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Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 30th Aug 2017 at 12:21 AM Last edited by billielith : 5th Aug 2018 at 8:37 AM.
Default How to BIN, FAMILIFY and GROUP Eyebrows, Beard and/or Stubble manually in SimPE
Hi all. I hope you are well

I've been working on the beard of a sim that I plan to upload soon. The beard turned out great, so I decided to make a set. I wanted to bin my colors and regroup them like I did for my previous sets of facial hair but I didn't remember how! lol.

So I looked into my back ups (this took time!!) and I found two notepad files I wrote for myself back then which helped me (and will help you!) BIN, FAMILIFY and GROUP sets of eyebrows and stubble in varieties of regroupments. Binned/unbinned, familified/defamilified, grouped/separated. Now you'll be able to do this too!

This is the method I use, if some part of this is not detailed enough, feel free to ask/suggest what I should explain further. Thank you!


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TUTORIAL

WHAT YOU NEED

- Sim Eyebrows, beard or stubble you recently (or not-so-recently) made/edited; - these are your work files for the current tutorial
- SimPE

If you didn't make any set of facial hair and/or are just trying to learn, you can get the 'Trash Heap' version of my set of eyebrows since they are not binned and are good examples to work from, put them in your work folder, and just follow the steps of this tutorial. **You don't need to bin all 51 of them, just bin 5, one of each color.


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STEP ZERO : BACK UP YOUR WORK FILES!! - This will simplify the task if you make mistakes and have to start over!
- Keep a copy of your eyebrows, beard or stubble in their 'Before This Tutorial' status in a 'Back up' folder. You should do this again after each step of the current tutorial, if, like me, you do the first steps right and then mess something up along the way. It sucks to have to start over from the beginning. Back up your work each step of the way, it will spare you discouragement and headaches.


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STEP ONE : EXTRACT ALL YOUR PRETTY TEXTURES - You will need them later if you group your files
- Create a folder for your textures/colors. You can call this folder "Textures and Colors"
- In SimPE, in the Texture Image (TXTR) of each file, right-click in its Plugin View, select Export..., save each file with a name that will help you recognize your colors later. Brown, LtBrown, Black, Blond, WarmBlond, etc.
- This is your group of extracted textures. All your pretty textures are in there, unharmed and working. Keep them preciously as a back up, and make a copy of this group for Step 5 of this tutorial.


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STEP TWO : REMOVING UNWANTED AGES or GENDERS - This will simplify the task for later
- Open the file of each color, remove the grey (the one for elders) for all of them except the black for TXMT, TXTR and XTOL.
- In the TXMT, the names of the resources contain a mention of its age before the tilde (~ character). For males it has either em, tm, ym or am; for females ef, tf, yf and af.
- In the XTOL, all the resouce names are similar, so you need to check in the Plugin View and look for "age (dtUInteger)", and check the number at that line. Here is the chart:

Adult: 0x00000008
Young adult: 0x00000040
Teen: 0x00000004
Child: 0x00000002
Toddler: 0x00000001
Elder: 0x00000010

- In Resource List, identify the resources related to the ages you don't want, make sure you select the right ones. To delete them, Right-click delete, save. You need to do this in both TXMT and XTOL.
- In the case of Eyebrows, you may want to group XTOL's of both genders if the textures are identical. You can eliminate a gender and group both genders in the other by changing the 1 or 2 by a 3 in XTOL.
- Save each color by adding 'AgesRemoved' at the end of its name. For example, Black_AgesRemoved.package, Brown_AgesRemoved.package, Blond_AgesRemoved.package, etc.
- This is your group of files from finishing Step 2 of this tutorial.
- Make a copy of all the files from Step 2 (Ages Removed) of this tutorial, then put this in your Downloads folder, preferably in a folder called 'Tutorial Step 2'
- Commit and Save everything, close SimPE, and test your files in Bodyshop to see if the ages you removed can still be seen or if they have been properly removed.
- It works? Congratulations! Something wrong? Try this step again.
- Move on to the next step if you like.


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STEP THREE : MANUAL BINNING - I've had problems with the plugins and programs people made for binning before, so this the method I use
- In XTOL always, Plugin View, hairtone (dtString), you have to change numbers there. 0 (or random number) for custom, 1 for black, 2 for brown, 3 for blond, 4 for red and 5 for grey. Like this :

Custom : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Black: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Brown: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Blonde: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Red: 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Elders : 00000005-0000-0000-000000000000

Don't forget to change the number for a 5 for your Elder version, which you kept in the Black, and don't forget to Commit/Save everything you change.

You only need 1 color to make it work - if you make a sim, you may want this sim to have special facial hair, tailored especially for them. This is what I did for my sim of Rudy Caya. I binned his stuff brown, there isn't any other color and it still works.

But, if you want to make facial hair that many people can use, make at least the 4 standard colors; black, brown, blond and red. You can make more, people like multiple shades of each color for more variety and to help make look-alike sims. I also like to join a silver tone that non-elders can use, which I put in the 'custom' category.

- Save each color by adding 'Binned' at the end of its name. For example, Black_Binned.package, Brown_Binned.package, Blond_Binned.package, etc.
- This is your group of files from finishing Step 3 of this tutorial.
- Remove the files from Step 2 of this tutorial from your Downloads folder and put them somewhere for BackUp.
- Make a copy of all the files from Step 3 (Binned) of this tutorial, then put this in your Downloads folder, preferably in a folder called 'Tutorial Step 3'
- Commit and Save everything, close SimPE, and test your files in Bodyshop to see if your colors have been properly binned and show up associated with the right colors of hair.
- It works? Congratulations! Something wrong? Try again.
- Move on to the next step if you like.


