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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 24th Oct 2017 at 10:34 AM Last edited by he.mf.bg : 25th Oct 2017 at 5:13 AM.
Default Hair default not displaying correctly
I'm struggling with my first attempt at making a hair default. I followed Marja's tutorial but I must have done something wrong because it's appearing like so:



I'm using my recolour of Cazy Helena to make the default. It has two problems, a) the invisible parts and b) the textures display incorrectly. I've tested the default in the other hair colours too but they all display in that red/brown colour.

I'm really not sure where to even start on fixing this or if it's even salvageable, so I thought maybe a more experienced creator would know what to do? I've uploaded the file to simfileshare in case you want to have a poke around.
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Née whiterider
retired moderator
#2 Old 24th Oct 2017 at 6:46 PM
So, there are a few problems here! I'm going to be honest - if I was in your position, I would probably start over, rather than try to untangle all these issues. But, I'll explain them anyway so you understand what's gone wrong!


I think the place to start is the TXMTs. You've got two sets of TXMTs in your default replacement file, and they all have problems.

The TXMTs which have their Instance set as 0x00000000 are suffering amnesia. They've all lost their group IDs and somehow wound up with their Instance where the Group should be; as a result they all have the exact same TGI (Type, Group, Instance) which is how the game tells them apart. So as far as the game knows, they are all one resource and they all conflict with each other; the game will pick one at random to use for all four hair colours and ignore the rest. To fix this, you'll need to reimport them, and double-check that they have the same instance, and groups to match the other TXMTs' groups, after you've imported them. I would also suggest renaming them to ##0x########!afhair_Casual1~hairalpha5_txmt, just to make it easier for you to keep track of which resource does what. Once you've done this, you'll need to delete the lines for those TXMTs from the 3IDRs, and re-add references to the new TXMTs with their correct groups and instances.

On top of this, all of the TXMTs - both the TXMTs with 0x00000000 instances and the ones with correct instances - are pointing to a texture that doesn't exist! The stdMatBaseTextureName lines are pointing to the texture 0x5f0156b5!0xbba88fb8_txtr, which doesn't exist in your default replacement file, but there is a texture with that name in your original recolour of this hair. I think you must have forgotten to include that TXTR from your recolour when you were putting together the default replacement.

The TXMTs for the "hair" group should point to a blank texture, because the scalp has no texture, so to fix those you just need to import 0x5f0156b5!0xbba88fb8_txtr into your default replacement package (if you don't do this, anyone who tries to use the default replacement without having your original recolour installed will have problems).

The TXMTs for the hair_alpha5 group, on the other hand, need a proper texture, because that group is where the actual mesh is. So for those TXMTs, you'll need to update the stdMatBaseTextureName line to point to the correct TXTR for each hair colour. In case you need a reminder of how to work out which TXMT is for which texture, the process is this:
  • Find the GZPS for the hair colour you want to change
  • Find the 3IDR with the same Instance as that GZPS
  • Look at the "Material Definition" lines in the 3IDR and note down the Group from each line.
  • Find the TXMTs which have that Group.
Once you've worked out, for example, that ##0x5f90c8ca!afhair_Casual1~hairalpha5_txmt is for black hair, you'll need to copy the name of the black hair texture and paste it into the stdMatBaseTextureName line in the TXMT, then Commit.

You may be wondering how your hair is getting any texture at all, given that all of its TXMTs are pointing to a blank texture. The answer is, I dunno! It's a mystery.


Next up the, GZPS resources. You've got a duplicate group in your GZPSes; there are two groups called hair and one called hairalpha5. I don't know if this will cause problems, but it might, and there's no reason to have it there so you're better off deleting the second hair group (don't forget to reduce the line numbers and resourcekeyid of hairalpha5 once you've done so). I'm not sure how this would have happened.

Because of this duplicate group, the resourcekeyid for hair_alpha5 is 4, not 3. That means that your 3IDRs aren't providing any info for hair_alpha5, which is the main mesh group, because they only have 3 lines. Remember that for sims, you start counting at zero - so the Resource Node is line 0, the Shape is line 1, the first TXMT (which applies to the "hair" - scalp - group) is 2, and the second TXMT (which also also applies to the "hair" - scalp - group) is 3. There is no line 4, so hair_alpha5 has no TXMT.

Once you've removed the duplicate groups from your GZPS, your 3IDRs will then correctly provide a TXMT for hair_alpha5. If you don't delete the duplicate groups in the GZPS, you'd need to add a blank "filler" line to the 3IDR so that you can add the correct TXMT info on line 4.


Your 3IDRs are great.


All of your textures are duplicated. So I would suggest you delete the unused ones - there's no point having them there, they just make the file bigger and the loading times longer!
And finally, this might be intentional, but you haven't included the mesh resources in the file, so any downloaders will have to download the mesh separately.


I think the transparency problem is caused by the opacity setting in the mesh being wrong. Do you get the same issue with normal retextures of that hair?


I know this is a lot to process - sorry! Let me know if anything is unclear. I would also suggest that you take the original mesh and retexture out of your downloads folder while testing this, since a lot of the issues are related to the files being connected in ways they shouldn't, and you're likely to miss some problems if you still have the originals installed.

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 25th Oct 2017 at 5:11 AM
Hey Nysha! First of all I want to thank you for taking all that time to help me out. I appreciate it.

I decided to start again from scratch (and it worked!) but I wouldn't have been able to do it without your explanation. It helped me to understand a number of things that weren't clear in the tutorial, but for the other issues (like the duplicate texture files) I have no idea how or why I did it.

I probably won't be sharing the default replacement because I think the actual mesh has some problems (the hairline doesn't meet up with the sim's forehead, and transparency issues). I might try again with a different mesh/different hair replacement.

Again, thank you for your help
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