04-23-2008, 12:04 PM | #1 |
Goddess for Life
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The Definitive Hair Binning Tutorial
Contrary to Greg's belief, there are no maimed newts or frogs in this process!
Why do you want to do this? There are two parts to binning... 1) Make the hair show up under its correct color. The Sim in the picture has brown hair from PeggySims2, which I binned a while ago. As you can see, binned hair retains its "custom" icon. This process allows the children of a Sim with custom hair to inherit the color and a randomly selected style instead of being the child version of the parent's hair. The best way to illustrate is via the in-game CAS. Give two Sims non-binned custom hair. Click the pacifier. Randomly generate children. The boys will have the child version of dad's hair. The girls will have the child version of mom's hair. Every time, exactly like the same sex parent. Remember, the Storm sisters will pass on their cloud white hair to their daughters, but not their sons? Now modify mom and dad to have custom hair that's already binned. Click the pacifier. The children will have hair color that's determined by Maxian genetics (black dominant over brown dominant over blond dominant over red) and a randomly determined style which may include binned custom styles in that color. The Sim in the screenshot would have genetically "brown" hair. Her children would have genetically "brown" hair, not genetically "that-style-brown" hair.In addition, the game adds binned hair to its list of "choices" available to it when creating a randomly generated Sim. This includes townies, downtownies, dormies, adopted toddlers/kids, etc. My newly minted teen in my almost newly minted 'hood went to a community lot because he'd spun up the 3 "personal electronics wants" that most kids get when they have their teen birthday. The game helpfully generated a couple new teens for him to meet, and one of them had the same binned custom hair as his mom! Ms. Custom Hair didn't hit it off too well with the playable teen; he's going steady with a girl named Betty with the Maxis wavy hair. I kind of wish he'd picked the girl with custom hair... I wanted red haired grand children!You also don't get recessives in the kids if you've got 2 parents with hair from the custom bin. The kids end up homozygous with the same sex parent's hair. I love recessives! I wish the game created Sims had them. I even create 2 temporary Sims in CAS, have them produce an offspring, and delete the temporaries, just so my CAS Sims will have a little surprise for the next generation.2) Set the "family." If I were to click the Black or Blond button, the Sim would retain the style, but change to the black or blond version of the hair style. Even hair which will remain in the Custom bin should be "binned" to set the family! Point of interest: If you start SimPE first, BodyShop will run fine if you don't have any files open in the main SimPE window or in the color binning tool. SimPE will not run correctly if you try to run it with BodyShop already running. However, don't try saving any files from SimPE while BodyShop is running! Comments particular to my setup or the style I'm binning as I write this tutorial are in italics. A definition: A context menu is the menu that pops up when you right click on certain things, such as hypertext links or some controls in dialogs. Set Up: 1) Download the latest versions of SimPE (http://www.amberton.de) and Theo's hair binning plugin (http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/co...ning-tool.html). 2) Install both using the instructions provided on those sites. 3) Create a text file on your desktop. a) Right click the desktop.4) Download and install some custom hair, if you don't have any. You should keep the zip file as a backup if possible, or quickly zip the files for one hair style (without BodyShop running) together, just incase something goes wonky. Being somewhat obsessive compulsive, I actually have mine installed in folders by creator/site and style. See screenshot below.5) Have a piece of paper and writing implement handy. You can use WordPad if you'd like, but when I say "write it down," I mean "write it down." You will forget details and drive yourself nuts if you don't. I'm having great difficulty typing in this jacket with the extra long sleeves, so save yourself the experience and write it down. Configuring the Color Binning Tool: 1) Open SimPE. 2) Choose Color Binning Tool from the Tools menu. Let it load! The Color Binning Tool opens in its own window, and it is not a modal dialog. This means you can use the SimPE window to do other things while the Color Binning Tool is open. If you "lose track" of the window, just click on its button in the Windows Task Bar.3) Choose Options... from the Package menu in the Tool window. 4) Click the Output tab.5) This is the set of options I like best. a) "Rename Files" adds the bin name to the file name. I don't like this because I tend to download duplicates. Retaining the original file name helps me know when I've got a duplicate.6) Click OK. 7) Close the Color Binning Tool window if desired. 8) Close SimPE if desired. For each style: 1) Open up the folder where the hair is installed. Right click in an empty area and choose View from the context menu, then Detail. This lets you see the whole file name. You may need to drag the end of the "Name" bar to the right. This particular creator decided to number her hair colors instead of naming them. ARGH! But we can work around this.2) With your paper and writing implement, write down a list of the numbers in the filenames of the recolors, or the color names if your creator was nice. 3) Choose one recolor and double click it to open SimPE (or drag it to the upper left window in an open SimPE window). Leave the folder window open. I just happened to choose #10.4) In the left hand column, click "Texture Image." You'll have 1 to 6 items in the right hand column. 5) Click on each item in the right hand column to get an idea of what's in there. 