I've noticed that if I place Lots that have the sunlight from different directions next to one another in the neighborhood, it looks weird, as might be expected. (One house might have a bright, sunlight facade facing the street, while the house next door might have the front facade in the shade.)
I know one obvious way to avoid this is to make sure the sunlight is coming from the same direction onto the various Lots during the building phase, if I plan on placing them together in a neighborhood, but is there a way to change the direction of the sunlight later, once the Lots are built?

I was hoping the cheat setLotLightingFile [filename] might let me do this, but I'm not sure how to use that cheat.
Firstly, the cheat description (on this page) doesn't specify whether the cheat is to be applied while in neighborhood mode or inside a Lot.
Secondly, assuming the [filename] is the name of the Lot, what are the "specific lot lighting values" mentioned in the description?

If this cheat cannot be used to change the direction of the sunlight, is there something else that will accomplish it?

I'm moving this to the Building forum, since your game is working as intended (grumble).

That's actually an interesting question. The lot lighting file is used on a per-lot basis, so it might work, if you can figure out what to change in the lighting txt file.

As far as I know, there is only one lot lighting file included with the game, and that's the one for the House of Fallen Trees in Downtown. I believe that the lighting file is named Downtown_Lot.txt in your Nightlife installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\Lights). So, that might be a place to start.

I also know that plasticbox did some research into changing the lighting direction of the lot imposter in the neighborhood, so that it would match the lighting direction of the lot itself. Here's the thread:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=325634

Here's a thread at MATY which discusses this cheat. The last post has files which change the lighting inside of the lot, but not the lot imposter in the neighborhood view.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=8076.5

The filename is the name of the lighting file. This implies that the cheat should be entered while editing the lot.

Hope that's of some help.

[Update:]

One thing that I've noticed. The lot imposter lighting seems to be controlled by the lighting file in the base game installation folder. This may mean that there's no way to change the lot imposter lighting on a per-lot basis.

Yes, it was of help, mainly in convincing me that the issue is not worth the trouble of pursuing, at least not for me.

Just to see what would happen, I copied the rotated neighborhood lot imposter lighting from the main lighting file (base game) to the individual lot lighting files. When using the lot lighting cheat, the lot imposter doesn't change (even if the lot is saved after entering the cheat).

So, there may be no way to change the lot imposter lighting on a per-lot basis.