Textures, textures & MOAR textures! Paints & Roads! All uploaded! (Update-Please Read) «12...Next Go

BSIRegina

For weeks or months or something there was something about Martine's texture pack that was bugging me. I had added files she exported to those I exported last summer. The thing was, it didn't feel like I had a whole set of the files. I remembered seeing texture names in there that never made it out in her pack.

Sooo, I went through both base game and WA textures as carefully as I possibly could, and I discovered that for once my brain wasn't faulty. I decided since I was at it I would export and upload the entire mess to BogSims so I could quit digging up a link to a very remote spot on MTS for people to get the files.

I found something like 15 additional terrain textures, and exported all of the road set files I could find as well.

I also rotated all of the crop images because I've found that invariably I try to apply crops to an area but the file I want to use is headed in the wrong direction. I also would like to do some diagonals but will get to those later.

I've put the entire mess on BogSims (link in my sig) for anyone who might be interested in using them.

Okay, old paragraph is getting edited plum out. Unless we did something seriously wrong with resizing images originally made at 1024x1024 and resized to 512x512 aren't working out real great. They look fine in C-A-W, no problem there, but when we get them into the game they aren't matching the in-game terrain paints as well as they should be, coming out on the blurry side and such. Because of this I've pulled the 512x512 and unless people don't mind fuzzy textures they may want to download the larger image sizes.

I noticed some of the images I exported are extremely tiled and have very strong colors and hues. They are absolutely beautiful, though, and applied with low opacity and a good fall-off setting will add some stunning effects to just about any world map.

So, go forth! Download! Enjoy!

ETA: Something I failed to mention last night was that when I exported the textures I didn't rename them, other than to remove the hex number that's attached to each one, AND include -WA at the end of the texture names that are in World Adventures, and added -512 to the end of the files that are 512x512 for anyone who wanted to have both files in the same directory somewhere on their hard-drive.

auntielynds

Yippee! I love new textures!

If I download these can I get rid of martines so I don't have duplicates? Or did you just put in the tectures she overlooked?

BSIRegina

Yes, you can get rid of Martine's. I decided to upload the whole ball o' wax. I was stinkin' tired of every time I turn around saying, "Hey, you need some new textures!" then have to run all the way over to MTS and dig up that thread that's hidden WAY out in the back 40 and run back here and post a link, when otherwise I can say, "Hey, you need some new textures! Click the link in my sig!!"

Oh, and then having to explain that if they downloaded those it would be a good idea to resize them and why, when a lot of people don't want to mess with that kind of stuff. I play with images--it's what I do. I don't mind resizing images but a lot of people don't want to be bothered with that kind of thing.

Rflong7

Hi

I bookmarked so I can link easier.
Good work, lady. 8)

BGateGWayB

BSIRegina if I knew what you were even talking about I would be very thankful. I'm still thankful :P some people really do need these things. But I thought you meant a different type of texture. Why I am even posting this? I don't know why. I'm just a little confused at the moment.
Thanks for the world textures though. :?:I'm still confused :?: :?:

auntielynds

Just tonight I was resizing some textures I tweaked, but I was going to 256 and a warning kept coming up saying that I would lose some layers because 256 was to small. 512 must be a better option I'll try that. I'm glad you uploaded the whole ball of wax it will make it easier to delete Martines.

I updated the Terrain Texture thread to directly link to your download pages. Thats what I hand out to every one. I should probably delete Martines from that list so others won't duplicate.

BSIRegina

BGateGwayB, that's okay. I was born confused and will probably die the same way.

These are textures you can use for creating your worlds. Some are for terrain paints, some are for creating roads. The ones I uploaded tonight all are straight out of the game with no modifications other than a set that is resized for smaller world file sizes. Included are also all of the road textures I could find as well that are used in the adventure destinations.

When you use C-A-W, adding textures is really easy, and putting together a custom road is simple as can be, IF you have images with which to do it.

I probably didn't explain that very well. For some reason I'm really tired tonight.

Thank you, Rflong! The more awareness we can bring to people that the shale rock texture just isn't a good one to cover their mountains with the better off we'll be!

I didn't even get to take the time to properly mess around with any of those textures, so I'm kind of anxious to see how some of them are going to look.

