Any Decent Custom Hair?

[idtaminger]

It makes my life much simpler, and I get townies/downtownies/children spawning with these hairs.  The downside to that is occasionally I get a nanny spawned with what I consider "young adult" hair.

Hmm. I was always kind of confused about this. CC hair that shows up in the genetics bin gets recognized as genetic hair color? So w/ NL, if I had a sim who was turned on by blondes, and I had a CC hair in the blond bin, then that sim would be attracted to the person wearing that particular CC hair?

A huge problem I have w/ the CC hairs at the moment is that I pretty much have to make all my male sims attracted to CC hair, and since everyone pretty much uses CC hair, my sims are attracted to practically every single sim out there. If this would fix the problem, I'd be very pleased.

[Brynne]

A huge problem I have w/ the CC hairs at the moment is that I pretty much have to make all my male sims attracted to CC hair, and since everyone pretty much uses CC hair, my sims are attracted to practically every single sim out there. If this would fix the problem, I'd be very pleased.

That's one of my pet peeves, too. Same for my female sims. Almost everybody has "custom hair" and "fitness" as a turn-on, and "stink" as a turn-off. I've been meaning to categorize my hair because of this, and I am at this moment having datgen run through my downloads folder. 

[Motoki]

Hmm. I was always kind of confused about this. CC hair that shows up in the genetics bin gets recognized as genetic hair color? So w/ NL, if I had a sim who was turned on by blondes, and I had a CC hair in the blond bin, then that sim would be attracted to the person wearing that particular CC hair?

Yes that's correct. Any hair that shows up in the color bins CC or no will count as a turn on for that color.

IMO, it's the responsibility of the creators to make their hairs work correctly with the genetics. I know Maxis didn't give us the tools to do that, but they didn't give us to the tools to make new meshes either and people have found work arounds for that.

[cheriem]

My new hairs from WDS and Pronup sims are in the correct colors.  I was soooo excited to be able to set a specific hair color in Turn on/off's.

[SaraMK]

Another bonus of having hair categorized in the right bins is that townies and NPCs might get it. I download a lot of wild-looking hair, and it always amuses me to see it show up on some totally inappropriate NPC. I once had a cop show up who had hair a mile long and looking like it could put someone's eye out.

I categorize ALL hair in Datgen. If it's blond, black, brown, or red, it goes in the right bins. Even if it has streaks of purple in it. As long as I can tell what color it's supposed to be, it goes in the right bins.

[idtaminger]

Okay. I just tried changing hair colours, and I am incredibly confused. Mostly I'm confused about the families. What families do we have to set the hairs to? Are there different families for different hair colours? And do elder hairs have a separate family? Or is it the same family for all colours through elder?

I looked at the DatGen tutorial, and my head was spinning. Doesn't explain very well at all.

[Bangelnuts]

Another bonus of having hair categorized in the right bins is that townies and NPCs might get it. I download a lot of wild-looking hair, and it always amuses me to see it show up on some totally inappropriate NPC. I once had a cop show up who had hair a mile long and looking like it could put someone's eye out.

I categorize ALL hair in Datgen. If it's blond, black, brown, or red, it goes in the right bins. Even if it has streaks of purple in it. As long as I can tell what color it's supposed to be, it goes in the right bins.

I would have love to have seen that I am downloading DatGen now ,it will help with my downloads I hope as I am having issues with hair meshes showing up as choice to put on my sims head in the in game hair bin obviously thats one choice I never make. my sim would be running around with some odd or bizarre looking hair to say the least. all my sims male or female either have custom hair or a recolor of maxis hair on their heads. in the males case its about25/75 most have recolors  . in my female sims  they have custom hair

[MokeyHokey]

Datgen is completely confusing to me.  That's why I did it with SimPe, and it's extremely easy.  Link is in my post above for family numbers and hairtones.  The good thing about Pe is that you can see the texture if the filename doesn't tell you, especially since the base color is frequently not the correct one.    Once you've done a few, it's ridiculously simple.

IMO, it's the responsibility of the creators to make their hairs work correctly with the genetics. I know Maxis didn't give us the tools to do that, but they didn't give us to the tools to make new meshes either and people have found work arounds for that.

Motoki, I agree with you, but since very few of the creators feel the same way, I've just been doing it myself. 

[idtaminger]

Datgen is completely confusing to me.  That's why I did it with SimPe, and it's extremely easy.  Link is in my post above for family numbers and hairtones.

Well, I read your post, and that was a bit ambiguous as well. First it says: Click on each Property Set and find the line that says "Family". Change the value to "b52b9d28-7b62-4f41-bd88-fb382721db82".

But then it says:
One of the property sets of each hairstyle will be grey for the elders.You'll know which Property Set is for the elders because the line "name (dtString)" will list the colour as "grey", instead of the actual colour. When you find the elder Property Set for each style, just enter the code for grey instead of the regular colour.

So is there a different family value for the grey hair?

[Motoki]

Datgen is really easy. It's just drag and drop. It really only takes a minute or less. Get the debug version and follow the tutorial

http://www.datgen.info/tutorials/sm_hairtone.aspx

I didn't even really read through the whole thing, I just dragged the hair entries over and dropped them to the proper color and saved. The key here is knowing which hair is what color. Their internal names may NOT match what color they really are because if someone started off with a black hair in the bodyshop and made a red recolor out of it, the internal name may still say black while the true color of the texture is red.

The best thing to do is load only the red package in Datgen, drag all of the parts of it except the grey to red, save, load the black, drag all the parts except the black onto black, save etc.

[Brynne]

Where is the latest debug version? The version I have is 7.12.
It really sucks that Darkmatter isn't going to update it anymore...

