More Awesome Than You!

Color Binning Tool
-----------------------
Users of SimPe v0.58 should download version 0.2.26.1
For SimPe v0.60, download 0.2.29.1
For SimPe v0.63+, download 0.2.30.1

This plugin allows you to categorize your hair package files so that they will appear in the correct color bins in the game catalog.
You can also select which PropertySets you wish to keep or remove from the output packages.

The inspiration and indeed most of its logic is stated in this thread http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=2119.0 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.net/smf/index.php?topic=2119.0)
But of course I would like to thank everyone that contributed with a bit of knowledge that was used in this tool.

I won't describe all its functionality in this post, because it would make it unnecessarily long, and that would discourage people from reading ::)

So, I will try to maintain a kind of FAQ for the tool in this thread - You post your questions or requests, and I (or someone else) may provide an answer.

I've created a simple page that contains a bit more info: http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool.html (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool.html)

Finally, I'll just point you to the step-by-step walkthrough of the tool. It's at http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool-walkthrough.html (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool-walkthrough.html)


Update 2006-05-05: (changelog (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool-changelog.html))

The compiler optimizations were disabled, as I suspect it is causing erratic behavior on some fast machines. I'm still not sure what's causing this, so if the tool is making you lose some recolors (apparently the blonde is the main target :P), please notify me in this thread, or contact me by PM or email.

The plugin now fully supports binning of facial hair, including meshed beards.

Also an old annoyance that write-locked the output files was finally terminated.

And for those concerned with the integrity of their custom-hair-bearing sims's dna, I have included a highly experimental feature that will scan any neighborhood and replace the former custom hair guid with the new (standard) guid in the sims dna.
So if you hadn't a reason to backup your neighborhoods yet, this plugin will give you enough motivation to do so :D


Update 2006-05-12: (changelog (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool-changelog.html))

This tool can now open and process clothing packages :o.
That's right, to accomodate a requested feature that allowed editing the footstep noise assigned to a skin, I also ended up adding the clothing package operations that are available in SimPe's Scan Folders tool.

This probably will be the last release of the tool in this format, as it is evolving to become Something Entirely Different  ::)
In fact the code is beginning to be difficult to maintain with such distinct functionalities assembled into one plugin, so in the future I'll trim down this tool to its original purpose, and separate the remaining functions.


Update 2006-11-14

Ok, I outrageously lied! :D

It's the same tool, with about the same look and usage, with just some updates to work with Pets.

It has a new option to specify if the packages should (or not) be renamed according to the current naming scheme. Of course new bugs are expected in this area, so proceed with caution.  ;)

Edit: Changed the source distribution so that it can be compiled solely with .NET 2.0


Update 2006-11-16

The version for SimPe 0.60 was corrected: it no longer adds a "subtype" property to all PropertySets, that would make the hair vanish from the catalog :P


Update 2007-12-26

A very belated update, which only removes the nag box from the debug versions of SimPe.

Awesome. Thanks for finally releasing this tool. I hope that once you're happy that it works well, has all the features you want and is bug free that Quaxi will add it to the SimPE package as a default part of the SimPE download.

When I try to use it I have an error message from simPe saying "unable to start tool plugin"
attached text file with the complete error message.
What am I missing ?

theo i've installed it and did one hair already, and so far so good. i havent had any problems. thank you so much for this. :-*

Okay, I must be really stupid because I cannot figure out how to use this tool.  :-\   :'(

Don't feel bad blue I havn't figured it out yet either ???

Ok, with the tool that I redownloaded from this thread, I have figured out how to change it to the right colour bin.  But how do I know if something is just an extraneous age/texture/whatever without looking at it manually?

Any chance of a more idiot friendly user guide in the future?

I messed with it breifly with some hair I didn't care if I screwed something up with.  I need to restart my game to see if it worked.  If this does work for me this will be the best thing ever. I'll let yah know if it worked for me here soon....

It does take some empirical knowledge to tell what can be deleted or not.
Besides, there are two main factors in this equation: the creator may have used a new mesh with the base textures (not likely), or it may have used the base mesh with a new texture! (very likely)

Normally if a hair says something like "Long Hair Recolors - For all ages!", it could mean that there is an age group that has a new mesh, so in those cases I wouldn't delete any recolors.

On other cases, the creator would just make some subtle changes to the textures, and they could pass unnoticed in the preview image!

The bottom line is that you may have to spot which age groups have a new mesh/recolor in the game catalog before using this tool!

I just can't say no, can I? I could have done that guide already, I'm just too lazy!  ;)

That error looks unusual! I'll try to reproduce it in my computer and tell you if something can be done  ???

A couple of things I've noticed with this tool:

It doesn't like it if you try to cancel something.  If I think I've messed up on a hair, I can't just pick something else because the tool won't recognize I've picked something else unless I restart SimPE.

I have my hair colours sorted into 4 bins for the 4 colours.  If I finish one colour and then move onto the next without changing the colour tab in the tool, the colour is now gone from the drop down menu for >Move to...

If all the grey is automatically deselected, how exactly do you make it so you can keep one grey?

**The above is said with the knowledge I have only tried to bin hair and delete extra textures, and I have not even looked at material definitions, seeing as I don't know what that is exactly.  :P

For me it is pretty easy to reproduce : it occurs each and every time I try to use it  :(
Do you need some more info ??

Well it looks like I got the hang of it somewhat...but I also somehow ended up up red hair in my blonde bin in CAS as well lol

If I knew exactly what I was doing with it, I'm sure I would love it. As noted though I think I need a little more detailed explanation of specifics if possible.

Theo: Is there a "hide in CAS" option that will set the flag to make a hair for a certain age not show up in the CAS?

The changelog says: "Corrected the value that was being set to a PropertySet flags, in order hide it from the catalog" but I didn't see an option to do that unless I missed it?

i didn't notice the thread here before. sorry clogging your PM, Theo! lol

Motoki, Theo already implemented this in the latest version. However, something isn't right
because when you choose the ages to hide, will remove the TXMTs of the output package of
those hidden ages..
i sent a PM to Theo about this problem. (before i realised that exist a thread to discuss the tool - sorry).

to hide you just need to go to the options and Uncheck the box saying (Remove Unchecked Recolors).

Theo: I noticed that after binning a hair the texture packages I used said "PACKAGEDISABLED" under their names. Does that means I can delete the original texture packages?

PS: if it makes any diference, I made the whole process in another folder, with copys of the textures of a hair I already had installed, I then just put he files the tool generated in the downloads folder. The hairs were binned when I checked them in Bodyshop.

I got as far as putting a color in each tab but don't know about the grey either. Also, what if say there are more than 1 shade of brown recolor for a style.

Could the directions use a hair I can download and use to follow along with them, then I can see that the result come out the same as the directions?

This is really nice, no copy and paste needed! Thanks 

I have a question : how do you use this tool when binning hairs you want to put in the same family ?
For the moment I have only binned stand alone hair, so I have no pronlem and everything is working just fine. But I don't know how am I supposed to use it regarding family.
I don't think you can open multiple packages at once, right ?
One thing I really really appreciate is the fact that this tool not only change the properties set but also the hairtone xml (which I found in game play to be responsible for the hairtone used when the sim change to work uniform including hats.
Thank you so much for this wonderful tool.
Pioupiou

you can open more than one package, go to the color tab and right click and open the package for that color, it makes them all one family when you save.

OK I will try right now and let you know. Thanks for the quick answer
Pioupiou

I have only one word : Brilliant !!!! ;D
Happily binning....
Pioupiou
Edit: Woaw... I'm really impressed, since writing this message (2 hours ago) I have totally finished binning my hair !! Totally, everything !!!
The first half took me almost 6 months (some days I was lacking motivation and preferred to simply play my sims...) and the second half took me only some hours, with no headaches and no pain in my fingers (so much lesser clicks !!)
Theo you are my hero !!!  ;D ;D

It would make sense to keep the Material definitions and textures, if you later wanted to re-enable them! Now I get it! ::)
I'll work on it for the next version.

@Motoki:
The option that controls that behavior is named "Remove Unchecked Recolors", which defaults to true, as I also like to delete those resources. >-)

You can delete the files, I was too afraid to do it in the code!

