Changing Skin Tone via SimPE?

[Zirconia Wolf]

Yippy skippy!

RL can wait...I'm having too much fun!

Body Shop is playing nicely right now & I think I may know what freaked it out:

Instead of a problem with "compressed files" (which makes no sense as TONS of players use the Compressoriser & run Body Shop just fine) I seem to have tracked it to having "too much" stuff on my Paint Shop Pro clipboard.

So far, as long as I empty my clipboard before attempting to import a skin back into the game, Body Shop is more than happy to comply.

Let's just hope that really was the issue...

-ZW

[Greg]

Does Body Shop know what you have on your Paint Shop Pro clipboard?

[Zirconia Wolf]

I'm not sure.

All I know is that when I am "skinning", I have both Body Shop & Paint Shop Pro open. After a few rounds of cut, past & resize, that clipboard of Pain Shop gets pretty full.

Since I have started emptying Paint Shop's clipboard before trying to import stuff back into Body Shop, it has been happy to oblige.

I can only assume that- somehow- the clipboard is eating await at my virtual (?) memory & sending Body Shop into a funk. Paint Shop does tell me- via a pop up- that leaving stuff on my clipboard may cause a memory drain & effect system performance....

-ZW

[Miros1]

Sounds like something isn't tidying up after itself... glad you got it working!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Not that anyone cares, but as I continue my foray into the land of Custom Skins, I have run into a stumbling block:

Because the Default Skins (S1, S2, S3 & S4) use the infant's body texture as "infant hair" instead of an actual infant hair file, it seems I can't make any Default Replacements that contain an infant hair texture/file. I have tried to follow the tutorials on making Default Replacements but can't add the hair as there is no file to add it into!

This is kinda disappointing, as I am really tired of bald babies (it's bad enough you can't have different outfits for them) but the prospect of hand-editing the files of every playable Sim in my 13 different Hoods via SimPE is...well, not making me happy.

Not that I won't break down & do so (I mean, I am reeeaaallllyy tired of bald babies!) but it still kinda sucks that I have to!

*sigh*

Such is life...

-ZW

(The really annoying part is that the Texture Images for both the with & without hair skins both show 33 files! It's only when you go to replace the textures that you realise there is nowhere for the infant hair to "go"...)

[Greg]

I had no idea that the game ignored the infant hair files. It sounds like a simple programming blunder that they could have fixed long ago.

[Miros1]

Oh, heck! Maybe if you look at how BlooM did his default replacement baby clothes on InSim, you could get an idea how to fix it.

[Zirconia Wolf]

I just can't (yet) quit thinking that there must be some way to "trick" the game into thinking the hair-enabled skins are the defaults.

I think all the infant outfit overrides I have seen link to a modified "baby-in-diaper" mesh. I'll have to check out Bloom's & see if anything can help me out.

Greg: The really annoying part is that when you extract a skintone via Body Shop, the darned thing includes an Infant Hair File! The Prima Guide (for the original Sims 2 Base Game) even says that editing a skintone involves 33 files, of which 3 (body, face & hair) are for infants.

So why, pray tell, don't the default meshes work that way?!

-ZW

*** EDITED TO ADD ***

Oh, I see! The BlooM file you were talking about is a global infant hair replacer, not an infant out fit! I will start to dissect it now...

[Greg]

I get the impression that none of the programmers at Maxis had ever had children of their own. If they had, they would have known that not all babies are bald and being able to dress babies in different outfits is very important to their parents.

[Zirconia Wolf]

Originally Posted by Greg

I get the impression that none of the programmers at Maxis had ever had children of their own.

Gack!

The last thing we need to encourage is more Maxis programmers...

Originally Posted by Greg

If they had, they would have known that not all babies are bald and being able to dress babies in different outfits is very important to their parents.

Heck, I don't even have kids & even I managed to figure that out on my own!

One would have thought that the sheer number of Mommy-N-Me & other infant clothing stores around should have been a tip off that infants can in fact wear different clothes...

