Custom hair: How to get one Elder grey?

[Jelenedra]

Okay, I'm having a bit of a problem with getting this right, and threads I find while doing a search doesn't seem to help that much.

I want to get my custom hair family'd, binned, and elder friendly (one color in the grey bin).

Using Theo's tool USED to work, and now it's not. Deleting XML properties and Instances manually is getting rid of the extra elder textures, but then for some reason, it disappears for the other ages. I'm about to rip my hair out.

[Ness]

The colour binning tool is still working for me.  It can't disable the original files for itself any more, so I'm doing that manually, but the overall thing is still working.

[Jelenedra]

Maybe I fiddled with the options too much and messed it up.  But yeah, I was putting everything in the proper bin, with custom hair having the grey box checked and now it just doesn't work.

[blubug]

ness, have you checked that the 'disable originals' box is checked in the options? Sometimes stuff like that just gets past me, maybe you disabled it by mistake? Because I just sorted all my hairs with the latest version, and it disabled all the originals.

[Jelenedra]

*growls*

Okay, it bins everything properly, makes everything all nice and familied, and this time, there weren't any elder hair colors at all!

 

*wishes Motoki was here to tell her which files to edit in SimPe to make the elder recolors except the one she wants to GO AWAY*

[Ness]

ness, have you checked that the 'disable originals' box is checked in the options? Sometimes stuff like that just gets past me, maybe you disabled it by mistake? Because I just sorted all my hairs with the latest version, and it disabled all the originals.

I've currently got that option unchecked because when it was checked, it was throwing up an error on every file it tried to disable - it was actually more time consuming to click through the 4-5 error messages than it was to uncheck the option and delete manually.

[Jelenedra]

The error messages should only throw up if you don't rename the files. Error message for each file it overwrites.

[Ness]

I'm pretty sure I'm renaming.  I usually bin all colours into one single file anyway.  I'll double check next time I find some hair worth downloading.

[Tamha]

What I usually do is make sure that the elder gray hair is only checked in the black bin (and in the custom bin if I'm using it, since they seem to be considered separately or something) and that the tool is removing the unchecked textures. When binning a separate gray package with the other colors, I make sure that only the elder in the gray section is checked and in custom if used.

[miros]

That's what I do, Tamha, but I usually use the blond version of the gray hair.  Some people get artsy and make the gray for black or brown sooo dark gray that blonds get darker hair as they age...

[Jelenedra]

Yeah, I reinstalled the tool and it seems to work fine now.  I don't understand why it was being a PITA since it was working just fine a few weeks ago. Either that or when there was a grey texture to mess with I uploaded twice, once in the custom bin (or whichever the color came from) and once in the grey bin. Seemed to work out nicely for me.

Oh wells.

[maxon]

The only time I've seen it do that is when I've tried to include two or more elder hairs in a family (by mistake).  The tool is working just fine for me - just like it says it should in Theo's tut - I actually did some today with the latest SimPE (60b?).  With at least one of the elder hairs, I used the one in the brown bin rather than the black (because I liked it better).

[eevilcat]

I've just binned a load of custom hair and found that a lot of them don't have grey versions. Does this matter? What will happen when the sim ages? I'm guessing they will revert to a standard Maxis hair that does have grey, but am not sure. I suspect I may have to go back and add grey versions <sigh>.

[SaraMK]

Yes, they'll just get a random hairstyle.

[Jelenedra]

That's the benefit of Theo's tool, you can make sure that the hair files that don't have grey textures don't show up in the grey bin.

Seriously, why include the elder stage if you're not going to make a texture for it? It's simple you just make the blond color black and white. >_<

[Tamha]

People do it so that their elders can "dye" their hair their natural color. I don't mind my elders having gray hair, but I admit that if it comes pre-binned with no gray, I won't bother giving them proper gray for the elders.

[Jelenedra]

I mind because it makes the elder grey bin all screwy with thousands of recolors for the black, the three shades of brown, four shades of blonde, and two red....

[Ness]

I think I'm a little strange in that respect...  my elders MUST have grey hair!  I also insist on my elders retaining the hunch-back look...  yeah, it's horrid, but I can't stand the thought of having elders that are visually no different from the adults, so I put up with the maxian extreme of elderness.

If a hair doesn't have grey textures for elders, it doesn't get in my game!

[eevilcat]

my elders MUST have grey hair!  I also insist on my elders retaining the hunch-back look...

I'm with you on that one and although the Maxian take on sim elders is extreme, it does clearly distinguish them from the other age groups. My attitude has changed since using the age duration hack, before that 30 days of shuffling platinum elder was too much. I do like the idea of old ladies with 'rinses' where they have a hint of colour added to the grey; that way you get an idea of how they were in their younger days. It would mean a lot of work fixing everything up though. I point blank refuse to have them wear the default elder clothes and it's taken me quite a long time to track down a good elder wardrobe - big granny pants and saggy bras, no thanks!

[Ness]

feel free to share any places those elder clothes come from! 

[eevilcat]

Most of my elder clothes have been gathered piece by piece from various sites... the problem is that nobody seems to be interested in making decent elder clothing. The main exception I've found is All About Style (http://www.all-about-style.com) who have some great stuff. There are also some nice pieces on MTS2, Parsimonious, PureSims and Insim.

[maxon]

I like elders to have grey hair too.  I don't understand why some hair makers don't include a grey hair.  People's skin, as well as their hair, fades as they get older.  The strong colours of young and middle aged hair looks weird against an elder skin to me.

[jrd]

I even give my elders wrinkles. First stage at 65-70, second at 80, third (extreme) at 90 if they reach it.

[maxon]

I even give my elders wrinkles. First stage at 65-70, second at 80, third (extreme) at 90 if they reach it.

Those from Mermaid Cove?  I like those, especially the middle-age ones for older adults (if you have kids in college, you have wrinkles).

[jrd]

No, the default ones. I have very little non-hack  or non-replacement custom content.