Sims4 CC

There isn’t much information about the specular map in the Sims 4 CC community. Honestly, it is one of the very confusing and frustrating parts to deal with. So I decided to investigate further.

I created a box with a uniform texture grey texture, but with a varying specular map. Each side of the box was given a unique specular color with a linear opacity gradient. Furthermore, the sides were numbered in the texture making it possible to analyze in-game.

I tested the following colors. UV-map and numbering laid over the specular map for info. Top-left image (number 1) is face down in-game. I had to turn the box and make 3 test boxes in total to see the red as well.

I think the result speaks for itself. I took one picture with boxes in the sun and all sides visible.

The effect of the different channels is beautifully described here, where a very similar experiment is performed. To sum up:

Red - sharpness (blurry at 0, sharp at 255), green - reflection, blue- falloff, alpha - strength. A completely non-reflective diffuse surface has a specular map with the color (0, 0, 0, 0).

So I don’t really know where I’m going with this - yet. I decided that I would do some sort of more interactive object than a lamp, so a consumable seemed like a good place to start.

What better consumable than beer, I thought. Better yet, beer out of one of those red cups college people tend to like. Okay first of the object that acts as the base for this project is the Coffee_drinkCupGENCoffee_01 object. It is necessary to tick “Show Debug Item” on in Studio.

 I did consider taking an actual drink, but they tend to be more complex, as they are transparent and have many a layers in the .blend file. 

When I export the mesh I get the following message:

I assume that it has something to do with the full/empty geometry of the file. A coffee mug has two states; full or empty. This also shows in that it has two diffuse textures. Only a loose geometry in the cup changes between these two textures. This might affect the possibility of making a workable consumable. I’ll nonetheless go on.

I tried something new with the UV of this mesh. The mesh is basically made from a 12-sided cylinder in Blender. Each of these sides occupies the same space in UV. Something I haven’t tried before. It seems to work great. Getting much more texture definition with smaller textures sizes.

As seen above. My textures are very oblong. 32x128 in size. Each side of the cup is longer than it is wide, therefore the choice. The contained beverage is seen on the bottom of the texture. In this case: Beer - yellow!.

Now to testing in game. This is a bit trickier for items not meant for build mode. The command line will have to be utilized to get the item to show. Bring up the cheat console by executing <ctrl><shift>c, put in testingcheat true followed by <enter>, put in objects.gsi_create_obj 0x{item’s unique hex identifier} and <enter>. The item will appear at the feet of your current selected sim.

How do you get your item’s unique identifier? In Studio under Warehouse->Object Definition. Here it’s the instance value of the key you want.

Back in game you should quickly be able to spawn the object. Even multiple times by click <up><enter> in the console.

While this is not the first object I’ve ever created for Sims 4, it is the first I consider of a high enough technical quality to publish. Applying the teachings of various tutorials found on the internet. I owe a large thanks to the authors and the community for writing up useful information.

The object is a square wall lamp. Called “Cheap Square Lamp” and costs 20 within Sims. Some info:

LOD: 56/46 (vertices/tris) - single LOD as the mesh complexity is fairly low. While it is possible to use the decimate modifier within Blender to easily reduce complexity, it will only reduce it by about 10 vertices here.

Textures: The diffuse map is a blend of bakes of texture, ambient occlusion both for outward normals and inward normals. This gives shadows and outlines that make the object appear more native.

It also includes a bump map created from a high-resolution version of the mesh by baking in Blender. 

One thing important about making lamp objects for Sims is the need to paint vertices in Blender to mark what parts are lit up or not.

I’ve tried to make the object look as native as I possibly could by studying base game lamps. It consists of a greyish box covered by the lampshade, this box holds both the lightbulb and the shade. It has a cord opening on the back.

Download: Jokerman_SquareLamp.package