Legacy:NeverWinter Nights To UT2003

This page explains how to get Neverwinter Nights Models into UT2003.

Note: Don't do this unless you have permission to from the model's original author, either express or implied. See Mod Copyright for details.

What You Need

This is quite a tricky process and requires the following:

• Neverwinter Nights
  http://nwn.bioware.com

• NWNExplorer for exporting models and textures from NWN
  http://www.torlack.com/index.html?topics=nwnexplorer_readme

• NWNMDLCOMP.EXE for converting the models to ASCII format
  http://www.torlack.com/index.html?topics=nwnmdlcomp_readme

• Milkshape3D for converting the models to LWO format
  http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/

• The NWN Import Plugin for Milkshape3D (msMDLImporter.dll)
  http://www.augustweb.com/~anim8r/downloads/msMDLImporter1.0.zip

Let's Import

Here's a tutorial on importing the phase spider from NWN.

• Open NWN Explorer
• Select File -> Open Neverwinter Nights
• expand data\models_01.bif
• expand Models
• Right click c_spidphase.mdl and select Export.
• Save the file to the directory containing MDL2ASCII.EXE
• expand data\textures_01.bif, then Textures, TGA
• Export c_spidphase.tga

Go to a DOS prompt to this directory and type

NWNMDLCOMP -dx c_spidphase.mdl

• A file c_spidphase.mdl.ascii should be created.
• Delete c_spidphase.mdl and rename c_spidphase.mdl.ascii to c_spidphase.mdl
• Load Milkshape 3D
• Select File -> Import -> Neverwinter Nights Model Importer.
• Load the c_spidphase.mdl. It will look a mess!
• Click Anim to go to animation mode - it will look a little better :)
• Click the Materials tab
• Click the 'c_spidphase' button and pick the c_spidphase.tga file. For more complex models you'll need to repeat this for each texture in the list.
• Right-click the 3d panel and select Textured - voila funky phase spider :)
• Now select File -> Export -> Lightwave 6.5x (THE TOP ONE - the bottom one produces weird artifacts)
• Click OK
• Save it as c_spidphase.lwo
• Start UnrealED.
• Import the c_spidphase.tga as a new texture in the myLevel package.
• Import the c_spidphase.lwo as a new static mesh. Ignore the warning messages. That's it!

Notes

The models are well tiny – so when you place them scale them up by at least 64x. Or you could scale them up in Milkshape prior to export. Scaling by 102.5 in UnrealEd makes them fit into a 1024x1024 square, which gives a good proportion.

Importing most of the tileset models into milkshape produces a strange copy of most of the model with a NULL texture, as well as setting one of the "proper" model sections to a NULL texture. You will need to assign the correct texture to the missing section and delete the unwanted bits.

Some of the textures have a mask (eg Splotch1) and you should tick the 'alpha' and 'mask' boxes when importing these textures.

Before importing tileset models, load the ASCII model into notepad and delete any 'light' nodes. The presence of these also seems to throw the import out of whack (the model dissapears when the Anim mode is selected).