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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 27, 2024 0:49:56 GMT -5
I made my very first Sims 4 mod today, just a few hours ago. It worked flawlessly! It all started because I wanted to have windows that had no frame over the wall, lined up properly with the tops of the generic doors such as the Geometric Six Panel, Simple Two Panel, and the various Wooden (Number) Panel doors from the base game, and could come in various sizes to place over counters or in bathrooms, all while still lining up nicely with the doors. In searching for days (and posting a "Where Can I Find" over at ModTheSims), I also thought about how nice it would be to have a different six-panel door that was more like those found in houses all over the US (and I think much of Europe as well, as the history of the design of these doors dates back to early Christianity). Well, my search came up empty, so I decided to make these myself. The mod currently features the six-panel door in two colors, shown below.  Now, I'm working on the first of many windows. I have the mesh and texture done, and it was started from the base-game Octopane window as a base. The Octopane mesh has 7 parts: an exterior and interior wall, frame, and glass, then the little frame that goes inside the wall. I maintained this series of parts, but changed the shape of the wall parts to match my new window size, changed the mid-wall frame to fit the hole, and made it so only the interior and exterior outer frames had the pane that goes in front of the glass parts. This is what my mesh and texture looks like:  Here is the original Octopane.blend that I exported from the base-game window in S4S. Here is my window.blend I am trying to import (I have even tried saving it under the original name in hopes it maybe just didn't like having a different file). Whenever I do import my mesh, it is reading it, and importing the first two parts (the walls), which looks like this:  Can anyone tell me what's going on here, and how I can fix it? I really like how the mesh and textures look and I don't want to have to keep dealing with this Octopane thing. Oh, also, how do I remove the wall shadow? This window's "frame" doesn't extend beyond the wall except for the bottom of the interior:  I really want to make this part larger to provide more space, and set it up as a surface you can place small objects on if possible. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 27, 2024 3:39:17 GMT -5
Hi. You need to assign cut numbers. Clone and export the original window again, select each meshgroup and you will see their cut numbers. The cut numbers of your meshgroups must correspond ( so glass replaces glass, etc )  Also, i should mention that your version of blender is not officially supported, so it best to get a more recent one. If you'll do this, make sure to change blender path in s4s settings |
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 27, 2024 14:45:05 GMT -5
Sweet, it works!  However, it isn't working in-game  Also, the wall cutaway didn't work correctly. How do I fix this? Also, you sap Blender 3.1 isn't supported, but the wiki says it supports 2.7 and 3.3 (I checked, I am using 3.3, I accidentally typed 3.1 in my title) and nothing older, newer, or in between are supported. If "a newer version" is supported, which newer version(s)? |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 27, 2024 15:26:38 GMT -5
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 27, 2024 19:13:31 GMT -5
YAY! IT WORKS!   Now I just need to figure out why the textures look all wonky with the little lines going across it and the shapes of the trees and other structures on the other side being visible through the solid parts. This is the texture being used  Oh, and here's the package file if anyone wants to check it out. Thank you for all the help so far! I also already have Blender 4.2 installed via Steam, so I will probably switch to that. I'm more experienced with it anyway. So, here's a good example of how objects show up through the solid parts. Notice how the corner between the floor and wall in the back of the room, and the items on the shelf show this dark shading on the solid parts of the window:  |
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 27, 2024 23:43:14 GMT -5
Alright, so I fixed the issue of those odd lines across the solid part of the window. It was caused by the Normal Map being the one from the Octopane window. I have fixed it, but I still can't figure out why the shapes of the trees, corners of walls, and other objects cast these shadow-like lines. I also can't seem to get the glass to look flat. It has this odd shape that looks like something is in front of it, but it shows up in areas that has nothing in front of it. You can see it quite easily in glass cells on the bottom of the top pane of the window to the left.   The texture of the window has the glass portion completely flat now, yet the issue still remains:  You can also easily see these shadow lines from the shelf in the right window and the corner of the wall in the left window. I made a separate post about rigging for this window because this thread seems like it should remain as a model rendering thread instead of switching subjects to rigging, both to help viewers with similar issues find the threads relevant to their issue and to help others know what I need help with. I apologize if I should have kept both together in the same thread. If so, please let me know so I can copy the contents of the other and post them here so that the other can be removed. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 28, 2024 4:26:02 GMT -5
These are shadows of other objects, you need to make proper shadow lods for yours to fix this
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 28, 2024 4:44:29 GMT -5
I did make a shadow mesh for mine which covers the entire object. How is it supposed to be made? I didn't make far-distance LODs, but those shouldn't apply with how close I am to these in these images.
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 28, 2024 4:52:47 GMT -5
Clone the original window again, export all shadow lods, study them, recreate by remaking your lods. Same number of meshgroups, corresponding parts of the window, adapted the same way.
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 28, 2024 9:37:29 GMT -5
I did that for the LOD0 and LOD1 (high/close range and medium). The only Shadow mesh I didn't make was low/far range, but I also never made a main mesh or texture, so they show up as the Octopane at far range (which I'm fine with for the moment and plan to fix after I'm happy with the window at close range).
Since I'm never viewing these at far enough range to see the low LOD, they are never visible, so why does that cause the closer range objects to be glitching like this?
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 28, 2024 11:16:06 GMT -5
Share the updated package please
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 28, 2024 15:48:00 GMT -5
So, I've completely rebuild the shadow mesh (using the same mesh for LOD_0 and LOD_1). When I tried to use a single plane covering the full opening like how the base-game Octopane does, no light would come through at all and the glass would be black/gray. Because of this, I removed the planes entirely and only had the edges, and that made it so the beams across the glass didn't cast shadows. It was fine as it allowed me to focus getting the window itself to look right and figure out rigging. Now that I've got that done, I decided to make a new shadow mesh that would follow the beams. It did indeed get rid of the lines from trees and objects behind the window, but now it has these odd dark spots around the edges and top, and the shadows cast onto the interior of the house by the edges and beams look odd.    Here is the current package fileI have a feeling I am not supposed to make the shadow mesh the way I did, and there's probably a way to cut out parts of the plane via textures or something, but I couldn't figure it out. |
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 29, 2024 3:38:30 GMT -5
The original shadow lod has the frame ( cut 0 ), the outer grilles ( 1 ) and the inner grilles ( 2 ). These objects are identical in shape to the ones in lod 0 ( cut 4 - 6 ). In your case, the last two meshgroups in a shadow lod dont match. - open your lod 0 and delete s4studio_mesh_0 - s4studio_mesh_3 meshgroups; - give s4studio_mesh_4 cut 0, s4studio_mesh_5 - 1, s4studio_mesh_6 - 2; - select s4studio_mesh_4, in edit mode select everything with A, click on Remove. Do the same with the other 2; - save as shadow lod 0; - open lod 1 and repeat the process, saving as shadow lod 1. Do the same with the last
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Post by bobgrey1997 on Sept 29, 2024 10:18:43 GMT -5
Why remove the mesh I just labeled the cut of to be part of the shadow mesh?
Also, this was how my first shadow mesh was, and it didn't work. The window was not see-through.
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Post by mauvemorn on Sept 29, 2024 10:26:10 GMT -5
Because this is how the original is made and you need to make yours the same way for each part to inherit correct tuning. If the original is see through, then yours will be see through as well. If not, something is done incorrectly.
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