Blackwill's Toolset blog

[Blackwill]

I just wanted to keep everyone informed... for a little bit of what I'm doing on the project, and on the Base Mod. So I'll try and update this thread every once in a while.

I've been working on making placeables up to the base mod specs. All placeables that should be moveable (weight), forcing open a lock, lockpickable, braking open crates and the like, destroying items, etc.

So today I was working on tables and such.
Table5 and 6 looked a bit buggy, so I didn't add them to the base mod list.




Some placeables allow tinting. About 1/10 is tintable I would say. If the tint is set to 0,0,0 (black) then they aren't tintable. If they are set to a color, then you can always edit them yourself. Below you see a tinted table, next to a raw black one. Most other tables on the shot are all standard fixt colors. There are about double that amount of table on offer.




So what's done so far:

• Containers
  
  • Furniture
    
    • Alters
      
    • Armoires
      
    • Bookcases
      
    • Cabinets
      
    • Drawers
      
    • Shelves
      
    • Wardrobes
      
    • Weapon Racks
      
    • Workbenches
    
    
  • Storage Containers
    
    • Bags
      
    • Barrels
      
    • Baskets
      
    • Chests
      
    • Casks
      
    • Crates
      
    • Kegs
  
  
• Useable Placeables
  
  • Benches
    
  • Braziers
    
  • Chairs
    
  • Cushions
    
  • Stools
    
  • Tables

Here's the list:




In those shots at the right you see the stats of one of the already edited placeable. The key to see is that we use custom scripts that connect with the named actions. Also, a nice amount of variable adds in a couple of our neat extra useabilities.

Here's a shot with the variables of a chest.


In between getting pissed off with placeables I started messing about with some basic area builds. Here's one I started on earlier... can you gues what it is yet?





Next on the to do list, are corpses... WITH INVENTORIES. YAY!
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

Today, and last night's events...

Yesterday I had little time to commit, but I had enough to complete some more containers/palceables.

I finally did the corpses with inventories. This way DMs can plop down dead bodies and give them some loot, if the PCs decide to loot the stinking rotting corpse... or even bag of bones.



Today, I finally had the time to complete my texturing work on the Moonsea coastline map I've been messing with.

This is what I started with: Uncomplete Cliff


The area's main feature is two outcropping cliffs into the sea. Basically the idea comes from the cliffs found at the coast in northern France or southern England.

Basically, what I learnt to texture hills, cliffs or mountains, the steep and unwalkable cliffs usually are in a stone. So this requires a different texture. Without using the "Surface Mesh" button it's really hard to see what's unwalkable. So just enabling the surface mesh button allows you to see what needs its texture changed in respect to cliffs.

Here is what I did after texturing. You can set the power of painting textures from 1-100%. This allows you to have one texture flow into another.





The finished version of one of the cliffs:



This is the overview of the area:



As reference the textures used are:

TT_GG_Grass_02 -> long grass, which the northern part of the coast between Phlan and Zhentil Keep should be like.
TT_GR_Cliff_01 -> Just like the Cliffs in Brittain, or the most similar.
TTGD_Dirt_02 -> used for a dirt road/trail.


Next step is grass... which there are about 22 different types of, although this inludes wheats and reeds.
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

Hurrah for grass.




I'm not too sure what to add to this map, as this was more of an experiment.
So I think I might start working on interiors, as I've not seen many of those yet. Lots of placeables and the likes will probably require much time and effort.

Does anyone know the name of that great Inn, in Zhentil Keep.
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

My first hand at the interiors. This is just the basic layout of what should be the House of Comfort.


_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

Today I put some more time into making the Inn interior that I started last week. Placeing down palceables, tinting some for uniqueness. Then I realised an important part of the interior was missing while I was starting to place down tables and the like... Lights!

So after realising I already placed candleabras around, but noticed they had no standard lighting connected I went in seach for answers. Soon I found an easy and quick tutorial that guided me into making stupid looking placeables, into shining beacons of brightness.

Here's what I did. Basically, you need to connect a standard light that's inside the Placed Effects Tab. There canle effect can be painted, but the position/height also needs to set perfectly, or it looks rediculous. So after twenty minutes of fidling around I finally completed my candleabra.



Now I hear you asking, do we need to make these everytime we need a candleabra... the answer is no. Thanks to the "grouping feature" you can group the light sources and the candleabra (or whatever your using). You can then export this, and hopefully the import function will be sorted out later, so we can add these into any mod or area. Copying does work but isn't very handy at all.

