When it comes to modding communities, Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the best. We’ve covered a bunch of fun (or useful) game mods on the site, and BG3 mods have been flourishing even more following the release of Patch 7 in September last year. Modding is one of those aspects of gaming – PC gaming in particular – that helps the longevity of a game, or even breeds successful spin-offs.

As for BGF3, one of the most exciting things right now is the development of custom campaigns. There are teams of people dedicated to putting together fresh content for the game, and we’ve chatted to one recently in an exclusive interview. With the idea that “the game ended” as developers Larian likely won’t be pushing any more major content, we can instead turn to dedicated fan creations.

Animation is the toughest part of development, say mod creators

We spoke with Gregory Lotrich and Tom Loughlin, two modders contributing to the upcoming Path To Menzoberranzan custom campaign for Baldur’s Gate 3. They provided us with a little more insight into how development is going so far; we were particularly keen to learn what challenges they are facing along the way. According to “team leader of level design,” Gregory Lotrich, they like to separate difficulty into three tiers. From easiest to hardest: level design, 3D modeling and scripting, and animations. On the topic of animation, they had this to say:

“Animations is; this is madness. From my understanding, even Larian worked on some animations – when I’m talking animations, I’m talking about cinematics and all this stuff – some of those animations you see on the game have been worked on for months. This is madness.”

“The pirated toolkit sometimes is unable to provide us with the tools we need and we need to focus on finding the tools we need.”

Gregory Lotrich, Path To Menzoberranzan mod developer

The idea that even Larian worked on animations for months at a time is labeled “madness” and it suggests that the tools could be a little easier to use. Lotrich discussed with us some of the compromises they settled on to produce something that’s “going to be 8/10”. They settled on using a mixture of Blender and Rokoko, the latter of which is a motion capture and animation tool.

“So what we’re basically going to do is we’re going to use Rokoko and Blender animations, merge them together, and it’s going to be 8/10, which is OK for me. This is our plan. We got a team that completely understands right now – they actually discovered this, I believe, about a week ago, how to fully work on the animations.”

Gregory Lotrich, Path To Menzoberranzan mod developer

They consider the animation work in Baldur’s Gate 3 to be a 10/10, so aiming for something close to that level will no doubt make for some fantastic visuals. You may be asking yourself what deducts a couple of those points? Well, Lotrich believes “very minor things like finger movements” or lip syncing are the biggest aspects which may fall in quality compared to what Larian is capable of putting out in the official game.

Overall, it seems like creating a custom BG3 campaign is no easy task. When we originally asked the question of “how easy” it is, the initial chuckling response made us think our choice of words was less than stellar. In reality, game development as a whole is difficult, and working with modding tools out of house can only add another layer to the difficulty.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.