Does This Sim Scare The Bejesus Outta You?

[Tgdrysix]

I agree, the only thing wrong with that girl is that her nose is too high, (and that first hairstyle is hideous, I've never seen a sim that looked good with it)

I have some horrendously ugly Sim kids... mostly decendants of I've downloaded, those nice 'unique' features don't blend well.

I downloaded a really good Lucy Liu and though she was cute as a button, she had the ugliest toddlers/children ever... Her son hit adult about 3 seconds after hitting toddler (was hoping he'd grow into it, but he didn't) I tried breeding out the ugly gene and have a whole ugly neighbourhood of her offspring to prove it (kept growing up them up in hopes an age would suit them, if not, they were moved out)  I thought I'd managed to tone it down a bit, but re-entering that hood months later, I realize I didn't even come close.


Her son and granddaughter... I shrieked everytime this kid looked at me and eventually had to grow her up because I just wasn't sure my heart could take it.

 You and everyone else's hearts!!! Gosh that is one very unappealing baby....Even I would probably age it up and out....or at least do the surgery.....or completely change faces!!! Something anything.....Tgdrysix 

[ZephyrZodiac]

At least you get variety!  My tots nearly always seem to look the same!

[eaglezero]

You know, my sims have never had ugly kids. This is probably because they're all initially based on this one sim a long time ago. But, well, they even breed well with Maxis sims, even though I made a lot of modifications. After seeing these horrifying children, I'm considering myself very, very lucky.

*is terrified*

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe they're changelings?

[Zeljka]

The worst thing was that her other parent was albino (hence the pink eyes) but I'd deleted the skin tone, so further generations were born with dark skin...
Though dark skin seems to reduce the horror of the odd features, that slight improvement was ruined by pink eyes and white hair. I also had a problem with female kids in the same hood not having teeth (just gums)  not sure where it came from (default rep from DMA?) but it just made a bad thing worse.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think I'd start a new hood, and get rid of any  other skintones that have caused problems.

[jack_d_spratt]

I shrieked everytime this kid looked at me

I'm a great proponent of playing what you get and all, but that kid scares me and I'm fearless.

[Emma]

Zeljka that sim toddler made me laugh out loud! Aww poor little thing...

[angelyne]

Zelka you win hands down

That's why I learned long ago to stay away from celebrities look alike.  The minute you start modifying the facial structure in any significant way, it just doesn't blend well.  I learned that with my self sim.  Since my hubby and I are a bit plump (damn his cooking skills!), when I made us as self sims, I made our faces a bit rounder.  Yeech!  Boy the kids were ugly.  It's unfortunate but if you want to have good looking sims, you need to keep tweaking to a minimum and that makes for pretty similar sims.  Oh well, at least I personalize them with makeup, hair and clothes.

 Thank god human genes work so much better than Maxis genes, or imagine the horror.  Their blending algorithm needs work or something.  I wonder if it's better to turn it off.

[Renatus]

It's unfortunate but if you want to have good looking sims, you need to keep tweaking to a minimum and that makes for pretty similar sims.

I don't think that is necessarily true, at least in my experience... My sims are relatively varied and produce decent looking children. However, it took a LOT of getting used to what kind of features actually look right and blend well with other features, and it also took  minimizing the cartoony look they have (my sims are all made with faces at least two clicks shorter than default, smaller eyes, and slightly bigger noses, and I have default templates that AllenABQ made). It's all too easy to make a sim that looks fine until they start having facial expressions, and then one notices that SOMEHOW their teeth cut through their lips when they smile or something.

 With celebrity sims I notice that most of them look good at first glance, but when compared to a photograph of the real person the sim is usually an extreme caricature at best and thus makes really odd looking children. It's hard not to make them caricatures in the first place as sims ARE rather cartoony looking anyhow, and it's pretty much impossible to get things exact given the limitations of the game.

I won't disagree that the face blending engine is terrible though, and makes getting good looking simkids much much harder than it should be. I've seen it introduce things into faces that weren't there at ALL in the parents, yet for some reason the kid has something really wrong with their face - one of mine looked like he had a coathanger in his mouth, because even though his mouth wasn't too wide his cheeks bulged out there. No reason, they just bulged out a ridiculous amount so he looked like he had matching tumors or something. I'm tempted to see how bad it really is by creating a celebrity who has kids and their spouse and seeing what the sim face blending engine comes up with. Say, Ron Perlman and his wife. They both have strong features (especially Ron Perlman!) so I bet the results would be horrifying, even though their real life children are gorgeous.

[BlueSoup]

I have a celebrity skin (Christina Aguilera) that I downloaded because I really thought they did a decent job with it (except the eye make-up...ugh).  I made her into a townie and now she just wanders around, making friends with my real Sims.  She'll never breed, so luckily I don't have to worry about freaky genetics since she also comes with a custom skin.

[angelyne]

Do you think it's better to turn off face blending?

[Renatus]

I've never tried it - been wary of it to be honest, although I don't know if it's reasonable for me to be. Hm, I think I should do another experiment with sims extracted from my current neighborhood and into a test neighborhood and making a variety of babies with face blending both on and off. I have to finish writing something tonight before I can try it, though.

