UGLY NPC MAKEOVER
By: Grapholina (www.grapholina.com)
July 5, 2005

For this tutorial you will need:


** SimPE 40 (latest version at this writing)
** The Sims 2 (with or without University EP) installed
** You can use any neighborhood you wish (if you think you can follow without problems, but this tutorial uses Veronaville. Back up the neighborhood right now.

Tutorial Objective:
Taking an NPC whose looks you don’t particularly care for, and giving her a makeover so she will look gorgeous – sort of. We will be working with a female maid, but this process can be applied to any NPC or Townie in your game.

A. Creating Your Model:
We need to create a model so that we can apply its looks to the ugly NPC.

Step 1A: I prefer Body Shop because you aren't as limited when creating Sims, but you can use whatever you want. Open Body Shop, and create a female adult Sim. Make her as pretty or as ugly as you wish, applying makeup, etc. Once you’re done with your Sim, save her and exit Body Shop.

Step 2A: Start The Sims 2 (doesn’t matter if you have or have not University). Once your game loads, select Veronaville and enter the neighborhood.

Step 3A: We now need to go into “Debug Mode”, so, from the neighborhood view, bring up the cheat code window by pressing Control + Shift + C. When the cheat box opens, type in the following bool Prop code (nothing is case sensitive in the game, by the way):

boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true

Press “Enter”.

B. Creating The Archetype For Your Maid:

Step 1B: You’re in Veronaville, and you’ve entered the code for debug mode. Now you need to enter CAF (Create a Family) mode. When CAF has loaded, before you do anything, press:

Shift + N

Pressing Shift + N will put all of the work clothes, NPC clothes, hairstyles, etc. into CAF, and we need this to dress our Archetype Sim correctly.

Step 2B: Using the model you created in Body Shop, create a family of one. The Sim’s makeup, hair color, etc. should already be in place because you created your Sim in Body Shop. So, give this Sim a name, and then we’ll begin dressing her.

Step 3B: Select button #3 and under the hair color of your choice, scroll until you see the hairstyle with the maid’s cap and select that.

Next, select button #5 (clothing), and under “Everyday Clothes”, select the whole outfits section. Once again, scroll until you find the maid’s uniform, and select that, so that your Archetype Sim will have the uniform for her everyday clothes.

Now, select button #6, choose a personality and aspiration type for your Archetype Sim, and that’s it. Finish her off, save, and exit back to the neighborhood. Leave your Archetype in the Family Bin.

C. Selecting The Maid for the Makeover

** This next step is strictly for tutorial purposes since we need to test our results. **

Step 1C: From the neighborhood view, find the Capp household, and enter the lot.

The Capps don’t have a maid, so get one of the household Sims to pick up the phone and call for a maid. We want a female maid, so if the maid that answers the call is a male, have the household Sim hang up and then have him/her call the service again. You should get a female maid the second time around.

Before your household Sim finishes his service call, you should get a final message from the maid saying that she’ll be right over or be over first thing in the morning. Before that message disappears, place your cursor over the maid’s picture, and that should give you her name. I got Gina Seavey and that is whom I am using for this tutorial.

Step 2C: Save your game and exit. Make sure you close down the game and not leave it running in the background.

D. The Surgery

Step 1D: Open SimPe. At the time of this writing, the latest version is 40; so make sure you have that version (or higher) since I am not sure how a previous version will act in this case.

Click on “Plugin View” now since that is the only view we’ll be using.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85263

Step 2D: From the top menu, select “Plugins”, and then select “Neighborhood Browser”.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85264

When the window loads, select “Veronaville”, and click on “Open”. Doing so will of course, load Veronaville in SimPe.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85265

Step 3D: Once more, go back up to the top menu and select “Plugins”, and then select “Sim Surgery”.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85266

Once Sim Surgery has fully loaded, you should see a row of character thumbnails for Veronaville. First, we’ll scroll through the thumbnails to find our ugly maid. Mine is Gina Seavey, so I’ll look for her. Once you find your maid, select her thumbnail, and then click on “Use” in the “Patient Sim” area of the screen. Don’t check any of the boxes in that area.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85267

Next, scroll through the thumbnails again until you find the Archetype Sim you created and dressed in CAF. Select her, and then click on “Use” in the “Archetype” area.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85268

Click on the “Surgery” button, and presto Change-O, SimPE does its stuff and you’ll be presented with a brand new looking maid; and hopefully, she’ll be as gorgeous as you always thought she should be.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85269

Okay, before you Commit and Save the file, let’s take this a step further with “Optional” Section E of this tutorial. If you would rather not, skip to the next section.

