[GRAPHICS] Animation Change

[LeastCraft]

Download Link

I noticed that some units are lacking combat animations / have bad animation assigned to them so I thought why not change it?

After following through Gagonite's extremely helpful tutorial I managed to give Losha a mordern spy idle and fidget and jaguar combat and movement:

Spoiler :

Then I moved on to the default archmage. He is a bit more difficult for missing both clavicles but after following through SaibotLieh's additional tutorial in the same thread I managed to make him whack enemies with his staff:

Spoiler :

But I wanted to do something more. So for a normal melee unit, the animation flow in combat is something like strikea - fortifya_idle - hurta - fortifya_idle - strikeb. Archmage has the kneeling fortify animation of a prophet which doesn't fit into the combat and needs to be replaced.
However I wanted to keep the kneeling animation for when you click fortify by making him somewhat like a archery unit, who has the normal melee fortify for combat and a separate rangedfortify and rangedidle for the fortify button.
I changed the kfm entries for these respectively but no change happened. He also has this black square instead of the glow around his head at the bottom left. I'm still trying to figure out why this happens.

 

[LeastCraft]

With a helpful tip from SaibotLieh

For the art info definition in the CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml file, make sure that the bActAsRanged entry is set to 1:

<bActAsRanged>1</bActAsRanged>

I fixed the fortify animation of the archmage and also gave Losha the spy fortify instead of jaguar as it blends more naturally with idle.

Spoiler :

I gave Hemah the berserker combat animation. They have this cool attack where they bash the enemy's head with both hands, which I thought fitted the brainwashy theme of OO.

Spoiler :

Then I did some minor voice changes. The Svartalfars have an almost exclusively female crew so I gave them the Amazon voice lines from SaibotLieh, with the volume increased a little bit. The Calabim arcane line I gave the Losha voice since they all look like female vampires. The brujah does not have a vampire voice line like his brothers so I also gave him that. Then to differentiate him a bit from the normal vampire I gave the normal vampire Charlemagne_HeavySwordsman animation to make him look more reserved as the brujah had a more savage design. Along the way I discovered that the heavy swordsman hurt animation with blood isn't working because of a typo in the kfm so I fixed that as well.

Spoiler :

 

[LeastCraft]

If anyone want these changes for their games as well I can upload it, though I have no idea how to make patches or install wizards so it will have to be find-and-replace-file style.

 

[lfgr]

If anyone want these changes for their games as well I can upload it, though I have no idea how to make patches or install wizards so it will have to be find-and-replace-file style.

That would be great!

 

[black_imperator]

Nice work, i'd very much like to merge those.

 

[LeastCraft]

Thanks for the support guys! Download link is up. Hopefully it all works.

 

[LeastCraft]

Hello! Got some more animations fixed this week.

Firstly I just found all the units using the Taoist Missionary kfm and redirected them to Hemah. So now Eater of Dreams, Mobius Witch and Infernal Mage all have Viking Berserker combat animation. It's a bit lazy but I can't find any other options that are significantly better. If you have any suggestions let me know!

Next I added the default modern spy ranged strike animation to Balseraph Courtesan and Calabim Mage. Again the original animation is using a pistol so it doesn't fit really well, but I am struggling to find better animations, especially for the courtesan. There seems to be some problem with her leg riggings that cause her to skate around when I applied combat animation of other units to her.

I brought back the legacy OO cultist (but NOT speaker) skin so that his appearance now matches the button.

Spoiler :

Illians High Priest of Winter is where I had the most fun. I changed idle/fidget/fortify animation to Charlemagne_HeavySwordsman, and combat animation to Viking Berserker. It gives him a much better posture with the sword/staff combo and now he attacks with both staff and sword like Gandalf.

Spoiler :

And lastly I gave Bannor Flagbearer the warrior fortify/combat animation. A pretty obvious choice.

Spoiler :

The reason why I kept the warrior fortify animation for this one is that to give a unit a different fortify animation than the one it uses in combat means that it has to be a ranged unit. That means if I set the flagbearer as ranged and place him against other ranged units he will just wave the flag in the air and the enemy magically dies, which looks kinda hilarious actually but I thought it's better to let him hit with his flag properly.

This also means that now generic archmage will just wave his staff in the air and Hemah will just do taichi and enemy archer will magically die. That actually makes more sense to me, but again please let me what what animation you perfer.

 

[LeastCraft]

The download link is updated and I just realised that the same problem also happens for Illians High Priest of Winter.
There are 3 options with this one:
1. Make him melee by changing fortify animation to berserker. The problem with this one is that the berserker animation messes with his cloak. It's not noticeable in combat but can feel a bit annoying in fortifying.
2. Make him melee by changing combat animation to heavy swordsman. This one looks okay-ish but it really lacks the oomph of berserker animation imo.
3. Keep him as is.
Let me know what you think!

 

[LeastCraft]

Okay I just realised that PAKing everything and deleting the original folder is a bit dumb and not quite compatible with other patches, so I uploaded a new version where you just need to copy into Asset folder without all the hassel.
Also Losha is changed back to melee, meaning that fortify animation is changed from spy to jaguar.

