Sims 4 Custom Content: Reducing CC File Size

If you're wanting to trim down the size of your CC folder, there are some easy ways to do it that don't always involve deleting the CC outright. Some are more time consuming than others. I admit it took me hours cutting down file size since I went through a lot of it cutting out unecessary texture, but also I have a ton of clutter. I managed to trim off a few gig by doing all of these things though, so if you like saving space this will come in handy. 

UPDATE: 25/07/25: I have had at least 3 hits from ChatGPT on this blog. If this is a result from one of you running this through ChatGPT to summarise it - DO NOT RUN ANY OF THIS BLOG THROUGH AI. I explain things at length to ensure CLARITY OF INSTRUCTION. If you screw up your project because you let your misinformation robot friend summarise the thing I spent HOURS writing, don't come crying to me asking for further help. And don't ask your misinformation robot friend for help either - READ THE DAMN TUTORIAL. 

YOU WILL NEED
- Sims 4 Studio
- HQ Texture Converter
- Blender (I use 2.79)
- An image editing program like GIMP, Paint.NET, Photoshop etc. that can handle layers. You need basic knowledge of how to use this program (changing the size of the image, using layers, Select tool.)
- CompressPNG (online tool)

NOTE: CREATE A BACKUP COPY of any CC you plan to edit, until you are happy with the version you have edited. 

A good way to have a look at your largest CC files, is:
- go into your Mods folder on Windows Explorer, and then in the Search box just type *
- then press Enter. It'll display every .package file in your Mods folder.
- Then right click, Sort By > Size > Descending. Then you can identify the largest files that you might be able to trim down!

A lot of the things that will hog the most space is the items with loads of swatches, so those are a good place to start cutting down CC file size.

1. Deleting unwanted swatches

Likelihood is, there are colours you despise, or never use, on any of your Sims or in any of your builds. So a good way to trim down CC file size is to get rid of swatches you never use. This is useful on the things that are recoloured into 50+ different colours, though I guess the point of you having those is for more variety, but...you get me. 

This is easy, but might be time consuming if you're doing it with a lot of items. Open the .package file in Sims 4 Studio, and you'll see a palette of swatches in the top right.

All you need to do is highlight the swatch you don't want, which will be previewed in the object window on the left, click Remove Swatch, then save. And keep going until it's only swatches you want. 

2. Use the HQ Texture Converter to convert HQ CAS CC to Standard

If you don't care for things to be of the absolute highest quality, then you can use a program that can batch convert any CAS CC to Standard from HQ to trim the file size down. There will of course be some minor quality loss, but for me, it's not noticeable at all.

NOTE: Make a backup of any files you plan to convert to Standard first in case something goes wrong.

 

 

- You can either use Select Package to select 1 CAS item, or you can use Select Input Folder and Select Output Folder to batch-convert whole folders.
- Make sure the output is HQ TO STANDARD, and make sure the Diffuse/Shadow/Skin and Specular numbers are the same on your program as they are on this screenshot.
- Make sure 'Use Existing mipmaps where possible' is ticked.

It'll take some time to convert if there is a lot of swatches, then the file will be output at a smaller size to a folder of your choice with NonHQ on the end of the file name. I did this on a 72MB file with 80 swatches and reduced it to about 6-7MB.   UPDATE 29/11: I was incorrect, it reduced it from 72MB to 22MB - Still, 50 MB shaved off is good!

If you're happy, just take the NonHQ off the file name then replace the file in your Mods folder.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: From azeterna on Tumblr: warning to check your converted cc in-game before you delete the backups! sometimes HQ Converter breaks the specular and makes everything super shiny, and the only way to fix it is by manually resizing the specular from the original version. 

 

It's always a good idea to keep backups before alterations! 

3. Cleaning up / compressing textures

For BuildBuy items, there's no batch / short way to reduce the size of the textures since HQ Converter is only for CAS material, so we can only do this manually.

A massive space-taker-upper is enormously-sized textures on items that don't need a huge amount of detail, and also wasted texture space (usually a problem with converted CC). If you notice you have some very small BuildBuy / CAS objects that seem to be fairly big filesize-wise despite how small an object they are, then that's a sign you likely have some items that either have unecessarily-huge textures, or a lot of extraneous unused texture space. 

As I said this is quite common with video game conversion objects, mainly because a lot of the textures in these objects seem to be one texture across many items, so of course it means a lot of extraneous file-bloating texture you don't see in-game.  This item I'm about to lower the size of is 6.7 MB to start with.

 

If you want to do this the easy way and are interested in just knocking down file size without maximising the amount of space saved, then scroll down to the 'shorter but less effective way'.

