More Awesome Than You!

This has been in the back of my mind now but I never really thought about it again until recently when I was making a new CAS family.  Has anyone noticed that when you make a couple in CAS and then use the option to create a child for that couple by mixing their DNA, the child will have overt features of the sim templates used to generate townies?

I noticed this mainly because when I generate children this way, I usually run the generator so that I can see what the child will look like as a adult.  Yes, they do adopt many features of their parents, but a lot also seem to borrow features from the default templates as well.  This was driven home recently because I'd had a man and woman that I'd done quite a bit of work on to get to look exactly how I wanted, and while clicking through random combos for their son, one adult image was a virtual replica of Komei Tellerman's face.  :P  Eye-area stucture seems to be one that is borrowed a lot.  There's a template of a guy's face who sorta has bug-eyes and that pops up A LOT as well, even when my CAS parents don't have this trait.

Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to happen for kids that are born in the game.  I suspect a different facial feature blending algorithm is used.

Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

yes and when someone figures out a way to alter those doggone templates it will be the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of simkind

I'm wondering if I can extract the template meshes, mess with them in 3DS Max and then reimport nicer ones. Of course I'd have to find where they are stored first.

As for the kids, I'm never happy the way they turn out no matter how good the parents look. I always give the kids surgery at some point to get them how I want them. :P

Maxis took the "economy" way of designing the templates by creating them so that there is a male/female version of each one.  "Twins" I guess.  If you do mess around with the templates, you might end up with only one or the other sex looking decent.  Not that that wouldn't be an improvement over what we have now, just a consideration...

Motoki if you did THAT I'd bow before your awesomeness. No more random ugly townies!

Well I found them. They're in this file:

Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\CASFace.package

I figured out what their internal names are too. For instance the first male face (the one that actually looks decent if a bit doll/anime-like) is amArchHeart which stands for Adult Male Archetype Heart-shaped.

It looks like I might not even need to use a 3D program but could probably swap out the geometric data container from another nicer looking sim.

Of course that begs the question, what's nicer looking? I've worked on a head mod for another game and people are unbelievably picky about faces.  :o

Brynne's sims? Everyone seems to like them.

I'd settle for you just removing some of the ones with insanely large lips, no top lip, extremely big noses and that sort. I don't need my townies and such to be beautiful I just don't want to see my sims interacting with sims with mile wide fat lips.

Agreed...also huge cheekbones are not an attractive trait on a Sim imo  :)

I'd go for the "something for everyone" approach that doesn't go for beautiful per se but is a nice cross-section of sims that just don't have those awful exaggerated features.  Or possibly just use something like Gigge's guidelines to create a more normal-looking group based on the originals and plop them in.

Maybe ask people to contribute??   :)

I wish townies were generated off the elf template. I actually rather like that one, but nooo. Has anyone ever seen a townie with the elf template?

Personally I would just like to see the extreme features toned down...a lot. I seem to get the same archetypes over and over, those planet of the apes sims, no matter what I do.

We did sorta talk about chaning out facial data not too long ago, which I think would be a great alternative to uploading/downloading entire sims. Of course you would need to have some confidence in using simpe and not be too attached to your game in case you mucked it up. Not a big deal for me.

by the way, feel free to share all the filenames you deciphered, I bet there is an cromagnum type in there though

Oh it's easy to get the filenames, just go into the CAS in debug mode (testingcheatsenabled true, then shift N) and go to the screen with all the facial templates and hover your mouse over them.

i knew that.


*slinks away...

Okay, I managed to do it with a test face. I nabbed it from my alien sim. ;)

So it looks like I just volunteered myself for the project.  :o

Why don't you guys see if you can come up with a group of decent looking sims and then maybe you could point me out to where I can download said packaged sims. Maybe the best thing to do would be to try and take the templates and make them more realistic, if not beautiful, looking. But some of those templates are so eff'ed up it would be hard to do anything with them.

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we cant just provide the facial data files?

Hey this is too cool.  I've adjusted a few of the males, and I've got the African-American woman I already posted pictures of on the other thread.  Where would be a good place to post packaged sims for this?  The Exchange?

It might help if we used this thread to set up some pictures of the BodyShop interface with the faces numbered.  Then people could volunteer to rework a face by claiming its number.

Just a thought... I could whip up those screenshots pretty quick.

Well sure you could. I just figure a lot of people are SimPE-o-phobic and it would be easier for them to just do a package sim.

*Puts my hand up* That'd be me!  :)

I would be one of those not too adept at extracting facial data files.  But I did upload four modified template sims to the Exchange.  They can be found here:

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/uploads.php?user_id=385&nstart=1&asset_type=sim

They were modified from the template faces in Bodyshop if you count left to right starting on the top line of each Bodyshop screen.  Hope you can use them!  They aren't "gorgeous" just more realistic faces.

Oh oh, pick me, pick me. I've got some nice looking sims too. I'll post some up on the exchange & some screenshots here in the next few hours. Be interesting to see what others think.

I agree Brynne's sims are pretty generic and pleasant looking.

I HATE those lips, those frog mouths.

I haven't seen Brynne's stuff, but I would caution against making things a bit TOO generic.  I trust Motoki will pick out a good selection.  Remember if this thing is successful, these will be the sims you have to work with in BodyShop as starting points for new creations.

Motoki, you are solving so many of our problems lately. First elders, now this! I nearly fell out of my seat when I saw this thread. Can it be true? Deformed townies gone forever?!

There is just so much I hate about the templates. The ear-to-ear mouths. The cow eyelids. The pinnochio nose. The squashed potato nose. The... oh, hell, I just hate all of them.

Personally, I would really appreciate some general info on how we might do our own replacements. I'm good with stuff like that, as long as I'm given a starting point. Just now I tried killing one of the ape faces, but I obviously missed some crucial point, because nothing happened.

I think you said it yourself, everyone's idea of beauty/acceptability is different, so a downloadable package would be unlikely to please everyone.

