Xanathon, it's not only a MATD problem.
The first thing I noticed is that the "xanathon_glass" MATD had a bad TGI: the group was 0xFFFFFFFF, the Instance 0x00000001 (like a MMAT).
I changed the Group to 0x1c050000 and then I clicked Fix TGI.
Now the object, instead ob being fixed, crashed my game.

After a little more investigation, I discovered that you deleted some entries in the GMND (all the shadows), but you forgot to update the Indexes (or "Indices", as it should be sayd ).
Look at the picture: every time you remove or add a block in the GMND, you have to modify the "Datalist Extension Reference".

Thank you very much for these explanations and sharing your insights! :howdy:

I will do further experiments.

Okay, I looked into that and I understand it, but how do I tell what cDataListExtensions that I delete in the "Edit Blocks" tab correspond to which Datalist Extension Reference entries in Content/cObjectGraphNode?

You showed the ones in your picture but I have no idea how I can tell which are the ones to delete.

No, there's not a relationship between the cDataListExtensions and the entries in the Index list: simply, if you delete 4 extensions, you have to delete 4 Indexes (the last ones in the list).

Some findings about animated textures.

After I saw Oberkorns krystals and Maxis' lost sphere, I thought about doing a palantir (it was also requested in some thread). My main idea was to try and find out something or the other about the animated textures. As a byproduct my Magic Sphere was created and I decided to share my knowledge thus far here in the MATD encyclopedia.

Here goes:


With this property set to "tile" you tell Sims 2 if you are using the bitmap registered at stdMatBaseTextureName as the source for animation frames.
I saw the transform entry and I tested scale, both did something, but I could not really find out what, yet. "rotate" is pure speculation atm. So let's stick to the tile-animation for the moment.


Here you set the number of tiles in the beforementioned bitmap. If you choose 4,4 for example, your bitmap will be divided into 4 rows of 4 columns of smaller images, which are used as (16) animation frames.
The original texture-coordinates have to be applied to the whole bitmap however, Sims 2 scales the smaller frames accordingly (first I thought I had to map my object to one of the smaller frames, but I was wrong).
The first animation frame is that in the upper left, then they are used left to right, row by row.

EDIT: I changed the order of r,c, after I looked into one of the pinball machines.


I'm not really sure about this property, since nothing seems to happen if I change it. I had the idea, with this I could probably assign an area of the animation-bitmap to be left out of the declaration of animations frames (example: upper half of your bitmap is static, while the lower half conatins animation frames), but further research is in order, I fear. Maybe someone has something to contribute here.


Sets the framerate and thus the speed of the animation. It seems to be roughly frames per second.

Nothing more about ...Rot..., ...Scale... and ...Trans... atm, but one can make an educated guess, that with the first two properties you are able to rotate and scale an animation. With Trans(form) you are possibly able to move an animated bitmap around on your object, that's my guess, because it is used to scroll the screentext of the teleprompter. Those are subject to further testing, however. If I find out more, you will hear (or better: read) about it. :o)

Thank you Xanathon for your contribution.
The "Anim" section of the MATD is still a mystery to me, and I'm glad that Oberkorns first opened this Pandora vase...

I have made no tests at all, but I can point out some other Anim parameters that can be found in the MATD, along with some values that they can assume:


Seems that lots of things can be done with this parameters: rotation, transformation, scaling (even with a pattern: triangular, sawtooth and sine...).
I hope that someone would run some tests: what interesting objects can be created with animated textures!

Ahhh to many to remeber it would be really easy if some one just made a list of some of the things you can do with the matd files

You're right, but it wouldn't be easy to write such list, because the MATD has a million different parameters and purposes

Basically, everything related to the external appearance (not shape) of the object is commanded via the MATD: texture, transparency, diffuse colour, specularity, reflection, animated texture (e.g. the flashing red light of the TV).... Too many to mention.
That's why I've created this thread: to let everyone give his contribution on this huge subject.

