Outdoor Lighting Tweaks v1.5

[dDefinder]

Reduces the blue hue during night hours. Nights will have a more natural appearance unlike the blue radiated moonlight of the default. Includes choices of how bright nights are: Brighter, Balanced, Darker.  Shadows will now follow the sun more accurately throughout the day cycle instead of them being stuck at 3pm shadow limit. Some minor tweaks to sun intensity, ambient, and sunset color. Added 3 weather types: heavy fog, stormy, overcast. Stormy and heavy fog will have a reduced appearance chance.

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version 1.5
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-Increased brightness for overcast afternoon
-improved sunset sky lighting color gradient and corrected cloud lighting
-Lighter water color
-Removed color shadows during fog weather type
-fog distance increased
-increased brightness for brighter night option
-fixed an error with partly cloudy using overcast lighting settings, shouldn't be as dark anymore

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version 1.4
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-Added 3 weather types: heavy fog, stormy, overcast. Stormy and heavy fog will have a reduced appearance chance.
-Reduced the fog effect during Clear sky and partly cloudy
-Further reduced blue hue and clouds at night
-Increased sun intensify and reduced shadow ambient
-Changed sunset color
-Merged Shadows and Less nights and applied name change.
-Name changed from Less Blue Nights / Accurate Outdoor Shadows

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INSTALLING
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Remove old versions if you have them. "dD-Less_Blue_Nights" "dD-Longer_Shadows"

Extract files.

Pick one of the "Lighting Tweaks" options.
Balanced - nights will be darker than the default game brightness but will still be visible to navigate in.
Darker - Will make nights very dark (pitch black)
Brighter - Will be more close to the default brightness setting.

Put the files inside:
...Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Mods\Packages
or whatever location you put your mod in.

(if you were using the heatwave fix you should restore a backup of your Egypt world file.)

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Also Check Out
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Fixes for the broken lights in EA glass doors and arches
by plasticbox:
http://linna.modthesims.info/download.php?t=389222

Night


Dawn, Dusk Shadows: (Default vs Modded) old screenshot

[brownlustgirl]

I have tried the mod and it's great not having the blue tint on the walls at night. The night is very dark, so dark that my dark skinned sims are almost invisible. All I see from them is eyes and clothes, it's amusing, but sort of annoying. I don't know anything about modding, but is there anyway to lessen the intensity of darkness?

[That Eighties Guy]

Sounds sexy, I've always found Sims' nights way too childish. They're so light and happy dandy.
I'll report back of my studies, madam.

[chann]

Nice mod (I never realized how BLUE the default night lighting was!). I recommend that you follow Rick's instructions here and package the INI files so they will work with future patches.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have tried the mod and it's great not having the blue tint on the walls at night. The night is very dark, so dark that my dark skinned sims are almost invisible. All I see from them is eyes and clothes, it's amusing, but sort of annoying. I don't know anything about modding, but is there anyway to lessen the intensity of darkness?

That is realistic, actually. You should see what's like with my wife: She is black, dresses in black, and wears sunglasses. At night, it's just like there's this dark shadowy shape you can't see.

[witch]

That is realistic, actually. You should see what's like with my wife: She is black, dresses in black, and wears sunglasses. At night, it's just like there's this dark shadowy shape you can't see.

A ninja, you're married to a ninja.

[dDefinder]

Thanks chann, the files are now package files and added brighter optional file. If you had the INI version of this you need to restore a backup of your original INI files.

[Orange]

I like what you have done so far, but is there any way to make night darker? What values should I be looking at?

Edt: What a terrible night to have a curse
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/6060/darknight.jpg

[dDefinder]

I like what you have done so far, but is there any way to make night darker? What values should I be looking at?

Change [SunMoonLight] and/or [AmbientSkyTop]
timeofday from 18-23, 0-6.

Does your changes affect inside ambient lighting?

[Orange]

Oh I get it now. Thanks.

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/2683/darknightok.jpg <- I made fogdistance end = 1500 here, looks nicer.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/44/inside.jpg <- how it looks inside houses.
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/7748/clipboard01bjv.jpg <- problems associated with nights as dark as these.

Basically, what I did to get things real dark was eliminate the fog entirely along with using negative values.

Example:
[SunMoonLight1]
red = -20
green = -20
blue = -20
timeOfDay = 3

[Chaavik]

So far, the mod is working out just great for me adjusting the way the neighborhood looked during the day and during the night.

There was one thing that bothered me for a long time, and I wondered if this problem is affected by the outdoors lighting at nighttime. The garden plants and trees always seemed so dark against the bright terrain if outdoor light poles are placed by them. The other plants, shrubs and trees looked fine.

Is there a way to adjust the way lighting is used to make garden plants and tress look normal at night?

[dDefinder]

Orange, The changes doesn't affect rooms that have no lights on, Seems the value for indoor lighting are not found in the ini.

So far, the mod is working out just great for me adjusting the way the neighborhood looked during the day and during the night.

