Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Reloaded

[Sabranic]

Shallina

for character which come from BGR i'll try to import their "build" made by the player. I think it' s possible.

 

 

So the current plan is :when you'll encounter a character you had with you in the final fight with Sarevok, is to allow you to take SOAR "default version", or to import the build you made in BGR. If I can' t do it, it still possbile to allow to level them from scractch.

 

This is important especially for Jaheira and Imoen which can be build in a lot of different way.

 

rjshae

 

kamal_, on 27 Jul 2015 - 3:05 PM, said:

Airie says at one point in ToB that she is one of the most powerful spellcasters in the Realms. She is right as she can cast max level cleric and wizard spells by that point. I dont remember if she says her cleric/wizard spell flexibility is why she is so powerful.

 

Something I remain curious about is whether Rasael's Replacement Magic System will permit a mystic theurge class build.

 

Mostly just wondering about the capabilities.

 

Shallina

I won t put something which doesn t work fully in SOAR.

 

rjshae

Arkalezth, on 27 Jul 2015 - 4:20 PM, said:

 

- "Mazzy's striving for an ideal that even she knows she can't reach, and that drive is an essential and compelling part of her personality. If she really is a paladin, she becomes yet another one-dimensional, goody two-shoes paladin stereotype--the absence of that is what makes her interesting."

 

She can always PrC as a Divine Champion of Avoreen (whose preferred weapon is the short sword).

[Sabranic]

drechner

Did someone say "Mazzy"?

 

http://i.imgur.com/V1Xtyum.png

 

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with her hair as the stock NWN2 hair I thought I could use didn't turn out like I thought it would

 

She looks better with thicker hair (and a couple tweaks to her diffuse), though I think I might need to revisit her a bit later.

 

http://i.imgur.com/CtVh2PE.png

 

It was a little time-consuming, but I think her new hair is a big improvement as compared to her old hair.

 

http://i.imgur.com/2eQUph0.png

Edited August 10, 2016 by Sabranic

[Sabranic]

Shallina

the golden pantaloon are in BGR, and there are pantaloons as well in TOB. For shadow of amn, well we haven 't started populated/scripting area yet.

 

But there is a gnomme waiting for them in TOB, already.

[Sabranic]

drechner

And... Valygar!

 

http://i.imgur.com/B6aAhjP.png

 

Here's a pic of all the ones that are done so far together:

 

http://i.imgur.com/CQf6Cvn.jpg

 

Viconia (hair by Soya):

 

http://i.imgur.com/RsVysGX.png

 

I think Sarevok may have turned out the best so far:

 

http://i.imgur.com/j0JONhH.png

 

Making all these character heads makes me realize how much I can improve the earlier ones I made (which is to be expected, of course). After I've done all of them, I'll probably spend some time on the diffuse maps to give them a bit more detail. I may also need to do another pass on the high-poly version of Valygar since his beard came out a bit wonky.

 

Tolkien Bard, on 04 Aug 2015 - 08:37 AM, said:

I cannot believe that I only discovered this project last night. I realize that only a year into the project, there is still a great deal of work to be done. However, given that I am already putting together quite the tally of replays on BGII EE, and I am seriously at a loss when looking for great campaigns for NWN2, I am a flutter with excitement about this. The screenshots of the docks and the slums looks great, as do the custom heads.

 

I enjoyed reading the debate on what to do about Aerie. The moment I saw this project, the very first thought that popped into my head was, "What are they going to do about Aerire? NWN2 hates the Mystic Theurge!" I look forward toward seeing what can be done to accommodate her character. Despite her whininess, she is one of my favourite companions to add. She brings some great healing, while also being my first line of defense against giant lizards with bad breath.

 

Unfortunately, I am no scripter or modeler, so I doubt there is much I can do to help this project along. As such, I'll slip back into lurking now. I just thought I would pop in and give the entire team a great bug and hearty THANK YOU for all that you are doing.

 

I shall now return to the shadows from whence I came, where, I shall continue playing BGR and IWDR until this project completes (I have faith it will).

 

Thanks for the kind words! You should totally stick around the forums though; it's a pretty awesome community!

 

PJ156

 

Welcome Tolkien Bard, good to see a new face. Here's something to do while you are waiting:

 

http://www.nexusmods...ter2/mods/538/?

 

http://www.nexusmods...ter2/mods/269/?

