'Randomly' changing faces

[Arina]

To start with, I've got all of the EPs, if that helps at all.

One of the face-changing incidents was when a CAS adult female set a uniform for her home business and wore it - it gave her a face which I think is the first template face in the (1st skintone) white adult female section. I kinda freaked out, told her to 'wear casual clothes' and her real face came back, so that was ok.

But the unsolved and unfixed ones are kinda annoying. She has twin children with her husband who live on the lot. The daughter resembles her, the son resembles his dad, but the daughter has dad's 'normal' ears and the son has mum's elf ears - well, had. He had them as a toddler and as a child. Then after a few days I was doing a 'change appearence' on him and I noticed that he no longer had elf ears (he was still a child - I don't know if he had them straight away after he grew up, though, as the hair covered it). Second unsolved: a townie I made was supposed to be Japanese and I made his face to look like that. However when he recently visited the business, I noticed that he had a completely different face. Eyes were still similar but the nose was completely different at least. All I can think of is that the business is a salon and he'd had makeovers both successful and not, but surely that shouldn't be changing his facial structure?

Another family was started in CAS. One guy with a 'default' face that I made and two dogs. I quite clearly remember putting that face on him after thinking about another one with a bigger chin and smaller eyes - I decided on the one I made and finished making him. I am sure that in the CAS screen he had this face. When I moved him and his pets onto a lot, I realised, when clicking on something and making a menu, he had that other face. This one could be down to me undoing something and not realising but I really, really doubt it - I do skin then face then everything else. I don't think there's any way I would have done contacts and makeup and eyebrows without realising it was the wrong face, but I suppose it is possible - but what it seems to me is that again, some poor sim's face changed on them for a reason I can't work out.

This is a fairly old neighbourhood but I did a deleteallcharacters before I made the two families living in it. I've made townies and, when visiting community lots, spawned NPCs, but really not enough to be causing problems (terrible things have happened before when 3 families are onto the 15th generation and everyone has siblings and there are lots and lots of townies and not much inbreeding but I recognise when that's happening and I don't think this is the problem here.)

Can anyone help me, please? I've not done a full reinstall because I don't want to unless it's necessary... and I've had plenty of problems in my game before that I've managed to at least sort-of fix, but I'm really stuck with this. Searches for 'face changes' or anything just tell me about plastic surgery or dna-editing or replacing templates, not this kind of madness

[Strangel]

I don't know about the changing-faces, but I can tell you the problem with your CAS+Pets face..

For SOME reason when making a family in CAS and including pets, all sims revert to default face template when tossed into Sim Bin. The best workaround right now is to make the sim family, drop them in a lot, and have them go out and BUY the pets.
Edit: Buy them or go back into CAS and make them, then join them to the family once the family is in a lot.

[Arina]

Thank you, I'll do that in future, then! (And I'm glad I've not gone insane XD)

The first sim I mentioned was created with a cat, but her face was fine. But her face was heavily edited inside CAS... Whether that has an effect on it or not, I don't know, but I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to faces I really didn't want

[cwykes]

just wondered if this was connected to the "faceless sim" problem.  change appearance on the faceless sim gives them a default face, a second change appearance fixes it.  Try two changes.  The fix doesn't stick for my sims unfortunately, but might work for yours.  At least yours aren't faceless!

Are they alien skin like mine by any chance?

[Gwill]

I spent ages making my crazy cat lady scary and hidious in Bodyshop and CAS, only to experience that exact problem.
Most people complain about their pretty sims turning ugly.  My ugly sim turned pretty.

[J. M. Pescado]

Gwill, I would like to state at this time that your new avatar sucks and makes me physically ill.

[MistyBlue]

This happens to me every time I change a sims appearance with the mirror, whether they are CAS or born in game. The face always defaults to the 1st template, the "pretty boy/girl" one. I no longer use mirrors because of this.

[cwykes]

Two changes seems to get it right.

[RainbowTigress]

This happens to me every time I change a sims appearance with the mirror, whether they are CAS or born in game. The face always defaults to the 1st template, the "pretty boy/girl" one. I no longer use mirrors because of this.

That's not normal.  It has to be something borked in your game.  I've not had this happen myself.  Only recently have I had this happen a couple of times when using InSim's temporal mod to change appearance of some townies.  I thought it must be a bug in OFB.  I also noticed that their eyes were the flat Maxis brown default  that you see on the skin files, so it was as if it wasn't showing their eyes either.  Doing change appearance again caused their face to come back, but I wasn't sure what caused it either. 

[cwykes]

mirrors' shouldn't do that - espcially not MAXIS mirrors...  Custom mirrors might I suppose if you got an old/bad download from somewhere.  I have one that doesn't let you change toddler appearance for example which I am now wary of.

