New Building Placeable Imports

[Legacy_Frush O'Suggill]

               

Thanks for your hard work on this - I especially like the new siege weapons...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Zwercules, I had simple shadows and basic blocking pwks on the first bushes till I decided they didn't need them. Looking at the trees, I stopped using even simple shadows and just the trunks have a small pwk tube around them.

 

FP, thanks. Scripting season changes is something I had thought about doing one day when I got there. A ready made script will help a lot with that.

 

Counting up, there are about 60 total tree types from E3, not including variants. Some of them aren't familiar to me so I can't verify their accuracy, and not all of them might appear in the hak. The pic below has the next 5 trees; acacia, alder, baobob, buffalo thorn and apricot. I'm not happy with the apricot tree's appearance so it will probably be pulled.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Next set;

 

4 seasonal variations of basswood

 

 

4 season varieties of birch

 

 

2 varieties of bamboo and 2 of a banian tree

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

I am glad to see that they do have baobobs, they were the one tree I was going to ask if they were around

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Below are 3 more pics of the newest imports, but there's a problem with some of these that means I might pull the last 2 groups. It seems that in some cases the branch areas aren't double thick on the mesh so you can only see the texture from certain directions. To fix this, you'd have to go to each problem area, clone the selected vertices and flip them so that the tree stays the same no matter which way you look. I could probably do that in Blender, but its beyond my skill in Max/ Gmax.

 

So unless someone was willing to take that up, I'll probably pull the one done already and not use any future meshes with the same problem.

 

1st pic below has 4 trees - a canary bush and coconut palm with 2 variations, and two large canopy trees.

 

A camilia tree with seasonal variations. Will probably be pulled.

 

 

A camphor tree with seasonal variations. Will probably be pulled. This actually has each tree with two placeables in the same spot for each, rotated 180 degrees from each. It helped a bit with the appearance, but still not enough.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Just completed what I would consider a successful experiment. The problem with the trees as mentioned above was that the branches were single sided and would vanish and appear as you moved around in game, making them pretty useless. I couldn't figure out how to fix it in NWMax/ Gmax but I have a bit of experience in Blender.

 

Importing the camphor tree into Blender, I selected everything but the trunk, duplicated the vertices and flipped the faces. This made the branches 2 sided but doubled the vertex count. Going back into NWMax with the new model, welding the vertices dropped the count back to where it was but maintained the 2 sided branches.

 

It will mean I'll have to redo most of the trees done already and take a bit longer on new trees, but the results are much better.

 

Compare the last picture above with the new version of the camphor tree below - both with all 4 seasons present.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Also, for Mecheon and anyone else wondering, both E3 and E2 have a fairly robust variety of trees. No guarantee they'll all be useable, but below is a quick list of the next few that will be attempted to be imported, not including what's already been tried. Some of these I have no idea what they are in the real world.

 

canary palm

catalpa

cactus African hairbrush

cedar

Chinese cherry

cypress lawson

cypress florentian

cypress mediterranean

cypress sawara

desert date

date palm

draceana

daphne

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

You'll find that some of your very earliest buildings had that problem as well. Apparently the NwN graphics engine is one sided in that your textures only show on one side. You can easily check this out with any of my vertical placeables (micro maps, runes etc).

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Thanks TR. From what I've seen its not just NWN but most if not all meshes work that way. If you know which buildings I  can try to revisit those and update them.

 

I know there was a problem on a few that Plush tried to help with that had black areas on them due to a missing alpha layer, but I don't have the skills to fix that.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

If I can find time and the original hak (no guarantee on that one) I'll let you know. But the ones with that error that I remember seeing were in the very first batch you sent to Rolo to check out. BTW is the missing alpha layer just on a texture?

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Yes on the texture. From what I've seen, the alpha layer is a black and white layer. The white part shows solid on an object and the black is transparent and invisible.I think there was a building in the 1st group that had a pot on a tripod with a black area above the pot, a fence that had black areas between the bars,  and another with thatch on the rooftop that showed the black around the edge because there was no alpha layer present. I think an alpha layer on the textures would fix these.

 

A remake of the orginal hak is on the new vault by Killmonger and may have some fixes in.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

These are looking much better now. Improved version of the camillia with season variations

 

 

Improved alder, coconut palm and acacia

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               

Congratulations. Your effort and detail is admirable. Don't think it goes unnoticed. I am sure there are many, like myself, who don't write much over in the comments section, not because we don't appreciate your work, but because we don't have much to say that's useful to your endeavor.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

Much appreciated JJ. All comments are welcome,

 

Moving along, I think everything done so far will be upgraded by this weekend and I can start adding new items.

 

1st pic is the improved birch with seasonal variations. Not sure if I like it, but since I'm not that familiar with birches, it might be accurate. Still, much improved over the previous try

 

 

 

2nd pic has updated versions of one of the aspens, a buffalo thorn, and 2 variants of a canary bush.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Randomdays]

               

The Aspens are redone leaving just 2 more before starting on new greenery.

 

1st pic, back row of 2 arctic aspens with summer and winter versions. Front row is sapling versions of the same

 

 

 

2nd pic - seasonal variations of temperate aspen.