Hi everyone,

Cardinal Richelieu, my first 3D leader head, is almost ready, but now I've encountered a little nasty illumination or mapping problem.

http://www.fritzenkoetter.org/Exchange/Richelieu.jpg
http://www.fritzenkoetter.org/Exchange/Richelieu2.jpg
http://www.fritzenkoetter.org/Exchange/Richelieu3.jpg

Look at those screen shots above: It's always the same animation, yet the colors are totally different.

I found out that the coloring depends exclusively from which leaderhead I've been looking at BEFORE. So, in the three examples the left image was taken after I had clicked Elizabeth, in the middle after having viewed Hatshep ... Hatsche - arr, y'know: the cute chick with big brown eyes, and the one on the right was taken after I had clicked on Zara Yaqob.

Logically, when I first click on Richelieu in the menu without viewing any other leader image, the body is completely black (the background is visible).

I think my file is missing some map or some information, so the same information from the image before is not overwritten in the RAM. But what can it be? Thanks for any ideas.

Nice work!

I think your problem could have something to do with the shaders. What are the colours like in Scene Viewer? Also, did you use Blender or 3ds Max?

If it's the shaders then you can try others in Scene Viewer and see if they work better.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that. The problem is indeed related to the shader, which is the genuine TLeaderhead_20 that comes along with the Firaxis MaxTools. When I choose a different shader like blinn or so, the problem doesn't appear, but of course the scene doesn't look half as gorgeous as it does mit TLeaderhead_20. I would really like to use that one. I'm sure it can be fixed somehow. My feeling tells me that I've confused something with shaders/materials, textures or so.

However, I didn't think of SceneViewer - thanks for that hint. I'll check that one out and see what it tells me.

Oh, and I use 3ds max 8.

It's great that you've come this far with a max model because I've attempted getting a new leaderhead into civ before and it always made the game crash. It's different for units though, they're way easier.

Anyway with the shaders. You probably already know all this but:

Base Map - Diffuse Map
Shader 0 - Environment Map
Shader 1 - Normal Map
Shader 2 - Specularity Map
Shader 3 - Environment Mask Map

For environment and environment mask you could probably use some of the ones that come with civ. Hopefully you can fix it in SceneViewer somehow, that leaderhead shader *should* be working.

Any progress on this? Once more, you have invigorated my hopes of breaking the no-originial-leaderheads rule in CivIV modding.

Maybe joint efforts with Firehazurd will help to break this barrier. Just a wild guess but he seemed to me clever enough to break a lot of difficulties in regard to LH creation.

Well, it's not so much a question of wether LH creation is possible in the first place - I'm beyond that point, so to say. :) Fact is, my Richelieu head is practically finished, I've already played a game with him. There is still fine tuning to be done, like improving the textures, refining the motions etc, but that's all peanuts. I just have to find time when to do that.

So Monsieur Le Cardinal is the "living" proof that LH creation can be accomplished. At least when you have 3ds max 8.

The only two remaining problems are those: First how to import sound, second the described lighting problem.

About sound import, I just haven't dealt with it, but I think it should be doable. About the strange lighting thing - that one still persists, but I'm totally convinced that it's something tenacious yet trivial - like you have to check out one zillion billion texture combinations, color depths or so to find out which one works. But eventually, it WILL work. Compared to all the difficulties I've been dealing with in this six-week uphill battle, I don't expect to take a "beating" on this very last step. ;)

So, what are the standings? - I've been trying out several combinations, but with no substantial progress. However, I couldn't spend to much time on this, because first I had a hardware problem (getting my motherboard to work with Vista 64 and 4 GB), and after having resolved that one, my 30-day's license for 3ds max 8 had expired. I've decided to order the full software (I'm teaching, so I can get it legally for 120 Euros - that's worth it), and when I have it, I will hopefully get the Cardinal behaving as expected. :)

I presume the lighting problem could somehow be connected to the dds file format ... something like catching the correct color depth, transparency parameters or so.

dds converting has become much easier with the new Direct X SDK which let's you convert jpgs directly into dds from within the windows explorer (I don't know if this is only for vista?). However, I still can't switch back from dds to jpg, which would very helpful to spy on the file infos ... anyone knowing anything about the dds files used in LH files would be most welcome.

Are you from France ? I'm wondering 'cause you choose Richelieu. Not a first choice for many people, I guess.