BSIRegina

That might be a good idea, AuntieLynds. I need to remember to bookmark that thread, because you added some most excellent resources to it. I need to clean out my bookmarks first, though. I can barely find anything in there at the moment. :oops:

auntielynds

Okay this is how I handled the Martine link issue. Take a look and see if that is self explainitory, It's late, and I might not be making since.
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/181739.page#2164962

BSIRegina

Sorry, AuntieLynds, I went to bed and didn't see this last night. I think that looks great! There were also several base game textures I found that she didn't have extracted. That's what led me on this search to begin with. I had never looked at the WA textures, but had been through the base game stuff last summer, long before WA ever came out.

One thing I forgot to mention but will add in the first post. Martine renamed a lot of the files and added her name to the beginning of them. I found that confusing when trying to look for textures, so the only thing I changed name-wise was to add -WA to the end of the names of textures I extracted from the expansion pack. This way pretty much everything is grouped together as it should be in the Source Textures directory (excepting that silly sand file in the default source textures that starts with 00). Of course if a person is holding onto that many textures, I think dividing them into sub-directories by type would be even better.

auntielynds

I went to bed right after I posted that, It was almost two in the morning for me and I think you are a time zone ahead of me! such night owls we are.

I decided to leave them in because inevitably people would be posting I forgot Martines textures, so I thought I would clarify the redundancy to begin with.

Yes I agree with you on the confusion with the nameing Martine gave hers, it's hard to find what your looking for. If I could change one thing about CAW it would be to have the thumbnail pics in the texture directory. I spend a good amount of time adding and then editing textures try to find the right one.

Edit........Regina, how do you make the links say something else? I want to clarify your links on the Textures thread.

BSIRegina

So many times have I thought the very same thing about thumbnails for the textures! And with the .dds files it's not as if you can open Windows Explorer and set the directory to thumbnail view and see anything. I CAN open Paint Shop Pro and do a browse, but for some reason it won't bring up the .dds images in the Source Textures directory, so I basically need to have a copy of that directory exactly as it is somewhere else, then access it through the browse feature of PSP. It's a pain in the rear!

Here's the code for making a link:

[url=http://www.webpagenamehere.com]Text you want to use instead of the URL here[/ur]

Elilie101

I love textures.... If I'm undestanding right, I don't need to worry about my custom texture for CAW because they'll just upload with the world?

BSIRegina

That's right, Elilie. Any images you use in your world are part of your world file, so technically they aren't custom content.

Elilie101

Yay! BTW I've downloaded these textures andI'm thinking they're gonna be heavily used... I'm considering darkening the main grass I'm using for the Reaper World...

BSIRegina

Ooh, no doubt a good call, Elilie! A while back I was helping someone with a project (the one that is at least temporarily abandoned by her because C-A-W just eats up too many resources) and she was using an extremely dark grass texture. She hadn't noticed it when she was in that world on a daily basis working on it, but it was way too dark for that particular world. The result was an extremely eerie and creepy feeling, with the sky even looking way darker than it normally would have. I mentioned that to her and when she loaded the save after a week of not seeing it, she felt the exact same thing.

So yes, using the right grass color for your world is essential. I had to tweak grass a lot for The Shire to get exactly what I wanted. It needs a happy, peppy green, not a yellow green. This ultimately meant redoing every grass texture I use on that map to reflect that but the result is well worth it.

simbody872

These textures are wonderful! Thanks much for exporting them. I had made a bunch of custom textures to play with and sadly only a few of a few dozen look decent over large areas. Trying to find decent rock textures for mountains that look good both up close and at a distance is a real pita! I think I will be using one or 2 of the rock textures to replace the rock I'm currently using in my worlds.

BSIRegina

I had made a bunch of custom textures to play with and sadly only a few of a few dozen look decent over large areas.

I can completely empathize with you. This is an ongoing problem with most of EA's textures as well, and why that generally speaking I spend an hour or two editing nearly every texture that I use. The problem is that in-game the saturation and brightness of the textures are increased over how they appear in any image editor, so in an image editor the tiling isn't always as noticeable as it is in C-A-W or in the game. I have found the best way to get around this is to edit out the worst of the tiling, then use those textures with lower opacity over the top of textures that have very little tiling, and tiling that's in a completely different pattern.

