Yep, you got it. I think what I'm going to do is have a small preview of the hair texture, so that when the user selects a hairtone, they see the texture show up. Its not really a perfect solution...actually it still sucks, and the tool will still be confusing without a tutorial. But, it should fill a void and let people fix up how the game displays their hairtones.

BTW, the 3IDR files...I think the official name for them is Resource Indexes. Karybdis was doing some digging, and keept finding resIdx references in PSETs. The name makes sense, as thats basically what they do. Index different kinds of resources and combine them into sets, i.e., many of the 3IDR/RIDX files index all the neccesary files for sim outfits.

Sorry, Pinhead and DarkMatter... I've been away for a few days.

The "Proxy" value in the Hairtone property set will never be missing, but it will often be incorrect. What happens is that the creator extracts the files and images for only one color through Bodyshop, and uses that file set as a base to make all their hair colors. So the same Proxy value from the extracted hair is used every time that Bodyshop "project" is imported back to the game.

The internal filenames are really useless in these hair files, it seems to me. You probably have the same filenames being used across an entire set of colors because of the same reason that the Proxy value is often wrong. The user exports a single "project" in Bodyshop and then reimports it with different recolors. Just my guess.

Normally the way I determine which files are a "family" of haircolors is by the package filenames. Either the creator gives them a meaningful name after importing them to bodyshop, or I give them a meaningful name as soon as I download them. I don't think there's any way to tell by looking at the files internally, unless you have an expert eye for graphics or the hair is very unique.

Bodyshop just wasn't created with the intention of having the files be viewed or manipulated, and they weren't created with "families" in mind at all. Patterns to work with without user intervention aren't there, so I'm very particular about making sure all files have meaningful package names and get irritated with creators who leave the Maxis hashes as the package names.

RG

"Patterns to work with without user intervention aren't there, so I'm very particular about making sure all files have meaningful package names and get irritated with creators who leave the Maxis hashes as the package names."

Eh, thats precisely the issue I'm running into. Few content creators change any names, internal or not, so its really hard to display hairtones in any meaningful way in this tool. I'm trying to come up with a way to display the hairtones so you can just look, click a few, and group.

I guess another plugin is in order. Something that is more efficient and more clean for making hairtones. A tool where someone can just browse the existing ones, pick one to clone, and clone. Later as they update they would be forced to choose the color of the hairtone, so all the proper adjustments could be made to ensure that the hairtone works properly and is grouped properly in the game.

Bodyshop deeply wants improvement, and these issues are only part of it. The lighting in Bodyshop's preview is very dim. It's hard to see seams or errors and colors are very different from what will be finally rendered in the game. Also bodyshop doesn't give the user the opportunity to change internal filenems at all, and doing it manually is a long and confusing chore as outlined by Pinhead. All internal files have a template name which is always the same or a numeric name. This is true of clothing and genetics as well as hair files.

I'm not sure how far you've gone with your Charred plugin, but I'd expect you to run into similar problems there with the ability to change a sim's outfits and makeup and so on. Changing these isn't really a problem, but creating a reasonable ability to browse to the desired replacement item probably would be because many of the internal filenames are meaningless. Creators do the same thing that they do with hair. They clone once and use that base to make several outfits, so all have the same internal structure. Sometimes with clothing being able to view the texture is helpful. But with makeup or hair it really isn't.

For the purpose of this plugin, the only way I can imagine working it would be to allow users to select the files they want to alter based on package filename and perhaps by image (only because you can tell the color in the image, but not really the style). At some point in the future it would be great to have tools that replace Bodyshop for the creation process, allowing more flexibility and personalization.

RG

I have been following this whole discussion although I have not posted because much of this is over my head.

But I do very much like the idea, and I would like to offer a possible solution to this whole grey-hair problem at least with custom-made meshes.

I have discovered that it is entirely possible (and not very difficult) to combine the mesh file components right into the "Bodyshop" components so you will have something similar to an object, mesh, textures, and all, inside one .package file. Although I had thought it wouldn't be a good idea to do with hair because it would mean you would be required to always keep that one hair color to make any recolors work, I am thinking maybe it would be a very good idea to include only the grey-hair BodyShop parts along with the mesh, and eliminate the grey color parts completely from the "colored" hair .packages, if this is possible.

This would mean that the grey hair would always be available for the mesh no matter what other colors you might have for it. It also would eliminate the useless repetition of the grey hair in every hair color .package file. No one ever recolors those anyway so this would be no loss in my opinion, and might cut down a little on the huge filesize of hair files.

