Hi all,
as title says, I want to fix moroccan fence's (in game name: White Royal Courtyard Fencing) bump map. I didn't find any mention of this fence's bump map fix on the net so I did my own research in game files (...\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D) in ObjectsXX.packages. I found out that the fence's bump map texture (+LIFO) is wrong, by wrong I mean without the correct pattern. The pattern is visible on the fence's thumbnail.



So I checked the material file and found out that it does not matter since the white fence's bump map uses the other moroccan fence (the peachy one) and that one has correct bump map. But only in game files, in game no bump map is applied...

I tried a lot to fix it but my knowledge on this matter are limited.
By the way, the material file adresses bump map and also bump map is enabled.



But no matter how I try, I cannot force the bump map visible in game. When I was little I do remember that those fences in BG were using their bump maps when placed on the ground (not just the thumbnail...). So I tried to look in EPs if there is no override by any chance but I didn't find anything useful.

Does anybody have a clue how to enable the bump maps? Thank you all in advance

I have:
- Ultimate Collection
- powerfull enough graphics card for bump mapping
- bump mapping enabled in game

I looked into this a long time ago, I found that fences don't support bumpmaps so I gave up (beyond my skills!). Perhaps there's someone who will know how to enable them?

Thank you for you answer! I hope so... I would really love that.

What's strange is that fences use the same shader as objects, "StandardMaterial", which normally handles bumpmaps. A summary search doesn't turn up anything in the shader code that might explain why, though. I'd be curious to change the shader used by a fence to, for example, the one used by clothing, and seeing what happens.

Alternatively, it might have to do with how their meshes are stored? I vaguely remember trying and failing to bump-enable a fence by exporting/reimporting its mesh in the SMD format. Again, I'd be curious to experiment with this: use a fence's mesh in a regular object to see if bumpmaps work on it then; use an object mesh that natively uses a bump-map as part of a fence; etc.

Yes, I tried SMD too. I would be curious too but my experience is limited Also I can't think of any object that uses bump maps right now... but your ideas are very good

Two items I can think of that are bumpmapped are the Ancient Transport Urn sculpture and the Cornucopia that makes the Holiday Roast available.

Great! Thank you for the object tips! I tried what Azelanne suggested with the Ancient Transport Urn. I took the fence model from original game (exported from Objects03.package as .obj), cloned the Urn normally via Object Workshop and replaced it with our fence mesh, used fence's textures and as you can see the bump map works.



What a pleasure to see it in game even when it is just a test. A bit oddly the "thumbnail" pattern is visible from far only but after all, it has to be some sort of visual effect since the pattern is destined to give visual illusions anyway.



I didn't change anything from the Urn clone, except the object itself and textures. So fences really have to have some ban for using bump maps... not sure why. I am 99% sure I did see this bump map on this fence back in 2004... No idea what version of the game I had. Maybe it was some not patched, pre-release, almost beta kind of thing version. Who knows.

(By the way I have my game normally in Czech, because I am Czech So the first image were taken when I changed my language to eng to be able to tell you the eng name of the fence. In case somebody is confused.)

Oh so that's what it should look like! Well done @LaraHCroft ! I never saw it working in my game, and I played since release date. But I didn't figure out that bumpmaps were a thing in the game until I saw this thread:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=43273
So possibly I didn't have bumps until the game had been patched.
If I start the game using the AnyGame Starter in basegame only, I can't get the bumpmaps to work at all- even with my graphicsrules edited and bumpmapping forced in userstartup- but then, Windows 10 has royally messed up the way my graphics card uses shaders, so that's probably why. I have an old, unpatched basegame executable, but I can't even get that to run at all on my computer now. I can't see any bumpmaps in basegame only- not in game or in CAS. So the fences are blank.

I am glad that you finally saw it I find it much more beautiful with the bump map applied. And I really don't know how is possible that I remember it. But for me it was weird for a long time "why" there isn't the bump map anymore It would be great if somebody else saw it and remembered it aswell.

Your Windows should be ashamed of itself... How can it dare to mess with shaders! And yes, I tried to install base game only too but nothing, same as with UC, black fence. I would be interested about that unpatched BG exe of yours... that could be really interesting!

Or we just need a good modder to somehow enable bump maps for fences :D

Did you edit the mapping on the fence? It's not applying the texture the same way my game does. Mine uses the whole width of the bottom, yours looks like it is missing the pattern of the tiles.

Not sure I understand what you wrote. The picture above I showed is just a test, a clone of the Ancient Transport Urn with fence mesh (rail only) but it is not fence per say, just regular object. I didn't change any mapping of the textures or material file because after all the urn does show bump map so I used also its settings. And for the bump texture itself: First I manually resized the texture of the fence bump map on the original Urn bump map and did only "Import" and then "Update all sizes" to not meddle with Raw8Bit format at all - that is what I showed here. Second attemp was to keep the original fence bump map texture so I built DXT with DXT1Format and then I manually changed it to Raw8Bit format and the result in game was the same as you see on the picture above.

If your game shows any bump map on this fence, could you show me/us?

No bump maps don't work on fences. But I don't like the way they look either, it looks like badly photoskinned cc from 2005. I just have a (poorly made) texture default trying out some of the texture. But the post mapping for this fence wouldn't allow for just enabling the bump mapping.

Well I thought of this too, as last option though because fake bump map on the texture itself will never look as good as true bump map. I created a normal map from the original TS2 (supposed-working) bump map and then used it to bring life into the flat surface of the white fence. In case you like it, you can use it for your fence replacement




(I used CrazyBump)

I used it only to show the tiles bumps, the rest is the original texture. Also the white fence, even replacement, needs change of posts tops because it uses the tiles section, but other than that, it looks decent in game.

So yes, until somebody hacks the game to force it to use true bump maps for fences, this is probably the only option.

It's still cool to see what the fence could look like if bumpmaps worked for those :p

I've used Blender to 'bake' the shadows and highlights generated by a normal map (and others) into the basic texture. It can give better results than trying to add them by hand, though obviously there's a learning curve. I shoudl write a tutorial for that one of these days.

@LaraHCroft Did you ever manage to get any further with this?

Maybe you can create a ts1- styled fence? Once you clone counters for example, and remove all the slots and interactions on them, it can work like a fence we had once in Sims 1.

In such case don't know how to add end pieces and the slots for fence lighting though. but you can also create such fence as two separate sculptures - center piece and post.