Cleopatra

All hail Cleo!


Alternative indoor version:

NoShader version:


Like my Female Ranger, this leaderhead is a convertion from a Atlantica Online model (tom2050 made some very nice Civ3 units with them, more information about that here). I used the Isabella leaderhead as base and made a Bone Weight Copy following The Coyote's tutorial.
This leaderhead was pretty easy to make, especially because I didn't do any artwork modifications this time.

Download link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=15071

This leaderhead is a non-shader one again. I tried again with shading, but run into some problems pretty soon. I think I have two major problems:
1. I don't know how to make a NiSkinPartition for it. I tried the option from NifSkope, but that did not work. The leaderhead appeared in the game, but looked like a wrong NiSkinInstance was used for it.
2. I don't know how to create a norm/nrml file for the leaderhead. As far as I know this file works as a cotour map and for starters I just made a file that only consisted of the bluish ground color. But of course it could be better than that I'm sure.

Any help would be appreciated of course.

Nice. Do you think you could convert the Inventor into a LH?

I don't know how to create a norm/nrml file for the leaderhead. As far as I know this file works as a cotour map and for starters I just made a file that only consisted of the bluish ground color. But of course it could be better than that I'm sure.

Click to expand...

What I do is use parts of other LHs' norm files and use them in the norm files of my LHs. (copy and paste)

As for the NiSkinPartition, I think there is and option in Blender for creating that when exporting the nif.

Wow, you are fast!

She looks great! If you somehow manage the shader version, that would be perfect, but I think I'm gonna add her anyway.

Thanks!

I think even the style fits to the other civ LHs a bit.
Nice one .

SaibotLieh said:

Any help would be appreciated of course.

Click to expand...

• first you have to export the model with the leaderhead export option from Blender - necessary to create some additional information. ("Export extra shader textures)
• second, there is no working NiSkinPartition for Leaderheads so far (works only for units), therefore stripify the model (NiTriStrips)
• the nrml map can be created using a gimp script from the diff texture or a self made "high texture" (with black and white you controlls the high of the object) - link
• and look here

this one looks great also

hope you will convert more of these

It looks great SaibotLieh!
If you aren't done with converting some of the models, could you perhaps convert the monk and the shaman?
The monk looks like it would make a good stand in for a middle age Tibetan monk leader head but could also be used /modified to become a older east Asian leader head. The Shaman could also be used/modified for a generic east female Asian leader head. There are only a few high quality east Asian leader heads in the database simply because there aren't too many vanilla faces to work off of without heavy mesh editing, so if you could import these it would really help. (Not to mention they would look pretty cool.)

Again thanks for the praises. I'm glad she turned out that well.

charle88 said:

Nice. Do you think you could convert the Inventor into a LH?

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Hm, do you want it with or without the helmet? With should be pretty easy because most of the work I had with the first two leaderheads was to make the facial expressions look right. I haven't looked at that model yet, but maybe it could be a problem that it has this big machine on the back. But that is only a wild guess.

charle88 said:

What I do is use parts of other LHs' norm files and use them in the norm files of my LHs. (copy and paste)

Click to expand...

Shouldn't the norm file resemble the LH texture? Or is that file rather resistant against differences?

charle88 said:

As for the NiSkinPartition, I think there is and option in Blender for creating that when exporting the nif.

Click to expand...

I tried that, but using that NiSkinPartition leads to the said error. This is how my export setting looks like:

avain said:

Wow, you are fast!

She looks great! If you somehow manage the shader version, that would be perfect, but I think I'm gonna add her anyway.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Just had a not much to do for a day. Once you know what to do, it is rather easy. I share your opinion about the shader, so I'll try to manage it somehow.

The_J said:

I think even the style fits to the other civ LHs a bit.
Nice one .

Click to expand...

Funny, I thought the same the first time I saw her animated.

The_Coyote said:

• first you have to export the model with the leaderhead export option from Blender - necessary to create some additional information. ("Export extra shader textures)
• second, there is no working NiSkinPartition for Leaderheads so far (works only for units), therefore stripify the model (NiTriStrips)
• the nrml map can be created using a gimp script from the diff texture or a self made "high texture" (with black and white you controlls the high of the object) - link
• and look here

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out as soon as possible. Now I might even have to learn how to use Gimp...

psob2 said:

this one looks great also

hope you will convert more of these

Click to expand...

That strongly depends on my motivation. But at the moment I can imagine to make some more.

Bakuel said:

It looks great SaibotLieh!
If you aren't done with converting some of the models, could you perhaps convert the monk and the shaman?
The monk looks like it would make a good stand in for a middle age Tibetan monk leader head but could also be used /modified to become a older east Asian leader head. The Shaman could also be used/modified for a generic east female Asian leader head. There are only a few high quality east Asian leader heads in the database simply because there aren't too many vanilla faces to work off of without heavy mesh editing, so if you could import these it would really help. (Not to mention they would look pretty cool.)

