Custom Content Challenge: April 2013: Drow Stuff

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               If you're thinking evolution...there is  light in some places in the underdark, right?  I think black skin would be an advantage, able to blend in better in such situations.

Of course, the white hair kind of messes that up, but so too do some of the displays of various wild creatures looking for mates..."hey!  look at me!  I wanna pass on my genes before I get eaten!"

Purple or blue skin?  Probably just used so you could see some facial features of drow in the artwork.  I personally prefer black-skinned drow...I don't expect to be able to see their faces well in the dark anyway.


For drow in my PW, I just use dynamic elf models and pick a black skin color and (usually) white or grey hair.  It works out well, since I can then assign them the "assassin" fighting style phenotype and they look cool doing it.  I then just put them in clothing/armor with the blacks, greys, and sickly greens associated with their patron deity (which is not a spider goddess in my PW).
               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 26 avril 2013 - 08:59 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Frith5]

               Natural selection would favor dark skinned Drow in the Underdark for survivability.

I recall some lore decades back that said the Underdark held some strange radiation that may have contributed to drow abilities.
Drow  are similar to Drough, in my opinion, and are based on them.

Great work going on here, btw! Awesome!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               one more male and female.

and I got ne of the mounts finished.

               
               

               

                     Modifié par Draygoth28, 27 avril 2013 - 05:01 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               You're killin me with anticipation Draygoth28. Gimme gimme gimme...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               That male armor is awesome!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               JENNA - For your mixing and matching delight, PLUSH HYENA of DOOM has slaved away in hour after hour of backbreaking toil beneath the electric whips of the kinky, PVC-clad Vixen Guards in the Dreaded Evil Placeables Mine of Morbidia to produce a complete set of Purple AND a complete set of Gold Drow Placeables as requested...

Actually it only took five minutes of easy button pressing, but it sounds better the other way...

I shall now go and e-mail them to Amethyst Dragon and urge him to stamp cruelly upon and throw away the package I already sent him and replace it with this one.

PS:- I don't want to hear about green or red versions! (I tested - they looked a bit rubbish). Besides, how many boxes with Spiders on them can you possibly need?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

PLUSH HYENA of DOOM wrote...

PS:- I don't want to hear about green or red versions! (I tested - they looked a bit rubbish). Besides, how many boxes with Spiders on them can you possibly need?

I live in Australia, PHoD

You know this is a rhetorical question for me
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               When I was out there, it was more a question of how many Spiders were IN the boxes than on them!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Alright, well I guess I am bout out of time to work on a tenth or eleventh drow. I'll be sending in mine this afternoon or tomorrow just to make sure it gets in. Here's 9 drow as good as they are going to get visually. I intend to compile at least half of them before release.



About the draegloth: he will be included in the file, as well as the supermodel glabrezu. He's skinned, but if you prefer non skinned, just delete the skin and use the underlying bones as is, plus a little texture fixing. He DOES still have a shadow bug, even after massive tweaking. The bug is enough to make him NOT show in the toolset half the time. He also crashes NWN on module unload. During play, he works fine, but I don't know what all module unload entails, so it might break some stuff. I really just don't know.

And since I'm out of time and feeling exceptionally lazy to boot, the priestess, two wizards and the draegloth do not have proper 3e stats associated with their test entities. I figure you'd all change those anyway.

This has been the most fun challenge Ive seen so far!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               @MerricksDad - have you tried turning off shadows on all parts of the model. If you have the skin set to render a shadow, turn that shadow off. If, after all the shadows are off, the model still has issues try reducing the geometry on the bones to as little as small you can get it then turn the shadows on for just the non-skinned geometry.

Alternatively, I'd be more than glad to take a look for you.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Pstemarie, 27 avril 2013 - 06:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shemsu-Heru]

               There is a lot of wonderful stuff, for this challenge; Thank you to all builders who had contributed.

Here is my latest version of my Matron head, I have made  some texture improvements...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Pstemarie wrote...

@MerricksDad - have you tried turning off shadows on all parts of the model. If you have the skin set to render a shadow, turn that shadow off. If, after all the shadows are off, the model still has issues try reducing the geometry on the bones to as little as small you can get it then turn the shadows on for just the non-skinned geometry.

Alternatively, I'd be more than glad to take a look for you.

I think its the skin doing it. Its definitely the skin throwing the negative shadow spikes, which I don't know how exactly such a math exists. Skin shadow isn't enabled on that model. Other than the minor skin shadow thing, its successfully using 26 bones in a single skin. I might find a breakpoint somewhere and cut the model in half.

I'll post the package on my CCC Drow project page at the same time I submit it to CCC address. Anybody is free to tinker with it any way they find useful.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               I don't recall that skinmesh could cast shadows in the first place anyway.

Easiest trick with shadows I've found is test out hiding shadows for each bone in turn until you find out which one was the cause, then create a really simple bevelled box or something with render turned off to cast shadows for that part instead.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

_six wrote...

I don't recall that skinmesh could cast shadows in the first place anyway.

Easiest trick with shadows I've found is test out hiding shadows for each bone in turn until you find out which one was the cause, then create a really simple bevelled box or something with render turned off to cast shadows for that part instead.

You're 100% right that skinmesh doesn't cast shadows. However, I've seen a lot of shadow-borked models that had a "shadow 1" parameter defined for the skinmesh. Remove that and the model works. This type of error is what I was referring to.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cervantes35]

               I have seen  items cast a shadow with a "shadow 1" parameter and with no shadow parameter entered. I have always had to include the "shadow 0" that way there is no doubt that the item isn't casting a shadow.

26 Bones seems like it would cause problems as well. I thought NWN had a 16 bone limit on the amount and a 3 or 4 along any single vertice. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm sure six knows the specific amounts of bones recommended for the game.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par cervantes35, 28 avril 2013 - 05:05 .