And finally, a step-by-step walkthrough of the tool has been created.
http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/walkthrough.html (http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/walkthrough.html)

I would recommend not doing this until you've finished binning everything and checked it out in both BodyShop and CAS and made sure that everything is showing up properly in the right bin.  I found several errors I had made, some of them involving colors that looked, for example, black in the tool's texture previews and in BodyShop, but which turned out to be brown, or that looked blond but was really a blondish red.  The easiest way I found to correct this without hopelessly confusing myself and generating a bazillion oddly named files was to go to the folder, delete the new version(s) made by the tool and rename the disabled file to a regular .package and try again.

Also, I had one texture up and disappear...the mesh showed up in the proper bin but with only the scalp color.  Dunno what went wrong there...luckily it wasn;t an important one!

Can you post the offending package file (hopefully if it isn't too large)?

BTW you can resize the three panels, so when in doubt, I usually make the texture preview box larger.
My problem still is trying to make those damned splitters to show up!

Hehe, I had the same thing happen with one of the male hairs.

I'll have to concede on this one: one can't just delete PropertySets and expect the game to take it gently. (sigh)

Even after repeated warnings posted by Pinhead, I stubbornly kept the option to delete recolors on. I was wrong! :-[

Your problems look like symptoms of that procedure, so I turned that option off by default in this version. In that safe mode, the recolors will be simply hidden from the game catalog.

So from now on, the "Delete Unchecked Recolors" option is off by default.

You can still turn it on, and you may find that deleting PropertySets didn't harm the hair package, but it's better to do it by the safest way.

It is highly recommended that you re-download the tool.

Hi Theo! :)

Well, now is keeping the TXMTs of the hidden ages. Thanks for fixing that :)

Looks that the output is fine so far. But (here we go with little problems, sorry) when i
used the option to "use the base textures" when clicking in the TXMTs inside your tool,
isn't changing anything. And the wrong texture is in the output package.
i was wondering if you can set up if when we choose to "use the base texture", that was
copied from TXMTs Filelist, if the tool can delete those old textures used. Like it was before.

When you set a new texture name in stdmatbasename is completely safe delete a texture from
the package. But, i know that users can make wrong and then mess with their files, so maybe
a little more work to you (sorry) to check if other ages are using the same texture in the package
opened in that color tab to make sure that the texture can be delete it safety.

i know that is complicated... But, anyway, if you think that is not a perfect and safe solution and can't
be doable, right now as it is your tool is fine already. :)

thanks man!

EDITED:
oops. I think that i found another little problem...
the ages that i hide are not using the maxis hairtone hash in the "hairtone" field of their PSETs..
so, even hiden, must be set to the same hairtone hash as the other files are using. The hairtone
hash is the one that will be stored at a sim DNA, so is really important change that.
but don't forget to set only the elder hair to 00000005-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.
if the elder hair use the same color in the hairtone field of PSET, will create conflicts inside the package.

Just one thing : could you make so we can choose the hairtone for the hair we put in custom ??
Let me give you an example to explain what I mean :
Say you have a hairstyle with a brown, black, blonde, red and platinum recolor. You would want to bin it with the platinum in custom. But if the hair was based on a black hair your platinum recolor is "black" in the hairtone xml. Putting it in the custom tab doesnot change that.
I found that when doing standalone hair I can put it first in the right color (obviously blond for platinum) then put it in custom and save : when looking in the file in simpe the hairtone xml is correctly changed to "blonde"
But it's not alwas practical to do that like that when doing the all family of recolor at once.
So, I'm asking for a way to change the hairtone on the custom one more easily.
If this isn't clear don't hesitate to ask, I will do my best to clarify (english is not my mother tongue....)
Thanks a lot for this wonderful tool once more
Pioupiou

Pinhead:
Did you use the base texture option on a PropertySet that you disabled (unchecked) ? I know that I wasn't commiting changes to TXMT's of hidden PropertySets previously (I'll post that change though). But if that happened on a checked item, I may have a bigger problem in hands!
The same applies to the PropertySet itself: changes in disabled items weren't being commited.

As for determining which textures can be deleted, the change in code may actually be simple, I'm just waiting for more issues to appear, so that the next update will contain all these corrections.

pioupiou:
Do you mean the proxy property? In the hairtone xml, this property controls the color of the facial overlays when you change to this hair in CAS.
Because I didn't know what to do with this property, I left it unchanged.
But I could make a basic editor so that you could change these properties yourself.

Yes I mean the proxy property. I like it to match the actual hairtone of the hairstyle because (from my in-game testing) it seems to control the hairtone the sim get when putting a uniform with a cap (like the llama mascot or the fast-food worker). And it bothers me when my sim with platinum custom hair change to be a black-haired sim when going to work.
So I really like a basic editor to change this proxy separately.

Do you leave it unchanged for all the hairtones or only for the custom one ? From using your tool I am under the impression that it updates the proxy to reflect the hairtone I choose, except for custom.
Thanks for your answer,
Pioupiou

Yes. And i tried to use the option to copy the base texture before uncheck the PSET. Didn't work.
But looks that with checked PSETs is working (i just tried here now).
about the hairtone hash problem, like i said, even hidden, the game will use the hairtone hash in the PSET. So, is better you change this field to hidden ages also.


that's great! thanks! :D

Odd! I tried to do color binning of facial hair and it all went ok, but when I tried to use the base textures for a Material Definition, the tool complained with an error! Despite that, I was able to continue and save the packages. (whew!)

I opened the original package in SimPE, and indeed the Material Definition's filelist was empty.
How could that be? Surely it must have been cloned from another facial overlay, and the filelist should have at least a reference to the original texture. ??? Should all facial overlays be treated differently?

Sorry, I looked but I think I already deleted it.  :(  Looks like you've figured out the problem anyway.

Quick question while I'm posting anyway: will re-binning the hair make Sims recognize it as the proper color for purposes of turn-ons and turn-offs, or will they still see it as being Custom Hair?

Indeed, other sims will no longer see these as custom hairs.  This has been one of my biggest incentives to have hair properly binned.

i never tried binning a facial hair or brows, and i don't know what the differences between facial hairs and brows with hairs.
maybe facial hairs and brows are different because are overlays?
so maybe other person has more knowledge and can help you on this.

Now i think that your tool for hairs, at least, is giving great results. Looks that is working good so far. :)
I just need to test it in the game now.
thanks a lot, Theo!

EDITED:
i forgot to ask something:
Theo, Is possible copy a texture reference of a material from black tab to other color tab?
i mean, it looks like that you can only copy textures and use the texture reference in the current color tab. I'm asking
this because i'm using the option to merge the output package and then the ef txtr is been duplicated (each color has
a ef texture) and i have to change manually the stdMatBaseName to point to just one.
Since i'm merging the package, if i delete a color from the Bin, all other colors will be deleted as well, and will not be
with a missing "ef" texture, so is completly fine use this texture.

AmberDiceless:
That's right, as Regina said the new hairtone color will be recognized as such when the game determines the turn-on/offs of the sim.
There is an annoyance, however: as some colors of that hair have the family guid changed, any sim wearing the formerly custom hair will lose it and become bald! :o You'll have to change the sim's appearance and chose a new hair.

Pinhead:
But that would work even if creating separate packages, as their resources are all loaded by the game, wouldn't it?
There was an old version that allowed copying references between packages, it's no big deal to allow it again. The old code always works better... ;D

lol
if you say so. :D
about the separate packages, well, i think that isn't a good idea delete the ef texture and use a reference from other color package. If the output is creating separate packages, if you delete the color package in bodyshop that all ef TXMTs are using as a base texture, the ef hair for other colors will miss the texture and become with that tag texture with the name of the missing texture on it.(a white texture with a red cross and the name of the missing texture)
I think that is more secure use the copy texture method from other color only if the output options is setted to merge the packages. This way, if you delete one color will delete all colors to that hair set.
anyway, i'm just saying what this process can cause wrong, but i don't know if users will think about copy the ef texture reference from one color to another...

:)
thanks again, theo! :D

I just gave the plugin a shot, and it works great!  The only thing it's lacking, I think, is the ability to change the Family number.  (Once the Family numbers match, it'll jump smoothly from one hair color to the next when you choose another color instead of defaulting to a Maxis hairstyle.)

you can change the family number using the Package/Options menu in the Tool.
make sure that you are generating a valid GUID.

is this what you were asking?

anyway, if you create a set (loading all packages in the respective color Tabs in the plugin) all the hair colors will use the same family ID.

