face overlay catalogue
A good way to make your sims seem a little more natural and show some personality/emotion is to use the face overlays from Decorgal's Custom Modeling Poses Overlay Hack V2. The face overlays can be layered, making for a fantastic array of expressions, and they work wonderfully in conjunction with poseboxes and animboxes.
Some general notes about using facial overlays and some test shots can be found after the cut. The images are an ongoing project that I will continue to add to as I can. To date I have completed shots of all the base overlays, and neutral, sad, happy, anger, eyes closed, eyebrows up, smile, confused, disgusted, embarrassed, embarrassed smile, fear, frown, horror, pout, sorrow, surprise, tired and part lips + the base overlays.
If you are using poseboxes, the facial overlays have worked with every posebox I have tried them with, but some will only allow you to use the overlays if you apply them before putting your sim into a pose, so its worth getting into the habit of doing that step first.
If you are using animboxes, you will need to apply the face overlays first. These will override most, but not all, facial expressions during the animation sequence. They do not override the expressions that occur during autonomous conversations between sims.
A few other things of note:
- The “neutral” option will make any of the other expressions less exaggerated (“part lips” also has a neutralising effect), however I would recommend not using it too often, or on its own, as it will make your sims appear very wooden.
- “Eyes closed (S)”, “tired” and “eyes closed tight” all work best in conjunction with overlay expressions that have the sims eyes partially closed, otherwise the eyes will not be fully shut.
- The “Eyes closed (S)” option requires Seasons in order to work.
- There are four animated options that will run on a continual loop, “friendly loop”, “surprise (a)”, “languish” and “so hot”.
- Layering several facial overlays may cause your sims eyes to roll and stretch periodically. This is most prevalent when using animboxes. You may have to cue up your desired animation a couple of times to avoid the eye roll during the point on the animation you wanted to use for your picture.
- I recommend taking note of what facial overlays you have applied to a sim, it makes it so much easier to undo them, and is kinder to your game than having to reset your sim each time.
If you can think of anything I might have missed out on adding, please let me know, like any of the guides I do, I figure they are works in progress to be added to over time.
I hope this is a helpful addition for sim storytellers and machinima makers!
(If you would like to repost some or all of these images to another site, I just ask if you would please just message or email me first. I just would kind of like to know where they end up. If you just want to link to this post, asking is not necessary.)