More Awesome Than You!

I've always wanted caustics to work in my game, and I've fucked with all sorts of files to make that happen.  Recently I got a new laptop.  It's got a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 card in it, and 2 gigs of RAM.  I don't know if that's good or not because I haven't researched video display cards recently.  It's got Sims 2 up to Mansion Stuff.

So I installed the latest Radiance light mod from over at MTS2 with Scriptorium, got the sphere objects to activate the damned caustics, and made sure I have all required textures.

No caustics.

It says in the original caustics tile and wallpaper set that I have to put the damned sphere *inside* the pool.  Am I missing something painfully simple here?  Cause if I am, then I'll be happy cause it means I'm thick and not that my computer is incapable of making the water shiny.  Or that the game has changed in such a way that caustics don't work anymore.

If anyone can help me, I'd be ever so grateful cause my brain is starting to dribble out my ears.  ???

Does it work if you put a swimmin pool on the lot? I assume you are talking about Niol's caustic pool walls?

It's a swimming pool I'm trying to get the caustics to work in.  LOL!  And yes, it's Niol's stuff I'm working with.

You might be better posting in that thread so that Niol will see it, if you haven't already. Which EPs do you have?

Why on Earth would you want caustic substances in your swimming pool, and WTF does that have to do with us?

Pes, are you being deliberately obtuse?  Caustics are the light effects that happen in water and there's a mod to make that work in the Sims.  (I am totally gullible so I can't tell if you're being funny or not).

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/pancake_bunny.jpg)

Ah okay.  Well, trust me, I'm not just talking about random crap.  It's a mod connected to the light rendering in the programme.  Not really essential but I have been trying to get it to work for years now so it's just a stubborn determination for me.

Thank you for the bunny.

Oh, and Simsample - I have left a message with Niol.  I just figured that someone here might know about it, so I'd ask while I waited for Niol to respond.  It took a while last time.

Did someone take a real word and just slap it on something again? That never happens on the internet.

As far as I can tell it gives you an adorably gay pool?

(http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/5/0/2/5/7/MTS2_niol_404743_chris47_rainbow_caustic-pool-version.jpg)

Yes, that's it.  I want a gay night club as a pool, it's fantastic.  I like the shiny.  I just can't bring the installed elements together or something, it's driving me batty!!

No one knows what caustics are? It is a real word describing the phenomena when light passes through a liquid or glass.
(http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/4856/causticsiu9.jpg)
It comes up a lot when dealing with 3D programs like 3DS Max or Maya.
Assmitten, the caustics caused that light on the walls, not the fugly wallpaper and flooring.

Ah, thank you. I learned something new today.

Unfortunately, I believe that niol has left the community.  His last post was Sept 8th at MTS2 and Oct 5th here.  My understanding is that his internet provider decided to refuse access to some of the better TS2 sites.

The problem isn't that people don't know what a technical term in the science of optics means. It's that the word is more commonly used to describe corrosive substances, like sodium hydroxide. Wider-spread definition drives out more specialized meaning.

It's pretty and all, but it's one of those details that is too much for a player like me to fuss with. I never really thought about the fact that they were missing. I bet it would be good for storytellers, though.

I was imagining sims swimming in pools of deadly liquid... hehe :P

I probably shouldn't be saying anything anyways. The only reason I know what caustics are because I use 3DS Max and it comes up a lot when dealing with realistic glass and liquids.
Since I'm so used to knowing what that word describes, it was like seeing a easy question.
"You don't know what extruding a spline shape, applying a polygon modifier to the mesh and beveling the polygons mean? Silly noob!" :D

He just needs to discover the wonderful world of proxies. Down with censorship!

Polygons are 2D. How do you BEVEL one?

You add more polygons around the edges of the first one at a different angle, thus giving the appearance of a beveled surface.

Polygons are 2D. How do you BEVEL one?
[/quote]

What are you talking of? On 3DS Max, after you convert your object to editable polygon, you click on the polygon button, go to the edit polygon panel, click on a
polygon you want to use,and click either extrude or bevel. I'm guessing beveling means something different outside of 3DS Max?

