SOLVED!! How do you convert LRLE resource to editable file?

I actually have the same question, so I'll get on the bandwagon! Hopefully someone who can help will see this thread soon

All right, y'all, this is ALMOST as easy as I expected it to be. geeekaesthetic bonehildy missduckky

Updating default replacement CC to work with the new image resource type introduced for several forms of CAS content in various recent patches doesn't actually involve changing the images themselves, not even saving them into a new format. They've just been classified differently inside TS4 package files, and the manual fix is literally just changing a single 8-character text string from one value to another in order to tell the game that the Resource Type is now LRLE instead of RLE2. The reason why it initially looks complicated is because there isn't a method for doing it inside the user-friendly GUI of the Studio tab, but it's still just copy-and-paste.

The reason it's only almost as easy as I expected, and not exactly as easy, is that S4S wouldn't let me do it. When I tried to change the string, it turned into a bunch of zeroes and the little textbox it lives in got a red outline, so something isn't letting me change the Type string, even though it lets me change it to go from RLE2 to LRLE. I leave it to andrew to decide if this is something it's sensible to change, or for that matter if converting between LRLE and RLE2 in the current file, or by individual resource, is a good feature to add in a simpler, button-clicky kind of way. Anyway, since S4S objected to changing the resource type, I had to use S4PE.

This is where you get S4PE:
github.com/s4ptacle/Sims4Tools/releases/

You download the 7zip (.7z) file (if you don't already have 7zip, which you should, you get that here: www.7-zip.org/ -- it's a free program that handles all sorts of compressed file formats like zip and rar and tgz as well as it's own 7zip format, and it's very useful; if you have a Mac, get www.keka.io/en/ instead to open .7z files) and then uncompress the folder inside to wherever you want S4PE to live on your computer, and run s4pe.exe. (There's no installer, the program is ready to run as-is once you unzip the folder. This is the same as the Default Fixer, and is the usual way that CmarNYC's programs are set up.)

Then you MAKE A BACKUP (because S4PE WILL let you accidentally eff up your file) of the default replacement package file you want to get the images from, and then open it in S4PE from the File menu.

Here is part of what you'll see, with yellow highlighting helpfully added by me to call attention to the important bits:


Each line in S4PE is one resource, much like the Warehouse tab in S4S, just not as pretty. The Tag column displays an abbreviation for the type of resource. When you initially open your default replacement, you'll see a lot of UNKN (Unknown) because the last S4PE update was probably before LRLE was introduced. (That won't hurt anything!) The Type column displays the hexadecimal string that tells the game (which, being a computer program, likes hex strings much better than words) what type of resource is it. It looks like gibberish, but it's short, we are only going to be working with two possible values, and we only need to replace one with the other and not do anything else with it.

The value that corresponds to LRLE is 2BC04EDF. That is what you will see a lot of already when you open your package file. (In S4PE it's actually 0x2BC04EDF.) The value that corresponds to RLE2 is 3453CF95 or 0x3453CF95 and that is what we're going to change the Type field for each image to.

(You might notice that the very first line of the resources in my screenshot says the Tag is UNKN but the Type is not either of the two I mentioned above. That one you don't touch, and the same with any other resources that have different Type numbers, whether the Tag is UNKN or something else.)

For each resource that has a Type of 0x2BC04EDF, you will double-click on that string, and when the smaller window pops up, replace it (copy and paste) with 0x3453CF95 instead, then click the OK button. You will see the Tag field for each resource turn from UNKN to RLE2 as you do this. If your default has a lot of images, as skintone defaults tend to, you'll have to do it a lot of times, but since you'll be pasting the same thing every time, you can just keep pasting. A bit tedious, and hard to tell what's actually happening if you're not used to the innards of TS4 package files, but not actually difficult.

When you've replaced all the hex strings, save your package from the File menu and exit S4PE.

Open the package back up in S4S and enjoy all those RLE2 resources that have visible image previews, working export and import, etc. Everything should now work exactly the same as it did before the default changes! Export your images, edit them, import them back in, etc. just like you usually do for any other CC.

