New Player Race Questions
Hey guys I'm trying to create some new races and I got it working to some degree but was curious about a couple of things.
1. Is there a way of taking an existing race and scaling it for a new race. For this example I would like to make the gnome as tall as the half-orc.
2. Is there a guide for NWN Armoury? I'm an art guy and I haven't done technical stuff in NWN in like a decade. I thought the NWNarmory might work for this or some other utility that copies and renames. I thought one might have existed back in the day but I am not sure what it was.
I would also like to see if there is a way to make a new race using the half-orc 2nd phenotype as a base just replacing that torso.
1. Is there a way of taking an existing race and scaling it for a new race. For this example I would like to make the gnome as tall as the half-orc.
2. Is there a guide for NWN Armoury? I'm an art guy and I haven't done technical stuff in NWN in like a decade. I thought the NWNarmory might work for this or some other utility that copies and renames. I thought one might have existed back in the day but I am not sure what it was.
I would also like to see if there is a way to make a new race using the half-orc 2nd phenotype as a base just replacing that torso.
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NWN Armory
If you did a good job earlier, the next part is simple. We’re going to use NWNArmory (Tool 5). This is a self running program that needs input in the form on an .ini file. We’re going to edit the nwnarmory.ini file so the first thing you want to do is make a backup of it. Simply selecting the file in windows explorer and doing a copy / paste will create a copy of it. Now that you have a backup, let’s look at the contents. Double click on the file and it should open in notepad. You can ignore the top part and concentrate on the actual guts starting here…
; make sure you set this! set it to one higher than the last [sN]
nTransforms=110
[s0]
; transform for Male, Halfling Belt
match=pm??_belt???
substitute=??a*
Scale=(0.72, 0.72, 0.72)
Leave everything above “nTransforms” alone.
The semicolon (;) is used to denote a comment. Anything following it will be ignored by the program, it is there only as a reference to the user. You can use it if you wish.
Ntransforms=
The line “nTransforms=110” is used to denote how many transformations you’ll be doing. After you have all your transforms set, you’ll change this number to one more than the highest [s#] since you start with [s0]. For instance, if we do all of our body part, we’ll have 18 transforms and the last one will be [s17] so nTransforms will equal 18.
Match= and wildcards
The line match=pm??_belt??? is used to tell the program how to auto name the new parts. The question marks are wildcards that tell the program to grab all the body parts matching pm and any next 2 digits. The asterisk works in much the same way only it tells the program to leave everything the same once it hits that spot.
Scale and Rotation
The Scale line does just what it says. It scales the body parts by a set amount. Just like Rotate rotates the body parts at a set angle. This is where our transforms from the Gmax Tti come in to play.
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Example
So in our example above, it is changing a human belt to halfling size by scaling all selected belts by 0.72 in all axis and renaming the new belts from pmh0 to pma0 which is the code for halflings with the standard phenotype. This is where we start our new ogre.
Almost there
NWNArmory can only create a new object for each object it finds. What this means is you have to export ALL human parts out of NWN and put them in a folder for access. Note these MUST be in ASCII format. All this should be done, but if not, see the section on working with NWNMdlComp (Tool 10).
Building the new parts
If we only wanted to do the chest model, we can do so by editing the nwnarmory.ini in this manner.
nTransforms=1
[s0]
; transform for Male, Ogre size chest
match=pm??_chest???
substitute=??r*
Scale=(2.3, 2.0, 2.35)
Rotate=(-14, 0, 0)
Note that I used a “r” for the racial type. This can be whatever you want so long as it’s different from the other standard races. There is only a single letter allowed here so we can only have 26 races in a hak pack. I used “r” because “o” is already used by the half-orc race and “g” is used for the gnome race and of course “e” is used for the elves. It will be necessary to use letters that don’t have anything to do with your creature if you plan on making a lot of them.
Ok, so now we make our new body parts. Open up NWN Armory and use the 1st browse button to find your chest (or other parts) then use the 2nd browse button to choose a location for the new parts. Click on “Go!” and let the program do the rest. Note, when selecting body parts to edit, you are only allowed a certain number of parts so you may not be able to grab everything at once. NWNA will only make a new body part for every part you select so you will have to select all chest models in order to make new ones. Repeat for each body part.
Well, that’s it for NWN Armory. It comes with a help file that covers these things in more depth than I have.