Graphics question

[cwieberdink]

I have something.... odd.... happening in my game and I'm sure there is a simple reason that I'm missing.  Anyway, most custom clothes in my game show up most clearly on "High Texture Quality" but some skins and clothes are blurred at high quality, and are seen best at medium. 

I would have thought everything would be better at high quality.  I'm having trouble deciding which setting to keep.  It doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in performance and I have the most recent drivers.  I've tried an older driver too and the same thing happened. 

Any thoughts?

C

[Swiftgold]

Perhaps it has something to do with the graphics settings of the person who made the custom things? I guess if it was me I'd just go with whichever setting shows the majority of the skins the best way. I played for a long while on really low settings before upgrading my video card so I'm just glad to be able to see cinematics now and see the Sims with fingers and not paws, so I'm not quite sure if that's what the problem is, but it seems like it to me...

[Hairfish]

Two things I know of might cause this:

Either... The skins that look best on Medium have smaller-than-normal textures, so they're having to be enlarged to fit the Sim (although I have no idea whether BodyShop would even allow that to happen, since I've never tried to sneak in a smaller texture)...

OR

There's something going on with the bumpmaps. I can't verify that, either, since I have to play without bumpmaps activated because of my graphics card.

Do you have bumpmaps activated? If you don't, then it's not the second thing.

Can you post a screenshot showing the two side by side, for comparison? You've got me curious.

[cwieberdink]

I will work on getting a screenshot.  The skin problem could be what you are saying, as the skin looks fine on the Crammyboy sim (tattooed one) but is blurred on my bodybuilder sim (stretched).  It's really the clothes that bugs me most because you can't read text on the T-shirts or see the details of some of the pretty stuff I've gotten off YOUR site   

I'll try and get some pics and post today.

C

[trancejeremy]

IIRC, there was actually a bug in some versions of bodyshop which is causing the problem of bluriness on high level when the original creator had certain types of hardware (low end).

You might try exporting them in body shop and looking at the source files and then reimporting them.

[cwieberdink]

Okay, here is Mary Sue Pleasant after her makeover.  First pic is at high texture quality, second pic is at medium texture quality.





C

[gali]

Do you have Shadows "on"? It looks like you need more shadow.

[Aldebaran]

Hi all,

Just a thought. I don't know how good is your video card, but if it's not that high-end (128mb and above), then it might be possible that it just can't "hold" the higher textures and blurs them, and when set back on the quality it can display it again propery.

I can have this problem (my card is 64mb), in the first hours without shadows and reflections the game runs on the highest settings without blurring together, but after turning on reflections/having too many sims on the lot/playing a too big lot it just loses footing and begins showing crappier quality without actually changing the setting. Sometimes setting the lower setting then setting the higher again works, sometimes it only gets better if I restart the game.

Vejitto~

[Kristalrose]

I don't have an answer for you, Fae, I just want to say that I love her hairstyle.    She's a very pretty sim. 

[cwieberdink]

Hi all,

Just a thought. I don't know how good is your video card, but if it's not that high-end (128mb and above), then it might be possible that it just can't "hold" the higher textures and blurs them, and when set back on the quality it can display it again propery.

I can have this problem (my card is 64mb), in the first hours without shadows and reflections the game runs on the highest settings without blurring together, but after turning on reflections/having too many sims on the lot/playing a too big lot it just loses footing and begins showing crappier quality without actually changing the setting. Sometimes setting the lower setting then setting the higher again works, sometimes it only gets better if I restart the game.

Vejitto~

You know what, I just noticed last night while I was playing that the graphics had "slipped" by the time I had played for a few hours.  Clothes that were nice and clear were suddenly blurry.  Tht must be what the problem is.  I don't remember what exactly is the memory on it.  I want to say 128 though but I could definitely be wrong.

C

[Hairfish]

IIRC, there was actually a bug in some versions of bodyshop which is causing the problem of bluriness on high level when the original creator had certain types of hardware (low end).

Well, "low end" might apply in this case, since the blue skin in the screenshots is one of mine. I certainly don't have a "high end" card, but low end? It's an NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 (or numbers to that effect) with 256MB memory... That skin looks fine in my game, though, so I don't think that's the problem.

However, I can't see very fine textures, or read t-shirt text at far zooms, either, unless I drop "smooth edges" to 0. I think that's a problem with the game's rendering method ~ it smooths edges by antialiasing everything, instead of just actual edges. Perhaps more powerful video cards compensate for this, but that's something I and other skinners can't control. 

[Aldebaran]

You know what, I just noticed last night while I was playing that the graphics had "slipped" by the time I had played for a few hours.  Clothes that were nice and clear were suddenly blurry.  Tht must be what the problem is.  I don't remember what exactly is the memory on it.  I want to say 128 though but I could definitely be wrong.

C

I think you can check it by running the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (Control Panel -> DirectX -> choosing DxDiag), it should be under Display along with name, manufacturer, etc.

Well, "low end" might apply in this case, since the blue skin in the screenshots is one of mine. I certainly don't have a "high end" card, but low end? It's an NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 (or numbers to that effect) with 256MB memory... That skin looks fine in my game, though, so I don't think that's the problem.

That is certainly not low-end, don't worry  I think the best cards now have 512mb, with no in-between those and 256mb cards, so yours is really good (especially if it allows for smoothing).

