The mess that is custom hair and what we can do about it
Custom hair for TS2 is out of control. It's an absolute mess. The files are bloated with duplicate textures that add to our already long loading times, we have to scroll through pages and pages in the custom section with seemingly no rhyme or reason to find the hair we want, in most cases non adult age groups that are duplicates of the Maxis hairs are included with the custom hairs so we have to scroll through pages and pages of the same damned toddler, child, teen and elder hairs, the custom hairs don't pay attention to Maxis genetics, they won't show up on newly generated townies or adopted children etc etc. I could go on and on.
It's been known for some time now how to properly 'bin' hair, since Pinhead and a few other dilligent modders spent a lot of time and effort working out how to do this properly. What I mean by 'binning' is having the custom hairs show up under the black, blond, brown or red hair tabs like Maxis hairs do instead of under the 'other' tab like 99% of custom hairs currently do. There are several tutorials on how to do this and a tool was even created for the now defunct and unsupported program Datgen to do this. Still the community has largely ignored this.
Until now, admittely, it has been a bit tedious to do with SimPE, albeit in my humble opinion certainly worth the extra work to present a professional nicely sorted effecient hair package. That is about to change soon because I am currently beta testing a SimPE plugin that Theo so awesomely made to make this whole process much easier and quicker.
However, the tool is only as good as the people who use it. As a community we must politely, but firmly, insist that creators should use this tool and set their hairs up this way. To be sure, part of the problem is Maxis' poor implementation of the body shop and its lack of support for setting hair custom hair up with the proper genetics, but the shortcomings of Maxis' tools never stopped the community from finding and using other ways before and it shouldn't now. If we only depended on Maxis for tools to create custom content I think we can all agree the community wouldn't have anywhere near the selection of wonderful items it currently does.
I've heard a number of excuses why creators don't bin their hairs don't and none of them wash with me, here's the common excuses and my rebuttals:
The asterix section is for custom hairs, custom hairs shouldn't show up in the color sections. We won't know if that they are custom.
Wrong. Custom hairs that are binned still retain their asterix on their thumbnail clearly marking them as custom. They can still be deleted. The asterix hair bin isn't just for custom hairs because Maxis put some of its hairs in there too. It's for hair that is outside the standard 4 colors. Purple, green, blue hair, streaked hair and alternate shades like platinum blond etc.
People won't be able to find my hair if I set it up with the colors. They won't be expecting it to be there.
The Jeannette Biedermann hair has been out for a very long time now, and no one has ever had trouble finding it. Several other creators have also binned their hairs. Seomi, Windkeeper, Guppy-Gabriel, Callum91, Jelendra and even myself have made binned hairs and never once have I seen anyone claim to have a problem finding them. Even if they did, you would simply tell them it's in the color categories. No big deal.
I don't know how to bin hairs.
There is a plugin for SimPE that should be out very shortly that will make the process easier. Until then there are a number of tutorials on how to do this:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.msg59038#msg59038
http://www.springhole.net/bogsims/tutorials/geneproperties.txt
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=127096
http://www.datgen.info/tutorials/sm_hairtone.aspx
There are probably more too that I am missing. Feel free to add any in the comments.
Why should I go to the extra trouble to do this? People already download my files. Who are you to tell me what to do?
I would say this, creators (and I say this as one myself albeit a minor one in the Sims community) do you like to scroll through pages and pages of hair files with no rhyme or reason? Do you like seeing duplicates of the same Maxis toddler, child, teen and elder hairs filling up your entire custom hair bin? Do you like having extra duplicate textures in your downloads directory that needlessly take up space and contribute to extra loading time?
Thing is, I think we who are concerned about this in the community and know there is a better way need to inform people that this better way exists and why they should care. We also need to keep at the creators. The more people that ask them, the better chance they will comply. And lastly we need to pratice what we preach and when we make our own files we need to set a good example and make them this way.
I even know of one case where another kind modder went and binned 2 hair sets and changed them to use the Maxis textures instead of the duplicates they were using, thereby drastically reducing the file size, and offered these streamlined files to a very well known Sims site for hairs. The owner ignored him and kept her original unbinned files with duplicates of the large Maxis textures up instead. This shouldn't be the case. We as creators and we as a community can and should do better than this!
*steps off soapbox*
It's been known for some time now how to properly 'bin' hair, since Pinhead and a few other dilligent modders spent a lot of time and effort working out how to do this properly. What I mean by 'binning' is having the custom hairs show up under the black, blond, brown or red hair tabs like Maxis hairs do instead of under the 'other' tab like 99% of custom hairs currently do. There are several tutorials on how to do this and a tool was even created for the now defunct and unsupported program Datgen to do this. Still the community has largely ignored this.
Until now, admittely, it has been a bit tedious to do with SimPE, albeit in my humble opinion certainly worth the extra work to present a professional nicely sorted effecient hair package. That is about to change soon because I am currently beta testing a SimPE plugin that Theo so awesomely made to make this whole process much easier and quicker.
However, the tool is only as good as the people who use it. As a community we must politely, but firmly, insist that creators should use this tool and set their hairs up this way. To be sure, part of the problem is Maxis' poor implementation of the body shop and its lack of support for setting hair custom hair up with the proper genetics, but the shortcomings of Maxis' tools never stopped the community from finding and using other ways before and it shouldn't now. If we only depended on Maxis for tools to create custom content I think we can all agree the community wouldn't have anywhere near the selection of wonderful items it currently does.
