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Post by SelaronoSims on Apr 20, 2020 20:36:43 GMT -5
I dont know if its me or if S4S has updated changing some of this, but none of these prompts seem to be there. I opened the item and clicked on Model, there as no "Meshes" on the right. So, I clicked on one of the Model LOD and the "Meshes" button was there but as far as anything else, I was unable to find it. Now, it may just be my newness causing issues. I know that a lot of beginner tutorials assume that people have knowledge they dont so maybe thats it. Maybe I should know where the Model Medium/Low choice is, but I dont and cant easily find it. Again, maybe S4S has updated changing some of these choices. I dont know, Im just confused.Here Any help would be greatly appreciated! Here is a link to My Item
ibb.co/HXK1z3yThe link you put to your item doesn't work, but it's the same for any object, it should be like this - video. You probably need to do it for any phong and phongalpha meshes, and any material variant I fixed the link. Thank you!! The video helped a lot. The directions were completely different than what shows in the video. This should help alot.
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Post by castelliaparrilla on Jul 12, 2021 6:58:13 GMT -5
Hi kitkat and Stephanniie, I also have the same problem Stephanniie had with her chair 1. I read Kitkat's instructions, but I'm very new and I don't understand the part about overlapping shadow UV map and object UV map. Do you mean the UV maps of the shadow LOD and the LOD, or the object itself has two UV map? If so how can I know they're overlapping and fix it? Thank you so much in advance.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 17, 2021 1:58:06 GMT -5
Hi kitkat and Stephanniie , I also have the same problem Stephanniie had with her chair 1. I read Kitkat's instructions, but I'm very new and I don't understand the part about overlapping shadow UV map and object UV map. Do you mean the UV maps of the shadow LOD and the LOD, or the object itself has two UV map? If so how can I know they're overlapping and fix it? Thank you so much in advance. I think what's meant by "overlapping UV maps" is just UV islands overlapping in the UV_0 map. Here's an example: As for everything else discussed in this thread, it helps you to troubleshoot if you know what is what, so I'll explain. You have your main mesh with two or three LODs. LODs stand for Level of Distance. In the game, when you zoom your camera away from an object or sim the game will switch to a lower LOD. The farther away you get, the lower the LOD the game displays. It does this to decrease lag for those with low-end computers. There is no reason for the game to display the highest LOD when you are too far away to see the small details anyway. If you forget to replace the other LODs with your mesh, when you zoom away from your item the game will switch to the item you cloned. This is true whether it's an object or a CAS item. The game also displays smaller textures as you zoom away from an object or a sim--again, this is to reduce lag. These textures are called mipmaps. You don't need to make them yourself; Photoshop and GIMP will make them for you if you are working with a DDS file. You just need to make sure the option for mipmaps is ticked when saving your DDS file in Photoshop or GIMP. If you use a PNG, Studio will make the mipmaps for you. If for some reason your item does not have mipmaps you'll see weird graphical issues when you zoom away from your item. The shadow meshes are used to generate sun shadows when your object is outside. Your main mesh will have a flat plane under it. This is the floor shadow that is displayed when the object is indoors, but the shadow mesh, the main mesh that is usually assigned a cut number of 0 , is for outdoor shadows. That's for meshes. Now, on to textures. The specular map is used to control how shiny an object is. The bump map or normal map (same thing; different names) is a sort of optical illusion image that makes it appear that details are 3-dimensional when they are not. It helps to keep the polycount on your mesh low while still maintaining how good the object looks texture-wise. If you don't replace the bump map, the old bump map will not match your object and will show weird shadows on your mesh. Always make a custom bump map. It's actually a lot easier than you think but I won't go into how to make a bump map at this time. This post is long enough as it is. Those are the basics There has been some discussion in this thread about SSAO. SSAO stands for Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. Screen Space is just what's displayed on your monitor when you're in the game--what you see on your screen. Ambient refers to how much light is in your surroundings in the game. Ambient light is light that exists basically everywhere and doesn't come from a definite source like a lamp. Occlusion is...okay, hopefully this'll make sense. So, say you were sitting in a well-lit room and you put one hand over the other hand, not so they're touching but so that one hand is hovering over the other hand. See how there is a shadow cast on your bottom hand? One hand is blocking the light in the room. That's occlusion. The game tries to determine what is blocking what from having light shined on it. Sometimes, the game screws it up because it doesn't understand the laws of physics, lol. And this is why you can disable it on your mesh if that's what's causing funky shadows. Hopefully, this will help. If you need more help with your project share your package file here and I'll take a look at it.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 17, 2021 2:10:09 GMT -5
Saving your DDS in Photoshop. Mipmaps checked: Mipmaps. Note that each texture is reduced by one-half: Weird texture issue with car when the camera is zoomed away. The mipmaps are missing.