Out of curiousity, have you actually seen that the game is using your new template(s) to generate new sims? I think someone already pointed out that not all the templates get used by the game. Hopefully the part that tells the game which templates to use is actually in the templates, and not stored elsewhere in some unknown location.

Here are some pics of sims I've just uploaded to the exchange: http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=267632 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=267632)

Unfortunately I didn't think about all their custom skins, there are 8 of them, and the package is nearly 27Mb. If you like the look of any, I could repackage with default maxis skins.

I try to make my sims a little more realistic by making the eyes smaller, the mouths not so turned up and a bit less puffy. Sometimes the length of the face needs to be altered too. One of the sims is as close as I could make to Maori. I also have a custom townie that looks quite asian, I haven't posted that but could extract it from simpe. Anyway, see what you think.

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more pics

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I would think it might be interesting if each of you created a sim me (you) to use. Imagine, if this went available public wide you would all be a part of sim history! (and everyone would have your faces, now if we can just JM's in there)


Motoki, I was wondering if this will effect the parts templates as well or are those separate? Like I said I havent sat still long enough to look or even really think about it. I realize the archetypes are the templates for the townies etc, but do they also use the parts as well to randomize? Would we need to think about toning down some of those templates as well or would it matter, and is it a whole face or just part of a face that would have to be modified in a 3d program? Speaking of sitting still, I am gotta run, off to check out a frac job and do some norm work up north today, woot!

It does do the parts too as well as the face, I checked. :)

I supposed I can do more than one set for variety. Maybe we could have people vote on sim faces to use? Keep in mind we'll be seeing these faces a lot if they get made templates. ;)

I can go over how I did it, it's really not too bad. First you want to go into the CAS in the game in debug mode (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true then hold shift and N). Now go to the screen with the facial templates and hover over them. This gives you the internal names of those facial templates. I actually ran the game in windowed mode and left it open while I was hunting for the face files.

Now the file you need to look for is Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\CASFace.package. If you are going to leave the game open then you will need to make a copy of this file to work with it, SimPE won't open the original while the game is running. I just made a copy of it on my desktop.

Now open the file. On the left side there's several selections. You want to pick Geometric Data Container because those are the actual meshes and the only files we're really concerned with. Then I would hit the "type" bar above all the geometric data container listings on the right side to sort them alphabetically because it's just easier to deal with.

Now fine the face or faces in question (remember, you can get the names from the CAS in debug mode) and then export them. Make a new file in SimPE and import them. You can delete the exported files once you've added them to your new file and saved it. The face templates will always be in sets of 2, the regular and LOD15 version so make sure you get both geometric data container files for each template.

Now find a sim whose facial structure you like and open their package file in SimPE. You can do this from neighborhood character files if you know the sim's character #, which you can get in the sim browser in SimPE, or you can do it with a bodyshop sim template. Those will get saved in the SavedSims directory and tend to get file names with numbers so you might not be able to easily tell who they are unless you just have one in that directory. SimPE also has a sim surgery plugin where you can export any neighborhood sim's looks to a bodyshop template in the SavedSims directory and call it whatever you want.

Now when you open your sim's file go to Geometric Data Container. Their might be multiple selections here, particularly if the sim has gone through all the different ages in the game. For Adults, look for the ones with age3_0_gmdc and age3_0LOD15_gmdc in their names and extract these two entries as well (you can preview the mesh if you go to the 3D Mesh tab down below).

Now go back and open your new file (the name doesn't matter btw) with the original face templates and go to the Geometric Data Container again. For the template you want to replace, highlight it on the main upper window on the right hand side and write down or copy the "filename" somewhere where you won't lose it. You will need it in a sec. Do this for the LOD15 version too. So in my example where I was replacing the first male facial template called amArchHeart I copied down the filenames amArchHeart_tslocator_gmdc and amArchHeartLod15_tslocator_gmdc. The second is the same name but with LOD15 inserted after the archetype name.

After you've stashed those names somewhere, highlight those files again on the upper right window and do a right click on them. Choose replace, then load the data you previously extracted from your sim. Make sure you replace the LOD15 from your sim with the template's LOD15 and the regular one with the regular one. You might want to save them to different places when you extract them.

Once you've replaced them (the entries should show up in italics in SimPE to signify that they were modified) then highlight them and change their filename back to that of the template. So you may see something like #0x6f0009f8!age3_0LOD15_gmdc, in my example if I wanted to change the adult male 'heart shaped' template I would rename that file name to amArchHeart_tslocator_gmdc. If you saved those names before to a temporary notepad file you can just copy and paste them back over. Now do this for both the regular and LOD15 version of the template and commit then save.

That's it. Now put it in your downloads folder and run the bodyshop and you'll find your face there. Of course you'll have to do this many times over for all the templates and both genders. Probably all the ages too. :P A quick tip though, if you have a sim whose face you like, you can open them in the bodyshop, change them another gender or age and resave them to get the female or child etc versions of that same face to use for templates. This way you can keep matched sets for both genders when you do the replacing.

I don't think my sims are generic at all. I've done my best to keep them as realistic as possible. If any of these appeal to you, let me know:

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/cam.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/trips.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/marinacloseup.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/jason.jpg)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/3guys.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Sims2%20blog/JeremyTaylorpose.jpg)

They're very nice sims Brynne, but they're all so pretty and also unique. Maybe we could do one or two replacements with your sims but I think a neighborhood full of them would kind of ruin their uniqueness don't you? Plus, having them pass down their genes wouldn't be so special anymore because half the town would have them.  ;D

Maybe we could do an alternate all-Brynne template replacer. ;)

Oh, I do have other ethnicities in my game, too lol

I posted at the same time as you. lol
I just realized that I probably should have shown a few different sim-families, not just ones who are all related.
I do have some more "generic" looking ones I could hunt down and post...I misunderstood, sorry. I was thinking you were specifically looking for non-generic, but you're right. That doesn't make sense. My bad.
And I do have a neighborhood full of sims that look like those guys, because most of them are Romance sims, and..."well known" among my Pleasantville residents. Not big on birth control, those guys ;)
Anyway, I'll look through my photos and see if I can find some a little more generic looking. 

