April 2011 Custom Content Challenge: Religious Items and Symbols

[Legacy_Dark Defiance]

               This month’s challenge is “Religious Items and Symbols”.  


I would like to request that a future challenge focus on HOLY SYMBOLS. There are precious few of them in NWN and most of them are CROSSES. Now, I have NEVER done a campaign that involved RL religions (I'm happy using fictitious pantheons of my own creation) and they need HOLY SYMBOLS. How about it? Does not everyone need these?

This theme was suggested by ehye_khandee

The theme is religious items and symbols. This can be anything from a held item, icons (book, misc small, etc), placeables or even an armor set. May be even a new tile for any of the existing sets or an entire new set! These can be of your own custom pantheons or that of Faerun, Dragon Lance, etc..


Rules:
- It must be fully working in game.
- Use of vanilla NWN or publicly available texture is fine, though state-of-the-art amateur's work would require 100% original work, but that's up to you.
- Teamwork is also welcome.
- Beginners most welcome, don't be afraid, just try, you'll be surprised!

All submissions must be finished, working, and emailed to NWNCCCMakers @ gmail.com (minus the spaces obviously) or a link provided by May 1st, 2011 (which is a Sunday) at 8AM EST.  Sooner than that is perfectly fine too.



*** Please do NOT post your content separately on the Vault. ***


Some things you could include in the download/email that would make packaging everything up easier and faster (otherwise I’m just going to pester you with questions!):

- 2da lines needed
- Screenshot for use on the vault page (this also gives me hints on how to display the new goodie)
- Portraits (if needed) of your new goodie
- Any credits you would like listed
- If this is your first entry, please tell me what name you would like your work listed under and provide a link to your other NWN content if you want that displayed as well (the link bit is totally optional).

Remember, the Challenge is all about fun, sharing, creativity and surprise!

If you have concerns/questions about this month’s Challenge please post in this thread.

If you want to discuss the Monthly Custom Content Challenge idea as a whole or wish to submit ideas/themes for future monthly Challenges,   please post in its thread here.  ***When submitting a new theme, please provide a title and short summary of the theme.***

If you have a technical question about some custom content creation, please create a separate thread so that the answers can be found later by anyone, not just people interested in this Challenge. We'll try to help!

Have no fear and join the fun!

And finally, you can vote for May’s theme: right here.  The voting dead line is Sunday May 1st, 2011 at 8AM EST.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Dark Defiance, 01 avril 2011 - 11:45 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Religious Content Suggestions & Ideas:

Models:

For those looking for some model inspiration, how about going with some of the many, many props used in real world religious ceremonies.  The older (and larger) ones typically have the most objects, so I would suggest looking to jewish, catholic, and muslim ceremonial items.  You could always strip out the religion-specific imagery and replace it with images specific to the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, generic D&D, etc.

Going just with catholic for starters, there's ornate religious books, incense burners, all sorts of statues (usually people in robes or angels), candle holders, chairs, pitchers/vases, chalices, spears, partitions, doors, pipe organs, fonts, reliquaries, and other such objects.

Scripting:

- healing pools
- religious ceremony or procession cutscenes
- blessings of items and/or creatures
- concecration or desecration of religious placeables/items
- curing of diseases
- custom on-hit functions that affect only followers of opposing deities
- scripted holy gear that can only be used by followers or priests of a specific deity.

Prefabs:

- religious organiztion NPC laypeople (the non-priests that keep a temple/abbey/church/etc. running day to day)
- monsters "blessed" by evil priests to be tougher than normal (or with strengths/weakenesses changed from normal)
- temple interiors (pristine or ruined, with placeables, lighting, etc.)
- peaceful druid groves
- corrupted druid groves
- sacred burial grounds
- monastary areas (with gardens, eating areas, work areas, libraries, burial areas, worship areas, sleeping quarters, etc....might fit many priesthoods and/or D&D monk orders)
- background texts/books for different campaign worlds, with information that might not have any game mechanics use, but could be great for RP (and would be a great way to help fill bookshelves (prayer books, historical documents, etc.)...and not necessarily accurate information could be in some, with several authors writing to spread misinformation about another god's followers)


There.  That should be a start for anyone that can't think of anything they'd want to make. '>  And yes, I like to suggest things that don't always mean having to know how to make models.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jenna WSI]

               I would like some old European style catacomb related work, if anyone feels like it. Would be nice to work with more piles of skulls or walls made of skulls.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Download HERE

Beholder Hagioscope description:
Larger and more powerful beholder cults never fail to draw the attention of larger and more powerful beholders.  Once passed a certain point, it is said even the Great Mother may take notice and destroy the leader of a cult in order to control their followers directly.  Enormous eyestalks contained in egg-shaped hagioscopes punch through to the prime material plane and demand worship and allegiance in the Great Mother's name. Whether these things are eyestalks of the Great Mother herself or imposters in one form or another, once the leader of the cult has been replaced by one it is not long before the members disappear- to where or why is unknown.  The hagioscope itself is seemingly impenetrable and winks into and out of existence when the entity controlling it wishes to communicate or bargain directly.

