Gleanings from the chatroom

[Castano]

1. Envorinment objects take less resources....but will strip the doors off your houses....and can be walked thru

1a. you can set for example, walls to nonwalk using the walkmesh cutter...then set them to environment. This will save on resousrces and bake time.



Acknoledgments:

Sanderman
Spidey
everyone else

[Audark]

also a key tool for using environmental objects, especially where you're sinking objects into a hill and only a piece of them should block walkmesh but not the whole object.

'blueprints'
'triggers'
'empty'
'walkmesh cutter'

click multiple times around your screen to surround your environmental objects with a blue line. Then when you bake, the area inside the blue is unwalkable, and its far mroe precise than painting a whole area non-walkable.

This tool is great for blocking off large piles of environmental objects, like a room full of rubbish, crates or rubble.

This tool is also great for defining paths in dense brush, i've had fun placing a bunch of thick AmerHolyC trees and using the cutter to block everything but a narrow path through the brush. Great for secret nooks and crannies in forest areas.

tons of other uses

[Castano]

ANybody have a short description of how to properly do trees?

[Audark]

I don't know about hwo to properly "do" trees, but heres what i know

1) when placed on slopes, you often need to 'sink' trees slightly so that their trunk isn't floating over a small bit of ground

2) The suggestion is to use no more than 5 types of trees per area, this includes different 'seeds'. A more efficient way of having varying tree shapes is to alter a trees scaling, instead of adjusting its seed.

3) the walkmesh cutter I described above is especially useful around trees

as for how I go about 'doing' trees, I make sure to select my 5 before beginning the area, leaving one of each in the margin area so I can go back to them if i forget.

Also important is to start small and work your way up, Big trees occupy a lot of space when you click on them, so any smaller trees or other objects inside the larger treees selectable area can be impossible to select. Frequent use of the 'Show/Hide' and 'Selection' tabs can make this easier, by de-selecting trees in those lists you wont have to worry about selecting already placed trees when messing aorund with other placables or environmental objects.

Pretty basic stuff, but may be useful to those starting out

[Castano]

thanks Halrin. That's what i was looking for.

[Castano]

On doors:

<Castano|nwn2tooli> i notice doors liek tot disappear lol
<Castano|nwn2tooli> thanks for the tips in the thread BTW
<Castano|nwn2tooli> i need to put it up though
<Castano|nwn2tooli> would like to get it moving along get feedback etc.
<Halrin> *nods
<Halrin> the door thing
<Halrin> you mean if you set buildings to environmental?
<Castano|nwn2tooli> no
<Castano|nwn2tooli> they are placeables
<Castano|nwn2tooli> when i copied the area the deleted 15% of the doors
<Halrin> ah, well sometimes the doors pop out of their sockets when you move buildings, or when you adjust nearby terrain height
<Castano|nwn2tooli> yes
<Castano|nwn2tooli> i put back no prob though
<Halrin> also, try just slightly rotating the buildings
<Castano|nwn2tooli> so where is the PWC
<Halrin> often the doors arent gone, they're just glitched to some weird angle hiding inside the building
<Castano|nwn2tooli> yes i notice that to...they tend to get out of place?
<Halrin> rotating slightly pops them back in place

[Castano]

How to make a PWC file (the file players need to download to play your mod)

File
Make client pack

this should generate a PWC file