I know that there have been many, many sets of the various skins, eyes, makeup, hair, and all the rest that goes into making our pixel dolls, from addin to the maxis line to creating a totally realistic, made by the various creators over the years. I was curious to find out which ya'lls thoughts and feelings on which look you prefer and why. Do you prefer the standard Maxis look, a more realistic look, or maybe a mix of the two?

For me, I prefer the maxis skins to the realistic ones. I do however like the added skins that match by purplepaws and aqualectrix that allow for more variations of the maxis skin tones. I do like the realistic skintone look, especially those that have the added body hair. The body hair just takes it to a whole other level of realism. (By body hair I mean chest and leg hair, though the other is a nice addition too.) Mind now, it has been 5ish years since I last played and longer than that since I used any realistic skin tone so things might of changed, but part of the reason why I went back to maxis is that I like the genetics that it has. I like that the child of a S1 and S4 has a range of the skin tones. I can't actually recall offhand how the realistic ones do, but I'm sure that there are some geneticized ones.

When it comes to hair and eyes I have recently found 2 mods, an eye one by Mootilda who was inspired by TheSilverLining's hair one, that I just love. With these two mods it makes the genetics so much more interesting imo as it brings all colors to an equal footing. I tend to lean towards maxis colors on these as well. For the hair, while I think there are some awesome hairs out there, I tend to stay within the maxis bunch for the most part. I have seen where people pay great attention in making a great hair in many colors, and those who fix the not so great hairs done by others :p, but then they forget the eyebrows so that when the hair is used all colors have the same color eyebrow, which is generally black. I am speakin in broad generalization here so please don't start point out that so 'n so doesn't do that , I do however love it when a hair is made to match maxis colors, is geneticized, (is familied the same thing?), binned, has matchin eyebrows, and is for all ages.

For eyes, again I do like the realistic look and I totally appreciate the long hours and hard work that went into making them look so, I find myself falling back on the maxis colors. I wouldn't mind adding a few colors that would go between the maxis ones such as like the skin tones, but not sure if there is any. (Read that as I haven't delved that far into downloads yet )

Overall, while I do like the realistic look, I also like the maxis look and then I don't have to decide which of all the wonderful creators realistic skins to use :D

I'm a mixer. I like my Sims to look more realistic, mostly in that I like realistic-looking eyes because the flat Maxis ones freak me out. I have literally thousands of custom eyes in my game, which I've (mostly; there are few that came with downloaded Sims that I still need to fix) carefully geneticized and townified so that playable Sims inherit them properly and so that townies generate with them.

I also like more realistic hair because I think the Maxis colors/textures are flat and ugly. I appreciate hair with a bit of depth to it, highlighting and lowlighting. More realistic hair textures have those whereas Maxis and Maxis-match textures don't. Of course, some realistic ones can look too "plastic," but I've slowly gathered ones that look very nice and just last night weeded out a bunch I had that didn't look so nice once I had them in my game.

Skins I'm not too fussed about. I actually like them a bit more on the Maxis side; the "realistic" ones often tend to look a bit too shiny/oily to me. I do like them more anatomically-correct side, though. Barbie anatomy freaks me out, too. That said, more Maxis-y skins seem to me to blend all right with more realistic eyes and hair. All right enough for me, anyway. I've default-replaced the Maxis skins, I've also geneticized the custom skins I have so that they inherit properly. (Other than the funky-colored fantasy ones, which I don't have many of. Mostly just ones that alien Sims use.) I use overlay boxes to add body hair instead of skins that might have hair painted on them. Works better that way. That way, I can have Sims with varying amounts of body hair, like real life.

As for the Sims' environment, I prefer a more Maxis-matchy look. Except for carpets and painted walls, actually. I hate the flat Maxis carpets and flat painted walls. I need depth and texture, so I've made lots of carpets and plaster walls, some that I've shared, some just for my own use. But for objects I like using (mostly) Maxis meshes that I recolor the hell out of and collect other people's recolors of. This keeps the Downloads folder size down, since I don't have a lot of extra meshes, and keeps the catalogs cleaner, which I like.

When I see pictures of sims with everything CC that are supposed to look realistic, they just don't to me. I guess they are trying to make them look like people do in magazine photo shoots, but they just end up looking like IMVU people. Maybe its just me.

This again? It doesn't really matter what people like, they like it because they like the look of it. Myself I am Maxis Match to semi Maxis Match. The only thing I don't like are straw like hairs and would prefer something in between which is very hard to get so I mostly go with less shiny Pooklet when and where I can get it.

Maxis-Match all the way. If it doesn't fit well with the default visual style of the game then Its not going into my downloads folder.

I only use Maxis Match adult default skins, every thing else is ingame.

Again? I'm sorry if there was a past post on this subject as I didn't see one, but then I didn't go all the way back either.

