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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 5:09 AM
Default New mesh question
I'm working on a new mesh, and I'm not totally sure if what I'm doing with editing the .dds files in Photoshop is correct. I've cloned the garden gnome for a decorative object I've made. I don't want the object to be recolorable, so I pasted my texture (it is in color) over the file with the gnome face on it and edited the alpha to match. The mask file, I filled in totally with red.

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?
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In the Arena
retired moderator
#2 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 5:37 AM
(This is where it disappeared to! I was composing my reply and poof! magic gnome got it, so I thought. :giggler

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.
Scholar
Original Poster
#3 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 6:07 AM Last edited by Rainncandy : 8th Apr 2010 at 7:39 AM.
I have more questions, but did I do wrong by coloring the mask file all red if I want to make my object non-recolorable? I don't want any part of the object to be recolorable.

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?
Pettifogging Legalist!
retired moderator
#4 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 7:29 AM
Your picture doesn't show up; it says "moved or deleted".

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.
Scholar
Original Poster
#5 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 7:39 AM
Ok, it should be fixed now. I don't have any idea why it wasn't showing.
Alchemist
#6 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 12:47 PM
The gnome has 4 dds files. To make an unrecolorable item out of him that looks nice in the game you're gonna have to change 3 of them.

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.
Field Researcher
#7 Old 8th Apr 2010 at 1:38 PM
Thanks for this explanation OM. I've been able to port the Chicken from TS2 to TS3 over the Gnome, but I've had the recolour button although they didn't do anything. I also need to remove the presets, but I'm guessing I know where to look now
Scholar
Original Poster
#8 Old 9th Apr 2010 at 5:47 AM Last edited by Rainncandy : 9th Apr 2010 at 6:05 AM.
Thank you Orangemittens for your thorough explanation. I really appreciate you and Ella. Thanks!


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.
Inventor
#9 Old 9th Apr 2010 at 8:58 AM
Rainncandy, the pink flamingo is a 1 tile object with shadows, placeable on the floor only and has only one recolourable channel.
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.
Scholar
Original Poster
#10 Old 9th Apr 2010 at 10:46 AM
Alchemist
#11 Old 9th Apr 2010 at 12:07 PM
I guess the gnome isn't really more or less complicated than most other EA objects are to use as a clone. The main problem I've had with using him is when I'm making an outdoor object that is significantly larger than he is. When I've tried that I've not been able to make his sun-shadow fit him. I know that other people who have used him to make something roughly the same size as he is though have had no problems.

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
Inventor
#12 Old 9th Apr 2010 at 3:55 PM
Oh, I forgot about the flamingo kicking! My simmies do not do that autonomous, maybe only evil sims?
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.
Alchemist
#13 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 12:15 AM
I'm not sure if this object would suit the purpose but someone else posted about his traffic sign clone because he wanted to get rid of its sun-shadow...so that object, at least, does have sun-shadows.
Scholar
Original Poster
#14 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 9:03 AM Last edited by Rainncandy : 10th Apr 2010 at 6:23 PM.
I was successful with getting the pennant to show up in-game, but something is wrong with the textures. Plus, the model seems "smoothed", but I never smoothed it when I made it in Wings 3d and I didn't smooth it in Milkshape. Why is it smoothed?

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.


And here are pics of how it looks in-game:











Here are pics of the .dds files:

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.
Alchemist
#15 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 12:59 PM Last edited by orangemittens : 10th Apr 2010 at 1:41 PM.
When you brought your object into Milkshape to overwrite your decompiled clone are you sure you had the Autosmooth button turned off? This button is located at the bottom of the other buttons under the Groups tab. If you want that off make sure there is no checkmark in that box.

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
Me? Sarcastic? Never.
staff: administrator
#16 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 1:58 PM
To disable the channels you need to do this for all preset colors, the gnome has like 4? So for each for preset you disable 34,35, & 11 to disable channel 2,3, and 4. Disabling channels won't make the whole object recolorable, but just get rid the channels. I think you have to keep one channel for the item to be recolorable at all.

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.
˙uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ǝɹ,noʎ 'oN
#17 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 3:46 PM
Quote: Originally posted by orangemittens
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.

"Part of being a mesher is being persistent through your own confusedness" - HystericalParoxysm
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Alchemist
#18 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 3:57 PM
That is amazing and awesome How do we add presets? Is that method written somewhere and I missed it (wouldn't surprise me...lol)
˙uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ǝɹ,noʎ 'oN
#19 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 4:45 PM
In the Grid, select a preset and push the copy button. A new preset is added to the end of the list. Then select that preset and change the Unknown 3 to the next number in sequence of the other presets.

"Part of being a mesher is being persistent through your own confusedness" - HystericalParoxysm
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Scholar
Original Poster
#20 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 5:29 PM Last edited by Rainncandy : 10th Apr 2010 at 6:32 PM.
Thank you Orangemitten. I really appreciate your help and everyone else's help! Yes, I have the Autosmooth option unchecked, just as Ella instructed in her tutorial (if I'm not mistaken). I never have that option checked b/c I don't want my object smoothed. Yes, HugeLunatic, I have the latest Wings version - 1.2. I don't understand what's going on with it. (Thank you Cmo for your information. Much needed! Thanks! )

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.
Alchemist
#21 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 6:43 PM
If you have AutoSmooth unchecked and your object is showing up in Milkshape that way my guess is that it's something to do with what you're doing in Wings that's causing that. I hope someone can help with that because I know nothing about Wings and have never even tried using it.

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.
Scholar
Original Poster
#22 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 6:46 PM
I even tried importing another mesh I made into Milkshape, and even that is showing up smoothed! I don't get this. It's not making any sense.
Alchemist
#23 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 6:54 PM
Did you try with the normals/smoothing groups export thing you mentioned unchecked?
Scholar
Original Poster
#24 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 7:01 PM
Yes, I tried that but then it wouldn't show up correctly in Milkshape. I could see the pennant in wireframe, but it disappeared when I wanted to see it in 3D. It shouldn't be doing that, so I think something is wrong. I don't know what to do now.
Alchemist
#25 Old 10th Apr 2010 at 7:12 PM
I'd give it a little time to see if HL comes back to the thread. I think she knows how to use Wings. If she appears not to be checking back after posting in other threads I would send her a little PM asking her to take a peek over here to see if she can help
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