TUTORIAL - Navigating Sims 4 Studio (Patreon)

I had the chance to talk with a couple of people wanting to start modding or at least wanting to be able to open and tweak a mod to their liking, and realised that the hardest part is not reading the xml but actually... using Sims 4 Studio. The hardest part of it all is understating how to open a file .package. There are tutorials on the forum, but it's probably harder to teach people how to use something you already know how to use, even worse when you're the one who did the tool and know how it works perfectly, so they're not completely clear for a total beginner.

This is going to start from the very basic:

HOW DO I OPEN A FILE PACKAGE IN SIMS 4 STUDIO?

Actually, you can open it like you open any other file with double click. But when you download the software, the file type is not associated with it. What your computer associated the file type to can vary, right now I told my PC to open the file type with NotePad... so if I try to double click I get this Alien shit here:

In order to have your PC open the file with Sims 4 Studio, we need to tell him. To do it, right click on the file and select "properties":

It will open this window, select "change":

From here, select Sims 4 Studio:

If you don't see it, scroll down and search for it in the PC:

Select the .exe file in the folder where you installed the software. Now your PC will always open the .package files with S4Studio when you double click.

METHOD 2 (Probably Easier if you're not Computer Savvy):

Open Sims 4 Studio and click on "My Projects":

Navigate to the folder where the .package you want to open is, and select it:

Now you opened the file in Sims 4 Studio.

SIMS 4 STUDIO UI 101

On the left side:

In the top bar we have some useful information about the content of the package file (or of our mod):

Type: this is self explanatory, the type of file 

Group: a number used by the game to identify the file

Instance: another number used by the game to identify that specific file 

Filesize: self explanatory

The last column has the name of the specific file.

Here we have some tools useful for modding, most notably we can see an Extract Tuning this allows you to browse the files from the game and add them to your mod. Same thing (in a different way) does the Game File Cruiser and the String Table Lookup (String Tables or STBL are a type of file containing the text).

We can find other useful tools under Modding, most notably the Copy String Tables to All Languages, which allows you to have the text of your mod copied in all the Strings used by the game to display text in other language (otherwise, the text in other languages will be empty). Some of these tools are used in objects creation more than modding.

If you get lost, there are links to tutorials and to the forum under help.

This text input field here allows you to search for a specific file inside the mod by using the name or the Instance. Press Filter to search and Clear to go back to the file list.

The buttons at the bottom of the file list allow you to perform other tasks:

To add a empty instance to your mod, press Add:

From the drop down you can select the type of file to add. This will be empty and needs manual tuning (or copy and paste)

Duplicate allows you to create a perfect copy of the currently selected file:

You need to change the instance, because this needs to be unique, but the new file will have the same tuning as the one you copied. 

Delete removes the currently selected file from the mod.

To export a file from the mod, press Batch Export, it will save it in XML format:

XML files can be opened (and edited) with NOTEPAD++ (you can edit the XML directly in Sims 4 Studio, Notepad, though, has some useful functions Sims 4 Studio lacks, so it's useful to know this option exists)

To import files back inside the mod press Batch Import 

Select the files you want to import, then open and they'll be inside your mod (notice: sometimes Sims 4 Studio doesn't save the changes to a file after you imported them, so if you want to edit them in Sims 4 Studio, save the package, close the software, and open the package again)

In the windows on the right we can find the content of the currently selected file (the actual xml)

In the Data Tab you can change the group and the instance of the file:

These two Tabs can be different in different types of files, like, for example, String Tables:

They also have group and instance, in the first tab and an edit items button, the text Tab only displays the text (the content of the strings):

This is where you look to change the text of things in a mod or Maxis, press Edit Items in the Data Tab to change the content:

The two buttons Import and Export you see at the bottom of the right side are different from Batch import and Export in the left side:

They allow you to import and export things inside or from the file itself (and not inside the mod, like the other two options), and are used, for example, to import an image inside a DST file:

That's all.