Making Hair & Heads – Sims Legacy Collection Guide

On this page

How Hair & Heads Work Texture vs Mesh Filename Format Understanding the Head BMP Two Routes Common Mistakes

ℹ️ This page is a work in progress – screenshots showing each tool step will be added at some point. If something is unclear, ask on Simscord or r/thesims1.

💡

How Hair & Heads Work

⚠️ Sims 1 has no separate hair item. Hair is painted directly onto the head texture – to add a new hairstyle, you paint it onto the head file. To add a new hair colour, you make a separate copy of the file with the colour repainted.

One file = face + hair + neck

The head texture contains the Sim’s entire head appearance – face, ears, neck, and hair all in one flat bitmap image. The hair is part of the image, not a separate piece on top of it.

Three skin tone versions

Head files need a light, medium, and dark version, just like body skins. The skin tone affects the face and neck areas – the hair colour stays the same across all three versions.

The C prefix

Head files use the C prefix (Cranium). Unlike body skins, heads do not include a body type code. The format is: C[meshnum][gender][age][skintone]_[name].bmp. Example: C001FAlgt_Ponytail.bmp = mesh 001, female adult, light skin.

Two types of files

Every head is made of a texture (BMP – the flat image that gets wrapped onto the 3D shape) and a mesh (SKN + CMX – the 3D shape itself). To change hair colour, you edit the texture. To change hairstyle shape, you change the mesh.

🧩

Texture vs Mesh – Two Separate Things

Understanding this distinction is essential before you start

Every head in Sims 1 is made of two separate things that work together. If you are new to modding, this is the most important concept to understand before you open any tools.

🖼️ The Texture (BMP file)

A flat 128×128 pixel image – think of it like a sticker that gets wrapped around a 3D shape. It contains the face, hair colour, skin colour, ears, and neck all painted onto one small square. Must be saved as 8-bit (256-colour) Indexed BMP format.

Example: C001FAlgt_PonytailRed.bmp

🧊 The Mesh (SKN + CMX files)

The 3D shape of the head – the underlying geometry that determines the hairstyle silhouette, facial structure, and how features like ears and hair sit in 3D space. The texture gets wrapped around this shape, so the same mesh can look completely different with a new texture painted over it.

SKN: xskin-C001FA_ponytail-HEAD-HEAD.skn
CMX: C001FA_ponytail.cmx

📝

Filename Format

No spaces – the filename tells the game everything it needs to know

Head skin filenames follow a strict format. Every segment runs together with no spaces between them. Unlike body skins, heads do not include a body type code (like Fat, Fit, or Skn) – the head mesh is the same regardless of body shape.

C[meshnum][gender][age][skintone]_[name].bmp
Example: C001FAlgt_MyHair.bmp

Segment	Values	What it means
Prefix	`C`	Cranium – marks this as a head skin (as opposed to `B` for body skins).
Mesh number	`001`, `002`, `357`, etc.	A 3-digit number that identifies which head mesh shape this texture goes with. Maxis used numbers like 001–005; custom creators pick their own.
Gender	`F` / `M`	Female or male.
Age	`A` / `C`	Adult or child.
Skin tone	`lgt` / `med` / `drk`	Light, medium, or dark. Only in BMP filenames – CMX and SKN files omit skin tone.
_Name	Any text	An underscore followed by a unique identifier you choose.

A complete set needs three BMP files (one per skin tone) plus one CMX and one SKN:

File	Purpose
`C001FAlgt_MyHair.bmp`	Head texture – light skin tone
`C001FAmed_MyHair.bmp`	Head texture – medium skin tone
`C001FAdrk_MyHair.bmp`	Head texture – dark skin tone
`C001FA_MyHair.cmx`	Mesh config – no skin tone in filename
`xskin-C001FA_MyHair-HEAD-HEAD.skn`	3D mesh – no skin tone in filename

For a full breakdown of every segment in these filenames, see the File Reference page.

⚠️ No body type code. Body skins include Fat, Fit, or Skn in the filename. Heads do not – the head mesh is the same regardless of body shape. If you see Skn or Fit in a head filename from an old tutorial, that tutorial has it wrong.

