Hey there,
It's been a long time since I've been here so I just made a new account. I have Sims 2 University, Nightlife, Pets, Open for Business, and Seasons. I'm running it on OS X 10.6.8, and I don't have any stuff packs. Recently I decided to reset my neighborhoods/game data, and I followed This MTS guide for resetting neighborhoods, and This MTS guide for resetting user data. I put my downloads back into the EA Games directory, and started the game. Everything was fine and loaded, but when I went to the CAS, I noticed that clothes were displaying kind of like a mesh (for lack of a better term).

I removed all the caches, in case that was the issue, but it didn't solve anything. As you can see in the screenshot, the clothes display correctly on the sim, but not in the thumbnail. I'd rather not have to do the 50/50 method, but I will if there is not other way.

Thanks

Did you deleted all thumbnails in your..Thumbnails folder?
this would refresh them all.

Yes, I followed the instructions on the MTS wiki. I also was trying to figure out how to replace the objects.package file, but the OS X seasons disk does not have this.

Update: I removed all custom content, deleted the caches, and deleted the thumbnails, and this issue is still occurring. This leads me to believe there is corruption somewhere that I need to deal with. Any ideas?

Hmmm - not sure what is happening there. You seem to be using default replacements in places, yes? The game seems to be drawing on a skintone texture (at a guess). You've not recently DL any skintones?

Did you try pressing Ctrl-Right Click on the thumbnail (this should refresh them)? It means doing it individually instead of deleting the folder (which is quicker) but it might work.

Hmm... I did download one recently, and I suppose it could have attached somewhere else. When I completely reset the files again, it was gone. I re-added custom content but only clothes and a couple mods (inteenimator, insiminator, simblender, toddler fixes), and it only happened when I added clothes, even if there were no mods. Could something be corrupted that dislikes custom clothing?

Bumping... Haven't found any way to fix this. I deleted my Sims 2 folder, restarted and then loaded ONLY clothes (so there was no other custom content installed) and this is still happening. I'm starting to think that maybe I'll have to reinstall, but I only have the seasons disc and I don't even think I have the box. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks.

Do the 50/50 on your clothes. Since it happens when you put CC clothes in, there must be something weird with one of the clothing files, or with two of them butting heads, and a reinstall is a lot of work that wouldn't change that.

I downloaded a brand new clothing item that I've never used before and put it in a new Downloads folder (after regenerating The Sims 2 again) and the same problem is occurring. (screenshot attached). Since this is happening no matter WHAT the custom clothing is, something deeper has to be happening.

Any ideas?

Are these new CC are from the same creator?

What does show up on your disk? I think you might want to ctrl-click on the .app file and choose Show Package Contents to find the objects.package file. But more likely, I think, is bad or conflicting CC. I once used a default maternity outfit, deleted a color I didn't like, so the default pulled a skin texture to replace the missing texture. Didn't hurt my game, just made that CC really weird.

Rosebine, excellent idea, but I checked and the creators are different :<

SIMposiast, inside of the installer, there are a few plists and a couple folders, and a season.pkg file which seems to have a few plists. I didn't see anything called objects.package. I completely agree it's likely a bad CC, but I seriously don't get why even when i remove the CC it still happens, and it seems to happen with ANY clothing CC. It doesn't seem to affect gameplay in any way, just clothing thumbnail. I found out I DO have all my disks. (thank you mom for making me take everything when I moved out) so I guess worst case scenario, I can reinstall.

So I decided to take the plunge and reinstall. I downloaded a brand new item from a creator I'd never used, loaded it in and.... still broken. I had a feeling this would be the case, but I'm genuinely lost at this point. I guess maybe it could have something to do with my graphics card, but I don't know why only THIS thing specifically would glitch. Can anyone point me in a direction for how the heck I can test this?

Thanks.

Another Update: Decided to look in BodyShop and see if the problem persists, and it doesn't! The clothes display perfectly normally in BodyShop. I decided to try opening an item in body shop, and then importing it to the game. When I did this, I ended up back at square one with the default clothing showing the "skin". I'm wondering if maybe this has to do with bodyshop in general?

This is really odd and I think must have something to do with your system from what you've said. I realised after I last posted that what is probably happening is that the mesh is trying to call up the texture for the outfit but can't find it for some reason and just shows the underlying skintone instead. I know this is sort of what people have been saying but what I wanted to point out is that the game doesn't layer meshes - the mesh just distorts the body shape and then layers the texture over the top. And it would seem it's at that point something goes wrong. The game does do some layering but not in the sense that your sim is 'dressed' in clothes.

Anyway, the good news is it's only the thumbnails as the outfits seem to display properly in game so at least it's playable. It's a very odd problem though.

Very odd, and very annoying. Honestly, I could probably live with this but when changing clothes or building new sims it's insanely frustrating to try and figure out what the eff each item is. Also I noticed that sometimes the faces of sims would get to be the same kind of way. I'm wondering if maybe it's my graphics card. I recently had some work done on my computer, so it's still under warranty from that.

Appreciate your help!

What would happen if you delete the...
Programs/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 Seasons/TSBin/Res/UserData/Thumbnails...CASThumbnails.package?
Would it regenerate too?

AFAIK, game files don't regenerate. Just those in My Documents, so bad idea. It's those files the game copies when you do delete stuff in My Documents. You can, however, replace that file with the one off the disk.

Good to know. Thank you

Okay, not only did I solve this, but it comes with a story:
Since I had basically conceded it to be a hardware issue, and since the computer is under warranty for another couple weeks, I decided to take it into apple to get it taken care of. I took it to the apple store, set it up, put the game in, added custom clothes, and ofc the error occurred. So then I decided to play around, and see if I could make it "spread". I tried ctrl-right-click and... magically they turned back to normal. I don't know why it worked now and not then, but whatever. Thanks for everyone's help. Marking as solved.

Good news!!!
Bad news is..we might never know why it happened.
But at least, you seem to be free of it!