71 réponses à ce sujet

[TheOneBlackRider]

So I stumbled into a new side project...

 

A while ago, I got myself " The Witcher 1". I instantly liked the looks of the areas very much, so the idea of porting them came to my mind, since CDP were (kind of) using the same engine.

 

In addition to that I was very inspired by the NWN2 conversion project of Tchos.

Witcher placeable conversion project by Tchos

http://forum.bioware...ersion-project/

 

And CDP seem to have allowed such doings (see URL above / Tchos' post).

 

So I decided to check, if and how porting of buildings is possible. I remembered, that Michael DarkAngel (MDA) did an approach some years ago, which got lost. Well,  I contacted MDA and he actually took a dive back into his importer and greatly improved it:

http://www.tbotr.net...=3&ssid=3&dlid=

EDIT: Something is wrong with that link. The right download page doesn't show up...Try:

http://www.tbotr.net/modules.php
Click Downloads -> twMax v2.05.05.0 should show. If not, click The Witcher and then you should see it.

Again: Many thanks for your correspondence and time, MDA!

 

And here is a sneak of the result so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CDP did use a different approach: The (outside) areas are huge, the walkmesh is one piece and as large as the whole area plus blocking walls are placed in a none NWN1-manner, no tree models (they use "Speedtrees"), backdrops and most difficult: They used a kind of terrain painting technique (Quote MDA: "they paint the texture onto the mesh"): The ground meshes don't have a certain texture assigned. IG they mix them somehow, eg. grass, cobble, dirt in various states of visibility. That is not easy to mock in an economical manner in NWN1 (at least for me).  

Also the general scale differs (a bit smaller). And the poly count is higher than the NWN1-avarage one.

 

After some testing, I found a workable scale and I was able to trick the walkmesh modifier, which seems to crash, when applied to a mesh a big larger than 800 or so faces. Also did I figure out a way to tile slice a large complex (higher poly) model without the slicer crashing.

 

What you see above is still a very rough (but working) result. The wooden building is the tavern group of the outskirts of Vizima / Wyzima. It's an 8x8 group.

I do have shadow issues (though I shadowed only a few selected parts - shadowing every object will drag down the performance quiet a bit). The ground texture is not finalized. The Witcher-doors are not implemented (NWN1-doors differ a bit in size).

 

There are no day and night animations so far.

 

The export was without "sanity check", but the models are CMed.

 

Also ATM it's a complete port with all that was part of the area. I'm thinking of eg. remove the wagons and make them available as placeables.

 

The stone houses are the ones in front of the bridge leading into Vizima / Wyzima. These buildings are just for show (ATM) = jammed them in as a (big) placeable. Plan is to turn them into tiles some day.

 

Tileset base is a striped down rual TNO terrain only (so no TNO-features, groups, city / castle / sea cliffs / lake terrain).

 

 

Also special thanks to Shemsu-Heru, who gave me some info on skinmeshing NWN1 models. I did get an result, but it didn't look very well, since the witcher character models are made up of several parts and I got some eye ball popping out while moving around. Interesting sight!

Also would this technique mean not to use the dangle mesh on the hair. The head model in the screens is not finalized. The hair mesh needs to be reworked, because the original texture uses an alpha, which doesn't work (= look nice) with the metal look of body parts with transparency. And it still needs to be "dangled".

 

For the screens, I created a head only version of the original model. It still is made up of several parts and uses the original texture.

The armor is another (not finalized) attempt to port an armor. Here I learned, that I lack the practise to texture bodyparts...

 

As written in the beginning: It's a side project of mine, so I'll be fiddling with it as time permits and progress may be slow. So, if anybody wants to join in the converting process, just drop me a note, so we can coordinate.

[Fester Pot]

Check with Zwerkules, as I believe he has over 80+ Witcher placeables ready to go - they're not on the Vault yet - but Zwerkules had mentioned it in the NWVault chat some time ago. That could save you time to concentrate on other parts of your project.

FP!

[TheOneBlackRider]

Thanks Fester. I did miss that! Will PM him right away.

[Ssythilac]

Wow, very interesting project! Keep up the good work!

[Zwerkules]

I've finished more than 250 and less than 1337 of the placeables so far.  I'm not just converting them to NWN 1 though. In the case of chests and wardrobes and so on I also add animations so they can be opened and closed and I added animations to candles, candelabras and lamps so they can be lit and unlit.

[TheOneBlackRider]

Awesome! How fitting!

