More Natural Hair Colours?
The Sims 4 has a strong focus on the customization of sims, however, I feel that like hair colour options are severely lacking. Its strange that we can go into so much detail editing our sim's faces a...
Forum Discussion
Instead of the hair meshes having ombre effects, I'm wondering how hard it would be to create 3 ombre color swatches that can be applied to all hair styles?
I like more natural hair colors with highlights and dark roots/streaks, but each and every hair mesh (except for the handful of ombre specific styles) all seem to have a very solid, plastic looking color scheme to them. Which is super cute for most sims! Don't get me wrong, it's a fun style to create some interesting looks for the sims :) But when I want to create my sim self, or other people I know in real life... it's kind of a struggle, because all the hair colors are a little bit too overly saturated and seamless, for fumpy normal folk such as myself with different shades of natural highlights.
I love the hairs we have and the color swatches that we got, but a dark brown to red, dark brown to light brown (like me!) and a dark brown to blond color swatch that we can use on all pre-existing hair styles would be wonderful.
But now that I think about it, maybe we have so few hair colors to choose from because they create 1 hair style object that needs to have all 18 hair colors? Don't quote me on that because I'm not a modder, but that would at least explain why we have so few swatches. (And in some cases, so few new hair styles in certain packs.) I can't imagine how time consuming or expensive it might be, creating 18 different art files to apply to every single hair mesh in the game. (And beards, and eyebrows, and making sure they all fit well with all the hats, earrings and glasses.)
Anyway, I checked my game (no mods and no cc,) and counted the skin tones, eye colors and hair colors in Create a Sim.
Skin Tones: 35 Tones
Hair Colors: 18 Swatches
Eyes: 17 Swatches
Vampire Eyes: 9 Swatches
Maybe 3, 5 or 7 more new color swatches, would be nice? The problem is I just can't pick 7 colors. I want lots of different colors.
- Dark brown to red ombre
- Dark brown to light brown ombre
- Dark brown to blond ombre
- Natural redhead
- Dark redhead
- Strawberry Blond
- Graying redhead
- Ashy Blond
- Titanium Blond
- Amber Blond
- Graying blond
- Burnt Brown
- Dark Red Brown
- Light Red Brown
- Golden Brown
- 2 more graying brown shades
- Purple
- Mint
- Ruby Pink
- Pastel Pink
- Burgandy
- Peach
- Corel
Or maybe we should have a graying hair slider, highlights slider and dark tones slider, instead of having the different swatches separate. A saturation slider and contrast slider could also be cool, too. Ombre mix and match thing? Like how in Cats and Dogs, you can select two different breeds together? I'm just not sure how doable sliders or an ombre mixer would be. But at least with this way, we can keep all the standard color swatches that we have, maybe even just reduce the color swatches from 18 down to 9, with black, brown, blond, red, orange, white, purple, pink, blue and green, and customize with 5 sliders and 1 ombre mixer instead.
Graying Hair Slider
If the hair mesh supports graying hair, it will increase the amount and variety of shades of gray.
Highlights Slider
If the hair mesh supports highlights, it will increase the amount and variety of shades of highlight.
Dark Tones Slider
If the hair mesh supports dark tones, it will increase the amount and variety of darker shades, like along the root/hairline.
Saturation Slider
Decreases or increases the saturation of the selected swatch. (How bright/intense or how dull the color is)
Contrast Slider
Makes the color swatch lighter or darker.
Ombre Mixer
Select up to 2 different color swatches and apply to a supporting mesh; only base colors can be applied, no sliders allowed (for the sake of simplicity)
Whether it be new swatches, a slider set, or an ombre mixer, it would have to come in a free update, otherwise I'm not sure how it would work on the gallery. If one player created a sim with titanium blond hair (from a haircolor pack or something) and someone with just basegame downloaded it, and didn't have the hair color pack. Assuming the hair style itself was basegame, would it just auto select a different basegame color? Or would the game download the sim and leave her bald? Would the haircolor pack just have hair colors that will work for the hairs included in that pack? (Like how vampire features from the Vampire Pack can only be applied to vampire sims.) Or would all hairs ever released be compatible with this new hair customizing system?
