More Awesome Than You!

I really feel like traits are completely broken in this game.  Today I created a male Sim who was not too bad looking. I try to make all of my Sims very unique to one another so, there are some features that stand out more. While I was finishing him up, I decided to make a sister out of his present state so, while she would look similar to how he looks now, I would continue to work on him a bit to tone down certain features and add a few changes. So, I cloned him. Sweet Lordie. As you can see below, there is something terribly wrong.  I understand that in real life, certain traits don't translate well between sexes but, something just seems so off.  Look at the jaw and tiny nose on the woman.  It's just wrong. Everything just looks wrong. The fellow has a very normal jaw, even a little wider on the scale and yet, she shows up like this. 
Is there something wrong in the transition, bug-wise?  We all know it's hard to get non-fugly females but, this seems like a badly broken system.

I had some tweaks to get her to look normal and the most outstanding tweaks were jaw and nose. But, what about children in-game?  It seems like, if it's even possible, I'll be reworking every single Sim to make them non-hideous unless I intended them to be so. I do want some normal looking famblies, you know.  ::)

It this a feature or a bug? 

Normal Looking Guy:                                               
(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4096/normaln.jpg)

Feckin' Scary-ass Twin
(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/6444/fugly.jpg)

Unfuglified With Some Work (which isn't possible once they are in-game)
(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/6060/unfuglified.jpg)

Analogue-features are very poorly done in TS3 compared to their TS2 equivalents. As a result, pretty much ALL traits don't translate well. This is probably why the game resorts to parthenogenesis.

Looks like a normal morph between sexes to me, except the brow was raised a bit much.  That was probably to compensate for the enlongation of the smaller face to match the larger one.

its just cloning and sex change, that result was expected since its simply adjusting the facial structure from male to female.

Its not really attempting to create siblings that would be impossible without having to create their parents first (something that was just NOT DONE! in this experiment) in order for the genetic data to work with to actually exist.

Nah, not at all as would be expected if we're following the trend of Sims 2 or even life iteself.  
I could make a female that looked semi-decent as a male in Sims 2.

It doesn't seem to matter in Sims 3 if you have two very good looking parents either, as your saying is the true test.  I have to say that the *real* way has yielded FAR worse results.  
Two very good looking parents have spawned hideous children in many a game. Not at all as it should be in life or otherwise. No way. It doesn't work this way OR the *real* test that you're talking about.
This was just a simple example.


I will add this here so I don't double post:
Here is a fine example of a nice family with traits gone wrong. Just what Pes said:


Father:
(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/4029/father.jpg)


Mother:
(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8783/mothere.jpg)

Daughter:
(http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/3650/daughter.jpg)

I'm not convinced on that kid. Many of my families have had fugly kids (ones that looked facially similar to yours, actually) that started as ugly ducklings and totally swanned out upon hitting YA or Teen. She looks like she'll grow into her features. I actually liked that some of them were awkward looking teens. I can provide screenshots upon request, but I'm going to assume by default that no one gives a crap. :p So, just wait until YA to see what's really going on, or do an editme (editsim?) cas preview.

I will definitely get some screens of her as an adult.  Might take a few days, though.  :)

The bottom line for me is that it is very difficult to spawn nice looking sims from one another, by parent or twin.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen.  I'm sure some of you have struck it lucky but, as a rule, it just doesn't work. Plus, beauty is surely in the eye of the beholder. When someone says "Beautiful Sim, Lily" or "hot guy Trevor", 9.99999 times out of 10 it is a scary result, even though these pages are rife with comments like "he's so HOT" or "I MUST have her!".   ;)

 Sims 2 worked great for that sort of thing.  If you had a great looking family, the kids always looked great and if you had a not so beautiful family, the kids usually followed suit with the exception of a few in each direction. That was my experience and I bred all sorts of mixtures.  :D

That's why I started this thread, because I honestly believe there may be something wrong. Like one 0 was supposed to be 1 a one in the codex hex thingie stuffs that only smart people understand. If you don't understand, then you're not smart.  ;D

You could shift-clic, trigger age transition a couple of times, take pictures and exit without saving.

See, I think your female sim looks fine.  But maybe that's just me.

I actually like getting the ugly-ass kids in the mix.  I normally have them do interesting things, unlike my perfect beautiful sims, who all marry each other and have babies.  For instance, I had a set of twins where one was gorgeous and one was fat and ugly.  Gorgeous chick married a gorgeous guy and now they have twins and are living in some super cute house on the beach.  Ugly chick turned lesbian, adopted two babies, cheated on her wife then kicked her out, and became the top in the Criminal career.  I actually like playing the ugly chick more.

Oh what the hell, I'm bored.

Pictoral results for tiny genetic experiments:

(http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/5245/1and2gen.jpg)

This is the First Gen, CAS-created of course, and their biological firstborn son. I changed his hair up seeing how I named him Saffron, and it turned out to be a great fit. He's my favorite of the first round. I love his sweet face, and how there's an even distribution of features from each parent.

Oh, and that gray spot on the dame's forehead? Seems to come from the skin tone mod and the blue skin tone. Which sucks, because I like that a lot for pale sims like her. Anyone else have this happening?

(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9278/kidone.jpg)

Same mom, different dad, here. She's very cute and I'm quite fond of her, but she took a little too much from her mom imho. But I think she was a god awful kid.

So, as a little final note. The screens of your brother vs sister clones kinda makes sense to me. It isn't terrible. It shows that the game is, to an extent, trying to feminize girls and add a degree of masculinity to guys, which I believe is a good thing in the war pretty townies.

As for what's next...

(http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/7476/nextuplol.jpg)

...only time will tell. :D

Actually OpiumGirl, I think the "before" sim is prettier than the "after" sim.  I like the longer distance from nose to mouth in the "before" sim, for instance, as I think it works better with the full lips.  I'm definitely not seeing the fug that you're complaining about.

Some of the prettification changes you've made (such as a hairstyle that suits her face, and the eyebrow thickness) are cosmetic, and could be applied to a sim in-game.  If you want to compare before and after pics of facial structure it might be better if you didn't include cosmetic changes.

I have no makeup on her at all in either pics....but, I do see what you mean.
 I definitely can't agree with you (or even relate), though, on the first on being nicer.  :P Not even in the least. My whole family had a look at these because I was making them for my niece's game, and the first one was "ewwww" and the second "ahhh". (as in relief) Purely objective statement not to be confused with "Beautiful Sim Judy" mentality. It makes me wonder if you're a sim maker somewhere who's getting me back for talking smack about other people's Sims. ::) I'm sure I'd love all your Sims! Every single one! Unless you made the first girl in my pics....
In all seriousness though, it just brings me back to *beauty* or *fugly* is in the eye of the beholder.  ;D (I hate using metaphors but there it is...)

Hope no one is edgy about this subject. I just wanted to know if there was something amiss with the genetics/physical traits.  Well, Pes says .... what he says. And what he says....is what he says.  So it probably is just by design.

