More Awesome Than You!

So I have a couple of families with custom eye colors that I've decided I really don't like, and unfortunately they are the ones that keep getting passed on. My brilliant plan was to figure out which files those eye colors are, then download a couple of nicer colors and rename them to have the same filenames as the ones I don't like, thus making all those sims' dna point at the new, pretty eyes. Then I discovered that the genes listed in SimPE have nothing to do with the filenames in my downloads folder--as such, I can't find the files that go with these eyes, and even if I could, it probably wouldn't work to try to replace them with other files.

Can this be done, or am I just going to have to make all these sims quit breeding? (I suppose I could just delete them, but then they'd have the default brown eyes--weird because both custom eyes are blue--and I have default replacements and don't want to look at the awful flat Maxis defaults any more than I want to look at the eyes they already have.)

I believe you can change eye color with the newest version of TS2Enhancer on the DNA screen.  You can probably do the same in SimPE, but it's not as straightforward (at least not to me).

instead of renaming them, wouldn't it be easier to find the eye file (use the Sims2Pack scanner to find them, put them in a seperate folder, and then *copy* only that into the downloads. Start the game, delete all custom eyes that you are not using. Then, open the remaining ones in SimPE, and import a new eyecolor over the old one. Save, and put those edited files back into your normal downloads, overwriting the old ones. Thus, the game would find new graphics in the files it's using now. That should affect all current sims that have them, and all their offspring.

You can get new graphics by simply opening up the eyes you want to use in SimPE and exporting those graphics.

That being said, I've never done that myself. So I don't know if it really works.

Importing via SimPE causes major graphical corruption. If you do decide to edit the file, make sure to d/l Nvidia DDS utilities first, and then open SimPE, and in the preferences part, put in the location of the DDS utilities (it doesn't automatically recognize the installation in my comp...don't know about others). Then all you have to do is, instead of doing "import", simply choose "Build DXT". Make sure to commit & save, and you're done.

You could always use contacts, it's not a genetic solution but will save your eyes from having to look at their eyes.

what is Nvidia DDS utilities? What's the equivalent for an ATI Radeon card?

Quaxi has a link to the Nvidia DDS utilities on his site (were you get SimPe), you can download them from there. As far as the graphics card goes... I hope there is someone out there with an answer, because I don't know it.

It does? I *have* edited default replacement eyes with this method before, and they all work perfectly. Tho' I have an ATI card...

The tools will work regardless of what card you have - they're an unrelated utility that seems to help simPE do stuff. I have to say, though, that I've edited files (hair, in my case) without the utility without problems. It can't hurt to have it, though, and is probably useful.

Just to clarify, when I said graphical corruption, I didn't mean corruption of the file itself, but rather of the image quality. And it definitely corrupts the image quality. In game, it's not as noticeable unless you look at the object relatively up close. But if you compare an image pre-importation to the image post-importation, you can definitely see the quality difference. And since I have a pretty good graphics card and play w/ all settings maxed, it's particularly noticeable for me ingame when the image quality goes down a bit, esp. if I'm editing skins and the like, when the images are large and corruption is much more noticeable...you should see the mess it makes of perfectly good skins.

The DDS utilities work for both ATI and Nvidia. I myself have an ATI card. The company is really irrelevant.

A picture: (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v668/idatminger/Img.jpg)
Left is the normal img. Right is the muckier one. Definitely not going to be too noticeable, b/c eyes are generally small...but you def. run into problems w/ larger img files.

Maybe I don't understand the problem, but it really doesn't seem as hard as what people are making it to be.

I'm home now, so as a test I went to Veronaville (which I'm not playing right now) in TS2Enhancer.  I went to Oberon Summerdream's DNA page and changed his displayed DNA from red hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to blonde hair, green eyes, and light skin.  Then I went to the game.  I had to take him to the mirror, but after he did "Change Appearance" (but I didn't change anything, just clicked "okay" to accept the way he was) he became blonde, green-eyed, and white. 

Well.  From the neck up, anyway.  I gave him a shower, changed his clothes, and bought new clothes, but I couldn't get his body to be light-skinned -- just his head.  But the eyes did change.

