strangetomato | Discussion: Of Basegame Premade Sims and Face Templates

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Discussion: Of Basegame Premade Sims and Face Templates

I was involved in some discussion on Skell's Tumblr recently (here, here, here, and here) about some of the basegame premade sims and which face templates they were based on. Some of them seem fairly obvious, while others are much harder to pin down. Inspired by this conversation, I've been taking them into Bodyshop (which I've done a little before, and was often surprised by my findings) to get a little more scientific (results are here, here, and here), and I'd love to open this up to more discussion and analysis with a wider audience.

Here are my results so far:

Beau Broke - Face 1 and 28 (altered) ???
Brandi Broke - Face 1 (altered)
Dustin Broke - Face 13 and ???

Jennifer Burb - Face 2 (altered)
John Burb - Face 2 (unaltered)
Lucy Burb - Face 2 (altered - jawline only)

Dina Caliente - Face 2 and 15 (brow and forehead) (altered) ???
Nina Caliente - Face 3 and 15 (altered) ???

Darren Dreamer - Face 2 and ??? (altered?) ???
Dirk Dreamer - Face 2 and ??? (altered?) ???

Alexander Goth - Face 18 (slightly altered - chin/neck only)
Cassandra Goth - Face 17 (altered)
Mortimer Goth - Face 2 (altered)

Don Lothario - Face 2 (altered)

Coral Oldie - Face 13 (altered)
Herb Oldie - Face 2 (unaltered)

Angela Pleasant - Face 14 and 16 (altered) ???
Daniel Pleasant - Face 2 and 9 and ??? (eyes/brow) (altered?) ???
Lilith Pleasant - Face 14 and 16 (altered) ???
Mary-Sue Pleasant - Face 8 and lips from ??? (altered?)

Pleasantview Bella Goth - Face 2 (altered)

Circe Beaker - Face 28 and ??? (altered) ???
Loki Beaker - Face 12 (heavily altered) ???
Nervous Subject - Face 1 and 17 (heavily altered) ???

Lazlo Curious - Face 8 (altered)
Pascal Curious - Face 8 (altered)
Vidcund Curious - Face 14, 15 and ??? (altered) ???

Buck Grunt - Face 2 and 18 (altered) ???
Buzz Grunt - Face 1 and 17 (altered - eyes only) ???
Ripp Grunt - Face 1 (altered)
Tank Grunt - Face 2 and 17 (altered) ???

Ajay Loner - Face 1 (altered)

Chloe Singles - Face 2 (altered)
Erin Singles - Face 1 (altered)
Kristin Singles - Face 3 (altered)
Lola Singles - Face 2 (altered)

Jenny Smith - Face 2 (altered)
Jill Smith - Face 2 (altered)
Johnny Smith - Face 14 and 15 (altered) ???
P.T. No. 9 Smith - ??? (really, really not sure about this one, for obvious reasons)

Ophelia Nigmos - Face 28 (altered - brows only)
Olive Specter - Face 1 and 14 (altered) ???

Strangetown Bella Goth - Face 1 (altered)

Capps - didn't check them yet

Montys - didn't check them yet

Bottom Summerdream - Face 13 (nose) and 27 (unaltered)
Oberon Summerdream - Face 5 (nose) and 27 (altered?) ???
Puck Summerdream - Face 27 (unaltered)
Titania Summerdream - Face 27 (altered)

I will edit this as I get more/better information.

I've only included playable premade sims from the basegame. The ones with ??? next to them are once I remain a little unsure about in one way or another. I also welcome disagreement about the ones without any ??? next to them, if you have evidence or theories (which we can test) of a better match. Please dig in and do some Bodyshop work of your own (you can download them all here at at

maxis_taste) to share here or just react and discuss however you like. I love talking about face templates. This stuff has always been really fascinating to me.

I'm thinking of maybe making some gifs out of my Bodyshop shots to include here when I get a chance. Flipping back and forth between the templates in Bodyshop really helps to illustrate some of the similarities and differences that are not as easy to see when comparing two images side by side.

Also, I'm still getting over the fact that I've only just realized that Ripp was based on face 1 (more on that here and here). How could I not see it before? Someone please tell me. How many times have I looked at his face? Thousands? Millions? Haha!

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Bella Goth (Pleasantview) is a Face 2 as well, but with altered eyes.

