Well these masterful programmers here NifTools (http://niftools.sourceforge.net/), have created a plugin that exports .nif files, and the plugin is for a freeware 3d application found here Blender (http://www.blender3d.com/cms/Home.2.0.html). If you at all are serious about creating new graphics for Civ4, download Blender (http://www.blender3d.com/cms/Home.2.0.html) and start practicing. Once you become familiar with the program or already are, head over to the NifTools (http://niftools.sourceforge.net/) forum and show them support with suggestions, acclimations, and bug reports. These are the programming gods that are going to allow us the ability to truely mod Civ4, that is until such time as Firaxis releases their SDK.

So head over to NifTools (http://niftools.sourceforge.net/) and show these guys your support. Remember this is opensource and they don't get paid for doing this other than the pure joy of modding and programming. So give them lots of support and encouragement, and they will most definitely be more enthusiastic about helping us out with our modding needs! ::cool:

you should post this in the Utilities forum, but from what i read in the NifTools site it has no support for "Animation, Lights, Cameras and Particles" but i guess its better than notthing! thanks!

Good eyes. Hope the community can find a use for it before the SDK. I'll use my limited powers to take a look.

It should work for buildings, but without animation support, it might not be of much help for units, unless you design the unit to use another unit's keyframes, which in turn requires technical information.

Damn... not for 3dsmax/gmax.

As soon as those are possible, I'll start testing how to make stuff :D

Yes I am fairly aware of the limitations of what the Blender plugin can do. It is being worke on in full earnest now and hopefully something more can be doe, ie animations, in the near future. The hope was for those people that do not have disposible $$$$ that numbers into the thousand. With Blender being free and open sourced more potential modeller and animators can create stuff for Civ4. I think that is all more important that getting a plugin that works for a program that most of us will not possess or use.