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The main texture file is a grayscale image and has an alpha, but I'm not sure if/how I need to edit the file plus its alpha. What I did was just edit its alpha to match my object's alpha, but I didn't edit the grayscale image. Do I need to edit the grayscale image? If so, do I use my colored texture file and paste it over it and turn it to a grayscale image?
Also, the other grayscale image didn't have an alpha. Do I add my object's alpha to it? And do I edit the grayscale image here?
All .dds files should be in grayscale of different intensities other than the colored one for the partmask, and the overlay.
The grayscale image with *_m_* in the filename? This is the main texture that gives your object the 3D look with bumps and dips.
The colored *_m_* file or sometimes *_mask_*, is the partmask for the CAST function that determines how many channels is editable. If you're going to make everything Red (one channel), you have to also disable the controlcodes in the grid for the other channels as outlined in cmomoney's MiniTutorial - Enabling Patterns (1 pattern to 3 patterns).
In Gimp (never used Photoshop so I don't know if it is the same or opposite), areas that I want has to be white, invisible(unwanted) in black. So translating your one-channel recolorable area into Gimp's terms, I would edit the Red Channel to all white, other channels as all black with an all-white Alpha. HP's answer in Very basic alpha question is the post that help me understand about channels and alphas.
I think what you need to edit is the overlay image for your colored texture, S3PE names this with *_o_*. That was one thing not mentioned in my tutorial as the table has no fixed (overlay) textured parts.
All the .dds images are clones of each other, except for the dropshadow
- bumpmap and specular all in gray with different intensities to provide shadowing and depth with the specular being a brighter version
- partmask with blocks of colors matching where the CASt-able parts go
- overlay with grayscale areas and colored areas for fixtures that are unchanged eg: door handles or showerhead handles and toiletries trays, metallic fixtures for the garage door, etc
All the mesh needs to be UVmapped to all the above .dds images.
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I'm lost on how to make my texture file have different intensities of gray to provide shadowing and depth with the specular being a brighter version. Both of the grayscale images of my object have the same grayscale image, show below. All I know how to do with that is make the texture grayscale. Here is my grayscale image:
How do you make the textures have the different intensities of gray and have the specular image have a brighter version?
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Stuff for TS2 · TS3 · TS4 | Please do not PM me with technical questions – we have Create forums for that.
In the kingdom of the blind, do as the Romans do.
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The first, the overlay, I think you changed correctly from the way you have described it. The red one, you won't need to change at all.
The greyscale one with an alpha is the one the game uses to figure out how to put shadow textures on your object in-game. Not shadows it casts, but shadowing that appears on it that give it visual depth. If you leave it as-is you're gonna end up with shadowing that was designed for the gnome on your object. There are numerous ways of editing this dds. You can do like what you said, just take your color image and make it greyscale, adjust the brightness of the greys to closely match the greys of EA's greys and use that. You can just turn it to a flat grey although that will make your object look a little odd in-game IMO. You can bake the shadows using a tool like Blender, or you can hand-paint the shadows you want. How you handle it is going to depend on which method you're most comfortable with and the effect you want to achieve.
The specular dds also has to do with how shading is applied to your object in the game. If you don't edit that you will still see gnome shading on your object in the game. One way of dealing easily with the specular is to just make the alpha for it all black. Another way would be to change your color image to greyscale and then brighten it until it is roughly as bright as the EA specular is.
To make the object unrecolorable you need to make it so that no part of your object is sitting on the black part of your overlay dds. That is, all parts of it need to be on the alpha image you've put there. As long as that's true it doesn't matter what's on the red/green/blue dds. But, making it unrecolorable in this way will still leave the recolor buttons showing in the game. They just won't work. To get rid of them, that is to have your object look just like an unrecolorable EA object does, you will need to disable the 3 channels. You do this by editing the object in s3pe's grid.
Cmo wrote a tutorial about how to enable color channels and it's in the tutorials section here at MTS. To disable them you would follow along that tutorial and where he is saying to change the number to 01 you would change it to 00 if memory serves me correctly. If you do that, the object will be unrecolorable no matter what the red dds looks like.
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Orange, do you think the gnome is a sort of complicated object to use to clone? Do you think I should use a more simple object to clone? I'm making pennants, and I want to use the easiest object to clone to make it.
With its 3 presets this could be a good candidate for a pennant lawnornament?
If you want it on the wall, you can check in the game for an object that has the features you are looking for.
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Using the flamingo would be marginally easier since you would only have to disable 1 color channel to have an unrecolorable item rather than disabling 3. Of course, with either object, as long as you don't mind having non-functional color choice buttons in-game, you really don't have to do the disable step as long as your mesh is mapped completely over the alpha image on the overlay dds. But you're still going to have to fix the same dds files that you would have to fix if you were using the gnome.
I've never cloned the flamingo so I can't tell you what his sun-shadow is gonna do if you try to make an object that is much taller or bigger than he is. Maybe Coco knows...but if the flamingo acts like the gnome, you might end up with sun-shadow problems if you plan on your pennant being a big object.
If you find that you're having this kind of problem the only advice I can offer is, as Coco said, look for something that has the characteristics you want (or the closest you can find) but is also close in size/shape to the size/shape you want your pennant to have.
Also, and again Coco might know better than I do...but won't Sims kick the flamingo? Lol...if they kick the flamingo they will kick anything that's cloned on it as well. I'm envisioning a tired but victorious medieval Sims raiding party storming the bailey and kicking the losing side's pennant...that might be kinda cute
OM
I'll better go and check my poor little pink chicken.
