It's time to expand the imagination of your Sims with 3 new imaginary friends! 🐇🐄🦈

This mod adds 3 new imaginary friend variations: The Social Bunny 🐰 from The Sims 2, the Cow Mascot 🐮 (AKA the Evil Mascot) from The Sims 2 University and the Shark Costume 🌊 from the Origin Exclusive Trick-or-Treat Costumes Pack.

Also included is a tweak to the default imaginary friends to make their eyes more lively with dynamic catchlights! ✨

Requirements

The Sims 3 Generations is obviously required. If you want the shark costume imaginary friend variation (which is optional), you will also need the Origin Exclusive Trick-or-Treat Costumes Pack from TS3 Store. It was available if you purchased Sims 3 Seasons from Origin. Only a legit version will work, a decrapified version will not!

Info about the included package files

All the components of this mod come in separate package files. This way you can choose what you want in your game. Here's what each package contains:

• Body_TS2_SocialBunny , Hair_TS2_CowMascot , Body_TS2_CowMascot : These CAS items have been converted from The Sims 2. These are not meant to be used on regular Sims. They're non-recolorable, have no morphs and will clip/conflict with other CAS items. As such they're hidden in CAS without the use of cheats or mods.
• Acc_EP4_ImaginaryFriendAntenna : This is an accessory version of the antenna that the regular imaginary friends have. Without it, there would just be a floating light above their head.
• DR_Outfit_ImaginaryFriend_Stripe_2_TS2_SocialBunny_Yellow , DR_Outfit_ImaginaryFriend_Star_2_TS2_SocialBunny_Blue , DR_Outfit_ImaginaryFriend_Stripe_3_TS2_SocialBunny_Pink , DR_Outfit_ImaginaryFriend_Dot_4_TS2_CowMascot & DR_Outfit_ImaginaryFriend_Star_1_OriginSharkCostume : Inside these packages are the files that tell the game which CAS items to use on the imaginary friends. Do keep in mind that these only take effect on newly generated imaginary friends or after they age up.
• DR_ImaginaryFriendHead_DynamicEyes : This tweaks the eyes of the regular imaginary friends to have dynamic catchlights.

Dynamic imaginary friend eyes

One common complaint about the default imaginary friends is that they look a bit creepy. The vacant eyes are a big reason for this in my opinion. So I've made a small edit to bring some life into their soulless stares. 👁️👄👁️
Their eyes now have dynamic catchlights, just like regular Sims. The preview image doesn't really show this off well, but in-game you'll be able to see the catchlights bounce around depending on the angle and lighting.
The catchlights don't always align symmetrically, but I think this suits the silliness of their peppy attitudes. I recommend using Eye Shader Tweaks by Simbouquet to make the catchlights look more realistic.

The way I've achieved this edit is by separating the eyeballs into a new GEOM and setting it to the SimEyes shader. Thanks to CAS Designer Toolkit by Destrospean it was very easy to add the new GEOMs!
I've also applied this shader to the eyes of the cow mascot head. They look even more precious with a little spark in their eyes. 🌟

Extra info

I've made sure to replace the imaginary friend variations which match the closest in color. It's unfortunately not really possible to replace the imaginary friend dolls to look like a bunny or cow, since all the default variations share the same mesh. I was planning to also replace the imaginary friend turned real outfits, but I couldn't really figure out a suitable outfit without it looking too silly (like the Showtime bunny costumes). Plus that would be another 40 outfits that I'd have to find and replace.
With the social bunny and cow mascot - teen, adult and elder imaginary friends use the same CAS items - while children use a separate rescaled GEOM. The textures are shared between them. Because of the unique shape I manually edited every single bonedelta so there are no clipping issues. For example, during animations they will correctly put their hands over their mouths and eyes or rest their hands on their hips without them clipping through. This took forever to do and would be unfeasible if morphs were involved. Maybe one day someone will be able to come up with a way to make this process less tedious.
The antenna is directly cloned from an imaginary friend head and almost all resources link back to it. If there's ever mod released that get rids of the light VFX, then you can leave this accessory out.
I've assigned the 'slip' walking sound effect to the bunny outfit to make it sound like bunny paws hopping around and the 'leath' sound effect to the cow outfit so it resembles hooves clomping around. 🐾

Resources overridden
The new CAS items don't conflict with any of the game resources, as they are not default replacements. Instead, the imaginary friend outfit files are overridden. I've replaced 5 of the 12 variants, which each consist of a child, teen, adult and elder version. So 20 outfit files in total. The variants overridden are: Dot 4. Star 1 & 2. Stripe 2 & 3. Check out this image from The Sims Wiki if you want to see which doll colors will age up into the one of the new imaginary friends: LINK.
The dynamic eyes default replacement overrides the LOD1 and VPXY resources of all the regular imaginary friend heads.

Credits & tools used

Credits go to EA for the social bunny and cow mascot. A special thanks to the lovely Crystal for providing me the textures and meshes. She was also very helpful to me while I was converting these. Like giving advice on how to create the normal maps and speculars for the cow mascot. Check out her TS2 > TS3 conversions, they're awesome!

Tools used:

• S3OC & S3PE by Simlogical
• Blender GEOM Tools by SmugTomato
• MeshToolKit by CmarNYC
• CAS Designer Toolkit by Destrospean
• SimGeomEditor & BoneDeltaEditor by Tashiketh