Why do the all the articles of clothing and the fabrics in Sims 3 look like rubber? They have a flat-like shine or texture. The fabric textures do not look real or correct. I wish that I had the talent to make my own clothes and designs so that my jeans, in game, looked like jeans and not rubber or spandex! The textures are just so wrong.

Then there are the faces - fat and smooth. Is it possible to get skin tones similar to those CC in Sims 2? I haven't found many and those that I have found are default replacements it seems. I still don't understand how to install or find them. I hate pudding faces.

Very frustrated with the Sims 3 smooth textures-- but I am liking the game more and more with the EPs.

Just change the textures with CAS! Its very easy to do and they will not look like rubber. As for the faces, there are plenty of CC skins you can use as well as sliders to change more aspects of the faces plus you can add wrinkles and freckles, etc. I think the Sims 3 faces look more real if you work on them a bit than Sims 2 faces now that I have played with them for a while.

Many people have installed package files which includes default and non-default skins. It is very easy and you can find instructions on this site. I understand being frustrated but I would guess you are capable of fixing this minor issue if you really want to do so. Look at the help section and find 'installing custom content'. Skins are installed exactly like other custom content and you don't need any special things for default skins. Its very easy.

Why are people still complaining about how "ugly" TS3 is? -_-

Frankly, I think the look of TS2 was very ugly... too Barbie-like. I like how TS3 skins/textures look... at least they look like normal people, and not like some freakish anorexic aliens with bad veneers.

I am of the opinion that those who whine about "pudding face" are simply terrible at making sims.

But the clothing, could you post a picture? I have no idea what you are talking about. Only shiny textures have a shine to them.

I won't argue there, Sims 3 skins are horrible they are indeed pudding and fugly no matter how good you are! But as for clothing just put a pattern on it....

Nah, I know what they mean with "rubber clothes" - a lot of the clothes have the specular applied too much... the track pants that show up as sleepwear/athletic for females, with the coloured waistband and sort of baggy ankles are a good example. In-game they often look way too shiny, even though any real-life garment like that is likely to be made of a very dull, non-reflective knit material. I've been thinking of going through and reducing the specular on all the game's clothes, but it'd be a pretty big file to do properly (if I don't just turn it off entirely) and would take a while to make.

I don't know what pudding face means, but the clothes are all smooth and shiny, no matter what fabric type I choose, whether it's denim, abstract, gemoetric, but not on the furs, interestingly enough, all sim clothing looks rubbery, smooth and shiny.

Is there a mod to cause people to generate without the standard everything down the middle settings? I want fat people in my city doing karate and skinny burglar females with squinty eyes. etc... black chinese man, white egyptian with blonde hair and a helmet....

I've noticed this too. What would be involved in reducing the specular? Would you have to default replace all the specular textures or are there settings you could adjust?

Mainly, it'd be a matter of opening the specular, reducing the contrast/making it darker, and then default-replacing it. I don't think the settings are adjustable in any other significant way - at least, not to my knowledge.

The lightest and easiest way to do it would be to simply default-replace all clothing speculars with a tiny, black image to turn off the specular entirely. Not sure how that would look in-game though.

"Material shininess" -wouldn't that be a nice slider for EA to add? Like the opacity slider for makeup.

That's Generic Pudding Syndrome. Without AwesomeMod, every sim generated by the game spawns as Generic Pudding, the straight-down-the-middle faces.

GPFS, don't let it happen to your sims xD

Get a mod like Awesomemod, put the cas slider multiplier to x5, seed your family bin with interesting looking sims and voila. The game will now give birth to better looking sims. Although every now and then you'll get a sim that requires surgery in CAS stat.

I haven't noticed Awesomemod doing anything with my sims in the family bin. Is it supposed to?
AM does do away with the vanilla puddings, but I'd probably describe them as more unique looking than better looking.

I used to hate the look of TS3 sims over TS2. Now, I prefer them. Not sure if I got better at making or just got used to them, or what. I would have to say EA themselves are making better sims because the ones in Bridgeport look pretty good to me, and I remember absolutely hating the ones in Sunset Valley. Then again, maybe they just grow on you after 1-1/2yrs.

I got used to the Sims 2 style, and I am still having trouble adjusting to the Sims 3 style. One weird thing is almost all of my Sims have a ton of freckles. Its almost like wow look at the new effect. The rubber thing I just change if it annoys me, but isnt is supposed to eventually skew to my preference?

That is odd. Maybe its your graphical settings or your card. I do see some shiny stuff but its not everything. Of course if its a specular problem, it could be different on various cards.

It is not odd, it is exactly as HystericalParoxysm described it above. I have noticed it in my game too -- one of the reasons I always end up using specific colours and fabrics. I hate that.

Could be that it's more obvious on certain cards, yeah... I have an ATI card which appears to be a poor choice for TS3, with all the various bugs and issues that seem to be ATI-only.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 here and I am sure I can see whatever you see with your "poor" ATI.

Hmm, well, there goes that theory. My ATI's a 4850 (not terrible at all), just has various stupid issues with TS3 that other cards don't seem to have.

I don't have issues with Nvidia but the rubbery shiny "feature" is there in all its glory. *Yikes* So, give more love to your ATI.

Then you are lucky in my opinion. I love freckles and the loaded my town with people with freckles and married them into my legacy and even though it says freckles are carried over genetically they never do. Even after 5 straight generations of people with freckles marrying in.

The sim faces looking fat and smooth don't bother me so much. And I can sorta understand why. The game is supposed to generate all shapes (it used to with just the base game and then they all because vanilla at some point) it would look odd to have the face shaded for contoured cheeks, but then have the sim spawned with huge fat cheeks... like the problem now with the game generator abusing the muscle shading slider on huge sims that should not have muscle shading. But there are other skins out there I have seen that add more to the face and aren't just smooth.

the shiny texture thing has bugged me since the beginning. Usually the most random type of material will have a sheen to it.. things that don't usually shine in RL.
Especially trying to get a good denim texture. The ones that came with the game don't look right to me, and all the ones I have tried to download look too photo sourced and also end up looking odd. Though with the new LN EP there is a pair of jeans for guys and a new jean skirt for girls that looks rather good imo. It's just a shame they are only for young adults and adults.

But I don't want to make sims. I prefer playing the existing households. And yes, I prefer the look of the Sims 2 sims.

I know - you have to compensate. Like I use that sweatshirt knit type fabric if I want to use a solid color on clothing that tends to be shiny. But I think those pajama bottoms that HP mentioned are the worst. The shininess really gets to me - it reminds me of polyester from the 70s. (I have an Nvidia card also.)

Yep, know exactly what you're talking about. Those jogging bottoms should be really matte, not shiny! I get it with lots of dresses too. I don't want all my sims to look like they have a latex fetish.