 

http://www.nexusmods...ter2/mods/938/?

 

PJ

[Sabranic]

PJ156

Show down with Irenicus anyone. You would need to be mad to try it

 

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e377/PJ156/Spellhold%20Upper%206_zpsdvsxw3yq.jpg

 

Room tile by RJShae, placeables by 4760 (all but the jars) and Calister (the jars), floor and wall retexture is mine as are the glowing green lamps and stone wall re-textures. The room itself still needs to be lit but you get the picture, I hope.

 

All it needs is a few mad men, a damsel in distress and a few snappy one liners

 

PJ

[Sabranic]

drechner

 

Continuing with my recent theme of NPC heads, here's a WIP pic of Keldorn:

 

http://i.imgur.com/hOEfZmA.png

 

There's still a lot to do for him, mostly for his diffuse textures. His forehead (add wrinkles and some discoloration), goatee (strands of grey didn't come out like I had hoped), and hair (bad mirroring) especially could use some more work. His scars also could use a bit more love and better detailing. Overall though, I think he has a decent base to work from.

Also, here's a pic of all the NPCs created so far:

http://i.imgur.com/fsHfRDo.png

 

I did some tweaking of materials a bit which I think makes them look a bit less flat now. The whites of their eyes especially are a bit less grey and more white, and reflect light a bit better. I've also decided to use a blue specular color on the skins, which I think looks much better than the white one I was using previously. It looks like NWN2 OC used a warmer color, but I think blue makes them look a bit more natural.

A few other random updates:

• Flattened and reshaped Valygar's hair quite a bit, which now more closely resembles his portrait
• Increased the polycount of Valygar's earrings as they were a bit too low poly and looked silly
• Removed some of the blonde from Viconia's hair, leaving it a bit more white
• Re-colored Sarevok's glowing eyes

 

PJ156

 

I think they look great but I still think that Nalia and Mazzy seem too dark skinned. Nalia is indoor raised and I imagine her as very fair skinned, almost wan perhaps? Mazzy would have a pale complexion I imagine, but is outdoorsy and thus the more worn skin tone would look fine. The others are great and very fitting to their race/lifestyle.

 

PJ

 

 

drechner

 

Arkalezth, on 04 Aug 2015 - 6:40 PM, said:

Speaking of scars, could Sarevok's be made a bit more noticeable? They're glowy in his original pic, which would likely look silly, but you have to look closely in order to see them in your model.

I like how he looks in general, and the scars don't look exactly -bad-, but I was wondering about that.

 

Definitely, though the new materials actually helped quite a bit in this regard. Maybe I'll upload a new pic that shows off his scars a bit more.

 

Tchos, on 04 Aug 2015 - 7:08 PM, said:

I like to use an olive green for skin specular, myself.

 

Interesting. How did you decide on using that out of curiosity? I really don't know much on the subject other than many people seem to use blue quite a bit (though NWN2 OC doesn't?), so I'm mostly resorting to using trial-and-error.

 

PJ156, on 05 Aug 2015 - 01:02 AM, said:

I think they look great but I still think that Nalia and Mazzy seem too dark skinned. Nalia is indoor raised and I imagine her as very fair skinned, almost wan perhaps? Mazzy would have a pale complexion I imagine, but is outdoorsy and thus the more worn skin tone would look fine. The others are great and very fitting to their race/lifestyle.

 

PJ

 

They're both pretty dark-skinned in their portraits though. I think Mazzy could use some more highlights, details, etc. on her diffuse, but I wasn't considering changing their base skin tone very much. Do you think they differ that much from their portraits?

 

-Semper-, on 05 Aug 2015 - 10:49 AM, said:

you both are sure that the electron engine supports colored spec maps? afaik only gray scaled maps work and the colorization was done through the spec color of the lights in-engine.

 

It's used according to the OEI document that Hellfire (thankfully!) uploaded here: http://www.rwscreati....php?f=18&t=725.

I noticed a difference in the engine when I set it to different values in the material itself, though I could have just been imagining it

 

 

I used to be more of a 3D rendering animator/artist and texturer, not so much a modeler, and olive green specular highlights was recommended in my circles as being good for bringing out natural-looking skin tones. I expect not much has changed in the intervening time as far as that goes. Blue light is definitely nice for the backlight or edge light in a 3-point lighting setup, though, and it's certainly not a bad choice for specular highlight colour.

