So the other day I started really getting curious about sim faces. I know I've seen pictures where a lot people's sims look similar, whether it be because they are using Maxis genetics or prefer one set of custom eyes, skins, etc that make their sims blend together instead of stand out individually. It made me wonder If I do this, even though I have a good dozen custom eyes, and different face templates for my sims that actually mixed with other types of maxis genetics when they had children - because I do enjoy the thought of a diverse batch of faces.

To test this, for fun I took all my YA, most of them were born in-game and made a fake Sims State University Yearbook Page to see all their faces at once ( and it's high-quality so you can zoom in). I think they have a good mix of faces although a lot may be too pretty...

Do any of you stick to a certain set, Maxis or otherwise or do you try a mish-mash of things when you created your sims that in turn showed up? If you have second-generation or more, do you notice a more diverse look in your playable sims?

Hmm, you know, I never really thought about it much. I would say my Sims are pretty diverse as I have quite the mix going on in the genetic pool. I have some very ugly Sims whose unfortunate looks are often only somewhat hidden by facial hair/accessories.

I do use a set of custom eyes by alkaloid, but I understand the set I use is no longer available for download. I do use Maxis skintones though. I just haven't found a custom set that looks right, although I would not mind having more skintone variety. I don't really like shiny skintones that many people use.

As for clothes/accessories, I tend to stick with somewhat maxisish stuff. Clothes that look like they belong in the pixelated worls of TS2.

I unfortunately cannot view your Sims yearbook on my phone. =(

@ That's alright, maybe you can check it out when you get to a computer

But I find that interesting, at least for the future of your sims that you have a set that only a select people have downloaded so in a few years you will probably have sims with eyes that many other people don't have making them more unique as time passes. I'm not sure how shiny is shiny but I have found a few skin tones that I love, namely ganchi's Idolatry of Freckles based off HystericalParoxyisms's skintone set (though the images are down on that.)

I love the yearbook page! And it looks to me like you did a pretty good job - which is saying something, because I'm terrible with faces.

I tend to make really cartoony-looking sims in CAS just so I can be sure I can tell them apart. And even then, if I'm not careful, I tend to get repeats of certain features. There's a tendency for my sims to come out broad in the forehead and narrow in the chin, and I've given a lot of people mouths that turn up at the corners compared to those with even a slight downward aspect. Also, when making ethnic sims, there are certain templates that look more black, or more Guasimalan, or more Simdinavian, or whatever, so there's a danger of repeating myself there.

I don't think you need a bunch of custom things to make diverse-looking sims; you just need to be willing to use all the templates, have sims that aren't beautiful at first glance (they may well become beautiful over time), and push the sliders around. I don't have any custom eyes at all - nobody seems to make Maxis-match eyes, and the more realistic irises and sclera freak me out, though I would like to have a few hazel-eyed sims. My graphics aren't good enough to make ordinary-sized eyes distinguishable in most views, anyway. I don't like to have too many different hair colors, as it just fills up the bin, slows down the process of changing appearance, and leaves me with too many choices. And I don't have any custom face templates at all.

Love the yearbook page!

I'm big into the genetics of the game myself and I do use replacement face templates. Mostly I want my Sims to look human they don't have to be perfect and some of those original templates didn't look human. My problem is that when I create Sims I have a tendency to make the same adjustments so even using different templates my created Sims lean towards a sort of sameness. Really trying to break that habit. I'm just starting into the 4th gen in a fully customized hood and I'm noticing that my born in game Sims are starting to diversify facial.

The 2nd and even 3rd generation resembled parents and grandparents for the most part. Although I've had quite a bit of cross breeding among the born Sims and I'm really trying to pull more of the townie genes into the pool. I've got genetic skins that match the default replacements so I have a broader range and I've started noticing some of the midrange ones come into play and I've got scores of eyes all of which are genetic enabled.

The most interesting thing to me at the moment is that I have some half alien off-spring that are starting to produce their own kids. The kids were all part of an alien abduction challenge I played and I liked how they all turned out so much I decided to keep them in my game. The first one just had a baby and to my great regret neither the skin tone nor the eyes were passed on I'm hoping that both of those items don't breed out quickly. I don't know about the actual facial diversity since it's impossible to really tell till they age up to at least a child. I'm very happy with the alien defaults I'm using including the PT so I'm interested in seeing how the facial extremes play out in future generations.

