31 réponses à ce sujet

[ColorsFade]

It's been fun learning the toolset this week... So much to do. So much more left to learn. But wow, is this ever fun. 

Four roads converge... That usually spells trouble. 










Whatever lives in there probably isn't friendly. 


Ten Dollars says this woman needs help. There's a Quest in here, I can smell it. 

[MokahTGS]

 Not bad at all for being your first week.  It seems you are drifting the curve quite well.

[PJ156]

These are nice screens especialy the out door ones. Lighting will help the indoor one a lot.

Good work for a week, you are a long way further along than I was in the same time

PJ

[Shallina]

Adaur Harbor is the best adventurer of all, he is always the first to visit new frontiers without any fear !

He's unmatched !

[kamal_]

Shallina wrote...

Adaur Harbor is the best adventurer of all, he is always the first to visit new frontiers without any fear !

He's unmatched !

Adaur always gets a shout out somehow in my work.

OP, the character used to test a module (when you select "run module" from the toolset), is the one that's the first alphabetically in your local character vault. When you get tired of Adaur, you can just make a character of your choice and either give them a name that would be first, or rename the character .bic file (this is what it actually goes by, not the character's name).

[ColorsFade]

PJ156 wrote...
Lighting will help the indoor one a lot.

PJ

I have five lights in the indoor shot (1 overhead placed where the chanedlier is, and four placed where the torches hang on the walls, and I think the ). 

I am open to suggestions on how to make it better

I was playing another mod a few days ago and it was incredibly dark inside one of the interiors and that really bugged me. I couldn't see a thing. 

[ColorsFade]

OP, the character used to test a module (when you select "run module" from the toolset), is the one that's the first alphabetically in your local character vault. When you get tired of Adaur, you can just make a character of your choice and either give them a name that would be first, or rename the character .bic file (this is what it actually goes by, not the character's name).

Yeah, I read that. I had been using my main from the OC, but his name starts with an S and I got tired of scrolling down. So I just started clicking on names in the first row. 

I haven't been running the game through the Toolset; been actually loading the game to test stuff. I don't know if it makes a difference or not, but I wanted to see it how my game settings see it. 

[ColorsFade]

By the way - is there any way to delete the pre-built characters?

I'd rather just nuke most of them out of my game.

[PJ156]

ColorsFade wrote...

I am open to suggestions on how to make it better

I was playing another mod a few days ago and it was incredibly dark inside one of the interiors and that really bugged me. I couldn't see a thing. 

I have some thoughts for you to cogitate, but I'm no expert at this.

Don't flood the place with light as it washes out the smaller ones. For me, candles and torches give isolated pools of light.

There are many presets for area lghting out there, you can play about yourself as Tsongo said or you could do what I have and when you see a good one in a game export it from the toolset to have a look at how it has been done. There are some lighting sets on the vault and the OC has a load of presets in there.

These are ones I like to use:

PJ_lighting_presets

There are a few dark but not painfully so sets in there, mostly very similar, I tweaked one of the vault ones slightly to get these. Also get yourself SLS2 (scripted lighting system) off the vault if you don't have it already. Even without the scripted aspects it speeds up laying down lights no end.

As I say I am no expert at this myself and it's all subjective but here is a toolset shot of a similar area to yours.
I have tried to create pools o light in a darker room and given the statue a small no shadow making light near its head to highlight it.


I hope that is helpful,

PJ

Modifié par PJ156, 17 février 2013 - 04:46 .

[PJ156]

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...

To all you Adaur Harbor fans out there I have to say I'm a Brigid Chandler man myself because she's got a light spell and is the right height.

ps. No offence meant to dwarves/elves/halflings/gnomes or any of the vertically challenged races.

I made a druid called Aardvark very early in my modding career and deleted all the presets.

Coloursfade, the presets are in your:

C:\\Documents and Settings\\User\\My Documents\\Neverwinter Nights 2\\localvault

You can simply delete the ones you dont want or move them elsewhere if you want to save them.

