The Sims 3 Guide: Create A Sim

Over there to the right is a Sim that I created. This Sim represents me. She looks like me and she dresses similarly to the way that I dress. If I'd taken more time to tweak her, she might have looked even more like me (you can see a close up of her face in my profile picture). If I moved her into Sunset Valley and gave her a house (and then played her), it would be "me" living a life that I could design, from the ground up. If I really wanted to, I could even destroy that life.

The Sims is a PC gaming franchise that was created by Will Wright ten years ago. In the beginning, the game was designed to help budding architects, but it took off as a role playing sensation with nothing to compare. The game was so popular that The Sims 2 was released, a 3D version of the original game, with more dimension to the role play as well.

The Sims 2 took off like very few other games in the history of video gaming. Challenges and communities developed, stories were told about the lives of sims, and players enjoyed making or breaking Sims' careers and lives. The Sims 2 was a real sensation!

In June of 2009, The Sims 3 was released. Now Sims could be customized much, much more, and each individual Sim could be made to look entirely unique, from body shape to hair and eye color to facial shape. The possibilities are endless!

Oh yes, you need a Sim, whether it's a Sim Self (like the one over there to the right) or a little character in a story that is entirely of your own making. So, to get a sim, you need to:

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When you click on the paintbrush button, you will see an image that looks like this. You may click on it to see a larger image that will make it easier to see the pictures.

The first thing that you will notice is that you have six hues of seven colors shown on the main tab. It's eye catching, and in this case it can be a tiny bit distracting. If you're like I was in the beginning, you are probably wondering where the purple hair that our sim started with came from. I will get to that in just a moment.

For now I want you to note the upper part of the panel shown at right. You see a large square block that has your sim's hair color displayed within it, and then to the right of that, four circles of varying sizes. Those circles, in order, are roots, highlights, base and tips.

When you click on one of these circles, you will be able to adjust the color for that particular "layer" of the hair. In the picture, "base" is selected and you can see that each layer is varying shades of brown. I'm going to change that.

This is where the real magic happens: The Sims 3 allows you to be very specific in how you change the color of your sim's hair. I'm going to try to walk you through this step by step. The first few times I did this, it seemed cumbersome and complicated. I would like to spare you that.

The first thing that I'm going to do here is to show you the pre-set colors palette. I would like to do this in several steps so that you can see the way that the changes take effect. If you click on the image to the right, you will see both color palette and sim.

In my case, I've chosen to leave the base color alone: there was a reason that I chose this color for my sim's hair. Instead I'm going to select the top circle: roots. (You should be able to see, in the enlarged image, that there is a white circle around the "roots" selection.)

I have chosen to make my sim's roots a dark red because I like that effect (and have used it before on Sims).

A note on roots, however: Roots should be a very similar shade to that of your base color. In this case, I chose a dark red with a dark brown. The overall affect is a good blend. The root color shouldn't match the base color for best effect, however.

Skipping over the base color (the big brown circle), I'm moving down to the highlight color. Notice that even in the EA created option that this is a lighter color than the rest of the hair. The highlights give more definition and depth to your sim's hair color. Think about if you decide to dye your hair: Do you want a flat color or something with some depth?

It's the same way for your sim: she will look more natural if there is some definition to her hair color.

I have chosen a reddish-brown color on light side. You can see the white circle around the color on the right side (even in the thumbnail). Click on the thumbnail to see the larger image so that you can see how it looks on the sim!

The last thing that needs to be edited for the hair of your sim is the tips. This is the final, tiny circle on your palette. You should see it circled in white on the thumbnail, but it is clearer to see on the larger image (just click to view it!).

In my opinion, you have a lot of flexibility in this area. If you imagine that your sim dyes her hair, the color could be lighter than the rest of her hair. It might be darker because it doesn't get any sunlight on it. This is one very variable part of designing your sim.

I've chosen a red color similar to the color on my sim's roots. You can see the effect on the Sim by clicking on the thumbnail image. I will give you a more complete view below.

You may not need this pointed out to you: there are two tabs on your palette. The first allows you to choose colors based on a pre-determined palette created by EA. The other allows you to use the sliders that should be familiar to simmers. You can see an example image to the right.

This color wheel allows you to be very specific in how you choose the colors for your Sim's hair.

This is also how you get the funky hair colors, because the color wheel allows you to choose any color of the rainbow. If you want your sim to have bright green hair, you can do it using this tab.

