***
Update:
This thread is now for tile-modding...

1. (1 more new setting added) Settings for 2-sided/doubly-sided tiles: post 9
HystericalParoxysm has offered an easier-to-understand instruction here
2. Settings for animated tiles: post 26
3. Settings for pool-tiles and pool-wallpapers: post34
4. Settings for pool-surface-tiles: post39

Additional info:
1. bumpping settings for tiles and wallpapers are basically the same, may read here
2. How to edit the" directory of compressed files"
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=132612
***

I'm not considering a step-by-step tutorial so far, but people are welcome to break the production barrier by making step-by-step tutorials about them without permission, but it's nice to inform me of your nice tutorial(s).

Also, for those HCP product beginning modders,
reading the following threads will help you advance in HCP-product modding.

1. RGiles's Tutorial: Transparency in Floor Tiles (Updated 16 Apr)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=37846
2. Numenor's Recolouring Objects with Object Workshop (NEW tutorial)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=102356
3. Frillen's Tutorial: Transparent Floor tiles
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=71559
4. JWoods' Modding InfoCenter - Creating an Animation Cell Re-Color
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=82395
5. Jwoods' Modding InfoCenter - Understanding The TXTR File and Formats
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=86151
6. Animation via texture-rotation
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=71672
7. Tech Discussion: The Material Definition ("TXMT", a.k.a. "MATD")
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=35769
8. How to interconvert txtr and LIFO files, may read here
9. Wiki: TXMT/Parameters/CategorisedList/TexturalAnimation
http://www.sims2wiki.info/TXMT/Para...xturalAnimation
*****


sete stdMatCullMode cullClockwise (none cullClockwise cullCounterClockwise)
#attrdescription Culling (usually back-face) of primitive rendering

For floor tiles, as long as in their txmt's properties,
"stdMatCullMode" is set to "none", the floor tile can have their bottom wrapped with the same floor tile texture.

But, Since I did alter other properties and txmt type of the floor tiles, I'll have to test more on what are necessary.

The second pic shows the wireframe (basically the graphical presentation of the mesh of the floor tile)

So, from now on, bottomful floor tiles can be done by this setting.
For a temporary guideline, may jump to post 9, but may read advices and experiences from other posts to enhance the insight.

That's very interesting! I didn't know that the "stdMatCullMode" property was even active for the floortiles!
Good finding!
But - to anyone interested in making such "double-sided" floortiles - remember that setting the stdMatCullMode to "none" force the game to draw twice the number of the faces, compared to the normal setting; and therefore, an excessive usage of the cullmode for floortile can lead to a slow-down in the game.

The "double-sided" tiles are great for screenshots and movies, though: film-makers will be very happy, I guess

Alleluyah! Floor hacking at last Thanks Niol!

It occurs to me that if anyone doesn't want the same colour ceiling as the floor above, they can add one of those dummy levels as a sort of crawl space between floors.

I wonder if further exploration will tell us how to change the height of a floor up a wall? Then we'll finally have half landings at any height without warped walls

Later: erk ignore last paragraph - *not* by editing the txmt file I don't think :D

We should thank Bob for his talking about how he used stdMatCullMode in object-creation... That in turns stimulated me to think of trying that on floor tiles... in the hope that it may work.
I've been believing floor tiles are like some recolours rather than some objects. These seemingly further prove that way of thinking may be right.

The txmt type has to be changed into "StandardMaterial", too.

I'm still checking out if other settings are related. I'm unsure if patterned textures will work though coz I've been using a plain texture, a monotonous colour. The tile was intended to be made as a "glow-in-dark" floor tile.

Oops, I've forgotten to post out a file for testing out...

Ah! So the stdCullMode IS deactivated in normal floor tiles!
Have you tried to see if the modded floor tile is correctly managed by the HomeCrafter?

Now if only someone would figure out how to change the edges of the tile to match the top and bottom... XD

Edit: don't worry - found it on another tab

Well this works for me now, but I hope there is a way to get the ceiling to light up like normal objects and floors do, rather than having to set it as emissive. I tried stdMatLightingEnabled=1 which would have worked on a normal object, but my white floor remained resolutely black until I raised its stdMatEmissiveCoef. Otherwise it's beautiful as a backlit ceiling :D

Sorry for the messiness, but I'll be updating this post for collection of infos in a short term. This post temporarily serves s a short and quick guideline for the at-the-time approach.

