Four greys of the same hair.

[claudiasharon]

I'm trying to find a tutorial on linking all four hair colors (black, blonde, brown and red) to just one grey so I don't get four greys showing up in CAS. The only thing I've been able to find is tutorial (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=307555) related to an outdated tool for SimPE (i.e. the Color Binning Tool).

If I just change the family id to all match the black hair's, will the other colors use the grey (if it's in the black hair file)? And if the grey is separate, how do I link the other colors to it?

I have all my hair colors binned already, so I don't need to do that again (and they match the right eyebrows too).

I'm also trying to understand what txtr files to delete for the ages that I don't need the hairs for, but the tutorial I found was for clothing and I couldn't figure out how to apply that to the hair (since the hair doesn't say the ages they're for in the txtr files).

EDIT: Also, is there a better program out there to compress file size? The ones everybody seems to recommend do not actually compress the files for me, even though some of them are really big and were never compressorized before. I don't know if I should try using it on another OS or what.

This post is sort of solved, as in, I got the color binning tool to work right, but since I'm assuming from what I've read that it's not really compatible with the latest SimPE, I'd really rather learn how to go in and manually do it myself so my game doesn't get borked. Using the tool, I thought it was supposed to link all the hairstyles together, like if you have the hair as a teen and grow up, it'll be the same hairstyle that you had before. I didn't test it in my game, only in Bodyshop so I don't know if Bodyshop wouldn't show whether the files are linked or not.

When I tried to manually delete the txtr files, I didn't know my Young Adult shared textures with my Elder because the hair for YA was gone in Bodyshop. But the Elder and Adult hairs were fine. So I tried using the color binning tool again and that worked perfectly, except for when you click on one Sim in Bodyshop at one age group, then go to the next age group up (or down) the hairstyle changes to a straight long hair that I think is from the Base Game. Maybe it's just a Bodyshop thing and CAS would be a better tester or even in game. I checked the family id line and they're all the same, so I don't know why it's doing that.

[Quinctia]

Without seeing the file after you modified it, it's hard to tell you exactly what's the problem. Most hairs (assuming the original creator wasn't absolutely batty when putting them together) tend to share textures among all the ages. Deleting textures out of the package is usually unnecessary, unless you are intending to eliminate elder gray or perhaps an age unused by the mesh (toddler is a good culprit here). And, if you did delete the texture linked to the YA age, chances are you'd be taking out a texture that's used in all the non-elder ages, anyway.

So...if the elder texture was a gray, and that was all you deleted, then that should not have affected the YA hair in any way. I have, in the past, downloaded a hair or two where the creator didn't make the hair available to the YA for some reason I can't comprehend. I'd maybe grab the unmodified file and see if YA shows up in Bodyshop with that version. If it doesn't, you know it's nothing you did, and there's a way to change that in the file.

If it does show up, it is probably something you accidentally tweaked in SimPE, and fixing it shouldn't be too bad--easiest thing to do would be just to rebin. What issues were you having with the binning tool, exactly? While I can do all of this stuff manually, I have found the binning tool works quickly and easily. Especially since I always want to family recolors, delete excess elder grays, and do things like click the "hat" ticky box, where applicable.

As for compressorizing...I have found a few things out there that just didn't have much in there to compress. I think some of it has to do with image information in the textures...for instance, on the other end, the "tattoo" textures in my overlay boxes started out at the filesize for a skintone, but compressed massively because they were mostly transparent. Solid images wouldn't do that so much. Also, it's almost become par for the course, so there might be some things you download pre-compressed where the person didn't mention it in the download post.

On the wild idea that perhaps another tutorial worded differently might help with the binning thing, here's (http://rikkulidea.livejournal.com/22644.html#cutid1) the one I wrote...though I don't think the general gist is much different than the one you already looked at.

[claudiasharon]

Well, I figured since the Coloring Binning Tool is outdated compared to SimPE's latest version, it's probably not a good idea to use the two together (I think that tool is unsupported now too). But it has worked for me, most of the time. Right now though, for some reason, I can't get it to fix a couple of hairs for me. They have grey textures, but one is showing up as blonde in the grey bin and the other as red. I tried using the tool again because last time it fixed whatever I did wrong the first time with other hairs, but now I can't find where the file saved to. I tell it to save to the desktop but it was saving it to SimPE's folder before, now it's no longer saving in that folder nor is it saving to where I tell it to save. When I do a search for it on my computer, it shows it as one file that when opened up in SimPE is just one of the colors, not all five. Another file that I found my computer shows up in the search but when I click it, it tells me it's looking for it. Then I tried opening up the folder it was supposed to be in, and it took me to some temp folder with a bunch of shortcuts in it.

I think I'm going to try to redownload the hair again and use the tool to fix them again. Maybe I've fixed them too many times? I dunno.

