Acifer

I could suggest another option: the door should only be able to be opened from the outside. If the whole party is in the room, there is no way out. But if a party member is waiting outside, there is still the possibility to open the door. This doesn't prevent cheesy tactics, but it could work well from a role-playing perspective.

I too would love to see a bestiary ingame! Also, it would be a great opportunity for modders to add their own stuff.

I don't think it would be a copyright issue, since all the material has been publicly available on the internet for a long time.

A good site that lists the original descriptions from the AD&D 2nd Edition sourcebooks:

http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/monstrousmanual/

22 minutes ago, Graion Dilach said:

Not even the models? Wow, that's impressive (and sounds massively time-consuming).

Thanks! The models are not game models either. However, due to time constraints, I use some licensed models and textures from commercial 3D-asset sites.

11 hours ago, artyfox said:

I also checked out the Skyfire mod thread, I think your animation work is just as impressive as your environments.

Thank you! I have imported the animations from NWN using 3dsMax. Since it was a long time ago, I would have to search where I saved the corresponding files, then I could create a related tutorial.

9 hours ago, Daulmakan said:

Colour me very impressed. 

From which game you used the resources to create that map?

Thanks! The area graphics are not taken from a game.
I created them on my own in a 3D program.

A good way to add water overlays in new area graphics

Areas that contain water look beautiful, but are among the most difficult graphics to create for the Infinity Engine. Animated water is generated in the Infinity Engine using overlays. The process to add overlays is very time-consuming, giving mixed results.

There were two ways to create these overlays:

1. paint overlays in IETME

2. create them in DLTCEP using polygons.

Both procedures are not quite ideal. It takes an incredibly long time and the results are suboptimal. I create my water overlays using a third method, which I would like to introduce here. So if anyone is using 3D renderings or Photoshop to create new area graphics that contain water, I hope I can share a quick and perfect-looking approach with you.

What you need

• NearInfinity
• DLTCEP
• IETME (Infinity Engine Tileset Map Editor)
• A graphics editor of your choice (like Photoshop or Gimp)
• Your 3D Rendering suite

Step 1 - use object masks

This is an area I created for my Skyfire modification that contains a hell lot of water. It's Lost Ahjuutal, a city that is slowly sinking into the Spider Swamp. Preparing all the mangrove leaves for the water overlays using the old methods would be nearly impossible and an absolute nightmare.

However, every 3d-rendering-suite and every graphics editor has the possibility to create object masks. In this case, I selected the objects representing water and rendered a black and white mask:

Step 2 - floodfill the water

Using Photoshop, cut out all graphics in the area that do contain water using your object mask.

Place another layer under the cut-out area graphic and fill it with a uniform colour. I chose the RGB colour 255.0.0 (pure red).

Step 3 - create your tis-file

Save this area graphic and create a tis file with it.

Open DLTCEP, load the area you want to edit and create an overlay. Create a small polygon in DLTCEP for this overlay and save the area.

How to do this is described here: http://www.simpilot.net/~sc/dltcep/index.htm

Step 4 - add the water tilesets

Open IETME, select the overlay and select "Add/Delete Tiles". Now you have to select every tile that contains the red colour. Save the area using IETME and make sure you also save the Tis-file.

Step 5 - export the tileset

Open the tis-file in NI, it should look like this:

As you can see, IETME has attached all tiles that contain water to the bottom of the tileset.

Export this tis-file as png.

Step 6 - remove the floodfilled water

Open your exported tis-file in Photoshop. Place the original area graphic containing water in the upper part in a new layer.

Select the red colour using a colour mask and delete it from the png image.

Save the file as a png.

Step 7 - convert your final tis-file

In NI, go to "tools -> convert -> image to tis", select the png you just created and save it as a tis file under the original tis name. If you take a look at your area ingame you will see perfectly matched water without any annoying edges:

1 hour ago, Guest Morgoth said:

@Acifer, did you make any progress on Skyfire?

Yes I do! At the moment I am very busy with another modification, which I will announce in the near future. I am currently working on the suggestions of my closed beta testers. I hope to introduce this mod soon, when the closed beta-testing phase will be finished. Skyfire has to take a step back for now, but as soon as the other mod has been announced for open beta I will finish the work on Skyfire. For the Grabmal mod I updated some areas some time ago, but it's up to Jastey to continue on that project.

