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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 11, 2024 15:58:12 GMT -5
Hi I've converted a suitcase from CP with the goal of making it into a storage base game backpack clone and hopefully also a carriable growing together suitcase. I have two issues: 1)In S4Studio it appears with the decal meshes missing and in game showing only the decal but the mesh shape is showing as black. I could just get rid of them and put the decals on with Photoshop, but I'm curious why is this happening and can I fix it differently? 2) In game the converted item, while functioning as I want (at least as a storage, haven't tested as a suitcase yet) is showing a strange transparency that I've seen on other converted items from this game by other creators, how can I make the mesh (and possibly fix others) to look solid? I've only tested my diffuse map and the mesh, so I wondered if it is due to the other maps being the original backpacks but don't think it is that... When it comes to the missing parts, I did delete islands and areas but they were all invisible or inside the case (the original mesh has the main case and the lid as separate meshes; in cyberpunk the case opens for loot, I don't need that so I manually joined the two parts and deleted parts of the objects that were imo unnecessary or hidden) and therefore I thought I didn't need them, I couldn't see any difference after removing them and the case looks solid in my blender view. Also I don't see how that affected the decals, they just came on there, I didn't delete anything. Attaching files of my package, the diffuse, the mesh used in the package (sims suitcase blend) and the original mesh before I joined it and attached it. |
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Post by sp00kitty on Sept 11, 2024 17:21:43 GMT -5
Helloo  I've had a look at your files and FIY I'm not by any means a pro, I've only used Blender for a month and I've never converted any objects but mainly make my own incl textures, so I don't know all the terms and I can't guarantee all I say is correct, but I like the challenge of problem solving. Your mesh has several material layers, the decal and other parts of the suitcase are on separate layers/images. For S4S everything needs be merged into one image to import to the "diffuse" file with the correct UV map, I don't know if there is some sort of merge option in Blender besides baking which can be somewhat tricky. I'd say to just export the UV layout and manually combining the different materials and colours you want in a 2D editor of your choice. You can see this in "material" in Blender, or open the UV editor and click through the different images to find the parts you want and save the images you need. The mesh parts containing the decal/stickers need to have a transparent background when making the diffuse image, if not they will show up with a black background. The strange transparency issue I think comes from LODs where you import your mesh. The shadow lods is what the sun will reflect on in game if your object is placed outside and it's still the backpack. In your video file the transparency issue disappears where the backpack would originally be so I'm fairly certain it's that. To make a shadow LOD, make a copy of your blender file, open it and delete the white square "s4studio_mesh_0" and in the "Scene" tab to the right, change the cut of "submesh_01_LOD_1" from 1 to 0, save it and import to the shadow lod. For the bump and spec images you can use some clear ones while testing as the current ones might give some weird textures. Here you can download them. Hope this helps and apologies that I'm not the best at explaining. I do recommend reading through the Tutorial Index on here for more helpful tips. |
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 11, 2024 17:36:06 GMT -5
Hi thanks so much for your reply!
Yeah I used a separate blend from before to make the diffuses by transferring one UV map to the new one which is the baked diffuse image i've attached and ready, I have baked these textures before so I think that is fine and my diffuse looks alright and matches my new UVs, the mesh i've uploaded is just the one I use as the mesh for s4studio after joining and removing the old uvs, so I've already arranged all the uvs and have my diffuse texture.
So I think I need to make the decal have a transparent background like you say but how do I do this part? where is that setting when baking that mesh?
The original decals image that I baked from was transparent aside from the pictures. And my diffuse after baking is also not having these black parts, so it's the decal mesh itself. Where is the transparent option?
Thanks about the info on the LOD shadow I'll try that out!
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 11, 2024 17:43:52 GMT -5
I've added another image of just the decal meshes and their texture image they originally used
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Post by sp00kitty on Sept 11, 2024 18:28:08 GMT -5
Ah apologies, my mistake! I opened the wrong diffuse picture in my 2D editor, I thought I was opening the one from your package file, I can see it's transparent. :D I have so little experience with layering materials so the all the different nodes in the shader tab throws me off badly haha.
I'm still trying to pin-point the exact issue myself, I do like the practice. I started fresh with a new package file and exported a random object to Blender and replaced it with your suitcase along with the UV map and only linked your diffuse image to it. I do see some transparency issues with the front and the stickers so I'll see if I find a way to fix them.
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 11, 2024 18:47:30 GMT -5
Yeah it's ok! it is odd, I somehow need to tell the mesh that the part without a picture needs to be transparent but don't know how to do this and I can't find anything that is like what I need, some say to import into a plant so that it is alpha (I think this is to mean transparent parts of mesh?) but I don't want the object to be decorative I need it to have that function.