I asked because I really would like to know, not just to put a post up. With the game bein played by such a vast array of ages, nationalities, and genders it's interesting to find out others peoples thoughts on the different facets of the game; to see things from a different perspecitve that maybe I hadn't thought of before.

It seems to me like the tide turns a lot on this issue. For a while, semi-realistic was all the rage and you were sort of seen as weird if you didn't load up your game with a ton of CC to make your game look realistic. I suppose it's still more the thing with people who play the game just to take pretty pictures that they then Photoshop up to look real...although this seems to be more the case with decorators than Sim-makers. (Note: Not saying that there's anything wrong with using the game for that. I think it's great. It's just not what I'm interested in doing, personally.) But in general, now it seems to have kind of swung the other way, in that Maxis-match seems to be more "The Thing" now, at least with people who do actually play the game and post pictures of their game play and stuff. (Not that such pictures aren't subsequently Photoshopped just as much as the "realism" folks' pictures are, but they seem to be Photoshopped to make them look less real -- Like, brighter, with more vibrant colors, more cartoony -- than more real.) Of course, it also depends on where you hang out and who you hang out with, I suppose.

Me, I just go with what I like the looks of. I don't care what the trends are. Which, you know, is kind of my approach to life in general.

I have never asked myself : is this hair/ outfit/ sofa/ chair realistic or maxis-match? If I like it, I will use it I guess I am a bit more on the Maxis-match side, since I actually use the clothes and hairstyles from the game as well. Skins - same as @iCad. Furniture - I like recolors of the Maxi furniture (not default replacements). Clothes - I have tons of stuff but sometimes, some Sims seem to belong in their Maxi outfits
Personally, I have plaid the game for almost 4 years without ANY cc - and I had a lot of fun then too. It does get a bit of a bore if you have to put the same furniture in every house, though Oh, I actually still put the same furniture in every house, but now I use recolors (thanks to @iCad and Michelle)!
I do like some of the more realistic hairs - Trapping - but I also love some of the Maxi match hair - and I really like the 3to2 clothing conversions, which, I guess, will be maxis-match.
Eyes - I have tons of them, and some are maxi-match, and some are supposedly realistic

icad is definitely right about the tide turning from time to time concerning what's popular or not as far as looks in the game.

Myself, I'm sort of semi-realistic, in that I really hate the Maxis textures in hair and clothes and am not fond of the colors, so I default a lot of stuff, but I don't tend to go for what I think is super-realistic, especially in objects (just as long as they don't look too flat or horrible). As mentioned, a lot of the super-realistic stuff just ends up looking really odd or off at times. I'd rather have a hair that looks a little cartoon-y but actually flows and moves more than one with ultra-realistic textures that stays flat as a board, doesn't really lay like actual hair, and stabs through the sim next to them when they bend over. Barbie, however, does bother me, so the sim ladies have skins with "parts" and the guys have a certain well-known mod added--which then gives the finger to realism by detaching itself and going floating around on top of the covers (especially on CC beds) if there's at least one male involved in woohoo.

I like to think that the reason my game likes to occasionally emulate an infamous 90's song is to remind one that it IS a game and you're meant to have fun with it.

Yes, this is a topic that returns every once in a while.
Which I guess is kinda normal since not everybody has been at MTS for so long, and many of us even learned about CC quite late compared to some veterans here who where creating their own content much before we had even heard it was possible.


Anyway back on topic.
I prefer Maxis-match style. This is a game, a fake reality, which I play with my own rules to make it interesting. Sometimes I like to mimic real life (hence I've modded out some aspects) but most of the times I simply think what would make the game more amusing.
It works the same for bodyshop and items - going for realistic would mean replacing almost everything and I'd rather just add what improves my game. Maxis-match makes it much easier.
Also some realistic styles look great but to be honest they look kinda static to me. They seem better for picture-taking, storytelling, etc. though.
And some are too shiny for my taste.

For those reasons I love Michelle's recolors of Maxis items. I can have lots of more color combos and the game still looks the same.
I don't download many clothes, unless I really love them, because my game already has plenty of them, and I only have a few hairsyles which all are Maxis-Match. Cleos has a few really cool recolors here at MTS.

Skins and eyes are the only things that are not Maxis-match in my game. The reason not being that I prefered them realistic but that there were collections of them with more variety and I am really interested in TS2 genetics.
I'm using a set of 7 skins by PeachT geneticised so my darkest is really dark and my lightest is really light - and there are other 5 in-between. I blogged about it here.
And I'm using bruno's Gemstone Eyes also all geneticised and changing the default dominance rules, so light colors tend to be recessive.

LMAO! Seriously? I have that same infamous mod, and I've never seen that happen. Then again, I haven't looked that closely, either. I'll have to keep a better eye out when next one of my manpixels gets a little action.

And yes, Barbie is disturbing on just so many levels, from the actual dolls to the description of pixellated anatomy.