@Ashkitty, cool pics.  That the little girl turned into a fine looking teen.  So all of the children have that look about them, eh?  Doesn't seem right, along with the genes women get in the game. It does make me feel better though.  I'll have a look and force her to grow up.

@minidoxigirli
Who doesn't love playing ugly lesbians?!  ;D And pretty ones too!



Edited-for grammar, excessive smilies and to add info.

This.  I don't see real fugly on any of these.  I'm not particularly enamoured of some of the "before" examples, so the "after" examples don't seem so bad.  In fact, some of the male sims seem to work better as females.  The child is not fugly, in the sense of the game doing anything horrible to it, even if it did not turn out quite like the child the OP wanted.

I agree. I like the jaw of the "Before" more as well. The "Before" looks more natural, whereas the "After" looks like she had little tweaks done by a Korean plastic surgeon. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

I like the jaw better on your "before" pic.
I prefer a more slender jaw though, looks a lot more feminine IMO.  I gave my first CAS female a super-slender jaw in order to counter-act the visual "fat" the in-game lighting seems to add to their faces.

I've actually been quite pleased with the way my born in game Sims are turning out.  A few have had awkward periods (or really unfortunate hair choices that made them look much worse at the outset), but almost all of them have grown up to be rather pleasing looking.  They're not all classically beautiful or handsome, but I've seen nothing even approaching the fugliness TS2 would throw at me.  And I've said it elsewhere, but almost all of the fug I've encountered has been realistic fug - the kind of ugliness you're likely to encounter walking through the mall rather than the house-of-mirrors type.

Except for the Bunch clan.  They're just F-U-ugly.

Just so I know what kind of Tard you are, do you have a problem with Koreans, plastic surgeons, or just when a person is both at the same time?

I like the first one a whole lot more.  *duck*

Wow so, I guess because she's more feminine. I don't usually do really feminine girls, maybe cause I'm a tom-boy at heart.  But, I'm also an artist and I know that I see with different eyes than most, as does everyone, which is why I should have foreseen. (Not always better, mind you, just different)  I was surprised but, hey, that's why the old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" cliche stands.

Those who thought the first one was nicer spoke up in defense of her so I'm sure she feels better knowing that someone finds her less than fugly. Sad for the second girl but she has the silent majority.  ::) I know in my deepest heart that there are people out there that are going, "wtf?!" about the first girl.  ;D

A little OT, but I kind of prefer the second face as well. :P

The first one feels kind of alien-esque-looking.

I....I think I'm in love with you.

Am I the only person who thinks they're both pretty, in different ways? The 'before' in a more media-idealized way, and the 'after' in a real-person she's pretty hot way.

You know, I think that's what's been bugging me about the before, that I couldn't quite put my finger on. She looks too much like fake plastic celebrity pretty.

No, Ayana, you're not. They are different, but neither is anywhere near hideous, ugly, or even slightly unattractive. I find the analysis of these bunches of pixels by their creator to be distasteful, but then they are her pixels. Just keep away from mine, okay?

For what it's worth, I thought both before and after pics were too fugly for me.  It's hard to say if it's an improvement.  The biggest problem with the first pic was the eyebrows.  But almost all the faces in the game have horrible eyebrows and no tools to fix them properly.  The outside edges of the eyebrows seem to permanently anchored such that raising the eyebrow (eyebrow height) only arches it even further.  Reducing the eyebrow arch slider does nothing to remove that outside eyebrow anchor.  Rotating eyebrows only rotates everything from the middle to the inside, exaggerating the arch.  The only thing to do when you get brows like that, that I have found, is to rotate the brows upwards (on the inside); the resulting brows are less arched, but the brows are strangely slanted and make the Sims look sad and passive.  It's much easier to just replace the brows.

We really got shitty slider tools with TS3.  I'm very pissed off about that.

The mouth is also crappy, but you did little to improve that in the second pic.  Large mouths seem to come standard in the game, just as they did with basic TS2.  I usually end up shrinking them quite dramatically.  You can create a simllar effect, though, with a makeup change.  Using a lighter makeup makes it look less prominent.  And if we can ever make our OWN makeup (not this color wheel crap) then we may be able to do even better.

Back to the topic at top -- This is more important I guess -- genetic facial gender dysmorphism in the game:

TS2 was AWFUL in this regard.  I can't understand anybody thinking TS3 is worse.  In my set of default replacement TS2 archetype faces, I focused on making more attractive female faces; the males got beaten pretty badly by the Fugly Stick as a result. 

If TS3 is anything like TS2, I can probably tell you what is going on.  Every sim, regardless of gender, carried the settings for both male and female faces in their file.  Tweaking the face for one gender applied changes to the settings for the analogous opposite gender face, although you did not see that.  The unseen opposite gender face owed its genesis to the other part of a face pair in the game archetypes.

What I COULD have done (and never did, sadly) was to edit the faces of males and females separately and then merging separately edited male and female faces together when constructing the new default.  When the tools become available for doing this with TS3, that's going to be one of my first TS3 projects. 

Yes, yes! Fake and plastic!
 :D!! I didn't know if I shouild be offended by the whole Korean statement.  My gut feeling was "yes", but "tard" may work depending on whether or not that's a politically correct statement by itself.
 Funnykid has the pictures confused, anyway.  It's the first that has a plastic and stretched look about her.

@Doc Dufus, your post only solidifies how differently people view beauty.  I disagree quite stronly with a lot of your ideas that would "better" the way they look. I have a feeling that I wouldn't particularly like the results of your most beautiful sim (in your eyes),  and I say that with complete objectivity. It's obvious that there are many who would feel completely the same, and completely opposite and, well, in between as well.

To clarify all of this, I never did say that any of them were "beautiful".  As I said, I do my best to make each sim very, very different from one another which often yields *unpretty* and imperfect results.  What I mean is, sometimes I make the lips a little too big, lush and/or put the nose closer to the mouth as in the first pic. Had I shrunk his lips, moved his mouth down a bit and other minor tweaks, then he would probably be "handsome" to some who can't look past outstanding features. But I go for unique.  If I perfected every one of them, they'd all look exactly the same.  So, I go with outstanding features a lot. If you then look at the Father of the homely child, ehem, you will see that no features of his or particularly outstanding and is actually rather bland in a way, though no unpleasantly so.  Just like real people.
So, I'm not harping on fugly Sims..You should see some of the ones I've had. It's just that if I make a normal looking sim, I want his/her family to come out the same. Make sense?  Not distasteful anymore (zazazu?), hopefully. I do tend to forget that some people don't know that I'm being humorous a lot of times.  It's hard to translate everything via computer....

