NWN2 Toolset
From Neverwinter Pedia
NWN2 (Electron) Toolset
Even in the early days of Neverwinter Nights 2 development, the developers (now Obsidian Entertainment) promised that there will be a new toolset to satisfy the modders community — just like the Aurora Toolset for Neverwinter Nights (NWN1).
After long anticipation, the new NWN2 (Electron) Toolset (hereafter, NWN2 Toolset) was finally opened for beta testing in September 2006, one mere month before the game was supposed to be released on October 1, 2006. Sufficed to say that the beta (toolset) testers found enough problems with the toolset, which resulted in the delay of the game (to November 1, 2006). Although many gamers expressed their unhappiness with the repeated delay of the game, majority of the modders were actually glad that Obsidian took the Toolset seriously. Nevertheless, the toolset that shipped with the game disc was still a late beta, and was quickly patched not three days after the game hit the shelves. (The first patch was some 89MB in size.)
The toolset was indeed impressive, allowing the modders to do many things they could not do before, like land sculpturing, painting of terrains and waters, and a much improved conversation tool. NWN2 also introduced the new item crafting workbenches — much like the ones found in Knights of the Old Republic 2, also developed by Obsidian.
However, the new NWN2 Toolset is not all good (so to speak). Many modders were not happy that there is no longer any easy way to create a waterfall (one of the first tutorials that appeared on the NWVault was the Tutorial for making a waterfall). The new sculpturing tool for landscape creation also make modding NWN2 much more difficult than modding NWN1 (with the Aurora Toolset).
Most horrendously to the players (particularly if they have played the Lord of the Rings trilogy) is the unbelievably "ugly" models used to depict elves in NWN2! (Hey, don't take my word for it, see for yourself! I have two rows of elves in the following picture. Which row do you think is the ugly elves from NWN2 toolset?) What's with the hair?!!
In contrast, the Lord of the Rings Online game has much better-looking models for their elves (see image below).
Of course, the modders community is (or, will soon be) here to the rescue. Several retexturing projects have been initiated to "prettify" the look of the elves. And once there is a way to re-texture the 3D models, new models will not be far behind. This is why the Granny 3D Animation Export Tool Beta Test will immensely benefit the modders' community.
Hopefully someone will be able to give the NWN2 elves extreme (facial) make-over soon!
Continue to Toolset User Interface