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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 22nd Mar 2022 at 9:09 AM
Darker Nights
I figured out how the color ramps work so I made the sky black at night. However, nights are still too bright for my liking. I have messed around with the tunable parameters related to lighting, but I still didn't like any of the results. Either the shadows were way too dark during the day from changing AmbientProbeScale or the ground was dull looking from changing the GrayscaleProbeIntensity. I only took pictures of the night.
Screenshots
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retired moderator
#2 Old 22nd Mar 2022 at 11:58 AM
So which aspect are you not happy with? The brightness of the buildings, the brightness of the streetlights, or something else?
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#3 Old 22nd Mar 2022 at 11:40 PM Last edited by isisj12 : 23rd Mar 2022 at 12:02 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
So which aspect are you not happy with? The brightness of the buildings, the brightness of the streetlights, or something else?

I wasn't happy with the light blue cast/light on everything. It made everything on ground level look bright.
I figured it out myself looking at the lighting tutorial you helped others with. Someone mentioned it indirectly and I caught on.
I probably should have done that from the beginning...
My question isn't totally useless though because now I have noticed that the clouds are too bright at night. Like, pure white.

These are the color ramps:
Clear
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14o...iew?usp=sharing

Partly Cloudy
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ba...iew?usp=sharing

Overcast
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TT...iew?usp=sharing
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retired moderator
#4 Old 23rd Mar 2022 at 12:07 AM
That should be easy to solve; change the colour ramps for the cloud tints at 18-06 hours; in case you hadn't seen the hour labels for the colour ramps you can see them in this post:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....756#post3833756
And this one has some labels to show you which parts affect clouds:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....477#post3834477

You may have seen them already!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 23rd Mar 2022 at 11:53 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
That should be easy to solve; change the colour ramps for the cloud tints at 18-06 hours; in case you hadn't seen the hour labels for the colour ramps you can see them in this post:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....756#post3833756
And this one has some labels to show you which parts affect clouds:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....477#post3834477

You may have seen them already!

Here are the updated color ramps:
Clear
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12n...iew?usp=sharing

Partly Cloudy
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nV...iew?usp=sharing

Overcast
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hs...iew?usp=sharing

It's frustrating because now colors are showing up at the wrong time of day/night....

Some colors just left me confused because my color ramps don't have those colors (not that I see).
I paid attention to the time certain colors should take affect and only some of the day made sense. The night barely made any sense at all. During the day around 3:00pm the horizon
had this pinkish and blue color like something you would see if the sun was rising/setting. It got worse from there.

A little later the blue color came back in, but it was darker than what I saw from the first portion of the day and it wasn't even getting that much late yet.
Night comes and there were all kinds of colors on and off. When 12:00am hit the sky was just gray,
the water was gray, and it brightened up some leaving my nights brighter than I wanted, again......
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retired moderator
#6 Old 24th Mar 2022 at 12:11 AM
If you take a look at the basegame ini files, some of that might make sense. The basegame world (Sunset Valley and also Riverview) didn't have colour ramps- instead the colours were defined purely in the ini files. And these ini files havce some description in them which makes understanding the subsequent colour ramps easier. For example, Sky_ClearSea.ini has this:
Quote:
;; Sky Colors
;;
;; These are the colors used for the sky. There
;; are 'dark' and 'light' components to the sky
;; color, which correspond to the sun's position
;; in the sky. These are interpolated across the
;; sky so that the position where the sun is
;; gets the 'light' color and the position
;; opposite the sun gets the 'dark' color. The
;; light and dark colors are in turn blended
;; from day, sunset and night colors.

Also:
Quote:
;; Horizon Colors
;;
;; These colors are used for the sky at the
;; horizon. They work the same as the Sky color
;; with Day/Sunset/Night plus Light/Dark
;; variations. The results of sky and horizon
;; blends are in turn blended together based on
;; the pixel's altitude from the horizon line.


So you see that some colours are blends, or interpolations.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 9th Sep 2022 at 1:17 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
If you take a look at the basegame ini files, some of that might make sense. The basegame world (Sunset Valley and also Riverview) didn't have colour ramps- instead the colours were defined purely in the ini files. And these ini files havce some description in them which makes understanding the subsequent colour ramps easier. For example, Sky_ClearSea.ini has this:

Also:


So you see that some colours are blends, or interpolations.


100 years later I figured it out. I was editing the wrong color ramp lines. Finally got what I wanted out of the lighting.
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retired moderator
#8 Old 9th Sep 2022 at 7:19 PM
Well done, glad you got it the way you like it!
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