The BTH Model Clearance Sale

My warehouse is drastically over-stocked. Everything must go!

Over the last couple of years I've worked on a number of NWN2 projects that never made it to completion. The rate of project failure has been quite spectacular and I think that is a reflection on how much effort it takes to design and build a quality NWN2 module or persistent world. My only contribution to most of these projects has been to make custom models which is only a small part when you consider the writing, building and scripting that goes into completing a module. Running an amateur gaming project that relies on volunteer contributions must be like herding cats.

At the end of the day it seems a shame to have created custom models that won't get used. So I've decided to gather the models that are laying around like unclaimed baggage and release what I can to the vault with the hope that someone can use them.

I've updated the BTH Houses hak with models that were done for the terminally ill Dark Ages PW project. Unfortunately Dark Ages only ever made it to a basic alpha release before being left to wither. A pity. I was looking forward to playing Dark Ages with the AussieNWN guys. Such is life.

The update to the BTH Houses hak includes 4 re-skinned OC house models plus an inn as well as textures for the Standard Interior tileset that match the external stone or earth walls of the house models. The re-skinned houses have been dirtied up a little in keeping with the rustic feel of the other BTH houses.



Over the coming weeks I'll work my way through all the unused models I have and release what I can. I think this will help draw a line under my NWN2 work and tidy up the remaining loose ends. A sense of getting my affairs in order, so to speak.

A mixed bag

I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure. - W.C. Fields

So the last five weeks have produced a bit of a mixed bag in terms of my NWN2 work. I've been a little scattered with my efforts as I jumped from one idea to another and from one project to another.

BouncyRock's Shattered Dreams module is coming along nicely and you can read more about that on the BouncyRock forums here: BR Shattered Dreams and you can read about the interesting work Elysius is doing on his blog. Now that the module has been announced I'll post some screenshots of the work I've done for Shattered Dreams in the coming weeks.

Aussie NWN - Dark Ages PW (the other project I'm working on) has an alpha module ready and is in the early stages of testing. It's been a long time coming but I'm looking forward to this PW coming to life. They are are waiting on the long promised fixes that are set for release with the 1.23 patch.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to try my hand at character skinning and with that in mind I set about making some Roman-like armour to compliment the other work I'd done for Dark Ages. I basically made up a Frankenstein model from bits and pieces using the OC naked model for the arms and legs and one of the chain shirt models for the torso.

Bolting all the pieces together was the easy part and once I started to work with the skin modifier, I soon realised how much work it was going to be. It took a lot of experimentation to get the legs working so they didn't break out of the armour during the character animations. I used a combat animation widget I'd scripted to help me test the new armour and it proved to be a valuable tool. In any case, I managed to tweak the lower part of the model to achieve a very good result. It wasn't until I ran the OC chain shirt model through the same animations that I realised I'd actually improved my model over the OC model in terms of reducing the amount clipping.

Having finished the legs I moved to the arms. I completed about 90% of the skinning on this armour before I was distracted by something else but I intend to get back to it soon and complete the model. Here's the model so far.


The combat animation widget that I'd used to test the Roman armour was included as part of an update to my Module Testing Toolkit. Along with a module reload widget and some redesigned GUI functionality, the "Ring of the Dancing Warrior" formed part of the MTT v2.01h update and brings up more than six years of work on this toolkit.

I could not count the number of hours the MTT has saved me in testing time over the years. This little tool started life as a set of NWN1 scripts that morphed into the DM and player widget used on the Aeon NWN1 PW and in 2007 I re-wrote the core scripts for NWN2, adding a GUI menu to replace the conversation driven menu. If you have any interest in building NWN2 modules you should check out what the MTT can do and how it can help.

I have also released an update to the BTH Weapon Pack to include four new axe models. Three of which are shown below.


And lastly (and quickly, because my weekly NWN2 multi-player campaign is about to start) I did a re-skin of the arrow quiver model for the Dark Ages PW.


So there you have it, a mixed bag of NWN2 goodies.

Rome wasn't built in a day

she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat - Mark Twain : A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Much of my NWN2 modeling for the past few weeks has been for the BouncyRock project and we have a Secret Squirrel agreement in place and so I haven't been able to write about it here. But after reading Elysius' series of blog entries on creature modeling I decided to experiment with a technique of using a high polygon model to project a normal map that is used on a low polygon model. This is a method I had previously read about but never tried before.

Until now, all of my normal maps have been created in Photoshop from grey scale bump maps and converted to normal maps with the nVidia Photoshop plugin. It's proven itself to be a very effective way to make a normal map as can be seen in my shield pack. But while reading Elysius' creature blog I realised I had more or less stagnated in my modeling methods and I was relying on the same set of techniques I had discovered from tutorials when I first started NWN2 modeling. I guess this is one of the dangers of being self taught. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. So I challenged myself to learn some new techniques and experiment with new ways (for me, at least) of doing things.

