Hello!

I'm using this method of changing textures with SimPE for the first time, and I'm a little confused with a specific thing, so I thought about asking here to see if anyone can help clarify this or if maybe I just misunderstood it lol

So, this is the situation: I used to have the Easy/Lucky/Free eyes on Maxis sclera as defaults (found here: https://smjoshsims.livejournal.com/47350.html and here: https://smjoshsims.livejournal.com/41172.html), but recently I've decided to switch it up for a version with another sclera (this one: https://ddeathflower.tumblr.com/post/153561440570). No problem with this, except that the Maxis sclera version allowed you to pick which color you wanted to use for each default eye color, I selected the ones I preferred, but I didn't really like the specific colors of this new default set... So I thought I could just learn how to change the defaults' colors through SimPE, as I did see people talking about it being a rather easy method (and completely skipping Bodyshop which is not really necessary in this case).

Anyways, I read a lot of the threads here and in some other places explaining the DXT method, did the whole setup on my SimPE, picked the packages with the eye colors I wanted, and everything worked perfectly

However, what's confusing me is that the exported textures look kinda grainy? Like, somewhat low quality, but since this whole process is done through SimPE, that wasn't supposed to happen, right? What's weirder is that when I tested the eyes on Bodyshop and ingame, I wasn't able to notice any glaring bluryness/loss in quality (or maybe I just didn't look close enough)... But looking at the PNGs I extracted from the eye packages, they seem grainy to me Here's one of the images for reference:


(I hope the creator doesn't mind)

What I really wanna know is if this is completely normal and the expected result, or if maybe I did something wrong along the way. Because I feel like textures exported straight from the packages on SimPE, with no interference from Bodyshop, shouldn't look like that, right? Especially if the person who made the eyes also used this method rather than importing to the game with Bodyshop, which I'm assuming everybody does now... Yet both this texture above and the original defaults also looked like this in SimPE, even before exporting?

Maybe I'm overthinking too much, so if anyone can shed some light into this for me, I'll be very grateful!

Are you using DXT3 (or 5), and did you make sure to switch the "sharpen" setting to "none"?

The textures are 512x512, and the eyes are roughly 170x80-ish out of that, so because of the size you can expect some "graininess", especially if you zoom in on the texture in a picture editing program. In Bodyshop you don't see each individual pixel the same way you do in the editing program, and often don't zoom in as close.

Yeah, I did use the correct settings (just didn't try DXT5 because most people said it didn't make much difference), but what I find strange too is that the textures look like that to me in Plugin View inside SimPE

I totally understand that such a small texture in a game from 2004 probably wouldn't look extremely high quality, I guess it's the perfectionist in me that gets a bit annoyed by that xD I just thought that this "crunching" happened only if you used Bodyshop to import projects into the game... Like, normally I see images from people's projects and they look very good, so that kinda puzzles me how it'd turn out less than that in the final product lol

I'm actually working on some custom eyes of my own, but I haven't tried this method with them yet. Importing with Bodyshop they look alright, I tested ingame but I assume the results would be better if I replaced the texture through SimPE... They look very smooth on Photoshop, that I know But I'm still unsure how different it'll be without Bodyshop's compression, that's also why this test with switching the defaults' textures got me confused

I might test it out with my custom eyes to check if this happens too, perhaps confirm that the problem is me being too nitpicky 'xD

There can be a slight loss of quality even with DXT3+ and PNG files, but most of the time it's not something you notice too much ingame. You rarely spend so much time zoomed in staring deep into your sims' eyes unless you're filming or taking pictures with closeups, and even then it's not that often.

There are a few other methods depending on what you're doing, but if you're exporting directly from Photoshop one isn't relevant (exporting then importing a texture via right-clicking the resource itself - some renaming and fixing most likely required for the file to properly read the new texture, so that would need a small tutorial on its own). Another I've seen most in use can crash Bodyshop if you try to make new projects with the files, and generally makes 4x as large files than DXT3/5 even when compressed (RAW32 format) - filling your game up with those is probably only going to wreck havoc on the game's texture memory.

I see, that makes sense. That's probably just it indeed, I'm gonna have to learn how to live with textures not being 100% high quality XD But that's alright.



Ah yeah, it's no problem, I was mostly looking for some clarification whether everything was working as it should! If I run into an actual problem, I'll come around again Thank you very much for the explanations and the patience!