As an aside, how would these hair colors affect eyebrows and beards? (Ombre unibrows!!!!)
There aren't any easy answers, but it was fun to brainstorm hair customizing for an hour and a half :p
I like more natural hair colors with highlights and dark roots/streaks, but each and every hair mesh (except for the handful of ombre specific styles) all seem to have a very solid, plastic looking color scheme to them. Which is super cute for most sims! Don't get me wrong, it's a fun style to create some interesting looks for the sims :) But when I want to create my sim self, or other people I know in real life... it's kind of a struggle, because all the hair colors are a little bit too overly saturated and seamless, for fumpy normal folk such as myself with different shades of natural highlights.
I love the hairs we have and the color swatches that we got, but a dark brown to red, dark brown to light brown (like me!) and a dark brown to blond color swatch that we can use on all pre-existing hair styles would be wonderful.
But now that I think about it, maybe we have so few hair colors to choose from because they create 1 hair style object that needs to have all 18 hair colors? Don't quote me on that because I'm not a modder, but that would at least explain why we have so few swatches. (And in some cases, so few new hair styles in certain packs.) I can't imagine how time consuming or expensive it might be, creating 18 different art files to apply to every single hair mesh in the game. (And beards, and eyebrows, and making sure they all fit well with all the hats, earrings and glasses.)
Anyway, I checked my game (no mods and no cc,) and counted the skin tones, eye colors and hair colors in Create a Sim.
Skin Tones: 35 Tones
Hair Colors: 18 Swatches
Eyes: 17 Swatches
Vampire Eyes: 9 Swatches
Maybe 3, 5 or 7 more new color swatches, would be nice? The problem is I just can't pick 7 colors. I want lots of different colors.
- Dark brown to red ombre
- Dark brown to light brown ombre
- Dark brown to blond ombre
- Natural redhead
- Dark redhead
- Strawberry Blond
- Graying redhead
- Ashy Blond
- Titanium Blond
- Amber Blond
- Graying blond
- Burnt Brown
- Dark Red Brown
- Light Red Brown
- Golden Brown
- 2 more graying brown shades
- Purple
- Mint
- Ruby Pink
- Pastel Pink
- Burgandy
- Peach
- Corel
Or maybe we should have a graying hair slider, highlights slider and dark tones slider, instead of having the different swatches separate. A saturation slider and contrast slider could also be cool, too. Ombre mix and match thing? Like how in Cats and Dogs, you can select two different breeds together? I'm just not sure how doable sliders or an ombre mixer would be. But at least with this way, we can keep all the standard color swatches that we have, maybe even just reduce the color swatches from 18 down to 9, with black, brown, blond, red, orange, white, purple, pink, blue and green, and customize with 5 sliders and 1 ombre mixer instead.
Graying Hair Slider
If the hair mesh supports graying hair, it will increase the amount and variety of shades of gray.
Highlights Slider
If the hair mesh supports highlights, it will increase the amount and variety of shades of highlight.
Dark Tones Slider
If the hair mesh supports dark tones, it will increase the amount and variety of darker shades, like along the root/hairline.
Saturation Slider
Decreases or increases the saturation of the selected swatch. (How bright/intense or how dull the color is)
Contrast Slider
Makes the color swatch lighter or darker.
Ombre Mixer
Select up to 2 different color swatches and apply to a supporting mesh; only base colors can be applied, no sliders allowed (for the sake of simplicity)
Whether it be new swatches, a slider set, or an ombre mixer, it would have to come in a free update, otherwise I'm not sure how it would work on the gallery. If one player created a sim with titanium blond hair (from a haircolor pack or something) and someone with just basegame downloaded it, and didn't have the hair color pack. Assuming the hair style itself was basegame, would it just auto select a different basegame color? Or would the game download the sim and leave her bald? Would the haircolor pack just have hair colors that will work for the hairs included in that pack? (Like how vampire features from the Vampire Pack can only be applied to vampire sims.) Or would all hairs ever released be compatible with this new hair customizing system?
As an aside, how would these hair colors affect eyebrows and beards? (Ombre unibrows!!!!)
There aren't any easy answers, but it was fun to brainstorm hair customizing for an hour and a half :p
