|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 29, 2024 7:28:08 GMT -5
Your mesh's topology is a terrible mess. The game doesn't know how to render the geometry when it's in that kind of shape. Here's what I mean about bad topology: ...... It looks like you used the decimate modifier to reduce the polycount. Don't do that. Decimate will kill your topology. It's better to dissolve edge loops (X > dissolve edges) to reduce polycount but if your topology is bad dissolving edge loops is difficult and time consuming. In that case, if you don't already have a mesh with good topology, retopologizing your mesh is the best thing to do. Always model in quads, by the way. It makes things a lot easier. Once you have a mesh with good topology everything is so much easier. You have other problems with this mesh: * The polycount is more than 8,000 polygons; this is way too high. A mesh like yours should be around 2,000 polygons, AT MOST. * In each flower you have one petal with layers and layers of geometry all in the same place. This will cause your mesh to flicker. It's called "Z-fighting." * Your UV islands are choppy looking. Studio will insert sharp edges in your mesh wherever your UV islands' edges are. This will look terrible if your UV islands are all choppy. Plus, you have one random face that belongs to one of the rabbit's eyes in your UV map. I honestly don't see any point in dealing with the mesh in its current condition. You'll be spending hours (if not days) fixing all of the problems I mentioned above and the mesh will still look terrible in the game because the topology is so awful. Also, the item is shiny in the game. You'll have to adjust the specular map if you don't want your mesh to be as shiny as it is. Don't worry. It's not hard to fix. Thanks for your response! I noticed that the polycount was too high, but is having trouble reducing it without deforming the model. I will watch and learn from the videos you provided. More suggestions are welcome:-) I used the rotary tool to make the petals. Would it be better to carve the entire three-dimensional way to make entire flower? Also, how can UV map be done better in the future? Thank you. I'm writing a walkthrough for you so hang on. I'll post it tomorrow. Or the next day. Meanwhile, Mauvemorn's post is important, too. Sometimes the game shades things in a weird way.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 29, 2024 3:50:41 GMT -5
I made a hat that glows (that I haven't upload yet because the texture is terrible), and if I remember correctly, your emission map needs to be the same size as your bump map. And the size needs to be in powers of 2. For example, 1024 x 1024.
Not sure what you mean by "...the background on the polygons also appears."
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 29, 2024 3:42:44 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 28, 2024 6:30:52 GMT -5
Well, I can tell you right now that you're going to be told that this isn't the right forum for your question. The Sims Resource has some tutorials here, but I can't seen any that are specifically for wallpapers. Mod the Sims does have a tutorial here. And here are a bunch of threads talking about making wallpapers. Here is TSR Workshop's page that talks about what textures TS3 uses. You can take a TS4 wallpaper diffuse and import it into TSRW as a non-recolorable overlay. Or you can desaturate a TS4 diffuse and import it as a multiplier. But, then you'd need to make a mask so that the wallpaper can be recolored. You can even make one swatch with a non-recolorable overlay and a second swatch that is recolorable. Also, the specular map that TS4 uses is different from what TS3 uses. TS3 speculars are greyscale. Basically, you take a TS4 diffuse, desaturate it, and darken or lighten the texture according to what kind of shine you want. Darker means less shine. Lighter means more shine. The normal map is made the same way as you'd make a TS4 normal map. No difference. You import the normal map in the meshes tab in TSRW. Take a look at The Sims Resource's tutorial page for more information. Edit: Forgot to mention that TSRW uses DDS files (if I remember correctly) so export the textures from Studio as DDS files. You might need to resize the TS4 texture files. Use the TS3 files as a reference for sizing.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 28, 2024 4:57:58 GMT -5
I doubt there's much difference between a Sims 3 item and a Sims 4 item. It would be a lot of work on their end to change everything. I'm sure they wouldn't want to deal with that. This is how I see it, anyway. I forgot to mention that EA publishes its tuning descriptions. I think this is the latest version. There's a tuning description browser that you might already know about. Instead of looking at a Sims 3 item, maybe it would make more sense to see if there's something already in the game that changes according to the time of day and, using EA's documentation and/or the tuning description browser, see if that yields any information?
