More Awesome Than You!

There's few things I hate more than retarded faces in the user panel, which has become a big problem with AL. Thanks to JM's hint, I've been able to kill the fugly poses by overwriting them with acceptable ones.

I have as good as no experience with SimPE, so some of the steps may be unnecessary/redundant/whatever, although they worked fine for me. Plus, I can only guess how some of the options are called in English (the bold, red ones), because my SimPE insists on showing me a German interface in spite of changing the language settings. Also, I'm sure that part of my phrasing will make the Grammar Police cringe. It's not on purpose, I swear.

How to get rid of fugly Sim Portraits

1. Look for the file "Sims00.package", usually located at

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\

and open it in SimPE.

The animation files for the UI sim portraits are named as follows:

Teens/YAs/adults/elders:

a-UIPose-F01_anim to a-UIPose-F08_anim (female)
a-UIPose-M01_anim to a-UIPose-M08_anim (male)

Children:

c-UIPose-F01_anim to c-UIPose-F08_anim (female)
c-UIPose-M01_anim to c-UIPose-M08_anim (male)

Toddlers:

p-UIPose-F01_anim to p-UIPose-F08_anim (female)
p-UIPose-M01_anim to p-UIPose-M08_anim (male)

2. Extract source and target animations

Right click on the animation file(s) you want to use as overwrite (source) and choose "Unpack...". Save all files in a place where you can find them easily, e.g. in an own folder on your desktop (do NOT save them in your The Sims 2 folder). Do NOT change the file name. You're going to extract more than one animation, so it's a good idea to save them in a seperate subfolder each, because otherwise, it's a bit hard to tell them apart. After saving the source animation, do the same for the animation file you want to replace (target).

In my example, I will replace the male adult pose M01 with the male adult pose M08, so I extract the source animation "a-UIPose-M08_anim" and the target animation "a-UIPose-M01_anim" to my work folders "animations\a-UIPose-M08" and "animations\a-UIpose-M01".

3. Add the target animation to a new package file

Make a new package file, right click in the resource list (which is empty) and choose "Add...". Look for the target animation file you extracted earlier and double click it. It's now added to your package file and can be replaced.

4. Replace the target animation

Right click on the target animation file (in this example "a-UIPose-M01_anim"), choose "Replace..." and browse for the source file. You'll see two different files, one .5an file and one .5an.xml file. Double click on the .5an file. Don't worry about the warning message popping up, just click OK "Yes".

You'll notice that the resource filename of your target animation has now changed from "a-UIPose-M01_anim" to "a-UIPose-M08_anim". In the Plugin View, change it back to "a-UIPose-M01_anim". Commit. Save the package file. Put it in your downloads folder. You're done!

Adult pose catalog:

(http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/457/uiposesadultbq6.jpg)

And yes, the female poses F02/F05 and F01/F06 really are (almost) the same.

Child pose catalog:

(http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/8826/uiposeschildhn5.jpg)

Toddler pose catalog:

(http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/7702/uiposestoddlerue3.jpg)

Zombie / werewolf pose catalog:

(http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2323/uiposeszombiewerewolfpy6.jpg)

Zombie poses in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\3D\sims00.package
a-UIPose-Fzombie01_anim to a-UIPose-Fzombie03_anim / a-UIPose-Mzombie01_anim to a-UIPose-Mzombie03_anim

Werewolf poses in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Pets\TSData\Res\3D\sims00.package
a-UIPose-FWerewolf01_anim to a-UIPose-FWerewolf03_anim / a-UIPose-MWerewolf01_anim to a-UIPose-MWerewolf03_anim

Note: There's an additional set of poses named a-UIPose-Werewolf01_anim to a-UIPose-Werewolf03_anim. No idea what they do, I changed them as well just to make sure. It didn't hurt.

Vampire pose catalog:

(http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/4494/uiposesvampirezi9.jpg)

Vampire poses in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\3D\sims00.package
a-UIPose-FVampire01_anim to a-UIPose-FVampire05_anim / a-UIPose-MVampire01_anim to a-UIPose-MVampire05_anim

EDIT: Heavily changed thanks to BastDawn who pointed out that it's much safer to make an own replacement package instead of messing with game files ;)

EDIT2: Minor mistake fixed, child and toddler pose catalog added.

