Man that cobble stone sure looks bare... I need to dirty it up some.
I'd start by using terrain tinting at very low saturations to introduce patches of colour variation, and various levels of very low pressures of black to break up the pattern. Only after that would I consider adding projected FX textures or litter placeables.
I agree with Tchos, use the colour to accent the height variation you have and it will start to come together with the street placeables in. Some grass and greenery as well in the appropriate places.
To my taste there needs to be more height variation around the houses is shot 2 it will never look right sitting on a flat surface and something to foil that interface will make a huge difference.
There you go, you did not ask for comments I know but you got some. Since you know all this already lets take these as being for new modders reading these posts 
I love that sea wall, it looks good in that shot and looking over to the cluttered scene in the background works well. How does the wall work with the near vertical level change in the tools. does the ground stick out at the base of the wall? I seem to remember they are wider at the bottom that the top?
I also wonder if we have enough areas between us all to do a campaign water deep set of areas in the same way as BG II does Athkatla?
PJ
Then again, it *is* the City of Splendours. Maybe they've got one hell of a clean-up crew to keep those pavers looking brand new.
True, then that bloke wandering around with two clubs in his hand is going to get arrested real soon
Unless he's a juggler?
PJ
I love that sea wall, it looks good in that shot and looking over to the cluttered scene in the background works well. How does the wall work with the near vertical level change in the tools. does the ground stick out at the base of the wall? I seem to remember they are wider at the bottom that the top?
I deliberately added a narrow walkway along one side of the sea wall parts so that they would cover the sharp rise in terrain. It's just a matter of careful placement so that it spans a row of mesh faces. I also found the straight wall look a little boring to the eye, so I added a curved section piece.
Yes, the pavement placeables are flat. I'm adding curvature to the road to try and compensate visually, and I placed the buildings relatively close to the edge where possible. I'll see what else I can do; maybe add some more planters and such.
I was planning to use the color brush to add more variation to the cobblestone; plus I'm using a dirt brush in selected areas. But I'm not quite done with the placeable build out yet; those two shots are just the more finished parts of the area. (I seem to take forever doing exterior city scenes. Oh well.)
"... There you go, you did not ask for comments I know but you got some. Since you know all this already lets take these as being for new modders reading these posts
..."
I check these boards every day for this stuff.
Perhaps it would make sense to make a small set of one-sided pavement edges that are uneven along the visible edge then flatten out toward the other side (for building placement)? It wouldn't be too difficult; I'll have to think about it.
A rough, uneven edge could be pretty convincingly portrayed with decent texturing. The existing raised building foundations are not very nice.
I wonder if a projected texture visual effect might do the trick?
Ed.: I think now I might be able to work it out through a modular pavement approach: build pavement blocks, some level, some with an s-shaped slope along one axis, and fit them together along their sides. (Kind of like using those dock walls.) I think I'd need at least six pieces--a flat edge, edge slope up, edge slope down, middle flat, middle slope, and a corner--plus a variant or two. Maybe two different slopes as well.
Well, here's the same scene with some sloping curb blocks. I haven't adjusted the ground height yet, so you can see it gives at least some vertical relief. I don't think I can do more without ending up with doors opening underground. Instead I'll probably lower the road middle.
Here's a little view of my attempt at the "Realm of the Reaper" area. At left is a new tile variant with the pentagonal platform where the reaper stands. To the right is one of the floating door placeables that is supposed to be used for the planar travel. Unfortunately the door doesn't animate. Is that because it's not on the ground? I don't know, and I'm not sure how to fix it. I may have to resort to a clickable box, alas. It also needs a visual effect to make it look more magical.
The NWN area is fairly bare bones. I was thinking about putting some visual effect down in the gutters to liven it up a little. Maybe add some runic decals here and there,
I had to abandon the floating door thing because selecting the door was crashing my toolset. (I have no idea why.) Here's the latest, with a custom portal effect and some glowing runes. Hopefully it looks a little more otherwordly now...
Guess I compressed the image a little too much.
Any suggestions?
You want a floating door, with animation and transitions? Just tell me what model you need, and how high above the ground the door should be, and I'll make it. Or maybe the problem comes from the placeable, missing the hook point?
It's not the door that's the problem. I have a door opening model with a hook point, and I'm able to place a normal door in the opening. However, when I try to select the door using the rectangular drag tool, the toolset crashes. I have the same issue with the arcane circle in the area; when I try to drag near the circle, it crashes. I just decided to move on and use a visual effect instead. Thanks.
when I try to select the door using the rectangular drag tool, the toolset crashes.
That reminds me of the rotating torches. I believe it was caused by the hook point (for the VFX) having a negative Z (or rather, lower than the pivot point).
I did try lowering the model to the surface with the hook point positioned at ground level, but the problem still occurred. The hook point is correctly oriented (I imported it from a working model). For some reason, the door attached to the model was also being scaled wrong. It's just a weird problem and not really worth spending more time trying to fix.
I imported [the hook point] from a working model[...]
the door attached to the model was also being scaled wrong.
That would explain why it still crashes the toolset: when I import things from working models, it's always at 10000% (100 times bigger than normal), because that's how Expotron is set. And consequently, hook points coordinates are 100 times bigger than what they should be. In the end, for the torches I just created a brand new helper, and checked that the orientation was the same as the stock torch one's.
It's just a weird problem and not really worth spending more time trying to fix.
I can understand that! What model are you using? Just wondering if my assumption above is right, I might have a look at this attachment point and see if just remaking it (therefore with the same scale as the model) would fix the crash problem.
I can understand that! What model are you using? Just wondering if my assumption above is right, I might have a look at this attachment point and see if just remaking it (therefore with the same scale as the model) would fix the crash problem.
Here you go. It uses the Sunken Ruins wall textures.
https://www.dropbox....door01.zip?dl=0
The more I delve into this game, the more detail I'm finding I need to add. I spent the past few weeks porting creature blueprints over to NWN2, which in addition to their myriad stats includes fixing the voice sets, porting the custom icons, setting up a large faction array, creating various conversation files, and adding in all of the custom scripts. All but two of the Waterdeep areas are now complete; I just need to set up the University District for the cut scene view through the telescope, then I'll work on the Yawning Portal entrance chamber.
Before the year is out I want to be able to do a playthrough up to the point where the PC enters Undermountain. We'll see if I make it...
Ah, the joy of placing waypoints... heh. 
Quick question for those who have played with Kaedrin's PrC pack: the starting module has an option to auto-level and it will preferentially select the starting class if available. Does anybody know if Kaedrin's include level up package.2da entries for his various PrC additions? If so, should I look into selecting for those as part of the auto-level up?
Quick question for those who have played with Kaedrin's PrC pack: the starting module has an option to auto-level and it will preferentially select the starting class if available. Does anybody know if Kaedrin's include level up package.2da entries for his various PrC additions? If so, should I look into selecting for those as part of the auto-level up?
It does, something I saw when I did the archetype base classes.
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