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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 8th Jan 2020 at 8:52 PM Last edited by Slamyy : 30th Jan 2020 at 10:39 PM.
Default Editing Effects / Custom Puddles,Ghosts
I want to change some things like ghost appearance, puddle color and transmutated sims' statues. I'm assuming that I'll need to edit the SWB file named Sims3Effects in Deltabuild0 but I'm not sure and idk how. I would be glad if anybody could show me a way.
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Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#2 Old 14th Jan 2020 at 12:59 PM Last edited by Lyralei : 14th Jan 2020 at 1:22 PM.
Hiya!

So the effects in SWB are (as far as I know) only actually has particle-like effects. So like confetti and snow falling down. Some of these are images so those are quite easy to fix without even editing the SWB file . Ghosts, puddles, transmutated sims statues, on the other hand, are actually shaders and not effects. What happens, is that once a sim becomes a ghost, there's a script that runs that will change the shader of a sim (So SimSkin > Ghost).

If you wanna try editing a shader's default settings, you totally can now! But it's very byte-to-byte like currently. So i'd say that currently, this is quite the "Advance modding". You can read more about it here: https://modthesims.info/showthread....893#post5600893
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 15th Jan 2020 at 11:55 PM
Hi Lyralei! That thread was helpful thanks After some researching, I've learned that what I want is achievable by editing Mtnf for objects. But since ghosts are not objects, are you saying that even if I just want to change things like color, transparency etc., I have to edit the shader's default settings in precomp file? And if I wanted to make a custom ghost, would I need to add a new shader to the file?
As for puddles, I was hoping to make a custom blood puddle (Like this). But I'm far away from editing it's shader or material cuz when I search "puddle" in game files it only points to the SWB file. I don't think puddles are just effects, so that's interesting.
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#4 Old 16th Jan 2020 at 1:12 PM
Yep! One thing to know first though, is that thought mtnf editing an object, you're only editing the shader for that particular object. not all objects that share that shader. With ghosts, indeed, it would mean editing that file. Currently adding a new shader I wouldn't recommend doing. Mainly, because we haven't fully figured out how to edit the precomp file without it going in corrupt mode. So, for now, I'd stick to editing it

Usually, SWB's with meshes are linked *somewhere*. But I will say I had issues overriding this before with a butterfly mod I was working on. I think in regards to puddles, they probably did make it more of an effect. it's a strange one at least! Personally I didn't come across puddle in the SWB file though :/ So maybe i'm missing something here.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 17th Jan 2020 at 10:36 PM Last edited by Slamyy : 31st Jan 2020 at 3:02 AM.
I think I've figured out why searching "puddle" pointed to the SWB file: Checked the effect list from here (couldn't check the SWB file itself with Effect Cloner cuz it didn't open the file for some reason) and found stuff like "puke puddle". But there wasn't anything related to the regular water puddles.
Looking into the libraries, found "Set Puddle" which calls "Set Floor Features" function in the end to flag a location as puddle :
Code:
gWorld.SetFloorFeatures(lotId, location, FloorFeatureFlags.Puddle, puddle, mask); 
And here are all the flags:
Code:
// Sims3.SimIFace.FloorFeatureFlags
public enum FloorFeatureFlags
{
	None = 0,
	Puddle = 1,
	Burnt = 2,
	RainPuddle = 4,
	Leaves = 8,
	All = 0xFF
} 
So all I know now is that for puddles to spawn we need to flag the floor, but how the game actually creates the puddle after flagging is a mystery to me. If it's not an object or effect then what is it?

As for the transmutated sim statue; I see that its appearance is determined by the sculpture material "Gold". So if the sculpture materials are just shaders, then I'll need to wait untill there is more insight to the precomp file.

Lastly, for creating a new death type with a custom ghost appearance; (temporarily giving up on shaders) I think I can do with just editing the Ghost Noise image. However, I couldn't find anything in the libraries that can be useful in this regard. So idk how this can be done code-wise.

EDIT :
Looked inside the precomp file and among the shader sets found this:
Screenshots
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