This part is relatively easy, and you shouldn't require much of a walk through. Use the sliders to adjust the shade of the hair you chose on the previous tab, or use the color wheel to choose a completely different color. In my example to the right, my sim has bright red roots (and eyebrows!), pink highlights and blue tips. You can do anything that you want!

As always, click on the image to see the sim!

While you have the hair folder open, you should see that there are two tabs for a female sim (or three if it is a male sim): The first is for the hair and the second is for eyebrows and eyelashes. If you are creating a male sim, the third is for facial hair (I will get to that in a moment).

You have a lot of options here -- far more options with The Sims 3 than with The Sims 2.

I recommend first skipping over the different eyebrow style options and choosing the color of the eyebrows. In most cases, you will find that the root color is the automatically selected option, but you can change eyebrow color just as flexibly as you can the hair color: by clicking on the paintbrush button. It works the same except for the fact that eyebrows are only one color.

You will also see that you have several options for eyebrow styles. Generally speaking, I come back to this option after I have constructed the face for my sim, so that the eyebrows go with the face instead of me building the face around the eyebrows. I have also set my sim's hair to be back away from he face so that I can see what I am doing in the steps below. This is especially important when editing ears and earrings.

The eyebrow options are adjustable later on.

Eyelash length can be adjusted using the slider on the bottom. You can go from very short to very long, as you please.

Click on the thumbnail to see the entire screenshot, including the current sim.

If your sim is a male, you will have three tabs instead of two. The third tab will be for facial hair.

Facial hair works the same way that eyebrows do. You can choose to either match the root color of your sim's hair, or to adjust the color of the beard manually using the colors offered, or by clicking on the paintbrush button in order to use the color wheel or the pre-sets. You can also choose the shape of your sim's facial hair, or to have no facial hair at all.

As with the eyebrows, I recommend matching the root color provided that it is a natural color. If your sim has, for example, bright pink roots, you might want to choose one of the offered hair colors for the facial hair and eyebrows.

I am not going to go through every individual type of modifier in The Sims 3 in this tutorial. If I were to do so, it would take forever for me to demonstrate sim creation to you, and I don't think that you need me to go that far for you to "get" it.

I will be taking you through adjusting the basic facial structure of your sim, as well as discussing details and makeup.

The image to the right shows the panel that you will see when you click on the "looks" button. This is the third button down on the line, right after "hair."

You are presented with a series of faces for you to choose from. You can choose to change the facial shape of your sim or to leave it the way that it is. I'm going to be changing the shape of my Sim's face.

You can see the choice that I made "in action" by clicking on the thumbnail to see the sim.

Choose any face shape that you like. The modifiers allow you to make a lot of changes to virtually everything, as you are about to see.

No two sims need be alike in The Sims 3, and this is where it really begins to come together for those simmers who enjoy making major changes to the structure of their sims.

You should be able to see in the thumbnail where the white circle is around the selection. If you cannot, please enlarge the image by clicking on it so that you can better see. It is the "button" to the right, in order to get to the modifiers.

Here you can see that you have several different areas of the face that you can modify. Right now "global" is selected. You can also modify the ears, the cheeks, the jaw and the chin.

I am not going to show you everything that these modifiers do because again, that would take several lenses in order for me to do so. I recommend that you play with the sliders and view your sim both head-on and in profile to see what is changing with each tweak that you make.

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While your choices for topical details are few in The Sims 3, you have more options than you did in The Sims 2 (without custom content).

This option is the tab second from the bottom. Here you can add freckles or beauty marks.

As with the other options, I advise looking at these personally. I've viewed pictures of the freckles and beauty marks and you cannot do them justice in an image: you need to see them in your game and the way that they look on your sim. Try all four of them: they can be used in any of the various available combinations or alone.

Makeup in The Sims 3 is as flexible as the hair is!

You have several options for makeup, all of which allow you to choose your own colors: eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush, lipstick and costume makeup.

The eyeshadow options are shown in the image to the right. You can choose from one of the five colors that are provided for you, or, using the paintbrush button, you can choose a color of your own. You will have an entirely new palette to work with (shown below) so that you can adjust the color of your sim's makeup as you please. You also still have the color wheel available to you.

One of the two blush options and one of the three lipstick options involve three colors combined for a complete look: you can choose all three colors to make up your sim!

Experience tells me that it is easier in the Sims 3 create a sim to stick with the colors that they provide for you, because they are reasonably natural and you can wind up tearing your hair out working on creating your own looks if you aren't particularly patient (and I'm not!). The choice is yours, of course. If you are more patient or creative than I, give it a go!

