Hmm, I am still having problems with it freezing up when trying to open a hair file. This is after installing the updated file for SimPE 0.60 too.

Hi, does that happen with every hair package?
Be aware that when the tool starts, it begins to load SimPe's File Table, so it may take a while until the program responds again, especially if you have a large number of files being referenced.

This is AWESOME! So easy to use, thank you!!!

I have binned around 100 sets of hair using this tool. It saves some time over doing it by hand in SimPE mostly because I can right click to copy or paste when using the tool. I still have twice that amount of hair sets to finish yet.

I understand that you wanted oddities reported. Since this one glitch has happened three times, I thought I should let you know. Sometimes a package file is saved but is empty. I bin the colors, then save. But when I check the hair in body shop, one of the colors is missing. Upon further investigation, that particular package will show empty in Clean Installer. If I then redo the binning process using the original color package, the process will work correctly the 2nd time around. I noticed a few others commenting about the tool "eating" some color files. Well, its not eating them, just saving them empty.

Example: I have a set of hair with 4 colors. After color binning, the black color doesn't show in the game or body shop. The black color package shows up as empty in clean installer. So I discard the "bad" file and rebin the set using the original black package, and all is well.

I said this happened 3 times. Twice it was the black package that was damaged, and once a brown color.

There is only one hair that I am having "permanent" difficulty with. By permanent, I mean that I can't find a way to fix it. This particular hair shows in the game and body shop. But when I load it into the color bin tool, the textures listed on the bottom say that they are missing from the file. Can I assume that the maker did something different with this particular file? I didn't try to bin it since no textures were showing, but it really confuses me why it works in the game.

I might try to bin it anyway, just to see what happens. I might just throw it out to be on the safe side.

Just in case you want to see what I am talking about, I have 2 files here. One is an example of hair that I binned that now contains an empty package (before and after folders). The other is the hair that shows in the game but shows no textures in the tool.

Oh, one last observation. Whenever I have to redo a hair set, I cannot reuse the same names and let it overwrite them because I get an error message and sometimes SimPE crashes. Instead, I have to use a new name then manually delete the files I don't want. (Example: I have a hair that I named "afro" when I got done binning and saved. But now need to redo them because I forgot to remove an age group. So I reload the packages-which are now named afro-black, etc. I cannot reuse the name "afro" or I get the crash. I must name it afro-male or some other variation of the name then manually delete the previous packages.)

All in all, this is a fantastic tool with very few kinks in it. Thank you for your time in making and supporting this product.

I am using the Pets version of SimPe.

EDIT: I attempted to use the tool to bin the Rasta hair that was showing no textures with the tool. It produced an unusable package. So I used SimPE to change the color manually and the package works. I don't have an explanation, just results to report.

Thanks for the report magicmoon, I'll review the code for the tool, and I think it's probably a file-locking issue when saving the packages.
I will post a fix for it sometime this week.

cheers,
Theo

Theo,

Is it possible to put in an additional error catching routine for when I click on jpg's instead of package files? SimPE does catch the error most of the time, but for some reason it "freezes" for 20-30 seconds before the error pops up. I get an error message about the tool crashing, but it actually crashes all of SimPe, not just the tool. Other times it crashes SimPE without getting to the error message.

On the other hand, If I click on a mesh instead of a texture file, I get an appropriate error message stating that it is not a texture file. This message is quick and allows me to resume working.

I know that it would be easier to tell me to stop clicking on inappropriate files, but I work fast, have bad eyes and fat fingers, so I will continue to make these types of mistakes.

I binned around another 50 sets of hair yesterday and again ran into both of the problems that I described in my last post. Several more empty packages were saved and another 5 hair sets were not able to be read by the tool (missing textures report). Again these sets were able to be binned using just SimPE and work fine in the game.

EDIT: After binning over 300 hair sets, I'm checking to make sure all is correct. But I can't find a way to see if I have the hat attribute set or not. Where can I look to find out?

Hello Theo,

I am still having a problem in the files not saving correctly. The disabled package and the new package are both in my downloads folder, but new packages still show up in custom in bodyshop. I know I emailed you about this a while back but I figured you're tied up with all the holiday festivities and I thought would post here as well...hopefully someone here can assist until you can get back to me.

Thanks again!

I have changed the title of my downloads folder to "Downloads hair binning attempts", it is still located within C:\Documents and Settings\Chwanda\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2. And changed my original downloads folder back to "downloads".

Okay, they are visible in game, but not the bodyshop even though they are not located in the "downloads" folder....wierd, I know. I suppose this is okay....since they are binning properly in game. Any ideas why or how, I didn't think the game could pull from someplace other than the downloads folder?

I now have 3 files for the hairs I was experiementing with: The original, the renamed, and the disabled package file. The original is in the downloads folder and the other two in the "downloads hair binning attempts" folder. Can I delete the original and disabled package and move the renamed one into the downloads folder?