Vejitto~

[Savage]

Perhaps it has something to do with the graphics settings of the person who made the custom things? I guess if it was me I'd just go with whichever setting shows the majority of the skins the best way. I played for a long while on really low settings before upgrading my video card so I'm just glad to be able to see cinematics now and see the Sims with fingers and not paws, so I'm not quite sure if that's what the problem is, but it seems like it to me...

So thats why my sims have paws haha.

[Brynne]

So, did anyone ever figure out what causes this? I'm having the same exact thing in my game right now. It was fine up until this morning when I started up the game. I haven't changed a thing.

[radiophonic]

Do you folks use Nvidia cards? If so, I can share the trick I used to get rid of those compression anomalies.

[Brynne]

No, I have a radeon. But here's the weird thing. I had everything on high, except for shadows, which are always off. I turned shadows on, and the graphics cleared again. I turned shadows back off and the graphics are still clear. Except for the thumbnails of the portraits of my toddlers only, which I can live with, it's all crystal clear and normal again. I don't know if that's like banging on the tv to get a better picture, but it seemed to jar something. Maybe. I have no clue. 

[cwieberdink]

Do you folks use Nvidia cards? If so, I can share the trick I used to get rid of those compression anomalies.

I do.  What's the trick?

C

[radiophonic]

Which model is it?

[cwieberdink]

GeForce 4200 (I think)?

C

[Brynne]

I have my graphics problem back, again. With "texture" set to low, it clears up. It's blurriest on high. Anytime I go into buy/build mode, or even into my sims' inventories, when I return back to the game, I get blurry clothes, again. I have to set the texture to medium then back down to low to get it clearer. Even when the sims themselves have cleared up, the thumbnails haven't. And it does not affect every sim. It only affects the clothing, apparently. Very frustrating. I'm going to shut the game down, cool off my cpu and reboot and see if that helps.

Here's a pic I took to help illustrate the problem. I have the texture set to low, here. Jason, up front, while not as sharp as he normally shows, is much clearer than his thumbnail, and it's only his clothes that are problematic. As you can see in the background, the others are fine. Some sims have crystal clear thumbnail pics, some are like Jason's. If I set the texture to high, everybody looks as muddled as Jason's pic. This just started today, so I don't get it.

[nectere]

I have a similar probelm with some skins, when the setting is high they get some weird shadow under their neck and on down, even though shadows are off. The only thing I can figure is that the skins were made to look good with a low end graphics card and now that I have a better card they dont look right? I have no idea but its bugging me because they are my skins...I guess I will have to redo them and see if that fixes it.

[gali]

Brynne, how can I steal this pretty Jason? 

[Jorenne]

Brynne,

You might want to give this a try, it worked on an NVidia card, which I know you don't have, but Radeon control panels should be very similar.

(Disclaimer - This solution is not mine, just something I read while surfing that might help)

In game graphics settings:

All on high but turn smooth edges all the way down. You'll be using your card settings for the anti-aliasing/smooth edges instead (4x). It looks just as good this way.

In Nvidia control panel (ATI should be similar):

To get to the control panel, right click on desktop, choose properties, settings, then advanced. Click on the tab that has the name of your video card. Mine says 'Geforce 6600GT'. Click on performance and quality settings (or similar). The settings you're changing will be under global driver settings. Be sure to tick the box to enable the advanced options to be shown.

Antialiasing (4x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled)
Anisotropic Filtering - (2x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled) - This is optional
Image Settings - High Quality
Vsync - Application Controlled
Force Mipmaps - Bilinear
Conformant Texture Clamp - Off

I also went into Color Correction settings and bumped Image Sharpening up to about halfway and Digital Vibrance to Low. These settings tend to make your game look more Maxis-like

[cwieberdink]

I have my graphics problem back, again.

Brynne, welcome to my world    I followed Jorene's advice on adjusting my vid card, we'll see what happens now.  It is frustrating because it didn't always do this.  Before I play, I always do a clean boot, shut down all extraneous processes and start up the game.  Sometimes though if I've been playing every day or playing for  7 or 8 hours at a time (yes, I do have benders too!   ) it will start to get really bad.

C

[radiophonic]

(Disclaimer - This solution is not mine, just something I read while surfing that might help)
Antialiasing (4x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled)
Anisotropic Filtering - (2x - be sure to uncheck application-controlled) - This is optional
Image Settings - High Quality
Vsync - Application Controlled
Force Mipmaps - Bilinear
Conformant Texture Clamp - Off

Right. Except it is possible to set antialiasing to 2XQ instead of 4X and save some processor cycles.

Fae, I found the one thing that got rid of the corruption was simply changing:
Antialiasing to 2XQ and Antiscopic Filtering to off

If you want to reference my driver settings (I have a 440MX which isn't much different):
Image Settings - Performance (anything higher makes minimal difference in Sims 2)
Vsync - Application Controlled
Force Mipmaps - None (Seemed only necesary to change this for older games like Quake2)
Conformant Texture Clamp - Off
Negetive LOD Bias - Off

Make sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers and remember that you have to uninstall the old driver before you can install the new one.  The process: Download driver (http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp), uninstall old driver, reboot, install new driver, reboot, pull hair out.

Let me know if it works for you.

(Edited to show additional settings for reference)