Not bad at all, congrats

In one of the older threads, I saw someone make mention of the Earth as a moon...one of us should try that!

Thanks. I do try

I decided to edit the moon again and make it darker. Looks quite nice if I do say so myself:

Once again, just open the RAR file.

Enjoy

As for the Earth, probably could get a picture of the Earth, paste it over the image of the moon and save it then import the file in to your world and low and behold you should have the Earth in the sky at night.

That's my thinking anyway

Decided to give it a go and it was surprisingly easy.

If anyone would like to replace the moon with the Earth then I have done it for you as demonstrated below:

Just download the RAR file which consists of the following files:

1. DDS Image File:
   S3_00B2D882_00000000_C61E627EBFF91A92_Earth as Moon%%+_IMG.dds
2. Tunable Parameters Related to Sky file (to make the Moon - or in this case the Earth - bigger):
   S3_1F886EAD_00000000_5E20253AF53E517F_Tunable Parameters Related to Sky%%+_INI.ini

Once again, enjoy

AWESOME!! I was hoping you'd give it a go!

Looks good in game, too. You should upload it as a mod, I have a hunch many people would like it

Ok! I've been slaving away for a couple of days now, on just one color ramp. There's still a little tweaking to do.

Here is the color ramp.

Now how do I approach the other color ramps for other weathers? Does it matter if I only have one, or do I actually need one for each weather type?

I'll leave that to other people as I haven't even dared attempt colour ramps yet.
I'm just getting ready top post some more moon redraws of Jupiter, Neptune and finally Titan.

After that I'm not sure what else I'll try attempting

Edit 1:
If anyone would like to replace the moon with the Earth then I have done it for you as demonstrated below:

If anyone would like to replace the moon with Jupiter then I have done it for you as demonstrated below:

If anyone would like to replace the moon with Neptune then I have done it for you as demonstrated below:

If anyone would like to replace the moon with Titan then I have done it for you as demonstrated below:


Just download the ZIP file which consists of the following files:

1. DDS Image Files:
   S3_00B2D882_00000000_C61E627EBFF91A92_Earth as Moon%%+_IMG.dds
   S3_00B2D882_00000000_C61E627EBFF91A92_Jupiter as Moon%%+_IMG.dds
   S3_00B2D882_00000000_C61E627EBFF91A92_Neptune as Moon%%+_IMG.dds
   S3_00B2D882_00000000_C61E627EBFF91A92_Titan as Moon%%+_IMG.dds
2. Tunable Parameters Related to Sky file (to make the Moon - or in this case the Earth, Jupiter, Neptune or Titan - bigger):
   S3_1F886EAD_00000000_5E20253AF53E517F_Tunable Parameters Related to Sky%%+_INI.ini

And I think that's probably enough Moon Redraws for the time being.
I've been toying with the idea of creating two or more moons and then changing the size of the MoonRadius to make it look like two moons.
Will probably have to wait for a few days or maybe until Sunday.
Depends if it works or not
Just a pity we can't have two individual Moon images and/or two moons mentioned in the ini file...
...or can we? I might try that as well and see if it's possible

Anyway, I hope you like what I've done so far though.
Me thinks it's beddy byes time now though.

Goodnight everyone

Margaret: Wow thats flawless, Id love to have that lighting in my sim's world. o_o

Hello,

so I am currently working on a world that, I think, doesn't look good with the Sunset Valley sun-all-the-freakin-time sky in it. So I used SimPE and imported custom Bridgeport ini files that I downloaded from this thread after I installed the world. But if I plan on uploading this world to the Sims 3 exchange or other place when I'm finished, I want the world to be already set with Bridgeport's ini files in it... (The climate for Bridgeport is perfect for my world) How would I go about doing this so that the sims3pack file for my custom world would have the custom sky & weather in it?

Thanks!

Edit: Nevermind. I totally forgot that there's .world files in the CAW folder. Ugh! Anyways, thanks for offering these default premade world INI files for people like me to use, who are not good with technical things.

