While I suspect that many people have come across this over the years, I decided to post this because I haven't actually seen any discussion of what I am about to describe. While working (extemely slowly and often sidetracked) on service pack 2 for Map Mats I found something that I have come across before and had forgotten about (it's my age already (
)). While NwN can handle translucent textures there appears to be a caveat to it. If the translucent (part) texture is contiguous (ie one lump) then not only can NwN handle it, it can deal with the texture being textured (look at my frozen puddles for an example) and coloured.
However if the translucent thing is made up of small discreet dots (ie smoke), I have found that, that is when NwN (both ingame and in the toolset) throws its (metaphoracal) hands in the air and says sod off. What happens appears to be based on the density of the particals. If they are sparse NwN will simply not display them. On the other hand if they are dense then NwN simply displays the area that should have a smoky/misty look as a solid colour. This only happens if the particles are translucent (or possibly transparent I haven't experimented that much). When they are a solid colour all seems well.
Anyone else come across this and any idea why it happens? Is it just the age of the engine?
TR
