Saibotlieh's Leaderhead Collection

SaibotLieh said:
:think: Is that even possible with .dds files? Or did he use another format? I've seen some leaderheads using other file formats, but never thought about using anything else than dds.
Click to expand...

DDS is interchangeable with other graphic formats given the right utility programs. For example I can export DDS to TGA, save it as a 6/12 quality JPG, then convert that back to DDS and it will be a lot smaller I believe (though I haven't actually tried doing that yet so I could be wrong; I was just assuming that's what Avain did heh). Interesting that he also reduced the number of textures... I didn't know that.

But yeah I have a fair number of custom graphics in my mod at this point, and I use Photoshop for everything, so I go back and forth between DDS and TGA all the time.
 
SaibotLieh said:
Thank you kindly. :)

Try this tutorial: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=372029
I hope it answers every question. If some are left, don't hesitate to ask them.

Somehow I'm much more motivated to do female leaderheads, but in fact I'm slowly running low on useable AO models. Maybe I'll try some male ones next, but I can't promise anything.

I don't know about the Angela Merkel leaderhead. First I'm not that motivated to do one and second the Barbie version looks quite different from the real Merkel. Also I can't access the character models from AO. Only most of the Mercenaries and some of the NPCs are possible. :sad:
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tutorial. I won't have time this week to try it out myself but I'll be sure to ask if I run into any problems.

As for the Angela Merkel leaderhead, I was under assumption that something like what Firaxis did for Catherine the Great (Civ5) could be done, haha. Not really something that's a faithful rendition but more like an idealized version. Obviously Catherine didn't look anywhere near as good as her in-game depiction IRL but then again, we don't have a live Catherine to look at whereas Angela Merkel is still kicking :mischief:.

Also, which AO Mercenaries/NPCs are still left to use?
 
PPQ_Purple said:
Just a question. For those that come with their own XML are their personalities based on some other leaders? If so what leaders are in question?
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Generally they are a combination of two leaders each. All XML values are more or less the respecitve mean value of both leaders. Sadly, I already forgot which leaders I've choosen. :blush:
smeagolheart said:
I think he means that he's saving the leaderheads at DxT3 compression instead of the large T1 and uncompressed files. You can shrink some texture's as well from 1024x1024 to 512x512 sometimes (results vary depending on aspect that's shrunk). I think reducing the number of texture files is the biggest key for our "not-bird" (Avain) friend's optimizations. :goodjob: Again, if you download the Tamerlane from the database and compare it to the one in VD you will see less textures loaded and the texture files that are there he would shrink from 1mb ea to 600k using presumably using better compression/lower rez textures.
This hasn't been an issue really for the leaderheads you've been releasing - they are all ~3mb or lower IIRC. The ones that cause hiccups when they are opened have a bunch of extra textures using only a small piece of crown or hair or whatever out of the whole file. Those can run around 8mb on up.
Click to expand...
Thanks, thought as much. Just wanted to see if there are still some things I could tweak. I also noticed that lots of leaderheads use many dds files for rather small details.

By the way, there is a rather simple way in Blender to combine all the artwork in one single dds file. The_Coyote wrote a tutorial about it.
LunarMongoose said:
DDS is interchangeable with other graphic formats given the right utility programs. For example I can export DDS to TGA, save it as a 6/12 quality JPG, then convert that back to DDS and it will be a lot smaller I believe (though I haven't actually tried doing that yet so I could be wrong; I was just assuming that's what Avain did heh). Interesting that he also reduced the number of textures... I didn't know that.

But yeah I have a fair number of custom graphics in my mod at this point, and I use Photoshop for everything, so I go back and forth between DDS and TGA all the time.
Click to expand...
smeagolheart said:
How do they compare sizewize with compression? TGA is much bigger files no?
Click to expand...
I think dds files with the same pixel are always the same size, at least that's my experience. For example, all the 128*128 px dds files of the units have the size of 17 kB.
Tomorrow's Dawn said:
Thanks for the tutorial. I won't have time this week to try it out myself but I'll be sure to ask if I run into any problems.

As for the Angela Merkel leaderhead, I was under assumption that something like what Firaxis did for Catherine the Great (Civ5) could be done, haha. Not really something that's a faithful rendition but more like an idealized version. Obviously Catherine didn't look anywhere near as good as her in-game depiction IRL but then again, we don't have a live Catherine to look at whereas Angela Merkel is still kicking :mischief:.

