Just an idea came through my mind. I think I had this in TS2 once. But I was able to put some sort of mannequins at my store's windows. I could edit their clothes, (maybe even skin tone, I forgot), and they just stand there in-animated, not worrying about mood/bladder/starvation.

I think I was able to achieve this in TS2 by having simbots and turn them off. I also used some kind of Game editor to edit my existing Neighborhood that essentially let me changed those androids into a human mesh, so they look human, feel human, but technically to the game they are a simbot.

Is this something remotely possible now in TS3?

I haven't heard of such a thing for TS3. I think the only way to achieve your goal is to create a custom object, making CC. The fact that such an object would be decor and not functional in anyway would make it easier, since programming interactions won't be required.

I'm pretty sure the sim-bot approach is not the way to go. Sim-bots are actual sims, which go around, holding jobs, paying bills, etc. They can even become parents, but only if they themselves complete the "Mystery Invention" opportunity chain in the Inventing skill.

In TS3, sim bots can't be turned off. They can "short out," but when they do, they are hunched over while sparks are flying from their bodies.

In fact in TS2, hunched over is what simbots would do. But it could be remedied by the poser object. Now the introduction of poser in TS3 and suddenly a huge array of poses surfacing, it can't stop me to try looking into mannequin again.

I was under the impression that the pose player is for active sims, probably for machinima purposes or novelty. That it couldn't be used to create statues. That's why I suggested the idea of making a custom decor object.

There's the "Make Needs Static" cheat option, but I think that's only for the active family, not for all sims. Also, it's for every sim in the household, or none of them. No way to make that the case for some sims and not others, as far as I know.

If you really want to use sims for this purpose, instead of custom decor objects, you will need to somehow "Make Needs Static" just for that sim, and you will also need to somehow disable aging selectively (just some sims and not others).

Ah i see what you mean. Yes I think that was similar to what I did by disabling the simbots and made them stand there at the lots.

About making custom decor object, is there a way to import a sim pose into Blender? Or I must do it myself? Afterward, I wonder if we can assign skintone files for the statue.

I haven't explored object creation, so I don't know. I don't think it's that hard to learn though. If you already use Blender then chances are it will be much easier for you to learn how to make TS3 objects.

I do know that objects have different channels which can use different colors and patterns (changeable in CASt). If you make an object, then be sure the channels are logical. For example, with a mannequin object you probably want the skin surface to be one of the channels.

Now the downside to creating such an object would be that you would need to make a new one for each pose.

As far as clothing for the mannequins, you would need separate objects. When making them, the clothing would appear to float in mid-air, being worn by an invisible person. To use them, you would use moveobjects to place them in the same place at the mannequin.

With the pose systems, when a sim is posed their motives are frozen in place, and they won't stop posing unless you tell them too. So in retrospect you could make a family of "mannequins" and pose them where they need to be posed, and just leave them there and they would stay until you go and change them. You would want to also invest in the Story progression mods to make sure that the family has no free will. But yeah, you could change their hair and clothes and skintone easily with "Editsim". Just an idea.

Which story progression mod ensures them not to have free will?

I tried posing, I didn't know their moodlets were frozen too, which is a good thing. But will the poses hold after I switch households? And switch back?

Wow, that's a lot of work for some mannequins. I think I'd rather have a deco item. How often do you use the store you're doing this for?

Well, don't we rather have it as deco item? But there is none available.

Well, it might be possible to do what XPTL297 has been doing over at Insimenator for TS2 for "Mannequinsims". I mean, these things look like frozen sims,not regular dummies/mannequins. I pm'd him about the feasibility of doing the "dolls" as he called him in a fashion that would work for TS3. From his reply it sounds MAYBE it could be done. He's pumped out several groups of specific Mannqusims over there so far. I'd seriously download them and use them especially for stories, but I had a lot of TS2 CC that I loved and I lost the backup DVD I burnt with all the CC files, so I don't feel like going all over the web looking. So I'll stick with TS3.

Also XPTL297 created "wig" stands fashioned from TS2 sim heads for the game,and I think a couple hand stands as well.

Well, the debug interactions have a "sculptify" option, introduced by the Ambitions EP (use DebugEnabler or AwesomeMod to access it). So, you could choose a pose, hit the "sculptify" button and have an actual sculpture of a Sim. The only drawbacks so far: These sculptures are not CASTable, are pooey brown and have no interactions tied to them.