Hi all! I've been struggling to figure this out on my own, so I was wondering if anyone knows how to change the game's snow color/texture, please?

Not the snowflakes that fall from the sky. I mean the snow that builds up on the ground to cover trees, rocks, furniture, and such. You know -- the snow that that can be low, medium, or deep.

I'm looking in the basegame & SSNS EP texture files and replacing every file with the word "snow" in it that I can find, but there's no change.

I changed the color/texture of the snowflakes, and the snow that's on the roads and streets just fine.

So now I'm wondering if ground snow appearance isn't based on a texture file at all. Is it some stupid shader or particle effect or some other such nonsense?

I have been looking at that myself, and short answer is: There is none

Basically what EA did was the cheap way out, regarding memory usage and decided to apply a shader that just has a 'white solid colour' to it. So there isn't actually much we can do unless you want to go super far and edit the Shader_Win32.comp file.

Now, there are for bigger objects (Think cars, etc) A texture for that which overlays it. Which actually makes me wonder if there's a parameter somewhere that defines "does this object need a texture as snow or just the solid colour shader?" In the shaders.

But getting to the point! This texture is called SnowDiffuse. This texture will be applied to any big objects. I'd really just test it with cars. Everything else is just a hard-coded  shader :/

gosh DARNIT!



*horrified gasps* HAYUL to the naw!



Drats. This throws a monkey wrench into all my plans; nothing is gonna look right if the main snow color/texture stays the same.

SIGH

It's like, I love TS3 because it radically overhauled so many things to allow for so much more customization. But I effing hate TS3 for making it all so much more complicated at the same time.

I'm having a similar issue with my lighting mod WIPs: I miss TS2's skyboxes, and the way we could just change the way the sky looks with just a texture swap. I hate having to go into the .INI and all the weird color ramps and nonsense.

And now I have to worry about effing shaders blocking me from changing snow cover, cuz EA's a doofus.

OK, I'm done venting, lol. Thanks for the really helpful info!

Yes, the actual snow depth is a shader I believe-

BUT, I know that there are some specular, normal, and diffuse files that are scattered around the actual Sims 3/Sims 3 Seasons Data Packages.

Me and Mspoodle1 tried tweaking the speculars for a shinier snow, but didn't experiment too much otherwise.

Maybe you could have a go at these?

Hrmmm.... No way I'm effing with INI files anymore, I'm traumatized.
But there IS one file in that zip that admittedly I somehow overlooked, the S3_00B2D882_00000000_C9A0E281BAEC4BE4_snowRamp_0xc9a0e281baec4be4%%+_IMG.dds file, how embarrassing.
If it's anything like the color ramps for sky/cloud lighting mods, then that might be smoking gun!

Pray for me, y'all.

Nope, alas, no dice -- bury me on the mountaintop with my Sailor Moon collection, all hope is lost.

Have you tried experimenting with the other INIs?

Try making them red, and seeing if the snow turns out differently!

I actually noticed when I made my own snow mod, that the snow itself has these "sprinkles" which isn't actually combined with any specular map at all. So, if you open up the Terrain_snowmap in Photoshop, if you check the alpha channel of that diffuse map, you notice that the alpha map has these sparkles going on. I think if you put the actual snow textures but change the contrast to something dark-gray or something, you'll actually see a different kind of depth  

Hope this helps the shinier snow info!  Snow actually doesn't really use specular maps.

See, the problem isn't actually that I want the snow to be a different color. I actually want it to be a different texture altogether.

Not even snow. I'm talking about an entire world covered in flowers. Utterly buried in flower petals. A magical land of flora, if you will.

I'd already retextured the actual snowflakes to be flowers, and the street/road textures, and the snowballs and snow angels and snowmen etc etc. But none of it matters if the main coverage for the world itself is still snow. Changing the color won't really help. *SIGH*

So, alas, this project is a bust, cuz EA had to be a butt and make snow a shader with complicated texture crap. *gathers up my Sailor Moon VHS tapes and hiking boots*