This is a really interesting little scientific project. :)

I intentionally left Bella off the list, because she's not actually a playable sim, but you're right about that. She's an altered face two (a slight alteration to nearly every single feature, in fact), with eyes that are maybe from a different template entirely. I'd have to double check to see if face two's eyes could even be altered to look that way.

Strangetown Bella is a straight face one, I'm pretty sure. I haven't double checked that, but it seems obvious.

I've always wanted to do something like this. We've talked about this many times before, but have never gotten into this much detail. Feel free to participate if you're interested. :)

Edited 2013-05-09 14:40 (UTC)

I just put both Bellas in bodyshop :

face 1 vs ST Bella

face 2 vs PV Bella

I've been making over Maxis sims lately (including some plastic surgery, heh) so I've been pretty interested in this stuff. (What I find odd is that there are two different Bellas. Why???)

edit: those were huge, sorry! I changed them to thumbnails.

Edited 2013-05-09 16:05 (UTC)

Oh, that's neat! Even Strangetown Bella isn't 100% unaltered Face 1.

I don't understand why they didn't use the same face on ST Bella as PV Bella, either.

I'm surprised than Strangetown Bella has been altered from face one, since I assumed that all townies were straight face templates. Now I'm curious to see if any of the others have been alteered.

Yeah, the two Bellas are interesting. It's part of the mystery! But more likely, they probably didn't expect us to look at them so closely (and look at us now) or even see the Pleasantview Bella at all.

Well, ST Bella also has a bio, so she's different in that regard too. I think all of the regular townies and NPCs are straight face templates. However, downtownies are not, and neither are the Garden Club members...

Yeah, you're right about the bio for Bella. That's why I included her in the character profiles way back when I started S,HWC. (I actively resisted making her much of a prominent character, but we see how well that worked out for me. :P)

Downtownies are really interesting, because they have their own templates, right? But they're full sim templates, with makeup and glasses and clothing and all that. (I wonder if anyone has ever extracted them?) They do have some very interesting faces. I didn't know about the garden club memebers.

Heheh. Bella does have plenty of stories about her. I think my main problem is actually EAxis inserting her in one too many places, making people hype so much about seeing Bella here, seeing Bella there... Even with that Sims 4 picture of the eyes people think the dark haired one is Bella. (And they might even be right, knowing EAxis.)

Yeah, downtownies are full templates, like they came out of Body Shop. I did see a thread on InSiminator where someone had found where they're stored. I'll see if I can find it again.

I'm not sure about all of the Garden Club members, but I know that Toby here (http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Toby_Bruenig) and Matthew Smith (http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Matthew_Smith) aren't straight face templates at least. Peter Sims too, from the looks of it: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Peter_Sims

(Oh god all those little "these townies share the same last name!" tidbits on the wiki irritate me. It's the same pool of random names. Of course some of them are going to share a name.)

Isn't Peter Sims the same template as the burglar Russ Bear? http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Russ_Bear Not that I know which template it is, but I've always thought they looked the same.

I only notice because I married Russ into an uglacy and his son was a thing of Neanderthal beauty.

Hmm, looks like you're right! Maybe it was just Peter's goatee and glasses that threw me off. Maybe that's the case with the other Garden Club members, too...

I really couldn't say with the others. I'd have to compare them with the templates. Toby Bruenig looks familiar somehow though... like maybe he has one of those extra faces tucked away in CAS...

Yeah, I guess she's not technically playable, but... she's Bella Goth! :) Yeah, I see from the picture below that everything was altered slightly. I think you can get the eyes from Face 2, though, by moving the corners up.

I might end up doing some research of my own. :) I think finding the face templates for the later EP sims would be more difficult, those generally seem to have been altered more...

Is Face 3 the Komei Tellerman face? Because Kristen Loste totally has female Komei face.

I don't think PT9 was based on the PT template, because if he has babies they won't get any of the alien face template, they get the standard face 1 baby faces.

I had to draw the line somewhere, right? Bella starts us on the slippery slope towards townies, NPCs, and dead relatives. Where does it end? :P (And okay, I'll admit I also experience Bella burnout from time to time, and maybe I was reacting to that.)

You're probably right about the eyes. And maybe it's sort of like the Curious twins, or even Dina.

I think you're right about a lot of the later EP sims. I'd love to see what you can come up with for some of the other hoods, or Bluewater Village, or the university sims. I remember when we were trying to recreate all the broken template sims, and it was sort of the same sort of detective work involved. It's fun.

