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An Adventure module

NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
edited July 2012 in General Modding
with all the experienced and veteran guys and gals together in here has anyone a "real" project planed or is anyone just doing NPC interactions or working/improving on the tools etc. (which is realy appreciated also)?
What I mean is an actuall adventure project with new areas and new quests. The smaller the scope as a start the better I think so if anyone needs an area and prop designer... here I am;)

I should add that I´m not going to learn the specific tool for dialogues or quests. I´m just doing art assets and provide them to the quest designer then!
Post edited by NWN_babaYaga on
lordkimlansounet

Comments

  • WispWisp Member Posts: 1,102
    In case you do not get any bites here, you can try volunteering your services here.
  • lansounetlansounet Member Posts: 1,182
    You're not going to learn how to use notepad? :p
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    Thanks for the link. And it´s not that i dont have any work to do, but still I would like to work in a Team on something specific as doing it like a one man show again....

    @Iansounet :D
  • DazzuDazzu Member Posts: 950
    I believe I have a thread on this already... here it is http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/377/infinity-engine-module-adventure-maker
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    I'm slowly slogging away at my Athkatlan Expansion mod on CoM. Sadly, it hasn't progressed very far because I'm never happy with my models. Perhaps we could shoot ideas off from each other?

    http://www.baldursgatemods.com/forums/index.php?board=124.0
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    @SFisch have you modeled and textured the area with the large pool in 3dsmax?. Some of the textures looks almost exact (but better uv aligned) like the original ones. To capture the BG style is not easy, some models seems highpoly and realy poorly textured and some are blocky etc you know. Take columns as an example, I´m sure they used a cylinder with 50 sides and then again a cavewall with 3 sections up only...There is no constant quality realy. But I like your stuff and maybe we could do some stuff together. My texture and model library is very large and handmade.

    NOTE: some textures that are used in TOB are reused in NWN 100%. ttr01_grass and ttr01_dirt03 or so;)
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    Yeah, that is the second iteration of the district. I have scrapped all of it, because everything was terribly out of scale. I haven't posted any screens of my newest, but I think from a modeling standpoint, it's looking a lot better. I am using 3dsmax, yeah, and am doing textures myself. I don't have a texture library and have pretty much just been going off from what I can find on CGTextures. I would say texturing is the most difficult part for me.

    I've noticed with a lot of the Athkatla cylinders and domes, they're pretty rough and you can count the polys.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    man, i never imagined how much trouble I have modeling for BG. Not the geometry is the problem but the whole scenesetup. I already thought my exterior setup is good enough to just import my premade stuff and render it away... Either the scale is out of place and my nice textures then just sucks or the FOV for my orthographic cam is so wrong I can actually see the interstice of my bricks...

    Realy, In 10 years of modding for BG have no one ever thought about releasing a setup for others???

    As a counter performance dont hesitate to ask for something appropriate;) I´m realy p****** wasting 3 or 4 hours alone messing with units and cam properties.

    If you want a quick example of my texture work (still not finished) , which I´m willing to share:
    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PyFxoM6B51I/UBbtJmsX0UI/AAAAAAAAADM/Kj7JZYaGOWU/s1600/mb0_fieldst02b.jpg

    not just this one i mean, i have a whole texturestreet for decent medieval building design
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    I'm going to upload my setup somewhere. Hopefully someone else can get use out of it. I'll post a link soon. I'm also using 2012 though, so hopefully that's not too new for the few modelers that I've found.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    uh 2012... no then sorry mate. Could you instead write down a quick list of properties you are using? you cant imagine how helpfull that is for me. Or can you export a door mesh to OBJ in scale maybe for me and then tell me if the size should be around 2m or so?
  • jcomptonjcompton Member Posts: 157
    @SFisch: Export a basic scene in FBX format, which everything under the sun can import.
    Cuv
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    I'm writing up a full tutorial and will include a download link! Thanks!
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    edited July 2012
    This is a small personal site I'm working on. I've uploaded both a tutorial and a .fbx export (which should be compatible with Max 2006 and later).

    http://bgrealm.webs.com/3d.html

    EDIT: @NWN_babaYaga @Nimz
    salomonkane
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    @SFisch thank you so much. Will check it out now with a tasty cup of coffee:)

    Just imported it and thanks again!!!
    Post edited by NWN_babaYaga on
    salomonkane
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    edited July 2012
    Glad I could help! If you have anything to contribute towards a tutorial, I think we need to make more resources for budding 3d modelers. I hope to get some more content on my 3D page and then distribute forum versions to the different communities.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited July 2012
    At the moment I try to make myself familiar with the whole process of area creation. So not the modeling process alone. To me lots of stuff seems to be painted too. The whole terrain blending I mean and other little details. How else could they have done it back in the time around 2000. In Planescape its extreme, it´s realy a mixture of paint and modelwork and so for the IWD games.