 

[LeastCraft]

More animations done!

I gave Shadow the Native American Dog Soldier combat animation because this one uses the same bone naming as Shadow, and also it doesn't mess up with his cloak at all which is neat to have.
To Grigori Medic I gave the Axeman combat animation which has the same hunchback posture as his idle animation.

Spoiler :

Then I fixed Loki. He is a really tricky one because the modern artist skeleton he is using misses a ton of bones, so I had to work around by letting him use his activation animation (without fade) as a combat animation. The result actually looks quite fun so I am pretty satisfied with it.

Spoiler :

Now comes my favourite one. The mercenary was using the warrior animation originally and the idle animation really irritates me. He just holds a zweihander upright in one hand as if it weighs nothing.
So I searched up some doppelsoldner pictures, presumably what the mercenary is based on, and the ones I found (in idle posture) are either carrying the sword across the shoulder or sticking the tip of the sword to the ground and resting one hand on the crossguard.
Now civ4 units that carry their weapons across the shoulder we have anti-tank/sam, and civ4 units that stick their weapons to the ground we have musketman/musketeer. The former two don't look like they will quite fit and I settled with musketeer because his bones matches that of the warrior's better. After some renaming bones and tweaking weapons visibility I got some really nice result:

Spoiler :

Pretty good eh? The left arm is a liiiiittle bit twisted, but now he really has that doppelsoldner vibe.
Lastly I changed Calabim Archmage/Empyrean Priest/Empyrean High Priest idle and fidget animation to Charlemagne_LightSpearman so that they now loosen up a bit. The original pikeman idle animation is a bit too tense for them.

Spoiler :

Oh and there's also a typo in the samurai blood kfm messing up the hurt animation and it is now fixed.

 

[LeastCraft]

Quick update: I covered the twisted part of the mercenary left arm with steel plate so now he looks better.

Spoiler :

I'll try to figure out how to do the gloss map for the pauldron and armplate later to make them shinier.

 

[LeastCraft]

Done! Download is also updated.

Spoiler :

 

[LeastCraft]

Okay I stumbled upon the original upload of the doppelsoldner, which included this beautiful zweihander and also a fitting button (from Age of Empires 3) and I just had to try them out on the mercenary with its new animation. I added my own touch by making the hat bigger and now he just looks awesome, maybe way too cool for a strength 5 unit:

Spoiler :

The only thing to improve now is to tweak his hands, and to do that I'll really have to get out of my comfort zone and learn blender perhaps. And if I can manage that maybe I'll even try animating the Svartalfar Archmage! We'll see about that later.

As a bonus I fix a bug in the Illians ranger animation where his sword displaces a bit when he does a taunt. It's barely noticeable, but it's there. There are a few other units using the swordsman animation that has the same problem, I'm not particularly motivated about these but will get to them eventually.

 

[LeastCraft]

This one is more of a graphics update than animation, but here goes:

Spoiler :

As you see I've updated the unit graphics for Lanun Beastmaster, Horseman, Phalanx, Mage and Archmage. The only one that "changed" is phalanx. I find a redcoat wielding a primitive spear extremely anachronistic and unbefitting of an endgame unit, so I changed him to Tercio pikeman, and reassigned the redcoat to be a mage. The rest are just lacking unique graphics and I though it would be nice for them to have one.

I didn't make any of these models, so credit where credit is due:
Beastmaster uses female pirate captain from SaibotLeih
Horseman uses seasoned scout from colonization
Phalanx uses Landsknecht model and this head from zwei833
Mage uses the original Lanun phalanx model from FFH2 and the staff is a reskinned version of Calabim Mage's
Archmage uses elder statesman from colonization

Also they all come with unique icons:

Spoiler :

 

[LeastCraft]

@lfgr One thought: If I patch the animation for vanilla FFH2 and then set up MNAI, would it still work?

 

[lfgr]

I don't think MNAI has any unit art changes, so it should work.

 

[LeastCraft]

I don't think MNAI has any unit art changes, so it should work.

So if I just copy CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml over it would work right? And I suppose this would also allow the changes to be transferred to extramodmod?

Also I changed CIV4UnitInfos.xml and CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml for the voicelines, will they be overwritten?

 

[black_imperator]

yeah, those would likely be modified by the modmods, so you'd need to edit them again.

 

[black_imperator]

if i may suggest something, adding in your readme the list of entries you edited in the various files would make it easy for people to know your changes and to merge them, even for other modmods than MNAI.

Out of curiosity, would you take requests ? i have a goblin adept model with a staff that's still using the default goblin spearman animations, and i don't have enough knowledge of these things to fix it

 

[LeastCraft]

if i may suggest something, adding in your readme the list of entries you edited in the various files would make it easy for people to know your changes and to merge them, even for other modmods than MNAI.

Good advice, thank you! I'll do that for the next update.

Out of curiosity, would you take requests ? i have a goblin adept model with a staff that's still using the default goblin spearman animations, and i don't have enough knowledge of these things to fix it

Of course! I'll do what I can.