Race
From NWN1 Custom Content Guide
Contents |
Overview
Races, specifically, dynamic races, are slightly different than a usual creatures you use in the toolset. What makes them different is that they are separated into multiple body parts: head, neck, chest, pelvis, belt then the left and right biceps, forearms, hands, shoulders, thighs, shins, and feet.
This allows more unique looking creatures, at the expense of a longer initial modeling time as you have to create variations of every body part type. But it does allow for a much higher variety of appearances as you can mix and match them, instead of them all looking the same.
Naming Conventions
The filename of a given model indicates which character appearance will use it. There are three elements of the prefix for a model piece that indicate where it appears. The 'p' at the front of all model files merely indicates that it's a player race model file, and should always be present. The second letter indicates the gender, the third indicates the race, and the fourth number is the phenotype.
The second part of the filename begins after the _ seperator. The word refers to the body part underwhich the model appears, and the number is the internal reference for the parts_*.2DA. An l or an r after the part name tells the game whether it is for the left side or the right side. Heads and helmets do not have a parts_*.2DA.
| Player Gender | Race | Phenotype | Body part | Example |
| M = Male F = Female (Both, Other, and None use Male models) | A = Halfling D = Dwarf E = Elf G = Gnome H = Human O = Half-orc (Half-elf uses Human models) | 0 = Normal 1 = Skinny (not implemented) 2 = Big | Belt Bicep[l/r] Chest(Torso) Foot[l/r] Fore[l/r](Forearm) Hand[l/r] Leg[l/r](Thigh) Neck Pelvis Robe, Shin[l/r] Shoulder[l/r] | - |
| male | human | normal | belt | pmh0_belt |
| female | gnome | big | chest | pfg2_chest |
Body Parts
In each category of most armor parts (list follows), the first two numbers indicate that the model is a Base Body Part. For example, pmh0_chest001 is the default "naked" appearance for the human male. pmh0_chest002 is the "tattooed" appearance, which appears in the character creator when clicking left and right on the Tattoos option. In addition, a pmh0_chest000 exists, which is a null file. That means no model appears for this body part if this is selected. Heads have a *head000, but do not require a "naked" or "tattooed" variation. head001 and head002 are just like other heads. For all other armor pieces, *001 and *002 should only be changed if you want to change the default appearance of a race, gender, or phenotype (ex. if you wanted to make different default tattoos, you would change *002). At no point should *000 ever be changed.
Robes
See: Robes
Heads, Helmets
Heads and helmets, though considered clothing and/or body parts, do not use the same parts_*.2DA convention that the other parts do. Heads and helmets are displayed in the toolset (and, for heads, in character creation) in exactly the order they are numbered. pfh0_head025 will be the twenty-fifth head on the list. The trick is that in the appearance.2da file, it will have a scale value for the helmet, so it will automatically scale by a percentage to fit properly on the head.
Custom Races
Making an entire custom race is rather complex. Once you have done so, however, you will have to assign a new letter to the race (y for githyanki, k for kobold, m for minotaur, etc) in racialtypes.2da. This will take the place of the normal race entry in the filename.
For changing standard models to fit on custom races, there's no better tool than Eligio Sacateca's NWN Armory.
Textures and Pallettes
Textures, in this case .PLT textures, tell the game where on the model to assign a given color. They also tell the game which category of color to use (skin, hair, tattoo 1, tattoo 2, leather 1, leather 2, cloth 1, cloth 2, metal 1, metal 2).
| Note | There is a hardcoded limit where the base (index 0) pgr#_bodypart000.plt will ALWAYS refer to pmh0_bodypart000.plt or pfh0_bodypart000.plt, so they will always use fleshy tones. This is currently restricting the use of custom races, particularly ones like dynamic goblins or gnolls. One workaround is to script it so whenever the creature is naked, it will automatically apply an armour that uses all body parts 001 to retain the look. |
See "Discuss this Page" in the lefthand column of this page for another method of evading this problem that works for fleshed races.
Inventory Icons
As with all items that can go into a player's inventory, armor pieces require a .TGA inventory icon to display properly.
Putting It All Together
Once you have all of your models, textures, and inventory icons gathered, you will need to organize them properly for a hakpak. If you have your models named properly so as to not replace any of the standard Bioware content (or any custom content you already have in a hakpak), you will need to find the proper parts_*.2DA file (parts_belts.2da for belts, parts_chest.2da for torsos, etc). This is a simple list of three numbers. The first number is the filename's number reference (ex. pfa0_belt020) The second is unimportant, and should always be 0. The third, ACBONUS, tells the toolset where in the list of parts your new model will appear. It only affects the actual Armor Class of the item in parts_chest.2da (where it indicates what actual Armor Class the new torso will give to the entire armor set). Once you have an ACBONUS assigned to your model pieces, you are ready to put them into a hakpak.
If your armor pieces do not have the right filename, then you will need to change that filename so that they will not replace or be replaced by other models that already exist. While this can be done by hand, simply changing the filename will not work properly. If you do this, the game will no longer recognize the texture file. You can open an ASCII model file with Notepad or another text editor and manually change all instances of the filename to the new one (as well as the Bitmap references, which is the texture), or you can use a tool which I prefer called ReNameIt. This will change both the filename and the internal references automatically.
Currently Allocated Race Letters by the NWN Community
| A | Halfling by Bioware |
| A | Goblin by Evil Asmo & Sebastian Cain (add-on to halfling) |
| B | Brownie by Kinarr Greycloak / updated to Fairy by Fantu (HUB Team) |
| C | Orc by D&D Geek 1 2 |
| D | Dwarf by Bioware |
| E | Elf by Bioware |
| F | |
| G | Gnome by Bioware |
| H | Human/Half-Elf by Bioware |
| I | |
| J | |
| K | Kobold by Acidchalk & CyberDoc |
| K | Lodoss Kobold (wolfmen) by Wolfsong |
| L | Hobgoblin by D&D Geek 1 2 |
| M | Minotaur by D&D Geek 1 2 |
| N | Gnoll by Evil Asmo & Sebastian Cain |
| O | Half-Orc by Bioware |
| P | |
| Q | |
| R | |
| S | Skeleton by Amala & Darkworld3D |
| S | Ophidian by Hub team |
| T | Tiefling by CODI (link needed) |
| U | Demon by Fantu (HUB Team) |
| U | Half-Ogre by Daemon Blackrazor |
| V | |
| W | Wemic by Eligio Sacateca & Ghostfactory |
| X | |
| Y | Githyanki by Darkwoulfe |
| Z | Draegloth (Half-Fiend) by Bierchen66 |
| 0 | Armor Stand by Kinarr Greycloak (link needed) |
| 1 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 2 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 3 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 4 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 5 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 6 | DLA - Work In Progress |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Lizard Man by Monferrat Update by Drakken_Raed |
| ! | |
| @ | |
| $ | Illithid/Mindflayer by Monferrat |
| % | |
| ^ | |
| & | Troll (CEP w/ Bioware troll head as head 002) by Monferrat |
| ( | Djinni by Monferrat 1 2 |
| ) | Kyote by Monferrat |
| _ | |
| = | |
| + | Tabaxi by Monferrat |
| ] | |
| } | |
| { | |
| # | Used for remarks within Bioware files |
| [. | These crash toolset |
| \ / : * ? " < > | | Can't be used within a Windows filename |
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