So it seems if you go in and change the displayed custom eyes on the DNA page to something in-game (plus change the eye color they pass on so they don't breed more kids with that eye color), then you'll be fine?

Well, some people would rather not pay 20 bucks for an editor.

Why can't you just use Sims Surgery in Sims PE?

1) Choose a sim with the desired eyecolor.

2)  Choose the Sim with ugly eyecolor as "Patient"

3) Click on "Eyes only"

4)  Click "Commit"

Works fine for me.

You could always change the recessiveness of the eyes you don't like so they don't get passed on.  That's especially easy (just requires changing one value in SimsPE)

You can get it for 48-hour free download.  Personally, I've found it well worth the money back from TS1 days, but if you can get all your changes done in 48 hours ......

You know, I wanted to just play around with this, so I downloaded it one day, but it simply would not run. I thought maybe it was because I didn't download the "Nightlife-aware" test version and I had Nightlife. So then a couple of days later I downloaded the Nightlife-aware test version. Got a message that my 48-hour time period had expired and the application would now quit. Oh well.

Yeah, TS2Enhancer is not gonna happen, I've paid enough just for this game without paying for third-party stuff too.

I figured out about SimSurgery after I posted this (I am not too intimate with SimPE) but while all the changes appeared to "take" in their DNA and when I initially went into the game, when I did "change appearance" (just so I could see what the new eyes looked like close up) their eyes all reverted back to the old ugly ones. Not to mention--the "archetype" sim whose eyes I transferred apparently also transferred her pale pink lipstick, which was not attractive on the man and his two sons who got it. (Yes I checked "eyes only", no I did not check "makeup") I will have to play with fixing that later.

One reason I'd like to be able to just replace those files with new eyes is so that I don't have to remember who-all has what eyes and change them all individually. Will have to learn more SimPE to do that, I guess.

Okay, you just hit a HUGE pet peeve of mine with custom eyes.

PEOPLE STOP PUTTING BLACK SMOKEY EYELID SPACE OR OTHERWISE BORDERS AROUND YOUR GOD DAMNED EYES!!

*breathes* Okay sorry, this just drives me INSANE! And everyone does it too! I think one person started it and everyone else copied. The problem is if your sims are looking in any direction but straight head on or are making any kind of goofy face where their eyes get all big it looks freaky and terrible. And it looks particularly bad and creepy in the cinema scenes. :P

If you look at the Maxis eyes, they are a pupil and iris surrounded by white. There's a reason for this!

If anyone can reccomend some nice, non-cartoony realistic eyes without the stupid borders please let me know!

Well, regardless of what people think of TS2Enhancer and whether or not they choose to make use of the free 48-hour trial, I suppose my initial point is that you can do the same thing with SimPE, except not quite as easily.  I found the info -- I had copied and pasted it to a text file on my computer when I was trying to learn something about genetics and unfortunately did not make note of the people who originally wrote this (but I believe some of it is somewhere here on this site).  Anyway, I take no credit for this, but if you go into the DNA screen in SimPE and substitute Maxis eye color codes for the custom ones, it seems it should accomplish the same thing as TS2Enhancer.  Anyway, here it is:


3 (dtString):  dominant eye color
268435459 (dtString): recessive eye color

Eyes color codes:
32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 = Brown eyes
2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f = Dark Blue eyes
51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7 = Green eyes
e43f33602-3a08-4755-8b83-a0d37a6c424b = Light Blue eyes
0758508c-7111-40f9-b33b-706464626ac9 = Gray eyes
12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51 = Alien eyes

You know, when Enhancer was released, some nice person over on MTS2 posted a crack that made it run forever in free trial mode. Moderators zapped it into oblivion mere moments later. Isn't that a damn shame?

Now you're just making it complicated....One - SimPE only changes the carried DNA, not the visible genetics. W/ this, sims' babies will turn out right, but the Sim'll stay the same. Second - if you have a large no. of sims using the same eye color, you'd have to manually edit every single sim w/ the genetics. Much more of a hassle than just editing the used file, which automatically affects both underlying DNA and every single sim.