Thank you so much for this mod - I've been waiting for something like this for years! The denoising emphasizes the painted look of the games in a very pleasant way. 

Can't wait to install the new graphics on my iPad!

17 hours ago, Gwaihir said:

Anyway, it would be very cool to add a little bit of lore to that area..

That's a good point. When I created the encounter I didn't pay much attention to the lore, I just wanted to add two new areas from scratch that included an opponent for a higher level party.
But adding a bit more lore sounds very intriguing. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

On 4/3/2022 at 11:02 PM, Sam. said:

PS BAM is extraordinarily good at compressing BAMs, far beyond any other tool available.

PS BAM is a killer tool for bam postproduction. I recently tried to enhance my XDR Dragon animations I created some time ago, and PS BAM reduced the size of the 567 bam files from 543 MB to 11.4 MB!

Not only did it compress the bams, it optimized each frame in every possible way, reducing the size of many bams that only contained transparent frames from 743KB to zilch (1KB). Awesome!

2 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

The edge problem on @Acifer's example is because the renders were antialiased against the background as well which you don't want.

Unfortunately I switched AA off by setting the filter size to 0. The creature model has sharp edges, but the soft edges of the shadow occur because the shadow filter uses a transparency fade; it gets more transparent at the edges. You can get rid of that that by adjusting the Color Ramp filter I guess.

2 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

In C&C, the standard is to render the object and the shadow separately then merge them in the asset

Another reason: if you normally choose a unique shadow color, this colored shadow will also be cast on the object, causing ugly artifacts on the object. Since Artemius has managed to separate the coloring process of the object and the ground plane (which catches the shadow), there should be no need for further adjustment if everything is set up in Blender as it should be.

I should point out that I have little experience with Blender, but I did render dozens of NWN animations using 3DS Max a few years ago and am quite familiar with the issues and obstacles discussed in this thread. I'm totally impressed with how @Artemius I has put everything together so far.

My experience is that you should put all your efforts into creating a well-functioning rendering setup (Blender file) and try to use as few different editors (like GIMP) as possible, since you might have to re-render and re-import your animations quite often at the beginning.

EDIT:

@Sam.: That sounds like just the tool we need - great! It's good to know that there are good modding tools out there these days that make life easier.

I think you are almost there. I just rendered the golem from your blender template file.

First, I disabled anti-aliasing by setting the filter size to "0"

...then I adjusted the shadow color of the shadow catcher material to assign a unique, distinctive color:

I do not have access to NWN files at the moment, so the rendered golem looks a little wonky without textures:

I used BamWorkshop II for the conversion and assigned that "red" color as a shadow color:

That way, you have a transparent shadow ingame:

As you can see there are still blurred green lines around the shadow. I guess you have to tinker around with the settings of the shadow catching material.

Using BamWorkshop II is very time-consuming, however, so I hope there is another tool that can handle shadow colors and create a 256-bit palette bam.

EDIT:

Here's the final result without blurred lines so far:

On 12/2/2021 at 7:09 PM, Artemius I said:

And yeah, I’ve been zigzagging between whether I’d prefer the shadows to be more defined or more translucent, but those shadows definitely do not look good in game.

You will receive the best results by assigning a unique shadow color to your shadow catchter material, for example a strong red (RGB 255.0.0). BAMWorkshop 2 used a pink color to determine where shadows are present. That way the shadows are assigned to palette entry #1 (the 2nd palette colour) and there are no "false" shadows in the darker portions of the creature.

@argent77:  Is there a way to tell NI which color should be considered as the shadow color?

Awesome! 

The first animation looks like a Stone giant.

Thank you so much! I've been waiting for a workaround like this for ages. 

Good work! And thanks for sharing your .blend file, it's especially useful because of the decent shadow catching node you created.

May I ask how you managed to attach weapons? I couldn't find the corresponding mdl files with NWNExplorer.

This looks great! Adding new animations from NWN would be absolutely fantastic and sharing a step-by-step guide would be awesome.

I tried to convert a couple of animations using blender but switched back to 3DS Max because of some issues I could not solve. So I have a couple of questions:

- How did you import the mdl file?

- How is your camera setup?

- Did you manage to create a proper working shadow? This is the greatest obstacle using blender in my opinion.

Just a quick note: Guido Henkel, who created this game, was the first producer of Planescape:Torment.

On 2/7/2021 at 10:49 PM, argent77 said:

Maybe these notes about splitted bams can help

That's very helpful! Thank you very much. 

