My First Tileset

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               Okay, well...uh...I got it to work. The problem? It's about the dumbest thing imaginable. You see, [group28] should've been [GROUP28]. I noticed it right as I was going over everything for your email, Bannor. I didn't expect it to do much, but I figured I'd change it to see what it'd do, and bam...depot ingame. Lower case letters are now the bane of my freaking existance.

Thanks for the help, man. And extended thanks to everyone else who've already given me a great deal of help beforehand.

edit: Here you go. In editor shot.

It has some issues. I've got some Z fighting on the window, and the shadows are weird. Beyond that, it's ingame. I hope I'm now on the gentler slopes of the learning curve here.

And I wonder if you're all as sick of looking at this thing as I am. I'm ready to move on and more stuff. '>

My next group set, once I'm done with a goodly amount of tweaking and terrain tiles, is gonna be a bit higher poly, now that I know what I can get away with.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Renzatic, 25 décembre 2010 - 08:01 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               It looks great, but now that I see it in-game....Don't you think it's a bit too monochromatic?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               Yeahhh...it kinda is. I was wanting to go for a dead of winter look, but it turned out about flat out depressing inside of NWN. Though giving me the benefit of the doubt, everything does look a little more colorful when you're in near fullbright in an editor. I can color it back up pretty easily, though.

And click on the link up above for the ingame shot. I figured it's more true to form than the an editor shot.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Renzatic, 25 décembre 2010 - 09:12 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               Yeah, I think the coloring is a bit too little in-game as well.

Obviously just my opinion of course, but I think giving it a little color, even very desaturated, washed-out color, would be good, and then rely on the in-game lighting effects to achieve some of the wintry dead-ness.  The model and the overall texturing is fantastic, but right now it looks less like a dreary winter day and more like something out of a black-and-white movie.  Which is awesome, come to think of it, but maybe not thematically/artistically compatible with anything else on the vault.

(Sidenote:  An entire detective-noir module, with everything textured in greyscale only.  Great idea, or best idea?)
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Eradrain, 26 décembre 2010 - 10:39 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               Well I've been told quite frequently that my winter textures are pretty good compared to most, and my main trick is to make everything that isn't snow very dark in comparison - it helps to bring out the brightness of the snow/ice better. It's generally a bad idea to use very bright values on a texture, even a snow one, as it makes them look very flat, so it's nice to be able to create the illusion instead.

Though I think you should make sure you have Ambient and Diffuse settings set to white on your model objects in Max, and also have Override Matte Values checked on them all. I may be imagining it, but your models look too dark in the screenshots even considering the overall lighting in the scene.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 26 décembre 2010 - 12:28 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               

Eradrain wrote...

Yeah, I think the coloring is a bit too little in-game as well.

Obviously just my opinion of course, but I think giving it a little color, even very desaturated, washed-out color, would be good, and then rely on the in-game lighting effects to achieve some of the wintry dead-ness.  The model and the overall texturing is fantastic, but right now it looks less like a dreary winter day and more like something out of a black-and-white movie.  Which is awesome, come to think of it, but maybe not thematically/artistically compatible with anything else on the vault.

I was thinking about saying it was a black and white mod, and you'd all have to deal with it...but I'm trying to make a good first impression here. '>

(Sidenote:  An entire detective-noir module, with everything textured in greyscale only.  Great idea, or best idea?)

It's a damn good idea, actually. The only problem is it'd clash with the NWN UI. Might be jarring have a B&W NPC suddenly surrounded by a harsh red halo as soon as you move the cursor over them.

Still, it'd be a fun thing to experiment with.

_six wrote...

Well I've been told quite frequently that my winter textures are pretty good compared to most, and my main trick is to make everything that isn't snow very dark in comparison - it helps to bring out the brightness of the snow/ice better. It's generally a bad idea to use very bright values on a texture, even a snow one, as it makes them look very flat, so it's nice to be able to create the illusion instead.

Well, the snow isn't the major focus of the tileset, it's just there for flavor. The yellowing grass is what you're gonna see most of, so it has to be kind of in balance with the snow. As long as one doesn't overpower the other, I think it'll work out pretty decent. I gotta get my grass models ingame first before I can say if that'll work or not, though. 

