How to Bin Hair Recolours Using SimPE

[HystericalParoxysm]

By default, custom hair recolours will show up in the custom (*) bin. If you would like your hair recolours (your own creations, or those created by others that you use in your own game) to show up under the four regular colours, it's relatively easy to do; these instructions explain the steps to place a hair recolour in the proper bin in SimPE. This can also be done using DatGen.

This is the hands-on way to do it, designed for people who are comfortable in SimPE, binning their own creations, and don't mind a few extra steps. This is how I bin hair. However, if you are binning your downloaded hair, many hairs at once, or you would like something easier/quicker, try the Color Binning Tool, a plugin for SimPE: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1190910

1. First, BACKUP the files you are going to be editing. Select them and copy them to somewhere else, like a folder called Backup, or something equally easy to remember, just in case you mess up.

2. Secondly, BACKUP your files. Seriously.

3. Now, open SimPE and in SimPE, open the .package file for the hair recolour you would like to properly bin.

4. Often, one is binning a bunch of hair at once, and it can be confusing to remember which file is for which colour. However, you can take a glance at the textures in the recolour package by clicking on the Texture Image (TXTR) entry in the Resource Tree (A) and then looking at the textures contained in the file (B). Look under Plugin view to see the textures (C). If you already know what colour you intend to bin this hair recolour under, go ahead to the next step.
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial06/tutorial01-s.jpg

5. If a creator made the recolour based on a different default colour (i.e. they just exported a red version of the texture, then made their black, blonde, brown, and red versions on that), then the default colour will be wrong for all the other colours. Click on the Hair Tone XML (XHTN) in the resource tree (A), and again in the list of resources (B). Under Plugin View (C), look for the line "proxy (dtString)" (D) and change it to the desired one of the following (E):

Black: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Brown: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Blonde: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Red: 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Make sure you Commit once you've made the changes (F).
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial06/tutorial02-s.jpg

6. Now, under the Resource Tree, choose Property Set (GZPS) (A). Click on the first one listed in the list of property sets (B). Under Plugin View (C), look for the line "hairtone (dtString)" (D) and change it to the same thing you did for the eyebrows in the Hairtone XML (E).

Make sure you hit commit after you've made the changes (F).
http://www.demusedsims.com/images/tutorial06/tutorial03-s.jpg

7. Repeat Step 6 for all of the rest of the Property Sets in the file, making sure to Commit after changing each one.

8. For the elder Property Set only (the name will have "_grey" at the end) change the hairtone to:

00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

9. File - Save to save your changes to the file.

10. Move your modified file into your SavedSims or Downloads folder and test to make sure it's working correctly in Body Shop and/or the game.

[RaynePoodle]

Okay, call me stupid... but I have no idea how to find all the files I want to move from the correct hair bins to the custom bin... and how to delete certain hair for certain ages, because they have the hair already. Melodie9 made the adult hair available to toddlers and children. but it also shows up in the adult bins too... and I don't want this... because the hair was accessable to them already... *so frustrated* I hope I am being clear in what I am trying to say....if I am not, feel free to yell at me.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Rayne... If you want to put them in the custom bin instead of the correct genetic colours (i.e. do the exact opposite of what this is showing), the easiest way to do that is to just make a new recolour of it in Body Shop and just Import to Game as-is - it'll create a duplicate recolour, but you can then remove the original recolour and have your new one in the place you want. If you can't find the original recolour, try scanning your Downloads folder with Clean Installer - it'll show you the texture images which can help in figuring out what's what.

Alternately, if you want to use SimPE to do it and apply it to the existing recolour files, you'll have to find them in your downloads, open the files, and then look under the Hairtone XML. There should be only one. Find the "family" value and copy it. Open the first Property Set (there will be one for each age) and find the "hairtone" line. Paste the "family" value from the Hairtone XML over the hairtone value in the Property Set. Commit, and repeat for each Property Set in the file. Save when you've done all of them. That'll switch that binned hair back to custom.

If you plan on doing any recolours in the future of melodie9's meshes, and you want sims to grow up wearing them, don't remove the other ages or they'll age into the wrong hairstyle. But if you never really age sims from one group to another (like me - I only open the game to test stuff so nobody ever ages), you can remove the other ages by this method.

[Blackjacksims]

Does binning brows differ greatly from binning hair?
Will the brow be binned correctly if XTOL hairtone is changed to black value?

[HystericalParoxysm]

You're welcome to TRY binning brows - I haven't seen many people messing with brows. Give it a go, tell us what it did. :D

[DremeMynd]

I've been experimenting with binning eyebrows and this is what I've found:

The brow IS binned correctly if XTOL hairtone is changed to the desired hair color value.

If you have a custom browshape with all 5 regular colors, if the XTOL family is the same in all the packages, they will switch properly as you change the sim's haircolor.

If you want to bin an eyebrow with a custom haircolor, you need to copy the hairtone value from the hair's property set, and use it in the hair's XHTN proxy field. You also need to use the same value in the brow's XTOL hairtone field.

