Making Animated Textures for NWN 1, a 5-part tutorial series on YouTube

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I just finished uploading a 5-part tutorial series to YouTube which should help beginners learn how to create and import animated textures into Neverwinter Nights.  Some experience with GIMP is required but every step in the process is shown and explained (sometimes multiple times).

I'm not an expert but I do the best I can.  I try to at least alert the viewer when I might not be sure what the hell I'm talking about.  '>

To make things a little less boring, the workflow involves the extra step of importing animated spell effect .GIFs from Planescape: Torment using the Infinity Explorer.  Any other animated .GIFs can be substituted and will work fine.

All sprite sheets created are targeted to both editable meshes and emitters with introductions and explanations of the TXI files and emitter settings rollout, respectively, throughout the tutorial.

All videos are recorded in HD and are best viewed in 720p with Captions on.  Altogether the tutorials run about one hour in total.

Part 1: Overview of Tools required & Workflow.  Also includes an explanation of the steps and why they are necessary.

Part 2: Actually creating a NWN-usable sprite sheet from an animated .GIF, using a spell animation from Planescape Torment.  This is a complete end-to-end execution of the workflow chart.

Part 3: Applying our NWN-ready sprite sheet to both an Editable Mesh plane and an Emitter, going over TXI for animated texture and emitter settings rollout.  Includes troubleshooting for both TGA/TXI and Emitters, including unintended consequences of having a mesh using a TGA (and TXI) which is shared by a cycling emitter.

Part 4:(OPTIONAL) Running through the workflow twice, showing how
quickly animations can be converted once you have done it a few times.

Part 5: What we've learned so far:  Making animations from scratch, using other animated .GIF sources and capturing still frames from videos.  A quick evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of Emitters vs TGA/TXI's and finally, showing off the raw power of TGA/TXI in regards to the fact that almost every element in NWN is just a texture mapped on a 3D model- and so fair game for TGA/TXI replacement!

List of materials used(aside from GMax, NWMax(+)):
Infinity Explorer
GIMP 2.6.11
GIMP scripts
GlueIT 1.06
Animation Tutorial Sample Files
Above archive includes:
workflownew.jpg (Workflow graphic referred to during the demo)
Sample GIFs (in folder)
devil.tga, devil2.tga, devil.txi & plc_a01.mdl (to be copied in override folder)
Demo - Animation Tutorial (OTR).mod (to be copied in your modules folder)
...and a bunch of TGA/TXI pairs showing the power of TGA/TXI in NWN (see Part 5).  Just remove the X from the TGA and its TXI and load module to see effect.

Optional:
Image Grabber II (for extracting frames from videos)

Please feel free to drop me notes here with suggestions or error corrections and I will try to get the videos annotated accordingly (if possible) as soon as possible.

Enjoy!

OTR
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 30 mars 2011 - 01:18 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rubies]

               This is something I took an interest to very recently and have been experimenting with, and your videos are absolutely perfect for anyone looking to pick it up too (and I learned a bit too)! Eagerly anticipating anyone elses' results with fiddling with this stuff.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rubies, 30 mars 2011 - 03:03 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               Great job, nothing new for me but it always great for more tutorials to everyone to create stuff. Sorry I have not been around. I been scripting, scripting and scripting uggg. I need to get back to my CC roots there so many cool things you all doing. I just want to say great job everyone. There is just endless things you can do with NWN, we just scratched the surface. Add it to tutorials topic I made and trying to keep alive.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Nice, easy to understand.  Thanks for putting these together.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Frith5]

               This is an aspect of NWN I never played around with, and your tutorial is thorough and extremely well done! Thank you for the time and effort that went into it, and the passing along of knowledge to the rest of us. Your other tutorial on spline animation is also wonderful. I hope you continue to make these tutorials!

JFK
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Killmonger]

               Once again, another excellent addition for the custom content community...
Thankyou very much OTR for making these available !
'>

K
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Good to see people are getting use out of it!  And if anyone wants a tutorial done for something or thinks newbies would find it useful, feel free to let me know and if I know enough I'll try to do tutorials for those, as well.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 01 avril 2011 - 12:02 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Dark Defiance]

               Sticky +1. Great work OTR!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Fred]

               TXIs are awesome, but I could never find any real info on them, back when I started using them. Great to see a tutorial about this sort of thing!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tiberius_Morguhn]

               Thank you very much.  This will make creation of animated signs much easier..........
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Cool, post about 'em or PM me some screenshots when they're done.  Sounds like a great idea.