Amazing work, Jay290783! Those are stunning!


And to the person who mentioned stars:

[MiscParams]
StarIntensity = 100
ManmadeLightIntensity = 48
ProbabilityWeight = 0.5
DaytimeBloom = 0.2


This is found in three package files...

S3_1F886EAD_00000000_DAA2E7455D05702D%%+_INI

S3_1F886EAD_00000000_020B928B69D9347C%%+_INI

S3_1F886EAD_00000000_14BCCF66ED42DE73%%+_INI

Er was that aimed at me? If so then I haven't edited any lighting. It's just what Hidden Springs has as standard.
Only file I've changed (other than the moon dds file) is the file I've included. All I've changed is sun, moon and star size and position.

Thank you. Well I certainly do try. My mum would probably say I'm very trying

Have you seen my Smurf Moon further up by the way?

That I'm especially proud of. Although I do like the look of Titan and Neptune

lol I'm not so sure about that one, but the colors/contrast/detail on these planets (and Titan) are quite lovely!

Er I'll let you in on a secret sssssh don't tell anyone but they're just pictures of the planets and moon Titan. I didn't actually draw them.

To everyone else though...it's allllllll my own work

Oh wow that looks great! Thank you!

(Although now I feel like starting the lunar colony idea I had RIGHT AWAY before I've finished any current things!)

Sorry Jay, but no. What I said was aimed at Margaret in the post above you. But your results with custom skinning of the moon are awesome too!

Im wanting to test this out, make my own color ramps, but i have a dumb question. How do i open and edit DDS files? >_<
both Windows and photoshop tell me DDS is unsupported. Dose it need to be converted...?

You first need GIMP which can be downloaded directly from here

You then need to download the dds plug-in from here and place it in the plug-ins folder. It's not an autoinstaller or anything so double clicking the exe won't don anything. It is actually just the dds plug-in.
The read-me will explain that though.

Once both are installed you can export to file _IMG files which are actually dds files and edit them freely to your hearts content.

Maybe SimSample can add that info to the first posts so people know?

Hope that helps

I'm using Gimp, and it didn't automatically support DDS files either, I had to get a plug-in for it to work. You might try looking up DDS plug-ins for the programs you use as well. I found some listings for Photoshop, so I'm sure you can find plug-ins for other programs as well.

Photoshop needs plugin, as does GIMP- and I always had the dickens of a time getting them to work.

For people who don't have PS and have issues with GIMP, Paint.NET is what I've used recently, and it DOES auto-support .dds files.

The downside of Paint.NET is it is a bit more limited that Photoshop or GIMP in some other tool areas... but for very basic stuff and alterations it works like a charm.

Wow, you have all been making some real progress! Well done to all of you for your efforts, I'm learning a lot from you all!


Firstly, I love all of the moon overrides, so I've created a special thread for them in Resources. Please post them all there, so that players will be able to find them easily:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...d=1#post3686924
Also, that way we can keep this thread to be just about tweaking the sky parameters, as the moon override thing really deserves its own place. Well done to Jay290783 and Margaret Pendragon for making those!


Margaret Pendragon, thanks for the colour ramp! Lovely colours. For your question about the weather types- yes, you need one DDS for each weather type, although France, Egypt and China only have two. If you do five though you can have five different weathers- but they can all use the same colour ramp. So you could have the same colours, just different fog/ clouds. Bridgeport is a good example of this, the colour ramps are all very similar, so that you have very little change in sky colouration (and the water stays the same colour throughout). What I did when making five identical colour ramps was just to make five copies of the same file, and rename it five times! So you would rename it to:
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_ECCBBCB773C02131%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_7529C26EE8E2A9E6%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_28C841C9462BCDE0%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_E422CDDE7FE1F25F%%+_IMG.dds
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_F0A86F660985BF20%%+_IMG.dds
As mentioned in post #2.