For all possible brow choices on your elder sims, you need to make sure the grey property set hairtone field for your custom hair is set to the grey hairtone value. This assumes your custom hair turns grey(white) when your sim becomes an elder.

Every color of your color binned brows will populate the grey brow bin with a copy of the brow if you use the packages as they default from the body shop. In order to stop this I did two things. First I made a copy of one of the colored packages and named it "grey". Next I deleted some of the resources in each of the packages. In the colored packages I deleted the texture overlay(XTOL) texture image(TXTR) and material definition(TXMT) for the male and female grey brows, leaving all the colored brows. In the grey package I deleted the same resources for all the colored brows, leaving only the two grey ones. This worked for me.

The last thing I want to note is that if you want to make a recolor of one (or all) of the maxis default eyebrows to match your custom haircolor, and you want it binned properly for your custom hair, and to switch properly when you change hair colors, then you need to use these family values in the brows (I have all the add on packs - I don't know if this changes)

BROWS:
browbushy e82d96e8-780c-472f-a53b-085c053676cf
browcombed 32782ccb-6e46-4168-948c-262b0bc88d7f
browtweased 3a3869f3-6f47-400f-b7b6-bb5729477f52

I found these values in this file:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Catalog\Skins\Skins.package - you can find hairstyle, brow, facial hair families there, in the XTOL file.

When I have more than one color of a hairstyle, I have also found that I need to remove the grey property set from all but one of the colors. I cloned and recolored some maxis hair, put the correct family on it (so it is associated with the hair it was cloned from) and then deleted the grey property set and they worked great - pulling the grey version of the style from the maxis default.

-------------------------

Well - I tested this with ugly blue hair (2 female, 1 male) and brows (1 custom, 1 maxis recolor) in bodyshop. They all use the same hairtone value. I can make sims with it in bodyshop - and import them into the game. They show up fine, play fine, and when they have babies, they have blue haired babies which cycle through the two different female hair styles if they're girls. Because the custom hair is dominant, the blue hair shows up whether they mate with someone with blue hair or not. It also carries a recessive behind it properly.

The problem is that I don't see the hair in the sim creation utility of the game itself. Since I make my sims in BodyShop, this won't effect me much, but it's a bummer to be fiddling in the game, and to not be able to choose your new haircolor properly.

If anyone knows why they don't show up I'd like to know.

[FaithLove13xxx]

Ugh, I am so frustrated.


I cannot do this.

How do I know which files are hair files from crazy names like 5a943ifje4_848000e8uw?
I have no idea how to do this.

[HystericalParoxysm]

Well, you have to be somewhat organized to be able to do this. When you download things, you can rename them so you know what they are. You can also open the files in SimPE to get an idea of what they are from looking around at the resources within. Clean Installer also has a way of scanning your downloads and sorting them by type, which isn't perfect, but it helps narrow things down quite a bit.

[divinebovine]

Will the renaming/editing of files affect the Sims I've already created using those files?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Renaming definitely doesn't mess anything up - rename recolours however ya like, whether or not they're already used on a sim, and it'll be fine. Just about everything can be renamed - except CEP, possibly CAS screens (not 100% sure on that one), installed lots, and certain multi-part hacks like the InSIMenator. All Body Shop content and all normal (non-hacked) objects and recolours should be able to be renamed whenever you want without screwing anything up.

Binning I don't think modifies those sims' genetics if the recolour's already used on 'em... but I don't think it messes them up either. You're not changing the actual parts of the file that the sim's info is pointing to, so it should be okay. I'd suggest trying to the binning before using any files in future, and backing stuff up if you try it on an existing sim, but I'm about 85% sure I've done it before myself and it worked okay.

[Lupusdragon]

Is there a way to remove certain an age? For example, if a hair style is only designed for YA/A/E, is there a way to remove it from the bins for T/C/T?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Yes, Lupusdragon... look through the other tutorials in this section. I believe SimplyStella created a tutorial on doing that.

[Citysim]

Wondering myself if I was to do this, when the game create random townies, is it also possible it will also pick a custom hair and not one of the maxis ones ?

[HystericalParoxysm]

Yes, Citysim, when the game randomizes townies it will pick from all your binned hair - I have one girl who always mans the coffee bars in my town who wears some big fluffy red custom pigtails I have binned. :)

[misspriscris]

I have a question. I'm trying to bin the long bob from Elau, but it will not let me save because it says the file is protected. So for anything that is protected, there is no way to get it in the correct color bin?

And thank you for this tutorial. This is so awesome!

[HystericalParoxysm]

I've never run into it saying a file is protected, misspriscris. I'd assume the file is maybe read-only. Check its properties in Windows and uncheck "Read Only" if that's checked.

[Darsky]

Hi, HP!

Great tutorial! Just what I need. I have one stupid question, though.

You mentioned renaming files. Do you mean I can go to Windows Explorer and rename them by using F2, just like any other type of renamable file?

If so, that's awesome!

