This is a quick guide to help you create realistic and/or diverse sims.
There is no perfect method to achieve that, I can only give you some tips, based on how I create my sims. I hope everything will be understandable, as english is not my native language !
Most of the time, before opening my game, I think about the character I want to create, what kind of person it will be, some basic ideas for a personal story. This will influence all my creating process.
But you don’t necessarily need all that. Sometime, a simple concept is enough, or maybe you only want to focus on the appearance first and then, imagine your character story.
This advice applies for almost everything, creating sims, building houses, working on poses ! When working on a sims, you can use reference pictures for different things :
Only reproduce the general proportions, to have a more realistic base.
Recreate a face, and then keep it like this or use it as a base for your character.
Or focus only on a specific facial feature.
Especially for the last point, it would be better to find a face with significant/pronounced features you can try to reproduce. Your model can be anyone, a actor or an actress, someone you personally know, or a complete stranger. Humans of New York or Humanæ can be nice places if you are looking for inspiration (if you know any other website, don’t hesitate !). If you already have some basic ideas about your character, it can help you to find a model.
Using references can be a nice way to get out your comfort zone !
Try to create older or younger sims, sims with different origins, create a male sims if you usually focus only on female sims. Using references can help you to achieve that.
Keep this in mind : depending on the angle or the distance, a face can be distorted on a photography. That’s the reason why it’s almost impossible to perfectly recreate a real person face in game, even if you find plenty of photo, the face won’t have exactly the same shape on every photo. But if you only want to shape the general proportions, it’s not a problem.
Before working on anything, click on each face part, and choose wisely the presets you want to use. If you look carefully, you will see that each preset not only change the geometry, but also have an influence on the face texture. A preset can make dimples appear on the cheeks or on the chin, modify the shape of the eyelids…
So click on every face part, the nose, the lips, the eyes, the chin, the cheeks, and don’t forget the forehead.
The face presets are the reason why I avoid using custom skins. Most of the time, the ones you can find in the face detail category completely mask the variations of textures created by the different presets.
This advice is essential, if you don’t use custom content.
Using custom face details is another way to create some interesting variations on the face textures. You can find some of the face details I use on this post.
When you are done selecting your presets, it’s time to work on your sims face ! Note that you can always change a preset afterward, but you will have to redo all your work on the face part you changed.
Click on everything, touch everything in normal and detail mode, on all angles.
And don’t forget to compare the result with your reference pictures, depending on how you choose to use them.
When I use reference, and have a nice front or profile picture of my model (but don’t forget what I said about the face distortion on photos), I take a screen of my sims and superpose it with my reference picture. It can be usefull if you find it hard to see what you can change to make your sims more accurate.
I don’t have any specific tips for this step, as I have no specific method. You can maybe take a bit of time to study all the options you have, to edit each face part. Depending on the mode (normal or detail edit mode), the angle, where you click, the direction you move your mouse, the result of your modification can be different.
For exemple, if you want to bring the eyes of your sims closer, you can do it in normal mode. Or in detail mode, if you click on the white part of the eyes, but if you do it this way, the eyebrows won’t move. Making your sims face wider can also influance the distance between the eyes..
Don’t forget your sims body. There is so many different body shape you can recreate in game, use all these possibilities to make more diverse sims. And again… you can use references for that (don’t count how many time I used this word on this post) !
Last point ! It can sometime be a good thing to take a break, and resume your sims creation later. After a pause, it can be easier to see what you can change to finalize your work.
I forgot to talk about that earlier : before working on my sims face, i usually try to find him a hairstyle, because it can completely change how your sims look (by making his forehead smaller or bigger). Sometime I change it later, and readjust my sims face accordingly.
When you’re done creating your sims face (or not necessarily, you can do that when you want !), you can work on his/her look. I don’t really have rules for that, so here are some some random tips you can find usefull :
Do not limit yourself to styles you consider stylish. If you have some basic ideas about your character story, dress him/her up accordingly. Maybe your sims don’t care about what he wear, he only want something practical. Maybe she just have a doubtful fashion sense !
References. Pictures are not even necessary in this case ! Observe the people around you, open your eyes when you are out, it can give you inspiration about the looks you can recreate.
When I create my sims outfits, I try to reuse some parts on multiple outfits. In real life, we don’t have an unlimited number of clothes ! I often do this with the shoes or the accessories too.
As you can see, you don’t even have to reuse exactly the same top, to give this impression of a limited wardrobe. Here, Jonas only take-off his cardigan, he is still wearing his white v-neck shirt. in game, it’s two different tops. This tip can be useful when you are working on a story.
And… voilà ! That’s all I have to say for the moment ! Maybe I forgot some of my ideas while writing this, but if I remember something, I will simply edit this post. I hope this tutorial enlightened you about how I create my sims, and that some of my advice will help you in the future. ;)
I created a new tag on my blog, for my Tips. Only a few posts for the moment (one about my editing process, for example), but if you liked this one, maybe I will see if I have other advices to give you ;)
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