Scaling Question and Discussion

Old_Gith

Greetings NWN Community! I have a question/concern about scaling. With many of the placeables I scale to a large size, the object in question becomes invisible until I am nearly right on top of it, and then as soon as I walk away from it, it fades from view. See the illustration below where I have scaled the remains of a dead god. It comes into view when I am right next to it (when it should be visible for many miles), but the moment I turn my back and walk a few steps, it's gone!



and then poof:



Is it my own ineptitude, or is scaling really of limited utility?

Chreelister

Call me old fashioned, but how are we scaling placeables? I thought only creatures were scaleable.

Old_Gith

It's quite simple. Make sure your target placeable has the "Static" box unflagged in its properties. Then select your placeable and hold down the Control Key while using your mouse wheel to increase or decrease size.

Proleric

Non-static placeables fade when the PC is 40m away from the model's origin.

Is it possible that the origin of the dead god model is off-centre, moving even further away when scaled up?

That could be fixed with a text editor.

Otherwise, if it's happening for all placeables, it's a new problem.

Chreelister

Thanks Old_Gith, How long has this been a thing?

Ancarion

Control over non-static object fade-in has been a long desired feature, and maybe it's one that will finally be addressed with the mythical "new renderer." Time will tell.

I share your frustration. 40 meters is not a long distance in relation to very large objects. I've run into the issue most notably with scaled trees, as well as animated skyboxes. An object as large as your dead god will inevitably disappear regardless of where its origin is located, as it is clearly intended to be visible from further than 40 meters. You may end up needing to just make a new placeable model of the desired size.

Old_Gith

Ancarion wrote: »

Control over non-static object fade-in has been a long desired feature, and maybe it's one that will finally be addressed with the mythical "new renderer." Time will tell.

I share your frustration. 40 meters is not a long distance in relation to very large objects. I've run into the issue most notably with scaled trees, as well as animated skyboxes. An object as large as your dead god will inevitably disappear regardless of where its origin is located, as it is clearly intended to be visible from further than 40 meters. You may end up needing to just make a new placeable model of the desired size.

I might be able to pull that off. The model is one of the CODI models, "skull_post". Here is the skull_post.pwk. What would I need to change to affect the size?

#MAXDOOR ASCII
# model: skull_post_pwk 
filedependancy PlaceableObjects01.max
node trimesh skull_post_wg 
  parent skull_post_pwk 
  position -0.155427 0.0 0.0
  orientation  0.0 0.0 0.0  0.0
  wirecolor 0.52549 0.0235294 0.0235294  
  ambient 1.0 1.0 1.0  
  diffuse 1.0 1.0 1.0  
  specular 0.0 0.0 0.0  
  shininess 1.0 
    bitmap PLC_RugDMtlBrk
    verts 9
        -0.840184 -1.1148 0.0
        0.0 -1.45151 0.0
        0.704938 -1.27194 0.0
        -1.02886 -0.309517 0.0
        0.0 0.0 0.0
        1.19 -0.496419 0.0
        -0.768494 0.700196 0.0
        0.0655667 1.1483 0.0
        0.77199 0.893306 0.0
    faces 8
        3 0 4 1 0 0 0 1
        1 4 0 1 0 0 0 1
        4 1 5 1 0 0 0 1
        2 5 1 1 0 0 0 1
        6 3 7 1 0 0 0 1
        4 7 3 1 0 0 0 1
        7 4 8 1 0 0 0 1
        5 8 4 1 0 0 0 1
endnode
node dummy X02_pwk_use01 
  parent skull_post_pwk 
  position 0.00216713 -0.349336 0.0
  orientation  0.0 0.0 0.0  0.0
  wirecolor 0.694118 0.580392 0.101961  
endnode

Ancarion

It's a pretty trivial thing to rescale models with NWMax. I'm not sure that the object in your screenshot is the skull post, though... In any case, I'd be glad to to the scaling for you, if you could give me an idea of how large you want the object to be, and which model you're using.

Old_Gith

Thanks, Ancarion, I'll shoot you a PM.

Old_Gith

But back to the original discussion, is it possible to lengthen, with or without a toggle, the distance of non-static placeables? I suppose the same is true with creatures since I observed the same behavior with them when scaled. Otherwise the scaling feature, which is awesome by the way, is of very little value.

Proleric

Creatures and placeables are different.

The distance at which creatures are visible to players is configurable in ranges.2da. This is a global setting, so if you don't want players to see every creature all the time, choose a moderate range (or make all your outdoor areas foggy).

Placeable visibility appears to be fixed at 40m from the model's origin. If the placeable is in a corner or on an edge, so that players will only ever see it from one side, you can extend that to 80m by moving the model's origin 40m towards the centre of the area.