001.
Necessary txmt properties and things to change:
--1. txmt type = StandardMaterial (instead of "Floor; @ the 1st lower tab of txmt)
--2. stdMatCullMode = none (the essential property to show both sides of a tile.)
--3. stdMatLightingEnabled = 0 (needed to properly show the texture even though disabled!)(yet, the texture will be glow-in-dark outdoor)
(stdMatLightingEnabled = 1 will turn the tile all black.)

--4. lightMapAvailable = true (this'll darken the tile in the night mode)


maybe more... (still testing out what're necessary. Sorry)

002.
If
stdMatCullMode = cullClockwise,
the upper surface (top) of the floor tile is textured while the lower surface (bottom) of the floor tile is NOT textured
If
stdMatCullMode = cullCounterClockwise,
the lower surface (bottom) of the floor tile is textured while the upper surface (top) of the floor tile is NOT textrured.
If
stdMatCullMode = none,
both sides are textured with the same texture.
The texture's direction has yet to be confirmed.

003.
When
txmt type = StandardMaterial (instead of "Floor"@ the 1st lower tab of txmt),
floor txmt properties like:
--1. floorMaterialScaleU
--2. floorMaterialScaleV
no longer work. Only 1x1 scale is left. These two properties are to decide the floor tile scale like those presets (1x1) ,(2x2) and (5x5) in HCP (Home Crafter Plus). The scale is free to decide like (30, 40), (6,7) and etc -- (x,y) where x and y can be any positive integer.
***important to know***(If your original tile has it, keep these lines for HCP compatibility despite its non-sense for rendering.)

004.
non-functional txmt properties in this type of floor tiles (recolour txmt-based rather than the floor txmt-based):
1. stdMatMinLightRangeHint (If wanting to keep this line, keep it as "stdMatMinLightRangeHint = 0". Although the parameter is a non-sense value to the algorithm, it's a known safe one so far.) (for the animated one, the value for this line can remain "4")

005.
1. When the tile is all black while this is not expected, syntactical error happened, or improper txmt properties are input and being effective. Not all improper combinations of txmt properties will cause a problem just as well as some will cause problems. These have yet to be found out and confirmed.
2. When the floor tile is flashing blue, textural referencing error(s) happened.
3. My first patterned doubly-sided tile just acts like a glow-in-dark tile that it's not darkened at all...!

006.
The wireframe pic shows that a tile has a mesh on the grids, and tiles will be regarded as a normal mesh-based object when it comes to the global shadowing effect. They're not exluded, and so this can explain why very clear and translucent transparent tiles have dark shadows like any other mesh-based objects.

007.
--Known or Reported Compatibility:
1. TS2
2. HCP
3. "every EP, Maxis patch and Addon" (info by Inge Jones).
4. FFS (info by Fat D)
--Incompatibility:
Not known or reported yet

008.
For the base game, only 2 ceiling lights will be presented to be properly close to the "ceiling"
eg1 = Floral Fancy Hanging lamp
eg2 = Qadim Bauble Lamp
The others will appear flying in the air... So, choices of ceiling lights are limited.
See the screenshot.

009. Changes in performance & known issues:
1. Tile-scale limitation is now done by the tile-animation property "stdMatTextureCoordAnimNumTiles"
2. like the ceiling/doubly-sided tiles, hard to make them dark like normal tiles...
May read Inge's post to see if that helps in your case(s).
a. Rgiles used a relatively high transparency to weaken the glowing effect. Namely, the higher the opacity the brighter the tile is gonna be.
b. Rgiles seemed to use spec value to further darken the modded tiles
c. use textures not so bright from the start, so the glow-in-dark effect won't be so much unless you're making glow-in-dark tiles...
***-***
3. Ceiling gap... see the 2nd pic. It's a very slight gap between the walls and the tile's bottom. Added: Sorry, the previous one is not good at showing it..
4. transparent tiles may work out better though in terms of lighting.


For beginners, the following threads should help better understanding of the contents. Don't forget, you can ask questions.
1. RGiles's Tutorial: Transparency in Floor Tiles (Updated 16 Apr)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=37846
2. Numenor's Recolouring Objects with Object Workshop (NEW tutorial)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=102356
3. Frillen's Tutorial: Transparent Floor tiles
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=71559


For other infos, may check out this post


Inge,
How is your tile like?
It seems I messed up something that my tile failed to be darkened even when stdMatEmissiveCoef = 0,0,0.

(May edit and add more later)

awesome discovery, niol.

am I right that if we set it to counterclockwise, it will only be a ceiling?

