Hi there, so I've recently installed TS2 UC on my laptop and just moved the previous CC I had into the new game.

I don't have much custom hairs, only converted Maxis hairs for the younger ages, but some of the CC didn't work properly... I noticed that some hairs have this shiny head issue? I don't think I remember having this issue at all, so it must be graphics related, right?

How can this be fixed?

I think this is a variant of the "bright CAS" issue that some of us are having. Since I got my new PC in October, this is now issue I still have. It's as if there was an over-bright lamp in front of the Sim. (If you look in the mirror, their back looks properly lit.) In my case it's mainly affecting clothes, but it's affecting a few hairs too. As far as I can see, it only affects CAS. Save the Sim to the game, and they look OK. For that reason I feel I can live with this bug (though I'd be delighted if someone could fix it). I take it that's a default replacement rather than original Maxis hair. It seems not to affect Maxis items.

It's the "bright CAS" bug. It turns random CAS items bright (only in CAS). It's unclear what causes it. The DXVK fix can get rid of it, but has a few other potential issues (some people experience crashes or other problems with the DXVK).

I think it could be related to some lighting setting and/or TXMT and/or mesh setting, but haven't found anything yet.

Okay, I just had a look into the mesh file and compared it with EA's meshes.
I noticed that EA used different opcacities for hairalpha5 and hairalpha3, etc. while melodie19's hair conversions had -1 as opacity.. like the base mesh.

So, what I did is just manually changed the opacity values to 5 and 3 respectively and this actually fixed the issue!
(Sheesh, this means that every custom hair I'd have to download, I'll have to do this.)

There was also an extra line "HasTangentArray:" which I've added to the converted toddler mesh, (into the comments section of each blend group) so that might also be why it got fixed. I'll do some tests now.

ETA: Apparently, it has nothing to do with the opacities... you can have as many opacity values as you want. Even if they are supposed to be transparent... this doesn't cause the issue. I discovered that if you add HasTangentArray: into the comments section of each blend group of the mesh, this solves the issue.

I don't think it's an opacity thing, because it happens to hair and accessories, too.
(My original Peter Pan Aidan has veeeeery bright ears - but I made him some new not-bright ears recently, with added bonus baby and toddler meshes, so he's good if I ever need it again, plus I have a random selection of hairs and other accessories, and I have at least one EAxis outfit shining brightly in the kids' category, too.

I've compared all the TXMT and mesh data from various bright and a non-bright hairs and accessories, and couldn't find anything that stood out as "this is it!!!" but I feel like I'm missing something, though... I'll try to look more into it when the holidays are over, because it's been rather chaotic around here the past couple weeks or so, and not enough headspace for thinking clearly.

I have noticed none of the accessories I've made do the bright thing, only recolors I've made from already borked ones (I made a few recolors for those original ears and they were self-illuminated) - but I've constantly worked from the same files as bases (I always make a new recolor from one I already have, and have a set of basefiles for the meshes), so I think it has to do with which of them already have this bug - whatever it is that's causing the problem. As long as you don't use files with this bug as a base for anything, the finished product shouldn't end up with the bug.

I'm not quite sure what HasTangentArray: does but it solved the issue with the hairs, and I didn't even change the opacities this time.
So, maybe this might also fix your accessoires? If you could try that out, I'd be very curious to hear what happens.

Maybe.

Found this one by WesHowe:
https://modthesims.info/t/292425

Could explain it if it's a bumpmap thing (bumpmaps can do strange things, and it can cause lighting issues with textures. Hairs and accessories don't generally have bumpmaps, so perhaps it's best to be a bit more careful with that comment info...)

I'll test it out too - if it's that "simple" a fix it's pretty great (yes, simple is relative, but it's much quicker to fix a few meshes than a ton of recolors).

Could maybe also explain that random EA outfit I had - I think it's a default replacement mesh, so maybe it's a missing line.

Keeping an eye on this thread, would be great if you’ve figured out a fix!

I usually put the line into the comments (always do, never knew what the line did, but guessed it was there for a reason), and I've made sure to keep/add it.

The strangest thing is that I've had several of these items in my game for ages, but they've never looked this way before (on 3 different computers with 2 different Nvidia graphic cards and one chip, and with the single-CD versions of the game they were perfectly fine), until I now have one of the newer Nvidia cards and the UC version of the game, and everything goes ballistic with the graphics.

So I'm kind of wondering if it could be a setting in the GraphicRules or lights or something of that sort in addition, but I have no clue how to figure that out (I can't read those files very well). There have been some errors between the CD and UC versions, so I wouldn't put it past EA to bork up something else...

