Getting Civ 4 Units into Civ 5 - Full Conversion

[Multruvite]

I am trying to do a custom mesh and bone for a hero mod I was planning to release but it comes out in gr2 the skeleton upright while the model mesh is facing down. I did ctrl A and in one instance my mesh exploded literally in Gr2.

The skeleton in one render exploded in size
while the mesh remained the same.

Also, while exploring the net for a proper GR2 viewer editor, I stumbled upon this GR2 editor for SH5, it is open source so perhaps someone in these forums could do something with it and adapt it to civ v.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=188290

Thank you for all your help.

Edit: I got it to align correctly using the swordsman bone from civ v without the weapons but the armature hovers over the mesh as depicted here

 

[Nomad or What]

I am trying to do a custom mesh and bone for a hero mod I was planning to release but it comes out in gr2 the skeleton upright while the model mesh is facing down. I did ctrl A and in one instance my mesh exploded literally in Gr2.

The skeleton in one render exploded in size
while the mesh remained the same.

Also, while exploring the net for a proper GR2 viewer editor, I stumbled upon this GR2 editor for SH5, it is open source so perhaps someone in these forums could do something with it and adapt it to civ v.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=188290

Thank you for all your help.

Edit: I got it to align correctly using the swordsman bone from civ v without the weapons but the armature hovers over the mesh as depicted here

Have you confirmed that all mesh objects are parented (Ctrl-P -> Make Parent To | Armature | Don't Create Groups) to the armature? As far as Ctrl-A, sometimes your mesh object can go haywire when you do this because it may have unapplied modifiers on it; you will need to move the object's parent node into the correct position in Object mode and then move/rotate the mesh as necessary in Edit mode once that is done. then, Ctrl-A one more time to ensure that loc/rot/scale is applied correctly.

If this is your first attempt at converting a unit, you may want to try something easier like a simple rig so that you understand the concepts before you jump into full-on custom animation conversions. To this day I still slightly dread doing them, because every single time they are problematic in one way or another - and sometimes seemingly for no reason. Either way, please be detailed about your specific issue (screenshots help).

 

[Multruvite]

Here is how I think if you want to do custom animations even if they're kind of flaky could be made to work in CiV. Per instructions of other threads and old posts by many of you that I've searched through in Civ IV threads.

I base from Deliv's worm model and custom animation in Civ IV that was then imported to CiV , that the custom bones and animations could be successfully transferred from one game to another even if doesn't exactly work as intended,animation wise, it still would work for my intended purpose.

1.Correct me if I am wrong but I would have to animate and create the bones for my unit as if it was first intended for the previous game and then transferred over to CIV.



2.(or) Find an unit that is similar to the animations that I want and transfer the bones from it to my mesh. Edit out the unwanted bones and animations to reflect what I want to do( there are several tutorials on how to do this in the Civ IV tutorial pages, although many of them are vague esp. when they are related to nifskope.) I guess some assume you're already an expert on that subject matter and skip details or you would have to go from one tutorial to another, ie they're not centralized.


4. Then taking the KF files from that unit edit out the bones that are not wanted and then modify the animations to reflect what you want.

5. Finally using the lion Import's tutorial found in this forum to attempt to make nice with CiV

6. I did see a thread from Sabioleth's (sp.?) Earth magic unit, that has an idle similar with what I want but with extra bones for the cape it uses. He did say he made some units with imported animations from another game and adapted it to his unit. Could this be also done with animations that use Kf from other game? Adapt them to a Civ IV bones and discard the animations that wouldn't be compatible?



Yeah it's going to be crazy but I believe with the guidance of experts such as yourselves and metric tons of patience it can be done.

Thank you for all your time.

 

[Nomad or What]

Here is how I think if you want to do custom animations even if they're kind of flaky could be made to work in CiV. Per instructions of other threads and old posts by many of you that I've searched through in Civ IV threads.

I base from Deliv's worm model and custom animation in Civ IV that was then imported to CiV , that the custom bones and animations could be successfully transferred from one game to another even if doesn't exactly work as intended,animation wise, it still would work for my intended purpose.