Also, which AO Mercenaries/NPCs are still left to use?
Click to expand...
You are welcome. So far, I used the Oracle (Cleopatra), the Archer (Female Ranger), the Gunner (Jingu), the Lady Knight (Joan), the Shaman (Mandukhai), the NPC Aris (Mangammal) and the Princess (Maria).

I guess you can figure now which Mercs are left. For the NPC, the list is just too long to write it down here. If you install AO on your computer, you can look for yourself. Basically, all the nif files that can be opened with NifSkope can also be used with Blender. However, the NPC have often relatively low-res dds files, thus they're not good candidates for leaderheads.
 
LunarMongoose said:
For example I can export DDS to TGA, save it as a 6/12 quality JPG, then convert that back to DDS and it will be a lot smaller I believe
Click to expand...

:cry: oh my god, i hope you know what this procedure does to the image quality.
 
SaibotLieh said:
I think dds files with the same pixel are always the same size, at least that's my experience. For example, all the 128*128 px dds files of the units have the size of 17 http://forums.civfanatics.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=10009116kB.

However, the NPC have often relatively low-res dds files, thus they're not good candidates for leaderheads.
Click to expand...

When I mentioned size I was talking pure filesize not pixel size.

Hey about those low rez NPCs, it's much harder to find a good converter (you seem to be the only one) than it is to find a skinner. Just about anybody with a knowledge of photoshop can fix or make new skins.
 
The_J said:
:cry: oh my god, i hope you know what this procedure does to the image quality.
Click to expand...

Well I don't have much choice if I want to modify an existing .dds file; I can't edit it without exporting first, and TGA is a lossless format (at least it better be given the filesizes heh).

Stuff I make myself is just a matter of saving as .tga then encoding to .dds. Civ4 even accepts .tga files directly in some cases, which means I doubt there's too much friction between the two.

But no, I don't convert them more than I have to, I'm not that dumb lol... the worst that happens is existing .dds -> .tga for editing -> back to .dds for use. (I also don't notice any degradation at all visually when doing that, and I can usually see it with lower quality .jpgs and such, but I could still be wrong.)

Edit just to be super-clear: I meant I've been doing that procedure with a lot of different files lately, not doing it a lot of times on the same specific files. ;)
 
smeagolheart said:
When I mentioned size I was talking pure filesize not pixel size.

Hey about those low rez NPCs, it's much harder to find a good converter (you seem to be the only one) than it is to find a skinner. Just about anybody with a knowledge of photoshop can fix or make new skins.
Click to expand...
That would make the whole process more complicated (more than one person (aka me) will be involved), but might be doable somehow. But I don't really know about the polycount of those models, it could be also too low for leaderheads. :dunno:
LunarMongoose said:
Well I don't have much choice if I want to modify an existing .dds file; I can't edit it without exporting first, and TGA is a lossless format (at least it better be given the filesizes heh).

Stuff I make myself is just a matter of saving as .tga then encoding to .dds. Civ4 even accepts .tga files directly in some cases, which means I doubt there's too much friction between the two.

But no, I don't convert them more than I have to, I'm not that dumb lol... the worst that happens is existing .dds -> .tga for editing -> back to .dds for use. (I also don't notice any degradation at all visually when doing that, and I can usually see it with lower quality .jpgs and such, but I could still be wrong.)

Edit just to be super-clear: I meant I've been doing that procedure with a lot of different files lately, not doing it a lot of times on the same specific files. ;)
Click to expand...
Well, as long as you change between lossless formats you should be alright I think. Only the
LunarMongoose said:
... save it as a 6/12 quality JPG ...
Click to expand...
part made me a bit suspicious.
 
SaibotLieh said:
Only the part made me a bit suspicious.
Click to expand...

I was talking about how I had assumed Avain had shrunk the LH texture .dds's. It sounds like I was probably wrong and it's a matter of how you save the .dds, not how big the file you're converting TO .dds is compression-wise. I also said I hadn't actually tried compressing the input file myself. ;)
 
Little info on this (posted by avain in May):

avain said:
There are a couple of tricks shown to me by others, a couple of tricks I learned and thought of myself:

- Use Triangulate (I don't know if this actually helps, but it does lessen the Triangle number)
- Use other dds formats that are more compressed
- Combine textures into single texture files
- Don't be afraid to resize a texture if it's used on a small or remote surface
- Open in scenviewer and export again
- Check if vertice number is ok, preferably below 10.000 -> if not, check if some parts of the model use a lot of vertices and can be removed without ruining it completely
- Remove unnecessary files
- etc...

