PSA FOR CC CREATORS
I learnt something interesting today and I thought i’d pass it on because it was causing a quite annoying issue in my game.
Quick Summary: Make sure your shadow map alpha layer is not all white
Long explanation:
So I was getting quite annoyed because for some reason, random cc hairs were causing bad texture crunch on some cc underwear I was making, picture example below:
(I turned up the contrast so it’s easier to see but it’s quite obvious in CAS)
So, after doing some digging I figured out that it was the shadow map of the hair causing the issue.
Shadow maps work by reading two layers, the texture and the alpha. I’m not an expert but just to quickly explain, even if the the texture is white (meaning no shadow) you still need to make the alpha black so the game *knows* there is nothing there. For example:
The texture is white, but if the alpha is white as well the game still places a layer of ‘nothing’ over the entire body which for some reason causes the crunchy textures on the rest of the sim, so to stop this you just need to make sure you have the alpha only be white in the area that your actually using for the shadow map, like above.
I hope this makes sense! maybe give it a reblog to spread the word as I found that about 50% of the hairs in my game have all white alphas on the shadow map and were causing this issue. I had no idea bout any of this until today so i am by no means trying to tell anyone off! just spreading some knowledge on how to fix an annoying issue :) thankyou for reading my post lol