![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rudhira_simsHi! Ever since I started uploading default replacements where the Maxis hair isn't all ages, but the replacement is, I've gotten questions on how to do that. Afaik there isn't really a tutorial for this, so... guess I'll make one. This assumes that you're already comfortable with making default replacements, and that you've followed this method.
Note: Skip the step where you delete ages from the mesh. Or well, I guess "Now delete everything that belongs to ages you're not using" still applies, we're just gonna use all ages and therefore not delete anything.
So, let's make ourselves comfortable with a regular default replacement file. In this case, I'm replacing afhairbarrett_blackclip with Nightcrawler Da Bomb by Poppet.
Here's a complete default replacement file for afhairbarrett_blackclip. What is it made up of?
3D ID referencing files and property sets are the file you extract from the game and edit in order to make the replacement.
GMDC, GMND, CRES and SHPE are all mesh files, and we won't really do anything with them. I can mention that the GMDC for this hair shows me that the mesh groups are hair and hair_alpha5, letting me know that I'll need to extract those material definitions.
The files starting with ## are all related to the textures, and for this tutorial, I've marked them in black (+grey), brown, yellow and red to mark what hair colour they're for. Usually, but not always, you'll see that the texture for hair is just a transparent square, and then you can save space by using the same material definition for all hair colours. hair_alpha5 contains the hair texture, so we'll need one for each.
If you look at the groups I've marked to the right, you can see that brown, blonde and red hair have two files each. One texture and one material definition. The black group has six files, because we've extracted the blank scalp, the black texture and the grey texture, and there are two files for each.
Now, what do we need in order to add the other ages? I like to run my custom hair files through the Hair Binner to remove the extra ages. They can be removed manually, assuming you're comfortable with SimPE. I'm not though, so I'll just use the Hair Binner.
There isn't really more to it. Since the hair we're replacing is for adults and elder, we want to keep the ages that are not adult and elder, so toddler-teen. Let's see what we have to work with by opening the file for the black hair colour.
The files we care about here are textures, material definitions and property sets. I don't really know what the 3IDR's, binary... indices, and the hair tone XML do. Unless you happen to know, just leave them alone.
If we look at the texture files here, we'll see that they're the same as the ones we already have in the default replacement file, so we can delete them. Before we look at the next colour, open one of the material definitions for hair. Doesn't matter which one.
Look at the line called stdMatBaseTextureName, and copy the value from it. Paste it in Notepad or something so you have it accessible. This value refers to the blank scalp texture from earlier, and we can make all hairs refer to the same texture in order to make the file a little smaller.
Here's the blonde file, and the material definition is referring to the blank scalp in the blonde group. We want to change it to the blank scalp in the black group.
All we need to do is change the value for stdMatBaseTextureName to the one we copied earlier. Do this for all ages, so toddler-teen in this case. Then delete the textures. We don't need the blonde blank scalp, and the blonde hair texture is already in the replacement file. Then repeat all those steps for the other colours.
Now it's time to open the default replacement again, and add all of the files we've prepared. Right click, and choose add, then add the mesh and custom colour files. If you already have a mesh in the default replacement file, you'll get duplicates, but just delete those.
This will greatly increase the amount of files in the... file, but I don't really think there's anything to do about it, and I don't know what would be safe to remove.
Home stretch! All we need to do now is edit some property sets.
These didn't have very descriptive names, but we're going to make the same edits for all of them so you don't need to know, really. If you want to learn more about property sets and what all the lines do, I'd recommend this guide.
We want to edit the custom files in a way that makes the game think they're not custom. We also want to link them up to the adult files, so a teen wearing this hair will keep it as an adult. Here are all the values we need to edit:
Update 19/11/19: I have since writing this tutorial discovered that the family value is kind of tricky. I think a better way to go about this is actually using the family line from the custom hair and pasting that in the default replacement property set, but I can't say for sure.
Version and product refer to EP/SP. Since the hair I chose is from Apartment Life, version is 0x00000006 and product is 0x00000011. Creator needs to be set to 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 instead of a random string of numbers and letters. I think this makes the game think the hair is native to the game. If you want to learn more about this, here's a tutorial. Finally, we need to copy the family value from afhairbarrett_brownclip, and paste it over the family value for the custom hair. This is what tells the game that the hairs belong together. All ages and colours should have the same family value. Unless you're adding unnatural hair colours, in that case I think each colour should have its own value, but it still is the same for all ages of that colour.
Update 20/07/15: I haven't tried this out myself, but after reading a post by midgethetree on tumblr, there might be even more steps if you want to do this as properly as possible. It wont affect the function, but rather how the items are sorted in CAS.
Update 20/07/21: I've experimented a bit with the information provided by midgethetree and I will make a post about my experiences. At some point.
That's... all there is to it, I think! Start up the game (or BodyShop), and make sure that everything is working correctly by checking that everything appears where it should in the catalog, and that you can change a Sims' age and hair colour and still keep the same hair.
