shiny stuff?

[eric-the-ded]

i know it's been asked before, but who knows.. maybe it's been figured out since then.
is there a way to make shiny skins? i mean actually shiny like that teen girl outfit with the gold leggings and arm.. things.

using body shop and an image editor only seems to let you make it more or less shiny, but doesn't let you change what parts are shiny.

[wyzzard]

If it works like most 3d until we can control the meshes we won't be able to assign reflective qualities until then....

[Rain]

I asked the same thing recently... Well, a couple of weeks ago, actually. I started a thread on this, but I don't know where it went. I don't think anyone ever answered. I'd still kind of like to know. However, since then, I did a bit of digging into .package files using hex and I found some references to reflectiveness here and there... Something like "reflectivity.0", or something... And maybe the zero being made a one would make it reflective? I don't know... Oh, well.

[Rain]

I just checked again and the reflectivity thing was in the .txmt file within the .package file. There was a reference to "reflectivity" and then, later, "RefValue" which I assume is only "reference value", so maybe the "reflectivity" thing determines it?

However, I forgot to mention before that I also extracted the files for that dress a while back and that there is also an extra texture included with the other textures and this special one has something like "reflective" in the name. I don't know if it's necessary to have this extra texture for any items that are meant to be shiny in this way. Also, if you simply made one and threw it in the folder, I doubt Body Shop would know to suck it back in with the rest of the files when you try to re-import it into the program.

[phervers]

yeah yeah shiny stuff is possible
i was able to add shininess to a texture, but there are some problems as usuall. But the texture is shiny :) she looks kinda like a robot now but anyway its cool

e107_files/public/24462_screenshot.jpg
<span class='smalltext'>[ 24462_screenshot.jpg ][/i]

[madhattr999]

i have some shiny lingerie i think i got from this site..

[poodlescoot]

there are some filters that can give a "glossy" look to things- but a metallic look requires more work, as previously stated

[phervers]

I'll give you a package so you can see how it looks.
Don't try to open it in Body Shop, just put it into your Saved Sims

24462_7fdcb213_shiny3.rar

[Rain]

Oh, my god! He did it! I whined to him about this and he spent forever getting it to work and had such frustration, but he got it! !amazed

Most people don't seem to realize... This outfit's shine is more than painted on... It has an additional set of textures in the package... reflective maps that make actual shine appear on the clothing.

This dress already had it on the arms, legs and shoes, but not the rest of the dress. He spent so much time on it and finally got it to appear on the whole thing! I think this means that we will be able to add shine to other things as well now! This means actual non-painted-on shine that moves over the item as you turn it. Wicked! When I saw in the chatroom that you had done it, I started freaking out! Hee! Thank you so much! So there's our answer! This is the second time he's helped me. He's my heeeerroo!!! Thank you so much! Again!

I hate hearts usually but... !heart !heart !heart It's totally called for, in this case! YAY!!!

[madhattr999]

so you mean u can see reflections in the clothing?

[DaHoney]

so how do I make them shine, then?

[Rain]

Yes... Light reflections, not actual image reflections... I have been talking to him on I.R.C. for the better part of his working on it and I keep yammering at him, "How about this?" and "What if that?" and he's being patient with me and trying things out and coming up with ideas, too, about what might be possible and so forth. We have also debated the idea of image reflections, like a mirror, but I'm not the genius here... I just come up with impossible situations and he figures them out. He comes up with a bunch of them, too. Heh, heh.

Anyway, I don't know how to do it... I have just been speculating about things with him and he tells me how it's going as he does it and it's taken him a lot of work and he's keeping at it so diligently. I'm so amazed and grateful... As for being able to do it, ourselves... I don't know how many of you know about the .txtr extracting program he made but, while trying to figure this reflective map thing out, he's also been working on incorporating this into his program, as well. I think he got it working in his program, too, from the sounds of it, but I'm not positive and can't ask because he just went to the store. Hee! Anyway, I am extremely excited about it and, if anybody else knows what we're talking about, I'm sure they will all be extremely excited, too. I don't know how well I described what phervers is trying to do, but it seems to be understood so far.

Anyway, just to be clear, I have no idea how it's done, myself. I just happen to have bugged him about a couple of things lately and he's been incredibly kind and generous with his time and looked into doing them and also is doing a great job with it, from what I've seen so far. I have the gist of the progress he makes as long as I'm talking to him, but I don't know the actual procedure, really. Some of my speculations about the "reflectivity.0" have something to do with it, I think, but he is the brainiac who is actually figuring it all out, himself (I have never used that word in a non-sarcastic sense 'til now). Hee! I'm gonna try to be patient and not bug him, though, because I think he's working himself to death over it. He is so helpful and considerate. :)

[Rain]

Oh, and wyzzard, it is in the mesh, from what he said, but he's playing with the coding for the mesh, I believe, even though we can't yet alter the shape of the mesh yet.

