Skinning robots

[Gus Smedstad]

OK, I verified that I can use Pescado's clothing tool to make Servo look completely human.  Just buy him some ordinary clothes, buy him some formal clothes, and change his appearance (I favor a bald look) and poof, he's human (or an android, if you prefer).  He can only change to "everyday" or "formal," but you can definitely dress different Servos differently.

I also found a very nice Sim Droid skin that is pretty much everything I could ask.  The screenshot doesn't do it justice, it's not pale white, it's reflective silver, and it works.  What I don't see is how to apply a custom skin to an existing Sim.  I can create Sims with this skin in Body Shop, but that doesn't help me converting my Servos.

On a semi-related note, I've seen a couple of posters here talking about using replacement skins for the default skins, and what little I've seen on the subject has been very cryptic.  I'm curious how it's done, but I'm far less interested in that than getting some variety in Servo's appearance while keeping him robotic.

 - Gus

[Motoki]

I'm working on making a different colored servo right now. I'm close but need to figure out how to get rid of the face.



I think what you want to do is a lot easier actually.

You should just be able to use the Sim Surgery feature of SimPE to copy the new skins look over to the servo sim. Normally you have to create a new sim in the game before you can copy them with sim surgery, but there's a new too by Theol in Peasantry that lets you do it with just a Bodyshop sim template file.

[Motoki]

Okay after several hours farting around with this, I'm throwing in the towel for now. I just need help on it. I checked my regular servo and she has some sort of null face setting but I can't figure out how to apply it to my custom pink one and I'm tired of trying. I'm not sure who else to turn to on this. Maybe Morague once she gets OFB. *shrug*

For making humanoid shaped servos with skins like binky's though that should be no problem at all with Sim Surgery.

[Maria]

The only problem is that the servo sometimes wears the default skin when visiting community lots.  Sometimes s/he'll wear the new assigned outfit and hairstyle though.  I wonder why?

[LFox]

Tried it and it works perfectly.  They seem to take on the facial appearance of the sim who activated them i think.  For the voice i think you can change it with simpe.  How would i go about changing the skintone from normal to alien though?

Thanks for the info btw been wanting to make androids for ages.

[Motoki]

You should be able to use Sim Surgery to clone the skintone only from say the Pollination Technician from Strangetown or Stella Terrano etc. If you know the code for the alien skintone you can change that over to that number in SimPE too. I'm sure someone here knows it or you could go into the CAS in debug mode and hover over that skintone and the tooltip should give you the info on the skintone #.

[LFox]

You should be able to use Sim Surgery to clone the skintone only from say the Pollination Technician from Strangetown or Stella Terrano etc. If you know the code for the alien skintone you can change that over to that number in SimPE too. I'm sure someone here knows it or you could go into the CAS in debug mode and hover over that skintone and the tooltip should give you the info on the skintone #.

Thanks Motoki i thought sim surgery would probably work.  If it doesn't i guess i'll have to try to change it manually.  Heh once they look like androids my servos maybe i'll actually like em more.

[Motoki]

I can confirm the copy skintone only feature of sim surgery works with OFB, at least with normal skin tones. I had one sim with a lighter skintone who I grabbed another sim and just copied over his darker skintone but not his looks and it worked just fine. This was after installing OFB and with the latest SimPE update that works with OFB. I'm assuming the alien skintone should work without problems as well.

[nectere]

Thats exactly the droid skin I thought about using...but

The issue still remains, how do you tell them apart if they all have that same skin?

Motoki I LOVE the idea of having dif colored robots, I cant for the life of me understand why Maxis didnt enable this in the first place. Perhaps to give us all something to aspire to or keep us busy with? Ah the old clam shell trick works everytime...

[Zaphod]

I suppose you could put clothing on them...

[Motoki]

If you put clothing on them they get a human body and it looks weird. It's possible to recolor their 'formal' outfit, but Maxis sure made it a pain in the butt to do. 

[Gus Smedstad]

Theo's SimPE plugin worked.  Once changed, you can only buy clothes / change clothes / alter appearance through Pescado's tool.  The red "alarm" facial editor from DMA works on them.  However, I found that simply altering facial structure didn't provide me with enough clues to tell them apart easily, nor did clothing help enough with the headshot thumbnails.  I had to resort to hair.  On the plus side, the weird custom hair colors that I never use seem appropriate for androids.  Unfortunately, the reflective metallic effect only seems to appear in Body Shop.  In the game they're kind of white.



 - Gus