The only problem I've noticed so far is that it's possible that we won't be able to save a prefab (group) into the Base Mod. Which would suck. Lets hope I'm wrong.

Here's a pic I took from the main room of the Inn. I'm still working on everything, so it's a pretty early shot of my work.


_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[jodyhamilton]

Wow that is a really nice interior...I like the low ceiling/cellar look to the place. Just had to comment...carry on.
Jody
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Go ahead see if I care.

[Blackwill]

Still figureing out if I can edit the ceilings. AFAIK the tiles can be tinted, but I think the ceilings are uneditable... lets hope I'm wrong once again.
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

Lighting seems to be taking up a stupid amount of time. Certainly if you want to find a way to prefab them, and then still have all the heights set as they should. Chandeliers are a huge pain in the ass if you ask me.

Here's some of the shots with lighting... which still aren't done.




_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

I've finally finished the House of Comfort Inn. Well, as far as finished goes in the pre-release toolset. I've completed the lighting... and god was that a big nasty job. Adding lights, adding effects, grouping them, and spreading them around, changing heights, and messing up often.

Doing the placeables is just as easy as it looks. Finding what you want in the placeables list is the hard part. The list finally started to look familiar once I nearly completed the area. There were a few things I did really miss. Things like dungeon dressing, starting froim scorth marks, blood trails, gore, webbing, pee, a pile of thrown up food, etc. I found nothing like these sadly. They will be a MUST if I make the pride of ZK. I hope we'll get them soon in a hak or in a patch.

I think I must have worked about 15-20 hours on this area. With the knowledge I gained it could be done in 5-10 hours. Still, that's a damn long time for a small-ish Inn.

See if you like it, oh yeah, no NPCs yet, so it's still a bit lifeless. Here's a tour. Comments are of course more than welcome.


Entering the House of Comfort, the warm glow draws you in to take a look.


Getting your barings you look around and see many cozy places around the common room.


The warm hearth draws you near. The coldness of the outdoors that lingered in your bones quickly fades as you approach.


Meeting up with some friends, and after a great cardgame you decide to take a look over at the bar. "Where's that damn wench... lets see if I can get myself a dark stout before she comes back."


Deciding your hungry as a horse, you move to the kitchen door and decide to take a peek. "There must be somthin' good ta eat in there".


A good slap up dinner was all you needed. Now up to your comfortable room, you went, and relaxed in the fresh bath. "Where's the lass I ordered."


Sneaking around at night, you decide to take a look in the private quarters of Maradad.

_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

Well I started working on the Dragonspine Mts. It took me around 5-8 hours just to landscape it. What I now realise is that sketching out rought terrain like this before you start should shorten the time it takes for actually scaping the area. Here's an arial shot of the walkmesh.


_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

A waterfall... ooooh. Not 100% happy with it yet. It probably still needs some tweaking.


_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

I've dropped off the building rader untill this weekend. Why? Simple, I'm addicted to the great OC. Its like BG2 all over again. So far, very impressed, even on the lowest res.

I'll be finishing off my mountain exterior this weekend (hopefully).
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

After a while, I realised the OC was fun, but building is more important, so I grabbed myself by the color and started on a new interior.

First of all, I recommend everyone that wants to do any interior building to download this plugin: The NWN2 Mapper. Its so far the best and most usefull plugin I've used. It allows you to create a tunnel network of your desire interior in mere minutes. No more manually selecting tiles. This thing is king.

So I started work on the Temple of Bane in Zhentil Keep. I will be showing you some shots, but certainly not all shots. Only those of the public sanctuary will be shown. The rest you'll have to find out ingame.


So...

Firstly opening the toolset, I created an area, 1 tiles in every direction larger than the size I needed. Then I openend up my plugin, and started mapping out according to the canon information available.



Once I had the complete layout down, I started to work on the tinting. Tinting can be a real pain to get everything just right. And some tilesets don't allow good tinting. Tinting something black makes it look pitchblack, and looses all texture. So you need to work with dark greys or browns to get a suitable dark color.

My first attempt sucked...



But then I kept fiddling and ended up with a suitable (or nearly suitable) tint.



Before anyone asks... the tint is based on black granite, and black marble mainly. There is a some green in there too, due to the veigns that are in the marble.

More very soon.
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "

[Blackwill]

With the new public thread "DA NEWS" by Thangorn, I'll be locking this thread, and allowing him to paste parts of our private progress on the NEWS thread.

Thanks.

~B
_________________
~Blackwill
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me. "