Darsky
:D

[tiggerypum]

You can rename your files in your saved sims folder to anything you want, it won't change how the file works. So you can turn it from the horrible "7f8d8e85_teentop.package" to "darsky-teenhaltertop-greenandpurple.package" ;) Same for hair or whatever. Give it a good helpful descriptive name, with your name, the age, style and color in it.

[SephirothScars]

hey,
this is great it really helped alot but i have a question. (sorry if this is in the wrong place it seems to be the most hair colour oriented tutorial i can find, so again, sorry)
Iv finally finished a mesh that ive been working on for quite awhile but ive recently had to re-install my game, but having lost uni i only could install nightlife (which is what i created the new mesh in) i re-bought uni and managed to attach the mesh to the YA hair but it wont recolour, its just stays blonde. Is there anything i can do?

thanks in advance :)

[goatfarmer03]

Thanks for the tutorial. I am in process of binning all my hair into its correct color. If you have NL or OFB you can subfolder them in Downloads as well. I have 2 Separate Folders for Men and for Women. Then I have it separated into the 4 base colors and an other folder. The mesh goes in the main "Men" or "Women" folder and the colors go where they are supposed to.
It is a very long process if you have lots of hair and i am an obsessive hair collector so i have hundreds of Meshes (yes just meshes not even including textures).
I am also in process of logging every Hair mesh i have installed to possibly make a "Master Hair Mesh Text File". Which i can post on websites for others. So wish me luck.

[NixNivis]

THANK YOU for this! It always irks me when hair I've downloaded ends up in the * bin even though it's a "real" colour - but thanks to you, from now I can bin it myself before I put it in my game. Yay! :D

[moppetliz]

Brilliant tutorial!

After a massive crash and the ensuing rebuild of my Downloads folder, I decided to give binning a try. I was intimidated at first but have just binned my first hair following your tutorial (tested in BodyShop and it's exactly where it should be now, whoot!). I think it took me all of four minutes to do my first one? And that was going extra slowly and reading each step two or three times before touching anything.

It may be time-consuming to go through all my hairs to be binned, but I'm confident I should be able to handle it easily, thanks to this tutorial. Tossing may thanks and roses in your general direction!

Cheers,
Liz

[s00]

Thank you very much for taking the time to make this fabulous tutorial. Who knew it was that easy? I've spent this afternoon colour-binning all my custom hair, and now my sims can have many many hairstyles within their genetic hair colour! It has been a pet peeve of mine since I started downloading custom content, so I'm very glad to have been able to fix it. Many many thanks again.

[Saraswati5]

HP, thank you so much.. I've been being a big, fat chicken when it comes to doing this and this is just not that hard.. Thank you for making such a lovely easy tute so I could get through this.

Kath
http://www.sublimesims.net/

[poke_simmie_]

I've been looking for a tutorial for hair-binning for ages, and this is great! Thank you so much!

[schuldig_seiben]

Thanks very much - this tutorial is very clear and helpful.
However, I was wondering - when I finish binning a file, another file appears in the same folder, with the same name, but with a '.bak' at the end. Is this normal? :blink: If so, is it important - can I delete one? If I want to upload the hair, do I upload the .package or the .bak? Thanks in advance :)

[adammc80]

After I have extracted hair to the game, where does it go? I have looked all through the downloads and can't find it. The only place I can find it is in the Projects folder, and it doesn't work through there.

[HystericalParoxysm]

schuldig - You would upload the .package. The .bak files are created by SimPE as a backup of your previous version when you save. So if you found that you'd screwed something up in binning somehow, you could delete the .package file, rename that .bak to .package, and have your old file. Assuming your stuff works right, though, you can just delete the .bak files safely.

adammc80 - It goes into SavedSims, containing your project name, with a string of random numbers and letters at the front. But that's not really what this tutorial is about. ;)

[schuldig_seiben]

:) Thanks very much for answering. I got a little worried when I didn't see .bak files mentioned anywhere in the tutorial, but that's probably because it's basic knowledge and I'm a newbie at using SimPE ^^;

[adammc80]

Sorry, I was just trying to figure out where they were so I could bin them correctly with the tool. Thank you.

[mithrril]

I'm a little confused about this one part:

Now, under the Resource Tree, choose Property Set (GZPS) (A). Click on the first one listed in the list of property sets (B). Under Plugin View (C), look for the line "hairtone (dtString)" (D) and change it to the same thing you did for the eyebrows in the Hairtone XML (E).

What am I changing this too? I didn't see anything about eyebrows previously and so I'm confused where it says you change it to the same thing you did for the eyebrows... Could someone clarify? I've been trying to figure out a way to this forever, so I'm really happy about this tutorial. Thanks!

[tiggerypum]

mithrril, you might also just look at this, it'll bin things for you using simpe automatically: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1190910

[mithrril]

Thanks much! I'll check it out. :)

[The_Simlander]

Thank you so much! This will be great for re-binning all the hair I got from www.rosesims2.net - I hate when the eyebrows are the wrong colour!

[tsp1414]

Hi, I'm wondering if is that is possilbe to bin stubble or beards/mustache without using color binning tool?

Thank you.