6) If your creator numbered the recolors or you disagree with the creator's designation, write down the main color (black/brown/blond/red) next to the number for the file. You may want some hair, such as pink or blue, to remain in the custom bin. Write that down too. 7) Whether the recolors are named or numbered, write down a note if the file includes a gray recolor that you like. Also write down a note if you think the toddler or child recolor looks like a standard Maxis hair. You'll quickly learn to recognize the styles that your favorite creators use as "placeholder" hairs for their child and toddler recolors. My file has blond hair and a gray recolor, and nothing I recognize as a placeholder child or toddler hair8) Go back to the Explorer window and drag the next file to the upper left window and drop it. 9) Repeat steps 4) to 8) for each file. I found that my other files did not have a real gray recolor, so it's very important that I know which file or files have the gray recolor in them.10) Choose File, then Close, or the close icon on the SimPE tool bar to close the last file, but leave SimPE running. You now have a list of file colors or numbers followed by the color that you think it is and notes about gray, toddler, and child recolors. My list looks like this:Choose one hair from each color group. If only one recolor has a gray recolor, make sure you include that one. My choices are black 9, brown 2, blond 10 (because it has the gray recolor), red none, gray none (because the gray is in the blond file), and custom 8.11) Optional Steps a) If you have no gray, you can easily fix it with BodyShop. Simply create a recolor of the hair (probably using a pale blond as a base) using BodyShop, desaturate the elder hair, and import it back into BodyShop. Quit back out of Body Shop, name the file something clever like "Elder Hair Only for <style>" and drag the file from SavedSims into your open folder window. The unmodified non-elder hair in that file doesn't matter, since the binning tool will drop it later.12) Go back to the SimPE window. Choose Color Binning Tool from the Tools menu. Let it load! The Color Binning Tool opens in its own window, and it is not a modal dialog. This means you can use the SimPE window to do other things while the Color Binning Tool is open. I don't recommend doing anything other than looking at files with the Tool open, however. If you "lose track" of the window, just click on its button in the Windows Task Bar.13) Binning the black recolor: a) The Black tab will be automatically selected when the tool window opens. If you are doing several styles in batch mode or your style includes several browns or blonds, you may have to click the Black tab.14) Binning the brown recolor: a) Click the Brown tab.15) Binning the blond recolor: a) Click the Blond tab.16) Binning the red recolor: I skipped this step, since there wasn't a red recolor I liked.17) Binning the gray recolor, if the gray hair is in a separate file, not included in one of the four basic colors: I skipped this step, since the gray is in the Blond file.18) Binning a custom color: Although this sounds pointless, it actually does have a purpose. In the next step, we will set the "family" based on the GUID from the Black file. This allows the hair style to remain the same as you switch from color to color in BodyShop, in-game CAS, or the Change Appearance screen from the mirror.If you should make a mistake opening a file, you can fix it! Just right click on the upper part of the window to see this context menu. 19) Setting the family and tool tip text. a) Click on the Black tab. Probably not necessary, but I'm a little paranoid.20) Save the files! Choose Save As from the Package menu. If your options are set the same as mine, your existing files will be renamed with the .bak suffix and new package files will be created. They should be slightly smaller than the originals, especially if you removed toddler, child or elder recolors.21) Go get a drink, walk around, go potty... you deserve a break! If you only have the 4 basic colors plus optional gray plus one optional custom, you're done binning and can skip to step 24. 22) Next batch! a) Repeat steps 13 to 19c for the next batch of recolors, skipping the steps for the colors you don't need. Don't rebin the hair you've already done and checked off!23) Repeat step 22 until all recolors for that style have been binned.I will only have brown and blond colors in my remaining batches, since the one black and the one custom recolor were dealt with in the first batch.b) In step 19d, you'll paste the GUID from the previous batch into the GUID field. If you've somehow lost it from your clipboard, you can simply copy it from the text file. Yep, that whole file is mostly just a sanity check. I spent too much time reopening files with SimPE to get that GUID for the next batch! There's another use for it, which we'll talk about later. 24) Sanity check: Run BodyShop to test your binning. You may leave SimPE running if you like. You should see the style in the correct color bin. Select the style and change to another color, and your Sim should keep the same style, just switched to the new color. Also check the age transitions to make sure the child and toddler versions really are new meshes, not just Maxis recolors stuffed into the package for completeness sake. Also verify that the elder hair is what you expect. I still have to track down and repair a peggy 0008 blond file that I mistakenly binned as brown.Now for the other use of that text file with the GUIDs. Say you download another artist's recolor of a mesh you've already binned. You can use the GUID from the text file when you bin those recolors (see step 22b), and the recolors will behave just like they were created by the original artist (except the tooltip text will have the recoloring artist's information). If you don't like that behavior, you can use whatever GUID was in the new artist's Black recolor as in the original step 19d or generate a new one by clicking on the word "GUID" in the Options dialog. Last edited by Miros1 : 04-23-2008 at 09:32 PM. |
04-23-2008, 12:10 PM | #2 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
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I've never tried this but from reading through the tutorial, it looks like it boils down to just a few mouse clicks. That is, it's not nearly as complicated as the tutorial would appear at first glance, once you've learned what you're doing.
