Mini Tutorial: Invisible Recolors

[hat_plays_sims]

It's easier than you'd think to make an invisible object recolor. About half these steps, I picked up from a Lord Darcy tutorial, the rest was from a HugeLunatic tutorial. I figured it was about time to put 'em all in one place.

Start as though making a nice, normal recolor, but substitute a clear .png file of the appropriate size for your largest image. Use Build DDS on DXT3 or DXT5 to maintain transparency.

If you’re lucky, that’s all you need to do. Test your recolor.

Got funky white shiny bits or weird solid black bits? Then you need to look at the TXMT.

Set Reflectivity to 0.0 (or 1)...

Set stdMatAlphaTestEnabled to 1

And stdMatEnvCubeMode to none.

Commit, save, test again.

That should do it!

If it doesn’t?

Set stdMatAlphaBlendMode to blend (lower case B is important)…

Still stuck?

Set stdMatUntexturedDiffAlpha to 0

That has worked on everything I've tried so far. On certain objects, like the OFB crafting tables or Bon Voyage massage tables, some features are attached and would require either cloning or default replacing to change at all.

Comments

[pinketamine]

Uh! Thanks! :D
This can be REALLY useful :)

[hat_plays_sims]

You're welcome! It's really ridiculously simple, but if you only have half the tricks, sometimes you get some weird alpha issues.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks so much for this! I have depended on others in the past, but now I can do it myself.

By the way, when are we going to get another State of Hat's Sinuses Update?

[hat_plays_sims]

You're welcome! It's too simple not to share.

... Do people really WANT an update on my sinuses? Spring seems to be my enemy, generic sudafed my friend...

[(Anonymous)]

Sigh, tutorials like these are some of the only times I wish I wasn't too lazy to divide my Mac and do the fake PC thing. Especially as I really, really want to have the fridge part of the Florist Bench invisible!

FyrDragon

[hat_plays_sims]

Mmm, I'd have to look at it. Some parts of the florist bench are slaved to one unrecolorable texture, which I do plan to default out... but it's been a while, so I'd have to dig out the file again.

[(Anonymous)]

If you can do something with the florist bench so I could use it in my Medieval or Victorian neighborhood without flinching, you will have a willing slave!

FyrDragon

[hat_plays_sims]

A default replacement of the unrecolorable background textures is on my list, but Piggi has some really great wooden recolors of it. (Downloads > Maxis Recolors > By Category > Hobbies.)

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks Hat. I didn't know about those. They will work for now, but I will eagerly await what you come up with! ;)

FyrDragon

[hat_plays_sims]

You're welcome! I'm on a mission to default replace everything, Piggi seems to be on a mission to do matching recolors of everything. It's AWESOME-- thanks to her I can use all kinds of things that I couldn't use before.

A few questions about fixing those black bits.

[supadupageekygirl]

I recolored a custom rug mesh, but instead of fringed. I get a thick black strip with fringe over it. I'm trying to follow the above but I didn't see several of the stdMat files you have there in the recolor files. I did rebuild using DXT5 and now the textures preview in SimPe don't show the black strip but when I go in game they're there again. Is there something I've missed or is this for invisible objects only?

Re: A few questions about fixing those black bits.

[hat_plays_sims]

Augh, sorry to be getting back to you so late!

You may have to add the stdMat thingies yourself, if the recolor file doesn't already have them. Just make sure they're exactly how I wrote them when you add them. The fact that the options aren't there is probably why you're having trouble doing an alpha edit.

Re: A few questions about fixing those black bits.

[digitaldollies]

This is jaccirocker @ gos aka supadupageekygirl. I got some help from GraveRobber @ GoS and rebuilding the DXT and changing the AlphaBlend to blend from your tut and her help they worked great. Thanks so much for posting the tut and getting back to me.

If you want to see them in action they're in the December theme thread.

Re: A few questions about fixing those black bits.

[hat_plays_sims]

I'm glad you got them fixed, and definitely sorry I was slow! I'll have to check out that thread-- I got back into the swing of the internet just as the holidays really got rolling and that does not make for keeping up with anything.