Solved Help solve the mystery of the missing hair

[Jocks3D]

I have a few VaM installs, one for playing around with creating looks and scenes and another for my favorites. In the favorites install I have some hair styles I like so I copied them over to the add-ons folder of my creator install and to my surprise they do not show up under the hair chooser. So I deleted them from the add-ons folder and downloaded them again, this time from the Hub browser within VaM and they're still not showing up. I checked and the .var files are in the add-ons folder. And yes, I did close and open VaM in between doing all these steps just in case in was a cache problem. Although come to think of it, do I need to manually clear the cache in VaM to solve this?

Any other suggestions on how to solve this mystery? Why would a .var file in the add-ons folder not show up in VaM where it's supposed to?

The files in question are some nice hair styles by @NoStage3, a wavy and messy bob if it matters.

 

[atani]

If you have the VARs possibly it's a checkbox somewhere in Hair that you selected that is hiding them. And check the Error log in case something else is to blame.

 

[Jocks3D]

Thank you @atani. Here is the error message in the log:

Hair item ICannotDie.Riley_Robyn.latest:/Custom/Hair/Male/NoStage3/Messy Bob/Messy Bob.vam is missing

So it appears that the @NoStage3 Messy Bob hair is linked to the Riley_Robyn look. This seems odd since the actual hair is available as a download. I would think it would be the other way around, a Look that needs a hair style, not a hair style that needs a Look.

Anyhow, I added that look to my add-ons folder and presto, the hair showed up! I guess I'll always need to add that Look if I want to use that hair.

Mystery solved?

 

[atani]

That hair was repackaged as part of the look and the reasons could be many. Perhaps it's a highly customised version beyond a hair preset capability, maybe the original creation was done before VARs where it had to be packed in, or the creator didn't know how to pack well at the time.
Unfortunately this is very common, and you probably have dozens of copies of "Lexi" hairs and others. While I think people are improving their packaging patterns as they learn more about it, there's also others who don't care and just cram everything in. This is the reality.
If everyone followed the VAR packaging tutorials and took care when doing their stuff you wouldn't have resources with over 100 dependencies, cascading levels of dependencies, and all kinds of junk added for no reason. Alas, this will continue to be the case.

If you have both hairs, the original from NoStage3 and ICannotDie, load them and use the "Copy all parameters" from the ICannotDie version to the NoStage3 one. If they look the same you can update your appearance preset to use NoStage3's version and you won't need to use the ICannotDie version.

 

[Jocks3D]

The workaround so far is to just include the Riley_Robyn look in my add-on folder but I asked nostage in the post for the hair if he could re-post it as a stand-alone var not tied to a specific Look. I only have the original var from nostage found here and on his Patreon site and both require the Riley_Robyn look if I want to save it with a Look I create.

 

[RandomVAMUser]

@cs2022

Messy Bob is standalone hairstyle and working as intended (female only).

However obvious problem here is futa, specifically male version of said hairstyle (included inside Riley & Robyn).
I can understand male part, but I dunno why female version also has to be included (looks indentical to original).

In order to use futa(male) you need another copy of same hairstyle inside /Custom/Hair/Male (as indicated by error above).
You can simply create local copy of original Messy Bob hairstyle inside male folder.

 

[Jocks3D]

You can simply create local copy of original Messy Bob hairstyle inside male folder.

@RandomVAMUser, not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying to make a copy of the Messy Bob var file and paste that into the Male Hair folder? I thought var files had to go in the Add-On folder?

Also, how does this solve the problem of exporting a look with the Messy Bob var and not also needing the Riley_Robyn look? If you hit Customize on the Messy Bob hair availble for download here you should see ICannotDie listed under Package Info, not NoStage3. So when exporting a look I always need to make sure Robyn_Riley is in the add-on folder or else the look will come in as bald.

 

[RandomVAMUser]

@RandomVAMUser, not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying to make a copy of the Messy Bob var file and paste that into the Male Hair folder? I thought var files had to go in the Add-On folder?

var packages go inside addons folder, true.

You didn't clarified, so I gonna assume that you wanna save futa character.
Since that hairstyle is female only,
I didn't meant you copy entire package inside male folder, simply extract content from it (inside /Custom/Hair/Male).

In order to use it on futa you need to create male copy of it.
Inside VaM/Custom there is no futa specific content paths, only male and female (male=futa).

After that simply equip new local copy (futa version) and you no longer need hairstyle from riley package.
If you decide to share this look, than you have to package hairstyle (futa version)...otherwise is gonna be bald.

sidenote: you can't retrofit copy-paste all content for male/female, but in this case of futa/hairstyles you can.

Also, how does this solve the problem of exporting a look with the Messy Bob var and not also needing the Riley_Robyn look? If you hit Customize on the Messy Bob hair availble for download here you should see ICannotDie listed under Package Info, not NoStage3.

Well than that equiped Messy Bob hair is not from NoStage3 package,
If you mouseover little "cube" icon (packaged content icon) it tells you package name and version.

 

[Jocks3D]

Thank you all. This problem was solved. User error on my part (as usual). More details on the solution are here:

Hairstyles - NoStage3 – Messy Bob

NoStage3 submitted a new resource: NoStage3 – Messy Bob - A messy bob with different color presets. Copy the .var file to your AddonPackages folder and you'll have access to the hair piece "Messy Bob". There are different color presets included. Enjoy! Important: Update VaM to 1.19+ (Beta...

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