Difference between revisions of "Game Help:Creating Sims"

Revision as of 20:55, 25 March 2007

Creating Sims

All the tips, info, and instructions you could need to help create beautiful, unique, interesting sims.

How do you make sims?

It may seem simple, but people have asked this time and again.

Sims are created in either Body Shop or Create a Family/Create a Sim in the game. You go through and change their facial features using sliders (adjustment controls that "slide" left to right), change their skintone, hair, makeup, eyes, clothing, etc., and then just keep adjusting their features and content until you get something that you like.

General Tips

Basic info and tips to help get you started not only making basic sims, but creating really nice, interesting, unique ones.

• Make your sims in Body Shop, which comes with your game, rather than in Create a Sim. They stay still, you can choose all the content for them, and you have quite a few more sliders than in the game. You can always change a few things once you get into the game.

• Don't be afraid of the sliders! Just using the Maxis templates makes for boring sims. Try at least a small adjustment to every slider.

• The "Randomize Sim" button only randomizes the content on your sims and uses the same faces you can choose on the whole-face templates. You're better off choosing one of the basic templates and then modifying as you do not get random facial features with randomized sims - just random face templates with random content.

• Download sims created by other people, and change them to your liking - switch hair and makeup and play with their facial features. Just remember: if you modify a sim created by someone else, you shouldn't upload it or use it in a contest as it's not really YOUR sim - this is only for personal use - no sim stealing!

• Try making a sim that looks like a real person. You don't have to make it look exactly like them, but having a picture of a person that you like to use as inspiration can help you create original, unique face sculpts.

• If there is a particular sim you like, try examining their facial features and try to recreate them on a new sim.

• Create your facial sculpts without any content - no default skintones, no default eyes, no makeup, no custom anything. Use Maxis defaults and create interesting faces that way. If you can get unique faces with no content, you will have a striking, unique result once you put content on.

• Once you do put on content, experiment with different types of content. Skintones especially can change the whole look of a face, making features look different.

• Try using one of the ugly Maxis faces and softening the features by adjusting the sliders, for a more unique, striking face.

• Don't make the eyes too big, and make sure they're not too far apart. Look at pictures of real people for proportion - the eyes should be about one eye-width apart, and the eyes should be about as wide as the nostrils.

• Make at least one unique, stand-out feature, and then adjust all the others to compliment it. A strange nose, interesting lips, or tilted eyes look much more impactful if the whole face has unique but not over-unique features.

• Not all sims have to be model pretty. Try making one or two features that are imperfect - nose a bit too big, lips a bit thin, pointy or squared-off chin, etc. - your sim can still be beautiful without looking like they were sculpted in a lab.

• If you find part of your sim's face is going weird, like a strange lump on the jawline or sharpness in the face from too much adjustment, switch to the premade faces or features and right-click one or two times on a basic premade face. It will fade in the premade face/features without obliterating your work and will soften any harsh or jagged lines you may have developed while sculpting.

• Creating a really good sim takes a long time! Don't just crank out a sim in 5 or 10 minutes... Spend at least 20 to 30 on the sim, then save them. Then go do something else, come back, and work on them again later with a fresh set of eyes. Repeat until you have a really unique, interesting sim - there's no such thing as too much tweaking!

Sims for Breeding

If you're creating your sims not just as models, but for play, and you plan on having them breed and bear children, you'll want to keep the following tips in mind, as second generation sims are often FUGLY if you don't create the parents carefully:

• Sims with similar faces will tend to create more beautiful children than sims with wildly different faces. Try switching your female sim to male (or vice versa) before finishing them, to make sure they'll look good as the other gender.

• You may even want to make a sim as one gender, then switch the gender and adjust them some, saving the sim as male and female, then breeding them, as they'll tend to create pretty children together due to their similar faces.

• If you want your sims to create better-looking toddlers and children, switch the parents down to toddler or child while you're creating them, then soften the features of the toddler/child a bit, then go back to adult. Repeat until you have a decent looking sim both young and older.

• Even with all these tips, toddlers and children will tend to be, well, ugly. Don't let the social worker take them just yet - wait until they age into teen or adult as their faces will change. A hideous toddler may be a beautiful adult.

• If you plan on breeding your sim with townies, you can ensure they'll have beautiful children. First, create your sim in Create a Sim/Create a Family. Then create a second sim using one of the Maxis faces. Then "Make a Child" using those two sims. Roll it a few times to see what kind of kids they'll make. If they don't make nice kids, choose a different Maxis face for your second sim. Repeat until you find a Maxis face your sim breeds well with. Then, when you go to play, have your sim have kids with a Maxis sim that uses that same face (townies, maids, etc., all use the same faces that you can choose in Create a Sim/Body Shop) to make lovely children.

Overslidering

Overslidering is pushing the sliders beyond their limits, to make more extreme facial features. First, you need to decide which feature you're going to need to overslider as you want to do it first. Adjust the slider(s) on that panel to their limits, then switch to a premade feature (like a chin or a mouth) and click on it to reset that feature to a premade default. Then go back to the fine adjustments and you'll find that it reset the sliders to the middle, so you can readjust them again.

The same works for pets, too - adjust the slider to max, pick a default feature like forehead shape (anything but tail works for pets) and you'll have more range on the sliders again.

Contributor Credits

Thanks to the following users for providing info that has been added to this FAQ: Ghanima Atreides, Aijux, sidneydoj, JessicaMcPherson, claire., corvidophile2, jmtmom

Related Links