You've definite got some sims I'd like to use, Brynne!

I used the exchange to upload a few of mine, and witch has some of hers there now.  Whether Motoki creates one file for people to use or people do their own according to the instructions, the Exchange might be the best place to post them for others to grab.  Just make sure your packaged sim you put there is 100% Maxis in content.  By doing this, the download size is only ~160KB for a given sim.  The Exchange also allows you to upload pictures of your sim now so if you want to throw in a screenshot of them all dressed up in custom content.  Randomized townies won't turn out that way, but I might grab some for playable use in the game myself.

Witch, that one female "Biergut" looks sorta like Nicole Kidman.  She'd make a great replacement for the Jan Tellerman face.  ;D

Well, Allen, I have to thank you for your awesome skins, most of my hot males have them!
I have the three guys in the tuxes available for download at my yahoo group (link in my sig), if you want them. If any of the others appeal to you I can package them up, too. It's a restricted membership because I want to have some control over where these guys go and who downloads them. They are definitely not mostly Maxis content! So, out of respect for you and the other people whose clothes my sims are wearing (and I can't remember who did a lot of those outfits! Bad, Brynne. Bad.), I'm being picky about who they go to.

*Pretty Sure* you'd be approved lol 

Thanks.  ;D

I'm in the last stretch of finishing my master's degree in computer science.  1.5 months to go to graduation.  I've barely had time or energy to work on body hair project since I started school.  I did my last set in December last year.  But I'm planning on doing more once school is out of the way.  There are so many different types that could be done, and I'm itching for something new!

Add me to that phobia list too.....I don't even have  SimPE.....just the thought of trying to figure it out sends me running in fear....I leave it to you guys who are so much more awesome than me!  ( Do you see an avatar under my name....well that should speak for itself!) Tgdry6

I'm definitely going to make at least one set of replacements, but I don't mind if someone else makes some based on the instructions I gave. I have a feeling it's going to be somewhat time intensive if we end up having to do all the ages and genders (not sure if we need to do elder since AFAIK they use the same mesh just with a different texture) so it might be a while before I can get enough time together to do a full replacement but I did download Allen and Witch's sims and have them saved.

If anyone needs more clarification on the instructions or any of the steps let me know.

One and a half months, huh? So close! Congratulations in advance on that.
Looking forward to your new creations!

That's why I was thinking, the more the merrier.  There are 26 adult faces of each sex (discounting the Vulcan/elf face).  That's 52 adult sims alone and more if teens, children, etc. are included.  I would hate for you to have to come up with even a quarter of those by editing sims yourself unless you've already got a bunch to use.  So the more people that donate a sim or two (or 3, 4, 5...) the easier it'll be on the Awesome One who figured out how to do this.

 :D

I'm not really sure what they did exactly to exclude the elf face from generating townies based on it, but I'm going to look into that. If I do enable it though, I'll make it totally optional as I know some people have serious issues with paranormal type sims (aliens, zombies, vampires etc.)

It's funny because looking through that template, I noticed there was an alien face template too. If I could somehow tie it to always use the specific alien skintone then I'd try and enable it too (again as optional), but I don't think that's doable. :( I'd like to maybe tie certain features to darker or lighter skintones and certain eye colors too if I could.

I was about to suggest hunting around the Nightlife files to see if you could find the Maxis templates that are used to generate downtownies.  They seem to be more consistent in terms of skin tone usage, etc.

But at first glance all I could find was this:

F:\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\3D\CASFaces.package

and all it appears to contain is vampire teeth info.

Motoki,

Thank you so much for your easy to follow SimPE tutorial. In just a few minutes, I've been able to change one of those ugly faces. I think, I'll change some more tonight and then wait for you or someone else to come up with some other new faces.

Thanks again.

Her face is in shadow there too, she's got a lovely little face. She's quite naughty in my game but all the sims love her.

Motoki - that tutorial looks good. I am counting down 7 weeks to my annual leave, I have so many things I want to try in sims, that I just don't get time for in my everyday life. I have saved your tute as a doc, hope you don't mind.


WOO HOO! Masters too. I remember when I got my Bachelor's, the paper arrived in the post, I snuck into a deserted corridor at work and sat down and had a cry for joy.

Congratulations! I'm two papers towards a masters, but they've put me in sucky business computing, not computer science because my maths and programming aren't good enough. :( I want to build robots, not learn about bloody e-commerce.

Anyway - wotcha going to do with your masters? Gunna be a Dr or go make lots of money?

Already got a job as a software developer where I'm quite content.  Work paid to send me to school for the new degree.  ;D
That being said, once I go back to work I won't have nearly the amount of time to play the Sims or post to the forums.  But I will have free evenings and weekends to do whatever I feel like.

How does one do this?

On the "Target" line of the desktop shortcut, simply add "-w -r800x600" (sans quotation marks). So, if you have NL, the "Target" line will look like this:
""C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSBin\Sims2EP2.exe" -w -r800x600"
Replace 800x600 with whatever resoloution you'd like to run the game in.

Nope, I don't mind at all.

re: how to run in windowed mode

You right click on the Sims 2 (or University or Nightlife) shortcut or you can create a new shortcut. In the line where it has the path to the program like "C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 University\Sims2EP2.exe" (I'm going from memory, not sure if that's the exact path and filename) just add -w after the end quote. You can also add -r and set the resolution. Like mine is set at -r640x480. In general, if you are just running the game to get names out of the CAS or delete stuff it's best to run as low res as possible with all the settings turn down so it doesn't run all slow on you.

*edit: Venusy beat me to it. :)

Yowza!!!

I just replaced my first template face using Motoki's tutorial.  For some reason I had this strange idea that the process would end up making a new CASFaces file.  Even cooler is that faces are atomic and so can be replaced individually.  So basically if people get tired of one of their templates they can always replace it with another.

This is pure AWESOMENESS!!!

Good-bye mile-wide lips!
Good-bye side-of-head eyes!
Good-bye Pinnochio noses!
Good-bye you Komei-Benajmin-Kennedy Clonus Horrors!

