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Snaitf's avatar
Snaitf
11 years ago

@SimGuruModSquad - Seams on seamless textures?

OK, so several of us over at MTS have been working on a rather irritating problem.
The issue is that, when two different wall/floor textures are placed side by side, it generates a seam, even if those textures line up.
It appears that less than a pixel of either side of the panel/tile is being applied to the opposing side.

We've tried many different approaches to solving this, and have come up empty:
Using different mipmap options, and even no mipmaps at all.
Using different image sizes (widths and heights).
Using different programs to export the DDS files (Gimp, Paint.net, Photoshop...)
Offsetting the textures by 1px in either direction.
Testing textures with AND without bumps/specs.
Using different CC tools (WallEz, Sims4Studio) and even making them by hand (S4PE and hex editing).
Copying the right/left most pixel over the opposing side, and even swapping them both.
Copying the right/left most pixel over the opposing side on to the texture next to it.

But none of these have solved the problem.

Which makes me believe that this is a bug within the game itself, and something we cannot fix.

If that is the case, are you geniuses planning on looking into this?

However, if I am wrong, and there is something we can do about this, could you ask your art department to tell us how?

Thanks in advance,
Snaitf

@SimGuruModSquad
Discussion: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=539060

(Example Images)

http://i904.photobucket.com/albums/ac247/BakieProductions/The%20Sims%204/MTS%20problems/21-10-14_17-58_zps112284d2.png

http://i.imgur.com/10VZuUW.png

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/62184_141019014804Seams.jpg
advice

6 Replies

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  • tastytourist's avatar
    tastytourist
    11 years ago
    Just adding two screens for direct comparison, to make sure it's not mistaken as purely a user-side graphics issue:


    Custom wall on the left (seam), Maxis on middle/right (seamless):

    http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/62200_141021151536seam_custom-vs-maxis.jpg


    Maxis on left/middle/right (completely seamless):

    http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/62201_141021151607seam_maxis-seamless.jpg


    I have a relatively lame graphics card (but am within specs) .. and your walls look seamless, so HOW are you doing this? o.O


    Also here are some direct links to packages in case that helps:

    http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/62202_141021152846pbox_simplesiding_left.7z
    the one in my screenshots above (single tile left edge)

    http://chii.modthesims.info/getfile.php?file=1474495
    not pictured above, screenshot here



  • tastytourist's avatar
    tastytourist
    11 years ago
    Also, I tested with a direct texture override -- that has no seams. So it cannot be the actual textures, must be something else in custom walls. (This override is only the diffuse texture, but some of the ones shown above don't have bumps/specs so that can't be it either).

    (Override is for the corner texture 0x00B2D882-0x00000000-0xEBA2E8A773C1476F, rest is untouched)

    http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/1/7/8/2/8/2/MTS_plasticbox-1474638-10-21-14_override.jpg
  • SimGuruModSquad's avatar
    SimGuruModSquad
    11 years ago
    Hey guys. The reason for the seam is because the sampler for the base texture will wrap rather than clamp at the boundary. This means you’ll get a small amount of the other edge of the texture, which will create seams if the texture’s sides aren’t tileable.

    A way to avoid this is to use a material setting in the MTRL block to scale the UVs such that a single texture can be spread across multiple wall or floor tiles. The parameter name is DiffuseUVScale (which is referenced in the MRTL block via the hash of its name: 0x2d4e507e). Setting this to 0.5 will make it a 2-tile interval, 2.0 will make it a half-tile interval, etc. For an example of a resource that does this, see 01d0e75d:00000000:98cf7bf37a1cc76c – this wall pattern is called “Urbanity” in the catalog. There is a limitation on this though, the alignment of the wall texture is based on its lot position, i.e. if a texture spans multiple tiles, which part of the texture that is used for a particular tile is based on that tile’s lot position.

    Hope that helps.
  • tastytourist's avatar
    tastytourist
    11 years ago
    @Sierra, maybe you can get around the shuffling by um .. “counter-shuffling” your base texture in a way that will make it appear unshuffled again? (Like when it has four 1-unit parts ABCD, which get displayed as CDBA on medium walls, make your medium texture a DCAB one?) -- apparently doesn't happen when making a wall from scratch, so this would be unnecessary.

    @SimGuruModSquad, thank you! The DiffuseUVScale was the last state of our guessing as well, good to know we were guessing in the right direction =P

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