Yeah, Face 3 the Komei face. Kristen's is pretty close to template, but there are some changes made to it.

Ah! That's a very good point. I didn't look into PT's face very much, because he's SO FAR off templates that he could be his very own template. But I'll scratch face 29 from the list of possibilities. Thanks for that!

It's not entirely impossible that PT9 comes from some sort of prototype PT template. The dead aliens in his family tree also look pretty different, with their pointy ears and all, and so does that alien in the Caliente sisters' family tree.

I know I've found some of the later EP sims among the CAS templates that come with the base game, just altered. Peter Ottomas and Chester Gieke among them.

Did you fix PT's genetics in your Uberhood? I ask because my PT/Jenny spawn are all very like PT.

Yes, his (and everyone else's) genetics are fixed. Their offspring should look a lot like him, his skin and eyes are dominant, and I've found his facial features tend to dominate too (although I haven't quite figured out how the dominance works for those).

Edited 2013-05-12 19:38 (UTC)

Gender-flipping can help you spot the features, since the male features are usually more extreme. If it looks the same flipped both ways, then you know it's the same feature.

I thought Pascal and Lazlo are the male version of the Mary Sue face? (Sometimes mysterious templates show up in bodyshop so the numbers might be one off)

I think Nina still might have different lips, since I don't think the face 15 ones could be shrunk that far without leaving little lines at the edges. Pinching in and thinning out the face 2 lips looks close to hers, for both males and females. And I have no idea how to get her jaw; I think you'd have to edit lots of things with the jaw and face shape.

I'm impressed by how not face 2 Dina looks (or any template really). With most of the others it's really obvious flipping back and forth, but she doesn't have a feature that isn't changed.

Heh I remember thinking "Wait, isn't Ripp face 1?" when you've talked about it before, but then I figured you must have been thinking of him when you talked about trying to make those face 1 dudes look manlier. I must have missed you wondering about his template.

Yeah, I've used that technique for many of the female sims. It's helpful for spotting smaller differences. Many of the templates are similar in certin areas, so it can be difficult to tell them apart when you factor in the possible alterations. And in many cases, I do think you can start from one template and use sliders to end up the same as another template, so that can make things even more confusing.

I meant Mary-Sue's face template for Pascal and Lazlo. I guess I get the number wrong. So 8 is correct? I get that issue with extra templates (usually face two) all the time, so counting doesn't always work for me. Do you know if there a list somewhere to refer to?

I can't comment much on Nina or Dina without Bodyshop in front of me, but I'll definitely look at them again. I thought the lips on 15 seemed very much the right shape for Nina, but didn't actually try to change them. It did seem to work with the eyes though, as I mentioned.

Are you certain Dina's based on face two? I didn't compare her to many other templates, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was based on a different one. Her forehead seems to be only slightly altered from 15 to me, so maybe she has a different template for some or all of her other features, too. If she is in fact face two, she would certainly be more altered than average for a Pleasantview sim. The Pleasants (not including Mary-Sue), the Dreamers, and the Broke boys are also all fairly altered from template.

Hah! I can see how you might think that with the stubble and such, but no... and I still don't get much of a face one vibe from him that way. I think they changed him just enough. But I can't be the only person that didn't see it, because I've never once heard anyone say he was based on face one, compared to say Ajay or Brandi, where people point it out all the time.

I've just been looking at face template swatchs that include comparisons to the original, like this one: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?threadid=250376

I was so in denial about Dina being face 2, but I was able to recreate a Dina-ish face from by the thinning the lips, tapering the jaw, and making various changes to the nose. But that is a lot more work than usual, since usually the face shape or nose or something remains the same. Also I just altered the face 2 brows when trying to recreate her, but now I agree that those are taken that from 15, so maybe there are different pieces here and there.

It's just lovely irony that Dina is face 2 and Ripp is face 1, considering how much we complain about those. XD

Oh, and I think you've mislabeled some of the elf-faced sims as face 17.

Ah, I see. Should be 27, right?

I'm confused because I have indeed thought of the elf as 27 and the Mr. Big face as 28 when I counted them myself, but that template swatch has them as 26 and 27.

I think the least confusing way to discuss them might actually be to use those names associated with each template (and I guess these were found via SimPE?), like "heart" for 1 and "base" for 2. I doubt a lot of people are very familiar with those names, however, unless they work with face template replacements a lot. Maybe using both the name and number would reduce most of the confusion?

