New Edit: I'm keeping this up because I want to learn more about realistic hair. But OMG, I just discovered the massive "HAIR DUMPS" of Hat Plays Sims. Umm.. I think I'll have enough hair for a while.

I’ve always been a devout maxis match simmer. I’m currently collecting the New Hair System, and I can tell at a glance most off the major MM hair textures apart — Poppet, Remi etc. When I first started getting maxis match hair, they all looked alike to me. I’d mix them up and not notice or care that they were different styles, mismatched colors or clashing textures. Now I notice and try hard not to mix it up too much.

But I’m making a 100% medieval modded game and most of the best hairs are realistic.
It’s that shiny (I think called alpha textured?) wispy hair. I used to call it “pooklet”, but now I’m learning that refers to the colors. (Most of the Maxis Match hair I download is pre-binned, set 1. Never thought about colors. I just assumed that’s how all hairs worked.)

I’ve gotten nearly all the female hairs I can handle from plumbob keep, but I have scarcely have enough male hair. I want to venture outside the site, but I get overwhelmed looking at all the different realistic options. I can tell that there are a variety of textures, but I can’t tell them apart by site.

When you see hat plays sims conversions, what style does she use? What does most of plumbob keep use? Most of the hair from that site seems to match nicely. I can provide images, but not at this time. But I wanted to know if realistic cc simmers could tell what style(s) of hair I should be looking for.


And how careful should I be matching facial hair and eyebrows to the right style? I love my nhs eyebrow and facial hair collection, but I assume that would look terrible to mix maxis match and realistic.
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As a bonus, care to suggest a good realistic skin default? Not too shiny, and the make sims don’t look too feminine.

I mean it really depends on what your taste is. I go on tumblr and find a lot of modern and realistic cc. You can try all the hairs website. You can browse the sims resource. I really like mouseyblue skins and ephemera i think they come in both default and custom.

My favorites are some Ephemera blends for skins because they're somewhere in between MM and realistic (my game is somewhere in between the styles). I mostly use Pooklet textures for hairs and some, but not all of the Pooklet colors - the reds are a bit too vibrant for my taste so I've often ended up not using them. I'm not too picky, though, so I'll often blend in some other colors and textures for a bit of variety.

Tumblr has a LOT of variety - there's both MM and Pooklet/Io/similar with new and old meshes, so under is a bit of both. Just be warned that a lot of new meshes tend to be TS4 CC conversions and relatively high-poly meshes. Older meshes usually tend to be somewhat lower (depending on creator, a few were high-poly back in the days, but TS4 creators have a tendency to love making 30k+++ meshes, which TS2 doesn't like without shaders turned on).

Maxis Match (or similar)
https://deedee-sims.tumblr.com/tagged/dl-hair-recolors
https://mikexx2.tumblr.com/tagged/dl%3A-hair
https://keonidownloads.tumblr.com/t...download%3Ahair (some might be defaults)
https://lilith-sims.tumblr.com/tagged/download%3A-hair
https://kooli-sims.tumblr.com/tagged/dl-hair
https://peppermint-ginger.tumblr.com/tagged/dl%3A-hair (some might be defaults)
https://simgigglegirl.tumblr.com/
https://rented-space.tumblr.com/tagged/female-hair (male hair)

Pooklet (or similar)
https://timeparadoxsims.tumblr.com/tagged/download
https://goatskickin.tumblr.com/ (A little bit unsure, but I think it's Pooklet?)
https://lilroisin.tumblr.com/
https://mrs-mquve-cc.tumblr.com/tagged/sims-2-hair
https://redsimmer-blog.tumblr.com/tagged/dl%3A-hair
https://aehklnt.tumblr.com/tagged/dl
https://fakebloood.tumblr.com/tagged/s2hair
https://grecadeasimsstudios.tumblr....gged/sims2-hair
https://withlovefromsimtown.tumblr.com/tagged/hair (Some might be defaults)
https://entropy-sims.tumblr.com/

There's a lot more, but these were just from a quick search through some of my links. I'll update if I find more.

The links were a great help thanks. I prefer Maxis Match in my "normal" game, but because Almighty Hat has SO many medieval specific hairs, I'm trying to match her style rather than find all the hairs she selects in the New Hair System Maxis Match. The realistic stuff is starting to grow on me a little bit -- but only with medieval themed stuff.

Tnanks for mentioning ephemera. I loved the TS3 ephemera skins and didn't even think about them for TS2.

"Alpha" is term they use for alpha hairs in Sims 4 community since by default the Sims 4 hairs are those weird bulky clay hairs, in Sims 2 (and in Sims 3 too) all hair is alpha hair unless it's a clay hair converted from Sims 4. In Sims 2 maxis match VS realistic is purely dependent on the texture, any hair can be realistic or maxis match depending on the texture used on it.

Pooklet does have texture too (see here) and it is generally used to refer to shinier "realistic" hair textures (for example allthehairs uses it catch-all term for all the shinier more realistic textures). Pooklet also can prefer to their hair colors, linked in that same post. So when you see someone say they "pookleted a hair" it can mean either that they used Pooklet's textures OR colors OR both. Nowadays there are plenty of variations of it though so not all realistic textures are "pooklet", for example Io has their own edit of it. Also the first popular realistic hair textures were Nouk's I believe, you can still see old hairs using those textures over at GoS and HypnotizedSims used Nouk's texture till they disappeared. But those have both fallen out of fashion/been forgotten now that there are more options and generally the community has gotten more interested in the more maxis matchy content.

Hair is my favorite thing to download and create so I like nerding about it

Edited to add: Also for Skins, check Sims2defaultdatabase's "Semi realistic" skins section, you'll likely find something you'll like! ( normal skins | Supernatural skins )

Except for hairs, the "Alpha" term can be very misleading for realistic-looking CC, and only really works in TS4 where there's a distinct difference between the "clay" and "alpha" hairs. I wish they didn't use it for everything else, though.

All CC with textures have alphas as part of the textures (most of the time not visibly so, or fully white), in TS2/TS3/TS4 and probably TS1 as well (it's a texture term for the black/white and sometimes grey texture that decides which parts are visible and/or transparent - it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the CC is realistic or MM).

TS4 still has some issues with the material shader for the texture for CAS items - I don't think EA meant for CAS items to be fully alpha editable or transparent like they were in TS2/TS3, but CC creators always find a way if there is one...

You will sometimes see the term "alpha edited" for TS2 hairs or clothes, but in most cases that actually means the alpha texture has been edited, and it has nothing to do with whether it's realistic or MM (could be either).

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Pooklet made both textures and color actions, although these days there are several other color actions based on their, too. And there are a few variants of the textures (3 versions, plus some curly ones, and most likely a few blends, plus hairs where the actions were applied directly without retexturing). There's also io and Digi's actions, plus various others.