EDIT3: Freakshow added

Wouldn't it be safer to put the extracted resources into a new package file to create an override, rather than directly editing the game files?  That's how overrides are generally created, like default eyes and skins.

ETA:  It works.  I made a new package, and in testing, I used the debugger to regenerate both the male and female adult portraits around 30 times or so, with no sign of the portraits I hate.  Yay!  (Townies and other sims with the old portraits will keep them until the thumbnail is regenerated, which presumably won't take long in AL.)

I changed:
f04 to f03
f08 to f05
m03 to m04
m05 to m02
m07 to m08

The override is attached.  Heh... we can all post our favorite versions.   :D

Oh yes, that would certainly be safer. The problem is that I have NO idea how to do that :D. I made a new package file and put the changed animations in there, but well... it didn't have any effect. At all. I'll grab your override and have a look into it, perhaps then, I'll see what I missed. Thanks!

ETA: Hm.. strange. It doesn't look any different from my override. I made a new package, imported the animations I wanted, renamed them to override the ones I don't want, commited each, saved. What the hell am I missing?

ETA2: LOL - I'm an idiot! No wonder my new package file didn't work. In fact, I just renamed the same animation again and again. Aw well... It had been very late when I tried it, that's my only excuse. I'll change my first post accordingly.

You ROCK!!!  I have wanted to do this since 2005.

How did you figure out which animation is which?

By replacing all adult poses with animations F01/M01, firing up the game, making screenshots, replacing all poses with animations F02/M02, firing up the game, making screenshots, etc. etc. Which might explain why I'm a bit reluctant to make a pose catalog for children and toddlers :P.

Weird how they made two identical poses and just changed the mouth...

Child and toddler pose catalog added. Obviously, I AM really bored :D.

 ;) If you're really , really bored ... maybe you can do the dogs and cats for us too please  :P Just kidding  ;D  . I'm grateful for the hard work you ( and Bastdawn for her help with your tutorial ) have done to identify these portraits because it must have taken you ages , and along with your tutorial I've been able to make a couple of packages so that my male and female sims just stick with the same portrait pose I most like all the time which I'll upload here if anyone wants them .

The MaleUIThumbHack makes it so that your male sims just use the number 2 pose , and the same goes for the FemaleUIThumbHack . Yet again the number 2 pose . With the other ones you've just posted for the kids I'll also be able to do some for them now thanks and I'll post them when I've done them too :) ( F05 and M02 will probably be my choice for the kids , although I'm not sure about the toddlers yet because they have a better quality variation of poses to choose from so the choice is a bit more difficult )

Obviously you can't use these with Bastdawn's because they'll clash , but hopefully more people will chip in this thread with some more variations of their own of these hacks so that there's eventually a wide selection of single poses or collection of poses to choose from :)

The normal portraits have never bothered me all that much, but I might have to look into the zombie, werewolf and vampire poses.
Vampire has one that makes me cringe.

Is it that big open-mouthed one? Yuk. I hate that one.

I too am curious about Vampire/Werewolf portraits.

I just located the werewolf/zombie/vampire UI pose files, so the freak catalogs will be added soon. I have the strange feeling that I might get bored tomorrow.

Edit: Bored already. Zombie/werewolf/vampire catalogs added.

I wonder, is there any reason you couldn't replace the creature portraits with the normal Sim animations?

Frankly, 04 and 05 of the vampire are kinda nice.

Otherwise? ALL those damn poses can go. Ugh.

I'd say, no.

I wonder if it would be possible to make completely new UI portrait replacements?

Well, there's an animation editor over at MTS2, though it sounds like kind of a bitch to use.  I would cautiously surmise that the portraits are just single-frame animations (yes? No? Can someone more awesome than me confirm?)  So in theory, I would think you could.

I really like V04 and V05. Could could change our normal sims to use these poses, to look something like this picture (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/me.png)?

Is there a way to keep portraits in the way it was before AL ? The ever changing while putting the casual cloths is rather annoying.

Dizzy has a hack that fixes it over at the The Laden Swallow, but it requires the no-CD crack.

http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?topic=1530.0

Hmm... I always used the CD to play it until now. I wonder if using the no-CD crack won't disturb anything... ???

Anyway, thank you for the  link, Amberdiceless.  ;)

NP.  I think you'd probably have to see the "How to get rid of SecuROM" thread first and clean your system out if you want to use the no-CD after the fact...