I had started another thread here about the look of the animals in Pets and how I wasn't crazy about how the dogs and cats look. Others respectfully disagreed, which is great and what a message board is for. Well, after reading over at the official forums and seeing some photos, no wonder I didn't like the look. See the thread at the official forums called "no fluff" or something like that. A few people are posting photos of gorgeous dogs with feathering on their legs and coats that look much better than the ones in The Sims 2 Pets. But most people are complaining that their dogs and cats look blocky and chunky with no "fluff," and that's what mine look like. They look like they're carved out of featureless blocks of stone.

Don't know how to change this. My computer (processor, RAM, graphics card) far exceeds the specs. The horses look great. I have the graphics options in the game, such as Sim Detail, turned up to Very High. Any ideas? thx

EDIT: This is the thread:
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/451611.page

thankfully someone in that link said they are working on a patch to fix your issue.

Yeah, maybe it's something to do with my graphics card. The drivers are updated and all that jazz. I really wouldn't have known how nice some of the pets could look if I hadn't seen that thread!

Ouch.. really hoping I don't have the same issue. Those look like TS2 pets...

also, someone in the thread said they moved the fur sliders up or down (it doesn't matter which), and then back to where the fur slider was and the fur appeared...

Idk if that will work for you though.

Yep, tried that. Didn't work. Good suggestion, though.

Do you have advanced rendering enabled? I've read that fixes some people's bazar looking pets. I've also read some people with ATI cards are having these issues. It does appear to be more of a bug than a graphics issue, or kind of both in a way but EA is more to blame than the video card

I'm just wondering how long it's going to take them to get a patch out

Yes, I have advanced rendering turned on, Sim Detail turned up to very high, etc. It is an ATI card, the Radeon HD 5770 1 GB. Dogs and cats are fugly.

Have you tried turning all the graphics settings down to low, restarting the game and putting them all back up to high?
There have been a few weird bugs (most of them tree-related) that I've been able to fix by doing this.

Yes, I tried that too. What I find really weird is that many people said they had lovely furry pets in the CAP demo (which I didn't download) but now in the actual game, they don't. So same computer and settings, different results between the demo and the game.

EDIT: I really appreciate everyone's suggestions. :)

Okay thats^ Weird. Now I'm afraid I have problems and just don't see them... But I started a completely new Documents game... no old data, except for the options. Now I'm afraid to change them.

This doesn't really seem like something you can fix, and is something EA has to with a patch. Or maybe ATI with a driver update. EA is already working on a patch, just no one knows when it'll be out, or what exactly it'll fix. Given the amount of bugs being discovered, I'd say we have abit of a wait

Go to advanced mode and put fur density on max. It help a litte for me

Some people in that topic were saying they have Nvidia. :l But I should shut up, my pets do have fur. Though they do have that strange outline thingy. I was super surprised mine have fur since all my settings are not on max and I probably don't have the best card (hurhur it's a ATI card, go figure)

I went into CAS for the first time in about a week yesterday and started making a cat... lo and behold I get chunky fur.
It took about half an hour of moving mods and changing settings, but I managed to figure out what the problem was. Nvidia has a global 3D settings override thing and for some reason I'd changed some of the settings after the last time I played Pets.

Anyway, if you have an Nvidia graphics card, go into the NVIDIA Control Panel and fiddle around with the 3D image settings. If it's an ATI then I'm not sure how you can go about changing the settings, but there should be something.
Here's what I have applied in case that helps:

Under 'Adjust image settings with preview' I've selected 'Use the advanced 3D image settings'.
Under 'Manage 3D settings' I have the following:
Under Preferred Graphics Processor I've got High-performance NVIDIA processor, then under the settings I have:
Ambient Occlusion: Performance
Anisotropic Filtering: Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Gamme correction: Off
Antialiasing - Mode: Application-controlled
Antialiasing - Setting: Application-controlled (although the drop-down box is greyed out so I can't change this one)
Antialiasing - Transparency: Off
CUDA - GPUs: All
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Multiple display performance mode
Power management mode: Adaptive
Texture filtering: Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality: Quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple buffering: Off
Vertical Sync: Use the 3D application settings.

I'm guessing the wrong type of texture filtering or antialiasing is what's causing the transparency in the fur not to be there.

Thank you much, Draik! I'm not sure that I have the problem (in fact, I'm pretty sure it's perfect as-is, because I'm lucky) but I've fiddled with my nVidea settings before, so I'm gonna go and make consistant with those settings. Maybe if you want, you should go post that in the original Sims 3 Forum thread that someone posted.