I copied and pasted the GUID from the first hairstyle - kind of a jump-over from what I was doing when I was binning the old-fashioned way.

Anyhow, thanks for the information.  I'll try it.

Edit: by the way, I can't seem to load every color at once.  It seems I can get two maximum; it doesn't seem to want to load any more after that - I double-click the filename and nothing happens.  Any chance it's trying to put them into a bin I've successfully loaded into or something?

Hi Syera, the tool cannot load the same package file into different color tabs, it's a known issue that will have a fix for it.
But that's not an usual scenario, normally you have like four package files.

All you have to do is select a color tab and load one package into it. Then repeat the same for the other tabs.
After you done it for the 4 packages, you can save the result.

But that's not all to it, there's the issue of the grey color, that is explained a bit further in a simple walkthrough at this location: http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/walkthrough.html (http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/walkthrough.html)

If there's something missing in the walkthrough that you think deserves mentioning, I'll be glad to add it to the example. :)

Regarding separate vs one package for binned hair, I think one just makes more sense. Not only from a technical viewpoint so you can have only one grey and then have all the references point to it, but also because why would you want the colors in separate packages if the hair is binned? You really will need all 4 colors for a binned hair to work properly. Even before this tool, when binning hair I would always just insert everything into one package except maybe for the mesh.

For some reason, the program keeps erroring every time I try to open a package file. It comes up with a .NET Framework error saying "could not load SimPe.Interfaces.Files.IPackedFileDescriptorBasic from assembly simpe.helper, Version = .50.2120.35905, Culture = neutral, PublicKeyToken = null."

I can't open any of my files with this tool.  :( Help please?

Now its going "obj reference not set to an instance of an obj"? It goes back and forth between the two error messages. I have no idea why this is happening.

maybe because you are using a very old version of SimPE..
version 50 is really outdated.

and i'm not sure if this plugin can be running with such old version.
correct me if i'm wrong, please. :)

anyway, looks like SimPE site is down.

i agree!
and back in those days that i was trying to figure it out how to make a set in one package (using the jeannete hair package), i was affraid to use different groups IDs in the same package.
Looks like is completely fine merge all color packages without changing groups and names in TXMTs (to not conflict). :)
i'm glad that this tool can do this. Once gain, Thanks a lot to Theo! :D

Ah. I see. The SimPE site was down yesterday, so I couldn't check. Thnx.

Thank you, Theo - I've got everything working now.  :)

I really like the ability to put all recolors into one file.  (http://www.springhole.net/smileys/drool.gif)

Theo, thanks for putting up a more detailed tutorial for combining color packages.  I get it now.  XD

I thought I would throw this out just for the heck of it, since you seem to have such a great handle on hair and color bins...I don't suppose it would be feasible to make a mod that would recategorize some of the Maxis default hairstyles into different bins?  Specifically, the hats?  If I could put them all into the Custom bin, my life would be complete.  XD  Okay, well, not really, but I'd be a lot less annoyed.  ;)

So far it's working great. Really cuts down on rebinning time. ;D

But just a suggestion for the tool - when you open a package, it always starts you off at the downloads folder. I generally have my stuff organized in an outside folder for editing before I dump it into my game. This way, it gets kind of tedious to have to redirect to the correct folder every time I edit. Do you think you could implement it so that the tool starts you off at the folder you were last in?

And for hairs without a grey elder texture, I was wondering if you could implement an option to leave the elder hairtone alone, so that it'll stay in the custom bin? I know that this disrupts the hair's transition from adult to elder, but I would like some of my elders to have colored hair, and I don't want these hairs in the grey bin for the obvious reason that they're not grey.

Just some suggestions...but definitely a great tool!

Idtaminger, I started copying-and-pasting the folder path from Windows Explorer.  It helps immensely throughout all stages of the process I do - zip extraction, opening, saving, etc.

A quick fix would be to change the default filter to show all files, thus showing shortcuts to folders in the file list.
But I prefer to wait for the next SimPE, as quaxi will enable custom plugins to store their preferences through the program's options panel.


You can uncheck all the grey recolors from the normal color bins (the plugin already does that automatically), and load a package with the desired grey hair into the Custom bin.

Now this is important: The current version in the first post (v0.2.5.1) does not allow loading the same package file into different color tabs.
I do have an (even more) experimental version (v0.2.7.1) that enables it, so if you feel brave enough to try it, here's the link: http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/ColorBinningTool_0271.zip (http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/ColorBinningTool_0271.zip) (see also the changelog (http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/changelog.html) for a list of other changes).


Motoki did post something similar, the Clothing Equality Mod at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1243.0 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1243.0), but I only downloaded it and haven't been curious enough to analyse what's being done to create those packages, but I think it's only a matter of creating PropertySets with the same Id's as the Maxis ones. This tool just isn't powerful enough to do that yet ;D

Edit: I saw these packages ( http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=146185 (http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=146185) ) at MTS2, that contain all the PropertySets for the hats & clothes, already hidden from the catalog, so maybe it's just a matter of selecting the ones you want :)

I am finally getting the opportunity to try out this tool, and let's just say this is no doubt going to set me off on a hair downloading spree!  For months I've been seeing hairstyles and just *harrumphing* because I knew if I downloaded them I'd just be causing myself a ton more work.  Woo-boy!  This changes everything!   ;D

Motoki, I really and truly appreciate your tenacity in the non-properly binned hair arena.  Keep it going!  And don't let up on those site-owners, especially now that this tool is out!

And Theo, thank you so very much for taking the time to program this!  I've no doubt your time you've used in its development has already saved many times that amount of time on everyone else's end by not having to bin the old-fashioned way!

Okay--now before I forget!  I do have one question.  I noticed that when I binned a hairstyle, then saved it as one file instead of the original four, that the size of that file is a whopping 5.4 megs!  The hairfiles that went into it averaged 700 kb each.  This means that somehow or another that file grew almost 3 megs in size between binning and saving.  Is there any way around this because this is going to be absolute hell on people's games, especially on slower systems, not to mention what it could do to bandwidth and upload/download times?  :-\

Hi Regina,

I've also seen the file size increase, and I think it may be related to the fact that the tool doesn't modify the existing packages - it creates new files from scratch, and afterwards processes and adds the resources to them.

There may be an option in SimPE's code that allows a more "conservative" file size setting, but until now I haven't found it :P

Just wanted to add my 2 cents worth if you don't mind.  :D    It does save alot of time for binning hair and I know I could never create a program like this, but I did notice two things.

If a creator makes more than one version of blond or brown, etc.,  I have to put one in the custom bin but where would I put a second extra color?  And I would actually like it if I could put the all versions of blonds, browns, etc., in their respective bins instead of putting the extras back into custom, just my preference.

The second thing is when the binning process is finished, I noticed that textures don't change to the next or previous age group in Bodyshop.  Would making a unique GUID in options solve that?

Thank you for listening.   :)

Theo, are the textures being saved as uncompressed somehow? SimPE can make use of the Nvidia DDS tools to provide DXT compression but you have to have the tools installed and point SimPE to the location where there are installed. Also even if you did this in the past and upgraded to a newer version of SimPE you may need to tell SimPE again the location of the DDS tools.

Motoki, you could be on to something there.  Now that you mention it I'm pretty sure that when I installed SimPE on this computer that I did NOT install the NVidia DDS tools.  I was only freshly acquainted with them and barely installed them on my old computer so it would only be right for my brain for me to completely forget that on my new machine.

Edit:  Nope--that didn't do the trick.  I installed the tools, fixed it up in SimPE and re-did that particular package.  The file size is still the same.

So maybe the binning tool isn't correctly using the tools then to compress the textures? Hmm. I never noticed a file size increase when I exported the TXMT from SimPE and pasted it into a new package, but the tool must be decompressing the textures and then I guess either resaving them uncompressed or with less compression. Theo would have a better idea how it works though. Maybe Quaxi could give some insights too but his board was down last time I checked.

Hi!

No! the problem with the size of the packages is just a matter of uncompressed resources.
SimPE, by default, when importing or creating resources never compress them (security reason).

