Hi everyone! It's been a long time since I really used this blog properly, but I thought I'd actually have a proper crack at it.
I never really consistently posted pics of my sims, just occasionally pieces of cc (which are very old at this point) but I figured I might as well since I play this game pretty often, at least messing about in cas.
Edit- I've only posted like one piece of CC that is up to date, so I haven't sorted out links or anything yet.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
β Live Streamingβ Interactive Chatβ Private Showsβ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
I am so baffled by the people who don't like Paralives art style. I understand having different tastes and not liking it leans on the cartoony more than the realism, but saying it makes it unplayable is ridiculous.
Every time a news sims game came out, I didn't like the look. Even 2, which became my favorite!! I came to each new game years after release, mostly due to my financial or technical limitations, and that gave me time to look through lots of other players game photos. I found that I cultivated a distinct aesthetic with each iteration that is totally unique to that game. I think that if you're not on board with the style now, give it time. People will get really creative with it!
You can literally, in the Paracreator, reduce the contrast of the outlines by customizing the skin. You can make them any color of the rainbow. There are already shader and skin mods out on Steam after the first day. Things will only get better in time and damn... I'm excited.
Do you want a specific hairstyle in Paralives? Selection too limited for you? I'm gonna show you how to convert any Sims 4 hairstyle to Paralives in 7 easy(ish) steps!
This tutorial requires you to have some basic knowledge of Blender, modelling, and texturing, so this is by no means a beginner tutorial- if you want that, I'd recommend checking out Paralives' wiki.gg modding guide!
You will need need to download Blender 4.2.4, the Human Rig, and the UV Layout from this page here. To export models and textures from TS4, you will need Sims 4 Studio. This tutorial also requires access to a painting or photo editing tool with layers, I'm using Clip Studio Paint.
Step 1: Pick your hair
Not every hairstyle will be a good fit! Since Sims and Paras don't have the same head shape, any hairstyle that shows the hairline or head will require a lot more work to shape it and remake the textures. For your first try I'd recommend a medium-length style with no hairline showing. I'm using Sienna's hair from Horse Ranch, which only has a bit of hairline on the right side of the head, to demonstrate.
Once you've picked the style, open Sims 4 Studio. Select "Create CAS Standalone" and hit "CAS." Select the grey or greyish white variant of the hairstyle you like, and create a dummy package (you can delete this later).
Now, under the Texture tab, make sure "Diffuse" is selected and export the texture. Name it something or place it somewhere so that you'll remember it's the original. Go to the Meshes tab and export the mesh.
Step 2: Prep The Hair
Open up your original hair mesh in Blender. It'll come with a bunch of crap you don't need, plus three files labelled s4studio_mesh_1-3. That's your hair mesh and the two hat chops. Shift+select those three files and export as FBX. Make sure you tick to limit to Selected Objects. Now you can open up HumanRig and import your hair FBX. Sims are bigger than Paras, so you can grab all three of them and scale them down in layout mode, I chose 0.85 in this project. There will be a weird cap attached to the hair- move the whole object so that it roughly lines up with the head (it doesn't have to be perfect!), paying careful attention to matching the ear position. This cap will be your hairline later. Make sure all your hat chops are all still aligned.
Once all of this is in place, apply all transforms and reset your origin to the 3D cursor. Do this any time you need to adjust it in layout mode!
Step 3: Remodel VERY CAREFULLY
Make sure all three meshes are still selected, and switch to edit mode. Any changes we make to one mesh should also be made to the other two. When you need to move a vertex, switch to X-ray mode and drag to select all overlapping vertices. Enable proportional editing to move larger areas smoothly. Since paras don't have the same head shape as sims, the skull cap won't match up perfectly- we want to approximate a smooth transition by burying the edge vertices in the head, but keep the rest visible so that the hairline shows up correctly. Be careful not to rip any vertices or create any differences between the three meshes. If you make a mistake, don't be afraid to restart. You should also fix any other issues at this stage- sims have huge foreheads, so my para's head was sticking straight out the top of this mesh, I used proportional editing to carefully lift it up.
Step 4: Fix your hat chops!
