23 réponses à ce sujet

[Vaalyah]

Hello everybody. I need a hint. I am building a fence, here you can see a picture:
http://lh6.ggpht.com...reenShot538.jpg
My problem: the house is dark brown, the gate is dark brown and the fence parts are light brown. I would like to have everything in the same colour. So I opened the fence property panel and set the colour options. But nothing changes.
Can you please tell me where I am making a mistake?
Thank you.

[PJ156]

That fence model doea not tint. So you cant change it's colour.

You can change the tint of the house though.

You could consider using fence wood B scaled to 1.2 with a tinted house and mulsantir small gate from the oputside doors set. that would give you a more regular tonal appearance.

PJ

Modifié par PJ156, 11 novembre 2010 - 08:44 .

[dunniteowl]

Just as a note for future reference, the color panels when you go into properties will usually be all black for non-tintable models. Some of them are colored different colors and will still not be tintable. The best way to check for this is to open the properties in a new window and set it some where on the screen that allows you to see the model when you attempt to change tints and give it a shot. The color wheel window will show up and you want to move that so you can see the model, too. Then, just make some changes in the colors and if there's no visible change happening as you make the changes, then that palette is not tintable.

Does it suck? Yeah, hugely. This is my single LARGEST complaint with regard to the game and how it was done. The simple addition of having all three color palettes tintable in all models, across the board, would have reduced the need for a lot of custom content, allowing the few modelers in the Community to work on stuff that could not be in the game at all (like new creatures, new placeables, etc) instead of remaking walls and new textures for buildings, etc.

Unfortunately, this is what we have and what we have to deal with.

dunniteowl

[Vaalyah]

:-( sad. Thank you guys. Can I ask you two other things, since we are speaking about toolset?
1) is there a way, when I select a blueprint, to ROTATE the thing before clicking in the area? I would like to see what I am putting in my area before choosing it. I hate having to put it, then rotate it or my point of view (if you do that with the blueprint selected, the blueprint would rotate in order to show you always the same side) and then delete it, for starting again with the next blueprint...
2) I've seen that in the game you have roosters (male chickens). I would like to add also female ones (you usually have one male and many females). Where can I find a female mesh? Yes, I know, I'm mad!

Modifié par Vaalyah, 11 novembre 2010 - 09:39 .

[kamalpoe]

Vaalyah wrote...

:-( sad. Thank you guys. Can I ask you two other things, since we are speaking about toolset?
1) is there a way, when I select a blueprint, to ROTATE the thing before clicking in the area? I would like to see what I am putting in my area before choosing it. I hate having to put it, then rotate it or my point of view (if you do that with the blueprint selected, the blueprint would rotate in order to show you always the same side) and then delete it, for starting again with the next blueprint...
2) I've seen that in the game you have roosters (male chickens). I would like to add also female ones (you usually have one male and many females). Where can I find a female mesh? Yes, I know, I'm mad!

1. Not that I'm aware of sorry. Use the toolset enough and you'll start to learn what the placeables look like.
2. next to the wendersnaven model.

[Vaalyah]

Ehm, so, next question is... is there a wendersnaven model?

[PJ156]

There isn't one nor is there a hen.

But now Kamal has me scouring the toolset too.

PJ

[_Knightmare_]

For question 1 above:



You can look at the placeable in the Preview tab of its properties. You have full camera control in that tab (zoom and spin camera).

[Vaalyah]

Thank you! I should now check the vault searching for chicken! :-(

[dunniteowl]

Hey Vaalyah, did you check the properties tab of the chicken and see if there is a setting to change it's gender, or appearance type? It seems to be the way to go. I recall trying to get a female deer instead of only a stag and found in the appearance settings that there was a female and male form. Unfortunatly in my particular case, someone left the male version in the female slot, which is funny, because all you'd have to do is remove the antlers and badda-bing, badda-bang, a doe.

Still it's worth checking if you haven't already.

dno

[PJ156]

Don''t work sorry DNO, but you can tint it if you dont like white chickens

PJ

[Vaalyah]

Dunnite, thanks for the hint, that could be useful for other blueprint! :-)

@PJ: what about you? Do YOU know where I can find a female chicken? I love realism! ^^

[PJ156]

Sorry no but if you like your chickens real then go visit Uncle FB's NPC control. Download that and one of the scripts you get is a heatbeat script for the chickens which makes a group of them run around the map as a group and animate occasionally.

If I see a chicken I will post you.

PJ

[Vaalyah]

That seems nice, even if, to say the truth, it's a bit too much "pro" for my level of modding-learning :-D

So, I hope you will find a chicken soon ^^ thank you!