[phervers]

actually its like changing material properties, they are stored in Material Definition files, quite simple format, i'm now investigating to get more info on what those properties mean. I hope this could lead to making stuff like glass floors or mirror glasses if you know what i mean ( i don't know english word for them)

[jerife]

I am absolutely thrilled about this thread. Thanks phervers, thanks Rain. The only thing I can say is more, more

[Rain]

By "mirror glasses", he meant those sunglasses that you can see reflections on. Just thought I'd interject that because he mentioned it earlier. I think that would be a wicked idea and the floors, too. Don't thank me, though. He's doing all of the work. I'm just whining at him about it.

[buffermonkey]

That Rocks!

I made myself crazy trying to figure out how to add reflectivity to clothing after seeing it on the teen dresses and hero/villain outfits. I figured it was somehow associated with the mesh and despaired of ever being able to do it. Thanx Phervers!

I agree that mirror shades and shiny floors would be pretty damn cool. Shiny furniture would probably be pretty entertaining too.

I'm sure you folks already know this, but you can change the color of the shine by changing the texture named "envirocube." I don't remember the exact name but its pretty close.

[Rain]

Yeah, hee! I couldn't figure it out, either... I guess no one knew, at the time, because I asked in here a couple of weeks ago and no one answered... Every time I have a problem no one knows the answer to, he figures out a solution. He's amazing.

Yes, hee! I experimented with the color of the shine, too... I made something with iridescent light running over it, just as a test, by coloring that texture with different rainbow colors. It looked pretty realistic, too! I don't remember the exact name off-hand, either, but it's that little textured square, not the white one.

[Rain]

This is what happened when he tried using other parameters to experiment with reflectivity... He was trying to make it more than shiny, but actually mirror-like and it didn't work, but this is what he got:

http://www.modthesims2.com/forum_viewtopic.php?8.17698

A few years ago, when we just had the old Sims and before we had that Sims Milkshape plugin, I had something similar happen. Some people may not know, Milkshape is a 3D modelling program that was used a lot by many of us for making meshes (3D models or shapes) for Sims and, for a long time, we had to use a transitionary program to convert our files between The Sims format and Milkshape-recognized format. Ultimately, a plugin was implemented that allowed us to open Sims files directly in Milkshape, but it was quite a while before that happened.

Before the Sims format plugin, there was a problem with trying to add vertices to meshes because nothing was in place to designate which vertex would go to which joint. A vertex is a point where lines in the mesh come together. The mesh is like a big wireframe. Think of maybe a sculpture made out of chickenwire and, over it, you have papier maché. Vertices are somewhat similar to where all of the wires would intersect although it's arranged a bit differently.

Anyway, we could only use already existing meshes to make new meshes from. We couldn't do things from scratch or add anything to them. If you just had a mesh in the shape of a dress, or something, and wanted to make the dress really fancy, you'd have to work with what you had and stretch and skew the shape as best you could to try to achieve the new shape. It was horrible.

Once, I think what I did was inadvertently added or deleted a vertex from a mesh I was making. I didn't realize what I'd done right away. When I opened what I thought was my finished mesh into Simshow, the program we used for viewing purposes, the head and hands were where they were supposed to be (the hands and head were all different meshes, separate from the body but appended to each other to look like all one piece)... but the body was totally static and inflexible. Furthermore, it was totally sideways, just floating in the midst of the properly positioned head and hands, a horizontal body with an upright head and hands.

This reminds me of when that happened to me and phervers said that the white written on part of the body you see in his picture was stiff and static like the body area of my mesh was. I'm actually getting at something, by the way... Er, I think...

Maybe this won't be a huge, stunning revelation to everyone or anyone for that matter but... I want Chinese food. No, that isn't what I was going to say. Sorry. I've been up for... thirty-three hours and I'm not sure why, but I'm still not going to go to sleep and I'm overtired but not exactly sleepy and it's difficult to focus and, besides, I just really want Chinese food.

The point is that--oh, yeah... It may not come as a startling revelation, but, if the meshes involved here go at all along the same formula as the old Sims game, this may be a small indication of what the meshes are like... In the old game, like I said, there was usually a body, head and hands. Here, there is that floating torso but the legs seem to be a separate mesh, the arms seem to be a separate mesh also and I think maybe the hands are part of the torso mesh (just with the appropriate amount of space between them). So maybe this is somewhat of an indication of the number of meshes might make up a Sim's body? If that's so, maybe, if we know the number (or a fair idea of it) of meshes make up the average Sim body, maybe it'll be easier to recognize that number in corelation to information embedded in inscrutable mesh files we've yet to properly dissect and figure out? Either that or I'm just talking out of my patoot.

