How to Create a Custom Wrench Mod

I remembered after receiving several requests that we didn’t have a tutorial on making a custom wrench mod, so decided to make one. Sure, there’s the tutorial I followed on MTS that gave me a general direction, but we need a specific one in case a wrench creator disappears again, or for those who just want to know how for their own ideas. 

Before we get started though, just a friendly reminder to respect creators, etc. and if you plan to do “recolors” of a wrench mod, probably ask before doing so if you plan to release it to the public.

The first thing you want to do is make sure you have Sims4Studio (S4S) installed, as well as the UI Texture Squasher and your image editing program of choice (that supports transparent PNGs). Then, make a folder/work area for your mod. This is especially important if you want to be working with multiple colors. I have a main folder, then subfolders for each color, one of them being a base folder that contains the original images in case I made a mistake, need to check something, etc. Organize however you see fit, but this is just the way I do it.

Then, we are going to open S4S and go to the top where Tools is located and click on it, then select “Create Empty Package” from the dropdown menu. A popup will open asking to name the file. Name it whatever you want, but if you plan to release it please fill in your creator name, the name/version/color of the wrench, and use underscores (not spaces or special characters, they lag the game). 

Once your empty package has loaded, go to Tools again and this time select “Game File Cruiser” and a popup will appear. 

We are now going to copy and paste the Instances of the files we need for our mod into the search system. The instances we need are: 

09BBBF9DC6153DF9 – The biggest and contains mostly CAS icons, as well as the main wrench (and used to be swatch wrench, but that has been removed in a recent update).

9AD1293A832706E0 – Second biggest and contains mainly gallery icons, as well as the gallery wrench.

D518B5D7A3BBD37C – The smallest and contains mostly CAS icons, as well as the skin, hair, etc. wrench swatch.

We’ll start with 09BBBF9DC6153DF9. Copy and paste it where it says “Instance”. Now go to the check box area named Type and look for “DST Image” and check it. The cruiser will then filter to just the files we need, which is actually two files for one image. Each image we are looking for comes in a pair of two with a different group ID. Select both (Ctrl + Left Click both) and then click the button “Add to current package” that is located at the bottom right of the popup. They will now be added to the package.

You do the same process for 9AD1293A832706E0 and D518B5D7A3BBD37C, the only difference is that you now hit “Filter” instead of checking a box. This saves you a single click, but you can check and uncheck the DST box as well to reset the search if you prefer that.

Save your package before doing anything else. Now go through each file in the package and export the DST image, which is the weird gray block you’re seeing on the right. You can do so by clicking the little green “Export” button at the bottom right of the screen. Make sure the “Save as Type” is set to “DDS Image (*.dds)” and how you name it is important. I normally do “Color_Group_Instance” so that the Color and Group is front and center and I don’t confuse the two files with the same Instance. Use whatever naming convention works for you though, just make sure you remember which is which based on the Group as that will come back in a few minutes.

Once everything is extracted, it’s time to combine the files so you can work on them. Open UI Texture Squasher and notice the two selection boxes up top with a group ID next to them on the left. We want to select the matching group IDs of the first image you chose to start with, which for this example will be image 09BBBF9DC6153DF9. So, click the “Select” button on the right for group 0x00064DCA, find the image you want with the first matching group ID (so in my case that would be 0x00064DCA_09BBBF9DC6153DF9), select it and click “Open”. Do the same for group ID 0x00064DC9 of your image. Once both are properly setup, click “Convert”. It will ask you to name the merged PNG. This one I normally name after the image, so “Color_Instance_Base ”.

Now, open the newly merged PNG in your editing software. I’m not going to cover how to edit, but I will give basic tips. You’ll want to find the wrench icon in the image, then import or create your new icon as a layer. Drag your new icon on top of the wrench, then line it up. The new icon you add must be the same size or smaller than the wrench and must not go past the wrench’s spot. If you do you will get all kinds of weird UI distortions, which is why we line up our new icon with the original first to know where to place them. Hide your icon, now very carefully select just the wrench (so keep the selection tight), and then delete the wrench. Unhide your layer, make sure it looks right, now save the file as a PNG. I highly recommend saving as a PSD as well, or whatever it is your program uses, so you can easily open and edit again. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be tricky to get right and you may need to remake the file several times. 

Once you are satisfied with your change and have saved, go back to the UI Texture Squasher. Now we will use the bottom selection window. Locate your new PNG, hit convert, and it will ask for a name twice, one for each group ID. Make sure to name these in a way you remember each group (again, for me that would be “Color_Group_Instance”).

Once the files are named and saved, go back to your package. Click the blue “Import” button on the bottom right for your first group file, import, and do the same for the next group of your image. Make sure to save after you are done.

The next step is to repeat this entire process for the other images we extracted. If you did 09BBBF9DC6153DF9 like I did for this tutorial, you now need to do 9AD1293A832706E0 and D518B5D7A3BBD37C. Once you’ve done all 3, save and head in-game to check it out. Hopefully all 3 came out right! Remember that each major patch we have, and some minor ones, will break the mod so you will need to make a new one. It doesn’t break the game, but it does make it hard to play and navigate as the buttons will be distorted and replaced with other icons.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, let me know if you need any help or have questions!