[Sagana]

Thank god human genes work so much better than Maxis genes, or imagine the horror.

Actually very very minor differences in facial proportions are very noticeable to humans and anything extreme just looks bizarre or wrong. There are specific ranges (some of which are posted on this thread I think - unless it's another thread) and those include small variations that still fall within the "normal" range. If you do figure drawing, or portraiture or the like, you learn quickly that eyes just a touch too wide (a pencil line width, say) are noticeable and much more than that and the piece seems out of proportion. The edges of eyes (for example) line up (generally, of course with the edges of nostrils - so that determines both how wide the nose is and where it's placed. A person whose nose goes over just a bit into the iris, rather than at the edges of the eyes, seems to have a wide nose. "Cartoony" or chariacture adds a bit more leeway, but would look wrong on a "naturalistic" figure or in real life. Humans are very perceptive about minor facial changes. A baby's face is proportioned somewhat different than an adult's also (the face is closer together and takes up less of the head, the eyes appear larger, etc.) so moving in those directions makes someone appear younger or, for example, I had drawings done of my oldest son for his grandmother's when he was small. On one, the artist didn't quite get the child-like features correct, so it didn't look much like him at first. After a couple of years, it was exactly like him.

Anyway, it's all very interesting.

[Syera]

Do you think it's better to turn off face blending?

I think I heard somewhere that turning off face blending causes the wierd bug that makes the baby skins map wrong sometimes - giving them the "third eye" appearance.

[Sleepycat]

Do you think it's better to turn off face blending?

I think I heard somewhere that turning off face blending causes the wierd bug that makes the baby skins map wrong sometimes - giving them the "third eye" appearance.

I've been playing with face blending off for ages and have never had that problem.

[gypsylady]

I have face blending turned off and I have never had this problem. I have Sims that range from plain to beautiful. My game tends to give me a nice variety of looks for my sims,depending who the parents are.I don't recall ever getting a down right ugly child.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've never used face blending either, and although my sim kids tend to look very similar, they are rarely ugly!  and certainly not the stuff that horror films are made of!!!!

I just started playing a new CAS family, and the little boy is quite gorgeous, so I hope when he grows up he keeps his looks!

[Process Denied]

My kids are usually cute except when mixed with Maxis characters.  Goneril is down right scarry--not gunna breed that.  I got smart and gave Albany and her plastic surgery and they were soooo cute.  I actually liked playing them.  But I knew that they couldn't breed.  What I now do is make replacement sims for the truely hideous.  I make a suitable repacement townie with opposite coloring in CAS and use the Insiminator to make them a townie.  Then I go to ts2 enhanser and make the townie the clone for said sim and then go to their DNA in the same program and change the coloring to match the playable sim.  Because their coloring is opposite they don't look alike.  I will also do the same for children with the adoption pool.  I also use already made CAS sims as templets.  As long as you change coloring you usually can't tell that it is the same face.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I've changed Albany and goneril too, though not much, but there's nothing wrong with the kids they already have.  So I presume they wren't actually created as genuine offspring!

[maxon]

I agree, the only thing wrong with that girl is that her nose is too high, (and that first hairstyle is hideous, I've never seen a sim that looked good with it)

I have some horrendously ugly Sim kids... mostly decendants of I've downloaded, those nice 'unique' features don't blend well.

I downloaded a really good Lucy Liu and though she was cute as a button, she had the ugliest toddlers/children ever... Her son hit adult about 3 seconds after hitting toddler (was hoping he'd grow into it, but he didn't) I tried breeding out the ugly gene and have a whole ugly neighbourhood of her offspring to prove it (kept growing up them up in hopes an age would suit them, if not, they were moved out)  I thought I'd managed to tone it down a bit, but re-entering that hood months later, I realize I didn't even come close.


Her son and granddaughter... I shrieked everytime this kid looked at me and eventually had to grow her up because I just wasn't sure my heart could take it.

Fantastic - how great is that?

Pretty sims - I SPIT ON PRETTY SIMS
(and kittens)

[RainbowTigress]

Facial blending defaults to "on."  You have to specifically turn it of via the cheat code before the baby's birth to turn it off.  I only tried it once, and the toddler had very angular features.  His features had very rough "edges" to them.  He seems to be growing into them, but they look very strange on him, as Maxoid Tom said they would.  He said blending is to soften the edges of the features until they reach adulthood, when the features won't be as severe.  So I don't think facial blending has to do with how the parents' features blend together, but rather how the features themselves blend together on a child's face.

I am not sure if the cheat code stays in effect for a particular lot until you turn it off or if it in effect for the entire game until you restart.

[Kitiara]

I think it is a descendant of his Self-sim, from what I can remember.  Like great-great grandson or something.

And yes, I am totally sure of this kid's parentage.  I just can't say who they are. 

Can you tell us why you can't tell us? I honestly did not care who the girl's parents were/are untill you said you couldn't tell us. Now I wanna know. 

[Sleepycat]

hehehe I think the parents are Blue and JM 

[BlueSoup]

Nope, it's not my kid.  This is my kid.