Blurry paintings - help!

[kat_]

Hi,

I’m a newbie at making things for the sims2 and it would be great if you could help me with this.

The problem is that all my paintings end up blurry in the game.

I’ve tried making recolours of paintings following Numenor’s “RECOLOURING OBJECTS with OBJECT WORKSHOP” tutorial and when I use the “Build DXT” the image looks all shattered in SimPe. When I use the “Import” button it looks fine in SimPe but blurry in the game.


Now I tried following Deedee’s “Photo Studio Tutorial” here: http://sims.ambertation.de/tut_ps.shtml

But the paintings still look blurry in the game. I used the same image that was used in the tutorial on two different painting bases and neither of them looks anything like the result in the tutorial.

Can anyone tell me what’s going on?
It’s three different ways and something goes wrong in all of them...

[trezero]

*ponders* The first thing that comes to mind is the paintings themselves. Are they a high enough resolution, or are they big enough?

It's always better to get a huge picture and let the game (or DDS) shrink it, than it is to make do with a smaller one.

[tiggerypum]

I'm wondering too about the picture size, I assume it must not be your game settings, because other objects/pictures in your game are sharp? Are you using the exact dimensions of the original picture on your new graphic? I'm wondering if the build dxt is scaling it down for some reason.

[simaddict99]

when using the build DXT option make sure that you have the sharpen option set to none. the default setting is smooth which results in blurry images after you save.
using import and update all sizes always results in b lurrier images so i woudln't use that at all.

[kat_]

Hi, and thank you so much for answering.

There’s been some progress today, I managed to get one painting that looked ok by using “build dxt”.

The thing is that the first painting I tried to recolour was the “Nature’s Perfection” painting (the Maxis one with four small frames) and that one still looks blurry. I tried exporting and importing that png without changing anything in it – and it looks blurry in the game anyhow! So it’s obviously that part that fails.
I guess I could just give up on that one and recolour the paintings that work, but I really like the smaller paintings and it would be great if someone could explain if there is something special with that painting or what it could be.

The “Photo Studio” i SimPe still only makes blurry paintings and the import button as well.

simaddict99: yes I set the sharpen option to none, but that doesn’t make any difference on the “Nature’s Perfection” one. But I guess I should just not use the “import” button at all =)

trezero and tiggerypum: I’ve tried both making the image exactly the same size and other sizes, but in both “Photo Studio” and on the “Nature’s Perfection” with “build dxt” it makes no difference.

But I’m glad that one painting worked with “build dxt”. So my question now is really just about the “Nature’s Perfection” painting, does anyone know?

[Ben♣]

After importing with the DDS, be sure you do *not* update all sizes - otherwise the blur problem comes back.

Maybe you already know it :)

[kat_]

Ben♣ - thanks, but I don't update all sizes so that can not be the problem... =)