You just need to open the package after completed and select some resources to
compress. But be very careful on this! some things can't be compressed.
And i never use the compression in 3IDR files because i got corrupted.

This information i'm a little worried. I'm not responsible of anything if something got corrupted
and people don't know what they are doing... So, if you are worried about using this, use just to TXTRs
and will decrease a lot of the package size. The other resources are all small ones and will not change
too much. But remember that i said, some can't be compressed. So, if it not compressed one or two,
forget it.

to do this, just select one or multiple resources (draggin a box around the resources with your mouse
or shift+click or shift+ctrl ... whatever) and select the Resource Dock (where
is showing the Group ID and Instances and where you can edit the IDs). There is a little box called compression.
Select "Yes" and go to File/Save (don't need to hit commit). Will make all selections compressed. Make sure to not hit commit!

note that simPE will freeze a little time, sometimes it takes more than 2 or 3 minutes if a lot of resources are selected.
i suggest select the resource by type first. This way is more fast.
And be patient! don't close the simPE task using task manager if hang up for too much time. lol
go take a bath, play dices or poker with your dog... PATIENCE! :)

make sure to make a little backup of the package. if something gots corrupt you can't use it.

Just a thank you post  ;D
I only noticed today that you change the tool to allow choosing of the proxy for the custom color, thank you so so much !!!
I'm ashamed to notice only today :-[
thanks again
pioupiou

I browsed SimPE's code documentation (the code itself! ;D), and indeed each resource has an option to make it compressed through code! 8)

So following pinhead's tip, here's the code to compress the textures only:


Early tests show that compressing textures alone is enough to bring the file size down by a considerable amount. :)
The tradeoff is a noticeable lag when saving the packages. :(

I will provide an option to compress textures, available as a check box on the output options panel.  8)

By the way, I found another serious bug: the tool didn't take into account the "stdMatNormalMapTextureName" property of the material definitions, which caused some textures to be excluded from the output packages :o. The next release will have that correction as well.

that will be cool, theo! :D
if the tool make the output textures compressed is less manually work that we have. :D
thanks a lot!

about the normal maps, i was thinking that bump map textures are only used by clothes..i never saw a hair using normal maps.
i'm curious. why you are worried about it?

idtaminger PM'd me because she had a hair that was showing the skincolor instead of the hair's textures. The hair is "Nouk Dreads" that can be found here: http://noukiesims2.net/Genetics.html (http://noukiesims2.net/Genetics.html)

After inspecting the package he sent me, it was clear that the TXMTs were referencing custom textures through the stdMatNormalMapTextureName property and that the tool had discarded those textures. The Filelist also had two entries: ufhaircornrowslong-all-bump and ufhaircornrowslong-brown (by that order).

It did take some reworking, but now the tool takes this special case into account. When reverting to the base textures, the texture names are taken with the correct order of the Filelist. Copying and pasting texture references will also consider base and bumpmap textures as one unit.

I'll let you know when I release these corrections so that you can test them.

Edited because idtaminger was in need of gender correction ;D

oh! i see.
that's new to me. I never saw a hair using bump textures. Now i know that the maxis dreads are using it.

good that you are working on this issue. :)
thanks for the info, theo. great job :)

EDITED:

Theo, i found something wrong with a package that i was working with your tool.
I downloaded some multi colored tinted hairs and i was categorizing those as "Custom".
If i try to use a base texture in a Material, your tool is changing the color name of Filelist to
"-custom" when pasting to stdMatBaseTextureName.
for example, the hair was cloned from a black hair. toddler, child, teen and elder texture was not changed
to be multi colored as adult texture. So, i was copying the base texture to the Materials. In file list, for example,
i have "puhairsimple-straight-black" and your tool is changing to "puhairsimple-straight-custom.
The texture will not be found, of course  ;)

i hope that you can fix this later :)
i'm trying the version 0.2.7.1 btw.

Theo, you might want to point out where the Compressed box is on your tutorial - I must've spent about five minutes looking for it!   ;D

I compressed the textures - that decreased the filesize by about 1900k (nearly half the original size) - not bad!  :)

just another small mistake in the "Custom" color tab is that the elder hair is the only one using another hairtone value at the PSET. It's
using the maxis 0000005 hairtone. You may need to exclude this change to only "Custom" color tab to keep the same hairtone value as
the other ages (to not broke the DNA if a sim has it). Looks like all the other ages aren't been changed in the hairtone field of PSETs.
 
I don't know if is possible isolate the changes that you are making to color tabs.

The hairtone field in PropertySets - elder age excluded - of custom hairs has the same value as the family guid, I guess you want this value applied also for the elder PropertySet?

Anyway, the tool has been updated with these changes.

Thanks for pointing that out, I was waiting to have more changes in this release so that I could include them in that document. (In other words, I'd completely forgotten it! :D)
It has been updated as well.

Alas, the plugin doesn't directly support more than one custom color in the same family. What you can do is to process each custom package in separate sessions in the "Custom" tab, and making sure their family GUID (available in the options panel) is the same. The text box allows you to paste guid's.

That would happen if you excluded those age groups, but if that's not the case, what hair package are you trying to bin?

She! I'm a she. :D

Oh, and I'm a little confused about the texture referencing. Say I have a Maxis hair that was converted for all ages. Now, since each age is essentially using the same Maxis texture, how would I go about referencing the original Maxis adult hair?

yes. If other ages PSETs are using the same hairtone GUID (same as the family GUID), the elder must use it as well, since all custom hairs unbinned are using like this.
man, you are fast! :D

i tested redoing those packages and all is fine now. Plus, i tested other hairstyle with all colors properly binned and no problems were found.
this version is the best so far. :)
bravo!

But looks like the compress code for textures is not working. at least, not here.
and just a very small request, with low priority of course. When you have a time, if is doable.. could you please make the tool save the option checkboxes
as a preference or something? when i was testing, everytime that i create a new session the options checkboxes are changing to default.

now i will go back to work and stop bothering Theo with requests and small problems. lol

Does the compress code use SimPE default compression or Nividia DDS tools? I remember Quaxi saying the default compression he put into SimPE wasn't so good, so that's why he added the option to get the Nvidia DDS tools and then have SimPE point to the location where they are installed and use them because he felt it was a better compression program.

At least that is what I seem to recall him saying.

Motoki, i think that you are understanding wrong.
the compression is for resources (package compression). Not BMP or PNG textures to DDS.(image compression) :)
what the tool does isn't relating to recreating textures.
Is the same thing if you export a resource to *.simpe and reimporting. Will export/import as a binary file.
what that will be lost when importing again is the package compression, not the image compression. :)

Oh, okay I see. Makes sense. :)

Oh, that surely must have been a typo! ;)

Those are functions to which the phrase "Motoki made me do it!" would apply :D.

What happens is that every hair cloned in BodyShop comes with an integral copy of the textures used. But what some hair creators want is to just change the underlying mesh and use the original base textures (that are buried somewhere in the TSData folder).

Pinhead told us (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3714.msg107206#msg107206) that it was possible to make the hair packages point to the base textures, thus relieving the need to have those big texture files included in the package, and Motoki nagged me enough kindly insisted that I put that option available.

The "Copy/Use texture references" allows you to use the adult texture in the teenage TXMT's for example, and it's useful when you have situations in which each TXMT is using different textures, but you visually see that they are the same, so it will allow you to normalize the texture usage. (I hope this makes any sense)


Motoki & Pinhead:
I've tested the file compression without the DDS tools installed, and it works on my computer. Maybe it's time to query the SimPE forum on this one, because I don't know what it needs to work, I just set a property in code!

Theo: Sorry for nagging.  :-[ But I REALLY appreciate your effort in doing this. If the creator doesn't change the Maxis texture then there's certainly no need to make a copy of it and take up extra space and loading time when we already have the same texture with the game files.

Oh and the SimPE forum is still down. :(

Lol Motoki, I said it in a jokingly manner, maybe missing the required smiley :D

Like Regina said before it was your tenacity and insistence for correctly binning the hair packages that made me do this tool in the first place!

cheers

Well, what I mean is, I've got a hair that has added the toddler to teen stages. They use the same textures as the adult stage. The adult stage is a Maxis hair. So...what I want to do is to have no textures at all in the packages, and rather just have them reference the adult texture that the game has already provided. Possible? Feasible?