-ZW

[Greg]

Silly story: When my son was born, my sister sent him a toddler-sized 3-piece suit. We looked at the suit and looked at him, and stuffed him into fast to take a picture. If we waited until he was two years old, he never would have fit!

[Miros1]

Originally Posted by Zirconia Wolf

Oh, I see! The BlooM file you were talking about is a global infant hair replacer, not an infant out fit! I will start to dissect it now...

He's got infant outfit replacers too. Some even have little hats.

Originally Posted by Greg

I get the impression that none of the programmers at Maxis had ever had children of their own.

Originally Posted by Zirconia Wolf

Gack!

The last thing we need to encourage is more Maxis programmers...

Oh, is that where new Maxis employees come from?

Originally Posted by Greg

Silly story: When my son was born, my sister sent him a toddler-sized 3-piece suit. We looked at the suit and looked at him, and stuffed him into fast to take a picture. If we waited until he was two years old, he never would have fit!

Even sillier story: My aunt bought my nephew a newborn outfit with arrows on the front for the various body parts (head, right arm, left arm, belly button). My sister took this outfit to the hospital for the first picture and coming home. After the pictures got mailed out, a friend in California called my sister-in-law and accused her of buying it! She just laughed and said, "no, I had nothing to do with it!"

[Zirconia Wolf]

Those are great stories!
Kinda makes me wish I had kids. Well, almost...

On the subject of my quest to get a set of default replacements with baby hair, after ripping apart the various skins & replacements I have downloaded & reading (& re-reading) the same tutorials I've been reading for the past several days, I think I may have just figured out how to pull it off.

Won't know for sure till later this evening (RL is calling) but will most assuredly be posting an update tonight...whatever the results may be!

-ZW

[Greg]

I think the trick is to enjoy other people's kids. It saves a lot of heartache and hassle.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping your sim babies can develop some individuality!

[Zirconia Wolf]

Originally Posted by Greg

I think the trick is to enjoy other people's kids. It saves a lot of heartache and hassle.

You might be on to something there! I suppose I should clarify that I'm not a child hating, baby eating monster or anything, even though I sometimes imply I am.

I think my feelings were best summed up in a classic line on the Fraiser TV Show : "Oh yea, kids are great! I just don't see my self mothering one, though."

I always thought I would be a cool Aunt or something...just not so sure about the parent gig! Then again, you never know what life will through at you...

...like for instance, say you are a Sims 2 player with an interest in modding your game. You start by making your own clothing mods & spend some time dinking around with SimPE. You even make a not-to-scary recolor or two.

Then you stumble across a set of custom skins that get you excited, as they have the infant stages "hair enabled", & you start to think that maybe- just maybe- you could find a way to make that a feature of the default skins so you don't have to think about editing 13 Hoods worth of Sims by hand.

So you set about the daunting task of learning about making default overrides. You even post a bunch of pictures detailing your progress on a Very Cool Sim Site (hint: rhymes with Fun Wins) were nobody punishes you for asking questions & they even encourage your incredibly clumsy results.

Then you hit a wall that seems insurmountable (in-game skins using funky texture logic for babies) & you are tempted to resign yourself to either living with bald babies forever or spending a lot of time with SimPE going through all your character files one at a time.

But inspiration has a way of finding you at the strangest times (like in the middle of eating a tuna fish sandwich for lunch) & you dive back in with both feet, a little bit of skill & a whole lot of hope.

Without further ado (well, maybe a little bit more ado) I present you with another series of pictures, depicting my latest test & the results.



First up, it's time to say hello to Guy & Gal Tester, generation 2. I'm sure you recall the exciting adventures of the original Guy & Gal, but they are currently zipped up along with a whole mess of "redundant" Hoods, hence the need for their "twins". They live in Isolation Islands (also known as Hood 89) & this is their story.



So, is that the infamous "Mystery Sim" everybody's been kissing? (Seriously, whatinthehech was Maxis smoking when they thought of that creepy idea!)

No.

That would be Guy Tester...well, it's supposed to be Guy Tester! So much for the default templates I downloaded! Geeze, maybe this whole thing really is out of my grasp after all! But wait a minute...



