Any Decent Custom Hair?

[Bangelnuts]

Well, I can't get Bodyshop to run properly in my game, so I never use it.  However, I do have an Invidia 5200 (I think) but I don't know if bump maps are enabled or not.  I'm just not technically up in these things.

neither am I and bump maps to me dont matter one way or the other

[yetyak]

I have a 5200 and did the fix to get the bump maps to show.  Somewhere I found a male underwear outfit that has "bump mapping is enabled" on the front that shows when it works.  After installing NL, I had to do the fix again.  It was pretty easy, I can post it if anyone would like it.

[MokeyHokey]

I think that problem was fixed with Nightlife. I always thought I'd seen bump maps, until I actually saw them in game after installing Nightlife  Cheesy. But, in return, I lost object specularity (upon installation, with the same graphics card as before).

Have you tried the 6.1.7.7 driver? 
I swore by the 77.77 until I rolled back to this one..thanks to my husband and his fascination with W.O.W. 

[IgnorantBliss]

Have you tried the 6.1.7.7 driver? 
I swore by the 77.77 until I rolled back to this one..thanks to my husband and his fascination with W.O.W. 

No, thanks for the tip! Would you happen to know where I can find that version? Can't seem to find it at the Nvidia page.

[Hairfish]

I upgraded to an NVIDIA 5500/256MB and enabled bump maps by editing one of the core game files (I don't remember which one). That's when my game slowed down so badly. There's also a boolprop cheat you can enter to acitvate both bump maps and the brighter, more animate pool water, but you get the same slow-down on the lower-end cards.

Properly done bump maps look good. Unfortunately, among the usermade content that I have, there are very very few properly done bump maps. Contrarty to what some tutorials suggest, it's more than a matter of clicking a couple of filters. I found otherwise beautiful skins suddenly looking like they were embedded several inches into the Sim's body (light and dark backwards on the bump map), or what was supposed to be sheer, filmy fabric appearing two inches thick (too much contrast on the bump map). To me, it's simply not worth the trouble and expense to enable the damn things. GOOD textures don't need them, anyway. 

[IgnorantBliss]

I do think bump maps do improve the look of some clothing. Having a print on a shirt appear elevated looks pretty cool, for example, and some sweaters look better with it. Not all skins need it, though.

[MokeyHokey]

Assuming you have XP, I think this is the correct link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_61.77.html.  Lemme know if that driver works for you; I'd like a second opinion before I advise people to roll back. 

[IgnorantBliss]

Assuming you have XP, I think this is the correct link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_61.77.html.  Lemme know if that driver works for you; I'd like a second opinion before I advise people to roll back. 

Thanks for the link, I'll have to try that report back to you how it works out . It would be awesome to have the object specularity back, because after I'd had it for a while, everything looked so plain without it.

[IgnorantBliss]

Have you tried the 6.1.7.7 driver? 
I swore by the 77.77 until I rolled back to this one..thanks to my husband and his fascination with W.O.W. 

Nope, didn't change anything compared to the 77.77 I had before. Objects like the Maxis piano used to be very shiny, but it's not. Has anyone tried the newest version of the drivers, 81.94? Does it make any difference with TS2?

Edited to add: I tried the latest drivers, but they made my cow plants turn light green in color. Someone else had a similar problem with their bed pillows turning green. I went back to 77.77, and everything is working fine, except for the missing specularity, of course.