I wasn't sure I'd be enthusiastic enough to finish a typical religious item so I figured I'd try something a little out of the ordinary.  I liked the idea of doing something for beholder cults and I thought it might be interesting to have an ambiguous entity occasionally attempting to take over larger groups and present itself as a Living God.

I mostly learned about Bezier Position controllers, which were used to make the up and down bobbing of the hagioscope much smoother and natural looking.  The keys bake out just like normal using the Bake Anims tool in NWMax(+).  Textures are a mish mash of standard Bioware, a few procedural textures and the ethereal tentacle bit underneath has something I whipped together in GIMP. Animation, nothing fancy, just a 60 frame default anim.  Includes portraits and the whole shebang (I hope) except a placeable sound.  I probably won't mess with this much but if anyone has suggestions for variations or if they find a bug or something, PM me and I'll take a look at it!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               Some kind of ancient/druidic altar.

http://nwn1cc.com/six/_dumpit/altar

Thinking of giving it a corpse strangled to death by the vines.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               Updated with a bit of further detail:

http://nwn1cc.com/six/_dumpit/altarb
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Nice work, _six.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               I would like to THANK ALL YOU KIND PEOPLE who are working to make items for the religious items/objects April challenge. I really think the PLAYERS of priests and other sim-religious devotees will be overjoyed to receive this fine work. The timing is kind of interesting too, I'll intentionally NOT think of this a as a birthday gift - BUT THANK YOU ALL JUST THE SAME!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Congratulations, Ehye!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               Thx - as they mount up, each year is kind of a "wow, didn't expect THAT." My mind harkens back to a stand up comedian whose name escapes me - I recall him asking the audience "You know all those noises your father made when he got up off the sofa? Yeah *smiles* He meant every one of them."

LOL

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Builder_Anthony]

               Man ...............sigh i have to reinstall max.I had to redo my computer and lost it.Im sorry i never sent any of my files to anyone i just never thought anything would happen.I really hate not being able to contributr to this cause i know theres only a few people actually doing anything.I think its a good way to learn by modeling things you like.

I guess with things being slow and all in these crappy new forums there still are a few that stick together.Thanks for makeing the things you do since i had a small brush in with the modeling while i had it installed.I know theres alot to making just somehting small....Well for me anyways.I was just trying to do things right and i never really got to the .........mmmm the box that fits over your model to keep everyhting tight and fast running.Then i was going to go into textureing it.

Its still art to me so i guess i just like to say i like the things people are producing.

Happy birthday
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jenna WSI]

               Six: That looks really great, would use it myself on our mod redo. It'd be easy enough to place a corpse on the object f the builder wanted to.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Builder_Anthony]

               Could make a wall with it as well by placeing them close
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Download updated pack HERE

Secret shrine of Rallaster description:
Rallaster, the Razor God, is a deity of murder, torture, and psychotic behavior. Religious scholars refer to him as the Insane God and the God of Madmen, but Rallaster’s followers find him completely sane and comprehensible. Rallaster’s clerics are psychopaths and mass murderers who lurk in the shadows or discreetly in plain sight. Many act perfectly normal, maintaining a second identity as shop clerks or artisans. Whether they camouflage themselves within society or remain apart from it, Rallaster’s minions delight in torturing and killing their victims, usually in seclusion. Rallaster has very few temples. His followers are usually loners, and as such they keep secret shrines just for themselves. Each shrine has a small altar made entirely of razors.

Too bad there aren't more (or any?) placeables inspired by the Book of Vile Darkness.  Could this be the first?  This placeable looks like any other armoire but it's got a dark, dark secret.

Razor graphics from all over the web, skinned faces from YourProps with lots of bruising and decay courtesy of GIMP.  Had fun learning about texture atlases.  If you've got 3DS Max 9 or above, this is a very nice script (later became Flatiron), but I wound up using NVidia's Texture Atlas Tools and then manually shifting my UV's around.  Also learned about wedging new animations into a timeframe with existing animations and not hosing anything- which hopefully I didn't.

Very cool altar, _Six.  Is there a tutorial you could share showing how a nice texture like that is put together?  It looks very realistic!

Again, I'm probably "done" with this unless someone finds big problems, requests variants or something like that.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 05 avril 2011 - 01:23 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               Photos. Bunch of different photos of rocks pasted on top of each other with bits erased, and a bit of manual dodge/burn brush work. Actually, I've considered maybe doing a texturing tutorial on youtube or something before, but never really had enough inclination to actually do it. There's probably plenty lying around already.

Course, the real trick is in making the photos stop looking like photos, and start looking like the real thing.