Yeah, what you want is sort of like looking through a dictionary by reading the definitions and trying to guess what the word is.
I have a tool that would look through all .package files in a single directory and print out which ones contain any particular TGI₆₄, including a simple pattern matching capability. But that won't help you much for what you are seeking to do.
The Postal idea is probably the best alternative idea.

Inside the .package files, all the contents are cataloged only with the TGI₆₄ values. Names, if available, are buried in a chunk, usually encoded as 16-byte characters. Not so user friendly, but a good, lean-and-mean format for loading into a game quickly.

There are/were some rudimentary catalog dump and search tools around (command-line based), but hardly what I think you are asking for. I generally opened them and looked at the image files to guess what they were.

There are also cache files (mostly textures) in the WorldCaches folder.

I don't believe there is any technical problems remaking those meshes as replacement packages. They just lack sufficient assignments to the L and R breast joints. You wouldn't have to even mess with the morphs and CTU stuff if you are changing only the weights, just edit one GEOM per age per item (well, probably not the child age group). It just looks like no meshers have taken on this project.

The bar goes up. TS2 needs some special attentions to make them work, because of their IK methods.
Now, unlike TS2, we can import animations and they play well in several different programs. Tweak 'em a little and export them for a nefarious, unapproved purpose, like babby carving in the Babby griller.

That is no longer a technical impediment... although a lack of animation artists is still a drag.

For the few that are off badly, someone will revise the weightings. In TS2, none of the breasts were tied to anything except spine1 on the clothes used in the game. Some work was done later with animations that used the unused "breathe_trans" bone and some reweighted meshes to get some "jiggly" action.

It would certainly be easier to manage this in a game that has not one "breast" joint, but two, one for each side. I certainly can think of some amusing uses for that.

Why wouldn't the crib work for that? I mean, you put a baby in either one and leave it there.

The subject matter on the original post was certainly correct, older versions of TSR Workshop installed a keyboard hook that caused alarms to go off. It no longer does that, nor does it even attempt to connect back to TSR unless you authorize it to. Whether this indicates that it is now just sneakier, or that complaints caused changes to be made to the program depends on your paranoia level.

I have never seen the issues with their site myself, but it has ads, and I have seen 3rd party cookie warnings from other sites with ads. Other complaints stem from fallout remaining from the nuclear winter after the war between TSR and PMBD went critical. All who remain are in Wooden Ships on the water, very free (and easy).

As long as my tired old body holds out, we will have the ObjTool I already made available and supported, and it will remain free. I think I may drop the restrictions on the work product, because they served their purpose. As long as people could leech without giving back, the provision had a purpose. While some people have made representations about their intentions to give their tools away, I have also listened to chatter about what functionality will be kept as private. Should such as event occur, and some significant custom content creation capability be hidden from the ordinary mortals, my competitive (and combative) spirit will force me to make sure that they can't do anything we can't.

==== Recruiting Message Below ===========================

I put a lot of effort into making the intermediate part of the mesh and material editing process be a simple (well, as simple as technology allows) set of text files. I was hoping that Morgade would make a Blender plugin for object meshing that uses that format, and had some initial discussions of that with him. He seems to have lost interest and has gone off into the ether somewhere. But I am actively interested in recruiting aspiring tool writers that might want to make a name for themselves writing a compatible file script for Blender or Wings (or some other modeling program) that leverages this work. All of the really hard parts (float/integer decompression and recompression, group packing and unpacking) are in the decompiler and recompiler code, all you have to worry about are the mesh parts themselves.

Besides the documentation I provided with the package, I will help where I can with the process. Ideally, you could use one editor for UV mapping and one for the bone assignments with the same set of files, recompile them, use Postal or S3PE or my S3Pack or insert-your-own packager and stick it in the game and play it.

Characterize it as you want.

What I have done is allowed them to support the object mesh format I use for the MilkShape object meshing plugins. Better to have interoperable tools than not. If I had just licensed everything freely (as I did for TS2) from the start, there would have been less incentive for more modding tool development. As long people can get a free ride, they will take it. Since they have put some of their skin in the game, then standards are better than fighting.

While they have some distance to go technically, it is perfectly feasible to make an object with a new mesh and textures using their WorkShop program now. To whatever extent I contributed to their effort in the form of posting all of my research, I have no apologies to offer. I still have my code, none of which is included in their WorkShop, available as an alternative to using their stuff. That is not changing.

With Vista-64 and 8 GB of RAM, I can fire up the game andwhile chat, internet, Visual Studio or whatever else I happen to be working on are still open, without shredding my hard drive from constant system paging. Vista has a reputation for being memory-hungry because it will use all that you have available to avoid paging.

So yes, TS3 is stuck with a 2 GB limit, but here it has its own 2 GB, nothing else needs to get the heave-ho for it to be running.

It took me 49 seconds to get all the game loaded and into a saved neighborhood.
This is with no-intro mod, no awesome mod, on a Quad core Vista-64 machine with 8 GB RAM.

I downloaded another 256 MB of RAM from that site link, but it didn't help any.

With either the downloadable or arred version, you have to get rid of that key from the registry, and use the one that came with your retail package.