Using a high polygon model as the source for a normal map is a relatively straight forward process. Basically, make a high polygon model with all the detail and a replica low polygon model that the game engine can render. Use the high polygon model to render a normal map that is then applied to the low polygon model. Simple.

So I decided to try this out on a Roman helmet model I was making for the AussieNWN Dark Ages NWN2 PW. While it took me a bit of fiddling to get the high poly model the way I wanted it, I think it was worth the time taken to learn the normal map rendering process. The normal map on this model is the combination of high poly normal map rendering blended with a bump map conversion.

The Roman helmets often had a highly tinned finish, so it's too bad the NWN2 engine doesn't do reflections. The best I could manage was to set the specularity to represent shiny metal and add a touch of blue colour to the specularity settings. Thanks to Slimer for the tip about using colour.

The Dark Ages Roman soldier is coming together slowly. We have a couple of Roman short swords, a shield and now the helm.

I'm going to learn how to do character skinning and work on some Roman armour next. It's time I stepped up my modelling from simple items and placeables and moved onto something more challenging.

And on another note; the NWN Aeon PW I helped build with Sporaxis and Relexx has been revived by Sporaxis. I put a lot of effort into the custom tilesets for that world (about six or seven tilesets from memory) so it's great to see that the module is being used again. Sporaxis is converting the world from its original custom setting to Forgotten Realms. I wish I knew then, what I know now about modeling and I would have really given those tilesets a good going over. As tempting as it is to fix up some of the old models (like floating rocks lol) I have my hands full with NWN2.

You can find the details for the Aeon PW on Sporaxis' forums. Long live the Aeon PW!

A Milestone

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights - Muhammad Ali

Today I released the BTH Weapon Pack, my seventh custom content submission for NWN2. By coincidence it is exactly twelve months ago to the day that I released my first NWN2 models.

The BTH Weapon Pack came together nicely with the addition of three more models in the Smouldering Weapon range and includes a total of 36 weapons.

It's taken most of the day to collect the screenshots, package the model files and run a final test. The submission is currently waiting for approval on the NWVault site. The preparation for the release gave me the opportunity to look at some of the early weapon models I made for AussieNWN and reflect on how both my 2D and 3D skills have improved.

It's not at all difficult to pick out the short sword models that were my first attempts at making weapons. The dates on those first weapon models go back to December 2007. The BTH Weapon Pack has been a long time in the making. In fact, this project has been so stretched out that while I was preparing the files today I re-discovered a couple of models I'd completely forgotten about.

Anyhoo, here's the link to the BTH Weapon Pack on NWVault. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the the complete set of Smouldering Weapons. I'm going to fiddle with another short video.

Burning down the gates

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable - William Shakespeare

For the most part I like to make custom content that will be useful to the wider NWN2 community. Sometimes I do things just for fun, like the severed heads. Sometimes I make stuff that people ask for, like the Rune Placeables. My Module Testing Toolkit is targeted at a niche audience and I don't expect that will be hugely popular. But overall I like to know that I'm spending my time on building custom content that is appreciated.

The best way for me to gauge popular opinion on a particular project is to look at the downloads and votes that my NWVault submissions collect. So it's been two weeks since I released the update on the BTH Watchtowers and the update has only attracted one extra vote and twenty downloads. I begin to wonder if I'm wasting my time making models that only a handful of people are going to use.

I've decided to drop the rural gate model and make the final watchtower update with the the new Archer's Platform and the walkmesh helpers. I still have to package the new models and write a how-to for the walkmesh helpers. It all takes time to do it properly and looking at the response to the previous watchtower update I don't think the additional effort involved in making a gate model is worthwhile. The new models are "more of the same" and it doesn't seem to be what builders want.

I had been thinking about re-vamping my house pack, but again, the interest in those models has been minimal. I have another 5 or 6 models that I had done previously for the Aussie NWN boys, all I need to do is package them up and submit them. But the interest from the community doesn't seem to be there.

In the meantime I've been playing with the texture for the new great sword. I have added a subtle pattern to the lower part of the blade. The pattern is a combination of diffuse texture and bump map. It doesn't jump out at you, but that was the look I was trying to achieve.

I also gave the blade a very sublte taper. It's barely noticeable, but somehow it improves the overall look of the weapon.

It's no simple thing to climb a ladder

Twelve months ago I sent a note to Slimer of the Aussie NWN team asking if they needed a part-time developer for their custom content. The Aussie NWN team had plans for a NWN2 persistent world set in Britain around 300AD and it sounded like an interesting project to contribute to. Plus I had played on one of their NWN PWs a couple of years ago and so I knew the guys involved. I had only been modelling for a few months when I contacted Slimer, but I was confident enough to be able to make placeables and other non-animated models for them.