I try not to make more than one or two CAS sims for a neighborhood, then I normally populate it with their friends. Surprisingly I don't get a bad genetic mix, though it takes a generation or two to get some weird ones in. I do have the odd annoyance of having a rogue mod that keeps turning mah babies green when they're from normal parents. I also try to get my more unique sims to at least breed once.

I LOVE the yearbook idea.

You know, I've been thinking of downloading that particular set but have always chickened out when it comes to my main hood. However when the computer is back up, I'll he setting up a separate account for TS2 so I can play it with the mods I really want. I won't get rid of the hood I've spent years on, but the new setup will be for the long project hood I intend to build mostly from scratch.

Or would it be safe to install those defaults in my current hood as is?
Would my Maxis Skintone Sims look all that different?

Edit: I finally got to check out your Sims yearbook page. That is so cool! And it looks like you have quite the variety in eyes there... I thought I saw at least one Sim with Maxis eyes.

I like that yearbook page too. I think most people have a tendency to go for a certain look in their sims - probably unconsciously. I think of my sims as being pretty diverse but that's personality-wise, I think, rather than looks. I'd guess, facially, they're pretty similar (I'm bad at faces in general). One way I've used in the past to get away from my sim-type is to use sims my online friends have made. You have to be careful what you pick or who to swap with (there are so many sims out there with what I think of as the fashion-culture look and I CAN'T tell them apart) but the last time I imported a bunch of sims, I got them off friends of mine from newsnet. As the boards over there were populated by a lot of middle-aged women (and some younger ones and even the odd man or two) this involved a lot of cackling, bad jokes and funny pictures but the sims I got are not at all like the ones I usually make and that was good enough for me. I also got to use sims I thought were rather uglier than I would make myself (please don't tell the people who made them) but there was a variety of face types. So Little Carping has some more diversity.

My hood is very diverse, in fact it's a zoo, with long eared elves, and Sims with the skins, faces, and sometimes even the bodes of cats, dogs, wolves, goats, deer, and even an almost elephant. I haven't started having babies with my newer Sims, but when i do I'll probably check in SimPE to make sure that the right face parts stay together.
happy Simming DR57

over the years I've come to realize that many of my Sims end up very similar in face structure and that I tended to shy away from using all the CC hair eyes, skin tones etc. that I downloaded and I promised myself that I would rectify this situation. so to tackle the problem of similar featured Sims in my hood I started adding Sims created using the Sample Sims created in CAS and only allow myself to change their clothes, or add facial hair, and change their hairstyles, but otherwise I don't allow myself to change their faces. At first i found some of these newcomers rather ugly, but after playing with them in the hood, I began to grow attached to quite a number of them, and as they mingle their genetics with my Simmies I'm sure I'll be pleasantly surprised with the result.

I have also recently decided that any new Sims moving into the hood (rather than born in game) would have to be created using whatever randomized Sim showed up in CAS and I must use one of the custom skin tones I've got in the game, a hairstyle I've never used and clothes I've never used to add to the diversity of the hood.

For Peni Griffin, and anyone else interested in Maxis-matchy eyes, Phaenoh has some great ones I've been enjoying for years. Three sets, from which you can pick and choose which will be defaults, and the many others can go in the custom bin. Highly recommend!
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=253636
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=254053
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=258296

I LOVE that yearbook page. Absolutely gorgeous.

As for Sim diversity, I use one custom eye set and one custom skintone set, but there are 18 skin shades (not including alien/zombie) and dozens of shades of blue, green, brown, purple, gray, hazel, etc. eye colors (I use Nothing Like The Sun as my eyeset, which is a slight variant of the Pooklet/Yumedust eyes with a few extra colors.) I use a mishmash of facial templates from about 5 different creators, but I'd say that like many people, I tend to make sims that don't look too drastically different from one another: they'll cover a spectrum from the sharp-cheekboned to the plump-cheeked, but I never get too crazy with the sliders. From hairstyles (I love hair CC and like having a couple shades of each color in the hair bin), freckles, eyebrows, glasses use, etc., I can always get them to look quite different, and can tell them apart even with 250+ sims in the 'hood, but that's mostly due to things other than the facial features. I find myself reverting to the same general look with my male Sims because the features on extreme male Sims can get really extreme on their female offspring.

