CCG V3-1 Conversion:Part 0 Intro

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Contents

Introduction

The Aurora Toolset for Neverwinter Nights (NWN) provides the building blocks for your custom modules – from tilesets to create your dungeons to creature templates for designing your encounters. The toolset is both flexible and limiting at the same time. Flexible - because you assemble the building blocks in whatever fashion you desire to create your world. Limiting - because the blocks are not as varied as your imagination. However, with the right add-on tools, those outer limits can be pushed as far as your time and imagination will take you. Creating custom content for Neverwinter Nights can seem like a daunting task but the rewards are great. And it is not as complex as it sounds – not after you understand how all the bits and pieces of the toolset fit together. This tutorial attempts to show you how some of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It does not cover all types of custom content; there are already some good tutorials available that I reference near the end of this document.

Notes: This is likely the last version of this tutorial. Any notes or quirks or bugs in the toolset that I mention in this document exist at least as of version 1.32 of the NWN game. I may update it to accommodate future changes with the release of HotU and other expansion packs.

Acknowledgements

This tutorial and what I have been able to piece together about developing custom content builds upon what others have done: it is compiled from various sources on the Neverwinter boards, bits and pieces of tutorials, and personal experimentation. Sources are varied and there are too many to name them all. However, let me acknowledge now some of the key contributors:

  • Danmar, primarily for information on weapon modeling
  • Conjumen, for information on custom portraits
  • Ddraigcymraeg, for information on voicesets
  • Zoligato for the original NWN Viewer.
  • Torlack for NWN Explorer.
  • Kaine, for detailed information about spells.
  • SamJones and Lisa, for explaining PLT files.
  • Haelix and Jupp for explaining creature creation and animation.


I will confess up front to having used portions of tutorials and sound bites from these people to as a starting point and then sought to clarify and expand them for my own use and the general NWN public. And there are more whose ideas and posts have influenced this tutorial. Forgive me in advance for not being able to include all of you. Thanks to Jay Wataniumak and Bioware for filling in some of the holes in previous versions of the document.

I have added a new section to this tutorial regarding the Community Expansion Pack (CEP). The CEP is intended to make the use of quality custom content by the community easier. The section I added includes tips and hints on making your content compatible with the CEP which will make integration of it easier.

Disclaimer

Please note that these tutorials are provided as-is, with no guarantees that they will be particularly useful for what you wanted to accomplish. Also, the author(s) cannot be held responsible for damages done to your computer, applications and/or game installation by following these instructions. Caveat emptor.


The Tools

If you wish to create custom content you will need a few tools in addition to the Aurora toolset.

NWN Explorer

NWN Explorer lets you browse the NWN resource files (all of the model, textures, pictures, text, etc.) that make up the content of the game. It also allows you to extract these files so that you can modify them or use them as a base for making your own custom content. You can get Torlack’s NWN Explorer from his site (http://www.torlack.com/index.html?topics=nwnexplorer_readme). It supports SoU and other content.

Roboius has also started to maintain a version of NWN Explorer but recommends continuing to use Torlack’s for now.

In previous versions of this manual I recommended Zoligato’s NWN Viewer. This viewer is still available (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1026158289673.shtml).

Not sure which tool to use? Experienced models keep both around. NWN Explorer has a lot more features and it recognizes both patches and SoU content natively (NWN Viewer does not) so it is most commonly used. NWN Viewer does have two features making it worth consideration: it allows for mass export of files (select a range of files and export them all) and it recognizes talk tables (dialog.tlk).

Bioware's Hakpak Editor

Warning
  • Another way to override Bioware content is to drop a file into the /override folder of your game directory. However, you should not do this.
  • Hakpaks are much cleaner – they can group many overridden files into one package and, more importantly, they are specific to a module.
  • Putting a file into the /override directory will override it for all modules you play on that computer which may have unintended consequences on other people’s games.
  • In general, don’t use the /override directory. The only valid use of the /override directory that I would recommend is for temporarily and quickly testing your content without having to go through the process of updating a hakpak, saving it, etc. Once you have finished testing, don’t forget to load the new content into a hakpak and take it out of the /override directory.

A hakpak is a file (with the extension .hak) where you add custom content files to either supplement or override standard Bioware content. For example, you can use a hakpak to make Neverwinter’s standard goblin a different color (overriding standard content) or to add a new monster such as an Owlbear (adding new content). To use your hakpak you must add it as a resource to your module. For instructions on how to do this, refer to the Hakpak Editor section at the end of this guide.

