How do I get rid of the "sun reflection" texture on the water?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Guys, I'd like to know how can I remove the belt of the sun reflection that goes across the water tiles.

The reason is, it completely ruins any attempts at creating the regional screenshots as per chfzdn's tutorial here. As a matter of fact, I can see he was experiencing exact same issue but I don't think it has ever been addressed.

From what I can see, it's the sun reflection (overlay?) texture that causes these discrepancies. I want to smite it for good... I want it out! Can you help me? Case study below:

[BartonThinks 3,416]

Unfortunately, I have no idea how or even if this feature can be turned off. That said, is there a particular reason you're using chfdzn's method rather than the Region Census tool?

The main benefit of chfdzn's method seems to be that you can see user-created signs, which don't appear with the Region Census tool. He also says that you can see a greater level of detail, but I'm not sure the difference in detail between the two methods is all that noticeable in a region screenshot.

Given how much quicker it is to use the Region Census tool (full region screenshot in a few clicks), I feel like chfdzn's method only really makes sense for highly specific situations -- i.e., when it's absolutely essential that you can see the signs in a region screenshot.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

1 hour ago, BartonThinks said:

Given how much quicker it is to use the Region Census tool (full region screenshot in a few clicks), I feel like chfdzn's method only really makes sense for highly specific situations -- i.e., when it's absolutely essential that you can see the signs in a region screenshot.

That tool gives you the exact same shot you would get in-game. A region shot of tiles stitched together will give you better resolution of the region.

This is a region shot stitched from all the tiles. The original is over 12k p. Aside from the photoshop it offers more uniformity to the region pic.

I don't exactly know the solution to this water problem. With the glare, it pretty much renders most water mods ineffectual for tile stitching. I have isolated water in PS, and changed it to solid colors(labor intensive). Some water mods such as the textured variety are even worse. A few medium dark blues seem to absorb glare, a little better. Some of JENX's water dyes will tone down the glare, but you can't plop an entire ocean with them. I have some mods that offer different sky lighting, including cloudy and overcast skies. That might do something. Maybe a time mod that will give us dusk/dawn as well as day/night choices. Raymond is toying with landscape filters. Maybe he can come up with game "sunglasses".

I try not to have too many situations on my maps where large bodies of water adjoin. I usually use a clone brush on instances like the one in your pic.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Hmmm, that looks interesting and it seems this tool can accomplish the job alright.

There are just two things that I don't really like about it (if that's how it works). One - the final region map looks very schematic instead of being a "satellite" pic. Second - it's top-down instead of orthogonal.

I gotta make up my mind yet. Otherwise, do what you say and use a water texture that reduces glare - something I already had in the back of my head.

I'd gladly check the Census tool, but I forgot my password for SC4 Devotion and resetting it doesn't work. I'm not getting the reset link. 

[BartonThinks 3,416]

1 hour ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

That tool gives you the exact same shot you would get in-game. A region shot of tiles stitched together will give you better resolution of the region.

Well, the Region Census has the advantage that it (a) gets rid of the user interface, (b) provides you with a transparent background, so you can add your own background in Photoshop, and most importantly (c) gives you an image of the entire region, even if you would not normally be able to view the entire region in region view. 

As for the resolution, I get that, but I'm just not sure I see the appeal. The main point of a Region View image is that it allows you to see the entire region at once, and at that scale, you're not going to be able to tell the difference. To see the detail, you'd need to zoom in on the image to the point where you're no longer looking at the entire region, and even then, you're going to be looking at a Zoom 1 (or maybe Zoom 2) level of detail.

That all said, it's a personal choice. I mostly mentioned the Region Census tool in case @TheMurderousCricket was unaware that it was an option. When I originally read chfdzn's tutorial, I didn't know about the Region Census, so I assumed the only alternative was the in-game region viewer.

1 hour ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Maybe a time mod that will give us dusk/dawn as well as day/night choices.

I'm sure it's already on your radar, but for anyone who's interested in a dusk/dawn mod, JENX Aurora changes the dusk/dawn transitions and adds a sun/moon effect.

As far as adjusting the color of dusk/dawn or day/night, we already have at least one mod available with the DarkNite mod. Unless I'm mistaken, adjusting the daytime and nighttime colors is relatively easy -- it's mostly based on a single PNG file which Raymond identified in this post. If you poke around in the DarkNite mod, it's pretty easy to figure out how the game's overall dawn/day/dusk/night color scheme works and how it can be modded.

