The Assembly line begins

Well I am doing everything I can to get this out during my semester break (which is till the 11th I think).

I keep falling into my old habbits of screwing around with something stupid but time consuming (and ultimately maybe unecessary) like trying to control my companions in a cut scene. They keep running all over in the most irritating fashion possible when I've gone through numerous hoops to prevent it. CutSceneImmobilize and forcing a jump to a precise way point is not enough most times. Then it works, but 1 in 3 tries someone is still puttering around. I look forward to leaving this toolset behind for DA: O. There is a lot of things done better in that toolset such as how your party is perfectly lined up and facing the right way at every cut scene. I will miss the fun things NWN2 has like multiple particle effects and the 3 ed D&D rules. Then again I hear 4th edition will totally botch those, so maybe that point is not valid.

So specifically to my project, I can NEVER get my water to reflect. I crank the reflection power to full 10, and the bias, and I get green watercolour paint as my result:



Perhaps any of my readers will be able to help. Before we go further though, yes I know how reflection settings work and it does work in game for the OC or other mods, mine just never reflects. I have noticed it gets better if its during sunset or sunrise but I use default settings, so if anyone has a quick way to set my scene up to mimic sunrise sunmoon settings do tell!

I'm also looking for suggestions on how to make the stone/dirt hills blend into the grass nicely. I just cant envision it, should it be a rough drop of about 6 feet, or a smooth hill that gradually grows more grass? What kind of textures?

Working on it... barely

Well my last final exam was this morning. I thought I would procrastinate longer for sure, but here I was working on it already today. Chapter 3 is removed from all the areas I've been working on for 2 years so it has an element of freshness to it. Here are some shots of the mountainous isle, the last area of the campaign. Above is the shore. I kind of stole it off the vault and modified it without too much butchering of the higher quality art. As always, click the images to see a full size version. Sorry but I was lazy and these are just toolset shots, lacking the fine settings. It's conceptual though.

This next area is scary... I'm attempting to build a whole exterior myself and I gotta say its not my forte. This is an early shot, with much left to do but I would welcome any advice to make it look more like the linked pics, of Lake Louise, near Calgary.



I'm hoping for the treed in like crazy effect:

SAMPLE IMAGES

However I see how this might be unrealistic since trees that heavy will slow things down and there are no individual tree cut out 2d placeables, whose low overhead would make this possible. So in lieu of that I'd just like advice on making this look more convincing.

I'm in touch with voice actors and Im racing to finish so they have something to read and we can cut this diseased limb off by new years. :) But man it's really hard forcing myself to do it right now but maybe having nothing to do for 2 weeks will improve my motivation.

LATE EDIT: I did happen to find relatively cardboard cutout trees by accident in the RWS cliff pack so yay for that. Still looking for general tips now to "reality"-ize the area or at least improve it.