150 réponses à ce sujet

[Renzatic]

Hey everybody! I'm kinda new to the whole NWN scene. I picked it up for the GOG contest, asked a few dumb questions down in the scripting forums, then went a little overboard from there. The whole online DM storyteller thing has piqued my interest.

To get down to the subject at hand, I want to tell a specific story. I want to do something a little less medieval. Something more Victorian if anything. Beyond one pretty decent but limited tileset, my options aren't exactly expansive for this particular setting. So I set off to make my own.

I started whipping together textures, and got to work on it the day before yesterday. This is what I have thus far:

users.chartertn.net/greymatt/depot_1.jpg

Nothing too terribly grand at the moment. I don't even have it in engine yet. I've been reading up on tutorials, and while they're informative, they don't tell me the one thing I really want to know: the limitations.

My first question: can each tile or model support more than one UV? Right now, to maintain a good level of detail, my little depot building has 3 1024x UV's on it. One for the walls and base, one for the roof, and one for the doors, windows, and knick-knacks. I'm kind of concerned because NWN 1 is an old engine, and I've seen old engines that would freak out from even overlapping UV's (NWN does let you overlap UV's right).

Secondly: What's the max amount of tris I can go for? I'm thinking I can go a little bit higher with this. Just looking around on the forum, I've seen some tilesets go as high as 5000 tris per tile. Just looking at the Wild Wood set shows me I have a little room to play here. Right now, my 4 tile scene is just 1846 tris. Once I'm done with the landscaping and foliage work, I'll probably be pushing 3000. Seems a decent amount for the engine, but I'd like to have something to use as a guideline here.

Thirdly: I don't have 3DSMax. I don't even like Max. It's like...the devil's modeler (it can bake real good though). Since I don't use Max, how easy will it be for me to get tiles into the game? Will I have to swallow my pride and dig up an old copy of GMax? What if I want to do characters, and maybe animate them?

Well, I think that's all the qustions I've got for now. If you want to critique my little scene, feel free. I'm always up for some healthy criticism. But if you can, at least answer one of my questions before you go on a no holds barred free for all bashing spree.

Thanks much.

[Bannor Bloodfist]

5,000 tri's per tile is a good max to shoot for. NWN is old, the fewer the triangles it has to deal with the better.

3, 1k textures is a bit high, reduce those down a bit if you can, to 512. The only reason I am saying that, is you claim you are not done with the tiles yet, so you will be adding additional vid ram requirements to the scene... the engine is old, I don't think we have true numerical limits for it all, but for all practical purposes, reducing vid ram usage is best, while still maintaining quality.

gMax or 3dsMax are required. Sorry, but I just don't think there is anything else out there that has translation utilities created for it. I may be wrong on that, but from what I have seen over the years, nearly everyone is using 3dsmax9 ($150.00 US) or gMax (free) is what everyone is doing.

Multiple UV's as you put it, are NOT allowed in this engine. You must split your buildings into walls, roof etc. Each with their own (or shared) texture applied to it.  Only one texture may be applied per object.  If you need more than that, you must split the object into multiple smaller objects each with their own textures, or sharing a single texture with associated UVW mapping applied.

a Tile in NWN is 10 meters by 10 meters. Period. If your objects are larger in either "X" or "Y" direction then you must slice them at the 10 meter mark. Height doesn't seem to be much of an issue, but 10 meter tall buildings are very rare, even in today's world with the exception of the bigger cities. (Yes, I know, there are arguments about that, but consider the reality of your own home, or your neighbors home, again, excluding bigger cities or apartment buildings etc).

The level of detail you have in your current textures, well, it will cause you some issues. Doors need their own objects, with their own textures, windows too if you want them to animate lighting at night etc.

There are dozens of tutorials out there, I personally like the stuff from Velmar AND, if you can still find them, the tutorials created by Danmar. Velmar also has a set of scripts to plug into 3dsmax some of which will also work with gMax. NWMax, available on the Vault is the most prominently used import/export tool for use with either 3dsmax of gmax.

Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 09 décembre 2010 - 10:42 .

[Eradrain]

Bear in mind that, as Bannor says, there aren't actual numerical limits. The game engine will support models with incredibly high polycounts, and 1024x textures just fine.  It's mostly a matter of high load times, and the players who still stick to NWN mostly having older computers, or at least, that's how it seems.