Anybody who plays your module will need a copy of your hakpak so be sure to distribute it along with your module itself.












Modeling Tools

The complexity and expense of the modeling tools you use is completely up to you and what kind of custom content you want to build. You have many options:

Note
  • I no longer reference c-tools because NWNMdlComp is a more up-to-date version of what the original program could do.
  1. Simple copying and retexturing. If all you want is the ability to copy models, rename them and retexture them, there is a simple utility you can use. NWN can read either binary or ASCII versions of the model files (most of the NWN files are compiled into a binary format). The reason for turning them into ASCII files is that you can edit the ASCII model file with a text editor and change simple things like the texture file used and the model name (make sure you change all instances).
  2. If you want to try modeling work without an expensive modeling tool, try gmax (http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/). It is a subset of 3ds max for non-commercial game designers and it is available free. To use it for NWN you also need to pick up the new version of the GMax MDL import/export script (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1062667036829.shtml) and NWNMdlComp (above). This latest version of this tool is by Joco (based on Wayland’s original scripts) and it now supports the creation of emitters (an advanced topic for NWN modeling).
  3. There are low cost modeling tools available on the net. Milkshape 3D (http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/) is a low polygon 3D modeler originally made for Half Life. Milkshape import/export scripts (http://www.augustweb.com/~anim8r/html/closet_tools.htm) are available to support NWN and a host of other formats. I have read that the import/export plug-ins for Milkshape3d appear to have been made for the beta toolset before the game was released. They rotate body parts 90 degrees counter-clockwise so you have to either rotate 90 degrees clockwise before exporting - that is rotate the model not the view - or else import/export your model a total of 4 times to return it to original position. Beggars can’t be choosers but most modelers use Gmax over Milkshape.
Warning

Bioware has only released the export scripts - no import scripts. This means you cannot load their existing content from a Bioware MDL file. You can only export a model you create from scratch. I believe most modellers make heavy use of scooterpb’s suite and more limited use of Bioware’s scripts.

  1. Professional modeling. Buy 3ds max (http://www.discreet.com/products/3dsmax/). Pawn your car. Mortgage your house. Sell the rights to your firstborn child. Once you have done that and have the 3ds software, you need a set of MAX Scripts to export and/or import model files. The MDL Plug-in Suite 1.0 (http://www.bricksbuilder.com/nwn/utils/) by scooterpb is the utility of choice here. This is a set of tools developed by the community that will let you import Bioware’s models into 3ds max 4 or 5, manipulate them, and export them as ASCII mdl files. Bioware has also released their Export Scripts for 3ds max (http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/max_script.html). Grab them and Bioware’s Export Scripts Documentation (http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/max_docs.html).

If you are feeling brave, try Roboius’ beta updates of the MDL Plug-in Suite version 1.1 beta3 (http://rockbottom.vtex.net/).

  1. More professional modeling. Buy Lightwave 3D (http://www.lightwave3d.com/). Joviex has released Import/Export scripts for Lightwave (http://www.onarom.com/Plugins/nwnmdl.asp). Again, most modelers do not use Lightwave – Gmax or 3DS Max are the norm because the import/export scripts are more fully defined for these products. The lightwave scripts are buggy. Very buggy. Some people would say unusable.
  2. ObsidianSS (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1030162054010.shtml) is a tool for scaling and skinning existing models (it does nothing that cannot be done with gmax or the other modeling tools but some people find it a good tool if they just want to scale and skin existing models without learning gmax). If you are interested in ObsidianSS, here is a tutorial on re-skinning an existing model (http://nwvault.ign.com/dm/modeling/tutorials/lllSnakeeyeslll/BlackBalorTutorial.htm) using ObsidianSS.
Notes
  • Note that ObsidianSS does not scale animations properly – creatures no longer attack where they should. Small ones swing in front of the target and large ones well behind it.
  • I suspect this is because the motions scale down or up but the game engine does not know to change attack distance between the creature and the target. This may be fixable with parameters in the appearance.2da file (like HITDIST) but needs to be tested.

There are other 3D modeling tools but import/export scripts for these currently do not exist. A number of people ask about Maya because there are free/low-cost educational versions available and it is reportedly better at animation than 3ds max or gmax. However, there are no import/export scripts for Maya directly from and to NWN. They could be written for the professional version if somebody has the inclination – the SDK exists for the full version although the educational versions do not accept plug-ins and use a proprietary file format so you are out of luck there.

