Custom hood deco creating tips.
Date Posted: 6th Apr 2009 at 6:08 PM Views: 1660
Hi all
Finnaly, i've came up with some tips on making your own custom neighborhood decoration.
There's nothing special actually... If you have experience on making custom content such as meshing, texturing, UVmapping, importing, etc. but if you don't, please, go to the tutorials section first - there you can find all the information about all this stuff...
Anyway, creating custom hood decos is very familiar to making other custom objects. It's all about cloning...

First of all, run SimPE
go to prefrences and tick an 'advanced mode' box:



Then hit 'Ok' and restart SimPE

From now on, all neighborhood objects will be available here:



For me, best object for cloning is a 'concrete breakwater' (from 'misc' submenu). I use it oftenly when i need to import a single mesh object.
So if you have your custom object prepared with it's mesh and textures, clone a breakwater and after going through familiar cloning steps you'll see a recource tree.
I'll not stop on importing mesh or textures (there's allready some great tutorials here at MTS2). I'll just explain a very important part of recourse tree:



So.. i guess that's all i can say
In the end, here is an archive with a scale template - an .obj file with 1x1 tile box included. Top side of the box is ingame road level, so it will help if you need your custom object appear on the ground but above the road.

Hope it will help you, creative minds, in making custom decorations! :D

Recent Comments for: Custom hood deco creating tips.
matthew
By djmixmaster (5th Sep 2009 at 12:14 AM)
when is this sky line "horizon gonna come out?"
i cant wait!!
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By serillita (17th Jul 2009 at 3:06 PM)
How get simPE (version 0.72.1.33855)???
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By bikebuilder76 (19th Apr 2009 at 1:48 PM)
Criquette I love your work. Do you think you can make the planes from the airport set lot enabled. Those are the best ones I've seen done for sims 2.
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By zaxis (14th Apr 2009 at 10:48 PM)
Thanks again Criquette, that fixed it. I really appreciate your help. I hope I can get this project done now, didn't have much time for it last week.
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By Penguindude (14th Apr 2009 at 1:02 AM)
Criquette, i know this is off-topic, but since you most likely wont be realsing any content for a while, do you think you could upload all the items you were intending to upload in future sets(like the power lines) in some "criquette pack"?
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By Criquette (12th Apr 2009 at 10:44 PM)
Zaxis, that's cool! Concerning alpha channel - choose 'material definition' in the resource tree and find a line "stdMatAlphaTestEnabled", make it =1 i use this alpha mode for all my objects - this gives a sharp look even at the very closeup. You can also find a row "stdMatAlphaBlendMode" and make it "blend" (while leaving "stdalphatestenabled" at zero) this will make your texture alpha look more gentle (like the fence on a maxis's white tank decos).
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By Paradise (11th Apr 2009 at 11:48 PM)
This will be very helpful for all the creators out there. I'm saving this for the day I learn proper meshing, maybe I can make something I want one day too.

Zaxis - great effort on the boats!
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By zaxis (11th Apr 2009 at 5:57 PM)
Yes, they are invisible from lot mode (maybe because of the strange location of the texture?) and the height would make them a little awkward to use also. But I think the terrain following would be worth it.
Thanks for the tip on the Nvidia utility, it works muchbetter! I think I need to make a 1024x1024 texture instead now. I encountered another problem though, alpha texture isn't working in the game. It works in SimPE, the texture becomes transparent in the right places, and I apply it to all sizes, but when I open it in the game it doesn't work.. :S
I have so many ideas, but so little knowledge. :D
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By Criquette (8th Apr 2009 at 8:10 PM)
zaxis, yep, really bad that we can't find the way to make it. But decals are invisible from the lot, isn't it? anyway, to have the roads according to the terrain would be awesome...

Concerning your great boats. They look awsome allready! But the texture error is really because of incorrect size I use Nvidia DDS utilities (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/...ies_legacy.html) for importing textures. You also can find some tips on installing it by Zookini here (http://www.modthesims2.com/archive/.../t-218912.html). When you have it istalled, all you need is a right click on a texture (existed size is doesn't matter) and choose 'build DXT'. In this window, choose you PNG texture (oh, by the way, don't forget to check levels box, for 512x512 levels is 10 and 1024x1024 levels is 11) check the format to be DXT3 and sharpen to be 'sharpensoft' and then hit 'build'...
whew.. hope i wasn't too incoherent
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By zaxis (8th Apr 2009 at 1:07 PM)
Hmm, that's a shame. Overwriting files isn't a good solution at all. I had hoped to be able to clone decals and add road textures to them, to get roads than can follow the terrain... The plan was to make one set of maxis match roads with turns and such, and one set of a higher speed road with turns and detailed intersections (Something in between maxis roads and your highway). Perhaps it would have been hard to make them look right from lot view though.

I want to show you something too, here: http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosti...114843-temp.jpg . The mesh turned out nice for a first try, but the texture is messed up. I didn't even draw those black and white stripes! lol. I believe the problems came when I tried to add a larger texture in SimPE. I foolishly cloned an object where 256x256 was the largest texture, so I tried to add a 512x512 (even that is too small though). Didn't turn out all that well. The idea is to make more ships/boats and upload them, we need more water stuff now that we have bridges!
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By Criquette (7th Apr 2009 at 6:32 AM)
mattc117, thank you!

Zaxis, oh yes! I've tried to mess up with terrain decals. But all i get is the same thing - a grey stone instead of what i expected It seems to be kinda tricky if it's ever possible.. any way, i still didn't find the way to go trough it. Allthough that would be great.. but wait. Once i've recoloured the concrete decal with the grass texture that fitts the color of the grass from my rural road mod. But i've replace it in one of the TS2 texture files that can be found in TS2 folder in 'Program files'. I do believe that there is a way to make a *.package with such a texture that will override the standart one (the same way as road mods work) but i didn't fugure out how to make a standalone .package file with override texture. I just gave up when i've find out that i can't just add another decal instead of replacing existed ones
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By zaxis (6th Apr 2009 at 11:24 PM)
oh, I am definately saving that last pic.

I am wondering though, have you tried recoloring the farmfields or the terrain overlays? All I get when I open them is a stone texture, that doesn't affect the texture used in the game..
Custom hood deco creating tips.
By mattc117 (6th Apr 2009 at 9:05 PM)
Aww thanks for this Criquette! It has been most helpful!

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