As for the 3D program...While Bannor's right in that NWMax is the only import utility (As far as I'm aware) and it's designed for G/3DSMax, my understanding is that there are plenty of plugins out there in the wider world that allow you to port your work from one modeling program to another. You could do all your stuff in Maya or Wings or whatever you prefer, then just export it to 3dsm to run it through NWMax.

Lastly - Your work is looking great already, and welcome to the NWN community! Thanks for contributing.

Modifié par Eradrain, 09 décembre 2010 - 02:53 .

[Renzatic]

Cool. It looks like there are some snag I gotta work through, but it looks like the engine has enough flexibility to do what I want, so long as I'm a little careful. Got a couple questions, though...

If I do need to reduce VRAM usage, what should I shoot for? Right now, my entire scene takes up 18 meg, if I assume that NWN uses the uncompressed TGA files I've got lying around. With a bit of tweaking (those ground textures could be 512x without any loss in quality), I could probably get the current tile down to 12 meg. With foliage and everything, it'll probably clock in at or under 20 meg (I'm gonna try my best to fit all the grass, bush, and tree textures for the tileset on one or two UV sheets). All in all, for my exterior sets, I'm aiming for anywhere between 64-128 for the forest, and 128-256 for the village. That struck me as a pretty feasible imposed limit that'll still allow me to work in some crisp details.

But to be on the safe side, should I try and go for lower? Could I release a low res and high res version, and still allow the two haks to be compatible with each other, so long as the textures share the same name?

Now the multiple UV things. I believe that's the way I've got it set up. I could explain it, but I think it'd be better if I just showed you a shot of what I've done.

http://users.charter...tt/UV_sheet.jpg

As you can see, each UV section corresponds to it's own model. So the depot is basically a bunch of standalone models mapped to 3 UV sheets. From what you're  telling me, this is alright. But I want to make sure before I jump in and get frustrated.

The overlapping UV's I mentioned earlier would be where I mapped the same coordinates to objects that use the same textures. The walls, for instance. And the front and back porches on my details sheet.

The 10 meter thing isn't too big a deal. Neither is the door and window issue. That'd actually help me out, since it'd free up some room on my UVs for other things I wanted to throw in.

As for the rest, I guess I'll start reading up on those tutorials you recommended, and get to learning bits and pieces of gMax.

Thanks for the compliments and help. I'll probably be back with more stupid questions later.



 

[Frith5]

Where can I buy 3dsMax 9 for 150 bucks?



Welcome to NWN!

[Michael DarkAngel]

Frith5 wrote...
Where can I buy 3dsMax 9 for 150 bucks?

When it was new you could have upgraded from about $800.  Bannor must have some good connections

@Renzatic
My only critique;

Its too clean.  The lines are too straight, corners too sharp.  It looks too perfect.

Your textures look great.


  MDA

Modifié par Michael DarkAngel, 10 décembre 2010 - 12:08 .

[Tyndrel]

http://software-supr...op/byvendor/20/

There seem to be a number of ads on google but they all end up pointing here. 

Edit:  As a beginner would it be worth my while to buy this or struggle on with GMax. There is so much more support for 3DS learners but has time made it more complex to use/learn?

Modifié par Tyndrel, 10 décembre 2010 - 01:13 .

[Calvinthesneak]

Hmmm no soft ware shipped. the price which is hundreds lower than anything else. It smells a little to me. I'd be careful

[Renzatic]

Michael DarkAngel wrote...

@Renzatic
My only critique;

Its too clean.  The lines are too straight, corners too sharp.  It looks too perfect.

Yeah, I kinda have to agree with you there. I could bevel out the edges and up the material smoothing a bit, but that'd require me to add a goodly bit of geometry, and I'd have to redo my UV's. I can probably make the edges look a little smoother with some texture trickery. I'll see what I can slap together.

Really, I thought the biggest problem was that the boards on the main part of the building looked too flat. I fixed that pretty quick, though. I made the boards smaller, threw on some shadows along the edges to make it look beveled, and added a gradient to make the boards look like they're rotated out a bit. It still looks a little flat on the model, but the building looks alot more realistic now.

http://users.charter...att/depot_2.jpg

edit: quick question. I added my img tags to post the picture directly to the boards, and it doesn't show up. It does when I go to edit my post, but not on the board itself. What's up there?

Modifié par Renzatic, 10 décembre 2010 - 04:08 .

[Calvinthesneak]

Forums use BB code. All tags go in square brackets. IE [ img ] your image [/img]

Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 10 décembre 2010 - 07:44 .

