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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 1st Feb 2019 at 12:47 PM Last edited by MeowMixPls : 16th Feb 2019 at 3:00 AM.
Default Weather overhaul - when is the sky too blue?
I'm trying to fix various issues that bother me i.e stormy weather, fog, not bright enough days, blue hue everywhere, water issues etc.







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Scholar
#2 Old 2nd Feb 2019 at 6:25 AM
I personally like yellow or green best. I think they look the most realistic. Red is good if you want very heavy fog. Interesting project!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 2nd Feb 2019 at 6:47 AM
Great, I was actually planning to make something in between yellow and green already!

I also really like red but that kind of weather might get old really fast as you can't see anything while playing?

Hhm, I'm still thinking if I should make stormy weather with red and then overcast weather with yellow/green.

Thanks for your feedback!
Mad Poster
#4 Old 3rd Feb 2019 at 7:31 PM
It differs per image. Definitely prefer red in #1, I think I prefer yellow in #2 and blue in #3. Red in #1 because I dislike the visibly repeating pattern in the water surface, which is otherwise more visible than the city itself. I also dislike it in #2, but the more gradual fog gives a good sense of depth which is visually pleasing. In 3 I like that there's several 'layers' of buildings visible, which helps to preserve the urban look and feel of the world.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#5 Old 4th Feb 2019 at 2:13 PM
Yeah that's why I needed an opinion which one color is the best overall.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 4th Feb 2019 at 5:04 PM
Well it's hard to say, and maybe I'm not the right person to ask. Each screenshot is a scene, and it reminds me of tweaking shader settings inbetween shots for episodes. There is no one fog setting that is perfect for everything, since you cannot tweak fog while in-game (barring Reshade of course). So you need a universal configuration. And I'm not sure that any one color would come out as much better over another when you conduct a test like this.

Having said that, the first thing you'll want to do with the color ramps is reduce the blue tint. TS3 loves to give everything an ugly, dirty blue tint but for Bridgeport you may want to tone the blue down until you get a murky greyish brown. An immediate improvement, I think.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#7 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 1:19 AM Last edited by MeowMixPls : 13th Feb 2019 at 7:42 AM.
Hi,

This is very overwhelming to me, so first I am working on neutral colours only and when I have sorted all that out (fog, water etc.), I'll move to give each weather type a tint which will be the last step.

Vanilla:



My edits (the colour ramp is completely black and white, I did not add a tint):



Then about my-sky-is-too-blue dilemma, I tried it in a tropical world. I'm putting vanilla first, followed by my mod. I think I need to desaturate the sky once I get the energy.

























Ok so be brutal. Do you think the coastline in the Sunset Valley pic looks any better or is it worse in my edit?
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#8 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 7:39 AM
I'm pleased how these edits make the map view look like. I'm sure it can be made better though.





Now I realised that EA actually tried to get some terracing going on in Isla Paradiso.
Mad Poster
#9 Old 13th Feb 2019 at 5:18 PM Last edited by jje1000 : 13th Feb 2019 at 10:12 PM.
Looks great!

IMO the sky towards the horizon should be a much lighter tone of blue:


I would also shift the hue of the blue slightly closer to the green spectrum, to avoid the sky from looking too purplish.

Uranesia's weather is a good place to start referencing from:
http://nilxis.tumblr.com/post/14670...her-ive-created

Also the water reflections are interesting- were you able to edit them as well?
Mad Poster
#10 Old 14th Feb 2019 at 5:01 AM
This blue's a little too saturated to be honest, it almost looks unnatural. I'd tone the saturation down slightly and bring it just a little bit closer to the original. But it definitely looks better than EA's weak, lifeless skies.

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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#11 Old 16th Feb 2019 at 2:54 AM Last edited by MeowMixPls : 16th Feb 2019 at 3:32 AM.
@jje1000 That's the kind of sky I'm trying to create, especially the deep blue bit. I had a look at Uranesian weather and it seems to suffer from the same issue: the lighter blue sky doesn't blend well with the dark blue bit. https://i.imgur.com/vOslymG.png
I was really hoping that your thread about the precomp file could have provided some insight into this issue.
@AGuyCalledPi

So I desaturated the blue, made it slightly more turquoise, the lower sky is much lighter while the upper sky is a darker blue. But there is that harsh transition... Which set is better, the top or the bottom one? The upper ones are supposed to be lighter. I'm still not happy how it looks.

edit: hhhm, cant see the difference in these pictures when they are listed like this, how can I share a folder in imgur? does this link work for others? https://meowmixpls44.imgur.com/all













Uranesian mod as a reference:



Vanilla:

Field Researcher
Original Poster
#12 Old 16th Feb 2019 at 3:24 AM
@jje1000 I don't think I'm able to directly edit reflections, they were a side product from a want to reduce that weird water blending with sims and objects. The water blending also makes the shore and fog look awful. I'm sure it still can be made better but I needed to move on before I went crazy. I'll return back to it later on. This current water texture is also able to reflect stars during clear nights.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 17th Feb 2019 at 5:55 PM
@MeowMixPls

That's cool! What were the values you edited? I want to take a look at them and see if I could make them a bit more realistic as well.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#14 Old 17th Feb 2019 at 11:04 PM
@jje1000 Good question, I need to revert all my values to default and start adding them one by one to see which ones give that effect. I'm relatively sure it wasn't just one value but they will be in that sea.ini file
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#15 Old 30th Apr 2019 at 1:10 PM
@jje1000
I compared by sea.ini to EA's and I got this effect by changing these values: RefractionDistortionScale = 0.01; and ShoreDepthStart = 0.1;

I haven't really been working on this because I'm still annoyed with the sky issue, and I noticed a new problem.
My mod makes dark-coated horses have the purple "stuff" on their muzzle more visible. But without the mod, the sim and the environment look not so great. Especially the sim.

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