Okay, here is my contribution. I'm not 100% certain of what I'm about to say being absolutely correct, but I'm 100% certain of my experience attempting to create stainless steel, and large matching sets. I've kept records; here they are:

Please correct me if I am wrong.
These settings were constant through my experiment:
stdMatEmissiveCoef: 0,0,0
stdMatEnvCubeBlurFactor: 0,0,0
stdMatSpecPower: 12

stdMatEnvCubeCoef: 0.9,0.9,0.9 (the most reflective) or 1,1,1 (the least reflective).
My Scarborough cabinets were set to 0.25,0.25,0.25. Typing 0.9 for each gave me undesirable results. (see picture labeled #1 where the settings are 0.65,0.65,0.65). It's not set to 0.9, but it gives a basic idea of how big of an effect the number change is. Multiple colors tend to be seen when you rotate the screen, like a mirror effect. The higher the number is, the less visible the actual color tends to be. You basically have to be at a certain angle to even see the actual color.

stdMatSpecCoef: 0.99, 0.99, 0.99 (for brighter edges, handles, and corners) or 1,1,1 for less bright edges. (see pic # 4)

If stdMatEnvCubeMode: is set to "none" then it disables the reflectivity caused by the stdMatEnvCubeCoef. I don't know if the stdMatEnvCubeMode
has other uses, but I know that stdMatEnvCubeCoef seems pretty useless without it.
One more thing:
While recoloring Frances's Zen Dining Room, I noticed that the material definitions of the china cabinet (buffethaut - sorry, I only speak English) were quite different from the table and sideboard. no matter how I recolored it, it never looked right. I edited the Matd's so that they were identical to the sideboard and table, and now the cabinet looks the same as the rest of the set.
The more the Matd's are alike, the more the textures are alike. Without fail.

A question: Does anyone know why I am seeing equations (x+y) in recolors with a high setting on the stdMatEnvCubeCoef. It appears that the lower my settings are, the higher elevated (less visible) the equations are.

This may be common knowledge by now; this may help no one, but then again . . . it might.

Thank you Harpy for your much appreciated contribution!

The thing that most puzzles me is the way the stdMatEnvCubeCoef modifies the transparency of the object... It shouldn't, as far as I know.
I'm curious, and I'll run some more tests with different values of stdMatEnvCubeCoef, while keeping all the other parameters to an average level.

In your tests, you wonder how come a stdMatDiffCoeff of 0,0,0 prevents your solid red colour to appear. It's normal: the DiffCoeff determines the "diffusion", i.e. how much the base colour is visible. If the object has not a texture, the DiffCoeff determines the colour of the surfaces. If a valid texture exists, the appearance of the texture is "bended" toward the RGB value contained in the DiffCoeff. Therefore, a DiffCoeff of 0,0,0 brings the texture colour toward the black.

On the other hand, I thought that the EnvCubeCoef determined the colour of the EnvCube texture: 0,0,0 = the EnvCube reflection is shown with very dark shades; 1,1,1 = the EnvCube is shown with very bright shades; other RGB values = the EnvCube reflection is "tinted" with the RGB value.
But seem that I was wrong, or at least it's not that simple: that transparency effect was not expected...

In your tests, the stdMatAlphaBlendMode is set to "none" (= no transparency)?

I had to check to be sure. Yes, it was set to none through all of the testing. I have only recently started learning to recolor glass, and I didn't use it because I didn't know what it was for.

I did have to set EnvCubeMode to reflection to get these results though. If it was set to none, I saw no reflective properties, of course.

Do you think that is what is causing me to see these equations. (See pic below). I suppose it was not intended to be used that way, but it can obviously be manipulated. The numbers can be tampered with to where the equations are not visible, or at least higher elevated. The in-game camera cannot come low enough to the surface to view the equations.

All I can say is that the closer EnvCubeCoef is set to 0.999+, the more visible the equations are. This really drives my curiosity.

Well, it's been four days, and I've answered my own question about the equations. It turns out, I had to add a new material definition to get rid of them.

This stuff is starting to make a lot more sense now.

Sorry, Harpy, I missed your last post...
I only wanted to point out that when you set the EnvCubeReflectionMode to "reflection", you have to specify a valid TXTR in the stdMatEnvCubeTextureName field, otherwise, the game can't render the reflection.

Infact, there is a difference between "reflection" (correctly, EnvCube reflection) and "reflectivity": the former uses a texture (the EnvCubeMap) to create a fake "environment" reflection (like the trees that can be seen reflected on the taxi windows); the latter is only a "shineness" parameter, that determines how much the surface reflects the light.

If in the MATD there isn't a stdMatEnvCubeTextureName field, you can add it; but you'd better use a MATD that already has the stdMatEnvCubeTextureName field (and presumably has the stdMatEnvCubeReflectionMode already set to "reflection"

I got writing on one of mine using the description in this thread, then I noticed a texture name for the reflection mapping had been spelt wrong in the message (sliver instead of silver) when I corrected that in my MATD I stopped getting the writing on the object.