1.Correct me if I am wrong but I would have to animate and create the bones for my unit as if it was first intended for the previous game and then transferred over to CIV.



2.(or) Find an unit that is similar to the animations that I want and transfer the bones from it to my mesh. Edit out the unwanted bones and animations to reflect what I want to do( there are several tutorials on how to do this in the Civ IV tutorial pages, although many of them are vague esp. when they are related to nifskope.) I guess some assume you're already an expert on that subject matter and skip details or you would have to go from one tutorial to another, ie they're not centralized.


4. Then taking the KF files from that unit edit out the bones that are not wanted and then modify the animations to reflect what you want.

5. Finally using the lion Import's tutorial found in this forum to attempt to make nice with CiV

6. I did see a thread from Sabioleth's (sp.?) Earth magic unit, that has an idle similar with what I want but with extra bones for the cape it uses. He did say he made some units with imported animations from another game and adapted it to his unit. Could this be also done with animations that use Kf from other game? Adapt them to a Civ IV bones and discard the animations that wouldn't be compatible?



Yeah it's going to be crazy but I believe with the guidance of experts such as yourselves and metric tons of patience it can be done.

Thank you for all your time.

Civ IV has nothing to do with CiV; you won't want to base anything upon it at all. You need to study how CiV animations work and base your custom animations to make those transitions accordingly. Civ IV custom animation conversions almost never look right because CiV animates in a completely different way, using datagraphs and transitions. A typical CiV unit has many more animations than a typical Civ IV unit did because of these transition animations (such as IdleA to IdleB, RunChrg to CityAttack, etc.). Datagraphs "randomize" actions by plotting a desired output from available inputs, so for example when you R-Click to attack an adjacent unit with a unit that has been defined with three separate attack animations then the DataGraph randomly chooses one and sequences it through a series of animations back to a base animation (usually idle). If you are building a unit from scratch animations it will be detrimental to you to try to make them behave like Civ IV animations. As I said before, you need to study the .fxsxml and .ftsxml files to figure out how to time your animations to fit the sounds and effects you wish to use, and if you don't want your animation transitions to be clunky then you need to build transition animations to match the DataGraphs.

EDIT: And another couple of things worth mentioning is that if you borrow Civ IV animations from various units you have to make sure that the bone names don't change. All bones in animations must match the names of the base model .gr2. If bones exist that you don't need, you don't necessarily need to delete them; just don't add any mesh vertices to those bones and they won't do anything (bones without mesh move invisibly).

 

[Multruvite]

I said this because I thought you couldn't make animations from scratch and directly implement them into CiV. That the most available method of creating units that have no animations that natively CiV has was with this method.(Making it as if it was for the previous game then convert it to a usable format by the newer game modifying entries etc.

So from what I gather I can make my custom animations, make sure they use the bones from a pre existing CiV armatures then import them into the game?

Because from what I can gather since CiV uses a file structure for the anims that is encrypted directly converting it to this format is nigh impossible without the source code that Firaxis wouldn't provide. For modifying animations and the like or having tools to bring them in.

Edit: Sorry if this seems like a noob question but what does it mean that I need to assign two vertex groups per bone and attach a vertex group to a dummy bone to get it to display correctly in gr2.


Edit 2 : Per your instructions I got it to render in GRviewer with the bone and mesh aligned in the same angle don't know if this is good the y axis is facing up and the mesh and bones are facing the same downward position Plus the tips of my meshe's feet becomes distorted at the feet towards the center, and bones exist for both the camera and the lamp which I don't know if it's normal. Yes I already discarded that bone belonging to any vertex groups I took care of that but I think somehow it's still pulling them there, maybe I need to re weigh my mesh to the lower bones.
IE so my armature doesnt float off into space.

 

[Nomad or What]

I said this because I thought you couldn't make animations from scratch and directly implement them into CiV. That the most available method of creating units that have no animations that natively CiV has was with this method.(Making it as if it was for the previous game then convert it to a usable format by the newer game modifying entries etc.