And sounds like a long distance run, too!

 

OK, some questions:

- Are these "only" the actual placeables of the game or do you also convert things from the area meshes into placeables?

- To stay conform: What naming style do you use for your placeables (eg. plc_tw1_..., tw1_plc_... plc_..., ... )?

[Zwerkules]

I only converted placeables, not meshes from areas.

I named them plc_wit01 to plc_wt250. I only use numbers, not their names because those are too long.

The numbers below 100 have that 'i' in the name which I removed for the numbers higher than 99 so the length of the names stayed the same.

 

You can download a first version here: http://neverwinterva...-game-witcher-1

[ShadowM]

Tchos is also doing witcher placable conversions to nwn2, which you could easily convert to nwn1 placables if you missed any.

Link

 

I love to get them all into one big package to grab

[TheOneBlackRider]

Zwerkules: Thanks for the upload. Now I can also check out the 2da lines you are using (was going to ask that next ). Well, you'll be needing a few more reserved lines!

BTW: Your screenshots of the placeables look so beautiful!

[Tchos]

Tchos is also doing witcher placable conversions to nwn2, which you could easily convert to nwn1 placables if you missed any.

Link

 

That is what he said he did, converting my NWN2 conversions to NWN1.  But unless he goes beyond the ones that I've done so far, there will be no big package to grab for some time, as it has taken me over two years so far to convert about half of the total placeables.

[Zwerkules]

That is what he said he did, converting my NWN2 conversions to NWN1.  But unless he goes beyond the ones that I've done so far, there will be no big package to grab for some time, as it has taken me over two years so far to convert about half of the total placeables.

If I can get the ones you haven't converted to NWN 2 yet in a format that gmax can read from The One Black Rider I will convert those to NWN 1. You didn't convert a lot of the plants, probably because NWN 2 has far more plants than NWN 1 because of Speedtree. Those will be very useful for NWN 1, so I'll convert those soonish.

[Tchos]

Plants have been relatively low in priority for that reason, yes.  This is likely the next one I'll do.

[Cannonade]

Do the buildings in Vizima appear convertable? Especially the richer trade district one has my curiousity peaked, as I'd love to be able to be able to use them in the future.

[Tarot Redhand]

One little question, has the Geralt in the images been released anywhere?

 

TR

[TheOneBlackRider]

Sorry for my slow reply.

 

Do the buildings in Vizima appear convertable? Especially the richer trade district one has my curiousity peaked, as I'd love to be able to be able to use them in the future.

 

Yes, that is possible. But I don't know, if it is possible to have them close next to each other (yet), because the houses have to be cut out of the mesh and then scaled (or first scaled and then cut). I've been doing alot of scale testing and now decided to go for a scale of 109. So with this, houses may not have an exact tile size (eg. without squashing them and I want to avoid that), which would lead to gaps between them, when using my approach to make them available as features or groups. Of course, larger groups would be possible, too.

Another option would be to turn them into a city terrain, but that's not my aim (also I'm lacking practise here) and one still would have to adjust the models, so that they touch each other in a working way.

 

 

One little question, has the Geralt in the images been released anywhere?

 

TR

 

No, not yet. It's just a result of playing around to see, what is possible. The head - the hair that is - is unfinished, that is why. CDP applied mesh streaks to the head and use a hair texture with an alpha. For NWN1 this means, that the shiny base of the body part will be visible, too, which doesn't look very well.

 

(http://forum.bioware...is-it-possible/)

 

So the hair needs to be remodeled (and dangeled), which I haven't done, yet. Also the armor is just a test and the result is far away of being OK (IMO).

 

But, as written above, I'd be glad to send out parts for others to work on. So, if you want to finish the head (and other heads / bodyparts), be my guest!

[NWN_baba yaga]

Love the original witcher 1 look so much. Just great stuff there guys

The first game realy nailed it perfectly for me and nothing will ever come close to that authenticity imo!

[ShadowM]

That is what he said he did, converting my NWN2 conversions to NWN1.  But unless he goes beyond the ones that I've done so far, there will be no big package to grab for some time, as it has taken me over two years so far to convert about half of the total placeables.

Oops sorry was thinking they were seperate projects.

So many questions

Any chance on some creature model in either nwn2 or nwn1 format? (just model, textures) I can do the bone rigging, skinning animation work.

What programs are you using to extract from the witcher, model format they using?

Are there any art assets that CD project does not want extracted?