Anyway, at least there's a way to fix the items now. Maybe this explains why I sometimes had strange issues with some of the hairs ingame on my old computer (they'd often act strange with lights, and go dark or bright when the rest of the skin stayed the proper shade). I never had issues in CAS there, though.

I presume this fix (adding HasTangentArray: into the comments section of each blend group of the mesh) will work for clothes as well as for hairs. Most of my problems are with clothes, and only a handful of meshes seem to be affected, but some of these I use a lot. Most important for me are Knightskykyte's Pretty Boy Outfit (mesh here) and the Male Loincloth (alpha editable mesh) by tiggerypum and its Teen version available here. The adult version of that is the most important of all, as it is the mesh for the Adult version of ladylarkrune's Loincloths that I've shared on Plumb Bob Keep. I don't like the fact that I've shared something that will look bad in CAS on many players' computers.

I'm a complete newbie in Milkshape, having done nothing there beyond HP's first tutorial and a very simple edit to a dress mesh. So I might need some hand-holding. I haven't even installed it on my new computer yet. But I do now have a registered copy, so I had better move it to my new PC ASAP. If I get stuck doing this edit in Milkshape, I'll ask again here.

I checked the "Knightskykyte's Pretty Boy Outfit" mesh and it does have the "HasTangentArray:" line, and there's no stray bumpmap lines in the TXMTs (haven't checked the others).

It does seem a bit like a bumpmap issue now that I think about it - bumpmaps with the wrong sizes compared to skins can cause brightness issues, such as using 1024x1024 bumpmaps on anything that uses the SimSkin shader on toddler clothes. The skin is 512x512 so anything bigger or smaller causes the bump map to weird out. It's the same for anything using the SimSkin shader.

The SimStandardMaterial shader that's used for accessories, hair and extra clothing groups doesn't have the same issues, but is sometimes confused with the StandardMaterial shader, which is used for objects, and can cause brightness and see-through issues (I have checked some of the problem items, and while a few older accessories did have the wrong shader, fixing this didn't fix the problem - they were still bright).

I see this problem, but only in a basegame configuration (using AnyGameStarter). Mine is really severe- everything in CAS glows! Certain CC hairs glow too, and some clothes look shiny or even reflective when they aren't.

I don't know whether this is useful or not!

@simsample
This looks like as if you had the shaders turned off, try to type in “boolprop useShaders true” and see what happens, because well... if it works in your main game, there must be something wrong in the Base Game graphic rules files.

But i’ve seen that this cheat fixed the bright CAS issue for some people.

Having shaders on should fix most of the shiny issue for those who have the full self-illuminated CAS version, but does leave the odd CC item. Shaders on can be quite taxing on integrated chips, so if you have that, you might want to consider turning off some individual shaders like bumpmaps, and possibly shadows and/or reflections if you can do without.

If you have one of the newer Nvidia (especially 1000/2000 or higher) or Radeon cards, you'll want to update the cards via the vendor (not via Windows). I thought I'd updated, but when I removed the DXVK (had a lot of random crashing, which calmed down after removing it), my CAS got grey stripes and looked really strange (the rest of the game looked fine, weirdly enough), but updating the drivers properly really did improve a few things.

Maybe the bright CAS is a problem with newer graphic cards, because I haven't seen it with the two older Nvidia cards I've had. Shaders off wasn't really an issue on the first laptop I had either (chip) except for no fishes (didn't know there were any, to be honest), although after I started using Nvidia cards I've always had shaders on, maybe except for a brief issue a while back when I set up my gaming computer, where some possible missing shaders combined with low memory - needed the patch - caused what was supposed to be this to become this . Got it sorted out pretty quickly, though. Never seen it happen again before or after.

---

Anyway - I just checked one of the hairs and two of the accessories I've had the bright issue with, and all of them lack the TangentArray line in the mesh (the hair had it for the "head" part, but not the rest).

The hair lacks a toddler age, so since I'm thinking of updating it anyway I'm seeing it as a nice opportunity to maybe finally add a toddler mesh, because it's one I use for one of my story sims, and I've always wanted that hair for her toddler alter-ego, possibly even some recolors (she's been through at least 4 hairstyles already, and that original blonde is a bit off, could perhaps need some freshening-up) . The hair I'm using for one of her brothers, possibly her mom too, has the CAS issue, so better get those checked as well. They're old but quite nice hair meshes. It's always annoying when people skimp out on adding toddlers (and kids) to hair meshes. They're not that difficult to add...

Well that disappearing head is quite weird, lol.

But you're right with the newer graphic cards. I haven't seen this problem in my old TS2 game. But I'm very curious whether there are any differenes between the TS2 UC and the CD version. My old TS2 game was a CD's version. And this newer one in which I've first seen this bug is the UC.

