These days I spent lots of time fixing lot skirt shader - and it turned into something more. I was to rewrite many game shaders to get consistent look of terrain and snow, and now, it's ready to be published!
Attempted to fix inconsistent lighting, implemented transparent lot skirt roads - so that they match the rest of lot skirt terrain, more and more!
Improvements
Consistent lighting - lot skirt, lot terrain and roads now match.
All lighting states compatible - dusk, dawn, seasonal changes work well.
Every lighting mod compatible - works even with maxis lighting.
New snow shaders (lot skirt, lot terrain and roofs) - fixed ugly shading, proper reaction to every lighting state.
Fixed lot imposters - now their terrain is rendered as well as possible.
Transparent lot skirt roads - now it's possible to use road textures with transparent cuts so that it matches lot skirt terrain.
Now reflective pond water doesn't require pools - its reflections work by reflective plane placed in lot corner.
Neighborhood roads have light snow pass.
Included
Lot skirt shaders
Lot imposter shaders
Lot terrain shaders
Lot lighting fixes (requires RPC)
Roof shaders
Bright CAS fix
Extended Standard and SimStandard shaders
Neighborhood road shader
Pond Water Overhaul
NOT Included BUT Compatible
Better Nightlife
Sea Water Overhaul
Accurate Neighborhood Lighting
Soft Shadows
WIP
Multi-road neighborhoods (I will add it later, sorry!)
Installation
Put the contents into your downloads folder (contains default replacement of maxis roads making them transparent, you may delete these files if you use road default replacements). Remember, my shaders must be loaded last to prevent conflicts!
Snow Lighting
Light snow:
Heavy snow:
Neighborhood roads
Vanilla:
Mod:
Fixed lot imposters
Before:
After:
Lot skirt roads
Default texture:
Transparent texture:
Consistent lighting
Radiance (maxis shaders):
Radiance (my shaders):
Reflective Pond Water
First step - choose respective to lot size reflective plane:
Second step - place it in the lot corner so that the plane covers every lot tile:
Third step - enjoy reflective ponds; there's no need to keep pools or something like that in the scene, reflections work independently:
stencils and stamps are under these, same method as horse stencils and stamps as far as i can tell, i won't write a second tutorial because the ones I wrote on @h-emera are still valid
custom brushes are basically made with the stamps, just yonk one from there and go
B1 is responsible for sorting on whether your brush is considered a Brush or a Stamp. 0 & 2 - Brush, 1 & 3 Stamp EDITED 24/10/2023: 0 is non-rotating brush, 2 is a rotating brush! (the same for stamps afaik)
For F1, I do NOT recommend using 0 or 5, when I tested these values in-game, they were extremely laggy when attempting to paint. 1 - Smooth Painting, 2 - Spaced Apart Slightly, Overlap, 3 - Spaced One After Another, Some Overlap, 4 - Spaced One After Another, No Overlap
F2 changes the size of the brush in-game, meaning how small it can be, I believe. 0 - 1px smallest size brush, scaling up changes how small the brush can get.
F3 I suspect is brush rotation, but I could not make it work on any of the brushes I tried making, so I’m not 100 sure. This is one of the brushes you’ll have to look at values for in the existing in-game brush files, as I could not get this to work for myself.
F4 is the maximum the size of the brush will become. Maximum size the brush can get, I’ve tested it from 0 to 5, 5 is quite large, so I recommend that, but go for smaller as well.
F5 I’m not entirely sure, however during my testing, I found that this changes where exactly the brush appears in both stamps and brush tabs in-game. There may be more to it, however, I could not figure it out. The values I tested for this were 0, 1 and 2, this affected where the item appeared - 0 - First Row, First Item, 1, First Row, 2nd Item, 2 - 2nd Row, First Item, I’ve seen that these can go quite high, ie the base file I used being 44, so keep that in mind while changing this setting. For my personal brushes I use 0.
copied from my original guide
the only thing is that i'm not familiar with the new "PeltBrush_Type" but from looking at the files, it seems like it's related to the Tattoo skill.
Create custom brushes to use in-game in paint mode or modify tattoos directly in your photo editing software, without having them classified as custom content.
Create your own custom brushes: step by step
Ready to download custom brushes & edited existing brushes
Create your own custom tattoos using your photo editing software
🍵 If you’ve been enjoying my content, your support would mean so much! A small donation here could go a long way, especially as I navigate my career change. Thank you!
