still-life gone poof?

[jennydeenyc]

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this. I had a custom-painted picture of my sim family's founding couple (both of whom are now deceased), and made sure to move it with the family to their new home. All was fine with it until I installed a few additional hacks, including Inge's bed reserving mod & the no buskers at home hack. Suddenly, the next time I looked, the still-life had become one of the standard "sim painted" canvas designs! Since I had already saved a couple of times since installing the last batch of hacks before noticing the change, I fear the picture is gone forever, which is a real bummer. If anyone has any suggestions on how to regain the custom image I'd be thrilled to hear them. Thanks in advance...

[Emma]

Have you checked in the storytelling folder to see if the picture is still there? It might be able to be restored to that image if so.

[jennydeenyc]

Are sim-painted pictures stored in the Storytelling folder? I thought only screen captures were.

[vector]

Are sim-painted pictures stored in the Storytelling folder? I thought only screen captures were.

I think if it's a still life or a portrait, it counts as a screencap - you need to take a screendump to get the image for the painting in the first place, anyway.

Remember if you've got Uni, then you've got two different storytelling folders.

[jennydeenyc]

Ok, I'll check in Storytelling for the picture. If its there, how would I go about getting it back on the stupid canvas?

EDIT: Ok, I checked both Storytelling folders (regular & Pleasantview) & none of the custom portrait shots (my sims painted 4 different still-lifes) are there. I'd never seen a painted shot in Storytelling before, so this doesn't surprise me. Could the images be located anywhere else?

EDIT EDIT: I also have a saved copy of my N001 folder from before I moved the family to the new house, and none of the still-life shots are in that Storytelling folder either. Looks like that's not where those images are stored.

[vector]

Hmm. I don't really have any suggestions. I did have a look around for you, because I know you can get your sims to paint an image on your hard drive that you specify using that screenshot.bmp file, but I didn't find anything to suggest that the images you capture to paint are actually stored once they've been painted. That's not very helpful. I dunno. 

[jennydeenyc]

Thanks for checking though. This development is making me wary of having my sims paint any new still-lifes or portraits, just in case something will make them go poof in the future. Bummer.

[MissDoh]

How about having one Sim living in that house (or any other which have enough creativity skill) take a picture to do a still-life paint?  I think it will tell you where it will save it or at least you will be able to sort the files by date to find it.

[jennydeenyc]

Ok, I just tried having another sim do a still life, then when he finished I searched my entire computer for files modified today, and all it came up with were a bunch of log files, nothing else. When capturing the image using the C key, the game doesn't tell you where the file will be saved either.

EDIT: Ok, I found the newest custom painted image in the non-neighborhood Storytelling folder after another search, but none of the previously painted images are in that folder. Looks like once you start a new painting the old image goes bye-bye :-(

[MissDoh]

That is weird since we can have different families doing lifestyle paintings at the same time on different lots and there could be more than one in the same house.

Maybe someone will come up with a solution for you, I do wonder how come it disappear.  Did you look in your old back-up to see if you could find the file there?

[jennydeenyc]

Yeah, but I had only backed up the N001 folder, and the snapshot file was in the non-neighborhood Storytelling folder anyway, sigh.

[Baddmark]

What I do now, is when I take the snapshot for a photo or painting, I drop Sims to the taskbar and open MSPaint. I can then retouch the background to make it all one colour, or whatever. Then I save. Then I "save as" something else - Beau_school.bmp or whatever. That way, I should have a copy that can be repainted or rephotographed should the original go missing.