Motoki, I made some replacement eyes awhile back.  They may be a bit cartoony for you, but they don't have that silly shadow thing going on and they don't look like they have cataracts.  You can take look if you're interested.
http://www.springhole.net/bogsims/syera/genetics/eyes.htm


Major shame.   ;D

Yes. Such a shame the nice person went and uploaded it to his own website, where it lives to this very day. Shame, shame, shame, I say. There are such dirty, immoral, thieving scumbags in this world, it's downright frightening.

You make me glad I don't make stuff for the sims ;D

I am sure that Lyran's (http://www.lyran.net/ts2/) eyes are pretty clean-they are what I use.

I don't have too many pet peeves in custom content, but sorry that's just one of them. Most things I can tell by the picture whether I will want it or not but those eyes with the borders are like a lot of houses I've downloaded, looks nice in the pictures but not so nice when you actually get it in your game and play with it. :P

I've actually been forced to fix up some of my favorite eyes to get rid of the borders. Helaene seems to do all her eyes with them. I can't play without her eyes, but the borders do screw up some of the cinematics that I'm particularly fond of.

So... I agree with you. Down with eye-borders!

I noticed. :P

So does Echo and a lot of other people. And the ones that don't tend to look a little too cartoony and close to the Maxis ones for my tastes.  :-\

If people weren't so touchy in this community, I'd ask you to post the cleaned up Helaene eyes. :P

While I don't approve of people stealing software, I kinda have a thing against the people who make SimEnhancer/Sims2Enhancer.  Basically, they make you pay for a program that will work only ONCE PER INSTALLATION.  A certain Simmer I know had to re-format her computer, and thus, her copy of SimEnhancer had to be reinstalled.  However, it wouldn't accept her old-and-paid-for registration code.  She attempted to get a new code from the website, explaining her plight, but she never heard a word back from them.

I've heard that same story over and over and over again all over the community.

Don't know why people still throw money at that guy after all that.

Oooh!  Oooh!  I know!  I know!  Pick me!  Pick me!

Ahem.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition No. 231: There's a sucker born every minute.  Be sure you're the first to find each one.

Something to that effect.  ;)

Motoki,

Have you looked at SimderZ's eyes?  her eyes are my favorite ones.  http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=67003&highlight=simderz

she also has sets at http://simderz.moonfruit.com/ and 8th deadly sims...

At her site look for the link Downloads/The Look.

the eyes have some shading but I don't notice it in game...

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v21/dewshine2003/0x5f459c52stdMatBaseTextureName_txt.png)

Hmm, you know I check her site every so often but for some reason I never noticed the eyes. I've been waiting for that raven skintone for a while now though heh.

Thanks dewshine. I actually somehow missed those too. These are very nice. I just checked them out in-game and (though it was a quick look) they are much better than the ones I've been using.

Lyran has some very nice default replacement eyes.  I couldn't play without lyran's eyes.  Or lipsticks.  Or eyeshadows.  hehe

Her's and helaene's are about the only custom facial stuff I have.  Though I do love Simderz eyeshadows as well.

*sigh*

OK, I have two problems which are probably very easily solved if someone will just point out where it is I'm being stupid.

1. I go into SimPE and do SimSurgery on all the sims with ugly eyes. I click "commit" after the surgery. I close SimPE and say yes save changes to neighborhood004. I open the game, go into a house containing one of these people. She has nice, normal blue eyes. I send her to a mirror to "change appearance", and immediately her nice normal blue eyes are gone, replaced by the same old ugly ones--which are no longer in her DNA at all, either dominant or recessive. Why, and what do I do about this? (She shows the weird eyes in the mirror, in close-ups in the game, in her thumbnail--but she has normal eyes in cinematics.)

2. What I really want to do to try to get around this is to import new eye colors into the files of the old ugly ones, except that I can't figure out which files they are, because what the DNA tells you seems to have absolutely no connection to the filename. Is there any easy way to find out what the actual *file* is? I know I could work around this if I had enough patience, but well, I don't. Too many eyes, too many that look the same.