When you're done, use any method you like to fix the default, just like you would for an old default that had never been fixed -- run CmarNYC's fixer, change the strings back in S4S manually, fire up S4PE again if you've really gotten attached to it, etc. Now it should work in game again.

(For people who are making additional changes to something they already created or edited in the past, of course, you probably don't really want to export the existing images to edit them -- you want to make changes in your real working files, the PSD or XCF or whatever other lossless, layer-supporting format is native to your image editing program, export them to DDS or PNG just like you did before, and then import them. But they still need to be RLE2 resources and not LRLE resources for you to do that, too.)

(Also, when you fix the default to convert all those RLE2s into LRLEs again, MAKE A BACKUP AGAIN. If you've used the Default Fixer program before you may already know that it requires you to save the fixed file with a different filename than the original because using the same filename will break things; other methods do not require this, but YOU WANT ONE because if you load your default in the game and it's not working, or it works perfectly but you totally put the elder face on adults and the adult face on elders or crossed up the lighter and darker shades of an eyecolor or something, you're not going to want to have to switch all those LRLEs back to RLE2s to fix the problem; you're going to want to edit your backup and then fix it again. Just make sure that you keep your backup outside your Mods folder, or otherwise keep the game from reading it, or else you'll have dueling defaults, which is way less fun than dueling banjos.)

Let me know if any of that does not make sense. 

I explained a while ago how to change RLE 2 resources to LRLE in Studio. The same way it can be changed from LRLE to RLE 2 by changing group number from 2BC04EDF to 3453CF95.


EDIT: Just tried to do this and I can't do this anymore. It worked before the latest patch.

------I am having an issue where S4S is importing eye colour .png files as lrle instead of rle2, which the game isn't recognizing. I don't understand why it's doing this, as eye colour does not use the sliders like makeup does. So, I went into s4pe and changed the types, but this is time consuming and frustrating, and didn't actually allow me to work with the subsequent saved .package in S4S. Will this be fixed within S4S any time soon? I've not worked much with hex strings, so I don't understand how to change that to get the files to work. I would love some assistance on how to do it, because after I go into s4pe and change all the types I get this error when attempting to modify the files in S4S:

The Sims 4 Studio - Version 3.1.4.9



System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> System.NotSupportedException: Specified method is not supported.



at Gibbed.Sims4.TextureCompress.RLEUtilities.ConvertDDS(Stream input, Stream output)



at Gibbed.Sims4.TextureCompress.RLEUtilities.ConvertDDS(Byte[] src)



at S4Studio.Data.IO.Images.RLE2ImageResource.get_DDS()



at S4Studio.Data.IO.Images.RLE2ImageResource.set_RawImageData(Byte[] value)



at S4Studio.ViewModels.Warehouse.WarehousePackageViewModel.ImportResource(WarehouseResourceViewModelBase existing, String f)



at S4Studio.ViewModels.Warehouse.WarehousePackageViewModel.<>c__DisplayClass45_0.<ExecuteImportResourceCommand>b__0()



at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.InnerInvoke()



at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()



--- End of inner exception stack trace ---



---> (Inner Exception #0) System.NotSupportedException: Specified method is not supported.



at Gibbed.Sims4.TextureCompress.RLEUtilities.ConvertDDS(Stream input, Stream output)



at Gibbed.Sims4.TextureCompress.RLEUtilities.ConvertDDS(Byte[] src)



at S4Studio.Data.IO.Images.RLE2ImageResource.get_DDS()



at S4Studio.Data.IO.Images.RLE2ImageResource.set_RawImageData(Byte[] value)



at S4Studio.ViewModels.Warehouse.WarehousePackageViewModel.ImportResource(WarehouseResourceViewModelBase existing, String f)



at S4Studio.ViewModels.Warehouse.WarehousePackageViewModel.<>c__DisplayClass45_0.<ExecuteImportResourceCommand>b__0()



at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.InnerInvoke()



at System.Threading.Tasks.Task.Execute()<---