Tali'Zorah

This unit is an import from Mass Effect 2, its Tali'Zorah, highly skilled Quarian Machinist.

I have no deeper intention for this import, I just wanted to see if and how I can do it. Tali became the 'victim' because she is one of my favorite characters from Mass Effect. In fact the first thing I wanted to do was a photoshop montage to use it jokely as a modern engineer for my female great people units, but then I'd go the whole way. Altogether it was a lot of work, so I guess that joke was one me in the end .
With a polycount around 2200 I don't think that this Tali model will be useful for regular units, but I just couldn't bring myself to simplify it more (I already have removed 2/3 of the triangles the original model has). However, I guess it could be of some use in some SciFi mod as a single mesh unit.
The only thing I added to the mesh is some structure behind the helmet glass to give her shine-through eyes similar to the game. Take a closer look and you might see them.
Hope you like it.

Download link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=14286

...and I'm saying that as somebody who didn't go for the Talimance... !

Of course, the big question is now: Will you do more ME units? What about Blasto the Hanar Spectre? (okay, we only hear of him, but I can't tell hanars apart anyway)

Cheers, LT.

Is she an alien? Her lower legs look weird for a human. Nice unit otherwise. If it weren't for the legs I could use it as the Planetfall Great Engineer.

Lord Tirian said:

...and I'm saying that as somebody who didn't go for the Talimance... !

Of course, the big question is now: Will you do more ME units? What about Blasto the Hanar Spectre? (okay, we only hear of him, but I can't tell hanars apart anyway)

Cheers, LT.

Click to expand...

Guess you could only use Blasto when you also include the Chuck Norris unit to have a suitable enemy.
But to tell the truth, Tali gave me so much work that I don't feel the urge to import any other complex model like her at the moment. I could try to import them without reducing the polycount. That would be a lot less work, but I'm afraid that they would be not of much use with more than 6000 triangles. Maybe if somebody would want to make a leaderhead out of them...
I could also explain how they can be extracted from the game files if somebody else want to do the work.

Maniac said:

Is she an alien? Her lower legs look weird for a human. Nice unit otherwise. If it weren't for the legs I could use it as the Planetfall Great Engineer.

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Yep, she is a Quarian and they have their legs shaped that way. Also they only have 3 fingers and toes, but I guess that can't be seen very well in the pictures. Guess one could reshape the legs, but I myself just can't do that to Tali.

Nice unit .
Will probably replace my spy unit .

SaibotLieh said:

I could also explain how they can be extracted from the game files if somebody else want to do the work.

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I'd be interested in knowing whether what programs you need to to that (i.e. do I need 3Dstudio max or is Blender sufficient?) and what range of models we can access - because the ship models from the captain's cabin would all make great futuristic aircraft/spaceship units!

Cheers, LT.

Lord Tirian said:

I'd be interested in knowing whether what programs you need to to that (i.e. do I need 3Dstudio max or is Blender sufficient?) and what range of models we can access - because the ship models from the captain's cabin would all make great futuristic aircraft/spaceship units!

Cheers, LT.

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Basically all models from the game can be extracted. The only problem is to find them, because they are often rather cryptical named. Tali's files were rather easy to find, they are named BioH_Tali_00.pcc and BioH_Tali_01.pcc (whereat I don't know the difference between those two files, because their seem to have practically the same content). I found the model ships in the file named BioD_Nor_000Cabin.pcc and I think they might be very interesting models to import because their have 'only' about 2000 triangles. This should make them directly useable, which means a lot of less work. Within 5 minutes I've made this .nif file of the human dreadnaught:

The only thing left is to give it the proper bones and animations. I haven't made any spaceship models yet, so I don't know how much work this might be.
The program I used to export the models is called Unreal Model Viewer. It's very easy to use and supports many different games. The only real problem is that I get psk files out of it. These files can't be imported with Blender, and the only solution I found so far is using MilkShape to import the file and export them as .obj. This works fine, but MilkShape is shareware and can only be used for 30 days for free. I think I'll write a more detailed tutorial about how to import the models from other games in the next few days.

Yeah, SaibotLeih! I love her, and you know it! I'll find a place of honour for her!

SaibotLieh said:

...and I think they might be very interesting models to import because their have 'only' about 2000 triangles. This should make them directly useable, which means a lot of less work. Within 5 minutes I've made this .nif file of the human dreadnaught:

Click to expand...

That's what I hoped and why I wanted to know about'em!