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 28, 2024 4:13:47 GMT -5
Your mesh's topology is a terrible mess. The game doesn't know how to render the geometry when it's in that kind of shape. Here's what I mean about bad topology: It looks like you used the decimate modifier to reduce the polycount. Don't do that. Decimate will kill your topology. It's better to dissolve edge loops (X > dissolve edges) to reduce polycount but if your topology is bad dissolving edge loops is difficult and time consuming. In that case, if you don't already have a mesh with good topology, retopologizing your mesh is the best thing to do. Always model in quads, by the way. It makes things a lot easier. Once you have a mesh with good topology everything is so much easier. You have other problems with this mesh: * The polycount is more than 8,000 polygons; this is way too high. A mesh like yours should be around 2,000 polygons, AT MOST. * In each flower you have one petal with layers and layers of geometry all in the same place. This will cause your mesh to flicker. It's called "Z-fighting." * Your UV islands are choppy looking. Studio will insert sharp edges in your mesh wherever your UV islands' edges are. This will look terrible if your UV islands are all choppy. Plus, you have one random face that belongs to one of the rabbit's eyes in your UV map. I honestly don't see any point in dealing with the mesh in its current condition. You'll be spending hours (if not days) fixing all of the problems I mentioned above and the mesh will still look terrible in the game because the topology is so awful. Also, the item is shiny in the game. You'll have to adjust the specular map if you don't want your mesh to be as shiny as it is. Don't worry. It's not hard to fix.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 28, 2024 0:11:31 GMT -5
Unfortunately, I don't really have an answer as I don't know anything about XML tuning. But, I do remember there were drapes made for TS3 that automatically opened and closed depending on the time of day. Here's a thread with several links. You can open the TS3 package file with S3PE and take a look at the XML tuning part of it. If the file is in sims3pack form you'll need Sims3Pack Multi Installer to extract the package file. Also, aren't there lights in the game that automatically turn on and off at certain times? (I haven't played the game in a long time so I'm not sure about that.) You could take a look at how those lights are structured. If there are automatic lights (or automatic anything, really), that functionality is already coded into the game. You'd just need an XML tuning file. I don't know which tuning file would contain that information, however. I'm sorry, I know this isn't much help. To be honest, I'm only responding because so many tuning questions here are never answered. If you figure it out please post what you learn. It will help others.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Mar 27, 2024 23:22:53 GMT -5
There's something wrong with the .blend file. I tried opening and appending in Blender 3.3 and Blender crashed. Then I tried opening the blend in Blender 2.78 and the mesh appeared empty. When I tried appending in Blender 2.78 Blender crashed. Go back to a previous save if you have one. Or you could just as easily use an .obj file, if that's all you have. You'd just need to open the EA mesh, append your mesh—you don't even need to append the floor shadow mesh as the EA mesh already has one—position your mesh where you need it, assign your mesh to transformBone, make sure your cut numbers are assigned correctly, resize the floor shadow mesh if needed, delete the EA mesh, then save. Just a simple mesh swap. This tutorial is old and it's for converting a TS2 item to TS4 but the concept is the same. The only thing that's different for you is that you're not exporting meshes and textures from SimPE. Anyway, your blend file is FUBAR. You'll need to use a different file. Oh, and if you're making a plant your mesh might need to utilize alpha transparency. If that's the case you'll need to clone something with two mesh groups because one of the mesh groups will need to be assigned to the Phong shader. In that case, clone something that has glass. The glass part will already be assigned to the correct shader. You just need to make sure that the parts of your mesh that need transparency (e.g. if the leaves are flat planes with a leaf texture painted on and parts of the flat plane to be invisible in game) are given the same cut number as the glass part of the EA mesh. I hope all that makes sense. I don't know what you're making so I can't say for sure if you can use the books you cloned or if you need to clone a mesh with glass parts.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Feb 7, 2024 23:56:55 GMT -5
How your UV map is arranged depends on your texture, in some ways. You have to keep in mind that if you're using a texture with a pattern all of the UV islands that will use that pattern have to be sized relative to each other. For example, if the ribbon and bow are using a pattern and the bow's UVs are much larger than the ribbon's UVs the pattern will be different sizes. You can check how a pattern looks on your mesh while still in Blender and the nice thing about this method is that you can move or resize your islands and see how they look on your mesh in real time. Here is how to add a grid in the UV editor to use it as a guide for your UV islands' size and/or location. Or you can use image > open image and add a texture into your UV editor that way. Other things to consider: 1. If you're stacking UV islands but want to bake an ambient occlusion map and if the mesh parts are located on different places on your mesh your AO bake won't turn out well. You'll have to keep your UV islands unstacked. 2. Depending on your texturing needs, you can make some UV islands bigger or smaller than others. My comment about patterns apply here. If you're just using a plain color the size of the island doesn't affect things much. 3. You can split up your UV islands but keep in mind that wherever the edges of your UV islands are located Studio will split those same edges in your mesh. You could end up with sharp edges that you don't want. 4. The only way to make the game use a larger texture is if you're using the HQ mod. This mod will double the texture size. There are downsides to using this mod, however. You're not the only one who's struggled with wasted UV space. It's an issue for me, too.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Feb 7, 2024 22:46:01 GMT -5