🗺️

Understanding the Head BMP

What each part of the 128×128 image maps to on the 3D head

When you open a head BMP in an image editor, it looks like a strange, flat image – a face surrounded by what looks like distorted skin and hair. This is called a UV layout. Imagine cutting a globe along the seams and flattening it into a flat map – the continents look stretched and distorted, but they are all there. The game takes this flat image and stretches it back onto the 3D head shape when it renders your Sim.

ℹ️ See this for yourself right now: go to GameData\Skins\ in your game folder, find any file starting with C (e.g. C001FAlgt_ponytail.bmp), and open it in an image editor. It will look tiny – it is only 128×128 pixels. Zoom in to see the detail.

Centre = the face

The face sits in the centre of the image. You can see the eyes, nose, and mouth. This is the part that faces the camera in game.

Sides = the ears

The left and right edges map to the sides of the head. When a hairstyle covers the ears, these areas are painted with the hair colour instead.

Top = the scalp

The top portion wraps over the top of the Sim’s head. For most hairstyles, this entire area is painted with the hair colour.

Bottom = the neck

The very bottom maps to the neck and underside of the chin. This must match the body skin tone so there is no visible seam in game.

Not every pixel in the 128×128 image is used by the 3D mesh. The head mesh only reads from the areas it needs – some regions of the BMP are effectively dead space that never appear in game. This is why you may see unused corners or edges when looking at a head texture. If you add accessories or extra hair textures to a custom head mesh, creators sometimes place those textures in the unused areas of the same BMP file.

🛤️

Two Routes to Custom Heads

Choose the approach that matches what you want to make

There are two fundamentally different ways to create custom head CC, depending on whether you want to change how a head looks (its colour and face details) or how it is shaped (its hairstyle geometry). Both are covered in their own dedicated guide pages.

🎨 Retexturing Existing Heads

Change hair colour, repaint the face, add makeup, adjust skin tones – all by editing the flat BMP texture in GIMP, then using The Sims Creator (TSC) to generate the companion files. This is the easier of the two routes and does not require any 3D modelling.

Tools: GIMP (free) + The Sims Creator

Best for: recolouring existing hairstyles, making new skin tones, adding face details, putting a photo face on a Sim.

→ Retexturing Heads Guide

🧬 Creating New Head Shapes

Create entirely new head shapes by morphing, blending, and fine-tuning with FaceLift Gold – a standalone Maxis tool that generates variations of heads for you to choose from, with no 3D modelling required. Start from 9 random heads, shape them with sliders, and fine-tune the eyes, nose, cheek, and jaw until you get the look you want.

Tools: FaceLift Gold (free)

Best for: new face shapes, unique character heads, experimenting with head geometry.

→ FaceLift Gold Guide

ℹ️ Which should I start with? If you have never made head CC before, start with retexturing. Copy a Maxis head file, repaint the hair colour in GIMP, and get it into the game. It is the quickest way to see a result. FaceLift Gold is great fun but creates new shapes – you may still want to retexture the result afterwards.

⚠️

Common Mistakes

Problem	Cause	Fix
White blank head in game	BMP not saved as Indexed 256-colour. Skins with more than 256 colours show up white in CAS.	In GIMP: Flatten Image, then Image → Mode → Indexed (255 colours), then File → Export As `.bmp`
Head not appearing in CAS	Files are in a subfolder, or the CMX/SKN companion files are missing, or the CMX internal name does not match its filename	Place all three files directly in `GameData\Skins\` root. Open the CMX in Notepad and check line 5 matches the filename exactly.
Upside-down or scrambled hair	Started from a blank canvas instead of an existing head file, so the UV layout was wrong	Always start from an existing C-prefix file or a TSC export – never a blank canvas
Skin tone mismatch	The lgt/med/drk suffix does not match the actual skin colour in the BMP, or the neck does not match the body	Colour-pick the skin tone from a matching Maxis file. Check the neck area matches.
Wrong hairstyle shape	The CMX is pointing to a different mesh than expected	Re-export through TSC using the correct head mesh
Saved as BMP but still white	Used GIMP’s “Save” instead of “Export As”, or saved as RGB BMP without converting to Indexed first	Always use File → Export As, and always convert to Indexed mode before exporting
Colours look banded or blocky	The 256-colour palette does not have enough shades for smooth gradients	Use Floyd-Steinberg dithering when converting to Indexed mode. Avoid subtle gradients.

←

Custom Meshes

→

Retexturing Heads