[MonoChaos]

I followed this tutorial and I got my hair in the right bin but they do not form a set so when I switch hair colors it does not keep the same style but switches to a maxis style. Did I do something wrong? How do I get the styles into a set?

[darcee]

Thank you! Great tutorial!

[earth2luna]

Hi HP. I have a weird problem. I thought who better to ask then you!

My custom hair toggles back to a black color in Seasons, no matter what I do, and I've tried everything.
I specifically change "binned" hairs to custom, if they're not already.
I didn't touch the clothing/hair tool, so it's not that.

I know you can assign hairstyles for different outfits, etc.. But I don't want that. I want to pick a custom hair on-the-spot.

Normally I wouldn't care, but her Sim hubby is attracted to custom hair, and their normal 3-bolt attraction has become a 2!

Sorry, I had a mild stroke and I get confused at times.
Could you help me understand this, and what I can do to fix it?

Thank you for your consideration.

[tiggerypum]

I am not sure how you tried to 'undo' the binning of the hair but there is an easy way, except that they're now broken now. I hope you made backups before trying to change things.

Remove your edited broken hairs. Put back in the binned ones.

Go into bodyshop and just make new projects from whatever hairs you want custom. They'll automatically be custom. Import into your game. Taa Daa.

[earth2luna]

Hi tiggerypum.

I have already made them custom, by going into bodyshop and making new projects. So how can they ALL be broken? I have approx. twenty hairs I made custom that way.
Every single one of them automatically toggle back to a black hair color.

I can't pin-point the axact moment this happened, but it seems I already had Seasons installed, at that point.

Do you think a outfit made for Seasons, from peggysims may have caused something like this?
I correct my Sims hair traits back to custom using simPE, go into my game, change her clothes, and wham! Regular hair is back again.

Do you think I should bodyshop them again? I am so frustrated.

Thank you so much, for taking the time to help.

[tiggerypum]

You have a bunch of peggy hair in there? I have at least one cute peggy hair that is improperly 'binned' - it simply does not transition to elder or even show up for elder in my game. I tried writing to her about it and I got back a form letter, tried writing again and it's clear she doesn't understand English well enough to handle bug reports.

Frankly, I would put $$ on you having one or more busted hairs in there. I have no idea how peggy constructs her stuff, or if one could create a broken body mesh that might break hair meshes, that seems less likely. Is this only happening with that sim with that outfit? If so it's probably the outfit. But I do remember at least once someone having a bad hair file that damaged how other hairs displayed also. It wasn't the same issue, but I certainly think it could be a bad file.

To try and track/sort things out - you will need to keep track of the sorts of things you've tried in order to find a bad file.

Before going too far - I suggest you clear out your cache files - you can delete any cache files you find in your my documents/ea games folder. Then when you start the game they will rebuild new.

Assuming you don't have any 'hair' hacks (like hide Maxis hair or some other oddity), I would try removing your downloads and saved sims folder - and then putting a few of the modded hairs into a new downloads folder (you might need to also put an object in there for the game to recognize that there are custom things - I had a problem with that once that I forgot to document). Then go test them.

Now it could be if you had a bad file that was effecting those hairs that your recolors are just bad - but in that case I have no idea how we'd track that down. In general the technique for finding a bad file is remove half your downloads, check for the error, then take those out and put the other half in and check for the error. Assuming only one group had the error, you then go back to that group and split it again, keeping track of the results for each round of testing until you find the bad one. (there's entire directions for finding bad downloads in the game help area)

[Fuu]

wow, I'm way late on this, but... thanks so much :) This was actually a little easier for me to do than to figure out the colour binning tool. Crazy! But seriously, this was a big help, I have such a ridiculous amount of downloads, and I'm only recently figuring out how to recat. custom clothes, and now I know how to do the hair as well thanks to you :)

[Midnight Voyager]

I have a question. A burning question, as I'm trying to bin all my hair now. I'm using the body shop to figure out what hair I need to bin. Problem is, this does not tell me the file names. Is there any quick way to find the file names of hairstyles that are not binned?

[Caemi]

Have you tried pressing Ctr + Shift + C and, typing "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true," and then pressing Shift + N(or maybe it was Ctrl + N) while in Create A Family mode? I'm not sure if it'll help you much, but it did pop up with a bunch of internal information when mousing over the images.

I also have a question myself. Granted, this is an old tutorial, but I don't think it's outdated so I think the problem lies on my end. The binning works marvelously, but my question is, why don't the preview thumbnails seem to work in Create A Family mode?

Here's an example of one of xmsims hairs that though I haven't binned myself, am experiencing the exact same problem.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/8499/untitledfs6.png

And apologies of this doesn't belong here. :(

[crackradio]

is there any way besides BodyShop to bin them into the custom hair? I'd like to move some pinks that are binned red, whites that are binned blonde, etc.

[cannabeans]

Thanks! This was so very extremely helpful. I just used SimPE for the very first time yesterday. I'm so proud of myself! :P

[AlloSim]

This is the best hair binning tutorial I've found! I thank you (x5,000000) for doing this and I recommend this for people who are just bored with doing recolours of hair and them ending up in the custom bin. Thanks!