 

Reducing texture file size - the longer, more complicated but more effective way

If you want to maximise the amount of space you save, and your item has obviously-unused texture elements... the longer way means removing elements of unused texture from the file.

This is just one book, but as you can see by the texture, there's a lot of pages and covers that aren't part of this 3d object. Export the texture in Sims 4 Studio, and then open it up in your art program.

 

So there's 2 ways we can go about this: 

- Eyeballing.
So use the directional buttons and the W,A,S,D,Q,Z  and D keys to move the 3d object around in Sims 4 Studio, and see what parts of the item's texture should NOT be deleted, then remove the rest using the Select tool, Delete tool and eraser.

HOWEVER, doing this, you risk removing part of the item's texture which will then come up black on the 3d object in Sims 4 Studio. If you're going to do it this way, don't delete ANY part of the texture if you are not sure if it's part of the 3d object or not.

- Working out what texture is used and unused by looking at the UV map in Blender.
For an item like this where we can easily get away with a small texture size (1024 X 1024), we can crack open the file in Blender to get the UV map and overlay the object's UV map, so we know what to delete and what not to delete. So let's do that for example's sake. 

Go to Sims 4 Studio and click the Meshes tab, then click Export. 

Once it's done exporting, open the .blend file up in Blender. Follow these steps:

- With your mouse / cursor in the 3d window, click Tab.
- Click the A key. 

Your screen will look like this:

See the box on the left side with the UV map? Look at the little bar underneath that window.
- Click the UV tab, then click Export UV Layout on the drop-down menu. 

- Save that file. then go into your art program and open up that UV file you just saved. 

Go back to your opened texture file in your art program. Use Scale Image or your art program's equivalent to scale the item's texture down to 1024 X 1024 then click Scale.

4096 X 4096 is a HQ texture size, and absolutely not necessary for such a small object. When I reduced the texture size down to 1024 X 1024 there wasn't much noticeable difference, and for a small item like this you won't notice during gameplay anyway. 

For a larger object like a decorated cabinet or other large decorative and detailed object, I'd suggest not making the texture any lower than 2048 X 2048 if you still want it to have decent detail. 1024 X 1024 won't look terrible on a larger object, but you'll notice the difference in quality. 

Once you've done that:
- go back to the opened UV map. Select All, then Cut.
- go back to the 1024 X 1024 texture file.

Click Paste. So now your UV map should be an overlay on your texture.

TIP: If you're on GIMP, go to Colours > Invert and the UV map will show up in white, so easier to see and erase around. 

 

There we go! Now we can erase everything outside of the white lines. Go back to your texture layer. I suggest using the Rectangle Select tool and Cut carefully to make sure you don't accidentally erase anything inside of the white lines. 

Now, with all of the unecessary texture removed, delete the UV map layer, then Save your image. 

Now, we open it in CompressPNG. 

 

What it does, it is lowers the file size of the image by compressing it by doing what the site describes as removing useless bits of information. In a video game texture like this, you won't notice the difference. If you try to compress a very large and colourful image you'll notice the dotty 'lossy' compression, but something like this you likely won't notice a thing. 

Go to the CompressPNG website, and click Upload File and upload your edited texture file. 

It'll tell you how much the image has been compressed. Download it. It'll be the same file name but with -min on the end. 

Go back to Sims 4 Studio, Texture tab, then Import the new texture with the -min file name on the end. Use the directional buttons, W,A,S,D,Q,Z,D buttons to look all around at the 3d object to make sure there is no missing texture (which will likely come up black). If it's all fine, click Save. 

The book file is now onlu 208 KB, so we've shaved off practically 6 megabytes. 

Reducing texture file size - the shorter but less effective way 

If you can't be assed to go through all the eyeballing or Blender stuff, then resizing and compressing textures will still make quite the difference in file size. This is also the option if you don't want to risk / don't need to delete anything off of the actual texture itself. So the shorter way would be: 

 

- Export the texture
- Resize to 1024 X 1024 or 2048 X 2048 if needed (use 1024 X 1024 for small clutter / decor items)
- Upload it to CompressPNG
- Import the compressed texture into Sims4Studio
- Save. 

This reduced the 6.7 MB book to 494 KB, So we've saved a massive amount of space without any deletion of any of the texture. I highly recommend doing this for any small clutter / decor file that's larger than 3 MB since it likely has a huge texture you can resize. 

 

The difference between doing it the Complicated Way and the Shorter Way is only about 200KB, so it's likely still going to be worth your while just doing it the shorter way instead.

I hope this helps you with lowering the size of your CC files and getting rid of unused bits that you don't need. It's good for when you REALLY don't want to get rid of something that's taking up a lot of space. You don't necessarily have to kill your darlings, just...make them smaller!