INFO: A simple cube map cheat sheet to help you edit them

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

If you wind up playing around with making cube maps manually or using software to generate them, here's a handly little quick reference sheet to show you how NWN processes and orients them.

 

Cheers!

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

Nice, always wondered how they actually worked '>

 

I always thought they worked like DDS, for distances or something, are they are lightning setting for North South East West Shading?

 

What are the potential modding possibilities (what are your able to change with them, as an end result, in layman's terms?)

 

Are they the tileset textures that should be mirrored on things like shiny metal objects to simulate a reflected skybox/tileset enviormnent?

 

(Could a builder make a stars/nebula/galaxy one for a space tileset, or a lava cavern or deep cave style for underdark areas? or Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Arctic environments?)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Yep!  You can think of a cubemap as virtually surrounding whatever it's applied to, so whatever has them applied is inside (reflectively-speaking) that cube.  Unlike regular, single-image environment maps (like tcn01__ref01.dds or ttr01__ref01.dds) which are basically projected from the your camera's view onto whatever is mapped with them, cube maps are fixed and do not move, making cube mapped objects appear to more realistically be reflecting an environment they're in.

 

As far as modding possibilities go, cube maps are (off the top of my head) primarily used for two things: First, they're what's reflected off of bumpy-shiny things, like shinywater.  Second, because they represent the reflection of an environment, they're also used in .set files, I believe.  So, one could make/generate a mountainous or desert-y or swampy cube map that would be reflected off armor, for instance.  Though they can be very detailed and complex, they can also be blurred to give more of a "feel" to what a tileset, for instance, has going on, light-wise.  IIRC, you can always apply a cube map to something that would have worked with a regular environment map.  However, some things might look better with one than the other, depending.

 

Again, environment maps are single-image things which move as your camera does.  It's why the eyeballs follow the camera in this video.  Cubemaps are fixed, and you notice the reflection change when you move the camera, like in this one.

 

Edit: It's also worth pointing out that ttr01__env is actually a pretty terrible example of a cube map.  In most normal cube map situations, ttr01__env5.dds/tga would not reflect clouds but he ground/surface.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

Very Cool!

 

So basically its a cube reflecting an approximated version of a tileset's assumed environment, or a scaled down background/skybox image set...

 

 

(since the nwn engine cant render your player avatar and whats behind you in the mirror, realistically)

 

 

(For a Mordor tilset's Env Map, you might mix the following to the top north south east west sides of a cube) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(or perhaps recycle the sides of a skybox, or use different shades of water textures, for undersea)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

Found some example Envmap Cube Images (from blender and other games):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(or supposedly, you could take screenshots NSEW and TOP, then make into ENV maps)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               

 

Edit: It's also worth pointing out that ttr01__env is actually a pretty terrible example of a cube map.  In most normal cube map situations, ttr01__env5.dds/tga would not reflect clouds but he ground/surface.

 

hehe... the complete set is a terrible example of what you can do with NWN in general '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

@Carcerian (1st message): Yep, yep to all of that!  But, again, I want to put out the idea that while we think of cubemaps most of the time like this, they can sometimes do a better job like this or maybe even a mix of the two.  Imagine a placeable which was a floating sphere inside a wire cage or whatever.  You could do the cube map so that the wire cage was crisp but everything beyond it was fuzzy and then when you mapped it onto the sphere at the center of the placeable it would look freakishly-realistic because you'd see the sphere reflecting the rest of the placeable it's a part of but the rest of the area much less distinctly.  However, that might be a lot of work for a little payoff.  While I've dallied with, say, using a scripted camera to allow me to take screenshots for a cube map, they usually require a bit of work to get good enough looking. 

 

Oh, speaking of, here's a neat little program that can help you stitch together individual images (In our case, I believe to facilitate smoothing between them before re-exporting them as individual files) and...load existing cube maps (like cross maps) and splitting them into individual images.  Which we can use.

 
'>

 

Enter CubeMapGen...

 


 
Free, made by ATI, now unsupported.  Can download it here.  Comes with a bunch of samples to play with as part of the install.  Can download a much newer version (of the executable, only) which was modified after ATI open sourced it here.  Can read about some of the improvements of that NEW version (drumroll) here.

 
@Carcerian (2nd message): Love that cube map with the trees.  And there was a space station tileset or tilesets by either Chandigar and/or Chico400 (?) which would look great with something similar to that third cubemap down.

 
@NWN_baba yaga:  I found a little grim tidbit reading a Gamasutra article by Don Moar on tools programming.  You can read the whole thing here, but here's a snippet:

During Neverwinter Nights, the tools programming team at BioWare was asked to write a replacement for the current bug-tracking system. The bug-tracking system that was in use at that time had been purchased during the development of the original Baldur's Gate and was showing its age. ... Development started in the fall of 2000 and took five man-months of design and implementation. Unfortunately, those additional features that were unavailable except in the more expensive packages were not very well received and went largely unused. Since then, seven additional man-months of effort have been spent on support, maintenance and general improvements but for all intents and purposes, it remains only a bug-tracker.

 

Considering the scope of the program and how few of its features were ultimately used to their full potential, the Project Manager System was not as successful as it could have been. In hindsight, a third-party piece of bug-tracking software should have been purchased to allow the programming resources that were spent on it to be spent directly on Neverwinter Nights.

 

An extra twelve months of someone like Don Moar's time.  I can only imagine what goodness that would have yielded.  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

While this a good article I think it would be enhanced if someone was to offer an NwN example, say maybe of a skybox, since too many that I have seen have this awful seam visible. Also an NwN example would aid in understanding this topic.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

If a person were to make a skybox, I suppose a spherical one, and flipped the normals (so they were facing inward where the player could see them), I imagine someone could map a cube map onto it and it might look good.  There's a chance it might look better than an actual bitmap, especially if the cubemapping tool I mentioned above was used to make those seams go away.  As I mentioned, the tool will also read in different types of cube maps (like popular "cross style" ones which can be found all over the internet) and spit out the individual cube faces which NWN can read- so if someone is already familiar with making or retexturing skyboxes, it wouldn't take all that much extra skill to test out the effect.