• Naturally Posed: Poses should look natural, with almost every joint adjusted somewhat, including face, hands, fingers, etc.

• Anatomically Possible: Most poses should look like they could be done by a real person (or animal, for pet poses), within the range of human motion. Of course, poses not meant to be a normal human range (for acrobats or monsters) are fine. Keep in mind that for some poses, while a real body may be able to do it, it may look really bad on a sim. If the body gets badly distorted in a certain pose, try to work around it or try something else.

• Gravity: Poses should look balanced and with a believable center of gravity. Your sim/pet shouldn't look like they're about to fall over (unless it's meant to be a pose in motion or falling, of course).

• Sinking/Floating: Whether a sim/pet is supposed to be sitting, standing, or leaning, they should not noticeably sink into or float above the surface they're on. Of course, this doesn't apply to poses that are in motion like jumping or falling.

• No Stretched Skeleton: The bones should be kept at their regular length, with joints usually only rotated, not moved.

• Clipping: Limbs shouldn't float over or collide with other parts of the body. For example, if a hand is supposed to be on the hip, then it shouldn't sink into the pelvis or float a foot above it. Of course, keep in mind the body type intended for sims (poses intended for large sims will look odd on skinny sims, and vice versa), and the type of clothing (for a ski holiday theme, the poses should work well with bulky winter clothing).

• No Sinking of Floating: Whether the sims is supposed to be sitting, standing or leaning on something, they should not noticeably sink into or float above the object their weight is intended to be resting on. Of course, this doesn’t apply to poses that are supposed to show sims in motion (jumping etc).

• Pose List Compatible: All poses must be pose list compatible. For instructions, see: Pose Pack Tutorial

• Props: If you have made props (new object meshes) to include with your poses, they should follow the MTS2:Creator_Guidelines/Sims_3_Objects/Sandbox MTS Creator Guidelines for TS3 Objects.

Tip: Aikea Guinea wrote a handy tiptorial on rotating joints in known problem areas. Find it here: Aikea's Tutorials

Tip: Whenever you're unsure whether a pose looks good and makes sense, use a mirror to check what's possible on your own body, or work from pictures of real people.

• Pose List Compatibility: All poses should be pose list compatible. Please state that they are compatible in the written portion of your upload or provide a screen grab of your pose list in game to show that they are. Pose pack tutorial

• Pose Names should be in the format that you would type them into the pose player. E.g. a_dancepose_3. The pose names must be included in full somewhere on the upload post but it's up to you if they are in the main text or just on the images or both.

• Props or Custom Content Links: If your poses use props that someone else made, you must link to them. Please don't make poses that require content you have to pay for.

• New Mesh Info: If you have made a new mesh to use as a prop for your pose and have included it in the file, must include the same information you would as if uploading it separately.

You will need to include certain screenshots with your pose set. You must:

• Show the whole thing: You should have at least one picture of each and every pose you are sharing, showing the whole thing without anything cut off or cropped out.

• Uncovered: Make sure not to cover the pose with long hair, text added in a photo editor, objects in the way, or your model in clothing like long fluffy skirts that hide a lot of the body.

• Include Additional Angles if Necessary: Your images should show at least the key elements of each pose which are the face, hands and limb joints. You may need to show side on views or take a few shots from additional angles if the pose cannot be adequately seen in a single picture.

• Props: If you made a new mesh to be used specifically with your pose set and have included it with your poses, you must include the proper pictures of the object as if it were uploaded separately - show the texture mapping and CASTability. For details, see: [MTS2:Creator_Guidelines/Sims_3_Objects|MTS Creator Guidelines for TS3 Objects]. You should, of course, show them in use with your poses, too!

Please remember, for your required pictures:

• In-Game Screenshots: All required screenshots must be taken in the game with actual in-game backgrounds. Please don't cut and paste your models onto non-game backgrounds. Images should be lit well enough to show the poses and not so overly cluttered and fussy that it's difficult to see where the pose ends and the background begins.

Keep the following in mind for your screenshots, especially the required ones:

• Size: 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall is a good size for the smallest pic you would want to upload. Your images can be up to 2560x1440 pixels, and 800 kb, so you have lots of space to work with!
• Lighting: For most things, it's best to take pictures in an interior room with good lighting. For lots, pictures should be taken during a nice sunny day, for floorplans, take the pictures with the lights ON.
• Clarity: Neither blurry, nor pixellated/crunchy. Do not size up small pictures to make a large one as this will blur them, and make sure not to use too much compression/too low quality when saving your images.
• Distance: Take your pictures so that your creation fills the screen without anything cut off at top or bottom - neither zoomed in too close, nor zoomed out too far.
• Distortion: If you resize your images, retain the aspect ratio so they don't get stretched or squashed. Take care when zooming in and out with the camera that you do not create a fisheye effect on your pictures.
• Photoshopping: Do not apply filters like sharpen, contrast, etc. to the required pictures, as downloaders want to see what your creation will look like in their game, not your skills at using Photoshop.
• Attached: All required images must be attached directly to the MTS upload, not just inserted using the img tag, so that even if the pics get deleted from your Photobucket (or other host), the upload on MTS is still complete.
• Show all items: For most areas, if you are uploading a set, you must take all the required pics for each item in the set. If there is an exception, it will be noted.
• Picture limit: You may upload up to 100 pictures for a single upload thread, so feel free to add some additional pictures just to show off your work to its best. Of course, keep it reasonable - nobody needs 50 pics to show off one sim or hair.
• Inline pictures: Inline pictures are those that use the [img] tag to show up in with the description text. So that it doesn't take too long to load, please keep this to no more than 4 pictures done inline, unless you put them inside an [infobutton] tag. To do this, see our guide on post formatting.

For instructions on compressing your files into an archive, please see: Creator Guidelines: Creating Archive Files.

• Do not include multiple archives with the same contents - that is, please don't put your files in both a .zip as well as a .rar because some people only want .zip files. Choose one format.

• Do not double-compress your files... a .rar file inside another .rar file (or any other archive inside another) doesn't compress it anymore, and it makes it so we can't see the contents without downloading, and also just makes an extra step for the people downloading.

• The file size limit on MTS is 50 mb. If you exceed this limit you will need to split your archives. This should probably never come up except for large worlds for The Sims 3, or huge sets of smaller items.

Zip files containing poses do not need to be any larger than around 200kb; most are usually far beneath that. Please do not bloat files by adding additional pictures or by having pose list thumbnails that far exceed the recommended size of 59x60pixels.