Comments
- Some times they are the opposite for some hairs. I'm guessing it's how the game handles cas vs in game0
Explored everything there’s to explore? Here’s a brand new Shang Simla tomb for you.
Explore some more?Check out Desert Palace, a tomb especially created for RFlong7’s amazing upcoming world.- edited April 2018Here are two of the problematic hairs. All of the hairs with this issue are made by the same person.2
- I'm not 100% sure, but my guess based on the appearance of your other textures is that it's a combination of your texture quality being set to low and the fact that CAS will always have better graphics than the game itself. If I had to guess, it's because CAS is less intensive and doesn't have an entire world to try to render. That's what I think is happening at least. lol
And the reason it would happen on some hair and not others probably comes down to quality and poly count. Every CC hair that someone makes should have multiple versions of the mesh to go along with difference graphical settings. Basically, they need a high quality mesh and a low quality mesh. And I feel like a lot of people either don't set a low quality one, which might cause problems for people not running on high settings, or they just use DirectX Mesh tools in Milkshape and willy nilly drag the slider down to reduce the poly count with no real thought put into how it might affect how the mesh looks in-game. - edited April 2018@Emily4331 I could never see much difference between medium and high for most settings, so I have everything on medium for the sake of better performance. Based on what you said, I changed texture detail and sims detail to high and very high respectively. The grass looks a bit sharper, but the hairs still look the same.0
- edited April 2018@Emily4331 I could never see much difference between medium and high for most settings, so I have everything on medium for the sake of better performance. Based on what you said, I changed texture detail and sims detail to high and very high respectively. The grass looks a bit sharper, but the hairs still look the same.
It is worth noting that your computer will only display what it can. If you have your settings on medium for better performance, that tells me you're running the game on a not-so powerful computer. So whether your settings are low, med, or high, the hair will render in-game as best your computer can do it.
So this hearkens back to what I said about poly count mattering. You might have just been lucky to get relative medium poly count hairs, but these ones were potentially made with a high poly count that your computer just can't process well. - edited April 2018When I was making the sims to run a test game with the hairs, because I had problems with other CC hairs from TSR in the past, my husband remarked that one of the hairs looked more like feathers than hair. I didn't notice while I was making them, but you can see in that first picture, even in CAS, up on the left side of her part, there's a dark spot that looks like the same bad texture that shows in the game, and in the lower left there's a bumpy looking area. When I went back into CAS to get pictures to post here, I noticed that all of the hairs that look bad in the game have those same issues in CAS, except that one on the little girl.
I find it a bit hard to believe the problem could be my computer, because it's a relatively high performance gaming computer. I keep my graphics settings low because that's one of the many suggestions on the list at NRaas on improving gaming performance, and I have vision issues that make it hard to tell the difference anyway. And back when I had a lesser computer, and I asked about specs for playing without issues, everybody who answered insisted that the only way anybody could play long term saves without game-breaking issues was to follow those steps, because the game itself is the issue.
Oh well, I guess I'll just do without those hairs and see if I can find some for children and toddlers from a different creator. I found lots of good adult hairs by Nightcrawler and a few other creators that look just as good in the game as in CAS. Maybe some of them made some child and toddler hairs too. - edited April 2018Isn't it possible that the problem indeed lies with the hair? That the simmer who created it forgot something or... well, I have no idea how creating CC goes, but something like that? If it's only the hairstyles of this modder giving the issue.
Explored everything there’s to explore? Here’s a brand new Shang Simla tomb for you.
Explore some more?Check out Desert Palace, a tomb especially created for RFlong7’s amazing upcoming world. - edited April 2018Then, honestly, you probably just downloaded some poorly made cc.
- edited April 2018Isn't it possible that the problem indeed lies with the hair? That the simmer who created it forgot something or... well, I have no idea how creating CC goes, but something like that? If it's only the hairstyles of this modder giving the issue.
I have never made CC hair or even attempted to, but I do have knowledge of creating CC in general.
To me, if it isn't a problem with computer specs, then my next logical assumption would be that the hair is poorly made. The texture doesn't look to be the problem more than how shadows are being cast on the hair. So whoever created the hair probably just screwed up in its creation, so the game can't properly figure out how shadows should be cast on the hair.
From what I have read, CC hair is a pain to create and make look and perform well. So, really @IreneSwift just downloaded a couple that weren't made very well.
Edit: from re-examining the pics you can tell it is shadows because CAS would have no shadows, but in-game would have a ton of shadow play. Which is why it doesn't show up in CAS.
