Bad lighting issues

[Anubis360]

Hello there! I was really happy I could finally do my first frankenmesh with working morphs and all, but sadly noticed this while testing:

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/1/1/3/1/0/6/9/MTS_Anubis360-1256844-WTF.jpg

My mesh has some weird shadows when outside, but when it is under indoor lights it looks perfectly normal, so it does in MS3D. The strange shades also appear in CAS, but not as noticeable as in-game. I checked all the meshes (base and morphs) and they look good in Milkshape. I really don't think the bump maps could be the problem, I did that texture as I always do it, and it never failed (like this :P)

I hope you can help me! :)

[BloomsBase]

could be a wrong format texture or just specular colors to dark.
Hard to tell from the screenshot.

[Anubis360]

Oh, ok. I'll check and see if it works. Thanks! :)

[robokitty]

Personally, I've just accepted that things are uglier outside. Look at the sim's skin on the indoor vs. outdoor pics. Even the skin gets more shadowy & blotchy on the outdoor pics, so I'm guessing all the weird shadows are just normal game behavior (though I'd be interested in hearing if you manage to fix it).

[Anubis360]

Okey, so I've changed both specular and bump map textures, and the bad shading persists. Maybe it's TSRW problem, do you you know what "Optimize mesh" and "update bounding box values" do? Maybe the change the sun shadows or similar, causing this issue.

EDIT: Just tested, it wasn't that. Oh well! XD

[BloomsBase]

share so we can have a look?

[Anubis360]

share so we can have a look?
It looks exactly the same, I could not fix it :P
I guess it's going to stay like that XD

[whiterider]

The bounding box is used for objects. It changes how big the game thinks the object is - e.g. if you have a painting with a huge bounding box you won't be able to drag it up and down the wall, because the game will think it's cutting into the floor/ceiling when it's not.

[CmarNYC]

I agree with Robokitty - shadowing in sunlight just really sucks.

[Anubis360]

@White: Thanks, it's nice to know that :)

@Cmar: So I guess it'll stay like this? :/

[CmarNYC]

The only other thing I can think of for you to try is smoothing the normals on the mesh. You'd have to smooth only the dress parts, not the skin parts, though, and keep the original mesh in case it comes out looking worse.

[Anubis360]

What MS3D tool should I use to smooth my mesh? align normals?

[CmarNYC]

Align normals is what I would try, yes.