AD's Test Lab: Because I Stopped Making New Things for a Week

I took myself off making new content stuff for NWN for a week, and actually had to spend a lot of time off the computer and spend it with the kids (2nd semester of school starting up, preschool starting up, spring sports starting up, older kids wanting long D&D sessions...).  Of course things kept popping into my head, so I wrote them down on a piece of scratch paper to tackle once my gmax break ended.

Here's toolset pictures of what I've made while spending time with a cat we recently adopted from the pound.  The sad thing is, these are models and textures made in a few broken up hours over the course of three days, from a list that still has at least two dozen more creature models on it.

Some are new, some are updates to existing/used models.


- brand new base texture, brand new leaf clumps, darker bark, removed faint reddish glow
- made because the old base texture looked bad, and discovered this one glowed like the crystal golems used to
- old one was also made with leaf clumps made from model ripped from World of Warcraft


- repositioned some icicles, removed dangly hair, made ice both transparent and shiny (now you can see both shine in game and the troll's white hide through the ice at the same time), removed an orange dynamic light node that somehow got pulled in from the cinder troll model, fixed shadows


- started with DLA treant, scaled down a little, removed old leaves, added thicker leaf clusters


- retextured gold dragon model, removed flex movement from "whiskers", removed wings, removed back/tail fins, added leaf clusters along body

Noticing a plant theme yet?  Yeah, a good 1/3 to 1/2 of my list is plant-related.  I was taking an inventory of plant critters I had available to work with, and suddenly thought of a bunch I wanted to make and several I could updated.


- had the urge to replace both the old gargoyle and the slightly newer one that's in the CEP with something scarier
- scaled down Aenean balor model (originally based on Project Q's version of the balrog), retextured, reshaped forearms and hands, reshaped horns, removed eye emitters, added glowing eyes that show up more in darkness than in bright light
- still need to make a placeable version of this one for when they disguise themselves as statues


- brand new stone giant model, since they were feeling left out (old stone giants in CEP were just recolors of old BioWare hill giant, so they never got used anywhere in Aenea)
- rescaled DLA 3.5e ogre model, replaced head with one based on a half-orc model, replaced boxing glove hands with fingered ones, altered feet, retextured with a grey/stony skin

Lookin' good, , lookin' good! Can't wait to see all that in-game, especially the forest dragon! (Excited about a new type of dragon blood to collect, as well!)

Eric of Atrophy wrote:Lookin' good, , lookin' good!  Can't wait to see all that in-game, especially the forest dragon!  (Excited about a new type of dragon blood to collect, as well!)

They won't have blood.  They're actually plants.

- just couldn't get over how blocky the old shambler base model was (it was based on the DLA crystal golems, after all)
- new base made from Project Q stone golem, scaled down, for more rounded "walking mound-ish" appearance

While I like most of these, I prefer the hanging moss Shambling Mounds from older D&D games; Swamp thing fan, I guess, as well as enjoying the one from the old Night Stalker series.

On the subject, I also like older versions of the Fire Giant, as opposed to the NWN2 look. Not a major thing; just a personal opinion of the art concept.

On the plus side, the Treant looks far better now, and the Forest Dragon is an intriguing concept for Rangers and Druids.

Tree dragon sap

Elhanan wrote:While I like most of these, I prefer the hanging moss Shambling Mounds from older D&D games; Swamp thing fan, I guess, as well as enjoying the one from the old Night Stalker series.

On the subject, I also like older versions of the Fire Giant, as opposed to the NWN2 look. Not a major thing; just a personal opinion of the art concept.

On the plus side, the Treant looks far better now, and the Forest Dragon is an intriguing concept for Rangers and Druids.

I guess I'll have to figure out a good way to make a shambler version with dangling spanish moss.  I think one of the giant scorpion models has that, I'll have to see about duplicating the effect.

Newer fire giants I prefer just because they fit better with my memory of them from PnP D&D (basically really oversized dwarves with a penchant for living near volcanoes).  Pstemarie's version are closer than I could come on my own.

With the treant, I like both the original DLA one with the sparse leaves (maybe for an autumn or damaged part of a forest) and these new ones with a few more leaves (for summer or for a healthier forest).