Also, I wonder if it might be a problem with the hair mesh itself. If a 3D object is made poorly to begin with, no amount of good texturing is going to save it from having problems. I almost want to say there are multiple instances of 2 vertices occupying the same spot.
If you could, could you link the hair? I want to take a closer look at it. - I looks like hairstyle from skysims, or one of the other pre-2012 sims 3 hair creators.My wishlist! Give items if you want!!! (RANDOM ORDER)
Ultimate cc-list
My top 5 - edited April 2018I looks like hairstyle from skysims, or one of the other pre-2012 sims 3 hair creators.
Yep. I found the shoulder length hair and it is an old Skysims hair.
I removed doubles (which means verts that sit in the same spot) in Blender and it removed over 3000 of them. So i think that might be the problem. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about CC hair creation to actually fix it. I am a novice in general with CC creation. But from what knowledge I have of 3D modelling, I would say that the weird issue in game has something to do with the huge number of verts that are in the same spots.
So, if I had to guess, the issue is that the weird blocky texture you see in-game is because the light in game is trying to figure out which face it is supposed to be hitting, but it can't because there are so many faces in the exact same spots. If that makes sense. You could try to find a re-done version of this by someone else and they may have fixed the issue. - edited April 2018Yes, all the problematic hair is Skysims, and unfortunately, all of the really good hairstyles for female children I found at TSR are made by Skysims, so they most likely all have the same issue. I looked up Skysim retextures online, and was able to download one of the same ones I had downloaded from TSR (not the ones in the picture). All the other links required me to install something else before I could download, and I'm not willing to do that. But the retexture was just as bad.0
- Yeah, if the retexture is just as bad it is guaranteed a problem with the mesh itself.
- edited April 2018Just did a test put three hairs chosen at random by Skysims from TSR in my game.
All looked perfect,so not sure what could be wrong
Example of one below just took this in game
Now I have to go uninstall don't want CC in my game.5 - @CravenLestat So maybe they aren't all bad then. Unfortunately, the female child and toddler hairs I like the best are bad. It's such a shame. Skyskims made such adorable toddler hairs especially. Nothing else I saw from other creators even came close.
@Emily4331 I don't know anything at all about CC creation. You said you found and removed the doubles but you don't know how to fix it. I take it that means just removing the doubles and saving it wouldn't do it, correct? Also in your other post, you said it's definitely the mesh. Does that mean there's no fix to it even if someone does know how to make CC?1 - @IreneSwift Am not a CC guy but dang gotta agree while picking hairs their stuff is really cute.If interested the one in my picture is a Ashley Tisdale hair3
- @IreneSwift I can see if I can fix it, but I'm just not sure my knowledge of CC creation, especially CC hair creation, is enough for me to properly fix it. Someone with more knowledge could, probably.
- @Emily4331 Oh, don't go to the trouble on my account. I can live without it. I did get a lot of other adult female hairs from other creators, most of which look good in game on the test sims I tried them on. I also got a few child hairs of both genders, though the styles are not as nice as Skysims'.0
- That is the trouble with CC. A lot of people edit their pictures so you can't be sure the quality is as good as it appears to be until you try it out yourself. Glad you were able to find some other styles that looked good, though!
- Oh! And you should try looking here: http://sssvitlans.tumblr.com/tagged/s3childhair
That tumblr is how I find all of my CC and I have run into a couple poorly made pieces, but overall the quality has been good. - @Emily 4331 Thank you for the link. Those are nice hairs. I especially like the second one on the page, which looks similar to my favorite of the Skysims toddler hairs, which has a big bow tying back the hair. But the bow wasn't the main thing I liked it for, so that one will be a great substitute.1
- The hairs in question aren't much of an eyesore in my game. I do see some kind of slight distortion but not like the pictures shown which I think Emily4331 was right the first time about the graphics. Some cc hairs only look good with high settings. These hairs I downloaded from TSR Skysims. It's not flawless but it's not bad. By the way, my graphics are maxed out except high detail lots. 1920 x 1080 resolution.
