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Post by Arista on Jul 15, 2021 16:47:28 GMT -5
Hi! I'm trying to make the wreckage ship deco livable, just like the Admirals Wreckage in Sulani, as you can see in the picture below. I cut out the door and such, just like the Admiral one(the left ship on the picture below), and it works perfectly well in game. But I have low graphics on so I'm stuck looking at LOD1 instead. I thought I could just import LOD0 to LOD1, but that messed up the textures and LOD1 doesn't have as many textures as LOD0, it seems. I guess I could just scrap it and re-do it, using only LOD0. But I thought, can't I just merge all the groups in blender, clone a plant and make the whole thing a decoration with just one LOD? If so, which plant(or other deco object) has the biggest texture? That way I can just merge the textures into one image. Or maybe that's a bad idea? To make it as simple as possible, should I just cut the door in LOD1 as well? If anyone knows how and feels like fixing LOD1, feel free to do so. I have no idea what to do with the Shadow LODs but I'll figure that out later! www.simfileshare.net/download/2606166/ |
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Post by menaceman44 on Jul 15, 2021 17:46:55 GMT -5
The different LODs do not always share the same number of mesh groups which is why you can't always just import LOD0 into LOD1 and so on.
I would reccommend cutting the doorway out of LOD1 as well. The whole reason LODs exist, as I'm sure you know, it to remove strain on your computer from having to render objects that are more complicated than it can handle.
The fact that your computer has to run on lower settings tells me it would not be a great idea to start making it use the very high detail versions of things.
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Post by Arista on Jul 15, 2021 18:37:55 GMT -5
Yeah, I figured that would probably be the best thing to do. It's a shame though, a lot of pretty details are lost in the LOD1. Would it be that bad if I used the high detail version instead? For my laptop, I mean. I use a lot of other objects and CAS items on LOD0.
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Post by o19 on Jul 16, 2021 5:55:53 GMT -5
The most easy solution would be to switch to high quality graphic and live with the introduced lag if possible.
Having a few high-poly mesh objects should not matter, unless you are already too close to a limit (GPU/memory/...).
I'm not sure whether it helps to reduce the texture size by 50% from eg 512x1024 to 256x512 if the details are not important. At least for renders it can speed up rendering a lot. TS4 may or may not convert the textures to a unique size.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 16, 2021 7:54:15 GMT -5
LOD stands for Level of Detail and it works this way: when you are close up to your object, the game will display LOD 0 and it does this so you can see all of the detail. Move your camera away from your object and the game will switch to LOD 1. Less detail, but you won't see the difference. Move even farther away and the game will switch to LOD 2. LOD 2 has even less detail but you're too far away to tell. The game does this to reduce lag. When you're up close to an item you want it to look good, so you want the high detail mesh to be displayed, but if you move farther away, it doesn't matter how good the mesh looks. There is no point in making your computer render something that you won't see. The game does the same thing with textures, and that is what mipmaps are for. You don't need to bother making mipmaps, however, so don't stress out about it. Photoshop will do it for you (I think S4S will, as well). I'm just telling you as an FYI.
So, the pirate ship is kind of confusing. First, it has 5 mesh groups AND 5 diffuse textures. Each mesh group corresponds to a diffuse. To further make things complicated, the UV layouts on two of the mesh groups are going off the UV map. I've no idea what that's about. :-/
The polycount on the pirate ship is almost 14,000 polygons, and aside from deleting the bottom faces of the ship that you won't see since it'd be sitting on the ground, I'm not sure if you could lower the polycount anymore than it already is. However, if your computer can render the blue ship without trouble, I don't see why it couldn't render the pirate ship, assuming of course that you don't have your lot loaded up with a ton of high-poly meshes.
Regarding what to clone, the problem is that if you combine every diffuse into one diffuse you are going to have to reduce the size of the textures to make them all fit into one reasonably sized diffuse. In my experience, you always end up with blurred textures when you drastically resize textures. It seems to me that you could clone the blue ship and make it all work, but you'd have to split up at least one of the pirate ship's mesh groups so that you have 6 mesh groups, and of course whatever mesh group you split will need its own UV map and its own diffuse.
Keep in mind that one of the pirate ship's mesh groups, the one with the smoke (dirt?) on it that is made up of flat planes, has a PhongAlpha shader. The blue ship doesn't have a mesh with the PhongAlpha shader assigned. You'll need to adjust one mesh group to fix this. OR, you could delete the flat planes that have smoke on them. Then, you'd be left with 4 mesh groups and you'd need 6 so you'd have to do some mesh splitting.
As for the trouble your PC is having, of course, you can lower the details settings in the game, and you can play in windowed mode instead of full screen. Reduce the screen resolution in your game's settings as well. Go into task manager and shut down unnecessary processes that run in the background (I'm looking at you, Origin!) Close your browser or at least close some of the tabs if you have a bunch open. That's all I can think of for now. Google "How to Improve Sims 4 Performance."
