Testers wanted: Color Binning Tool 0.2.30

[idtaminger]

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.

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

[pinhead]

(...)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.

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.

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.

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.

[idtaminger]

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?

[pinhead]

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?

[idtaminger]

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.

[Regina]

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!  

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!

[idtaminger]

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

[pinhead]

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.

[idtaminger]

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.

[Theo]

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! 

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!! 

If I can make it work in the code, that's going to be good news for everyone 
Here's the picture :

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

[pinhead]

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 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:

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.

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?

[idtaminger]

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!

[Sophie-David]

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

[Ambular]

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...

[Syera]

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.

[Yolu]

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?

[Mike]

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.

[Liss]

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

[Solowren]

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

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!

[pinhead]

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?

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

[pinhead]

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

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!

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.
 

[Yolu]

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?

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

I'll give this a go - thank you.

[Theo]

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).

That's why the tool automatically unchecks the elder recolor items [in standard color tabs], so that you can simply check the desired grey recolor, instead of unchecking three!

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.

[Solowren]

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? :|

[Theo]

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:

Code:

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

************** Exception Text **************
...