Sure, it's possible to reference any Maxis texture for any mesh. Now whether the mesh's UV Map will work for that texture is a different story, but yes you can make new hair meshes that have no textures at all in them because they just call references to existing Maxis textures. My female afro is actually set up this way. And I didn't have this tool when I did it either so I had to do it the old fashioned tedious way. :P

So....how? ??? Cuz that's what I'm really asking about.

lol
those ages ago. We can start call those times as "b.t.p." (before Theo's Plugin) and now a new Era came up. :D

Theo, i think it is better if you talk to quaxi about the compression resources using a code. Like i said before
this type of compression is not a image compression, but a resource compression. The DDS tools don't have any relation to
what we are seeking. I wish i have more knowledge and a better english vocabulary to explain better this situation. sorry guys :)

idtaminger:
just right click in the materials and use the "use base texture". But like motoki said, if the creator changed UV Maps in the mesh, the texture may
be messed. Make sure to do this in all materials that is showing. You can select multiple Materials and apply to all with just one click. :D

EDITED:
Theo, i found why was not compressing the textures. When chosing the option to merge the packages (create single package)
is not compressing the textures, but if this option is unchecked (by default) the textures will be compressed.
I think that your code is already working, but was not used by "create single package" option :)
and this option is what i'm using always.

Another issue I have with this tool - after I bin my hairs, if I try to manually place the elder stage to custom by changing the hairtone line, it doesn't work. Right now, when I click the hair in the custom bin, it jumps to the grey bin instead, and thus I'm unable to select the hair. Is there anything else I need to change in SimPE for the elder stage to be custom?

hun?
why are you placing the elder hair as custom?
well, anyway, i think that what i said to theo fix with custom tab colors is making your life hard. sorry about this, but what you are making is not a "classic" way. lol

ok, you can try open the package and change the PSETs of elders to use:
hairtone (dtString) = 00000006-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (maxis multicolored bin)
instead of 00000005 (grey bin).
let me know if this helped

EDITED:
idtaminger, i read again your post and i'm not sure yet what you are trying to explain. lol
sorry. But if you are keeping a hair set (all ages) in custom bin and just the elder is been categorized as grey bin (was a bug), you may try
the new version that Theo fixed this problem.
are you using Color Binning Tool version 0.2.8.1?

Ah. Thank you! I want the elder in custom b/c the creator didn't create a grey texture for the elder stage. I still want the colored hair to show for some of my elders - hair dye, if you will - but I don't want them in the grey bin b/c they're not grey.

Well, so far so good!  By compressing the textures, just like Syera said, the file size is being greatly reduced, usually anywhere from 50% to 75%.  I've noticed that some textures refuse to compress, but that just could be their nature.  Not all files are going to compress as well as others, just depends on their data.

Now I'm only wishing this was working out as well for custom facial hair and eyebrows.  I was trying to bin one set of eyebrows.  Each eyebrow file is less than 70kb each (total of four files).  After binning and saving as one file, the file size was over 3 megs.  Compression brought it down to a little over 2.  That's kinda scary!  :o

I haven't had a chance yet to look at any of the binned hairs in-game but have been checking them in BodyShop as I go along and so far everything looks great!

I set the hairtones to 00000006-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, but now they won't even show. Help? :(

you just changed in the elders PSETs, right?
if isn't show up, just change again to 5 instead of 6.

i can't imagine why isn't working using as 6.
i will try here to see

yes. you are right. Well, i never tried make a set like you are doing, so, i was guessing.
but if you copy the family GUID and paste to the elders PSET (i tried here) hairtone field, will place in
the custom bin. But, if you are selecting an adult hair in the black bin and change the age
to be an elder, the bin will change to the grey bin (the bodyshop expects that the correct bin is
this one), but if you click in the custom bin, the elder thumbnail is there (not selected).
i don't know why isn't selected, but if you select this thumbnail and change to adult, will go to
the black bin again (so, is corrected linked by family ID).
in the game will not be broken, i guess. But is something unusual that you are trying to do.

Yep. Just the elder psets. If you want, I could email you one that's working and one that's not, for comparison. The one that's working was binned a diff way, and I changed the elder PSET manually afterwards.

I tried changing the texture format and got incredible results.
By merely changing the format to DXT5 and then compressing, I got an eyebrow package from 2Mb (uncompressed) to 38Kb!!  :o

If I can make it work in the code, that's going to be good news for everyone  8)
Here's the picture :
(http://theos.home.sapo.pt/res/txtr.dxt5.png)


I see you already found the bug :), I will have a new version soon with (hopefuly) the change in the texture format as well.

I forgot completely. lol
the hairtone ID 6 is hidden in Bodyshop. Will only be avaliable in the game (doesn't matter if the thumbnail is hidden or not).
so, is better not using this if you are planning to select in bodyshop.
if you do like i said in the last post that i edited:

will be placed there, but will not be changed smoothly between bins like normaly is (only the elder).
are you doing like this when you say that is working?

Ah! That seemed to work! Thnx! :)

For the other file, I had set the hairtone to the originalhairtone line that's all the way down at the bottom, and for some reason, it works for hairs edited either manually or via Datgen, I believe, but doesn't work for hairs edited by the tool. Go figure. But thanks a lot for the help! :-*

Hi Theo

It looks like this is going to be a wonderful tool that I will use frequently. The tutorial at http://theos.home.sapo.pt/ts2/walkthrough.html was easy to follow and working very well. However once I tried loading colours other than Plicka's black I ran into problems. No matter what file I select it always loads the black set. In the case of blonde I do see a colour change to blonde in the preview window, but no change in the filenames.

I have tried this with other hair files. Sometimes I do see all of the other colours in the preview window, but the filenames always refer to the black files.

Unfortunately I just upgraded to Family Fun Stuff yesterday - before running this plugin - and of course SIMPE complains that it is not compatible with expansions more recent than OFB. Perhaps this is the problem...

Cheers - David

Loving the tool Theo, my hair is organized so much better now.  Thanks so much for this!  XD

May I suggest a possible feature to consider adding to future versions, if it's feasible to do so?  When loading a hair package that already contains more than one color, would it be possible to set it up so that all the colors show up under their correct color tabs in the plugin rather than lumped into one tab?  A couple of times now I've had to fix a color I mistakenly put in the wrong bin, or add one I missed to a package, and the only way I could do it was to start over with the original hair files and redo the entire thing...

I have a suggestion - could you fix the Options menu so it'll remember the settings?  It's getting mighty old, having to recheck the boxes under Options for each and every hairstyle.

Thank you for this fantastic plugin - it makes hair binning a lot easier. However, this tool seems to actually double the sizes of the modified hair files. That is to say that the new files generated by the plugin are twice the size of the original (disabled) package files. This problem sort of defeats one of the reasons for binning hair - can it be fixed?

This plugin came right on time. I was gettin tired of all the post about people having problems color binning. Hopefully, this will stop them.

I just gotta say, this is a brilliant tool!  Thanks so much, this is making my life sooooo much easier.

That happens to me too. I think it's just something the creator of the hair did. As long as the preview window shows the correct color the hair has been working fine for me in game, even though the filenames might be saying the wrong color.  :)

And I'd like to add my thanks for this tool. Yesterday I decided to learn how to bin hair, and I was dreading learning the long way that I had read about. Thanks to this I don't have to. Woo!

Theo made an option to compress the resources. It will use the SimPE Compress code in the textures resources inside the package.
However, since SimPE isn't Bodyshop, sometimes it can't compress all..

and to clarify, compressing resources is not related to image compression. :)

you can select the option to compress the textures resources at menu "Package/Options" in the Output Tab.
make sure that you are using at least version 0.2.8.1

It happens when creators (almost all of them) use the same bodyshop project to create all colors. Will use one color to start the project and after finished they reload the projet to change the colors. All references were based in one color. Anyway, the names there doesn't matter by the game. 
This is why Theo made the texture preview. You can know what color is related to that package and not to care about the names that most of the time are wrong.
What are really important, Theo made with the tool can change properly everything to make the hair work fine in the game.
 :)

I'll give this a go - thank you.

It's easier than you think: when you download a hair, it normally comes with four color packages. When you view the hair in CAS or BodyShop, all four colors are in the custom content bin. But when you change the mannequin age to elder, you see that there are also four grey hairs in the catalog. This happens because each color package comes with a grey recolor.

