As the Sims 2 runs on a 3D engine, each object in the game will be affected by the lighting (sun or indoor) and shadows in the game. Therefore, each object you clone from will always have it’s own values for how it is affected by either. One example to explain this would be to clone a counter and also a fridge and put the same textures on them both. You might think they should look the same in the game but they don’t. This is due to the fridge having different values for reflection and surface lighting than the counter in the original objects.

Material Properties, Useful When Making Sets

a) This tutorial requires you to have working knowledge of SimPE
b) Object Workshop = OW

1. Okay, open your counter in SimPE
2. Find the definitions by clicking on Material Definition under File Types at the top left and then clicking on the Material Definition in the Packed Files frame next to the File Types frame.
3. To get the exact numbers from the counter, you need to open the _clean material definition.
4. (To see if you have the clean one, you can check under Texture Image in the Plugin View before going to the Material Definitions)

Write down the numbers next to the following Properties:

1. deprecatedStdMatInvDiffuseCoeffMultiplier
2. reflectivity
3. stdMatDiffCoef
4. stdMatSpecCoef
5. stdMatSpecPower

The next steps:

1. Then open up your fridge, click on Material Definition and go to Plugin View.
2. Change the above mentioned values to those you wrote down from the counter, hit commit and ctrl s your file (save it by holding down those keys)
3. Fire up your game and put both side by side. Perfect. =)

The reason why we changed the fridge’s values instead of the counter’s is because it has a reflectivity map (texture) so that it shines and reflects more in the game. Of course, if you want a shiny reflecting matching counter instead, you can use the properties of the fridge on the counter and this technique can be applied to any object(s) you edit with SimPE.

Have fun!