To Igne Jones: I did not change any spelling, and fixed the visible equations. Numenor was right.

To Numenor: Why did you say "you'd better use an MATD that already has the stdmatEnvCubeTextureName field"?
I added TextureName and didn't seem to have any problems, but if this causes problems, please let me know as I have sent the MATD settings to a mesh creator.

Harpy, that doesn't mean there wasn't a misspelling in the MATD you replaced. I can tell from your spelling of my name that you are prone to the occasional typo

Gee thanks, and I did not not replace a MATD. I added one that was not there to begin with.
And I was not saying that your method did not work for you. I checked the MATDs that I was using before I posted, the before and after MATDs, and there was no typo in mine. I don't know how many objects you found typos in, but it is unlikely that I had typos in dozens of unrelated object MATDs.
P.S. Can I just call you "Bob" as I am less prone to mispelling "Bob"?

Sure, Bob will do fine :D

I am playing around with the MATD lately. thats what I figured or at least think I figured:

I checked out a mesh that has a recolorable part and an additional MATD. the second MATD has blend mode set to blend, blendstrength set to 0.200000, speccoeff set to a dirty yellow, diffcoeff set to a medium grey and diffalpha to 0.97. the default texture is medium grey and its MATD has medium grey coeffs everywhere. I figured that the chrome appearance of the item results from the additional mesh MATD. once the diffalpha is set to less than 1 and blendmode is set to blend u can make your texture blend to the color entered in the speccoeff.

now I intended to get some other colors. thus I went and created recolors that appear gold, orange/copper, red, purple, light green and light turquoise ingame - all this with a darkened silver texture. once a 'prop group' with a coeff is enabled u can add a color and make them overlay the texture.

having figured that out I intended to tweak reflectivity. the MATD of the texture has cubemode set to reflection and reflectivity set to 0.5. while the envcube props do not look like I could do anything about the 'degree' of the effect reflectivity certainly looks like a percentage in decimals. thus I tried tweaking it by using diff parameters for reflectivity. only: no change at all ingame! how annoying! then I thought I might add reflectstrength. maybe that prop needs s.th. additional to be tweaked the way I wanted. I again tried diff parameters (format: 0.000000) in combination with reflectivity. while the game didn't mind me adding that prop it sure didn't change anything about the ingame appearance either.
what exactly does it take to change the degree of reflectivity? I aimed at making the surface appear matte or at least less reflective...

s.th. else I couldn't figure while recoloring windows is the emissivecoef. its supposed to tweak the brilliance/ inner light of glass provided blendmode is set to blend. now with a window blend mode is certainly set to blend only why do I not see the slightest diff when compared to the 'default' black? what exactly am I supposed to see when entering a color to the emissivecoef??

Emissive coeff are intended to be used with opaque textures (blend=none), not transparent ones (though the Emissive should be visible on transparent textures, as well). Note: the emissive RGB parameters can be higher than 1.0.

As for the various reflectivity parameters, I've never understood completely what each of them is supposed to do. I usually enhance reflectivity by lowering the "Reflectivity" parameter, and it works to me (especially with glass, but it works on metal surfaces, too).

Last note: I'm not sure to have read well your experiments, but if you add one or more entries to the MATD, the game won't read them, unless they are in alphabetical order (the next release of SimPE will have a "Sort" function for the MATD).

I just discovered and read this thread. Now my head is spinning and I'm wondering how, understanding as little as I do, I have managed to make anything. Well the answer is that people like those who have contributed here have also made step-by-step instructions for people like me. Thanks to you all. I'll have to read everything here over several times and then see if I can use it. The answers to several of my previously unanswered questions are here if I can make sense of them in my fuzzy little brain.
Thanks to everyone who has given me all this new information.

Btw, this link is dead. What is wiki? Is there anywhere else I can find this information?

The link you've posted works for me (at least, it's working now...).

The Wiki is a sort of Encyclopedia that contains all the things we know about the game; everyone can add his own findings.
If you have read the message you have quoted, you have probably read my reply, too: I don't like the Wiki very much, seems so unfriendly... Though it's a great idea, and it might have had more success among the users.

The home page of the Wiki is: http://www.modthesims2.com/wiki/
You need to register (the login to MTS2 isn't valid, there).

Thanks. It's working for me now, too. Not that I know what to do with all that information. But I like to think I am graduallylearning a little.

Yay! kitchen appliances that actually match each other perfectly. Thank you so much to everyone who posted here and gave me this valuable information.