I'm going to walk you through creating an everyday outfit for your sim. The other outfit options I will leave up to you. They work exactly the same as the everyday outfit.

I am not personally a fan of the complete outfits in The Sims 3, so I'm going to skip over them. If you find one that you like, feel free to use it instead of putting an outfit together from scratch.

The first part of the outfit is the top. You will find quite a number of options for your sim (fewer if your sim is a male). The tops come in various lengths, layers, styles and colors and as you'll find out later, are customizable.

I have chosen a long shirt layered with a jacket over the top. I like the red and will probably not change it. I think this is a good style for my sim.

The next item that we can change is the bottoms. The jeans aren't bad, but I want to try something just a little bit different for my sim (again, to make her wholly unique). I like the pants that are shown in the picture. I'm not sure about the black (I might like them to match the gray shirt) but I can work with that later on. This color is the closest to what I want, so that's what I've chosen.

I'm not especially happy with the bottom offerings in The Sims 2. The variety is oddly very slim and I suspect that the effort is to get us shopping at the Sims 3 store (on the EA site). If you've seen my other lenses, you might get an idea of the reasons why I'm not fond of the super short skirts and shorts that are offered in The Sims 3. I also don't like the look of the super-tight tapered jeans, which leaves me with some very serious limitations.

There are more options available with the Worlds of Adventure expansion pack and available at The Sims 3 store.

This one is a little bit difficult to see, so please be sure to click on the image in order to enlarge it.

If we skip over the complete outfits (which we don't need if we've chosen a top and bottom), the next item that we get to choose is the shoes. This is new in The Sims 3 -- previously bottoms or outfits came with shoes already attached. The Sims 3 makes things really, truly customizable.

There are a lot of choices for shoes (more for women than for men). I don't like the Converse-style shoes that my sim is currently wearing, so I am changing them to a pair of wedge heels that look nice with the pants.

In this case, the sim is wearing socks (they are under accessories). If I wanted to put her in sandals, I would first have to remove the socks. We're about to move on to accessories.

Things really get interesting when you begin to add accessories in The Sims 3. First of all, you can add more than one different kind of accessory, and remove them at will (though once you're in the game you'll have to use a wardrobe to do it).

You can choose glasses, earrings, bracelets/watches, gloves, rings and socks. Use whatever combination you wish.

I decided to change to a pair of silver hoop earrings and to add a bracelet. I left the socks in place since they are invisible under the shoes.

At this point, my sim's appearance is finished. Now all I have to do is choose traits for my sim in order to determine her personality, give her a name, save and upload her. Then I'll be done.

Before I go on to that point, I want to show you one last thing.

If you look on your panel when creating your sim's outfit, you will see at the bottom right that there is a small button with a palette image on it. If you click this button you will enter Create a Style.

This is the stuff that Sims creator's dreams are made of. You can change anything about your sim's clothing to suit your personal taste. I could give my sim here leather pants, or make them cowhide (with the fur and all). Instead, as planned, I tried to change them to gray. I hated it, and switched back to black.

I'm not going to go into detail about Create a Style here, because there isn't enough room (as though this lens isn't long enough). Look for a future lens on the subject of using Create a Style!

There are some final details that you can add to your sim. These don't affect your sim's appearance or personality in any tangible way, but are fun, and do influence the types of things that your sim may talk about when "getting to know" another sim.

Access these details by going to the heart tab on the personality panel.

The first row will show you three items: favorite food, favorite music and favorite color. Clicking on one of these will allow you to change them.

I haven't noticed how favorite food or favorite color influence anything, but favorite music does influence the music that a sim will choose to listen to.

Below the "favorites" you can change your sim's voice. This is new with The Sims 3 and I like it because it allows me to pick my sim out of a crowd by listening.

For the voice, you edit it two ways. First you choose the voice quality. Just choose which of the three circles sound best to you. Then you choose the voice's pitch. Your sim can have a deep voice or a high pitched voice: it's your preference in Create-A-Sim.

If you don't already have a copy of The Sims 3, and are reading this lens in the hopes of getting an idea of what the game is all about, or how it stacks up against The Sims 2, then you may want to read my Review of The Sims 3.

I love this game. I think that it adds a lot of dimension to the previous games in the series, but more than that, it is a new game entirely. Whether you are already familiar with The Sims or not, you have just as much of a chance of enjoying this game as someone who has played every game from the very beginning.

The Sims is getting ready to celebrate its ten-year anniversary, so why don't you jump on the bandwagon and get involved, too?

If you don't already own a copy of The Sims 3, what are you waiting for?

Buy it now!