There was one thing that bothered me for a long time, and I wondered if this problem is affected by the outdoors lighting at nighttime. The garden plants and trees always seemed so dark against the bright terrain if outdoor light poles are placed by them. The other plants, shrubs and trees looked fine.

Is there a way to adjust the way lighting is used to make garden plants and tress look normal at night?

I don't notice this issue if I place lamps next to garden plants or trees. I do see darker plants still appearing dark, which it's suppose to be.

[Chaavik]

But that does not make sense if the lights are placed NEXT to the garden plants to brighten up the area where the garden plants and trees are planted. For example, a tall street lamp on the wooden pole is supposed to brighten the area, but the plants and trees were much darker than they should in the light. Is this related to the way EA implemented the natural lighting outside on top of the outdoor lamps?

[Larku]

That is quite useful, I'll most definitely be using this mod. Keep up the good work!

[dDefinder]

But that does not make sense if the lights are placed NEXT to the garden plants to brighten up the area where the garden plants and trees are planted. For example, a tall street lamp on the wooden pole is supposed to brighten the area, but the plants and trees were much darker than they should in the light. Is this related to the way EA implemented the natural lighting outside on top of the outdoor lamps?

I tried this on another house where there are a lot of trees outside and I can now see the problem. Shadows that are from the moonlight overlaps the lighting from the lamps which will cause it to appear darker than it should. Its definitely the way they implemented the lighting system, and it appears change it.

EDIT: it appears to be unchangeable.

[Chaavik]

I suspected it wasn't my video card playing weird tricks on me when I looked at the garden plants and trees at night time with the lamps next to them to illuminate the area.

Will it be possible to fix this? If that's not possible, then it's okay. I used your mod the other day, and the whole 'hood looked a lot better now with brighter lighting.

[dDefinder]

I'm not fully sure, but it looks like a technical limitation and I don't know where the rest of the lighting code is. I'm going to guess that its located as a core??

[brownlustgirl]

Being a coward at darker nights and shadows moving around (ninjas = super scary) the brighter nights is very useful and still keep that awful blue tint to a minimum. I appreciate the work you put in this.

[Chaavik]

Maybe or not if the lighting seemed to be coming from somewhere else that's considered as a core. There is another idea, but I don't know if the idea will work. I wonder if you can try to reduce the moonlight itself and see if the plants and trees for the garden will look more visible? You did say that the shadows from the moonlight was overlapping the lighting from the lamps.

Yes, I do appreciate the hard work you're putting into this project to make lighting look more realistic for Sims 3 as much as you did with yours for Sims 2.

[Pyromaniac]

Not sure if this is intentional or not, but ever since I've installed Brighter Nights and Longer Shadows, the in-game afternoons always look overcast.

See here:





I thought the longer shadows only applied at dawn/dusk, but these were taken at around 4 pm in the afternoon.

[dDefinder]

Chaavik, The moon will still cast shadows even if the moonlight itself isn't visible. I'm testing the moonlight radii maybe to try and hide it.

Pyromaniac, I've taken a look at this and There was a value that applied an extra shadow skew which ended up making the shadows longer than it should.

with skew:


without:


I've updated the Longer Shadows. Shadows should now cast correctly with the sun throughout the day and decreased the horizon limit.

[Chaavik]

All right. I will look forward to hearing from you if you can get that to work and allow the plants and trees to look more visible. I'm going to re-download Longer Shadows and see if the "overcast" feeling has been reduced in my neighborhood.

[dDefinder]

Update to 1.4

I still can't change anything to indoor lighting as there are no INI files related to that.  New worlds like China and twinbrook have their own set of custom lighting files but they are hidden in a non ini format.  So this mod will not have any effect in the new worlds.

EDIT:
Small change to fix green heavy fog evenings and made partly cloudy mornings more brighter.   Heatwave fix isn't working and probably never will be if mods change the sky common or you want heatwaves in all areas.

[markjs]

I loved your mod on Sunset Valley. I hope you do for EP's worlds too.

For worlds that have their own lighting variables like Twinbrook you can do a search for the resource type 0x1F886EAD (_INI) on the .world file.

I uploaded respective packages containing all ini files inside Twinbrook.world, China.world, France.world and Egypt.world if you want to take a look.
Mediafire Folder

Hope you can get something useful for them.

Sorry, just noticed that expansion worlds share the inis with the same instance.
And since they have different options, I don't think we have a option to change something on them, unless we replace the original ini inside the world?
Since the specific inis are loaded when the referring world is loaded, we would lose default settings made specific to that world.

[dDefinder]

The thing with the files in the new worlds is that they only change the fog effects but not the actual weather, color, and sky.  They seem to be located somewhere else or under a different file type.

Replacing the ini in the world files will still get overridden by the ones in the package. I think the best option is to not have the ini in packages and edit the individual worlds accordingly.

EDIT:
The thing i do need is the names of the new custom lighting files that are hidden. There are 5 in new named ini's in total.