While the base Aurora Toolset can allow a module to be created (with areas, creatures, conversations, items, stores and scripts) you might want to use custom content in your module or create custom content.
This can include new models and animations (for creatures, placeables, items, VFX and tilesets), textures (for models, but also including portraits, icons and special colourable PLT textures), game data (spells, races, classes, feats, item types and much more), sounds, music, shaders, TLK files for text, movies and several miscellaneous things.
Getting Started with Custom Content
For an introduction on how to add a simple placeable to the game files, see: Introduction to Adding Custom Content to a Module. For hakpacks to bundle your custom content for release see Introduction to Hakpacks.
For more tutorials see Tutorials covering a wide range of topics.
Custom Content Tools
See the Custom Content Tools page for a more exhaustive list, here is a basic rundown for essentials;
For exporting game files you'll use NWN Explorer or the command line nim tools.
For modelling, you will want Blender and NeverBlender plugin, with potentially Clean Models: EE for decompiling existing exported models as examples.
For texture work you need NWN Crunch to convert from source files like TGA or PNG to better suited DDS. For PLT editing there are a number of tools available, including a GIMP plugin
Neverwinter Nights ships with the Aurora toolset, which allows players to create custom modules for Neverwinter Nights. These modules may take the form of online multiplayer worlds, single player adventures, character trainers or technology demos. Additionally, several third party utilities have further expanded the community's ability to create custom content for the game. Custom content creators are known as builders in the Neverwinter Nights community.
The Aurora toolset allows builders to create map areas using a tile system; the appearance and surface textures of the area are defined by the area's selected tileset. Builders can overlay placeable objects onto areas, and use the built-in scripting language NWScript to run cut scenes, quests, mini-games and conversations. NWScript is based on C.
Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment. Custom content is added to the game in the form of hakpaks. Builders have used the Aurora toolset in combination with hakpaks to create playing experiences beyond the scope of the original campaign. Despite the game's age, the Neverwinter Nights custom content community remains active.
The community, mostly centered on the Neverwinter Vault, created over 4000 modules to the game, among them are many award-winning adventures and series, like Dreamcatcher,[7] Aielund Saga, AL series, and much more.
Additionally, Aurora toolset has allowed for the creation of a number of ongoing persistent worlds modules.
The Aurora toolset is not available for the Linux (can be used on Linux using Wine) and Macintosh versions of Neverwinter Nights. The open source project neveredit aims to port the toolset features to these platforms.