...okay, that's much better! It turns out that Default Replacement templates like it when you actually add textures to them.

Who knew?

Okay, so lets take a breath & make my (potential) "Hair Enabled Overrides".

To make things simple, I decide to try:

S1 (Light) with Blonde infant hair
S2 (Tan) with Red infant hair
S3 (Medium) with Brown infant hair, &
S4 (Dark) with Black infant hair

Guy is S2 & Gal is S3, so I am hoping for a red-or-brown haired baby.

So it's time to fire up InSim...



...& get Gal on her way to mommy hood!

As she stares at herself in disbelief, I can't help but notice...



...that having a pregnancy-wear-anything hack means you need to be careful about what your Sim is wearing when they get preggers!

Oh well, who cares? Not me (though I do use InSim to grab her a "belly mesh enabled" outfit anyway) so lets get on with it!

I will spare you the delivery pics (I'm something of a picture addict) & just cut right to the end result.



Gal delivers a bouncing baby boy.

She is happy.

Guy is happy.

ZW is also happy.

In fact, ZW is super uber incredibly happy.

If you can't tell from the above picture why I'm happy, maybe the next one will explain it better.



Is it just me, or is that a little S2 infant with an adorable head of red hair?

No, it's not just me; it's real! I actually did it! I actually made my very first Default Replacement skin package!

I was so excited, I think I scared my dogs when I cheered out loud!

When the box pupped up to enter a name for the little tyke, I didn't even hesitate: Atlas. (At last...get it?)

It is late (almost midnight here) & I have got to get away from this darned computer for a bit...

...but before I go, I just want to post one last picture.



Oh yeah.

Victory never tasted so damned sweet!

-ZW

[Greg]

Zowie! It worked!

So it was just a matter of replacing the default skin tones with an infant-hair-enabled set?

[Miros1]

Um, Greg, I think she made her favorite default skin tones into an infant-hair-enabled set.

Congratulations! We do get a tutorial, don't we? Tuna sandwich optional. Or maybe that's the most important step -- Eat a tuna salad sandwich!

(BTW, it's even weirder when the pants get preg and the shirt doesn't!)

[Greg]

OK, tuna salad sandwich is in hand. I've got step 1 done. Lots of practice with that!

[Zirconia Wolf]

I'm working on a picture tutorial, though I forgot to get a picture of the tuna sandwich so I guess it won't be 100% complete!

It's taking a little bit because I am actually cropping the screen shots (yay!) but I should be done in another hour...or two!

If you can't wait & don't need/want pictures, here's a quick "verbal" run down:

Since the Default S1-4 skins all have 33 texture files & the "Baby Hair" custom ones have 34 (for the separate baby hair file) my big stumbling block was how to get an extra texture into a Default & still have it act as a Default. (FYI, I think I might have figured out a way, but I haven't tested it yet.)

So how did I get baby Atlas?

I basically created what is known as a "Dependent Default", which is a Default that draws it's textures from a separate file. This greatly reduces the size of the Default file (as it doesn't contain all the redundant textures that you get with a typical Body Shop package) but it means that in order to work you need to have both the Default & the file it is being "linked" to in your Downloads folder to function correctly.

It also means the Default package still contains the standard 33 texture files. I am just "telling" the Default to look elsewhere when it's time to create a baby's hair file.

Okay, that's not the best explanation, but I really am finishing up a picture tutorial!

While you wait, make sure you have SimPE & the NVidia DDS Tools installed (for creating your DXT files) as that's what I used so that's what my pictures are gonna show!

There's a way to do it without the NVida Tools, but the compression method isn't as good so the end result isn't as good looking as with the NVidia Tools. Anyway, I don't know how to do it without the NVidia Tools, so...

If for some reason you don't have the NVida Utilites, get them here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/n...ure_tools.html

I will post again soon with my pictures & the blank set of Default Templates you will need.

-ZW

[Greg]

That sure sounds like the way it oughtta be done. Instead of having a gazillion copies of things, other files ought to just link to them.

I think I need to get a fresh copy of the DXT tools. I might not have installed them on my new machine after I blew up the old one, so it's been quite a while!