2 Different skin tones

[Gayjohn104]

Forgive me ahead of time, i know this can't be that rare of a problem, but i wasn't able to find any help doing a search. But, most of my sims (even those who are born in the game) have 2 different skin tones. As in, the head is one shade, and the body is another. Most noticible in the darker tones. What have i done to make this happen and how can i easily fix this?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Sounds like you have an odd skintone that doesn't match correctly. Is this ALL your sims - including Maxis-made ones like the paperboy and such? If so, that means you have a default replacement skintone you've downloaded that's, well, mismatched. If you scan your Downloads folder with Clean Installer, it won't come up under skintones if it's a default replacement (it'll have no category) but you should still be able to see the images from it to see that you've found the right one. If it's just your own sims that you've made yourself that are being effected, using a custom skintone, then you'd do the same thing... scan Downloads with Clean Installer. Non-default-replacement skintones will show up under Skintone, and you can see the images from it to make sure you've got the right one and remove it.

[Gayjohn104]

It was ALL sims, both maxis generated ones, and those born in my game. The darker the skin, the more noticable it is. I was checking other forums here, and found FRUMPH's tutorial on how to clean up my downloads, so went to Sims2Pack Clean Installer, and ruthlessly deleted all files that were pink (was sweating when i saw some of the file names) Finished part 1 of his help tutorial, went back in to my game and now all born-in-game sims have body and head skin tones that match. Maxis sims are still mismatched. I'll continue with the next step and see if it helps more. I'm still not sure i understand your first statement, how do i know if a skin-tone is mismatched using Clean Installer, since it's all skin tones in the game? Also, some of the names in the no category section are no help in identifying what they are? I understand that a picture of what it is will pop up, but how would i tell it's mismatched?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Hmm. What's the texture of the skintone actually displaying? Is it the Maxis skintone, or is this mismatched light/dark of a custom skintone?

What happens if you take out ALL your downloads? Try cutting and pasting your whole Downloads folder (and your SavedSims if you have content in there) to your Desktop. Then go back and see if the rest of your sims are okay - if they are, exit without saving. I suppose it would probably be difficult to tell if they're mismatched by the image in Clean Installer - it would probably be easier to use the 50% method to sort through and see what's what, although you could probably use Clean Installer to sort out what's likely NOT the culprit (like walls and floors, object recolours and objects, etc.) in this situation to narrow things down a little.

[Gayjohn104]

oh yeah, i'm getting closer. Doing step 2 of the 'How to clean out your Downloads' Deleting unwanted sims/heads in the CAS, getting mismatched in the maxis default skin tones for the MALES only in CAS. So that helps, as somewhere, i've made downloaded tones default for males, but not females. Went thru all the custom skins in CAs and they all match just fine. Getting close so now i just have to find that one particular file. lol And yes, i went thru and put walls/floors/object recolors and game objects in their own folders

[gwillewyn]

That often happens if you have more than one set of default replacement skins.
Default replacements are notoriously hard to pin down and get rid of.

[Gayjohn104]

<<<< walks up to nearest wall... draws a big red X on the wall... smacks forehead against the big red X...

Turns out it was easier to fix the problem than i thought. I had put some skins in the SavedSims Folder. Ended up removing 5 files and voila, problem solved. All sims skin tones are now matched to their heads. Thank you to everyone who helped. My game already runs faster now that i cleaned up my downloads folder. FRUMPH's tutorial helped immensely. :)