[Michael DarkAngel]

Renzatic wrote...
Really, I thought the biggest problem was that the boards on the main part of the building looked too flat. I fixed that pretty quick, though. I made the boards smaller, threw on some shadows along the edges to make it look beveled, and added a gradient to make the boards look like they're rotated out a bit. It still looks a little flat on the model, but the building looks alot more realistic now.



edit: quick question. I added my img tags to post the picture directly to the boards, and it doesn't show up. It does when I go to edit my post, but not on the board itself. What's up there?

Definitely like the boards smaller.

Are you using Lightwave?  If so there may be working import/export scripts.  I don't know the specifics of it, what versions it will work, or how well it works.  But you can find them in the Downloads/Neverwinter Nights/Utilities and Tools section.  Look for NWN MDL Import/Export Plugin for Lightwave

Edit: Only suggestion regarding the images would be to make sure there are no spaces between your image tags and the url.


  MDA

Modifié par Michael DarkAngel, 10 décembre 2010 - 07:54 .

[Calvinthesneak]

Is it possible there are post count limits before you can post images and links Michael?

[Michael DarkAngel]

I suppose there could be. I don't remember if I had any issues when first posting here.

[Lord Sullivan]

You might want to check out these three fine tilesets before going all tileset designing rage

RLCore Gothic Estates 1.4

RLCore Gothic Interiors 1.41

RLCore Gothic Garden v1.1

Nothing stopping you from making custom content mind you and we all infact encourage it, but if these
tilesets can do the trick, well...

You can always add some extra tiles and/or tilegroups to these and repackage you own module specific hakpack,
just don't forget to mention the original hakpack and give credit to the original author.

[Bannor Bloodfist]

[quote]Renzatic wrote...


But to be on the safe side, should I try and go for lower? Could I release a low res and high res version, and still allow the two haks to be compatible with each other, so long as the textures share the same name?

Now the multiple UV things. I believe that's the way I've got it set up. I could explain it, but I think it'd be better if I just showed you a shot of what I've done.


As you can see, each UV section corresponds to it's own model. So the depot is basically a bunch of standalone models mapped to 3 UV sheets. From what you're  telling me, this is alright. But I want to make sure before I jump in and get frustrated.
[/quote]

Ok, I misunderstood what you were doing by your first typed description.

3 1024 textures, used the way you just displayed them, will work just fine, and absolutely NO NEED to reduce them.  You are already mapping bits and pieces instead of just dropping an entire texture onto the object.  Which looks pretty good for a greyscaled texture.

[quote]
The overlapping UV's I mentioned earlier would be where I mapped the same coordinates to objects that use the same textures. The walls, for instance. And the front and back porches on my details sheet.[/quote]

That will not work with NWN.  It only accepts a single texture, or a single map on the objects... so, you could NOT lay the boards across the entire side, and then lay the windows on top.  The windows would have to be split into a completely seperate object.

[quote]Thanks for the compliments and help. I'll probably be back with more stupid questions later. [/quote]

You are jumping in, with an already good hold on what you are doing, and it appears you just need some tips on how the NWN engine handles things.  What you started with here, is a great start.

As others have already mentioned, Welcome to the joy of modeling for NWN.  There are still a few dozen or so artists that are actively working with creating new content.  (By artists, and new, I do NOT include those folks that just take from another game and slightly modify to fit within NWN, as that doesn't take much effort OR skill).

Anyway, WELCOME, and keep going with it.  If/when you run into trouble, leave a post here or maybe drop by RPGModding.com (link in my sig) and visit the Community Tileset Project.  We have some tutorials, complete with screen shots and detailed explanations on some of the more interesting things that can be done with tile animations.  As well as other tips, tricks etc.

Most of all, keep it fun.  If it starts wearing you down, take a break, and come back to it when you are fresh and ready for the challenges!



 
[/quote]

Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 10 décembre 2010 - 09:48 .

[Eradrain]

I'm gonna go ahead and urge you *not* to use the tilesets that Lord Sullivan linked. The RLCore stuff has aged pretty badly, and I'm really liking what I'm seeing here.

Plus I've got a vested personal interest, I'm working on a victorian mod of my own, and any content someone else makes is something I won't have to make myself!

Modifié par Eradrain, 10 décembre 2010 - 02:25 .

[Lord Sullivan]

Eradrain wrote...

I'm gonna go ahead and urge you *not* to use the tilesets that Lord Sullivan linked. The RLCore stuff has aged pretty badly, and I'm really liking what I'm seeing here.

