hi everyone, i'm trying to make a custom portrait of my medieval sims but whenever i try to use TSRW i get met with this error which prevents me from creating my portrait. it basically says this:

Could not load game folder contents.

Folder:

Error: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: key

-
i literally have no idea what to do so any help is appreciated! thanks

Looks like you might have a non-standard installation that TSRW is not detecting. Is this error appearing as soon as the program starts or after trying to begin a project? If you can at least get to the main menu, you'll want to check the settings and manually find your game folder. If it's crashing immediately, you'll probably need to try a clean install of TSRW.

If you're just planning to do a simple image swap on a painting, you can also use S3OC as an alternative. That way you can just clone the item with the frame you want and replace the texture in S3PE.

you know, now that you mention it, i have the smooth patch installed which may be causing the problem. the error pops up when i start a new project. i'll probably try the S3OC thing you mentioned so i can have my cute heir portraits. thanks!

okay nevermind i removed smooth patch and it still is having issues. aaah this is all so confusing

How is your game installed? Is it through Origins or through Steam? In my case I had TSRW not recognizing my install folder because it was installed through Steam so I manually put in the program the game folders.

Booted up my install of TSRW to take guiding pictures.
When opening TSRW go to the Preferences tab (shown in the first picture).
In the Preferences tab go to the Folders tab (shown in the second picture) and check your game folders, as you can see my base game folder is inside the Steam folder. If you want objects from the expansions / stuff packs to show, simply put the folder directory inside its corresponding place.

For example (in the case of Steam): Generations --> C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\The Sims 3\EP4

By non-standard install, I meant more along the lines that wherever the game folder is (or sometimes the name, for users with different language settings) just wasn't where TSRW expected- so it isn't able to see your game until it's pointed to that folder. Sorry for the confusion!
Hopefully those screenshots above help

thank you for taking the time to take screenshots and stuff. i had actually manually put in the paths to my EPs and base game and was still having errors and all that. my game is installed via ea app. i've attached my game paths in case i did an oopsies in that department and the contents of my Bin folder in case anything looks funky. hopefully we can figure this all out!

Could you try running TSRW as admin, just in case its struggling to get permissions for your program files? Right click the icon > Properties > Compatibility tab > check Run this program as an administrator, apply.

There is also the old pre-Sims 4 version of TSRW that many of us find a bit more stable using for TS3 work, just in case it's getting the two games mixed up: https://www.mediafire.com/file/x70d..._2_0_86.exe.zip

great news everyone- we got it to work. so even though i downloaded the pre-ts4 version it was still being weird. when i read the error, it seemed like it couldn't detect my game unless it was under Origin Games. when i saw that, i changed the name from EA Games to Origin Games for the time being so i can use the workshop; it worked right after that. now i can have portraits of my heirs! thanks for the help everyone