I dropped the idea of four channel object, and enabled only three on another object (which needs only three), but now I have a weird problem:

The image has a shadow looking like the original objects shading (image attached).
I read some threads saying that I should modify specular image to correspond my image.
I colored all the other pixmaps medium gray (except for rgb mask image), but the issue is still visible.
I didn't find any other images from the package which would cause the shadow, and I had the "export defaults only" unticked when I cloned the image.
Might some configuration in the package still point to some file which is not extracted? I cloned the painting with sunflowers.

Did you change the Specular? If so what did you change it to? The option which might work best is to just make the Specular a solid black alpha.

Did you clear your caches before putting this in the game? If you did could you post the object so someone could look at it?

It should not be the case that, "some configuration in the package still point[s] to some file which is not extracted..."

I've never cloned this one so it would be helpful to see your object package.

I cleared the caches before putting the item in game. If specular is the one with the little s in it's name, I painted it medium grey. Though I can't see any alpha, so might be that I messed up with the image and lost the alpha.
Anyway.. I'll try adding the black alpha, but I can still upload the package if you want to take a look. Several heads together is always wiser

Those dark spots/shading is a normals issue, you can see it in the mesh in MS as well. Assign each face to a different smoothing group, fronts/sides and then smooth all.

I've split your posts off from the tutorial one since it veered off to help regarding the package and not the channels anymore.

I was suspecting that first also, but since the mesh looks smooth in MS (pic attached), I dropped the idea. But cause I don't have anything else to try, I'll give it a shot

Also I checked the smoothing groups, they are correct. Opposite faces are at the same group, but I did the smooth all for make sure they are smooth, and soon will try again in the game.

edit: Btw, I just found a great tool from MS, selection tool, which can be used to check which way the normals point. That shows the mesh is ok :/

Aha, something seems to change my mesh when I import it to game. Now when I exported the current mesh and decompiled it, I can see the issues with normals. I'll try again to replace them with my original mesh. If it happens twice, I think there might be nothing we can do :/

edit: No bonus this time either.. When I enter the game, the mesh is f....d up again Any ideas how to keep the normals as same in the game as in the original mesh in milkshape?

edit2: I have a faint idea I have had this issue earlier. There was some kind of tool called "Demon tool" or something to prevent the faces go f....up when exporting, but I don't remember where to fetch it. Simple googling didn't either reveal it. Maybe I remember the name wrong.

edit3: Aha, found it, Demon's tool, not Demon tool Let's see if it fixes the issue. Looking forward to see my object in the game intact

Ok, it didn't fix it Any smoothing I do before exporting is not saved for some reason. I smoothed by selecting all sides to different smoothing groups and still not success. Also I experimented with autosmooth ticked/unticked and also with Demon's align normals tool. Nothing worked.. I start to loose my hope with this case. I'm not so keen to try again with another mesh since the UV-mapping is a pita

edit5: tried with another mesh.. I'm starting to think that the problem is the object I clone (the sunflower painting) since it does exactly same normal modification for every mesh I try. I think I need to try another object, agan

edit6: I cloned another painting and still getting the same issue. Though I probably found a reason for it. It happens only to mesh which is UV mapped, with unmapped mesh exporting doesn't change normals. The exporter seems to split some vertices, but misses a couple of them. That causes 2 of the three normals of vertex to align to same direction, which causes the shadow. Not very deep analyze, but I better try making the box out of 6 separate plains to avoid that behaviour. Anyone else had problems with a box shaped UV-mapped mesh?

edit7: \\\o//// I made it finally. The problem was that I was trying to map the sides to be connected to the front panels of the painting to create continues surfaces, cause the painting is kinda 3-dimensional. The object tool didn't split those vertices which shared exactly same texture coordinates, and left shadows.
I tried remapping in a way that I left gaps between sides and front panels in the map, and I got a successful mesh exported. Is there another way to map a box that it would maintain continues texturing/patterning than doing all the sides of the box as plains, or splitting a box to plains manually?

Sorry for double posting, but I want to thank you both orangemittens and Hugelunatic for helping me with my problems!
Now I pushed the limits and mapped the sides so close to front panel than possible, without touching it. There is some screenshots attached how it came up.
When I find some nice default pattern combinations for this piece, I'll be publishing my first Sims 3 object

Sweet! I'm glad it worked out and that's a very nice object

Thanks orangemittens!
I still seem to have the same problem than earlier, I'm somehow not able to "share" the new default patterns from CAST, to change the package patterns.
They definitely needs changing before releasing, cause at the moment they are hideous.
I'm throwing in a challenge for someone to pick the package (attached) and apply some nicer default patterns, and drop it back here.
Feel also free to add your nick to description/package name

edit: forgot the package.. now it's attached :P

I apologize but I don't understand what the issue is from how you're describing it. What is the problem you're having with the painting?

matrixx while I can appreciate that changing the default patterns is difficult this is something you need to do yourself. By having someone else take this and fix your default patterns for you is moving this from something you've created to something someone else has created. After enabling your channels you will want to follow the tutorial for changing those patterns by cmo - http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=377883

I know the tutorial, and the problem is that I cannot follow it, cause my game fails in the beginning where I'm supposed to share the saved pattern combination.
I dunno is it a Vista problem, but after I've clicked share, and filled in the creator information it says that "transfer failed". Not necessarily exactly as those words, since my game is Finnish, but roughly translated to English.
I tried opening the game as administrator, but didn't help. I would gladly do it myself if I was able to.. But as far as there is no pattern browser in s3pe, I have no way to know any values mentioned in the tutorial.
I guess it means then that I'm not able to finish this, or any other object I create, which would need changing of default patterns :/

I had problems with that tutorial also. Cmo taught me a different way using only s3pe. Let me dig out the information and see if the other way will work for you...it did for me Heh...I'm about to lose my power (storm here) probably so it could be a little while.

orangemittens: that sounds great! I hope you find it, and also I hope that lightning doesn't strike (struck my house once when I was little, what are the odds)

I've collected the instructions together that I got. I'm thinking this method won't work for your object...at least not with what I know.