Edit: One caveat about modding the dawn/day/dusk/night color-scheme. Unless I'm mistaken, this type of mod would only be fully compatible with BATs generated using Gmax. The lighting scheme would not match up with BATs made using 3ds Max.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

7 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Hmmm, that looks interesting and it seems this tool can accomplish the job alright.

There are just two things that I don't really like about it (if that's how it works). One - the final region map looks very schematic instead of being a "satellite" pic. Second - it's top-down instead of orthogonal.

I gotta make up my mind yet. Otherwise, do what you say and use a water texture that reduces glare - something I already had in the back of my head.

I'd gladly check the Census tool, but I forgot my password for SC4 Devotion and resetting it doesn't work. I'm not getting the reset link. 

The screenshot Jack posted is one that he Photoshopped using chfdzn's method, so it's not from the Region Census tool. The top-down effect is something he added on his own in Photoshop.

I purged my Regions folder recently, so unfortunately I don't have any built-up cities that I can use to demonstrate the Region Census tool. However, I can show you a Region Census screenshot from one of my regions after I seeded it with flora. Hopefully this gives you a good sense of how things look. There are options in the tool to show city borders, city names, etc. if you want them, but I've toggled them off for this image.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

10 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

The screenshot Jack posted is one that he Photoshopped using chfdzn's method, so it's not from the Region Census tool.

Oh... that changes a lot. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

33 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

Well, the Region Census has the advantage that it (a) gets rid of the user interface, (b) provides you with a transparent background, so you can add your own background in Photoshop, and most importantly (c) gives you an image of the entire region, even if you would not normally be able to view the entire region in region view. 

 

Those are operations I can do in PS in seconds. I always use a black background, so I can isolate any tile or region in one click, copy and drop into any setting. The advantage of a full scale region shot is that if, say, I wanted to make a journal or just a small example of something, I can make a copy and crop out anything I don't want, and I'll have a decent pic.

 

33 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

The screenshot Jack posted is one that he Photoshopped using chfdzn's method, so it's not from the Region Census tool. The top-down effect is something he added on his own in Photoshop.

 

IMO, he's using my method. He just made a tutorial and I didn't. And that pic is actually 3 regions stitched together. The Wisconsin project I'm currently working on is 9 regions. And I have one even bigger that I will release this xmas- 16 regions all in one mega-region.

[rsc204 21,857]

In terms of the glare, not that I've looked into it specifically, but based on a general understanding of such effects, it will likely be handled by either an overlay texture with some sort of transparency or a Property within the Terrain Exemplars or some combination of the two. You may well find however, this process isn't specifically for water/sea, but is generally applied to an entire city and shifts based on the in-game time too. I'm pretty certain in any case, this isn't a well documented part of the game, so may be difficult to find a definitive answer.

One reason why region-view cities don't look seamless can be because two were saved at different times of day when the 'filters' used would not have been identical, so the screenshots the game takes to make up the region-view also has these differences.

[mattb325 28,890]

8 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Guys, I'd like to know how can I remove the belt of the sun reflection that goes across the water tiles.

It's not my area of expertise, but I believe that the three properties in the reader that confer that water look are:

0xa91cbe00 - Float32 - ShimmerMinQuadWidth (Min quad width in meters in different zooms)

0xa91cbe01 - Float32 - ShimmerMaxQuadWidth (Max quad width in meters in different zooms)

0xa91cbe02 - Uint32 - ShimmerQuadDensity (Number of shimmer quads to have if all of a 256x256 happens to be water)

To my knowledge, no-one has ever done anything with these - whether it is a custom water mod (which is usually just a TGI over-ride to get the custom texture to appear) or custom terrain mod: a cursory look in the reader of SimCity1 dat didn't show anything in the usual terrain exemplars, but bear in mind it was a very quick look, there's thousands of entries and I didn't search each one.

As for region census, it doesn't use the glare for the zooms....here's a pic from it using a custom water mod.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

One reason why region-view cities don't look seamless can be because two were saved at different times of day when the 'filters' used would not have been identical, so the screenshots the game takes to make up the region-view also has these differences.

To follow up on that -- saving cities at different months can also cause a mismatch, both in terms of seasonal flora (if you use seasonal flora) and textures. The ground textures in a city are partly controlled by seasonal factors, such as ground moisture, which changes each month. So if you save two adjoining cities in different months of the year, the textures might look different (e.g., one city will appear to have lighter grass than the other).

Similarly, texture and flora mismatches along the edge of two cities are sometimes unavoidable. This happens because moisture in unable to travel from one tile to the next. So if you have a moisture source at the edge of one tile, but no moisture source in the city next door, there could be a noticeable shift from "moist" textures and flora to "dry" textures and flora along the edge of both cities.

