Why are there so few 3D graphics artists for Civ 5 compared to Civ 4?

sukritact said:
I must be the only person who found Blender (albeit 2.6) easy to use.
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Having done tutorials with 2.6, I definitely agree. I wouldn't go so far as "easy to use" :p but 2.6 is much easier to navigate. Once I had a better grasp of how 2.6 worked, I was able to go back to 2.49 and map those actions and concepts to the old UI.

While Deliverator can definitely teach us all a lot, I would question how valuable an introduction to Blender would be. There are already loads of resources online for learning 3D modelling with Blender (without paying for anything) and I think it might be a bit of re-inventing the wheel. Deliverator knows a lot about all of the civ-specific gotchas, which are invaluable since they aren't covered elsewhere.

Then again, if it gets the community going on 3D art, I'm certainly happy about that!
 
S3rgeus said:
, I would question how valuable an introduction to Blender would be.
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I agree with this. Unless Deliverator can somehow take my place and do the hard work of learning for me, then there isn't much more he can do for me.

I always find the best resource is the questions/answers after tutorials. Usually some other noob is hung up on the same thing that I am (that the expert doesn't see).
 
I have to ask one thing though: why the Blender exclusivity when it comes to tools? Can it not be adapted to 3dsmax?

Also, can someone tell me if it's at least possible to bring stuff over from 3dsmax to Blender without any loss? If that's possible then I guess I could just export to Blender and then to Civ5.
 
Wodhann said:
I have to ask one thing though: why the Blender exclusivity when it comes to tools? Can it not be adapted to 3dsmax?

Also, can someone tell me if it's at least possible to bring stuff over from 3dsmax to Blender without any loss? If that's possible then I guess I could just export to Blender and then to Civ5.
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Blender is free, so everybody either has it or can get it. Deliverator's import/export scripts are an essential part of the process and work by interacting with the Blender API (they're written in Python), which isn't directly portable to 3DSMax. Having glanced at the scripts, they're not all that simple, and I imagine it would be a significant time investment to get them to work with 3DSMax. (They don't even work for versions of Blender >2.49 yet, since the API changed.)

I believe someone mentioned in another thread that exports to Blender from 3DSMax should convert to CiV the same way as models made exclusively in Blender though.
 
Wodhann said:
That's good news - my only concern is if 3dsmax exports perfectly to Blender or not.
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I have exported models and animations successfully from 3DSMax to Blender via the NIF format used in Civ 4 via the NifTools plugin, but there may be other formats that would work.
 
I'm planning of doing some unit but at the moment, I'm really really busy at work, but as soon as I'm more available, I will start doing loads of them.

And Woodhan, you can do it easily with 3ds Max, i'm working in Maya and creating units from scratch is actually not that hard (saying this, it took me 5months to actually manage to get one working!)
 
Wodhann said:
So I take it using 3dsmax for modeling stuff is as I feared, not feasible? That is a shame if true.
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And this is completely untrue. It's totally doable! Just get in there! Nexus Buddy needs FBX to convert into GR2, so you can model, rig and animate your unit in 3dsMax and export it as an FBX and it'll work perfectly fine!
 
hugojackson18 said:
And this is completely untrue. It's totally doable! Just get in there! Nexus Buddy needs FBX to convert into GR2, so you can model, rig and animate your unit in 3dsMax and export it as an FBX and it'll work perfectly fine!
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The only issue with that is that you will probably need to keep your model to a single mesh object and single texture otherwise you will encounter the instability of Firaxis FBX import code. For single mesh and single texture FBX import is usually reliable. This is why I developed the BR2 overwrite method - to allow multi-mesh models to be imported reliably.
 
I think there's another reason for there not being many 3d artists... Everything is just so damn buggy and complicated.

Literally everything I tried to do, the most basic things, I have encountered a problem - and for every problem I found I had to download some piece of software/script that I needed to get, or to find that for some seemly arbitrary reason some things don't work.

I encountered a problem getting Nexus Buddy to work.
I encountered a problem getting Granny Viewer to work.
I encountered a problem getting stuff into Blender.
I encountered a problem getting stuff into 3dsmax.
I encountered a problem getting DDS textures to show correctly.
I encountered a problem getting leader DDS textures to open correctly. (I still am stuck at this problem)
I encountered a problem getting texmod to work. (I still am stuck at this problem)
Etc, etc.

