Sunbathing is one of the many new pastimes for your Sims if you own The Sims 4 Island Living. While it can be very relaxing, it can also turn out in a burning hot disaster! We’ll be going through all the ins and outs of sunbathing in The Sims 4.
All about tanning, sunburns and pranks!
If you want to start sunbathing, just click on either a towel or a lounger and select the Sunbathe interaction. You can pick to sunbathe in your current outfit, your swimsuit or even naked when there are no kids around. You can use either a towel or a lounger to sunbathe. Mermaids are also able to sunbathe in the ocean as long as they have a natural skin color.
Your Sim will start to relax in the sun, but unfortunately they can’t multitask while doing so. While they are relaxing it’s important to keep an eye on your Sims’ moodlets. The first one to appear will be the Sunkissed moodlet, which will make your Sim happy. If you stop sunbathing now, your Sim will get a nice tan. Their tanned skin can last up to 3 days if you don’t sunbathe in the meantime.
Tan lines will appear in the shape of your Sims’ outfit, but accessories and hairstyles will not influence the outlines. Sunbathing again will override the tan lines that you currently have, so if you don’t like how they look, you can just restart.
How to prevent sunburns, or not…
If your Sim is sunbathing for a longer period they will eventually get the Starting to Burn moodlet, making them quite tense. No need to sound the alarms just yet! If you quit sunbathing at this moment, you are right in time to safe your Sim from a painful sunburn. They will get tanned instead.
Continue sunbathing passed this moment and your Sim will really get burnt. There will be a red glow surrounding your Sim, as they are literally baking in the sun at this point. Your Sim will turn red as a lobster which will make them extremely uncomfortable.
Sunburns usually take around a day to fade, but can take longer if you’re unlucky. You can get their uncomfortable moodlet off faster by sunbathing again. Want to prevent all this? Just put on some sunscreen by clicking on your Sim and they’ll be protected for the next 12 hours.
Beware of pranksters
Sims can now prank each other while sunbathing, so be attentive of other Sims when sunbathing. You can also become the prankster. Just click on them while they’re sunbathing and choose Prank Sunbather.This will make your Sim happy.
The result of the prank will be only visible once the pranked Sim gets either a tan or a burn. When the prank is successful, the victim will end up looking silly making them embarrassed for 5 hours. There are a few variations of tan lines and the results will be randomized each time.
When and where can you sunbathe?
Your Sims will be able to sunbathe in any world as long as it’s light outside. This means that in worlds such as Forgotten Hollow, people can sunbathe for a shorter period of the day. Not that I recommend sunbathing as a Vampire in the first place, but you get the point.
For Simmers with The Sims 4 Seasons there are a few more things to keep in mind while sunbathing. The skies must be clear, but the temperature does not matter. This means you can even sunbathe during the Winter season in let’s say Brindleton Bay or Windenburg, as long as there are no clouds.
Temperatures will still influence your Sims, so they could still get hypothermia when tanning in a swimsuit. Besides that the sunbathing will get canceled once your Sims’ skin turns blue, as blue-skinned Sims can’t tan. If you still want to sunbathe during the Winter, I advise you to pick your prefered clothes as the Cold Weather outfit. This way your Sim will remain warm.
How to get tan lines with The Sims 4 Custom Content
Tan lines are possible with CC items for The Sims 4. It’s important that the alpha channels of the item are set up correctly by the content creators. This basically means that the actual outline of the object, must correctly match the visuals, or else they will not show up properly in your game.
SimGuruMorgan had the following to say about this:
As you might have noticed, in Island Living sunbathing supports tan lines from whatever clothes your Sims are wearing. Tan lines will work with your custom content as well (so long as you set it up your alpha channels properly).
* Please note this does not work for accessories. The only accessories that do support tan lines are socks, tights, gloves, shoes, and full-helmet-hats.
The alpha channel of the diffuse texture is used as the mask for applying a tan. That means in order to get good tan lines, be sure that your alphas are properly aligned with where you want a tan applied. On our end, the game does automatically apply a slight blur to the edges to make them feel more natural, so you don’t need to worry about doing that yourselves.
Concerning CC Skintone Replacements: Tans/burns are overlays on top of our basegame skintones, so it’ll work on replacement skins that are roughly the same complexion and in the same order/slots.
The biggest fail of any game ever was being able to build a swimming pool, but not being able to sunbathe next to it. Problem solved!