Tips for Posing Expressions

I have been working on this on and off for months! My old Emotions pose packs look awful, stiff and just plain bizarre because of various errors mostly to do with the faces. Not only that but as a result, my 2 'tips on posing expressions' tutorials floating around Tumblr that I cannot find now are also dated and useless. I've recently refreshed some of my old poses into one Emotions pose pack with much better results, so here's a new guide on tips for posing expressions. Some of this will focus on body language, but most of it will focus on the facial expressions.

UPDATE: 25/07/25: I have had at least 3 hits from ChatGPT on this blog. If this is a result from one of you running this through ChatGPT to summarise it - DO NOT RUN ANY OF THIS BLOG THROUGH AI. I explain things at length to ensure CLARITY OF INSTRUCTION. If you screw up your project because you let your misinformation robot friend summarise the thing I spent HOURS writing, don't come crying to me asking for further help. And don't ask your misinformation robot friend for help either - READ THE DAMN TUTORIAL.

You can download my folder of blank rigs from here if you need them. This guide assumes you already know the basics of how to make poses and have basic knowledge of using Blender and SimRipper.

NOTE: I suggest using the 'ADULT RIG LOCK FIX' file in the above folder for this to make moving the jaw and hands easier.

UPDATE 5/11/24: Changed permissions for use of my expressions.

GENERAL TIPS

This isn't related to making poses necessarily, but to get more out of the pose packs you do have you can use this first person mode trick in-game to get your Sim's head and eyes to face a different way.
A trick taught to me by a friend was to move multiple parts of the face, even if just subtly, to make poses more realistic and convey more emotion, as opposed to just moving the lips, eyes and eyebrows. Try making the expression yourself and feel what parts of your face move in what direction.
ALWAYS edit expressions in Ortho mode instead of Perspective (press 5 on your NumPad.) Ortho mode is MUCH easier to pose with (it's the flatter-looking view mode) since posing the face especially in perspective mode will result in a lot of distortion, especially where eyebrows are concerned.
Go very careful when using the G key to move facial points around. It's really easy to accidentally pull the lips so they stick out, and it's also easy to do this with the eyebrows. Try to stick to using the axis to moving the facial 'bones' around.
Also go careful moving the eyebrows. Only move the eyebrows before you move the neck is my suggestion. Trying to move the eyebrows whilst the head and neck are not in their default positions can sometimes lead to eyebrow weirdness, like the forehead being pulled outwards in an odd way.
It's up to you whether you mainly pose using a .dae custom rig or the regular 'normal' blank Sim rig in Blender. The blank rig is better if you want poses to look more 'universally' good, but a .dae custom rig is good if you want your poses to suit a specific Sim. You might notice with a lot of my poses they can be quite wide-eyed when you use Maxis Match eyes because it's harder to tell on my own Sims, since I use eyes with quite dark sclera.
Using PureRef for poses is always really helpful, and is an easy way to keep a ref photo on the 'top' of your screen as you work, so you don't have to keep bringing the window up or do you need to work in a smaller Blender window.
For the sake of this tutorial I recommend having a .dae custom rig of one or two of your Sims as well. It's not mandatory, but it's useful.
This is all based on my own ideas and outlooks, yours might be different and everyone will take different movements / postures to mean different things because of personal opinion or cultural reasons and so on.

First off, a general tip...

Moving the eyes, head and eyebrows is always helpful, even if just a little bit.

I always suggest moving the eyes, eyebrows and the head even if just a little bit in any friendly or relaxed discussive / emotive pose, to make it look more natural. A lot of people when they make Emotions poses don't move the eyes or eyebrows at all resulting in very flat-looking expressions, which is only helpful for subtle and more neutral-leaning poses. I guess some folk prefer subtlety so they work with a bigger variety of sims, but I like to try and make mine a bit more lively.

The one on the left, I haven't moved the head, eyes or eyebrows and it looks a bit lifeless as a result. On the right, I've tilted the head slightly right, the eyes so they're facing forwards and the eyebrows slightly lifted to give a sincere yet subtle smile.

When it comes to moving eyes, always do this in Ortho mode, and be sure that you move the eyes so that the Sim is looking at the right 'part' of its target - whether that's the face of the hypothetical other person in the conversation, an animal, an object, or the other person / people in a multi-person pose set. I've deleted a lot of romantic pose packs because the couple aren't actually looking at each other and it ruined the mood a bit as a result.

The top one, I've only moved the head and neck and he isn't quite looking at the dog and just is kind of sraring into space. Moving the eyes down, again it looks a bit more natural and he's actually looking at the other subject for this pose.

General tip on wide-open mouths for poses

It's taken me ages to find a plausible way to pose these, so here's my advice on how to get a decent-looking expression when the mouth is open wide (either in happy surprise or anger.) I've done a .gif showing the method, but I'll explain it below.

