1. Because I am dumb, I forgot to note (here, anyway), that the public release of AFK_Weye turned a year old on February 27th. It’s garnered, over 4 versions and with a couple of patches, slightly over 10,000 downloads. Considering I never really expected it to be a hit outside of about 5 people who read this blog, I’m pretty happy with it, and I’m pretty proud of what’s been accomplished. It perhaps goes without saying that having thousands of people enjoy your work is a pretty good rush, never mind the ego boost and the affirmation that maybe you don’t suck after all.

2. With that said, as some of you know I’ve been working since November on what was supposed to be a patch to fix some bugs, but is now essentially a whole new version of the mod. It’s in alpha testing right now, and given the zillion other things on my plate it’s going to be a while, but there is a new version coming, and it will be big. Among other things it includes are:

- Dozens and dozens of bug fixes.
- Several new quests, at least two of which are fairly large.
- New ways to solve older quests.
- Reworked manor interior spaces with choices – don’t want the display cases? You don’t have to now.
- Fallout 3 style companion management for manor guards and others.
- Configurable automatic lighting in the manor – turn it on or off as you like, or have the maid do it for you.

Among, well, other things which I will leave you all to speculate about. In the meantime, I have screenshots.

New Verres Manor, now retextured in Imperial City style.

A dark and stormy village, crawling with undead carrying farm implements.

Purple Halls, now with 100% more lich.

Ancient Halls with toggleable lighting.

New manor sitting area, now with toggleable fireplace and lighting.

Basically, I want to create these:

Which could be better, but aren’t bad for having started life as low-res book scans. For those of you not in my D&D game, those are house arms for noble families in Waterdeep. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them, but they’re shiny.

1. Open image

2. Layer/Transparency/Add Alpha Channel

3. Select exterior white area, delete

4. Move each color to new layer via selection

5. For each of the layers:
- Hide all other layers.
- Use the select by color tool to select the transparent area.
- Invert the selection with Select/Invert
- Delete the selected area. Should have a transparent outline now.
- Select a paint chip of the appropriate color. Paste it into the current layer using Edit/Paste Into.
- Move the chip around in the selection until it looks good, then anchor it. Try to give a little color variance.
- Repeat for all other layers.

6. Unhide all layers. Right click in the Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo box and Merge All Visible Layers.

7. Select the whole image using Select/None. Add blur with Filters/Blur/Blur. Add a drop shadow with Filters/Light and Shadow/Drop Shadow. Use the default settings.

8. Make sure the shield layer is selected. Use Filters/Light and Shadow/Lighting Effects to give the shield a lighted effect. Play with this, but a Type None Light 3 at distance 0.175 seems to work well. [edit] Actually, a Point Light 1 at distance .246 works better. It’s also worth messing with the material properties for effect. [/edit]

9. Merge visible layers. Save.

So, having finished up all of Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, I figure I ought to say something about the experience. This is going to ramble a little. Or a lot. Because I am me, and this is 15 seasons of television plus three movies I’m talking about. You have been warned.

Overall, somewhat contra Suzanne, I find myself as more of an SG-1 fan than an Atlantis fan, and here’s why:

- SG-1 had a much, much superior mythology to that of Atlantis, and I’m a mythology geek. As big evil bad guys, the Gou’ald are a lot more frightening than the Wraith, both because they make more sense, and because with the exception of Todd and Michael, the Wraith never got fleshed out enough to be interesting. On the other hand, Apophis, Yu, Anubis, Ba’al, Osiris, etc.

- Compounding that, too much of Atlantis was knock-offs on things we had already seen in SG-1, both episode ideas and enemies. To be fair, the Atlantis Replicators were a better idea than the SG-1 Replicators, but that horse is pretty dead at this point.

- On the other hand, the writing for Atlantis was by and large stronger than it was in SG-1, with some exceptions. Even the worst Atlantis eps were better than their SG-1 counterparts, and the best stuff, like the S5 ep Vegas, are among the best things I’ve ever seen. Atlantis spent a lot of time in strange reality warps, and was better for it. More plot arcs and multi-part eps, and it was the better for it.

- On the other other hand, there were some crazy uneven bits with Atlantis that just didn’t seem to happen as much with SG-1. For the most part, characters falling off the radar screen in SG-1 wasn’t a huge deal because there were more of them. The lack of Athosians was very strange by contrast. While SG-1 had fairly well-defined roles for its characters, there are a lot of Atlantis characters (Ford, Carter in her appearances, most of the SG-1 guest spots in general, Keller) who got severely underused, and that was coupled with a distressing tendency to do bad things to people the writers apparently got bored with.