I think there is a single-tile painting it would work on though. But before I say it would I want to try it myself to be sure it will. If it meant you had to reclone on a different painting would you still be interested? Because if not I don't want to go to the time of testing it. If you are still intersted I'll test it and, if it works, post out the information

Sorry for the double post. I've tested this through to getting a solid color of your choice on each panel and it works just fine. Each panel is a different color and each is still recolorable in create a style.

I haven't tried getting actual patterns onto the panels instead of solid colors but, given the success I've had with changing the wood and etc. to a different pattern type, this should also be do-able using this method. Let me know if you want to give it a try. It would require changing the clone you used but that shouldn't take you more than a few minutes to accomplish.

orangemittens: Sure that sounds great, I'm ready to try with another object. Should be easy when I now have a finished mesh

Ok...clone it onto the PaintingContemporary. This one:



While you're doing that I'll get the instructions ready. Excuse me in advance for any stumbles...I've only done this twice now and it was a bit of a flog both times.

ETA:

SAVE A COPY OF YOUR PAINTING. The changes you're going to make can't be easily reversed.

1. Open your new painting in S3PE and choose OBJD. Click the Grid button.

2. Select Materials and click the little button at the far right that has little dots in it.

3. On the left [0] Material should be selected. This is the Material section for the first of your painting defaults...the one that will go on the thumbnail in the buy catalogue and that shows up on the painting when you first place it in the game.

4. On the right, click the plus sign in front of Material Block and from the list which appears below it select MaterialBlocks. Again click the little box with dots at the right side.

5. On the left you should again see three materials. These are the three default patterns for the first default selection. If I'm remembering this from testing it you want the [2] selected. Click on that one and then pick the TypeCodes on the right hand side. Again click the box with dots.

6. On the left click [5] TCString. On the right, across from the word Data, it should say Materials\Miscellaneous\solidColor_1. If it doesn't then repeat the process after backing out and selecting [1].

7. Once you find the one that has that Materials\Miscellaneous\solidColor_1 in the [5]TCString delete the other two Materials that you saw in step 5. This will get rid of the wood patterns we don't want.

8. Now hit the Copy button to copy the remaining Material.

9. Select the [0] Material and on the right click the plus sign in front of Unknown2. In the Data field put Pattern A.

10. Select the [1] Material and do the same thing but instead put Pattern B. Repeat for the [2] Material but put Pattern C. Commit all the way out and then Save.

Check your painting in the game. It should have all three panels using the same pattern which is a Misc pattern in a sort of cream color. Get through that part first and then we can move on.

Yay, I got the creamy color now in all three pattern slots

Excellent!...I *knew* you'd get it faster than I did...lol.

Ok...so do you want to keep it that way but with different colors on the panels or do you want to try to put patterns on it? I've put three different colors on the panels and it looks pretty cute that way but patterns look good too as your picture showed.

I think I can stick with the colors, since I really have troubles to chose a nice combination of patterns.

About the speed.. I also shared my part of mistakes. First accidentally cloned without "defaults only" unticked, and didn't get the default pattern materials. Also I forgot to change the alpha of the texture file and ended up with a painting where right half was covered with the solid color, and left half with the original texture of the painting :D

edit: though I could stick with the colors this time, I still would be very interested to know how to replace them with patterns, to be able to do it for future objects

Lol...I'm glad I'm not the only one then

Ok...will edit in a second with instructions for the colors.

SAVE YOUR PAINTING AGAIN. That way if you screw up you don't have to go back to square one.

Open the object in s3pe. Go to OBJD/Grid/Materials. Pick the [0]Material and then pick MaterialBlock/MaterialBlocks on the right.

From there pick TypeCodes for [0] Material Block . The one you need to change is one of the TCRGBA lines but I can't remember exactly which one it is. So this is where the trial and error part starts because there are several of these to choose from and I got them to work through trial and error and didn't write down what I did...sorry. I am fairly sure it isn't the first one. Try the [4]TCRGBA.

You will need to pick a color and get the hex code for it. Then you enter the codes into the red, green, and blue lines.

For some odd reason, S3PE has the red and blue reversed, so when you enter the hex codes put the red code onto the blue line and the blue code onto the red line or else you'll get some other color you don't want.

Here's a nice hex code color chart that I used when I colored the panels:

http://www.blythe.org/webwork/NS3ColorSpecifier.html

Trial and error that until you get the color you want onto the first panel in the game. Then go back and do the same for the other two materials. In the meantime I'll look at what I have in the game and try to figure out which line goes to which panel.

ETA: Ok...I'm pretty sure it should be the [4] one for each of the Materials.

I think [4]TCRGBA is a very good choice to start trying. I inserted the hex code which it had to my image manipulation program and it seems to have the hex code for the solidcolor_1 (the creamy one)
Others have either 00 codes or one has a dark grey color

Excellent Since they are all the same color that should be the line you need to change for each of the 3 Materials.

I think I finally made it (pic attached). Thanks for your help orangemittens, I think that would be a great tutorial to share to other ones too! I'll finalize the package tomorrow, because now I have to go to sleep, gotta go work tomorrow.