Remove unwanted age groups from hair recolor package. Level: Beginner

You downloaded this fabulous custom hair mesh for adults but when you load it toyour game you discover that it also comes with all the other ages, except theyuse Maxis hair. And now you have duplicates of same hair style for kids,toddlers, and teens. Can you get rid of them? Yes, you can. This tutorial willteach you how to do that the easy way. Basic knowledge of SimPE program isrequired.

Always make a backup copy before attempting changes. 

Step 1.

StartSimPE program and open the recolor package file you wish to clean up. The fileshould have Property Set resource listed in the top left window. If itdoesn’t, you opened a wrong file.

Thereare 6 age groups in the game:

·         Toddlers

·         Children

·         Teenagers

·         Adults

·         Elders

·         YoungAdults (if you have University expansion pack)

Decide which age groups you want to remove before you start altering the package file.

Step 2.

Clickon Property Set resource in the top left window. Several property setswill be listed in the top right window.

Usuallythere are 6 Property Sets, one for each age group. What you need to do isdelete the Property Sets of the age groups you want to remove. Soundssimple enough. The trick is to figure out which one is which.

Oneof the clues to tell the age group of a Property Set is its name. Take a lookat the screenshot above. First two letters of the name tell you both the ageand the gender of that Property Set:

afhairbun_black– stands for adult (a) female (f);

tf – teenage (t) female (f);

cf – child female;

pf – toddler female.

Therecould be variations, for example pu – stands for toddler unisex. Thesame formula applies to male meshes: am – adult male; tm – teenmale; cm – child male; pm – toddler male. There are usually threeProperty Sets for adults: one for adult, one for elder, and one more for youngadult. Another clue, for elders, would be the word grey in the name. Inthe example above afhairbun_grey belongs to elder age group.

Unfortunately,you cannot always rely on the name. More precise method is described in thenext step.

Step 3.

Clickon the first one of the Property Sets in the top right window, it opens in thePlugin View below. Lookfor age (dtUInteger) string in the list and take a note of its value, itwill tell you exactly what the age group is, see the table below.

Age group

age (dtUInteger)

Toddler

0x00000001

Child

0x00000002

Teen

0x00000004

Adult

0x00000008

Elder

0x00000010

Young Adult

0x00000040

Step 4.

Ifbased on the information in Step 3 you determined that the Property Set belongsto the age group you plan to remove (in example above it was toddler),right-click on that Property Set in top right window and select Delete frompopup menu.

TheProperty Set becomes marked for deletion (its name crossed out).

Moveon to the next Property Set, check its age group and mark it for deletion ifnecessary. Repeat that for every Property Set in the list. Step 5.

Ifyou marked a wrong Property Set by mistake, you can undo that by right-clickingon its name and selecting Restore from popup menu.

Ifall is correct, Save the package file and close SimPE. Run BodyShop tocheck that hair recolor.

Note for advanced users and mesh creators

Tomake the package file clean and small, also delete corresponding TextureImage and Material Definition files. Just first make sure that thetexture you about to delete is not used in any remaining Material Definition.Some recommend to also delete 3D ID Referencing File and Binary Index file, but I found that leaving them in doesn’t do any damage.