#shadow extender

[lazyduchess]

[TS3] Shadow Extender

Overview

This mod increases the draw distance of shadows and in addition improves the look of map view by making trees and other miscellaneous deco cast shadows, when they previously did not.

Download

SimFileShare | Patreon

Source Code: Github

Pre-Requisites and Installation

Extract the attached .zip file into your (Sims 3 Installation Folder)/Game/Bin

Included is a "Presets" folder with configuration files I've made for different shadow map resolutions, such as 2k (2048), 4k (4096) and 8k (8192) resolution shadows. Also an "Unmodded" version that looks like unmodded TS3, in order to provide a base for your own customization.

You can of course use a preset that is meant for lower resolution shadows than you have in your game if you want the shadows to look higher resolution.

You can replace the "ShadowExtender.cfg" file in Game/Bin with any of these, and configure it further on your own if you wish.

If you don't know how to change shadow resolutions, SimsCommunity has an article on it. It's necessary to get this mod to look good.

Drawbacks

It's been reported that reflections and objects might appear lower quality with this mod enabled. If this happens to you, try opening your GraphicsRules.sgr with notepad, scrolling down to "option TreeQuality" and adjust the LODDistances to bigger numbers. This won't fix reflections, but it should help with object quality.

Comparison Shots using the 8k Preset and 8k Shadows

Before:

After:

[lazyduchess]

I've confirmed that the shadow extender is working on 1.67 and 1.69 and it all looks OK after a lot of testing, so I've made the mod available on my Patreon Early Access for around a week like I did with the Hotkeys mod :)