I appreciate everyone's opinion and, I may be coming back with my head hanging low when my child grows up and looks normal.  If there's interest still, I'll be sure to post the pictures so you can say 1. "See? I told you so" or 2. "I don't think she's that bad" or 3. "Yuck, you were right!
And you can bet we'd hear every single one of those!!  :D

Are outside links to pics allowed?  I can't locate anything against it. Many may hate me for this...but, let's just have a laugh!!
This is not my sim and I do not endorse this sort of sick joke upon the masses, but she is revered as beautiful.... I saw comments like "she's gorgeous!" with my very own eyes. I could definitely think of a few descriptive words for her too but, you're probably not interested... ::) That's what I'm afraid my child will look like... *shudders*. There can't be TOO many who....well, ya never know, it's a very *diverse* place, this world. She's So HAWT! Right? Right everyone?  :-*

http://thumbs2.modthesims.info/img/3/0/8/3/7/8/2/MTS2_thumb_psychedeliria_936866_TWO.jpg


Moderator edit: Don't hotlink images from freesites.

She's pixels. *shrug* I don't see the point in harping over her, probably because it reminds me of what mean-spirited and shallow people do in real life. I prefer to pick on sims for their stupid names, or for their poor fashion sense.

In all fairness, you chose the most unflattering picture of her in the lineup. She's actually quite attractive in the other pics.

Can't tell you how much I agree with this.  I know that these are not real people we are judging, but it still seems sad to me that our society focuses so much on superficial details.  Some of these Sims may not be perfect but I honestly think people are getting a little bit out of hand with their criticisms.  I have found in general that the Sims we have in TS3 are pretty good looking.  Were people expecting every randomly generated CAS Sim to look like a super model or something?

And I think it is much more likely than some people here realize for two beautiful parents to have an "average" or even below average looking child, and vice versa.

Our society has been trained for a few generations to judge people on their looks, so you honestly can't expect everyone to be able to discard their life's programming. It took me years to realize that judging people by their looks is a bad idea. In a game where we can control everything that happens, it's easy to understand some peoples' dislike towards aesthetically displeasing Sims.

Personally, I like having some fugly puddings in the game. It allows me to recoil in horror at the EAxis' ability to create the next Fugliest Pudding Ever.

Now, on the example recently added, she looks like a genetically deficient Cameron Diaz with a hint of young Demi Moore. I find her personally repulsive and possible useful to breeding some less desireable traits out of my gene pools.

I like to think fuglies like her are great to have, much like a pure breed dog. The pure breeds have several flaws that come with the breed. A good example is heart problems with a Great Danes. When you make a mutt out of the pure breed, you have something called hyrbid vigor. You get the best traits out of each parent. So cross a Dane with say, a Mastiff. You take the heart problems out, you balance the hip problems, but the down side is you have a weird looking dog.

Much with these Sims, save for the problems. Their problem is that they're fugly. Cross them with another fugly and you should run a pretty good risk of getting a semi-attractive or less-fugly-than-their-parents Sim. You would hope, but I know this isn't the case 100% of the time. It's just nice of having that option seeing as nothing but attractive Sims have produced some pretty scary shit.

Please remember that I've said, more than once that I don't mind fugly sims in my game! No one is judging anyone.  As I also said, I just want normal looking sims to have normal looking offspring. The problem with that sim is that she is classified by a few as "gorgeous" and, that's just, well, retarded as some here might say!

Mean-spirited? Here on this forum? Never thought I'd hear that from any member who has survived so long here.  I have seen some of the most hideous forms of meanness known to man right here.  :D
All of the other pictures of her are just as scary. I picked that image because it was the preview.  I can't imagine the creator would have picked the worst (as someone called it) pic as the main one.  ::) Not on purpose, anyway. But, since it's becoming more than a joke and politics are poppin' up, I'm going to remove the pixelated scary lady. (maybe)

I can't even begin to think that someone considers this too mean-spirited here of all places.  Never, never did I think, especially a long-standing member. Perhaps you're a creator and are sensitive but I'd think that being called a tard would make a person feel pretty bad!
Not much worse than a joke about a scary sim.  
I know there are lots of cats that are snickering behind their computer screens but who will not dare speak up for what is truly fugly. *cough*

I may be wrong, but I don't think she was calling you mean-spirited, OpiumGirl. She said it reminds her of mean-spirited, shallow people in real life. I think I know where she's coming from.

It seems to me that we judge females more harshly than males when it comes to physical appearance, and we're so conditioned to it that we don't even notice this glaring double standard. People continue to point out "fugly" girls and women in TS3, but so far I have yet to see one person complain about the looks of the guys. It reminds me of high school when everyone seemed to think that ugly was the worst possible insult you could throw at a girl; apparently, I was the only one who thought that stupid and boring were far worse.

Even in a virtual world, women are under constant visual scrutiny. I find that just a little unsettling.

I promise you, I already have seen about ten fuglified male sims in a few days of seeking out Sims 3 dls. I could re-find and post, though I think it's best to leave that one alone..I request, humbly that you take my word for it. It was the order of my creation that caused it to rest on the poor lady. 
But, I am not discrediting what you've said about women having to meet a much higher standard in real life.  It is absolutely true.

By the third generation of my game, the males at my teen female's high school were so OMFG FUgly, I changed her whole story and made her a lesbo.

I don't know how you people even tell ugly from pretty in TS3, because they all fucking look the same. Some of the default families do have a few distinctive specimen, and yet, adult Mortimer Goth looks a lot like that bitchy kid-hating guy who lives in the posh mansion on the seaside.  It's really hard to breed the bastards when a daughter is almost exact copy of a mother.

I'm not seeing the same-ness. Maybe in the pre-mades, but born in game sims look different enough to me. For example, here's a set of triplets shortly after becoming teens:

(http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p282/Lady_Faizah/TS3/Triplets.jpg)

The middle one most closely resembles the made-in-CAS father, so any oddness there is not the game's fault, exactly. (Though that blasted smiling made the mouth rather difficult.)

Please upload that to photobucket/tinypic/wherever rather than hotlinking MTS... you do realize that hotlinking is generally considered to be both very rude and actually IS bandwidth theft, right?

I don't understand how you can be a member of this site since 2006 and yet not understand the MATY use of the word tard, but evidently, you need to lurk moar. Xenophobic tards have no place here.


You didn't know if you should be offended by this statement, which means you weren't offended, but rather asked yourself if being offended was the politically correct thing to do.

Would you have continued to be ambivalent if unfunny12 had used your race or country of origin instead of Korean? What if he had said Afro-American plastic surgeon? Would your politically correct conscious then tell you that you should be offended?

Unfunny12 could have easily said "poorly trained plastic surgeon" but instead chose to use wording specifically crafted to disparage a large group of people.

I'm not trying to pick on you, OpiumGirl. No one else in this thread seems to be concerned that two sovereign states and an entire race were denigrated, so I guess it's OK to demean anyone that happens to reside in Onebiglumpistan. That is, until someone with authority tells us that it is politically incorrect, at which point we should modify our behavior and pretend that was our stance all along. Because there are neither rights nor wrongs, just political correctness, and thinking for ourselves is just too much of a hassle.