I see that there is a patch for bodyshop. I will download this and see if it makes a difference. I think my problem my lie with bodyshop itself.

This is what seems to happen when I colourbin hairs:
I always do all 4 colours together, and pick one for grey, and it seems the texture of the file I select for grey (usually blonde) disappear entirely, and the package for the grey hair is completely empty. The result is usually that my grey hairs show up as those maxis missing texture pattern with blue and red numbers on white. Looks really bad.
If I do the Adult>= hairs first, and then do elder seperately and fix the family name manually, it works.

I just wanted to say that this is a wonderful program. I have all these custom hairs that I've downloaded over the last couple of years, and I like my hair binned. This truly is the best program I've found. You've idiot-proofed it for me. Thank you!!!!

Great tool, thanks!

Hello, I just downloaded this wonderful plug in and I think I get it. (I printed the tutorial) but I don't get what the neighborhoods tab is for under option? Especially this "fix missing DNA" What exactly does this do? thanks

The way I understand it...

This is so that Sims that are currently in your neighborhood wearing this hairstyle (chosen originally from the custom bin) will be wearing the same hairstyle of the correct color after you get done binning the hair. Otherwise they end up wearing the correct hair, but the wrong color or they end up defaulting to a Maxis hairstyle. You can of course fix this in game by taking them to a mirror, but you would have to do it with every Sim in the hood that had their hairstyle binned. This should fix most problems with an already populated neighborhood.

I am having a problem with this plugin at the moment... whenever I try to load a hair I get an error message saying "method not found." I tried installing it again but I am also getting an error when I try to extract it into the SimPE plugins folder. This is weird because it worked perfectly fine before.

Hi i need help with this plugin. i've read through the tutorial on "http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool.html" but i seems to do something wrong some where.
here's how i did it

1. i load the package in bodyshop, check to see which age group is using a maxis hair rather than the downloaded hair

2. open it up in the color binning tool (red in red tab, black in black tab... etc)
in this case the hair comes in only one recolor

3. i uncheck the age that i do not need

4. options, under the output tab i check - "rename files" and "generate single package"

5. save as

but the stuff turns out like this:





the textures disappeared

is it something i've not done which i'm suppose to?

please help!
thank you!!!


ps: sorry if my English is weird

thankyou

Thank you for making such a useful plugin, the other way of binning looked very complicated. The only problem I've had so far is that sometimes there isn't a thumbnail for a hairstyle. The odd thing is that it's happening with a hairstyle that has thumbnails until I use the binning tool to change it from the custom bin to the four colors. Then only the grey hair has its own thumbnail, all four of the adult colors show as the short Maxis hairstyle in the catalog. The thumbnails do show up correctly in Bodyshop, but not in CAS or the mirrors.

I have all the expansions and mini-packs and am using version .60 of the binning tool.

No pressure or anything. *sits back and waits patiently*

Hello. I just installed Sim PE 0.62 and want to know if the plug-in is compatible with this version and if not then I would like to know if there are any plans for an updated version. Thanks.

I love this tool, thank you so much Theo!! It works great except for one problem I have found, for some reason it just won't work with Peggys older hairs...does anybody know what the problem may be? I have binned a bunch of other hairs and it works perfect, but when I go to bin Peggys hair, they don't show up in the seperate colors and they stay in the custom bin still...It's so frustrating me!! Has anybody else had this problem and know of any fixes? Thanks!

Thank you Theo! This tool has helped me save lot of time. I have a question though, is it possible to have more than one custom hair colour? I have lots of hair styles which have different custom colours (e.g. purple, green, blue, etc.) and I want them to all to be grouped to one GUID, is that possible? Thanks a lot!

Regarding part 3 of your instructions:

"- Run SimPE and verify that you have a menu item named "Color Binning Tool" under SimPE's Tools menu."

What if I don't?

I have found that the "hat" checkbox does not make the game recognize the hair as a hat. (Checked by putting the hair on a sim and looking at their Nightlife qualities in SimPE.) By comparing property sets and sim qualities for several different recolors, I found that I was able to make a hair into a "hat" by changing its Property Sets "flags" string from 0x00000000 to 0x00000002. I hope this helps.

OMG.. I don't know how to say it any better than "I LOVE YOU"!!!

I just spent 2 happy days pruning my thousands of hairs and colour binning and getting rid of extra recolours and putting greys with them... oh the joy! Now my hair folder is just... well... beautiful! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

It worked right off, no problems for this dummy! Great ease of use - I'm so happy and impressed with the tool. I can't believe it was that easy... I'd never done it with SimPE before cos it all sounded so complicated... but loading up 5-6 hairs in a little programme... now that I CAN and DID do SOOOO easily!

This worked fine for me with the latest SimPE (0.62.1.100) btw...

Ok, SimPE as you may know, was just updated again. Will this work with the new version? Or should I wait for the tool to be updated? Thanks =)
p.s. awesome tool!