Thanks for all the hard work you have done, both of you.

[Tchos]

It was over 2 years ago, but I used a utility called TWArchive to extract the MDBs and DDSes from the Witcher archives.  I used the twMax import/export plugin because these MDBs are not in the same format as the NWN2 MDBs.  I used a trial version of 3ds Max with the plugin because it doesn't work with Gmax.

 

As for asset restriction, I don't know of any.  They just said "the assets".

 

And honestly, after seeing The Witcher 3, I can understand why they wouldn't mind people using the Witcher 1 stuff.  As good as the Witcher 1 is, the Witcher 3 is an achievement that really puts my humble skills into perspective.

[TheOneBlackRider]

...

Any chance on some creature model in either nwn2 or nwn1 format? (just model, textures) I can do the bone rigging, skinning animation work.

...

 

 

A while back I (with the help of Shemsu-Heru - thank you again!) made a sloppy attempt to skin a Gerald mesh to NWN1-bones. As you can see, the stance is a bit stooped forward, which doesn't really look very impressive (I mean, him being THE WITCHER!). But this may be due to my lack of practise / knowledge in this matter.

 

A few more things to keep in mind is:

The body is made up of several parts: body, head with neck and a bit of the breast, eye balls, more than 1 hair part. The head mesh does also have teeth and a mouth cave, but that can be removed (for NWN1).

Thus the parts use different textures.

 

I was able to skin the body and the head separately to the according bones and that movement then kind of works. Since in NWN1 hair is part of the head and there is no hair bone, I attached the hair mesh to the head and, as you can see in the pictures, the hair  then uses the texture of the head, so the head texture would have to be extended to include hair texture (+ mapped again, I'd say).

 

If you assign the head bone to the hair, the hair starts to move away from the head while in motion. Same with the eye balls: They tend to pop out of the head!

 

Due to all these issues, I didn't continue with it at that time.

 

But, yes: All meshes are available! If you want to give it a go, just tell me how to get the files to you.

[Zwerkules]

Oops sorry was thinking they were seperate projects.

So many questions

Any chance on some creature model in either nwn2 or nwn1 format? (just model, textures) I can do the bone rigging, skinning animation work.

What programs are you using to extract from the witcher, model format they using?

Are there any art assets that CD project does not want extracted?

Thanks for all the hard work you have done, both of you.

I asked Rolo to convert the children and the grandma to a format that gmax can read. As helpful as Rolo always is he did that for me.

Unfortunately I'm still too busy with the medieval city and haven't had time to work on the skins and bones yet.

If you'd like to do the rigging and animation work for those, I can upload them for you.

[ShadowM]

I behind on the otyugh animations because a bunch of real life stuff flooded in, but upload them and I see if I can knock them out.

[TheOneBlackRider]

Here is a link to the witcher models as a Gmax scene and as mdl to import:

https://www.dropbox....1-mdls.zip?dl=0

 

Textures are converted to TGA, but original (non NWN1) DDS textures are included.

 

Please check out the "Info_Witcher_models_Gmax+NWN1.txt" for more details.

 

INFO: ShadowM got the files and will go for an NWN1 skinmesh.

 

 

Else, I didn't have too much time for this, so slow progress. Walkmesh is now fine on the Tavern area. I'm still fighting with some weired shadows on this group and I'm still trying to find a way to get a smooth transition from cobble to grass. Problem is, that the mesh is pretty twisted and thus the texture, which I used as an overlay, looks pretty smeared in some places. I have to figure out a better way to accomplish this.

And I have one rual house ported (together with a working shadow ).

[NWN_baba yaga]

Shadows must be horrible to fix for NWN... and i personaly would just get rid of them all together. The witcher one geometry is pretty complexe compared and could slow down the engine a bit to tough .

 

But it´s great you are doing this

[ShadowM]

Actually the shadow bones he included are working fine in game for shadows, but like you say the high vertex count is what I been beating with decimate modifier in blender with a stick to get a good balance of count and look LOL. I might post some screen shots later of some of the work but for now it lunch time.

[TheOneBlackRider]

Just a small lifesign. Of course, I'm still at it, but RL kept me VERY busy, so I made only little progress. I'm still trying to get some working shadows for the tavern area. Some do work now. Also did I start with an idea for the cobble paths on that area. It's not finished and nothing worth a new screen.

And I'll be away for a couple of weeks. Will continue after my return and hopefulle have a new screen by the end of August.