Before you begin, back up your game! Easiest way to do this is to copy your entire My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 folder. Copy it to your desktop, CD, DVD, anywhere that's out the way! It's a good idea to back up your game regularly, anyway, so if you have any problems, you don't lose everything you've done!
First, select your victim! If you have a sim you created in CAS, or who was born in-game, this is a simple way to preserve and reuse them. You can also use it as a way of making over Maxis-created Sims.
I'm going to do two things with her. Firstly, I'm going to clone her, and turn her into a Young Adult Sim, and send her to Uni. Then, I'm going to give her a makeover.
Open SimPE, then open Pleasantview. To do this, go to tools/neighbourhood browser
Select your neighbourhood, in this case Pleasantview
Allow it to load, this may take a few minutes, then select tools/sim surgery
Again, this may take a few moments to load, but it will open this window, with the characters listed down the left in alphabetical order.
Select your chosen sim in the list on the left, click use underneath the top thumbnail, then click export. When the save dialogue box comes up, click ok to save your cloned sim to your Saved Sims Folder.
Congratulations, you've just cloned your sim! Now, if this is simply a favourite sim you want to keep and use again, that's all you need to do. It will appear in Bodyshop and the CAS SimBin, just the same as any other sim.
You can go ahead and edit your clone in Bodyshop, the same as you would any other sim. If you want to change an existing sim to a Young Adult, you will have to do it in Bodyshop. Any other age changes can be done in Bodyshop or CAS.
I decided to change her eye colour, and her hair colour and style, too.
She's ready to appear in the Uni CAS Sim Bin and go off to start her studies!
Now, you can also use the clone function to change the appearance of NPCs. There's just a few more steps involved!
I prefer to do all the facial alterations in Bodyshop, as there are more sliders to play with, and this gives you more options and more control.
She's almost ready, but I'd prefer her as a blonde. Only problem is, the maid's hairstyle isn't in Bodyshop. No problem! Save her, close Bodyshop, open the game, and go back to the hood. In the Neighbourhood screen, you need to open the debugging cheat.
If you don't know how to do this, open the cheat window, by pressing control+shift+C together, then type boolprop testingcheatsenabled true. Now, go into CAS, and press Shift+N. This puts CAS into debug mode and gives you access to all the hairs and clothes which are normally locked. Including the maid's.
She looks better as a blonde, I think!
Shift+M turns off CAS debug mode, you can set the rest of her stats and save the family. I normally give this sim the same name as the one I want to change, you'll see why in a minute. This creates a dummy family that we won't be playing, but will have a name and a character file for cloning.
In the neighbourhood screen, open the cheat window back up and turn off the debugging cheat by typing boolprop testingcheatsenabled false. Even though we're just about to quit the game, it's a good habit to get into.
Quit the game, we need to go back to SimPE now. And we don't want any of our real sims to meet the dummy one we've just created and have any memories of her.
Open SimPE, and go to Sim Surgery again, same as we did to begin with. When you scroll down the left hand list now, you'll see the sim you just created and the one you want to change. The reason I use the same name is it makes it easier to find them both!
Select the sim you want to change, and click use on USE in the top panel.
Select the sim you want it to look like, and click use on the middle panel.
Press surgery on the bottom right hand corner, and that's it!
The Sim's character file will open in SimPE now, you can edit any details you want from this, just remember to press commit and save before exiting.
All you need to do now is go back into the game and check out your handiwork! I also delete my dummy sim as soon as I go in-game. As long as they haven't met anyone, this is safe enough to do.
The new look Kaylynn's back off to work, now!
Any problems, I'm usually found lurking about The Sims Resource, either in Chat or on the forums.
