Project Reforged: Replacement of ALL Default Weapon Models

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Edited: Adding links to all 8 parts for ease of downloading/commenting/voting/enjoying. '>

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Project Reforged:

1. Reforged: Chain Weapons (all flails & morningstars)
2. Reforged: Chopping Weapons (axes of every sort)
3. Reforged: Smashing Weapons (clubs, maces, hammers, & quarterstaves)
4. Reforged: Reach Weapons (halberds, scythes, spears, & tridents)
5. Reforged: Light Blades (daggers, kukris, short swords, & rapiers)
6. Reforged: Heavy Blades (all swords scimitar size & heavier)
7. Reforged: Unusual Weapons (darts, shuriken, sickles, kamas, & whips)
8. Reforged: Ranged Weapons (bows, crossbows, slings, & ammunition)

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A while ago I began a personal project, remaking all of the default NWN weapons from scratch to bring them more up to date.  Newer textures, more polygons, more representative inventory icons (made from screenshots of the actual models), and some more variety in some cases.  I call it Project Reforged.

Why not a "redux"?  I was going to call it a redux, but because I was curious I looked the word up (thanks, dictionary.com).  I'm not "returning" these, I'm remaking them.  How do you make a weapon?  You forge it. '>  Plus, when it's all done, anyone searching the Vault for updated weapon models will know all of the "reforged" weapons came from the same place, since nobody else has used the word.

The first group of these weapons has been released on the Vault (chain weapons - light flails, heavy flails, and morning stars).  The next public release (chopping weapons - hand axes, battle axes and dwarven war axes, great axes, double axes, and throwing axes) will be available within a week.

I figured I'd start to post work in progress pictures every once in a while to show the community what I'm up to and so I've got another reminder to keep me moving forward on this project.

I'm currently working on the third part of this project, smashing weapons.  Clubs, light hammers, warhammers, maces, dire maces, and quarterstaves.  I'm working on maces today, so here's the WIP comparing one of the new maces with the corresponding default model.  It doesn't show the reflectivity of the metal (that requires game rendering of course), but the basic textures are there.

Isn't nice what some extra polygons, different textures, and some minor creative license can do for a 10 year old game?


               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 14 juillet 2013 - 03:40 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <holding up a thumb...>

*Choice!*
I'd have simply "like"'d it on my "What's New" feed, but for some reason you don't show up there :-(
You have 10 levels in Ninja Dragon?

<...as he tries to capture the angst of the maces on canvas>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Beautiful work!  I also enjoyed listening to your interview on the NWN Podcast last night.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheSpiritedLass]

               And I thought I took on crazy huge projects.  Wow!  Stunning work as always.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Daijin]

               :thumbsup:  '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               Amazing what a few well-placed polygons can do for a model. Nice to see these dated old weapons get a make-over.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Believe it or not, making the inventory icons is the part I really don't look forward to on these.  I finally get done with a bunch of models and the icons seem more like a chore.  I have to save them for last anyway, since they're all being made from screenshots taken in the toolset.

So far for smashing weapons, I'm done with the models for clubs, light hammers, warhammers, and maces.  I'm going to do double (dire) maces tonight (since they use the same heads as regular maces), with quarterstaves after that.  After the staves, I add them all to a test hak, put in a bunch of dummy icons (for the extra color models for my PW), then load up the toolset and take a lot of screenshots.

While I am trying to stay close to the original shapes/color schemes for this project, I realized today that sometimes the original models are bad enough to require some creative flexibility.  Two of the old mace head designs are just bad and don't look anything like images of maces I've seen before (#2 and #3).  I'm replacing them with two different 6-flanged mace heads.  Which, in my completely biased opinion, look very nice.

I like the fact that maces are small enough to dual-wield. Double the head-bashing!



Note from first post: evidently I'm not sure of the date anymore.  I took the screenshot yesterday, not a year ago yesterday. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Now available for download and use: Reforged: Chopping Weapons


The copper greataxe sitting in inventory looks great with a fire VFX. '>  I don't know about anyone else, but I prefer when the icons look like the 3D models.

On the smashing weapons section, I've got the prototype models (which are combined top, bottom, and middle parts of the base texture/color) done for both double (dire) maces and quarterstaves.  Now it's a relatively short process to split them into the desired parts and make different colored models from those.

For quarterstaves, the "bottom" part will be the basic staff, with the middle and top parts things added on, such as hard metal ends, metal rings, and wrapped grips.  Top 1 - Color 1 and Middle 1 Color 1 are both going to be empty dummy parts so that a plain staff in any of the 15 or 16 colors/textures can be made.  Bottoms (basic staves) will have: four types of wood, eight metals, three glowing metals (self-illuminated, won't actually shine light in-game unless the item has a light property), and one purest black.

I'll likely finish the models tonight sometime, then start to work on the inventory icons for all of the parts.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 17 janvier 2012 - 08:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               Wow, this is great! (Though I have to admit I first thought of the Reforged philosophy of the warforged when I clicked the link to this thread. My mind is in Eberron...)