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04-23-2008, 12:33 PM | #3 |
Goddess for Life
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Yep! I just put in notes to help people avoid messing up their favorite hair files and ripping out their own hair. And no other tutorial tells you to use SimPE to figure out what color a file really is before you start trying to bin a style.
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04-23-2008, 05:02 PM | #4 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
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Aha! I just learned something else! A few of my sims have hair styles that change when they get pregnant. Now I see why!
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04-23-2008, 09:26 PM | #5 |
Goddess for Life
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I think I tried to explain that once before, but you got the newts and frogs mixed into my explanation somehow. Will add that to the first post!
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04-23-2008, 11:30 PM | #6 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
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Maybe it was clams and oysters. I never was too good at bivalves.
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04-24-2008, 02:18 AM | #7 |
Miros Groupie
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: California
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Fantastic job! This is such a great post. Considering the amount of hair that I have... I'll be fixing it for years. Heh. Thank you Miros!
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04-24-2008, 03:11 PM | #8 |
Goddess for Life
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Location: NY State
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The hair that we've both got, we should split and get done twice as fast!
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06-12-2008, 10:59 AM | #9 |
Goddess for Life
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Has anyone abused their minds, fingers, and hair files trying this yet?
I'd like to know if anything needs clarifying!
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06-12-2008, 12:17 PM | #10 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
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I have never tried it, mainly because it involves so much time snooping around all those downloads to find the hair files.
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06-12-2008, 04:11 PM | #11 |
Goddess for Life
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Hm, sounds like a job for Report Generator!
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06-12-2008, 04:41 PM | #12 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
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Does your Report Generator hunt down unbinned hair styles?
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06-12-2008, 04:54 PM | #13 |
Solar Max
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Las Vegas
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Uh, just out of curiousity, what exactly does it do? The Report Generator , that is.
Last edited by Hokieman : 06-12-2008 at 06:05 PM. |
06-13-2008, 03:22 AM | #14 |
Goddess for Life
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Although I call it the Report Generator, it's actually a Java proggie that applies an XSL template to an XML file and outputs a text file (or a CSV file, or an HTML page). It will come packaged with some templates I've found handy, but someone clever with XSL could make their own files and create their own reports.
I think I can make it spit out a list of all "Custom" catagory hair, so you can quickly look at them and determine that 10 files numbered MyHair01 through MyHair10 in one folder are likely in need of binning, and so are the files named "blond," "brown," and "red" in another folder! Lemme poke around in Delphy's output file and see what happens.
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06-13-2008, 11:55 AM | #15 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
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So... the trick to using it will be understanding how to compose an XSL template?
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06-13-2008, 10:45 PM | #16 |
Goddess for Life
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Not really. It'll come with several templates (suggestions appreciated), which you'll choose with a standard file selection dialog.
People who are already skilled in XSL can add their own templates.
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06-13-2008, 11:18 PM | #17 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
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Oh, good. "Examples make the learner's path short."
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06-14-2008, 01:08 AM | #18 |
Goddess for Life
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Yep, here's the file that lists your downloaded clothing meshes and their recolors. Just feed it into an XSL processor along with your XML file produced by Delphy's Download Organizer, and you'll see something like the picture (only with your meshes and textures).
(Click for larger picture)
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A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game). Last edited by Miros1 : 06-14-2008 at 08:58 AM. Reason: Wrong attachment |
06-14-2008, 03:58 PM | #19 |
Goddess for Life
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Works lovely for finding your custom hair files and which bin they're in! PhotoShop is having fits over my overstuffed C drive, so I'm posting a bit from my actual HTML output file. The recolors of the first mesh are allegedly all Blond, so obviously that one needs binned. The second group of recolors specifies different bins, which even agree with the file names, so that one probably has been binned.
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01-01-2009, 04:11 PM | #20 |
Reticulated MoonBat
Join Date: Apr 2007
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(Sorry to bump an old thread, but...)
This may sound dumb, but what happens if I try to Bin a hair that is already Binned? I have long since lost track of which hairs are/aren't properly binned- and many of the file names are unhelpful- so if I accidentally open up an already Binned hair, what (if anything) will happen?
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