Sims have a changeable body mesh and an unchanging head mesh. Both types are crude and simple, the head meshes having no real eye sockets and a profile that is straight from the nose down, any illusion of lips or chin suggested by the texture. Hair, likewise, is just a blocky extension of the head mesh. The game accepts fan input in the form of head textures, but when the basic shape is wrong for the character being skinned - as with huge-eyed, huge-haired anime characters - texture alone won't do it. Later expansion packs add more realistic faces with lips and ears, but "realistic" isn't what an anime character needs. So the only solution is to make one's own heads.
The AS and AG heads were created to skin, respectively, Sailor Moon and Gatchaman characters, to be exact: Berg Katze, and Sailor Moon villains/extras. The first heads were edited off the creation of another fan, after repeated and failed attempts to ask permission first, because I didn't know anything about either 3D modelling or UV-mapping. Finding that the mesh code for the first Katze head was already in use by someone else, I remade the head from a standard Maxis head that resembled the fan's creation, and was to become the base for all subsequent heads: the C015MA "nerd" head. I used this head, and some other standard heads, for all Gatchaman characters, so, the AG heads owed nothing to any fan. The AS heads made for Queen Beryl and her soldiers were also made off the C015MA base, but there was still a fan-derived head with the stock Sailor Moon "short-haired young man" forelock used for both Mamoru and Motoki, in the "smboys" zipfile. The "final" versions of the Shitennou and Queen Beryl were put up in 2003, and I decided to deal with the Sailor Moon boys later.
From left to right: Katze, old Nephrite (note the smoothed skull),
edited Mamoru with no proper eye sockets.
Given that there is a limited number of mesh codes, and Sailor Moon characters have one of a set of basic head shapes with a distinctive hairdo slapped on to tell the characters apart, rather than make a new head mesh with hair included for each character, I decided to make a head mesh for each basic head type, and make separate meshes for the hair. After discovering the trick to make another mesh use the same texture as the head (or body), so that the hair mesh, like the head mesh, could be "recycled", it occurred to me that if I made the head texture twice as wide, I could fit both the head picture and hair picture in side by side. This led to the "double heads". A "single" head is a normal head with a 128x128 texture. A "double" head has a 256x128 texture and has had its UVs halved to fit in the first 128x128 pixels of this texture. A reusable hair mesh, with mesh code HAX2 for double heads (HAX1 is for single heads) has its UVs mapped to the second half of the texture. Most AG heads were redone to double heads and the AS heads were planned to have a single and double version of each head.
UV maps of a single and double head, showing the wraparound effect of negative UVs.
What the AG and AS heads have in common is rectangular eye sockets in various sizes, from Sailor-Moon-size to Kunzite-size. Such sockets, though good for showcasing large eyes, are ugly and unnatural. I needed something less blocky for some characters from Ai no Kusabi (shortened: AnK), which uses a "realistic" character design, meaning, the characters' eyes are smaller than saucers. As the A was already taken, I used the last letter, K. The eyes in these heads have not four but five corners, and all heads have clear chins and a suggestion of lips. This was useful when making a second series of heads for Agent AIKa characters (another K) since the roundest heads had receding chins, which is impossible in a face that's flat from the nose down.
More facets for a rounder chin.
The AK heads all had single and double versions, whether I had a use for either version or not. They were also "U" heads, meaning that the same mesh could be used for male and female Sims, and the child version was the adult version shrunk. Since skinning these heads was a bit of a bother due to bad UVs, I spent much time on re-UV-mapping them - so much so that I barely skinned any actual characters. This, too, was something I decided to improve in the AS heads as soon as I'd broken them up into categories and finished them.
This categorizing was set back by three things: firstly, the inconsistent animation, giving especially female characters pointed chins one moment, and completely round faces the next. It's a good thing their hair sets them apart, because I wouldn't be able to recognize their ever-changing faces. Secondly, Beryl's long ears. I'd thought of giving pointy-eared head shapes their own mesh code, but as ear shapes, like head shapes, are one of a set of basic shapes and are not in themselves a head shape, I decided that Beryl's head, which had the same shape as Zoisite's head, would have the same mesh code, but with different ears, in the same way that all BAG0 body meshes have the same mesh codes, but different heels. Secondly, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, another anime show that I'd been initially repelled by but gave another chance, had some characters begging to be skinned and an animation style similar to the Sailor Moon TV show, unlike the mangas on which the shows were based, and whose styles are totally different. The only difference between the animes is that YYH has less filled-out cheeks and pointier chins in the "round" heads - those of young and/or female characters - and a more realistic model that was missing in SM. Basically, the heads in either show range from very short and big-eyed to very long and small-eyed, and I made lists of character names and tried to lump together all characters with the "same" face to arrive at five models, without variations like ears or hair. I tried to define the same for children's heads, starting with an even rounder and more big-eyed model, since children in anime have even more ridiculously big eyes than teens and adults.
Once the basic shapes were worked out, I decided - by now the last two expansion packs were out and I'd seen that it could be done - to give the characters "real" ears. The typical Sim ear is just an elevated triangle with an ear shape drawn on. SM characters have big round ears that stand away from the head, especially when they end in a point, and Beryl's old ears were screaming for improvement. I sculpted some ears, blended them with the head mesh, created shrunk UVs to stop the ear pattern from showing up elsewhere on the skull and finally moved these UVs to the bottom right of the texture, some distance away from the face.
The ear is no longer part of the face.
Because Sim heads have negative UVs that "wrap around", double heads have a section of skull and jaw stretching through the "hair" half of the texture. The skull is no problem as it will be covered by the hair mesh anyway. It was too late to do anything about the AG/AK heads, but as the AS heads had to be totally remade anyway, I changed the jaw UVmap to split down the middle and be peeled away sideways. I also gave the basic mesh a better chin as preparation for the round-chinned versions that still needed to be made. The chin's UVmap makes it harder to skin, but that's still less ugly than the usual smear under the jaw.
The UVmap with chin divided in three flaps, the old and new underside of the jaw,
and a close-up of the chin.
The much improved basic AS mesh re-UVmapped (still not 100% symmetrical, but it will just have to do), it was time to make a series of single/double head shapes ranging from short/big-eyed to long/small-eyed. Although they're not numbered logically because the numbers reflect the order in which the first AS heads were made, coincidentally the single head number is always 5 more or less than the double head number, except for the later heads and the less reusable ones, which are double. Likewise, the early meshes had a gender code and were named after a character, but later ones are gender code "U" and identifier "gena" which stands for "general anime". Finally, because one of the characters has a round head and is completely bald, all AS heads were made rounder just above the neck.
Old vs. new: better ears, better head shape, better UVs.
While I may still need to make new heads for unique head shapes - a good example being Gatchaman's Jinpei, or the drummer of "Demon 5" with his huge nose and jutting underbite - the "set of basic shapes" meshes should cover most anime characters I'd like to skin.
All heads are provided with sample textures in the standard three skin tones plus two custom ones: pale and red.
Finally, what happens if a single texture is used with a double head, or vice versa.