I'll just fix this one little thing...

Thursday afternoon:

Finally decided I should copy over the "improved" hand models for the heavy fighting style/phenotype.  I started digging into the haks to extract them...

Friday afternoon:

Dammit.  I've now made all new hand models from scratch to replace the "improved" ones for humans.  Five fingers each, better sized, less blocky/pointy, better mapping of textures, using existing texture files.  120 models so far (30 left/male, 30 right/male, 30 left/female, 30 right/female) (base game + CEP/Project Q).

Next, I'll put them through the NWN Armory software to quickly make versions for other races (120 x 6 = 720 new models).  Then I'll just copy those for the other phenotypes/animation styles (720 x 15 phenotypes = 10,800 models).

Crap.  At least the ones for the other races and phenotypes won't require new textures...they all just use the regular human files for that.

And here I sit, pondering making about a dozen completely new varieties (bare hands with visible rings).  Let's see...12 x 2 (left and right) x 2 (male and female) x 6 (races) x 15 phenotypes)...4,320 extra models + 48 copies of an existing texture file...  Sure am glad hand models don't require inventory icons (like shoulders, torsos, etc. do).

All because I wanted to get rid of the "fists of doom" for those using ;;style heavy.

That, , is why we love it here! Truly, whenever I think of NwN, I always think of you first! Viva la Dragon!

Revisiting almost all of my remade hand models, since the texture mapping doesn't look quite right on many of them in-game.  Then I found I messed up some lighting settings on the rings (they looked too dark).

So, today I'm going back through, pulling copies of the textures out of the game resources and hak files, and checking every single one and fixing where necessary.

There will be new hands, it's just taking a few days longer than I anticipated.

And of course today I thought of several more varieties I might make since I'm not yet finished.

The work of the Dragon is never done!

 

Dude.... passion leads us to seemingly insane ends at times

3,816

It looks like almost all of the alternate fighting styles / phenotypes use the default hand models.   Except for "heavy", of course.

53 models x 2 hands (left and right) x 2 genders x 3 phenotypes (normal, large, "heavy style") x 6 racial types.

A few more (non-hand model related) things to work on before I do a hak upload.  Players should get the new hands sometime just before thanksgiving.

Just one of many things to give thanks for, yes?  

And now for a lesson in custom content and texture mapping...

Export and adjust coloring on a .tga version of every .plt your model will be using.

Here I am, checking out my supposedly finished hand/glove models in the toolset, when I discover that a few of them just look bad.

It turns out that some .plt images, when you look at them in NWN Explorer, look identical...but they're not.  They're using different layers/channels in the same spot, so a part you thought was skin or leather is actually metal, or a part you though was skin is cloth, or something else that just doesn't look right.

This might explain why up to this point there's been only one previous attempt to improve the NWN hand models (kurairyu's hands from 2004/2007).