I came across a faceless teen in an old album from base game days, so this kind of problem isn't new to OFB.  I remember downloading InSim once, but don't remember if I actually ever installed it.  Certainly not as early as the time I made that family.  something borked in the game files for random sims is certainly a plausible cause or it would be a plague spreading round the hood.  Every sim with mirror X would turn faceless or pretty on you.

My faceless alien looking sims, turn pretty the first time you use the mirror which is why I think it's related,

[Arina]

I'm sorry this is quite late, I've not been able to get onto the forums.

These sims didn't have alien skin, and I don't think any changed to the 1st face, apart from the one with the business outfit and that was temporary.

I don't think the faceless bug is related, though it could be... anyway, what I ended up doing was wiping the neighbourhood and doing a shiny no townies or pets restart of it. 2 families and generations in, and everyone still has their faces. Related? No idea. But with daily backups, hopefully it'll stay like this Thanks for all your advice, though.

[notveryawesome]

I've had the problem with CAS sims w/ pets changing after move-in. I have an extracted pollination technician that I 'created' in CAS, though I made no changes to him. When I moved him, his family, and their cat into the neighbourhood, his face changed to a default template, though it still retained the alien eyes. I had to cheat the plastic-surgery station into existence just to *somewhat* change him back how he was. Since installing Pets, I have also had problems with mirrors, all mirrors, even Maxis ones not allowing me to put collars on pets, even though I *know* I bought the correct-sized collar. I am getting very exasperated with my game.

Edited to include: Yes, I was trying to use the floor mirrors for pets, not the wall mirrors.

[OpiumGirl]

I've had problems with the faces reverting to Maxis faces with OFB (when changing into uniform) from the first day I got OFB...I have never been able to use uniforms due to this issue.  Even changing the face in a mirror doesn't fix it for me (though I'll try doing it a few times as mentioned above)
I don't get it, and it really bums me out because I want some really skanky clothes for my backroom club but I don't necessarily want them to wear them all the time.
Anyway, I don't see a definitive answer to the whole work outfit problem....I just don't understand how something so blatantly wrong could go unfixed by EA/Maxis....
Am I missing something, or is there no definite fix for this?
I haven't had the problem with CAS and Pets, and I'm glad I caught this thread before I made any families with pets.  I've always added pets to my established families....I'm very glad I did!
Thanks for the tips on that!

[KellyQ]

This happens to me every time I change a sims appearance with the mirror, whether they are CAS or born in game. The face always defaults to the 1st template, the "pretty boy/girl" one. I no longer use mirrors because of this.

That's not normal.  It has to be something borked in your game.  I've not had this happen myself.  Only recently have I had this happen a couple of times when using InSim's temporal mod to change appearance of some townies.  I thought it must be a bug in OFB.  I also noticed that their eyes were the flat Maxis brown default  that you see on the skin files, so it was as if it wasn't showing their eyes either.  Doing change appearance again caused their face to come back, but I wasn't sure what caused it either. 

This a problem I'm experiencing, eyes changing from custom colors to default brown (ugly) eyes. Regardless of how many times I have them my sim go to the mirror and change appearance, she isn't reverting back to the custom color eyes. I went into Simpe to check and she has the custom eye color listed for her DNA.

It is driving me quite mad.

[J. M. Pescado]

Changing current eye color is more complex than changing the SDNA and then using the mirror. You can change skin tones this way, but not eye colors. Eye colors require considerably more messing-with. MTS2 had something on this, IIRC.

[RainbowTigress]

I did this once, changing a sim's eyecolor.  I had to change several things, I think in the actual Sim package file, not in the neighborhood file.  I think it was in material definitions.  I haven't done it since then.  If I want to change a sim's eye color, I use contacts.

If you delete a custom eyecolor a sim was using, they will revert to the eyecolor default on whatever default skins you're using.  If you're using Maxis defaults, it will be the ugly brown color.  I've fixed my default replacements so they have a dark blue as the default eye color should they loose their eyecolor.

[Sleepycat]

This a problem I'm experiencing, eyes changing from custom colors to default brown (ugly) eyes. Regardless of how many times I have them my sim go to the mirror and change appearance, she isn't reverting back to the custom color eyes. I went into Simpe to check and she has the custom eye color listed for her DNA.

It is driving me quite mad.

you need to change it in the sims "character file" under "age data"


you will then need to have the sim "change appearence" with a mirror in-game to get the "new" eyes to show up.

[Dea]

I read that even if you want all your employees to wear the same uniform you still need to create seperate uniforms for each sim.  Since  I started doing that I have had no facial problems.