- So, if somebody had told me that McKay would end up being one of my favorite Stargate characters ever, I’d have told you to stop hogging the good drugs, but sure enough, he’s great in Atlantis. On the other hand, Sheppard is sort of O’Neil lite half the time, Teyla may as well be played by a cardboard cutout in later seasons, and Ronon is saved from being Teal’c lite by subtle differences and the fact there can only ever be one Teal’c. SG-1 had a much better team dynamic, which really helped it out. Even the late season SG-1 replacement characters did better for themselves than the unfortunate Teyla.

- OTOH, Atlantis sure was a pretty show, wasn’t it? Lot of oooing and aaahing to be done. But then, a whole show shot in HD with modern CGI, as opposed to the 1990s, here.

- Also, weird pacing problems in Atlantis, which is another I hate the Wraith thing. I really wish that The Seige had been the finale for S4 or so instead of the S1 finale that it was. After having been built up over S1 as badasses, the Wraith never really recovered from S1. Plenty of other points at which the Atlantis crew comes close to some really awesome stuff, but in the end nothing ever really changes, as opposed to SG-1, where Earth gets a logical progression of stuff over the years. I expected more out of Atlantis in this.

- And just because it’s mandatory in these sorts of things, a list of some of the best eps, in no particular order:

1. Vegas (SGA S5)
2. The Fifth Race (SG1 S2)
3. 1969 (SG1 S2)
4. The First Ones (SG1 S4)
5. Beast of Burden (SG1 S5)
6. Lost City 1-2 (SG1 S7)
7. Threads (SG1 S8)
8. Continuum (movie)
9. Rising (SGA S1)
10. The Seige (SGA S1-2)
11. Michael (SGA S2)
12. The Real World (SGA S3)
13. The Shrine (SGA S5)
14. The Queen (SGA S5)
15. Moebius (SG1 S8)
16. The Changeling (SG1 S6)

Among, obviously, others.

And just for the obligatory other list, favorite characters:

1. Daniel Jackson
2. Vala Mal Doran
3. Rodney McKay
4. Carson Beckett
5. Jack O’Neil
6. Todd
7. Michael
8. Ba’al
9. Yu
10. Anubis

And also Teal’c, because Teal’c is better than any list.

I think I’m done now.

Well, almost.

Refusing to submit to our rule, you call yourself lord and sovereign. You seize and distribute our treasure, you decieve our servants. You never cease to annoy us with your bands of brigands. Have I not destroyed you Greeks? You say that you trust in God; why then has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? Could I not also destroy Constantinople?”

—Chosroes II, King of Kings of Persia to Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, as quoted by John Julius Norwich

Do click through for the large version.

Soon, my minions. Soon we shall rise up, and claim dominion over the hot water heater.

Yes, today is a three hours of sleep day. Why do you ask?

When making trigger zones that cast spells at people in them, one should always remember to check that the triggering thing is in fact an actual people, as opposed to, say, any random static, such as docks, lanterns, buildings, rubble, and the like.

We see above the results of not performing this check. While constant streams of lightning are indeed epic, they are, perhaps, not the desired result.

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume you have copies of Blender, Nifskope, and the Blender nif scripts, and have an already-completed .nif file you want to add additional texturing blocks to. Here’s how.

1. First, make a backup copy of the mesh you’re about to edit.

2. [PICTURE] Open up your mesh in Nifskope. For each NiTriStrips block, note down the value, which should be something like “CastleWallTower01:1″. You care about that :1 part. These blocks will be sequential.

Having noted all of those numbers, note down the Material # under NiMaterialProperty for each block. You can ignore the Material # if you don’t care about color properties or glossiness.

All of this will become highly important later. For now, close down Nifskope.

3. Open Blender. When it finishes loading, use the Delete key to get rid of the default cube. If you misclicked and deselected the cube, right click it to select it.

Go to File/Import/NetImmerse Gamebryo (.nif & .kf). In the file dialogue that pops up, navigate to your .nif file, select it, and click Import NIF in the upper righthand corner.

Another dialogue will pop up. Make sure that the option “Combine Multi-Material Shapes Into Single Mesh” is deselected (it’s on by default, and you’ll need to do this every time you import), or you will hate yourself later. I do not assume responsibility for any monitor stabbings as the result of failing to follow this advice. Hit Ok. Your screen will go light grey, meaning you’re looking at a super zoomed in version of the model.

4. I digress for a moment into some basic Blender navigation.

- Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
- Hold and drag the middle mouse button to rotate the view.
- Shift + Holding and dragging the middle mouse button will pan the view.
- RIGHT CLICK things to select/deselect them. Left clicking does various random other things, and you almost never want to use it in conjunction with model navigation.
- A key selects/deselects all.
- Blender is very subtle about denoting selected objects/faces/edges/vertices. Usually it’s some kind of outline, with the exception of faces.

That should cover it. I’ll try to cover other commands as we go. And yes, this UI is a nightmare for anyone used to just about any other program ever.

5. You should be in Object Mode right now. Use the scroll wheel to zoom out so you can see the whole object. It should all be selected. Hit A to deselect everything. Notice the outline going away.