I started with some rustic houses. Many of the original Obsidian models in NWN2 are way too clean and the rural house models are a perfect example. The thatched roofs look like piles of hay and every wall and corner is perfectly square. It was a good opportunity to grunge things up a little and knock a few walls and door frames off square.

While I was playing Bob the dodgy Builder, I noticed that the rural watchtower model (that looked great) was mostly a useless pile of timber that you couldn't climb. Duh! Not much use to a module builder. NWN2 seemed to be devoid of towers and platforms that could be climbed and used to defend a rural town. I took up the challenge of making watchtowers and archers platforms that the players could climb.

And so started my love/hate relationship with the NWN2 walkmesh, for it's no simple thing to climb a ladder in NWN2.

The walkmesh is used to stitch the geometry of a model into the terrain of the surrounding area and it defines where players can and cannot walk. For most placeable models this is easy enough; you have a wall and you don't want players to be able to walk through it. If you add a walkable gradient to a model (such as stairs) the points where the model intersects the terrain usually stitch adequately, but only as long as the terrain and the stairs terminate at the same level. If the stairs are sunk into the terrain the walkmesh creates a dip that makes the ground in front of the stairs unwalkable.

I settled on a walkmesh that worked well with the base of the stairs level with the ground and so in October 2007 I released my very first placeable hak with watchtowers and rural fort wall models on the NWVault site. I have been a little surprised at its lack of popularity and in ten months it has only tallied 280 downloads. In any case, I recently found myself in between projects and I decided to take the opportunity to revisit my watchtower hak.

I never liked the texture that Obsidian used for the fort walls. For a start, the models cannot be tinted. The texture also makes the upright posts in the fort walls look like mutant asparagus cross-bred with giant bamboo. It was time for the BTH texture treatment to add a more weathered look for the timber and an opportunity to include a tint map. The new texture is on the left, original texture on the right.


I also wanted to build an archers platform that was integrated with the style of the fort walls. I am quite pleased with this one, it turned out nicely.

The walkmesh for this model also has the same ground level restrictions as my previous towers. I can't claim to have mastered the NWN2 walkmesh just yet. Nonetheless, it was pleasing to look back on some of my early work and reflect on how much I have improved my workflow over the last 12 months and become more efficient.

I did have an idea on how I can improve the walkmesh for these watchtowers with a walkmesh helper model, but I was having difficulty getting it to work and so it was cut from the v1.10 release of the BTH Watchtowers. I have since read a tip from Sporaxis about converting placeables to environment objects and adding a walkmesh helper over the top. With this in mind, I have created walkmesh helpers specifically for the watchtowers. This has worked really well and I'm currently working on the v1.20 update to the Watchtowers to include the walkmesh helpers, an additional archer's platform and a gate with double doors.

My Watchtower hak for NWN2 can be found here: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2HakpaksOriginal.Detail&id=12022&id=226

It's a dangerous business stepping out your door

It's a dangerous business stepping out your door, if you don't keep your feet there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. - Bilbo Baggins

One of the things I have spent a lot of time on in recent years is the game Neverwinter Nights, based on the pen and paper role playing game of Dungeons & Dragons. While I was initially attracted to Neverwinter Nights as a fantasy RPG with strong ties to D&D, it would be the game's world building toolset and the community of other NWN players that would sweep me along on an unexpected journey and capture my attention for a long time.

I have no doubt that the NWN player community has been largely responsible for the longevity of the game. Six years after the release of NWN, the game continues to have a strong following. I first bought the game in 2003 and was lured to the toolset before I had come close to completing the single player game.

My early experimentation with the toolset had me writing some simple "go fetch" quests. One of the quests was to recover an item from the village thief. Every actor in an adventure needs a name, even a petty criminal. So, inspired by such names as Jimmy the Hand (Raymond E Feist) and Mack the Knife, I created Barry the Hatchet. The name made me laugh and I eventually adopted it as my online identity for all things Neverwinter.

I soon learned that writing exciting adventures was not one of my talents. But I did have an affinity for the scripting language that drives the NWN game. I also spent a lot of time playing on persistent worlds. Mystara- Black Horizons was an early favourite. The server is still active today. I also played on Chronicles of Torn (made by the Aussie NWN team). I had some great times on these servers and met some people I still hang out with online today.

So it's almost two years since the release of Neverwinter Nights 2 and at the moment I'm getting my kicks by making 3D custom models for NWN2. It's been a long journey from where I started in 2003 with the creation of Barry the Hatchet (petty thief and scoundrel) to building 3D models for NWN2. The fun part is that there is always more to learn.