My Pleasantview is gonna be so much more pleasant soon!   ;D

Oh good! I'm glad it worked for you and aerdehel. :) It's actually really not that bad to do once you know how. It'd be nicer if a lot of different people made different replacer sets for variety. And like you said you can mix and match too.

Somehow I think that once word of this gets around we'll probably see a number of people publish their own replacer sets.  I expect MTS2 will have several.  The great thing about this is that it has immense application for people who want to do specialized neighborhoods whether they be ethnic, alien, what have you.

The only thing that would make it better, as you mentioned before, is if way could be found to tie certain traits like hair or skin color to the templates.  And I figure there must be a way to do it since Maxis appears to be doing it with the NL downtownies.  Maybe their templates will have additional details that'll provide the right clues.

I'm still not convinced they didn't just make those downtownies by hand. It seems like elders don't get generated if you create a new downtown but only if you play the default premade downtown.

It's kind of puzzling.  I posted on another thread a rogue's gallery of new downtownies made by the Townie/NPC Maker.  Most of them were close or exact copies of the default downtownies.  Maybe they just have some full sims hard-coded somewhere and that's what you'll always get when downtownies are made by the game?

By the way, I discovered an additional step.  In order to get the new face templates to show up in CAS, you have to delete the file:

C:\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Thumbnails\CASThumbnails.package

It's safe to delete.  The game will generate a new one.  If you don't do this the thumbnail picture of the old face template(s) will still be present in CAS.

eep, thanks for mentioning it. I'm just about ready to make my own downtown (along with a new Uni) and the elders and teens (the Tricou-generated errors), the most likely ones to be made by hand, are the only default ones I actually want. Guess I need to save them out with simpe and stick them in bodyshop so I can put them back in again.

Why do they make the best stuff difficult :)

Aren't the downtownies here? C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate\D001\Characters

I thought it worked exactly like the default Pleasantview townies. They sit in their own neighborhood character folder, ready to be copied over to any new neighborhood you create. The only difference would be that they seem to get random names.

I could be wrong, of course. I've not really been interested enough to check where the downtownies are coming from. I just needed their pictures for something I was working on, and the files inside that folder contain large portraits of them.

I didn't have to do that myself, but my Bodyshop never caches right like it's supposed to anyhow.  ::)

As for the CAS, if it's anything like buy mode in the game you should be able to refresh a thumbnail by holding control and doing a right click I think.

That would be them.  Looks like Motoki is right. They are pre-made Maxis characters.  And all the more irritating that when you get rid of a downtownie the game regenerates from files with the same-looking characters all the time.  I've noticed there are SOME dynamically generated downtownies.  Not many, but those that are use the standard random-assignment fugly templates we here are currently trying to replace.

sigh... well Maxis DID say they'd give us better looking townies in NL...  ::)

Thank you AllenABQ for that info.

Yesterday evening I replaced 2 faces. In Cas, none got updated. In bodyshop, only the first one got updated. I was going to investigate on this tonight but you already got the solution.

I think the ones that it ues the standard tempates for are the "special" downtownies like the Diva, Mr Big and the Slobs.

Motoki, Love the tutorial. One guestion for the lazy lol *grins*. Are you going to release any replacements for people that this might be out of their league.

At some point, yes. But it may be a while between being really busy at work (though not so busy that I can't stop to post this lol) and having a bf who whines I don't spend enough time with him and spend too much time online (*looks around to make sure he's not looking*) and keeping up with the posts here and Bines daily finds and TSR every few days etc it's hard for me to squeeze the time in. To be honest, I was hoping someone would beat me to it lol. I'll try and work on it this weekend though if I can.

You too, huh? I don't get the whining from my husband, I get the silent sulking...

I get the screeching  hubby

Oh he does that too. But when that doesn't work, and it usually doesn't ;) , he gets vocal. :P

the screeching doesnt work either :P

and neither does the sulking. Which leads to louder silent sulking.

OK, folks.  Here's a first test drive of this thing.  I had some time to burn the evening and thought I'd at least do the adult males.

These are simply the default face templates tweaked to look a bit more normal.  No huge lips, doll eyes, and other wildly exaggerated features.  I didn't use anyone else's stuff -- just my own adjustments to the Maxis stuff following Gigge's face editing tutorial for the most part.

This is adult men only.  Drop the package files somewhere in the Downloads folder.  (I created a sub-folder in Downloads called "Face Templates".)  Each file has both the number of the template face in the order it appears in the face selection dialog in CAS and Bodyshop and also the internal face name.  If you don't like one of these or want to replace it with something else, just identify it by number and delete/replace it.  I didn't do the Vulcan/Elf template (#26) because it is not used for random townie/NPC generation.

I've already tried generating new NPCs with these, and they appear to work fine.  Randomness still doesn't alleviate really bad combinations of hair, skin color, etc., but it's a bit better than the defaults by a long stretch.

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they are very good  thanks :)

My hubby is just as addicted to the sims. We sit up all night playing them. We love building and designing.

Thanks a lot for making these Allen. It's a huge improvement. I know all the file management stuff in SimPE can be tedious and time consuming so I appreciate it.

BTW, I did confirm that you can go into the CAS (but not bodyshop) and hold down control and right click on the faces one by one to get the thumbnails to refresh. It's probably faster to just delete the file but I actually like this way better because you get to see the dramatic difference between before and after.  ;D

Glad I could help out.   :D

I've been working on the women this morning, and I've made an interesting discovery.  I had thought that the facial data of a particular sex was locked on some linear correspondence to the opposite sex.  That is, because I hadn't altered the women yet I thought that if I loaded up a Maxis female face template and then flipped the sex to male, I'd still get the unaltered male face.  That's not true.  I got my new templates for males instead.  So if I adjusted a maxis female face (per Gigge's tutorial) the male version of that face would look like its new male template PLUS the changes I'd made resulting in some very weird looking male "twins" of the women.

