I've noticed that all of my objects are blurry when they are in game, but when I go in Create-A-Style mode, and change the color, it becomes all nice, clear and crisp, and once I hit the check button and am done with CAS, it becomes blurry again. Is there any way to fix this? I noticed it greatly with my christmas tree.

Blurry in game:


Clean and sharp in CAS:

I had that issue for a deco object. It seems to mean that the mapping of the object isn't covering enough of the texture. It was for my giraffes, when looked at the mapping in Milkshape, they were all bunched in a corner of the texture, so I just rescaled them bigger. Of course, that particular texture was just a big grey rectangle, so that was easy...
I'm not sure how to proceed with an object that has a complicated texture like this one. Maybe make it bigger and remap over it ?

This happens to me ALL the time, even with EA meshes.

Edited to add - my game settings are on high for everything, and my graphics card (nvidia GTX 260) is tweaked to optimise it as well. It happens with some things and not others, very annoying but I've come to deal with it :P

That looks like you are seeing a different lod in-game. What are your options set at?
Or perhaps they are as high as the game allows for your graphics card.

But is a different lod related to a different texture file?(it was with the sims2....but i haven't seen those with sims 3)
All wat is messed up are the textures, especially parts that are created by alpha editing.

There is definitely a lot less detail on the tree... not just texture, but less faces. It must be a lower LOD. When I use low texture detail, I get everything in lower res.

The game uses DDS files for textures... these have mipmaps in them, so a smaller, less detailed version is in there.

I'll have to check what my settings are later since I'm not on my of atm, but I believe my object detail is set to high. Also, I haven't edited the LODS yet, so this is the main mesh. And I get what you're saying. But wouldn't know how to fix it. Maybe I could clone an object with a bigger texture, because it seems to convert it to the original size.

I get this problem every time I use a different size texture image than the original clone had. The game just doesn't like it. So I try to use a clone that has images of the size I need.

Your right, i forgot allabout the mipmaps.

@ prince,
Fastest way to find out a bit more is to download a object from another creator.
If it displays correct, its in your package.(you didn't say you had the same problem with default objects?)
If its blurry its most likely your game(graphic card) settings.
And you might want to ask someone else to test your tree to make sure.


I had blurry textures once, i have a old slow computer and had manual set my nvidia card to performance instead of letting the 3d aplications decide.
that didn't work either.....

I'm having the same problem. Looks bad in live mode, great in CAS. But I have added shine. If it's not considered Hijacking a thread can someone look at mine too and help out. Note: This painting is for the sister site, but they don't have any help threads. I get referred back to here. So, everything is included in the .rar file and not uploaded seperately.

Edit-Fixed shine problem.

I changed the mask height in the mtlsrc file to same size as the sims 2 mesh I converted and it worked okay the image wasn't blurry at all.

MaskWidth 2 1 00000080
MaskHeight 2 1 00000100

I changed the texture from 128 x 512 to 128 x 256

I just changed the maskheight from 2 1 00000200 to 2 1 00000100

Find the size you want from another mesh mtlsrc and copy and paste it into the blocks indicated by the object tool that you need to change. Well it worked for me anyway. The only problem I'm having is getting the black not to show through on my alpha. So if anyone can tell me how to do it I'd be grateful. I've done the desk tut 50 times in photoshop and it either comes out completely black or how it is in this pic.

Ah... nice work, a good discovery.

While I can make tools that can list and change the values in the materials, I don't know what they all mean... I didn't get a modder's manual here, seems they are all out-of-print.

I had that problem before. I solved it by changing this value in the mtlsrc:
AlphaMask Threshold.
When it was 0, I could not get transparency to work.
This line is from the mtlsrc of a plant (with transparency around the leaves):

Am I too late to talk about the blurry texture thing?

Not to rehijack a thread or anything, but I've also noticed that patterns and textures show much better in CASt than in live or build/buy mode. It happens even using EA patterns on EA meshes, so it's not a custom content problem.

It's not just the patterns, either, the non-recolorable textures are like that too-- the picture part of the paintings are less pixelated and compressed in CASt even though what you're recoloring is the frame. With custom objects and patterns, I can tell that what I see in CASt looks pretty much the same as what I see when I look at my dds in photoshop or S3PE or in the pattern packager, but then it seems like the game gives them one more nasty hard crunch when I close CASt. I've learned not to preview patterns that way.

I have all my graphic settings on high, and I think my system is reasonably adequate, so I've been assuming that it was just part of the game rendering system and that it was the same for everyone. I'd love to hear if there's anyone it isn't true for, because I'd adore it if it was something I could actualy change...

I wrote something about blurred textures here (post #11). Perhaps that also helps for your problem.

Well it seems that i have the same problem....
I converted a sims 2 paintind and here's the difference..


Normal Mode


CAST Mode


How can we fix this...?
I tried Killc*a's method but didnt worked for me...

Did you changed all the lines? Did you used Notepad not Wordpad to edit?

Yes i used Notepad to edit the files...
The two lines were 100 and i changed them to 200 the other two were already 200 so i didnt changed them...
Should i change them too to 300 or something?

I think that the issues with detail in the game versus detail in CAST mode is related to the capability of the graphics adapter, as analyzed by the game.

Since there are limits on how much graphic RAM is in each different card, when you are using CAST animations any effects stop for all the other objects, while they are displayed, they require no special processing to display. So there is spare overhead, and CAST uses it to display that single object in high detail.

When you are in game play, it requires more memory to keep all of the animations and effects storeed and active for a whole roomful of objects. When graphics power is limited, that is one place where the game "cuts back".

I don't see any of that detail reduction here, unless I lower the slider (in options), but I am running with a GeForce 9600 that has 512 Megs of video RAM. Not a stellar card, but well above average.

Hraklis948, did you remap it in milkshape? I only realised after I had mapped the curtains that I could change the width and height in the mtrlsrc so after I had changed the mask height and width I had re map them back again to the original sims 2 size.

Try to delete the compositorCache.package in Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/. The game stores some textures here. I needed to delete it before some textures showed up properly.

This is not a graphic card issue but a mesh material setting. After the several textures are run through the texture compositor (which is performed in a size of 1024x1024) the final texture sizes are taken from the mesh material. Height and width size for the Diffuse and Specular (which need to be the same size, or the lower value is taken). Then the textures are saved into the compositorCache.package.

The only way I know these values can be accessed is through the new TSR Workshop via the Materials Editor. However, these values are updated automatically whenever a new Multiplier with a certain size is imported. We decided to take the Multiplier as a base, because the pattern tiling in some cases might be simply too big and there's no logic reason, to save textures, which are over 1024x1024.

When you change into CAST, the complate is rendered real time at 1024x1024 with all single textures. That's why it's not blurry in that mode.

teko: Do you mean the material definitions as in the MTNF chunk inside the GEOM file?

GEOM materials don't have that final texture size included because they're all saved at 1024x1024. Talking about MLOD and MODL here. For the chunks you have to ask Johan or Pommes - no idea.

Actually, Delphy, the exact same chunks are embedded in the MODL and MLOD mesh files, and are editable in the .mtlsrc files, which are decompilations of the MTNF files.