[Phaenoh]

The tutorial states that this gives us 4 grays instead of 1, is there anyway to link them all to the same gray so we don't have 4 identical grays. Like how maxis does it with just one?

[spikesminx]

hey, this is great, thanks! Is there a way to re-bin already binned hair? Some hair makers put blond in brown, red in blond, brown in black etc. I'm tired of pink haired townies with red eyebrows, lol. It frustrates me so much. If there is a tutorial, I'd like to know =)

[the evil writer]

Is there a way to figure out from the property set if a hair color is binned or not? I spent a lot of time this fall fixing hairs with the colorbin plug-in, but my computer melted down and I lost all my fixed hair. I can't stand the idea of doing it all over again when they might not all need binning.

[tiggerypum]

spikesminx, yes, you can rebin hair with this method. Although ones you want to be unique and not picked up by townies, you can just recolor in bodyshop and then toss the original - like for your pink that's binned red.

the evil writer - if you look at the codes, the 4 main hair colors have very recognizable codes, so uhm yes.

[strangerous]

Great tutorial, thanks a ton, HP!

A question (which should be fairly obvious, but I want to make sure): if I have a recolor that's the same colour for elders as it is for the other ages, should I give the xxx_grey property set the same hairtone as I give the other property sets? :)

Edit: I just came to a file with several different colours in the texture images (black, gray, blonde and either dark blonde or light brown). The package name ends in "_brown", but the different texture colours confuse me. Is there any way to tell which is the right one through SimPE, or should I leave that file be for now and check which colour it really is in CAS! later on?

[amberella]

Thank you!!! I tried using Theo's bin tool but for some reason it did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to categorize my hair. I had one nice package, but it was still all under the "custom" tab in BodyShop. I tried for several hours using various problem isolation methods, all to no avail. I'm sure it works for some people, but apparently not for me. :( Using your tutorial, though, I've corrected the hairtones manually in SimPE, then used the Color Binning Plugin to create one package that cements them together and eliminates any separate mesh files.

ONE QUESTION: This is picky, but I would also like to correct the feature where you can have one hairstyle selected in Bodyshop, then click another color tab and the same hair will be selected, in the new color. The Maxis hairs all do this, so I'm sure there's a property/resourceid/family/something i don't know... to do this. Any ideas?

Thanks again for the clear instructions!

[amberella]

I just answered my own question (above) by the tinkering method.

By making all the "family (dtString)" values identical, you can click between color tabs to view the same style in multiple colors. The way I did it was to just use the existing family string from the first haircolor file I opened, and copy it to notepad to keep it handy. Then, beginning with the second haircolor file opened (since they are already all the same in the first file), I replaced the family string in ALL the EXACT same places where the hairtone string needed to be replaced. That means on the initial Hair Tone XML tab, and each of the ages under the Property Set (GZPS).

Also additional tips I've discovered to enhance this process:
1. As I go through the Property Sets, if I recognize the toddler/child mesh as a copy of a default Maxis style (you can usually tell just by looking at the name), you can delete them to eliminate duplicate hairstyles on the toddler tab.

2. For styles that do not have a separate Gray color file, you can choose which other color to use (usually blond) by deleting the _grey file from the resource list as you go, leaving it in the file for the color you'd like to replace the grey, editing it's hairtone string to 00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 as indicated in the tutorial. Of course, if you have a special Gray color file, you'd just use that and eliminate the _grey Resource from each of the other color files. This differs from the steps in the tutorial here by not causing you to have all four colors available as choices for old age. If you'd like your grandma to have a pink hair option, though, you can of course do that, too. :)

I hope this helps some people as I have been researching all over the place to pull this together into a process I (and hopefully you!) can successfully use.

[amberella]

Ok One more update as I have finalized my own process and I hope that it will be of assistance to someone else who is pulling their own hair out over their poor Sim's hair.

If you are fine leaving each hair color in a separate .package file, you can use this tutorial + the method I described above of editing the family strings to associate the colors togther. Include all the colors and the mesh file in your downloads folder and you're good to go.

If you want them all in ONE package, you can use Theo's color bin plugin to create the initial package of all the colors and SKIP the process of editing the family strings as it will be done automatically. Unfortunately, the mesh doesn't seem to get packaged with the colors for me, but YEMV. I've used SimPE to manually add the mesh to the final package (right click in the right pane and choose "Add," browse to the mesh, click OK, and resave) so everything is in one place. Using his tool, remember that you can only have one gray color, so if you have other colors specified as grays, you'll be at crunch time to pick one when you create the final package.

I feel that my own method will be to create a "basic" package with a standard black/brown/blond/red/gray/favorite custom, and leave any other mid-tone recolors I reallllly love as their own entities, delete the rest.

Hope this helps.

[t2suggas]

ambrella, it's great you figured out family linking hair. The only thing to consider is only to family link one of each colour in each bin.