The lesson here is that if you are doing a new facial template, it's probably a good idea to make the male and the female version at the same time.  Then put both of them in the Downloads folder at the same time.  If you do one based on the new template of the other, then one sex might be capable of passing some underisable traits to children of the opposite sex.

PS -- This isn't to say that my adult male templates people are using are bad because I didn't do the women.  It just means I have to take them out of *my* Downloads folder while working on the female set.

Speaking of Gigge, I haven't seen it in this thread so far, but Gigge does an excellent line in elder clothing as well as her face tutorials. www.sagesims.com (http://www.sagesims.com). In fact I just emailed her about a download link that wasn't working on her page, I might just send her a link to here too, she may be interested in this.

Edit: Just realised I meant to post this is the elder clothing thread, never mind I'll post it there too.:)

Yeah, Gigge's cool. I like her stuff. I should let her know about my adult clothes for elders mod too.  ;D

I was just composing a telegram! :D

PS I was in fact working out how to link direct to your first post about the elder skin mod.

PPS I'll just leave it up to you then, shall I?  ;D

PPPS You being the creator and all, wouldn't want to step on any toes now...  :P

LOL I don't care and I'm lazy haha. But I'll write her. I wouldn't want it to be your fault in case something else goes wrong because we know enough things are already your fault. ;)

Thanks! This is awesome! Some of them are still a big on the ugly side, but I'll just follow the tutorial and edit them myself.

Hi, it's Gigge (I can't sign in as me because I made my last password so stealth even I can't remember it  ::) ).  I already got a note about your work Motoki and am going through the thread now.  So, you can resume laziness immediately ;) . . . or write me anyway if you want, lol. Thanks for looking out for the seniors.

Also, thanks for the note Witch.  I responded that the links on my site should be fixed now, but a couple of people have said that my responses aren't returned or have a completely blank message. So, I apologize if you didn't get an answer.

Today I made a whole set of adult males. I completely redid the faces. I noticed something weird though that may make things a little more complicated than I thought. I built a completely new sim in bodyshop choosing the randomize face button. I made him old and noticed that his face was not matching the face my adult man had.

So I made some investigation on this. I used one of my new adult faces on a new sim in bodyshop. I didn't blend his face with any other. I made this sim older and it turned out that his face as elder man was the face he would have had if I had not replaced it. This simply means that the game doesn't extrapolate the face to make the sims look older but takes the elder man face template corresponding to the original face. Same thing for making sims younger.

This makes sense but also means that to replace a particular face you have to rebuild the templates for all ages. That's rather tough work.

Can somebody confirm this?

That seems to be the case yes and to do a complete replacement it looks like you'd have to do all the age groups and both genders which will be a royal pain in the ass. :(

But since most townies and service npcs are adults I do think it will still be a great help even just having the adult faces replaced because I am tired of looking at the ugliness.

Hi Gigge, I got your answer fine thanks. I just wasn't going to load your mailbox with a 'thanks for the email' email. :)

In addition to what Motoki said, it really depends on what you are shooting for by replacing the face templates.  If you want complete age transitions for all faces, then yes, you've got to reprogram the whole thing.

However, you could take the position that the age transitions don't matter.  What you REALLY want is different looking sims across the spectrum of ages.  In that case, putting different sims in the same "age slot" wouldn't matter.


You're welcome!  I wasn't going for 'beauty' with this set.  Just taming the exaggerated features of the defaults.  In any case no matter how one edits the templates nothing can protect against the game deciding to create an NPC/townie who has asian features, dark skin, and a red mohawk.  It's too bad we can't associate certain faces with the other genetics (skin, eyes, hair).

BTW, I've finished the female set.  I'm going to post the whole shebang on MTS2, with credits to Motoki of course.

But for the moment, here they are if ya want 'em right now!

<file removed for now>

will you be doing the elders, children and Teens/YAs?

I don't think it's necessary to do young adults since they are sort of a faked age group that are really adults. I checked and University didn't ship with any new archetype face templates either so they must just use the adult ones.

I think they use the teen face structures but I'm not sure. That's just what I have heard.

Just a query, I'm not quite clear. If a townie has a new default face, then they are moved in to a lot, then they age - what will happen to their face?

A lot of people are confused on that point. They actual use the teen texture but on the adult head mesh and adult body. The differences between the teen and adult textures are very subtle. The adult texture has some very faint fine lines that the teen texture doesn't but you'd honestly have to open them both in Photoshop and compare the two side by side which is what I did.

At any rate, the head meshes are completely the same between adults and young adults.

Most likely they'd revert to the default Maxis template for that age group if no custom one exists to override it. You can kind of get around this effect, I think, for CAS created sims by combining in just a little bit of another template or making a slight change to a template face, thereby making it sort of custom and not corresponding to any one template, but you can't really do this for townies, so if you move one in and they age you might get an unpleasant surprise!

Then again, that's true in the game sometimes even without replacing the templates. I had one of my teen girls go with Hal Capp, a Maxis pre-created sim in Veronaville. He as a cute kid and teen but oh my god when he became an adult was he ever ugly. LOL

ah thani you for enlightening me. That's what I get for talking about things I know nothing about.

lol don't worry about it. I used to think that too when university first came out. I don't recall what gave me that impression. Maybe it was an interview with someone at Maxis or the Prima Guide. I bet it was the Prima Guide, they're wrong about a lot of stuff. :P

It was one of those idiotic "Letters Home" review type things. "I have an adult body, but still keep my teen face" or something along those lines. And the different texture is noticable for men, at least, but much less so for women. For me, anyway. Mainly because the textures for men have more forehead lines than the women.

Yeah, I think that's where it came from. I read those reviews.

Dang!  Well I guess this undermines my earlier theory about putting different templates in different age slots.  I just confirmed what you said by moving in the "improved face" townies into a household in my test neighborhood, then age them with a cheat.  They became elders with the old template features.  One pretty woman spouted enormous lips in addition to turning gray!

Sigh... well I guess I won't post the sets elsewhere until I get them coordinated for all ages.

