Pixelated textures and problem with reimporting certain projects

[liebundartig]

Hi there,
after a whole day of frustrating research I decided to start a new thread for my issues.

1.) I startet a series of band-t-shirts and stumbled across some of them being pixelated in Body Shop.
So I searched and found that wiki-article about how to change the graphics rules.sgr's - which I did without any result.
I really took time and searched for any kind of solutions, but mostly it lead all down to changing those files.
The strange thing is, that only some of my creations get pixelated, while others seem quite allright. (It mostly happens to my Rolling Stones Tongue though.)
I attached a pic of two logos both in Photoshop and Body Shop, while the "KISS"-one seems to be allright, the "Stones"-one got that ugly pixelation at the egdes of the lips.
The resolution of each of my textures ist 1024x1024 and I got my graphics rules.sgr's changed (ALL of them).

2.) I wanted to do some recolours of KSK'S 2-Toned Tops (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=265589) but with bump mapping enabled. So I followed this tutorial (http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=47109) and voilà I got that wonderful top bumpmapped!
Now the problem: While I could change the textures, bumps etc. and create a bunch of recolours and they work well in game, after a re-start Body Shop is not able to reload that project. It's telling me my drive space was not sufficient to import the component (which of course is silly) and shows a random Maxis mesh instead.
The first time this happened I looked that my .bmps were save and deleted the project and startet a new one on one of my already finished and exported tops. Same effect: I can easily change the textures and export them but when I re-start Body Shop it seems to have forgotten how to handle that very project.
Of course I could go ahead and start that project again every time I start Body Shop but not only is this annoying, I bet there is a way to fix this.
As in every project all three .bmps have 3MB and 1024x1024px.

That was quite more text than I intended to write...sorry for that.
Btw. I use Win XP and ancient Photoshop 5.5
I've installed every EP up to Freetime and no SP.

Any Help would be welcome. :) (I really tried hard to find something to help me before I started this thread!)

[fakepeeps7]

I'm assuming the top looks okay in Photoshop. Have you tried using Build DXT in SimPE to replace the textures that Body Shop chewed up? I often have to do that when working with dark colours (the Body Shop compression can really mess with dark colours).

[liebundartig]

First of all thank you for trying to help me. :o)
I have to admit that I'm not yet so much into SimPE (and pretty new to creating anyway...). It's kind of intimidating to me. But till now I could follow some nice step-by-step explanations for it.
So you think it might be caused by the black shirt I am using?! It seems quite high-handed to me, as I tried a bunch of different logo-shirt-colour-combinations and some got pixely (with any background colour) others were allright. Could it be a matter of contrast? (eg. the higher the contrast the worse the pixelation)
*sigh* So I guess I have to do a little research on Build DXT in SimPE. (I hoped I would not have to... ;o))

EDIT: I now did try to replace the textures with SimPE, both with a .bmp and a .png and DXT5 but I could not see any improvement. :( I tried to play around with the settings but hardly recognized any difference...
I also tried to put some noise on the logo as was suggested somewere else... effect: zero.

[fakepeeps7]

Build DXT should be making some difference. I've used it for pixelation problems a few times.

You don't need to set it to DXT5. DXT3 is fine. Step by step, here's what I do:

1. Open your recolour package file. Click on your texture so that it's displayed in the bottom right window.

2. Right click on the texture itself, and from the pop-up menu choose "Build DXT..."

3. The DDS Builder window should open. Click on "open Image..." Choose your PNG file (you need a PNG file with transparent areas; otherwise, you'll lose your alpha texture and your clothing will cover all of your Sim's skin)

4. In the pull-down menu for "Sharpen", it will be automatically set to "Smoothen". You need to change this to "None" (it's at the top of the list)

5. Click "Build"

6. Commit your changes and save

If you didn't notice a change last time, perhaps you forgot to commit your changes. There should have been a noticeable improvement if you replaced the texture. Keep in mind that every time you run it through Body Shop, the compression will cause more pixellation... so replacing your texture should be a final step before you go and test it in the game.

[liebundartig]

The texture does not screw up when I reload it in BodyShop or elsewere but directly in SimPE (well at least it does not get more screwed up ^^). Directly after Step 5 I get the result shown on the attached pic.
I am sure I did all steps right. My only real mistake was that I first used a file without transparency. (Since the result did not convince me that was not so bad though. ^^)
I pasted the .png from Photoshop and the old screenshot from Body Shop for a better comparison. And still I can hardly tell any difference.
I added some noise to the logo what did not change the result either.
Well the only thing I could imagine that I was mistaken is the file I chose. I took the finished one from the "SavedSims" folder. Is that correct or am I supposed to take the .package from the "Projects" folder?
I really appreciate your patience and effort. :)

[fakepeeps7]

No, you're supposed to use the one from the SavedSims folder. You had it right.

Hmmm... Is it doing this on every shirt, or just this one? I had a similar problem (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=311675) on one of my outfits. Check out the red shirt with the plumb-bob. Nice pixelated outline, eh? It might have something to do with the contrast between red and black. I never was able to fix it, despite using BuildDXT multiple times. (Other folks even tried it on their computers. No luck.)

I don't think I'd worry too much about it, if it's just on that one shirt. There are certain limitations with the game and we can't always do anything about them. Compared to my poor plumb-bob, your tongue looks great!

[liebundartig]

Well it happens to some of my textures, but it seems to happen preferred to sharp red-black contrasts... So it seems we all have to suffer from that.
http://forums.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=2015609#post2015609

Maybe I do less red on black then... what a pity. (Maybe I just stop zooming in too close with those clothes ^^)