Necrodog has some knowledge about animation. He's on Mod the Sims, too, and he has a YouTube channel with some tutorials.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Feb 7, 2024 22:43:19 GMT -5
I don't think there are a whole lot people on here who know much about animation, unfortunately. You can try doing a web search for "animation sims4studio.com" and you should see posts from this site. I know there have been many questions about animation asked here.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Feb 7, 2024 22:23:41 GMT -5
These are my settings and I use Blender 3.3. It works fine for me. Do you have your game in a different language than Studio? That may be your issue. Regardless, Studio needs access to your game's files in order to clone the files and it needs access to Blender to utilize the S4Studio addon in order to create a blend file. And of course, Studio needs to access its own folder in your documents folder. I'm pretty sure all of these need to be in the same language. Oh, and Creation Kit? It always throws errors when you start it up but you can just ignore all those errors. I think there's a script on Nexus Mods that automatically bypasses all of that.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Feb 7, 2024 21:40:07 GMT -5
Did you clone the mesh to make a custom item or did you do a default override? If it's a standalone recolor I don't know much about that. I'm wondering if redoing things would fix it. Start with a fresh package. It looks like a mip maps issue to me. Mip maps are what the game uses when you zoom out from an item. Up close, the game uses the largest texture then switches to lower resolution textures as you zoom out. It's kind of like LODs but with textures instead of meshes. Obviously, if you don't have mip maps the game has to use the original texture when zoomed out. Did you use a DDS texture for your diffuse? Edit: it's the size of your diffuse. Yours is 1800 pixels by 1800 pixels. Sims 4 won't even display that size; it'll automatically display a smaller size. And Studio can't make mip maps for you because the size of your diffuse is wrong. I looked at the textures from the original painting and the diffuse is 512 x 512. The normal map is 512 x 512 and the specular is 256 x 256. Those are standard sizes in the Sims games (Sims 3 and Sims 4). All of the sizes that the Sims games use are in powers of 2. For example, CAS items have a diffuse size of 2048 high and 1024 wide. It helps to check the original size of the textures and use that as a guide for your own. I always export EA textures just for that reason. So, yeah, make your diffuse size 512 x 512. You may even be able to double that size and get away with 1024 x 1024. If you use a PNG for your diffuse Studio will make the mip maps for you but the size has to be correct to begin with. If you saved the diffuse as a DDS save as DXT1 No Alpha if your texture has no alpha channel or DXT5 Interpolated Alpha if you do have an alpha channel. This screenshot is showing the no alpha option. Just make sure "generate MIP maps" has been checkmarked:
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jan 27, 2024 7:08:22 GMT -5
I would say, yes, use a rug's footprint. Or just clone a rug and import the meshes and textures from the debug object into your package file.
|
|
|
Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jan 27, 2024 6:33:46 GMT -5
Looks like the sim's body is under your mesh. You should delete any body parts that are covered up by your mesh. If you don't do this, you get clipping and it increases your polycount for no good reason. Then neck has sharp edges in it because the UV island is split in that same region. The vertices in the UV island, in the neck region, aren't merged. Studio will introduce sharp edges into the mesh wherever an edge is located in the UV islands. Regardless, the body looks messed up and it's not worth fixing so you should separate the body from your mesh and delete the body altogether, append a new body into Blender, and delete anything hidden by your mesh. Don't remove doubles in the body. Don't transfer weights, vertex pain, or the uv_1 to the body, either. It's already done perfectly. Just delete whatever is covered up by your mesh. Don't join your dress to the body until you've transferred the uv_1, vertex paint, and weights to your mesh. The uv_1 and vertex paint is needed so that the mesh will work with the game's sliders and they both look okay. The weight paint looks okay to me, too. The weird shading on the sleeves and the bottom of the dress are there because you need to split those edges. Select the edge loops and mark them sharp. Then use the edge split modifier to split the edges. Be sure to uncheck edge angle before applying the modifier.
A couple of other things. If you want to use a patterned texture you'll need to make sure the faces are roughly the same size. For example, at the bottom of the skirt, the faces are all large and this will cause a patterned texture to appear stretched. You can press Ctrl + R to add new edge loops if you want. You can also easily move edge loops by pressing G twice. And I suggest you pull the center vertex of the geometry you're created to close the holes up inside the mesh a little so that those faces are not so obvious. You don't have to do this if you'd rather not. It just looks better if you do.
|
|