1. Create your own custom brushes: step by step
In this tutorial, I assume you are comfortable enough with using Sims 4 Studio for creating content, and know how to use DDS export plugins in Photoshop or any other software.
To help you, I have here some sample files you can use to see how the images are made.
Required:
Sims 4 Studio
Photoshop and the Nvidia DDS export plugins. I'm sure you can use other software but that's the one I'm familiar with.
Brushes are really simple to create as they consist of only 3 elements: the Pelt Brush which contains all the informations related to the brush, and two images, which are the brush thumbnail, and the brush texture.
There are two types of brushes: black brushes (1) for which you can edit the color and the opacity in paint mode, and colored brushes (2) for which the color cannot be edited.
1- Prepare your textures
The brush thumbnail: prepare a 64x64 PNG image of your brush with a transparent background
The brush texture: depending on what type of brush you cant to create, the image format is not the same. I recommend starting from the sample files I've provided above to have the right formats.
Black Brush: prepare a 128x128 DDS image of your brush, with a grayscale channel with the alpha of the brush (white is visible, black is transparency), and a fully white alpha channel. When exporting, select the "8 L 8 bpp | luma only" format and check "Generate Minimaps"
Colored Brush: prepare a 64x64 DDS image of your brush, with a RGB channel with the picture of your brush (if you are starting from an existing image, I recommend making it darker and less saturated) and an alpha channel with the alpha of your brush. When exporting, select the "8.8.8.8 RGBA 32 bpp | unsigned" format and uncheck "Generate Minimaps"
2- Create your brush
In Sims4Studio, select Tools and Create Empty Package.
Go in Tools again, and select Hash Generator to generate unique ID for the three elements of your brush (Pelt Brush, Brush Texture, Brush Thumbnail): input a unique name in the Text box for each element, and copy the ID in the FNV64 box for each element.
In your package, click on Add to add each of the three elements: select the Type (DST Image for the brush texture and the brush thumbnail, Pelt Brush for the brush itdelf) and use the ID you generated for each element in the Instance box.
For both the brush texture and thumbnail, right click on the DST Image and select Import, and import the texture you prepared.
For the Pelt Brush, click on it and fill in the different fields displayed on the left (they seem obscure so don't worry, I will help you there, and not everything has to be filled in, I only listed the fields you need to modify 🤭)
B1: brush type, that determine how the brush is sorted. For basic brushes that can also be used on pet, you can put "2" here, for other brush types that are more for tattoing, I put "3"
BrushImageKey: the Instance ID of your brush texture
F1: spacing, if you are making a basic brush for painting, put 0, if you are doing a motif, put 5
F2: default size multiplier, I don't understand how it works, it seems to be a multiplier, so just put 1.5 as most default brushes use
F3: minimum size, for this one, I put 0.15
F4: maximum size, for this one I put 7
F5: the random rotation, this one is mostly useful for basic brushes used for painting to give more variety, in this case put something like 10, in other cases it doesn't matter (i put 10 all the same)
ThumbnailKey: the Instance ID of your brush thumbnail
With all of that filled in, you can Save your package and test in-game to see if your brush works. You can add other brushes to this same package if you want to create a pack of brushes 🤗
2. Ready to download custom brushes & edited existing brushes
New Brushes: Using this method, I created a small sample of new brushes using pictures from the game! The possibilities are kind of endless, so It's just a first small selection to get started (DISL_TattooBrush_NewBrushes)
Edited Brushes: one of the thing that really annoyed me with painting mode is that some brushes were still very big at their minimal size. I edited all the existing brushes to allow using them at a smaller size. Note that the quality of the paint is still limited by the skin texture size in game, so really painting really small won't look that good (DISL_TattooBrush_AdjustedSize_BG for base game brushes - also used for painting pets and werewolves, DISL_TattooBrush_AdjustedSize_BH for Business & Hobbies new brushes)
Download: SimFileShare
3. Create your own custom tattoos using your photo editing software
As for my existing tutorial for editing photos in-game, this method can also be used to edit tattoos in-game directly through a photo editing software. It can make it easier to import your own designs into the game without having to paint them from scratch in paint mode!
Start a new save file, to make sure of not messing up with your own save file - there are potential issues with hollidays when editing a save sile using Sims 4 Studio, and make picures easier to find - as you might already have taken some pictures in your own save.
