DatGen Help

[Kala]

I'm using DatGen to catagorize hair tones.  I can't find the hairtoner Icon on the latest version.  All I could find was some batch cinversion tool, that I couldn't make heads or tales of. 

[Swiftgold]

I would actually suggest not using HairToner to do it... I used DatGen happily enough for quite some time to categorize my hair, but it was very buggy and it didn't always work properly, and would crash on certain files and refuse to categorize them. Eventually after I encountered a bug where the scalps of my custom skin tones were replaced by hair textures, and I couldn't export any skins from Bodyshop without random hair textures showing up (and couldn't import after removing those), I just gave it up. Now that the program has been abandoned, I wouldn't recommend using it...

I've been going through and categorizing my hair files by hand using SimPe. It's quite easy once you find where everything goes; it's just taken me forever to do because I have put the filename in the text strings so I can see which one is which and remove duplicate/non-recolored toddler/child/teen etc. hair also. This thread here is very helpful:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.0

[Kala]

SimPE isnot nestagmus friendly, so I thought DatGen would be easier I also have trouble sorting out the hair files.

[yetyak]

I did that with the file names, too, Swiftgold.  I finished my catagorizing just a few days ago, and now have 1030 custom hair files, all in the right bins.  Started the project with more than 1700 files, so there were a lot of high poly and just plain fugly ones.  Much easier to get rid of those when you know which one it is.

[Swiftgold]

Perhaps I got the idea from you?  I've only gone though the black hair, but I am most pleased with the results, despite the hard work!

And, Kala, I've found that it's easy to sort the files using the Clean Installer since you can quickly look through the texture files with each hair and see what color is really in there, not to mention being able to sort all your downloads by type really quickly...

[aqualectrix]

Kala:

Indeed, the latest version of DatGen doesn't use HairToner anymore, it uses the batch conversion thingy.  (Make sure you have the latest debug version, though -- the 0.7.13 is very buggy when you use it for hair.)  I find it slightly less easier to use than HairToner (but a lot more flexible), but a *lot* less of a pain than doing it manually in SimPE (or manually in DatGen, for that matter).

Have you read the tutorial? http://www.datgen.info/tutorials/sm_hairtone.aspx  It can be pretty confusing, I'll admit.

I know I've written a simpler explanation, let me see if I can find it somewhere... Ah, here we go:

1. Load the hair files into DatGen. Open SkinManager and then the Bulk Hairtoner and Search to get the files to show up.

2. Drag each .package to the correct color: Black, Blonde, Brown, Red, or Other.  We'll fix the grey hairs in a bit.

3. Save and Search again to get the changes to show up.

4. Use the + boxes next to each file name to drill down until you can see the names of each texture. These look like "yfhairshortperm_black", etc.

5. In each hair color you will see one texture has the name "efhairshortperm_grey". Drag this to the grey color swatch up above. You won't get any dialogue saying something's happened, but it's been fixed.

6. Save

7. Click Search again to update the display, and click on each the name of each package again. You will see that instead of each texture being in, say, the "Blonde" category, most of them are "Blonde" and the elder texture is in the "Grey" category. If so, congratulations! You've categorized everything correctly!

Many people don't bother to set the "family", but I like to do it.  Essentially it marks a group of hairs as being the same style; when you switch hair colors in CAS, you'll get the same style in the new color, just like with Maxis hairs.

If you would also like to set the "family" of the hairs correctly, that is even easier:

1. Select one of the .package names.

2. Fill in the button next to "Family Keys in this Package"

3. Put a checkmark by the name of each package in the family (style).

4. Click "Set family to all skins in checked packages". (the middle button)

5. Save and you are done.

I hope this is helpful and works for you.  It's still a bit tedious, but less so than the purely manual method.