Hello,

I have made a recolor of an in-game painting and one of a mesh someone else made. Now on the one from in-game, there is this glass in front of the picture. Because of that, the colors are not as bright as they should be. If you look at the bigger painting on top, the colors are much brighter.

Is there a way to remove this Glassy look from the painting in S4PE or something? Or is it something in the mesh I can't remove?

The reason I'm not using the bigger painting, is because it keeps the original thumbnail, so it's al lot more difficult to find it in game if the picture on the thumbnail is not the one on the painting.
With the Maxis paintings, I don't have this problem.

Hope someone can help!

Did you mean to attach a screenshot that isn't showing? Since you say "If you look at the bigger painting on top, the colors are much brighter" ..

Anyway if the shine is due to the specular, and that is an img or rle2, you can export/edit/import that in s4pe of course. But if you want stuff to show up in different thumbnails you can also do that by changing the SwatchGrouping to whichever one you want.

Yeah, my plan was to attach a screenshot. It was the last thing I wanted to do before going to bed yesterday. But I think I was already half asleep when pushing the "submit message" button.
I attached a screenshot this time, so I can show you what I mean.

On the screen both first and second painting use the same picture. But on the second you see this glassy shine.
Now I searched S4PE ones again and I don't see any rle2 files. But I found the image on the second attached screen. Could this be causing the shine? And what do I have to do with it, can I just delete it? Or do I have to replace it with an emty file. (Emty as in a erase everything in this img in photoshop) [EDIT] It's not the img from the second screenshot..

[EDIT]
The following is already solved by Exporting the THUM's,keep the original name and replacing them in S4PE:

About changing the thumbnail on the first painting in the first screen. (This one is made by someone else, not EA)
I saw these THUM files that showes what I see in game but I tried importing another THUM in Sims4Studio but it didn't work. But I forgot about S4PE (I was already half asleep). So maybe I have to try that first.
When opening this package in S4PE I see the THUM files showed in screen 3. I think best way is to export these, keep the original name and then change them and replace the original?
One thing about those THUM's. For each painting there are 4 THUM's. The first is 32x32 pixels, the second 64x64, the third 128x128 and the fourth 256x256 (That's the one selected in th screen). I don't understand why there are four of them? You only see one thumbnail for every picture in game. But I don't know if you your familiar with this, because it's custom made.

The thumbnails are used in different sizes, that's why there's several of them -- like when you scroll through the catalogue, you see one size, and then when you click on an item the pop-up that comes up is using a larger size I believe. Sims can have thought bubbles about objects too (I believe those are smaller), and the UI is spaced/scaled differently depending on screen size and resolution, maybe that's also what some of the sizes are for. Good that you've already figured out how to edit them =) (did you see how they have the same instance as the cobj and the group is a part of that plus 0 1 2 3 at the end? Off the top of the head I'm not sure whether or not the first part of the group matters, but the last digit is how the game tells the sizes apart).

The pic on your second screen looks more like a wallshadow so me .. to tell for sure you'd need to look in the MODL/MLOD group 0 to see what is linked there in the Material Definitions (speculars are labeled SpecularMap, you could use the Search tool to find where/how the various textures are linked). Or you just fiddle with this one and see what happens =P .. erasing the content sounds like a good strategy (the game sometimes fails rather spectacularly when it expects a resource that does not exist).

You can look at the texture overriding threads in this forum as well, Melbrewer has posted a lot of screenshots of all the textures in a door for example, maybe that helps you to tell what is what. Those were Maxis objects of course; one can't tell what TSRW/S4S are doing exactly since both are proprietary .. but all speculars I've seen in objects so far were IMG, RLES I've only seen in CAS Parts (RLES would not be editable, but IMG and RLE2 are).


E: for a specular (if it's like in the doors for example), the alpha channel ( = transparency) matters a lot since that defines the strength. So don't forget to edit that channel too ..

Thanks for explaining, that all makes sense



I couldn't find any specularmap in the MODL/MLOD files. But I did export the IMG file from the second screenshot again and now painted everything in that image black instead of erase everything. Now there is no more Shiny Glass. I've attached a screen showing how it looks now. I've added some extra lights to make both paintings brighter.



There is a Alhpa channel when viewing that file in S4PE, but when I opened it in Photoshop, there was none...

Very cool =)

(The labels in s4pe also depend on what wrappers you are using -- when something is labeled with just a bunch of numbers, that might be why. But looks like you found the right file anyway! )

There is something odd about the Photoshop DDS plugins when it comes to dealing with alpha channels but I only know that from screenshots people post, I don't have a Windows photoshop .. if you need to deal with that more often, maybe try with a converter like Aorta or dxtbmp -- with those you can clearly see/export/import the alpha separately, which can sometimes be quite helpful. The DDS compression that Aorta does is also said to be very good (which perhaps matters when you're doing paintings). I just put the links in the sticky in Tools.

Ok, thank you. Going to take a look.
About Alpha channels on DDS files. The first thing I made for The Sims 4 but never uploaded it, was a tattoo, but the alpha channel did work in that DDS file. So it's not always a problem. Maybe it has to do with the program that exports the DDS file...or maybe not...Because Apple people would have problems too that way I think...I don't know.. :P

The NVidia DDS plugins for Photoshop only exist for Windows, that's why it only affects PS/Windows users .. not because of anything to do with Windows per se =)

Aahaa! Ok