PJ

[Tchos]

On lights:

Make sure none of your lights have the shadow intensity set to 1, unless you actually want them to cast pitch-black shadows when point light shadows are enabled (you can check this with the shadow display in the toolset). When you create a new light blueprint, it defaults to 1, and I think some presets on the Vault have it set to 1, as well. Properly made lights and point light shadows being enabled make an area look so much better.

For a typical interior, I wouldn't set the shadows any more intense than 0.5, because light in reality bounces off of objects and fills areas that aren't directly lit, but that doesn't happen in this game engine.  It looks like you have them set properly in your last screenshot, which you posted at the same time as this post.

Modifié par Tchos, 17 février 2013 - 05:10 .

[ColorsFade]

Wow, Lerp is cool... So I didn't realize that HasDirectionalLight was what giving the interior the light. I turned that off and I was left with my torches only for light, which is what I wanted.

I messed around with the torches some, and added the Lerp properties to each. I can see already that in order to make the Lerp work, you have to give each light individual settings, otherwise they all transition in unison and it looks wrong.

But still, I think this was an improvement, yeah?

[ColorsFade]

PJ - that is awesome!

I like that area, obviously :-) Haha... laughing that I almost duplicated it. I really like the light near the statue head.

Yeah, I picked up the SLS2 last night, but haven't plugged it in yet. Time savers are a win, for sure.

[ColorsFade]

PJ - Where did you find that interior? You said it was part of the Toolset? How do I find that?

[rjshae]

ColorsFade:

It's looking good so far. You might try adding some clutter to the scenes: rocks, benches, barrels, and so forth, where appropriate. I like to add the occasional cushion to the benches, and maybe a bottle or two on the barrels. The torches could use some placed effect flames centered on the tips, along with short-ranged flickering light sources and torch flame sounds.

[ColorsFade]

Yeah, I haven't got around to cluttering things up yet - totally intend to do that. I just wanted to get the big stuff working first. Learning terrain, texture, trees, environmental objects and how to get the walkmesh just right was a lot to absorb, haha.

I opened one of the sample areas and saw all the stuff I'd been missing - torch effects, etc. I thought that was really cool. I couldn't understand why my torches didn't look as good as others I'd seen

[kamal_]

sls includes things like torches with vx already attached, saving you lots of time.

[Dann-J]

I find that running the module straight from the toolset has a tendancy to crash the toolset when you try to open an area again after exiting the game. I tend to only do it if I'm just testing scripts or conversations (so there's no need to open any areas).

I created a character called Aaron Aaronson who does a lot of my testing (a figher with an impressive set of mutton chops). If I have to test something involving spell casting, then Brigit Chandler steps in. Barran Fenwalker is my go-to guy for rogue or stealth-related testing.

[Tchos]

Regarding Scripted Lighting System (SLS)'s blueprints:

I looked at them in the toolset, and most of them are set to 0.7 shadows, which is harsher than I would go. For general interiors like homes and shops I wouldn't go darker than 0.5 or 0.6 at the harshest.

Also, there are numerous light blueprints in that pack that are set to pitch black shadows, such as the ones named "Basic White" and "White Pulse".

So, if you're going to use those, I recommend adjusting the blueprints and resaving them.

Modifié par Tchos, 17 février 2013 - 09:51 .

[PJ156]

CF

If you save/export a light set it goes here:

C:\\Program Files\\Atari\\Neverwinter Nights 2\\NWN2Toolset\\lightingpresets

The stock ones are there but I can find them again. At some point I copied them out for safety sake and I have them if you want a link.

DannJ linked me to a manual for lighting some of which is free but I lost the link. Can you provide it again Dann?

I use the toolset to game in the same way that Dann does. I also had is crash a few times. You can leave the game running in the background though, that's stable for two or three starts then its best to close it up and start it again.

PJ

[PJ156]

Found it:

http://www.hourences...esign-examples/

I asked for this for Christmas from the wife but got socks instead. Don't get me wrong they're nice socks, I'm wearing them now, but they do not increase my skill in level design.

PJ

[Tchos]

Hmm, where's the crafting recipe to add +2 Craft Area to a foot slot item?