I agree that the jaw did not translate well to the female clone.  It should have been more square.  I also don't know where she got that brow.  He does not appear to have that huge, silly clown-like arch in the eyebrow. On the other hand, I think that the nose translated very well to the female version.  The male's nose is a bit high on the face which actually suits him well.  However, with the female shrunken nose, the distance is too enlarged and the nose appears way too high.  It almost appears as if she smells some foul odor.

Your tweaked female looks much more like the sister of the male Sim than the clone to me.  I don't think beauty has anything to do with it - the clone simply appears to have an odd combination of features not are necessarily ugly, but they are odd.  The features for the tweaked female simply are more in tune with one another and she looks much more like a sibling to the male. 

It's probably not a bug.  Just stupid EA.  I think TS2 did a very similar thing to the female/male version of the faces.  It has never made a whole lot of sense to me.

When most people in real life are more attractive than the Sims, I'd have to say the criticisms are deserved.  I would have expected at least some of the characters in an idealized game world to be attractive, but I didn't find that to be the case at all.


When it comes to physical attractiveness, double-standards are definitely obvious.  Like it or not, they'll always be around because there are psychological and biological forces driving them.
Actually, many of the Sims 3 guys actually look okay to me.  There are a few uggos of course, but I've found many that don't look too bad.  I think this is part of the reason most of the females look so ugly.  Where in Sims 2 there were drastic differences in facial structure between male and female (even the head size/shape differed), in Sims 3 these differences don't seem as pronounced.  The pre-made faces tend to lean towards more masculine features, like wide jaws and large chins which looks okay on males but makes females less feminine and therefore less attractive.

I have to agree that a lot of the males haven't turned out too bad (not great, but not horrific). But as for the females... Bar one or two that looked okay, the majority of them are hideous as they tend to suffer more from puddingface and masculine features. Elders look pretty bad as well, as the game seems to automatically give them extreme pudding faces regardless of what they looked like before. My sim, who I thought looked decent enough to not make me vomit, now looks vomitworthy as an elder because of this.

Actually, I think she is, but I'm not really in the mood for a fight today.

I can bitch and poke with the best of them, but that is all done according to the target's personality, not their genetics. You can't control genetics. You can control how you act/think/relate. Judging people by their genetics has always seemed rather petty to me.

I'm not going to weigh in on whether or not any of these Sims is attractive since the whole "Do you think my Sim is hawt?" thing completely put me off. Beauty is so subjective that my personal opinion is, or should be, meaningless to anyone but me. (Besides which, I think Patrick Stewart is one of the sexiest men alive which probably disqualifies me as a judge of physical attractiveness.)

That said, I personally prefer the second female Sim, not because the first one isn't pretty, but because she's too generic. She looks basically the same as every other 'pretty' female TS3 Sim I've seen. This is the biggest problem with the game's genetics/traits system in my opinion. There was clearly a fair bit of work put into making the original male look distinctive, not a small feat in a game where most of the characters look like they share at least one parent, and to see these features all but vanish in the female version of the Sim pretty much sucks. I'd definitely be disappointed if I'd worked on a unique-looking male Sim, only to find that it's impossible for him to visibly pass on those genetics to his female offspring. Where did his jawline go? And more to the point, what does the male version of the second female look like? I'm picture a grossly exaggerated jaw, not unlike the one one this poor bastard (http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/3769/snapshotd1e827ecb1f14c5.jpg).

To be fair, though, this problem exists in TS2 as well. I've lost track of how many times one of my CAS females has surprised my by spawning a male child with a huge schnozz or Neanderthal brow ridge that clearly did not come from the father. Further experimentation in CAS reveals that several of the more subdued or natural female features have an unrelated and sometimes grotesque male counterpart. I like this, as it adds some variety to the game, but I can understand it upsetting some players.


I thought we were judging Sims, not people? Sims don't have a personality beyond what the programming assigns to them, which doesn't leave much to judge them on besides looks/genetics.

It's people taking someone's judgement of their virtual doll personally that I find disturbing. I happen to like Blythe dolls. I think they're adorable. I own two. Nearly everyone I know thinks they're the sorriest excuse for a doll they've ever seen. I'm not going to take offence on the dolls' behalf, and I don't see any point in taking the criticism as a personal insult either. You don't like what I like? Great! That's what makes this world interesting.

Making sims in TS3 is a process in learning for me. I am more interested in facial characteristics that pass from generation to generation, hopefully leaving pudding faces behind.

 I like the "after" picture more because I want to see features, not round faces. Smaller jawlines are fine for a few sims in my game, but I would like more of the larger jaws and high/low cheekbones that will make them look different. I don't really care if they are unattractive, just want more than round faces.

What is up with the elders having heads bigger than their bodies? Now that looks unattractive to me.

I like them both. The first one is actually not that bad looking, a different haircut would make a world of difference though. I am also an artist and have had classes.

Lots of people think Patrick Stewart is hawt. When I was a 12 I didn't see the attraction, but now as a 30 I do.

Please try to keep up. I said that I find her comments in general sort of distasteful because it reminds me of judging real people by their looks, which is mean-spirited. The judging of the people, not the judging of the sims. She then commented on how she found that surprising of someone who has been here for a bit, since MATY is by nature mean-spirited. I was clarifying the difference between judging people by their genetics and judging people by their actions. Not sims.

Quite so.  And at MATY we continuously judge people by their statements, their opinions, their grammar, and their reading comprehension.

When I was 10 watching Star Trek: The Next Generation I thought Patrick Stweart was hot. :D

As an adult, I'm not attracted to aged bald men, but I still think he is still damn fine to look at. Which that leads back to the beauty/beholder crap. I find too many unattractive people (unattractive by societial standards) really interesting and pleasing to look at.

Judging Sims on their appearance is still judging people-shaped flat images on a computer screen, not actual human beings. Just because they look like peple does not mean they ARE people, or that someone's desire not to have "ugliness" in their personal game is somehow wrong or bad, or comparable to being sexist / sizeist / blindly accepting of the fashion industry / beauty industry / mass media's widely-promoted nearly impossible standards of beauty.

If you're cool with letting free-range Townie fug run amok in your 'hood, that's on you.
If you want to BURNINATE them all, that's also on you.

Let's try being a wee bit less F-ly over PIXELS.

Also, as was noted before, the puddings are bad, but Sandy Bruty (Gorilla Fishlips) in TS2 was FAR worse. The TS3 puddings mostly just look too much alike, which is mostly because we only have, like, 3-4 hairstyles that aren't completely horrific, and only 4-5 outfit shapes that don't make you want to throw up, and the default head size is FAT, 100% tapioca and FAIL.

The spikey-haired townie in University was worse than that.
One time I killed off every passing townie with cow plants and the game regenerated new townies, every 1 of 4 had that face.

Ah, yes.  I wonder when that started.