I've heard a number of excuses why creators don't bin their hairs don't and none of them wash with me, here's the common excuses and my rebuttals:
The asterix section is for custom hairs, custom hairs shouldn't show up in the color sections. We won't know if that they are custom.
Wrong. Custom hairs that are binned still retain their asterix on their thumbnail clearly marking them as custom. They can still be deleted. The asterix hair bin isn't just for custom hairs because Maxis put some of its hairs in there too. It's for hair that is outside the standard 4 colors. Purple, green, blue hair, streaked hair and alternate shades like platinum blond etc.
People won't be able to find my hair if I set it up with the colors. They won't be expecting it to be there.
The Jeannette Biedermann hair has been out for a very long time now, and no one has ever had trouble finding it. Several other creators have also binned their hairs. Seomi, Windkeeper, Guppy-Gabriel, Callum91, Jelendra and even myself have made binned hairs and never once have I seen anyone claim to have a problem finding them. Even if they did, you would simply tell them it's in the color categories. No big deal.
I don't know how to bin hairs.
There is a plugin for SimPE that should be out very shortly that will make the process easier. Until then there are a number of tutorials on how to do this:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2119.msg59038#msg59038
http://www.springhole.net/bogsims/tutorials/geneproperties.txt
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=127096
http://www.datgen.info/tutorials/sm_hairtone.aspx
There are probably more too that I am missing. Feel free to add any in the comments.
Why should I go to the extra trouble to do this? People already download my files. Who are you to tell me what to do?
I would say this, creators (and I say this as one myself albeit a minor one in the Sims community) do you like to scroll through pages and pages of hair files with no rhyme or reason? Do you like seeing duplicates of the same Maxis toddler, child, teen and elder hairs filling up your entire custom hair bin? Do you like having extra duplicate textures in your downloads directory that needlessly take up space and contribute to extra loading time?
Thing is, I think we who are concerned about this in the community and know there is a better way need to inform people that this better way exists and why they should care. We also need to keep at the creators. The more people that ask them, the better chance they will comply. And lastly we need to pratice what we preach and when we make our own files we need to set a good example and make them this way.
I even know of one case where another kind modder went and binned 2 hair sets and changed them to use the Maxis textures instead of the duplicates they were using, thereby drastically reducing the file size, and offered these streamlined files to a very well known Sims site for hairs. The owner ignored him and kept her original unbinned files with duplicates of the large Maxis textures up instead. This shouldn't be the case. We as creators and we as a community can and should do better than this!
*steps off soapbox*
thanks for visiting, and thanks to antiqueclipart.com 
11 Comments:
I agree with you fully on this, Mo.
I've got six hair files in my game. Just six. I refuse to deal with the mess that is custom hair files. It's just not worth bogging down my game for.
And there's no good excuse for it. When the importance of poly & vertice counts were discovered, most creators were aware and posted those willingly in order for downloaders to have that information. They had to go a little out of their way to do that, and yet they did without dragging their heels. So I don't understand the annoying and frustrating hedging on properly binning hair *and* removing those unnecessary files.
One guess I can make is that those who don't, don't play. A surprisingly large number of creators don't actually play the game, and so don't have an understanding or insight into how much difference these details make to a downloader. I agree that until they do, their stuff, no matter how well-done otherwise, is not worth downloading.
So I'm fully with you on this, and can quite easily resist the temptation to download from someone who refuses to be informed and create something more suitable for the people who actually play the game.
I completely agree with you...all we have to do is hope other simmers will read this so something can truly get done.
*applauds*
I completely agree with you as well, Motoki.
I suspect ignorance is a large part of why so many creators don't do this, not only the fact that many creators don't play but that they aren't aware of the available tools or techniques.
I don't have the willpower C has in downloading custom hair, I have heaps and it really is a mess. I hope that once this new tool for SimPE is available to the public that creators will actually USE it and make their files more usable for the downloaders.
Motoki,
Thanks for your well thought out and necessary comments. Hopefully, the excellent creators out there will take this to heart and we one day will all have the pleasure of having properly binned hair.
I've got to say I hope this brings changes to the hair creations too, because there are many out there I'd like to use, but I'm not cleaning up their mess. Since I spend so much of my time cleaning up messes of various sorts, I've got to draw the line somewhere. ;)
I'm going to add a section to the sidebar for important/special posts and put links to this and the one about the hair bin tool in it so they don't get lost. This is good information.
Great idea, Jen! I'm so glad you did that! :D Thanks.
No problem C :) I don't want this stuff to get lost, now we can always find it.
I am not a modder in any form and was unaware that custom hair could be placed in the regular hair bins. It does make things so much easier. I do believe that users will start choosing creators selectively. In other words, those who go the extra mile will get donations etc. for their work.
I'm Guilty! Wahhhhh! I don't put my hair creations in the Bins! And I have no Excuse! I've added to the mess that is custom hair!
OK, now that I've admitted I've been a bad hair creator I will read up on how to add my hair to bins and I promise that my next hair creation will be found in the proper bins!
I'm glad I read this, Thanks! Sue :)
Some people prefer their custom hair in the custom hair bin. Afterall that's what it was created for originally. I do agree however that duplicates of Maxis hair is useless.
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