Maybe I'll actually start using maces after seeing these reforgings...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Maces will be publicly available in a bit over a month.  It'll take a few days to finish the last models, take screenshots of every single model, and make icons.  My PW's players get to use them for a month, then they go onto the Vault.

After I finish the smashing weapons, I plan to jump into working on my shell game for the January custom content challenge (so I can finish before February), then back to this project for part 4: "reach weapons" (halberds, spears, scythes, and tridents).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               That sounds cool. I think I can endure the standard mace models for a month or two. '>

I can't wait to see what you come up with for scythes!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Bah!  Stupid desire for improvement.

Working on icons for all the smashing weapons and decided I need to rework a couple of the mace part models.  Top part 1 is too big in comparison to the other mace tops.  Some of the middles leave an upper ornament in the middle of the handle for no reason as they are now.  Ok, there's a reason...they would line up with the existing top part 1 and the old top parts 2-4 before I got to them.

On top of that, I had to make several more blank dummy models for every weapon, just so I could take proper screenshots of the parts in the toolset.  Gotta account for layering of the .tgas and overlapping of the parts.  Yes, quite a few of these weapons have parts that overlap in order to provide more variety.  For instance, the bottom part of a dire mace includes the weapon's shaft, which extends the entire length of the weapon, with the middle and top parts overlaying (and in some cases wrapping around) the bottom part model.

Time to go push around some more vertices before I go push around some more pixels.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               The third installment, smashing weapons (light hammers, warhammers, maces, dire maces, quarterstaves),  will be available on the Vault within a few days.

I've been working on a lot of PW-specific and CCC stuff for the last month.  I knocked out 20 placeables already for this month's non-drow elven themed CCC (not waiting until the last couple days this month, since I suggested the theme), so I'm now digging into the next group, "reach weapons".  Spears, tridents, halberds, and scythes.

After a couple hours of work yesterday, spears and tridents about 75% done.  Got the initial modeling done, just have to knock out the color variants and icons.  Tridents were easier just because I only did work on the heads...tridents use the same basic models as spears for the shafts and ends, so I'm doing the same with the reforged versions.  I will be changing some of the spear handles a bit, making some of them out of wood, some with leather-wrapped grips.  I find it odd that all of the default shafts are basically solid metal when historically the shaft would be wood.

Today I'm working on the model work for halberds.  The large, broad blades are actually some of the harder pieces to do, since I don't want to stretch and distort faces too badly (making the textures look wrong), while still making the shape of the items nicer than the originals.  Had similar problems with the bigger axes earlier.  I'm thinning the blades a bit, since I think a 4-5 cm thick polearm blade is just a bit excessive to be swinging around.

I'll likely have similar issues with the large, curved blades of scythes.  Straight and/or thin blades are much easier to work with, since there isn't as much chance for distortion of the textures.

For those reading that may be wondering about the best way to make larger, flat, but curved pieces, I do not start with curved shapes (like cylinders) for them.  Instead, I use flat boxes and move individual (and/or multi-selected) vertices to get the shapes I want, keeping as much of the original textures as distortion-free as possible.  It may or may not be the best method out there, but it works well for me.

Also, a couple helpful tips for newer model-makers.  When making object that have faces buried inside other parts, go ahead and delete those faces.  There's no need to make the game render something noone will ever see (no matter the camera position).  Also, when making cones, if you have one that comes to a point (radius 2 of "0"), weld those top vertices...there's no reason to have many vertices in the same spot doing the same job when one will do...and it can help with shadow/lighting issues as well.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Finally uploaded the 3rd part of this project to the Vault: Reforged: Smashing Weapons.

It takes some time to properly package things up for general player/builder use.  Even a couple of hours to make sure everything is included and looks nice.  Pull all the files from my PW's hak, go through and make sure no icon files are missing (either .tga versions or .dds versions).  Create a demo module with items showing all appearances.  Take screenshots in the toolset and in-game.  Edit screenshots.  Put all needed files into a .7z archive, then in a .rar, then in a .zip (gotta give peeps options, ya know).  Upload to the Vault.

Hint for other content makers that want to upload to the Vault:  If you have screenshots (and you really should, otherwise few will even try out your stuff), you can determine the order they're shown on the right side of the screen...it's the order you upload them.  I usually do this, since the 1st image ends up as the small version that comes up in searches and on the front page when the entry is new.  I'll even go so far as sometimes naming the images as I make them ("1_preview.jpg", "2_preview.jpg", etc.).

Back to halberds...I've got 3 of the 4 prototype models made.  Got distracted for a couple days fixing a couple of minor bugs with the randomly generated commoners in my PW (and ended up basically recoding the entire little system that populates all the towns with).  Distractions, distractions.



Time for a little WIP comparison of originals and reforged weapons.  In this case, a halberd and a spear.




               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 17 mars 2012 - 06:32 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               Really nice work on all of these.  I'm curious if you have plans to release a hak with all of the different weapon types you've redone in it, once you get through them all.