I have two custom showers in my game that are freestanding and wall-mounted, however rather than being cloned from the 'Strut Your Stuff' shower from the University Expansion, they have been cloned from the Shower Cubicle from the base game. This means that the showers are accessed from the side, rather than face on. It means the showers can't be placed with any walls or fences around them, because the Sim needs to access them from the left side. It makes them difficult/impossible to place in a way that makes them accessible - which is a shame because they're two of my favourite showers to use.

I followed a tutorial (this one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvg...ims2Shenanigans) to start from the beginning and clone the 'Strut your Stuff' shower and then imported the GMDC and textures from the custom showers to make them accessible face on, and it worked and the items function as they should in-game. The issue now , however, is that the textures aren't pulling across and the showers appear in game with black text all over them, indicating the texture is missing. I don't know enough about this to identify what is causing the issue. I followed the tutorial exactly, down to the 'Build DXT' step and installed NVIDIA DDS Utilities to make this possible. I exported the texture images from the original mesh beforehand.

Can anyone please tell me what I'm doing wrong and how I get the corrected meshes to pull the same recolours as the original? (happy to provide links to objects in question if anyone wants to have a go at this themselves)

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and is able to help!

1: When you used the DXT tool, did you make sure to use PNGs or BMPs (jpgs can cause some issues), and the settings "DXT3" or "DXT5" (DXT3 works for fully opaque textures, use DXT5 if there's cutouts or transparency of any kind for the best results), and "Sharpen: None"?

2: Did you preview the object in SimPE? Does the texture appear fine there?

3: Did you delete the cache files? If you've done changes to a mesh/texture while working on a package file, these files can need an update (deletion).

4: Did you export the mesh as a GMDC file or as an OBJ file, before importing it into your file? Sometimes when you export OBJ files from SimPE, the UVmap (the 2D picture that tells the 3D model where to put texture) shifts place. Normally this shouldn't cause issues for objects, because the material is usually set as tiled (can be an issue for CAS items, because those usually aren't tiled, and the texture will show up invisible or partially invisible). Could potentially be an issue for some objects, depending on material settings.

If you're still not sure, or none of this helps, could you upload the file(s)? It's easier to figure out the problems with a file to look at.

Hi Simmer22, thanks for stepping in to help!! My responses below:


1: When you used the DXT tool, did you make sure to use PNGs or BMPs (jpgs can cause some issues), and the settings "DXT3" or "DXT5" (DXT3 works for fully opaque textures, use DXT5 if there's cutouts or transparency of any kind for the best results), and "Sharpen: None"?

The texture file is a PNG image, set to 512x512 pixels. It's in DXT3 Format and I'm sure I set 'Sharpen' to None like in the tutorial, but don't how to check to make sure!

2: Did you preview the object in SimPE? Does the texture appear fine there?

No, it appears white (and if I was able to zoom in I'm sure I'd see the writing all over it like in-game!)

3: Did you delete the cache files? If you've done changes to a mesh/texture while working on a package file, these files can need an update (deletion).

By this do you mean the Groups.Cache or Accessory.Cashe located in Documents/EA Games/Sims 2? If so, no. I have the cache one set to read-only so it never gets corrupted, and haven't deleted the accessory file, but I could try next time I load the game.

4: Did you export the mesh as a GMDC file or as an OBJ file, before importing it into your file? Sometimes when you export OBJ files from SimPE, the UVmap (the 2D picture that tells the 3D model where to put texture) shifts place. Normally this shouldn't cause issues for objects, because the material is usually set as tiled (can be an issue for CAS items, because those usually aren't tiled, and the texture will show up invisible or partially invisible). Could potentially be an issue for some objects, depending on material settings.

The GMDC is an OBJ file, I can try exporting as a GMDC file and see what happens

If you're still not sure, or none of this helps, could you upload the file(s)? It's easier to figure out the problems with a file to look at.[/QUOTE]

I'll try your suggestions above and see if I can fix it, but here's my edited file anyway. If you need any other info just let me know. Thank you!!!!

Everything seems fine except the GMND resource, which is lacking all the referencing to the materials, meaning it's not reading the textures/materials properly, and likely isn't reading as recolorable ingame either (explains the "white with writing" issue).

When objects show up white/grey in the SimPE preview, but are meant to show up with texture, something is usually off in one (or more) of the resources.

Can you remember if you ticked the exact cloning options shown in the tutorial? Just asking, because there are a few options - ticked or unticked - that causes objects to reference maxis objects, or other slightly off issues.