6. Right click somewhere on your object to select it. Blender should only select a part of your entire model. If you get the whole thing, you messed up your import, and need to go back and check the “Combine Multi-Material Shapes” button again. If you get a bunch of crazy lines that look vaguely like your model but not quite, you’ve selected the collision geometry. We don’t really want that in our way right now, so do this:

Hit M, which brings up a small dialogue [PICTURE] which shows the move to layer dialogue. Click a box that isn’t the first one (see red arrow in the picture), then hit OK. You can select which layer you’re viewing by clicking the appropriate box in the layers control in the bottom left part of the picture.

Note that you can also do this for other pieces of your model you don’t want to look at right now, which is very useful for complex models with lots of individual parts.

If you didn’t get your collision geometry right away, don’t worry about it, and just deal with it when it gets in your way.

7. [PICTURE] This is what my model looks like with all of the extraneous bits I don’t want to work with right now moved to other layers.

Before you start cutting things up, you need a plan as to what exactly you want the model to end up looking like – how many different textures are you going to use, and where do you want them to go. In my case, I want to chop things into about three seperate pieces, roughly corresponding to the things on the top, the things in the middle, and the things on the bottom.

It really helps to play around in Nifskope before you do anything, and get a concept of what you want to be doing.

8. Once you’ve selected the part of your model you want to cut up, change to Edit Mode, click the Face Select Mode button, and then the Occlude Background Geometry button. See also [PICTURE] steps A, B, and C.

This gives us a more finely tuned selection ability. We could select by vertices or edges, but that’s more pain than we need to go through. We clicked Occlude Background Geometry to hide the geometry we can’t see right now, to prevent us from selecting it by accident, which causes all sorts of problems.

9. How you do this next bit varies on how much of your object you want. Either:

- Hold down shift and start right clicking faces to deselect them, or

- Hit A to deselect all. Note how you can still easily make out what’s selected by the lines and little boxes in the middle of the triangles. Hold down Shift and start right clicking these boxes to select them. Make sure to rotate around when necessary to get all the faces. You should wind up with something like this [PICTURE].

- You can also join parts together. Go into Object Mode, Shift + right click the pieces you want to join, and go to Object/Join Objects, or hit Ctrl + J, like the [PICTURE]. Note that if you do this, both parts need to have the same Material # in order to avoid Nifskope pain later. In the bottom pane, change the panel to Shading ([PICTURE]), click one of the parts you want to join, note the material #, click the other part, click the double arrowed box next to the material #, and change the material. Then use Ctrl + J to join them.

10. Now hit P to pop up the Seperation menu, then click Selected. All the faces you selected will now seperate out into their own object.

Repeat steps 9-10 until you’ve carved up as much as you want. If you need to select a different part of your object, go back to Object Mode, select the part, go back into Edit Mode, and repeat.

12. Once you’ve re-cut your mesh how you want it, here comes the fun part. Make sure you’re in Object Mode. Make sure you have that list of NiTriStrips numbers and Material numbers handy as well. Then:

- Right click to select any single part of your model.

- Make sure that your Panels are set up like in the [PICTURE]. In the Link and Materials box, check to see that the name is something akin to what’s shown. Pay attention to the “01:6″ part. If this bit has a period in it, say “01.001″ that means Blender is messing with you, and you need to correct it to be “01:#”, where # is some number that IS NOT one of those NiTriStrips block numbers you wrote down. Try to go in sequence. If you load up your nif later, and the structure is all wrong, you didn’t do this part right.

14. We’re ready to export. Hit A until you’ve selected everything. Don’t worry about the other layers, those are selected too.

Go to File/Export/NetImmerse Gamebryo (.nif & .kf). Give it a name and click Export NIF. A dialogue window will pop up. The default settings should be correct. Click Ok.

15. Now open up your nif in Nifskope. We have some housekeeping to do. First, go to Spells/Optimize/Split Properties. This lets us edit individual NiTriShapes.

16. Expand the Scene Root NiNode. Right click it, and select Block/Remove.

- Expand the remaining NiNode. Right click, then Block/Insert/NiS…/NiStringExtraData.

- Click the NiNode, and in the Block Details, find Num Extra Data List and change its value to 2.

- Then, click the double green arrows on the property just below it (Extra Data List), and click the arrow to expand it. Change the value of the first property to the number of the BSXFlags block. Change the value of the second to the number of the NiStringExtraData block.

- Open that backup copy of your nif from before you imported it to Blender. It should have a NiStringExtraData block. Click it, double click its String Data value, and copy the string. Close that nif, go back to your exported nif, and copy the string data to the String Data value of its NiStringExtraData block.

17. From here, you can change textures and materials like normal.

For the record, this took about 10 hours to figure out completely. As I say, I hate my life so you don’t have to.