Plus I've got a vested personal interest, I'm working on a victorian mod of my own, and any content someone else makes is something I won't have to make myself!

What are you rambling about?

AND " The RLCore stuff has aged pretty badly"... what is that even suppose to mean when it comes to 3D assets?

lol seriously, what's your agenda?

[_six]

I don't like to be one to compare the quality of very different artists' work, but I have to say from what we've seen so far I can't help but feel Renzatic is capable of producing work that might humble even Chandigar...

One thing I might suggest with regard to textures is to try and make textures that are more reuseable between differently shaped models (for instance ones that support tiling or mapping to a different scale a little more naturally). NWN's main shortcoming when it comes to rendering graphics is in the size of texture data it is happy with, and while what you've done so far isn't really pushing that, I'd say it's generally not good practise to have two large areas on the map with virtually the same image on them. I'm thinking of the side and face walls here.

Another thing that might help make it look its best in the NWN engine is to render soft shadows directly onto the texture itself. Something like a very transparent black gradient on the wall where the roof overhangs. NWN's shadows are very sharp, and having something softer on the textures can make the overall appearance look more natural.

That will not work with NWN.  It only accepts a single texture, or a single map on the objects... so, you could NOT lay the boards across the entire side, and then lay the windows on top.  The windows would have to be split into a completely seperate object.

Hmm... I'm not sure what point Bannor is making here, but since I found it confusing myself... The only real rule with mapping in NWN is to make sure that you only have one texture per object, and only one map channel per object. Other than that you can have as many seperate "shapes" on the UV map as you'd like.

Modifié par _six, 10 décembre 2010 - 04:29 .

[Eradrain]

Lord Sullivan wrote...

What are you rambling about?

AND " The RLCore stuff has aged pretty badly"... what is that even suppose to mean when it comes to 3D assets?

lol seriously, what's your agenda?

The standards for quality improve over time.  Both the skill of 3D artists and the technological expectations get better over time.  Here's an example:  1998 versus 2010.

Now.  Chandigar's RLCore stuff was great by the standards of 2005, but by modern standards it uses extremely low-res, unimpressive textures.  The model work on the exteriors is fine enough (Though the modeling of the interiors need a little sprucing up, in my opinion at least), but it would need at the very least a comprehensive reskin before it could be used in conjunction with something as decent and elaborate as Six's Wild Woods.

Which, coincidentally, I was working on.  But if the OP decides to make a Victorian tileset of his own, then that saves me the work altogether.  So that's my agenda.

But supposed  "agendas" aside, I'm not quite sure why you'd discourage someone from making something because there's an inferior attempt at the same thing on the vault already.  Some of the best forest and cave tilesets, for example, were/are being made in the last year or two, despite the fact that there were already more forests and caves to play with than just about anything else in the game.  I'm still glad the new ones got made, because they're better.

Making an add-on for RLCore would simply be putting lipstick on a pig, unless that add-on also overhauled all the textures.  And if you're going to do a complete rebuild anyway, why not just make your own tileset instead?  The OP clearly has the skill and technical knowledge not to need to rely on pre-existing models as a crutch.

Modifié par Eradrain, 10 décembre 2010 - 05:41 .

[Lord Sullivan]

@_six



I didn't know this was a competition of who does what better or who could do what better...



@Eradrain



Your opinion is none other then yours and yours alone.



Now I made a suggestion to the OP so he/she can know that there are options out there, now either he/she runs with it or not does not really matter to me, I'm just trying to help according

to his/her reasons given for wanting to create his/her own tileset and I clearly said that we all

in fact encourage it and you would have known have you taken the time to read my fairly tiny post.



Now how I'm I trying to discourage anyone here?



Maybe you should have stock with simply telling it like it is and said...



"I personally dislike the RLCore tileset and long for something new"



That would have been more accurate.

[_six]

C'mon guys, we're supposed to be encouraging a new modder here, and one who looks to have serious talent to boot. What kind of community are we to insist on bickering on something that isn't even the point of the discussion.

Though for the purpose of clarity, all I meant to infer is that the stuff we're seeing here is considerably higher poly, which generally implies a higher level of detail (which looking at the quality of the work here, I'd say is the case). This is not a competition, but we'd be naive not to appreciate such differences. I must apologize if I appeared to say anything inflammatory.

Modifié par _six, 10 décembre 2010 - 06:59 .

[Eradrain]

_six wrote...