The dds file format should be " DXT3 - ARGB - (Explicit Alpha) " I think. It's easy to choose different formats if you have photoshop with the dds plug-in. If you don't have ps then you could always send the files to someone who can resave them as that format.

(off-topic) I have no idea why you would want Vista 64 what with all the compatibility problems (it's hard enough finding stuff that works with Vista 32)

@snipperrabbit!!

Originally I wanted to model a 3D version of a friend of mine, a civ addict like myself. But this one being my first try, I discovered halfway that the actual model looked nothing like my friend, and that it was already hard enough to get aquainted with all the programs I had to deal with. So it was easier to take a person that could easily be recognized yet whose real face wasn't so much known. Richelieu seemed perfect for that purpose, for everybody knows a little bit but not too much what he looks like thanks to many Hollywood movies.

Looking back from what I know now, I would not have chosen him a second time. I wouldn't advise any newbee to model a person with a beard and a cape. Rigging and Unwrapping become unnecessarily difficult when you have those elements.

@Chugginator

Unfortunately, I don't have Photoshop (however, now with the new OS I could try out the demo).
Concerning Vista 64: My computer is still quite new, and when buying it I had to buy a OS anyway. So I saw no reason to choose a Vista 32 bit OS which may be standard now but will be out of date in very short time (with Linux and MacOS already using 64 bit and the first >3 GB applications coming sooner or later). Plus, it's really cool now to have 4 GB available, especially when you deal with 3D animation an virtual machines.

Switching back to the dds file situation:

I feel I still don't know enough about the maps that usually come along with a LH. When we unpack a LH like Gandhi, we find among others those dds images which Chugginator has mentioned above:

xy_diff (for diffuse mapping)
xy_env (for environment mapping)
xy_nrml (for normal mapping)
xy_spec (for specularity mapping)
xy_env_mask (for environment mask mapping)

Now there MUST be some information about those files which has escaped me so far. Maybe it's trivial, or maybe there are sth basics that I'm missing out.

E.g., I don't understand the coloring of the normal map dds files.
The diff map does the coloring, and the other maps do the rest, okay so far. Now what I observe is three of the four other maps using grey scale coloring but one of them, the normal map, using mainly blue, with areas of green and red. Is there a special reason why it has to be like that?

I don't think it would make any difference what colour it was? Supposedly you could just use the Gandhi texture and see if it makes any difference. When you get it working you'll have to make a proper one though because they look a lot better using them (plus with gandhi's you will have wrinkles and stuff lol). The easiest way to make them is to get a heightmap plugin for whatever software you use, and then just convert the diff image (experiment a little to get it right , you may have to invert the colours on the diff first for example). With the enviro and enviro map I would leave these black, or use gandhi's or another leaders until you work out the problem.

edit : I've heard that it's really hard to find decent anti-virus software for Vista 64 btw and also that Microsoft rejects anything they haven't tested. Is it hard to find software (non-buggy) for it?

Thanks for the new hints, I already tried before to find out how to make a good normal map, without success though. I use 3ds max 8 for rigging and animating and Cinema 4D BodyPaint for texturing. BodyPaint is really good for painting the diff map and some others, but I've found no way so far to create a good normal map.

Talking of normal maps, one of the typical beginners' mistakes was my modelling Richelieu with too much detail, particularly on the head. There are so many vertices and edges that the rigging process became a complete nightmare. If I had known about the sense of normal maps before, I could have spared a couple of days of work ... well, we live to improve ... :)

About Vista 64:
There are several Anti Virus programs on the market by now for Vista 64. I bought Kaspersky, but it's too early to judge its quality. There is also Norton, and maybe a couple of others. However it's true that e.g. there is no 64 bit version for the AntiVir freeware which I used before.

Generally, I didn't notice too many compatibility differences between Vista 32 and 64 bit versions. Concerning user applications like, say, Civ IV, MS Office or Corel Photo Paint, none of those has denied cooperation so far.
As much as I understand, it only affects those programs reaching deep into the computer's architecture, mainly drivers and antivirus software. So to say, changing from Vista 32 to Vista 64 seems a little bit like changing from Win XP to Vista 32: It's generally working fine when you have a decent machine, but one has to expect to be forced to spend 60 bucks here and 50 bucks there for a new scanner, a new graphics tablet or a new antivirus program ... nothing which really hurts, but of course, this also sums up.