Mini-tutorial: How to change light settings / light colour for custom TS2 lamp using SimPe.
It’s very easy. You replace the name inside Light Names and cLightRefNode with another TS2 light name. You’ll find the light names inside custom lamps you have in your game (those that work properly, ofc) OR you can clone a TS2 lamp and inspect the light name. Use the light name found in CRES / cLightRefNode, NOT in STR Light Names.
In most cases replacing the name inside CRES / cLightRefNode is enough to make it work - that’s the most important bit. Buuut.. it’s good practice to fill out the STR# Light Names as well.
More info, Light names and sample pics below the cut!
A tip for TS2 cc creators using Milkshape. You can fix thoseugly dark spots with Extended Manual Edit plugin if you’re patient enough by copying normal values from one vertex to another.
New look for all ingredient meshes, exept the sun gem - but now it’s smaller and glows in the dark. Mystic dust mortar replaced with a small glass jar.
Tweaked mortar and smoother sun gem are available as deco items with two subsets:
TS2 CC clothing texture quality: Bodyshop vs SimPe
Bodyshop doesn’t do great job at converting textures. That’s most visible in case of plain dark colours. It doesn’t handle transparency very well either.
This tutorialby @poppet-sims explains how to manually replace textures inside recolour files using SimPe & DDS builder. It’s about Buymode recolours but parts of it also apply to CAS stuff.
This method is much more convenient than juggling BMP files in Projects folder.
DXT5 outperforms DXT3 when it comes to alpha transparency. In case of plain-coloured textures, DXT3 and DXT5 will give you the same results* (that’s why I didn’t add the third pic for the grey dress - I did both but couldn’t tell them apart
😉
)
* or almost the same, if you have some very thin details, especially light on dark, these can become a bit crunchy as DTX3
Reposting, because some TS2 creators really, really need to learn.
My tutorial applies to CAS recolours, like hair, accessories, clothing. BUT in case of CAS stuff it’s actually one step less - you edit the texture name in the properties. That’s it.
(You want to repo EM clothes to AM clothes? That’s the exact same trick)
There’s no need for identical 1024x1024 textures duplicated a few times, for each age, in a single recolour file.
Like:
🧑🏻🧑🏻🧑🏻🧑🏻 or 🧦🧦🧦🧦
Clean up your CC guys
Maybe your game doesn’t mind 15 GB inside DL folder. Maybe you have infinite disc space - I don’t. And I’m pretty sure most Simmers don’t have that either.
You’ll need SimPe, 3D software like Milkshape or Blender 2.79b and 2D software like Photoshop or Gimp.
First part is easy. I’ve described my process of creating a texture for TS2 cc object that already has a working shadow subset.
Second / more advanced part is not exactly a step-by step tut, but it contains various tips and explains what resources are required to create a shadow subset.
Mini tutorial on how to improve catalogue thumbnails for custom TS2 decor items using SimPe
Tiny object mesh combined with large shadow mesh often results in crappy thumbnail (even if you can’t see the ground shadow that doesn’t mean there isn’t one).
The most popular TS2 deco cloning material ever: Fruit bowl & Chinese vase
both come with custom (non-standard) thumbnail camera settings. Vase settings may work well for some cc meshes but usually don’t. Fruit bowl camera settings are sh*t.
Note: obviously you can also replace the shadow with a smaller one.
Note2: By “the entire mesh” I meant: everything above the ground level ;)
And if you’d ratherfix a shadow instead of removing it, I did a tut on that.
Sometimes it’s enough to clear out custom thumbnail camera settings in thumbnailExtension. Sometimes removing
or resizing the shadow will do the trick - often it’s both.
All original recolors are bundled with the meshes. I re-used Veranka's GUIDs, so you can't have both versions at the same time. I also lowered the price from a whopping §6000+ to a more reasonable §800 in line with Maxi's entertainment items.
pixelated-finds
