Sims lose their eye definitions when they age transition

[spambi]

Some of my sims are losing their eye colors when they grow up or they are born without eye colors. Their eye colors become whatever the built in eye color is for their skin tone. It started with one of my alien children losing her black eyes (which was creepy). I didn't know what was happening at first but later I starting noticing that some of my sims had dull grey or brown eyes that weren't default eyes (I use custom defaults) or custom eyes.

I started a new neighborhood this week (last one exploded for other reasons) and the first three children born were fine. The fourth child who was born, however, had dull gray eyes (both her parents, who are CAS sims, use custom eyes) and no hair (the top of her head was missing.) I forced her to grow up and that fixed the hair problem but not the eye problem. I checked her DNA in SimPE and she has her father's eyes as dominant and her mother's eyes as recessive. Her father's eyes still show up on him.

I switched the dominant and recessive eyes in SimPE and put her through two age transitions. This didn't solve the eye problem, nor did changing her appearance in the mirror. Her parents had another baby, whose eyes (they were the father's again) showed up with no problem.

This might be a coincidence but while the mother was pregnant with the eyeless baby, my computer crashed twice (vista + nvidia = bsod, and yes, I hate vista) while in that lot. I don't remember the problem being tied to computer crashes before, but since I didn't notice the problem right away, I can't say for sure.

I would appreciate any suggestions how to fix this problem. Since I've already started a new neighborhood (with clean templates and everything), I guess the next step might be to reinstall the game. I'm trying to avoid that, though. I'm also wondering if there's a way to fix this eyeless sim. I'd rather not use contacts.

[J. M. Pescado]

I started a new neighborhood this week (last one exploded for other reasons) and the first three children born were fine. The fourth child who was born, however, had dull gray eyes (both her parents, who are CAS sims, use custom eyes)

Custom eyes are EVIL. 100% pure EVIL. Never use custom eyes, they are a source of unending grief. Bodyshop hates them, the game hates them, everything hates them. Use either default or default replacement, never custom genetics. Any issues in making custom eyes will propagate throughout your entire neighborhood for generations. They're basically a wonderful way to show off genetic diseases in your sims.

[spambi]

Ok, I accept that custom eyes may be evil, but the first sim that I saw with this problem was an alien child with the default alien eyes (custom defaults but still defaults.)

If there's no way to stop this from happening, is there at least a way to edit the character file in SimPE to restore the eye definition?

[Gwill]

I know there's something wrong with alien eyes for teen, but I haven't seen problems with children.  Do you have a default replacement for the alien skintone?  Some stages of alien use the face texture rather than the eye texture.

[spambi]

I have custom default alien skintones and the problem started when she turned into a teenager. Do the alien children usually grow out of it?

[Gwill]

If I remember correctly it corrected itself when they grew into adults.
Personally I solved the problem by correctly adding alien eyes to the alien skintone textures, but it should be possible to fix by editing the eye properties in stead.  I think I started on it once, but got bored with all the borkiness.

[gethane]

I used contacts for the teen years, and I don't remember if it was fixed as a YA. But my alien with default replacements again has his black eyes as an adult (without using contacts).

[Gwill]

If I ever did get around to fixing it, I can't find it now.

Here's advice on how to fix the sim itself:

I am happy to report success, here is Jax sporting his fixed alien eyes. The problem is all down to EAxis and how they are generating the customPart TXMT data in the character files. The teenage aliens and normal skintone sims are missing some vital data so they don't use the alien eye texture at all. I fixed it by hand in SimPE for a normal skintone as follows:

for each customPart txmt definition:

On the Properties tab:
Change baseTexture1 to baseTexture2
Add a new baseTexture1 with the value uuface-eye-alien (NB add creates a blank entry at the bottom of the list, once you have set the values, click the sort list button)

in compositeBaseTextureName: insert _uuface_eye_alien after the face txmt definition
e.g. I changed _tmface_s4_uuface_browcombed_black-diffuse to _tmface_s4_uuface_eye_alien_uuface_browcombed_black-diffuse

change numTexturesToComposite from 2 to 3 (this will use baseTexture0, baseTexture1 and baseTexture2, adding in the alien eye texture)

On the File List tab:
insert _uuface_eye_alien as per the compositeBaseTextureName value
e.g. I changed _tmface_s4_uuface_browcombed_black-diffuse to _tmface_s4_uuface_eye_alien_uuface_browcombed_black-diffuse

For sims with alien skintones, you only need to patch the teenage customPart TXMT (paramAge 2)

[spambi]

Thanks. I'll try that if I get another alien teen.

I don't suppose anyone has done the same thing with non-alien sims who have lost their eye defs?

[morriganrant]

Funny, I just saw this discussed here.

[eevilcat]

Does anyone know if the file formats and I/O are completely hard-coded? If by some magic (or common sense to everyone else) EAxis have defined the formats in data or script or similar then it might be possible to fix this properly. Otherwise any fixes are lost on age transitions which is particularly annoying for sims with normal skintone/alien eye combos.