Funky Clothing Thumbnails

[Zirconia Wolf]

Okay, this is strange.

I finally managed to get back up to a Seasons/Celebrations install last night & promptly plopped back in my self-made clothing mods that I have used on several Seasons/Celebrations incarnations before without any problems.

Now however, pretty much all of the thumbnails in CAS (or anything showing clothing) for Adults show up as "blacked out". The clothing is fine, but any "bare skin" is shown as blackened. This does not affect the Sims themselves, but it is effecting the "Family Thumbnails" when a lot loads as well as making it hard to see some of the darker items of clothing when in CAS.

At first, the blackened skin actually showed as the PlantSim overlay, but I removed my PlanSim outfit unlock & now the blackened skin is in it's place.

Given that I have used this same collection of mods before, I am at a loss!

Yes, I'm sure this means that I'm gonna have to start over on my unlock/recategorizer mods, but I was holding out hope that someone may have a better (less labor intensive) solution!

Any thoughts?

-ZW

[Miros1]

First try deleting the thumbnails and regenerating them by going into CAS and hopping through a couple catagories. If that regenerates correctly, you should be in good shape.

I vaguely remember something about black skin in thumbnails... but I don't even remember which board it was on!

[Greg]

I've had times when an entire sim shows up as a blank black area but never a situation where the clothes showed but the sim didn't.

[Zirconia Wolf]

Well, I tried deleting the thumbnails & no dice.

I removed all my clothing mods, cleaned out the CAS thumbnails again & everything is now fine...if "fine" means that none of the Elder clothes are hidden & stuff I want moved/unlocked is not moved or unlocked!

*ZW mutters to herself*

I really hate the idea of remaking all those mods, but unless I can find another answer (I too recall seeing a "blackened skin" thread somewhere out there) it's looking like my only option. Given my current work load, I'm thinking I might just have to wait until Apartment Life & Ikea Stuff are released...but I hope not!

-ZW

[Greg]

Hmm... then we can conclude that a clothing mod was the culprit?

[Miros1]

Where'd you find the tutorial for making your own "hiders"?

[Zirconia Wolf]

(Sorry this response took a while! RL is a !@#$ )

Greg: Yeah, it looks like- for whatever reason- my Clothing Mods are being putzy. One the plus side, I'm getting pretty quick at making them!

Miros : Basically, it's a matter of a simple "hex code" edit via SimPE. Any even flags are "visible", while any odd Flags are "hidden". To hide a visible item you change the # "up one". To unlock it, you change the number "down one".

For instance:

afbodygraduationgown_blackblue has a flag of : 0x00000009 so it is currently a hidden outfit.

Change the flag to 0x00000008 however & *poof* you can now find it (under Everyday) when an Adult Female wants to buy clothes.

To hide Maxian stuff (like I do with Elder clothes) you just do the opposite: seek out any even # flags & change them (+1) to odd.

This is also a great time to do any "re categorizing" of stuff.

Oh, & hats "need" to be flagged as 0x00000002 to work right...unless you want them hidden.

This is a good time to do clothing re-categorizing too! To make an item show up in a different category (Outerwear, Swimwear, etc) just change the category #. To get it to show up in more than one place, just add the #s together.

A great re-categorizing tutorial written by Phaenoh (MTS2) can be found here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=281025

I actually made myself a little Notepad "cheat sheet" I print out & refer to when I am "shuffling stuff. It has all the hex codes for clothing categories, ages, unlock/lock etc. I have attached it to this post in case it helps. (It has some "combo" codes for a few clothing categories I often combine, but not every possible combo, so you may still have to do some math on your own )

Oh yeah: Outerwear is strictly a Seasons EP feature & (I believe) Toddlers only got a Formal category with Glamour Life...

-ZW

**** EDITED TO ADD ****

If you want to do a "mass age change" (like make all Adult clothes into YA, Adult, Elder) you can do it via SimPE & save yourself a lot of time! You can't (yet) do a "mass hide" however, so for that you are stuck with the one-by-one looooong way.

[Greg]

If you want to hide Maxis stuff, do you have to edit the files that are in those big .package files under the Program Files directory?

[Miros1]

No, that's the cool thing. You extract about one resource for each outfit and change the appropriate codes. Then you can hide and unhide things by simply shuffling the files around!

[Greg]

I think you lost me there. "Extract about one resource"? "Simply shufflling files around"?

[Hokieman]

I'll go Greg one better. HUH???? Completely lost me.