A shadow is one thing; the eyelid casts a shadow on the iris, and without it, the eyes look flat...dead. But people have taken it way too far, making it black. I've been adding shadows to eyes since the day Body Shop first came out...but I don't accept any of the blame.

My pet peeve is skintone-specific makeup that includes surrounding fleshtones. It's all the palest-pale, and I have a lot of Sims with the other three skintones. But no one tells you when you're downloading it that it can only be used on one skintone. >:( It's a waste of the creator's bandwidth, because I just delete it as soon as I discover it.

I ain't naming names.

I only use the maxis blush-I haven't found any that looks right on my sims :-\

I am compelled to use those lip glosses on my male sims. Compelled, I tell you. And I hate that I have to use light skintones with it. I tried fixing it, but it just looked screwed up.

I wish some makeup god/goddess would make some makeup for men that didn't look too much like makeup. Your eyelids are awesome and 99% of my male sims get them, but I long for something more. Lips without makeup just look hideous.  Especially when I'm looking at two sims, and the female has wet and glossy lips while the guy has the crappy naked lips. Just looks wrong. I love the wet lip look. Isn't there any way to make transparent gloss? So that the default lip color comes through, and the "lipstick" only adds a glossy shine to it? I'm guessing not. :(

Could you post a picture of the eyes (in the sim) you are trying to change... I have lots of eyes and might be able to help you track down the file... Or do you have clean installer?  using that program you can sort your downloads by type and then click on each file for a preview of the eye color... another way to track down the file. (I'd offer to do it for you but I don't think that's possible).  hehe

My lip glosses? Yeah, the lighter colors look hideous on darker skintones. That's the hard-edge ~ doesn't look natural with so much contrast. Like clown makeup. I've tried feathering the edges of the alpha, like I did for the Ebony glosses, but there are so many different shades of base-skin lips, they all looked like crap half the time.  :-\


Did you miss the "Hints of Tints" here?
http://www.hairfish.com/mermaidcove/html/2cosmetics.html

"Juicy Lips Clear Gloss," first in the row of tiny lips at the top of Lip Color, is transparent except for the "gloss" effects. I think...it's one of the first I made. If it's not totally transparent, it's very very translucent.

No, not your lip glosses. I assumed you were talking about Sim Cribbling. So much for not naming names. :D

By the way, your Ebony lips are awesome.


*is ashamed* I did miss that. Thanks!

It was YOU! It's all YOUR fault! *grabs pitchfork*

LOL j/k ;)


A couple of times I found makeup specially created for dark skinned sims. I even found makeup made for aliens once. ;) It's hard to find stuff like that though.

The first time around I played the game before I trashed everything I had SOOO much makeup, and most of it was total crap! Now I tend to like more stuff that adds realism, eye folds, realistic lip tones, wrinkles a bit less subtle than the Maxis ones and that work for adults, blush that adds shading and sort of sculpts the face or makes the face shinier or bronzer or whatever, etc. And a select few tasteful actual makeups.

I really the stuff at your place for that reason. Gigge's got some wrinkes, salt and pepper hairs and subtle shading blushes and I like Sussi's shiny face blushes. I used to have a bronzer blush but can't for the life of me remember where I got it. :P

Does anyone know if there are sim sites specifically for dark skinned sims? I mean, there's one for elders and there's a place or two for men, it would be nice if there were one for darker skin sims or hell even aliens. ;)

yeah, I hate the shadow eyes... I've deleted them all, so my Sims have reverted to uh... actually, they're probably Maxis, but I'm not used to them anymore because I use default replacements (which don't show up on deleted-eye Sims)

Sim Surgery doesn't seem to work for me beyond cloning a Sim, I once did a face transplant and not only did the ugly girl NOT get her twin sister's face, but her ugly face is now green. Showers, change appearance, more surgery... nothing will stop the green face. I made her a townie, she's a laugh a minute! 

Once I tried 'skin only' and got an albino teen with a tan face. Then, I had the problem mentioned with eye replacement, they were changed until she changed in the mirror, right back to her ugly eyes. PE is wonderful and I can't imagine my game without it, but I'll hold off on surgery until I need another laugh.