Also, good idea to use the family number of the first colour and use for the rest, as Bodyshop assigns unique numbers, so they won't clash with anybody elses.

Thanks Phaenoh for this information, which I got from here (http://modthesims2.com/member/showthread.php?t=252950)

[tamlfra]

I see it's been a bit since this thread had questions, so I hope someone can help me too... I'm brand new to recoloring Maxis hairs, and SimPe. I decided to recolor a hat in 3 colors, in all the 4 basic hair colors.

The hat is to match a suit, and the suit only comes for YA and adults, so that's all I need the hat recolored for too.

So I did this tut with the new Free Time version of SimPe, and I did exactly as told. Only I also deleted the uneeded ages, (toddler, child, teen, and elder), and changed the rest.

Yet when I go into bodyshop, they are all still under the *, even though when I look at them in SimPe, they have the correct string #.

Did I mess up by deleting the elder? Or what?.... Please help a nooB. lol

[Aligeth]

The two main things that must be changed are:

Hairtone XML - the proxy (dtString) value

Then under Property Set, for each age you must go in and apply that very same value to the hairtone (dtString) line, EXCEPT for elder which must have value applied of 00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.

If you have done that just right, and still have them under *, maybe there is some issue with deleting elder, since I have yet to ever have any luck getting elder to go away, and end up using the method of hiding the elder version if it is unwanted or is showing up a total of 4-5 times.

[tamlfra]

Well, I deleted all the originals I'd made, and redid them. This time, I didn't delete the elder state... I'm recoloring a base game hat

So I now have under property set, 6 files... 2 YA, 2 adult, and 2 elder (1 hat, 1 hair?)

I did this tutorial to the T, commited all changes, and saved as...

Yet nothing shows in BS correct.

So I have tried in everyway I can I know of, and am at a total loss.... I'm so frustrated, I could cry.. Childish, perhaps, but real.

Is there some kind soul willing to one on one with me? I want to know what I'm doing wrong, so I can do this on my own, and enjoy it! As of now, it seems like the programs aren't even registering my changes..

I know the codes for Hairtone XML - the proxy (dtString) value, and Property Set hairtone (dtString) are correct.. But either I have bad luck with SimPe, (at which I am a nooB), or I'm missing something.

And all the stages I thought I'd deleted... they are still there in BS.

I have tried to make these recolors over 15 times in the last two days, and am still at square one.

I have some shots of the newest attempt on this, so hopefully someone can see where (if) I went wrong..

Thanks again...


PS: Also, I have tried the ColorBinning tool, yet it doesn't give me a chance to overwrite a file.. When I click save, it all dissapears from the screen, and makes no changes to the file.. All this crap has made me gain a true respect for the creators who dabble in hair! lol

[Aligeth]

From your explaination and your set of screenshots, I'm not seeing a single obvious or even not so obvious thing that you've not done correctly.

So, to double check if it was something to do with hats with hairs, I did one up quickly myself, then binned it. It went just where it should have, into the black hairs bin.

So...I'm so sorry to say I'm stumped. If you'd like to attach your package file, I'd be happy to have a look at it, though. Maybe its something so simple that isn't being noticed.

Just don't cry!

[tamlfra]

LOL, already past the cry stage!

I also tried a non hat hair, and still no luck....

I've attatched 2 zips here... Both black hair, one is the hat in green, and that's the file I've already ran through SimPe, to no avail. The other is the hat in pink, and I took that exactly as BS spits it out...

On one hand, I hope you can get it to work fine, but on the other, that'll stink for me! lol

But thank you so much, I really do appreciate it... :lovestruc

[Aligeth]

I could just be suffering from tired eyes, but those look to be the files from your Projects folder instead of just the package file from your Saved Sims folder.

One other thing to check on, is your version of SimPE up to date. Not so likely that would cause this, but its always a good idea to update it, at least when you have a recently new expansion pack for your game that might need it.

[Aligeth]

Yeah, hey...is there some chance that when you tried to bin these hat/hairs, that instead of opening the file from SimPE out of your Saved Sims folder, that you instead opened and edited the file thats in your Projects folder?

[tamlfra]

Oh no, can it be as simple as that?? :cry: :lol:

All I saw was get the file from where you saved it... I thought that was the spot! Told ya I'm a nooB!!!! I'll retry them from the other location... I would have never thought the game saved hair under savedsims.... :wtf:


OK, you rock!! I tested it, and that was the issue.... So bad, lol! THANK YOU!!!!

[Aligeth]

Yep! Stuff that you have finished and imported to game from BodyShop get sent into the Saved Sims folder. Also if you've downloaded stuff you want to bin, or have made meshes, those are in your Downloads folder.

Your saved sims folder files will start out with a goofy long gibberish number-letter combo thing attached to the front of the name..you can safely rename it to get rid of that junk to any name you like.

[indigomermaid]

I'm so happy that someone's realised how irritating it is to have all your nice custom hair in the custom bin.

[xurui7131893]

thanx very much,it's so helpful,when i creat a new hair,i would like to classify to the correct group!