Click to expand...

I'll think about it. Most of the time I'm more motivated to work on a female model, thus the chances are higher for the shaman I guess. But one way or the other, it's good to hear that they might have some good use.

Okay, I tried to add shader to the leaderhead today. I followed The Coyote's checklist, but neither NiTriShape nor NiTriStrips meshes worked. All I got was a black screen for about a second and then the game crashed. I finally got the leaderhead working by using a NiSkinPartition that has a Max Bones of 4. Here are the export settings I used:

Now my leaderhead appears, but doesn't look like I want it to be. First thing is that it is far too bright and second the invisible parts don't work like they should. They are invisible, but in some places they also make everything behind them invisible. Even the first part of the background. Here is an image:

The brightness problem might be caused by the NiPointLight nodes. After removing them, my leaderhead looks like this:

I guess there might be a adjustment problem here. The problem with the invisible parts is still present though.
So, am I on the right path here and if I am is there a better way to adjust the NiPointLight than using NifSkope? I also attached the leaderhead to this post in case somebody wants to take a look at it.

nice. I actually have a cleo still in work. Could post the files for the gunner, pirate, the other oracle files (they show many)and spartan?

You can download them all for free by installing the Atlantica Online demo. I want to see the oracle without a crown, looks nice. And the monk will make a great LH.

Sorry fo the late reply, but I would like the Inventor without the helmet. In blender you could seperate the parts that are supposed to be transparent (like the end of her hair) from the main model. You shouldn't apply shaders to those parts, since then they will no longer be invisible. I'm not sure how to help you with the brightness problem.

Ekmek said:

nice. I actually have a cleo still in work.

Click to expand...

I've seen that.

Ekmek said:

A new model, new animations (all custom), new skeleton, and do the coyote baking for textures. figure I need these skills for civ5 (finers crossed that blender models will work)


I guess I could leave it as a surprise but no need too. I plan to add somewhat see through clothing over the body and make custom moving hair as well.

Click to expand...

That'll be a lot of work I'm sure. I'm curious how it will work out and wish you best of luck.

Ekmek said:

Could post the files for the gunner, pirate, the other oracle files (they show many)and spartan?

Click to expand...

As smeagolheart said, they can be all downloaded with the regular AO download. See my Female Ranger thread for more details.

charle88 said:

Sorry fo the late reply, but I would like the Inventor without the helmet.

Click to expand...

Don't worry, I'm not the fastest either at the moment. I'll see what I can do about the Inventor, but of course it always depends on my current motivation...
Oh, and should it be the one with or the one without the eyepatch?

charle88 said:

In blender you could seperate the parts that are supposed to be transparent (like the end of her hair) from the main model. You shouldn't apply shaders to those parts, since then they will no longer be invisible. I'm not sure how to help you with the brightness problem.

Click to expand...

Hm, wouldn't that lead to rather strange effect at the border between the shadered and the non-shadered parts? Also are you sure that applying shader always messes up the invisible information? For example, most of the collar of the Cleo model seems to work alright, only the parts above her shoulders mess with the background.

something seems to be strange with the stripified exported meshes, instead of Num Strips of 1 they had much higher figures there (details of the NiTriStripsData). Not really sure if this caused the problems, but after triangulating and stripifying the meshes in Nifskope again it worked in scene viewer (and the num of strips was 1) like they should.

Considering the transparency - at least for leaderheads i have no idea how to have transparent parts and a shader at the same time - interesting that the way you did it at least to a certain degree it´s possible.

and to alter the light and checking the impact - try scene viewer, bernie (iirc) made a tutorial about this topic (i change the values there and check what happens and edit the values also in nifskope - i don´t like the way scene viewer saves the files), but perhaps you have also to alter the diff texture itself because the texture has already light baked in the texture.

I've uploaded a shader version of Cleo now. It's still a bit bright, but I think it should work now. I had to do some artwork modifications because the orginial one already had bright and dark parts included, similar to no-shader leaderhead files. I further didn't included the BloomFactors and BloomColorChannelMix NiPointLight nodes because they caused too much brightness.
The leaderhead works with the NiSkinPartition that can be made via NifSkope. I needed to set the Number of Bones per Partition to 4 to get a useable NiSkinPartition. I also still have some working transparency included. As long as there is a part of the mesh that has no NiAlphaProperty between these parts and the background no glitches can be seen.
So, enjoy this shadered Cleo.

Great.

Edit: No, this shadered version is fu*king amazing.

Can you change the background? or is there a background change tutorial somewhere? it's the same hatshepsut has...

edit: Nevermind. I've found a way.

Glad you like it.
Out of curiosity, which background do you use for her? I thought about changing the background myself, but couldn't find a suitable one.

There is a another cleopatra leaderhead around (with hatshe as base) with a new background. I've used this.