Well the elders seem to be the only other ones worth worrying about IMO. The toddlers and children I don't think are so bad. Even most of the teens aren't that bad really. And I'm pretty sure you don't need to mess with Young Adults.

well I often marry/move in townies and NPCs. So I would like to see all ages fixed up so I don't have to deal with weirdness when they have kids.

Yeah I guess one thing that is not resolved yet about this is if someone moves in a townie or NPC and then has a child with them, which template age slot for the townie contributes to the genetic profile of the baby?  All of them?  One of them?  If the kid get's Mom Townie's mouth, does it change from fat lips to no fat-lips transitioning to YA/Adult and then back to fat lips when an elder?  Hmm....

Would probably be better to do all the ages, even though its time consuming.

I think that is what would happen yes. I think the features would come from, say for example, AmArchHeart for whatever the age group applicable. So I'm betting if the kid has the dad's mouth, as a child it would grab the lips from the AmArchHeart child template, and as a teen it would grab them from the AmArchHeart teen template etc.

Ideally, a full replacement would be best, but I do feel like the most extreme features tend not to come out in full force until adulthood. Also, I don't think this will by any means prevent people from ending up with weird looking children. The way the game combines features randomly can often lead to less than desirably results even between 2 very attractive sims.

Still, it should help at least and get rid of the most extreme Maxis features.

Yes, you're right.

I did some experimentation.  I was hoping that by starting with a template and changing it slightly or substituting in other parts that other ages would then adopt the new face as a whole unit and find new settings for the whole face that would be consistent.

What I found was that only those parts that are altered with controls are affected.

So I had a Maxis adult female to start with, and I changed her eyes slightly.  Then I aged her to elder.  Her eyes retained the new shape I'd given them, but every other face part changed to the parts the elder template was based on, including fat lips.  Same when I changed her to teen.

This is gonna wreck havoc with trying to create new playable families in CAS unless you have a full set of changed templates.  If you load in just the adult templates, any sim you create based on a template will undergo radical changes into or out of the adult phase unless you first design them as an adult and adjust the sliders for every feature so it will be a "custom" setting.

:(

I've taken down the files I've posted as a result.  Those that have them may like to continue experimenting with them or use them as a basis for making the other ages, but on their own I think they'll be a source of frustration with playable sims.

PS -- And I'm just hoping that already existing playable sims in the game that might have unchanged template parts aren't affected by the template changes either!  :o

Can't you just start off with one template and then move the bar just ever so slightly to blend in just a tiny bit of another full face template, thus that should make their whole face and all their features neither one template nor another.

At any rate, I'm going to keep running your files in my game. I'm very picky about my own created sims and design every last feature on them anyhow. And no matter how good my sims look their kids always end up looking funky so I always end up giving them surgery at some point too heh. I really mainly just want the townies to not look like deformed gorillas and am tired of having to grab them all and make them selectable, give them surgery etc etc over and over for each one so I think your files will solve that problem at least.

OK, I think I figured this deal out after some experiment and observation in both BS and CAS.  The answer to your question, unfortunately, is no.   :(

The only way a sim becomes "unanchored" from a template (or a composite of template face parts) and its age slots is if you save a copy of him/her.  Then if you start a new sim based off a saved copy, changing ages translates the face properly.  Easy enough to do in BodyShop.  The only way to do this in CAS though is by loading a saved BodyShop sim.

Creating a new sim from a default template in BodyShop or CAS (starting from scratch using the "+" thumbnail in BS, or working with a sim that started out being randomly generated in either) binds that sim to the template or pieces of templates it is using.  And apparently this effect carries over into the game for sims that were generated from templates (i.e. the Townie Maker) per my ealier experiment where aging one of these townies made her use the elder Maxis-fugly template that hadn't been changed.

The only thing I don't know yet is if any CAS-created playable sims that were not started from a saved BodyShop creation share the same vulnerability to the age template binding that the townies do.  I suspect they do -- it makes a kind of linear sense.  Sims born in the game should be safe though.

Which all still makes the case for creating complete age groups because not everyone creates their CAS sims first in BodyShop.  This is tedious, but not hard.  Just use the saved adult sims, age transition them, save them again, and extract the info in the same manner suggested in the tutorial.

EDIT: I'm also not sure about the following situation.  If a CAS-created playable sim is bound to the templates, and then the changed templates are introduced, will the sim in question then use the new template when age transitioning -- in essense using the deviation of clicks used to create its uniqueness and then applying those deviations to the next age template it transitions to?  The bad news would be that if its true, then even replacing all the templates in every age group could still mean radical face changes for any CAS-created sim that was made prior to introducing the new templates.  The only neighborhoods that would be immune would be those started from scratch with the new templates and those pre-played neighborhoods where all CAS sims were created from BodyShop files.

I think this is going to require a bit more experimentation before general release to the public!

Tedious, yes... sigh... I also came to that conclusion. I think that only a few changes in a new face will make that face look older. Applying the same kind of changes to all the new templates will probably do the job. Same for the teens. I agree with Motoki that it is not so important to change the children.


This afternoon I'll do some experimentation on this. I consider that the game acts like this: amArchHeart + tweaking becomes emArchHeart + same tweaking when growing old.

What I hope: New amArchHeart + tweaking becomes New emArchHeart + tweaking.

What I fear: New amArchHeart + tweaking becomes original emArchHeart + tweaking.

It all depends on how Maxis has bound the faces to the templates.

Well, I have some bad news and some good news.

Concerning the elders. Good news. I used the amArchCaus geometry files (That's the 18th male face in BS or CAS) and took these to replace the the emArchCaus geometry files. This works fine: the old man resulting out of this looks fine. I noticed that the game adds some tweaking to the face, the same way it does when switching from young adult to adult. This works in the game, in CAS and in BS.

Concerning the teens. Bad news. You can't just do what I did with the elders. The face gets completely distorted because the mesh coordinates are verticaly way too heigh. Besides, the resulting face doesn't look like belonging to a teen. Same behaviour in the game, in CAS and in BS. I guess that the teen templates must be completely rebuild.