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Post by castelliaparrilla on Jul 18, 2021 6:03:35 GMT -5
Thank you Fwecka (Lolabellesims) , Unfortunately, when I looked at my UV map again, it seemed to be not overlapping. I've also tried to change the SSAO Intensity to 0 and replaced EA's normal map and specular map with blank ones. I don't know what is wrong. I'd really appreciate it if you can look at my files :(( Here is my .blend file and .package file.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 18, 2021 6:20:00 GMT -5
Okay. I just looked at it. It looks fine to me although the floor shadow under the table isn't right. It's too small for your table. Is that what your issue is? Your screenshot isn't showing up so I can't see what your problem is. I'm assuming that it's the floor shadow so I'll go ahead and address it. Click on the shadow mesh (the big, flat plane with the cut number of 0) and go into edit mode. In the UV editor, at the bottom, you'll see a box that says "new" and "open" next to it. There's an icon that looks like a photograph or something and it has arrows next to it (see the second image below). Click on the arrows and cycle through what's there and select the shadow drop sheet. It's white with a bunch of dark blobs. You'll need to see how the blob sheet is affecting the floor shadow mesh so put your cursor in the 3D viewport window and press N. In the toolbar that pops out you'll see the word "shading." There's a dropdown menu under it. Change that dropdown from GLSL to Multitexture. (Make sure you have your shading display set to texture and not solid. The button for that is located at the bottom of Blender next to where you can change from object mode to edit mode, etc.). Now you can see the shadow blob texture on the mesh and if you move the UV island around, the texture that's displayed on the mesh will change in real time. I'll use OrangeMitten's images from her tutorial here since my Imgur account is filling up fast. If you're still a beginner, I highly recommend you try this tutorial. It's very helpful. In the image below, the white arrow that says "59" shows how to change the shading to Multitexture. In the image below, where it says "Untitled.001" at the bottom is where you cycle through all the available images. Just click the little arrows. There are a couple of things you can do once you've got the shading changed to Multitexture and can see the shadow blob on your mesh. You can move your UV island and choose a different blob on the blob sheet--since your table is square, it would make the most sense to choose a square-shaped blob instead of a round one--but you will still be faced with the issue of the shadow blob just being too small for your table. To make the shadow blob appear bigger on the shadow mesh simply make the UV island smaller. Press A to select the UV island, then S to scale it. Watch what is happening on your shadow mesh as you do this so you can see what size the final UV island should be. It would be a good idea to scale the shadow mesh itself so it's a little bigger, as well, but this is up to you. Once you have the UV island adjusted so that the floor shadow looks right, go ahead and save your blend. You will need to reduce the polycount to make LOD 1 and LOD 2. Each LOD should be a lower polycount than the one before. LOD 1 should be lower than LOD 0, and LOD 2 should be lower than LOD 1. Does that make sense? If you look at the original table you cloned, you'll see that LOD 0 has 382 polygons, LOD 1 has 350, and LOD 2 has 334. Each LOD has had its polygon count reduced. Regardless, your polycount for LOD 0 is way too high. If you look at your package file, you will see that your mesh is made up of more than 11,000 polygons. Keep in mind that S4S triangulates the faces so if you are modeling in quads, whatever your polycount is will double once you import your mesh to Studio. You are also using your highest LOD for LOD 1 and LOD 2. This is bad practice. Always lower the polycount for each LOD. In my previous post I explained why there are different LODs--it's all about reducing lag. If you are planning to share your creation others might have trouble with lag with a high-poly mesh, especially if their lot is filled with a ton of meshes. What I would do if I were you is choose "edge select" located at the bottom of Blender, select some edges on your table, press X, then choose "dissolve edges." You can use the decimate modifier but decimate can wreck your mesh if you lower the polycount too much. It's your choice. Here is a tutorial on how to use the decimate modifier. Another thing you can do to lower the polycount is to delete faces that no one will see. If you select the table top and press H to hide that face (or you can go into wireframe mode) you can see that there are faces on the top of the square inner frame thing that are hidden inside the table top. The legs have faces on the tops and bottoms as well that will not be seen in the game. Your game will render those faces but you won't see them, so what's the point of keeping them? All they do is add to the polycount without adding to the looks of your mesh at all. The goal is to reduce lag without sacrificing beauty as much as possible. By the way, if you've pressed H to hide something you just press Alt + H to unhide everything.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 18, 2021 22:46:32 GMT -5
Hi Fwecka (Lolabellesims) , I've tried to modify the shadow and it looks better, but the weird shadows are still there like some strange lines at the legs of the table, they look like this (idk why the image does not show up), you can click this link Btw, I've reduce the polygons of LOD1 and 2. Here are my new files Package file and Blend fileTo make an image show up in your post, right-click your image and choose "open image in new tab" and copy the URL. Then, at the top of the message box here, there's an icon that looks like a picture. Click it and a box will pop up. Enter the URL there and your image will show up in your post. Is it a shadow on the floor you're talking about. Maybe I'm blind, but I'm just not seeing any weird shadows on the table, itself. I'm still not clear on what you're having issues with and I'm afraid you're going to have to clarify. Maybe open your image in Paint or Photoshop or something a draw a box around where you're seeing the shadow so that I know for certain how to help you. Again, because I'm not 100% sure what shadow you're seeing that you want removed, I'm going to assume it's a shadow on the floor that you're having problems with. You can try removing the occluders. Here is a tutorial on editing shadows. The part about occluders is about halfway down the page. And the polycount for your table is still way, way, way too high! 11,000 polygons might be acceptable for a complicated hair, or something large with lots of detail, but a simple table like yours should be like 1,000 polygons and that's if the faces have been triangulated. In Blender, your faces are currently in quads. Once you import your mesh into Studio, Studio triangulates the faces which doubles your polycount. So, in Blender, since your faces are currently in quads, reduce the polycount to between 500 and 1000 faces. If decimate wrecks the mesh, and sometimes it can do that, you can select some edges, press X, then choose "dissolve edges." Focus on the edges on the legs and on the edges of the tabletop. You can have beveled edges for a tabletop but a beveled edge should not have that many faces if it's just a simple table. Again, to clarify, reduce the polycount for your LOD 0 to about 500 to 1,000 faces. I'm talking a 90% reduction here. THEN AND ONLY THEN should you make your lower LODs. Blender will tell you how many faces your mesh has at the top of the screen. If you are ever unsure if your mesh has the right amount of faces, you can always compare your item to a similar EA item. You have to follow EA standards when making custom content for TS4.
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Post by zwhsims on Oct 18, 2021 0:14:00 GMT -5
Im having this problem with every object i create i just dont know how to fix it Same here. I'm following the tutorial but it won't let me save it, there's just a long error message.
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