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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Oct 2017 at 12:42 PM Last edited by sam&skye : 10th Oct 2017 at 3:03 PM.
Default Running into problems trying to remove shininess (need help editing specular)
I'm currently trying to edit the ranch kitchen set that came with I think Pets. I've successfully made some defaults and edited their masks and stencils so that the golden handles would be CASTable, but they're shiny. (By that I mean they're always shiny no matter what material you choose in CASt, and if you choose a shiny material in addition they will be way too dark, see screenshot #2.)

Now I've already figured out that it's the specular that makes them shiny, but I'm getting the weirdest issues trying to edit it. I have this completely empty specular saved that I pulled out of the corner counter and never touched, and that is the only one that ever seems to work.

The counters and fridge get weird shapes on them even if I do use said untouched empty specular (but only when choosing a shiny material in CASt), see screenshot #4.

The trashcompactor and dishwasher just won't give up on their shininess either way, see screenshot #5.

The stove has a cooktop that I want to leave unCAStable and shiny as it is. So what I did with that one is I cut the previously golden parts that are now CAStable completely out of the specular. (As in, I selected everything that's handle/metal part around the knobs, and hit Ctrl + X) and left the parts that are the cooktop alone. That was just an (un)educated guess and as you see, it hasn't worked. (See screenshot #3 for what happens when I import anything but the empty specular that I've used on the counters, everything previously perma-shiny will look pitch black when choosing a shiny material in CASt.)

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what my mistake is, or is there a tutorial that can help me here? (I've tried to find one, I promise)
Screenshots
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Virtual gardener
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#2 Old 11th Oct 2017 at 3:18 PM
There could be 2 reasons why this is happening. One being the fact that the specular map isn't done right, the other might be your material settings So in TSRW, if you go to the mesh tab, and your group (In this case just the mesh's group, not the shadow map one). And go to the materials tab. You should now see this 3 dotted button. Click that one

Now a window will show up. These are the materials/shader settings. What we want to look for is the shininess level. The orignal shininess level is always set to 10. 20 being the highest for it not to go all glowy. If it's over about 200 or 50, things will be quite glowy. What it does, is increasing the highlights spots on your specular map, so they're more visible and thus, more shinier.

If that isn't the case, would you mind if I looked at your specular map? Just the package/sims3pack file or even just the dds file is fine!
Instructor
Original Poster
#3 Old 11th Oct 2017 at 4:08 PM
Thanks for your answer, it would be really awesome if you'd have a look at this.

Do you by any chance know what part of a package is responsible for settings like the shininess level exactly, so I can try to do this in s3pe? I tried in TSRW, but TSRW seems to bork defaults (they show up as custom objects after exporting them from TSRW rather than replacing the originals.) If I know what resource gets changed when doing these settings, I can do it in TSRW and then import it into my package using s3pe.
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Instructor
Original Poster
#4 Old 26th Oct 2017 at 11:11 AM
*bump* ...
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#5 Old 26th Oct 2017 at 2:25 PM
I know you can edit the specular with Texture Tweaker. I don't know if it would exactly help you much, but I suppose that at the very least you could edit -just- the specular, save as a new file, then have S3PE compare the two files to see what is different.

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Virtual gardener
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#6 Old 28th Oct 2017 at 4:44 PM
Oops sorry for the long wait! I actually did notice your maps were a bit too bright, so I made a small guide on what works well



Low specular: Will be pretty much not as shiny, or some shine at least. but... low.
Medium specular: Will have some shine but not as much
High specular: Is really shiny

NOTE: Do no use a solid black or white texture as specular map, your mesh will appear really shiny because the game will be confused!
(Also keep in mind that patterns have specular maps as well, for example the metal patterns will make objects shiny too).

The Counters though had a mask that isn't compatible with objects... or at least not with yours It seemed to be exported as a DXT5 which isn't the correct format. You want to have the DXT1 for that one. It also seemed to have 2 specular maps for both modular objects, and for some reason I can't seem to find where the other textures are coming from that seem to be linked from

The other objects... question, when cloning them with S3OC, did you click the renumber button or not? Not that it has much to do with it but for some reason all your packages seem to have textures in them that aren't even in the package in the first place (Exception for the shadow map texture of course)
Mad Poster
#7 Old 28th Oct 2017 at 7:20 PM
One of the interesting things to note, and I recall this because it initially confused me, is that the specularity of a pattern applied to a object in BuildBuy influences the specularity of the object it's applied to, but the same isn't true for CAS. In CAS, everything has a set specularity determined by the CAS item's specular map. In BuildBuy, I believe the specularity is determined by multiplying the specularity of the object itself with the specularity of the pattern applied to it.

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Virtual gardener
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#8 Old 5th Nov 2017 at 6:51 PM
I actually came across a tutorial and totally forgot about this option!:

(Scroll down to 'Glowing control (optional)' aka normaleditor) http://poccisims3.blogspot.com/2014...-making_13.html

Maybe that's the case for some of the shiny objects?
Instructor
Original Poster
#9 Old 25th Nov 2017 at 4:19 PM
Quickly answering because i just noticed that I've abandoned the thread. (I'm also really out of patience with this and decided I'll have a short break from creating. Solutions for Sims-problems have a habit of coming to me out of nowhere once I lay it aside. So just wanted to leave a message that the help is appreciated and I will actually try the suggestions at some point...)

As for the mask, I did that for some objects because they have 4 channels, so I needed an alpha channel... I thought that DXT1 didn't save alpha channels. Did I get that wrong?

I'm like 99% sure that when I edited those additional textures in the counter packages to test where those are coming from, it was the corner counters that changed. So that's probably where the textures are coming from that confused you.

I unchecked the rename/renumber internally thingy - is that what you mean?
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