11 replies to this topic

[murfeel]

I keep having the same old problem in TSRW with these blasted terrain paints, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Backstory: When I made my very first TP, Cogs & Gears, the only way I could get my TP to show up in-game was to clone the Autumn Grass--I had tried to clone the Rock, Dirt, everything, and in TSRW it would look great, and it would install just fine in the Launcher, but when I searched in game for it it was nowhere to be found. Only through a stroke of luck was I able to successfully clone the Autumn Grass.

Same thing is now happening with a set of new TPs I'm trying to do, and it's driving me mad. I finished my very first Sci-Fi lot the other day and since I wanted it to be a moon base I made a few moon crater terrain paints, which look fly (if I do say so myself--evil chortle ^-^ )! However, out of 3 only 2 installed successfully, but one was just NOT seamless so I went back and did it again, and now it's just not going right at all and so really only one turned out okay, and I don't know why it's fine and the others aren't.

I suspect that it might have something to do with the alpha channel. I can feel it in my calcium depleted bones. Looking at EA's TPs in TSRW, they have slight transparency, where you can see the checkered background underneath the TP. So in Photoshop I put my TP image on one layer, lowered the opacity to around 97%, and saved it as a interpolated alpha .dds . It shows up in TSRW the same way, with the checkered background, so I thought I was doing something right...WRONG.
Second go, I decided to take a look at the actual alphas on EA's .dds, and my own. Some of EA's alphas have this pale grey colour, so I copied it to mine to see if maybe my alpha was too dark or too light. Nope. I tried a pure white alpha, but I didn't want to use pure black, since that would make the TP totally invisible, right!?

So I've just been doing trial and error the entire time, cloning everything I possibly can to try and luck out, but I've pretty much all but given up at this point.

Anyone know the secret to get this blasted process unlocked?

[Cyclonesue]

I'm going to take a wild guess here, and state that you used three different base paints for your terrains?

Workshop picks up all terrain paints, but you might have noticed there are rather more in Workshop than there are in the game! I'm no expert, only having made around a dozen or so myself, but the problem is not the alpha, but the base paint you pick. Therefore, I recommend that you only clone a paint that you recognise easily from the game.

The alpha channels do indeed allow transparency (or two paints to blend into each other). However, in the main game it doesn't work and the alpha is ignored. Isn't that special? Should you ever use an alpha-enabled terrain in Create A World, you immediately see a difference and realise just how well they do blend when the alpha is used (snow paint over mountain tops, grass and cobbles look stunning). Then return to the main game and weep at your alpha-less paint!

But back to the main point: ensure you only clone a paint you KNOW you've seen in the game. Be warned: textures for Sims 3 terrains have a much greater spread so your texture needs to be in small detail (else your 'gravel' will show up as mighty fine boulders when in the game).

[murfeel]

Alright, this is just not working for me (I'm not surprised). I did see a few terrains that I didn't recognize and stayed away from the wierdos, and stuck to ones I definitely knew--mostly the Flowers terrain paints, yellow, pink and purple. The Rock terrains give me the most failures, despite using the easy ones like the Flagstone, Cobblestones and Paving River Rock. Nothing is working--none of them show up in my game. I don't know what's going on anymore. But the tip was excellent, thank you!

[daisylee]

I think I have had this problem too. I have only done a few but some have shown up and some have not. Also, for some reason they show up in the misc. area at times and I forget to check for them there. I am going to try something really simple, like recolor the flagstone and see if I can get it to show up. Will let you know.

[murfeel]

Thanks so much!

I just tried Sand and Sand Raked and neither of them worked, either. And as for the Dirts and Pond--forget about it.

[daisylee]

http://s85.photobuck...reenshot-46.jpg

My recolor worked ..... after I found out how to get a dds plugin for Gimp on this computer .... which took a while.

I just did a silly blue recolor which I can use on my Greek Island. It even showed up in the stone and pavements category. All I did was change the coloring in Gimp. Did not mess with anything else.

Knowing zero about these things .... it is odd looking that the background is black, but that is OK I guess for now.

Edited by daisylee, 12 December 2011 - 07:04 PM.

[murfeel]

You're lucky--nothing is working for me anymore. I just tried the Flowers again, with no luck.

I have 2 more ideas: I'm going to clone my Cogs & Gears and Moon Crater terrains as a New Import, and insert the .dds from there, and if that doesn't work then I'm going to use an Ambitions terrain paint, since I just got Ambitions on sale last week (yay!).

If none of that works, then I'm just giving up--I've had enough of wasting my time on this nonsense--the impatient Year of the Dragon Aries-Taurus cuspid in me is NOT pleased!

[daisylee]

If you still have my email address, which I think I gave you, do you want to send me a few of the packs and I will see if they show up in my game or not? Then you will know if it is an issue with the terrain paints or your game, maybe.

[murfeel]

That's very kind of you~! But, it won't be necessary, because....

I DID IT!!!!

FINALLY! I tried to clone my Cogs & Gears TP, but TSRW rejected it saying that there weren't packages of some sort in it, so when I tried again I loaded the terrain paints and there was my Cogs & Gears TP with all the others! I don't know how it got there, but I quickly cloned it, loaded the sims3pack, and it's FINALLY in my game! Yatta! ^-^

I had tried to clone the Ambitions White Flowers TP, but that didn't work--grrrr! So from now on I'll just use my TP as a base and go from there--I don't know what's going with EA's TPs in my game; none of them work.

Thanks anyway! *Hugs*

Edited by frisbud, 13 December 2011 - 08:44 PM.
Removing the cursing.

[daisylee]

Hooray!

[murfeel]

Thanks, but away the bubbly, my dear. False positive.

I am working on 2 patterns to make a set, and I cloned the first one using my Cogs TP and it showed up fine. So I went back and cloned the 2nd one, and loaded it in the game. But in-game, something wierd happened--the first TP's thumbnail shows in the TP section, as it did when I installed it, and the 2nd one was no where to be found. But when I clicked on the tumbnail showing my first TP...the SECOND one was the one that actually painted itself on the lot!

What's going on here!?

I was really confused, so I uninstalled them both. *SIGH*

Back to square one, I'm afraid.
Will keep y'all posted.

[nicketti]

I was having a similar problem. So, what I did was go into the game, write down all the terrains from all the categories that were base game only. Now I only use the base game terrains to clone. Most do work. Had no problem with pond or flowers, so far, cross fingers. The other was having the paint brushes not work. For some reason, on some of the terrain clones only the square brush or only the round brush will work.
If you would like another tester, would be happy to try to clone your textures, if you want to send me one that has been difficult. Hope this helps. Happy Holidays.