CCFinds

Supernova Eyes:

Default replacement for all ages

Fully recolorable

Supernova Eye Highlights:

4 new highlights (found in eye highlights category)

1 recolorable channel

Adjustable opacity

CTRL + click on the thumbnail if it's not generated (this is a Paralives bug)

*Log in to Steam or Paralives to view. Steam Workshop allows for easy downloading of mods and custom content for Paralives. It also enables creators to easily update any uploaded content, which in turn makes it easier for you to track the status of your mods. And, it's free!

Here (click) is a list of the shaders I select when installing ReShade, you won't be needing all of them and I'll put a screenshot below of exactly the shaders used in this preset, but with the link above you'll know in which pack they are - made it this way to make it easier for you to find everything!

SHORTCUTS LIST: (on/off is for what it is by default)

(off) Fake HDR — Numpad 5

(off) Bloom & Lens Flares — Numpad 7

(off) Chromatic Aberration (Prism) — Numpad 4

(off) Vignette — Numpad 4

P.S — The preset is pretty gameplay-friendly with these 4 shaders turned off, I've been playing with it myself just fine! 🫶

Also try turning on/off "Monocular Cues" and see if you like it. It's a shader that I don't use all the time (it makes a halo effect around stuff), it can get tiring to look at sometimes.

­ ­

­ PRO TIP: I always adjust the "BloomAndLensFlares" shader to my needs, which is where the magic of this preset lies. The settings I'm uploading it with may be too strong or too light for some cases, so it really depends on your shot. Just mess with the "fBloomThreshold" slider a bit and see what I mean and, if you're feeling confident, mess with the "fBloomAmount" altogether. ­

So I think Paralives is focusing their team on the big priorities which is good! It's by far my preference, but that means there's not a lot of things like pop up tips or detailed guides when it comes to modding.

But Paralives DOES have things built in to make your own mods wihout needing a third party program like Sims 4 Studio. For eyes, you'll need a texture editor (I use Photoshop). And something like Blender is needed for working on meshes.

File Formats and Locations

Paralives works with .png files for images and .fbx for models. Those are the formats you're going to want to save things into for use in your mods folder. (This is serious basics so I'm not getting into .ini or .config or other things that more advanced most might need.

There are two places that files are stored on the computer. On my machine, the main game files are here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Paralives\

And the files for mods are here:

C:\Users\Kat\AppData\LocalLow\Paralives

But you can look up both with Steam and Paralives respectively.

With Steam, you can right click on the game in the list of your games and from the drop down menu select Manage and then Browse Local Files. That will take you to the game files.

In Paralives, on the main menu screen, below Start New Game and Load Game, Settings, etc., there's an option for Mods, which brings you to this page.

Then clicking on the folder icon of one of your mods in the little bar(you can make a blank new one and name it with your project) will take you to the folder that Mod Files should be stored in for the mod you are making.

Finding Base Textures

Now that we know WHERE things are, we can get the textures that paralives is currently using. These will be stored in the main game files.

Anything that makes up a Para is under Equipment in how they refer to it. Clothes, Hair, Eyes, Skin, Teeth, Body Parts. It's all Equipment.

C:\...\Paralives\Main.mod\Species\Human

For humans kid to adult, this is where I found the textures I started with. You can just search through the different file folders and open up things to see what they are - that's the long route I took - but there is a short cut.

Back to Paralives, on the screen where I showed you how to find the folder for mods, start by editing your new blank mod then click on Control Panel in the top bar.

Eyes are Equipment so we'll go there.

I put in Eye to narrow down the search and it ended up being in 'EyeIrisGlobe', if you open up that, you can see all the details about that specific part. In this case, we want to look at the textures that are applied to the eye mesh. This is where we'll change the texture to a new one for the mod later on but if you go and look it up in the menu that pops up, a hover menu will tell you where that file is located.

So, it's a great way to look at what's point to what. While there's not a lot of documentation, this is SUPER helpful for figuring out what goes to what.

What's in an Eye?

A lot, it turns out. There are several different textures that make up the final look of an eye in paralives.

