a whole lot different to any other complex skill you might learn so approaching it in the same way is a good idea. You wouldn't expect to cook a perfect souffle on your first try if you didn't know how to make cheese on toast, so don't expect to turn into a super-ace modder, mesher or designer over night! You may not want to do certain things, but by treating them as part of the process rather than an irritating distraction will be beneficial in the long term. 

Please note the information below is for Sims 2 Only

What you will need:-

Any programs listed here are not created by us  - if you want information on how to use them then please search online for tutorials!! 

I have put a very approximate cost range by each type of creating - the upper figure represents usually the cost of the full version newest programs that I would consider reasonable to use for these content production methods. There are certainly many more ways to spend more money on most of these but that should represent the basic investment cost for those who are serious about learning those particular skill sets. There are usually some free alternatives for some things (again search and if it exists you'll probably find it eventually) but a lot of the free options are much harder to use because they lack many advanced features and tutorials tend to be more scarce than for the main stream programs.

I have NOT included a value for the potential cost of buying meshes, either Sims meshes for recolouring or non-Sim meshes for converting. If you're intending to use other people's meshes rather than making your own then its a good idea to budget extra for that, nor does the quoted cost include web hosting if you wish to share items you've made. There are free meshes but they tend to be limited, often not very good quality and have already been used to death by a lot of Sim creators. The cost of furniture meshes may vary wildly from just a couple of dollars up to tens of thousands of dollars, the same is true of potential accessory and hair style meshes.

Please DON'T waste my time or yours complaing to me about your personal finances, or lack of them - I am not responsible for the cost of any of the suggested/recommended programs, plus I've spent over £8000 on Sims creation software in the past 5 years, along with many computer upgrades, the cost of buying all the games & EP's plus putting in large contributions towards the cost of this website despite the fact that I work for a not-for-profit organization which pays me only a little above UK minimum wage. Besides which, beyond being sympathetic, there really is nothing I can do to help you - I'm certainly not about to recommend places where you can download illegal versions and I'm not sharing my license keys!

Some software you may be able to purchase at a discount if you attend school, college or university - some discounts can be up to 90% depending on the retailer so its really worth having if you can arrange it. Check with the supplier what proof they need and make sure someone at your school can provide it before you buy the program, or better yet see if your school has access to copies - they may already have licenses for some of the programs you want which you can use for free.

Walls & Floors: cost: $0 - $700

• You'll need Homecrafter from the official site: http://thesims2.ea.com/getcoolstuff/homecrafter.php

• You'll need a graphics program - you can use virtually any graphics program, although support for layers will make your life easier! My recommendation would be Paint.net - its simpler than The Gimp or Photoshop but has a lot of the same features.

• Whilst its not necessary, you may find that using a texture program can save a lot of time when creating seamlessly tiling textures, there are some free options, but my recommendation would be Seamless Factory - its cheap ($50) and easy to learn.

Creating textures for clothing, hair, make-up, accessories: cost $0 - $680

• You'll need to use Bodyshop - this comes WITH The Sims 2, so if that is installed on your computer then all you need to do is find it and run it! If you don't know how to find an installed program then I'd suggest some remedial tutorials on how to use Windows are in order, if you don't know how to navigate your computer then make that your first priority! (Rule no.4)

• A GOOD graphics program is a MUST. You need something that supports LAYERS, again my recommendation would be Paint.net or The Gimp for those who can't afford Photoshop.

• Whilst its not strictly necessary, a lot of Skinners also find having SimPE and a UV mapping program is useful, so you can extract meshes and create a UV map to design on. 

Houses: cost $0+

• You will need the Clean Pack Installer from ModTheSims 2 - make sure you understand how and why you need to use this program if you are contemplating SHARING your houses with other people. The primary cause of people's games crashing is due to careless house builders not checking their houses before the publish them followed by equally careless downloaders who blindly install the contents of all the houses without question.

• If you want to make your own custom furniture and walls & floors to go in your houses then you'll need to learn to make those separately, although contrary to popular opinion there are a lot of sites and creators who do allow their items to be used in houses shared online, including Parsimonious!

• If you are sharing your houses then you may need a simple graphics program to create preview pictures - this is something you can us MSPaint and similar for, although again, I'd recommend Paint.net as its altogether more capable so you can pretty up your pictures with nice borders or text or whatever!