On 2/7/2021 at 10:49 PM, argent77 said:

4[segment]0[dir]: GH=[dir], DE/SL=9+[dir], TW=18+[dir], DE/SL=27+[dir], DE/SL=36+[dir] -

4[segment]1[dir]: GH=[dir], DE/SL=9+[dir], TW=18+[dir], SL=27+[dir], SL/DE=36+[dir] -

4[segment]2[dir]: GH=[dir], DE/SL=9+[dir], TW=18+[dir], SL=27+[dir], SL/DE=36+[dir]

I wonder why there a so many doubled animation cycles. Maybe they were meant for some additional animations that had to be cut out?

On 2/5/2021 at 4:44 PM, temnix said:

Is there going to be a real new dragon animation? Why do you care how they work?

Yes, I am working on a new dragon animation, but don't expect too much as I am not a 3D modeling / animation expert at all. 

On 2/4/2021 at 9:55 PM, lynx said:

It looks like you have everything figured out.

Thank you! I wasn't sure I got things right, but I'm glad I can move forward from this point. As for the naming, I didn't know how to name the master file so after splitting them all the different files share their corresponding names, but I hope I've figured it out now.

On 2/5/2021 at 12:22 AM, Sam. said:

In fact, Beamdog is looking into re-combining all split spell and creature animations to eliminate the dark lines between sections caused by zooming.

This is good to hear. I didn‘t know that. So, with no size limits in the Enhanced Editions, there could be real huge dragons? Cool.

On 2/5/2021 at 12:22 AM, Sam. said:

If you get to the point where you have all of your frames done and are ready to convert them into BAMs, I can batch process them for you

This is a very generous offer - thank you very much!
And I wasn‘t aware of how powerful and versatile PSBam really is. An impressive tool! 

If only I were a better command-line user.

18 hours ago, temnix said:

Is there going to be a real new dragon animation?

In some way, yes. The rendered frames are all there, they just need to be assembled. This might take some time, though.

MDR1 - BAM sequences

I am trying to figure out how the dragon animation sequences work. I have read the explanations in the Infinity Animations readme but I do not understand what is exactly going on and how to create the split bam files. I usually just keep trying, but this is too nasty. I do not want to create 405 separate bam files just to realize it is not working how it's supposed to be.

What I figured out so far:

As a baseline, we have 9 sequences for each of the 9 "west" directions (S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, NNW, N). There are no "east" animations as they are generated (mirrored) by the engine.

Each dragon has 5 animation types that contain all animations: XDRX1xxx  - XDRX5xxx

Each animation block is divided into 9 files (e.g. XDRX11xx - XDRX19xx) which itself has 9 files (e.g. XDR11110-XDR11118). Each animation block therefore has 9x9 animation files = 81 files.

The animation blocks consist of:

MDR11xxx - 9 cycles: walk (9 cycles; 12 frames)

MDR12xx - 27 cycles: Sequence ready/combat (SC) / stand down(SD) (27 cycles)

                1-9:                   SC: 9 cycles (Seq ready)  (9 cycles; 8 frames)

                10- 18:              SD: 9 Cycles (Seq pause / idle)  (9 cycles; 14 frames)

                19-27:               SC(?) 9 Cycles (8 frames)

MDR13xx - 27 cycles: attack (27 cycles)

              A1: 9 cycles attack1 (13 frames)

              A2: 9 cycles attack2 / wing buffet? (13 frames)

              A3?: (same as A2?): 9 cycles attack2 / wing buffet? (13 frames)

MDR14xxx - 45 cycles: get hit, fall asleep (SL), sleep, dying / dead(tw)

              1-9: GH gethit (6 frames)

              10-18: SL (Seq fall asleep)(11 frames)

              19-27:  (Seq sleeping) (2 frames)

              28-36: DE (Seq dying)(11 frames)

              37-45: DE? (Seq dying)(11 frames)

MDR15xxx - breath fire (cast spell) (18 cycles)

              1-9: CA Cast Spell (13 frames)

              10-18: CA Cast Spell long / breath fire (21 frames)            

My questions so far:

-Is there no getup (GU) animation?

- Is there no Spell prepare (SP) animation?

- how does the MDRX4xxx Animation block work?

OK, now the hardest part:

Since the animation graphics are too large to handle for the engine as a whole, each frame is split into 9 separate frames.