Now I'm going back to playing Pokémon Ultra Sun.3 - There's no way my graphics card could be the problem, because it is major overkill for the Sims 3. So I decided to play around with the settings some more. What I tried before, that I said didn't make it any better, was to set texture detail and sim detail as high as they would go. This time I started by setting everything as high as it would go, except anything specific to something having nothing to do with sims, like reflections and high detail lots, and I set shadows to low. This is the result:
I did some more experimenting, turning most of the settings back to medium, but trying different combinations of settings for sim detail, texture detail, and shadows. Even with shadows on low and the other two as high as they would go, it was still bad. I finally tried setting visual effects to high. This is what I got:
As you can see, it is just as good as the other. I tried lowering sim detail again, because that's the only setting of the three that will affect game performance, but it was bad again. So I guess I will try playing with sim detail on very high and see what happens. I had so many problems with my game for so many years, before the current computer, I am a little paranoid about taking any risks with game performance, especially when I do still have occasional lag and freezes. But I've concluded recently that those are most likely from sims getting stuck somewhere, so it probably won't make any difference to have that one setting higher.1 - I forgot to add to my last post, I want to thank all of you who helped me get this issue solved. I didn't expect to be able to use those hairs, and I'm delighted to be able to after all.3
If you already have an EA Account, you can log in to TheSims3.com with your EA ID to create a persona name for The Sims 3 Community. Learn More About Origin Log In With Your EA Account. I hate the way most CC hair for Sims 3 looks in game, and how there's always something off with it (weird hairlines, floating off the sim's body, overly glossy/metal-like textures, generally looking out of place, etc). Even a lot of maxis-match retextures of alpha hair in Sims 3 still bother me.
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Base Textures
Base textures can be thought of as the 'canvas' the game 'paints' the patterns and colors onto. The game uses the Alpha layer of the base texture to determine what parts of the texture you want displayed. Whereas the base texture itself adds details to the CAS part like wrinkles and folds. Altering the base texture can turn bland boring opera gloves into beautiful tattoos like these.
What This Tutorial Will Do
- Teach you how to alter the base textures of CAS parts in the Sims 3.
- Teach you how to add translucent effects to base textures.
What This Tutorial Will NOT Do
- Show you step by step how to make a tattoo!
- Following this tutorial will lay the foundations, but it'll take a lot more work and practice to actually make them look good.
- Teach you how to make new meshes.
- Teach you how to make new patterns.
- Take a look at HP's Custom Pattern Tutorial for that.
- Add multicolored RGB masks
- Take a look at Basic Mask Editing for that.
Difficulty
- This tutorial is written for beginners, however, some basic knowledge on how to use your imaging program is needed.
- Keep in mind that the more intricate and detailed you want your finished product to be, the more tweaking and practice you'll need.
- Although a tattoo was used as an example, it's advised to start simpler... consider that a warning.
What You'll Need
- Adobe Photoshop (purchase) or GIMP 2.0 (free)
- DDS Plug-in for Photoshop or GIMP
The Tutorial
Part I: Extracting the Base Texture
Step 1
Open the CAS Texture Unitool (CTU).
Step 2
In the 'Find A CAS Part' tab, set the CAS part details to the parameters of the mesh you wish to change the base texture of. (i.e. Adult-Female-Accessory) Next choose the mesh you want to use from the drop down list (i.e. afAccessoryGlovesLong_fitted).
Step 3
Sims 4 Textures
Move over to the 'Designs' tab and click 'Add New Design'.
Step 4
Under the 'Textures' sub-tab click the base texture key to highlight it.
Step 5
Being sure that the base texture key is highlighted, click on the 'find' button at the bottom of the window.
Step 6
A DDS Preview window should pop up. Click the Export button at the bottom right corner of the preview window. Choose a destination for the file, give it a name, then save it.
Part II: Editing
Open up the newly exported DDS file in your image editor. If asked, load default sizes and do not generate MIPmaps.
Note: If you get an image that looks like the one below, then you accidentally generated the MIPmaps. Close the file and reopen it, being sure to NOT LOAD MIPMAPS!
Now here comes the fork in the road. There are two things you can do with the base texture: change the way the alpha looks, or change the way the base texture itself looks.
Editing the Alpha
- The alpha channel controls what pieces of the CAS parts you want displayed. You can turn a conservative one-piece swimsuit into a Bay Watchesque skin fest by just removing parts of the alpha channel.
- There are three methods to change the alpha channel: the 'subtractive' method, the 'trace' method and the 'cut-out' method.
Note: The cut-out method only works for Photoshop users.
A Little Info
- Black areas in the Alpha are completely hidden in the game.
- White areas are completely opaque in the game.
- Grey areas between RGB values 151/151/151 - 149/149/149, give a translucent affect to the texture. 151/151/151 is the lightest (think highlights) whereas 149/149/149 is the darkest.
Subtractive Method
- Make sure your canvas background color is set to black
- Click on the channel view and hide all channels except the Alpha channel.
- Using the eraser, erase the major parts of the Alpha image that will not be a part of your new base texture.
- Use the paint brush to add details and shading using the colors mentioned above.
