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Cleaning Up the Skins Folder

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Blondie

Posted: Jul 29 2005, 02:43 PM

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From Kiri:

QUOTE

Tools required:
Patience. And lots of it. Don't expect to complete this in a couple of hours or a day. It took me up to a month to completely sort my skins out, and it takes discipline to keep it sorted.

The main sites that you can get tools from:
The Sims Official site
Programs to get:
SimsFileCop - It's valuable and worthwhile to have this and use it. It will spot bad CMX files and bad bitmaps, and pull them out.
SimShow - This is what I found most valuable in testing for different skins using the same prefix.

SimPrograms
Programs to get:
Skin Doctor Version 2.27 (on page 3) This is the Blarney Stone one that was talked about in the other thread. It does a lot of cool things and will help diagnosing things. It doesn't "fix" things though. Unfortunately - fixing is a MANUAL process.
ISimSkinner is a better looking SimShow and can make it easier to sort things out.
EliSims is a truly cool program� (also free) and can be used with skins, as well as it's usual functions.

Paladin's Place/SimWardrobe
CMX Maker - somewhere along the line, we're going to need to create our own. SimWardrobe has made it easy for us.

STEP 1 - FIX THE GLARINGLY OBVIOUS

Move all your skins from skinsbuy to skin. The reason why we do this is because Sims File Cop was created before there was an expansion shared - so it doesn't look in there. Also a subversive reason - because we're fixing and playing, we need somewhere to put clean skins. the skinsbuy folder is a good place for this

Run Sim File Cop

Tip: Leave Sim File Cop running - without trying to do anything else. If you do, it tends to stop working. Especially if you've got a lot of files. Also, If you have a lot of files (I've got 55,000) expect for it to be running a LOOOOOOOONG time.

It will also check wall and floor tiles - don't worry too much about this one.

This will do two good things for you. It will pull out all the bitmaps that aren't 256 colour, and it will pull out all the CMX's that it thinks are wrong.

So Go look in the folder -
SimsFileCop/Bad Textures. If there's anything in there, you'll need to fix them if you want to use them.

If you have a paint program (I use PSP7), you can open up the bitmaps in here and correct them.

Some of them will be because they just shouldn't be in the skins folder. You can tell which ones they are - they're the roofs, or the pictures that someone has included. Leave them out of the game you won't miss them - they just clutter up the folder.

Some of them will be because they're not 256 colours. You fix them to be 256 colours with your paint program.

Some of them will be because they're a custom size. Don't worry about these - you can put them back in the game.

Fixing the files in the BadOtherFiles folder

First up - you'll notice that they are all CMX files. Mine all have a prefix of B. (I think that File Cop might not check the others?)

OK - time to fix them.
The reason why they can be bad are the following
There are no bitmaps with the same prefix as the CMX OR
There are no skins with the same name as in the CMX.

So - Skins with the same name as in the CMX.

Let's pick the first one - mine is
b0APfafit_LoosePants.cmx

So First question - do we have a bitmap for these?

Using windows file explorer search option on your skins folder, set up your search condition as follows:

b0APfafit*.*

This will get all the bitmaps if there are any for the cmx. The stars are wildcards.

My search found 9 bitmaps.

OK next, right-click on the CMX file in the BadOther file and choose edit.
The inside of my CMX file looks like:
// Character File. Copyright 1997, Maxis Inc.
version 300
0
1
b0APfafit_LoosePants
0
0
1
PELVIS
xskin-b0APfafit_LoosePants-PELVIS-BODY
0
0
0

Copy the bolded bit under pelvis - that's the name of the skin mesh that it tries to match the bitmap to.

Go back to your search window, and paste your selection into the window - but change it to

xskin-b0APfafit*.*

Then search.

I get
xskin-b0APfafit_MA_LoosePants-PELVIS-BODY.skn
In the window. So that's fairly clear why it's not working - the skin names are different.

So back in the CMX now� - I'll change the skin name to

xskin-b0APfafit_MA_LoosePants-PELVIS-BODY

And now it's fixed.

If there were no Bitmaps with b0APfafit as the first 9 characters, I would have changed my search to just look at b0AP*.*. If that didn't turn up anything, I would have deleted the CMX. It's got no bitmaps, so there's no point in having it.

If there were no skin-meshes with xskin-b0APfafit, I would have looked for xskin-b0AP, and then finally looked for all skn files with "LoosePants".

If I couldn't find any of them, again I'd move the matching bitmaps and CMX files to a new folder called "Skins-Bad".

Why not delete them? Well - you may be able to find the mesh on a site and download it. In which case everything's good again.

This post has been edited by irisheyz on Nov 3 2006, 08:43 AM

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