Since Heterochromia is a built in option, there's a mesh for each eye, what Paralives calls the 'greymask' texture and then a colormap mask for each eye.

There's also a greymask for the inner eye ring and each eye has two different colormaps, one for the simple whole eye color and one that allows you to change the whites of the eyes, the inner ring, and the entire iris.

The Greymask:

The Tri Color Mask

Eye Mask

Inner Grey Mask

This doesn't include the catchlights (the white highlights over the pupil), those are their own entry and have additional images in another folder.

For me, all I wanted to do was replace the base eye texture with a different one, same dimensions and same color locations for the different color wheel options, which meant I only needed to replace the greymask texture.

I'm not going to go over how to make a texture for an eye. There are better ones already out there, certainly. This one is just a remake of the eye texture I made for my sims default eye replacement.

Putting it into Paralives

To make the mod, I needed a right and left eye replacement in png format, and at the ratio that they use for textures (1024 x 2048). I strongly recommend using the base greymask of each to model exactly where your replacement is going to fit. Otherwise you'll end up with textures mapped to the wrong mesh as well. Background should be transparent of course.

Now back to Paralives to make it a mod. You'll need to make a New Mod, if you haven't already. Leave the files in whatever place you've saved them. For me, its a working folder on my desktop.

In the game, after you've made the mod, use the folder icon to open the folder window. Paralives automatically makes a folder for your new mod. The files for that mod need to go in THAT folder specifically.

This is the part that caused me serious issues. The game MAY NOT detect the files right away. What worked for me is to exit the game after storing the new files in the right folder and then return to the game.

You will know when the game finds the files as it will pop up a little notice like '2 files were reinstalled'. (Sorry, I didn't manage to screenshot the exact message. I was in and out a bunch of times trying to figure out why I couldn't find the files in the next steps of this. Its the only pop up you get like it. You'll know it when you see it!)

Once you have the files loaded and you've gotten the little pop up, it should go quickly.

Note: A friend who is also working on modding reported that turning the mod on and off has gotten the files to register as well. That may work for you as well! I had to exit the game to get it to show up.

So, click on the mod and then Edit This Mod.

You are now editing the Mod!

IMPORTANT: You will continue to edit this mod even if you go into game and out of game, it will remain in edit mode until you click the stop editing mod button. Which is great for testing. Not so great for not giving yourself a mild heart attack when you realize you're in edit mode and might accidentally change things because you're not paying attention.

Now, back to the control panel!

All we are going to do is replace the HumanEyeLeft.png and the HumanEyeRight.png to point to the new files you made and dropped in the mod folder.

Once that's done, you'll need to make sure that the settings (the wheel icon next to the texture name), match what they should.

The default eye settings for the base game eyes look like this:

For my eyes, that was brighter than I wanted them so I have 'Is Linear' unchecked personally.

The eye that is brighter has 'Is Linear' Checked, the eye that is darker has it Unchecked.

Great! Now you've changed the base eye texture for kid through elder! All that's left to do is repeat the step of replacing the textures and updating the settings for the 'ToddlerEyes' Equipment. That will make the baby and toddler match.

Final Pro Tips

Remember what I said about the 'now editing mod' staying on and the heart attacks?

It IS useful as well. So, if you leave the mod in edit mode, you can actually go into the game and tweak it live. When you're in, for example, Paramaker, Control+F2 will bring up the mod menu and you can make adjustments to the control panel and see them reflected as soon as you change the eye color.

My final word of advice is: BACK UP YOUR MOD FILES. If you delete the mod, it will destroy the mod folder it made for it and any files stored inside. DON'T put your only copy of a texture or a model you've made into the mod folder. Have a backup. For your own sanity down the line.

Here's what you get:

Dining chair, 8 swatches, 75§

Dining table (small), 8 swatches, 300§

Dining table (large), 8 swatches, 400§

Cupboard, 8 swatches, 510§

Vase, 6 swatches, 40§

More info:

Base game compatible

New meshes, all LODs

Custom specular and normal maps

Custom catalog thumbnails, tagged swatches

Search for "myshunosun" or "marnie" in the catalog to find these items.