I do have to do a snow set with the same tiles for my story idea. And when I do, I'll follow your advice.

Though I think you should make sure you have Ambient and Diffuse settings set to white on your model objects in Max, and also have Override Matte Values checked on them all. I may be imagining it, but your models look too dark in the screenshots even considering the overall lighting in the scene.

...and that was the problem. I've already redone the textures, but even the brighter, more contrasty textures came out only slightly lighter than the original run. After overriding the ambient in the trimesh with a slight, low level grey, everything came out perfect. Just a little bit of light made a huge amount of difference.

Here

As far as the textures go, I added a little bit more red and yellow into the mix, and made the various pieces in the scene stand out from each other a little more. The only thing I didn't touch was the roof, but...you know...there isn't much you can do with white snow on grey slate without it looking weird.

And I couldn't take a shot ingame because, after redoing my UVs and importing the new stuff into Max (each ground tile has it's own unique 1024x texture again), I ran into the same error exporting the walkmesh as I did before. Since I was impatient on wanting to see it ingame, I did a geometry only export just to check it out in the editor.

Now I gotta figure out why the shadows are messing up on the porch. I thought it might be my supports along the roof, so I gave them their own trimesh modifiers and turned the shadows off. Turns out they weren't the problem. : \\
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               I think that's looking a lot more solid, actually. The ground texture and the door make it pop.  What happened to the trees, though?

Also, any notion what your next group/terrain is gonna be?

Renzatic wrote...


It's a damn good idea, actually. The only problem is it'd clash with
the NWN UI. Might be jarring have a B&W NPC suddenly surrounded by a
harsh red halo as soon as you move the cursor over them.

The UI is moddable, actually.  Though admittedly, I'm pretty sure the green-friendly/blue-self/red-hostile mouseover auras are hardcoded into the game, but then again, now that NWN is no longer being patched, we've got some very talented coders working on the base code of the engine itself, so that shouldn't be an impediment if someone wanted it enough.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Eradrain, 26 décembre 2010 - 11:28 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               

Eradrain wrote...

I think that's looking a lot more solid, actually. The ground texture and the door make it pop.  What happened to the trees, though?

Also, any notion what your next group/terrain is gonna be?

Getting the trees and grass ingame is the next big project, now that I've got the depot looking halfway decent. Once I get them in, and looking about as good as they do in Max, I'll start the landscape tiles. Probably 4 or 5 different roads, the tiles needed for one elevation change, and the cliffs. The real basic stuff, in other words. 

I've also managed to browbeat a buddy of mine into helping me out. He's really good with foliage, so I'll probably have him working on that if he's up to it.

I'll say that once we get that done, along with a few extra tidbits, I'll do a little mini release to sucker you all into being my unwilling alpha testers.

The UI is moddable, actually.  Though admittedly, I'm pretty sure the green-friendly/blue-self/red-hostile mouseover auras are hardcoded into the game, but then again, now that NWN is no longer being patched, we've got some very talented coders working on the base code of the engine itself, so that shouldn't be an impediment if someone wanted it enough.

Really now?  If there's one thing I would change about NWN, it'd be that interface. It's always looked sorta slapped on to me.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Eradrain]

               Yeah, I'm actually surprised more people haven't tried modding the UI, considering how easy it is.  You just need some talent with photoshop, really.



The UI is basically made up of invisible "model" nodes with textures slapped onto them, those textures are the buttons and stuff you press.  A reskin is as simple as overriding the existing textures with new ones, but you can actually change the basic layout too, and make a completely new UI if that was your thing.



Though, as I said, some things (Like the mouse-over colored auras) are hardcoded as far as I know.  You'd need someone to dig into the game code to make any changes to that.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               

Eradrain wrote...

Yeah, I'm actually surprised more people haven't tried modding the UI, considering how easy it is.  You just need some talent with photoshop, really.

It's probably just one of those things most people assumed was "good enough". NWN's UI isn't exactly pretty, but it does the job well enough.

Though, as I said, some things (Like the mouse-over colored auras) are hardcoded as far as I know.  You'd need someone to dig into the game code to make any changes to that.

