The Haunted Hotel – creating an interior tileset in Blender and Neverblender 1.29 – part two.

In this part of tutorial we will make some more complex tile, and in next parts create other tiles andminimaps for all of them. You will need this small utility: minimapgen, foundhere:https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/tool/neverblender-blender-269-27xSetup it accordingly to instructions that comes with it (unpack, set your Blender file path). In thistutorial some more accurate measurements will be needed – don't worry, Blender already hasmeasuring add-on. To enable it, open File=>User Preferences=>Add-ons. Click 3D View and checkthe box for 3D View: MeasureIt. Save this settings.

Now, when you go to “Edit Mode”, a new set of tools appears at side panel. You can select two of more verts, and click “Seg”, then “Show/Hide”. The distance between chosen verts is generated. This tool is interactive, and if you scale your model, measurements change dynamically. Yes, it's that awesome! You can scale to the exact size you need with this guidelines.

When all is set up, we can start a new tile. Open the Blender file from previous tileset tutorial.Switch to first unused Layer. Like before, add 5-radius plane. This time we will model a simple 1x1room with a doorway. To do it we will need this plane to have more faces. Enable “Edit Mode”.Press “Ctrl”+”r” or expand “Mesh Tools” and choose “Loop Cut and Slide”. Move your mouse overthe plane. A single magenta line appears. Scroll with mouse to add another cut.

When you have two lines, left – click, then right – click to confirm. Next, scale these two “Edges”along “x” axis (press “s”, then “x”), until you have something like that:

To make things easier later, we will choose specific numeric values for all the edges. Take look at the “Transform” panel. “x” positions should be symmetrical for the edges (x=-4 for the left edge, and x=4 for the right edge – you can just type in the values, make sure that “Global” positioning is selected).

Now, in this same way cut 2 edges on “y” axis. Select the lines and move them – one to “y=-4”, another to “y=4”.

Time to prepare it for adding some door. Add two cuts along “x” axis. Select them and with measurement active scale them to 2 meters (standard door size in NWN) between them:

The basic plane is now ready. We will duplicate it and use one for the walkmesh and the other forfurther tile modeling.Switch to “Object Mode”. With the plane selected press “shift”+”d”, or select “Duplicate Objects”from “Object” menu. Rename one of them to “small_room” and the other to “small_room_walk”

Hide “small_room_walk” from view (select it and press “h”). We will edit it later.For now, we will be creating shape of the “small_room”, so select it and switch to “Edit Mode”.Select “Faces” shown below:

Press “e”, next “z”, next “4.5”. This will extrude selected faces along “z” axis by 4.5 units (ourtileset height). Select all outer faces. Delete these faces, you don't need them (press “x” then choose “Faces”):

To create doorway later, we could use another cut. So press “Ctrl”+”r” and add cut around theroom. Move the edges to “z=3” (see picture below):

Enable “Face” selection and click the middle face. Delete it.

Enable “Edge” selection and select edges around the hole:

Now press “e”, then “y”. Drag the edges with mouse along “y” axis but be careful not to exceed 4.9y location:

That's all for base geometry. Because NWN doesn't allow multiple materials and textures on this

same object, we need to separate parts of the room for (there's a workaround – You can add multipletextures and “bake” them – but it's for more advanced tutorial). The parts will be (top to bottom):

-black “top” to match other tiles- walls + passage (doorway)-floor

In order to better illustrate it, I assigned colors to faces (I won't use this material for final tileset).

First, select all “black” faces, then press “p”. Choose “Selection”. This will separate the selectedfaces and make them a single new object. Rename it to “black”. Next – do this same for “green”faces and rename the object to “walls”, the rest rename to “floor”.

Before any texture could be applied, we'll need to unwrap the model (something like creating“object” canvas for painting, to tell graphic engine, where and how the texture will be “painted”).With a very simple geometry, “black” and “floor” are ready for unwrapping, but “walls” will needsome work. We will mark edges, where they will be cut. These edges are called “seams”. Hideeverything except “walls” (select it, then press “shift” + “h”).

Select the edges shown below. Choose “Mesh”=>”Edges”=>”Mark Seam”. Edges marked as seamswill have dark red color.

