A couple of my notes:

I have a desktop shortcut for BodyShop. i don't know if I made it or the game installer made it, but after I upgraded to the first expansion pack it was still pointed at the version that came with the original game, even though there was a newer version in the University directory.
You can tell what program it is pointed at by right-clicking and selecting 'properties' and looking at the file location. I don't know that the new version fixes anything or not, but it didn't make anything worse. There is a newer version still that came with Nightlife.

The other neat thing I have seen lately is a small program by Dr. Pixel called BodyShop Mechanic (a message about it is here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...368#post1060368 ) that allows you to pick a gif or other graphic file to use as the background image when you press F5. Using a small pattern image and selecting 'tile' allows you to see clearly how much the body changes when toggling between fat and thin body types.

<* Wes *>

Thanks, wes. That would certainly be helpful to meshers, especially.

For those of you looking for Body Shop, it might be more helpful to manually click through. Go to your Start menu. When it opens, select "All Programs", then "EA Games" then "The Sims 2" - and whatever is the most recent ep you have. In the pop-out box you'll see "The Sims 2 Body Shop". You can right click and pin it to your start menu and you'll never lose it again.

As for photoskinning, you really need to look on the PhotoShop hints and tricks thread. Body Shop will help you create the facial structure of your sim to lay the photoskin on top of. This is where your sim will really look or not look like the person. You would create the face in Body Shop, save it when it looks structurally close, then export it to your game, where it will show up in the sim bin. At that point, you can use a photorealistic skin by selecting it as the skintone. I wouls suggest you start with a pre-made one. Helaene and Enayla have done some lovely ones. By doing this, you already have matching face and body skintones, and can make adjustments in PhotoShop to the face alone, adding makeup, stubble, etc., to fine tune the sim.

First of all, wow!! =D Thank you so much (to everyone) for all this! It's amazing! ^_^ Anyway, I have a question: in the screenshots I've seen here, it looks like there are great graphics in peoples' Bodyshop games. But in mine, everything shows up like it does if you have the settings in-game set to 'Low' on everything. Also, whenever I make something, it goes all blurry as soon as I say 'import to game.' Maybe it's because I'm on a Apple computer?... :-.

PAF I have a similar problem with certain meshes. For instance, chriko's meshes for teens dont seem to work right in my game, and i cant recolor them if I download them from her site, plus many of them dont show up correctly in body shop (the meshes i mean) so i cant use them to recolor objects, and I get the same texture error you do. Her adult meshes work fine tho? And other sites that have the same meshes that I download recolors from? I can recolor the recolors fine! I never upload to websites, so figure its okay for me to recolor the recolors esp. since I cant seem to get the meshes to work ingame? It may be the size of the image issue thing hritza mentioned, but how do I fix that if I cant get it to download, unless I use simpe?

guineapigluva I have the same issue with mine, but the clothing I make is fine within the game (well sorta well enough I can live with it right now anyway) mainly because I have changed details, textures and something else to high in my game, but have no idea how to change body shop's settings? I would like to get a higher end video card which I figure would solve the issue but 1. dont have the money right now. 2. not sure what one to get. My daughter has a new computer with a nividea 6100 card and it does fancy things like videos with the first kiss, engagement, marriage, births etc. and the details are fantastic! however a lot of people have issues with nividea in general it looks like so leary to get me a new one. I tried to update my drivers to see if it would fix more of the blurry issues with bodyshop and the game both but there was only one update and it did zilch.

Unfortunately, there is smoothing in the game, and that's a necessary thing since the meshes consist of joined polygons with angles and points and stuff. However, there's no excuse for the amount of smoothing in BodyShop, or the poor lighting, and Maxis doesn't seem to have any intentions of changing it any time soon. I'm trying to figure out how to use the Skin Workshop in SimPE and see if that works any better. I upgraded to a Radeon card from my old GeForce, and while the game plays better, my skins are way fuzzy, so it's forcing me into looking for a workaround. Anyone else who wants to try it is welcome - I'm busy with lots of stuff, so it might be a while before I can contribute any useable information.

My skins are amazingly fuzzy as well... in body shop it looks good, with great detail, but when I export it into game it is all blurry and ugly, and all the detail is gone.

My main thing I want to do is take a skin off of a mesh I already have, and apply it to another body type (I have some Warlokk meshes, and the Xenos superheroine, as well as the medieval/muslim chunky lady that I want to make medieval dresses for).

I opened projects in body shop, and copied the skins into the project, but then when I imported them back into the game they were all blurry. I really miss the Sim1 when all you had to do was rename the skin. Is there a way to do it in SIm 2?

Thanks!

Make sure your detail settings are turned up in the game - texture and sim/object detail being low can cause things to look really crunchy in the game. Try that first, make sure it's all up and set to high...

