I've decided it's time to recreate some of the CC I made for the Sims back 'when that was lost in disk crashes. But I forget how to do it. It was fifteen years ago, after all.

Specifically, I want to take some textures for Teen clothes and graft them onto appropriate Adult meshes. I did this all the time back 'when. Many of my teens had signature outfits that I wanted to carry over to YA and AF.

So, the questions:

1) How do I find out what outfit a Sim is wearing (texture and mesh). Presumably that info appears in SimPE, but buggered if I remember where. I need to know that, so I know what mesh I want to use for the custom content. eg, Simmie is wearing a plain grey jumper as an adult, and I want to have her wear the same jumper mesh, but with the custom texture she had as a TF.

2) IOW, I need to know what Simmie is wearing now, so I can clone it and modify the clone with the TF texture, then insert it into the game so she can pick up the new gear and stop wearing that drab grey thing I gave her until she could get her real clothes back.

3) I misremember where the binning information for clothes, hair, etc, is found in SimPE. Naturally, I want the new outfit to be suitable for YA and AF, so she can keep wearing it when she graduates. I remember the appropriate number (48), go figger, but not where to find it.

Presumably this is a really simply task, or I wouldn't have been able to do it so much back then.

-- Mal

1/2: If you can't find the item in your downloads (I recommend searching first, either with Bodyshop if you have access to it, or in your Downloads folder), one way is to extract the sim with SimPE, clone them, and package them in Bodyshop. It extracts all the items the sim is wearing (apart from accessory meshes - but if you have the recolor it's easier to find the mesh).
Bodyshop installer for Legacy: https://modthesims.info/d/690428/bo...collection.html
. Clean Installer .

A lot of CC these days come for multiple ages, so if you're lucky, it's a set that's already available, or there's an available mesh you can slap the textures onto. Can be an idea to check so you save yourself a bit of trouble (especially if you're looking for an adult version of a teen outfit - most likely the teen outfit is a conversion already).

A lot of information is found in SimPE, but not quite the information on what a sim is wearing. There's some info, but once you've extracted a sim, save yourself the trouble of digging around, and do the Bodyshop route instead (we're talking info like 3DIR/SHPE/CRES etc. here, which involves digging around in a lot of files, and honestly it's easier and faster to look around in your Downloads folder unless there's no pictures to go from, and other way to find an item).

2: For age conversions, you'll have to dive into a clothing tutorial or two. There are probably a few that deal with age conversions spesifically. If you haven't made clothing meshes before, or can't remember how to do it, read the Unimesh tutorials first (here at MTS), just to get into the basics.

3: Binning info is in the PropertySet for hair/clothes (MeshOverlay for accessories, and TextureOverlay for makeup++)
In most cases the ones you'll want to edit are "Age", "Gender" and/or "Category".

1 & 2) What I would do is make a Sim in BodyShop who is wearing the gray jumper. Put as little else CC on that sim as possible.. Package that Sim as as a Sim2Pack. Then open that Sims2Pack with Clean Installer. Both the texture name and mesh should be shown in Clean Installer.

3) If you open a piece of clothing with SimPE and look in the Property Set, in the Plugin View the age data is where you would place the hex value 48.

You could also use Wardrobe Wrangler to set the correct ages. https://archive.org/details/ts2wardrobewranger

Now, there's a utility with which I was unfamiliar. But from the screenshot, it appears to have been developed around the time Pets came out. Does it still work with later content?

It looks as though it might be useful for another task I want to undertake: getting rid of a bunch of textures I no longer want to appear in Buy mode because I have later, improved versions.

-- Mal

After I posted this, I remembered that I used Bodyshop for conversions like these. The only thing SimPE would be needed for is making the YA textures also available to regular Adults. SimPE is for object recolors, not clothes textures. I'd forgotten that.

But there's another question. After finishing a conversion/recolor/whatever to a project package, Bodyshop exports it to the game. Question is, to where does it export the package file? I see in my projects one package file for a project, but that project may have been exported a number of times, as I have fiddled with it and tested it to see how it works in-game. eg, Dress "X" may have three or four copies available in the Buy screen in-game, but the Project file only has one package for Dress "X." Where are the other packages, or does the Project file package contain all the versions?

A second question is that the Project file is in the dummy "Sims 2" folder, but the working directory for the game is "Sims 2 Legacy." This is confusing to me. Yes, I understand that "Sims 2" is a proxy that Bodyshop uses because it can't use the "Sims 2 Legacy" folder, but my Downloads folder appears in both directories. Does that mean that the game is actually holding duplicates of my entire Downloads folder? Or actually, triplicates, since the Downloads folder is also in my Steam Sims 2 Legacy directory.

-- Mal

(1) When you import a project into the game, the finished project's package file automatically goes into the SavedSims folder. If you export it three times from BodyShop, you will have three differently named package files in SavedSims, one for each export. The package file in the Projects folder is an incomplete package file and will not function properly if it is moved into the game folders. It will also be flagged by Clean Installer as an "Incomplete BodyShop file" if it is moved into the game and a scan is done. The BodyShop package file will only show the last changes made to the file.

(2) I'm unfamiliar with how the Legacy/Steam version works, so I'm unable to offer any meaningful advice there.

To add to HobbesED's explanation, the package file found in the Projects folders should stay in those folders. They're just a template file for the files that end up in SavedSims and have no use ingame.

You can reuse a project multiple times, and you can delete a project via Bodyshop without being afraid of losing any of the files you made (but if you want to keep any PSD files or similar, make sure to save those elsewhere than in the Project folder before deleting a project). Project folders can take up a lot of space on the computer (especially hairs), and can also slow down Bodyshop a bit, so you may want to clean up there once in a while.

Wardrobe Wrangler still works for me and I have the UC. If you don't want certain recolours though, you can delete them in Bodyshop.

That's what I wanted to know. It's interesting that the new package goes into the Saved Sims folder in both the Sims 2 Legacy directory and the Sims 2 proxy directory. I'm going to have to put a package into the proxy folder's Downloads next time and not the Legacy Downloads and see if it shows up in the game.

I cannot believe I was so stupid as to forget that Bodyshop can delete textures. Well, fifteen years, like I said.

-- Mal

The Wrangler looks like it will make binning stuff a breeze, instead of the cumbersome SimPE method. Must try that.

Okay, brilliant. Brilliant and painless. You're my hero. It links to "Sims 2 Legacy" without a hitch.

-- Mal

Wardrobe Wrangler is amazing for rebinning. I remember spending so much time with it, paintstakingly rebinning all of Peggy's hairs.

Oh, god, I wish I'd known about it back then. Such tragedy: I spent literally days rebinning hairs and other stuff, didn't back up my Downloads folder (because the project was still incomplete, I had a lot of recolored hair I had to bin properly), and then a disk crash wiped out all that work. Why is it that the one time you don't back something up in a timely fashion is the one time it's all wiped out? Mind you, that was like the third or fourth catastrophic crash I had in the Sims 2 over the years.

-- Mal