My Sims 2: Ultimate Collection

Hi,
my goal is to add fall (swx03) and bare winter (swx04) seasons to almost all maxis bushes. But since there is nobody (that I know of) who already made such a thing I had to try it myself. I am not able to clone tree and make a bush from it myself so I borrowed Littoral Rose from Aysarth because it has everything I wanted. It has all seasons (although I am not interested in spring since I want summer and spring having the same texture), lods and is trimmable. So I thought why not use it to make default replacements by cloning the rose. All that was ok but this object has also swx02 which is not really maxis friendly (or what I know... I just never saw it anywhere in maxis objects). All maxis trees have only 1,3,4,5,6 and summer default of course. And this season 2 that this rose has I believe switches on when you are in build mode? I am really confused by this stage... and I had been battling with this project for over two weeks now and it always ends by blue flashing of summer+spring of lods in neighborhood view. I tried almost everything by this point. I deleted swx01 and 02 since I do not really see any need for them (also they mess up recolors because it constantly switches to default texture when in build mode or after trimming), I repositored and slaved it to maxis bushes, and any possible "something in between" attempts. And funny is that winter seasons or the two added seasons (fall + bare winter) don't cause any issues, just the stupid summer and spring.

So after many attempts my frustration reached to a point where I would really appreciate some help, tips. In the last attempt I did not touch spring and this weird season 2 at all, didn't change GUID, didn't even reroute any textures so the package has two same textures for summer and spring (which is not ideal) but ok... at least it does not flash blue for summer and spring lods. But it still has one issue → design tool does nothing. At first it is ok, I mean after placing the bush and not leaving build mode I can use design tool repeatedly on it but when I go into live mode and then back to build mode → the design tool no longer works, nothing happens when I click with it on the mesh. I suspect the swx02 stage because I have noticed during my attempts that it switches to it after going from live mode into build mode. But I do not see the reason for this bug inside the package. My knowledge is limited.

So ideally I would like to fix my work with the repositored method but if that is not possible then at least make the design tool to work for the all-in packages (will be much more MBs but I don't really care at this point... all I want is to have fall and winter textures for bushes!)

APPROACH #1
Here is a link for the repositored maxis bushes I have already done (which have blue flashing issue in neighborhood view for summer and spring): HERE
It includes:
- creeping phlox
- rose bush
- hydrangea (needs CEP from Tvickiesims)
- bougainvillea
- oleander
- spider lilly (I made overgrown mesh for it)

APPROACH #2
The second approach I took is the all-in package (meaning all textures inside so no repositoring because it caused issues before). So far I was working only on Creeping Phlox. Link HERE

Can somebody who is more experienced tell me the mistakes I am doing, please?

See how beautiful it would look in fall :D



or winter...



Thank you for any tips or suggestions! In any case I gave an idea to someone who is much more experienced than me, feel free to take this project and fix it and share it, I don't mind :D

(for example the boxy hedges are fully working and I included them inside the first file)

EDIT: Forgot to tell that this replacement fixes issue with recolors for maxis shrubs, when they will revert back to default texture after trimming. So instead of default it will stay in correct season and recolor (some of my attempts broke reverting to recolor but in general in most cases it was ok). So no more green bush after trimming in winter. I think that this project has great potential.