Please let me know if this is unclear or if something seems off, I just sat down and wrote all of this in one go as I went, and I haven't even read through it all. ^^' If you want to download the hair I made in this tutorial, you can find it here.
Thanks for reading!
Note: Skip the step where you delete ages from the mesh. Or well, I guess "Now delete everything that belongs to ages you're not using" still applies, we're just gonna use all ages and therefore not delete anything.
So, let's make ourselves comfortable with a regular default replacement file. In this case, I'm replacing afhairbarrett_blackclip with Nightcrawler Da Bomb by Poppet.
Here's a complete default replacement file for afhairbarrett_blackclip. What is it made up of?
3D ID referencing files and property sets are the file you extract from the game and edit in order to make the replacement.
GMDC, GMND, CRES and SHPE are all mesh files, and we won't really do anything with them. I can mention that the GMDC for this hair shows me that the mesh groups are hair and hair_alpha5, letting me know that I'll need to extract those material definitions.
The files starting with ## are all related to the textures, and for this tutorial, I've marked them in black (+grey), brown, yellow and red to mark what hair colour they're for. Usually, but not always, you'll see that the texture for hair is just a transparent square, and then you can save space by using the same material definition for all hair colours. hair_alpha5 contains the hair texture, so we'll need one for each.
If you look at the groups I've marked to the right, you can see that brown, blonde and red hair have two files each. One texture and one material definition. The black group has six files, because we've extracted the blank scalp, the black texture and the grey texture, and there are two files for each.
Now, what do we need in order to add the other ages? I like to run my custom hair files through the Hair Binner to remove the extra ages. They can be removed manually, assuming you're comfortable with SimPE. I'm not though, so I'll just use the Hair Binner.
There isn't really more to it. Since the hair we're replacing is for adults and elder, we want to keep the ages that are not adult and elder, so toddler-teen. Let's see what we have to work with by opening the file for the black hair colour.
The files we care about here are textures, material definitions and property sets. I don't really know what the 3IDR's, binary... indices, and the hair tone XML do. Unless you happen to know, just leave them alone.
If we look at the texture files here, we'll see that they're the same as the ones we already have in the default replacement file, so we can delete them. Before we look at the next colour, open one of the material definitions for hair. Doesn't matter which one.
Look at the line called stdMatBaseTextureName, and copy the value from it. Paste it in Notepad or something so you have it accessible. This value refers to the blank scalp texture from earlier, and we can make all hairs refer to the same texture in order to make the file a little smaller.
Here's the blonde file, and the material definition is referring to the blank scalp in the blonde group. We want to change it to the blank scalp in the black group.
All we need to do is change the value for stdMatBaseTextureName to the one we copied earlier. Do this for all ages, so toddler-teen in this case. Then delete the textures. We don't need the blonde blank scalp, and the blonde hair texture is already in the replacement file. Then repeat all those steps for the other colours.
Now it's time to open the default replacement again, and add all of the files we've prepared. Right click, and choose add, then add the mesh and custom colour files. If you already have a mesh in the default replacement file, you'll get duplicates, but just delete those.
This will greatly increase the amount of files in the... file, but I don't really think there's anything to do about it, and I don't know what would be safe to remove.
Home stretch! All we need to do now is edit some property sets.
These didn't have very descriptive names, but we're going to make the same edits for all of them so you don't need to know, really. If you want to learn more about property sets and what all the lines do, I'd recommend this guide.
We want to edit the custom files in a way that makes the game think they're not custom. We also want to link them up to the adult files, so a teen wearing this hair will keep it as an adult. Here are all the values we need to edit:
Update 19/11/19: I have since writing this tutorial discovered that the family value is kind of tricky. I think a better way to go about this is actually using the family line from the custom hair and pasting that in the default replacement property set, but I can't say for sure.
Version and product refer to EP/SP. Since the hair I chose is from Apartment Life, version is 0x00000006 and product is 0x00000011. Creator needs to be set to 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 instead of a random string of numbers and letters. I think this makes the game think the hair is native to the game. If you want to learn more about this, here's a tutorial. Finally, we need to copy the family value from afhairbarrett_brownclip, and paste it over the family value for the custom hair. This is what tells the game that the hairs belong together. All ages and colours should have the same family value. Unless you're adding unnatural hair colours, in that case I think each colour should have its own value, but it still is the same for all ages of that colour.
Update 20/07/15: I haven't tried this out myself, but after reading a post by midgethetree on tumblr, there might be even more steps if you want to do this as properly as possible. It wont affect the function, but rather how the items are sorted in CAS.
Update 20/07/21: I've experimented a bit with the information provided by midgethetree and I will make a post about my experiences. At some point.
That's... all there is to it, I think! Start up the game (or BodyShop), and make sure that everything is working correctly by checking that everything appears where it should in the catalog, and that you can change a Sims' age and hair colour and still keep the same hair.
Please let me know if this is unclear or if something seems off, I just sat down and wrote all of this in one go as I went, and I haven't even read through it all. ^^' If you want to download the hair I made in this tutorial, you can find it here.
Thanks for reading!
