Custom skydome Tutorial

From NWN2Wiki

In the 1.10 patch Obsidian added the ability to change the skydome. This is an attempt to create a guide for for builder to change the default skydome to another.

[edit] Changing the skydome in the toolset

1. Select the area which you whose skydome you want to change in the Area pane
2. Right-click on it and choose “Properties” or “Properties (new window)
3. Find, and bring up the Properties window.
4. Go to the top and find the Appearance part
5. Go to the “Default” stage under “Day/Night Cycle Stages”
6. In the right field where it say “SkyDomeModel” you can specify the skydome you want to use. Besides the default one, everyone can use

• fx_skydome_generic

People who own MotB can also use

• fx_skydome_shadow
• fx_skydome_astral
• fx_skydome_fugue
• fx_skydome_dream

or any custom skydome that you either have in a hakpak associated with the module/campaign or your override directory.

To see the skydome, save the area (after having entered the name of the skydome in "SkyDomeModel"). Go to File and choose “Close tab”. After the toolset has closed the area, open it again – the skydome should now be placed.

[edit] Create your own Skydome

To make your own custom skydome you will need the following:

• A good image editor that can save images in .tga format (for instance Photoshop or The Gimp)

• The MDB Cloner utility (which can be found here)
• fx_skydome_generic. MDB from your Program files\Neverwinter Nights 2\Data directory (it is in the file NWN2_models_v07.zip, so you need to extract it).
• The texture/image that you want to use on your custom skydome (more on that below). If you need reference, Mask of the Betrayer owners can find severel in NWN2_Materials_X1.zip named like “PLC_Skydome_xxx.tga”, while people who do not own MotB can find “PLC_Skydome_Generic.tga” in NWN2_Materials_v107.

Once you got the texture you want to use for your skydome you will have to do the following:

1. Open MDB Cloner
2. File->Load MDB
3. Find your extracted fx_skydome_generic.MDB and load it
4. Click the “...” button in front of the Diffuse setting and find your texture
5. Rename the MDB file under the MDB Name option
6. Save the Clone

Move both the texture and the .MDB file to your override directory.

Now follow the instructions in the first part of the tutorial, to add it to your area. The skydome will not show up instantly, since the toolset has not loaded it, so if you want to make sure it is there before you load up your area in NWN2, you will need to reboot the toolset (after having saved of course).

In order to distribute your skydome it is advised, as always, to add it to your modules hakpak instead of forcing people to put it in their override directory.

The skydome texture file should be a .tga (TarGA image) file with the image ratio of 4:1, otherwise part of the sky near the horizon might end up looking a bit funny. Obsidian used the dimensions of 2048 by 512. If you want a skydome that looks natural it is advisable to create it so that it “wraps around” - meaning that one should be able to go from the far left of the image to the far right without experiencing any noticeable jumps or cuts. Therefore it would seem advisable not to extend detail and more complex patterns to the far left or right of the image.

Another import thing to note is that the skydome in NWN2 will use the texture twice in-game to wrap around the horizon (instead of just wrapping the image the entire way around the horizon). So, for instance, if you want to have a tower in the far distance, it will appear twice. This is of course far less than ideal, but I haven't found any way to resolve this.