nwmax, Gmax, and nwn edge 2da's......
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KamaZer0
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nwmax, Gmax, and nwn edge 2da's......

Post by KamaZer0 »

I've been pounding through the old bioware boards archives looking for info on edge 2da's and a particular problem i seem to have for 2 days now. My new edge mdl's are rotated +/- 90 deg. To make my new edge mdl's i copied a regular tile, in gmax removed any animations/lighting, then dumped the wok into file 13
I've pieced together little bits from various posts about how to fix this but I guess theres a few too many "ways" referenced throughout the boards there. I've managed to overcome alotta little hang-ups along my journey into tileset modification and creation, but this one is eluding me.

I use mainly Gmax although i do have 3ds 6. Could one of you guru's here lend a little guidance please?

OldMansBeard
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Post by OldMansBeard »

KamaZer0 wrote:I've been pounding through the old bioware boards archives looking for info on edge 2da's and a particular problem i seem to have for 2 days now. My new edge mdl's are rotated +/- 90 deg. To make my new edge mdl's i copied a regular tile, in gmax removed any animations/lighting, then dumped the wok into file 13
I've pieced together little bits from various posts about how to fix this but I guess theres a few too many "ways" referenced throughout the boards there. I've managed to overcome alotta little hang-ups along my journey into tileset modification and creation, but this one is eluding me.

I use mainly Gmax although i do have 3ds 6. Could one of you guru's here lend a little guidance please?
If you use CM3 and you have the edge.2da in the import directory, it will do all that cleaning up for you. It knows about edge tiles.

However, your problem is interesting. Is it possible that the geometry in the original tile is rotated inside the model and gets rotated back again by orientations in the .set? If so, that would account for it because edge tiles are not in the .set and there is nowhere to declare an orientation for them - they just have to be right in the model.

KamaZer0
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Post by KamaZer0 »

OldMansBeard wrote:If you use CM3 and you have the edge.2da in the import directory, it will do all that cleaning up for you. It knows about edge tiles..
ok, i'll give this a try, I've used CM3 once or twice before, but i had no idea i could drop anything other than the mdl's through it.
OldMansBeard wrote:However, your problem is interesting. Is it possible that the geometry in the original tile is rotated inside the model and gets rotated back again by orientations in the .set? If so, that would account for it because edge tiles are not in the .set and there is nowhere to declare an orientation for them - they just have to be right in the model.
Ok, to be honest on this issue,...i have no clue, the models in question were pulled from another set and i just did some reskin and slight tweaks to (ie, making splitter tiles to transition form one terrain type to another) One thing i have noticed is that alot of the time the mdl when imported into Gmax is 180 off from the same mdl in nwexplorer.

Basicly, I've been piecing together a forest/rural plains tileset, I mostly have been pulling tiles from other sets and doing a lot of reskin work, theres only a few "new" tiles, and they are really only tiles that i've made a few changes on like adding some different trees or changing some heights on to make them work with the rest of what i got.
I've been kinda doing the crash course in modeling as i go.
This is the first time i've taken on more than just a simple reskin. By adding in all kinds of stuff from other sets and making a few transition tiles to help the merging, i've gotten a neat tileset with a deffinate old world feel to it, Ive just to work out the edge 2da with 10 terrain types and 14 crossers :huh:

OldMansBeard
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Post by OldMansBeard »

KamaZer0 wrote:ok, i'll give this a try, I've used CM3 once or twice before, but i had no idea i could drop anything other than the mdl's through it.
CM3 only does tile models but it does read edge.2da files to find out which tile models are meant to be edge tiles (so it can delete unwanted stuff like walkmeshes and animations).
Ok, to be honest on this issue,...i have no clue, the models in question were pulled from another set and i just did some reskin and slight tweaks to (ie, making splitter tiles to transition form one terrain type to another) One thing i have noticed is that alot of the time the mdl when imported into Gmax is 180 off from the same mdl in nwexplorer.
Just guessing, but you can easily check - open one of the problem .mdl's in notepad and see if, between the line near the beginning saying "node dummy" followed by the tilename, and the next "endnode" line, there is one saying "orientation" followed by four numbers. If there is, that's the problem. GMax believes that line and turns the whole tile round but NWN (and NWNExplorer) ignores it because tile orientations are meant to be controlled by the .set file.

If that is the problem, run the tiles through CM3 and it will fix them for you.

OMB

Chandigar
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Post by Chandigar »

Also, are your tiles oriented properly to act as edge tiles? IE a grass tile with a wall running vertically through it won't work as an edge tile, the wall has to run left to right. If thats the case, then you have to import the model, rotate it (without rotating the node) and then re-export it.

At least thats the way I would do it, but there may be other methods OMB or others can tell you.

KamaZer0
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Post by KamaZer0 »

Just posting a thank you to you guys for the help, Im now almost done with this tileset and its edge 2da.
I ended up rotating the models while leaving the node in its original position and then having to re "square" the model up to the nodes position. it's taken me awhile but im getting there, Thanks for taking the time to answer a relative noob to modeling's questions mates :)

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