[Tea Leaf]

I have 1 question
I did all the steps in simpe, but when i got to step 10
"10. Move your modified file into your SavedSims or Downloads folder and test to make sure it's working correctly in Body Shop and/or the game."
I had no idea where to find the modified file
where do you find it?

[icedmango]

do I need to change the elderly property set to 00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000?

because when I do change for all hairshades, it shows the grey hairrecolor for all colors? I have in bs in the grey section the hairstyle 10 times in grey color. How can I get rid of this?

[Dj Music]

Wow! Thank you so much for this wonderful tutorial! I was doing the Bon Voyage hair with the leaves in it, Because I'd done some recolors of it, And it worked perfectly! Thank you so much!

[AyameS]

I can no longer use Theo's color binning tool since it hasn't been updated and so SimPE no longer supports it. I had color binned some files a long time ago using Theo's tool. They got deleted and now I'm really irritated.

So I have a request: Can someone please post a tutorial (step by step) on color binning eyebrows, beards, and stubble? Please?

[taureanbeauty81]

Thanks so much for this! I finally decided to try my hand at recoloring Maxis hairs, just because they look too fake (and because I came across an awesome tutorial for hand painting hair). The hair isn't that great, but not bad for a first attempt! I followed this tutorial and got it right the first time, though I did have major complications with SimPe. I couldn't find the area where step B comes into play. So I uninstalled....twice, deleted folders, restarted my computer, and then I noticed the reset layout button...which set it back to default, and voila! Whew! What a headache...heh.

[Inge Jones]

Sorry for replying so late, but people with AyameS' complaint are still able to go to Theo's site and obtain the plugins and support there. The SimPE developer(s?) stopped distributing the plugins with SimPE because they were unable to support them. This does not mean Theo cannot. :)

[heaven]

I am going insane! I recolored one of the hairstyles I found on XM because all of the normal colors had little tiaras and stuff but the custom colors (silver, green, blue) all were without the extra tiara. So I recolored the silver to have 4 "normal" colors. They all appeared in the custom bin. I HATE having regular colored in the custom folder and have been trying forever to figure it out.

I tried the Theo's Color Binning...nothing. I tried doing this manually with SimPE using my recolored package files in the Projects folder and then moving those files into my downloads...nothing. I have no idea what I am doing wrong. No matter what I do, it will not put these recolors in their proper bins. I'm about to give up and just deal with having to search for the colors in customs because I am so frustrated.

Is there anyone who can help me?!?!?

[Kairin]

This is a very informative tutorial, but how do you do this on a Macintosh computer? You just show how to do it on a PC. When I downloaded SimPE, my computer was unable to compress it. No system opened. Also, when I attempted to download that SimPE file, there was no SimPE folder. Macintoshes don't have that "C://Documents/Package..." thing that PCs have. I'd like to know how to bin because, even though most creators bin their creations on their own, this one creator, whose hair styles, I adore does not, and I'd like to have her hairs binned properly instead of simply staying in the "Custom Content" bin. Is there a special download SimPE for the Macintosh?
Thanks in advance. I apologize if this doesn't meet the rules.

[HaphazardSim]

Worked like a charm, thank you.

[Sango_Uchiha]

Okay, I'm having a problem. When I first tried this it worked perfectly. Now that I'm trying the second time, when I open the file in SimPe, I get the resource tree, but when I click on one of them, nothing shows up! Did I do something wrong?

[ScorpioMaurus]

I can no longer use Theo's color binning tool since it hasn't been updated and so SimPE no longer supports it. I had color binned some files a long time ago using Theo's tool.


I tried the Theo's Color Binning...nothing. I tried doing this manually with SimPE using my recolored package files in the Projects folder and then moving those files into my downloads...nothing. I have no idea what I am doing wrong. No matter what I do, it will not put these recolors in their proper bins. I'm about to give up and just deal with having to search for the colors in customs because I am so frustrated.

Is there anyone who can help me?!?!?

I'm a little confused as to why people are having any trouble at all, I use the newest SimPE 73.44 QA with Theo's Binning tool made for SimPE 6.0 and I've never had a problem. Is it Theo's newer 6.3 tool that people are having an issue with?

[alfalfa]

Without using the Theo binning tool, how can I know that a custom hairstyle with a hat is actually registered as being a hat hairstyle in the game?

[Sadi Kalen]

Thanks so much for this! Now I can bin all my new recolours, yay! :D

[katiejesse8]

I am very new at this although I have used SimPE to organize clothes and made a few hiders. I am trying to organize the hair to the right bins and ages because for some reason all ages have everything. I don't want toddlers,teens and adults to have grey hair nor the elders to have all the colors available. The hair bin is a mess. Will I be able to sort it all the same way one would for the clothes (sort of?) I just want what I have to be organized. I have no idea how to make or recolor anything. Thanks, KJ

[Mossnose40]

Wonderfull tutorial, thanks ^_^

[Illirey]

