PMBD

I swear, I think Raon, Peggy and Rose must be colourblind. I'm busily deleting crappy hair in-game, and after the fourteenth purple-brown hair listed under "red," and the umptillionth violet-grey under "black," I finally saw the light. :shock:

I'm also bugged that light blondes seem to be considered "brown," but those are harder to delete, because they are actually decent blondes.

Question about SimPE colourbinning:

You load the file you want, say "wankyhairwithgap9_black.package" and it's defaulted to the black tab, which is good. So then do you use options to make SURE it's black? Next, before saving, can/do you open the next colour, "wankyhairwithgap9_brown.package" perhaps, after selecting the brown tab in SimPE's colourbinner? Or do you save "wankyhairwithgap9_black.package" and do a new session and then open "wankyhairwithgap9_brown.package" and move it to the right tab?

What do you do when you have a jillion shades of brown "wankyhairwithgap9_xxxxx.package" files? Pick one, let the others set to custom or ignore them?

Super novice here. :oops: Just attempted Raon colourbinning and I clearly did something nonawesome, after two hours of trying, because I managed to make the files unreadable. I am wondering if this was because I edited in my backup on my Desktop and not in the DL folder. When I finished binning (or so I thought), I removed the disabled packages and swapped the folders to test.

ETA: I'm also displeased that CAS crashes after a half hour or so of deep cleaning, but that's an issue with my game. Since I actually am brazen enough to attempt to run the Sims on a LAPTOP, then, according to EA, I deserve all problems I get. Srsly.  :roll:

Um, all of the above.  
I'm no expert by any means compared to some of the people on here, but I bring linkies!  And I suck at posting them correctly.

Anyway, this is a tutorial that explains how to bin properly, and also how to delete other ages that may not be custom.
http://community.livejournal.com/thesims2/1609913.html

I, however, find that much too technical, so I use Theo's color binning tool with SimPE, and find it incredibly easy to use.  In fact, I bin hair on my own everytime I add a new style.  I actually like one of XMs light browns as a blonde, so...you know.  Here's a link to that, and I believe he's got a tutorial somewhere on that page.
http://theos.chewbakkas.net/tools/color-binning-tool.html

Hope this helps!

Add XM Sims to that list. I think we just cut that site a lot of slack because their hairs are free, but seriously? Their best blondes are categorized under brown. I don't know how to re-bin them with SimPE and I'm too lazy to learn anyway. Shame because they're nicer shades of blonde than Peggy's or Rose's. And they don't make my Brown color bin cry as much as Peggy's puke-purple-grey shades. Most of Raon's hairs I can't even look at, so I just deleted all of them.

I too run the Sims on a laptop. I have four EPs but no SPs, and I'm afraid to get Seasons because it might kill my laptop and I'm currently too poor to buy a new one. What? I like laptops.[/i]

I saw the MTS2 and Theo tuts, and I am still a wee bit confused about how to package handle.

Do I continue to open packages under new tabs before saving? I think the issue is that I have opened one-colour-per-package files. When I attempted to move just one item, the grey shade, the whole list moved to the new tab. (Also, was probably not supposed to do that, anyway.)

Also, I moved my meshes to another folder. Most of them. Long time ago. So they aren't in the same folder as the hair packages.

I can't believe I forgot XMSims. Maybe because I haven't loaded her stuff back in yet. Yes, apparently I have brown hair according to them. According to my driver's license, hairdresser and L'Oreal, I am a very light blonde.

Another super fun issue is when you pick a red, say, hair for a Sim, age regress them to check their DNA / facial characteristics as toddlers and kids, and suddenly you have black-haired children.

I needed to be able to select more than one of those options :P

yup, most of the above for me! I went with the farking gaps though  :D

the most annoying thing for me is that some hair creators make hair that looks awesome from the front,.... until you turn your sim around! yikes! the backs are awful, it's usually free items I get from paysites that do this too, so make you wonder what what their pay meshes are like.

