34 réponses à ce sujet

[Rekov]

I was hoping there is a relatively straight forward guide to making custom grass for the toolset. (Grass, not grass textures). I have been trying to create something that looks vaguely like this, and I've determined that I can only really go about it with custom content. I already have a working texture. I just need grass to put on it.

[PJ156]

In my humble opinion you are going to have to lay down grass very thick to get that and could end up with performance problems.

 

You could try to use the grasses we have at low height settings though. You could not exactly colour match but the overall feel could be achieved I think.

 

Try a placeable instead snakebanes work is in my cornucopia. There might be something in there that you find helpful. 

 

Not trying to put you off making the grass, there just might be another simpler way.

 

PJ

[PJ156]

This is rushed but uses only stock stuff at 0.3 height. Your problem with grass is that it sways and the effect your looking for will be hard to achieve.

 

Just a thought for you, if you continue to make your own grass then good luck 

 

 

PJ

[Rekov]

This was my very brief attempt at getting it right. I made the red flowers a little big, and it's not very densely covered in grass. I think what I need is something dense like one of the jungle "grasses" that matches the texture.

[PJ156]

That looks really good. I like the twin waterfall, that will look great once the hard lines have been softened.

 

I used the purple flowers (the one with the round head) at height 0.3 as with the red flowers with the large head (not the one that looks like the small tree). The bright grass is faked with yellow flowers and one of the spring trees shrunk to 0.3,0.3,0.2 and then sunk into the ground.

 

I used grey at 20% on the floor to shadow the dips and around the rocks and deep pea green in patches to give the under texture some variety. I used a little bright yellow green on the top of the "noise" to bring up the high spots and put in some variety where the grass isn't.

 

That's not to say mine is better than yours but that's how I did it.

 

Just for comment really I tend not to use those loose rocks sets at the stock scale. I always reduce the height to 0.3 - 0.5 and sink them into the ground a little. They look much more natural to me than the rather overstated height and shapes you get in the stock set. It's personal taste but I ways find them jarring to look at and hard to blend in..

 

PJ

[kamal_]

I may not have a matching texture, but a look at my terrain textures project should allow you to figure out how to add terrain textures.

 

That area looks nice.

[Rekov]

Thanks! And just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding, I have a working texture. I need an upright grass to put on it. Where might I find your project?

[Happycrow]

I wonder - they made nosway trees... do you think no-sway grass is a possibility?

[rjshae]

Well... you could always make some static grass clump placeables by building a single grass plane in a modeling tool then duplicating it and rotating to various angles. It would be a way around the grass placement limits and would be pretty lightweight (especially if you can use the same textures as the grass).

[Rekov]

Well... you could always make some static grass clump placeables by building a single grass plane in a modeling tool then duplicating it and rotating to various angles. It would be a way around the grass placement limits and would be pretty lightweight (especially if you can use the same textures as the grass).

This might actually work pretty perfectly. I think I'll just do this. Thanks!

[Rekov]

I ended up deciding on red sorrel for my plant. I've come up with this for a texture for my model.

I've never made a placeable before, and I have not the faintest idea how to go about doing so. It should be fun to learn, I hope.

[Dann-J]

That'd make a great texture for the existing grass system.

 

I'd take swaying grass over static placeables any day. Plus you get the ability to paint it down en masse, rather than having to position placeable models individually.

[Rekov]

I don't necessarily disagree with you, DannJ, which brings us right on back to the topic of this here thread.

[rjshae]

Yes, a placeable of grass planes would likely be the most useful for covering a relatively large, flat areas. For smaller details, the normal grass is better. Possibly a large area of swaying grass could also be generated by a placed special effect.

[Rekov]

Ladies and gentlemen! Comments + suggestions are welcome.

[Happycrow]

Nice.  Would want to see the full context area-wise, but it looks good.

[Eguintir Eligard]

As far as I know simply replacing or adding to the existing grass textures is how you add grass. No models

[Happycrow]

WOW.   If that's the case, Eguintir, it gives a lot of possibilities, some dead-on handy for the module I'm gearing up for.

[rjshae]

Yes, that would make sense. It's nothing but a bunch of planes with a texture. We could make it cobwebs, fungi, seaweed, or skeletal hands...

[Happycrow]

Yup!  Now all we need is the magic no-sway version!

[rjshae]

Yup!  Now all we need is the magic no-sway version!

 

If it is hard-coded behavior then that might be something we cannot change.

[Happycrow]

Pity.  Well, swaying works for the stuff in the Sunset World just fine.  =)

[Eguintir Eligard]

It will definitely sway, grass is still treated as grass.

I am looking at the files right now.

 

Open:

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\Data\NWN2_Materials_X2.zip\NWN2_Materials_X2\AnimatedGrass

 

all it is is dds graphic files, no models, nothing more nothing less.

 

While I hate and avoid 2da changes where possible, I can see how easy it is to add new rows to the very simple 2da in:

 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\Data\2DA_X2.zip\grass.2da

 

23 **** AG_Reeds_02

 

That's the last row of entry. Simply copy and start a new row number. Replace AG_reeds with AG_NAMEOFYOUR_NEWGRASS

 

 

 

Sorry I didn't say something sooner but I took this to be common knowledge and figured it would have been stated before long.

 

Note that custom grass was once used to make thick 2d shrubs to really fill out an area background with lesser graphic engine impact years ago. The area was never released but the demo looked fantastic.

[kamal_]

nm, Eguintir already answered how to add grass.

[Dann-J]

You'll also need a small bitmap (.BMP) icon for the toolset (64x64 pixels). It's only needed for the purposes of building, so it doesn't have to be included when you publish the campaign/module. I usually give it the same name as the DDS.

 

Some of the things I learned creating grass textures include:

 

• Have the texture at least 512 x 512 in size to avoid pixelation.
• That 512 x 512 image will include four variants of the grass texture, one in each corner. So each individual grass texture will be 256 x 256 pixels. You can always just flip two of them horizontally (and maybe change their colour slightly).
• Create a DDS image with mipmaps to optimise the way the game draws grass in the distance.
• For bush-like plants with a central stem, make sure the stem is perfectly centered at the bottom. This isn't an issue for more grass-like textures with multiple roots though.
• You'll get better results by making the surrounding colour the average of the total texture colour, rather than black or white. Otherwise the mipmap images will get darker or lighter as you move away from the grass.

Here's an example of a dead bush texture I created: