18 réponses à ce sujet

[rjshae]

For an interlude, I was thinking about spending a little time building a handful of lightweight placeables that I want to add to a nearly finished overland map for FR. Maybe a set of merchant ships, a few building, ruins, and settlements, plus some natural features or formations. I think that some of the NWN placeables may be suitable for this, since they tend to be somewhat blockly and lighter on the details. Does anybody have a specific overland map placeable they would like to see?

[andysks]

Hmm, I never created an OM, so I only know the ones that look ok as normal placeables... like the debris. But since you open a subject, these OM placeables, even the stock ones, do they behave anyhow different... other than the scale? I mean, one can use them whenever he wants, right?

[Tchos]

Andy:
There is no difference other than scale, number of polygons, and texture resolution. The map placeables are meant to be small, and viewed from a distance, so they can be lower quality than normal placeables. Additionally, when you scale large objects down too much, the light starts behaving strangely for them (at least on some video cards -- not sure about all), so starting with smaller objects is better.

[rjshae]

Yes, at least on my PC, the toolset/game does seem to get a little sluggish/jittery when I'm moving across an overland map filled with a bunch of scaled down placeables. I try to keep the number somewhat limited.

[kamal_]

Just as long as they are modeled from all sides, not only one side like some of the SoZ placeables. If they aren't modeled on all sides, they can't be scaled to use as other things.

[rjshae]

I'm trying to imagine why you'd use them for anything else as they're pretty low polycount. Maybe in an inaccessible area of an exterior map?

[kamal_]

rjshae wrote...

I'm trying to imagine why you'd use them for anything else as they're pretty low polycount. Maybe in an inaccessible area of an exterior map?

I've used them as altars (specifically the castle OM placeable), parts of things like a dwarven bakery oven, and as map markers on large scale war planning maps like generals have.

[PJ156]

Some of the models are okay. There is a temple in the SoZ set that is not too bad when scaled up and one of the towns gives a very good circular wall that I used in one of my mods.



It's worth investigating what's there and if you make yours so they can be played about with that would add a lot of value.

PJ

[rjshae]

Okay. I'll try making a few and see how well it works out. Thanks.

[Tarot Redhand]

And if they're not already from NwN1 they might get filched (with proper attribution of course ()) for that game as well (Hopefully for use with my Map Mats).

TR

[Happycrow]

I may be the odd duck out, but playing LoWPM, I greatly enjoyed running around on the OLM with the free camera - it looked neat and good in a way that normal outdoor maps don't tend to (though I also have an aesthetic taste towards the spare, so that would explain a lot too).

[MokahTGS]

As someone who is using the OM extensively, I would like to suggest that you think through what types of locations or props we don't have that could be useful.

I tend to build what I don't have out of existing placables that are scaled way down to make up for the lack of good locations.

Off the top of my head we need...

• More caves and burrows
• graves and tombs
• strange towers
• weird arcane artifacts
• rune covered stones
• trees converted to placeable versions
• ships and docks
• small towns
• various temples

I'm sure there are more...

[rjshae]

Thanks for the suggestions!

[rjshae]

MokahTGS wrote...

• trees converted to placeable versions

For the existing placeables with trees, it looks like they applied a tree texture to three flat surfaces that are rotated with respect to each other. That way the player could see any two of the three tree images regardless of the orientation. It's a very lightweight approach that is quite similar to how grass is shown. It makes me wonder whether we couldn't just use the grass tool and give it some small tree images? That way you can just apply a forest with the grass brush.

There's a limited set of tree images on the main texture file, which could be used to create some placeables or grasses. It would probably not be too difficult to make more from screen shots, or we could use the flat tree background placeables.

[Dann-J]

Grass has a tendency to slow down framerates moreso than speedtrees. You'd be better off scaling down the existing vegetation (that's what I do on my overland map).

Speedtrees allow you to turn off shadows on an individual basis, whereas grass always casts shadows if they've been enabled in the game options. Speedtrees will also fade if necessary (unless you set them not to), whereas grass could potentially obscure the player if it's long enough.

Also, grass-trees would likely look very flexible as they sway back and forth, whereas speedtrees tend to keep sections of trunk rigid when they sway. Not that you're likely to notice much swaying if the OLM camera is out far enough. In my own OLM you barely notice the scaled-down speedtrees moving.

[rjshae]

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. Darn.

[Happycrow]

rjshae,

DannJ has forgotten more about this stuff than I'll ever know, but I think it still might be worth experimenting with for bushes and some more flexible trees like bamboo and palms. Sadly, I don't know of any way to keep grass from blowing, but for a given (somewhat-exotic) module I'm starting up on, tintable "trees" with grasslike behavior would be actually really handy.

Modifié par Happycrow, 21 janvier 2014 - 05:07 .

[rjshae]

Thanks. That might be interesting to try.

I experimented with the way trees were implemented for the OM placeables, but sadly it doesn't work all that great because the three sides can only be seen from certain orientations. It pretty much needs to use double-sided planes with a slight volume.

I tried using three sets of double planes (12 triangles total) in kind of a three-bladed propeller shape. It works and has shadowing, but the result is only useful for OM models.

[Dann-J]

The downside of the grass system is that everything ends up perfectly vertical (which is fine for actual grass). It'd be great if you could paint down undergrowth like ferns or small bushes in a way that gave them some volume when seen from any angle, without having to place speedtree vegetation individually.

The current grass system could be useful for ferns or bushes that are only seen from the side, like undergrowth in the distance beyond the walkable area. The static tree, palm and fern billboard placeables require both distance and a certain amount of fog to hide the fact that they're two-dimensional. Even then, their static nature usually contrasts noticably against swaying speedtrees in front of and behind them.