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STEP FOUR : MANUAL FAMILIFYING - To keep your 4 standard colors tied to each other if you switch your sim hair color
- Pick ONE black, ONE brown, ONE blond and ONE red which will be your 4 standards.
- In the XTOL of your black, look at the number besides Family (dtString), note down this number in a Notepad as your 'Standard Family'.
- In the XTOL of the blond, brown and red you chose as your standard colors, seek their Family (dtString) in their XTOL and replace it by the 'standard family' number that your black color had.

For example:
My standard family number is 296ee074-4250-20e9-7296-3d9b74aac85c (took it from the black)
Black XTOL, family (dtString) = 296ee074-4250-20e9-7296-3d9b74aac85c
Brown XTOL, family (dtString) = was 7ee9172f-46a0-3548-4201-d68bef191589, changed for 296ee074-4250-20e9-7296-3d9b74aac85c
Blond XTOL, family (dtString) = was 1648de4b-4d20-0095-1eb3-3ea14c516442, changed for 296ee074-4250-20e9-7296-3d9b74aac85c
Red XTOL, family (dtString) = was 14644b5d-4691-0ade-4763-4a99ffd8f993, changed for 296ee074-4250-20e9-7296-3d9b74aac85c

- Don't forget to commit and save after each change to make sure your file is updated properly
- If you make more than 4 colors, DO NOT try to familify all of them together! It jams them together when you try to select them in Bodyshop and gets buggy. Instead of giving your sim some blond hair, for example, Bodyshop will try to give him blond1, blond2 and blond3 all at once - NOT GOOD. Do NOT do that.
- Once you familified your 4 standards, you can familify another set of 4 if you have one for each standard colors. Instead of calling this one 'Standard Family', you can call it 'Second Family', and simply repeat the same process. You can have as many families as you want if you have multiple sets of 4 colors. However, do NOT try to use one same color in multiple families. It gets buggy too.

- Save each color by adding 'Familified' at the end of its name. For example, Black_Familified.package, Brown_Familified.package, Blond_Familified.package, etc.
- This is your group of files from finishing Step 4 of this tutorial.
- Remove the files from Steps 2 and 3 of this tutorial from your Downloads folder and put them somewhere for BackUp.
- Make a copy of all the files from Step 4 (Familified) of this tutorial, then put this in your Downloads folder, preferably in a folder called 'Tutorial Step 4'
- Commit and Save everything, close SimPE, and test your files in Bodyshop to see if your familified standard colors switch well from a hair color to the other.
- It works? Congratulations! Something wrong? Try again.
- Move on to the next step if you like.


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STEP FIVE : GROUPING COLORS TO 1 FILE - All your colors in 1 file instead of plenty
- THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL
- I am getting old, I repeat myself, but it is better to keep these groups OPTIONAL. A lot of people will like to have all the colors of one set in 1 fantastic file, but some people won't need all the shades and colors you provide. So, you can offer a version of your set with grouped files, and another version with separate colors so the picky people out there (which I am) can delete colors without breaking your set or making it buggy.
- Prepare one workfolder, you can call it 'Workfolder'. When you'll extract, you can put everything in that same workfolder.
- Extract all the content of the Resource List of each color in your folder EXCEPT THE BLACK. The Black is used as a bin where you'll regroup everything afterwards.
- To extract quickerly, for each file, press CTRL-A, all your resources will be selected in the Resource List. Right-click, Extract should extract all the content to your Workfolder (you'll have to browse to its location for each file).
- SimPE is supposed to put everything in tidy, well-identified little subfolders when you extract.

When I made my No Valentine Eyebrows, these were the quantities of files to be extracted and put back in the Black color file:

3D ID - 160 files
Binary - 80 files
Directory - 1 file
Material definition - for 8 colors I had 66 files. Without some ages it can be less.
Text lists - Number of colors. 8 colors, 8 files, the grey (elders) doesn't count
Texture image - Goes along the number of colors, +1 for the grey.
Texture Overlay

- Your number of files could differ, these numbers were put here so you see it's many files, not just one or two.
- Once everything is in your Workfolder, you will see several subfolders and files appear. This is normal.
- Put everything you extracted back in the Black color. Open your Black color package file, get in the Resource List and Right-click, 'Add...', save all the junk you extracted in your Workfolder. It should all be separate in the proper categories (3D ID, Binary Index, Directory, etc), make sure you put everything where it goes.
- All your colored files should have similar names, and they should all say "Black" since they have been extracted and put back in the Black.
- After extracting and putting stuff back, your textures COULD be pixellated/blurry, mine were, you simply have to reinsert them again (by SimPE's Build DXT tool) for each color and for the grey. This is why we extracted them at the beginning of this tutorial.
- Save your final grouped file by adding 'Grouped' at the end of its name. For example, it should look like YourName_SomeGuysBeard_Grouped.package
- This is your grouped file from finishing Step 5 of this tutorial.


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STEP SIX : MOMENT OF TRUTH : Commit/Save everything and close SimPE - Now's the time to test your fiddled fuzzies
- Make a copy of your grouped file (it should be just 1 file) from Step 5 (Grouped) of this tutorial, then put this in your Downloads folder, preferably in a folder called 'Tutorial Step 5'
- Test it in Bodyshop.
- It works? All your colors show up and work properly despite having only one file in your Downloads folder? Congratulations!
- Is something wrong? Try again.
- This is it.

END of the tutorial !


I hope this helped you, and that you could achieve this tutorial without problems. Have fun! :D

I know I can't do it, but I'm still going to do it. - M. C. Escher
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