Many times, when you download a mesh, this comes only for an age group, maybe two, rarely all.
In this case, you'll see for all the ages not covered by the mesh a Maxis default hairstyle in the Custom Hairstyle section.
It's a bit annoysing, because, when you want to chose for a, example, child hairstyle, you have to see tons of page with default hairstyle.. what a waste of time..!
I myself have really poor time to play with The Sims; I don't want to spend that time this way
Here's a small, quick, easy tutorial to get rid of the unwanted hair-ages.

REQUIREMENTS:
- SimPE (I have the version 48, but you can use a older one, since we're not using particular features).
TIME:
- 10 minutes
DIFFICULTY:

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE STARTING:
I've tested this steps in my game many times, and they work great; anyways I can't guarantee it will not cause problem to you files.
That's why I highly recommend to backup your files before starting (it's always a good idea to backup before using SimPe, tho).

- STEP 1.
Open up in SimPE the hair file you want to edit.
Please note that you must not open the MESH file (ex. MESH_BlahBlahHair.package) but the recolor file (wich is usually composed by some letter and number followed by a name, ex. 12af452_BlahBlahHairRecolor.package).
Those files should be in your Documents/EaGames/TheSims2/Downloads folder.

- STEP 2.
Once you've opened it, youl find on your left a list of items, called, in the latest version of SimPe, Resorce Tree.
Scroll down the list until you find the item named "Property Set". Select it. On your right it will apper a list of items called "Property Set" and an alphanumeric digit.
Click on the first of them.


- STEP 3.
Read down in the Plugin View tab.
After the line "Name (dtString) ", you'll find a name. That name show the kind of hairstyle and the age group. For example, in this screenshot, it shows TF, wich means Teen Female.


- STEP 4.
If the age shown in the name string corrisponds to one of the ages you want to delete, wrote down or remember its istance name, you'll find it in the third column after Property Set, on your right.


- STEP 5.
Now you can delete the item by right-clicking on it and choosing "Delete".

Now reapet steps 3-5 for all the ages you want to delete.


- STEP 6.
In the Resource Tree tab, select "3D ID Referencing Files ". In the list on your right, select the files with the same instance numbers of the files you deleted before and delete them.


- STEP 7.
Select the item "Binary Index (BINX) " in the Resource Tree tab, and repeat the step 6.


You done it! If everythings goes in the right way, now you'll have the hairstyle shown only for the ages you want.

I hope this small tutorial is helpful and clear to everybody (I know, my english su**s ).
:howdy:

Oh my gosh thanks. I've downloaded so many different hairs, but they look just hideous in so many different age groups. This will take care of my problem. Thanks again! I know it can't be easy to write a tutorial.

I appreciate this very much! Thats the exact reason I don't use very many user created hair meshes! Now I'll be able to download what I want to use and edit out the other ages that are just repeats of Maxis'. hehe

eheh
I'm glad this can be helpful

Hi, I am very interested in using your tutorial, as for example, I have downloaded some Toddler Female hairstyles and I would like to delete the Maxis default hairstyles for all the other age groups.

In steps 3 & 4, you give TF as an example of Teen Female and delete the unwanted “Instance Names”. Could you please point me to the appropriate thread or tutorial that gives a list of all the “Instance Names” associated with all ages and hairstyles.

I did a search, but as a mere downloader I didn’t really known which tutorial to download to give me the information I needed.

Thanks

I'm not sure I've understand what you mean
If you're looking for a list with instance names and corrisponding ages group, I don't think it exists.
Usually the istance 0x00001 is related to toddler age group, 0x00002 to child and so on, but not always.
If you want to recognize the age group by the initials, it's kinda intuitive, but heres a list:

SimplyStella,

Thank you for the reply, it will be very useful.
You said that a list of instance names does not exist, which explains why I couldn't find one.

Simply Stella,

Thanks it worked great, now I don't have all those files crowding bodyshop.

I think, it is very useful for optimize a file size, which contence a hair recolour. But, what about deleting textures? It adds the major size, isn't it?

Thank you so much for this. I have an absoolutely rediculous amount of Maxis defaults in my custom folder and I have been going nuts having to look at hte same pic over and over. Until I read this I did'nt know what they were and I thought the were mistakes. I have deleted a few not knowing they were connected to my other ages. (I hope I didn't lose nething to important..boo hoo) Luckily the delete process took a long time and i gave up. Question....Can you tell me y default clothing repeatedly shows up in CAS as custom content? I have 5 maxis jock chic outfits with a star on them! WTF???!!!

Not only is this very helpful, but it is written very well. Had you not mentioned it, I would have never known that English wasn't your first language.

Thanks again! :baloons:

I'm actually working on this.
By now, I found out this is possible only those ages wich are not covered by the mesh have different textures compared to ages covered by the mesh.
For ex., if I ahve a mesh that comes only for adult version, but the texture is the same for adult and, lets say teen, I can't delete the texture from SimPE since it only shows one texture per kind: i would delete the adult and teen version togheter.
Or at least, everytime I tested this, this worked like this. :dolt:


Maybe is missing mesh problem (you downloaded an outfit wich required a particolar custom mesh, and you didn't download the mesh; in these cases the game shows default outfits) :nod:



oh :insane:

I hope someone still reads this and can answer me on this, but when you remove ages from costom hairmesh and try to upload it or recolors of it to the exchange doesn't it give you error? or is just my game? maybe nobody here uploads to the exchange but if you do get a error message i think it might be worth mentioning. great tutorial btw, easy to understand.