Jasumi, thanks for that- but those hashes you have given are for the basegame INI files, and only the skies for clear, partly cloudy and overcast. I would urge anyone who wishes to override those INI files in a custom world to use instead the foloowing INIs:
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_560C0FD7012DA7F3%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_967BC6C3B3808C00%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_FE1F6A95A24A604A%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_2C02B3532B64EB49%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_8DEA7AE7631A026A%%+_INI.ini
Which as you can see, are the ini files for each specific weather type which each correspond to a colour ramp (attached to post #3). Those files contain the star intensity for each weather type, as well as manmade light intensity, probability weight (probability of that weather type appearing), day time bloom (how much the world 'glows' in the sun), cloud direction and speed, and fog parameters. I've added a note in post #2 to make it clear!

If you're making default overrides that show in every world then it's great to modify the basegame ini files, but for the purposes of modding a single world, I would recommend to use the INI files I uploaded to post #3, as this is the way that EA choose to override the default weather for a specific world.



For the question about DDS files, I've already included that information as well as links to the plugins in Post#3. Shows how many people read what I write!

From post #3:


That last bit about the Mip maps is important! I hope this helps!

I've been messing around with the settings, I wanted to have the France weather, but the colour of the water is too turquoise for my liking. When I change the colour ramp in any way when it's loaded up with the world everything becomes intense blue, green & red like this:


Any ideas why?
Here is the colour ramp, I've only made the water colour less green and more blue.


I used the photoshop plugin to edit them. Before I edited the colour ramp everything looked great.

In another instance I tried to make it so that there was France-like weather colouring in all 5 instances instead of just the first two and that also made everything go red, green & blue.

Splatedpumpkin, could you attach the colour ramp? It could be that you have the filetype wrong, as previous tests have shown strange graphical errors and game crashing when the incorrect parameters are used. As mentioned before, it needs to be a 32 bit A8R8G8B8 file, with no mip-maps.

Aha! That was it, everything works great now! I'll def. be trying out more things, it's pretty easy now I've worked it out. I'm definitely gonna continue fiddling, this is great o3o

Well done for getting it sorted out, we want more pictures of your modifications in action!

If by modifications you mean constantly breaking everything, then here you go!
When I fiddle with ini files (i'm modifying your edited base game files), sometimes this happens:

Any idea what that could be? If I just install yours without fiddling it doesn't occur.


Modifying water is very easy now though following the instructions. I just edit the colour ramp a bit, add it via SimPE and evoila! Going to have a go at seeing how much variety there is with water depth, since in my game I couldn't see much difference between 8-10. I want to make a big lake world and having clearer water would work really well. Will try to get good images of each number and transparency so people can decide which one to use easily.

Hmm, what figures did you play around with when that happened? Fog, maybe- or bloom?

For the water clarity, I think the figure just governs how deep you have to go before the water murk colour takes over- the wording is like this in the remarks in Sea.ini (and S3_1F886EAD_00000000_D89F9D186B7BB372%%+_INI.ini in some of the EA Worlds):

I think the last line is a typo, as in my experience lower numbers= clearer water, or at least the water will not get murky until you go deeper. So, if you have a figure 2 in here, shallow lakes will look clear, whereas a figure 10 will make shallow lakes have some murk. Perhaps you could test that for me and see if you get the same results? The default for this is 10, but Bridgeport has 1.0. I think whoever programmed that was reading the 'Lower numbers mean murkier water' bit, as I'm sure Bridgeport was supposed to have really murky water.


Edited to add:

I've added a bit in Post #2 about the correlation between weather types and colour ramps. So that it will be easier to tell which ramp to recolour to go with a particular weather formation!



I'm not sure which of the EA weather types each of those corresponds to, I'll have to devise some tests to figure that out. Anyone have any ideas?

DOH! I was coming here to ask that very question. I've spent the last couple of days remaking my island in CAW, and was getting ready to attack the color ramps again. I'll play around with it and see what I can find out.

Perhaps colorizing each ramp a different color might help?