hello! first of all, sorry for my English!
I would like to edit specular. add gloss reflector. (rles)

I cloned this mesh naturally lacks the brightness I want. but has the part number I need


My result is this, I am very happy and satisfied, just want the fabric a little brighter


if anyone knows how to do it, I can explain in detail, I will be forever grateful!
thanks you! :lovestruc

ETA: Okay, what I typed below has just changed - see the posts following this one!
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Unfortunately, it's not possible to edit the specular for TS4 CAS items. For some unknown (to us) reason, EA decided to encode it in some weird non-standard format that nobody has been able to figure out how to work with yet. Hopefully someone will crack it at some point, but not now. (Strangely, it is possible to edit the specular for objects, which is in regular dds format, but not CAS items.)

Maybe try taking a look at it in TSRW? Unless Esmeralda (or someone else who knows more about CAS items than I do) already knows it can't export/convert that either -- it's what I would try, it has just been released to the public a few days ago. Link see sticky in Tools.

I have just asked an experienced Workshop CAS creator and she confirms Workshop allows editing CAS speculars.

Ah, that's good to know! Thanks for the info =)

Really? Wow, will have to take a look at that!

ETA: OK, I tried it, and it does work - here's a test I made by putting (on both the main channel and alpha channel) a pure white band across the middle of the black bodice of this dress, and a pure black band across the middle of the white skirt. You can just barely see the band on the skirt, but the one on the bodice is very noticeable.

(But TSRW produces an odd package - this would probably be classed as a recolour, but it exported a package consisting of the specular, the CASP, and all the GEOMs of the dress. Don't know why it would include the GEOMs?)

ETA2: Ah, I've just discovered that the striped effect on the dress's texture after editing the specular, which I'd previously assumed was just part of the default dress texture, is actually an artefact that shouldn't be there. Apparently it happens on other clothes too. So it looks like we're not quite there yet with editing speculars after all...

thank you all! if they had tried before with tsrw, and I had the same problem striped and discard the option
Also try replacing, RLES secondly, another dress, but no change in game. anyone know of any option ... how to explain? ... put in numbers, higher brightness values ...

The specular for Sims 4 works different than the specular for Sims 3. I'll try to get a more in depth explanation/tutorial up soon, but basicly it's each of the RGB channels having a certain effect on the shine of the clothing and the alpha channel being able to undo the whole specular effect (just as the specular for Sims 4 objects). The striped effect is indeed unwanted, but it seems to be related to the green channel. Using only the Red and Blue channel should give a good specular effect.

You'll probably need to experiment a bit to get the effect that you want. Using a 100% red and blue channel would probably give far too much shine on your clothing, so maybe start with a 50% for both and leave the green channel completely black to avoid the striped effect.

There's an explanation SimGuruModSquad put up on the EA forums modding section.... it's buried a fair way back now though. But yes it's very different from the way the channels were used in TS3

Thank you for the info re the striped effect, AnoeskaB. Interesting about the green channel issue - thanks for explaining how the individual channels affect the TS4 specular, that's very helpful to know.

From EA forum (I guess characters means Sims, ie CASpart stuff):

FYI - our spec maps are fairly complicated, a quick overview how its set up (for Characters) is as follows:

R = cube map blur control
G = cube map strength control
B = specular falloff
Alpha = specular strength

There's also this with the rles format: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/dis...ormation-please

There's an extra channel in there beyond what's in a normal dds, so IMO the edited and imported specs are missing something. It's still progress! I was able to modify s4pe to export them as two DDS images but couldn't figure out how to combine them on import.

thank you very much to all for the info!

For my part, I have not had the desired result, so I decided to leave it like this!

will wait anxiously for the tutorial Anoeska and Cmar best wishes of progress, their tools are incredible, without them I would not be happy!

thanks and greetings to all!

You can edit speculars perfectly now. I created new Speculars for my newest download.
You just need the newest version of TSRW and s4pe. The new TSRW can read the specular now.
I use TSRW only to create the .rles format.

How to:
1. Create or find a package file that contains a specular using whatever program you like.

2 .Open TSRW and create new project. Browse to find your new package.

3. Name your project whatever. You wont be saving the project file so its not important.

4. When you see the FINISHED page, hit OK and you may see an error message stating that the workshop encountered a problem. If this happens just check the box "Ignore this error and attempt to continue" and hit the "Don't Send button". This error box may appear more that once.

5. Check the texture tab. If your specular shows up there then perfect. If it shows a small black box beside specular and not a proper 512X1024 .dds file, you will need to start over from step one with a different package file until you find one that opens properly. A bit of trail and error. :/

6. When you get a package with a properly displaying specular in the texture tab, click the little EDIT button beside the specular and export as .dds.

7. Open in Photoshop. Speculars are 512X1024. Check the Alpha channel and you will notice that the non black sections of the alpha are movable, like the black parts and white parts are on separate layers. This is important! If the alpha does not behave like this then the specular will not display correctly.

8. Edit your specular however you like. Save, then import back into TSRW.

9. When you've done that hit file and export your new .package file as ".package sims 4". This is a trash file. Its only purpose is to create a .rles file for you to extract in s4pe. So save it as whatever.

10. Open this new package file in s4pe and export your specular as .rles.

11. Now you can replace any .rles specular file with this new one in the package of your choosing using S4pe.

Thanks for the heads-up, Lunar Eclipse =). Can you add which version of s4pe you are using? The last few work a bit differently when it comes to image import/export, but I don't know whether these differences are relevant here.

Didn't she say SimPE? Or was that just a mistake?

Oh. Good point =)

I'm sorry, SimPE was a typo, i fixed it. its newest s4pe that i used.

Many thanks Lunar Eclipse, I love your explanation. many thanks! certainly I will try in my next creation! :D

There is an import/export option now for s4pe that allows to edit RLES. See this post for info and download: http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=552540