I'm having some trouble making dark areas with the placeables from the well-known city hak. What's happening is certain important placeables have some very not good effects with area lighting, picking up lights from too far away and also displaying them in odd places. I figure there must be something wrong with whatever file controls how the textures are lit but I'm not sure what to change or how. Any ideas?
Which placeables are causing troubles? I can't tell from the picture.
All of the curved walls have these weird strips of light on them despite being out of range (as far as the light spheres are concerned). The incline walls also have these shiny blue patches that don't make sense. Look around the edges and upper right.
I'm not sure if I can see the problem on the picture, but lights can cause problems if they are a lot per tile. 6 I think is the limit, including torches and weapons(?). So, even if a placeable, or water seems far away from the source it's still on the same tile. It may have trouble. Check if you can use less lights maybe and see what happens 
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I m not sure too to see the mater on the screenshot.
Did you scaled placeable?Usually scaling them down give some bug and they are not anymore lighted at the distance they should be.
Btw as i m working on big placeable atm for some dwarf content i see that light have lot s of trouble in nwn2.
Perhaps those parts of the placeables have higher specularity? I'll bet most players won't even notice.
It's not scaling or multiple lights, I get the same thing with 1,1,1 scaling and a single light.
Perhaps those parts of the placeables have higher specularity? I'll bet most players won't even notice.
Is there a way I can change the specularity on a placeable? The pillars from the same set don't have the same problem. I took another shot from up close, you can see that the pillar is properly lit while the walls have all kinds of problems, both on the top and on the sides of the upward slanted ones.
Yes, it's possible. In the mdb file, the RIGD packets have overall Specularity settings. This is something I can adjust in Blender by modifying the material properties for the packet and then exporting. For more fine-grained control, you can adjust the alpha transparency in the normal map file. You might try stripping out the alpha transparency from the normal map texture and then applying a new one at, say, a uniform 25-30%, to see if it makes any difference.
Sometimes I've seen weird lighting issues when the normal map is oriented in odd directions. It seems to cause the model to pick up different mixes of the ground and sky lighting. I'm not 100% sure what's going on there. Possibly it was from poorly selected smoothing groups?
I think it actually looks pretty good like that.
Well, I can see what you're talking about, now, but it's a mystery to me why they're behaving like that. Since they're curved, I know it can't be due to overly large polygons, which is the first thing I would have looked for.
Yes, it's possible. In the mdb file, the RIGD packets have overall Specularity settings. This is something I can adjust in Blender by modifying the material properties for the packet and then exporting. For more fine-grained control, you can adjust the alpha transparency in the normal map file. You might try stripping out the alpha transparency from the normal map texture and then applying a new one at, say, a uniform 25-30%, to see if it makes any difference.
Sometimes I've seen weird lighting issues when the normal map is oriented in odd directions. It seems to cause the model to pick up different mixes of the ground and sky lighting. I'm not 100% sure what's going on there. Possibly it was from poorly selected smoothing groups?
I'll take a crack at editing the normal map and see what it does, I know after some testing that whatever I'm looking for has absolutely no effect on directional area lighting so if I make the change it won't affect anything in my module that isn't underground like the area in question.
I've noticed similar problems in a lot of custom content for nwn2, mostly the floors of interior tilesets which I've always been able to cover up, but never placeables before, is it really standard to build stuff without any lights?
So, bit of a weird thing, I tried toning down the normal alpha map to 30% and it had no visible effect ingame. Do you think the lighting is determined by something else, maybe?
Aside from the alpha of the normal, the RGB channels can also affect the lighting, such as if they contain colours that don't belong in a normal map. I used a mod once that altered Neeshka's texture, but it put a line down the middle of her face and made the edges of her hair lit strangely, before I fixed it. Could you post the normal map to see?
Can you tell us the name of one of the models that's giving you a problem?
Sure, it's the set of models "plc_bc_houselowerwall##" that I'm getting this with, in the hak that I linked. In the .uti files they're just called "wall" under the city heading. I see the odd effects on every model that has rounded top parts, the posts seem unaffected. Here's the specific normal map:
https://dl.dropboxus...onewall01_n.DDS
There's nothing wrong with this normal map, but I notice it doesn't have an alpha channel. Did you remove it?
That one's unedited. straight from the hak file. I change them with photoshop so I need to remove them and save as .tga for them to work properly.
The only reason I asked is that you said you toned down the alpha channel to 30%, but there isn't one here to tone down.
How long are the placeable models? I've noticed that if any part of a placeable is within a light sphere, then every face in that model with a similar orientation to those reflecting light in the part within the light sphere will reflect light in the same way, even if they're well outside of the light sphere. It's a particular problem with long wall placeables if you try to join them up seamlessly, since the sudden change in light reflection properties makes it obvious where the join is.
The only reason I asked is that you said you toned down the alpha channel to 30%, but there isn't one here to tone down.
When I opened in in photoshop the alpha channel was pure white, I paint bucketed it with 30% gray and saved as .tga.
How long are the placeable models? I've noticed that if any part of a placeable is within a light sphere, then every face in that model with a similar orientation to those reflecting light in the part within the light sphere will reflect light in the same way, even if they're well outside of the light sphere. It's a particular problem with long wall placeables if you try to join them up seamlessly, since the sudden change in light reflection properties makes it obvious where the join is.
I'm not sure this is it. Lots of the models involved are very short, like the slanted walls I highlighted in the second screenshot.
When I opened in in photoshop the alpha channel was pure white, I paint bucketed it with 30% gray and saved as .tga.
Strange, since when I opened it in Photoshop (including again just now, to be sure), there were only the Red, Green, and Blue channels. The blue, of course, was mostly white, as is usual for these normal maps.
Strange, since when I opened it in Photoshop (including again just now, to be sure), there were only the Red, Green, and Blue channels. The blue, of course, was mostly white, as is usual for these normal maps.
What type of dds importer are you using? I downloaded mine from NVidia and I definitely have an all-white alpha channel.
I'm using the normal map filter downloaded from nVidia, but I don't recall if that's also what allows me to open and save the DDS files in the first place. Understand, I do see alpha channels in most normal maps. But not this one.
How many polygon it has on the length?If not subdivided may be it s the same kind of story i had with the light per poly system.
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