So from what I gather I can make my custom animations, make sure they use the bones from a pre existing CiV armatures then import them into the game?

Because from what I can gather since CiV uses a file structure for the anims that is encrypted directly converting it to this format is nigh impossible without the source code that Firaxis wouldn't provide. For modifying animations and the like or having tools to bring them in.

Edit: Sorry if this seems like a noob question but what does it mean that I need to assign two vertex groups per bone and attach a vertex group to a dummy bone to get it to display correctly in gr2.


Edit 2 : Per your instructions I got it to render in GRviewer with the bone and mesh aligned in the same angle don't know if this is good the y axis is facing up and the mesh and bones are facing the same downward position Plus the tips of my meshe's feet becomes distorted at the feet towards the center, and bones exist for both the camera and the lamp which I don't know if it's normal. Yes I already discarded that bone belonging to any vertex groups I took care of that but I think somehow it's still pulling them there, maybe I need to re weigh my mesh to the lower bones.
IE so my armature doesnt float off into space.

You certainly can make animations from scratch, and you can make the bones anything you want as well. Borrowing mesh, bones, and anims is just easier, that's all. It is probably best to use a base CiV bone structure because you will eliminate a lot of potential problems that way.

Concerning animations, you can certainly create your own from scratch and export them to .fbx to convert into .gr2 anims w/NexusBuddy as this tutorial demonstrates. The real issue is that we can't rip the existing animations from CiV to inspect or modify them, so we have to solve how the animations operate by studying their .fxsxml and .ftsxml files.

Where did you read that you need to assign two vertex groups per bone? You should create a vertex group for every bone you wish to use and it must have the same name as the bone. You don't need to create a vertex group to a "dummy bone" - vertex groups are for mesh objects and how they relate to the bones. So unless you plan to have mesh deformed by the dummy bone somehow there is no need to ever do this. You need to have every vertex of your mesh(es) assigned to at least one vertex group, however, or you will receive an error when exporting to .br2. Maybe you read that you should always have a "dummy" root bone?

Delete the camera and the lamp; you will never need them unless you are creating your own textures within Blender. You are probably correct about why your mesh is deforming; check your vertex assignments for every vertex group and remove the vertices from groups where they don't belong (but make sure that every vertex is still assigned to at least one vertex group).

 

[Multruvite]

Nomad you're awesome!

Thanks for all the help.

Now I think I can get to the other part which is. The animation

But seriously from the looks of it it's finally coming together.

 

[Deliverator]

Where did you read that you need to assign two vertex groups per bone? You should create a vertex group for every bone you wish to use and it must have the same name as the bone. You don't need to create vertex group to a "dummy bone" - vertex groups are for mesh objects and how they relate to the bones. So unless you plan to have mesh deformed by the dummy bone somehow there is no need to ever do this. You need to have every vertex of your mesh(es) assigned to at least one vertex group, however, or you will receive an error when exporting to .br2. Maybe you read that you should always have a "dummy" root bone?

I seem to remember that you need to have a minimum of two vertex groups (called Bone Bindings in Granny Viewer) per mesh? In that case creating an unanimated dummy root bone and a vertex group for it can be a workaround for that restriction. Still that should only apply when you have a mesh animated by a single bone such as a hand weapon - with any humanoid character mesh you will have more than two vertex groups for the mesh anyway.

 

[Nomad or What]

I seem to remember that you need to have a minimum of two vertex groups (called Bone Bindings in Granny Viewer) per mesh? In that case creating an unanimated dummy root bone and a vertex group for it can be a workaround for that restriction. Still that should only apply when you have a mesh animated by a single bone such as a hand weapon - with any humanoid character mesh you will have more than two vertex groups for the mesh anyway.

Yes, you are absolutely right; every individual mesh needs to have at least 2 vertex group assignments, precisely as you just mentioned. I have done this several times when I wanted to add a weapon to a base mesh but didn't want the weapon to be joined to another mesh. I would make the entire weapon part of the necessary group (e.g. BONE_SWORD) and then duplicate a small part of the weapon's mesh, bury it inside the hand so it wouldn't be visible, and make it part of BaseHumanRPalm (or whichever name was given for the right palm). That would meet the requirement of 2 vertex groups and would guarantee that it didn't deform improperly.

