Art Questions

First and most importantly, in the art blog, a bison is mentioned. Where is the bison features in the game(s)? I checked what I believe to be all units.

Secondly, are there any barriers in getting an animal from Zoo Tycoon (1 or 2) into civ4?

And is the transfer from unit to resource feasible or even possible? ie if I wanted to use the bison as a resource?

Thanks in advance

Check the Doviello. I'm not sure of the name, but I think it is called the Bison Rider. I don't play the Doviello.

bison rider replace the knight for doviello

if you want to see all the art, you have to go to civilizations and check their unique entries (one, then hit back, then check next one, its tedious ).
The Doviello Bison Rider makes use of the Bison, which is from Zoo Tycoon, like several other units. At least someone told me this (i am not responsible for that ).
And yes if you can rig it to the animation of the "to replace" resource, like horses o something, then you can implement the bison as a resource, most likely you will use blender to rig the bison exactly like the model you want to take the animation from. And so on...

thanks guys!
ill fiddle around with it and update if i need more help (especially cuz im away most of today so i still havent had a chance to try ur suggestions)

thanks again

Alright, might as well say i have no experience whatsoever...

first of all, when you say to rig it exactly like the model of whatever it replaces, what do you mean? Would I have to change the bison whos form I like and would rather not change? =)

second of all, how do I rig it to the animation in the first place (ive never even touched animations before). Does it or the bones attach to the mesh(es) somehow? If it does how do i connect it/the bones to the mesh?

Lastly so far, are there any steps to get the resource to not crash the game, like leaderheads would if you didnt go through nifskope/viewer?

Thanks

kevinman4404 said:

Alright, might as well say i have no experience whatsoever...

first of all, when you say to rig it exactly like the model of whatever it replaces, what do you mean? Would I have to change the bison whos form I like and would rather not change? =)

second of all, how do I rig it to the animation in the first place (ive never even touched animations before). Does it or the bones attach to the mesh(es) somehow? If it does how do i connect it/the bones to the mesh?

Lastly so far, are there any steps to get the resource to not crash the game, like leaderheads would if you didnt go through nifskope/viewer?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Ok, i think it is hard to explain, if you have no experience at all
but let me try, at least to give you a starting point.
I assume or request that you use blender...
You need to import the resource nif you want to use and your bison.
The animation is seperate from this file, but: the animation makes use of transforming the armature (bones) included in your nif. a mesh is linked to a armature, otherwise the bones have no influence on the mesh.
And the connection between animation, bones and mesh are the "vertexgroups"
Blender has next ot its "ObjectMode", "EditMode", "VertexPaintMode", etc. a mode called "WeightPaint".
This mode will display you (using different colours, like a heat camera ) which part of a mesh (exactly, which vertices) are rigged (weighted) to a certain bone (vertex group).

So, if you import a firaxis unit, which animation you want to use, like the horse resources. (havent done that yet! so i dont guarantee ths will work)
You select the mesh of a horse and have a look at his vertex groups (a normal warrior mesh e.g. has BIP Head, BIP Left Forearm, BIP right tigh, etc.). as the names indicate, a vertex in one of those groups will be connected to a bone. the weight from 0-1 tells you how much the vertex will follow the transformation of his weighted bone. (if you have 1, the vertex does exactly the same movement, if you have 0.5 it does it halfway, if you have 0.5 BIP Forearm and 0.5 BIP Upperarm, then it will do the "intermediate" movement, etc.).

And with rigging it exactly like the animations mesh you want to use, i mean:
If the Horses Head vertices are weighted to the head bone and you want your bisons head to do the same movement of the horses head in the animation, then you will have to look for geometrically corresponding vertices and weight them to the BIP Head group (or whatever it is called in a resource file) in a way it is done with the horses mesh. you will do this with all groups. make sure every vertex is assigned to a group!
You can do this visually by using the weight paint mode and having connected the two meshes (your bison and the horse) before. so that the bison and horse are one mesh (not necessarily at the same spot, otherwise it will be hard to modify ) Because then, when you click weight paint and select the mesh, you will have the colours (none on your bison yet) at both meshes. then you can use the "weightbrush" to paint the weight on the mesh or you go to editMode and do it manually by selecting a vertex and setting his weight in the small menu beneath the vertexgroup selection.

So, hope that helps, it was a long write up, so i hope you will at least try it

If you do not know about blenders interface: blender3d wiki ! (and for more information "from noob to pro"-tutorial in the blender3d wiki books section )

I read it all and so far it seems to make sense =) However, the only nif for the bison rider is "knight_fx.nif", which when I view in nifscope has no mesh, and which gets an error when i try to import it into blender (which is configured and works when i import leaderheads and resources).

How can i import it or fix the file?

for reference:

error in nifscope:

failed to load block number 156 (NiNode) previous block was NiCollisionData
"failed to load nif from file " "C:\PROGRA~1\FIRAXI~1\SIDMEI~1\Mods\FALLFR~1\Assets\art\units\civs\doviello\BISONR~1\KNIGHT~1.NIF"

error in blender: (just check console)

shudnt there be a knight.nif? and if thats the model as used in the nonmodified game, how would that work seeing as the bison mesh is supposed to be different?

ah, i see, no you cant import modifiied nifs.
i thought you had the original bison.nif from zoo tycoon or where ever Kael got it from. You would need that.
otherwise i dont see a way to make it work.

Alrighty, I have acquired the original nif.

I was thinking I would delete the mesh from the horse, leaving only the bones, and delete the bones and lod things from the bison leaving only the mesh, then merging, but you cant delete the attached bone without deleting the model too. And i cant find a way to break that attachment.