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 16, 2021 8:08:04 GMT -5
Just noticed something else. The blue ship has less than half the polygons the pirate ship does. And, when you go into the door of the blue ship, notice that there are walls and a ceiling. The way the pirate ship is, and I'm referring to the blend you shared, there are no walls and no ceiling inside the ship. If you go into the ship and look up, you'll see everything that is on the deck of the ship. You will need to add walls and a ceiling, which will, of course, increase the polycount. You could delete some details like maybe one of the lamps, a barrel maybe, some of the smaller details. I dunno.
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Post by Arista on Jul 16, 2021 8:09:45 GMT -5
Thanks for the answers everyone.
I'm not actually trying to replace the blue ship, I'm just cloning the wrecked pirate ship as it is, just opening the door and making it the same size as the blue ship. It's so weird though, just like you said fwecka, that the ship is separated in so many different parts and textures. And that the LOD1 version doesn't work with the LOD0 textures. This is giving me a headache, haha. So that's just the issue, I can't just import the LOD0 over the LOD1. It messes up the textures.
But about the textures, what I meant was..let's say the five ship textures are all 1x1. If I just grab a larger image and paste those 1x1's beside one another, I could just merge the ship and move the UV around to fit the new, bigger texture, right? That's why I asked which deco object has the largest texture.
I do have a few high detailed things running while I play, and I don't have much of an issue with it really, so I don't think the ship will bother the laptop much.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 16, 2021 10:17:57 GMT -5
Yeah, I think you could combine all the textures into one diffuse texture. I just now looked at the textures for the pirate ship and they are all 1024 x 1024. The one with the dirt or smoke or whatever is 512 x 512. If you wanted to make a new texture that is 1024 x 1024 you'd need to size each texture to 512 x 512. This is assuming you don't use the smoke or dirt or whatever texture. I have no idea what it is but if you delete it, you'll be left with four textures and each one would take up 1/4 of your new texture. You could also make a new texture that is 2048 x 2048. Then you wouldn't have to resize the four textures at all. But, honestly, they looked fine when I resized them to half their size. I got significant blurring when resizing them to 256 x 256, however.
If you want to make the ship livable, you'd need to add walls and a ceiling inside, but that could be easily done. Make your walls and ceiling and unwrap them, and set the UV islands to the side off the UV map somewhere. Also, make your new texture by combining all of the textures into one. Then open the new texture you made in Blender in the UV mapping area and assign that texture to your UV islands. You'll need to figure out where to put those new UV islands for the walls and ceiling. There is one texture that is mostly wood slats with some of the scrollwork painted on it that will do nicely. Just plunk your new UV islands there and let them use that part of the texture. To see what you need to do to make adjustments to your new UV islands, press N to open the tab on the right side of the 3D viewport, and down where it says "shading" click the dropdown menu and change it from GLSL to Multitexture. Make sure your shading is set to texture and not solid to see the texture on the mesh. If you move or resize or rotate or adjust in any way the UV islands you will see instantly the changes appear on your mesh. Neato!
Once you've got everything done, save it and that will be your LOD 0, then you'll need to use decimate or maybe dissolve some edges (select an edge, press X, choose Dissolve Edges) or something to reduce the polycount to make your LOD 1. I don't know if you changed the size of the ship or not, but I did a comparison of the LOD 0 and the LOD 1 and the LOD 1 is smaller than LOD 0. As in, smaller in size. The whole thing. If you plan to make this ship livable, making the entire ship smaller won't work for you. Personally, I like dissolving edges to reduce polycount. You have better control over the shape of the mesh that way, in my opinion. Decimate is sloppy and can ruin topology.
Alrighty, well hopefully, this helps!
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Post by Arista on Jul 16, 2021 10:37:02 GMT -5
I was thinking I could just do an ingame wall instead of creating an inside, lol. I'm not super picky, this is all just for personal use, I don't share the things I do mostly. But maybe I should try making an inside in blender instead. Thank you!
If I choose to merge the textures, what object should I clone? So I don't have to use the messy ship package as it is, haha.
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Post by menaceman44 on Jul 16, 2021 16:43:45 GMT -5
Usually you just choose an object that behaves closest to the object you're making and is of a similar size. So, don't go picking a table decoration as a base or you will be able to slot in onto tables!
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Post by Arista on Jul 16, 2021 16:48:13 GMT -5
Oh, right! I'll be careful with that, haha, thank you! I don't actually know how to make a texture bigger, so not sure what object I should go with. Can I just pick a random plant and make the texture bigger somehow? I still need to resize the ship-parts and put them side by side.
