Converting fantasy unit graphics from Civ4

My mod is in an advanced stage of development, but there is an important obstacle that prevents me from creating the mod that I dream of - the lack of fantasy unit models. There are many ethnic versions of existing units and WW2 vehicles available, but only a few fantasy units. Civ4 has a lot of them (in the FFH mod and elsewhere), so converting them to Civ5 looks like the best option. I lack the skills to do it, so I hope someone with necessary knowledge can help me with it. I'm sure other fantasy mod creators, including Pazyryk (Éa mod) and FramedArchitect (Faerun Scenario) need them too.

I especially need priests/mages, and monsters of various kinds. The animations don't need to be prefect. If someone is interested, I will create a list of Civ4 units (with links to downloads) that I need the most, and provide any help I can.

I second this. 10000 lines of Lua/XML/SQL/C++ don't make a fantasy mod. It's the units that make it feel like fantasy.

Many of the units shown in this thread could probably be converted to Civ5 using the templates we have at the moment (swordsman, etc.):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=472103

This is a big job

More people just need to be able to convert unit graphics. Why does Civ 4 have so many and Civ 5 doesn't?

Is it easier to just create unit art for Civ 4? If so then Firaxis needs to step up.

danrell said:

This is a big job

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Even a few of them would be a great thing, as far as I know we have only one purely fantasy unit available now - the Drake (or Dragon), although it comes in various sizes and colors in the Faerun Scenario.

So every new unit would significantly increase the number of fantasy units that can be used in mods...

Yes, a couple orc units would enable whole new civs. I'd like to see ogres, giants and trolls (and a whole lot more) too. But a couple orc units would go a long way...

Putmalk said:

Is it easier to just create unit art for Civ 4? If so then Firaxis needs to step up.

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Yes. In Civ4 you could do a lot easily just with nifskope.

PawelS could you send me some of the civ4 models and textures that you want converted? I am currently working on a number of projects and been busy with life stuff, so I am not sure how long it will be nor can I make any promises but will have a go at it.

I attached a demon from FFH, these are the files from the unit's directory in the .fpk. I don't really know which files are needed to convert it, so let me know if you need any other ones.

And some units from the downloads database:

Griffon

Unicorn (I don't need the horse)

Mermaid

Of course there are many more units I'd like to see in Civ5 format, but these 4 will be a good start They probably have different animations than the Civ5 ones, so there can be some problems with that. But, as I wrote earlier, the animations don't need to be perfect, I'll be happy with units that work at all. Thanks in advance for your help, I'm not releasing my mod anytime soon, so you don't need to hurry

Some more units, perhaps easier to convert than those from my previous post...

@PawelS, Have any Civ4 orc units handy? I'd think that would be easy -- it's just a warrior unit.

I have some FFH modmods installed, so I can extract the files from .fpk using Dragon Unpacker.

Here are some Orcs, Goblins and Ogres.

I might be able to convert some units from a RTW mod that has Lord of the Rings units. I am just waiting for their permission to use the files.

JTitan said:

I might be able to convert some units from a RTW mod that has Lord of the Rings units. I am just waiting for their permission to use the files.

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There is also a Warhammer Total War mod for RTW:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=533167

It has many fantasy units, such as these lizardmen:



I imagine these lizardmen would be quite useful, since they could be used both by fantasy and science fiction-ish mods. Furthermore, considering the many reptilian races that exist in fiction, lizardmen could be used to represent a variety of different fictional races.

I don't like the colors of these lizardmen...

PawelS said:

I don't like the colors of these lizardmen...

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Don't worry; reskins are easy. I'd be happy to do some when the units become available.

So you say that it's better to convert units from Total War mods than from Civ4 mods? (Civ4 has a Warhammer mod too, there might be some good units there.)

I'm necroing this topic because I've been pulling models from it to work on for converting units to Civ5. A lot of the models on here crash the nif import scripts (skeleton, ogre warchief, goblin, warrior, archer). I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that?

Goblin says this:
File "E:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\Blender\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\pyffi\formats\nif\__init__.py", line 3705, in get_inverse
raise ZeroDivisionError('cannot invert matrix:\n%s'%self)
ZeroDivisionError: cannot invert matrix:
[ 0.000 -0.000 0.001 0.000 ]
[ 0.000 -0.001 -0.000 0.000 ]
[ 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 ]
[ -0.002 1.899 92.415 1.000 ]

Most of the rest of them say either this:
File "E:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\Blender\.blender\scripts\import\import_nif.py", line 2825, in complete_bone_tree
% (boneparent.name, skelroot.name))
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'

Or this:
File "E:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\Blender\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\pyffi\formats\nif\__init__.py", line 3999, in get_transform
'between %s and %s.' % (self.name, relative_to.name))
ValueError: cannot find a chain of NiAVObject blocks between BIP Pelvis and Scene Root.

The last problem looks quite solvable? It looks like something someone competent with nifskope could fix by assigning a new vertex group/changing the hierarchy in the original nif model.

Also, the Fyrdwell almost loads into Blender. Some of the texture on its wings doesn't get mapped correctly, which is a real shame, because it's a freaking awesome looking unit. (I'm not yet able to fix the texture mapping.)

those errors may be because someone "made" or reshaped the unit via nifskope instead of blender. A lot of cool leaderheads like Amra were donefor civ4 that way.

What you make have to do is unassign the mesh from the skeleton and delete the bones altogether in nifskope then re-rig it (assign bones) to the civ5 template you are using.