Could also be an issue with the particular shower you cloned, or the CEP not properly installed. Make sure the "_EnableColorOptionsMMAT" file is in the basegame "...\TSData\Res\Sims3D" folder in the install location, and the "_EnableColorOptionsGMND" file is directly in the Downloads folder (not a subfolder!). Taking a guess, I'd think there could be a problem with the GMND file in Downloads (gone missing, maybe?).

So I've checked I have the CEP installed correctly as per below and it appears I do, although I did have "_EnableColorOptionsGMND" in a subfolder within my Downloads so I've now moved it to the main folder (I also didn't have the underscore at the beginning of the filename because I use a file renaming software to remove all special characters from my filenames - but I added it back in in case it was preventing SimPE from reading the file)

I have all the same boxes ticked as in the tutorial (everything except 'Pull Animations' and 'Reference Original Mesh')

During the cloning process, when the 'Scenegraph Rename Wizard" Window appears, there's a box at the bottom of the window that says "University Ready V2" that wasn't ticked during the tutorial so I didn't tick it, but being as I'm cloning an object from the University EP, I wondered if I needed to? So I've tried again at following the steps and ticked the box this time, but I still end up with a white object with black text all over it....

Any other ideas haha?

Thank you for taking the time to look at this!!!!!

I suspect the issue was the GMND file not having been read properly, because the MMAT was fine but not the GMND (the GMND file is the one in Downloads, which is often the one that gets messed around with - either renamed or moved).

One option is to throw out the first file and start over, now that you've got a working CEP.

Another is to add back the GMND entry. A bit more complicated, but not too much. I think the file should work fine

1: Open the GMND
2: See where it says "Blocklist" in the plugin window - Make sure the first item on the list (0x0) is selected.
3: Make sure the "Content" tab is selected, then click the "cObjectGraphNode" tab inside it.
4: To the right there's a box called "Datalist Extension Reference". Click "Add".
5: Mark the new entry. Change "Enabled" to "0x01" and "Index" to "0x00000003" (The "Index" number always goes one Hexadecimal number up from the previous entry)
6: You can click "Commit" here. It's not necessary until you're done editing or you click away to a different resource, but if you click away from the GMND at any point, the changes you've made won't be remembered/saved, so to be on the safe side, and so you don't forget. (Making this entry is an important step - if it's not done properly, the game can end up crashing).
7: Click the "Edit Blocks" tab.
8: In the list of choices, find "cDataListExtension". Click "Add".
9: Go back to the "Content" tab.
10: Click the new "0x3: (cDataListExtension)" entry in the Blocklist.
11: In the empty "Name" box, write "tsDesignModeEnabled".
12: In the list to the right where it says "Array", choose the "Array" option, and click "add".
13: Click on the new "Array" entry in the "Items" list, and paste the name of the subset, in your case "showercommunal_surface"
14: Click "Commit" and "OK".
15: Save.
16: Check the GMDC preview if it now shows the texture.

Let me know if anything is unclear.

--------------------------

Also, (and I'm blaming EA a bit here, because sometimes their subset naming is really horrible) I think it's possible you've removed the texture the shower uses.

Seems it's using
showercommunal-surface_txtr
Which is missing from your file, instead of these two:

showercommunal-showervalue-surfaces-clean_txtr
showercommunal-showervalue-surfaces-dirty_txtr

I think this shower is partially linked to the cheap shower, so when the "pull #STR" option is ticked, it pulls the (useless) textures from the cheap shower (Shower Value), even though it doesn't seem to use those anywhere.

Easiest way to fix that would be to fix the TXMT -
1: Go to the "EditedOramaShower08.01.2024_surface_txmt"
2: For the "stdMatBaseTextureName" entry, change the "Value" to "##0x1C050000!EditedOramaShower08.01.2024-showervalue-surfaces-clean" to match with the TXTR you already have.
3: Commit and save.

(Don't use quote tags anywhere in any of the boxes, though)

I've tested out both these changes, and after the TXMT edit, the texture showed up. It should also be recolorable with the GMND fix.

IT. WORKED.

You are a GENIUS thank you!!!!!

I've got another shower I want to fix in the same way and some living chairs i'm hoping to turn into dining chairs using the same method.

Only thing I've noticed is that the water on my new mesh doesn't come out of the faucet like it did in the original shower, but I'm guessing that's something that could only be fixed in Milkshape which I have absolutely no experience with, so happy to live with it

Thank you again!!!!!!!!

It's possibly a combination of Milkshape and SimPE (either moving the water stream itself via some editing in SimPE - which can be a bit of a trial and failure process and you may need Milkshape or another mesh program to find the correct placement, or aligning the mesh better with the original shower head in Milkshape).