This tool enables you to hide three of them (at your choice), leaving only one grey recolor (like the Maxis hairs).

The example also shows a little quirk: there were no really grey colors available (as seen in the texture preview).
Because the tool does not allow you to replace an item's texture yet ;), you either choose an elder age recolor (out of the four available) that looks like a grey hair, or you would have to create a grey color package yourself, and load that package into the "Grey" tab, where the elder age item is the only one selected.

I have a question....:

Everything has been going along fine for me as I have been binning the hair I downloaded. It all shows up perfectly and whatnot. But when I try to open recolors I have made myself, I get this error:

"An unhandled exception has occured in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will be shut down immediately.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

It's a .NET Framework error..... Does anyone know what's going on here? :|

Can you post the Exception Text (preferably as an attachment)?
When the error occurs, click the Details button and copy the text that begins like:

Here's the Exception Text.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Thanks a lot  :)
I think this happens when you don't type a tooltip for the package, I'll post a fix for the tool briefly.

Ah, that would make sense. I didn't put tooltips on my earlier recolors. Thanks a lot.  ;D

I've come across another problem: The plugin seems to 'eat' blond recolours. Every single blond recolour i run through the plugin does not show up in CAS. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

That is odd ??? What options are you using?

I just followed your walkthrough exactly and left all the default options. I've reccently started compressing the textures but I noticed this problem from the very beginning.

Can you provide a link for one of those packages? I would like to see what happened to the blond recolor package.

I've pmed a link to you.

I have a bit more information which might be helpful. In my high horsepower computer at home, I have the Sims and all expansions installed, together with a lot of custom content. With that computer, I found that even in the tutorial I was hard pressed to come up with a consistent output. Sometimes colours wouldn't move from one bin to the other properly during assembly. Sometimes one colour = often the blonde - wouldn't show up in the output file.

However, I am presently on the road and using a rather clunky Pentium III laptop with a primitive video processor. Although practically speaking it can't effectively run the Sims, it is quite useful for doing hair recolouring sinced the results are extremely reliable. Two possible reasons come to mind to explain this. It may be that on my home computer the large amount of custom content is in some way interferring with this plugin, and/or the presence of all the expansions including FFS is in some way overwhelming its operation.

Now that I have reliable plugin operation I am using me time away to rebin some of DJ_Mur3's (http://www.modthesims2.com/member.php?u=70642) wonderful hair designs.

I have an interesting tid-bit for you. I color binned all my hair and reinstalled my game a few days ago. I started a new hood and used testing cheats to create townies. I hired a nanny for one of my sims and noticed that the nanny had custom hair. I thought that was odd, but didn't think much of it. When I took my sim to a downtown area, I saw that a great number of my townies are now walking around with custom hair. I have not seen this happen before and the only thing I've changed is color binning so I am assuming that this great tool is what did it. Thank you so much! I urge someone to try creating a new neighborhood and seeing if this can be done without reinstalling.

Nope, the townies and NPC's get random hairstyles, so if you have custom hairstyles that are in the proper colour bins, there is a chance they can get those.

So it seems that the game checks for the hairtone property when choosing the hair for a new townie or NPC.

Just to update on that last problem, I re-checked the entire code and besides the obvious bugs, I was unable to find anything that could solve the missing recolors.
Since I cannot reproduce that effect here, I'll keep waiting for someone to report more information.

Thank you - this is great ;D.

What's the procedure to get Quaxi to add plugins to his list of Official Plugins that get automatically installed along with SimPE? Anyone know? 'Cos this really should be included as standard, assuming Theo's ok with that.

I was quite disturbed by how much larger the files became after editing, until Simsbaby told me about the "Compress textures" option. Now I'm very happy with my new slimmed-down Downloads folder :).

Any success stories on binning brows with this tool or by manually changing XTOL value?

Actually texture overlay packages are even more hard to edit manually, because texture overlays like brows apply to both genders, so you have to edit twice as many property set resources than in normal hair packages.

This tool should be able to all this work for you, and as long you have the packages for each brow color, you can load them the same way you do for hairs.

I did used it once for binning brows, and more recently for facial hair (I had binned most of it manually :P), and the tool processed them without problems.

I've just gotten up the nerve to give this a shot today and have the same problem. Only the black colors are missing instead of blonde.  :-\  As unawesome as I am, I should have known to just leave well-enough alone. LOL

I had the same problem with black recolors, and I figured out why: I was loading the black package a second time in the gray tab and checking only the gray textures in there, which worked fine in most packages, but a few of them didn't seem to like it.  The solution I found was to leave the gray textures checked in the black tab and load nothing in the gray tab, and then everything seemed to work fine.

Thanks Amber! Actually I don't know what the hell I may have done...lol  I do know that it's giving me a helluva headache. I'm stubborn though so I'm gonna keep on trying until I get it right or until my head explodes!  :D

Theo, I used your plugin for hair and it worked very well but when I try to bin brows they do not compress and become 2Mb files. Please tell me where I'm going wrong.
Thanks.

Oh dear, well I thought unchecking the grey in the big window (where all the hair colors are) made the hair have NO grey color. And I read the whole script on the download page (many times)! I feel very 'stoopid' after having binned almost 700 hair textures. I checked the unchecked grey every time, I didn't realise you could keep it unchecked and have one grey anyway.
Well I just have more useless elder hair colors, since I don't even age my sims to elder, freaked that they will become all shrivelled up and die without my control. Now I wonder why I even bothered checking them in the first place. God I need a brain transplant. (and could you introduce a batch-fixing option for this? Maybe I could uncheck the greys without the hassle all over?)

Thanks for making this plugin anyway, it works brilliantly!  (I think I have an older version by the way, with no clothing options)

Sometimes the textures won't compress even if you check that option.

This is a known problem of SimPE's compression function (which is used by this tool), and I think it happens when the compressed data is larger than the original.

Perhaps in a future version of SimPE that problem may be solved, but until then there's nothing we can do. You can try do do the compression manually, but in the end the result will be the same :(

SimPE's compression is indeed buggy. Compressing any kind of image (including hair textures and skintones) may actually corrupt the package. Only text can safely be compressed.

The Fix DNA function scans the Sim DNA resources in your neighborhoods, and if it finds any family guid of the loaded packages, it replaces it with the normal color guid. The normal guid to replace depends of course, on the color tab where the package was loaded.

This was done by request, and I have never used it in my neighborhoods, for the simple reason that I never created CAS sims with custom hair.

So far the only person that used it reported no problems, but if you want to try, don't forget to make a backup first ;D

I think the compression algorithm is set by whatever the Maxians are using, and it would thus be pointless to "compress" something to produce a result that is not, in fact, smaller.

What I find odd is that the same resource can be (or appears to be) compressed in a package generated by BodyShop, but cannot be so when processed by SimPE.

I had that problem, but I re-installed SimPE and that fixed it.

All folders under 'The Sims 2' are read.

Hi, I'm new to MATY. (Why did I feel like I was at an virtual AA meeting, when I was typing that?  :P) Anyway, this is the most ambitious project I've EVER attempted (SimPE frightens me a little... well maybe a lot, and the mere thought of code makes my hade tremble.), and all is going swimmingly! My custom color bin was annoyingly packed with things that should be binned. Now, rather than grumbling about it,and clean that crap up.  ;D
Thanks for clear directions and an awesome tool.  :D

Theo, this plugin rocks !  I've tested it and it kicks ass.  Big time.  You have to have spent entire evenings binning hair to properly appreciate the genius of this plugin.  You're DA man.

Could this plugin be changed to allow multiple packages per hair colour? Some hairstyles have a platinum blonde and normal blonde, or light and dark brown.
Currently once a package has been assigned to a hair colour, a second one cannot be added.

I'd love to merge them all in one package. Is it possible to merge meshes in as well?

It's just a matter of assigning the same family and hairtone guids to those packages, so I think it's easily done 'under the hood'.

The problem is organizing those packages in the UI; I've considered creating the ability to add more tabs to the window, like some web browsers do.

Until that is done, the only trick you have is to copy the family guid in the options, and process the remaining packages using that guid.



Uhh, I don't think it's a good idea to mess with the meshes ;), but do you want to include the mesh resources in the output package?