    For now I try to focus on interiors for a while, we have lots of potential wilderness areas in BG1 from where we can enter a cavesystem, dungeon etc. And thats were the most part of adventuring takes place anyway. A house, small ruin or caveentrance isnt to difficult to model and once rendered, we can layer it over a part of an existing area BMP where we think it fits. So once I´m happy with a properly lit interior section I can share the FBX file as well.

    And btw. the house is realy small when I render it with your cam settings at 5120 x 3840. But it´s a great start and realy helped me to also not give up so quickly;)

    For a potential candidate of a cool adventure area, the GNOLL STRONGHOLD idea comes to mind. We have everything just not the interior part...

    Something about a BG2 area:
    There is this dead forest area with big trees and do they used animBAMS for the branches so the NPC´s are layered behind them? you know what I mean, since it´s 2d how they make something that is in front of the cam and the CHARNAME behind.
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    edited July 2012
    The house is intentionally small, it's only a 15 foot by 20 foot house. That's the size of my bedroom! :P And yeah, they used Bams in the shadow forest area, rather than making 1,000,100,342,454 wallgroups. It's actually kind of clever, that is if you can line them up well enough. It's pretty tough to line up stuff like that in DLTCEP.

    EDIT: The BAMs for that forest are totally static, I'm quite sure. They're strictly for covering animations instead of doing wallgroups. Could be a useful tool if you have an area that has an impossible number of wallgroups.

    I think there might be some painting, but also some of the stuff could just be clever materials? The top/bottom shader goes a long way for terrain (and I swear, that's how they did it for IWD), and you can get away with quite a bit with vertex painting.
  • DazzuDazzu Member Posts: 950
    Why hasn't this thread been merged with the thread I linked. If I'm reading this right, they are about similar things, if not the same.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited August 2012
    It´s a bit more specific and contains some valuable info from SFisch about 3dsmax so I would realy like to see this thread stays independant. Also when I can show some interior progress I post it in here as well the files for others.
    SFisch
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited August 2012
    So I think I got the scale for interior doors and walls correct. Here is a sample overlay I did with some original area. I rendered my stuff with the exact cam setup from SFisch and just used photoshop to see if it matches...

    image

    Any thoughts?

    And once I made some more stufffor you, like lighting examples for windows, torches and wall prefabs etc I´ll make it available and we could host it on your site too @SFisch?
    Post edited by NWN_babaYaga on
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    Looks like you got the scale down, definitely! Did you use materials or a UVW Unwrap for those? They look like very nice arches.

    I'd be happy to host your stuff for you, too. I'm in the middle of getting a domain name for it, so it shouldn't be more than a few days.
  • NWN_babaYagaNWN_babaYaga Member Posts: 732
    edited August 2012
    I used uvw tiling for the wall and unwraped the arch in a very archaic way;) I started with just one brick and builded the arch with clone and moved the pixels onto another brick within the texture. But thats not the way I´m always modeling, it´s a very quick and simple way for testing.

    And I´m on weekend already. SOoooooo I should have a good mix of usefull content in one scene gathered by saturday:)

    I rediscover an old way modeling again I ended around 2005... with nwn and it´s a good feeling:D
  • SFischSFisch Member Posts: 59
    edited August 2012
    Okay, that was quicker than I thought. The new site is at:

    http://www.bhaalspawn.org

    and the 3D section is:

    http://www.bhaalspawn.org/3d.html
    NWN_babaYagaIchigoRXC
  • IchigoRXCIchigoRXC Member Posts: 1,001
    @SFisch Love the website so far.
    I want to get back into modelling and I may give scene creation a go, once I have finished all the other things I have on my plate at the moment. Have a Dungeons of Dredmor mod I need to finish when I get back off holiday.
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