AD's Test Lab: Dragon Scale Armor

Working on a little something. Currently just working the chest piece, and it's way too many polygons...the uncompiled chest piece model is over 900 kb. Lots of customizing yet to be done (with at least shoulder, forearm, and shin pieces still on my list), then conversion for females and then large body types.

Still...I'm pleased. I'm trying to decide if I need to go with a .plt to allow coloration or stick with my original plan to do higher quality armors with each dragon's color hard-coded into the models.

That looks awesome...

Because I'm a fan of being able to modify things as you want, I'd say one set of armour in this style with a .plt to be able to change it to whatever colour you want.... all depends on how the colour is split between the different "fabrics"...

So if the new 'scaly' pieces are hardcoded as (eg)metal in the corresponding dragon colour with relevant stat and bonus .. for chest, pelvis & perhaps, thighs .. we could effect colour of choice for the other parts by selecting different fabrics in Sronj's Shop and dyes from vendors; especially Spectra?

At the moment, the color isn't changeable. We'll see how it looks if/when I figure out combining multiple .tga textures into a single .plt. Yeah, combining multiple textures isn't something I normally do.

Once I get done with the red, I'll experiment with tintable armor. I'd still need to make a 2nd set for metallic dragons though, to use a different color channel than the chromatic ones.

Nice looking scales on that armour piece, can't wait to see it completed!

I'd be with Rusty on making them modify-able, because I like tailoring stuff to each indiviual character, but if you decide on making them hardcoded; how many of the dragons will be represented with an armor?

Reworked (brand new model), due to some mistakes I'd made the first (2nd) time around.

Current work in progress, using PLTs for color variations.

Like those.

The red, blue and green seem a bit 'cartoonish' in coloring though. Perhaps try say, 'shiney green' (can't recall what number that is) for the green.... There's a few "reds" (88th and 91st color boxes in the color palette) that might look better... those are darker, red with a little more'shading' to them. For blue... shiney blue, perhaps.

The white, black, and the metalics look great as is.

More work done. Chest, shoulders, forearms, belt, and shins.

Probably going to stop with these, since I now have to make multiple versions of all of these for females, large pheno, and large pheno females.

I may or may not do helmets made from dragon model heads.

Awesome work... are they individually coloured or is it a .plt colourchange option ?

Dragon head helmets sounds very cool... I'm sure that there is already a dragonhead helmet that works rather well though ?


And I think I see you getting tired and worn out a little... or this is indeed a screenshot from the future (May29, 2103) ....

RustyDios wrote:or this is indeed a screenshot from the future (May29, 2103) ....

Nice to think our descendants will have a decent, classic game to play

Hehe...I was tired when I posted that. Actually, I'm always tired (probably due to having kids and only sleeping 4-5 hours a night).

There are three different models for each piece. One is for most chromatics (black, blue, green, and red), one is for white, and one is for metallics (brass, bronze, copper, gold, and silver). They do use plts, so I can change the color in the toolset.

There is a dragon head helmet in the CEP already, but it's more of a mask than a helmet. It makes the wearer look like they have the head of a dragon, rather than wearing something made from a dragon's head.

If I do get time to make dragon head helms, I may just try to go open-faced with them. NWNCX gives me the option of making open-faced helmets, they just need a specific part added to the model that tells the extended client to render both the head and the helm at the same time (normally, NWN replaces the head model with the helm model). It also means I'd need to model the inside of the helmet, too, since that could be visible depending on the viewing angle. But if I do that, then players without NWNCX would just see faceless PCs with empty helmets running around.

I'm starting work on female versions of the parts right now. Really a pain to make room for breasts with the armor being so many vertices of overlapping layers, after scaling down the size a little is done. Shockingly, half the armor won't suddenly vanish just because a female is using it.

Too bad the NWN Armory program doesn't automatically makes versions for females and large phenotypes.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:... players without NWNCX would just see faceless PCs with empty helmets running around.

Easily half of my PCs use an override head pack, so most peeps are used to seeing headless PCs running around ... a floating helmet would be cool, too!

On task, though, those armors look awesomesause! Can't wait to try them out! (I especially like the shin/kneepad section!)

These look more than awesome! Love the colors and the scale shading!

Will these be limited to a specific armor class of armor, like Hide or Plate? (I'm wondering if my cloth-wearing DEXy scout and wizard can use these, although I'd understand if these parts were only slotted for a higher armor class limiting DEX.)

Oh, and FYI, there seems to be an artifact of one scale in a wrong place on all the armors, if you hadn't noticed it... out in front of the models at waist level, with a scale poking out horizontally and actually seeming way in front of the model detached from the armor torso. In the picture above, one can see this on all versions on the left side at the waist, and in the turned-to-the-side silver version up front, one can see this scale about a foot in front of the model (that white blur covering the right hand of the red model).

These looks better and better.

@On the scale issue Ramana mentions: If it is what I think it is you refer too, is aware of that.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:Quick toolset screenshot. Ignore the scale hovering infront of the NPC, it's just base scale used for building each piece and will be removed for the final versions.

Ramana Jala wrote:
These look more than awesome! Love the colors and the scale shading!

Will these be limited to a specific armor class of armor, like Hide or Plate? (I'm wondering if my cloth-wearing DEXy scout and wizard can use these, although I'd understand if these parts were only slotted for a higher armor class limiting DEX.)

The scale shading is due in large part to the fact that every scale is individually modeled before being added to the armor. It's a lot of polys.

As far a specific armor class goes, yes. The chest piece is AC 5 (like breastplate or chainmail). The other parts have no effect on AC so can be mixed and matched with other ACs.

Thanks, AoD and !

Super stuff! Your detailing is very nicely done.

And epaulets or gauntlets or shinguards of dragon scale would be cool enough for the max DEXers!

Real life is really interfering with NWN time lately, and I find it rather irritating.

Here's probably the last WIP screenshot. Got the female model done. Yes, I know the belt doesn't line up well, but that's mostly due to the stupid side-hip thing they have females do. They've also got that odd one shoulder higher than the other thing going for them.

Next up I'm making inventory icons from screenshots. Those are going to be a pain since I have to not only account for overlaying, I've got to make them into .plt images with separate channels for leather, metal, cloth, etc.

I don't suppose that there's any way to nix that female animation that makes them stand with the weight on the back leg and the front leg out and the hip tilted? Just make them stand straight and even like the males?

It messes with the CEP clothes also. Makes my female wizard's long coat clip over her leg pretty noticeably like there's a huge hole in the coat, and a piece of her butt sticks out from the back of the coat also. (It would annoy me much more if my wizard wasn't a shadowchild and therefore the clothing errors aren't very visible.)