Hi all!

I'm reasonably used to using SimPE at this point and I've been using it to create a few new hair tones for all of the maxis hairs. I've been working on this project for a while now and have nearly all of the base game ones done with them working fine for all ages...except YA. They show up when a sim ages up to YA, but not in YA-CAS. I have a sense that this is due to the way I've been doing file size reduction, so I'll explain what I've done so far:

To reduce the number of files, I combined the adult/YA styles (at least for the ones where it is the same) into one property set file by setting the age as 0x00000048.

From previous experimentation, I also found that if I remove a property set instance, I can also remove corresponding 3IDR and BINX files, but some extra steps are needed to make sure it works.

For example, let's say I removed property sets 0x00000006 from a cloned hair file that originally had 6 ages. I would remove the corresponding BINX and 3IDR files, and to make sure everything is linked properly, I would modify the 3IDR file with the 0x00000007 instance so that the property set it links to is now 0x00000005, the nearest remaining property set.

I didn't make any modifications to the BINX files beyond removing the extra instances, but now I'm wondering if I may have misunderstood how they work. Beyond the sort index, I can't find any information online for what the other parts of the BINX do, nor can I really figure out any particular pattern on how they relate to different ages etc. Does anyone know if there is a way to manipulate these files so that the combined A/YA property set file will appear for both ages?

If it's not possible and a separate BINX file for the YA group needed, how do I get it to link to the combined property set? I'd really prefer not to have separate property set files for both ages if I can avoid it.

I appreciate any help!!

Hairs can be a bit... iffy.
The safest/easiest way to remove anything from a hair is to just delete the PropertySet, then do the adjustments you need on the remaining PropertySets, then make a new recolor file. If you add something (like edit an age - just adult, to adult + YA, or adult + YA and elder), add it. Any adjustments you've done (deleting an age by deleting the PropertySet, or editing an age) will be there in the new recolor. This way also fixes the BINX automatically.

(When adding a younger age, you should ideally use a hair that has younger ages included - most hairs tend to add them in when you make recolors, so that's an option)

Editing the PropertySet and 3DIR to match the BINX is not easy. It's one of those things it's sometimes best to let Bodyshop deal with, especially if there are a lot of groups (lots of counting lines, if you get it wrong, things don't show up - I know roughly how it works and even I have more or less given it up by now ).

I think when you recolor the hair, you'll still get both adult and YA resources for the Project folder, but as long as the textures used are identical, SimPE/Bodyshop will see those as identical and still let you use just one texture (or two if there's a grey) in the actual file. If you see more textures in SimPE, it's because they're not identical.

If it's still not working for YA, it can be a couple other things, like the Product and Version numbers. Hat has some info on that, here: https://hat-plays-sims.dreamwidth.org/34791.html (use the search function, it's a long one, and mentioned a few places).

I tried it on a subset, and it worked! I never even thought to check the version either and that got about half of them working already as well :o
Thank you so much!