Furniture Recolouring: cost $0 - $680

• You'll need SimPE - it doesn't really matter which version you have so long as its 0.15 or later. Do be aware a lot of recolour tutorials are quite old so SimPE's UI may look different in the screenshots (Rule no.3)

• You will need a graphics program that supports LAYERS - although you could scribble on the textures in MSPaint, you wont be able to do anything with transparency so get a proper graphics program. Again Paint.net or The Gimp for those who can't afford Photoshop.

• As with creating Skins textures, a UV mapping program can be extremely useful to extract meshes so you can create a UV map to guide your texturing.

Body, Hair & Accessory Meshing: cost $30 - $2680+

• Please for the love of all that is good and green, make sure you can create clothing, hair or accessory TEXTURES before you start attempting to mesh. Although a graphics program isn't strictly required for meshing, you'll need one in order to learn to make textures - wont you! Again whatever you choose must support layers, Paint.net or The Gimp for those who can't afford Photoshop.

• You'll need SimPE - get the latest version you can but as with everything else, do be careful to check tutorial dates and read attached comments, there are lots of little steps in Sim meshing which do periodically change so can render parts of tutorials out of date.

• You MUST have Milkshape, this isn't negotiable, it is $30 but as there's only 1 set of plugins which are specifically for Milkshape there aren't any alternatives. Unless you want to code new plugins for a different program. I didn't make it that way so please don't whine to me for free alternatives (as so many people have done in the past like its in some way my fault that Milkshape was chosen and that it costs money to register!). 

• It is possible to create meshes in a different 3D program and then import them into Milkshape to do the bone assignments - it is rather up to you which program you choose although I'd personally advice against 3D Studio Max as aside from being rather expensive ($3000+) it has a lot of compatibility issues with The Sims 2 and Sim meshing. Maxis uses Maya, I can't really advice if its appropriate or fully compatible, I've recently bought a copy myself but its a pretty scary and hardcore program so I've yet to find out whether or not its good for Sim meshing! I'd suggest talking to someone else who does use it for this purpose before contemplating investing that kind of money in it!

• There are several different plugins you'll need for Milkshape - you will find those linked to in virtually every meshing tutorial so be on the look out for those! Fortunately those are free!

Furniture Meshing: cost $30 - $3680+

• You will need either Milkshape ($30) or Maya (upwards of $2000) - you can use other 3D programs in addition to either one of those two, but you'll need one of those programs which support the .obj format in order to create files to import into your Objects package. I use 3D Studio Max, its a mid-level program in that its not as complicated to learn as Maya, but its also on the expensive side at $3000 for the basic new version. You can use just Milkshape to create models, there are some basic free programs, i.e. Wings3D or Anim8tor but I have to be honest, they are hard because they're very simple and therefore extremely difficult to do anything much with them. Blender is another free option and unlike the others is a fairly robust and 'grown up' CAD tool but it is probably one of the hardest programs to learn, the UI is pretty complicated and tutorials for it aren't that common.

• You'll need SimPE - it doesn't really matter which version you have so long as its 0.15 or later. There is only one tutorial that covers the basic simple new mesh object method so I might as well save you the bother of looking for it yourself by JWoods at ModTheSims2. Do be aware though that there are different procedures for animating objects and you'll likely need to look at some basic modding tutorials for dealing with some of the more awkward types of furniture i.e. lamps, self-referencing objects, diagonals etc.

• You don't necessarily *need* a graphics program, but as with Body meshing, I hope you have the sense to learn to retexture existing objects before you launch off into trying to make your own - whatever you choose must support layers, Paint.net or The Gimp for those who can't afford Photoshop. Certainly if you want to create new textures for your new objects, rather than simply recycling Maxis textures on to your meshes, you will need a graphics program that supports LAYERS and ideally is .dds compatible to get the best quality textures.

• You may want a separate UV mapper program, most CAD programs come with a UV mapper of some variety, but if yours doesn't or you don't like it, then getting a separate .obj mapper is a good idea. My recommendation would be UV Mapper Pro, its cheap at just $30 and has a nice WYSIWYG interface.

Modding: cost $0

• You will need SimPE OR Datgen (which I don't have a valid URL for so you'll need to hunt that down yourself if you want to try it). This is not my area of expertise however if you go to the Modding Discussion area at ModTheSims2 you should find enough to get you started. As far as I know there really isn't anything else required although if you want to put new designs on your modded objects then you'll need to gen up on furniture texturing and meshing.