To start you'll need clone of the Athena bust from The Sims. I'm naming my tutorial file tutBust.iff and will be referring to file names derived from that name, so I suggest for the tutorial you also name your clone tutBust.iff
(You can use FarSight to extract the sculptures.iff from the objects.far in gamedata/objects.
Then, open the sculptures.iff you extracted in iff snooper, and, after entering your Magic Cookie, choose Subclone: Sculptures-bust from the File menu. When the box pops up asking you to name & save your clone, type tutBust.iff for the file name & Save to Desktop.)

(picture 1, STR#129 resource window)

Open your new tutBust.iff in iff snooper, and click on the STR# button in iff snooper's screen.
This will open the STR# resource window #129 for this objects. (Picture 1) In the window, you will see 5 items listed, as shown in the picture. My game is US English, so the items begin US English String. Yours may differ, and we won't be changing that info anyway. The items are also numbered 0 -4, and again we won't be changing that information. What we will be changing are the animation strings, which are what is listed here. If you check out list, and think about what a Sim does when they go to 'View' a decorative object like a sculpture, you can see the different animations listed here:
A2O-refuse-subtle is when your Sim refuses to do what you direct him/her to do.
A2O-approve is the animation for liking the object
A2O-consider is the animation of actually viewing the object
A2O-disapprove is the animation of not liking the object
A2O-shrug is the shrug animation played when the Sim is neutral about the object.

The 'A' part of the animation string refers to 'Adult' btw and these animations pertain to adult Sims. If you toggle to STR# 130 by clicking the Next button just above the window where the animation strings are listed, you will see the C2O animations for children. But we're just going to do the adult animations for this tutorial, once you've learned that you can apply it to the animations of adults & children in this & other objects. So toggle back to STR# 129 by clicking the Previous button beside the Next button.

(picture 2 STR#129 Edit Window)

To edit the animations, you will need to click the Edit button on the bottom right corner of the STR# window. This will open a new window, (picture 2).
Notice the animation string in Text Field 0, A2O-refuse-subtle
If you click The Select button above, you'll open a list of all the animation strings listed in the STR#129 resource window. Right now, choose 02: A2O-consider. Notice that Text Field 0 has become Text Field 2, and the animation listed is now A2O-consider. (You could also have typed a '2' in the String# field & hit Tab to toggle to that animation string, if you know what number you are looking for)
This is the animation that plays when you send the Sim to 'View' this sculpture.

(picture 3, STR#129 Edit Window, Text String 2, default animation string)

To change this animation to another animation, we will need to change the animation string listed here. To do that, we need an animation. We're going to use an animation from the vanilla Sims game, so people with even no ep can do this tutorial. Using farSight or another Far viewer/extractor, open your TheSims/Gamedata/Animations.far and check out the list of animations contained there. We aren't going to be extracting any of the animations, just choosing one to use on the sculpture.
Scroll down the list to find a2o-stereo-turnon.cmx.bcf Well there's a few stereo related animations in the list, stereo-boombox, stereo-expensive. You can't always tell exactly what an animation looks like by it's name, but some are quite obvious. So, for this tutorial we're going to change the animation for the Sim viewing the sculpture to the animation of turning on a stereo. Each animation is designed to line up with the object(s) it was made for, and just switching an object's animation to one from another object can bring very surreal results, and some are just bad. I'm going to choose the 'boombox' turn on animation, as I know that stereo sits on surfaces, the animation might be a good height for this sculpture. For the purposes of the tutorial, we're just switching animations to see the change, when you are making a real object with animations you'll want to search through your eps for animations best suited to your object. LOL, or make very surreal objects with wild animations. I don't know of any Mac program for creating Sim poses let alone new animations, so I at least am limited to the game's animations.

NOTE: you can use a far viewer/extractor to browse the animations files as I describe above. If you know beforehand that you want a specifc animation from a specific object, like the 'turn on' animation for the boombox stereo used in this tutorial, then you can also open that object in Iff Snooper and copy the STR#129 resource you are looking for from it.

(picture 4, STR#129 Edit Window, Text String 2, edited animation string)

So, the animation name for the boombox turn on animation is a2o-stereo-boombox-turnon.cmx.bcf
If you look in the Text Field 2 box of your Iff Snooper STR#129 edit window, the extensions .cmx and .bcf aren't listed. So when you change the name in the text field, type only
a2o-stereo-boombox-turnon
as shown in picture 4 above. Then click 'OK' on the lower right corner. This will close the window & you will now see that Number 2 on the list of animations (the 3rd down, numbered '2' in the list) is now the stereo boombox animation, as shown in picture 5 below.

(picture 5, STR#129 Resource Window after animation editing)

Now in the game a Sim who went to 'View' this object would do the animation for turning on a boombox stereo instead of dong the 'consider' animation he/she normally does. Viewing an object produces one of 3 reactions: negative, positive & neutral. You could change the animations for those reactions using the same method described above. Whatever animations you choose, the Sim will still believe they are just viewing a sculpture, and only get out of it what viewing a sculpture gives them. It isn't a particularly useful hack for a Sim, but if you want a quick way to see what a particular animation looks like separated from its context, swapping it in the 'view' function of a sculpture or painting is very easy. And then you can use this to change animations in objects like mirrors that are useful for Sims.

If you like, hunt around for other animations in the animations.far or in the expansion.fars of any eps you might have to replace the reactions for approving & neutral reactions to the sculpture, and even for the refusal animation.
It doesn't matter for the tutorial which animations you choose, we're only testing the changed 'consider' animation...feel free to have fun making new reaction animations by repeating the steps for changing the 'consider' animation with the other animations listed. Some of the game's animations will not work when taken out of their context, some will generate 'props' in your Sim's hand that you might not be able to get rid of: the point of an object like this is to test game animations before you apply them to a project you want to do. Always test an object like this very thoroughly before giving them to your favorite Sims or sharing them.

NEXT: Changing the Interaction Menu