Transparent grills/plants Apartment Life--Resolved

[reggikko]

I just brought my game up to speed with all EPs and SPs. The cheapest two grills and the rubber tree plant are semi-transparent (like a Sim ghost). I tried to take pictures, but they look normal in the pics. Sims can use them with no problem. I tested with my downloads folder out and no change. The items are affected on Residential, Apartment, and Community lots. Forcing an error does not change them, nor does using the recolor tool. Any ideas?

[eaglezero]

Graphics card or game graphics setting issues? I've seen other threads here where people have resolved the issue by turning on square pixels, putting things on lower detail, or adjusting other graphics settings on the game, and I think they've also resolved the issue by updating or rolling back drivers. I don't know that they had the problem with the grills, but I do remember plants mentioned. It's weird that they look normal in the pictures even though they're screwy in the game. Huh.

[Simsample]

Also I've heard where altering the video card settings to set antialiasing to 'application controlled' will help. Check the ATI/ Nvidia control panel for that.

[witch]

Here Regg, this is what it looks like on my system. I forgot to take a picture of the DJ booth but it's the same. Having just bought a new video card, I decided I just won't use those objects rather than cripple my clarity of view. I haven't tried with application settings running the video. If I turn anti-aliasing right down, the objects get solid again. I have an ATI HD4870.

[jolrei]

You could also test a couple of different drivers for your card, Regg.  Check if there is a recent update, or roll back to a previous version.  There might be one that works without having to reduce your graphics quality.

I mean, we all know that no hardware or software producer would ever break something that was fixed in an earlier version, but...wait...no, we don't actually know that.

[Jade]

You may wish to specifically check your ati catalyst control center to see if adaptive anti-aliasing is enabled.  I had a problem just like this, and disabling it made stuff solid again.  I didn't have to change the regular anti-aliasing settings.

[reggikko]

Thanks for the suggestions and help. I'll see if I can get it sorted out. Fortunately, it seems to be just these couple of items that are affected, so it's more an annoyance than a real problem.

You may wish to specifically check your ati catalyst control center to see if adaptive anti-aliasing is enabled.  I had a problem just like this, and disabling it made stuff solid again.  I didn't have to change the regular anti-aliasing settings.

This fixed it. Thanks again!

[Hegelian]

It was, in fact, having adaptive AA enabled in the Catalyst driver that was causing the problem, on both machines. This is on two different graphics boards (one HD 3870 and one HD 4830, both from MSI), and two different, but recent, versions of the ATi driver set.

We had messed with the in-game settings, with no luck. Thanks to Jade for pointing to something that would not have occurred to me, mostly because I forgot about that setting in the driver.

ATi's adaptive AA applies anti-aliasing to transparent areas to smooth the way the objects look in games. Knowing this, it becomes easy to understand why grills (with their grates) and cribs (with their bars) would be affected if the objects being AA'd don't take well to that technique. OTOH, it's not so clear why this would affect a plant. Presumably it has something to do with the transparency texturing of these specific objects, for when they become see-through when you get up close. Or maybe not.   

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, with plants, one polygon-saving technique is, rather than rendering each leaf as a complicated polygon shape, to simply render it as a flat blade and alpha the parts that are not desired.

[witch]

Well, I've turned my adaptive anti-aliasing off and tomorrow when I boot up the game I'll find out if it helps. Thanks for the tip Jade.

[J. M. Pescado]

Antialiasing is bad shit, anyway. Makes everything all blurry. Edges should be SHARP, not smooth! A smooth edge is an edge that NEEDS MORE SHARPENING. Edges are suppose to be SHARP. Sharp enough to CUT PEOPLE who even LOOK at them!

[witch]

Especially the retro zigzag, so cutting edge. 

[Marhis]

If your antialiasing = blurry, you're DOING IT WRONG, dude

[Liz]

Well, with plants, one polygon-saving technique is, rather than rendering each leaf as a complicated polygon shape, to simply render it as a flat blade and alpha the parts that are not desired.

Yep, this is how the potted plants are handled in TS2. The leaves/fronds/whathaveyer are defined by the alpha channel, not the mesh.