Revision as of 16:48, 21 July 2008

Sims - Quality

As a site primarily devoted to learning how to mod the game, MTS2 is committed to excellence in uploads - we have high standards for your submission to be accepted. Please read these guidelines carefully to make sure your sim upload is up to MTS2 standards. Uploads which do not meet our standards may be rejected.

Based on a Person or Character

The following are the quality standards for any sims based on real people, celebrities, anime characters, cartoon characters, or characters from books.

Celebrity Sims

Celebrity sims are those that are modeled after real people - actors, musicians, politicians, etc.

Quality Standards

Celebrity sims must bear an immediately recognizable and accurate resemblance of to who it's supposed to be or it will be rejected. We are aware of the limitations of Body Shop's sliders, but it is also possible to 3D edit sim faces to get an even more accurate sculpt. Some faces are harder to make into sims than others - if you choose a hard face to sim or you are not an experienced celebrity/character sim creator, be prepared to spend a long time working to get it just right.

Custom Content for Celebrity Sims

• Some people with more interesting faces may require you to make or to find texturing for the face to make them seem more like themselves. We do not require that all celebrity sims have masks/skins, but if they don't have an immediate likeness without a mask/skin, you will likely need to do some adjusting to the texturing to help the likeness.

• If you are making a face mask or special skintone for your celebrity so they bear a closer resemblance through texturing, please consider doing it via the Dependent Skintones Method which will greatly reduce the filesize of your upload and will reduce the amount of bloating of peoples' Downloads folders!

• Do not use someone else's mask or skintone to make a sim of the same person that they did originally - make your own skin or find one that was not originally of that same person. Using someone else's content to make the same person is rather lazy and extremely bad form, and you will find your sim rejected for it.

Anime and Cartoon Sims

Anime and cartoon sims are those from an animated series, animated movie, or cartoon. This can also include computer-generated characters.

Quality Standards

Anime and cartoon sims are some of the most difficult sims to make, due to their strange faces and need for a lot of content. In many cases, it may not be possible to use existing content or utilize the regular sim face sculpting tools to create an accurate representation of an anime or cartoon sim. It may require creating a whole new set of meshes to truly do them right, especially in cases of characters that are extremely inhuman in shape. For example, see the way these sims have been done:

• Powerpuff Girls by @Stefan
• Bender by the Dynamic Duo

For anime sims, some effort should be made to give them a unique look, and to differentiate characters by more than just content. There's a lovely article on making anime sims at Bogsims which has great illustrations of how to create human-looking anime sims.

Custom Content for Anime and Cartoon Sims

• We understand that anime and cartoon sims may need quite a bit of custom content to look right (especially clothes and hair) but as with using someone else's mask/skin for making the same celebrity sim, using someone else's hair/clothing/etc. to make the same anime sim is considered very bad form. Please try to keep use of others' content for the same sim to a minimum - one or two pieces at most, and remember that all of the rest of the sim including the face sculpt must represent a unique and accurate version of the character you are trying to make.

Book or Novel Characters

These are characters from a written story or book.

Quality Standards

Depending on how the author has described their character, two people may have wildly different views of how the character looks. Therefore it is important that you:

• Post a short excerpt from the text of the book or novel with the author describing their character's physical appearance and personality OR if you don't have a copy of the text handy or cannot find a concise description, post a short description of how the character was described in the book in your own words. The character's personality should be something that comes through in their face - a determined set of the jaw, a compassionate look in the eyes, etc.

• If the book has been made into a movie, please make sure to specify that you are creating the book version of the character and it is not meant to resemble the celebrity which played the character in the movie.

• Make a distinct effort to make the character look like a unique person. Please read the information below for the "Other" category - in addition to the points above, book and novel characters will be judged based on the standards for "Other" sims.

"Other" Sims

These are sims which do not fit into the above categories - random sims you have made yourself that are not based on anyone real or any existing characters. The "other" section is generally the most difficult to get your sims accepted to, so please make sure you have read and fully understand all of the guidelines below before submitting to that section.

MOST sims uploaded to that category get rejected for quality reasons - with literally thousands of "Other" sims already uploaded, we only accept the very best of the best, sims that represent a unique overall look as well as an interesting face.

Quality Standards

Unique Faces:

Anyone can make a pretty sim with some nice content. It takes true effort and skill to make a unique, interesting face. "Other" sim uploads don't have to be pretty - in fact, sims that look more like real people - not so much pretty or interesting - are greatly preferred to yet another "hot model" type sim. Your sim's face sculpt should not resemble any of the Maxis faces whatsoever, and even without custom content should be obviously unique.

There is no reason for anyone to download a random sim that they could have made themselves with a few minutes and the same content - and there is no reason for MTS2 to host this sort of sim, as we already have about 2000 "other" sims on the site. Please make a real effort to make interesting, unique faces that not just anyone could put together.

Creators of sims are highly encouraged to strip their sims down to all non-defaults (take out your default replacement eyes and skin), no makeup, and all Maxis content... and see if the sim really has an interesting, unique face... or if they just look special because of the content they're wearing.

Here are two illustrative comparisons (male and female) of what we are looking for in unique faces (please click for larger versions):

Sim 1: An attractive sim, with all custom parts, and an interesting, unique facial sculpt that took a lot of tweaking and playing with to create. This is a good example of what we are looking for in terms of a unique face, and assuming all other guidelines were followed, a sim like this would likely be accepted.

Sim 2: An attractive sim, with all custom parts, with a face that is mostly Maxis, with a little tweaking here and there. Anyone could make this sim with the same content and a few minutes in Body Shop. Even if the other guidelines were followed, a sim like this would likely be rejected.

Sim 3: Sim 1, but with all Maxis parts and no makeup. Perhaps not as attractive as Sim 1 or Sim 2, but still quite interesting. With a little makeup and a custom part here and there and the rest of the guidelines followed, this sim is still unique in facial shape and would likely be accepted.

Sim 4: Sim 2, but with all Maxis parts and no makeup. Just... a sim. All the custom content on Sim 2 doesn't make this sim acceptable, as the face shape is very plain and not unique.

Tips for Creating Unique Sims

We've compiled a guide with tips from many simmers on how they create unique, interesting sims. See: Game Help: Creating Sims.

Custom Content for "Other" Sims

Sims uploaded to the "Other" category must not only have an interesting face, but represent a unique overall look in their custom content.

This means you will need to create some custom content for your sim. You may use some existing custom content made by others, but some of the custom content on your sim must be made by you. This doesn't mean to just recolour a set of eyes or blush in hopes of getting your sim accepted, but to make some items which truly add to your sim. If you could switch out the item for any other and have basically the same sim, it's not yet unique enough.

• For great examples of what we mean by this, see Kamikitten's fantastic Robert Hawkwood and Emily or Zombiejill's Jill, which all have several pieces of content made by the sim creator especially for those sims (as well as nice unique face sculpts too). These are the kind of "Other" sims we are looking for on MTS2 - not just a pretty face, not just some nice content, but an excellent combination of the two.

Quality of Your Custom Content

If you have made your own content for your sims (for any category), please make sure you have thoroughly reviewed the Body Shop Creator Guidelines as the included custom content you have made is expected to follow the same guidelines and be up to the same quality standards as if you had uploaded it separately, not on a sim.

Use Creator Feedback

Please utilize our Creator Feedback Forum for great tips on how to get your sim looking perfect. Note that using the Creator Feedback Forum is not a guarantee of acceptance, but it is helpful to have other people offer tips and suggestions.