That's right.  We don't tolerate no gol-durned thieves around these here parts.  We got a rope hangin' from a tree ready for 'em.


I took that a different way entirely.  I think she may have been referring to the "westernizing" plastic surgery that is popular in some Asian countries.  I didn't take it to be a comment about the surgeons themselves.

Here's a before and after example, actress Lindsay Price.  How tragic.
http://www.makemeheal.com/news/images/lindsay-price-plastic-surgery.JPG

http://www.makemeheal.com/news/category/ethnic/asian-plastic-surgery

@Magicmoon,
All I was doing was being sarcastic on both parts.  Sarcastic and definitely not worth harping over for even a few sentences.  If you've read my other posts (all of them) you'd realize that I used that very word in my own post.  So, I was basically saying "good one!" to the gal who called him a tard.  That's all. Next time perhaps I should clarify.

@Doc Doofus, I love you.

@Crunk, Don't be silly.  Though I may post a link of the picture on imageshack just to quiet people, such as yourself, who will fill up the thread with comments such as yours.  Let's just keep this conversation to debating fuglys and not fugly behavior. *cough*

Adding:
@falln_angel
I was acutally making fun of "isn't she HAWT" concept.  I certainly wasn't actually serious. I feel just as you do,  put off by those "Gorgeous Sim, Talula Mae Lila Jean" posts.

@GnatGoSplat, I agree, most heartily.  And it is the fault of EAxis for making women a little stunted in looks by default.  So, they got the crap end in real life and Sims life.

Edited: For many things that you can't know.

Oh relax. Your sims look basically the same to me, although I've noticed that extreme masculine or feminine traits aren't translating well to the other gender. Mostly, I think this entire thread shows that most people are so influenced by standardized images of "beauty" that we've pushed those expectations on to not only ourselves and the people around us, but also onto people-shaped pixels that are designed to entertain us. If anything I think this whole thing is a little disturbing, mostly because of the reactions people seem to have to non-feminine-idealized sims. Overall, I'm in the same camp as the rest of the "eh, they be pixels, omgwtfbbq?"

Also, yes, hotlinking is fairly retarded and shows a nice little streak of laziness. I discovered one of your traits - yay!

Oops, you found me out.  Don't try the whole romance thing on me, though. It won't work because I'm not single.  ;D

I guess it was the last sentence that threw me off.


Not that it really matters all that much. I misunderstood. I stand corrected.

You may have a point as your lamentable illustration demonstrates. However, the before and after Sim pictures did not look like an example of a westernized Asian so I doubt that funnykid was referring to this practice. Besides, which scenario is more likely? Someone who refers to themselves as funnykid made a racist joke, or someone who refers to themselves as funnykid was able to comment on the changing mores of the Asian public?

As funnykid has chosen to remain silent on this issue, there is nothing I can do but wonder why she would allow me to misinterpret her comment without defending herself.

Okay, I presume you're making fun of my post. My excuse: it was 7am and I had not slept in over 24 hours. Next time I find myself in that situation, I will lurk moar.

Anyway, I thought of the perfect example of TS3-style genetics in real life: Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. See (http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e285/xchamacax/Future%20hair%20colors/rumer_willis.jpg)? Sometimes genetics do work like that in the real world.

Edited for clarification.

They have a two other daughters, too.  A little less potato-y, but potato-y nonetheless:
(http://i40.tinypic.com/2mi0rc9.jpg)

This has been my experience.  I've been playing with a proxy-me, married to Tori Kitamura.  One of the offpsring had a weirdly wide jaw as a kid, but it just looks chiseled as an adult.

Or Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley's son, Jack. Perhaps a bit early to tell, but he seems to be in the same boat as Rumer, good-genetics-gone-bad wise.

It's like the exact same with Rumer as in TS3. She got Bruce's face. Unfortunately, it does not translate well to females.

Which one is Rumer Willis?  The youngest just looks like a tom-boy to me and she the most promising of the bunch.  She has a funny little mouth but the rest of her face is quite pretty. I have a feeling she'll be the prettiest of them all eventually.  The others don't stand much of a chance at this stage. The girl on the right of the photo looks a little on the potato-ish side, which is probably why she's trying to stand "sexy" to overcompensate. Funny, I have never heard anyone described as potato-y/potato-ey.   :D

Rumer is the one on the left.

This ugly-Hollywood-kid syndrome is explainable.  We movie-goers, apparently select (in the Mendelian sense) successful stars based on their exaggerated sexual characteristics.  Uber-feminine women, uber-masculine men.  And then when they cross breed, the result is unpleasantly androgynous, like Demi Moore's eyes with Bruce Willis's jaw. 

Now, if Demi had spawned with somebody a little more androgynous looking... like, say this guy:

(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/8120/ralphreeddoesntopposeho.jpg)

... then maybe she would have had a rockin' hot-lookin' daughter.  As for a son...  eh...

Then there's looks that are acquired via plastic surgery. Starlet / actor gets rid of embarrassing nose or sunken chin or picket fence teeth, then has daughter or son with THAT nose / chin / grin.

Surgical changes, obviously, aren't genetic.

And here are the results of my child as promised.  I have to admit that I was completely wrong and those of you who noted that she may turn out normal may gloat. Had I listened to you, I would have saved myself days of terror and apprehension.  ;D Definitely looks unique to any Sims I have but took on both parent's physical traits just fine.

 She's got the teen "puffy lips" syndrome like her Mom but that may clear up since I've noticed that teens de-puffify once they turn adult in the game.
The son came out much nicer, though.  I've added his pic as well.
Hair 01
(http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/6389/normal01ascreenshot554.jpg)

Boy
(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/8630/screenshot611sm.jpg)


Edited to resize pic to smaller size and add boy image.

FYI, I'm Asian and one of my best friends is Korean. I certainly do not have a problem with Korean or plastic surgeons. I was referring to the fact that almost all Korean celebrities have had minor to extensive plastic surgery - some with great results, and some leaving much to be desired. I'm sorry if my comment offended you or anyone else. :)

Nah, it's all good. It was just a "unique" comment that I wasn't quite sure I understood. :)

Just wanted to say that I think the kids turned out quite nice -- particularly the girl, imho.  Though as you say, the lips could stand a bit of de-puffing, that's about it.

Also, I told you so.

*gloats*

One thing I do is make sure that the fathers have rather feminine jaws and cheeks. Masculinity seems to be passed onto the girls more often then the guys XD.

:D You deserve your day of gloating, completely. I'm still in shock, though, about the outcome (that you predicted).

I wouldn't know too much about what you've said, Rockermonkey, since this is my first spawn.  From the looks of things, you may be right, though I'm sure it depends on how the parents look in the first place.  I've found that a lot of times, I make sims with similar features, for one reason or another and that definitely caused the children to come out looking similar to one another at times. Perhaps you have a basic "style" of making sims which causes this same sort of theme for the girls.  I may be wrong about that but, it seems feasible given the trend of my experience with Sims 2.

