The eternal search...

[Gwill]

I'd like a bit more variety in skin colours in my game, but skin files are massive!  Considering the total size of my downloads folder, I guess I could afford to add a few more skins.
I'm not entirely happy with the range of maxis skins.  The darkest maxis skin, S4, is barely African American black; I'd like the darkest skin to be something like what you'd expect to see on a farmer from Zambia.  The colour of roasted coffee beans, not milk chocolate.  The lightest skin isn't really light enough either.  There I'd like something in the range of sun starved Scandinavian, the kind that burns or freckles in the sun; never tans, and would look completely out of place with black hair.
What's holding me back is mostly the way maxis distributes hair.  I'm too lazy to make all townies manually these days, so I let the game generate a few, and I'm deeply frustrated at how many S4 townies with bright red hair I end up with.  I wish there was some way to restrict hair colour to certain skin ranges.  Given the maxis skin range, I'd like no red hair on S3 or S4, no blonde hair on S4, and no black hair on S1.

[Arina]

Thanks for the answers

Gwill, that's why I like Lyran's skins - yes, the defaults are lighter, but there's an extra skin which is darker than maxis S4 and certainly darker than hers. It's not quite as dark as skin can be... but it wouldn't be too hard to just darken that one if you wanted a darker one (because it's already quite dark). There's a lighter-than-S1 skin (as in, lighter than hers, so really pale) too. Those all compress to 4mb or less apart from her freckled one which stays pretty huge at 7mb, I don't know if it's that the images weren't compressed initially or what :S I know some people don't like those skins, but I feel they've got the best variety for a non-shiny skin set. And I'm not being paid to say this, either XD

I don't know if it's possible to do that with hair colours :/ I'd like that too. I hand-make my townies, but if an npc ends up with hair that looks weird I just change it with a mirror. I don't bother changing their genetics because my sims rarely breed with non-townie npcs.

[Weaver]

I found these a while back at MTS2: Maxis-match Skintones by Purplepaws.
The shades encorporates around the four basic Maxis tones available and may be useful for anyone who wants variety with Maxis defaults.

I'm interested in variances between S1-S2, S2-S3 and S3-S4 with the Lyran default skintones (completed by the S0 Ivory and S5 Ebony available).
Very much like what I mentioned above yet in Lyran's style. Does anyone know if this has been done and is available anywhere?

[Ness]

I've looked...  and searched...  and I keep coming back to the fact that there's nothing out there that remotely compares to lyrans for me.

I'm currently pondering using some of the HP skins to fill in some of the gaps in the darker end of the spectrum, but I'm not so sure that it would work.  It's very hard to see how they two different sets would compare in terms of tones.

Weaver, I've looked at those maxis-match skins many times.  I've been tempted, but I just can't stand the grey-ness.  If they could be pinked up a little, then that would work.  But I'm effectively in the same spot as you - I want some skins to go in between the lyrans skins, but there doesn't seem to be anything even remotely similar.

[notveryawesome]

The Maxis skins all look too yellow to me, and not grey at all (I'd actually prefer it if they were more greyish). Nothing else looks overly yellow on this monitor, so I think it's just the skins. I'm not sure why they look grey on yours. There are colour variances between different types of monitors. Perhaps you could tweak yours to look less grey.

[Quinctia]

I personally don't like HP's skins much at all, to be honest.  I don't know if it's just my computer or what (I thought her pictures looked pretty good--I wouldn't have downloaded them otherwise), but when I put them on a sim in CAS, they just didn't look real.  I know Enayla's got a lot of contrast in hers (that's what makes them "shiny"), and I guess there's just not enough in HP's to work for me.  It might be different if someone was running as high specs as possible, which would increase the appearance of the textures, but I can't do that right now.  The two darker shades I liked a bit, but so far, in messing with CAS, I haven't found a sim I'd want to put them on.  I was making a bunch of custom townies, so I figured I'd try a few new skins, but I didn't like those.