[/quote]I was imagining sims swimming in pools of deadly liquid... hehe :P
[/quote]
Yeah, so was I!  I've got a couple of sims that I'd like to dunk in lye....  I've done just about everything else to them.

First open tag, then close tag.
Open one tag for each tag you close, and vice versa.

naceygirl,

So, have you tried to recolour the sphere to the graphically invisible recolour-mod recolour by eye-dropping  the sphere? the object host hasn't the activating line for the caustics, but the recolour-mod has it, so it has to be recoloured to that recolour-mod to activate the caustic effect.

Simsample might actually mean a block of swim-pool by the swim-pool tool but not a fake pool, and that is the another way known to make it work.


All,

Jorganza had clarified the meanings of "caustics" neatly, and that's the term used in the swim-pool shader, and so it is kept and used.
talysman had suggestted that more commonly used meanings of a word get more attentions than the less do.
It's been so funny for me to read on this thread and realise such pleasant-boisterousness-inducing ambiguity. :D  and, I didn't waste the chance to laugh quite a big bit.

I've modded the swim-pool shader to enable the caustics under my old video card.  But indeed, there's a setting in the game config files to grade video cards accordingly.
A tweak there may "upgrade" certain video card at the peril of the user.

Can anyone please help make a link at the caustic thread to this thread, so the infos are tied?  Thanks in advance... :)
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=179725

I'm mostly absent and lurking. lol  :P
My main PC is still down while I'm broke.
Plus, moderately serious outbreaks had been intermittently disabled my hands and fingers that there have been weeks and weeks of discomfort and etiolated abilities and so that I stayed at home mostly.  Yet, that's a norm once a flare-up of inflammation intitates too acutely including but not limited to the skin of joints of the mentioned body parts.  And, I've speculated constantly gradual aggravation of this condition will be the trend.  Nevertheless, a "new" means to control for my need is figured out due to the very same cause.  I'll see if such conditioning can be well fully manipulated.

I can't access MTS2 and now even simlogical...  that dashed censorship !


To whom are concerned with caustics and swim-pool in TS2,

It's interesting the caustic animation takes 2 shaders to render properly at the time of its making.  Bits of the caustic codes like switches are implemented along with walls and floors in shaders of wall, wall PS, floor, floor PS while the caustic effect codes are found in the swim-pool Material shader file.   One shader is for the caustic effect while one is for the caustic generator.  And it takes the latter to initiate the former in the same camera scope or namely simply the monitor screen.

[sims2 wiki search "Talk ShaderPool"]

The recolour-mod is simply to add the caustic generator (by means of Material type) through a host object into a lot to activate the caustic effects already referenced by the pool floor tiles and pool wallpapers (by means of Material type).  The Material type is actually a reference to conjure up the corresponding shader functions to draw on the monitor screen.

Note, both recolours of caustic effects (pool floor tiles and pool wallpapers) and caustic generator have to be together in the scope of the monitor screen to work out.

Since the swim-pool is a complex build tool consisted of many components.
1. pool floor tiles
2. pool wallpapers
3. swim-pool surface and pool depth layers
-- (the position(s) of both are recorded in a file of  the lot package file, may check out sims 2 wiki or ask Mootilda if interested.)
-- [sims 2 wiki search:  0C900FDB POOL Pool Surface]
-- One can decide on the size and location of such graphical "layers" whether a swim-pool is built.
4. invisible "stages"
-- where sims swim instead of the underground -1 storey/level, it may also be the structure that hosts the caustic generator as its texture though graphically invisible
5. maybe, more

EP5 introduce a "curved" meshed wall and some cut-out "curved" floor tiles to simulate the curved pool edge.  If someone can extract that curved wall segment mesh from the 3D folder, and one can  make it a fake curved wall in-game object with sims-blocking flags.

Oktaplex can be a demonstration on how to use the set.  If it doesn't work in a game version, and that may mean the caustics codes have been altered.