And so on so forth, and I'm sure I'll meet more problems along the way.

I look back and compare to how it was in my Warcraft 3 modding era and wow, is civilization 5 graphic modding needlessly complicated.
 
personally, i just have not had the time, BUT..i hope to be able to do some modding in the near future...SPECIAL THANKS to you, ekmek and others whom really done some incredible work for the modding community:goodjob::goodjob:
 
Rob (R8XFT) said:
If someone found a way to get poser units into Civ 5...well, I'd be "away" so to speak ;). Like the others have said, it's a case of learning another package that isn't straightforward to grasp (for me at least). I think though that at least some of what I'd like to do can be achieved by learning how to use the gr2 editor and a bit of "colouring in".
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What formats does Poser export too?

Deliverator said:
I've consider doing a beginners guide that explains the basic concepts and terminology together with a starters guide to Blender. It sounds like there might be value in doing that.

Even then I think there are a lot of difficulties that there's no clear way around...
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I want to do a Leaderhead tutorial and hope I have time the end of the month.

But for basic blender functionality I have A LOT of it in my Civ4 leaderguide http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=267233

I may also be on skype later this month where I can answer questions in real time. Personally, I wish I could do an online work shop for this but not sure how to go about it.

As for how I learned it was back with civ4. I had no modeling experience but jumped in and got a lot of help in the threads here whenever I got stuck. So that may be the way to go. Start a thread for a leader or unit or whatever you are starting and when you get stuck post some screenshots or the blend file of how far you got. Then me and some other modelers can chime in on where you got stuck. that's how I got started and I really appreciated it.
 
Ekmek said:
What formats does Poser export too?
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We had this conversation with Civ 4 ;) :cooool:. I did have a plug-in so that it would export to 3DS max - but for me, that's not the point, as you've still to use another program at some point in the process and to be honest, the export wasn't sensational. What I was referring to was the fact that in the Civ 3 world, Poser was a viable way of making a unit - in fact, a very good way. You could pre-load animations into a model; even without doing this, there was a very buckled-down, user-friendly process. I haven't got that comfortable with the Civ 5 tools as yet and definitely feel that, at best, I could do reskins....which would be reasonably alright for me.
 
Rob (R8XFT) said:
We had this conversation with Civ 4 ;) :cooool:.
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Yeah, I think I ask everytime I see one of your cool models and wish it could be in civ5 :lol:

I think I did import a DAS3 Victoria model one time which I think uses poser stuff too. If it exports to wavefront obj files or something like that it would be real easy to rig (as far as units go). Maybe at some point I'll get more time or another modder could do a colaboration with you.
 
In my case, a bit of burn-out with modding and starting a postgrad - not kind to free time (or motivation)!

Also, the general modding scene is just... less alive. Less inspiration than back then. I think the issue was (partially) that Civ5's initial modding was so... fiddly that it just destroyed interest. And I only started doing 3D modelling because I latched onto a project I really liked.

I do hope, though, that Civ:Beyond Earth is similar enough that Deliverator's hard work carries across.

EDIT: Are custom animations for units a thing yet? That would be the one thing that would really interest me.
 
Yeah, well, I'd be happy to do fantasy units (at least!) if I could get the process straightened out. I think I'm almost there with my first unit, an elf archer. I just need an answer from Deliverator about his python scripts OR Ekmek about an alternate solution and then I'm on to the texturing. Which from what I've heard is relatively easy. So hopefully I can start on a flood of fantasy and possibly sci-fi units fairly soon. Also, Ekmek says a tutorial on 3D leaderheads is coming next month (though I'm not sure he managed to give them custom animations or reused vanilla ones), so that's something.
EDIT: Actually, now I am doing fantasy units. Yay!
 
Lord Tirian said:
EDIT: Are custom animations for units a thing yet? That would be the one thing that would really interest me.
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Custom animations can be got into Civ 5 pretty easily. FBX import is reliable for that. For more details see the full conversion tutorial I did.
 
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