I hope my speculations have given someone with more of a brain than me some legitimate insight into... something? Who knows? If I had Chinese food, though, I'd probably be more helpful. Just you think about that.

[eric-the-ded]

this is rad. you have given me hope.
how the hell did you do that, pherv? will it be possible to add shininess to skins that didn't have any before?
like shiny bathingsuits?

[Rain]

That's one of the things I was bugging him for. Heh... Applying it to other types of textures and not just clothing. He is still trying to figure it out. Hee! I'm his rep. :p

[phervers]

Well it might be possible to add shininess, but as a side effect i had lost transparency, i hope i can figure out how to bring it back.

[Rain]

Yeah, notice how, in that picture way above, you can no longer see the skin showing through around the neck and shoulders like you see in the original one.

[thoughtcrime]

I think a high-poly curved ... thing with reflections of actual objects would make my computer commit suicide.

[pandaphil]

Hope you guys can work the bugs out of this skin. I used to play MS Flight Simulator 2 and someone created a shiny mod like this for the planes. A really neat effect. It would be nice to have it on swimsuits, and certain dresses or objects.

[Rain]

Yeah, I was thinking that, if there were a lot of mirrored meshes and stuff, it would slow things down all to Hell... I'll take it! Heh.

Know what I like, pandaphil? I don't know if you know of Morrowind, but I like how enchanted armor and stuff had that shine running all over it. Sooooo neat-o. That'd be great to have in The Sims 2. I wonder if it'd ever be possible. Anyway, the shine I want to obtain that phervers has been working on is similar-ish... Only it's not as dynamic... It doesn't just move all over on its own; you have to turn the model for the shine to move... It is dynamic, though, in that it is not merely painted on and completely static. I have to have it! Eeeeee! !amazed

[pandaphil]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about. (haven't played any Morrowind I'm afraid) When you use the rotate button in the game thenre's basically a white sheen that passes across the planes wings or body depending on which angle you look at it. It was a really cool effect.

ACtually I was playing in one of the houses tonight and discovered that one of the really expensive desks (Tibetan somethingorother?) seems to use a simple version of the light reflecting effect.
[ Edited 21-11-2004 01:07PM ]

[Rain]

Yeah, there are a few objects that do it, as well as this particular outfit. I think I remember something about a male outfit that does it, too? I can't remember. I have lots of neat things in mind, though, if we can harness the power of the reflective map! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! And then no one will be safe!

[maw3193]

I will be safe, I exist metaphysically.

Also, if Phervers manages to get the reflective and transparency to work at the same time, what kind of effects would you expect to get if you made the shiny and the transparent overlap, would you get shiny skin with a black alpha, and could you possibly transfer that onto a skin tone, not the outfit, then, my friends, we will have robots like none have ever seen, oh yes... we WILL!

[Darkmoon]

I will be safe, I exist metaphysically.

Also, if Phervers manages to get the reflective and transparency to work at the same time, what kind of effects would you expect to get if you made the shiny and the transparent overlap, would you get shiny skin with a black alpha, and could you possibly transfer that onto a skin tone, not the outfit, then, my friends, we will have robots like none have ever seen, oh yes... we WILL!

Hmm...I think somebody already did. I downloaded a Bikini from a site and the model sporting the Bikini had shiny "oil-tan" lotion skin.
The maker of the Bikini even mentioned the creator of the skin and I have been looking for it since.....but no luck in finding it sofar...

[Rain]

Oh, wow! How did I miss this? Very curious, Darkmoon. I'd be interested in seeing it. Please post back if you find it again.

[Warlord]

ooooh i got to watch this thread, i need to make my HEV suit shiny on some parts :p

[Fat D]

when i changed the shiny part of the villian suit it wasn't visible in bS and CAS because of an overlay, but in the game the overlay was gone, and the reflections with it

[ghosty12]

This is the best news ever, will make shiny materials like leather and pvc a lot better looking that some I have seen.

[Mobile_Artillery]

There are some nice glossy skins at this site (http://77simlane.angeltowns.com/77simlane2/index.html)

[Nebulosa]

Shinyness without reflections is easy to make with an ordinary painting program like PSP. I have made several skins with details that look like silver or gold. But of course it's not possible to make them reflect the environment this way.