Tired of ugly, splotchy body hair on your guy (or girl) sims that looks like silly string instead of actual hair? Well, I think at long last we've finally found a solution! This method is experimental, and I've only just tried it in my own game, so use at your own risk. Also, if you notice any strange graphics visuals after trying this, please report it in this thread. All credit goes to kaliban for discovering this, and HystericalParoxysm and heaven for sharing it with me. =D

1. Navigate to your GraphicsRules SGR file in the <install path>\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin.
2. Copy, paste, and rename the GraphicsRules file with an ".orig" extension to make a back up copy. Whenever you patch, you will need to revert to the original file or you could potentially get thrown an error.
3. Now, open the GraphicsRules file in Notepad and scroll down to the "setting $VeryHigh" subsection under the "option SimQuality" section (or, if you don't play the game with sim detail set on very high in the options panel in game, go to the subsection that correlates with your particular settings).
4. Change the [ prop $ConfigGroup ShaderSkinCompositing true ] line to false.
5. Save and test! If all goes well, you should end up with sexy, hairy sims like the one below. =D

Just did this - hopefully I didn't mess anything up - so I'm going in game to test it!

But isn't this what those downloadable HQ mods do when you replace EA GraphicsRules file with them? Or is this some new trick HQ mods don't do?

Misty over at Tumblr actually explained pretty well what HQ mods do (if you're curious) - but the TL;DR version is that HQ mods don't affect that specific line of code - they only affect "RenderSimTextureSizes".

Link: http://simsl3gacies.tumblr.com/post...le-all-the-time
It's well worth having a look at.

Oh I see, then I'll go read that to get better idea of HQ mod. Thanks for clearing that up

This is pretty cool, but I still don't like EA's default body hair.

This issue affects ALL body hair, not just EA defaults, so any custom body hair will look clearer, too.

Oh, nice to know. Let's get to work then!

Have wondered for the longest time if there was ever a fix for that body hair. Going to give it a try. Thanks for sharing this.

I've been playing/testing with this modification for two weeks now, and have seen no graphical problems in my game.
In fact, it seems to also have corrected the problem I had with my sims beautiful skins being all "muddy" and less detailed in play than in CAS.

Damn, that sounds great, I also wished skins would look less - well the way you said; muddy. Especially the freckled skins could look better. I'm going to give a try too. Though I suppose I have to modify the HQ mod file that I downloaded instead the Ea original. Maybe later the HQ mod creators will upload their Graphic rule files with this trick included

Ok, I think that I did run into issues after modifying my GraphicsRules.sgr: both the default skins that I use have become pixellated and blotched. The skins I use are oykawoo's conversion of kanno's default replacement for male bodies and HP's Increased Texture Detail Skin Replacement for female bodies, both from sexysims2. For male faces I use TummyZa's and for females an old one by Aikea Guinea.

Here are the pics for comparison:

And while these two pictures may suggest that it is due to the lighting conditions (sorry for this!) I checked over the course of a few days in-game and the blotchyness persists in both bright and dark lighting conditions. I posted these pictures because the Sim also uses the black/white tone that comes with an additional overlay and there the issue is the most visible. But my main Sim who is quite dark on the tan tone slider had the same.

babele44, I get the same thing. Nothing about the body hair changed, it just made my skins blotched. I was so disappointed that it didn't work! Hopefully there's a workaround somehow.

@babele44- I did some additional testing, and I was not able to reproduce this issue at all. Unless I'm just missing it (which is very possible! ), the skins I use did not seem to become any splotchier or more pixelated with this fix in game. I took some screenshots for you to compare if you'd like, but maybe it has to do with the specific skin you're using? I'm sorry, I don't really know. =(



#1 is without the fix, and #2 is with the fix. If anything, #2 (with fix) looks less blotchy to me, but they honestly seem really close to my eyes.



The top is without the fix, and the bottom row is with the fix. This time, the skin looks slightly better without the fix on the darker sim, but again the difference in quality is (to me) negligible. However, the difference in the rendering of the body hair is quite pronounced, especially on the darker sim. Which for me makes up for any loss in quality on their skin tones, but that's of course your decision.

I'm sorry this wasn't more helpful! I'm not really sure why it doesn't work as well for you.

@TheRedRaven- Are you sure you did it right? Cause if your body hair didn't change at all, I'm inclined to say that you made a mistake somewhere along the way. Be sure to read over the instructions again, and maybe try clearing your caches (both your regular ones and your world caches). Good luck! =)

Yes, the hair rendering did improve like advertised but for me at the cost of having weird skin, don't know why either. Maybe it's my skins, maybe it's yours or your additional alpha map. I did notice that you are using one of those heavily "painted" skins that already have a lot of colours (sorry, I don't know how better to describe it), like navetsea's. Both HP's and kanno's are closer to EA default in that they are very smooth.
$ConfigGroup ShaderSkinCompositing is already set to false at the lowest graphics settings in GraphicsRules.sgr and that's my experience, as if I had suddenly set the Sim detail settings to low.

Well how about link where to get the guy's hair and let me download that avatar loL!) I care more about the avatar lol!)

Oh my goooooood body hair are finally fixed. Thank you so much thank you thank you thank you *u*

has anyone just seen this and wanted to try it out? as with my files unless I'm not looking in the right place I can't find any Game File or SGR files I'll look under the file directory for my computer but if anyone has any help to suggest

You do not look in the Sims 3 folder in Documents, where your CC, saves, etc. are.
Look in the file directory where you installed the game (usually in Program files x86/Electronic Arts/etc. although Steam puts it in the same place it puts all the other games you get from Steam.) The note about making a copy before editing is still valid, even though you are not going to be patching. You ALWAYS keep a copy of the original version of any file you edit. It makes it a lot easier to undo the changes if you mess up.

I honestly thought the default body hair was just poorly drawn. I didn’t know it was a texture issue. It looks scribbled on with a marker.

What you have something against body hair?
Really glad this thread got necrod because other wise I would have never know about this fix. The body hair issue is definitely one that has been bothering me since I stated playing TS3 but one of those things I never would have thought about trying to find out if it could be fixed. So glad it can be!