Then I've read about a glass shader for transparent objects hair, etc but can't find it or what to do
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Post by sp00kitty on Sept 11, 2024 19:34:59 GMT -5
Honestly I was really scratching my head even after starting fresh. I thought it still looked strange in Blender and couldn't understand why it shouldn't work and was thinking the best option might be to UV unwrap it again so it's just the suitcase and then add the stickers and details directly on it in my 2D editor, to avoid anything to do with transparency haha. But I went ahead and just tried to open it in game anyways cause I know it can show up differently and I think it's fixed now! Here is a screenshot, don't worry about the weird shadows, I didn't change the shadow lod or the flat shadow of the table I replaced it with. But the transparency looks to be working as it should! Here is how I set it up in Blender and how it was looking. I saw the suitcase was missing the rig modifier in your blender file, I don't know if that might have had something to do with it but that's partly why I started fresh and joined it with a new object just to have all bases covered. Also the package file I made wasn't listed as debug but I don't think that should matter. So my solution would simply be to export the backpack blender file again and open it while having your suitcase open in a second blender window. Copy your suitcase in object mode and paste into the backpack one, that'll copy UVs as well. Join them up so that your suitcase gets all the same specs as the backpack and link your diffuse image in the Shader tab, and if it looks like my one did then hopefully it should look correct in game. I'm sure one of the mods would be able to confirm where the issue is, but hopefully this works as an alternative. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 12, 2024 4:56:34 GMT -5
Hi. For the material to display transparency, you need to either edit it or clone something that already does. This is why stickers have black background. Alternatively, you bake stickers to the texture of the suitcase with Selected to active. In s4s the background is blue because this is how s4s displays transparent background, it can be ignored.
You see shadows of other objects through yours because yours doesnt have a proper shadow lod. Export the original and compare it to yours. One meshgroup with cut 0, no vertex groups, uv maps, color attributes. Also, your suitcase in lod 0 isnt assigned to transformbone |
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 12, 2024 7:19:48 GMT -5
Hi! I've had a chance to do all this today. Thanks, I have fixed the Shadow Lod like sp00kitty said (I had no idea this exists so thank you) How is the method to bake the stickers to the texture by selected to active? I'm interested in this cause it might work better than what I'm currently doing. Instead of doing the importing to an item thing (I was gonna try after) I found how to make alpha mask for diffuse and edit the threshold and it worked mostly, aside from some small imperfections around edges of stickers or difficult parts like the see through three shapes on the front decal which I'm working on, not sure if in the right way yet. I've used threshold 128 of alpha mask according to the video explanation of the shaders that ravasheen did but haven't tested another number. The decal of these three shapes on the front looks better. I don't know if this is overcomplicating it or is it better to just import to say a object with transparency then export and import again to the backpack so it is functional, like what Spookitty did with the table? If I import it to an item with transparency do I also need an alpha mask on my diffuse to tell it where to be transparent? For now I'm interested in the bake selected to active method, and to know if it is a good idea to do this editing alpha mask method. This is my progress so far in photos and videos
Edit: there is a part in the video where I showed black patches on the top of the case but that I think is just a problem of how I've arranged the uvs, I'll probably redo them or manually get rid of it. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 13, 2024 2:09:32 GMT -5
- open a version of the package where stickers had their original uvs and textures. If you dont have it anymore, just assign a new material to the package and plug image sockets into correct ones in the material; - create a new image node with a new blank image with alpha at 0, select this node; - separate stickers from the suitcase; - s elect the stickers first, then the suitcase, Bake type to diffuse, Indirect and Direct disabled, margin to 6; - enable Selected to active, change both Extrusion and Max ray distance to about 0.0002, bake; - this way you'll get an image just with re-located decals. If you want to bake them to the baked texture of the suitcase, just use it instead of the blank one and disable Clear image
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 13, 2024 6:17:03 GMT -5
Thank you! I've finished making it the other way but I'll try this out too. |
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 13, 2024 11:01:09 GMT -5
Hi again, I am now trying to turn the case into a growing together suitcase. Is the data transfer the same as clothing? I don't know whether to check uvs or just uv 1 or not do it at all
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 13, 2024 11:33:56 GMT -5
It makes sense to transfer data only with objects affected by many bones that slowly blend into each other ( beds duvets, for example ). In other cases you need bones to affected meshes in specific locations.It is very unlikely that your objects matches the maxis one exactly for that to happen through weight transfer, so best to just do it manually. In this case, the suitcase has only two bones: _bind_suitcaseBody and transformBone. The first one does not affect the mesh at all, so you just add it to the list and thats all. As for uv_1, just duplicate and rename uv_0 Edit: ah, _bind_suitcaseBody affects the mesh on a different geostate, so you just everything but the handle, select transformBone, click on Remove, then select _bind_suitcaseBody, and assign it |
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Post by moonbiscuitsims on Sept 13, 2024 11:44:07 GMT -5
Thanks! Will try this out.
Yes I've just been duplicating uv_0 wondering what is the point so thanks for clearing that up.
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 13, 2024 11:45:19 GMT -5
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I've had a look at your files and FIY I'm not by any means a pro, I've only used Blender for a month and I've never converted any objects but mainly make my own incl textures, so I don't know all the terms and I can't guarantee all I say is correct, but I like the challenge of problem solving.
