Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

Textures spell the difference between superb-looking models and crappy-looking ones. Excellent diffuse and normal maps are crucial in giving your models that wow factor, and bad ones can damn even the best models to ruination. Normal maps can be baked from high-poly models, a process that I explained in a previous blog post . Diffuse maps, on the other hand, are created in image-editing software. There are many ways to make diffuse maps. For instance, you may copy and paste images together to form your diffuse map, as I explained in another blog post . Things get more complicated if your diffuse map has to follow the bumps and crevasses of your normal map. Such is the case with the snake and hydra texture, in which the scales on the diffuse map have to match those on the normal map. The key to accomplishing this is to use your model’s normal map – or better yet, its height map if it has one – as a basis for painting its diffuse map. There are many ways to do this. The method that...

A few months ago, I set out to make a hydra by first modeling a snake. It was only after I had completed its geometry and textures that I cloned its heads and attached them to its body to make a five-headed hydra. Ironically, even though I had finished the snake's mesh ahead of the hydra's, it was the latter that I first uploaded to the Vault and the Nexus  because that was what I had been commissioned to do. A number of people expressed interest in the single-headed model, so I rigged the snake, adapted the hydra animations for it, and uploaded it to the Nexus . I tried to upload it to the Vault nearly twelve hours earlier, but as of this writing, its entry is still pending approval. As can be seen in the picture below, I provided both a non-tintable (left) and tintable model. One of the good things about this model is that, if you need a smaller snake, you'll find that it actually "scales" well. Like a serpent biting its own tail , my project h...