So while I like Lyran's as a default, I "put up" with having mostly Enayla as the rest of my custom geneticized skins because they have the variety in skintones, the good quality modeling, and the colors tend to be pretty rich and well done.  Though I don't like some of her lighter tones, either.

I want as many skintones as possible, but I'm picky, and I'm not particularly good at digitally coloring anything that isn't metallic, so I can't make my own.

[Hegelian]

I can't stand the hyper-realistic skins, I'm quite happy with the cartoonish effect but find the maxis skins too grayish.

The Maxis skins all look too yellow to me, and not grey at all (I'd actually prefer it if they were more greyish).

These sound like monitor-calibration issues to me. Unfortunately, color calibration requires calibration software, which isn't always readily (or cheaply) available. Some Samsung monitors come with software that includes calibration, and Photoshop going back to at least ver. 5 includes Adobe Gamma, which is what I use. Beyond that, there are stand-alone calibration systems using colorimeters that vary considerably in price, but none are exactly cheap.

At the least, virtually every monitor comes with an ICC profile--these are files with an .ICM extension ( in Windows) that define the color characteristics of monitors and other color devices like printers, scanners, and cameras. These allow color graphics to look the same on different monitors and print the same on different printers; when imbedded in image files, they (theoretically) allow the image to look the same on any calibrated monitor. However, on uncalibrated monitors and with images without embedded profiles, what you see on your screen is a crapshoot. Calibration (or the lack thereof) can be a problem for creators of custom content:  Most likely without even knowing it, someone creating a texture for TS2 on an uncalibrated monitor can easily produce something that looks very different in someone else's game than in their own.

To see if you have the appropriate profile for your monitor, open Display Properties, go to the Advanced section, and select the Color Management tab. Any profiles you have that are associated with your monitor will be listed there. If the field is blank or the profiles listed don't match your monitor, you can usually download what you need from the manufacturer's Web site. In WinXP, ICM files go in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color directory:

[witch]

I recently acquired a 19" ex-work, I thought it was too blue-grey and I was missing reds/yellows - my techie-ex adjusted the monitor properties using the monitor buttons and that has made it much better. That's a simple thing you could also try.

[cassblonde]

I have to thank all of your for getting me to look around again at the custom defaults that are available and supplying links as well, I am now comparing skins and may very well pick out a new one! I've also found many other lovely things

Thank you so much! 

[dream_operator]

Thank you so much for this thread.  I have been trying to find default replacement skins that were still Maxisy, but with some tweaks and improvements.  I have had Enayla's skins as my defaults in the past and while I do like them...she didn't have all of the matching alternate lifeform skins and I play those a lot.  Lately I have just been playing with mostly Maxis stuff with just a select few downloads thrown in (mostly hair and HolySimoly furniture), so it was nice to find Lyran's site that had skins to match.  I had never heard of her site before.  The skins are really great...they don't look out of place next to my alternate lifeforms, but they have some nice improvements.  The default eye replacements are really nice too.  I also really liked her three extra skins...the really light one, the dark one, and my most favorite of all the freckled one. 

Dream

[Arina]

I made a skin to go between Lyran's S3 and S4. It's exactly 50% of each and has genetic value .75. I'm not going to do that for the lighter skins because, to me, they're close enough, but I thought some of the people in this thread might find this one useful, so I uploaded it here

[Quinctia]

Well, I'll certainly download it and put it in.  Since I use Lyran's skins as defaults and everything else is geneticized.  I can always use more skintones!  Thanks.

[Ness]

  Great!  I can't wait to get into my game and check it out now!

[J. M. Pescado]

Death to all hairy bellied Nesses.

[SaraMK]

Here's a tip for creating "in-between" skintones, for those who are not so good in Photoshop but who want to try making their own.

This assumes that you have a set of skintones that are all the same except for darkness/lightness. For example, Lyran's skintones (the default set) are exactly the same, but different colors from light to dark. However, one problem is that the difference between the medium skin and the dark skin is very big. Here's how to easily create an in-between skin without losing quality.

Export both the medium and dark skin in Bodyshop.