 

Semper: No, I'm not sure at all whether tints on the model work in this engine, and I do use it in the light setup in the toolset, which as you say does work. My suggestion was more for general 3D work.

 

 

No, not just you. I never interpreted either of them to be particularly dark, but I admit that could just be my preconceptions, like the blue and black or gold and white dress.

 

 

rjshae

Mazzy's bio says she's from Amn, which is supposedly comparable to Spain climate-wise. Perhaps a Mediterranean skin tone then? Anyway, she's a halfling so human standards may not apply.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Sabranic

[Sabranic]

drechner

Tchos, on 05 Aug 2015 - 7:10 PM, said:

Out of curiosity, I took Ark's provided portraits into Photoshop and sampled the colours from each at what seemed to be the "baseline" unshaded section on each of their right upper cheeks. (On the left of the portraits.) The circle to the right of the portraits is the colour that was sampled from each.

 

http://s14.postimg.org/q9eax2b1p/mazzy_nalia.jpg

 

Of course, the shadowed areas, especially under the hair, are darker on Mazzy, and I can't say what that means.

 

Mazzy is actually darker complected than Nalia; the lighting of the portraits can be a bit tricky though and make this a bit confusing. Further complicating this is they're both wearing "makeup" in the portraits, so it yields some weird results such as the overly colored cheeks on Nalia.

 

kamal_, on 05 Aug 2015 - 7:32 PM, said:

I don't want to hear "they messed it up", that would be bad for the rest of us.

 

That's... kind of a weird thing to say. At the very least, you'll get an influx of new NWN2 players

[Sabranic]

drechner

Eguintir Eligard, on 09 Aug 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

I just wanted to post here that I completed my fatty project and it may be relevant here since BG and BG2 invented the fatty model I based it on. While it might not be up to par with your project, if you click the link in my signature you will note that I containted files for the original 3ds max models so they could be modified or improved along with the texture files as one would see fit.

Nice; thanks!

 

Rigging scares me a bit because I don't really have any experience doing it. I did a couple test heads and the best I did was getting eye lids to move

 

There are some good tutorials out there for NWN2 though, so hopefully I'll figure it out with the help of those. How did it go for you?

[Sabranic]

drechner

 

-Semper-, on 09 Aug 2015 - 3:51 PM, said:

if you work with 3dsmax then be sure to read about the skin wrap modifier. it should be relatively easy to base the weighting of your new head on an imported vanilla one.

Yep, that's what I've used previously (which is why the eyelids worked!), but there were some errors that prevented anything else from working. It looks like those errors are quite common though and there are ways to fix it; I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully they'll work

 

So, this one is a bit tough; I've had a lot of trouble with him so far (especially with the beard) so I might call it "quits" on him for a bit and look at him again with fresh eyes down the road.

 

http://i.imgur.com/fsWpF5p.pnghttp://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/Walkthrough2/images/screens/korgan.jpg

 

There's still a lot I can do, but I think I just need to move on for now

 

Also, I'm not sure I've shared my updated Keldorn:

 

http://i.imgur.com/RzLl8Jn.png

 

He's not too terribly different, but he has had some additional work done on his diffuse, a new normal map (with more wrinkles!), and higher-poly hair.

 

rjshae

 

The nose may need to be longer and the mouth a little wider; as wide as the pupils. (Then again the eyes look unnaturally small in the game pic.) Otherwise it appears pretty close. Maybe raise the chin hairs some.

[Sabranic]

Shallina

Hi, I had a little step back with TOB, the exterior area of Watcher keep was corrupted, i couldn t work on it anymore, so I had to remake it.

 

the first time I made it, I was faithfull to the original one.

 

The second i was less faithfull of the original one, and worked more with NWN2 assets which renders well. I think the result for the 2d attempt is better than the first, my conclusion, as long as you keep the functionnality of the original area it 's ok to do an area a little different.

 

I think it 's more important to have something "as good as you can", than to be "as faithfull as possible" when translating an area into NWN2 from an other game where strong and weak points aren 't the same. My conclusion is that it' s better to compose with NWN2 strong points as much as you can.

 

An exemple is to avoid vertical texture stretching.

 

i didn t know what to do with the Imprisoned One, took me around 3 weeks to figure it out. I finished the encounter today, I think it will live up to the expectation of the strongest DnD monster ever implemented into a Computer D&D game as it was done in the original game.