An example of 3 of the MDR11xxx animation sequences (S, SSW, SW):

So the last number of each file is indicating which of the 9 directions we need.

0=S; 1=SSW; 2=SW, 3=WSW; 4=W; 5=WNW; 6=NW; 7=NNW; 8=N (creature orientation is similar as in script files)

This last number also indicates which one of the 9 cycles contains the graphics. The other 8 cycles only contain transparent (empty), 1x1px frames. So the SW animations can be found in the files #2 (MDR1xxx2) in the cycles #2 while the cycles #0,#1,#3,#4,#5,#6,#7 and #8 only contain empty frames.

The first number (MDR11100) is part of the 4-digit creature animation name (Red Dragon = MDR1 animation).

The second number (MDR11100) indicates the type (walk animation in this case)

The third number (MDR11100) indicates the number of the split frames. So all "S" walk animation files (100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900) merged together build one whole, large image of the red dragon walking south. The "SSW" walk animations (101, 201, 301, 401, 501, 601, 701, 801, 901) do the same etcpp.

So how should I prepare my animation for the MDR-file?

I created a large, 750x750 animation file. How should I name it? Next part will be to split each frame into 9 separate frames. Near Infinity has a cool feature of splitting the animations.

Should I create the bam files including the blank cycles and split it - or should I split only the cycle containing the animation and add the blank files afterwards?

If someone is still reading this I would appreciate any help on this subject as this animation is haunting me for years. 

There is a difference between the overlay sections of the Vanilla and the Enhanced Edition tilesets. Switching between these two game engines using the same tis-file thus leads to graphical glitches similar to those shown above. When converting Vanilla-tis-files -> EE, you should use @argent77's tool tis2ovl:

https://github.com/InfinityTools/tis2ovl/releases/tag/1.0

If you are using only the Enhanced Edition, this should not be an issue, but your overlay tiles of the area might be missing. The additional water graphic tiles are added at the very bottom of each tileset.

Before you edit the area-graphics in GIMP or Photoshop, make shure you always export the whole tileset including its additional overlay tiles, redraw the parts in your exported png and then convert your image back to tis using NI.

If you use DLTCEP, there is another way in adding additional graphics without screwing up its overlay parts, but it is quite tricky. Yovaneth mentioned it in his "Overlay" section of his area-editing tutorial:

http://www.simpilot.net/~sc/dltcep/index.htm

Thank you for your interest in the modification.

I think the mod you are reffering to is an old modification called "Grabmal-Mod" in german I startet with a fellow modder named "Knight" ~20 years ago. The mod is now under the caring hands of @jastey. There is no ETA yet.

There is a topic here at G3 about it:

Knight's Grabmal Mod

At the moment Jastey is busy with other things she mentions in the above topic and I am also working on some other modifications, but chances are good that this mod will be released sometime. It is dormant, not dead. 

Looks really good! Besides the things @jastey mentioned, I am not so happy with the translation of Happy, happy, joy-joy, happy, happy, joy-joy!

Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen has a rather negative meaning in German. 
Translated as Peace, Joy, pancakes, it is a proverb that describes a superficially intact, seemingly peaceful and carefree facade within a society. It is often used to express that problems are repressed rather than solved. I am not sure if this is the idea behind the original sentence.

I suggest changing it to something like "Freut Euch Eures Lebens" or „Lasst Freude in Eure Herzen“  which might better fit Alora's character.

7 hours ago, Raduziel said:

Maybe now people will start giving him two-handed swords and letting Minsc use two-weapon (best way to use him, IMHO).

That's a great idea! I never used Minsc as a two-weapon-dualing-wielding ranger since there was a lack of strong two-handed swordsmen. But now, with Brage showing up, the idea of Brage wielding Spider's Bane+2 with full plate armor and Minsc dual-wielding something in studded leather armor is really intriguing!

What would be the best choice of weapons for Minsc, since the two points in morningstar are quite useless in BG1?

29 minutes ago, jastey said:

I just "lol"ed by the thought of him having to wield that bloodthirsty, constant babbling sword (and seeing it as a just punishment, probably).

"Yeah! Hit it! Hit it again!" So there are two possible quest branches for Brage's BGII content: Make Lilarcor mute or Brage deaf. 

Congratulations on the release! A great mod with a unique character. All I want for christmas is Grey's +2 war teeth.