I had two-three more poll options, one of which was "all of the above / I don't use custom hair" but apparently there's a limit on poll items. :)

I voted for 'Five shades of nearly identical blonde, helpfully catted as brown for good measure'

Rose, Peggy and Ren are notorious for this. I want 1 shade in each colourbin, goddammit! I've learned to sort my hair in a 'dummy' game that I just use for making collections, testing stuff etc.
I don't actually mind them not always colourbinning their hair. I usually make my sim's turn ons 'custom hair'. :D

I wanted to vote for most of them. I can live with the non-animated, the non-colourbinned and 50 near-identical shades.

No, it's the ones that I really like but cut through the body of the sim that get me. Very annoying.

ahhh i want to mark them all!  but i'ma gonna choose gaps......

My complaint is about the gaps.  If they're binned incorrectly, I can fix that and I do that automatically anyways because even if some creators bin them, the hairs are not in the same family which makes me nuts anyways.  I can't fix the gaps.  I know nothing about meshing and I don't think I have the patience to learn.  And it's actually really starting to bother me when my sim bends over to talk with a child or something and I can see their teeth through the back of their head.

As for the 3 million shades of blond, I can pick and choose what I want.  Take Peggy for example (when I actually used to DL more of her stuff).  Ooh!  4 shades of blonde and only one looks like a natural blonde.  I'll take the natural.  Ooh!  Fire-engine red hair or a more natural orangey shade...too bad I can't recolor, I'll take that orangey one.  Never like mousey brown...so I'll take the chestnut and well, black is black meh!  I'll take that too.  Bin them myself and delete the rest.

I would also add SAU to the colorblind list - the reds and blondes I cannot use in my game, they're makin ME colorblind

I clicked the colourblind button. :wink:

I don't give a monkey's arse about people who colourbin, because I'm a nut and rebin everything myself, naming everything all cutely (I'm up to Peggy53). What I do, is if there's more than one of the same colour, I open the bin and just go in order clicking open every tab and selecting a colour. If I have four blondes, I choose the nicest and delete the rest. I'm picky about having only one of each shade. If the brown is too light, I choose a darker one.

(AKA I do what rome_raven does.)

Pinks in the red bin I hate the most. Being a redhead, I hate how my hair, the particular shade of my hair, is NEVER simmed...my hair isn't THAT ginger, and it DEFINITELY isn't fauxpink! Sometimes it isn't even pink; it's salmon-coloured...


Oh, just a thing, if anyone wants me to bin anything for them, if they can't be bothered to bin it themselves, don't know how to use the tool, or purely hate it, I'll be happy to serve. I LOVE colourbinning. It's sad, but true. :wink: <3<3<3

I'd like to learn how to colourbin, actually. But maybe you have already binned some hairs that I have in my game. We should coordinate. On the off chance I have some hairs you don't. bonus for you!

:wink: I know, that's one of the reasons I offer. *winkwinknudgenudge*
Seriously though, I will do it for you. AND I'll teach you to colourbin simply. I never used a tut, I taught myself and it works perfectly; much simpler. Do you want me to write how to in here?

I really like Theo's plug-in for SimPE, and once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to use.  I also have everything colorbinned the way I like it and would be happy to share mine.
I'm a super-sorter, so all of my downloads ae sorted first by site, then by creator (in the case of MTS2), then by what it is according to CleanInstaller.  And all the hairtextures are named by the mesh they use.  I'm on break from school right now and I do have some time to help sort, so if you want to PM me, I can send you some, or even sort some other site's that I don't have.  Maybe I can help explain Theo's tool for you (but I'm not so with the explanations, especially over the internet)

All of the above except for the creator who use poser. Actually if they paid for it and have to change it for using with the game, I don't think it is stealing. And Poser hair are really nice (except for the high poly).
But I hate when black are not black and blond are yellow. If a mesh had a gap that I don't like, that means I don't like the hair and I delete it, but when the mesh is gorgeous and the colors ugly...it get me very frustrated. Like Raonsims with the brown being almost green...WTF!

Sure! Thanks, guys! (you AND donovan being so nice to offer hand-holding...wow!)

I have SimPE 6.0 and the colourbinning tool. I think I'd have been fine if the packages were multi-colours, but that would imply that they were actually binned already. I wasn't sure when to save, etc.