Though for the purpose of clarity, all I meant to infer is that the stuff we're seeing here is considerably higher poly, which generally implies a higher level of detail (which looking at the quality of the work here, I'd say is the case). This is not a competition, but we'd be naive not to appreciate such differences.

Which was my point, too.

But yeah.  Sorry to have hijacked your threat, Renzatic.  Keep up the great work!

Modifié par Eradrain, 10 décembre 2010 - 07:14 .

[Renzatic]

Yeah, it's the internet. Thread hijacks kinda happens sometimes. I doubt it'll ever get so far off topic people will start ignoring me outright when I ask a question, so don't fret it.

Wow, got alot of replies here...

RLCore Gothic stuff...

One of those is actually the one "pretty decent but limited" tileset I referred to back in my first post. Cool to know I have three to choose from now, but none of them quite fit in with the theme I had in mind. They're more..er...city Victorian, while I'm trying to go for something more backwoods and rustic. Which leads me to another quote...

Which, coincidentally, I was working on.  But if the OP decides to make a Victorian tileset of his own, then that saves me the work altogether.  So that's my agenda.

You're more than welcome to use and hack apart anything I make. Though you probably shouldn't rely on me completely, because my Victorian might be quite a bit different than what you want thematically. Once I start getting into this a little more, and learn my way around a bit better, I'll probably be willing to help throw out some models for other people's tilesets.

Okay, next up...

That will not work with NWN. It only accepts a single texture, or a single map on the objects...so, you could NOT lay the boards across the entire side, and then lay the windows on top. The windows would have to be split into a completely separate object

I think we're missing each other on the pass here, and talking about two different things. I think a visual example will help explain what I'm talking about...



These are overlapping UVs. As you can see, all sides of my awesome box are mapped to the same coordinates. One texture applied to the whole thing. I did this with the main body of my depot, where the front and back walls share the same space so I could use a larger single texture for both of them.

Now the only reason this worries me is because NWN is an older engine, and I've seen some older engines that absolutely freak right slap the hell out if each surface doesn't have it's own unique UV coordinates on the map. 

I can work around it, but to maintain the resolution I've currently got going, I'd have to hack apart my models and make more UV maps. It'd suck, but it ain't the end of the world. I guess one plus would be that I could bake in some ambient occlusion if each surface has it's own space on the texture. That'd fall in with what Six was saying about painting in shadows up above.

Anyway, gotta cut this long post short, and reply to everyone else later. I'm running out of time, and this thing is already starting to feel like I'm writing a graduate thesis.

Modifié par Renzatic, 10 décembre 2010 - 09:12 .

[Zwerkules]

Hi Renzatic!

So that is what you meant by overlapping UVWs. You won't run into any problems with the NWN engine if you do that. You can also use a texture lots of times on one object. For example many grates and grilles are made by only having a tiny part of the grate as a texture and not the whole grate. So higher values than 1.0 for U Tile and V Tile work fine when you apply a texture. NWN1 has no problem with that, this would only possibly cause problems with NWN2.
If you use the same texture more than twice on say a wall, you can get some visible patterns, on
the other hand if you don't, you'd need very big textures for bigger walls and that could cause some lag in the game.

I like what you have done so far.

Modifié par Zwerkules, 10 décembre 2010 - 10:25 .

[Jez_fr]

Renzatic, welcome around =)

I really like your start and can't wait to see more. There's no tileset close to a vaguely victorian/old west snowy/frozen set so you're quite safe, if duplicate work was a concern (and apparently it's not, the better) and it will be much welcomed.



You asked about limits, here are some you might be interested in:

- Max height of a tile = 45m (not sure if its height of a model, or height of a walkable surface, not tested by me, and I don't know if it's an absolute value (ie even if you start at -20m for ex) or if it's relative)

- "safe" Max polys in 1 model is about 45k to 50k (50k crashes if I remember well), comprised of several meshes.

- "safe" Max polys in 1 mesh is about 10k

- Max size of texture is 2048 a side (can't remember who tested that)

- Texture size should be power of 2 (however some non-power of 2 textures work with the game, but it actually depending on the video card, so that would be stupid to not stick to this rule ^^)

- textures and model's name must be 16 characters max

- vertices can't be closer than 0.3 cm (or was it 0.4cm?), so beware of those little tiny details nobody will see anyway

- beware of the Shadows, not a limit however, still something to prepare yourself against, because the Power of the shadows over the minds is such that many lost their sanity cause of them, hehe...



These are not "holy bible" rules, more like relatively accurate and considered serious or tested warnings. Hope this helps =)

And again, welcome!