And now rather good news: The game uses the new templates when calculating a new face geometry: I had a afArchHeart (1st female adult with original template) marry a amArchCaus (18th adult male with new template). I made them have a male child in CAS. That child took most of its genetic appearance out of the male. Lets say the game took 10% out of afArchHeart and 90% out of amArchCaus and transformed this in 10% cuArchHeart and 90% cuArchCaus. (cu stands for Child Unified, I think). Since the xxArchCaus templates are quite ugly, the child was also very ugly. Growing that child older in the game, in CAS and in BS resulted in the game using the new templates of tmArchCaus, amArchCaus and emArchCaus to calculate the new face geometry when reaching the corresponding ages. tmArchCaus was still completely distorted so it was pretty obvious that the game was using the new template. ;)

Another solution has yet to be found for the teens, but I think the new template stuff is really going to work.   :)

Back on topic for the first post:

by default DNA-generated faces are "normalized" to the templates. You can switch this behaviour off with a cheatcode:

faceBlendLimits off

This works in userstartup.cheat

thanks for the hint

Well I've got some sorta good/sorta bad news too.

First, that's great that elders can essentially use the same geometry files as adults.  Just eyeballing differences on the screen, I've noticed that elder mouths are turned downward at the corner a few clicks, but that's no great loss to the mesh.

Teens... I'm utterly confused.  When I created the new adult templates, naturally I made sims of them that I could extract the face data from.  It turns out that those sims ("Caus", for example) translate facial geometry properly when I clone them in BodyShop and make them a teen.  So you'd think, GREAT! no having to rebuild.  Well, yes that's true at least for the sims I've created.  But then I went into BodyShop and started with a fresh sim based on "Heart".  I saved her. Cloned her.  Then used the clone to set to teen.  ...  She reverted to the unchanged teen "Heart" template.  argh!!!  I even tried it again, this time not only modifying her face ever so slightly with the face sliders, quitting BodyShop, changing the name of the file in the Saved Sims directory, and restarting.  Cloned her and changed her to teen.  STILL binding to the unchanged teen face.

ARGH!!

In short, I'm not sure WHAT I did to my sims that makes them unbound now.  Maybe someone will figure it out, but it looks like that for now I have the only sims where I can derive teen versions with a few simple clicks instead of rebuilding the face entirely.  Here's my "Caus" teens made from cloned "Caus" adults:


[attachment deleted by admin]

Well one thing I figured out is if you are going to do all the ages, take the original sim you are basing them templates on before you make him or her a template, change that sim to teen, then save as a new sim, change to elder, then save, the other gender then save and change the ages again for that gender etc.

If you make them a template first and make a sim based on the template then as you pointed out Allen it will revert to the original template when you change their age.

Thank you Motoki,

You're a very resourcefull person  :)
I have now a complete set of the "caus" templates: PU, CU, TM, AM, EM, TF, AF and EF. The set works in CAS and in BS. I didn't try it in the game yet.

If someone wants to try it, here it is. Put the files in your download folder. To undo simply remove the files. Sims created on base of these templates will keep their face until next face calculation. This is the first time I upload something, suggestions are welcome. If there are any complaints this upload will be removed and I will never upload sim stuff again.



[attachment deleted by admin]

 :o You replaced them ALL? Wow that's dedication.

Downloading now, I'll give them a try. I'm curious to see if any Maxis features still pop up with a full template replacement for all age groups.

:o wow that was quick thanks

OK, a little more quick experimentation today with the set of adult templates I created.  Thankfully it appears at this point that the templates DO NOT exert effects on previously-made playable sims when they age transition.  I had a one recently-created CAS family where I let the child generator determine the face of a girl.  I aged her to teen then adult with the aging cheat.  No template effects kicked in.  What a relief.  Of course she was a composite of mom and dad, so I believe if you had made a CAS sim that was 100% template in origin then then you might see an aging affect.  But I don't have any sims like that in my game to test.

I've got a rather busy week ahead of me with school assignments.  I probably won't be able to devote much time to this again until after Thursday.  I do intend to make a full set of all ages from the templates I started.  But it is time consuming and won't get done this week.   :-\

This sounds both tedious and complicated. Thank you very much for being so persistant.  8)

As a matter of fact, once you have spotted the right sim to work with, it takes less than 15 minutes to build a complete set.  :) There are 27 sets... I would like to replace about 20 of them in my game. It's a bit tedious, but not complicated.

The biggest problem is to find a correct sim to work with. I now have 2 complete sets, I made them with ingame born sims. The sims hace to be quite different in their appearance so that the game will generate a wide variety of faces. That's gonna be the difficult part of this. I'm not able to build 20 completely different sims... when I build new sims they all have something common in the way they look...  :(

Just a progress report.  I'm slowly making a complete set of templates that includes all ages (with my previous adult age sets used as the starting point).  I have six done so far.  About 20 left...  ;)

Motoki, I was thinking this would make a great official tutorial to put up somewhere like on MTS2's message board or some such.  Would you have any interest in making one?  Or would you object to my doing it and you getting marquee credit?

I also figure that since I'm extracting every single face mesh out of the "CASFaces" package, that it would be a real waste to have people do THAT tedious part all over again.  So I'm saving the base extracted template files and thinking it would be great to zip them up and offer them for download somewhere -- ideally as part of said tutorial I mentioned.

I haven't really participated at MTS2 for some time now, but I've thought of having it put up there as a tutorial. I would have done it myself, but the mods have to do it. I suppose I should contact Numenor or someone like that and ask if he wants to put it up there or at Quaxi's place since I think he's a mod there too.

Also if anyone else wants to repost it just via copy and paste somewhere else feel free to do so. No need to credit me either unless you want to. I did put the tutorial up in Peasantry just so it didn't get buried in the thread here and I also added the part about deleting the CAS thumbnails that you discovered Allen.

Hey Motoki...