Figure out which files go together (female adult soft, etc.). Open two files that are the same in a graphics program that supports layers and layer transparency. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, and I think PaintNet do, and probably other good programs out there do as well.

Copy the dark skintone. Paste it as a new layer on top of the lighter skintone. Now adjust the opacity of the layer so that it is 50% transparent.

Instantly, you have a skin that is in-between the two, and no loss of quality. You don't get the same result by adjusting the dark/light/contrast sliders, but that's how a lot of people do it and end up completely destroying the quality.

Try different transparency values for variety.

[Gwill]

I remember doing something like that with one of Louis' skintones, and ending up with two bellybuttons on one without noticing.  Apparently they weren't completely the same in all shades.

[SaraMK]

Which is why you want two that are the same.

Of course, minor imperfections/differences can be fixed, but that would make it no longer simple and easy.

[Flamingo]

It isn't too hard to fix those imperfections, really. You could just use the clone stamp, though you may end up with a Sim's nipples or belly button faded.

I actually did something like what SaraMK described to create my current default. I took similar shades of two skintones that I happened to like and put them together. I brought defining features, that I wanted to keep, anyway to the top layer and simply erased the others with the clone stamp.

[Arina]

I did it exactly the way SaraMK described, so don't worry about anything like second bellybuttons on that skin XD I hope it looks good in your games.

Out of curiosity, what does everyone else have Lyran's 3 extra skins geneticised as? I have the freckled one at 0.1, ivory at .05 and ebony at .95.

[Ness]

I've done pretty much the same with the ivory and ebony.  I don't have the freckled one in as I could never decide where to put it...  but I think I want it now!

[J. M. Pescado]

I remember doing something like that with one of Louis' skintones, and ending up with two bellybuttons on one without noticing.  Apparently they weren't completely the same in all shades.

There seems to be some disagreement over where the belly button should be. Similar disagreements result over where the nipples belong.

I've done pretty much the same with the ivory and ebony.  I don't have the freckled one in as I could never decide where to put it...  but I think I want it now!

And death to all hairy-bellied Nesses.

[Ambular]

There seems to be some disagreement over where the belly button should be. Similar disagreements result over where the nipples belong.

Well, those things vary quite a bit from person to person, as does their appearance.  I've seen people fuss over how the knees and collarbones look too.  My big sticking point is abs--for some reason the tummies on "realistic" skins almost never look quite right to me.

[Ellatrue]

Gwill, I agree with you about feeling that the dark skins aren't dark enough. It actually annoyed me when I first got the game.

This isn't a default, but I found a "chocolate" skin from Around the Sims 2 that I liked using for a while on my darker sims. They also have a paler, ivory skin available, and I guess it wouldn't be too hard to make it a default. They have a bit of that blueish undertone you see in African type skin which is missing in the Maxis defaults (which, IMO, look warmer and more Indian).

http://www.aroundthesims2.com/looks/genetics/skin/index.html

I suppose they could be geneticized or made into defaults easily enough.

[Quinctia]

Out of curiosity, what does everyone else have Lyran's 3 extra skins geneticised as? I have the freckled one at 0.1, ivory at .05 and ebony at .95.

.1, .05, and .99, respectively!  Though I did it so long ago, I might eventually go back and redo the genetics according to the collection of skins I've got going now, and where they fit with my default replacements.  (I didn't have any replacements when I first geneticized.)

[notveryawesome]

Gwill, I agree with you about feeling that the dark skins aren't dark enough. It actually annoyed me when I first got the game.

This isn't a default, but I found a "chocolate" skin from Around the Sims 2 that I liked using for a while on my darker sims. They also have a paler, ivory skin available, and I guess it wouldn't be too hard to make it a default. They have a bit of that blueish undertone you see in African type skin which is missing in the Maxis defaults (which, IMO, look warmer and more Indian).

http://www.aroundthesims2.com/looks/genetics/skin/index.html

I suppose they could be geneticized or made into defaults easily enough.

I like those skins from ATS too, but they don't work for YA, so I ditched them shortly after Uni came out. It's a shame, because they are very nice.