I fixed an armor tintmap!

[Tamha]

Of course, ever since making Darcy's mithril armor it's been bugging the crap out of me when I realized the tintmap on female armor 50 was made for armor 51 (the inscribed version in the same set).

So, comparison shots! First, this is the original appearance:


If you look at where the colors are on the chest, you'll see none of it lines up with the actual armor appearance.


In this one, you can see the tinting lines up on the parts now. Since I selected the same color for both areas on it, some of the details are more subtle than they would be on a more colorful version, but you can see I did the alpha layer on the bony protrusions on the armor, so that part won't recolor anymore.

I would love to see this added to our server (I would imagine the sundrenarmor.hak pack, it seems to have other server specific alterations in it?) Here's a link. It doesn't work in the overrides folder to override the ap_jgplate.hak (I tested that in Xalbrus' horse testing module).

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[GodBeastX]

If you tell me the issue I can correct it in the haks.

One thing bugging me is some of the textures are colored for a previous patch of NWN2, so head colors don't match body colors for skin right now.

[Tamha]

My tint file is new, so it would need to just get added into a hak pack that will override it's original version (located in ap_jgplate.hak), which is why I suggested putting it in the sundrenarmor.hak. That way, if someone is playing on another server using the same armor hak pack it won't get re-downloaded every time the player switches servers.

I do know this particular armor has two versions of the basic texture, one in ap_jgplate.hak and the other in wlckarmfix.hak. In fact, wlckarmfix.hak looks like it's primarily comprised of slight variations on armors, likely to adjust the skin color from one version of the game to another. However, it didn't look quite right when I took her hood off when I was getting my screenies (with either the original tintmap or my altered one). I don't know if it's because she uses a custom head, or perhaps it's an error that occurred when I exported her.

I think the skin to head variation is based on a lot of factors (race, base head texture, lighting, etc) which is why some races always look off color in skin-showing armors and Obsidian added the black undersuit to the warlock outfit (which our server did away with again). I know that plane-touched characters are some of the worst for this issue, especially the Genasi, while humans are the least noticable.

In the tintmap itself, it did look like the first tint was originally set up to handle the skin overlay, while the second and third handle armor coloring itself. In practice, changing that color has no practical effect on the appearance: setting tint 1 on the chest piece to black doesn't actually change the color of anything in game. I tried to do this in the toolset once to simulate a catsuit under some skimpy armor, and the game just recolored it to the character's own skin color (or approximation thereof). (I'm sure you know this already, GBX.)

[Tamha]

Here's a better shot of the altered tintmapping, using a basic RGB color setup.

[Kitsunestume]

Hrmm, does the boning need to be untinted, or could we have it coloured with Tint1 for a bit more customization?

High quantities of untintable surface area on models just bothers me, because you can't do anything TO it.

[Aniril_Telin]

It could be Kit, not seeing a whole lot of effect of red there, so 1 would probably be the best place for it. Considering doing tints for my horses as well actually...

[Tamha]

Red does nothing, as stated in the posts above. The entire chain area is covered in red. I can add tint to it if wanted (I'd swap it with the blue because those areas are super dark anyway). But it will take some time to do. Far as I know, Darcy is the only person who's ever used this particular design, so I just did the map the way I liked.

[Rekov]

I've always been under the impression that most armor pieces don't have tint maps for the first value (red). Is this traditional, or is there actually a functional reason for it, does anyone know?

[GodBeastX]

Usually one of the tint values is skin, It's been awhile since I screwed with it, but you got color 1, color 2 and skin.

[Tamha]

What GBX said, in our crafting system it would be Tint 1 that is reserved to handle skin colors, while Tints 2 and 3 are open for use (though not all armors use both). This is only on the main piece, all the additional pieces may use all three.

I'm cleaning up my backup .psd now so I can swap the blue and alpha channels. Probably won't finish it until next week, though.

[Valhalla]

Far as I know, Darcy is the only person who's ever used this particular design, so I just did the map the way I liked.

I've seen it a few times (I actually have an alt with a set), but yeah Darcy is by far the most frequent wearer of it I'd say. This looks like great stuff though, awesome work!

[Tamha]

Heh, well since it's not just for me anymore, I guess I won't feel too bad about doing a second version of the map. I'm glad it was only the female version that needed adjustment, though, and not both the male and female ones!

I did a rough mockup of it the other way around already (not releasable but enough to get the idea) and it actually didn't look that great with the single color setup I did on Darcy when I made her armor. Makes me wish I'd realized the map was messed up when I made her Adamantine Breastplate three years ago, then maybe I'd have already fixed this before I did her mithril.

[Kitsunestume]

Far as I know, Darcy is the only person who's ever used this particular design, so I just did the map the way I liked.

I've never used it, and most of my clients have noticed the tint problem and decided against the design based on the bad mapping, actually. I'ld predict more use when the mapping is fully fixed and implemented.

Also, I had noted that the chain was red, but was pretty unaware of the current system behind the colour-palette assignments.

[Tamha]

Alright, I finished the requested bone-tinting version. Here's a screenshot of the color-test:


Links are below. Same limit as last time, it won't work in Sundren from overrides. The link is provided in case the staff wants it, or someone wants it for another project.

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[Kitsunestume]

That is pretty nice.
No further comment (^_^)