I've encountered a really weird problem.  In BodyShop it appears that two face templates are missing from every age group except the adults.  I've identified one by name as "CSLA" (right before the elf face).  The other I haven't found yet but for myself every age group has 25 face templates except for the adults which have 27.   Oddly enough, the missing faces for those ages ARE in the "CASFaces" package, they just don't appear to show up.  Even worse, the two adult sims I made by improving the adult CSLA face revert to other face templates when changed to different age groups.

I was wondering if you can verify the same issue in your setup?  I'm sorta stumped as to how to figure out a workaround.  I've tried extracting the missing faces from "CASFaces" and placing them in as package files in the Downloads folder but they are ignored. I even took out all my custom face templates and reloaded BodyShop on the off-chance one name group was somehow overwriting the other but the problem persisted.

I'll check it when I get home. It's possible they put a flag to hide those facial templates in the bodyshop for other age groups. I know they use a flag to hide stuff like work and npc outfits from showing up in the bodyshop. They do some other weird things too. Like somehow that elf template is excluded from being used on townies and npcs, but I'm not quite sure how they do that.

If you want to check those facial templates, see what the flag setting is for them in the CASFaces file. If it's anything other than all zeros that's probably what's hiding them.

Ah... I'm not familiar with the flag setting or where to look for it.  Went through various tabs showing information and didn't see one called flag.   ???

Can you describe where it is in the "CASFaces" file?  If not, no biggie.  This isn't a rush thing.

BTW, the other one that has missing age groups is "CPER".

I'm not really sure where it is, but I think it should be there. It's there for clothing with the property set stuff and depending on how the flag is set the clothing will either show up or be hidden in the bodyshop.

I'll take a look and dig for it when I get home. I think with the clothing it was in the catalog file but not sure where they hid it for the faces. :(

I just confirmed that the faces DO NOT show up in CAS either, even when the game is in debug mode to show hidden stuff.  :(

Has anyone else run into a problem with the teen females? I wanted to replace the Cara template, but the Teen Female does not have a LOD15 file for it, just the regular file. The Teen Male has both, and so do all the other ages. What the heck?

I hadn't gotten around the extracting the teen templates yet, but I've done all the other ages.  And I noticed that the LOD15 file is also missing for the CPER and CSLA faces for toddlers.  That's the same templates that aren't showing up at all except for adults.  Wonder if there's a connection?

As long as the faces can be used in the game, I don't know if the missing LOD15 files really pose a problem beyond slightly more video memory consumption for sims using those faces.

I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't an oversight in QA on Maxis's part.  Can't think of any significant benefit they'd gain from doing it this way.

Maybe some questions directed at MaxoidTom would clarify a few things...

Allen, I found where the settings that hide a facial template are stored:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Catalog\Skins\Skins.package

Then select "Face Arch XML" from the left hand side. Now in the upper right window are the settings for your face templates, might want to hit the type bar above the window to sort them alphabetically. When you look at each face arch XML lookout for the settings "Flags". If this is set to 0x00000009 the face will be hidden in the bodyshop and CAS. Change it to 0x00000000 and the face will then show.

For example, the alien face templates are hidden, but if I change their flag to all 0s they then show up.

Of course, you don't want to change these settings in this file itself, but rather extract them and then insert them into a new package file and put that in your downloads directory.

*edit: Okay this works for clothes, but I can't seem to get the damned alien templates to show. :P Also, I looked and there don't seem to be Face Arch XML settings for CSLA for the other age groups. I suppose we could try creating them and see what happens. :o

*edit #2: Creating a new face arch XML file for the teen CLSA faces is not working for me. When I copied another teach arch xml and changed the name to clsa and the family to the same value that the adult clsa uses, it did not show up. When I copied the adult clsa face arch xml and changed the age to 4 (teen) and the name to tf and tm facearchclsa_clsa it did show up, but the face was at the adult height and had a huge neck stretched to reach it lol

Obviously there's more settings I don't know about or am not seeing, I guess I'm going to have to leave finding how to add those faces to the CAS and the alien ones to a more techie type person. Perhaps you could ask Morague? I hestitate to send anyone over to VS :P but he (she?) has always been a decent, polite person in my experience and has unlocked a lot of hidden Maxis stuff.

Thanks for looking into this, Motoki.  I might poke around with it a little myself being a techie type.  But my unfamiliarity with the Sims 2 internals would probably not help much unless I devoted some serious study to it which I don't have time for right now.  So perhaps contacting Morague might be beneficial.

It's curious though.  I find it hard to believe no one would have noticed the problem until now, but then the "Skins.package" file has a creation date of 8/17/2004 which is prior to the base game release.

I filed a bug report with Maxis about the missing faces in the other age groups anyway.

P.S. -- I've got 10 fully age-completed replacement templates now.  Hopefully I'll get the rest done over Thanksgiving break.

I'm honestly not sure if it was a bug or intentional. Seems like a bug, but then again there are some face templates like the aliens they are delibarately hiding so you can only access them through gameplay.

Oh and my skins.package now has a much more recent date on it since the holiday pack modified to add santa claus and a couple of other things.  ::)

well I found another file "globalcatbin.bundle.package" that keeps a text list of all the archtypes referenced in skins.package.  None of the CPER or CSLA age groups except for adults were listed there, so I made a package file to replace that text list with "tfarchcper_cper" appended to it.  That didn't help.  I figured it was a long shot anyway because the alien faces are listed in it, and they don't show up either.

I did notice that the "stretched neck" effect you mentioned came from cloning the adult cper file to make a teen version but not giving the teen version its own unique instance.  In addition to getting the stretched neck, the adult version disappeared from its own group -- sorta like moving it from one age group to another.  But giving the teen version a unique instance didn't get it to show up either, although the adult one returned to the adult group.

Strange...

So is Santa pretty anemic looking?

Yes, he's pretty damned thin. I think he's just some random sim they slapped the christmas outfit on rather than make a new npc that's a full body mesh. :P He doesn't go down the chimney either and interacts very minimally with your sims or their house and objects so I don't see how clipping could be an excuse for making him so damned thin.

if heget any thinner he will be see through as in a ghost :P