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 16, 2021 19:48:33 GMT -5
Before I answer your question, could you tell me, please, do you want to keep the texture that is on mesh group #1? The one that...I think might be water puddles? It looks kind of like smoke, actually. The answer I give you depends on what you want to do with mesh group #1
Edit: Don't clone a plant. It has some sort of transparency built in that I think could be problematic. If you want to keep the flat planes with the water puddles (I'm going to assume that's what it is) you'll need to clone something with glass in it since glass uses the PhongAlpha shader and that shader can handle alpha transparency. I think there's a bathroom cabinet that sits on the floor and has glass if I remember correctly. The meshes that are flat planes with the water puddles on it would need the same cut number as the mesh group with the glass. You'd need, as well, to somehow incorporate the water puddles texture into the diffuse. If you choose to toss out the water puddles, clone a sculpture that has just one mesh group.
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Post by Arista on Jul 17, 2021 7:56:32 GMT -5
Hm, no I don't think the fog/water, whatever it is, is needed really. The ship might as well be dry, so I'm gonna skip that part because transparency is always so messy. Okay! So if I clone a sculpture, how to I enlarge the texture so all the ship-textures fit?
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Jul 18, 2021 3:25:45 GMT -5
First, I'm assuming you know how to get around in Photoshop. If you need help though, feel free to ask. Okay, here's what I did. I downloaded each texture as DDS files and named them 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then, I made a new document in Photoshop and I made the size 2048 x 2048. I then opened each texture in Photoshop and copied and pasted them into my new document (Ctrl + Z to copy; Ctrl + V to paste). I put each texture in one corner and merged them all down so that I had just one layer. Here's how it looks but you wouldn't have the numbers or red lines, of course. I just put them there for demonstration's sake.  Then I made another document. Same size: 2048 x 2048. I then copied and pasted the alpha channel contents of each texture to this new document and put them in each corner the same way I did for the diffuse textures. Note that only #1 and #3 actually have alpha channels. That's because those textures have some transparency as part of them: the net that hangs over the side of the ship, and the sails on the mast. I made a new layer and bucket-filled it with pure white, moved that layer down so it's at the very bottom, then I merged everything down so that I had just one layer. I did that because white allows everything on the texture to be seen, black make things invisible, and grey makes things partially transparent. Naturally, we DO NOT want the contents of textures #2, and #4 to be invisible, lol. Then I copied the alpha channel image I just made, went back to the diffuse that I just made, added an alpha channel (click the channels tab in the lower right corner of Photoshop, then click the little piece of paper icon to make a new channel), and pasted what I just copied into the new channel. Then, you just save it as a DDS using DXT 5 Interpolated Alpha. Done! Here's the image I made for the alpha channel. Again, the red lines and numbers are just for demonstration's sake.  If 2048 x 2048 is too big of a texture, you can easily resize it to 1024 x 1024. I didn't see any quality loss when I did this. Clone a floor sculpture. It should be just one mesh group. And then join all the mesh groups of the ship into one mesh group. You'll need to open the new texture you made into Blender and arrange the UV layout to match the texture. Beyond that, it's just assigning the cut number and making the other LODs. One thing to note. If you are going to just add walls to the inside of the ship in the game, the ship might not be tall enough and the walls might poke out the top. Maybe this won't happen. I don't know. If it does, you can just toss the mesh back into Blender and either raise the ship a little and, if necessary, grab the bottom edges and drag them down to make the ship's sides and that wall with the door longer so that the ship isn't just floating in the air. Edit: You may have to fiddle with the UV layout. I don't think you'll have to resize the UV islands but you may have to fiddle with their placement. A good way to see what you are doing is to first, before you merge the mesh groups, move the UV islands off the map somewhere. Join the mesh groups by selecting everything and pressing Ctrl + J. Press N to open the side panel, and where it says "shading" change the dropdown menu from GLSL to Multitexture. Make sure you have your shading at texture and not solid. You might have to assign the UV islands to the new texture you imported. I could never quite get what people meant from that then the other day a light bulb went off. If the UV area is already showing a texture, press the X button down where it says "new" so that there is no texture in the UV area. Press A to select all the UV islands AND THEN open the new texture you made. Has to be in that exact order, (duh, Fwecka). When you move the UV islands you will see the changes instantly on the mesh. Helps with accurate placement. 2nd Edit: Sorry for all the edits, but there's one more thing I should mention. I noticed that mesh group #2 and mesh group #4 have islands going off the map. I'm not sure what's up with that, actually. It seems to be something EA does with very large objects. Somehow, they have it set up that the UV islands going off the map are sharing one or two of the textures. You'll need to take that into considerations and make adjustments to the affected UV islands. Otherwise, there will be parts of the ship that will have no texture. |
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