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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 8:19 AM Last edited by peacemaker IC : 21st Nov 2014 at 2:50 PM.
Default Shiny Hair issue [SOLVED]
I have been trying to tweak this hair for 2 days but I keep encountering the same issue each time; the hair is so shiny when I put it in-game. I used CAS Tools to remove the specular on both the base female hair file which I exported the meshes from, and the base male hair file I am over-writing. However, it is still shiny and clearly interfering with the transparent parts of the mesh. I thought I may have made a mistake tweaking this in Milkshape, but I started from scratch again and ended up with the same result. I do occasionally have this happen to clothing as well, where usually remaking the clothing part fixes the issue. I assume the mesh is referencing another specular from the game because there is no specular to reference in the package. I would love to include the specular, but I have left the base specular in too, and the mesh still comes out shiny.

What I would like to know is whether is is possible to fix this issue by someone that has encountered it. I didn't have this many issues last time I messed with hair. It is really de-motivational when things don't go smoothly and you just can't figure out what is wrong. Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated because I am at my wits end trying to figure out how to save this project.

In the meantime I may just try and import the original specular as see where it needs to be linked in the package file to see if that solves the issue -_-
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Lab Assistant
#2 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 1:48 PM
If it's alpha hair, you will need normal map referenced in your mesh too. Look at this posts:here
If it's not alpha hair it may be a smoothing groups problem. Can you attach a screenshot?
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 6:41 AM
*facepalm*

The picture didn't attach to the first post because I am totally obvious to the error message I got about it being png format. It is just a female to male TS4 hair conversion. I wanted to fix the issue and tweak it a bit so it was less 'poofy'.
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
#4 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 9:27 AM
Ok, this looks like a normals issue.
This hair uses a mesh, bigger than the hairy area to draw little hair roots on the face and uses face texture instead of transparency. It's in the shape of the strange shine exactly and looks like something messed up it's normals.
Make sure autosmooth is not checked in the groups tab in milkshape, always. Checking autosmooth causes shiny meshes like this or if you used any kind of smoothing on it, don't use it.
I hope this fixes the issues you are having with other meshes too.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 9:46 AM
Nope, autosmooth was definitely off as I had that issue when I was creating TS3 clothing and was one of the first things I checked :/

with the clothing, I can use the same mesh from Milkshape, unchanged and just remake the cloned package with CAS Tools again and the issue goes away. It just doesn't work with this hair.
Lab Assistant
#6 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 9:55 AM Last edited by Notegain : 21st Nov 2014 at 10:07 AM. Reason: Engrish
Ok, i'd like to take a look at that package then, could you send the package please?
This one may be related to normal map too. For me, normal map created some shadowy/shiny areas on a mesh i was experimenting with but normal map i used was a lot darker than it should be. Did you try changing the normal map to a blank grey map? Or the mesh may be referencing to a normal map that doesn't exist anymore.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 10:44 AM
The file has a normalmap and specular that I made sure was linked in the CASP files. I prefer trying to keep those files in there since i know how to make normalmaps and the specular already existed for the female version. I have had the same issue with and without the normalmap/specular included though. So many alternate package files have been made to try and rule out possible causes. It really is quite odd that I can't pinpoint exactly what is causing the shine.

The only luck I had was taking the advice of another creator and recloning a file to remove the specular again, and that seemed to work. The only reason I couldn't use that file was because the mesh needed fixing. I tried to replicate the outcome, but I couldn't get that suggestion to work again.
Attached files:
File Type: 7z  PC-TS4-MaleHair-BlownDry.7z (3.70 MB, 8 downloads) - View custom content
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 12:00 PM Last edited by Notegain : 21st Nov 2014 at 12:15 PM.
The normal map in your package and the normal map referenced by your mesh are not the same. So probably your mesh tries to find a normal map that doesn't exist anymore.
Normal map is not only referenced in CASP but in GEOM resource too. You can see it in the comments section in milkshape or GEOM resource TGI block list.

I exported the mesh from your package and imported it back to a new package i cloned. It didn't work at first because it was still referencing to your normal map, which doesn't exist in your package.

Then i opened GEOM resource in S4Pe in grid view and changed the GEOM resource to reference the normal map in my new package. It worked.