I learned a long time ago to stop making the same faces over and over. I play with the random dice in the CAS, and try to match up two completely Sims together. I don't do much with supernatural, I just haven't found a good opening for a storyline. Used to I'd make all blondes with the heart shaped face, and then I realized how bored I was looking at them. They had no character, and soon became less 'pretty.' There are still a few blondies heart-faced sims running around, but it isn't as extreme as it used to be, and I find when you add a little red to darker tones with lightish eyes you get a pretty diverse group. It may not be totally realistic, but the diversity is definitely there.

Thanks all for sharing your facial diversity stories

@ Peni - Thanks! And I guess graphics do matter for this kind of thing, I forgot to take that into account. If the details aren't set the highest then you'd most likely distinguish sims by bigger things such as hair shape and color and those facial exaggerations. That would be quite a challenge for me as I gradually planted sims in my custom hood until there were over 60 and they started having babies and I never liked the thought of them having the same hairstyle over and over :/ Just my Sim OCD.

@Clashfan - Glad you like it! That's really interesting how the alien baby doesn't show any distinctive alien genetics. I wonder too, if that will pass on anyway to future offspring. I used Maxis Templates for most of the sims I planted in the neighborhood and only started the replacement ones later so maybe 3 to 5 percent of my sims have that. That way there's a sort of half and half, mix and match in the second generation. I find it really fun when you can look at the family line and pick out who is related by how they look.

@ bmkcp - That's a good idea if one is not into making tons of CAS sims. I have so many now that I'm probably good off making them until they all die out or the game crashes And glad you like the yearbook page! I'm planning to another with the teen faces who were all born in-game

@punkrockgoth - I think there is a subtle difference, after I installed it I noticed that 3rd or 4rth original turned a bit more tan than it was before with threw me off a little bit when I had some gingers with medium skin get a California Tan all of a sudden. But it didn't bug me for very long because it sudden;y became more diverse. Also you might notice minor freckles on the paler skinned sims, which wasn't a big deal for me because I like them Glad you finally got to take a look at that! A few actually have maxis eyes..1,4,5,6,10, and 16 all had both parents with Maxis eyes! They just are diversified by size and/or make-up.


@ maxon - I think so too, it's a subtle habit that can go unnoticed. Like in my early sims 2 years I never allowed my sims to have the big gorilla lips or the weird jellyroll noses. I think I wanted them to look normal, not like freaks or clowns but for some reason the only faces I liked were one or two that filled that want. Sims swapping and uploading is a good way to deflect that habit, I agree. I never have used that technique for populating a hood but I can see why and how it overcomes the face-sameness.

@DavidR57 - That sounds crazy! I usually try for realistic play so I don't touch the odd skintones or supernatural features in the game but all the sims world is your menagerie

@ Deryn - That seems a very practical way to diverse your sims features! Very methodological

@ Julieryc - Thanks! I'll probably do another sometime featuring the teen faces I have that were born in the game so it's all purely genetic and not CAS. And I have a bunch of CC for this as well, as you saw in the yearbook shots, I find the easiest feature to use the sliders on besides cheekbones are the nose and eyes. eyes can be long and narrow or short and wide and still give off a good differential feature between sims. I agree setting apart faces with freckles, beauty marks, facial hair and accessories really helps take the blah-same feeling out of the sims too.

I admittedly have a hard time distinguishing facial features (both in real life and in the sims) unless there's something very significant about their face, which means I've spent ages trying to find good face templates that are distinct from each other and eventually settled on Terrakosmos' face replacements as it keeps the EAxis distinctions but softens them down. I have thought about taking some of my own distinctive sims and making templates out of them (like April Collier (huge picture, sorry) and Allison Hensley).

Because of the afore-mentioned problems with facial templates, I'm only now starting to get some genetic variety in my sims for some of my older 'hoods (both Allison and April were the product of five face templates, including an elf one). Because I have issues with facial recognition, I use various eye colours, outfits, hair and makeup/facial hair to identify my sims better -- this does mean I need a lot of clothing and hair styles to avoid too many repetitions, and I also tend to have sims in specific colours unless I can really identify them well. In some 'hoods I have different skin colours, and I am debating about changing out my eyes for ones with more diversity (even if it does mean a lot of SimPE work changing genes).

