More Awesome Than You!

Just wondering if anyone else is having a problem with creating gentic skins and bodyshop including some random custom hair files?

The files names are
afhair~hairalpha5~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp
afhair~hairalpha7~stdMatBaseTextureName.bmp

Anyone else?

Well I downloaded some custom skins recently and noticed hair files within the package but just assumed it used them for some reason or other but yes now that you mention it, it did seem odd to me.

Aren't those just names for the different layers??

I dont recall ever seeing them before and the txtr image is one of custom hair textures

nectere is right. I looked at the texture and it's most definitely hair. Not sure what style it is, looks like a short male style maybe? And it was in black. I wonder if we could safely just delete those entries from the package file. I suppose I could try and make a backup just in case.

I tried deleting those two textures in the package, but for some reason Bodyshop thinks it needs them. The hair texture seems fairly random, for me its the same custom texture each time, but for genetics others have made its more random. I tested it 4 different times making new projects. One package I peered into had two different alpha hair textures, it was a heleane skin, but they werent hair textures I had for any of my custom hairs, so I assume they came from her computer.

I can't figure out why it would need two alpha hair textures for a genetic skin. And they aren't really alphas either.  Tonight I will remove all downloads and run bodyshop again to see what it uses instead.

The regular game's bodyshop exe and the university one's still exist. I wonder if we can just use those. NL's doesn't seem to add anything except access to the new NL clothes.

I posted this exact same question/issue on TSR.  The problem, it turns out, is that if you have some of Janna's hair colors/styles in your Downloads folder she did something special with them that caused this unforseen side effect.  I'm not sure it was ever worked out.  And I'm not sure if other creators have done anything similar. All I know is that when I removed Janna's stuff, the problem went away.

Generally, your best bet to avoid issues like this is the same as making clean, hack-free residential/commerical lots.  Set up a separate account on your computer and run the Sims 2 / BodyShop for all your custom content creation there.  The bonus is because that account will start with an empty Downloads folder, load time should be really fast.

Your other option is to temporarily move your downloaded hair files to a folder on the desktop or something while you are using BodyShop.

Hmm, I remember her saying she made some of her hairs like the Maxis 'custom' ones in that they supposedly won't show up the bodyshop or CAS but will in the mirror when you change appearance. Is that what you're referring to Allen?

Yeah, it was something like that.  It set her hair files apart from most others.

Now I love Janna's stuff and didn't want to permanently remove them so that's why I started doing the separate account thing.

I seem to have developed a problem recently, at least since the last time I used BodyShop, where it crashes when I try to load it.  I have to move my SavedSims out of The Sims 2 folder for it to load.  So I figure something in there is causing it to crash, but I am not sure what it is.  I'm pretty sure I've run BodyShop since installing NL, but perhaps not since the patch.  I've started trying to organize all my clothes, hair, makeup, etc. into folders now that NL lets you do that, but that wouldn't cause this problem, would it?

I don't think it should cause that no. Although, I've heard you cannot do subfolders in savedsims, just in downloads, but I haven't tried it personally and I think the worst that would happen is the stuff just doesn't show up. How much stuff do you have in savedsims? If you don't have too much you can always do the one by one test. :o Or just take half out at a time etc until you narrow it down. Sounds like it's a particular file.

Yeah, I might have to sort by date and remove recent stuff first.  But it's a feature of NL that you can put stuff in subfolders in SavedSims now.  I have several things in subs now that appear in the game.  My savedsims folder says it's 254 MB.

Oh, I knew that you could do it with everything in downloads whereas you could only with certain things before. I read somewhere that even with NL you couldn't do subdirectories in savedsims. I guess it just goes to show don't believe everything you read. ;)

Erm, I am pretty sure MaxiodTom said that you can NOT subfolder saved sims, but you can in downloads.

I have searched and searched and cant find it. So for now, I stand corrected.

Can you find where he said this?  Because I'm pretty sure he said you could, but I can't find that particular post right now.  The search page isn't cooperating and going through each thread is a slow and tedious process.