INQUIRY: adding custom models

Hello,

For the longest time, I've seen plenty of either total conversion mods or added civ mods that are based on creatures/aliens/people that don't really resemble humans at all. The leaderheads are usually unique, as well as stats, pictures, listings, buildings, etc. but almost all of them still use all the vanilla unit model assets (like a Tau mod from 40K: they're blue futuristic aliens, but all the units are vanilla Civ. it makes no sense!)

I love mods, and if it weren't for my life being divvied up between my job, lady, and general lifestyle, I'd be a mod creator for sure. I appreciate the hard work and copious amounts of time poured out from content creators as well, but when I see mods like that, I'd find myself just not being immersed in it because I'm expecting people that often times look nothing like the Vanilla Assets.

So why is that? Is there some stereotype that Civ 5 modders are lazy? is there a hindrance from the game engine that just doesn't allow custom unit models? is it just simply stupid-hard to create custom assets? I tried looking up the root cause, but nothing really turned up from my googling...

Moderator Action: Moved to the main C&C forum as this is where questions should be posted.

It's not stupid hard, but a stupid amount of custom texturing that'd be required for a simple single civilization.

bobakanoosh said:

Hello,

So why is that? Is there some stereotype that Civ 5 modders are lazy? is there a hindrance from the game engine that just doesn't allow custom unit models? is it just simply stupid-hard to create custom assets? I tried looking up the root cause, but nothing really turned up from my googling...

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Well it's certainly not because Civ 5 modders are lazy.

IMO it's two main reasons....

1) it took quite a long time after Civ 5 was released for the modding community to figure out how to get models/animations etc into the game (because firaxis don't exactly make it easy). It is not all that difficult to add models now, but only because there are great utilities and tutorials available that people put a lot of effort into creating.

2) despite the fact that the tools are available to get models into the game, it's rather (very) time consuming to create new models/textures/animations.

bobakanoosh said:

Hello,

For the longest time, I've seen plenty of either total conversion mods or added civ mods that are based on creatures/aliens/people that don't really resemble humans at all. The leaderheads are usually unique, as well as stats, pictures, listings, buildings, etc. but almost all of them still use all the vanilla unit model assets (like a Tau mod from 40K: they're blue futuristic aliens, but all the units are vanilla Civ. it makes no sense!)

I love mods, and if it weren't for my life being divvied up between my job, lady, and general lifestyle, I'd be a mod creator for sure. I appreciate the hard work and copious amounts of time poured out from content creators as well, but when I see mods like that, I'd find myself just not being immersed in it because I'm expecting people that often times look nothing like the Vanilla Assets.

So why is that? Is there some stereotype that Civ 5 modders are lazy? is there a hindrance from the game engine that just doesn't allow custom unit models? is it just simply stupid-hard to create custom assets? I tried looking up the root cause, but nothing really turned up from my googling...

Moderator Action: Moved to the main C&C forum as this is where questions should be posted.

Click to expand...

Hoop Thrower said:

It's not stupid hard, but a stupid amount of custom texturing that'd be required for a simple single civilization.

Click to expand...

abob101 said:

Well it's certainly not because Civ 5 modders are lazy.

IMO it's two main reasons....

1) it took quite a long time after Civ 5 was released for the modding community to figure out how to get models/animations etc into the game (because firaxis don't exactly make it easy). It is not all that difficult to add models now, but only because there are great utilities and tutorials available that people put a lot of effort into creating.

2) despite the fact that the tools are available to get models into the game, it's rather (very) time consuming to create new models/textures/animations.

Click to expand...

In addition, most mod-makers will adhere to Firaxis' "only two uniques" rule. So if they add a custom unit as a unique, they will only provide a new animation and graphic for that unit. To make the civs units all unique-looking generally requires a unique unit for each one, even though the majority of those units would be the same in terms of game-play effects. This also has the unintended effect of making the Civ's civilopedia page and Dawn of Man screen either (a) cluttered and ugly in the case of the civilopedia, (b) not display the true unique units properly in the case of the DOM screen. Circumventing all this is possible but is also a boat-load of unecessary work.

