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- Floor lamp: disappearing & specular issues
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Anyway, I made a floor candle cloned from the EA wooden floor candle. The thing turned out ok but in-game when I move the camera close to it the object disappears. If I place an EA floor candle or lamp next to it these objects do not disappear up close and the camera will zoom and pass through them. Has anyone else had this kind of problem and if so, were you able to fix it? It isn't a deal-breaker for the object I think, but it is strange.
As a second issue with it, the texture of the candle has gotten very glossy...almost glassy even though I didn't alter the texture files at all. Again, for this object it doesn't render it unusable IMO but it is strange.
Any help is appreciated.
OM
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The glossy look sounds like an alpha being white. I know you said you didn't alter the texture files, but man do I get a lot of issues with that! LOL I can never get the alpha color right, CS3 continues to make them all white. I have no idea if its' possible for the cloner to lose the alphas. Maybe try editing them to see if it fixes it?
As far as the zoom, I would have to guess that it's one of the MLOD's right? Have you tried cloning and putting in your game without making any changes to it? This way you would know where the issue lies, with the tool or with something you did.
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I had this issue once, when I was trying to make a tabletop hosta out of the hanging hosta, by just pulling it down in milkshape (my first meshing babysteps!). It never got fixed, I just remade the thing on another (tabletop object) clone. Also when relocating game objects like that, they become hard to select, in that case only from the top.
Hazuitokage had recently a disappearing issue with a window. No one knows the answer
The glossy candle made me think of the table candle object. That actually has 2 groups and one of them is glass (it's the little plate thing under it). I only noticed this when I accidentally switched the groups and got a glossy candle in game. But you said you cloned the "floorlamp"-candle, I don't know if that has a glass group or not.
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Because I have found that even just opening and resaving breaks the specular texture and makes it too bright and therefore shiny. It seems like there is some alpha info that gets lost on import by the Photoshop DDS plugin.
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And, um, well, I'm late to the party again, because I wasn't aware of the black alpha channel problem until recently. Is it the alpha channel that gets eaten just entirely plain black?
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LC, the floor candle doesn't have a glass group but the candle part is turning almost like glass. It even has that sort of pale blue relfective line that glass gets. It doesn't look bad but it *is* odd that it's doing this. Actually, on second thought I have to admit that I did edit one of the dds files which I forgot that I had done when I posted. But all I did was put a gradient (all in grays) so that my object would not be flat and wouldn't have patches of bright and dark where they didn't belong. I've done this before on other objects and had no issue. It's a mystery.
HL for this object I only changed the MLOD with shadow and the MODL. I figured I would first check those and if it looked right I would go back and change the other two MLOD's. So maybe this is the issue with the disappearing. I'm going to fix those and if it still does the disappearing act I'll then move on to just cloning the object and placing it in the game as-is to see if it's me or something else.
OM
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EA is weird.
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As far as I can tell, the greyscale IMG's determine the shading of an object. That is the darker areas will appear as darker shades of whatever pattern you've applied to an object while the lighter areas will come out brighter. But they don't determine the material's texture.
At least, this is what I've always thought.
Edited to add: it may help to think of me more as OM or mittens...I *never* go by just plain orange...it would clash with my hair. Meanwhile LC is just that...a little lemon and a little candy. Just kiddin' LC...honestly just kiddin'. I just noticed the fruit punch thing going on upthread...lol.
Edited to add: well I just redid the two MLODs and that wasn't the issue. Next up I'll clone the object and stick it in the game as-is to figure out if it's me or the mesh.
OM
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I was talking about one of the greyscale IMG files-- not the multiplier one which sounds like what you're talking about, but the other one, which is usually higher contrast when you open it in Photoshop. If it's all white, for instance, it will make your objects very very shiny. But as discussed above, the original versions seem to mostly be masked out by all-black alphas.
Also, I do think of you as OM, actually, since that's what you put on your packages. I was just making up an excuse for my brain fart...
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What is this multiplier file? I mean, I know which one of the IMG's you mean. But what does multiplier mean?
Lol...I prefer to think of those as brain gone a-beggin'. I have that all the time myself.
OM
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I think (big think!) that the multiplier adds the shading and texturing details. The specular defines how bright? And the mask is the red/green christmas colored one that defines the channels.
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I thought I understood all of this but the more this conversation goes on the less sure of that I become.
OM
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I think what is happening with my candle is that the visual footprint of it is smaller than the actual footprint of the object it is cloned from. So that when the object "should" drop down is just slightly smaller than when it actually does drop down if you know what I mean. I'm just being sort of anal-compulsive about having it be exactly like the EA object.
I think this is something that really can't be fixed without figuring out how to change the size of the footprint the object has. But the issue really isn't significant enough to affect the share-ability of the object so I'm not going to worry about it further.
Although I am still hoping for information about the IMG's. That problem with this object still does need fixed.
OM
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Oh, footprints. See this thread a little further down from this one. Killa*c changed the bounding box via the VPXY adn it fixed where the object could be placed. Maybe this would be related to your candle.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=377113
ETA: I'm going to create a jar, that for each double post you place a dollar in it. I will be rich!!! You should really be editing your posts, especially since it was so close to the original post time. Chances are good it hadn't been read yet.
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This part of your post I don't understand, "some items I've cloned have an s or m or ma (sk) attached to it."
Could you explain that?
OM
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S3_00B2D882_00000000_81E959814646BDFB_sofaDesigner_m_0xcbe6d936b7698f43%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_62472D9983B204EE_sofaDesigner_mask_0x7c94c60490bd3a4a%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_00000000_36219616A7CC0C49_sofaDesigner_s_0xcbe6d936b7698f5d%%+_IMG.dds
Those are the file names from my recent sofa. Notice the bolded parts. The first is the multiplier which is a dark grey. The second is the mask which is the red/green one, sometimes the mask part is just ma. Must be a length delimeter in there. The third one is the specular and in almost all of my objects are an off-white with light grey shading. Basically a brightened version of the multiplier.
But since some objects don't have the bolded parts I am guessing there is a size delimiter on the naming. I think the specular and mulitplier images go along with the specular and multiplier in the mtlscr that you've edited.
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I'm glad there's someone else here who teases...this place often seems so serious and I'm almost incapable of being serious in Simland for very long. It's a game and not something which should require the lamentation of women to paraphrase a recent post.
Anyway, spell out the rules clearly and I'll follow them to the letter.
And thank you for the information. I do appreciate it.
Hmmm...edited to add: And so...if I am slower on the uptake I can post my new findings in a new post instead of an edit without breaking the rules? I think that is the ramification of saying time is the limiting factor here. Just wondering. That doesn't seem quite fair to those of us who are having a quick-think moment. Just teasing...do what you have to do. Nothing ever fits into the rules perfectly. That's why they're rules and not just going about things as usual.
OM
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And your welcome. If I'm off on some of the multiplier/specular info I sure hope someone pops in to correct me.
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OM
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A play on "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning"
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Edited to add: I didn't see the and I thought I had ticked you off.
OM
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