My First Attempt

[dob85y]

Hey,

here is what i have sofar for my first area attampt. I am making it in the hope it can be included and a multi denomational or non denominational monastary. I call it Hidden Valley, It should be somewhere in the cold depths of the mountainous country in TSM.

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV1.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV2.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV3.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV4.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV5.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV6.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV7.jpg
http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll63/dob85y/HV8.jpg

Im just feeling my wat through ATM, im not sure i have the toolset setup totally right, i get an error message telling me it cant find a file called alfa_acr01, i have used the basemod that was posted a little while ago, perhaps thats the issue?

Id really appreciate feedback, as im new at this and want to know what you all think.

[indio]

Well done. You've certainly made a strong start. The design is bold and really summons that feeling of epic so central to the genre.

I really love the central raised building. It's a great centrepiece. The mountains in the background are also strong features.

My only advice would be to learn how to use YATT. It's a plugin that will tackle many of the issues I can see in your building that you might spend months trying to solve in other ways. It will help you create exterior areas and cover them in textures. You can then focus on finetuning the areas and adding content.

Let me know if you need help with YATT, but it's a time investment that will repay you triplefold once you get moving.

Here's a link.

http://nwn2yatt.sourceforge.net/

[mr duncan]

agreed, very good start. pepper in more textures in many other strengths than 100%, especially around those lava pits... those open lava holes should be ringed in something like one of the darker cliff choices. Also avoid using textures both set at 100% pressure right next to each other, you can use those brushes at variable strengths to make it look very realistic. Using a few, 2 or 3 different grass textures will break up the monotony of a wide plain of the same green too.

also remember perfectly flat planes dont usually happen even with master bricklayers. Widen your brush and set it to really low pressure to make lower spots in the cobbled walkways.

Most of all, go back and use the color brush in the terrain tab to put in shades of green and brown to make the whole thing look less washed out. It helps a lot to put a ring of darker color under/around a lot of buildings too.

Also different textures under the water and on the shores will help ya. as will coloring in the deepest parts with a really dark brown.

Thanks for deciding to build.

J

[dob85y]

Thanks for the advice, im allready on to it, ill post more screenies once i have made some adjustments.

I have DLed YATT, and will see ho i go.

[AcadiusLost]

don't worry about the alfa_acr01 error, that file stores extra custom text blocks for things like descriptions and names of the new skills/feats/etc. You've got a copy of the file in your /documents/nwn2/tlk/ folder, the toolset is just looking for an "extra" copy of it with the .tlk extension chopped off (just alfa_acr01 instead of alfa_acr01.tlk) and dropped in your /program files/atari/nwn2/ directory. If you throw an extensionless copy in there, it'll stop the error, but if you don't worry about it, it shouldn't interfere with your building forays.

Seems like you're on your way now, the above posters are a much better source of guidance on artistic/stylistic nuances, so you're in good hands. I'm always available if you need help getting nuts and bolts working as well.

[zicada]

I recommend reading through this:

http://www.kliche.se/download/AMRAPHAEL ... TORIAL.pdf

This could also be valuable, pretty classic.
http://s.vnfiles.ign.com/nwvault.ign.co ... v1.5.2.pdf

There's lots of other tutorials and stuff for building rockfaces, roads, paths etc aswell. Google is your friend!

[darrenhfx]

That's a nice first area.

You'll pick up on all the nuances as you go and will learn to be more efficient in general.
Figuring out the basics of how to use YATT was a big deal for me because I love working with landscapes.

[zicada]

I found some video's of a guy that does some pretty good work on exteriors.

This is a bit timeconsuming, but the only real way to go imho.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=73

These are 7zip archive bits. Download them all and then unpack the first one (.001) with 7zip.
There's audio commenting aswell.