Thanks to Ashkitty for not being too mean about my mistake. :) I can give you a gift of a Sim if you want.

About the puddingspawn: They all seem to look more-or-less the same (as each other) until aging to teen, kind of like how TS2 spawn tended to all look alike, with a few minor differences. In TS2 we got forced cuteness (before the Seasons WTF is with those krazy cheekbones phenomenon), whereas in TS3 we get potatoheads with squidgy noses that tend to look either sad or angry, depending on their eyebrows. Once they reach teen, they look much, MUCH better, and more like they were actually spawned from their parents.

I've determined that the game strives for androgyny. The males tend to look girly, IMO, and the females often look masculine. This is probably intentional, perhaps to avoid drastic face-blending mishaps in spawn. I haven't looked at the code, however, so I could just be talking out my ass.

About the OP's experimental twins: Both females were pretty, in different ways, but the tweaked version looked more like the male, and thus more like his twin. As far as fugliness/prettiness are concerned, my game has produced some fairly ugly puddings, but still nothing that compares to the fish/gorilla anomaly in TS2.

Actually, I would love to get something from you -- namely, the info on what the hell your icon is. So it's an eye, and there's metal bits in it? It kind of looks like a table from above. Kinda. Or bike racks. And the little jutting bits on the sides, I have no idea. What does it MEAN?!!? What are these metal bits supposed to DO? -_o;

Sorry, I just try to figure it out every time i see it lol.

Edit: Yes, I was talking about Opiumgirl. Sorry! I really thought I quoted her, or something, then I kinda forgot about this thread.

It looks to be a chaos star. For chaos magic.

I think that Ashkitty was refering to the OP's avatar, not mine. Mine looks nothing like an eye with metal bits sticking out, though morriganrant is correct. My avi is, indeed, a chaos symbol.

For some reason, all my sims kids(even ingame born) Look really good. Here's a picture of my newest born:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockermonkey999/3659519532/

I  made both his parents though, however. But still, all my kids are really good looking.

Ah, I think that I have blocked that Avatar. It grosses me out. Yours does have bits sticking out of it though, it was 2am and my mind gears down to the lowest common denominator naturally from years of doing tech help for the sims for people who know nothing about their computer. Questions with vague, simi-similar, details to an issue are common with this. I have a chaos star on a necklace somewhere. I was very upset when it was lost in the great wasteland on the bedroom.

Oh, be still my heart. That is one fine-looking pudding.

It now occurs to me that Ashkitty was probably asking about my avatar, after all. I'd never noticed that it looks a bit like an eye with things sticking out of it (though how you can glean metal from a flat 2D image, I'm not exactly sure), but because I knew what it actually was, I just saw it as that.

....a reply here, too, since I see the confusion's not abated (I edited my original post to prevent further speculation).

Sorry! I was indeed talking about Opiumgirl, I could have sworn I said her name. Her avatar is, to me, a realistic, obvious orange eye with.. god knows what going on, beside from that. I still can't figure it out.

I do like your chaos symbol, but it doesn't warp my mind nearly as much. Sowwy. :3

Back from long summer vacation....
@ashkitty  :D
My avatar is just a warped 3d display of insanity. I'm always pleased to know when I've grossed out someone enough to have the image banned or blocked.  I wish more people would say so.  ::)
 Heh, It doesn't "do" anything, really, it just kind of a dramatic expression.  The things on the side are just regular ol' pins.  Clockwork Orange twistedness...I can never get enough of it.
The only times I've ever removed an avatar was if it was flashing crazily or erratically playing the same animation over and over again but I did have one person express their dislike of the image via pm.  This was a while ago and I just did my best to assure the person that it was not real.  And it isn't.

More thread talk is:
I've seen some real fugly Sims coming out of the works, even by the "pros" (PeggySims, anyone?) Man, some of those Sims are just plain hideous though the hair doesn't help too much.  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15971.0.html
 See?  Even the best can make a HUGE puddinglish mess.  ;D

You're not seriously suggesting that Peggy is one of the best, are you?

That is the funniest thing I've read in ages.

I think her taste in sims, people, and life in general has already been shown as being a bit ... funny. The world, it is so ugly!

*faints from ugly*

That's why I quoted the word "pro".
Personally, I don't think so but, look at how "famous" she is?  I was sort of referring to her in a "Brittany Spears is a pro" kind of way. The way where she sucks mammoth ass but the masses can't get enough.  I try to cater to everyone, see.  ::) Obviously many of you/us here thinks that Peggy is some sort of "best", otherwise she wouldn't be in such a vast business but some here are enlightened enough to hate Brittany Spears for her lack of talent and not her personality or personal choices.
Really, though, some of her stuff is more fugly than the fugliest Sim I've seen posted on MTS (and there are some very scary ones).  ;D
I can't help it, it's still funny to me


 :D Indeed, there is much to be fainted over.

I've had a painful experience with TS3 genetics. Here are Adele's parents, Meredith and Dakota:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-186.jpg)
(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-58-1.jpg)

Here's Adele:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-216-1.jpg)
(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-277.jpg)

I gave her some plastic surgey but she became even uglier:
(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-338.jpg)

She grew up into a YA recently:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-428.jpg)

I gave her more plastic surgery. I think she finally looks like a human:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-450.jpg)

I don't understand what happened. I think Meredith and Dakota look decent, so WTF went wrong? Here's her brother to compare:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-409.jpg)

Looks like the boy had a lucky break inheriting his mum's nose.  :D  Think it was just a unlucky roll of genetics.

I suppose Dakota's nose doesn't quite work so well on a female face.  Adele as a teen didn't look so bad (well... only the nose), but then you opted for facial surgery in a chopshop instead of a hospital.   ;D

She honestly looked okay until you took a hacksaw to her face.  I think all she needed was a slight flaring of the nostrils and she would have been fine.

Haven't we learned anything from Michael Jackson?

I'm just cracked up by the fact that your poster title is 'Exasparating Eyesore'  ;D

Jesus, daydreamer.  I don't know what the hell you did to that poor sim (were you MJ's personal plastic surgeon, too?), but in the last few pictures of her as an adult, she looks like she should be breaking out into "I'm Just a Sweet Transvestite" any minute now.

Your sim looked fine, but now you've created Frankenstein.

I burst out laughing at the MJ comments.  :D She doesn't look that bad. It's sad that I mucked up her face but oh well. Here's a close-up of her:

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-481.jpg)

(http://i44.tinypic.com/21kcql0.jpg)

Those cold, dead eyes and hollowed face will surely haunt my dreams for nights to come. *shudders*

Does Stallone have a sister?  She looks like she could be it.

Heehee...love the pics.  That last picture is really something...It's mostly her cheekbones and side profile that scare me. I'm usually all for a little brush-up but, this time, I think genetics may have been the way to go.  ::)

So actually, you've created Frank N. Furter.