I have some skin and eye default replacements, though they're not really realistic, a bit more so than Maxis, but they're not from the 'realistic' sets. I use Maxis and clothes hair only as I had to remove the CC ones because my old computer couldn't really take it. But when I did, it was mostly Maxis-match.

I don't like the super shiny hair that's so often called 'realistic', to me they seem too shiny to be really realistic. If you have hair like that in real life, more power to you, but the majority of people I know don't. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them otherwise, as Maxis-match hair is also far from realistic. I just don't get the name 'realistic'

In this game, as with others, my opinion is that too much photo-realism in a game that otherwise uses cartoonish graphics ruins the suspension of disbelief. Imo.

I don't care. My game would probably horrify people with the mix of Maxis and non Maxis stuff, picked just because I liked it.

Something in between. I mix and match a lot.

For skins, makeup, and so forth I don't like most of the realistic styles, particularly not the obviously photoskinned ones, but I'm not too fond of the maxis skintones (I find them a bit flat and lifeless). I like skins with some detailing.

For clothes I'm a bit mix-and-match, and I tend to like clothes that are a bit detailed, with textures or patterns (no floodfill). I do use photoskinned/realistic clothes, as long as they're well made (no wrinkles in wrong places, no heavy shadows or shiny bits in wrong places, or seams that don't match up).

For furniture I take what I can get, but I've got the same criteria on photoskinning as clothes. I often use recolored versions of ingame furniture, but I like when there's a little bit more texture than the originals, and I'm not much fond of flood-fill unless there aren't better options.

For hairs, I usually prefer them in Pooklet's textures and similar for story/picture sims. They're semi-realistic enough for me. Most of my test sims run around in Maxis styles, but that's mostly for simplicity.

Definitely the realistic look - Maxis have no taste whatsoever. None.

Although, as if by accident, they occasionally created a decent looking sim, which they then dressed like a mad clown with a broken washing machine. You just can't win. Plus, I like the shiny realistic hair textures, and the skintones with more of a range of actual human (and non-human) shades. And furniture that doesn't look as though it was cut out of a colouring book then painted by the same mad clown previously mentioned.

Photoskinned stuff looks awful IMO. Way too shiny, and it doesn't match the meshes, which are less detailed than other games of 10 years ago, let alone modern games. Modern processors are only just starting to get close to proper photorealism; IMO, games like the sims which are more blocky should stick to those limitations. So I prefer a more cartoony or impressionistic feel, but not too cartoony - I don't like Manga eyes, or neon colours, etc.

I think you have to be very careful with photoskinning and the vast vast majority of photoskins are done badly in my opinion. Plus they always seem to have these weird stick thin legs or barbie waists! What is up with that?

You might like Lilith's textures - there are a bunch of hairs in them here if you're interested: http://droolworthysims.tumblr.com/tagged/cc%3Ahair

It depends what I'm going for in my game, I see a lot of people use very contrasty maxis-match style sims, that in my opinion, although they do look nice - remind me of the pudding style skin used in Sims 3 which I'm not a fan of. In some games I go completely maxis-match and keep with the skintones and eyes already present in the game (and sometimes use PurplePaws extra skintones inbetween), but in my current game I have this one set of skintones I really like, can't remember what they're called but there's 20 that all have different genetical values and range from a very pale white to a very dark brown, and I have some eyes that I think a lot of people use but for the life of me I can't remember the name of them, either way, I quite like them. They'd be seen as realistic, but to me they don't look odd paired with maxis clothing and hair. - Though it also fits with the pooklet hair I tend to use too. I especially go for hair that has multiple different shades, because say a blonde haired sim and a brown haired sim had a baby, I'd lean towards giving it a bit of an ash-blonde hair colour, or say 1 sim had very blonde hair, I'd make sure any blonde children they have also have very blonde hair. Though sometimes I don't.

Here's like a few examples of my sims (all from my megahood so they're maxis-made, I haven't edited any of their genetics):

Maxis match, but not because I'm trying to follow a trend, I just like the way it looks when I'm playing the game, it works for me!

Also (something a little bit more personal), I don't have custom or replacement skins, it bothers me that the custom skins don't have the exact same face dimensions as the EAxis one (like different noses and nostril sizes) and makes the sims look different from what they are with the EAxis skin (I know this isn't an issue for most people, I have a problem). I would love if there was something like Sims 3 Ultra Plain Faces for Sims 2.

Bigsimsfan - those are what I consider maxis match! Perhaps we all have different definitions too...

@iCad, I use your plaster walls for just about every house I build. They're simply fantastic.

As for me, I'm a mixer. I don't want my sims to look too cartoony, but at the same time I'd like to be controlling pixels, not mini-humans. The only two things I *must* have are realistic eyes and skin tone. I don't mind the maxis-made skins too much, but the only custom set I use is exactly to my liking.
Otherwise, I rarely download furniture. I like maxis' stuff. (Some of their clothing...not so much.)

Thanks Nysha I will try some in game.