There are two flagpoles mentioned in S3OC now, don't know if they will be of use for the pennant.
I have not tryed them, but those game props usually are not recolorable and have no sunshadows.
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Here is how it is supposed to look (it's show in UV Mapper Pro). It is not smoothed and it's showing the textures properly.
Main texture
Specular
Overlay
So, what did I do wrong? Why aren't the textures showing properly in-game? And why is the actual pennant (flag) texture so blurry? Why is the mesh smoothed?
Also..... I followed the tutorial by Cmo and I disabled the 3 channels, but in-game the pennant isn't showing like an original Sims 3 non-recolorable object. It's showing just like the original gnome is, but it isn't recolorable. I thought if I disabled the 3 channels, then it would show like an object that ISN'T recolorable?
Finally, I want to make my own "recolors", so if I want to do that, then do I just create another overlay .dds file with a new texture and ADD that to the pennant files in s3pe?
Sorry for so many questions, but I'm really trying to get the hang of this and I want to get it right.
EDIT: I don't know if this matters or not, but I thought the specular .dds was supposed to be brighter than the main texture? When I exported the gnome's specular and main texture files and looked at them in Photoshop, the main texture was brighter and the specular texture was more dull. Is that supposed to be that way?
Even thought they were that way, I made my specular a lighter version of my main texture.
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The size of your dds IMG's is different than the gnome's dds IMG's. To improve the blurry texture you will have to edit the mtlsrc's for the MLOD1 and MODL. Here is a link where that is discussed:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=374964
at posts 11 and 13.
Just as a note, if your object had parts you wanted to be recolorable in-game, changing the shape of the dds IMG from rectangular (like the gnome's) to square (like yours) would also make it so you had to distort your mapping or edit the object in S3PE to change the tiling. If you didn't do one of these two things to account for the shape change the tiling of the patterns on your object would be distorted. Your object doesn't have recolorable parts though so this step isn't something you have to do.
The somewhat glassy appearance your object has looks like what happens when the Specular alpha is white instead of black. Take a look at the alpha and make sure your alpha is the right color. An all-white alpha on the Specular makes the object look bright/shiny/glassy/glossy in-game.
I was under the impression that if you disable the channels manually in S3PE that this *should* cause the buttons to appear disabled in-game just as they do for S3 objects that have channels which aren't enabled. This isn't happening? Are you sure you committed and saved after you edited the channels?
To add recolors of your object into the package itself you need to start out with an object that has preset choices. I can't remember whether the gnome does or not. If he does you should be able to add recolors by following the tutorial cmo wrote on adding new images to a painting which is here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=377737
Although your object is cloned from the gnome instead of a painting the principle should be the same.
eta: I cloned the gnome and disabled two of his channels, the b and c channels. In-game the buttons now appear like little circles with a line through them just as they would for an EA object with a single recolorable channel. I'm not sure why your editing caused a different result. Perhaps you could try going through the tutorial again to see if maybe you made a mistake in one of the steps.
Also, the gnome has 4 preset color choices which means that, if you want, you could add up to 4 new pennant choices into your package along with the original pennant choice
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The smoothing issue sounds like what OM said, I've never had an issue with exporting obj from Wings and importing to MS. Do you have the newest wings? 1.2 They have made some serious improvements in the whole smoothing thing in it.
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Also, the gnome has 4 preset color choices which means that, if you want, you could add up to 4 new pennant choices into your package along with the original pennant choice |
You can add as many presets as you want, with S3PE or TSRW.
Not only that, you can change the colored parts of the overlay(except for the wood) to transparent, and instead use the colors on the rgb mask(like a stencil) and keep your channels enabled. Then your pennant will be recolorable just where the colors are. And to make it even more awesomer, make other overlays, changing the logo and/or words, and use the different overlays in your presets by changing the TGI references. Then you'd have different teams, endless colors, one object.
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EDIT: I think I see what the problem is. When I exported my pennant in Wings, beside the wavefront .obj option, there is a little box that I clicked on b/c I always check the Triangulations option under Tesselation. At the bottom of that little pop-up screen, there is an option to export Normals/Smoothing groups. That was checked, so should I have that option unchecked? Is that the reason why my pennant looks smoothed in-game? Or should I keep it checked (maybe I need the normals groups exported, lol. I'm sure I do need that.) I don't know why my object is smoothed. When I exported it in Milkshape, it was already smoothed for some reason.....
I just don't have any idea why it is appears smoothed in Milkshape and in the game. I never chose for it to be smoothed, especially the little container box the pennant is in. It's supposed to be angular, like it looks in UV Mapper. I will upload the file here if needed.
Yes, my specular alpha is all white, so that is the reason why it appears sort of glossy. Thanks! I thought it was supposed to be white. So should I have it all black instead?
Also, when I was disabling the channels, I thought I was to disable all 3 channels, so I disabled 33, 34, and 35. I assumed that the first channel was 33. I may be wrong. In-game when I checked to see it if was recolorable, it wasn't, thank goodness, but the option still came up as it if was recolorable and it said something about an error (I don't remember exactly what it was). I'm not sure if I was supposed to disable #33. I just want the pennant to be nonrecolorable in-game. It would seem strange to me to have the pennant take on a pattern.
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Yes, the specular alpha should be all black if you want to remove the gloss from the object in game.
I'm not sure which channel is for the red part of your map. I only know 2, 3, and 4...lol. But if the object is showing an error in-game then something you did while editing was not correct. There should be no error and disabling the channels should cause the recolor button to be replaced by a circle with a line through it.
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