If you’ve been browsing the Gallery lately you might have noticed some sims looking like they had a professional photographer doing their pictures. If you want that look for yourself, Gallery Poses are the way to do it!
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Now that The Sims 4 Lovestruck has released, a lot of players have been putting their favorite sims on display in the EA Gallery under the hashtag #LovestruckSingles so they show up on Cupid’s Corner. And while the Cupid’s Corner app has its own way of posing & displaying sims, if you’re browsing the Gallery on your own for singles to bring into your neighborhoods you might have noticed that a lot of them are posed in ways you’ve never seen show up in the CAS options.
Many of these poses look much better than the default EA poses, make your sims stand out, and get more attention from players browsing the Gallery. You might be thinking to yourself, “I want my sims to look like that!” and if you do, this is how to do it!
The Different Types Of Poses
We’ve talked about posing quite a bit in the past here on SNOOTYSIMS, but only about specific types of posing. There’s actually multiple ways you can pose your sims depending on what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s a quick run-down:
- Regular Gameplay Poses are the poses you’re likely most familiar with. These are the poses players use to stage photos or screenshots for storytelling, photo shoots, showing off CC, or just for fun. You can use these poses pretty much anywhere in the world your sims can go.
- CAS Poses (see image above) are poses that happen only in CAS. The way these poses work is that the pose creator will choose a Trait from CAS and then override the animation that typically plays when you select that Trait, replacing said animation with their own animation or pose. This doesn’t affect any gameplay aspects of the Trait itself but merely the animation that plays. Typically the CAS Pose will be a static position and simmers will combine it with custom CAS screens to get clean, consistent images. These are most commonly used for CC photos and Lookbooks, since the background is easy to remove or manipulate.
- Gallery Poses are poses that override the pictures you get when looking at a household in the Gallery or Manage Households tab. These are the first pictures you see when browsing sims, and a great way to make them stand out/give them some personality.
- Secondary Gallery Poses are poses that override the additional images in Gallery view, such as the pose a sim takes when you’re cycling through the individual members of a household.
How To Use Gallery Poses
Gallery Poses work like pretty much every other CC pose which is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because there’s nothing special you need to do to install them, but bad because it can be easy to confuse which poses work in which ways if you don’t have them organized. If you download and use a lot of poses, it’s a good idea to consider sorting them by either renaming the files to add a qualifier like “GalleryPose” or “GP,” or by creating separate folders in your Mods for in-game poses, Gallery poses, and CAS poses.
I personally prefer the folder method because if you ever need to update a pose, it will not overwrite the old version if the file name isn’t exactly the same between the two. You will have to manually delete the old pose before replacing it, or rename the updated pose so it’s the same as the old one before installing it into your Mods folder so it will overwrite. It’s certainly doable but requires more effort and care—choose the method that works best for you!
Once installed, you can select “Randomize Portrait” when finalizing a household and different poses will pop up including those you have downloaded to your Mods folder. You might have to randomize the pose a few times before you get what you want, but it will eventually show up if the poses were properly installed.*
Getting Started With Gallery Poses
Gallery Poses can be installed in your Mods folder just like everything else, though it’s recommended you organize them as mentioned above. That’s all you really need to start using them, however there is a mod you might find that you need if the poses aren’t working for you: the No Mirroring Mod.
Depending on which Patch version of The Sims 4 you’re using, the game may or may not randomly flip—or mirror—your sims’ poses. Usually this is fine because it adds a bit of variety, but for certain Gallery Poses it can cause issues if your sims are doing a pose but only some of them are mirrored. In the image above the parent sim’s pose is mirrored and he is facing the wrong way so instead of looking like he is holding his child, the kid is just floating in the air awkwardly.
It seems like mirroring was removed from The Sims 4 after the release of Horse Ranch, but we wanted to mention the No Mirroring Mod in case it ever returns in a future update.