No problem mate!

Well firstly you need to open the tool in SimPE, and to open the files. I'd suggest moving the files out of your downloads folder to make it easier to access them. Then you find the set of hairs with the same combination; be it four or fourteen. If they have colour names on them and you want to choose the right one, open the first in the black bin, the next in the brown, and so on until you've got all the colours in, and choose which ones are most realistic (same if you don't have colours, except the black and so on will be in the muddle too; I'd suggest writing down the numbers and colours if you have too many). Then when you've deleted all the non-realistic ones (which is easy to do, even keeping the colourbinning tool open), put your black in black, brown in brown, etc. Make sure only one grey is selected, or it will slow down your PC and create unnecessary greys. Then if you want, you can make sure the blacks are definitely black and so on, but save all four together. This means when you're in CAS/BS, if you click on the hair in black and then in red, you'll get the same hair but the correct colour. This saves time greatly, and is something several hair creators forget to do, even if they bin. Never save the hair separately; it works best if they're linked. Save in the downloads folder under the name you so choose, and start again. ^^

I hope that helped, even if only a little. ^^^^

Greatly!

So if I have hairblackmesha, hairbrownmesha, hairblondemesha, hairredmesha, hairgreenmesha, etc., then I open black in the black tab (do I set option/haircolour/black at this point?), then, without saving, click to the brown tab, open the brown colour, etc. for all but weird colours, pick a grey (I know this has a special procedure)...aaaand I get stuck here. :/

I could be wrong here, but I think that if you load any color into the grey tab, then it only saves the grey.  So, if your hairgreenmesha has a grey attached to it, you can load it into the grey tab and it will save the grey, and the green should go bye-bye.
When you are loading the colors into the tool, you can click on one of the ages that is check-marked to see if it's the right color, because sometimes you load them in there and it's a black recolor but the file name is red (wtf?), it'll show you the actual colors.  When you go into the grey tab, there should only be one age checkmarked, and when you click it, if it's grey, then you should keep it, but if, using our previous example, it's green, then you'd want to trash it.  
And just a hint, but if you're using XM colors, their "silver" color makes for an excellent grey for that tab.

wow that's a lot of commas.

To get a grey without putting it in the grey tab, all you need to do is make sure the "grey" button is ticked in only one colour. I usually do it in the black bar but it doesn't matter. Make sure only one is ticked.
If you want, you can click to make sure that the black is really black (option/haircolour/black etc) but I'd do as Donovan says and click so you get a picture, to make sure you really do have the right colour.

When you've four/five/six (one custom if you choose to and one grey, but you don't need to unless you truly do want purple/green hair, and the grey is simple enough to do without being in a tab) colours, you click the save button. Save it in the area you so choose. Then you have to delete the ones you used originally, as they will be dead files and no use to you at all.


(Thanks, Donovan, mate!)

I agree. As a redhead myself, I am so annoyed how there never is a truly natural red colour made...or very very rarely and definitely NOT found on sites like Peggy, XM, etc. I would settle for a maxis-y shade or something a little darker (or lighter) too but puhleeease, stop with the bloodreds, pinks, purples, freaking rainbow polka dotted shades in the red bin! They're fine as custom but they should never, ever be in the genetic category! Needless to say, I recolor most new hairs I get and re-bin.

I voted for gaps, but mostly everything on that list annoys me just as much, but also the one million shades of every colour (I really don't care to load my game with 5 shades of the same colour when I'm only gonna use one, and deleting them is a pain), and, of course the nicest blonds being binned as browns (of which XM sims and Raonsims are most guilty, so I always end up re-binning XM's Fawn shade into blonde).

Also, binning your hairs. I like a lot of Raonsims' hairs and I went on a bit of a download spree only to discover none of them were binned. Thankfully I had each set in a separate folder so I could do it myself; but it's just lazyness on their part. It really is very easy to do it, just takes time.

</rant>

i went with the firetruck reds, etc.

it's funny because in my game, the brown hair category is overflowing but when i go to the black or red category it's only about 4-5 pages of custom and the rest is maxis. lol.