For example, if you look at the grass textures you'll notice that most of them are the exact same texture with different colors. In some cases if you layer one of those textures on top of another grass texture, it just magnifies the tiling.

Fortunately, the in-game fog and distance blending are a huge help with hiding some of the tiling, but it doesn't always work, and I've never seen it work on the really strong textures like the rocks.

simbody872

Ah so that explains why even darkening my textures didn't make them stop shimmering. I've spent hours trying to edit them but I see very little if any change. I have some lovely rock textures that look great while working on them, but place in CAW and disaster! I have one that has a detail I want but has too much once it goes in CAW and it sparkles and shimmers as the camera moves I've just not been able to beat it into submission yet!

Amy

BSIRegina

I've been sitting here for at least an hour trying to get Grass_01 to behave itself. This is an absolutely gorgeous grass texture with some of the most beautiful design and awesome colors I've ever seen, but it all has to go because it repeats terribly! I want it on Green Hill Country.

So yeah, in order to have the images display properly, you have to make sure you don't have any fun little designs in them. A fun little design on a single tile is a good thing. A fun little design spanning half the width of your map, not so much.

BSIRegina

I've been sitting here for at least an hour trying to get Grass_01 to behave itself. This is an absolutely gorgeous grass texture with some of the most beautiful design and awesome colors I've ever seen, but it all has to go because it repeats terribly! I want it on Green Hill Country.

So yeah, in order to have the images display properly, you have to make sure you don't have any fun little designs in them. A fun little design on a single tile is a good thing. A fun little design spanning half the width of your map, not so much.

Trying to remove the tiling while at the same time maintaining the ambiance of the texture is, as you say, a royal PITA.

auntielynds

Simbody872,
in what format are you saving your custom .dds files? I had the same problem with the shimmering until I read a thread about using mitmaps and whatnot.

I'll try to find that thread.

Okay here it is
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/143690.page
I use gimp and use the settings Stw402 used. that worked best for me.

BSIRegina

AuntieLynds, good catch! I had no idea there was an actual shimmering problem if the save setting was wrong. I just use DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp with interpolated alpha. I don't remember if I messed with it any before settling on that setting but I think maybe I didn't, just left it there from creating object textures.

Something else people might want to keep in mind is that C-A-W will also read .png format as well as .tga format files, so those may be options for problematic finishes on images as well.

BSIRegina

I had a question in another thread that I'm going to address here about the possibility of a world going wonky that has custom textures after installing a game patch or expansion pack.

To start with, TS3 and expansion pack(s) include several build.package files. These files are what holds all of the textures (in .dds file format), thumbnails for moodlets (in .png format), audio, behavioral and tuning stuff, and more. If you open one of these files in a .package viewer or .package editor you can see everything that's in it.

All of the textures that come with C-A-W (the few C-A-W defaults to, and the textures within the Source Textures directory are either exported .dds image files from one of those build.package files OR a .dds image file that was hanging about on one of the developer's hard-drives.

Each of these images available for use in C-A-W is not part of the game, but a stand-alone file. When a world is exported from C-A-W, the image files used in THAT WORLD and ONLY that world are added to that world file, which is the only place that world file will ever look for its texture images.

In a nut shell, any custom textures people put into their worlds are absolutely no different than the image files that are used in the worlds EA makes for our games. They are image files, nothing more, that end up assimilated by the world file.

simbody872

Thanks to your tips about how CAW magnifies brightness and textures I was finally able to alter one of my rock textures into something that has a texture, without any major tiling, and no shimmering as you move through the world! I think I'm finished with my world finally! Just one last in game test to double check my latest round of fixes.

I'm hanging onto your textures as well. I'm sure they will come in handy, especially the rotated crops. I figure why do it myself when you already have. How many copies of them do we need floating around anyway?

Thanks again!

Amy

BSIRegina

You're welcome, Amy, and I'm glad you were able to fix it!

Sometimes there are just things I want done a certain way and all those textures were part of that. I know the only way to get something the way I want it is to do it myself, and experience has taught me that if I want something a certain way someone else will want it too. So if I'm going to take the time to do something how I want it done, it makes that time and effort worth a lot more when someone else will be able to use it too.

Kudos on finishing your world! I'll bet you're excited about that!