Placeables with Tilefade

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Recently one of our builders had this idea to make a mountainous forest not with the Mountainous Forest Tileset but with Rosenkranz's Rocky Mountains and Rosenkranz's fir tree placeables.

 

The result was difficult to navigate through because of the lack of tilefade.

 

I managed to get tilefade working for these placeables which looks like this

 

The thing was tricky, but these are my findings in the hopes that more artists will set up their trees with tilefade.

 

• The model type is Character which means that a Tile classification is unnecessary.


• I applied the tilefade property to the nodes I wanted to fade. (This can be done in notepad or regexed in using some sed find/replace magic because all you need is "tilefade 1" in the node)


• The last column in placeables.2da, the one called "Static", should be set to 1


• The model when placed in the area should be set to static.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

Yes, this is possible, and in fact there is a step-by-step tutorial detailing how to make trees that fade here: http://nwvault.ign.c...r.Detail&id=525

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Nice link, Carcerian. But I did already crack this case.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

note that for best gaming experiences with enabled tilefade the trees should be cut in a 400px above the ground level and the trunk covered by black filler mesh

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

@ Shadow: Yes, the above tutorial cuts trees in half with black texture, the same way the standard NWN tilesets do when optional gameplay settings are enabled, while Hen's method makes selected parts of a mdl fade only. (If i understand it correctly)

 

Hen's new method is certainly handy for sure, since it only requires notepad to implement, and depending upon the MDL making tree canopy/leaves fade might be more than enough for visibility purposes or even possibly more natural looking in gameplay as well.  '>

 

(... and keep growing those Happy-Little-Trees...)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I wish I had pictures of some of my old fading tree work, but what my group did was:

 

Clone the entire tree

Set the first tree as 50% opacity or lower, depending on size and color.

Set the second tree as entirely removable on tilefade.

Slightly scale down the transparent tree so that it does not show or flicker through at any point on the removable tree.

 

I should try and duplicate this with some of my newer textures. I bet it would be wicked looking. Although I tend to use some stuff that would make opacity and environment maps screwy now days...so maybe the tradeoff is no longer there....worth playing with to find out.

 

If somebody wants to play with that idea before I do (because I think I am about to join the current custom content challenge), please let me see what you come up with!