It seems that if the creator and the family numbers match in each package they're related to, the greys are binned correctly and don't show up multiple times and the hairs are linked so the child can grow up into teen with the same hair. Though there might be other factors I'm missing, as right now one of the hairs I fixed with the tool that was showing up with four greys now shows up as a copy of an EA hair in the grey bin, but is fine in the rest of the color bins.

I went through the file with the grey and one of the numbers (either creator or family) didn't match all the other ones so I changed it. I haven't tested to see if it fixed it yet, I trying to fix the other two hairs that were showing up wrong in the grey bin which I seemed to have borked somehow.

Maybe if I restart my computer the color binning tool will magically start working right again. Or I could reinstall it. I tried restarting SimPE but that didn't fix it's weird saving files in the wrong place/not at all thing it's just started doing.

The Compressorizer that everybody says to use I tried once and it worked but then I think I stopped playing the Sims so I got rid of it. Then when I got back into the Sims, I tried using it again but it wouldn't work for me. And I have a lot of files to try. Some seem to be obviously in need of being compressed, but not a single one will be compressed. Even my own files that I make, I'm assuming don't automatically get compressed by Bodyshop or SimPE which is why the Compressorizer exists, are unable to be compressed. And some of them are really big. I wish I could find an alternative (I tried different Compressorizers and neither compressed any files). So I guess my 3 GB downloads folder will stay at 3 GBs until I decide to go on a custom content deleting spree to clean up stuff I don't use. Which I actually just did, so that won't happen again for a while.

[Quinctia]

I don't know if I'm running the absolutely latest version of SimPE (I only run up to Seasons in my game), but I'm running a .72 version, which is a bit ahead of the versions listed at Theo's site for the plugin, without any issue. I don't think the game has really changed anything to do with hair package files between those versions of SimPE, so as long as the SimPE program loads the plugin...it should be okay.

I don't know if this is related to your saving issue, but this was listed under known bugs: "If you choose to keep the original filenames, you should turn off the "Backup packages" options, or the tool will generate an error when saving the packages, and the output may be truncated (empty)."

I seem to remember this error not occurring with earlier versions of the tool, so if you had used it a long time ago, this might be part of your problem.

I'm not sure where your saving problems are coming up. When using the binning tool? Because if you don't have the "Rename Files" option checked, and you aren't saving the binned colors as one package, your original files are just overwritten. No chance to choose a location.

Is it a SimPE thing? I don't think there's a way to set a default save folder (like with some image programs), though I could be wrong, but you can choose a new location if you choose the "Save As" option when saving a file.

As for the Compressorizor, I don't know if you've changed computers or done a system restore or anything since the last time you were playing sims, but you do have the NET framework 1.1 installed, right? SimPE requires NET framework 2.0, and I'm not sure if that one covers everything that needs 1.1, or if you have to have both. Also, I personally use the self-contained version that doesn't require an installer. If you've installed yours, I suppose it's possible that it became corrupted.

If you'd like, I could take a look at the hair you're trying to bin, too. I rebin every hair that hits my game, and I've even notified a couple of creators if I've found some strange file bloat. It hasn't happened often, but it's entirely possible there is just something a bit odd about that particular hair.

[claudiasharon]

Well I wasn't having trouble with the binning tool at first, just the last couple of times I've tried to use it. I haven't changed the options since I first put it it my SimPE plugins, but when I first put it in I did change them to be whatever the one tutorial I read said to have them on. Which I believe had the rename files option checked. So it worked with it checked at first, but now it doesn't seem to. I can uncheck it and see if I can make it work that way.

I did find you can use the Wardrobe Wrangler to bin hairs too. Not sure which is better to use. I didn't mind binning the hairs in SimPE by hand, but I didn't know how to link the greys and whatnot. I think I'm figuring it out though as I use these programs to do it for me.

When I was using the "save as" option for the color binning tool I was choosing it to save on my desktop, but it was still saving in the SimPE folder instead.

Yes, I have everything I need for the Compressorizor to work, and I know how to use it, so it's not like I'm doing anything wrong (that I know of), it's just not compressing anything. I tried using the self-contained version first as I prefer those over installers and when that didn't work I tried the installer but it didn't work for me either (it installed fine though).

I have been going through all my hair and fixing it, so I'm not sure which hair I was refering to when making these posts. They may be fixed now. It looks like I only have one hair right now that's not showing the grey, which is weird because it was before and I don't remember touching it and trying to fix it again so I'll have to look into why it's not showing the grey now.

I'd like to fix some eyebrows so when my sims become elders, they won't have black eyebrows when they can have grey. I hate when their hair is grey/white and their eyebrows are the color of the hair they had as adults. It makes them look funny. I already linked one set of eyebrows, but some of the eyebrows I have don't have greys so I'm trying to figure out how to make the grey eyebrows for the ones I don't have greys for. I tried doing it in Bodyshop but it didn't work.

[Phaenoh]

Pretty sure CatOfEvilGenius had something out there that was doing that (or was in the process of making it). Its not in the uploads area so search her links and threads. My hair tutorial helps you do most of the stuff the hard way so you don't have to rely on outdated tools.