How To Make Identical Twins! Tutorial

I've been wanting to write this for a while, and now that a couple of Sims of mine were pregnant with twins...that was the perfect time!
Identical Twins here in HumanLand, have to be of the same gender. If otherwise, than they are Fraternal Twins.
This game only produces the latter.
So I will show you how to have real Identical twins in the game, starting from the Infant age, just after both babies are born.
This will work for 3 babies, or 4...as you wish!

For this tutorial, you will need SimPE.
You will also want a program in which you can see pictures, and either a Print Screen program, or just hit Prt Scr on your keyboard.
We will also work with BodyShop.

Meet Anthony and Sadie.

I got lucky, they had two girls on the first try.
I named them Billie and Bella.
Right from the start, we can see their skintone differs. This will be changed.

I think both babies should have a dark skintone, and I will give them their mother's skintone.*
(*This will be done last*)

So! Your two babies are born, and you are happy with the gender you've got. Either 2 boys, or 2 girls.
Step 1

We need to extract them using Sim Surgery, in SimPE. Yes, babies can be extracted just like any other sims, and yes, they will appear in BodyShop, given you saved them in your SavedSims Folder.
So go ahead and start SimPE.
Once open, select Tools/Neighborhood/Neighborhood Browser, then pick the 'Hood in which the babies are! Of course.

Once your 'Hood is done loading, click again on Tools and this time...Neighborhood/Sims Surgery...

Give it time to load all everything.
In the little window that will then pop up, you'll see that all sims are sorted alphabetically.
I need to find Bella and Billie, so in B!
Bella shows first, so I will click on her thumbnail, then on Use under Patient Sim.

Time to click on Export!
*IMPORTANT*
Before you save any sims, make sure the correct folder is selected.
You want your sims to be saved/exported to your SavedSims folder, and nowhere else.
*Important ToO!*
Give your sim a name. ALWAYS!


*Note that in my SavedSims folder, there is another folder. BodyShop cannot read sub-folders. So I moved all my created sims in that New Folder, to be sure only the 2 babies will show up.
You do not have to take this step.
When all your babies are done exporting themselves, close SimPE.

Now that the babies are exported, we will look at them one at a time, and figure out which one will they be identical to.
Will Billie be changed to look like Bella? or will Bella be changed to look like Billie?

My babies have different skintones, which will make them easy to tell apart.
But in any other case, you will want to move one of them to the New Folder, so you have only one in there.
Nothing is harder than trying to figure out which baby is which once in BodyShop!

So I'll do this too. I will move Bella to the other folder. The baby that will then appear in BS is sure to be Billie.

Step 2

Star BodyShop, select Build Sims then Build Or Clone Sims.
There she is! She should be the only baby in there...

She should be already selected, so go ahead and hit Clone Selected Sim.
We won't edit anything, we are just taking a look...
Age her to Toddler and see how she looks. Take a Screenshot!
Then age her to Child, and take another Screenshot.
TIP!
If you press F3 on your keyboard while in BS, you'll be able using your mouse buttons, to have close-ups of your sim.
Keep doing this until you have a good idea of...do you like her or not?
The different pictures at different age, will be used for comparison between your Twins.
This is how Billie looks as a toddler/Child.


Once you have all your pictures taken, close BodyShop, do not save your sim.
Once BS is done closing, and this can take time...delete Billie from your SavedSims folder(your sim might not be named Billie..)
and move back Bella to the main SavedSims folder, and repeat what you did.
Clone Bella, age her to different ages and take Screenshots.
Before you do start BodyShop, you might want to go delete your group.cache and your Cigen.package file.

This is how Bella looks as a Toddler/Child.


I decided that Bella won, and that both girls will use her face.

Now what?

Step 3

We will now use the Sim Surgery of SimPE again, but this time, to make Billie look like Bella, while they are both Infants.
Start SimPE!
Like earlier, so Tools/Neighborhood and pick your 'Hood.
Then Tools again, and Neighborhood/Sim Surgery...

Find Billie, and Use her as the Patient Sim.
Then find Bella, and Use her as the Archetype Sim.

Hit Surgery!
Commit and save.

You, well me, now have 2 Identical twin girls! yay!
If this is all you wanted, you are done.


Don't panic upon loading your family, the change won't be seen on your family picture just yet. You'll have the same family thumbnail you had when you last saved and exited your game.
But after playing this family, the image will have taken the changes into account, and will update.
You might need to Fix/Blue Flashing...on the batbox, to fix the babies's face. I had to.