And to be fair, while Tim Curry in or out of drag doesn't really appeal to me, he's much less frightening than this Sim. Ugly doesn't necessarily bother me, but scary is another matter. I agree, with those cheekbones and the eyes, she is truly nightmare-inducing. Did you try fattening her cheeks a bit just to make her look less, emaciated um, harsh?

Dr Frank N. Furter is gorgeous. Sorry, but I absolutely love Tim Curry, and him in drag is just hot.

I agree.  Tim Curry, in and out of drag, is hot.  This, however, is the lovechild of Sylvester Stallone and Al Pacino in drag.

Exactly. So no one else compare Curry to any sim abominations!

But...but...it was precisely the two of you, ZB and Georgette, whose choices of description lead directly to the Tim Curry comparison! Are you now saying that you find daydreamer's victim to be "hot"?

Hey  hey, leave me out of it! I said Frankenstein, not Frank N. Furter  :P

I said that "she" looks like she should be singing the song because she looks like a transvestite.  Any implications directed at Mr. Curry are my fault.  However, "she" is not a sexy tranny, while Curry is.  Hell, my shemale neighbor looks sexier than that sim.

I think your two heads may be telling opposing stories on this one.

Oh, sure, drag my multiple personalities into this.  ;D

I'm the one who made the RHPS reference, although I meant it in a "she looks like a man in drag" way and not an "ZOMG HOTT CURRY LOOKALIKE" way, thus our posts combining to make Captain Planet Dr. Frank N. Furter was my fault, although not my intention, you see.

 ;)


Anyway, I don't think she looks masculine; just kinda dead. Zombified. The slider for Profile needs serious adjustment because she seems to have almost none, save the protrusion of her eyes. The cheekbones are artificially high and sharp, but it's possible that adding flesh to the cheeks would diminish this effect while making the eyes look a little less fish-y and inexpressive.

Now I almost want to download her to see if I can rescue her from a life of MJ-itis. We could make a contest out of it. See who can make the fewest changes so that she still has most of the same characteristics while making her look alive lifelike.

Now that you mention it, the jaw structure does bare an uncanny resemblance to zombiefied MJ in the Thriller video.  A contest to bring this sim back from the world of the undead would be interesting.

I would upload her but I don't know how since she was born in-game. It would be interesting to see how everyone revamps her.

Do editsim on it.  Then, click the "..." next to the portrait.  This menu should pop up:
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2w7hgra.jpg)
You should know what to do from there.

Okay, I think I did it right. Have fun with her!

Flirty, Excitable, Artistic, Hot-Headed, and Lucky, Adele's a hit with everyone she meets!

If I was still playing TS3 I'd download this just for the lulz. However, I back in the wonderful land of TS2.

My game is already loaded in the background, so I shall have to stuff her in later and send her to surgery tomorrow. 

Holy shit!  That's Baltar!  Six is gonna be pissed...!



Moderator edit: Please don't quote images.

Here's my re-do of Adele.  I changed her cheekbones, eyes, and nose.  I tried to keep her personality and general look intact, just less fug. Oh, and I did a makeover.
(http://i31.tinypic.com/vo24w5.jpg)
Full body...

(http://i32.tinypic.com/200pbv5.jpg)
Headshot.

What do you think?
(Please excuse the jpg quality, I used paint)

@everybodyhatesclifton,
Must you quote that entire post with images?  It would have been as simple as deleting the image links.....

minidoxigirli , much better than my monstrocity. She looks what she should have been: half-Chinese, half-Caucasian.

You're right.  My bad.   :(

Is it just me or are the n00bs getting nicer? I actually feel genuinely guilty when they reply with a polite apology after getting berated by us  :(

No, it's just a statistical aberration (or something).  Don't give into the guilt.

Damn, I'm at work now. I'll take a whack at her tonight when I get home. Thanks!


Not bad, not bad. She does still bear resemblance to the original, yet looks plausibly human. I'm going to try a different approach, I think.

Here's my redo of Adele - similar to MiniDoxiGirli, I think.  The main things seem to be the cheekbones and the puggy eyes.  Once you do something about those, she returns to something like normal.

(http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/Maxon/RedoneSim.jpg)

Well, I blew it.  I made a bunch of screen caps (or so I thought) last night of a step-by-step makeover for Adele.  But I didn't have my auto-screen-cap saver turned on, so... no screen caps.

But here's what needed to be done in minimalist terms.

The cheek bones are totally ruined.  Fix them last. 

Start with the eyes, which are also ruined.  Rotate them slightly, raise eyelids, lower top eyelid, drastically increase eye socket depth.  Lower the eyes.

The nose bridge is also messed up.  Narrow the bridge quite a bit.  Change bridge shape a little to make it more natural.

Not as necessary, perhaps but:  Widen mouth.  Narrow bottom lip a little.

Now for the cheekbones...  Lower the cheekbones about 30% on the slider.  Change cheekbone shape until it looks right.  Quite a bit. 

Shrink the chin size.  Narrow jaw width a little. 

I actually didn't mean it to sound rude and didn't consider it berating.  Sorry if it came across that way but, in fact, I was just being honest/blunt. No problems here at all. :)

She's actually fairly easy to fix.

- Make face considerably less wide, but broaden jaw. Make jaw more defined.
- Fuller cheeks + define shape more
- Fix inner eye corner, rotate eyes slightly and bring up the eyelid height so she doesn't look permanently drugged
- Slightly reduce angle of nose bridge

And tadah:

(http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x95/Nepheris/Screenshot-15.jpg)

(http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x95/Nepheris/Screenshot-16.jpg)

Nicely done, Nepheris, she looks rather attractive.

I'd love to know the RGB codes for that lipstick, by the way.  I have been trying to get a nice pink going but have so far failed miserably.  The color there is almost exactly what I've been shooting for.

Yeah, Nepheris she looks quite pretty! Good job  :)

She comes packaged with that lipstick, I just left it on. You can just DL her if you want it and save it as a custom colour.

I think I'm one of the very few people that actually like the new slider system. You can do a lot with it when you figure out which slider does exactly what and how you can make em work together.

I would theorize that TS3 does not actually meld the nmumeric values of facial traits into an average of the two parents.  Rather for each characteristic (nose, eyes, mouth, etc) it simply picks one parent at random and does a copy/paste of that value.  So what you end up with is a mix & match of the absolute, original values from the parents rather than an actual blend.

Some examples: One parent has a huge schnooz, the other has a small one.  The child will not get an average sized schnooz.  Instead they will either get a huge one or a small one.  If one parent is Asian and the other Irish, you won't get green eyes with an Asian angle.  Instead you will either get totally Asian eyes or totally Irish ones.  The worst violator of reality is, of course, skin tone.  If you have one dark brown parent and one light pink one, you will not get a nicely tanned child like you would in real life.  Instead they'll either be dark brown or light pink.  One or the other, never a blend.