- Rotate the jaw so the mouth is open fairly wide.
- Select the two corners of the mouth at the same time, then bring them both inwards a tiny bit. After that, move those bones downwards until the open mouth doesn't look happy.
- Select the UpLip bone (left and right) at the same time, then raise them a bit so the teeth are showing.
- Lower the InBrow bones down a little, and raise the UpLid bones up as well to widen the eyes.

- Move the 'camera' so you are viewing your Sim's face from the side. Select the corner of the mouth and pull it back inwards a little, and down a tiny bit. Switch to the other side of the face and do the same thing.

Now turn your Sim to a 3/4 angle to make sure it looks okay.

Not too bad!

For a happy face, in the beginning, you'll want to instead move the lip corners out a bit to widen the smile, then use the R key to turn them inwards slightly. If you lift the lip corners any higher than this, it makes the toothy smile look a bit odd I find.

2. Happy expressions

The Sims is a game in which most non-modded Sims feel near-constant happiness, whether it's from a job promotion, a warm fire or eating a vegetable, so it only makes sense to start with happiness!

QUICK TIP: If you're using the Blank Rig, there's a thin black menu bar right next to the one where all of your bones are. Open up the Display drop-down, and if you tick Only Render, it'll only show the model, not the rig or the background grid. This is good for getting an idea of if anything looks a bit wonky.

This photo is one from a DuckDuckGo search, but not one I could find a source for since there was a 404 error. As you can see, the telltale signs of happiness, there's a lot of exposure of the teeth, and some squinting going on. Whilst there's not a very obvious raising of the eyebrows here, raised eyebrows help convey a sincere kind of happiness. But first, we'll go for something more subtle.

On the unedited blank rig, the lips look like this. For a smile with no teeth showing you'll have to rotate the Jaw bone up just a little bit to close the lips. NOTE: When moving these bones around make sure not to move the ones labelled 'CAS'!

- The two bones on either side of the mouth lift the corners.
- Each lip has 3 bones associated with it, the left, right and mid.

I made a .gif roughly illustrating the same method as described below.

Making a Smile

Select both of the bones at the sides of the mouth at the same time, then move them upwards.
Once you've done that, move these bones outwards just a little, then use the R key to turn them inwards ever so slightly.
Move the top lip upwards a little bit, all 3 of the top lip bones.

Once you've done this you'll get a result similar to the above, but if you look, the bottom lip not being moved makes it look a bit odd. So I also moved the bottom lip bones up a little bit as well.

Be sure to click I, LocRot, and Save to make sure your pose is saved.

Once you're happy with how it looks on the blank rig, my suggestion would be to make a duplicate file of the blank adult rig .blend, and import your custom .dae rig into that one so you can use it for testing. If you're not sure how to import the .dae from SimRipper:
- Go down to File > Import > Collada (.dae).
- Import your Sim's .dae file.
- Once you've done that, delete the new rig that imported with the .dae file. If you do that, a mesh named after your Sim will appear.
- With the Sim mesh selected, click the wrench icon underneath the box with all the meshes and rigs in in the top-right corner. copy the smile pose onto your custom rig Sim and see if it still looks good. (You do this while in Pose mode using the clipboard on the bottom right.
- Where it says 'Object' with a drop-down, make sure you set it to your rig that you posed earlier. Your sim should then move into that position.

To copy a pose or part of a pose, highlight all the bones you want to copy so they glow blue, then click the first clipboard icon that's on the bottom right corner of the screen.

After lifting the lip corners a bit more, lifting the bottom lip a bit more and the eyebrows I have this, which looks nice. Be sure to view it from different angles to see if there's any weirdness you might need to sort out, and of course test on your own Sim!

Still looks nice on a cutom rig, thankfully. It's up to you how many Sims you test it on but there's no such thing as a one size fits all pose.

Now, what if we want less subtle?

- Lifting eyebrows a bit higher
- rotating the upper eyelids to open them more, for surprise
- Lifting the squint bones

Look at the ecstasy on his face! Maybe he's just seen a long-lost friend, or maybe he works service and forcing a sincere smile is second nature to him.

But it doesn't stop there- For something more ecstatic or maybe laughing:
- open the mouth with the jaw bone and R key
- lift the top lip bones up a bit, and the bottom ones down a bit to reveal the teeth.
- Another option is closing the eyes tightly as well.

As for body language, for happier poses, I keep it relaxed for the most part. I tend to keep the head facing slightly away for calm / happy poses. There's not a lot of movement in the shoulders or clavicles, and the fingers are fairly relaxed as well. For things like laughter and more ecstatic poses, then that might be a good time to move the arms and shoulders around a bit more.

3. Angry expressions

Anger for me is fun to pose, but also quite difficult to get it to look good in game.

These photos from Pixabay for reference. Anger is easily identified from the furrowed eyebrows, the squinting for more extreme anger as well as the bared teeth, usually a frown or a wide-open mouth for yelling poses.