One thing I do a lot that I've never seen mentioned, and seldom seen done, is shortening and lengthening the face. You can do this particularly in the brow and mouth regions, and it makes a huge difference in recognizability. Moving features up and down within the face, ditto (though you can then start having trouble placing glasses). I think my tendency to make short faces round and long faces thin may be responsible for that wide upper/narrow lower face tendency I have when I marry people with disparate faces. But faces with different lengths that also have points of commonality give me good results. (And by "Good" I of course mean "I like 'em and I'm the one who has to be pleased.") For instance:

Red Onions - shortish round face; Livva Ann Onions, long round face. Both, however, have flat broad noses and high, round cheeks.


Their daughter Sage Ann - takes after her mother, but even when they were both adults could never be confused with her. This angle doesn't show the degree to which those cheeks puff up her face or how flat her nose is; you can see those features better in the avatar pic.

She married Ernest, with his rectangular face, high square forehead, and beaky nose.

Ernest and Sage Ann's son Mark - notice how that long round combo keeps right on giving, but the nose and mouth compromise between Munny and Onions tendencies, with the nose getting both Onions broadness and Munny depth.

Sage Ann's brother Oliver - this is one of my favorite faces, an almost seamless blending of Red and Livva Ann to get something entirely individual. Dad's mouth + Mom's chin gives him a chin of his own.

Married him to sharp-featured beauty Billie Ghote, and got this:

It's always hard to tell with toddlers, of course - Mark was the spit of his Grampa when he was a toddler - but I think I'll be able to tell Oliver's descendants from Sage Ann's with no problem, while still being able to see the relationship.

This was all happy accident, as Red, Livva Ann, and Ernest were among the first people I made from scratch after my experimental phase (during which, of course, all bets were off and nothing survives from that period). Sage Ann was made by rolling the pacifier after I got Red and Livva Ann, and was the first result I got. Ernest's mom was a widow and I didn't bother making his dad, but I presume Ernest looks almost exactly like him. He certainly doesn't resemble his mom much:

I was hoping one of the boys would get Mary's quizzical eyebrows, but instead Ernest's alien son Frank got her little lowset ears. Maybe next generation.

I LOVE that yearbook and Peni, you can really design a Sim. It's too late for me. My hood is prosperity so after the initial batch I don't use CAS anymore.

I didn't know this was an issue until recently. I like to show my especially hot Sims to my mom since she's the only person in my life who can put up with my simming. Well she just asked me why all my Sims "look like that". And these are sims of different races with different styling but they have a look and now I see it. Lush lips, Roman noses and so on.

I now have a female Sim who likes two guys. One is hot but probably because he has that look about him. The other is...interesting looking, some dormie who is almost ugly but in an interesting way. I'm really torn as to which direction to go. I really like looking at one of them, but the other would probably do better things for genetic diversity.

She could have kids with both of them ;-) ^

Aww I can't. I have too many floozy Sims. Like her mom, 4 kids different dads.

Then you'd better leave it up to her. Even without ACR, if you loosen your grip on the reins, she'll give you a clear preference. If she chooses pretty guy over interesting guy, you can always look into his preferences and hook him up with somebody else.

Hmm...now that I think about it, my female Sims are quite diverse in terms of facial features but my male Sims tend to look similar. I do have a few who are 'unique' looking but otherwise most of my male Sims don't have much facial differences.

I'm not very good with making custom skins but made these with Gimp and Teru_K's Simpleskin

That's what I did. She really really wanted interesting guy and they just got married.

Peni, i must ask, which generation are you in at the moment? or does every family have in your game have their own number?

Yay for her choosing Interesting Guy, Dameautour!

The thing about generations in my game is I started all the core families with teens who went straight to University and then had their children at different times in their lives; plus, the Hawkinses, starting with two teens, a child, and a toddler, proceeded to have five more kids and the Curians and Onionses had two and one more each; then all my Simmigrants and the Thymes, Gavigans, Newsons, Ottomases, and Travellers all started at different times, and I have a near-constant feed in from people started in University, so...I'm not tracking generations, screw it. If I can keep the age cohorts together and remember who's supposed to be breeding out of which group, that's all I require of myself. Counting the core parents as Gen 1, the first of Gen 3 will be going to college as the last of Gen 2 is born, the last of Gen 2 will be going to college with the middle children of Gen 3, and it'll just get more all-over-the-place from there.

ETA: Oh, right, even that's only true if we count all the Gen 2 kids born in-game as Gen 2.5; the actual last of Gen 2, who will presumably be some Hawkins or other, could easily be in the same age cohort as Gen 6 or 7...no, wait, that baby's not in Gen 2, it's in - the more I think about this, the more confused I get. So, not gonna think about it anymore.