Tiggerypum and I were discussing the confusion over age conversion on the other tutorial thread here, so I made this for you all in the hope that it will clear some things up. Please note that the only numbers I give you here are for conversions among Young Adults, Adults, and Elders, as these are the only conversions that will work without making entirely new meshes. Please don't ask about converting Children or Teens - it simply won't work.

This tutorial is designed to take you through age conversions step-by-step. You should have some experience with Body Shop already, so we’re skipping pictures for the first few steps. You fire up Body Shop, start a new project, pick the outfit, export it with a distinctive filename you’ll be able to find in Saved Sims, and then Import to game without changing anything. After you do this you will see, as in this image, that the outfit shows up twice in the same age group. Since this outfit is custom to start, you see both on the same screen. If you use a Maxis item, the outfit will show up at the beginning as custom as well as in its regular spot in Body Shop. When this is done, quit Body Shop.


From your start menu, go into My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/SavedSims.


If you have a lot of custom content, “Search” will come in very handy. And here you see why you gave your outfit a distinctive name.


Keep in mind, you need to have SimPE already installed so that when you double-click on the file name, it opens it in SimPE so you can edit it.

As soon as you double-click, this is the screen you will see. We’re going to be playing with only one little piece. You want to double click on “Property Set” from the top left list, then click the “Plugin View” tab below.



You will see a whole list now on the left. Click on age, and the numbers you need to change show up on the right. For adult, the number will be 0x00000008. Young Adult is 0x00000040. Elder is 0x00000010. You can change the outfit so it’s for one age group, or by ending the code with 48 (for adult/young adult) or 18 (for adult/elder) or 58 (for all three).

Other age groups have different skeleton sizes, and age conversions will not work properly. Clothes that are for a smaller skeleton will result in your sim’s head floating over a sliced-open neck. Clothes that are for a larger skeleton will result in a small head being swallowed by the neckline of the clothes.


When I look at this recolor, I can see that I already had the outfit available for 48 - which means young adult and adult. So now I want to make _this_ recolor available for elders also. I'm going to change the value to 10.

Now the outfit will show up – after we do a couple more things. First, you click on the “commit” button in the lower right.


If you’ve done everything right, then you’ll get the little “changes were committed” box. Click “OK”. Don’t exit yet. Select “Save” from your File menu.

Now you’ll see a BAK file with that same filename that you just converted. That file is just a backup, and you can delete it when you are done. You should be able to fire up Body Shop and find the outfit in the new age group, and dress your sims in-game in that outfit.


And here it is as an elder outfit, as you can see in Body Shop.


Now you can go into your game and verify that it’s worked correctly. As you can see, our Young Adult, Adult, and Elder can all wear the same thing, and as long as you don’t leave out any steps, it can work for any other outfit.


In this example, I made an extra recolor just to convert that outfit to also be available for elder. If you are making a brand new recolor and would like to make it available for all ages, simply make your new recolor import it into the game and then set it to 58 - you only need one recolor file if it is your own work. (or 48 for young adult/adult or 18 for adult/elder)


ALSO, please note. Full body meshes are interchangable between ya/adult/elder - but tops and bottoms will only work for ya/adult. The elder has a different waistline and the tops/bottoms will not match other elder outfits. So elder conversion using this method is only good for full body meshes.

Editor Note: Reworked the tutorial to clear up some user confusion about BAK files and the recolor number changes. -- Tiggerypum 9/1/2006

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I needed.

This so rocks!!! Thank you!

im so :S:S:Sconfussed! how do u make clothes do u have to download somwthing? help me plz

saucyemma, go back to the top of this page where it says Tutorials for Skinning & Clothing Recolouring. Click that. Read Faylen's clothing recolouring tutorials, starting with the first one. Explains what you need (Body Shop and a graphics editing program like Photoshop) and what to do.

Faylen, I found a downloaded package where someone has used the number 58 to include young adult, adult and elder in the one package and wondered if you've tried it out. otherwise do you need to download two packages with 18 and 48 for YA/A/E.

You know, this absolutely should not work. But it does. Go figure. I tested it, and the outfit showed in all three age groups, so go for it. Have a blast.

I tested it and it seems to work fine for me too.
cheers

I too have found this useful, especailly when needing clothing for custom meshes that I've downloaded.

Little off topic, but simialr in nature:
I also used a similar trick and started converting for Genders as well. IT starting out making some male clothes work on females, suchas suits and tuxes, then wound up as in the attached image below..

The necks don't always match up, but It's hard to notice.

Anyway, Thanks for the info!

Garand, I and many others quite notice when the necklines do not match up, which is why we do not recommend that change in this (or the gender) tutorial. Because as soon as we did, we'd have people saying 'there's something wrong at the neck'.

To change genders properly, you need to change the mesh, unless it's a child or toddler.

And 58 for young adult, adult and elder does and actually should work, it uses the same principle of adding the values together - add all of them and you get 58. The elder will not have the other body changes, but all three have the exact same neck positioning. The elders will still look a bit stooped over, because that's how maxis has them animate, but the slight changes in the body shape that happen from adult to elder won't be there (like saggy breasts, slightly wider hips, less muscular limbs). Probably for most of us, that matters little - some actually prefer their elder women to wear support bras

ok. i followed all thesteps, and in body shop it does show up (the dress). my question is this, going from an elder to an adult, should they still have the elder body in bodyshop? what i mean is, the dress still looks like it is on an elder's body, but i changed the age in the SPE to adult.

Yes, if you convert an elder clothing mesh to adult, then the adult is going to be shaped like the elder. The clothing mesh is laid over the body mesh. That's why most people would rather convert adult to elder rather than the other way around!

Perfect tutorial, thanks

I cant do it I don't get it! Can you PM me and help!?

alidana, it's all shown with pictures and arrows. If you don't get something, you need to tell WHAT you don't get. Exactly what step are you stuck on?

When I hit plugin view which is on my bottom left, not top nothings there!

You have to make sure you actually have the Property Set selected before you go to plugin view, or you won't see anything in the plugin view window.

I cant find the property set button!

It's not a button, alidana... In this pic, see the top arrow? First you'd click on the property set over in that left list, and then you need to click on it again in the right list (which there's only one item in) right above the arrow. Then when you go into Plugin View you should have something there.

My SimPE doesn't look like that! I downloaded it from http://sims.ambertation.de/

Where is that version from??

This tutorial was written a couple versions back - however, the important parts... the resource list and plugin view and all that should still work the same and be fine. You probably just have an extra set of buttons at the top, and don't have the resource filter as shown in the pics there anymore. It's still just a matter of changing the age in the property set - which is still done the exact same way.

Yeah but my SimPE doesn't look like that so I can't find the property set

If you have the most recent version of SimPE and a recolour file open in it, it will look VERY similar, in that you can select the Property Set from the resource list and look at the details of it in Plugin View.

I don't have that list at the top