That said, the first issue is easy enough to solve if you're careful to save all of your cities on the same month of the year before taking a Region Census screenshot, and the second issue is usually pretty minor. Also, it's probably worth mentioning that this issue will occur with both the Region Census tool and if you take individual city screenshots and stitch them together, so this wouldn't have an impact on which method you choose for region screenshots.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

18 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

To follow up on that -- saving cities at different months can also cause a mismatch, both in terms of seasonal flora (if you use seasonal flora) and textures.

The past 6 regions I've worked on, every tile has been started on Jan. 1 2000 and closed, saved and pics taken on Mar. 1 2000. As you can see, the discrepancies still exist-

The calendar date is not a factor in regards to water. The time of day is.

What I've come to discover is, there is no true pause in the game, only a slow crawl.

Using combinations of the ShowTime, StopWatch and WhatTimeIzIt cheats shows that the clock keeps moving, as does the light-

The clock was set at 7:00am in the 1st pic. Dawn. In that first minute, the sun gradually came out. By the second minute, it was high noon. So the clock is always moving, even if you can't see it. A global mod that gave you a true pause, would probably eliminate a lot of graphical problems.

As far as calendar dates, try this experiment in a "New City" without starting it. Plop some seasonal MMP's, hit the Day/Night button and then Cheetah speed. You can let it run 5000 game years, and those trees will never change color. Theoretically, with those settings, you should get a strobe effect, but the tile  remains a constant day.

So, as far as water glare, toning down the sun with dusk/dawn time re-setting will cure the problem. You can fix the gloomy look in PS.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

5 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

The past 6 regions I've worked on, every tile has been started on Jan. 1 2000 and closed, saved and pics taken on Mar. 1 2000. As you can see, the discrepancies still exist-

--

The calendar date is not a factor in regards to water. The time of day is.

I only meant that ground textures are affected by seasonal changes, which is why I talked about ground textures and grass textures specifically.

I'm not aware of any seasonal changes in water textures. That said, if there are seasonal changes in water textures, I can't imagine that would have any impact on the reflection pattern that's causing the issue.

I'll confess that I'm a little bit confused about the reported lighting inconsistencies during the day. I was under the impression that the day lighting is consistent between the end of the dawn cycle and the start of the dusk cycle, and that you can maintain consistent lighting by simply setting the game to "Day Only" mode. I've never noticed a lighting discrepancy between screenshots so long as I take them with "Day Only" mode active, regardless of the time on the game clock.

[rivit 3,402]

There is an overlay texture used for the skylight or light scattering over water  - its 0x69EFB7DA and its a greyscale mask in SimCity2.dat. If you make a version of that texture that is a constant shade of grey (say 128) then I think that will do the trick.

Try this one to see if it works for you (just add into plugins)

NoSkylight.dat

 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

On 7/16/2021 at 8:42 PM, rivit said:

There is an overlay texture used for the skylight or light scattering over water  - its 0x69EFB7DA and its a greyscale mask in SimCity2.dat. If you make a version of that texture that is a constant shade of grey (say 128) then I think that will do the trick.

Try this one to see if it works for you (just add into plugins)

NoSkylight.dat

 

So, I gave this mod a fashion show yesterday, running all my textured water through it. Does an excellent job. Looks like I'll finally be able to use that water for large projects. Thanks.

[TheCouncill0r 70]

On 7/17/2021 at 10:42 AM, rivit said:

There is an overlay texture used for the skylight or light scattering over water  - its 0x69EFB7DA and its a greyscale mask in SimCity2.dat. If you make a version of that texture that is a constant shade of grey (say 128) then I think that will do the trick.

Try this one to see if it works for you (just add into plugins)

NoSkylight.dat

Rivit with the texture save again!

I'm going to have to give this a shot myself - I'm making a house wallpaper-size image in photoshop from zoom level 4 and the glare is an issue for me too, particularly in the corners:

 

The filesize is over 32gb and I've been working on it on and off for over 10 years, but I only recently figured out changing the background to bright pink and using the colour select tool in photoshop to remove the background, and have never found a good solution for the water. I've also used different water textures as you follow the rivers inland to get a glassy reflective ocean look for the beaches, and a slow-moving river rapid look in the rivers, but I still need to fill that huge bay with just water, and it's almost impossible to match up the pixels when there's no buildings or land!

 

EDIT: Bingo Rivit! That works on all the different water textures i've tried so far.