I think it's very telling that face 2 is called "base". It seems the most neutral, at least for the average white face (and we know this is usually seen as the default for a human face, wrong as that may be). Most sims seem to use face 2 as a base than any other, and many of the other templates seem like they're based on face 2 to me. In some "prettified" face template replacement sets, most templates seem to have been made to look more like face 2.

Yeah it seems to be the default, since that's the mannequin face in bodyshop. The genie and witch doctor (under his mask) are face 2s, and even the servos (or at least mine) have an invisible face like that.

The mysterious second face 2 that shows up in bodyshop is broken so that the elder looks the same as the adult. Tara Kat was based on it, and that must be the source for all those Strangetown ancestors who are face 2 with gray hair. Kind of makes me wonder the story behind that stuff while they were making the game.

28 is the Alien template I do believe.
Computer has been stuck in safemode, I'm dying of Sims withdrawl!

I looked around for one like that, but didn't find anything as clear as that set. I often have trouble seeing the facial details with most custom skintones (a lot of them smooth out little details and seem to "paint on" different features to me), but I think there's enough there for me to go by.

Yeah, that'll teach us to complain. :P I don't actually dislike either face one or two (well, aside from that one minor aversion). I guess it's more of an overexposure thing, and a reaction to the widespread idea of them being the only attractive faces.

This is FASCINATING. I'm notoriously bad at recognizing face templates (and even which parent a kid looks like), but I can see where my old love of Face 2 came from. I never really liked Face 1, but seeing which premades were my favorites...an interestingly high number are Face 2s.

Nice work! I was never curious about the faces, but figured out the Curii and Nervous' faces one day by accident.

Fun fact: it was yesterday I figured out that male face 1 is Ripp's, because I used the female face 1 for a Sim and then turned them into a male for some reason and gave them the long hair.
Then I thought: "he looks ALOT like Ripp" XD

I'm terrible at recognising face templates, it wasn't until someone pointed out that the Burbs where all face 2 that I saw it. It does bug me that many of the pre-mades are only very slightly altered face templates, particularly in the case of Cassandra and Alexander Goth. It just strikes me as lazy especially when there is a built in feature for making children from two sims. I like that the pre-mades from later Eps are much more interesting looking, faces like Chasity Gere and the AF Ramirez (her name escapes me).

If everyone took out their cc and df-repl's you would see that between different basegame discs the sims have minor differences. I have 3 copies of the basegame (dvd, dd, and 4-disc original) and I first noticed it when my Tank Grunts all age transitioned. They had the same general face with minor differences, i.e. one had less severely back-tilted eyes and thinner lips, while another had larger eyes (slightly)and fuller, less curved lips. The last one looked similar to both having the soft eyes of the later with the thin lips of the former.

Edited 2013-05-29 13:51 (UTC)

I second calling the faces by their textual names. I do wonder what some of the 3 character abbreviations expand to though. Is 'ara' Arabic, and 'eng' – English?

A little rant follows.

It disappoints me that there is no consistency whatsoever between faces. Neither pretty faces inhabit a particular neighborhood, nor families have either pretty or ugly faces, nor similar ones. Nobody notices that a person has a pretty face. They effectively have no face at all, because it has no effect. Web forums attempt to collect these characteristics of people to describe them, when there is nothing to describe.

How is that both pure English (Cassandra) and almost pure Arabic (Alexander) were born to the same parents? And how is that Angela/Lilith have mostly sharp-nose faces, but were born to a rounded Japanese looking Mary-Sue. There was so much they could have told with such discrepancies, like one being an out of marriage child. But since these aren't exceptions but rather the rules, no such stories fit.

Downtownies were well made, but could also have some more stories behind them. And they should have had _names_ to those faces. The, how do you call it, Teen-with-the-life-jacket and Rose Miller clearly had 'base' faces. But Teen's 'base' face exploded into a birds-nose-down face when he grew old into an adult. That could have a supporting story, except that it's really a plain random bug.

A lot of these are actually wrong. Check out my own page on information about the faces of many pre-made base game Sims [http://csydes.wikia.com/wiki/Sims_2_-_Notable_Pre-Made_Sim_Face_Templates here].

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Discussion: Of Basegame Premade Sims and Face Templates

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Some of those are actually wrong.