In this new save file, Create a Sim and while in cas, go in paint mode to mark down where you want to apply your future custom tattoos (it will be helpful later). Validate the Sim creation and save the game.
Open you savefile using the Sims 4 Studio. In the Filter bow, type "Texture" then click on Filter to filter the files in the save file. You can now see your tattoos listed as textures. For each of them, right click on the line and select Export, to export them as PNG images (if you are comfortable working with DDS images, you can also work this way).
Go into your photo editing software and edit your textures. you can use the marking from the texture to know exactly where to place the tattoo. If you are doing colorful tattoos, I recommend making the images darker and less saturated as they appear brighter and more saturated in-game.
When you are done, you can right click on the line and select Import, to import your modified textures. Click on Save at the bottom roght to save your changes.
Go in-game and check out your Sim in CAS: you should see your new tattoos applied. You can now go back and make some changes if required, or save them to your gallery for future use in your regular save-file 🤩
If you are interested, I already shared some designs made this way on the gallery under my EA ID "Down-In-Simsland". If you plan to share yours to other players, make sure to use your own images or stuff from the game, don't steal from other people 🤗
l. faba in medieval | requested by @wastelandwhisperer
eliza pancakes in regency | requested by @plumbob-pudding
mila munch in 1880s | requested by @sims-and-antiques
morgyn ember in 1910s | requested by @applesaucesims
penny pizzazz in 1920s | requested by @tiallussims
lucia markovic in 1970s | requested by @bakersimmer
wolfgang wilder in 1980s | requested by @irrewilderer
I have some really cool new CC - a sci-fi, especially cyberpunk inspired makeup set, with the perfect items to create or complete your android, cyborg, robot, synthetic, or just generally cybernetically enhanced sim.
➔ DOWNLOAD (Patreon FREE)
Included are these toys:
OVERDRIVE Cyber Dermals:
Real-time reflecting and metallic. Comes with 15 different piece placements, plus 4 ready-made combination versions & an all-in-one file. 30 colors for all 20 items included, under head tattoos category.
PROPHECY Eye Glow Overlay
Glowy overlay addons for the eyes, can be combined with different eyesets for endless combinations of styles and looks. Available in 40 designs, under head tattoos category.
AERO Catchlights
Catchlights in 10 placement versions, in round or square shape each. Under head tattoos category.
GANYMEDE Lip Deco
Decorative, shiny lipstick, comes in 40 colors (20 metal / 20 latex-look shades each). Available in 2 different compression versions.
DECONTAMINATION Eyes
Mono-color eyes in 30 different shades. Available as facepaint, and non-default (under eyes category) versions.
ANOMALY Eyeshadow
Triangular-shaped, smokey eyeshadow underneath the eyes. 30 colors, and also available in 2 different compression versions.
If you like, please consider to support my work 🖤
● ALL MY CC DOWNLOADS
not seeing a lot of people on here talking about ICE murdering another man yesterday. His name was Lorenzo Salgado Arajou. He was a Mexican man living in Houston Texas. He was killed at age 52 and lived the past 35 years here in the USA, and was in the process of obtaining a work permit. He was shot and killed during a traffic stop that ICE claims was part of a targeted operation, and claimed he was “weaponizing his vehicle”- the same claim ICE agents made when they shot and murdered Renee Good.
During the stop, Lorenzo had 3 coworkers with him in his truck who have all been taken into ICE custody.
His family described Lorenzo as a hardworking family man who didn’t deserve to be killed. All he wanted was to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people. His eldest son recognized his father by his cries and pleas when trying to identify who the victim was.
The Salgado Araujo family has set up a gofundme to help with funeral and legal costs, and to help keep their family supported since Lorenzo was the sole provider.
On the morning of July 7, 2026, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was ta… LULAC Institute, Inc. needs your support for In Loving Memory of Lorenzo Salg
ICE has yet to state exactly who the three other men were who were detained, however according to one of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s sons, one of the men taken by ICE was another family member- his uncle.
Daniel Tirado and Jose Rojas are likely the two other men detained.
Absolutely heart breaking for these families being ripped apart.
So far there have been protests in Houston. We need more outrage. We need to remember his name. And we need to keep continuously applying pressure for an independent investigation and for the agents to face consequences.
Please have the same rage for this man’s murder as the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Be loud about it.
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