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SerraNolwen's avatar
SerraNolwen
Seasoned Novice
4 years ago

Lighting problem

Hi everyone!

I've been working on this build on and off for quite a while and it's getting pretty far along, but I just stumbled upon a very annoying problem.

See, I had already done the whole exterior, the floor plan and placement of the main furniture for the arts center I built. I've also fully decorated the ground floor. Today, I decided to move on to the second floor, which just had a few pieces of furniture placed in the room to help me figure out the floor plan. I added a couple items to one area and realized it was very dark, so I added a few ceiling lights. Suddenly, I saw this dark line.

https://i.imgur.com/VBxIh9S.png

No matter where I place the lights, they can't remove this line. If I place a light on one side of the line, its light can reach the other side, but it is basically cut in half. If I place lights directly above the line, it becomes slightly lighter, but the contrast stays similar as the rest of the room is lit up. Despite placing many sources of light all over (somewhat haphazardly as I tried to make something change, anything), it never goes away. Then I realized the shape wasn't just random. It's the same as one wall on the ground floor.

https://i.imgur.com/CMQamLk.png

Does anyone have any idea what I could do to fix this without destroying the whole gallery or the theater below?

*Edited for typos.
  • Omg, I already have a name here lol thanks @Clousinators xD
    I have seen this one before. I noticed it's usually caused by a wall on the floor below, combined with the use of platforms.

    The 'easy and fast' way to try to fix this for me, would be to try to use a half wall (this setup makes me think that the EA calculator sets the walls as too high in some way, so you'd have to 'lower' them)

    However, if you upload the build for me, I'm more than willing to take a closer look at it :)

    Edit:

    another fast solution: increase platform height on your top floor until the 'phantom shadows' are gone ;-) You might need to increase the level height to keep functionality.

    Made you a video elaborating on this issue :)
  • @SerraNolwen thank you for the upload! I will fiddle with it some later today and make you a personalized video solution if I find one that works :)

    Edit: I will make your video tomorrow, it's getting late :) I do have a few suggestions though.
    The first would be to make your grand steps actually functional. ;-) You use double height platforms for nearly all of the steps and while grand, this does render them unusable. If you lower those to 1 tick each, you already lower the building platform from 7 to 4, making the option of raising the level to a platform as well usable.
  • @DeanXeL is usually good with glitches like this....

    if you temporarily remove the wall downstairs does the shadow on the second floor disappear?
  • SerraNolwen's avatar
    SerraNolwen
    Seasoned Novice
    Indeed, removing the walls on the ground floor does make the shadow disappear on the second floor. Hopefully there is some way to fidget with this that allows me to fix this while keeping the same room divisions.
  • SerraNolwen's avatar
    SerraNolwen
    Seasoned Novice
    @DeanXeL Wow! Thank you! You put quite a bit of work into that.

    I tried both potential solutions you gave me. They do remove the phantom shadow. However, using just one or the other without further modification really doesn't work. It either renders the second floor unusable or makes it impossible to have even a semblance of an enclosed room. I'll also need to fidget with windows and such. I might have to simply lower every platform downstairs and remove the grand stairs I created out of platforms on the outside. I'm not sure yet and don't have much time to test this weekend, but I'll keep these in mind for whenever I manage to get back to this build. Or just hope the team somehow fixes this bug.

    Thanks again for the help! I uploaded the lot in case you're curious : https://ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/pc/gallery/1F17B2A81E0611EC88DD7DB6A3FFB678?category=all&searchtype=ea_origin_id&sortby=newest&time=all&searchquery=SerraNolwen&max=50&maxis=false
  • SerraNolwen's avatar
    SerraNolwen
    Seasoned Novice
    @DeanXeL Oh? I guess I should have tested the platforms right away considering it's the first time I really use them. I really thought two steps was low enough to be usable. Thanks for letting me know! This might indeed solve things, or at least help. Thank you! No need to make a video for me. Your explanation is quite clear.