I'm making a sunken tub cloned from the Maxis sunken hottub. The water has three stages: still, bubbly (when one or more Sims are in it), and raging (when Sims WooHoo). I wanted the tub/hottub to use the "bubbly" state when not in use and perhaps the "raging" state for when it is in use (regardless of WooHoo). In other words, I want the water to appear to constantly be moving (I'm going to make a water fountain attachment shortly).

But, for dummies like me, things are never as simple as the seemingly straightforward process that comes to mind should be.
Rather than dealing with the BHAVs that switch the material definitions and textures, I exported the "bubbly" texture and imported it over the "still" texture. Then I cloned the "bubbly" material definition, gave it the instance (high) and instance number of the "still" material definition, and changed the value for "stdMatBaseTextureName" to match the "still" texture.

Since I cloned the material definition for the "bubbly" animated texture for the "still" texture, I would think it would act in the same manner. However, inside the game, the animation for the "still" texture only animates a second or two after the object is placed. Then it only animates when the camera is moving (I hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse as opposed to arrow keys, by the way).

I have not and will not try changing the "raging" state to be the new "bubbly" state until I get the "still" state to work right.

I've read the Modding InfoCenter thread and the wiki page about Animation, but I am still at a loss. Any and all help is appreciated.

Edit: I going to leave this thread open right now just in case it can be fixed. Tomorrow, I'll see if I can find a backup copy of the object and make the changes to the texture and Material Definition without cloning/deleting the exisiting Material Definitions to see if that is why it is not working properly. If I can get it working, I'll delete this thread since it be no longer needed. I'm too tired to do anything tonight.

Edit 2: I've restored a backup and made the necessary changes. The texture does not animate at all, even with the identical texture and Material Definition of one of the animated textures. Interestingly enough, the animated textures have "none" as their values for the "stdMatTextureCoordAnimMode" field instead of "tile", so I assume they indeed use another means of animation other than the one described in the Modding InfoCenter thread. I've updated the zip file.

The hottub water animations and the else are predefined in their corresponding material shader unnegotiatorily.

You may either alter the material shader or the bhv, your choices...

Thanks, niol.
My, my...what...um, interesting names they name those BHAVs in the hottub semiglobals....it is a good thing I was not reading them aloud to myself or with anyone around me!

I had to import and edit the BHAVs that are not packaged with the standard cloning of a hottub to get it to change as I wanted. I keep getting an error (something about "Requesting to play an animation on an object for the third time") every once in a while whenever a Sim leaves, but I am no longer able to get it to appear every time. A few times, the Sims flew all over the place during their initial WooHoo before snapping back to each other....and one time, the cutscene music seemed to repeat itself (playing after the cutscene had finished). I am still testing to make sure there are no more errors. But, no errors appeared when those things happened.

I am posting the updated version (now found in-game with the showers and baths) should any kind soul wish to fix the cause of that exiting error and possibly correct any messes I may have inadvertantly created.

For the bhav modding, I'm sorry I'm not a bhav modder yet to help...

I believe you may get more bhav modding help from this forum
http://www.modthesims2.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8
where more this sort of modders frequent more.

Sorry, me not much of a help but just provided you a little bit of the direction you may try out.

May link back here...?

Good lucks...

Oops. You are right; since it is now more of a BHAV problem, I probably should post this there now. Do I delete this thread and start a new one there or should a mod move this thread? I do not think the staff would like it if I made a thread that just links back to another thread with the words "go here please"; I feel I've already past my self-imposed daily post limit.

(Thanks again for your help. I would have torn my hair out trying to get the material definitions to work right.)

Edit: I changed the title to be more appropriate for its new home in this forum. Thanks for moving my thread.