Trace Method
- Change your canvas background color to white
- Create a new layer on top of the base texture
- Design what you want your new base texture to look like. (Use the existing base texture as sort of a guide.)
- When you finish, switch over to the Channels view, and delete the existing Alpha channel.
- Create a new Alpha channel and make it visible.
- Pick one other color channel and make it visible as well.
- Erase the general area of where your base texture design is located
- Using the paintbrush, fill in any unwanted areas with black. (Note: although black might be selected, your paint might appear as a different color).
- Next, hide the other color channel, keeping the Alpha channel visible. Add details and shading using the grey scale colors mentioned above.
Cut-Out Method
- Create a new layer on top of the base texture
- In that new layer, design what you want your new base texture to look like. (Use the existing base texture as sort of a guide.
- When you finish, hold CTRL + Layer (click the layer with your new base texture design on it; if your design spans over multiple layers, merge them down into one layer. DO NOT MERGE IN THE ORIGINAL BASE TEXTURE) This should select your entire design.
- Switch over to the Channels view, and delete the existing Alpha channel.
- Create a new Alpha channel
- With the Alpha channel selected, hit ALT + Delete (this should make a basic cut-out of your new base texture design). If ALT + Delete doesn't work, try CTRL + Delete
- Using the eraser and the paintbrush, clean up the cutout and add details and shading using the colors mentioned above.
The End Result
Depending on how complicated your new CAS part is, you might have to use a combination of the three methods. Regardless, your end result should more or less look like this:
Note: It does not have to be as intricate as this! Adding greyscale details and shading is totally optional. If you're a beginner you should just stick to a plain white alpha channel for now, anyways! :)
Tip: To get a feel for where the highlights/lowlights would go, try making the alpha channel plus one other color channel visible while editing. See the example below.
Editing the Base Texture
- The base texture is the foundation of your CAS part. Using our example with the glove texture, you can see how the cloth wrinkles and highlights are already painted in. Here is where you'd change how the CAS part appears to wrinkle and fold. For example, if you were making a tattoo or something that was skin tight, you'd want to erase and smooth out a few of the wrinkles, and vice-versa for looser fitting clothes.
- Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, some editing directly on the base texture is needed. Generally, if you're making something that has recolorable parts (like a tattoo) then some solid outlines might be required.
- Take the tiger tattoo for example; On the alpha, the area where the tiger stripes are supposed to be are completely white, which means that that specific area on the texture is 100% visible. On the base texture itself you can see that the tiger stripes are already inked in. You see, if the tiger stripes weren't already drawn in, the game would show nothing but a plain tiger like cut-out with a few highlights thrown in the mix.
- You can also add color to the base texture. It may be hard to see, but there's a slight tint added to the tiger to give it more color definition. Remember how the different greyscale hues create different translucent effects? Well we can use that to our advantage to add the aforementioned highlights and also create varying hues withing the texture.
- Editing on the base texture itself is 99.9% optional, it all depends on what you're trying to change about your CAS part. If you simply want to make a pair of socks longer or turn a halter into skimpy mid-drift, then you don't really need to do any extra editing to the base texture, all you need to do is change the alpha.
Part III: Saving the Base Texture
Step 1
Depending on what you changed about the base texture dictates what you need to do next.
If you only changed the alpha...
- Make all color channels visible again.
- Switch back to the Layers tab and hide any extra layers you may have created. Leave only the original grey background texture visible.
- Next, flatten the image.
If you only changed the base texture...
- Hide any layers that are not part of the final base texture.
- Next, flatten the image.
If you changed them both...
- Make all color channels visible again.
- Switch back to the Layers tab and hide any layers that are not part of the final base texture.
- Next, flatten the image
Step 2
Go to File → Save As. Pick D3D/DDS as your save format from the drop down list.
Make sure that the Alpha Channels box is ticked. Give the file a name, then click save. When you do the DDS plug-in box should come up.
Step 3
In the long drop box, pick DXT5 ARGB 8bpp | interpolated alpha, then press save.
GIMP Users: Pick the BC3/DXT5 format and tick Generate Mipmaps , then press okay.
Make sure the MIPmaps are generated.
See Replacing Textures to learn how to add your new base texture to a CAS Part.
Sims 3 Ea Hair Textures Pack
Hints, Tips and Other Tidbits
- Some find it easier to use the Skin Specular in place of the Base Texture as for skin tight things like tattoos a body marks.
- Just FYI, although tattoos were used as an example, you'll need to learn how to create RBG masks to get them to color right.
Questions?
- For more help, go to the MTS forum about this tutorial.
Ea Games
Special thanks to Robokity for letting me pick apart her fabulous tattoos
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