The Catch – Limited Pose Control
There is a catch when it comes to using Gallery poses and unfortunately, it can be pretty major depending on the size of your household. One of the reasons why the default Gallery images always look a little off is that basically every sim is posing individually. This means that for group and family poses, you’re not always going to get it right the first time.
For example, if you have a Gallery Pose that involves 3 Adult sims what you’re actually getting is 3 separate individual poses, all designed to look nice together. Let’s call them Pose 1, Pose 2, and Pose 3, and for the Gallery Pose to look right they need to be positioned in 123 order. The first time you try to save the Household, they might be posed 231, or 312, or 132, etc. (see image above). You’ll have to Randomize the image as many times as it takes for all the sims to land on the pose they’re supposed to be doing, and the more sims that are involved in a pose the more difficult this can be.
The game has a number of different poses it chooses from when generating Gallery images. For Adult sims, each gender representation has 1 of 6 possible poses that can pop along with 4 generic poses shared between the two genders. So, an adult sim has 10 possible poses they can end up in when Randomized (6 for their gender + 4 generics). If you have a pose pack designed for a group of 3 adults, that means your sims have the chance to land in any of the 3 poses from the Gallery Pose pack, along with the other 7 that the Pose pack doesn’t replace.
Mixing Pose Packs Can Cause Problems!
Because CC Gallery Poses only have so many options on what they replace, you can run into problems if you have multiple sets that cover the same poses. As an example, let’s say you have a Pack called the Strawberry Pack and it replaces male poses 1-4, female poses 1-4, and generic poses 1-4. Now you want to download the Blueberry Pack, which replaces male poses 3-6, female poses 3-6, and generic poses 3-4. This is what you’ll get:
| Pose # | CC Pose The Game Will Use |
| Male Pose 1 | Strawberry Male Pose 1 |
| Male Pose 2 | Strawberry Male Pose 2 |
| Male Pose 3 | CONFLICT |
| Male Pose 4 | CONFLICT |
| Male Pose 5 | Blueberry Male Pose 5 |
| Male Pose 6 | Blueberry Male Pose 6 |
| Female Pose 1 | Strawberry Female Pose 1 |
| Female Pose 2 | Strawberry Female Pose 2 |
| Female Pose 3 | CONFLICT |
| Female Pose 4 | CONFLICT |
| Female Pose 5 | Blueberry Female Pose 5 |
| Female Pose 6 | Blueberry Female Pose 6 |
| Generic Adult Pose 1 | Strawberry Generic Adult Pose 1 |
| Generic Adult Pose 2 | Strawberry Generic Adult Pose 2 |
| Generic Adult Pose 3 | CONFLICT |
| Generic Adult Pose 4 | CONFLICT |
As you can see above, the two posepacks have several areas of overlap which can cause conflicts. Because of how easily Gallery Poses can clash with one another, it’s advised that you have no more than 1 or 2 posepacks installed per age/species group. Secondary poses behave in the same way, but you can combine Gallery Image and Secondary posepacks (as long as you stick with 1-2 for each category).
More on SNOOTYSIMS: Once you’re comfortable using Gallery Poses, you can have some real fun by combining them with the Family Portrait Mod for wonderful group and family photos!
Finding Gallery Poses
Gallery Poses, like any other type of CC for The Sims 4, are available all over the Internet. To get you started we recommend this Pinterest page by @thesims4shopper which has a variety of options, all organized by creature type, pose vibe, etc. It’s a fantastic resource if you’re just getting started and aren’t sure where to look!
Conclusion
When it comes to taking Household photos of your newly created sims, EA’s poses leave a lot to be desired. Using CC Gallery Poses allows you to refresh those stale family photos and give your household some real personality! If you’ve ever been curious about trying Gallery Poses or feel a little intimidated at the idea, this how-to should hopefully give you the confidence to give them a go. We hope you find the perfect poses for your sims, and that you don’t have to Randomize them too much to get everybody in position. Give Gallery Poses a try, have fun, and happy simming!