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Note the project will be looking at focusing on new models or free CC0/open source models and textures with a no copyright infringement. This means no ripped models and textures from other games.
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Models
New Models Style Guide
The models in NWN, especially pre-HotU generally are low quality but cartoony and animated enough to be fine at a distance, especially smaller creatures such as Goblins or small animals.
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On the top of them there may be upgrades done to the animations for instance making simple model animations include the PC animations set, like emotes and the like.
Texture Replacement Information
Textures across the game will be upscaled/improved with fancymaps using the original texture names. MTR files can provide the renderhints needed (although models may be re-compiled to bake in normals).
As models get replaced or upgraded these may become unused - for instance if the model design drastically changes and the texture has to change to suit. These "legacy" texture upscales and fancy maps will be moved to the Additional Builders zip and new texture names will be used instead. Then they can be used in instances where people have got additional models added that use the games base textures (very common across tilesets).
Model Replacement and Naming Information
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For new models and textures an identifier "op" will be used in the name, eg: c_op_xxxxx or t_op_xxxx, ife_op_xxxx, po_op_xxxx etc. See individual overhual overhaul pages for more information naming conventions. These will be strictly marked for each use across the project - sharing is possible but not highly recommended across different tilesets (instead a duplicate should be made).
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The compiled format will be the MDL file but compiled in game.
Textures
Texture Replacement Source and
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Final File Size Notes
The source files should be XFC (GIMP), PSD (Photoshop) or similar uncompressed originals if available.
The source folder would also contain the "final" intermediary PNG file that is not game suitable (again can be oversized).
The compiled file be at most a 15MB DDS file. DDS has compression which acts identically for each dimension. These are typical dimensions and what they output as in DDS, assuming a standard nwn_crunch run with standard diffuse:
SVN maintaining Overhaul will contain the source textures in a compressed PNG format at the highest possible quality (and on top XCF or PSD is fine to add!). This can be 4K, 8K or whatever - but bigger the better regardless of use case (even the smallest on screen item).
The reason? We can downscale sizes but not increase them. On an 8K monitor it might look blurry that otherwise fine looking 0.5K texture.
Some models also scale - weapons in larger creatures hands, placeables commonly get visually transformed, various other times things are zoomed in such as cutscenes. Tileset textures in particular look poor when zoomed in. NWN also may agressively downgrade the quality in some cases.
The final files will likely be along the lines of:
- 4K - Release of textures scaled to a maximum of 4096x4096 big. 4K monitors and the like benefit the most. 4K monitor appropriate and potentially VRAM heavy.
- Note for tiny items like say, Daggers, or some specific smaller bodyparts this might still have smaller ones generated - not sure yet.
- 2K - Medium quality, 2048x2048 maximum texture size. 2K monitor appropriate.
- 1K - Lower quality. 1024x1024 maximum texture size. 1K monitor appropriate.
PLT may be different see PLT section below.
Note on sizing - 15MB is a good guideline due to nwsync and sanity as it were.
| Dimensions | Typical MB for a DTX5 (Alpha) | Typical MB for DTX1 (No Alpha) | Dimensions | Maximum Typical MB for a DiffuseNotes | |
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| 4096 x 4096 | 21.3 MB (22,369,776 bytes) | 10.6MB | Upscaled from 1024x1024 - no Bioware HotU or earlier models are this large - so is newer DLC or custom content | ||
| 3600 x 3600 | 16.4 MB (17,283,232 bytes) | Odd size not sure what texture this was.3072 x 3072 | Difficult one to usually resize to, since it's taking every 4th pixel out or something. | ||
| 2048 x 2048 | 5.33 MB (5,592,592 bytes) | 2.66MB | Upscaled from 512x512. Likely best general square size. | ||
| 1024 x 2048 | 2.66 MB (2,796,368 bytes) | Longer texture - some cloaks and stuff use this. | |||
| 1024 x 1024 | 1.33 MB (1,398,256 bytes) | 682KB | Upscaled from 256x256 | ||
| 512 x 512 | 341 KB (349,680 bytes) | 170KB | Upscaled from 128x128 |
PLT Files
Texture Replacement Naming Information
For best results we will always name diffuse files with _d in the filename. This is done to allow ReplaceObjectTexture and similar to work fully when MTR files are in use. The MTR file name thus will never match any texture file name.
When naming new textures for a specific purpose standards will be to try and name them after the original model name, eg a dagger part called wswdg_b_011.mdl could have a full set of textures named wswdg_b_011_d, wswdg_b_011_n, wswdg_b_011_r, wswdg_b_011_s - and a material file called m_wswdg_b_011_d.mtr for instance.
For material file usage best practice is to only have the materialname reference in cases where that has all the texture information. It stops the game checking 2 references unnecessarily and makes it clear this is only using material PBR files. You can leave out the bitmap/texture0 line.
Material files should be the location for renderhint options to keep it all in one place (in case you want to edit if it uses the full set of options or a more limited set and you specify a global specular, as per further down).
In cases where the MTR is shared and diffuse file is swapped between items, usually the m_texture.mtr name is used for the materialname and the bitmap file is the diffuse file.
| File Type | Reference | Naming Convention | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MTR | materialname | originaltexture m_modelname modelname m_texture | tcn01_glas02.mtr m_wswdg_b_011 wswdg_b_011 m_greatsword.mtr | Original texture replacements are common especially on tilesets and placeables where the original models are left otherwise untouched. m_ keeps all material files prefixed. Helps to remove clashes. However requires new models. New textures with a 1:1 mapping to the MDL (no reuse) could use the model name to keep things simple If you want full clarity you can use m_texture.mtr - this is useful also in the cases of shared MTR files |
| Diffuse | texture0 | texture_d | tcn01_glas02_d | If a PLT file this needs to be excluded from the MTR file entirely (have no texture0 line) and instead have the bitmap file in the original just be "modelname" since this is automatically done by the game (and just makes it clearer) |
| Normal | texture1 | texture_n | tcn01_glas02_n | |
| Specular | texture2 | texture_s | tcn01_glas02_s | If it's not shiny using "black" as a reference here is worthwhile (else it's potentially auto generated from the roughness) |
| Roughness | texture3 | texture_r | tcn01_glas02_r | |
| Height | texture4 | texture_h | tcn01_glas02_h | |
| Self-Illumination | texture5 | texture_i | tcn01_glas02_i |
PLT Files
Source files - if they exist - can be in whatever PSD/XCF is done before changing to PLT although PLT has no quality loss.
There is no "PNG" intermediary howeverSource files should be the layered GIMP/Photoshop as appropriate. There is no "PNG" intermediary however. There may be a resized version for the game conversion since the GIMP PLT saver just uses the base file size as it's dimentions.
The final PLT files are all kinds of awful and 8MB max is what Beamdog used and even the game chokes on lower a lot of hardware (due to the amount of bodyparts loaded at once) . Further testing needed there.Need to figure out a good methodology for PLT and the sizing of different parts especially if PLT shields are addedeven with PLT load improvements.
The 4K/2K/1K options may become:
- 4K - original file sizes
- 2K - Halved sizes
- 1K - quartered sizes
TBH though might go through and make several bodyparts get standardised sizes, like all Necks being 512x512 or something...just to make the 4K pack not choke so much! Would need to resize things like normals to match as well.