Hat chops are the alternate version of the hair that is shown when the character wears a hat. In both Paralives and TS4, there are straight and angled hat chops. Identify and label which is which. Under the HatStandards folder, there are a number of reference models we can use to check our work. For each chop, carefully move the vertices with proportional editing so that they match up with, but don't exceed, the "hair limit." With the angled chop, turn on the "HatStandardAngled" model to test if your hair is visible through it- if so, bring it closer to the head.
Step 5: Oh, Textures...
Textures are maybe the most annoying part of this. Load in your base texture as the Base Colour for the material your hair is using. Looks nice, right? Probably not very Paralives-y. Paralives uses a much flatter and more cartoony rendering style than TS4. To fix this, we're going to edit the texture. Now, regardless of what happens, you're going to have to edit the UVs at some point- I'll be doing it at the end and showing you how, but if you find it easier, skip to that step and go back here when you're done.
Here's a sample hair texture from the game and the hex codes it uses. We'll want to adjust the brightness of our texture to roughly match, that way it won't show up too bright or dark in game.
I have a clever strategy for this in Clip Studio. I make a rainbow gradient map, and adjust the colours until they match each zone.
Now that we're in a good colour range, I'm going to separate any important hairline details onto their own layer, lock transparency of the main "block," and start messing with it until it's a good base to draw on. I posterized it with 11 colour levels and then did a gaussian blur for a decent base. Then I went in with a brush to exaggerate and smooth out the shapes. The Paralives team uses a very blendy gradient with some fingertip pulls to make it look paintery, then some more defined shadows. I go in with my dark pencil to sharpen up the shadows and then blend out the other colours.
At this point, you can start saving your file and importing it to Blender. Check what it looks like and start making adjustments. If you find an issue, you can bring the model into Texture Paint mode, paint a dot on the offending piece, and see where the dot appeared on the map to quickly reference where the problem is.
The rest of the painting process is just art! Try replicating a texture from the game that's similar to your hairstyle.
Now that we're done with the fun part.... it's time for UV hell.
Step 6: Suffer
I've never met a single artist who enjoys doing UVs. Luckily, we don't have too much to do here.
Open up the UV editor and replace the background image with the Parafolks UV Layout we downloaded earlier. Now, switch to edit mode and grab all the vertices of your hair. Under the UV tab, select "Export UV Layout." Save the image using a name that indicates it's the original. Now grab that big box of vertices and move it to the right and down so that it lines up with the cyan box labelled "hair." Move the skullcap part up and align the ears. If your hair has extra textures hidden within the skull part of the head, you'll need to move these around to fit into the remaining space in the purple "head" zone. Once your UVs are finished, export them again, this time marking them as the new ones.
Okay, you survived that far. Now back to the image editing. Import both the original and new UVs to your texture file. Place the new UVs below your texture layer, the original UVs over it, and set the texture to a low opacity. With both the original UVs and texture selected, draw a selection box around your square of UVs, and move it to the bottom corner. Place it so that the UV lines match up exactly, pixel for pixel. Voila, now your texture matches the new UVs.
There's just the issue of the hairline (and, if you have them, any pieces hidden on the skull section). Sadly, there's no way around it, you're gonna have to do it manually. Grab each piece using the same method and the lasso tool, and line them up one by one. For hairlines that you had to manipulate, align as much as you can with the least stretched part of the uvs, and then cut, rotate, and stretch them into place. This is why I didn't paint the hairline during the last part. Now that it's in place, I paint it to match.
Step 7: Set up the mod!
Now that you're happy with your hair's model and textures, you can follow this official tutorial to skin it, create a mask, and set up the mod in-game. This Sienna haircut is not available on the workshop yet because uh.... well it's definitely not because I got lazy and didn't feel like skinning it today (the only thing worse than UVs is weight painting).
But now that you're done this tutorial, go forth! Be free! And steal assets from The Sims 4! Just remember to get permission before converting any other CC creators' work. And if you use this tutorial, please let me know! I need more hairstyles....
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
β Live Streamingβ Interactive Chatβ Private Showsβ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
Am I the only one who really likes the harsh lines and almost comic book style of the paralives default skin? Like, I dunno if I've seen anyone say they like it yet, but I do! I don't want smooth!! Smooth is boring!! Gimme lineeeeesssssssss!!!