[JasonNH]

For future reference, if there is a non-tintable model that you feel very strongly about wanting to change, it may not be terribly difficult to do depending on the complexity of the model. In this case, the fence can be darkened in just a few minutes of work with GIMP as soon as you know where to find the pieces you need. For instance:

Before
200x100http://i657.photobucket.com/albums/uu292/JasonNH/NWN2/fence_orig.jpg[/IMG]

After
200x100http://i657.photobucket.com/albums/uu292/JasonNH/NWN2/fence_mod.jpg[/IMG]

All I did was take the PLC_WR_FENCE.dds image used by the model, import into GIMP, darken it, and save it back out into my override directory. You could either choose to override all of the existing fence pieces using this texture, or create a new model with the darker version using MDB Cloner on the vault so that you have a light and a dark version. Clearly it is not as ideal as having a tint map, but it's handy to know when you want to make minor alterations to a model like that.

[Vaalyah]

This is EXTREMELY interesting. What should I do to recognize which are the files I need to recolour?

The possibility to create a sort of clone for fences is amazing! Moreover, I am very skilled in photoretouching, so that would not be a problem at all. Again, since I am totally vault-stupid, can you tell me a link for this MDB Cloner?

Thank you very much!

[_Knightmare_]

MDB Cloner

You can use it to open a model and see what texture files are associated with it.

[Vaalyah]

Thank you very much! ^^

[The Curt Jester]

If you go through the trouble of darkening the fence, why not just make a tint map for it? It's actually easier. You just find the texture, color over the part you want tinted in full green or blue (the two non-skin tint colors for the maps) and save it as the same file with a "_t" at the end of it (without quotes) so you know it's a tint map. The MDB cloner can be used to apply the new map to it (if I remember right). Since you want something darker, that will work just fine. However, if I were doing it, I would redo the main texture as well to be white so you can tint to pretty much any color you want.

[Vaalyah]

The problem is that I don't think I have understood what does all of this implies. I think I should have a better look to that plugin and then try to find a sense in it. Just in the end I'll be able to take a decision! I'm a total newbie, you know...

[JasonNH]

The Curt Jester wrote...

If you go through the trouble of darkening the fence, why not just make a tint map for it?

Because I didn't know how they work? Good idea though, that's nice information to have.

Vaalyah wrote...

The problem is that I don't think I have understood what does all of this implies. I think I should have a better look to that plugin and then try to find a sense in it. Just in the end I'll be able to take a decision! I'm a total newbie, you know...

Okay, I'll do my best to cover the basics. All of the original resources you will need are located in your NWN2 install directory within the "Data" subdirectory. In there you will find the compressed contents. All of the models are found in the various NWN2_Models*.zip files. You'll see that there are several versions depending on how many expansions you have, as welll as updated archives distributed from various patches. The same thing goes for the textures that the models use. They are in the NWN2_Materials*.zip files.

So how do you find what you need? Sometimes it is pretty intuitive and easy and other times it can take a little more work. When you select a model inside the toolset, the default tag of the model is usually pretty close to the same name of the model and material it uses. This is usually where I start. I'll look at the tag and try to find the matching resources from the compressed archive described above and it's usually pretty easy to find.

If using the short-cut doesn't work, then I may use the long route of starting with the "Appearance" attribute of the model from the toolset and looking for it in the dialog.tlk file. Once located, you take the number from the strref field and search the placeables.2da file for it. When you find your match, you can locate the model name under the row named accordingly, load it into MDB Cloner and find your materials. Again, all of this isn't usually necessary since the model name and/or materials can often be inferred from the properties on the placeable in the toolset.

Once you create your new model with the new texture, you will want to add/modify one of the rows in that placeables.2da file in order for the toolset and game to recognize it. In order to avoid future conflicts with other content, you should review the Reserved 2da ranges and choose a free location. You can place the edited 2da in your override directory along with the model and textures while you are working on your module, but eventually you will want to bundle them up into a hak file before release. Hope that helps.

Modifié par JasonNH, 22 novembre 2010 - 03:26 .

[Vaalyah]

First of all, thank you very much. You have been extremely kind and extremely clear. Second, a question. From what I've understood, I have to modify the .2da file. In this case, all the people that want to use my modules, must put my modified .2da file in their override folder. Is it correct?

[JasonNH]

Vaalyah wrote...

First of all, thank you very much. You have been extremely kind and extremely clear. Second, a question. From what I've understood, I have to modify the .2da file. In this case, all the people that want to use my modules, must put my modified .2da file in their override folder. Is it correct?

You really only ought to use the override directory during your development process. When you release to the player, you should create a HAK file for your module. You can use NWN2Packer or the built-in ERF editor in the toolset. You also need to associate the HAK file with your module in the module properties.

For editing 2da files, I tend to use TLKEdit2, or just a text editor depending on the nature of the edit.

Good luck.

[Vaalyah]

Thank you again very much, you're such a resource full of information :-D

I have to give a look to all the link you wrote, thank you!