If it's just your creations, not ALL creations that are fuzzy, it's probably due to Body Shop being stupid and making things into mush. I have no idea why Maxis decided to include "completely ruin user projects" settings in Body Shop, but... they did, and sometimes they'll become enabled with installing new EPs and stuff. There's instructions on how to change them back here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=147242

MAKE SURE you back up as it says there before you change anything.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out

Pressing the two mouse buttons at the same time, makes you go up and down after pressing the f3 button... good for seeing rings or other accessories at your hands...

I think that the greatest problem that I have with the body shop, is when deleting content... If I delete something that it´s in the middle of my colection (bar on the middle, indicating it), the body shop goes to the beginning of the collection, and the same goes when working with sims and clothings, accessories, hair... I have a insanely huge collection of sim things (about 8GB), and it´s a hell to delete old or stuff tat you thought were good on a picture, but on you sim looks bad...

So, anyone knows how "fix" a point while deleting, or stopping the bodyshop/sims going to the begining of the collection after deleting clothing, hair or other sims parts?

Thanks for your tips!

I don't know of a way to re-order things, and Maxis has made it so you can't delete their own content (I know I don't need a gorilla suit, or a deep sea diver, much less four to six of them, but I'm stuck!)

Sometimes I find it easier to go into create a sim and delete from there. Or, if you remember the project name, you can go into you Saved Sims folder and delete it from there, as well. CAS loads them faster, Saved Sims is fastest, but you need to know what you're looking for already.

That´s not my real kind of problem... It´s about the stuff I´ve downloaded... It´s disgusting, when you delete something, and has to go all the pages you saw again, to find where you are. Anyway, thanks for you tips!

Thanks for the help! =D And NicoleShields, that's what happens with me. I make something, and it looks regular when I'm making it, but when I import it, it just goes completely fuzzy. I tried re-installing TS2, downloading BodyShop from thesime2.com, and just making copies of Maxis clothes, to see if it was the way I colored it or something, but... it's still all blurry! But the rest of the things I download from the internet are fine. And does anyone know how to get the amazing look of the settings on High in-game, in BodyShop? I've seen it in some screenshots... And it's set on High for everything in my game... 0_o Well, thanks anyway!!

Then you need to go and look at the Skinning FAQs post. I have a link there for the fix for that.

I know this may sound stupid, but i'm terrible at using bodyshop and i can't seem to figure out how to take pictures in it, how do u take pictures in bodyshop??

I don't think Body Shop has a "take photo" function like "C" does for the game. Just use Print Screen (on your keyboard) to copy your screen to your clipboard and then paste into any graphics editing program.

Thanks, Faylen, I'm going there now.

I finally got Body Shop to open for the first time. It only opens in CS Bin or whatever it was for me. Anyway, I exported a Maxis in-game hair to recolor. I understand how to recolor each part of the hair. I saw a tutorial and understand all that. My problem last night was that once I got done recoloring and saved it, I could not get the Body Shop to import it in my game. A pop up said I don't have enough memory on the hard drive to import the ONE hair recolor in my game. I went to look and see what space I've got and according to properties of my C drive, I have a little over 5 Gigs of hard drive space. You mean to tell me I can't import one lousy hair with that space? Is there a trick to make the stupid thing import the recolor in my game?

HouseDesigner2, I have found that when I use bodyshop and photoshop for a couple hours, it leaves temporary files in one of my drives. Very large ones! Not sure why it does this, but closing down the programs and resetting the computer usually gets rid of these, and I can continue.
If resetting doesn't help, then I have also manually deleted these files.
Maybe that's your problem?

none of that works with mine
HELP ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shelbync, no one can look over your shoulder, you need to say exactly what you are trying, what is working and what happens next.

Since it hasn't been mentioned, I take it everyone knows that with the Face Modifiers, if you've maxed them out, go to the (just) faces, move the lever slightly towards the left on any face (so it's not noticable) and go back. They will be in the automatic middle position, but the changes you made prior to it will still be there.

If everyone knows this, then I'm sorry for wasting you time :D

*shuffles around uncomfortably*

Never feel embarassed for offering information. You never know who might benefit from it. I still remember the first time I realized that Body Shop had an "undo" button. Duh!

I sympathize, as I have more skins than I'll ever use, and most of them are mine

The only way I've found to "fix" a point in the catalog is to make a dot on my screen with a felt-tip pen, and then after deleting something, grab the bar and drag it to that dot. I'm not kidding. Those white-board markers work pretty good for drawing on the monitor screen.

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but whenever I can't get BodyShop to start ~ when I click the shortcut and nothing happens ~ deleting my Groups.cache lets it load fine. Same for the game. It's one of those files that will regenerate the next time you run the game, so it's safe to delete any time there's a problem with starting any Sims-related program.

The Groups.cache file is here:
...\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\

(Hairfish, the inner techie in me goes Aaaaaagggh at drawing on the monitor, but you're right--a dry-erase marker would work perfectly well! I had never in my life considered doing that, but I may now! :D)

My question is, does anyone know of a mod or hack or -anything- to brighten the lights in Body Shop? They're simply miserable, and I can't see what I'm doing. (I realize this is the way Maxis shipped it. But pooh to them! I want it working -well-! lol!)