I tried doing that with SimPe, and found that additional recolors somehow didn't recognize the mesh :P

omg I've been looking for something like this forever  ::) i've got tons of hair and it's pretty annoying to keep it to the customs only! you rock! now I can only hope I can tackle the delicate art of making it work!  ;D

Ok, I outrageously lied! :D

It's the same tool, with about the same look and usage, with just some updates to work with Pets.

It has a new option to specify if the packages should (or not) be renamed according to the current naming scheme. Of course new bugs are expected in this area, so proceed with caution.  ;)

Awesome!  I tend to download duplicates, and I'd like the filenames to stay unchanged!

<mashes the thanks button>

Haste is the enemy of perfection...

Version 0.2.28.3 (for SimPe 0.60) was adding an invalid subtype property to all PropertySets, making the hairs disappear from the game catalog. :P

The hairs that you binned using the tool must be re-processed, or can be corrected manually by deleting all subtype properties from hair packages.
This new version can fix the packages that may have been created.

There's an unresolved bug concerning the new renaming option (surprise, surprise! ::))

Basically, an error box will appear for each package being saved, if the "Rename Files" option is unchecked and the "Create Backup" option is checked.

If you want to keep the original file names, and don't want to be bugged by popup boxes, just clear the "Create backup" option. The .packagedisabled files won't be created, but SimPe will create the .bak files for the existing packages.

Thanks for this great tool and for updating it for Pets. Since pets though, I haven't been able to bin any hair that shows up in the game. I have SimPe 0.06.2.20832  and the Color Binning Tool 2.29.1. I had the same problem with the previous versions of both as well. The hair doesn't show up once it's been rebinned. It sounds a lot like the problem you have mentioned above. I don't get any error messages though, everrthing appears to be working fine but the rebinned hair doesn't show up. Under my output options, I have everything checked except "Generate Single Package". I don't have the "Hide from catalog" checked and haven't done anything with the Guid or Text lines.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I'm going to try some different options and bin exported Maxis hair next to see if that works.

OK, I tried rebinning some extracted Maxis hair and they all showed up except for the black, including a custom color I added. This time, I left all the options unchecked completely. It's a better result than I've had before, so I'll keep trying this way.

Has anyone checked their missing colors using clean installer? When I get done processing a hair style I immediately load it into clean installer. Sometimes one of the colors (usually black for me, but sometimes blonde) will show up as an empty package.

I redo the one missing color then recheck with clean installer. Most of the time it "takes" on the 2nd try, although a few packages had to been done 3 or 4 times before it would save the package correctly. When I have all 4 hair colors not showing up as empty packages, I delete the original files. (I have the whole folder backed up elsewhere on the drive for emergency). I find that I can keep clean installer open along with SimPe so it isn't too hard to keep an eye out for empty packages.

I reported this on the MTS2 thread but haven't seen a fix available yet. In the meantime, this procedure has worked well for me.

To follow up on some previous comments: Yes, it would be nice to have it start up where it left off.  Until that's fixed (or not), I got a neat utility called FileBox Extender, which adds a button to the title bar of the standard Windows file chooser window.  The demo version only lets you configure two or three folders, but it's "one click" navigation to those folders.

Now the bad news.  Bug report:

I think it has something to do with the fact I've configured the hair binner to not change the file names.  It seems to work otherwise.

Is this a valid way to bin hair with an "extra" color, such as both light and dark brown:
1) Bin the other normal colors, and one of the browns as brown. Bin the other brown as custom.  Save.
2) Start a new session.  Click the Brown tab.  Load the brown that was binned as custom.  Save.

Is it also ok to make the hair that has been binned Read Only, so you don't have to worry about copying something over it or deleting it accidentally?

I get that message regularly. Closing the color tool, or navigating to another folder in clean installer if that is open too, will let me move the files. I usually don't have to close SimPe completely, but occasionally I have to for it to let me move files.

Notice the error complains about the file being used by another process. So closing the programs that were using the files releases it so it can be moved.

Also, when binning a second color of the same family, you don't have to load the 2nd color into custom. I usually do load the 2nd brown into custom just to look at the color. But then I clear it before saving the rest of the colors. Click on options and copy the Guid number, then save the first 4 colors you binned.

Go back in and load the 2nd brown (and or 2nd red etc.) into the tool just like you are starting fresh. You don't have to fill up all 4 colors. Then click on options and paste the Guid number that you copied over the one that is there. That will make all the colors stay in the same family. Then save again, giving the 2nd set a slightly different name so it doesn't overwrite the first colors you binned.

Thanks for the tips.  I'll probably be writing a "hair binning for dummies and impatient people" soon! Otherwise I'll forget and have to relearn everything next time...

Yes, when I went back and checked them that's what had happened to mine too. I get an empty package with nearly every hair set I bin, either black or blonde too. I'm also getting weird grey results too, some color (so far it's been red or brown) will get placed as the grey, even though I've selected something else.

One last silly question... when I'm binning recolors, should i use the same GUID as for the original hair?

I don't think it matters. As long as you use the same GUID for all 4 (or more) of your colors, then when you are in CAS and you have a hairstyle picked and change to a different color, the style will remain the same.

All evidence suggests that the renaming and the backup options are incompatible, so unless a more serious bug appears, I'll finally upload a fix for that  ::)

The fix will simply turn off the backup option automatically when you choose not to rename the packages.

Fortunately SimPe can still create backups, the only difference is that the backups have a *.bak extension, instead of *.packagedisabled.

One last silly thought... It would be helpful if the filename could be (optionally of course) appended to the tooltip text.  Lots of creators just put their name/site in the tooltip, which is nice to advertise where it came from, but not so nice when you need to figure out which of 10-100 files is that particular style/color.

Sorry to be stupid, but what is the SRC for at the end of the third download link? I'm not sure which of the last two files is the one I need...

Source code. You probably want the one without the SRC at the end.

Having issues with the tool.

It's putting everything in the proper bin and family, but my issue comes up with the elder recolors.

I dunno why it is giving me a hard time now. I used to have it working. But now it either puts the elder color in the custom bin instead of the grey bin. Or it doesn't exist at all. No grey color to chose from, no custom color either.

So what gives?

I have the box checked like I am supposed to.

Necromancy message ignored for useful feedback:

I have found that the "hat" checkbox does not actually make the game recognize the hair as a hat.  (Checked by putting the hair on a sim and looking at their Nightlife qualities in SimPE.)  By comparing property sets and sim qualities for several different recolors, I found that I was able to make a hair into a "hat" by changing its Property Sets "flags" string from 0x00000000 to 0x00000002.  I hope this helps.

(I've posted this message at your MTS2 thread as well.)

Hadn't checked this thread for a while.

Jelenedra, I'm having the same issues with the elder recolours.  Every time a sim ages to elder, they get the custom hair recolour if there is one.  If there is no custom recolour, they'll have the grey one, but the bin will be open to the custom page instead of the elder page when I change appearance/use the clothing tool.

I can switch it back to grey with no problems, but it would be nice to have the problem resolved.  I'm glad to know I'm not the only one experiencing it - I've double and triple checked that everything is checked the right way, redone numerous hairs, but nothing gives.

