Author Topic: Monthly CC Challenge  (Read 14491 times)

Legacy_Calvinthesneak

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« Reply #45 on: August 07, 2010, 11:33:16 pm »


               Eradrain that's what I've pretty much done for the past 4 years, is rearrange and update haks for little things like that.  Fixing up the 2da's and models so that things can be used in existing frameworks.  I have renumbered dephant's weaponry, I've used parts of Feanor's (with permission).  There are certain weapons that are lacking, but overall I think weaponry is pretty well represented in NWN, it just takes some work to put it to use.



Dephants is quite well sorted, if polycounts are a bit high, and textures are DDS.



@Estelendis:  Quite often what I do is use a different dissimilar model for the other gender in the case of something like Aribeths armour, since that fable armour is male only I'll probably put it counter to Aribeths in a hak.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Estelindis

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« Reply #46 on: August 08, 2010, 12:32:15 am »


               

Eradrain wrote...
Estelendis, would making gender-appropriate versions of presently gender-exclusive armor models involve very much creation?  I'm very much a modeling novice, but it seems to me that it'd mostly be resizing and tweaking existing content, as opposed to making something new.

Well, that's a fair question, but if we did choose this theme for one of our challenges it would have to be making new items rather than resizing and tweaking.  I mean, I didn't choose the Aribeth example randomly - you'd hardly want male armour that emphasises the bosom like hers does!  However, as Calvin points out, the job could be done with other conversions, so it might not be the best idea.

Now, weapons are a good idea.  Definitely.  Overriding or not?
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Estelindis, 07 août 2010 - 11:33 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_Eradrain

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« Reply #47 on: August 08, 2010, 01:51:20 am »


               @Calvin, let's be honest - I think the average NWN player lacks the technical knowledge and/or inclination to merge 2das and all that sort of stuff.  I'm not trying to rag on said average NWN player by saying so, it just seems to be the reality based on my experience.  If more people did that sort of thing, then the CEP wouldn't necessarily be as popular, right?

The problem as I see it is, exactly as you said, that "it takes some work to put it to use."

I think also that while weapons are quantitatively well-represented, the quality isn't anywhere near where, say, tilesets are.  When you compare something like Six's tilesets, which look better than NWN2 resources, to for example the weapons in the CEP, you can immediately discern that there's a disproportionate amount of progress being made in the former category compared to the latter.

I think weapons are a pretty cool theme for a contest like this because it allows a great deal of freedom while keeping said theme focused and beginner-friendly.

@Estelendis:  I'd suggest non-overriding/replacing, simply because it creates more options for the player (Some people are pretty married to those default NWN weapon appearances, even if I'll never understand why).  Whoever ends up making the .2das for the final project could pad said 2da to allow for CEP/ProjectQ/Feanor/Depheant compatibility too, if they wanted.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Eradrain, 08 août 2010 - 12:58 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_Jez_fr

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« Reply #48 on: August 08, 2010, 07:03:42 pm »


               Adding Este and Eradrain last idea to the list

So far we have:
- Field war hospital, after the battle (need a better description), expanded Builders_anthony original idea
- Magi scrying devices, and wondrous miscellaneous items of power, expanded Styxx42 idea posted on NWNVault
- Airships, from Eradrain
- Missing gender armor parts addition, idea by Estelindis
- New "state of the art" weapons (though here *I* am not going through hak compatibility headache, thank you =), idea by Eradrain

I think I'll put up a poll in the beguinning of this month last week if we don't achieve a clear choice by then, or if there's last minute ideas. Users and Challengers, speak up your mind please =)
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Jez_fr, 08 août 2010 - 06:04 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_the_isolator

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« Reply #49 on: August 08, 2010, 08:17:43 pm »


               How about some items of clothing. With all the fantastic tileset work recently all the characters are starting to look a little drab in comparison. Something I always thought was needed are a wider range of normal clothes, for commoners and such. I'm thinking simple tunics, shirts, etc. Nothing quite as grand as the usual armour additions. Perfect for creating rural villagers and townsfolk.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Olias Stormcrow

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« Reply #50 on: August 08, 2010, 09:17:10 pm »


               Another suggestion here. Since September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day, how about some new buccaneer related custom content booty to celebrate?
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Estelindis

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« Reply #51 on: August 09, 2010, 09:42:48 pm »


               

the_isolator wrote...
Something I always thought was needed are a wider range of normal clothes, for commoners and such. I'm thinking simple tunics, shirts, etc. Nothing quite as grand as the usual armour additions. Perfect for creating rural villagers and townsfolk.

Yes!  I completely agree with this.  The game has always needed more ordinary commoner clothes (as opposed to fancy outfits coloured beige and brown to make them look common).
               
               

               
            

Legacy__six

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« Reply #52 on: August 09, 2010, 10:51:57 pm »


               

the_isolator wrote...

Something I always thought was needed are a wider range of normal clothes, for commoners and such. I'm thinking simple tunics, shirts, etc. Nothing quite as grand as the usual armour additions. Perfect for creating rural villagers and townsfolk.

Normally I'd suggest that might be a bit demanding for first timers what with the slightly convoluted PLT system and all, but looking at the great entries for the current challenge so far I'm inclined to say go for it.

