Nice "after" shots, please post some "before" screenshots so we can see the difference. Besides everything looking shinier what are we supposed to notice?
@Calgacus good idea. It helps to read the descriptions of the posted images, for an idea of what changes you're seeing, too.
Those two are from 7 images posted at the Vault website, linked in Julius' top post. All images have descriptions if you hover over them, that tell what is being showcased.
-JFK
edited to note that all the images show changes only to shaders/material maps. No changes to the shapes of models. So the plaster one shows how the look of depth between the beams and the plaster can be achieved, without increasing the polycount or changing the actual geometry of the model. Pretty awesome!
I remember seeing these on the vault, they seem to have a lot of information there and are trying to standardize some material settings I think. People should definitely give the vault page and the google doc a look through.
This looks excellent! Are there demos of non-torchlight available? I'd love to see this with some colorful VFX. Also, maybe seeing a short video to show how the light sparkles would be groovy!
Not to just say it just to be different but I wouldn't like ceilings in interiors unless you can disable them. I never play in first person view, ever.
@SneakWalker That was a technical demo showing off what a talented modder can do with newly opened options in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. It showed a work-in-progress of options Beamdog was exploring in March, 2018.
No, I don't think it's a walkback. It was a tech demo from the start but some people jumped the gun and enthusiastically told everyone they could find that this was Beamdog making new assets. Do remember the new rendering wasn't even finished and they kept asking for a technical artist to apply for quite a while. Actually replacing all the thousands or maybe tens of thousands of assets was a separate issue they were considering from Trello but the tech demo wasn't at all indicative of progress in that regard.
As for modding some people have made some use of it already but I don't think there's a fully fleshed out official documentation yet.
I'm really excited about these enhancements after looking at the above screenshots.
However, I think in terms of hooking in new users and keeping them playing the game desperately needs improvements to character models / faces / textures.
The environment looks better than the characters in these screenshots. In general, you want the reverse to be true (particularly for a roleplaying game).
I'm really excited about these enhancements after looking at the above screenshots.
However, I think in terms of hooking in new users and keeping them playing the game desperately needs improvements to character models / faces / textures.
Or bringing back old ones. I played a bit after release but the dated look kept me from getting hooked again. After seeing the enhanced Hall of Justice I'm excited to see the entire game looking like that.
Still checking forums every day waiting for the "real" enhanced edition to begin, whether its a glorious expansion or just evolved assets for Aurora toolset.
After playing the demo with the new shaders and textures (and a serious FPS drop), I have come to the painful realization that I need a new video card. It's likely I need to upgrade my entire system. Currently running Windows 7 64-bit on a Dell Inspiron 660 with an Intel i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30 GHz (4 CPUs), 6GB RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD 5450 as my dedicated video card. (Begins singing Hank Williams Jr.) "Have pity on a dinosaur." Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to all.
After playing the demo with the new shaders and textures (and a serious FPS drop)...
Really hoping this is due to your "dated" specs... I thought this was supposed to improve performance? EE already has a huge FPS drop since 1.69/diamond when there's lots of spells and enemies on screen in PWs. And i have a nice video card, can handle much newer games than nwn...
It's not quite so simple as getting good performance for using newer graphics techniques. NWN2 used newer graphics techniques and it was a huge resource hog. So getting things right and properly optimized will probably also be a part of the process.
Depending on what you mean technically you can increase the view distance but there were some issues the last time I checked i.e. viewable at distance but fading from view when interacting at distance. There's a Trello discussion for that too I think, the area rendering and camera customization thread, if I remember correctly.
Will one have to update to using the new renderer, or can one remain using the old one, while still staying with the most up to date version of the game? Having tried the tech demo out, I dislike how it looks, and much rather the trimmed down and classical appearance of neverwinter nights. If it will become mandatory to update, will it be possible to disable, or not use most of the new features, to limit its impact on the game?
Forgive me for being dense and asking what to some will be blindingly obvious. I have looked inside some of your custom shaders and quite simply if you wrote it in Chinese I'd have more chance of understanding them. So here is my question.
I have found a fully public domain resource for textures. These textures all have specular, normal and diffuse parts. The thing is that some of them also have height and glow information. But they are not separate image files. Instead the unused alpha channels of the normal and specular maps are utilised. The normal has the greyscale height and the specular has the glow. I believe this is done this way so that these textures are unity compliant.