And that won't be me. The closest I've come to anything resembling hardcore coding came from making a webpage out of tables. And that was in 2000. Needless to say, it ain't my area of expertise. Though for anyone who would want to tackle it, they'd have my full moral support.

Still, it'd be interesting doing a greyscale texture set, regardless of any issues with the UI. I think I might give it a go with the current set once I got a bit more done.

And I've come back with another little problem. I redid my grass so it looks a little neater, got it all arranged, gave each clumb it's own trimesh modifier, modified some settings inside said modifiers, and linked them all to the approprioate aurorabase helper, and exported. It all seemed pretty straightfoward, but...dramatic pause...they're not showing up in either NWNE or the editor. From what I can tell, the data should be there. The mdl file size is larger, and it exported my foliage textures when I told it to copy TGA's. But they're not showing up.

I've tried doing a generic trimesh for all the clumps, done each one indivdually, and made sure they're all attached to the proper helper. As you can see from this shot, everything looks as it should, but something's wrong. This shouldn't be any different than exporting any regular geometry...though I did do a merge to get the grass into the scene. Would that make a difference?

edit: I'm gonna things the old fashioned, I know it works way, and import it as an obj, instead of merging the max file. Lets see if that works.

edit 2: Nope. Same results. Though I can see it loading the texture in NWNE, it's all refusing to show up.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Renzatic, 28 décembre 2010 - 03:32 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               you need another helper, an animnode helper.  You name it the same as the mdl base but add an "a" to the end.  so, if tile is tctl0_a01_01 your animnode helper would be tctl0_a01_01a.  You center it to zero, zero, zero, and attach it to the main mdl base.  Then, attach your alpha textured objects to that node.





so,

tctl0_a01_01 (mdl base)

--object01

--object02

--tclt0_a01_01ml1

--tctl0_a01_01ml2

--tct0_a01_01a

----grass01

----grass02
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

               Easy enough. One question (of course), is it set to 0,0,0 regardless of where the main aurorabase helper is, or is it centered on top of it to the tile?

edit: and really dumb question, where do I find the animnode helper at? It's not with the usual helpers, and not in any of the NWMax settings. I thought it might be a setting with the usual aurorabase, but I didn't see it in the dropdown box there...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Renzatic, 28 décembre 2010 - 05:20 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               it's centered on the mdl base.   Since you are working with a group, that center location is going to be offset by the position on the tile in the group of course.  Basically what I am saying is to center the anim node at the same location as the mdl base.  

It IS a helper that you can choose to create from the nwmax rollout.  Under general Utils, just create a new dummy, it will auto-create a box for you wherever you click in the scene, then rename it properly, and center it to the mdl base for each tile.  One each.  Not just one for the entire group.  One for each mdl base, named according to the mdl base name with the appended lowercase a.

Edite:  Don't forget to attach those new anim nodes to their respective mdl bases.  Then attach your grass objects to that new anim node.

Edit 2:  Also, your texture MUST be an alpha texture, a 32bit bit tga (you can of course convert it to nwn style dds after you get it working).
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 28 décembre 2010 - 05:27 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Renzatic]

                Hmm. Still no go. Lets see if I did this right...

I went into NWNMax, general utils, clicked dummy, centered it to 0,0,0 then centered it on my tcsw_d01_01 aurorabase helper. Now it didn't give me an option to name it during creation, it just plopped a box down, so I went into the object properties and named it tcsw_d01_01a in there. Then I linked it to the aurorabase helper, and linked the grass models underneath that.

Settings here

About right?

edit: there might be one problem here. I've moved all my grasses and helpers to seperate layers so I can select them more easily. It hasn't made much of a difference before, but it might be causing me problems here. Let me fix that, and see how it goes.

edit 2: Nope. This is weird, because I've exported my grass with alphas once before. The only difference then was that the grass was a standalone texture, whereas now it's on a UV sheet. That shouldn't be a problem as far as I know.

edit 3: ...and Reset Xform fixed it! 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Renzatic, 28 décembre 2010 - 08:54 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               You should reset the Xform every time you merged, mirrored or scaled something and also after adjusting the pivot point.

If your grass was linked to the model base, it should have shown up. It doesn't have to be linked

to an animation node though it should be because this helps preventing the cookie cutter effect.

I guess not resetting the Xform was the problem all along.