Custom Item Icons

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               I'm not sure if my terminology is correct, so please correct me for my own better understanding.

In short, I would like to make my own item icons ((for thin items)). With near zero knowledge of making custom content, is this something I can learn, if so where can I start?

Thanks for any feedback!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I'd look at icons available on the vault.
Or talk to birdman.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               

henesua wrote...

I'd look at icons available on the vault.
Or talk to birdman.

I'm making a world that is based around Magic The Gathering card game, with ingame cards etc. I would like to add these card (much like CEP did with the Rider Waite tarot cards) to the item icon appearence. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Tricky to do well. You need an artist like Birdman.

BUT by "look at the icons on the vault" I meant to look at them and use them as an example in your own icon work. You can see how they made the TGAs and DDS files etc....

What I did for my own work on Feat and Spell Icons (but FYI my climb and swim skill icons look terrible as I could really use help on this too! ) was to open up the originals by bioware and used them as my guide for color matching. Any part of the icon I wanted to reuse I put on a layer and then faded my new work in.  But thats how I did it. I am sure Birdman will have better advice.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Just a ghost]

               Actually this wouldn't be too hard, especially if you have a collection of the cards in a uniform size. I'd suggest making them 2x2 or even 2x3 items, if you want to see any details. Otherwise I'd simply make one card for each color and do the rest with text.

Anyway, you basically batch resize your images to 32 x 64 pixels and save then as tga files. I'd copy the thin item line in baseitems.2da and make a special item for your cards. With a file renamer you can deal with numbering etc.

I don't mind doing the job if this sounds like abacadabra to you, as long as you got your card images all in the same size already.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Just a ghost, 16 octobre 2012 - 05:11 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               

Just a ghost wrote...

Actually this wouldn't be too hard, especially if you have a collection of the cards in a uniform size. I'd suggest making them 2x2 or even 2x3 items, if you want to see any details. Otherwise I'd simply make one card for each color and do the rest with text.

Anyway, you basically batch resize your images to 32 x 64 pixels and save then as tga files. I'd copy the thin item line in baseitems.2da and make a special item for your cards. With a file renamer you can deal with numbering etc.

I don't mind doing the job if this sounds like abacadabra to you, as long as you got your card images all in the same size already.

Thank you for the information, I'll try and delve into this today and will post any further questions I may have. Thanks again!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Just a ghost]

               Good luck. I didn't get much more specific because this is basically image editing and the actual procedure depends more on the program that you use than anything else.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jez_fr]

               

Buddywarrior wrote...

I'm making a world that is based around Magic The Gathering card game, with ingame cards etc.

I'm not sure exactly what you try to do but have you seen Adam Miller's Demon cards
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Jez_fr, 17 octobre 2012 - 03:04 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               

Jez_fr wrote...

Buddywarrior wrote...

I'm making a world that is based around Magic The Gathering card game, with ingame cards etc.

I'm not sure exactly what you try to do but have you seen Adam Miller's Demon cards

I did see that and that is very impressive. I'm mostly looking to only change the appearence of the item in the inventory.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               I'm a little surprised no-one has pointed you to the Custom Content Guide v3.0.

TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               It's getting to that abracadabra point. I have my tga files. I've added them into the nwhak.exe utility. I've opened up baseitems.2da and copied the line "79        2294         miscthin" etc and pasted it at the bottom, giving it a unique name and label of "113        88888    gathering ". I then dragged and dropped the updated baseitems.2da file into the nwhak.exe program also. Saved the hak into the hak folder.

What would I be missing as I do not see an Item type of what I've created? I feel like I'm missing a step. Again, I would be happy to follow an online guide if one still existed. Any support would be great. Thank you kindly!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Download the ccg that I provided the link for in my previous post. The tutorial you need is on page 60 under the heading - Items Without Models.

TR
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tarot Redhand, 18 octobre 2012 - 09:11 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Buddywarrior]

               

Tarot Redhand wrote...

Download the ccg that I provided the link for in my previous post. The tutorial you need is on page 60 under the heading - Items Without Models.

TR

Ooh thanks!!! I didn't see your post at first untill you just mentioned it. I'll take a look. Thanks again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               

Tarot Redhand wrote...

I'm a little surprised no-one has pointed you to the Custom Content Guide v3.0.

TR

One of the things about that guide that is misleading is that it is pointing folks to the mdl_plugin suite instead of nwmax.  The mdl_plugin suite is severely outdated and very buggy, it does generate errors, and most especially can not handle 1.69 content.  It will spedifically trash a .SET file from 1.67 onwards.  There are other errors buried inside the plugin suite as well but I can't remember them all.

Likely there are a huge number of other things that have been learned about mdeling for NWN that are not included in that guide as well.  Things that would likely prove very useful to new modelers.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 19 octobre 2012 - 12:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_s e n]

               My opinion: if you have to deal with animations, emitters, animesh, skinmesh, doors, creatures, lighting, and if you have to re-import your stuff (also tiles) nwmax aura bases are better BUT, if you build static placeables or tiles (so most of the tiles), mdl-suite is waaay more quick, light on the script side, handles woks in a user-friendly way (maybe thats the best point of using it instead of nwmax wok chaotic interface, that im not able to edit at all). mdl suite has couple of disturbing bugs on model import (that can be done by drag and dropping the file inside max), namely it destroys smoothing groups, and it doesnt import all the trimesh modifiers, and when it does, changes a few of its settings (which are way more generic that nwmax aura base ones).
I am using mdl-suite for most of the tiles i make, and if i have to add animesh/animations to a tile, i export it with mdlsuite and reimport with nwmax, to complete the work once all the geometry, texture mapping and walkmesh has been done with mdlsuite '>
but i agree for doors and creatures it is best to leave mdlsuite in the closet, nwmax handles animations way better