Hey guys! I was wondering which EA worlds, pack and store, do you think have the best lighting. I'm moving away from lighting mods and adding the ini files to the worlds I edit instead. I want to explore more lighting from different worlds but decided to see what your opinions were before I begin that undertaking. Thanks!

Ah, welcome to the club!

But I think that there's no easy answer, because it depends on the world you edit, on both the atmosphere the world has and what terrain paints and colour schemes it uses. I've added, for example, the Sunlit Tides lighting to another tropical world and there it looked awful.
Another issue can also be the water colour conflicting with the water terrain paint and distant terrain elements.

But in general I like the lighting in Monte Vista and Dragon Valley very much for mellow tones and warm atmospheres and for more gritty effects the light in Twinbrook or Moonlight Falls. The Bridgeport lighting I found a bit too murky, waterwise, for most other worlds.

You can add the lighting mods to your worlds, too, by the way.

Riverview, however, doesn't use any custom light. It's the same as Sunset Valley.
Which further proves my point that light is only one factor and has to be matched against how the world is designed.

Care to show the world you have in mind?

It's just a tiny German world. Currently I'm using brntwaffels's "Moonrise kingdom" lighting mod or something and I really like it because it doesn't really have a "theme" and I like the clouds it uses. The only issue is the mod glitches upon load sometimes which results in the world looking really dark, or gray with no change in lighting day or night. I have to exit to the main menu and come back in. I've used Monte Vista, which is my favorite atm but for this particular world I don't think it fits. It's too Mediterranean.

I haven't got the slightest clue, by the way, why my Sunset Valley is so green, but it's very pretty.

Aurora Skies might fit if you don't mind the auroras; or the lighting from either Fagersims' Enekjaer and Dronningslund or Norn's Northeney

Ooooh very helpful! I've played in all of these so I see where you're coming from.

Your water looks quite detailed, do you have a mod set for that as well?

I've also made Bridgeport more human-friendly by giving it somewhat pastel-like summer afternoons:


My favourite CC world lighting will have to be Uranesia:

My opinion? Monte Vista. The warm yellow hue gives a sense of serenity. I'm not sure if real Italy is like that, but the world lighting fits an Italian theme.

If I had to choose a second I'd say Midnight Hollow. While it isn't objectively the best lighting. It's dark, dull, and quite stylized, but it fits a Gothic world. And style wins over objectivity for me.

For the world you're creating, I imagine some sort of mix of Monte Vista, Aurora Skies and whatever lighting Champs Les Sims uses.

Probably not a glitch; if the creator made the lighting to have a gloomy weather state but made the change duration long then you would get what you are seeing.

I would recommend that you make your own custom lighting files to suit that world- it's fun and not too difficult. I like to have changeable weather so in some of my worlds I have some of the rarer sky states set to show more commonly, and have the sky changing every few hours. That way I can have fog in the morning, sunshine at midday and stormy skies in late afternoon. A bit like the weather here, really!

If you want to try some of my custom skies, you can get the Jericho files from here:
http://simfileshare.net/download/38503/
Some more sky files in my journal, too. Feel free to use, abuse, edit and share as you like.

Midnight Hollow

just kidding

That makes sense, its just confusing though since it occurs randomly with no set time upon loading the world and also goes away if exit and re-enter, sometimes more than once.

I know zero about lighting mods but that Burnt Waffles one looked darn good so I got it. Put in my game and one world I am working on looked darn good. I then opened CAW and a world I have built totally from scratch looked horrible. Very, very, very dark and the water,...... yikes. It is interesting/confusing how it worked so well in one world and not at all in a clean world as far as lighting goes. Pulled it out and will stick with standard lighting.

I think I popped a BW one in my game years ago and had issues too. I just do not have luck with lighting mods.

There's this thread, which is a very good starting point: Research - Sea, Sky and Light parameters- let's learn!

You can avoid all possible "conflicts" caused by a lighting mod by importing the mod into the world using S3PE. Thus the lighting will be for that world only and not override that of your other worlds.
This is especially good when you travel a lot between worlds because a global lighting override (i.e. a lighting mod) can cause weird effects when you travel to a world which is supposed to have its own custom lighting.

ETA: There's also my thread here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=597571, where I got a lot of help from the resident lighting scholar.

Midnight Hollow has actually really nice light parameters if you disregard the red sky moments. It's very bright and rich in contrast. The darkness is caused by the terrain and the way everything is CASted.

That is good to know that they do not always work universally and it was not me. I did like that one and may use it later in that particular world. In the meantime, as I am working on both will shelf it.

There are settings in each sky type to determine its probability of being chosen, and it's also possible to change the length of time before another sky is chosen. In the basegame files (the settings used for Sunset Valley and Riverview) a new sky is chosen every 8 hours, and it's very improbable to see anything but partly cloudy or clear.

However, it is entirely possible to create files to have dark gloomy weather equally as possible as clear skies, and to have them both likely and lasting all day. So each time you loaded the world you'd either have the gloomy sky or the clear sky, and reloading the world would roll the dice again.

In my Jericho world I have a new sky selected every 5 hours and I have the probability weightings set so that it is likely that all five sets will be used randomly, which gives some nice variation.

I think Lucky Palms, Monte Vista and Sunlt tides have the best lighting. Especially the first two have the warmest, lovely lighting ever: dusks and dawns are so beautiful in these two worlds.

Dragon Valley in my opinion. I have brntwaffles Brighter Realm lighting mod in and love the lighting in the different worlds.

So what lighting would you all recommend for Riverview?

I've already tried a version of Perfect Day; the nights don't seem to become really dark.
I'm now testing Cloud Nine and Dream Dimension and the St.Claire with Pounawea water.
The biggest issue I have is with the water; most water versions don't go well with the rivers. They look patchy and dirty.

Well, I'm doing that right now, too. The default lighting isn't actually too bad, but the bluish night tint really gets on my nerves.
I've also knowledge of ddefinders ini changes, but these are too extreme for this world imo.

DreamDimension with Aurora Skies water is quite nice, but, alas, it comes with auroras.

I hate the default blue nights of the base game. It's the only reason why I began using lighting mods in the first place.