I'm loving paralives so far. I'm almost exclusively an indie game player, literally the only big big studio games I play are the sims, and the bugs are honestly fuckin fine. Like it's fine. Shit breaks and doesn't work and glitches out but like, the game has been out for A WEEK(ish) and the foundation of the game is so solid I have very little doubt most of the bugs will eventually be evened out. I was truly shocked by the building system and how fun and detailed it is, though not without it's flaws which as I said I think will get fixed, and the paramaker is phenomenal. To any sims players out there who are bugged by all the bugs, give it some time darling this is an active project worked on by three handfuls of people, just sit back and enjoy watching the game grow.
my only input on paralives reviews and discourse is that a majority of sims player have very little experience with gaming outside of sims/casual cozy games. because having to explain what early access is and not understanding how indie games are made says a lot about how a video game consumer interact with the medium. nothing wrong with not being a big gamer (capital G) but you can't expect an indie team of 15 making an incredibly difficult genre to nail it day 1 and for it compare to multi-billion corporations.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
β Live Streamingβ Interactive Chatβ Private Showsβ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
Paywalled mods for a game that isn't even out of early access yet. It's so embarrassing to be part of a community that is just so okay being scammed over and over and over, whether it's from ea or from greedy creators.
So, I assume most of you don't know, but there is a bit of drama inside the Paralives community. It's funny because this whole thing is revolving around The Sims 3.
TwistedMexi made his first paywalled "early access" mod called Sims 3 Camera, and I've been working on the same thing as he was.
1. Let's get the "clone" allegation out of the way first.
(Source: TwistedMexi's discord server)
TwistedMexi is accusing me of cloning his mod, but letβs look at the facts. Thankfully, I always use GitHub, so the commit dates are there to prove it.
(2026-05-26 22:27:02 +0200) is a timestamp of the first commit with hash d82ddd909e06833b0f8d5d439ad602d04a4f3e08
(2026-05-27T19:57:44.000+00:00) is a timestamp of the publication date of his Patreon post.
Honestly, I didn't know I could see the future, but ok.
2. The second thing I want to address is that currently there are a lot of awful comments directed at Tmex. PLEASE do not harass other creators.
3. Regarding early access and paywalls: My mods are developed in my spare time as a passion project. I believe in keeping my work accessible to everyone, which is why all of my content will remain completely free, forever. I believe the community should play a role in maintaining projects if the original creator steps away, which is why I always share the source code for my projects
Free mods are a pillar of a healthy community, whereas paywalls only lead to gatekeeping and unnecessary drama. My hope is that more creators choose to release their mods in a way that prioritizes community growth and shared resources.
A reblog would be greatly appreciated to help spread this message.
I can't even lie, I've been counting days for the Paralives release, and this has been a WIP since release day!
The hair is a retexture of my TS4 hair, which means absolutely more conversions of my other hairs will be happening. The learning curve was Something (you might've seen my post documenting it lol) but now that I've figured it out the process should be a lot quicker π
Also, full transparency, Paralives CC is gonna be my current focus instead of TS4 atm! I go more in depth on my Patreon if you want more details on how I'm feeling
HAIR INFO:
Hat chops
Fully recolorable roots and tips
DETAILS INFO:
Eyes can be found in face paint
Both items are recolorable
There's extra swatches included for some outfits with colors picked from his official arts, to save you the time πββοΈ
Are you playing Paralives? Are you annoyed over the fact that modders are already paywalling content for an indie game that won't charge users for future DLCs?
Content that would improve the game dramatically, like saaaaaay...camera controls that mimic the Sims 3?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
β Live Streamingβ Interactive Chatβ Private Showsβ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
god the gender customization in paralives is the fucking DREAAAMMMMMM gender being completely separately set from body type n pronouns. no clothes separation. one uniform frame. being able to pick out chest & bottom shape regardless of gender and of body type. height not being affected by gender. voice not being affected by gender. body & facial hair not being affected by gender. absolute fucking peek
YES THIS IS WHAT IM SAYINGGG!!! I can actually create myself!! i can create my friends!! i can create my trans self in paralives- something i have NEVER been able to do in a life sim game before πππ
sporadic simmer @jem-does-sims-stuff - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook