Ray Mazza – All about the easel from The Sims 3

It amazes me how complex the art easel is from The Sims 3.  Did you know that it contains 1500+ paintings?  Incredible!  Check out developer Ray Mazza’s blogpost about his time spent on how The Sims 3 team pulled together to work on the painting skill/easel.

I was emotionally attached to the easel because I’d programmed it in The Sims 2. It was a great object. I may have been in love with it. So I wanted to design an easel and painting skill worthy of players’ lofty expectations in The Sims 3.
To add variety, there were 3 different canvas sizes. To add depth and collectability, some paintings were uncommon and rare (known as brilliant and masterpiece paintings). To add character, certain personality Sims would paint unique variations of paintings.
And I wanted players to barely ever see the same painting twice.
By now you’re thinking, Holy Bella. That’s a metric dumpload of content… sounds insane. And you’re right. A few tens of paintings were within scope, but each one had to be painted by a digital artist, so it took a lot of time.

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