This part is repetition of what you've done in the first part of this tutorial:Split Blender window in two and select UV/Image Editor for second part of view.Select all faces and press “u” to unwrap or select “Unwrap” from “Mesh” menu.Here's the result:

Well, it did cut four walls but put some of them rotated, and smaller then UV image square. Allneeds to be tidied up. Select the faces from the topmost wall on UV image and press “r” then “180”.This will rotate them by 180 degrees. Move them to the left down corner so they line up with the

lowest faces (press “g” to grab and move, then “y” so the movement is only along “y” axis). Themiddle faces, with doorway cut need only to be moved down. The faces on the left side of UVimage should be rotated counter-clock wise first, so press “r”, then “-90” and after that move themto line up with the rest. Be careful not to select “passage” faces.After this you should end with something like that:

The last step (for now) – move “passage” faces aside the square, select the rest (“b” - for box selectthen drag to include all walls) and scale (press “s”) and move (“g”) to roughly fit the UV imagesquare.

Switch to “Object Mode” and add a new material to the “walls”. Rename it to “walls1”. In “Texture” panel select the image you have for walls. UV mapping should already be selected by default.Switch to “Edit Mode” and select your image in UV view and “Textured” in 3d view type. If the pattern is too big, you can Tile it - just scale the walls in UV view.

Example: before scaling

… and after:

Also, you can move faces of passage. If there's no texture on it, select it from drop-down on UV/Image Editor window.

Now, unwrap and add materials and textures to “floor” and “black”. I've just used previously created materials for floor (re-scaled the texture, though) and black.

For fine tuning we'll create door frame. First hide distracting elements of tile – select walls and press “shift” +”h”. In “Edit Mode” select the edges of “door-cut” . Press “space” and type beginningof curs… Choose “Snap Cursor to Selected” and switch to “Object Mode”.

Go to “Front” view and add a plane (you can't see it but you want it aligned to this view). In “Toolbar” panel check “Align to View” and set radius to 1.1 m:

Rename it to “frame”. Now we can edit it to create our frame. Switch to “Edit Mode”.I added measures for easier modeling.Create two cuts along “z” axis of the plane and one cut along “x”. Move them so you have something like this:

Delete the middle face. Scale all along “z” and “x” if needed (select all, press “s” then “z”/”x” then drag).The door frame should be slightly bigger, than doorway:

Now select all faces and extrude them along “y” until you're happy with the result (short-keys: “a” -select all, then “e” - extrude, “y” along y axis).Select outer and inner edges, then “Mark Seam”, “Unwrap”=>”Smart UV Project”.

Marked seams:

Add new material & texture. If some faces are dark, check the normals. Normals are a way of showing, how the light would bounce of model in RL. More practicalexplanation – they show in what direction the texture is facing. If they go inwards, there will be noface showing in game.Here's an example of normals facing inwards:

And here the normals are flipped:

Now we have all the geometry of the tile prepared. Time to create walkmesh for the tile. Like before, leave only the thing you are currently working on, “small_room_walk”, visible.Triangulate it (add “Triangulate” modifier to it, in “Object Mode”). In “Aurora Mesh Properties”choose “AABB Walkmesh” then “Load walkmesh materials”. Switch to “Edit Mode”. Assign“wok_Wood” for the main part of the room floor, and “wok_Obscuring” to surrounding faces:

Now some nice trick: this room will have door. Doors are added later, when you define tileproperties. Door placement is based on coordinates in the tile. To get this coordinates right, we will

add an empty in the doorway. Select the two vertices on “passage” and snap cursor to them.

Switch to “Object Mode” and add an Empty. Write down its coordinates. Add 0.2 to “y” value, sothe door will be located more “in” passage.

Before we can add Aurora light and Rootdummy, we must return cursor to its position in center.Snap cursor to the center. Add another Empty. In “Aurora Dummy Properties” select“MDL_Rootdummy”, in “Classification” - “Tile”. Rename it to htt_b01_01 Now set it (htt_b01_01) as a parent to “black”, “walls”, “floor”, “frame”, “small_room_walk”.

Next, Add “Lamp” and place it at this same hight you did in previous tutorial. In “Aurora LightProperties” select “Mainlight 1”. Rename it to “htt_b01_01ml1” and set “htt_b01_01” as its parent.

Export your tile.