I think I'm going to experiment with this stuff a bit! And even if they have 2000 polys, I think it's possible to reduce the count a bit more, since they're going to be even smaller in Civ than in the cabin.

Cheers, LT.

SaibotLieh said:

I found the model ships in the file named BioD_Nor_000Cabin.pcc and I think they might be very interesting models to import because their have 'only' about 2000 triangles. This should make them directly useable, which means a lot of less work. Within 5 minutes I've made this .nif file of the human dreadnaught

Click to expand...

Interesting find.

Personally I think 2000 triangles is nothing to worry about. That's less than two vanilla Horse Archer meshes. Still I know some people are passionate about such things...

I actually bought a license for Milkshape because it was the only way to port buildings from Emperor:Battle for Dune.

Edit: ... and rigging and animating a spaceship has to be one of the simplest tasks you can go for if want to learn how.

Deliverator said:

Interesting find.

Personally I think 2000 triangles is nothing to worry about. That's less than two vanilla Horse Archer meshes. Still I know some people are passionate about such things...

I actually bought a license for Milkshape because it was the only way to port buildings from Emperor:Battle for Dune.

Edit: ... and rigging and animating a spaceship has to be one of the simplest tasks you can go for if want to learn how.

Click to expand...

Thought as much, but unfortunately I have no use for spaceships at the moment. However, I had some spare time and exported all model ships. They are unrigged so far, but if you (or somebody else) would like to do that work I could make them available for download.

Here are the images of the ships and their polycount:

SaibotLieh said:

Thought as much, but unfortunately I have no use for spaceships at the moment. However, I had some spare time and exported all model ships. They are unrigged so far, but if you (or somebody else) would like to do that work I could make them available for download.

Click to expand...

Well, I wouldn't mind having them... I'm probably not rigging all of them, but I'd at least like to play around with the alliance cruiser... it would at least save me the hassle of installing the trial version of milkshape.

Cheers, LT.

PS: You're missing the quarian ship.

SaibotLieh said:

Thought as much, but unfortunately I have no use for spaceships at the moment. However, I had some spare time and exported all model ships. They are unrigged so far, but if you (or somebody else) would like to do that work I could make them available for download.

Here are the images of the ships and their polycount:

Spoiler :

Alliance Cruiser, Polycount: 2048


Destiny Ascension, Polycount: 4014


Freighter, Polycount: 1354


Geth Drop Ship, Polycount: 2554


Kodiak Shuttle, Polycount: 2776


Sovereign, Polycount: 4314


SSV Normandy SR1, Polycount: 2158


SSV Normandy SR2, Polycount: 5128


Turian Cruiser, Polycount: 1394


Hamster, Polycount: 504, not to be put into the microwave

Click to expand...

......If you convert the hamster, I will praise your name forever.

Lord Tirian said:

Well, I wouldn't mind having them... I'm probably not rigging all of them, but I'd at least like to play around with the alliance cruiser... it would at least save me the hassle of installing the trial version of milkshape.

Cheers, LT.

PS: You're missing the quarian ship.

Click to expand...

And here I am thinking I could trick you with the hamster. No, the real reason I had left the quarian ship out is because it comes with 3 artfiles. I thought that it would be a lot of work to get them on the model, but in fact it was pretty easy, because the ship also consists of 3 meshes instead of one.
Here's the picture:

I've attached all unrigged ships (and the unrigged hamster) to this post.
Have fun!

Valkrionn said:

......If you convert the hamster, I will praise your name forever.

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Do you need some extra wild animals? Well, I'll see what I can do...

Well, you see, I AM the Hamster King. An actual Hamster unit, rather than a resized bear, would be awesome.

Edit: The whole hamster thing came about when another modder used me as the leader for the Hamstalfar civ, by the way... I just thought it was awesome and went with it.

Weeee!

Are there any other harvester-like models? I would really like creature-looking ships for my Zerg race .

Deon said:

Weeee!

Are there any other harvester-like models? I would really like creature-looking ships for my Zerg race .

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You mean the Sovereign? As far as I know that's the only creature-shaped ship in Mass Effect. In fact it's the only ship shaped this way in 3D computer games I can think of at the moment, sorry.

Well, I hoped they've added something like Sov in ME2 (I've player just 1st one). Eh, then I hope someone will complete my request .

Tali!

The_J said:

Nice unit .
Will probably replace my spy unit .

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Now done.
Just posting because i want to say that it's really a great unit, i love her .