tutorial on how to upload sims3 sims to the site

hello to all my fellow inspiring sims members and staff members here is a nice little tut that i have found. (*this thread shall remain open if you have any question feel free to post them in this thread.

HOW TO EXPORT & INSTALL SIMS 3 SIMS

Just a quick mini-tutorial that explains the ins and outs of this simple little process.

To export any sim in game, take them to a mirror and select "change appearance". This will load your sim into CAS. Once in CAS, look down at the bottom of the screen. See the little square portrait of your sim with the options dots in the corner ( ... )? Click the dots. Click "Share Sim". Your game will pause and think about this for awhile. Once it's done, you're done. Yay! Now you're ready to share. Go to \My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Exports. Your sim's package will be in there, all ready to zip or rar or whatever for sharing.

To import any sim, just double click the Sims 3 Pack, much like sims 2. Now here is where it currently sucks. Your game will want to load the download manager and the launcher, which will both want to phone home. You probably don't want to let it, so if you have a firewall, set it to disallow those programs from accessing the internet. Because of this song and dance, it will probably take a few minutes to actually load. Once it does, it automatically extracts the sim to the \My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saved Sims folder. That's it.

Next time you're in CAS making a new family, if you click on the box at the bottom of the screen that looks like it has a bunch of disembodied heads in it, you'll get to your Sim Bin. Click the CC daisy up in the corner, and you'll see the sim you downloaded. Unlike TS2, TS3 imported sims have all the personality stuff saved in each pack. All the outfits are imported, not just the one they're wearing, along with traits, favorites, and lifetime wish thingy. You can change it if you want, or you can play the sim exactly like it was created. So that's neat. Edit: Traits appeared on the first sim I tested, but not the second. I guess more testing is in order.

As for the shenanigans with the stupid TS3 package installer, don't worry. Jfade, creator of such wonderful things as wardrobe wrangler and compressorizer, is working on a Sims3Pack editor right now, that looks like it will be something like Clean Installer. He's got a bare bones version up and running, and hopefully there will be a download version available soon that will cut out the whole song and dance with the loader. For more information, there is a thread on MATY, here.

ETA: Clicking your Sim3Pack does create a download folder, and in it will be... the exact same package. It does nothing, as far as I can tell. You don't actually need it, the package file is saved in Saved Sims. I am not sure if the Downloads folder will eventually behave like it does in TS2, or if it is just the holding pen for downloaded Sims3Packs.

The More Sane Method!
Thanks to SSChan and linuslover30 for doing the testing to make sure this method works. This eliminates all of the idiocy related to the Sims3Pack and the Launcher.

To export a sim, go into CAS and find the options dots as described above. This time, select "Save to Sim Bin". It will do it's saving thing. When it's finished, go to your My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saved Sims folder, and pull out the .sims file. Zip or rar for upload.

To install, simply unzip the file and extract it back to the Saved Sims folder. That's it.

This method seems to work perfectly at the moment, though if/when more CC becomes available, and there is a decent extraction tool released, the Sims3Packs might be a more convenient option. Who knows at this point? For now, this method is less of a headache.

Credit go to (Liegensholnheit) for writting this tutorial