The eyebrows that only light Sims can have? Argh, I hate them, they look particularly crappy when a light and dark Sim breed, I know they can be changed, but my Sims are breeders damnit, and it gets tiresome.

I have one lipstick (called sheer-probably tsr) that's works on 90% of my Sims and apart from 'sunny cheeks' on my toddlers, I don't do much blush because they seem very specific to the shape of the face. I did find full makeup for all face colours (including Aliens) but it was very unnatural looking.
I'd love to find makeup for dark Skintones, I have some eyeshadows that work, but that's it. Anything for aliens would be good too.

Checking for good eyes...

Same here. I would love more makeup for aliens. Most of them get the green lipstick from Helaene. I need variety. And I think they'd need alien-specific eyeshadow since their eyes are such a different shape. I've found that almost nothing looks quite right.

folks looking for eyes:  http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=106078
these are by exnem.  his stuff is usually top notch.  the screenies look very nice.

Gold lipstick goes quite well w/ the green color scheme. I suspect Blue would look decent too, as green comes from blue & yellow. The only thing I don't like about blue is that its cool, and I tend to like warm colors. And red lipstick on aliens ain't half bad. I suspect its cuz red & green are complements. Pink actually works, as long as its not too pale and opaque. The same colors work for the makeup too. I've found that makeup w/ very clear creases look best on alien eyes, b/c simple shadowing makes the alien eyes look washed out.

Here are the Singles girls. I think they both look very pretty. Not so exotic anymore, perhaps. But at least they look good... :)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v668/idatminger/Aliens1.jpg)
...bah...screwed up picture...didn't know photobucket resized...Is there another photo service that doesn't scale down their pictures?

I just kind of work w/ what's out there. Personally, I've very happy w/ the CC makeup that's out there. SO much better than Maxis stuff. You'd think w/ a full-time paid staff and all, Maxis could manage to churn out some better content!!!


I've found custom skintones fix this very nicely. Most of the time, they shade the face and everything so that the coloring looks nice and natural. B/c I don't like the way CC works genetically, I just edit my faves into defaults. This has the added benefit of changing the townies too. You'd be surprised at how much better certain townies look now.

This here is Ajay Loner from Strangetown. SOoooo much better looking w/ a new skin. I do think he even borders on hot at the moment. :D
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v668/idatminger/loner.jpg)

And again, I just cannot fathom how pple doing a hobby in their spare time can come up w/ content that's a gazillion times better than Maxis, who has a full time staff getting paid to make this stuff.

See, and I'm the opposite. I think a lot of the custom skintones like SimCribbling and such make men look way, way too overly made up. I see all these people post pictures of them and they seriously look like drag queens with makeup on to me. *shrug*

This is how I did it (possibly there's an easier way):

First, I filtered out all eyes with the Sims2Pack clean installer and put them in their own directory. Then I made a backup of it, just in case, and then started the game with only these eyes in. Went into CAS, and delete the eyes I knew I hadn't used on any sim. Exited.

Went into SimPE, and used SimSurgery to export every sim that uses custom eyes. Started the game with them and the custom eyes. Went into CAS, clicked on pre-made sims, looked at each one, and wrote down which of the custom eyes that were still in the game they were using. Then I deleted all the custom eyes that were not in use. Exited.

Once that's done, all the SavedSims you exported with SimSurgery can be deleted again, and you're left with a directory that contains only the custom eyes that are in use in-game.

I guess it's personal preference. I slap makeup on everyone. I've been told they all look like they belong on a street corner somewhere.  ;D

I totally get what you're talking about, b/c I've seen sims uploaded w/ full on lip gloss and blush and pretty, dewy eyes... men in drag indeed! But Oepu's skintones from MTS2 are really great, especially the darker shades. For the lighter shades I prefer Helaene's, though, b/c Oepu's lighter skintones make the faces look washed out. I did fiddle around w/ them to better fit my tastes, but overall they're still great skins, and a heck of a lot better than Maxis' stuff, for sure.