I'm getting error dialogs when I attempt to run the .29 version with the .62 SimPE.  Everything is fine until I try to load a hair file.  Then I get an error dialog with the following text:

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'SimPe.PackedFiles.Wrapper.StrItem SimPe.PackedFiles.Wrapper.StrItemList.get_Item(Int32)'.
   at SimPe.Plugin.PackageInfo.get_Description()
   at SimPe.Plugin.GeneticCategorizer.AddPackage(GeneticColor key, IPackageFile package)
   at SimPe.Plugin.GeneticCategorizer.AddPackage(GeneticColor key, String fileName)
   at SimPe.Plugin.UI.MainForm.OpenPackageFile(String fileName, GeneticColor key)
   at SimPe.Plugin.UI.MainForm.dlgOpenPackageFile_FileOk(Object sender, CancelEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.FileDialog.OnFileOk(CancelEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.FileDialog.DoFileOk(IntPtr lpOFN)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
SimPe
    Assembly Version: 0.62.1.100
    Win32 Version: 0.62.1.100
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/SimPe.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.helper
    Assembly Version: 0.62.1.100
    Win32 Version: 0.62.1.100
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.helper.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.workspace
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19319
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19319
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.workspace.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.commandline
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19326
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19326
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.commandline.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.package
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19318
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19318
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.package.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.splash
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19318
    Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.splash.DLL
----------------------------------------
NetDocks
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2529.20888
    Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/NetDocks.DLL
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
SandDock
    Assembly Version: 2.0.2.1
    Win32 Version: 2.0.2.1
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/SandDock.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.resourcecontrols
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19336
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19336
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.resourcecontrols.DLL
----------------------------------------
XPCommonControls
    Assembly Version: 2.2.3.4
    Win32 Version: 2.2.3.4
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/XPCommonControls.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.interfaces
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.interfaces.DLL
----------------------------------------
graphcontrol
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2509.16636
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2509.16636
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/graphcontrol.DLL
----------------------------------------
AdvancedForms
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2529.20889
    Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/AdvancedForms.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.names
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19328
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19328
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.names.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.scenegraph
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19325
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19325
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.scenegraph.DLL
----------------------------------------
bidou.career.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2521.24739
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2521.24739
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/bidou.career.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.commonhandler
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.commonhandler.DLL
----------------------------------------
optional.simpe.3d.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19336
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19336
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/optional.simpe.3d.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
pjBodyMeshTool.plugin
    Assembly Version: 2.0.2592.37137
    Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjBodyMeshTool.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
pjse.coder.plugin
    Assembly Version: 4.0.2668.31243
    Win32 Version: 4.0.2668.31243
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjse.coder.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
pjse.filetable.plugin
    Assembly Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    Win32 Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjse.filetable.plugin.DLL
----------------------------------------
pjse.localisation
    Assembly Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    Win32 Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjse.localisation.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.clst
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19317
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.clst.DLL
----------------------------------------
pjse.updatetool
    Assembly Version: 4.0.2668.31242
    Win32 Version: 4.0.2668.31242
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjse.updatetool.DLL
----------------------------------------
pjse.guidtool.plugin
    Assembly Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    Win32 Version: 4.0.2668.31241
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/pjse.guidtool.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.alt.surgery.plugin
    Assembly Version: 0.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 0.0.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.alt.surgery.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.bhav.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2521.24738
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2521.24738
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.bhav.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.filehandler
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19321
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19321
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.filehandler.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.dockbox.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19340
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19340
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.dockbox.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
NewHexEdit
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2301.39139
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2301.39139
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/NewHexEdit.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.downloads.plugin
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19338
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.downloads.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19318
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.cache.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.ngbh.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19330
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19330
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.ngbh.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.ngbh.scanner.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19342
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19342
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.ngbh.scanner.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.scanfolder.plugin
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19334
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.scanfolder.plugin.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.scenegrapher.plugin
    Assembly Version: 1.0.2676.19337
    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19337
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.scenegrapher.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
simpe.toolbox.plugin
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19333
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.toolbox.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19332
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/simpe.workshop.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19322
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.extfilehandler.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.wizardbase
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19328
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.wizardbase.DLL
----------------------------------------
theos.gbct.plugin
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    Win32 Version: 0.2.25.1
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/Plugins/theos.gbct.plugin.dll
----------------------------------------
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    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.rcol.DLL
----------------------------------------
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    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.sims.DLL
----------------------------------------
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    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.3idr.DLL
----------------------------------------
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    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.gmdc.exporter.base.DLL
----------------------------------------
simpe.geometry
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    Win32 Version: 1.0.2676.19318
    CodeBase: file:///E:/EA%20GAMES/SimPE%2062/simpe.geometry.DLL
----------------------------------------

Holy whoa, I finally got around to messing with this thing, and ALMOST ALL OF MY MALE HAIR IS BINNED NOW.

I was especially pleased to discover that it DOES work even if not all four tabs are filled in, since I do have a few singletons that need to be binned, plus a few styles that don't have all four colors after deleting the ugly ones and I haven't gotten around to fixing that yet.

If you are considering improvements, by the way, the only thing that would make me love it more is the ability to browse by game-generated thumbnail (especially useful for cases like the half dozen female hairstyles -- mostly by Peggy -- where the existing red shade was so hideous that I deleted it and made a new one myself, so I have to find the other three files for each hairstyle and then go fishing in my SavedSims folder for the red one).

I have never used SimPE before and am a bit intimidated by it.  I have wanted to bin my hair for quite a while and have researched the different methods out there.  Theo's plug-in seems to be the easiest, from what everyone is saying, so I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at it.

I have a couple questions about the process.

How do I know which hair needs to be binned while using the tool and if I 'rebin' a hair that already has been binned, wouldn't that cause problems?  Since the hair needs to be renamed after the binning, wouldn't that make two of the same hair in the game and if it's an already binned hair, will it mess up my game?

I tried opening Body Shop to sort my hair but it crashes immediately after opening, I can't figure out what's wrong with it nor can I find a "fix" anywhere.  I went through all my custom hair in game, got rid of the ones I don't use/like and wrote down some of the names of the hair, but the names in game aren't the same as the filename when using the color binning tool.

Thanks

I'm posting this both here and on Theos thread on MtS2.

edited for clarification

Eeek! Necromancy!

I'm a little confused. If we delete the recolors from age groups that we don't want to be associated with the hair, what will happen? What exactly are the possible problems? It won't just delete the texture, and leave a maxis mesh with a blank texture will it? And will that cause problems with offspring getting the same hair (or does custom hair not work that way when binned)?

I would like to delete these unnecessary all-ages recolor components that are identical to the maxis hair, instead of just hiding them, to reduce bloat. However, if I choose not to check the "delete unchecked recolors" option, what happens, and how can I hide them? Are unchecked recolors hidden automatically?

I'm also still confused about the renaming/backup/error message thing... more on that in a bit.

They are removed from the package file, assuming you go into Package/Options.../Output and choose to delete them rather than hide them -- which you should do, as I've had odd results if hidden files are left in.  (Like elder hair coming up with a hidden color in the family group rather than the one I chose.)  Removing them is particularly good if the removed bitmaps are different from the ones you keep, as your file size will be noticeably smaller afterward. 

I also check the boxes for Create Backup Packages (which will rename the file suffix of the original files from .package to something else so the newly binned hair doesn't create game-breaking conflicts with the old unbinned hair) and Rename Files (which clearly labels your new files for you with the name you choose for the group followed by an underscore with the color name).  I don't recommend checking the box for making all the files into one large package, as that will make it difficult to change the set later, like if you decide you want a different blond.

Children do not inherit color binned hair: they get the color, but not the style.  This means that binned hair will not behave differently than Maxis hair, unless you use a cheat to age a sim backwards.  In that case, if you de-age a sim to an age group with no hair, the sim will probably be bald.  You can fix this at any mirror.

Oh, and while it's likely too late for Jenchippper to see this, you can re-bin hair as often as you like with no consequence just so long as you don't squish more than one color file into a single family package.

very nearly, but not quite necromancy...
First i'd like to say, Theo, how much i truly appreciate this tool.  i've never done it the long hard way others spoke of, but this is even easier than Datgen, which is what i was using before. 

i do have a problem, though  :-[
everything was going swimmingly, when, of a sudden, i began to get this message: 


i saw someone had a similar issue before, but i don't understand the fix proscribed in the replies.  i wasn't using any other program at the time, i don't think, so i'm not sure how any other program could be using the files.

please help

thanks so much,
paige

Here are the two conflicting options:
(http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/res/cbt-conflict.png)

On previous versions, the "Rename Files" option was not changeable, and was always set to true (checked).

If you choose to keep the original filenames, the program will keep a lock on that file, thus preventing any other operation such as file renaming ("Create Backup Packages")

That error box is just informing you that this last operation couldn't be done after having saved the packages.

Theo, I was wondering if you happen to have the current QA version of SimPE. I recently got an error message when using the latest version (0.63h):


Is there anything I can do to re-enable this extremely handy plug-in?

I've used the tool before, for my own recolors. Today I started binning other creator's colors which they didn't bin, and it's not working. >:( I keep getting this error that says it can't move the original file, because it's being used by another process. The new binned file saves just fine, but the hairs aren't binned, they're still in custom . . .

Please help, this is really bothering me that I can't bin these hairs!  ???

Edit: opps, I didn't see that someone had already answered my question twice  :P