This seems especially disappointing to me considering that the system makes so much use sliders and numberical range values instead of absolutes when customizing characters for traits.  It would seem like doing blending of these traits would be 3rd grade math for the programmers.  Instead they opt for the coin-flip method?  Highly illogical.

You may have just been unlucky up to now with the eye color. My selfSim with medium blue eyes married and had 2 spawn with a very dark-skinned, brown-eyed maid NPC. While I was disappointed that both boys came out with her pale pink skin rather than a nice coffee-like blend, one of them has hazel eyes, and the other brown. So far, both are attractive kids, though I did switch their eyebrows via mirror to improve them.

Of course, maybe there's something in my game that's the aberration. Since Pescado verified that EA couldn't be bothered to make the skin blending work, I may just have been blessed by an oddity when it comes to the eyes, maybe related to the father being originally an NPC. I noticed that the older boy, like his dad, will frequently wake before he gets the fully rested buff, though he does not have the Light Sleeper trait and nothing obvious is causing him to get up.

Perhaps hazel was an asspull just like what happens with hair.  I had a kid with grey eyes whose mother had lilac eyes and father had bright green eyes.  He also had brown hair even though mom had blonde and dad had red.  Perhaps mom was inappropriate with the mailman when I wasn't looking.

So, I finally had a few minutes to play with poor Adele. Remember, my goal wasn't so much to turn her into a supermodel as to make her look realistic, using as few tweaks as possible.

Naturally, she blinked for the front shot. Bitch.
(http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/th_Adele_blink.jpg) (http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/?action=view&current=Adele_blink.jpg) (http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/th_Adele_tq.jpg) (http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/?action=view&current=Adele_tq.jpg) (http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/th_Adele_profile.jpg) (http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t106/callmecherita/maty/?action=view&current=Adele_profile.jpg)

You can see that she's still got that interesting nose, and is basically an average-looking Sim (if you don't count the fugliness of the eyelids when she blinked). After a couple of false starts, all I did was move the cheekbone shape slider to the opposite extreme, then adjusted the eyelid height slider until the whites of her eyes weren't prominent at the bottoms, which I think was the aspect which made her look zombirific to me. I did not end up adjusting anything else, such as eye socket depth or even cheek fullness, because I felt these two tweaks resulted in a normal-enough looking human face.

This was a fun little diversion. Thank you, daydreamer, for being a good sport and letting us play with your unfortunate Sim.

About the genetic melding... 

It would have been much easier to just average out the parents' slider bar positions when making the child, but the problem with that is that, over time, the sims community would gravitate towards the same medium face.

In TS2, they tried to work around that by mixing one dominant feature, like a jaw or nose, with some feature from the other parent.  That way whole families would have some peculiar differences that were passed down from generation to generation.  Or so was the plan.  The problem with it was that some features REALLY didn't mix well and you got bizarre mutants.  Like, most of the time.  I spent way too much time fixing inherited faces and then fixing their genes with SimPe.

Personally, I would prefer the averaging out of SOME sliders.  Even if face distinctions in the gene pool would tend to dissipate over time, that's not that big an issue because if you're playing the game for that many generations, you're probably introducing quite a few new sims of your own.

Woohoo for non-fugly sims!  Here's an update on my fugly little girl sim.  She grew up nicer than both of her parents and I'm satisfied that genetics are pretty decently done now.   ::) I'm even more surprised of her appearance as an adult than I was of her appearance as a teen.  She's on of the nicer looking female Sims I've seen, in fact. Who would have known?  Except for Ashkitty, that is....

Fugly Bye Bye 1
(http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/2733/grownupfugly02.jpg)

Fugly Bye Bye 2
(http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5653/grownupfugly.jpg)

I think she looks rather lovely with glasses, although something about that hairstyle bugs me.

Now that my freaking game is fixed, I need to upload pictures of the Adele makeover.

Oh, that reminds me...  Here's my Adele, using minimal changes (as described in a previous post).

(http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/2392/screenshot019x.jpg)

And here's Adele after I let myself go wild and change whatever I wanted.  This is the one I saved for my own use.

(http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/8971/screenshot020xl.jpg)

Hey, not bad at all, Doc. Definitely an improvement on her.

Question....where is Adele from?  I thought she was someone's Sim but seems now like maybe she's a character?

She was the product of Frankenstein and his bride a game-born sim from Daydreamer's two CAS-made sims posted a couple of pages back.

Oh dear.....

As for the hair on my teen Sim, it's the same hair her mother and uncle have so it's easy to tell apart that family from others. :)
It is a funny hairstyle which is why I like it.  I can't stand the ridiculous ponytails that are available and I like anything that's unsymmetrical and strange.  ;D

Eh, I tend to favor the shorter pixie-style cuts.  Of course though, something about that hair makes me want to beat it down with a bottle of Bedhead Straightening Shampoo.

ETA (because I don't want to doublepost, dammit):  Here's my Adele makeover pictures:

So here's a profilish picture (with her hair up), so you can get an idea of nose shape changes and cheek changes.

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa125/ThePenguinOnTheTelly/Adeleprofile.png)

Another from the side.

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa125/ThePenguinOnTheTelly/Adelesideview.png)

As you can see, she just needed a few subtle changes to the cheekbone and nose structure for her to look a little less Bride of Frankenstein and a little more Chinese-American.

Here's one from the front.

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa125/ThePenguinOnTheTelly/Adelefromthefront.png)

And here's one where I gave her a haircut and had her embrace her heritage, sort of.

(http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa125/ThePenguinOnTheTelly/Adelemakeover.png)

If anyone actually wants her, just let me know.  I can repackage her with a different basegame hair and a different basegame pattern (the hair in the picture is a store hair, and the pattern is some Asian pattern I picked up ages ago on MTS, I think).

I love all the altered Adeles. Here's the original in various get-ups (she's in the Criminal career track and frequently changes her look to fool the feds):

Gothic Well-to-Do

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-511.jpg)

Cheerleader

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-563.jpg)

Doudy Mom

(http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/happycowlover/Screenshot-574.jpg)

The children do get an in-between shade of the parents skintones if both of the parents have a skintone from the same color family.  So in my family where the father is dark brown and the mother a lighter brown, one of the two children is an in-between shade (the other is the same color as his father).  So in this case the genetics work just like they do in the Sims2 except with more variety with the in-between shades.  Where people are finding that they aren't getting the in-between shades is when each parent has a skin from a different color family.  Then the kids get one or the other.  And while I agree this is diappointing when one has parents of two normal skin colors, I can see why EA made it this way.  You would get some really muddled and yucky colors if say one parent was red and one was green...or one was brown and one was blue. 

I don't even use the swatches, though. I use the slider that seems to be default for the Basics tab. It goes from pale peach to dark brown, yet the game still gives spawnlets one or the other skintone. This gets frustrating, but that's what editsim is for.

That is a swatch, all of the swatches have sliders that range from light to dark.