Beamdog HD Pack

Beamdog released their HD Pack in a 'beta' state on 23 November 2021; https://files.beamdog.com/ News item: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/704450/view/3109168049657787421

The current recommended version of the pack for players and builders is the community-fixed version, found here: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwnee/hakpak/original-hakpak/beamdogs-hd-art-pack-community-fixes

Please report bugs with the community version here on the wiki (if you have a wiki account) or on the vault Discord: https://neverwintervault.org/chat or on the Vault page above.

What is the HD Pack and what does it include?

The Beamdog HD Art Pack is a large amount of upgraded HD models for most Neverwinter Nights base player/NPC appearances, and several weapons. The pack includes upgraded high quality textures and models for:

• Player model replacements for all base helmets, heads, cloaks, robes and armor/naked body parts for normal and "fat" looks
• Weapon replacements; Great Axe, Kukri, Great Sword, Katana, Long Sword, Rapier, Short Sword
• Shield replacements: Large shield (1), Tower Shields (all, but some are only texture improvements)
• Gemstone items: Emerald/Ruby/Sapphire Golems, Warhammers, Tower Shields and Gemstone model were upgraded with more crystal-like textures

These are overrides - they replace the base game models - and do not typically include additional models excepting a few minor weapons.

Improvements the project group has made:

• Fixes for many minor and major model issues
• Shadows added to skinmesh only parts
• Compiled models for faster loading
• Removal of erroneous, unused and non-override files including most of the 2das (better PW compatibility)
• Colouring of the eyes on heads based off Tattoo 1 colour

The pack has got some known issues, many of which will be fixed in future versions:

• The PLT texture files used are high quality but also quite slow to load so some jittering may occur when a model initially comes into view (can vary based on your computer or amount of models loading in)
  • To alleviate this there is now a "Low Quality PLT" hakpack for download
• There are some additional model fixes needed - there's a lot of models to work through - you can report any issues you find on the Vault download page or Vault Discord
• Some models may be missing and not upgraded (eg; one belt, a few NPC only heads, pale master arms)
• There are only normal maps for most bodyparts, additional work is required to generate a complete set of PBR textures

Out of scope of this particular project is adding new overrides or drastically changing the appearance of these ones. A new project Overhaul will carry on this with new HD and fancy mapped (PBR) content.

Installation instructions and Usage

The 'userpatch' installation of the community version of the HD Pack is recommended. Follow these steps to install the HD Pack:

1. If you already have a previous version (or the original Beamdog version) of the HD Pack installed, please uninstall/delete the files you currently have, otherwise you will encounter issue
2. Download the latest 'userpatch' (not the 'override') version of the pack from the Vault page; the download filename will be in the following format (where _x.x is version number): BDHD_userpatch_hakpack_x.x.7zip
3. Extract the .hak files into the Neverwinter Nights patch directory, eg: Documents\Neverwinter Nights\patch. Note that you might have to create a new folder called patch if it doesn't already exist.
4. Exact the file userpatch.ini to your root Neverwinter Nights folder, eg: Documents\Neverwinter Nights

The above 'userpatch' installation is recommended because it is much easier to upgrade when a new version is released and is easier to remove the pack from your system altogether if you want to. Also, you can very easily enable and disable the pack (simply by renaming the userpatch.ini file), and unlike the 'override' installation doesn't leave 14,000 or so loose files on your system, possibly mixed in with other files you might have put in your in your override folder.

You can also use the "Low Quality PLT" version to improve load speed at the cost of PLT texture quality. Most people won't notice this unless zoomed in. To do this replace the userpatch.ini with the one in the download on the Vault, and put the hakpack in the zip in the patch directory.

Alternatively, you can use the 'override' installation which involved just dropping all the ~14,000 loose files of the Pack into your \override folder:

• BDHD_override_x.x - This zip contents is intended for users to extract into their override.
  

  • Optionally start by clearing the override folder in the Neverwinter Nights folder, eg: Documents\Neverwinter Nights\override\

  • Clearing can help remove old files from this very pack meaning less disk space or issues with custom content conflicts.

  • Then extract the contents of the override folder in the zip to the override folder in your Neverwinter Nights folder.

For builders there are 3 zips:

• BDHD_builders_source_uncompiled_x.

  • This zip contents is intended for builders to pick and choose from the source files for larger projects such as persistent worlds.

  • This specifically contains the ASCII source models (decompiled if necessary) or files that may need compression for release (such as TGA files).

  • It is highly recommended to use the compiled builders pack if you are not intending to make any edits to the files before release.