But the EA downloadable also uses SecuRom, so if he had that, he needs to do an exorcism.

Now I was in the conversation. I said I was inclined to believe their explanation, based on how it played out, but I am not inclined enough to test the program myself. Anyway, I am busy making my own set of tools, and do not need them to provide the research for my work.

I don't know whether you mean "non-retail" to be the EA store downloadable version or an independently distributed version. The EA store version will have installed SecuRom, if so, removal instructions are in another thread on thos board. In both cases, the registry will still have the old keycode in it, you will need to remove that and use the new one from your retail package to get registered and so on.

Their programmer has been made aware of the issue. It is a keyboard hook, used because they failed to find the simple way to tell if the ALT key is down when the mouse is moved (for the 3D preview). Examples of how to do this were provided.

While I am inclined to believe them, as their explanation after they discovered they really do set off alerts from AV programs seemed credible, others may not. But the alert is from a keystroke hook, which certainly CAN be abused and is totally unnecessary for any application to do, unless it is some hot-key activated tool (like fraps). When you are the currently active application, you get all the keystrokes from your window port, When you are not, you shouldn't need to see them.

Both games are based on 1 meter scaling

I don't think anyone has made anything to edit the footprint and slots yet. So for now you have to choose the object you clone from to have the right layout and be content to change the mesh, textures and text. The rest will happen a some point, we have seen a lot happen in the not-quite-two months since the official release date, plus maybe a couple weeks preview time.

There are lots of those.

A set of them here.
A bunch here.
And when you work up to it, HP has posted a TS3 hair specific tute here.

She may very well have the tool she claims to have. But it didn't produce the two pay meshes she posted. Perhaps she will be able to use that tool in the future to resolve the issue ongoing. The description of the sims 3 mesh format, which was the result of a lot of research work (including contributions by Karybdis, Atavera, Delphy and others) is freely available from the sims 3 wiki just for people like Morgade (Blender plugin), Delphy (previewer), Echo (Postal previewer), Peggy, TSR and anyone else to use to design more meshing tools.

I have no problem with some "competition". If I did, the spec would still be private and unpublished. I just want to get modding jump-started, nce it starts rolling, it will churn more interest in custom content and more modding, and draw new people to the "community".

She is blustering and trying to cover her tracks. In her rush to get some new items online, she cheated and I caught her. Now that she has alternatives, and knows the data trail is there, perhaps we will not see any more done like that. That would suit me.

I have also made a Maya plugin, covered under the same license, that uses the same code to generate the GEOM with, but it was only released to a few testers. While the methods I use are my own "trade secret" the way the file is made leaves markings are irrefutable evidence she generated the final output of the two pay hair file I examined with my plugins. And the license terms very clearly prohibit commercial use.

She can claim she is using something else, and it may be true, to the extent she may be modelling with maya. But the final file was created with one of my plugins, or by code stolen from my plugins. Her rattling statements about insult, libel and attack are nothing but bluster and bravado. She is on the wrong side on this issue.

She can cure this by using the Blender plugins, and probably the TSR tool, as it exports GEOMs also. But until she does, she has no valid claim to ownership of the file, as it was produced only by violating my license terms.

<* Wes *>

I'll think about it. Or perhaps y'all can do that, and I will participate as needed.

I don't "shop" much for custom content, spending more of my time researching ways to make it, but I know lots of people here do. Since I don;t look for things, especially on pay sites (I mean, I am not really stupid enough to pay for those kinds of pixels). I know Mr. P can always get my attention even when I don't come around here, which is on an inconsistent basis. So I will not always know without some help, but it doesn't take me long to check on the tool used.

I will admit that some of the thinking of members here, including the head man himself, influenced my licensing idea for the tools. I don't agree with all of the rationale behind some of the activities, but I can wage my war in a manner that I do consider rational and consistent with my own beliefs, and perhaps those objectives are somewhat aligned with others here and at the boogaloo booty site. I think the rationale would be "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Mean. ESL is curable, and preferable to silence.

I don't think TSR's tool (which is totally absent from the ranch here) will be anywhere close to complete as long as they use the .obj format for transferring meshes, as that format does not support bone assignments and skin weights. And we have all seen on the hair meshes, including the EA produced ones, how important proper assignments and weighting are to overall quality.

So I think it is only a fitting punishment that pay meshers will have to use the TSR tool, since my stuff is not licensed for commercial use. But you can be assured my programs and plugins will never require an internet connection to phone home with.

I had the opportunity to think this all over before I decided to license it the way I did. I knew there would be violations, but I have a few ninja skills in the programming department. I can tell the difference between seeming identical meshes from the game and those produced with my plugins. Not spyware, there is nothing related to the user account or CPU, it is a construction method that is unique and subtle.

The meshes she produced and sells have no protection as original works, but her overall compilation, which includes some original artwork, does. I make this claim only for the two recent pay meshes, although her request not to copy the free ones is also invalid, as it is a redistribution restriction on the work product.

Of course, she can switch to Blender, or perhaps the new spyware ad-laden tool. Or she can continue to do what she is doing and perhaps someone else will "liberate" the meshes from their packages. I would bet they will work with some of the stock game textures.

<* Wes *>