[Miros1]

Ok, let me restate.

"About one resource": More accurately, "one resource, possibly two." A resource is an entry in the upper right panel in SimPE when you open a file.

"Simply shuffling files around": You can have one hood where elders wear the ugly Maxis elder clothes, and one hood where they wear "elderized" adult clothing. When you intend to play the first hood, you make sure the "hiders" are moved out. When you inted to play the second hood, you make sure the "hiders" are in the game.

[Greg]

OK, so you extract some resource from one of the big Maxis files. Then what?

[Miros1]

You change the flags from "hidden" to "visible" or whatever you want. That's why Zirconia gave the tutorial link as well as the Zirconia version of the tut.

Anyhow, back to the original problem! I think I found the answer! http://www.demusedsims.com/idolatryo...atomical2.html Black skin is caused by missing textures in the skintone.

[Zirconia Wolf]

Oh! Thankyou Miros! I knew I had seen something about that before but danged if I could find it! I wonder if I got sloppy when I unlocked the Burnt overlays. (I thought they would be funny as a Jungle Sim/ Raised-By-Wolves look! )

Greg & Hokieman: Sorry! I am so used to fooling around with clothing files that I forget not everyone knows how. I'll try to explain a little better...but you may have better luck with the tutorial I linked to! (The tutorial also gives a run down of how to recategorize objects in the Buy/Build modes, but I'll stick to Clothing for my rambling.)

If you look under Program Files > EA Games > *EP/SP Of Your Choice* > TS Data > Res > Catalog > Skins you will find a package file called- not to surprisingly- Skins. This is the file that contains all the clothing, hair & skin overlays relevant to that EP/SP. For instance, the Skins package for the Base game is uber huge while the one you find in the Glamour Life SP folder is pretty small. This is because the Base game contains everything (including things like the Grim Reaper & "Burnt" skins) while the Glamour Life one only contains the handful of clothes that the Glamour Life SP added.

Note that some of the "Base Game" stuff will be in multiple Skins packages, as some EPs altered the "codes" of the Base stuff to work correctly in that EP. For instance, the University Skins package added the whole Young Adult life stage, so many Base skins needed to be made "YA Okay" to work right. This "multi placement" can be a major source of headache when you are trying to hide/unlock things. (It took me 3 tries before I finally managed to get the Pink Elder Tracksuit hidden, as I kept forgetting to hide it in all the EPs it showed up in! )

Once you have found the Skins package, just make a copy of it on your Desktop (or where you prefer) & use it as your "extraction file" when making your own hiders or whatnot. This way the "real" Skins package is still sitting safely (write protected!) in it's usual spot.

Open the package with SimPE & use the left "navigation diagram" to get to Property Sets. These are the only files you need to alter to make you own hiders & whatever. I like to break these property sets down into smaller packages (like all Adult Female Hair, all Adult Female Clothes, etc) to:

A) make them easier to "handle"
&
B) remove all the unneeded (non Property Set) files from my mods.

Note that Sim PE (at least for me) doesn't like you putting "to many" things into a new package file (it seems to freak out in the 700+ or so range) so simply extracting all the Property Set files & putting them into one package isn't an option with larger (Base Game) Skins files. You also don't need to extract any Property Sets for things you won't be fooling with; there's no need to extract the Grim Reaper files unless you plan to unlock them just to see if you can like I did for fun. You don't need the "skin tone" type files either.

Once you have your victims...er...files all bundled up the way you like them, it's really just a matter of opening up the (Property Set only) package file(s) & altering the flags to whatever you find better suited to your playing style. When you click on an individual file, you will see all sorts of info pop up in the lower left hand window of SimPE. For hiders/unlockers, the only line you need to worry about is the flags one. Change that & *poof* you have now hidden (or unhidden) the clothing/hair in question. Other lines of interest may be the age one or even the category one, as they control the age & placement of the file in question.

