Hi,

I'm editing EA's kitchen knife prop to make a larger decor knife. There's a gap in the texture on the "spine" side of the handle that I cannot figure out how to get rid of. I've checked that the faces are facing outward. The UV mapping of the handle is done by EA and I haven't changed it, just confirmed that the affected part of the handle is indeed part of the map. The original EA model renders without the gap in-game.

Attached are screenshots of previews in Model Viewer showing the gap (it looks light gray in-game), as well as what the mesh and UV map look like in Milkshape. In the screenshot, the problem part of the handle is mapped to a lighter gray area of the texture than the rest of the handle, but this is not what causes the gap, as I just used that texture to show how the mapping looks. The actual object uses a multiplier where the entire handle is of a uniform dark gray, but the problem persists.

Any help would be appreciated! I can upload the .package if needed. Thanks!

Have you check the alpha channel of it? Sometimes that could be the issue, else I don't mind to take a look at it! ^-^

Thanks for the reply! The alpha on the multiplier is all white. The specular has an alpha that is white for the blade and black for the handle (except for those three decorative dots). The RGB mask has no alpha.

I've attached the .package. The mesh groups are inverted in the MLOD--group00 is the knife and group01 is the dropshadow--that's how it was in the EA decor object I cloned from, so I didn't mess with it. If you could take a peek at it, I'd be grateful.

Ok...I took a look at your file. There are several issues with your project, namely:

1) all the textures are the wrong size. They are all 64 by 64 when they need to be a minimum of 128 by 128 which would be a half tile by a half tile, I suggest 256 by 256 (1 x 1)
2) The mask is wrong. The mask should be up to 4 colors depending on how many recolorable areas are on your object. In your case, 2. The mask needs to be red and green, in that order. There should be no black whatsoever on the mask.
3) The multi is kind of strange. Multi's don't have alphas unless you have transparency. So you need to get rid of that alpha. Secondly you have it painted in white on parts??? The multi is used for shadows, and should only consist of 2 greys, 50% grey for the actual parts and the background a darker grey like 45 45 45.
4) The alpha of your specular looks good in terms of shininess, though keep in mind the downloader will not be able to lose the shine on any other type of material (but then again they probably won't want to) But the other channels are empty. This can't happen. What you need to do is use the multi as a reference material and lighten it up with the auto contrast feature and then add the white alpha on the parts you want shiny.

Try making these changes and see if it helps with your issue. A lot of these problems stem from the textures themselves and not actually the mesh. If you need any further help,, I'm happy to help further. If you need any clarification on how to properly fix these textures, feel free to repost and I i will help or reference the tutorial on textures from The Sims Resource.

Good Luck :-)

Thank you! Your reply made me look more closely at the mask. It turns out that the red channel needed to be extended lower to cover the whole handle. The gap is gone now. I have a couple of question though:

1. The textures are 64x64 because it's the size of the initial diffuse map. The knife was originally an EA animation prop; it was non-CAStable and had only a diffuse map. I used TextureTweaker to generate the specular, multiplier, mask, and the texture composites. The generated images were 64x64. How does one figure out which size the textures should be?

2. The mask only has white in the red channel as I only wanted the handle to be CAStable. It's saved as DXT1 with no alpha--I guess that's why the rest of the image is black. If this is the wrong way to do it, how is a single-channel mask made? If the entire mask were a single colour, that would make the blade CAStable too, which I didn't want. I thought about adding an alpha channel so the blade part of the mask can be transparent, but the alpha channel in masks is interpreted as an additional CAStable part, which the knife doesn't need.

Thanks again for your help! This was driving me nuts...

To answer question one, the textures should be the size the object takes in game ideally with a little extra for room, for example a couch should be 1024 by 1024
The single channel mask is made by pasting true red that is 255 0 0 into the entire document and saving without an alpha. Mask NEVER have alphas and that wouldn't be why the image is black in the background. Here's the thing, you never mapped the object so you probably don't have a multiplier from that??? May I ask why?? Masks only use alpha's when you have a 4th color. I think if you map this object it will be so much better. You also need it to have 2 colors to define the blade and those deco thing with the handle the primary color. I redid it quickly for you to follow if you would like to see? I'm am more than happy to help you with this endevour :-)

Thanks for your reply!



Wouldn't that make the entire mesh CAStable? What's needed to make only the handle CAStable?



The knife prop was already mapped by EA. I did remap the blade (not the handle) because the blade had to be remeshed. The original object didn't have a multiplier--just a diffuse map--probably because it was just an animation prop, but I generated a multiplier for it to make it CAStable.



I'm afraid I don't quite follow this: why are two colours needed (I assume you're referring to the RGB mask) if only the handle needs to be CAStable?

Sorry for all these extra questions!

Hi,

Ok no problem. That's okay if you only want the handle to be recastable. On the map there were overlapping parts which led me to believe that you didn't remap the object. What program do you use to map an object?

The best way to make only the handle recastable is to not include the blade on the multi or the map, so to do this you would just map the blade and then combine them only for the LOD"s when you import into WS. Now that I examine the map with just the handle its pretty good, a little stretched on the sides but that's kind of hard to avoid.

Okay so you will bake only the handle to get the base multiplier for your object. Then you will make that a fully red (255 0 0) mask and since you don't want that part to be shiny you want a specular with a black alpha.

As for the those deco circles you want to put them on the handle in 50% grey on the multiplier and leave them out of the red on the mask kind of what you did with the original mask. I can post a pic if you want to see what I mean.

Hopefully that answers your questions. Sorry I misunderstood and didn't realize you didn't want the blade to be castable. Give it a go but I can post pics if you need further clarification :-)

Sorry I couldn't look into this sooner, since I had some personal things that kept me busy, but I fixed it for you! It wasn't a mesh problem, it wasn't a Alpha channel problem (which I thought it was at first) It wasn't a specular problem, but a mask problem. Yep it was a mask problem which was the last texture I would think of giving this weird issue!
Here is your edited file with the fixed mask file in it, if i'm right, it doesn't have any issues. I haven't tested it in game though, but in TSRW and the model viewer in S3PE showed me that it was fixed ^-^

@metisqueen30

I used Milkshape for mapping. The overlapping parts are just for the handle and mapped by EA, not me. I just mapped the blade because I had to redo the mesh for that part. Thanks for answering my questions with such patience.

@Greenplumbbob

Thanks for looking into this! I finally figured out the mask was the problem in post #5 as well--like you, it was the very last place I thought to look. Now I don't feel so silly. (Sorry for not marking the thread as solved sooner...)

That's okay. If you need any further help then please feel free to ask. I knew also it was the mask but it was a bit to fix it glad you did though