New and better females for Neverwinter Nights 2

[Demonwise]

Ok so this is a carry-over from a different post I made about NWN2. My question was if someone could guide me through re-skinning a character model in Blender. Well thankfully I answered my own question but in doing so have created another problem. First let me backtrack a bit.

 

My goal is to make new models for the female races in the game that will feature much better quality and detail. Most of my newer meshes have up to 5x the amount of faces therefore allowing me to create much higher quality boobs, skin, and private parts. I am also working with the skin textures taking them from their vanilla 500 something by 500 something and beefing them up to 4096x4096. So far I have had mixed success as I'm not brilliant with textures in Blender but they still look very good IN Blender. I am using models and textures from Necrolord's Full Nudes but I am only using them as a starting point when I am done the models and textures are very different.

 

My problem now is that when I export the characters from Blender and pull them up in the game I get a player model with some kind of text all over it saying that, I can only guess, there are missing textures. So now that I have given you the bigger picture I will get into the nitty gritty.

 

When you import the model into Blender you are given 3 different meshes. One will be the name of the model file and the others will be the model file name + _L01 and _L02. I also notice that the meshes have 3 different textures assigned to them. Here is an example: P_HHF_NK_BODY256.DDS, P_HHF_NK_BODY256_N.DDS, and P_HHF_NK_BODY256_T.DDS.

 

So I get that the game needs all three textures but here is where my understanding gets fuzzy. Since there are 3 meshes should each mesh bet textured with one of the 3 different textures? If they should then which mesh gets which texture?

 

Now I know that NWN2 is getting pretty old and I don't know if anyone around here has played it or still plays it but I would be nice to add a little 'umpf' back into this oldie-but-goodie game.

 

If it helps people to answer my question I can post the blender file and the textures here. Just let me know.

[Demonwise]

So a bit of an update. I found that by exporting the model with the 3 different texture on the meshes (one on each one) I have solved the issue with the game saying that there are missing textures on the mesh. Now though the textures are showing up wrong. Screen shots below:

 

 

[Demonwise]

hmmm it would appear that no one still plays NWN2 or has any interest in it. Oh well that's a risk when you try developing a mod for a died out game. Still a little disappointing.

[Anon989]

Sorry to hear that man, I've personally never played any of the neverwinter games so I can't comment on the popularity there. But I do hope you can continue to keep it up, working on things like this can be very rewarding when you finally get it all done or even just a little part working. I'm sure you'll get more people's attention as you get more done, so all that said, good luck on your mod

[dmen77]

Well I will say that I am slightly interested in how this turns out since I recently picked NWN2 from GOG and have been searching mods for it since. Anything that can add to the game I consider worthy of looking into. I hope that this can add enjoyment to my experience.

[Kodiak]

Yea its a shame that there is so little interest in the potential of this project. NWN2 was enjoyable and I think may be generated if the body option was availible. I do recall a HGEC body being availible for NWN2 already and it completely revitalized my game when I got around to using it. I'd imagine the same would hold true if you did a new, up to date model.

[Demonwise]

Wait! There was a HGEC body for NWN2! When did I miss that memo years ago? Hmmm I don't suppose you have any idea where I could get my hands on that mod do you? It may give me a better starting point then where I am now. 

[dmen77]

Hmm, this seems to have something. It looks to bring various body models and clothing from Oblivion to NWN2. Maybe worth a shot:http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=nwn2hakpaksoriginal.detail&id=178. It is a hakpak and I don't know if that can be extracted. The site also contains various nudes you can examine and hopefully learn from.

 

Ooh, wait they could only be overrides which may make it easier.

[dmen77]

So, the fourth package on the list contains the HGEC body and looking at the files, it appears to be dds for the texture and a mdb file contains the model. All is meant to go into override folder to work. I don't seem to have the necessary program to open the mdb files but I hope this helps.

 

It appears mdb files are generated through the toolset itself.

[Demonwise]

thanks! I did look at the files and was able to import them into blender. I mus say, though I am not surprised, the HGEC body is fantastic! I did notice though that the textures are quite a bit larger than the vanilla ones but they are still quite small by today's standards. I might try to simply create a ultra-high res textures for the HGEC body. We'll see.

 

[Kodiak]

Well glad that tid-bit of information came in handy. Sorry I didnt get back sooner. I'm sure I still have the mod itself somewhere on an external backed up. I'm just a little annoyed now though. I know I had screen shots of some of my old characters using the HGEC body style wearing a mash up I was messing with. Not sure where they are off to though. Makes me wonder what else I'm missing that I dont know about....

[sbseed]

how does NWN 2 use meshes and textures in-game?... does the mesh control the texture (within the texture wrap information) or does the game control the textures (game setting the textures on the mesh instead)?

[Demonwise]

how does NWN 2 use meshes and textures in-game?... does the mesh control the texture (within the texture wrap information) or does the game control the textures (game setting the textures on the mesh instead)?

Now that is a good question. I am definitely the wrong person to ask. However I would like to know the answer as well. Due to my very very limited understanding I would hazard the guess that the mesh controls the texture since I had to manually re-skin the texture in blender before exporting the mdl file.

[sbseed]

hmmm... could be the problem, if the game engine tries to set textures itself it might be causing issues with them in-game... the engine/game would then probably place a default skin/texture on the model body, could also be why you are getting those two weird shadows just above the main part of the breasts...

 

anyways, the point is you might want to look into how NWN2 engine does stuff with meshes and textures... you might need reference id's for the textures applied to the mesh for the engine or something. i looked at it briefly (the engine that is) because i wondered how hard it would be to build custom 'cut-scenes', didnt last very long the engine is kinda confusing (at least for me).

 

should be able to find some information within tutorials and stuff around the web for getting meshes and textures to work properly in-game.

[Demonwise]

hmm yeah I don't know.  It could be the game but then I am using a model from a already existing override that DOES work. I am also using the same texture from the mod. Sooooo near as I can tell it may be an issue with the fact that I beefed up the textures to 4096x4096. The game itself may not be able to handle something like that. When I skin them in Blender they look fine but as soon as it gets into game it becomes a problem. I will try to resize the texture to something smaller and see if that does the trick. Then again I don't know how much more work I will do on this mod. Once I discovered the HGEC body for the game that really kind of threw my idea out the window. I was really only making the new bodies because I thought that there wasn't anything like it already done but then whoever makes the HGEC bodies is already light-years beyond my abilities in model building and texture creating. So now that I discovered that mod I really don't have much heart to finish this. Besides unless there is some kind of fantastic sex mod out there for NWN2 with actual sex animation or cutscenes then I don't see much point in making a really sexy lady for a largely 3rd person type of game.

 

and if I want that I'll ether watch porn or I will play Dragon Age Origins. 

[sbseed]

well there are a couple of mods for NWN2 that add animations, but they are extremely limited... course i havent used any of the ones a knew about before because there was no real control of the sex scene stuff, just regular cut scenes for NWN2 pretty much but this was a long time ago and i dont know if any new mods were ever made for NWN2 in regards to in-game sex stuff.

 

would be nice to have a controllable sex game experience within NWN2... so the ideas for a new mod are probably going to be centered around more interactive stuff, thats not to say you cant setup better looking meshes/textures for the game (personally i dont use mods unless they have more variety usually) specially for NWN2 because there arent enough real good or even 'good' mods for the game.

 

besides the fact that learning to mod games like NWN2 will help with working on any other mod projects for other games as well... plus maybe start another mod ripple effect for NWN2 again which is all good.

 

also, let us know if lowering the texture size helps at all... i have never known the mod tools to have limits on large texture sizes, even when they dont really 'support' them.