• BDHD_builders_source_compiled_x.x
  

  • This zip contents is intended for builders to pick and choose from the compiled files, ie the ones compressed/compiled for final user use.

  • The override and userpatch hakpack version of the zips are the contents of this zip, just put into hakpack or override folder form with no categorisations.

• BDHD_builders_additional_x.x- These files are a minor assortment of extras for builders that are removed from the fuller releases and may or may not contain fixes.

Main Changelog

1.4.2 Minor:

• Some icon files were warped, and have since been fixed

1.4.1 Additional:

• Low Quality PLT hakpack added, which can improve load speed at the cost of texture quality.

1.4.1

• Fixed the PLT on helmets properly.

1.4

• Horse phenotypes fixed (note this is done by duplicating 14K files, around 685MB extracted but very little added to zip size). userpatch.ini has an additional .hak file for this. - Jasperre
• Phenotype positional fixes for most female and "fat" models that should fix the alignment issues between parts - Tjured
• Fixes to various models with gaps in their geometry (such as Dwarf and Elf, females) - Tjured
• cloakmodels.2da adjusted to match base game functionality regarding showing shoulder pads for some appearances where the shoulder is uncovered - Jasperre
• Robe shadows added for all models (copied from the base game robes) - Jasperre
• Some female human phenotype 2 robe oddities fixes that may solve some phenotype oddities - Jasperre
• Several PLT Fixes where layers were wrong - Winternite
• A few Gnome and Halfling "fat" heads added generated from the normal versions since they were omitted by Beamdog - Winternite
• Helmet PLT fixes so they correctly display colours chosen for them - Wolf and Winternite
• Tattoo 1 now defaults to brown eyes for NPCs to go along with the tattoo 1 = eye colour improvement on head models - vapidchap

1.3

• Tjured's shadows (except robes/cloaks)
• Tjured's model adjustments (positioning for female elf head pheno2, thigh and pelvis reshaping/positioning/sizing, phenotype 2 resizing for various races)
• Jasperre's model fixes - hundreds of minor issues (classification fixes, non-existent or broken MTR references, bitmap reference issues, ambient corrections, correcting some gnome skinmesh heads back to trimesh, some robes, and many, many more).
• Jasperre's file cleanup - over 200 redundant files removed. This includes most 2da files except cloakmodel.2da. (others include unreferenced models, test items erroneously included, and extra hand models - available in the Additional Zip)
• Jasperre's compile - compiled all the models again to bake in normals/somewhat improve jittering
• Jasperre's DDS - all TGA files (primarily weapon icons) in the final compiled version are now DDS
• userpatch.ini version for much easier install

1.2

• All models compiled so should load faster
• Removed some unnecessary models and textures
• Additional model fixes
• Tattoo colours affect eyes of heads

1.1

• Some model fixes such as short swords appearances 21-24 (upside down blades), pmh0_robe003/004/006 (robes not looking correct), pmh0_shinl010/pmh0_shinr010.

1.0

• Initial Beamdog release.

Project Contributors

The community effort to make alterations and fixes to the HD pack, and potentially expand it, are:

2da Changes

Mainly useful to know for modders, cloakmodel.2da is the only 2da file now included in the pack, since other changes were redundant (not override) or did nothing (identical files) or were very minor (halfling weapon size change from 0.8 to 0.75). Download the 1.0 file pack if you need these back.

Potential Improvements

Done:

• Compiling models
• (most) Shadows
• Aesthetic changes (an ongoing effort)
• Colouring eye pupils (no lips yet)
• Removal of extra invalid/unused/test files
• Optional Icons that fit the toolset (resized down)

Some not done:

• A cloak pack with less cloak models, which would remove the normals, making it a wee bit pointless.
• 002 models for feet, pelvis or any other 002 nekkid bodypart. These are not available at character generation however only NPCs can use them and even then most of the time they're unused by modders.

Impossible:

•  Rename the phenotype textures to not clash with other existing CC. This is impossible since it's hardcoded by the game to load a single texture named the same as the model, falling back to the human version if not found.

Mobile Testing

It somewhat works - further investigation needed for a better release (userpatch.ini version would be best).

Bugs List

See also HD Pack Contents Assessment for some more high level views of some issues/problem files and lists of files (incomplete but being worked on where needed).

See also Fixed Bugs can be used on each release to clear the list, so this list doesn't get insane.

Note bugs must have in-game issues not just toolset issues. The toolset is still dumb when it loads phenotype textures so some appear drastically off / bad and this can be easily misreported.