But that may be only one problem, or a side effect, since i tried changing the normal map references of all GEOM resources in your package and it didn't fix the issue.
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#9 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 12:26 PM
Thank you so much. To think i actually read a thread a few days ago about normal and specular maps being linked in the GEOM files and it didn't click that happened. I will be sure to link it up in those files too for my testing purposes. (If you are wondering, the reason it sits away from you model is due to the adjustments I had to make to fit the male scalp). I also did spot a tutorial about how to remove the normalmap from the GEOM files, so I may try that too. I will try cloning a new file too, and see if that fixes the issues with that file you encountered
Lab Assistant
#10 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 12:50 PM
No problem i hope this will be useful to fix it. CASTools newest version has a feature in misc other tools tab, examine mesh. You can select your simgeom from there and see all the details about your mesh including which shader and normal map it uses, it's very useful in situations like this. I didn't see specular map or diffuse map linked to the mesh, there are references but they change according to the which CAS part they belong and same for all parts.
Nice job adjusting it to male head, it looks like it's originally made for males
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#11 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 12:58 PM
I did see that feature so i will have to use it more often. That could be the issue I am experiencing occasionally with the clothing meshes, the files just aren't linking correctly in the GEOM data. Wonder if it is a CAS Tool bug or a side effect of bring the mesh into milkshape? At least i have some idea as to what is causing it thanks to you. I hate not knowing why something is mis behaving, it messes with my scientist mind.

And thank you. It is really only a minor change to the hair (tilted forward and lowered a bit), but there are some hairs that really should have been unisex and weren't. This is one of them. There is a version by poodsy out there, but it hasn't been fully adjusted for guys and there are some weird gaps i can't live with. Doubt I will ever make my own hair from scratch though, i will let others do that. I got other aspects covered
Lab Assistant
#12 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 1:13 PM
I think CASTools removes mesh references too when you clone a package with remove normal/specular checked.
I do this mistake always, so i think this may be the case:
You may have cloned a package (1st), adjusted it, exported geoms with comments from this package (1st), then deleted the package (1st) you just cloned and cloned another package(2nd) with a new filename. Hence all the normal map instances etc. changed in the 2nd package but your geoms and their comments remained as they were in the 1st package. Then you imported the geoms that has 1st packages comments to the 2nd package, it can't find the 1st package now and you are having problems. This is what i do always, and i usually export an unedited geom from 2nd package, copy it's comments and paste them to my edited geoms to fix it.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#13 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 1:21 PM
Yep, that sounds about right. When something can go wrong with a package it is just easier to re-clone it, it is easy to forget to keep an original file as backup that everything came from. I think i will try your trick and copy over the comments and see if that works too.
Lab Assistant
#14 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 1:36 PM Last edited by Notegain : 21st Nov 2014 at 1:41 PM. Reason: Engrish
In the package you sent there is probably something interfering with normal map or specular map, i couldn't find what exactly.
I exported all the meshes from the package you sent with CASTools in S4 format, then i cloned a new hair package with CAStools (female shortBlownDry) hair to be exact and imported all meshes from your package back into it.
Then i opened the new package i cloned in S4PE and copied the instance of the IMG tagged normal map resource (The part i underlined with black in the first screenshot i sent)
then for every GEOM resource, i pressed grid>Chunk Entries>Chunk Entries>RCOL Block>TGI Blocks
and pasted the normal map instance i copied to the instance of the last entry.
Then i changed the CASP resources 0x00002078 entry to 0x00001078 to make it only work for males teen to elder.
That fixed it.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#15 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 1:41 PM
that is even easier then that way i was going to do it. Maybe the overwriting of meshes is what caused the issue? Hard to say. Guess it could be an number of things. I can say one thing........... i am going to look forward to when the tools are more developed because I can't say I am fond of working in hex values and troubleshooting issues LOL!
Lab Assistant
#16 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 1:53 PM
It would be even easier if EA released a modding toolkit, for a game like sims which relies heavily on custom content (i can't play without custom content) , i don't know why there isn't something like that and it's the 4th game already, i mean, they should have understood that people like using and making custom content by now.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#17 Old 21st Nov 2014 at 2:49 PM
I agree, a toolkit would be nice but I doubt they will ever do anything like bodyshop again. That is too cooperative of EA XD

and thank you so much! It worked! I didn't actually need to change out the normalmap in the GEOM TGI List. Now to see if I need to tweak the shape nay more. Al the help is much appreciated. I feel like I am finally coming to grips with just a fraction of the inner workings of this game. Little steps is all I need to take right now
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