I need some Help here. I've followed this Guide and Windkeeper's Guide of how to do this Manually ( more or less the same guide, but still), and have tried 2 Binning Tools, the SimPe Color Binning Plugin and CatOfEvilGenius Quick Easy Hair/EyeBrow/Eye/Beard binner. SimPe claim it's Been Binned; The Hairtone StringDT shows the Brown Code ( I made a Brown Recolor of the Maxis Cap, and wanted it to be Genetically correct), the XHTN's named BROWN and even the Binning Tools claim it's Brown, but it is Still in the Custom Color Bin. I've also Redone the File ( meaning made a new file from the Maxis Cap, copied the Textures and Rebinned it, then installed it with the Clean Installer), but got the same Result. Do You have any Idea of what I should do ? ( I've made a Thread in which You can see a photo from the Cap and the Bin its in in BodyShop, and A Rar File with the hair in, in case if You'd want to take a look at it Yourself).

Thanks in Before hand.

[Illirey]

I am very new at this although I have used SimPE to organize clothes and made a few hiders. I am trying to organize the hair to the right bins and ages because for some reason all ages have everything. I don't want toddlers,teens and adults to have grey hair nor the elders to have all the colors available. The hair bin is a mess. Will I be able to sort it all the same way one would for the clothes (sort of?) I just want what I have to be organized. I have no idea how to make or recolor anything. Thanks, KJ

Im not Sure it's the same thing. Hair, Eyes and Skins all have Genetics, which probarly matters in this case. You can read more in Guide's like Making Object recolours and such. Recolours of Objects are easier, they'll be like the Base Recolours that Comes with the Mesh itself, so You wont even need to touch them more once You've made them in the SimPe Object Workshop and installed it with the Clean Installer. I've made plenty of Car Recolours and they've been problem free. You make Cloth-recolours in BodyShop, and they'll end up in the same Bin as the Mesh You made it from, Plus, in Bodyshop, the Texture will be auto-extracted into a Folder in the
"Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Projects", so you'll just need to open it in a Paint Program ( Do Not chance the ones Name Alpha, they are Mesh Related!), edit it and then save it, open "Body Shop" ( you can actually leave it on while editing the Texture, it won't affect Anything!) and click "Import to the Game". You won't even need to Install it. If You don't want some Ages to have that clothing, You can Remove all their Textures Images before Importing the Textures to the game ( remove their Alpha's aswell). Toddlers Textures will start with PM, Children CM, Teen TM, Young Adults YM, Adult AM and Elder EM.

Sorry if I explain Blurry, I can send some links to Good Guides if You'd like (unless You've allready figured things out) :)

[telefen]

I just followed this tutorial& it seems easy but, for some reason it didn't work for me. I have a hair that i've cleaned up the extra colors on& a few ages so, I'm left with af,ef,tf. AS you said the creator in this case had used blond to create all other colors so, I first checked the texture& all the proxy values do match to the numbers you had written so, it looked like there was nothing else to do but,the hair was still not binned, so, I try to change the name from blond to the corresponding texture colors coommited&save. Still same problem in bodyshop- What is it that's wrong with this hair as when I looked at a properly binned hair the proxy values looked the same as you mentioned just like this one. basically all the proxy values did match the corresponding texture colors before I did anything but the hair was not binned. So, what else can be wrong?

[DoReMiFaSoLaTiDo]

I'm a little confused about this one part:

"Now, under the Resource Tree, choose Property Set (GZPS) (A). Click on the first one listed in the list of property sets (B). Under Plugin View (C), look for the line "hairtone (dtString)" (D) and change it to the same thing you did for the eyebrows in the Hairtone XML (E). "

What am I changing this too? I didn't see anything about eyebrows previously and so I'm confused where it says you change it to the same thing you did for the eyebrows... Could someone clarify? I've been trying to figure out a way to this forever, so I'm really happy about this tutorial. Thanks!

I am very confused as well.

[HugeLunatic]

Maybe try a program dedicated to binning hair instead?

http://www.modthesims.info/d/434016

[DoReMiFaSoLaTiDo]

Oh, there's another one that actually works?

[jbeach34]

I know this is an old post, but I need some help please!
I have a single hair that I've created for a specific sim. Well, I've managed to get it binned and stuff, and I thought it was all good! Well, the sim got pregnant and when wearing her maternity clothes, she reverts to some maxis/yucky hair!
What exactly do I need to do to get this hair to continue reading properly even if she's pregnant?
Thanks HugeLunatic!

[HugeLunatic]

You'll want to edit the category in the GZPS to include maternity.

GZPS

[jbeach34]

Thanks HL, but I'm still not understanding what it is I need to do...? Your link was just a resource of valuable info, but I didn't see a single thing about maternity, let-alone maternity AND hair! ???

Take that back, upon closer inspection ( ;) ), I DO see the pregnant category for clothing (which I AM familiar with!), but is it also the same thing for hair?

And thank you for your quick reply! AND this great tute!!!

[HugeLunatic]

Yea, the GZPS is for both hair and clothing. The hair will be available in those clothing categories if the value is set correctly.

[jbeach34]

OK! Thanks! Next time I have the game down, I'll fiddle around with it again! ;)