Is that a mesh or a recolor?

[tarquin74]

I've poured over the entire help section and I can't find the answer anywhere. I've got a lot of downloaded custom hair and clothes. I've noticed that some of them are just the default shoulder length black hair thumbnail. When I click on one of these "generic hair" thumbnails, I get just that. The default shoulder length black hair. Sometimes it flips over to the black hair section to a specific custom hair do.
Also I've noticed some my custom clothes are default sets.
I've sure this means I am missing a mesh or a recolor file. And the program is just filling in a default hair or clothing thumbnail. I work around this by using hair and clothes that will show up correctly in the game.

My question is...

Will a mesh file ever be shown in the clothing or hair section in Body Shop?
I want to avoid deleting any mesh files.
If mesh files show in a section, then how can I tell it is just a mesh file?

I do not want to start "cleaning house" only to discover I am missing files that in-game sims are making use of. I want to weed out the crap without losing the creme.

[StarboardParoxysm]

If you have a recolour in your downloads but not the proper mesh, it'll show that default hair for the recolour. Get the mesh and it'll show up as the right hair.

In almost all cases, hair and body meshes will be separate from their recolours.

However, there is a tiny percentage (less than 1%) of hair meshes that have one recolour actually in the same file as the mesh. If you delete that particular recolour, you delete the mesh. Putting a recolour with the mesh like this isn't done much anymore - it only seemed to be something a couple creators did really really early in the creation of new hair meshes and most likely, it's not something you'll run into (especially if you haven't been downloading older hair meshes) but what you describe is possible if you were deleting hair recolours that are properly displaying with a custom mesh.

The actual mesh file itself doesn't show up... A mesh is the shape that a texture is laid over - without the right shape, the texture has nowhere to go, so you're not going to see the actual mesh itself exactly... But if a recolour and mesh were in the same file, it's possible deleting the recolour would delete the mesh as well. Possible... but extremely unlikely.

Either way, deleting all those repeating Maxis defaults showing up because you don't have the proper mesh won't cause any harm whatsoever. You'll just be deleting recolours you can't really use anyway.

[tarquin74]

Thanks for the advice. Good to get some validation.
Unfortunately, I have discovered that people can create a mesh (like hair) designed to work for adults only but accidentially code their recolors to include teens and adults. Since the mesh was designed for adults and not teens the recolor will show correctly under the adult hair section, but will show a Maxis default under the teen section. So if you delete the recolor under the teen section, then you are also deleting it under the adult section since the recolor package is one and the same.
In this case I'd still have the mesh but no recolors to work with it.
Bummer.
Oh well, the hazards of custom simming.

[StarboardParoxysm]

Well, yes... but there's instructions on how to remove those extra ages that are still Maxis hairstyles - and keep the custom styles for the other ages. Check out the tutorial by SimplyStella in Body Shop Skinning.