So...

a) how do i get an exact copy of the horse's bones?

b) how do i attach the bison's mesh? Or do i just align it over where it should be?

c) there are many parts (one main mesh, two wireframe meshy things, more sets of these ie under the neck, and bones). which may i delete, if any, or am i supposed to edit/use all at once?

Thanks

kevinman4404 said:

Alrighty, I have acquired the original nif.

I was thinking I would delete the mesh from the horse, leaving only the bones, and delete the bones and lod things from the bison leaving only the mesh, then merging, but you cant delete the attached bone without deleting the model too. And i cant find a way to break that attachment.

So...

a) how do i get an exact copy of the horse's bones?

b) how do i attach the bison's mesh? Or do i just align it over where it should be?

c) there are many parts (one main mesh, two wireframe meshy things, more sets of these ie under the neck, and bones). which may i delete, if any, or am i supposed to edit/use all at once?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I am a bit tired, but try this:

a) dont delete anything, but select bison then shift+select Horse object, press space, object - merge objects. Then you can delete the bisons bones and everything else which came with the bison, you will only need the mesh.
Then, rig it like i described it before, having still the horse and the bison, to make rigging easier as you can compare.

b) with the bison mesh and horse mesh being now one object, and the bisons vertices rigged to the vertex groups of the horse, your bison will now react on the horses bones movement. make sure to delete the material of the bison in the material selection field (right from the vertex group field). so you have only the horses material left.
Then, delete the horse and put the bison where the horse was, making sure it is reasonable in relation to the bones.

c) dont know what you mean, if the above works, then it shouldnt matter, if it came with the bison, delete it probably, if it came with the horse, keep it, it might be part of the resource graphic.

d) cheers.

ur advice is working great so far- I have done everything up to the end of the vertex painting

two things:

when you talk about merging you mention the horse (in my case cow) object and the bison object. But really its several objects- I picked the bison's solid-looking mesh and one of the 3 cow solid cow meshes. Will it still work ok?

and

is there a way to delete vertex groups? cuz the bison ones still remain behind and i doubt id be able to completely wipe off the coloured vertices. if not, will it conflict? shud i be doing that period?

heh answer when you have time, i realize its a lengthy exacting topic

thanks again

heya,

joining the bison with the cow was perfect, the solid things are objects, when you are in objectmode, then you can select meshes only as objects. so you are on the right side. And make sure first to select the bison and then join with the cow, as the sequence determines which object it keeps and which object entry it gets rid of (in this case we want to keep the cow object).

To delete vertex groups, just make sure the right vertex group is selected and dsplays in the vertex group window, beneath it you should find a group of buttons with assgin, remove, new, delete, select, deselect. Now guess which one deletes the vertex groups

here is a blenderwiki link, for a very very simple rigging guide
you will see the vertex group stuff and such

And, if you are done with this and it works... we should release it as a kind of tutorial, therefore it might be helpful if you can provide some screenshots of the different steps of your process, perhaps other people want to do the same. Well, only if it works that is.

Yay, all th e rogue vertex groups are gone

but, just to make sure, the cow nif has three solid meshes reckon im ok if i just chose a rnaomd one?

and yes a tutorial would be a great idea, hopefully this works

kevinman4404 said:

Yay, all th e rogue vertex groups are gone

but, just to make sure, the cow nif has three solid meshes reckon im ok if i just chose a rnaomd one?

and yes a tutorial would be a great idea, hopefully this works

Click to expand...

well, think about it, replacing one cow will give you one cow in the game. In the game a cow resource consists exactly of those 3 cows you see in the nif. So, you will have to replace all three i think. but you might reuse the one bison mesh, already rigged, just duplicate the object and join it with the other cows, as soon as one s working i suggest.
Good Luck!

Wow ur fast, i didnt even have time to edit XD

I lied, I didnt get to delete the vertex groups. There are no buttons below it for some reason, as a screenshot from somewhere else showed me there should be. Only down and to the right, but those are for material. Heres a screenie:

kevinman4404 said:

Wow ur fast, i didnt even have time to edit XD

I lied, I didnt get to delete the vertex groups. There are no buttons below it for some reason, as a screenshot from somewhere else showed me there should be. Only down and to the right, but those are for material. Heres a screenie:

Click to expand...

the little details are what you have to pay attention to in life
as i can see on your screenie, you are in weight paint mode, go to edit mode, there the buttons will show up

Ill have to sleep now, so if you have any further problems, try a bit around, but save before, else wait till tomorrow

cheers

alritey =) thanks again for the help

for tommorow:

i deleted the bisons material, i deleted the cows part, i duplicated the bison under the name of the other cow mesh (i guess there was only two? pretty sure there was three once) and deleted its original counterpoint. All are aligned to the best of my ability. Exported as a unit.

In game its really weird (tho im glad im getting something). Its purple, with odd elements to it (thing sticking out, black rectangle) and its not shaped properly. Where the hind legs should be I see a huge mass of messiness, as if lots of things are there.

Oh, and it doesnt move [yet! =] ]

Here are screenes from having it centered and off to the right a bit:

can you please post the blend, so i can have a look at it ? cant judge whats wrong from the screenie.

cheers

Hey, sorry about my communication, as of today i am working while ur here and here while ur asleep and asleep when ur working

Two blends are attached, one before i deleted stuff from the cow and one right before export.

My guess on the weird shape is that not all vertexes are painted (which is a great possibility when using the brush). The rest idunno. Also there should be three, just liek the cows in the game.