Are you uploading your own hair mesh, or someone else's? Not too many meshers want their creations uploaded to the exchange, you know.

This may be a stupid question, but how do you know exactly which file to open into SimPE? When I go into BodyShop, for example, I can see exactly which hair I want, but when I hover my mouse over it, it will just tell me the "name" of the file that the creator gave it, not the "blahblahHairRecolor.package" file name. So I have a bunch of hair files in my downloads folder that are just numbers or vague names (for example, 0f1b685ed66e53fb45779b769b5cb6bd.package is one I have) and I have no idea what they look like. Is there any way in bodyshop to know the file name of the hair you're viewing?

If you go into SimPE and select "open" and go into your downloads folder, you should be able to find it - you'll have not only the package file, but the folder it came in, as well. If you have trouble finding the package, but the foldername is easy to find, click on the folder, and then the package file from inside that.

Now, if you're a real downloads hog, you will probably want to open your downloads folder from My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2, where you can use search to find a specific file name, or piece of a file name. Make a note of it, then fire up SimPE.

Alright, I think I got it, thanks for the reply! Another quick question: when I was going through this process I found that for many of the custom hairs I downloaded for adults and teens, some of the same default hair files for toddlers and kids showed up. For example, for many female adult and teen hair packages I have, puhair_bald_swirl_(color) was used for toddlers and for a few, cfhairpoofs_(color) was used for kids (under the property set part). So, I was wondering, are these default hair styles and for the most part, if they show up in this process with adult and teen hairs, are they safe to remove using this process? And if they are defaults that are ok to remove, is there a list anywhere of all of these (puhairbald_swirl_blond, puhairbald_swirl_black, etc.) so that I can know what ones are default and what ones are named after the creators of the recolor?

The names in the recolour files will always be the same as the defaults - you can't go by what the names are in the recolour file for removal. You need to look at the actual recolour in Body Shop and switch through the ages to see what it's linked to... You can do this by creating a new project, or by creating a new sim and putting the hairstyle on them and then age switching them... You can then remove all the non-custom ages for that style by opening its recolour file and following this method. Yes, the other ages that are default styles are safe to remove - that's what this whole tutorial is for.

Thank you!
In a word... You rock. (okay two words)
And thanks to HystericalParoxysm for letting me know about your tutorial.

I forgot i posted here so sorry, but yes it was another creators hairmesh and according to the post it is ok to do whatever you want with the mesh as long as you link to the site and give credit. I just wanted to upload a recolor of the hairmesh i made so the meshfile shouldn't even have been included. But maybe there's a way to block your CC from being uploaded to the exchange that i didn't know of, but i thought that because i didn't see the younger ages in the file when i recolored it that the exchange couldn't except it because they show thumbnailsof the hair for all the ages.

I have a question, how do you delete the extra textures for elder ages? I downloaded a few custom hairs, binned them, deleted extra ages and even linked them by family, but I don't know how to get rid of the extra greys. The same hair has 4 greys, but only the one linked to black is used. Can someone tell me how to delete the extras safely? Cause I borked the whole thing when I deleted it off-hand.

I also had problems using this tutorial to remove elder hair. I had previously binned my hair collection and today tried to remove the elder groups from all files except for the linked blacks. This resulted in the deletion of the regular adult brunettes, blondes, and redheads, (I didn't load a college to see if this borked my YA hair too,) along with the extra elder hair I intended to remove for all binned custom hair except for the untouched blacks. I removed every instance of afXXX_grey from the three sections indicated in this tutorial.

If this tutorial is the proper method for removing all ages except elder, a disclaimer at the top would be nice. If my problem is due to user error then I would like to join krayzieworld in asking for help.

Moon Dragon, I had this problem too, and it was because the instance numbers didn't match. In Property Set the elder instance was 0x00000005, but in the 3D ID Referencing File it was 0x00000006.

I noticed that in that instance there was a line which started "Category=Casual1, ..." and included "Age=Elder," so that was the one to delete. With the Binary Index I had to guess, but since both it and the 3D ID Referencing File had 7 listings and the Property Set had 6, I went with the same instance number as the 3D ID Referencing File. I had to guess again with the next hair I changed.

Also, I needed to set the available ages in the Hair Tone XML. The codes for the ages are here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=2119.0

If you don't want to search through the thread they are:
0x00000001 is toddlers
0x00000002 is children
0x00000004 is teens
0x00000008 is adults
0x00000010 is elders (that's 16 in decimal)
0x00000040 is young adults (4*16=64 in decimal)

And you add them up and put in the total for the ages you want. I changed my files from all ages, or 0x0000005F (1+2+4+8+16+64 = 95 in decimal = 5*16+15 = 5F in hex), to all but elder, or 0x0000004F.

Thank you, trr. I'll try this next time.

This is just what I wanted, thank you. I didn't realise it was so simple!