Hello to all, a total NWN newbie here I found the Aurora Toolset and I love it, decided to create my own module and boy - it is so much fun!
I have enabled all CEP files (in correct load order) in my module. And I am currently using Rural Grass* (CEP modified) tileset, when I open the āFeaturesā & āGroupsā menus under āPaint Terrainā - I can only find so much what is there for buildings. Not much, a few houses, barns, farms, castles, mausoleums.
However when I create a new placeable object, and scroll through the appearance models, I can see so many cool buildings with lots of potential in there. The main problem: you canāt place doors on them (or can you?).
Iām capable of modelling buildings with Blender, so I want to give this a shot. I wish to create a building, and be able to add it into āFeaturesā menu inside āPaint Terrainā - is this possible, or is there a better easier and cleaner way?
But my issue is, that I use latest CEP. I want to keep using it, I have extracted ttr01.set, ttr01_edge.2da, ttr01palstd.itp which seem to be the tileset files for āRural Grass*ā (CEP modified version) from area wizard.
Of course I want to modify textures, add some buildings to it. This will be the main town area in my module, so I then need to modify the stuff - and then create a separate .hak file out of these files, and upload it for my players?
I would suggest making your custom house as a placeable in the first instance. That way you can place it wherever you want. Then if you still want to add it as a custom tile at some point in the future you will already have a working model to play with.
Thank you for giving me confidence to get my building going :D! On a side note, I found another tileset inside CEP which satisfies me for the most part.
Why donāt CEP developers add waaaaaay more buildings into tileset pallette :P? Hope that is something to be seen in the future! I donāt mean just buildings, but really more ready stuff! Iām just curious.
Placeable buildings are more flexible because you can place them wherever you want.
Well-made placeables have a walkmesh so the player canāt walk through them. Some of the placeable buildings in CEP donāt, but you can fix that with the invisible wall placeables.
There is a trick for placing doors anywhere you like. Lay down a doorway tile. Add a door. Select the door in the list of area contents on the left of the toolset. Right-click Adjust Location to move the door exactly where you want. Now you can replace the doorway tile with terrain.
This is way easier than making tiles for additional buildings.
P.S. Sadly, CEP stopped its tileset development years ago, but there are plenty of custom tilesets here at the Vault that you can add as haks.
If you want your object like house as a choice in the palette as a Feature, then you should add it to chosen tileset. This requires:
-in Blender - creating custom tile/ or tiles, if the house is bigger then one tile, then exporting it with Neverblender (found here: Neverblender - you should get .mdl and .wok
And hereās link to tutorials for NWN and Neverblender: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/do-it-blender
Pack it all into hak, add to your module and enjoy
Adding your model as a tile will require more work, but can help with pathfinding in game, model as placeable - is easier, but large models with .pwk can tamper with pathfinding.
In Single Player, Iāve never experienced pathfinding or lag issues with placeables.
AFAIK that idea, often expressed as ādonāt put placeables on tile boundariesā, goes back to some research that Bioware did prior to releasing the game in 2002. I donāt know whether itās been validated on modern hardware. At any rate, if itās a problem at all, it will only be for busy MP servers.
In case you want to go the placeable or even doorless tiles route but really want doorways that look like they were built for doors (like I did)ā¦ well I may have the solution for youā¦ I did some math and created Placeable doorways with just the right size depth and comes in a number of common Textures. And the best part is you just place it in the exact same
@MasterMind any tile with a doorway will do - for example, if your area uses the Rural tileset, House 1. If youāre unfamiliar with a tileset, try placing all of the features and groups temporarily, just to see what they have to offer. Once youāve snapped a door to your House1, relocate it, then use the Eraser to replace House 1 with grass. If you really donāt want to mess up the tiles you already placed, just make the area bigger temporarily & put your doorway tile in the margin.
@Stonehammer thatās so useful - can we have a link?
@Proleric Wow this actually worked :D! Thank you for this handy trick. For now Iāll really go with this, Iām a beginner! And I know creating tiles is no easy task, so I hope this method will work just fine - and nobody canāt tell the difference!
@Stonehammer Thank you for sharing your works, looking forward to try out your hak. I am using latest CEP, hopefully it wonāt be too difficult to get it to work for a newbie like myself XD
I made sure I used CEP blank slots so it would not make a mess, but you may have to tinker with the CEP placeables2da. Copy my lines and add it to the CEP placeables.2da on the numbers indicated (they are blank). Make sure you delete the placeables.2da from my hak AFTER you have done the copy.
I found the Aurora Toolset and I love it, decided to create my own module and boy - it is so much fun!
thank you for this.