Although if we did try that, would it be a requirement to have all race and gender combinations? They're next to useless for most folks if not, but it's a lot more work to get everything working right (particularly with skinmeshes) that way.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par _six, 09 août 2010 - 09:53 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_Estelindis

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« Reply #53 on: August 09, 2010, 11:07:13 pm »


               Re. PLTs, I would be happy to give a tutorial to those who need/want it.



As for skinmeshes, they're only really needed for robes, right?  If we're doing robes, I'd be the one needing a tutorial!  Otherwise, all you really need is to make the item for male and female human and then run NWN Armory on it (then make whatever little tweaks are usually necessary on a race-to-race basis).
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Calvinthesneak

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« Reply #54 on: August 09, 2010, 11:14:59 pm »


               

_six wrote...

the_isolator wrote...

Something I always thought was needed are a wider range of normal clothes, for commoners and such. I'm thinking simple tunics, shirts, etc. Nothing quite as grand as the usual armour additions. Perfect for creating rural villagers and townsfolk.

Normally I'd suggest that might be a bit demanding for first timers what with the slightly convoluted PLT system and all, but looking at the great entries for the current challenge so far I'm inclined to say go for it.

Although if we did try that, would it be a requirement to have all race and gender combinations? They're next to useless for most folks if not, but it's a lot more work to get everything working right (particularly with skinmeshes) that way.



Conversion for all races is a breeze with NWNArmoury if there is a male and female version of the clothing part.  I seem to remember some options in NWMax to do conversion from one gender to another but no idea how that works and probably would need some hand tweaking to make them look good.  I'll happily handle the conversions, if I can do heads for Estelendis, clothing parts should be much easier, the scale factors are pretty well known and documented by Elglio..

The only difficult proposition is robes, and I don't *think* that was the intent of that idea.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Calvinthesneak

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« Reply #55 on: August 09, 2010, 11:18:24 pm »


               

Estelindis wrote...

the_isolator wrote...
Something I always thought was needed are a wider range of normal clothes, for commoners and such. I'm thinking simple tunics, shirts, etc. Nothing quite as grand as the usual armour additions. Perfect for creating rural villagers and townsfolk.

Yes!  I completely agree with this.  The game has always needed more ordinary commoner clothes (as opposed to fancy outfits coloured beige and brown to make them look common).



I'd suggest downloading Feanor's midievil armour Est.  It has some interesting commoner type clothes in there.
               
               

               
            

Legacy__six

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« Reply #56 on: August 09, 2010, 11:23:30 pm »


               

Calvinthesneak wrote...

Conversion for all races is a breeze with NWNArmoury if there is a male and female version of the clothing part.  I seem to remember some options in NWMax to do conversion from one gender to another but no idea how that works and probably would need some hand tweaking to make them look good...

...The only difficult proposition is robes, and I don't *think* that was the intent of that idea.

Robes can be processed from within max, although painfully as scene files rather than models (and thus need manual naming/exportification). They still need a lot of tweaking usually, but for tunics etc - or in fact any "primary" clothing item at all in my opinion - "robes" are the optimum implementation since they move far more naturally.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_B_Harrison

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« Reply #57 on: August 09, 2010, 11:28:45 pm »


               No objections from me on the clothing idea. Maybe I'm biased (since I've worked with them quite a bit), but I can't see plt textures being much of a hurdle to anyone who can already model and texture.

If one of us is going to run the entries through the Armoury for the Vault, that takes care of race issues; we can all just model human male and human female pieces. I refuse to model anything for pheno 2 though (ugh); don't recall if the transforms for those are known?

Would we all be creating a full outfit, or only individual/specific pieces? Given the mix-and-match part system, either approach is probably still useful.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Estelindis

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« Reply #58 on: August 09, 2010, 11:31:28 pm »


               I don't know what the transforms are for pheno 2.  When I'm making pheno 2 heads, I just scale X by an extra 20-25%, but that wouldn't really work for clothes.  

And thanks for the reference to Feanor's armoury, Calvin.  I had it in my head that the clothing was mostly, well, armour.  Must give it another look!
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Estelindis, 09 août 2010 - 10:32 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_Calvinthesneak

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« Reply #59 on: August 09, 2010, 11:58:17 pm »


               

_six wrote...

Calvinthesneak wrote...

Conversion for all races is a breeze with NWNArmoury if there is a male and female version of the clothing part.  I seem to remember some options in NWMax to do conversion from one gender to another but no idea how that works and probably would need some hand tweaking to make them look good...

...The only difficult proposition is robes, and I don't *think* that was the intent of that idea.

Robes can be processed from within max, although painfully as scene files rather than models (and thus need manual naming/exportification). They still need a lot of tweaking usually, but for tunics etc - or in fact any "primary" clothing item at all in my opinion - "robes" are the optimum implementation since they move far more naturally.



Hmmm I'm pretty sure that I've dumped robes fairly efficiently if they use a standard supermodel Six.

Go to the Robes/Armour/Skin rollout and use the armour maker, there should be an ini for robes in there.  You load up your human robe and then run the maker, and I think it does all the work for you.  Use the sc_manakin_robes.ini.  It doesn't handle custom animations for different races, so things like a_fa_skirt you can either cheat and use a standard supermodel which makes the robe not as pretty or you can fiddle with animationscale in the model.

So it's not completely manual....

EDIT:  Six is right that you need a max file to work from, though with mass import it's not that hard.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 09 août 2010 - 11:10 .