The forest dragon...I figured why should green dragons be the only dragons that live in the forest?  Why not have a plant that takes on the shape of a dragon?

And, on the subject of shambling mounds, what happens if one ends up in an area with too much moisture and not enough sunlight?


- scaled down newer shambler 10% (to represent part of it being decayed away already), removed leaf clumps, retextured with the look of mycelium, then scaled down, modified, and retextured violet fungus model to attach to the shambler

New Shambler looks like a really fun-gi.... *Thanks to Stan Woo for this one*

Thought on the remodeled Shamblers: perhaps could be used as a lesser Earth Elemental, or another golem. The muscular models look fine; only have another image in mind when I consider a Shambling Mound.

Now that looks like a truly revolting monster!  I can almost smell the fungus and decay wafting off that thing! Don't touch it! You'll catch a disease!

True that ... like something we'd find in one of the corners of Abe's room after a long weekend ...

Check out Worm's Shambling Mound in his PW's packs for another look at them. I thiiiink its based off a combo of the NWN 2 model and an absolutely ancient Treant model I've come to dub Old Logsie. LoW also does a lot of the similar thing you'll need for the moss on his various undead, particular the... Drowned ghouls. Lycawhatsits

We totes need to touch base at some time, because on the plant trail, Needlefolk would be a neat thing, and I have been meaning to take a stab at updating an old Tree Giant I found somewhere. Not the Warcraft version (Though I will blatantly use it for a bit of inspiration)

I'm in the process of revamping almost all of the cats that are or could be used in Aenea.

Built a skinmesh for a basic cat, layed it on top of the dire tiger model (which has all the animations needed).  Worked on a couple of textures (such a new cheetah and white lion).  Scaled the base model for various different types.

Currently trying to figure out the best way to add a mane for male lions.  I also need to find or make a higher quality tiger texture that lines up with the textures of all the other cats (dire/CEP tigers are oddballs as far as texture mapping).  The CEP tiger textures (regular and white) leave a lot to be desired.

Won't be updating a couple cats with skinmeshes, because they'll hardly show anyway (hellfire lion and topiary lion).  Topiary lion is getting a little attention anyway with the rest of the topiary guardian models.

Check Bloodsong's lions out?

Bloodsong's lions (or ones that look exactly the same) are in the CEP.  They're currently used in Aenea, but I want to replace them with something where the mane isn't as "poofy".

- resized dryad model, mapped parts to pixie animations, added wing (and tail) nodes, made it so weapons show when they are held, removed old pixie wing emitters, modified "pixie dust" emitters, made new textures to end up with 7 color variations.

I got tired of the standard pixie's weird emitter-based wings and wanted to see how she'd look with the dragonfly wings I made a while back.  And then I decided it didn't like the base pixie appearance that much anyway, so I replaced it with the dryad.  And then I wanted to be able to see the little dagger that pixies carry, so I made it so that her weapons show up when they are wielded.  And then I figured I should make a few color variants.

And then...

It's been years since I saw Dude Where's My Car?, but that line just keeps showing up.  

Those look amazing! And while I never watched that Dude film, this continuing dialogue does seem much like The Jerk w/ Steve Martin.

Love all these remodeled creatures, from the shambling mound and its interesting sibling the fungal mound, to the nicer cats and lovely pixies!

A nasty bugger that doesn't rely on any particular soil being fertile or moist.  It actively hunts down creatures that can spill their own moisture and nutrients on whatever soil they happen to die on.

Y'know, I was actually going to make something like that for the Plant CCC challenge, but with a rose for a head rather than a vine

Also on the pixies, give 'em bug legs, colour them brown and make them a bit more insect-y and you've got some proper Grigs on your hands

Concerning the new pixies (which are awesomesauce, i must add) - are you going to redo the faerie's lament staff?

Oh would you just let that poor pixie go already?  Haven't you traumatized her enough already?  Sheesh.... that armor Lolipop likes to wear is really rubbing off some bad mojo on her

Eric of Atrophy wrote:Concerning the new pixies (which are awesomesauce, i must add) - are you going to redo the faerie's lament staff?

Probably.