Sim-painted portraits are a red, grainy mess

[spambi]

Whenever my sims paint a still life or portrait, or take a picture of someone with a cell phone, the result is red and grainy. Does this happen to anyone else?

Screenshots taken with the ingame camera turn out fine. Here's a screenshot of a portrait of one of my sims painted by her daughter, whose artistic skill is level 9 --

[Alex]

Well I haven't had one turn out red, but it turned out looking awful. This was supposed to be my Emperor sim's grand evil portrait.



My sim also had very high artistic skill. Part of me suspects this is a "feature."

[Grumblesnort]

I think it's supposed to be "artistic" in style, instead of the nice photo-quality paintings we had in TS2. My sim has maxed out Artistic skill and ended up with the monstrosities below. You're lucky that yours came out bright enough to tell what they are. It seems to zoom in and out as it pleases as well. I set up the shot of the daughter playing chess to include part of the table and her upper body. In the resulting painting, you can't tell what it is unless you already know what it's supposed to be. For the toddlers, I set the camera exactly the same to get mostly just the upper body. The results would be almost obscene if you could even see them.

Oh, the kids look blue because they are. They take after their alien mother with blue skin and green hair. Maybe that's why their portraits are all grainy. We can't be having clear evidence of aliens lying around!

Toddler portraits:


Daughter playing chess:

[idtaminger]

It's a "feature". The game puts the portraits and still-lifes thru a filter so they'll look like paintings as opposed to a screenshot, and it actually works nicely with well-lighted objects - I ended up w/ a painting w/ a nice Edward Hopper vibe - but it's god-awful for portraits and usually makes the subject sim look like a blotchy orange mess. It'd be awesome if there were a way to turn off the filtering just for portraits.

[Alex]

It's a "feature". The game puts the portraits and still-lifes thru a filter so they'll look like paintings as opposed to a screenshot, and it actually works nicely with well-lighted objects - I ended up w/ a painting w/ a nice Edward Hopper vibe - but it's god-awful for portraits and usually makes the subject sim look like a blotchy orange mess. It'd be awesome if there were a way to turn off the filtering just for portraits.

I wondered if that was the case.

I second the optional filter idea.

[FlamingoKicker]

I've had this problem myself.  Thought it was something wrong with my machine. 

Glad to know it was just another of the bone-headed decisions made by Mr. Humble (God, what a name) and his gang that made all the poor choices with Sims 3.

Do these people actually play the damn games?

[Grumblesnort]

I think it's a case of stupidity and ego running rampant. They probably tested out the portrait-painting feature, got the same results we do, but thought it looked good and artsy. I envision a lot of high-fiving with oohs and ahhs. "Wow, doesn't it look like a real painting? I'm so awesome. Let's make it a feature so everyone can see my filtering genius!"

[Zazazu]

I've had an artist who turned everything blue, one who turned everything so dark you could barely see it, and both were horribly wavy. The waviness seems to be the basic "See, is speeshul" marker. It's annoying. I hate it. I miss my homes full of sim portraits and photographic still lifes.

[Death-Jester]

Several of my Sims have had paintings consistently come out with a mosaic effect on them, which looks stupid and virtually unrecognisable. Sometimes they would come out looking normal, but not very often.

[Inge]

If you want a photographic quality image I believe you can take photographs with the sim's mobile phone.  One of my sims was awarded that ability once they got to a certain level in painting.

[kattenijin]

All my sims' custom paintings come out black. Regardless of size or subject matter, day/night, etc.

[Zazazu]

If you want a photographic quality image I believe you can take photographs with the sim's mobile phone.  One of my sims was awarded that ability once they got to a certain level in painting.

You can use the phone to memorize a scene. They are still susceptible to the stylization when painted. Cell phone photos themselves are tiny and come out dark.

[Angelo]

All my sims' custom paintings come out black. Regardless of size or subject matter, day/night, etc.

It's artistic. It represents the blackness in their souls.