Image Editing Tools

The complexity and expense of the image editing tools you use is also completely up to you and what kind of custom content you want to build. You have many options:

  1. Picture Publisher from Micrografx (now a Corel product). Moderately advanced image editing, this is one of many packages bundled with common hardware like scanners (that’s how I got mine).
  2. Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html) from Adobe. Did you sell your firstborn to get 3ds max? Put the second child up on the auction block too. You won’t get as much for the little rascal as you did for the first one but it should be enough to get a copy of Photoshop.
  3. Paint Shop Pro (http://www.jasc.com/products/psp/) from JASC. The poor-man’s Photoshop. You should be able to get it for the price of your dog.
  4. GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (open source, natch). Contrary to popular belief, it runs on Mac and Windows in addition to Linux. If you really are attached to your children and your pets, this is the way to go.
  5. MSPaint from Microsoft. Wait, did I say that? Actually, MSPaint does not support the Targa bitmap format so it will not work for NWN.
  6. Your choice of 15,237 other image-editing programs.

DDSTools and/or Bioware’s DDS Compression Tool

Either DDSTools (http://downloads.neverwinternights.de/tools/ddstools.zip) or Bioware’s DDS Compression Tool (http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/texturetutorial.html) can be used to compress your textures into DDS format for faster rendition on higher end 3d video cards. While not absolutely necessary, it will give your objects that extra level of professional shine. It allows your hardware to switch between very hi-res textures when viewing an object close up while using low-res textures for the same object viewed at a distance. These are only necessary if you create custom textures for your models.

TGAFlipper

The problem with DDSTools is that it flips textures vertically when compressing or decompressing them. You need another tool to fix this: TGAFlipper (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1053910703210.shtml) will do this for you. There is another version by a different author called TGAFlip (http://nwvault.ign.com/).

NWNArmory

(http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1053910703210.shtml) is used to duplicate armor pieces when you are creating new armor for all the different PC races or creating new PC races.

Bioware’s Photoshop PLT Exporter Plugin

(http://nwdownloads.bioware.com/neverwinternights/misc/photoshop_plt_plugin.zip) is for people who use Photoshop to edit their image files. This tool will allow you to export them as PLT texture files for use in armor and head models.

Lord Emil’s pltcon

(http://www.lordemil.com/NWN/pltcon.exe) is used if you don’t have Photoshop because it changes PLT texture files into editable bitmaps and back again.

Ddraigcymraeg's Soundset File (SSF) Editor

(http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1027785116370.shtml) is used to create or edit NWN .ssf voiceset files. There are some bugs with this utility that may cause problems although it is generally stable.

ChilliSkinner

(http://www.chilliweb.co.uk/chilliskinner/) is used to unwrap an object for texturing in 3ds Max or gmax. Apparently 3ds max version 5 does not really require Chilliskinner; many of the capabilities of that tool are building into the advanced unwrapping features of v5. ChilliSkinner is really a set of Maxscripts.

Texporter

(http://www.texporter.com/) is used to unwrap an already textured object into a bitmap for painting (after you have run ChilliSkinner, for example). This is not strictly necessary when texturing because you can always do a printscreen when unwrapping objects and use the printscreen as a template for your texture (which is good because Texporter is a plug-in and can only run in 3ds max – it does not work on Gmax).

XYZ

(http://nwvault.ign.com/) is a program that does the same thing as Texporter but runs directly against your model file. It does not require 3DS Max to run.

CODI’s Character Creator

(http://codicc.city-of-doors.com/) is used to generate custom races.

ReplaceEm

(http://www.orbit.org/replace/) is a simple utility that does bulk updates to text files (replacing one string for another). It works great for making mass changes to decompiled model files.

3D Modeling

This guide is not a 3d modeling course. Nor will it teach you in the ins and outs of texturing. If you already know how to model, you have won half the battle. Pick up a copy of your favorite modeling tool and dive right into this tutorial. If you don’t, Discreet’s gmax is a good place to start and it includes lots of tutorials.

If you don’t know what a mesh is and need help with the real basics, there are other resources that can help you:

I would recommend you get started by doing some of the basic tutorials that come with your modeling package. Then move on to looking at the existing NWN models. Review them, modify them, understand them, and finally make your own.

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