Building Where is my bas-relief?

This is a bit of a strange one - see the attached picture. I have a video card that supports bump-maps - see Pixelhate's bumpmap object - but my fence is flat white. I had a look inside the fence file and there is a bumpmap texture enabled - but I see no patterning on this fence.

Can anyone advise if there is a fix out there for this admittedly incredibly ugly fence.

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Lee I dont think the item was intended to have a bump map since it was prob cloned off the tile one . In other words , EA/maxis had their 1500th failure moment in TS2

Lee, I don't think I've ever used that fence, but I just checked it in game and guess what? It isn't bump mapped in mine, either - even though it does indeed have a bump map, just as you say. (And just for the record, yes, my video card can handle bump maps and they are enabled.) So yeah, it looks like a Maxis failure. Beats me how or where, though - I sure can't see where the problem might lie.

As for a fix... I have no idea. Like I said, I've never actually used this fence, so I wasn't aware of the problem until you pointed it out.

Hmm, well, it is odd, I had a look in the TXMT using Pixelhate's guide - and it seems ok. I am wondering if bumpmaps just don't work on fences.

Yeah, I looked at the other BG stone fences, too, and they seem to have the same problem. They have a bump map that appears to be properly enabled, and their catalogue pic looks bump mapped enough - but they don't appear to be bump mapped in game. (The textures make it hard to see on some of them, but check the "Faux Stone Wall by Valyü" and I think you'll see it.) So it doesn't seem to be a problem just with the Courtyard Fencing.

But I'm wondering if it's fences in general that don't like bump maps, or if it's just fences from the base game or early EPs (it would be true to Maxis form to fix a problem but only do it for new objects/interactions, like with the dark computer screens) - 'cause if it's been fixed for the later fences, we can take them apart and (hopefully) see what the difference is. I shall investigate.

This was an interesting experiment.

After NL, there seems to be no bump mapped fences - and bump maps do not work for either the UNI or NL fences, even though the TXMT looks like they should work just fine. (I actually cloned one bump mapped fence from UNI and one from NL and changed the bump map to shout "BUMP" in white on dark grey. Just like with the other fences, the catalogue pic picks it up, but the fence is flat when placed.) Fences from later EPs and SPs have a LOD90 texture added, but no bump maps.

This is just a wild theory, but I'm thinking the reason Maxis stopped bump mapping fences? Was that they realised it wasn't working anyway, so they might as well save themselves the trouble.

So yeah. Maxis failure. I wish I could tell where they failed, but I have no idea.

Ok, well, thank you - it is interesting indeed. I will have to look at that LOD90 though.