E. Ensuring a Productive Maid (Optional)

I really enjoy a maid who actually does the job she was hired to do, so this next step is strictly optional. If you rather like the halfway job Sim maids do, then skip this section completely and go to Section F.

Step 1E: In order to make the maid more productive, you need to alter her character traits a bit. Choose the “Character” tab for your maid, and make her extremely neat and active as follows:

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85270

Click the “Commit” button in the lower right hand side of the screen.

Step 2E: Finally, we’ll make our maid easy to befriend. The way I see it, since she’s going to be around my Sims on a daily basis, she may as well be a bit more useful by becoming a family friend.

Click on the “Interests” tab for your maid, and give her some big interest points all the way around:

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85271

Now you can click the “Commit” button, because we’re done.

F. Wrapping Things Up

Click File > Save. Click File > Close File Handler. Close SimPe, and then start your game. Enter Veronaville, and finally enter the Capp lot. All you need do now is wait around for your maid to show up to see your final results.

Here’s my new and improved Gina Seavey, reporting for duty at the Capp residence.

http://www4.modthesims2.com:81/getimage.php?file=85272

Questions or comments, please post in this thread or PM me, and I’ll try to address them as best I can.

:howdy: Thx you so much for this tut // I will try

im going to try this right now. however, Im going to skip the create the model step and see what happens. I dont understand why I would have to go into bodyshop and then casie. why cant I do it all in casie?

You can. I said I prefer Body Shop because you aren't as limited with facial features, etc.

Sorry about the thumbnails, folks. Daysies will fix them for me soon as she can.

I´ve just tried it and it works perfectly! I´ve changed that toad-mouthed male maid into a handsome guy!
Thank you!

well Im done it work like a charm. Thanks a million. I did the maid ,gardener,policeman, paperboy and nanny.

Grapholina, this is a masterfully written tutorial. Superb work!

Thank you, everyone. I'm glad it worked for you and that you find it useful.

I was wondering how to get to SimPE

Go to http://sims.ambertation.de and then click on Downloads up at the top.

THANK YOU! I've heard so many people talking about how to do this, but since I've only just now gotten brave enough to download SimPE, I've been waiting on someone to actually create a step by step tutorial for it.

Brilliant!

Thank you

Beautifully done. Even people like me can understand it :D

Wonderful! thank you so much,

(im just going to see right now if I got it to work)

I did a gardener in a custom neigh....If I change his name in SimPE will it still work?

Thanks! I will try it!

Thanks so much for the tut. It’s brilliantly clear

Just a question: do we have to use Maxis clothes for the maid, for instance, or can we make them wear custom made ones?

Thank you so much! I'm still really new to SimPE, and this was perfectly understandable.

Does the new NPC model have to be of the same sex and age group of the one to replace?

What happens with the relations the original NPC had? Does the new NPC keep them?

You can have them wear whatever you wish. :D

Hi. Yes, of the same sex, because you're not really replacing thet NPC. All you are doing is giving him or her a new look. The NPC will still retain all their friends/relationships, skills, etc. The only thing that changes is the way the NPC looks. Nothing else.

[does is change the genetics? cause i dont want a ugly kid lol]

nvm i found a thread that told me how to change the genetics lol THANKS SOOOOOOO MUCH lol

Thank you! This was a very helpful tutorial

does is change the genetics?

Thanx so much Grapholina! I will try this right away! It sounds like just what I was looking for for those ugly Uni students who move in after my sims graduate. Thank you for the effort and the tutorial. Are you planning on posting this to your site as well??? Just wonderig..............

Thank you just what i need