The question is can the new engine/shaders/material/whatever handle these correctly? If not these really good looking textures will go to waste or is there some way of automatically extracting this information and converting them for the new scheme (Bimp?).
One other thing. Are emissive maps the same as glow maps?
Some time ago I was disappointed with the visual of the enhanced edition I really wasnt hoping changes and I am surprised with these pictures they look amazing it is like a really strong visual change it is now visually a truly Enhanced Edition of Neverwinter Nights!!!!
Forgive me for being dense and asking what to some will be blindingly obvious. I have looked inside some of your custom shaders and quite simply if you wrote it in Chinese I'd have more chance of understanding them. So here is my question.
I have found a fully public domain resource for textures. These textures all have specular, normal and diffuse parts. The thing is that some of them also have height and glow information. But they are not separate image files. Instead the unused alpha channels of the normal and specular maps are utilised. The normal has the greyscale height and the specular has the glow. I believe this is done this way so that these textures are unity compliant.
The question is can the new engine/shaders/material/whatever handle these correctly? If not these really good looking textures will go to waste or is there some way of automatically extracting this information and converting them for the new scheme (Bimp?).
One other thing. Are emissive maps the same as glow maps?
Thanks in advance.
TR
Hey there!
To answer your last question first, emissive maps are (in this context) indeed the same as glow/illumination maps. Beware however that the variant in the current tech demo only use 1 channel ("grayscale"), so if your emmisive map is coloured, make sure to grayscale/desaturate it first.
The same may be the case for the specular maps you've found - that is, they need to be converted to 1 grayscale if they are coloured.
If you have textures that have height and/or glow embedded in other channels, you can use Gimp's Decompose command to extract the channel into a separate image. There's a guide available here: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/plug-in-decompose-registered.html
I hope this answers your questions, otherwise let me know
Comments
Those two are from 7 images posted at the Vault website, linked in Julius' top post. All images have descriptions if you hover over them, that tell what is being showcased.
-JFK
edited to note that all the images show changes only to shaders/material maps. No changes to the shapes of models. So the plaster one shows how the look of depth between the beams and the plaster can be achieved, without increasing the polycount or changing the actual geometry of the model. Pretty awesome!
Here's a couple corresponding shots without the shaders and textures.
-JFK
Unbelievable how a 2d potatoemash texture can look so great.
Keep up that great work guys! And don't rush ... done when it's truely done.
Will there be ceilings?
I want it. ?
The info from the OP is much newer.
As for modding some people have made some use of it already but I don't think there's a fully fleshed out official documentation yet.
However, I think in terms of hooking in new users and keeping them playing the game desperately needs improvements to character models / faces / textures.
The environment looks better than the characters in these screenshots. In general, you want the reverse to be true (particularly for a roleplaying game).
Or bringing back old ones. I played a bit after release but the dated look kept me from getting hooked again. After seeing the enhanced Hall of Justice I'm excited to see the entire game looking like that.
Still checking forums every day waiting for the "real" enhanced edition to begin, whether its a glorious expansion or just evolved assets for Aurora toolset.
Really hoping this is due to your "dated" specs... I thought this was supposed to improve performance? EE already has a huge FPS drop since 1.69/diamond when there's lots of spells and enemies on screen in PWs. And i have a nice video card, can handle much newer games than nwn...
I have found a fully public domain resource for textures. These textures all have specular, normal and diffuse parts. The thing is that some of them also have height and glow information. But they are not separate image files. Instead the unused alpha channels of the normal and specular maps are utilised. The normal has the greyscale height and the specular has the glow. I believe this is done this way so that these textures are unity compliant.
The question is can the new engine/shaders/material/whatever handle these correctly? If not these really good looking textures will go to waste or is there some way of automatically extracting this information and converting them for the new scheme (Bimp?).
One other thing. Are emissive maps the same as glow maps?
Thanks in advance.
TR
Hey there!
To answer your last question first, emissive maps are (in this context) indeed the same as glow/illumination maps. Beware however that the variant in the current tech demo only use 1 channel ("grayscale"), so if your emmisive map is coloured, make sure to grayscale/desaturate it first.
The same may be the case for the specular maps you've found - that is, they need to be converted to 1 grayscale if they are coloured.
If you have textures that have height and/or glow embedded in other channels, you can use Gimp's Decompose command to extract the channel into a separate image. There's a guide available here: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/plug-in-decompose-registered.html
I hope this answers your questions, otherwise let me know