Wanted- a "bitz" maker

I don't make units, but from talking with the unit creator from my team, I kinda got an idea that I could like someone to expand upon, or something. This is also inspired by games-workshop.
Okey, so right now, the typical approach to making a new (infantry at least) unit is to make the new weapon/part that you need or borrow it from another unit, then attach it to the unit you want to modify, then post it, a job well done, etc... I would call this "1-bitz" modding.
What I'm proposing is for someone to make a buncha new "bitz" (weapons, helms, shields, wings, ears, etc...) to use to make a lot of new units. Instead of just putting on a new weapon, adding a new weapon, and helm and shield would make the unit unique and much much better looking, I think.

Games Workshop uses this technique to allow players to make completely custom models out of a relatively small number of parts, see:

(4 heads x 4 bodies x 4 right arms x 4 left arms x 4 legs=1024 unique units! +shields, and other add-ons)
It's also going to be used in Medieval: Total War II, to allow a lot of customizability.

I would do this myself (and I've tried) but I've detirmined that I am 3dsmax-handicapped and would do much better off sticking to my programming and organizing my mod team.

If anyone is interested, let me know.

j

A similar technique has been used by the Freedom Force community for years. Both FF games also use .nif files. They call these versatile meshes, and they contain between dozens to hundreds of parts, most of which are invisible. By changing on small part of the .nif using a hex editor, the parts can be made visible or invisible at will.

The downside of this is that it makes the .nifs MUCH larger than they otherwise would be, which could lead to some serious lagging in Civ.

catwhowalksbyhi said:

A similar technique has been used by the Freedom Force community for years. Both FF games also use .nif files. They call these versatile meshes, and they contain between dozens to hundreds of parts, most of which are invisible. By changing on small part of the .nif using a hex editor, the parts can be made visible or invisible at will.

The downside of this is that it makes the .nifs MUCH larger than they otherwise would be, which could lead to some serious lagging in Civ.

Click to expand...

But if you only put in the bitz you want to be visible, you shouldn't have that problem, right?

J_Period said:

But if you only put in the bitz you want to be visible, you shouldn't have that problem, right?

Click to expand...

someone go to the FF community and get those nif files so we can hand it out to the ones making futuristic mods (or modern mods) => Rabbit would have more time to create fantasy nd medieval bits
I think it could work with the nifviewer but perhaps a plugin would be needed, dont really know. but it would be worth a try!"

Otherwise, yea i need bits

The problem is you won't get any animations using this technique and you need to have separate texture for each piece. Otherwise it's a good idea.

sharick said:

The problem is you won't get any animations using this technique and you need to have separate texture for each piece. Otherwise it's a good idea.

Click to expand...

i dont know why u think u wouldnt get an animation with the parts, i am not talking about giving a rotor to a swordsman... i just want to get some pieces attached to his cloths or helmet or whatever and these will be attached to the various bones of the nif file, so they will move with with the rest of the body, i think i saw that working with rabbits wizard head...

if i connect his wings at the spine, they will move with the body! and perhaps he gets them to flap, which would be a milestone (but rabbit: please concentrate on making bits ). the problem would be with the textures (if u use the FF ones) but i think this could be solved with some communication or convertion, because they have to have textures in FF too... so i think the idea isnt as bad as you think.

And with Rabbit creating new Bits with 3dsmax, there wont be any problem at all! perhaps he should split up skins into groups... so we dont have a huge skin file. well ok, dds isnt that big. but lets see if he is willing to do it at all.

EDIT: sorry i think you meant attaching for example a spear to a swordsman, thats right, therefor we wouldnt get any animation, but thats something we have to live with for now... btw i am really missing a spearman with a normal helmet, like the one from the maceman...)

@seZereth - as far as I understood this method, you want to make units from separate pieces. These pieces need to be animated before if you want the unit to have animation. In Civ there is no universal skeleton for every unit. Each one has its own bone structure and skin. By skin I don't mean texture but rules which tell the mesh how it should deform when the bone moves. On top of that there are animation sequences for events in game. All this is done in 3dsmax before exporting to .nif.
What Rabbit, White is doing is substituting parts that are already separate (weapons) or attaching his own. I don't think he can delete swordsman's legs for example. Need to check though.

The problem is you won't get any animations using this technique and you need to have separate texture for each piece. Otherwise it's a good idea.

Click to expand...

Not at all true. They are all fully animated and some can use dozens of different keyframe sets. Just make sure every arm, for instance, animates together. You'll only see the visible one move. Most of the bits are miscellaneous things anyways, like hats and different kinds of shoes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by catwhowalksbyhi

A similar technique has been used by the Freedom Force community for years. Both FF games also use .nif files. They call these versatile meshes, and they contain between dozens to hundreds of parts, most of which are invisible. By changing on small part of the .nif using a hex editor, the parts can be made visible or invisible at will.

The downside of this is that it makes the .nifs MUCH larger than they otherwise would be, which could lead to some serious lagging in Civ.

Click to expand...

But if you only put in the bitz you want to be visible, you shouldn't have that problem, right?

Click to expand...

Wrong. Whether the parts are visible or not, they are still there and the game engine treats them as if they were.

someone go to the FF community and get those nif files so we can hand it out to the ones making futuristic mods (or modern mods) => Rabbit would have more time to create fantasy nd medieval bits
I think it could work with the nifviewer but perhaps a plugin would be needed, dont really know. but it would be worth a try!"

Click to expand...

I doubt most of them are even compatible. Most are based on an older version of the .nif and the keyframe setup is a bit different. If you politely asked some of the creators for the max files, on the other hand. . .

Unfortunately, the main FF modding website is down due to a hacker attack and you can't discuss copywrited character meshes and skins in the official forum, which is what much of the community work consists of. (but by no means all of it)

@catwhosnameistoolong Why do you have to put the invisiable oarts in in the first place, is what I'm saying...why not have each bit be a seperate file? o_O
It would be kinda annoying having a seperate skin for each part, but, it's not as bad as slowing the game down

@sharik Right now, I'm not talking about legs and arms and etc (though that would be cool! It's what they're doing for M:TW2) sorry for the confusion. I'm just talking about weapons and accessories for now. Little changes that make big differences. Like rabbit's wizard hat placed on a knight's body plus a staff made a HUGE difference.

@seZereth Just remember, rabbit hasn't agreed to do anything yet . He mentioned a similar idea (before I posted this! But I didn't know about it....) If he does do something, it'll probably be for everyone, not just us-specific...

@catwhosnameistoolong Why do you have to put the invisiable oarts in in the first place, is what I'm saying...why not have each bit be a seperate file? o_O
It would be kinda annoying having a seperate skin for each part, but, it's not as bad as slowing the game down

Click to expand...

Because the in the game each unit MUST be a single file. Now, if you're talking about a kit for meshers with Max to mess around with accessories and such, yeah, you can add and remove parts, but a versatile mesh lets ANYONE do it.

And you don't have to have a separate skin for each parts. Alternate parts can share the same skin. For instance, if you have four different kinds of swords, you can use the same skin for all, since you're only going to have one visible at any given time.

umm...okey...well, in my case I'd rather have all the seperate parts rather than turning parts on and off since we have so many units on screen at one time, this would really slow things down. (which was your point in the 1st place )

Since I have someone that can use the nif viewer to add/remove bitz(actually anyone can now that there's the tut) I'd rather have the individual bitz rather than slow everything down.