For an annoyed look, I usually:
- pull down the inner eyebrow a bit (sometimes I do the mid eyebrow slightly less as well)
- lower the eyelids using the R key.
Not quite seething, but evidently miffed. (As a note, the lowered inbrows can clip into glasses, so feel free to make it more subtle if that's something that'll bother you).

For the angrier look, I lift the lids with the R key instead of lowering them, and pull down the inner brows further. I also like to add a bit of nostril flare by lifting them as well.
I usually don't touch the mid brow for these, and save that for the more subtly annoyed poses.

For the lips, I rotate the jaw a tiny bit upwards to close the lips fully, pull the lip corners down a bit, and then rotate them downwards slightly for a subtly-bothered look.

Body language

As can also be seen in the photos at the start of this section, the hunched shoulders are good for annoyed or disappointed, but the more 'raised' shoulders and forearms slightly raised as well are good for a confrontational look. I rotate the finger bones a lot more as well, almost forming a sort of 'clawed' hand as if trying to suppress stress and / or rage. I also tend to rotate the torso and a leg forward a bit to make it look more threatening. Most of my angry poses have the head facing straight-on for that confrontational edge.

2. Sad Expressions

For when your Sim loses their cherished wife of over 50 years...and is only sad about it for a few days, or even a few hours if you call the Sadness Hotline about it enough. This one is the hardest for me to do, hence why I've never made a Sadness emotions pack. Pics below are from Morguefile (one, two)

This was as close as I could find to not-cartoonish free-use sad face photos. One of the big parts of sad faces is the avoidant features -eyes looking away, facing away, facing down, hiding the face... the slightly raised eyebrows and slightly open and relaxed mouth, as if about to cry.

For sadness poses, it depends on the vibe I want. For a subtle, let-down look:
- I rotate the head so it's facing moreso downwards
- move the eyes to look away from the speaker
- open the jaw a little so the mouth is slightly open.

This one is a bit more exaggerated and comical.
- I moved the bottom LoLip bone outwards and then up a bit to give the 'quivering about to cry' look
- raised the eyebrows more
- pulled the squint bones up as far as they'd go without clipping
- gave him wider eyes for.

Body language

For sad poses, I usually always have the head not head-on facing the perceived person on the other end of the conversation, and will usually try and make the person try to make themselves 'small' as possible, either hands behind back or holding one arm as seen here. Looking away also helps with sad poses as well.

For more intense sad poses, I say to keep the head facing forward instead of down, to give it more of a sort of shock / anger element depended on what's needed for your story.

Other emotions

Since I wanted to focus on the main 3 emotions you see focused on in pose packs in more detail, let's take a look at some other emotions:

Shock - A sudden and intense reaction, my shocked poses usually have the hands up by the chest or in front of the mouth. I always pull the top lip up to expose the teeth a little, rotate the top eyelids upwards, and lift the inner eyebrows for max : O factor.

Annoyed - Hmmmmm : /
The lids are rotated down quite far, and I also lower the inner brows a bit. For the lips, I pull the two lip corners outwards slightly. I then move all the top lip bones down a bit, and all the bottom lip bones up a bit for that sort of pursed-lip look. If you want something distrusting or skeptical, just raise one eyebrow instead of lowering both.
For the body language, when I make these sorts of poses this is usually accompanied by hands or one hand on the hip.

Awkward - I admit that the shoulder on the right pose is a bit wonky and rushed, so let's just ignore that bit : P As for the face, I tend to make these a bit exaggerated, pulling the top lip bones up and the bottom lip bones down with the teeth fully on show, and looking very wide-eyed. I probably could have raised the squints on the left one, for an extra 'heheh...whoops' look to it.

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Hopefully this tutorial has been of some help to you. Most of the facial expressions in this tutorial can be found either in this Pose Tutorial Blends .zip file (click here for the MediaFire download) FOR ALWAYS-FREE POSE PACKS ONLY, you can use or edit the expressions on these .blend files for your own poses if you choose to release them. If you release them, PLEASE credit me in the pose pack description on the post. I've changed this rule for using my expressions because of the recent pose thefts, and I don't want you to be accused of stealing from me when you had full permission.

Most of the fullbody poses shown here are from this pack.

MY POSE PACKS TERMS OF USE: You cannot use anything from my pose .blends or pose packs if you are charging money for your poses, either through Patreon, Boosty, Linkvertise or similar. This goes for Early Access and perma-paywalled content. You can only upload poses edited from my own if they are ENTIRELY for free, no money made off them at all.

In terms of if you want to upload edits of my poses you've made: Credit is mandatory, and please link back to the SimFileShare or MediaFire download link for the original pose pack (or the post with the poses if it's from TS4-poses or something). My poses can be edited any way you like or converted for different age groups. My only rule in terms of what you can do with them if you're uploading them: nothing to do with real-life hate gestures, or putting minors in sexual situations.

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