There are the Ethnic Diversity mods that make all or most of a civs units look different than the stock ones (I think they are referred to as R.E.D. SomethingOrOther in the downloads database and the sub-forums for completed mods). But I have never investigated code-wise exactly how these mods work, nor have I played using them so I am not sure if every Civ has a different 'units look' to every other civ, or whether the mod groups civs based on their Cultural Group Definition.

As for 3D leaderheads, only 5ish people know how to make them, and they take months to make, at least. AFAIK as I know, there are only 4 animated 3D modder-made leaderheads in existence. The rest are 2D because it's just that much easier.

Modders aren't lazy other than that I spend a lot of time on the computer playing games instead of actually modding. But 3D modeling is extremely time consuming and complex, and everyone without the know-how has to resort to using the assets that those select few have made for everyone to use.

Beyond 3D modding, making anything on the computer takes a long time, especially video games, which combine not only code but immense amounts of audio, artwork (both 2D and 3D) and text. You can never come close to appreciating how much effort Firaxis put into their games - despite having made many things extremely difficult for modders to have to work around - until you try to make one yourself. Or even just a small game-addon - a mod. Try it. Mod-making sucks up a lot of time and thinking capacity.

Thanks for the input guys. I only meant the lazy part of that OP as a joke. I certainly know how tedious and difficult it is to do any kind of software work.

I am aware of the R.E.D. mods and Ethnic Diversity (I never play without them, actually!), but I was more curious about the other mods that are sci-fi/fantasy based, where for example, there's a race of orcs, but it's just regular stock humans from the game. Or maybe a space marine faction, and again, stock game models and cities. I'm very appreciative about the mod authors' works, but something like that just totally breaks immersion for me. And cases like this seems to be quite prevalent, especially in the Steam workshop!

I was wondering if there was a specific reason/limitation within Civ 5's engine that made the majority of mods this way. Believe it or not, my googling/research turned up very little, hence my thread here.

Somebody mentioned the "2 unique" rule...is that an actual coded rule, or some kind of unspoken pact in regards to balance?

bobakanoosh said:

Somebody mentioned the "2 unique" rule...is that an actual coded rule, or some kind of unspoken pact in regards to balance?

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It's a combination of inherited design decisions from Firaxis and a general tendancy on the part of mod-creators to adhere to the Firaxis system. A civilization can actually have pretty much an unlimited number of uniques, but that is generally seen as over-powered, and "OP" as you probably already know, is a thing*, especially on Steam Workshop.

It seems to me that no one cares about 17 uniques being OP as long as each individual one is really underpowered to compensate. Nonetheless, I'd say the root cause is mostly that modders usually prefer to adhere to Firaxian design decisions, but also considerably because without EUI, only two are displayed anyway.
But yeah, number of uniques per civ is theoretically unlimited, bobaka.

I came across this thread by searching for how to add custom unique models (for the Orcs in the Elder Scrolls Civ Pack - thanks to Nomad or What for providing those units here on civfanatics!)

I was wanting to make each vanilla unit be converted to use the unique models of the Orcs without updating the models to Orc units for each civ......

Sure would be nice if the UnitClass tree had a way to set a specific civ so that only that civ could see it in game.

But based on this thread, it appears that I will have to make each unit a "unique" in order to have custom unit models for the Orcs..........and I am using EUI, so of course every single one of those "Uniques" will show up in the civ selection screen and everywhere else..............which will cloud the actual unique unit for the Orcs

I'm pretty sure there's a way to have units in the core game have different models depending on culture - the base game Settler does it, and I know mods like Typhlomence's Bowser civ and the R.E.D. modpacks do it. I'm not entirely sure as to the method, but you could start looking at those.

In my scenario, I have "Viking" triremes looking like longships. So it can be done. Do not know where I got the code... help from whoward I suspect. A search of the forum may bring it up... Otherwise, my scenario has the code deep within it.

This thread...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=510716

Craig_Sutter said:

This thread...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=510716

Click to expand...

Thank you!!!