I have not tried this with hair because I am not sure how to separate out the grey parts into a separate .package and as I said I don't really understand much of the technical end about the linking and so on.

But here is how I did it, if you wish to experiment -

1} Made the mesh .package in the normal way, as an independant .package file
2} Made the original recolor for it using BodyShop
3} Tested thouroughly in the game, made necessary corrections, retest, etc.
4} When all is OK, I took the mesh .package and exported all 4 components
5} Opened the BodyShop color .package, and added these components
6} Saved it.

That's it - no renumbering, fix integrety, or any of that - I think doing that would mess it up actually.

I have done this successfully with accessory meshs (ear-rings, necklaces, purses) cloned from eyeglasses, and these mesh/color .package files do work correctly with BodyShop and can be recolored using BodyShop in the usual way. The mesh components are not passed on by BodyShop to the recolor .package, only the usual color components, and BodyShop only exports for recoloring the included components
In my case of purses and such I eliminated all the male components, and BodyShop will still export just the female components without complaining.

Thanks for posting Dr. Pixel. I havn't read the whole post, because I have limited time at the moment, but the general idea is intriguing.

RGiles, if I was to make an "alternative" to BodyShop, it would have full 3D previews and such. The same goes for CHARRED's clothing, body, and face editors. Everything will be full 3D previews, so users won't really have to worry about names so much.

3D is a pretty hefty thing, though, and I didn't really want to implement it in this little hair fixer tool. I just wanted it to be a quick thing that people could fire up, group a few hair styles, and go play the game. (Also, the 3D stuff requires the April 2005 update to DX9c, which is a 35 meg download. I didn't want to force users to download that just to organize their hairtones).

I'll see about adding 3D in a later version of the hairtone tool, once people who use DatGen are fully updraded with DX9 and all.

Uhm, some people *do* recolor the gray hair, matter of fact I have some packages (now very hard to find in the mess that is my custom content) that give the adults 'gray' hair that isn't gray when they get there - like gray streaked with the color. I, for one, find the sameness of everyone's gray hair pretty horrible in the game.

There is one thing about this that I'm not able to picture yet, how would the hair colors (if NOT merged with Maxis) show up in Create a Sim or the mirror. The interface doesn't support anything but black, red, brown, blonde and custom, isn't that so?

I'd certainly like a tool that would make it easier for folks to build entire hair packages, mark internal names correctly while at it, and have them say if it's black, red, blonde, brown or other. I'd love to as a user to be able to easily fix packages that come in incomplete.

*Tig*

say, i love this idea. but will the mod created in the above link be compatable with the mod you are currently working on?

thanks!

the modification that i posted there is very hard and painfull to finish. Is a little different of the objective in this thread in the start. And this topic here was made with an idea that i had but now i think that the best option is using the maxis values and be placed in the correct colors catalog. So, now or in the future, will be compatible.

Hi Dr. Pixel!
thanks for posting ideas to help us out. Also for showing interest

Well, i didn't tried that but what about hairs that was recolored with maxis meshes?

I think that for custom meshes will work fine but if people start to recolor the mesh the "grey" will be placed in the color package and you will have to change everything again and correcting the reference of the grey hair in respective package of the recolor.

I know that because don't metter if the texture is in separate package. Bodyshop always "extract" the textures and create internal files again using all textures and creating new references. I had some "default skins replacements", for example, and when i export the original maxis skins it get the textures from those packages.

But i will give it a go when i have a time.

Oh, yes I understand. And yes, I hadn't thought about it but sometimes the elder hair is recolored also.

So, my idea was not such a good one.

Really what I would wish is that this new tool would make it possible to get rid of duplicate, un-needed hair files.

Often I download a hair (with new mesh, or not) that has only been changed in the "adult", and the other ages are just another exact copy of the Maxis hair.

It is unfortrunate that BodyShop doesn't have an option to select which ages you wish to include in the final .package file.

tiggerypum,
If we used the original idea presented in this thread, the hairs would still show up in CAS or the mirror under the * icon, same as they do now. The difference would be that they'd behave as genetics.

Darkmatter,
I definitely don't think a full 3D view is needed for this little tool either. In the future a Bodyshop replacement would be great, but even when we have it, it won't solve the issues involved here because it would be for creating new packages rather than adjusting existing ones. For this tool, I think there's no other way to do it other than rely on the user to know which packages belong together by the package file names.