 

[bouncymischa]

I would make the entire weapon part of the necessary group (e.g. BONE_SWORD) and then duplicate a small part of the weapon's mesh, bury it inside the hand so it wouldn't be visible, and make it part of BaseHumanRPalm (or whichever name was given for the right palm). That would meet the requirement of 2 vertex groups and would guarantee that it didn't deform improperly.

That's an interesting trick right there... I've been having some trouble with meshes that only want a single vertex group (for example, a helmet that only wants to be part of the head, or a ship hull for simpler boat armatures like the Caravel). I hadn't thought of just duplicating some small part and hiding it somewhere to get around the restriction...

 

[Multruvite]

So here is what I did to get my model to display correctly in Gr2 viewer

1. I opened my model up in blender 2.70
2. Created an armature lined it up correctly to the mesh and used the rigify script. Armature modifier on the mesh etc.
3.Edited some of the weights to better tighten up the armature to the mesh and make it more precise,even though the rigify script does a pretty good job.
4. Saved in 2.70 with the legacy box ticked on.
5 Opened the file up in 2.49 made sure nothing was out of alignment and everything transferred correctly, it did.
6. Converted to .fbx with the first conversion per this tutorial.
7. Saw that everything was perfectly aligned, at least I hope it was the y axis was going ^ that way, and my mesh and skeleton where parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the y axis.
8. The bones and mesh were perfectly aligned, haven't gotten around to animations yet. It is pending .

Edit: Don't know if this is transferred over but I have the shapes option ticked on the save but supposedly helps so your mesh doesn't lose volume while you're manipulating the bones and animating.

This is just me messing around with the poser in .49.

 

[Multruvite]

]I got it to animate a simple one in 2.49 but for some reason my dude is on a headstand twirling while he does the animation.

I don't think it is normal . Also, I discovered that while you're in the 2.49 environment messing with how the bones interact with vertices, changing from vertex group to envelopes or unticking one of them on conversion really messes things up. Meaning if you interact with anything that is related to how the mesh and armature interact, destroys the mesh upon conversion.

I will try to experiment with doing the animations in 2.70 then opening them and exporting them in 2.49.





Edit: Ok I figured out how to get the mesh to play nice with the animation and how it is portrayed in gr2.

Thanks to the internet mostly but here it goes. What you do is from front view your parent the mesh and rig to a empty object then since the empty object will be the anchor if you wil of the mesh and bone you you need to turn it on the X axis back 90 degrees so its aligned the same way it's supposed to be portrayed, like the tutorial from Deliv on how to re import a CiV V unit back to the game. The difference is this empty object, when you're animating and you need to undo all your movements, the top view will your forward forward view and it won't snap back to an upright position. As the armature and mesh won't go beyond the boundaries of the empty object parent. So now it's playing nice.

It may or not help to have in .49 in the anim settings have your armature and bones set to UP=y so that it maintains the proper alignment. I am having an issue that the animation is going up and down all over the place in gr2. But it maintains the proper alignment it is upright finally both the mesh and skeleton and the short animation I made.

Edit 3: I got a small animation going on in Gr2 still weird that it randomly twitches 90 degrees right but I'll figure it out. Anyhow, here's a screeny of my first anim progress.

 

[Multruvite]

Quick question do I have to export each anim file independent of the mesh or can it be done like the old mod buddy that that both the anim and mesh in the .fbx file. Because when I try to export them separately. I mean an fbx without an animation sequence the scene comes back blank. While when I export them with both the initial scene has both the mesh and model as above.

Also before getting the fbx back to the nexus should I apply a texturemap on my mesh, because I tried to import it into the old nexus importer and it came back blank.

Thanks.

 

[Nomad or What]

Quick question do I have to export each anim file independent of the mesh or can it be done like the old mod buddy that that both the anim and mesh in the .fbx file. Because when I try to export them separately. I mean an fbx without an animation sequence the scene comes back blank. While when I export them with both the initial scene has both the mesh and model as above.