For ease of reference here are some codes. As they are all Hex Codes, there are always 8 digits after the 0x prefix. (These codes are included in the text file I attached to my last post. )

* CATEGORIES *

Everyday = 0x00000007
Swimsuits = 0x00000008
Sleepwear = 0x00000010
Formal = 0x00000020
Underwear = 0x00000040
Maternity = 0x00000100
Active/Workout = 0x00000200
Outerwear = 0x00001000 (Seasons EP users only! )

To have an outfit in more than one category, just add up the codes. For example:

Swimsuits + Underwear = 0x00000048

* AGES *

Toddlers (p) = 0x00000001
Children (c) = 0x00000002
Teenagers (t) = 0x00000004
Adults (a) = 0x00000008
Elders (e) = 0x00000010
Babies (b) = 0x00000020
Young Adults = 0x00000040 (University EP users only! )

Again, a little math gives us 0x00000058, which would make an item available to Young Adults, Adults & Elders. The letter in parentheses is the letter that you will see at the start of the file name. So tfbodydress_blue is an outfit for a Teenage female, not a Toddler female which would be pfbodydress_blue. (P for Preschool perhapses? )

* Genders *

Female (f) = 0x00000001
Male (m) = 0x00000002
Unisex (u) = 0x00000003

So tubodysuitwhatever would be something (most likely a Mascot type suit) Teenagers of both genders could wear. Many of the Toddler clothes are unisex, which I like to change i.e; pink stuff to girls only & truck stuff for the boys. Remember, we are just changing the hex codes, not the actual file name of the outfit! So the fictitious pujumper_flillypinkflowers would still be called pujumper_flillypinkflowers, but only show up as an option for little girls after you changed it's gender setting to 1 instead of 3.

* FLAGS *

Remember, an even number makes an item visible while an odd one hides it! Hats need to be 0x00000002 to be properly visible. Go "up" one number (letter) to hide an item & "down" one number (letter) to make it visible. I am leaving out the 0x0000000 part as I think you know it's really just the digits at the end we are concerned with.

<<<< VISIBLE...........HIDDEN >>>>

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10....
A B C D E F G H I J K....

Hope this (or maybe that tutorial) helped clear things up a little better.

Oh yes, as to where to put your clothing mods so they override stuff correctly: it seems to sort of depends on the combination of EPs you have. You can always put you mods in your Downloads folder like normal, but the big "danger" there is that any clothing you have overridden will be marked with that "Custom Content" asterix & will have the Delete option available. Since deleting a Maxian file can cause BFBVFS, you are better served to put you mods in a "non delete enabled" place! I use Program Files > EA Games > *Latest EP* > TS Data > Res > Catalog > Skins > ZW Mods as my clothing mod folder. Obviously you don't have to call your folder ZW Mods though...

Apparently some other people (BV & FT users mostly) claim that they need to use a different place (the tutorial explains it as I can't remember right now) to get their mods to work right, but the Catalog > Skins > Whatever folder has always worked for me.

It is not possible to have an outfit flagged as hidden in one category- like Everyday- & visible in another, like Formal. It is either unavailable in Everyday & only shows up in Formal (via a category code change) or is just plain hidden. From what I understand, this can be a problem with the "Career Outfits" that are hidden (by default) in the Everyday category. So while unlocking the Astronaut suit & making it show up under the Outwear category works great, you have to leave Everyday as an option for it so the game can use it as the "go to work" outfit it is...which means that it's possible a new Townie could be seen parading around town in the latest NASA fashion! So if you don't want to chance seeing Townies in even stranger clothes than Maxis already gave some of them, you may want to:

-Leave those kinds of outfits out of your unlock plans.
-Unlock them, but only put in the mod after you have force created your Townies for that Hood.
-Unlock them & just use CAS, SimPE & the various teleporters out there to make your own Townies in the outfits of your choice. ("No Townie Generating" mods are required to prevent the game doing it's own Townie designing!)

I just leave them hidden & change the category setting to include other places I think the outfit can go. For instance, I changed the Astronaut outfit to include both Formal & Outerwear (in addition to the default Everyday) so when one of my Sims finally unlocks the outfit in game (via promotion to relevant Career level) they can don their space suit to venture out in the snow or impress their spouse-to-be at their wedding.

That's a lot of typing. I will stop now.

-ZW

*** 10:33pm = EDITED TO ADD ***

As to the "upper limit" of SimPE's re-packaging capabilities, I must amend/explain my earlier figure of 700+.

I have successfully extracted 1243 Property Set files (all the Base/Holiday Adult Hair files) in one fell swoop, but got a no-can-do message ("...Property Set 000 does not exist, blah blah, blah..." ) when I tried to put them all into one package.

The same thing happened with a grouping of 894 files (the Base/Holiday Teenage Hairs) but I had no problems with a group of 755 (the Base/Holiday Children Hair) so it seems the upper limit of SimPE's re-packaging is different than it's opening/extracting limit.