Not the VideoCard. i know hardware and my set up can handle all the extras. The problm *WAS* that both bodyshop and CAS were reading the skin file from it's previous unaltered incarnation. i saved the moded package file to desktop and deleted all instanceses on my computer. reloaded bodyshop and forced it to try and find the file. it culdent and defulted to natural lgt skintone. Then shut it down and replaced the package file to downloads and restarted bodyshop. this somehow cleared its who knows where buffers and forced a rerendering from the original file.

To say that the reflectivity setting of (1) is super shiny is a major understatment as seen in this CAS screenie

Yeppers 1 is way too shiny, even for chrome. I think something around 0.3 - 0.5 is probably like what you want.

Cool skin, though. People will ooh and ahhh.

RG

hmm... haven't got it to work at all... but then I'm trying it on CLOTHING, not a skin genetic...

more experimentation...

Clothing won't work this way because it's the "SimSkin" material type rather than the "SimStandardMaterial" type. You'd need to add a few steps, because you'd have to actually replace the Material Definition in your package with a different one, and then edit it.

Genetic skins use "SimStandardMaterial" by default, so there are less steps involved (but more files).

RG

(quietly hopes for one of the famous, well detailed RGiles tutorials.... :D)

ALOT more files!
Genetic Skins have 39 texture files, 1 thumb file, and one package file. those few of us who dare to do custom detailed genetic skins are totaly out of our everloving GORD!!!

Took HOURS of testing and fiddeling around but i finaly have the full genetic robotic skin set for SimDroid V6.5 totaly matalisized. Had to tune it down to a reflectivity of only 0.2 or the chrome effect washes away most of the minute details.

Uploaded it first to the *official* site, partly to get it copyright loged, but MAINLY to stick it to the buggers for freely trashing everyones assets. It's ONLY downloadable from MOD THE SIMS 2!

Check it out for RGiles AKA Danny's send up for all his work in making this tecnique possible to even dain bramaged people like me :D
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/sim...asset_id=175828

Very nice work! This would be great for things like leather pants, and such.

It might work for leather pants, glnderella, as long as they do not use any transparency map. As soon as you want any skin to be able to show through, you have to give up the shine effect.

Great job, Bink13y! I even went to the link and tried to download it and I got this message:

Sorry, an error occurred
The creator has marked this asset unavailable for download.

Niiiiice! :D

HOLY FRIJOLES!

You should do two things...

a) make some more colors (gold, red, blue, green).. why?

b) touch base with danny666 and make them into the HOUSE NPC's! maid, janitor, gardner, house manager... each a different color

then you have THE HOUSE STAFF OF THE FUTURE!!!

thats the 4th request for more SimDroid Colors, but I'de rather finish the SimDroid Upgrade to V7.0 fist. totaly new more bioOrganicmechanicl detailing, kind of like the style of some of the better japamation cyborgs

Bink13y,

Rather than redoing every texture in different colors, try just using different colored reflection maps on them. When I put different colored reflection maps on c-3PO it changed his look entirely, and the effect will be more noticable on SimDroid since the base color is neutral. Less work for you this way.

If you go in and add the bump maps as well... Wow! (I'm not positive that the bump maps work with the reflection maps... I would try it on just a face first.) I did try the glowing eyes thing. It doesn't work.

RG

Wekk, I'm getting close on getting this to work on clothing....

- pulled the material description out of the 'hello kitty' one to work with
- pulled it into the package on the body suit I'm working on
- trial and error changed the references in the MATD to match the new texture maps


LO AND BEHOLD! It SHINES! even black!

However, if I try to create parts from that modified one in Body Shop.... it FAILS with 'error extracting textures', so I assume something must be amiss in the file..

help? (pathetic look)

OK... someone smarter than I help me on this... as the previous above, I got the MATD changed, got the reflectivity applied... it shines and shines! But if I try to use bodyshop to use this as a souce for 'create parts', I get 'an error extracting the texture' and it errors out..

SOMETHING must be wrong in the package, but I've spent most of the morning looking at it and I don't know... see attached... can someone help (before I go forward on the mask/hood's)

Rosco,

You have your clothing reflecting an image called
##0x7f6a7636!body~stdMatEnvCubeTextureName

This image doesn't exist, which is why you're not able to extract it. What bodyshop is reflecting is a default test image. If you're ever seen a screenshot of a recolor where the object is covered with a white texture with words on it... this is the same sort of thing. The game has a default image that it reflects when it can not find the one you named. At some angles you may actually see text reflected on the outfit.

What you need to do is change the value of stdMatEnvCubeTextureName to either be the same as the base texture (##0x7f6a7636!body~stdMatBaseTextureName) or change it to one of the Maxis default reflection maps.

Using the default Maxis maps will give you a much nicer effect. Here's a list of the values you could use for those:

reflectionbronze-envcube
reflectionbronzenonlit-envcube
reflectiondarkgold-envcube
reflectiongold-envcube
reflectiongoldnonlit-envcube
reflectionkitchenhighcontrast-envcube
reflectionoutdoorwater-envcube
reflectionsilver-envcube
reflectionsilvernonlit-envcube
reflectionsparking-envcube

Alternately, you could actually create your own image to be reflected, but you probably don't need to for the effect you want.

RG

(Homer Simpson moment...)

D'OH!

I'll attack that tomorrow.. then onward! Thanks!

You be da genious RGiles!
i was finaly experameting with the existing colored reflecton maps. set C3PO up just as you described, not to reflecty to wash out detail and he looks spookily like a swordless Oscar Award statue :D

other reflection effect side notes. the effect (if done as a genetic skin) leaks out to hair and clothing items, but only if there file is in direct contact with the skin. forinstance some hair styles with seperate over shell meshes and skins only get partly reflective.

If it's possible to add the reflective effect to JUST a hairstyle with no reverse leakdown to the sim we have a catagory of hair that would drive all our trendy Simmers WILD! hair ofcourse relies HEAVILY on alpha transparencys tho...

I tried a relective hairstyle and it does work. There are som many MATD files in a hair package that it's insane, of course, and the MATDs are varied... some of them already have all of the required fields, and some of them need you to add all the fields. It's a pain, and personally I don't like the effect.

Since Quaxi has graciously supplied the source code for SimPE, I may play around with the MATD editor some. I'd love it to be able to update multiple Material Descriptions at once, and I really desperately want it to be able to change the material Type. I'm not sure if the inability to edit that field was by mistake or design, though.

RG

It was definitely by design. Someone knew you were going to try to figure it out and determined in advance to try to thwart you.

lolz I mean Quaxi's design, and I don't suppose he's trying to twart me. He hasn't twarted me for absolutely weeks.

you just used a whole bunch of lingo i have yet to understand...i am so sad!
hair seems extremely difficult to edit with SimPE (or anything that may come in the future). has anybody successfully done it yet?

what i did is i used four colors, one pixel at a time and got shiny green clothing

While your at it, some way to add or delete MATD file list entries would be nice

Edit: Doh! I just updated SimPE (haven't done so for a while) and you already can.

i would love see more shiny, reflective clothes!!otaku0015 could i see a pik of your clothes??