Trying out the NWN2 toolset for the first time?

Here are the results of my

explorations on building an exterior area, combined with the wisdom of several
others
1.
After you have sketched out or designed your area in your mind, youll
probably want to start out by adjusting the terrain. The first thing youll need to know
how to do, is how to move the map around in the main window, because it isnt very
intuitive use CTRL + Left click to drag the area view around, and the mouse
wheel/third button held down will allow you to change the camera angle. Tip: In the
top right of the screen you will see a little pin symbol. You can use this to keep a
panel open, or to make it hide itself. When you first open the toolset, click on the pin
for the Properties panel so that the terrain panel gets more room.
2.
Go to the drawing tools for the map, and select the one marked terrain. The
general consensus on building a map quickly, is to make heavy use of the flatten tool.
Still, you first select the raise or lower options, and adjust the height of one corner of
your map.

3.Select flatten and then eyedropper.

This is why you raised a corner of your
map the eyedropper tool allows you to
select the exact height you are going to use
as a default. Zoom in to your piece of
raised terrain, and click on the exact height
you want to be able to draw at. Now when
you paint, you will get a sort of flat-topped
hill/plateau. Use this to lay out all of the
raised terrain on your map. You can do
several heights if you wish. You may also
want to use flatten for sunken terrain, such
as the path of a road. If youre planning to
build steep terrain, dont lay down vertical
faces it stretches the textures and looks
bad. You either need to step it or find other
ways to break it up (see later on rocks).

4.
Youre going to probably do a lot of fine tuning on the terrain over the next
few hours, but start by making manual adjustments to create your terrain features
using the raise/lower tools. Build your hills, drumlins, lake beds, or whatever else you
need with these. Dont worry about errors for now. If you want gentler features,
increase the radius of the outer setting of your brush, and decrease the pressure
setting.
5.
Once youre happy with the rough layout of your terrain, use the noise tool
to add general bumpiness to dull/flat areas (only).
6.
Use the smooth tool to reduce the harshness of your terrain. If you have
jagged edges or a lot of cliffs from the flatten tool you used earlier, smoothing is a
good way to remove such harsh features that you dont desire. You should also use the
smooth tool to check the tile edges noise will sometimes cause these not to match
heights properly, and you can smooth these oddities out.
7.
Youll be using these tools a lot as you build to make finer adjustments, but
Im not going to be mentioning them much, since Ill assume you now have the hang
of them.
8.
Now place any water. To do this, use the eyedropper tool as before to select
the water level you want, and then lay down the pancakes of water to fill your
hollows/seas as desired. You will need to fiddle with smoothness, ripple and refraction

settings as well as colour to get your desired result (setting all 3 levels of water in the
panel to similar properties gives you a more wavelike pattern, others give a windy
look, etc). A word of warning, surface settings for water apply to the whole tile. If you
want two bodies of water to have a different surface or colour setting, make sure they
are on different tiles. Remember you can show or hide water using the top menu bar
whenever you like. In addition, you can save your water settings I recommend you
do. Its very easy to inadvertently adjust your water without meaning too, so once you
have the settings perfect, save them.

9.
I find that it is easiest for me to lay the larger areas of textures next. Go to an
unwanted area of your map (or another area) to test textures. There is no undo
function for textures, and replacing textures is done on a whole-map basis. Its a good
idea to work out the 6 or 7 textures you are going to be using for the whole map,
before you start any texturing work. There are a max of 6 textures per tile, so try and
select 4 or 5 you are likely to use everywhere, and leave 1-2 for individuality in
specific areas of the map. Test out all your selections in an off-map area, using the
swapper to replace textures you dont like. Only once you have made all of your
selections should you then texture the map.
10.
I find it helps to lay down accent (like cliff edges) or dark textures first, and
then lay the lighter textures on top. Another way of looking at it, is to build up in the
same was as life: stone then earth then grass for example. Dont worry too much
about painting outside the lines, by the time you are finished it will rarely matter,
and you can touch up later. On the other hand, dont use giant paintbrushes you
cant delete textures, only replace them on a map level, so big mistakes are painful (as
there is no undo). For large areas of single textures, start with a high pressure, then
drop it by increments at the edges to fade the texture out. In addition, you cant paint

two textures at once, so break up larger areas with spotting other textures, or with
colours, as well as adding placeables later.

11.
Go back to the terrain tools and select colour. At this point I do much the same
exercise as I did with textures, I start with darker areas and accents to dips and crags,
gradually lightening them at the edges if necessary, then I apply light textures to
exposed areas.
12.
Whether you paint grass, trees or objects down is up to your preference but I
prefer first to go and select feature objects from the blueprints menu, and lay those
down. I start with rocks, where I build a set of blueprints in the corner of the map, and
then tint (properties) the whole selection as desired to match the textures they will
blend with. I then take copies of these and apply them as I wish. The larger rocks are
particularly important for using to break up those ugly cliffs you made earlier (check
out the OC for many examples of this in action).
13.
Placing placeables can be tricky. Youll want to know a few key combos to
help you: arrow keys will move placeables about, while using CTRL + cursor will
rotate them. Page Up/Down will adjust the height of your placeable if youre going
to do this you need to switch on height lockwhen youre done so that the placeable
has no chance of adjusting its own height if you change the terrain. Height lock (Z)
is very useful for blending placeables into terrain if you dont set it they will always
default to being on the mesh.
14.
Once Ive laid out all my rocks, I then add any major features of the map. I
tend to do this before I add trees because I find they get in the way, but you can hide
them via the menu at the top.

15.
Next I select 5-6 tree types, again using a corner to test out. There is a limit on
trees of 6 different trees; each seed or tree counts as one. (The random seed is set on
the properties of a tree, and changes its dimensions and shape). From these 6
examples, I copy and paste individual or groups of trees around the map as desired,
then I break up groups by shifting some trees around, and adjusting the dimensions of
others. To do this open the properties of the trees and you will see that by default they
are set to 1,1,1 if you want a taller tree for example, try 1,1,1.2 (the other
dimensions control x and y and can be changed also). Note you cannot rotate trees.
16.
Last of all I go to the grass settings. Once again I go through the list, trying out
each type in a corner of the map until I am happy with the selection of grasses I am
going to use. I start by selecting a single or pair of grasses (you can paint multiple
grasses at once) and handling larger areas. I use different combinations to match
different terrains, or to blend one grass type into another at the edges.
17.
You dont need grass on the whole map (and dont worry too much if grass
often looks bad in the toolset zoom in for a more realistic idea of what it looks like
in game). Use thickish patches, adjusting to the terrain (I fill hollows for example) and
place it around objects, particularly rocks and trees, for a better look.
18.
Congratulations, youre probably about half way through! Likely you will
need to do many of those steps again now, as you blend textures around placeables,
tweak terrain, etc
Ben Wynniatt-Husey (B G P Hughes)