Anyway, actually there are very little amount of hairs for toddlers. That's why I downloaded this hair completer, lol.

I've never had so many issues with my game as when I decided to use the UC version. I have the CDs as a backup option (maybe my game would actually work properly with those), but that would probably need some fixing, too.

I added the info about the HasTangentArray to the problemsolving area in my accessory tutorial, by the way. It already has the full lineup of comments for the meshing part in the tutorial, so if that's followed there shouldn't be a problem for those who make new ones, but the problemsolving part can also work for those who want to fix older accessories.

I feel I'm getting more than a bit out of my depth here, but I've succeeded in extracting the GMDC for the adult loincloth mesh (tiggerypum). The body and body_alpha groups already include the HasTangentArray: line, but the ~00MORPHMOD.1 and ~01MORPHMOD.1 groups do not. It seems they are the fat morphs for the upper and lower body. Since they are only used when the Sim grows fat, I presume it would have no effect on the slim Sim if I added HasTangentArray: to the comments in those groups. But should I try doing it anyway?

[EDIT] My graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti on a Dell gaming laptop bought new in October. With the help of a few people here to configure it, it's running my game perfectly apart from this one issue, which only affects a few items in CAS.

You only have to add the line to the main groups without the ~, not to the morphs. The morphs should only have the "fatbot" or "pregbot" lines. Make sure you keep the MorphRefNum line in the main groups, though.

For clothes with morphs, the proper "lineup" of the comments is as follows (but text after the : is changeable for line 1, 2 and 5. Line 4 should always say "3" for clothes and anything else with blended joint assignments, otherwise you get borked bone/joint assignments)

ModelName: body
Opacity: -1
HasTangentArray:
NumSkinWgts: 3
MorphRefNum: 0

If the main mesh already has the "HasTangentArray" line, something else is probably causing issues for the clothes.

As @simmer22 already mentioned, I suspect that it could also be Material Definition (TXTM) related. A way to test is to link a random recolor package to that mesh (even though it'd look completely off) and see whether the clothing shows up fine or not.

Thanks simmer22! That was exactly what the comments for the loincloth said, so it certainly looks like it's something else that's causing the trouble with these clothes. I still think it's far more likely to be a problem with the mesh than the textures. When I look at my adult and teen male clothing, all the "bright CAS" problem items seem to use one the three meshes that I mentioned in my post #10 above. Moreover all the textures that use those meshes have the problem; I can't find a single one that doesn't have it.

I haven't looked in as much detail at my "bright CAS" female clothes, but a lot of them use an editable alpha dress mesh that I think is by Marvine. Again, every recolour that uses that mesh seems to have the problem.

Meanwhile I'll have a look at my problem hairs and see if they can be fixed by HasTangentArray:

Thanks again.

It can still be a problem with the meshes, but it doesn't appear to be that line. I can't find anything, though.

The teen version of the loin cloth appears to have far fewer lines than most clothes do, although I have seen that before without it being a problem. The file list still has the original hulaskirt references, not sure if that could be a problem. Have you tried removing the bump map and bump map references in the TXMT (the 4 lines in each TXMT)? They're not really doing anything as-is, and I suspect they're there just to be available for recoloring.

@Jawusa @Simmer22 Yes, bumpmaps are not showing in that shiny CAS, although they show in-game. In my CAS and game graphics rules for basegame, I have my card identified and set to use shaders and bumpmaps. The game logs show that the card is recognised, and all works well in-game, but in CAS although shaders and bumps are forced in userstartup.cheat file, no bumps show. This is contrary to how it used to be- a little over a year ago I was playing basegame only with the same userdata/ gamedata files, and CAS worked well then, so it's either a graphics driver update or a Win 10 update that has happened since then that has hosed it.

There was apparently a Win10 update that caused some issues a while back for graphic cards (something about a "creative suite" or something like that), and I'm not sure if Windows ever did anything to fix it (most likely every update since has either added to the problem). It suddenly caused pink-flashing for people who'd not had it, and other weird issues. I think this update snuck onto my new laptop before I could do anything about it because it's been acting up from the start.

I have gotten bump maps to show (in Bodyshop, at the very least), but 50% of them are either grey or not made properly. I tend to remove the ones that aren't made properly, and sometimes the grey ones if I can be bothered (can be tedious work and those don't do much anyway).

The bumps show up fine in my regular game, it's just the basegame CAS. So it's possible this is the cause of the glitches for other people, especially those who don't have all EPs and SPs.

@simsample
What happens if you replace your base game's GraphicRules.sgr file with the one inside your latest EP/SP?

I've noticed that each TS2 game setup has its own Graphic Rules file, so that could be why it affects the BG, but not the all EPs/SPs game.