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1.68 Cloaks and Textures Tutorial

How to make new cloak textures for 1.68

Tutorial by Brian Chung (with help from Lisa)

With NWN 1.68, as many of you have noticed, we now have support for dynamic cloaks. Equip a cloak into the cloak slot, a cloak appears on your character. This has been requested by the community, but unlike previous cloak systems, these are skinmeshed and were animated by Adam "ragnarok_mr4" Anden of DLA so they deform with the PC, and do not stick out as a neck body part replacement.

The cloak system is implemented differently than other game objects to easily allow custom content creators to add their own designs. We added the ability to mix'n'match the model with a PLT texture based on a 2DA entry, so you don't need to do any editing in 3D Studio Max or text edit the .MDL file to replace the texture.

This tutorial goes through the steps needed to add a new cloak texture to the game. Please note: How to use Photoshop is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Extract the PLT

Using NWN Explorer, browse the HotU:Patch Data->data/xp2patch.bif for the cloak PLT you want to modify. Please note, while there are 14 cloak types, there are 7 cloak models, and each one has a different UV layout. Pay attention to which cloak model you want to use it with. While you're at it and have NWE open, grab the "cloakmodel.2da" file too.

For this tutorial, we'll use the "Fancy" cloak. From the cloakmodel.2da file, we see the "Fancy" cloak uses texture 4, so we extract "cloak_004.plt" from the xp2patch.bif.

Convert PLT to PSD

Using GIMP with the PLT plugin from Joco, convert the .PLT into a .PSD for easier editing (or you can edit it from GIMP, it's up to you.) You'll end up with a multi-layered grayscale image that looks like this:

Make logo

Now, we'll grab the logo design we want to use for our cloak.

Spiffy, no? ;)

Fill in gaps

In Photoshop, we'll start off by positioning our logo on the back of the cloak.

Then we cut out the logo from the cloth1 and cloth2 layers. A good idea is to shrink the marque by 1 pixel to remove any possible "grunge" from the outline. Also, make a duplicate of the cloth2 (in this texture's case) and inverse the selection so it's like you cut the logo out of the cloth; we'll need this cutout for later.

Now, we place our logo layer as "metal1." Then we overlay the cutout and set it to "Multiply" at 50%. This overlay is to retain the wrinkles and shadows in the cloth so the logo doesn't appear as flat. Merge the metal1 and copy of cloth2 to the new metal1 channel.

Final note, your own logo can be split into multiple layers and does not have to use metal1.

Export PSD into PLT

From Photoshop, use the PLT exporter plugin and export it as "cloak_015.plt" and put them into your override folder. A good idea now would be to fire up NWExplorer and test to verify the PLTs exported correctly and the channels are working as intended.

The Photoshop PLT export plugin can be grabbed from the NWN miscellaneous downloads page.

Added note: you can use any 3 digit number (I haven't tested longer or shorter). Your numbers do not have to be in order (I used "015" in my cloak hak already. ;) - Lisa

Inventory Icon

Using Photoshop, you'll have to make an inventory icon for your new cloak. Again, outside the scope of this tutorial, but for a quick and dirty one we'll put the logo into it as metal1, and copy a piece of the cloak texture to cloth2, again cutting out the B from the cloth so we can see it.

As inventory icons are always prefixed with "i", we save it as icloak_m_015.plt.

I would suggest you make a nicer icon base picture than the one shown here. Perhaps adapt one of the current ones or take a screenshot and reduce it to icon size and such, as well.

2DA

Now, with the cloakmodel.2da sitting in your override folder, we'll open it up in a text editor and add a new line to the end:

Fairly self-explanatory, the model will point to the same model as Fancy, which is model "4", but instead use PLT #15 for the texture (which would be our "cloak_015.plt"). And same goes for the icon (15 which will point to "icloak_m_015.plt"). The next 4 columns are to toggle if you want to hide the wings, tails, or shoulders - the usual 0 for don't hide and 1 for hide.

Setting the ENVMAP column to "default" causes the cloak to use the area's environment map setting for any reflective, shiny channels. If you set it to "****", said shiny channels will instead be transparent, so you can create tattered effects. If you want it to be completely see-through, use the chrome colour (4th row, 3rd from the right, next to the black and white) for that channel.

Test it Out

Fire up the toolset and make a new module (new; do not open an existing one as we don't want any HAKs to interfere with our test), and use the wizard to make a new cloak. If all is well, you should be able to see a new cloak entry in the drop-down list, and it should now be colourable!

HAK

Use the HAK editor and pack up the two PLTs and cloakmodel.2da into a .HAK to share with others!

Module

And add it into your module!

Enjoy!

Related Links

• More info at the CCG Wiki
• Neverwinter Nights 1.68 update
• Cloaks Official discussion
• John 'Gestalt' Bye's offers a cloak crafting solution

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