[MokeyHokey]

No, it's not a different family, but a different hairtone. 

So, for the one that is gray, you'd put 00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 in the hairtone line instead of 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for black, or whatever tone you are working with.

The family number you enter in is the same for every hairtone.  The only thing that changes is the hairtone number.

[Motoki]

Where is the latest debug version? The version I have is 7.12.

I have 7.13.495

[idtaminger]

I didn't even really read through the whole thing, I just dragged the hair entries over and dropped them to the proper color and saved.

So no need to change the families at all? Cuz the tutorial had a whole big section about families, and I really didn't know what to set to what.

[Motoki]

I didn't mess with all that no, I just did the drag and drop on the color and it worked for me. *shrug*

[Brynne]

Where is the latest debug version? The version I have is 7.12.

I have 7.13.495

Where did you get it?

[Motoki]

http://www.datgen.info/downloads.aspx

From the first link. That site is slow as hell for me though.

[MokeyHokey]

idtamer, are you doing SimPe way or DatGen way?  I'm getting confused...   I thought by your earlier post you were trying to do SimPe, but maybe I'm wrong.  If you aren't, disregard this.

So no need to change the families at all? Cuz the tutorial had a whole big section about families, and I really didn't know what to set to what.

You do need to change the families. 

The way I do it is to open a hair in SimPe. 
Select the "Property Set" option on the left which gives me a short list of sets.
Then I go to my text file, highlight the family string (that's the b52b9d28-7b62-4f41-bd88-fb382721db82), right click/copy, switch back to SimPe and click on the first in the row of property sets, highlighting the family line at the bottom, and pasting that string in the box on the bottom right overwriting what is there. 
Hit commit and go to the next property set, repeating all the way to the bottom. 
Then, I go back to my text list and select the hairtone I am categorizing, let's pretend it's blonde. 
I start at the top again, only this time instead of highlighting "family", I highlight "hairtone" and paste in the "00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" all the way down.  Sometimes I skip the gray step and just throw them in the regular category cause I'm lazy lol.
Save it (it overwrites the original but provides a backup) and you're done. 

It sounds more complex than it really is, especially once you know where the two things you are changing are.

[idtaminger]

Well, I'm leaning towards DatGen, cuz for some reason SimPE takes ages to navigate. It takes a couple of seconds each time it loads a set of data, and the seconds can really add up. That's the only reason I don't like SimPE - cuz it takes too long to use.

The best thing to do is load only the red package in Datgen, drag all of the parts of it except the grey to red, save, load the black, drag all the parts except the black onto black, save etc.

Hmm. When I clicked and dragged a file to the color folder, the elder hair ended up in the color bin as well. Do you know if its okay to leave it that way? Or must I individually drag each age's hair file into the color bin and exclude the elder?

[Motoki]

You should be able to redrag just the elder hair into grey. I wouldn't leave it in the color I don't think it will show up for elders but might show up for adults. 

[noname]

The advantage to changing the family numbers is that it groups all colors of the same hairstyle. For example, say you've got a ponytail mesh with all the basic colors. If you make it so that the family number is the same throughout all the ages and colors of the hairstyle, not only will it be inherited correctly, but if you are in bodyshop, cas, or changing appearance looking at the ponytail in red, and decide you want it in say, black, when you click black it will still show the new color in the same style as opposed to showing a different style. You need to give every different hairstyle a different family number if you want everything to function correctly.

I hope that made sense. I _just_ figured it all out and I need to go to sleep.

[IgnorantBliss]

The problem is that not all custom hairstyles have all ages, or some of the ages don't match. Say, someone used a blond Maxis hair and then only changed the teen, adult and elder hair, making them black. If you make the whole hairstyle genetic, then toddlers and children will have blond hair and only get the correct black hair when turning into teenagers. Also, you're going to have a ton of identical toddler and child hairs, because these have not been edited in most cases, even if they match the color otherwise.

[Bangelnuts]

The problem is that not all custom hairstyles have all ages, or some of the ages don't match. Say, someone used a blond Maxis hair and then only changed the teen, adult and elder hair, making them black. If you make the whole hairstyle genetic, then toddlers and children will have blond hair and only get the correct black hair when turning into teenagers. Also, you're going to have a ton of identical toddler and child hairs, because these have not been edited in most cases, even if they match the color otherwise.

very true there I have many of Natrobo's toddler hairstyles that are only for toddlers but body shop hasnt figured that out so it substitues a maxis hair in other age groups as a result I end up having to delete a ton of maxis duplicates in body shop and CAS.the game thinks a hair mesh is for all ages automaticallywhich isnt necessarily true so the game in an effort to compensate for what it percieves to be a missing hairstyle in an age group substitutes  what ever maxis hairstyle will fit the mesh

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, one assumes that if the mesh is only for toddlers, then the game can do little else than substitute something when the toddler grows up, and it's safer if it chooses default meshes - you can always change them later!  (And for the short time kids are toddlers, I would never bother to give them custom hair, although I'd change their hair if they're bald!

[Karen]

And for the short time kids are toddlers, I would never bother to give them custom hair, although I'd change their hair if they're bald!

Interesting that you feel that way.  My reaction was just the opposite.  I can't stand the default toddler hairstyles, either for boys or for girls (well, the toddler girl hairstyle is OK, but it turns into that godawful "lawn mower cut" when they become kids, so I hate it....)  I use a bunch of different custom hair styles, mostly downloaded from TSR or Sims Connection, in my game.  Nearly all the adult Sims in my neighborhood now were born with custom hair styles, and so their babies also inherit the custom hair.  I love the variety this produces in the toddlers.

I agree, it's a pain when you download custom hair only to find it doesn't work for all ages. 

Karen