[KellyQ]

Not to hijack this thread but after reading RainbowTigress' post about replacing default eyes, I decided to go about it that way. (I tried Sleepycat's method in Simpe but am too Simpe retarded to figure out how to go about it .) So I downloaded default eye replacements and while it changed all Maxis made sims to the default eye colors, no go with the CAS sim that I'm having problems with; she still has the ugly Maxis default brown. I am irritated beyond belief with this.

As far as sims changing faces with uniforms, my sims' faces don't change as far as shape or characteristics but their makeup disappears until they change back into their regular clothes.

[OpiumGirl]

KellyQ,
I got it to work using simpe..
This was with sims who's eyes were default because I no longer used the custom eyes they originally had in my game.
For some reason they don't revert to Maxis defaults when you delete a custom eyecolor.\
What happens is, whatever color eyes that are on the skintone you're using are the eyes that your sim will have.  So no matter what other defaults you put in your game, it will still use the skintone eyecolor because it's pointing to an eyecolor which no longer exists.
Anyway,
I adjusted the dna of the sim with simpe to use the default string for whichever default color I wanted. (There is a thread someone pointed me to which game the default strings to use for eyecolor...maybe here or on MTS...I'll try to find it)
Then I also (as suggested by others here) changed the sim character file's eye color with simpe.
Once you do that, just go into the game and "change appearance" and their eyes should show whatever color you used in yours sims dna & character file...

This is all info that I gathered from people here who helped me to get it right...otherwise, I would never have know how to do it.

EDIT: Here's the thread that gave me all the tips I needed to fix it.  There are also links to how to which numbers to use in simpe for the different eyecolors.
Hope that helps.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6725.0.html

[RainbowTigress]

Not to hijack this thread but after reading RainbowTigress' post about replacing default eyes, I decided to go about it that way. (I tried Sleepycat's method in Simpe but am too Simpe retarded to figure out how to go about it .) So I downloaded default eye replacements and while it changed all Maxis made sims to the default eye colors, no go with the CAS sim that I'm having problems with; she still has the ugly Maxis default brown. I am irritated beyond belief with this.

As far as sims changing faces with uniforms, my sims' faces don't change as far as shape or characteristics but their makeup disappears until they change back into their regular clothes.

Sorry, I think things got confusing with so many different "defaults."  The defaults you downloaded do in fact replace Maxis default eye colors, the brown, dk blue, lt blue, green, and gray.  But on the actual skin tone files, if you look at them in SimPE, the facial skin graphics have an eye in the corner for each age and each sex for teen and older.  (On the baby skin, this file actually has their whole body including the face.)  This is the flat Maxis brown color you see.  If you are using a default skin replacement, a lot of times the person making the skins left this with the Maxis brown eye, but I saw some where this had been changed also with one of the creator's default eye replacements.  I did this myself on one of my favorite default skin sets where the eye had not been changed from the flat Maxis brown, and it wasn't that difficult, mostly cutting and pasting.  It was mostly monotony after getting into the rhythm of it, having to extract all the facial files to my hard drive, copying the eye graphic, opening each facial file, pasting the eye graphic, saving it, and after doing that for each facial file, importing them back into SimPE for the correct face.  Save that one, then repeat for the other three skintones.  I definitely made a backup after that, but I think it was worth it.  My Servo that I changed to have a human appearance does not have an eyecolor, so this eye shows up for her.  Also, I had a child born to a human and alien couple, and the child has an alien eye shape, but her eyes are not black.  They defaulted to the ugly Maxis brown, so by fixing the skin file she was using, I was able to get her to have a prettier eyecolor.

[slurpeefiend]

I have the whole "changing into a weird ugly face when changing into a uniform" problem with only one of my sims, but none of the others.  He was created alone in CAS with all game-provided genetics and clothes.  Also, he goes weird in his uniform, but his employee doesn't.

[KellyQ]

Thanks OpiumGirl and RainbowTigress for taking the time to give me more information. At least I now understand the "why" of it even if I don't have a clue on the "how" of changing it.

I finally just decided to download some contacts from Mermaid Cove and used those. At least I don't have to look at the ugly default brown eyes on my otherwise lovely sim.

[RainbowTigress]

I finally just decided to download some contacts from Mermaid Cove and used those. At least I don't have to look at the ugly default brown eyes on my otherwise lovely sim.

That is truly the easiest way to deal with it for now.  And you're welcome.   

I got my contacts from Lyran.  I didn't know Mermaid Cove had them.  I'll check it out.  She's always coming out with new stuff.

[OpiumGirl]

NP, KellyQ
Glad to be of some help.  THere are some great contacts on MTS...maybe the ones Rainbow Tigress was referring to.  I know that they're cloned after Helaene's eyes.  Some of them don't look quite right, but there are a few styles that look quite nice and there are a TON to choose from so you're bound to find some that you really like.