#ts4 cas tutorial

[thebramblewood]

Making Simple CAS Overrides to Allow Accessories

Ever find the perfect fit for your Sim only to realize it inexplicably hides necklaces, bracelets, or piercings that should logically be visible? Luckily, this is (usually) a super easy and quick fix! I wanted to do a walk-through of the process so that you don't have to compromise on your Sim's style.

1. Open Sims 4 Studio. Before clicking the "CAS" button to create your package, be sure that "Override" is selected.

2. After clicking the "CAS" button, use the filters to help narrow down the selection of in-game items and find the one you'd like to create an override for. For this tutorial, I'll be overriding this Tiny Living top that doesn't allow bracelets even though the wrists are uncovered (shoutout to @cowplant-snacks for suggesting it). Make sure to hold down Shift when clicking on the first swatch so that all swatches will be overridden.

3. Click Next. You'll get a File Explorer pop-up asking you to name your package file. Place it in a folder and name it however makes sense to you. I'm just naming it after how EA named the mesh. Once you've created the package, you don't need to touch anything else in Sims 4 Studio and can exit the program.

4. Open CAS Tools. If you don't already have it, download and install it. You'll install by simply unzipping to a location on your computer. I put mine in Documents. You'll click on the .exe file to open it. Windows may give you a hard time about opening an unknown file. As far as I know, it's perfectly safe. If this is your first time using it, you'll likely have to enter a creator name and confirm some settings when it first launches.

5. Once you're in CAS Tools, click on the "Clone Package Editor" tab. Then use the "Select" button to browse to and open the package file you just created.

6. After the file has loaded in, look for the "Exclude Parts" section on the right side. Scroll through until you find the parts that are currently disallowed. In this case, since we want to allow bracelets, we'll uncheck the left and right wrist categories. I repeat: UNCHECK THESE BOXES!

Keep in mind that some accessories are disallowed for a reason. The mesh may cover them, they may clip awkwardly, or there may be other conflicts. It won't break your game to allow these accessories anyway, but it's up to you to decide whether or not it's a fair tradeoff!

7. This part is important! Make sure to click "Commit Changes" and then click "Save Package."

8. That's it! The only step left is to go in game to check if your override works. Here's a before and after of that Tiny Living top. It's now marked as CC and bracelets show up. Success!

And that's really all there is to it. This is the exact method I followed to create my Reaper Career Uniform Overrides. Your Sims can now rock their preferred accessories in under five minutes!

BUT WHAT IF...

I open my package in CAS Tools only to find that the parts I believe are excluded actually aren't? Huh?!? What's going on there?

I encountered this problem while working on the I'm So Julia Collection. Bracelets didn't work with this High School Years dress I wanted to recolor, which was a problem because A. there was plenty of wrist room and B. my purses were in the bracelet category.

But when I opened the package in CAS Tools, it looked like this. It doesn't actually disallow bracelets! So what gives?

The ever lovely and helpful @surely-sims helped me figure out that in this case it was actually a region map issue! For this, we have to go back to Sims 4 Studio, open the package, and switch to the Warehouse tab. (Before doing this, you may have to go to Tools > Modding > Embed all externally referenced resources.)

In the Warehouse tab, find "Region Map" on the left side and click on it. Then click "Edit Items..." on the left side.

See "LeftWrist" and "RightWrist" there? Those are the culprit for bracelets pulling a disappearing act!

Pull up the drop-down menu next to "RegionType" and select "Base" for both instances.

Once that's done, click "Save" and then "Save" again.

Voila! We have a bracelet!

Now, I'm not sure how common this particular issue is, but I thought I'd share a solution in case you encounter it. Between both methods, you should be able to edit just about any CAS item that unnecessarily hides parts from other categories.

[littledica]

Tutorial: How to add a name tag to your CAS items, taking advantage of the Birthday Update UI elements!

I suggest looking at the post on the dashboard rather than on my website for bigger pictures

As you might know, a while back The Sims 4 recieved a birthday update with a few CC items from awesome creators put into the actual game. These items have a special tag that allows them to have a mouse-hover name tag.

Can anyone use this tag? At first i thought you couldn't cause it might've been hard coded, but actually it isn't! I'm gonna go through some steps to enable it on your items as well.

STEPS 1 - 3:

1: Open your CAS item .package file into Sims4Studio, click on the warehouse tab;

2: Look for your package file's CAS Part resource;

3: Inside CAS Part, look for the "tags" field;

STEPS 4 - 5:

4: Click on the "add" button and select CATEGORY: SpecialContent - TAGVALUE: SpecialContent_Anniversay21

5: Click on the "add" button and select CATEGORY: Style - TAGVALUE: Style_CAS_Branded_Anniversay21

We have now enabled the possibility for the asset to display a Name Tag. Now, how do we give it a string and customize what it says?

We are going to clone an object, whatever object, and utilize their strings to have a uniquely numbered string table that won't conflict with any EA or other CC item's strings.

STEPS 6 - 7:

6: Clone an object, it can be whatever object, i usually clone a tooth brush decor item and call the package "dummy" and stick it on the desktop;

7: Go into the studio tab and change the Catalog Name as if you were renaming your object normally, but instead type in your name or whatever you want the CAS item to display. For the purpose of this tutorial, i wrote "YOUR NAME HERE";

STEPS 8 - 10:

8: Go into the warehouse tab of your Dummy object and select all the String Tables, all of them;

9: Now click on batch export and save them in a folder somewhere;

10: Now, go into your CAS Item package and click on warehouse. Now, click on Batch Import and select

STEPS 11 - 12:

11: Click on one of the string table resources and then, click on the "Text" tab (by default it will show the "data" tab) and copy the "KEY" value of the string that shows what you typed;

12: Click on the CAS Part resource and look for the "PART DESCRIPTION KEY" field, and paste the value you copied earlier into it.

Now save, and test in game:

If it worked, hovering over your item should show a name tag, just like that!

[ebonixsims]

FAQ - How to enable Baby Hairs and Edges for Toddlers (TS4)

I have a MULTITUDE of asks in my inbox about how to or where to find baby hairs for toddlers. All the ones I use are ones I have enabled for toddlers using Sims4Studio (S4S). So I will drop this mini tutorial on how to achieve this ^_^ (using Windows - not sure if it’s the same for Mac users)!

What you need:

Sims4Studio

1. Open S4S and click on My Projects.

2. Locate the baby hair/edges you would like to enable for toddlers and double click to select it to open in S4S.

3. Select the Categories tab.

4. Check the Toddler flag and add the tick.

5. Press Apply To All Swatches

6. Hit Save.

And there you have it! Simples! You can use this method to enable almost anything related to CAS (eyes, skins, skin details).

Now, go lay ya baby’s edges!

Reblog to save a life!