To change their skintone,
I used this tutorial
http://www.lothere.com/verso/page/16

I've subscribed this thread so I won't lose it, this is extremely helpful :D!

Ahah! I almost tagged you... Thank you.

I would've seen this either way .

So you could just use Step 3 to make them identical if you wanted to be surprised by how they look when they grow up? Oh and does it change their genetics too?

What an awesome, well-written tutorial, Rosebine! Thanks!

Totally, yes! For a surprise.
It simply gives one's genetic to the other, so basically they become the same. Same face features, same recessive, same dominant...
Personality-wise, they keep their own.

That's perfect, thanks!

You are welcome

Although it may be rare the game does produce identical twins; over the years I have had several sets of naturally born identical twins in my game. In my current neighborhood I have a set identical twin girls; this is my first identical twin set for Redwood Cove; the other 3 sets of twins are fraternal (2 sets of boy/girl fraternal twins and 1 set of boy fraternal twins). The mother has two brothers that are identical twins; the awesome part of this is that they were all born in my former legacy hood Riverside Heights. When I created Redwood Cove I cloned several Sims from Riverside Heights and added them to Redwood Cove as townies and some of them have become a part of my playable households. I love when I'm able to continue a family trait within another neighborhood purely by coincidence .

The game might create them, but it will be pure coincidence. Meaning, the same face features, hair color, eyes, skin etc...from the same parent would be chosen at random, twice. This is rather rare, though yes it can happen. What I meant was that the game will not do it on purpose, will not chose to do so. When there is more than one baby, the game sets up for creating 2 sims instead of one, not *twins*

I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say that the game doesn't create identical twins on purpose? To say that it's purely a coincidence is to say that it happens by accident as if it's a glitch, which is not true. Based on your premise I've been having this coincidence in every neighborhood I've created for over 10 years.

Well, I'm sorry about this. Maybe someone can be clearer, and explain better so you understand.

Thank you SO MUCH Rosebine! I have been looking for something like this FOREVER! I'd been asking around and searching, to no avail. The game only ships with 1 set of identical twins - the Pleasants. The Rubens, Joshua and Martin are not, in fact, identical. While some may claim that their game has produced identical twins, the chances that it actually HAS are rather infinitesimal. First off, their appearances likely are not 100% exact. In the case of the Rubens, they look very much alike, but one can easily spot differences in them... for one thing, Joshua is "medium" skintone, while Martin is "tan". Secondly, with regards to the recessive genetics, it's virtually impossible to tell what they'd be from a pair of very similar-looking twins born in game. In order to be TRULY identical, they would have to appear exactly the same, AND have their non-appearing recessive genetics also be identical.

Anyway, I appreciate your tutorial. I've been trying to figure out a way to accomplish this for quite some time, and i've asked some friends who are pretty good with mucking around in TS2 mods, but until now, it had been fruitless. Thanks so much for doing this, and especially for sharing it! =)

Now, if only I could find this one particular hairstyle, mirrored... I wanted my twins to be maternal mirror imaged twins. Sure, haircuts aren't genetic. But, work with me here! hahaha...

Thanks again!


-grinEvilly
>=)

I have never played with Maxi pre-made neighborhoods or Sims so I have no idea how those neighborhoods function or who and what the come with. I'm not "claiming" anything; only sharing what I've experienced. Even identical twins in real life (babies that develop from a single fertilized egg) can have miniscule facial differences that are not so easily noticeable. I'm not going to continue to belabor the issue because I know what I know. This was not a slight of the information that was shared. I think it's great that others will now be able to do what a lot of us who often tinker in SimPE have figured out how to do. However, I will say that it's not only genetics that makes twins identical in Sims 2, it's also their personalities. Fraternal twins are most often born with different astrological signs (there are exceptions to this rule also); while identical twins are born with the same zodiac sign and personality points. One of the things that I love about this game after all these years is that there is still much to learn about how it functions.

Oh, that would be the First Born Syndrome. Was that what you called identical twins? This is a bug in which the game get stuck on the same set of data, like a broken record.

You are very welcome grinEvilly! I am so happy you find this useful. I hope you'll find that mirrored hair...too bad I do not make hair, or else I would have tried and make you one.

I know what the first born syndrome is and that is not what I'm talking about. Let's just agree to disagree, call it a day, move on and continue to enjoy our games.

Perfect then! Have a nice day