I now have a pack of some of the best LHs made by you guys, it's now at 41 LHs and it's only 190 Mb. This is the standard I'm now keeping. I can already see a difference in loading times of the mod, the loading time of LHs when checked e.g. in Civilopedia, and most probably less gameplay issues such as MAFs.

If you are interested, you'll see this pack as Leaders of Varietas Delectat v3.0, which I'll be releasing in the near future.
Click to expand...
 
AbsintheRed said:
Little info on this (posted by avain in May):
Click to expand...
Hm, nothing really new for me here. But thanks for the info anyway, if nothing else it's a good feeling to have done everything right so far. ;)

At least anything beside getting the polycount below 10000. :mischief:
 
Lol, she is real nice :)
Is it my imagination or does she seem a little crosseyed though?
 
AbsintheRed said:
Lol, she is real nice :)
Is it my imagination or does she seem a little crosseyed though?
Click to expand...
Thanks, and indeed she was a little crosseyed. But now she is no more. :)
 
Hey SaibotLieh!
Why is there no kfm file for your Maria?
Did I miss something? Or does she use the vanilla Elizabeth anims from the main BtS folder, that's why the file wasn't included?

EDIT: Alright, I figured it out, it's in the warlords folder, and you use that one
First I only copied over only the kfm, but not the actual animation files. Still no anims then of course :crazyeye:

EDIT2: I wouldn't even notice these "bugs", if I don't write my own xml files, just copy-paste yours
Just realized it was there all along :)
Maybe you could add those kfm and kf files to the rar for idiots like me who like to have everything for their LHs in the same place :crazyeye:
 
AbsintheRed said:
Hey SaibotLieh!
Why is there no kfm file for your Maria?
Did I miss something? Or does she use the vanilla Elizabeth anims from the main BtS folder, that's why the file wasn't included?

EDIT: Alright, I figured it out, it's in the warlords folder, and you use that one
First I only copied over only the kfm, but not the actual animation files. Still no anims then of course :crazyeye:

EDIT2: I wouldn't even notice these "bugs", if I don't write my own xml files, just copy-paste yours
Just realized it was there all along :)
Maybe you could add those kfm and kf files to the rar for idiots like me who like to have everything for their LHs in the same place :crazyeye:
Click to expand...
Ah, sorry about that, but good thing that you already figured it out. :goodjob:

I always try to make the download file as small as possible. As you noticed, the kfm and kf files aren't really necessary if an original leaderhead animation is used, the reference to that animation kfm file in the CIV4ArtDefines_Leaderhead.xml is all that it takes. For example, the Maria xml looks like this:
Code: 
<Civ4ArtDefines xmlns="x-schema:Maria_II_CIV4ArtDefinesSchema.xml">
	<LeaderheadArtInfos>
		<LeaderheadArtInfo>
			<Type>ART_DEF_LEADER_MARIA_II</Type>
			<Button>Modules/Custom Leaders/Art/Interface/Leaderheads/maria_ii.dds</Button>
			<NIF>Modules/Custom Leaders/Art/Leaderheads/Maria_II/elizabeth.nif</NIF>
			[B][COLOR="Red"]<KFM>Art/LeaderHeads/elizabeth/elizabeth.kfm</KFM>[/COLOR][/B]
			<NoShaderNIF>Modules/Custom Leaders/Art/Leaderheads/Maria_II/elizabeth_noshader.nif</NoShaderNIF>
			<BackgroundKFM>Modules/Custom Leaders/Art/Leaderheads/Maria_II/elizabeth_bg.kfm</BackgroundKFM>
		</LeaderheadArtInfo>
	</LeaderheadArtInfos>
</Civ4ArtDefines>
So, if you are missing these files, just look at that files or at my leaderhead description. I always try to announce there which animation the leaderhead uses.
 
Yeah, thank you
I already figured out everything in the hard way :)
I also realized you didn't include those files to make the dl as small as possible, just as I mentioned all of this was because:
idiots like me who like to have everything for their LHs in the same place :crazyeye:
Click to expand...
 
I agree, with a few changes she will definitely work as a Native North American
Just make sure to change back her um... "bow using injury" ;)
 
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