Fat D,

Yes, the top will be like eddies' "invisible" tile while the bottom will be textured.
As Inge suggested, a compressed or dummy level can make it a good use. There can be floor tiles, ceiling tiles and doubly-sided tiles, dependent on what one needs.

Hopefully, I didn't mis-spell your name... :P

I didn't like the glowing effect and I found that could be turned off by stdMatEmissiveCoef = 0,0,0

Then use the ambient light instead by using stdMatDiffCoef = 1,1,1,1

I found the ceiling was also lit by what happens above, so if the floor above is in full daylight, so will be your ceiling below, even in an enclosed dark room!

If you set stdMatLightingEnabled to non-zero and use stdMatBaseTextureEnabled = true, the whole thing goes black. If stdMatBaseTextureEnabled = false then it stays bright, but of course you can only have plain colours if you don't use a texture.

This is HUGE! For people like me who like to deform floortiles to make sloped roofs, this is a huge breakthrough! In the past, I couln't make a roof that rises up, because it would be transparent from below. This allows a whole new level of architecture!

Okay, I'm moderately tech-savvy, and I have SimPe. I'll see if I can hack this from the technical details posted here.

Niol, you're my new hero!

There're still some important thing to test out... and figure out. I feel I still don't know enough to do what I want out of these tiles yet.

But yes, this's a "breakthrough" for bp-cfe-based build-techs... Now and sooner, people can build things much crazier! :moose:

HCP (HomeCrafterPlus) now is like a factory to produce tiles for me to mod... Still, can't use SimPE to clone a tile properly. The fiels will use FR for file referencing.

Added:
AmberDiceless,
The edges of a tile are separate from a normal floor tile. They're simluated by other internal settings...

Well this should be particularly fun for the glass floor tiles anyway because you will be able to be inside conservatories properly and that sort of thing.

I just thought about that! finally dual-side skylights, partly slanted windows and more!

i think I'll update my floors made for matching WW-recolours as soon as I find time.

Wow this is an awesome discovery Niol! Thanks a lot!

Now, I'm wondering if the attached tile is compatible under all game versions....

Compatibility:
1. TS2
2. HCP


Incompatibility:
Not known or reported yet

It worked for me with every EP, Maxis patch and Addon apart from FFS

works fine with FFS, too.

Talking of changing the material "type", did you know that if you change it to "SimpleMirrorReflection" you get this weird mirror effect on the floor. It starts off just reflecting the sky or whatever is above it, but as you rotate the view it starts accumulating artistic swirls of bits of the objects on the lot.

So it's part way to making mirrored floors without using rugs, but I think the lack of the bounding box might be why the reflection is messed up.

Inge, thanks... I'll try that, and I'm testing something else at the moment.. Hopefully, more interesting things will come out...

Niol's doing some nefarious experiemnts... pretty nasty ones again...

How did you set the other settings? I still haven't got one to act like a mirror.

A perfectly working floor tile has already been created, but it's a huge load to bear for the game: one camera for each tile is definitely too much for our poor PCs...

But a mirror over the bed would be an interesting addition to woohoo!

Where can I get it, and how can I do that, please teach...:beg:
When I check out the structure of a mirror, I can find some references in the SHPE files.
Is the file a default file in-game packages, so I just need to call it in the XML or the txmt?
Or that I've to extract
simple_mirror_reflection_txmt
or
caspodiumarea_simple_mirror_reflection_txmt
and then import either into the package?

Numenor are you sure it's a mirrored floor tile that exists already? So far I have only found squares you place like rugs, which several sites have produced now to good effect. I too have managed quite a while ago to make something based on a rug that is a mirror. I thought a real mirror floor was still to come.

Niol, I attach my floor. It's also the one I happened to be experimenting with for making the ceiling as outlined in this thread, so it's got stuff like that in it too

I found the mirror material simple_mirror_reflection_txmt in Objects_02 and the only thing that made it any different from any other material was its type - "SimpleMirrorReflection". So I simply entered that in the type for the floor material and it worked well enough to let me know I was on the right track.

But I believe something further is required to keep the refection true and stable - ie reflecting the actual scene you would expect to see from a particular viewpoint. My hunch is its something to do with the bounding box which is included in a mirror rug, but is not normally included with a floor. This is a mesh, and of course the floor meshes are not included with floor tiles. I think somehow this taps into a lot-wide universal reflection plane whose purpose is to prevent the need for a ray-trace every time you pass a mirror while navigating the lot.