Art Downloads and M:C Graphic Tutorials

Here is the drop box Link for all the new art for the Development Git version

M:C Dropbox Art Link

As I get time I will add my own Tutorials but in the mean time here are some links to get you started:

Getting your Civ 4 Units into Colonization
How to add new building to City Management screen

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I found some new Nif files that have a ton of Objects, Buildings, and such and I am hoping to be able to use some of this stuff to spice of M:C. I always wanted the Fisherman to have a bucket of fish, wah la!!

I actually wanted him to carry a net, and I actually have a fishers net. I may use that to make a slaver unit though

Nice work! Where did you found them?

Schmiddie said:

Nice work! Where did you found them?

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Hey, Schmiddie, I was just looking over the units you have been posting at the download page, nice work there too.

I found these in my steam version of the Guild II. You have to import them into Blender and then export them as Civ4 nifs. There are all kinds of medieval buildings, gizzmos, and gadgets.

They even have one of those harbor cranes that we have talked about on these forums. Except when I export it to Civ4 nif it loses its texture. Although it never really had it as the texture is called something like harbor_crane.NIF and I can't find any reference to its texture in the files. I am guessing the texture in embedded in the NIF somehow or packed away somewhere. I was going to ask you if you knew anything about this? A bunch of the buildings are done with .NIF textures and if we can figure how to get to the textures we have a ton or new NIFs to use.

Edit: I think some items like the Harbor crane model are not actually used and is not finished or something and that is why the textures are missing.

Here is the Bakery. I managed to fix up the textures but when I import to Blender nothing appears? See if you can do anything

PS There is a bunch of Ships

Actually, I figured out what the problem was. I had to shrink down the model when importing as it was so huge I couldn't see it. So, as you can see in the screen shot I have managed to get a model building in the game. However, the textures are not complete.

It is strange that the textures I have access too seem incomplete, like way to much of the texture has been turned to transparency. But, when I view the model before exporting as a Civ4 model it looks fine. You can see in the screen shot the before import and after.

Also, after import the UV mesh doesn't match up with the texture .dds files any longer. In fact they don't really match up before I export, but while editing the UV you can manipulate textures just fine, however, what you see in the texture view screen is not matching what you see on the model, strange. It is like the Model is using a different set of textures other than what you see.

Edit: it seems that the before import nif model renders the .dds files differently than the Civ4 nif and that is what is causing the textures to have to much transparency. We'll just have to make a custom skin.

Anyway, there is the model, and it appears all we need to do is fix up the textures.

Kailric said:

I found some new Nif files that have a ton of Objects, Buildings, and such and I am hoping to be able to use some of this stuff to spice of M:C. I always wanted the Fisherman to have a bucket of fish, wah la!!

I actually wanted him to carry a net, and I actually have a fishers net. I may use that to make a slaver unit though

Click to expand...

I don't think that wisely to use The Guild II building's graphics in Colonization.

The Guild II is the game where you play in one very small city. All graphics is very detailed, each building has hunders or even thousands polygons. Compare with Civilization or Colonization games where you play on extra large territory and where each city with many buildings is represented a small point on the world map.

However, small elements like a "bucket of fish" and similar ones of course are could be very useful.

Some interesting building graphics converted from Europa Universalis 3 and from Empire Earth 2 expansion pack Art of Supremacy.

Don Senglar said:

I don't think that wisely to use The Guild II building's graphics in Colonization.

The Guild II is the game where you play in one very small city. All graphics is very detailed, each building has hunders or even thousands polygons. Compare with Civilization or Colonization games where you play on extra large territory and where each city with many buildings is represented a small point on the world map.

However, small elements like a "bucket of fish" and similar ones of course are could be very useful.

Some interesting building graphics converted from Europa Universalis 3 and from Empire Earth 2 expansion pack Art of Supremacy.

Click to expand...

I was thinking that was the case, I am mostly just attempting to learn more about modeling. I am also wanting to learn more about how to edit models so I can perhaps edit them to have less poly counts. However, I have not noticed those building Art links yet, those look splendid. With all the building art that is added for Civ4 I think there should be enough to spice up any mod already, so I won't worry about building art for a while if ever. Like you say I have access to dozens of smaller items to spice up units and existing art so I have plenty to do.

I haven't tried to convert any units yet, and their poly count would be high also, but already some people have converted units from games like Sid's Pirates and such. Plus in Col generally the Expert or Master graphics are not used very often as they are mostly in your cities and or using profession graphics, so managed correctly Unit graphics won't hit the system that hard.

Anyway, thanks for feedback and links.

It maybe cool to work up an Items pack as when I searched before in the Civ4 threads it didn't turn up much. I think some modders would really find that useful to spice up their units in Col and Civ4.

Kailric said:

Plus in Col generally the Expert or Master graphics are not used very often as they are mostly in your cities and or using profession graphics, so managed correctly Unit graphics won't hit the system that hard.

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Arguing that units can have a high polygon count if they are rarely on the screen might be overlooking one important factor. Even if the unit isn't on screen, it will be in the memory. Memory I/O speed is a bottleneck and having rarely seen units could have a negative impact even if they aren't actually displayed.

Also we only have 4 GB of memory for this 32 bit game. Some people have claimed it to crash when it uses 2 GB (never tested that myself). C2C can't handle loading all graphics at once due to this problem. I would prefer that we keep our memory usage low whenever we touch anything to avoid problems like that.

The Guild 2 would be an awesome game if it ever implemented a decent 'trade route' automation system, as the one they released for the expansion is almost as useless as not having one at all.

My guess with the harbour crane is that it was actually made for the 1st expansion, as that includes pirates and a port.

I have all the expansions, so if I can ever be bothered to go digging I may find a texture for it