I don't have any technical comments to add, but I do want to say that I read that sims may be attracted to one another sometimes based upon hair colour in Nightlife. Which I think is another compelling reason to re-cat custom hair. How else will Sims know what colour another sim's hair is supposed to be?

For the tool, I also don't think a full 3d view is needed. But I do think a visual display of the "flat" picture is necessary, since it is not always possible to tell from the filename what color the hair really is.

Ok, so, here is the plan for the tool. I'm going to write a very simple program to seek out and list packages that contain hairtone information. This program will just list all the packages, the name of the hairtone(s), and will have a 2D texture preview for the selected hairtone. When you select one of the entries, you'll be able to flag it as belonging in the Black, Brown, Blond, Red, Gray, or Styled bucket. Once you have selected one or more hairtones, you'll have the option of specifying a family guid to place those hairtones into, or, you can leave that field blank to have the tool generate a new one for you. When you click GO, the hairtones will be assigned to the correct color bucket, and will be assigned a family guid to group them. After that, you can select other hairtones and repeat the process.

Sound good?

sounds very good! :D

We can use it and give suggestions if something was confusing or not appropriate. But i think that with all that you said will be fine.

thanks a lot for trying this tool, DarkMatter! :D

the elders textures will be a problem (not so big, of course), but we will think about something to eliminate it later.

This also sounds very good to me. I thank you too.

Sounds great to me. The trouble with the elder hair colors should be very minor. At worst we have duplication of textures taking up space, which is a problem we already have now. This is exactly the sort of solution I was hoping for. Thank you.

Ok guys. Check out the original program request thread. I've got a shell written, but I'd like to hear your thoughts before I go with it.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=65672

hi , plz i would like to know how u actually make the hair like make it long or short and colour it and play with it in the game. can u plz send me a tutorial how to do it coz if i dont know i think ill go crazy lol thanx alot

I just re-read this thread because of the multi pollination thread.

Custom hair *IS* genetic and passes to the offspring of the SAME SEX. If you make the sim with CAS (at least if it had a full set of hair) and then take them in and make babies with them, their hair passes to their offspring and is supposed to be dominant over all the maxis hair colors.

I made a blue hair female in cas and her girl child has her hair. Her sons got some other random hair color (I forget) Oh yes, and I have another mom in the same house also with custom hair and her daughter also has her hair.

This is different from what most people do when they change hair in the mirror after birth, that is NOT genetic, it's a dye job.

That said, marking custom hairs that are brown, black, red, blonde as really *being* those colors instead of custom will make them work *more properly* with maxis genetics, pulling them out of the always dominant status to their proper place.

I can package that family if people want to take a good look at the in game kids and look at what their genetics really look like. I expect that w/o the hair meshes they won't show up right in your game, but if the issue is looking at the characters in SimPE you should be able to see what really happened.

*Tig*

What I have wanted to know for ages is, why can't I make a hair colour just for elders, so they can change at the mirror, without also having to bundle in the entire range of ages? It's meant to be a coloured hair style, not genetics. Is there no way to do that?

Ah another thing I meant to ask - to change the dominance rating of a custom object, should I change the genetic= value in the Hair Tone XML file, or the Property Sets files in the package?

You should be able to make a custom hairtone just for elders. You just need to delete the psets and other information for all the other age groups, and change the hairtone property to '0000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000'.

To change the genetic dominance, you need to edit the 'genetic' property. This property is kind of funky, and I'm not exactly certain how it works. But, from my experiments, it seems the larger the number, the LESS dominant, or the MORE recessive. Custom hairtones always seem to have a genetic value of 0, which is what makes them dominant over absolutely everything else, for the entire family chain.

Thanks. I was wondering which one to edit, as there is a "genetic" property in the Hair Tone xml and also one in each Property Set file. Should I just do it in every "genetic" field I can find? :D

Oh, you need to change it in the hairtone file. Don't change it in the actual skin file, as that can cause weird problems. The Skin PSET for a hairtone should have a genetic of 0, but the Hairtone PSET can have any genetic value (although 2 is the highest I've seen in game files...which is pretty recessive from my calculations). The value is floating point, so you can have 0.1, 1.3, or 4.68...it allows pretty fine control over how dominant a hairtone is. All hairtones exported from bodyshop have a genetic of 0, making them completely dominant for the entire length of a family line (which I guess is until the sims are born so deformed that you can't bring yourself to make babies with them anymore :P).