RE: Sims 2 Offspring Facial Distortion
Really surprised that this isn't talked about that much. There's only a couple of sources I found talking about it. (Links - 1 2 3) But, basically what Offspring Facial Distortion does is that your sims' offspring in TS2 won't inherit the EXACT features from the parent Sims. There will be some distortion to the facial structure (i.e. for female sims - longer chin, more upper eyelid, etc.) Apparently, this isn't a problem with the templates, it's hardcoded in the game itself, so sadly no fixes.
For the rest of the post, I will refer to this as OFD in short.
And, as a former Sims 4 player (last played 3 years ago), this isn't just a Sims 2 problem, in TS4, offsprings will have recessed chins. (Link to reddit posts talking about it - 1 2) Both TS2 and TS4 have this as part of the code of their respective games, so as you have offsprings in both games, their faces will have some form of distortion, even if you try to fix it. Not sure if there's also OFD in the Sims 3.
For the default face templates I've made and how OFD affects it, It's really different for Male vs Female Sims, which really goes to show that it's a game/coding problem since I made my male and female face templates look as close as possible. So, for my male sims, it's ignorable, but for female sims: 1) chin and jaw get lower and 2) upper eyelid gets higher. Solution to that is plastic surgery, w/ all the custom sliders I have installed, I found that 3-4 ticks to lift chin up, also 3-4 to make jaw smaller, and then 3-4 ticks to lower upper eyelid does the trick to make my sims look like their parents.
Here's the OFD in action (all ages - original face vs offspring face) I used the same face template for the parents to show the differences between the original and the offspring.
NGL, the teens kinda look better with the distortion lol, but for my adult female sims, the chin gets soooo longggg, and the eyelid too, like whaatttt.
Also, I know in the GIF, the original faces look like they have weak chins, but they don't it's just a CAS thing. It looks normal in bodyshop and in game.
IDK how it is for others, but for my game, OFD is still in action even if the parents don't have the same face template. The offsprings will still have the changes in the GIF above applied to them.
So, at the end of the day, since there's no fix to this, what I'll be doing personally is just giving my Sims plastic surgery with Gussy up.
It might seem DRASTIC in CAS, but trust, in-game, it's not that drastic at all, maybe because the gameplay is good lol. It's only drastic if the offspring inherits a weak jaw from the parent sim/s, because since the offspring will inevitably have a long chin, the weak jaw is gonna make the long chin more apparent.
My advice is that if you notice it, then just give your sims plastic surgery. But, if you don't notice it, even if you know that it's a mechanic in the game, why bother doing it every time.
Maybe that's why it's not that talked about that much, maybe it's just that nobody cares about it like that.
That's about it though, kinda sucks but what are you gonna do. š¤·
Note: I'm not using the Sims 2 Steam version released this year by EA so IDK if they've got this issue fixed there.
See how the camera angle is different in CAS vs Bodyshop and in game? That's why I use Bodyshop when creating Sims, and not CAS.
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