Screenshots

Description

At long last, I am extremely pleased to give you my "ultimate" skintone pack. Ranging from a rich, deep, dark chocolate to a pale, rosy light, this skintone is designed to look good on sims of all ethnicities and facial types - pretty on pretty sims, but not too pretty on ugly sims.

It features an extremely detailed texture, with lots of shading and highlight, but no gloss or shine. I have worked toward realisim with my texturing, to create a highly interesting skin that is not intended to be photorealistic or over-realistic... Distinctive, but still versatile enough to work as a default replacement, if you so choose.

Every part of the body is detailed, with nice feet, knees, hands (both backs and palms), elbows, arms, butts, backs, bellies, chests, and tummies. There is no push-up effect - these are natural boobies. The shading is highly appropriate for the default body shapes but will likely adapt to most interesting body shapes without looking too odd.

This skintone works for all ages, and changes for fat states - the version pictured is the normal/fit version.

There is no makeup used on any of the sims in the previews, and the brows are not part of the skintone, so you can add whatever eyebrows you like.

This skintone also works genetically - if a light and dark sim wearing these skins have children, their offspring can be medium or tan. An unexpected side effect of this is that this skin may crop up even if the parents aren't using this skin - if you breed two sims with Maxis skins, their offspring can have the Maxis skins, or these skins. If you don't like that factor, you can easily change them back yourself: open each file in SimPE. Open the Property Set resource in Plugin View and simply change the value for the "Genetic" line to 0. Commit, save, and they will act like normal custom skins.

These are completely barbie, with the same anatomical features as Maxis skins (nipples on children and males, no other details on anyone).

My Texturing

Almost all of the texturing for this skintone has been done starting with some great source pics, then painstakingly adjusted, manipulated, and blended, combined with a LOT of handpainting, to create the texture you see here - it has taken me well over 200 hours of work to create this skintone, so for those who might ask me "how'd you do it?" the answer is having great source pics to start with... but mainly TIME, TIME, AND MORE TIME!!!

Please do not nitpick my texturing. The choice of the shading and highlighting and the lack of shine is entirely intentional, and I have created the skin I have always wanted to create. I am not entirely happy with it, and I wish it were a bit more dazzling somehow, but if you don't like it or it's not your style, tough. Go download one of the 500 other skins that make your sims look like buttered hams if you like that kind of thing.

Yes, there are imperfections here and there, and there may be a slight seam or two, but I will hunt you down and eat your children if you nitpick and nag me about them. There are lots of shiny skins out there, and lots of matte ones, and lots of realistic ones - and all of them have a seam or imperfection here and there. I created the blend of styles that I have always wanted for my game. Your mileage may vary.

Defaults

Please read this part carefully if you want to use my defaults!

The original, custom, non-default skins are REQUIRED to use the defaults! You must download both the Skintones and Defaults RARs if you want to use these as your defaults. Mine are Dependent Defaults, enabling the use of an existing custom skintone as a default replacement, so you don't have to duplicate all of the very large texture files to have a default of something you already have custom.

Remember to remove any existing defaults before using mine!

Known Issues

If your sims look like this picture to the left, with white scalps with writing, black bodies, but normal faces, then you downloaded the defaults only - you must also download the non-defaults and put them in your Downloads folder for the defaults to work.

They are dependent defaults, meaning the default package points to the non-defaults.

Just get the non-default normal skintones and your sims will show up properly with my default file you already have.

Or, if you didn't want to use my defaults, remove the default file from your Downloads folder. It has "DEFAULTREPLACEMENT" at the start of the file name so it should be very easy to find.

Anatomically Correct?

These versions do not include any additional details on females - they are Barbie skins the same as Maxis. I have provided these to offer a "safe" skin that anyone can use.

However, for my own use, I prefer a more anatomically correct skintone. Therefore, I have made a version that includes the right details on the females. You may download that version (and a default replacement package for it) here: Idolatry of Flesh (Anatomically Correct).

Recolours and Edits

You may edit for tattoos, scars, recolours, celebrity skins, or using parts as a base for your own skintone, and share your edits with sim uploads or on their own - as long as you provide a little link and credit to me for what you've used, as I have done for those who have contributed to this skin.

If you would like to edit this skin... PLEASE use my original bmp files! You can get them as a modder's resource under the Modder's Resource Textures section below.

Use on your sim uploads with a little link and credit. Use however in pics, movies, stories, etc., with no credit needed. Please don't reupload otherwise or claim as your own. Also, paysites are bad. No paysite anything for my skin, kthx.

Modder's Resource Textures

These optional files are my original skintone .bmps to work from for recolours, using as a base for your own skintone projects, etc., as further generations copied in Body Shop greatly degrade. For the sake of quality it is best to begin your edits from the Tan version of the skin, as that is my original from which all the others were recoloured.

Please note the use of a quality mark at the lower left corner of all the texture images. This is a highly zoomed version of the image - in reality each dot is one pixel. This mark will help you see when you are losing depth of shadow, highlight, or midtone, and when the image is degrading, by comparing what you have to the original mark.

If you would like to add anatomical details to the female skintones (or if you like the look of the anatomical details but want to put them on other skins that don't have them), I have also provided a layer-separated PSD (Photoshop Document - saved in CS2 but in Maximize Compatability Mode) with nipples and pubic hair for females. Please do not download that file if you are under the age of 18, offended by ridiculously detatched pixel nudity, or just a fuddy duddy who doesn't like that sort of thing.

Details

Gender: Both
Ages: Infant, Toddler, Child, Teen, Young Adult, Adult, Elder (All Ages)
Mesh Required: No
Expansions Required: No

Credits/Thanks:
For a bit of the detailing on the male chest, I used the textures from Ren's beautiful Self Make-Up Skin as a base, with quite a bit of hand-painting overtop.
The female navel/belly is from Oepu's Skin Realistic Ages.
The hips are based on texturing by Navetsea (used with special permission), from his F-IN evo2 skinset.
The eyes, which you probably will never see unless you delete custom eyes a sim wearing one of my skins is using... are part of my Blasphemy eyeset, using Knightskykyte's sclera and Pinstruck's iris.

HUGE thanks to all of the above creators, not only for their beautiful original creations, but also for their policies/permission that allowed me to use bits of their textures. The other texturing is based on high-quality source pics I own the rights to... and countless hours with my Wacom tablet, scribbling away in Photoshop.

Model/Picture Credits:
Models:
Dark Male is Corvus
Medium Female is Claudia
Light Female is Rebecca
Pale female is Linuslover30's Selar Stareck, with some slight tweaking.
All others are nameless random sims, some heavily modified from other peoples' sims, whose originals I forget.
Hair:
Dark Male, Female
Medium Male, Female
Tan Male, Female
Light Male, Female
Pale Male, Female
Eyes: Blasphemy and Precious Jewels
Brows: Helaene, RenSim, Sussi, and some unreleased ones I made.
Plants: I am a total plant addict and download every one I can see. Here's a BIG list of plants, with most of what I have used: Sims 2 Wiki Content List: Building and Construction: Plants ... please see there if you are looking for the plants used in the garden.

Download

These are the genetic custom skintones, the basic file that everyone needs.
Download Idolatry of Flesh Skintones (7.11 mb)

Download this file only if you want to use my skins as your defaults. You need to get the above file too!
Download Dependent Default Files (988 kb)

You only need these if you're going to be making your own edits of my skintone.
Download Pale Original BMPs (18.7 mb)
Download Light Original BMPs (17.11 mb)
Download Tan Original BMPs (17.35 mb)
Download Medium Original BMPs (17.29 mb)
Download Dark Original BMPs (18.32 mb)