Also before getting the fbx back to the nexus should I apply a texturemap on my mesh, because I tried to import it into the old nexus importer and it came back blank.

Thanks.

In Blender, export the animation with the mesh as an .fbx, but the .fbx isn't really for mesh data; in NexusBuddy you will open the .fbx and then Save Animation.

Ultimately, any base mesh you create with the same bones can use these animations (which is why the most common way to do conversions is to rig to existing CiV animations).

You will need an .fxsxml file configured for your base model and anims before you will be able to view it in Nexus.

 

[Multruvite]

I did that already basically followed the instructions. As in this page like I was converting a civ iv unit, without going through the nif and kf files stuff.

Right now my animation is upright and so is my mesh. Though I noticed if I tweak anything in the 2.49 environment be it textures or what ever on the export it does all sort of weird things, like mis aligned models etc.

The model is complete like I said and the animations in granny viewer are in the correct orientation. but in the SDK viewer everything is shooting off errors, including my gr2 mesh,meaning nothing shows up in the viewer, even though the SDK's own exporter when it does its GR2 thing comes back normal. Why I thought from the beginning that making the unit as if it was for civ IV would've probably yielded better results, than trying to convert my anims and bones directly to Civ V. But I digress, when I send it to the civ importer meaning the fxsxml viewer says there's errors in the code.

I guess if it's there's only one error in the code it doesn't display correctly?

Also do I need to have my textures on the mesh before it displays properly on the 3d viewer or is that not necessary? Meaning even if it has no textures it should display is what I am asking.

As you see in my pictures the viewer comes up with just thebone names.

while the validate state graph shows up a bunch of errors. Don't know if since I have the same animation over and over totest it out it is giving me errors, or do I have to specify some sort of code within the animation
so it shows up properly. also u can see in granny my anims are in the full upright position .

No textures yet. but if you want I can copy my fxsxml code which is just like the lion one except I replaced everything that says lion with my own gr2 model.

PS Yes I did that there's a .fbx with no animations just the skeleton and model.

the subsequent ones are just the animations, saved as "anim" and I tested them in granny and they came out fine.

Edit1: Idk if I have to put that at the end or if I have to define what the animation does in the nexus viewer before I export the anim.gr2 file but here's the code for the fxsxml. I just replaced the lion for my unit, then named my animation files accordingly.

Edit 3: I got it to work in the old nexus and it renders fine just the animations don't work, maybe I made them too short. But at least for now. I know it will render in the game. so here it is in the 3d viewer without any textures yet. Don't know if those red spots are the way they should.

Edit 4 : When I changed the animation file so it had an association with my root bone ( don't know if I need an extra step for it to be seen and act accordingly)
then selected the animation state the mesh stayed flat, as soon as I changed it back in the fxsxml as the way we we see in my post the unit "stood up" as soon as I selected machine state. At least it seems the 3d viewer knows there's an animation there. Do I perhaps have to re name the vertex groups or my bone assignments in blender? Here's the zip file with my blender file if the original animation is needed I can also comply.




I beg your pardon if my questions seem redundant , as I haven't been involved with the mod community before.

Edit 5: Never mind! I got it to work I didn't read the part where it said you had to play the animation from the animation graphs. I tested with the default lion from this tutorial and when it worked with the lion. I switched to my mesh and fsx file and Presto! He is there hovering happily!

So now I need to skin it with the proper dxt5 and mipmaps dds. Finish my animations and I think we're good to go.

 

[Nomad or What]

BTW, from your original post:

Updated 11th February 2014
2. Next import lion.nif into Blender with the following settings (you can ignore the Scale Correction setting - this was for an earlier version of the tutorial):

Scale Correction is actually absolutely essential if you intend to use custom effects. If you do not originally import the .nif and animations using scaling proportional to a CiV unit then the effects will not appear correctly. CiV base human scale is roughly 0.14 when defined in the XML "<scale>" parameter, so if it is necessary to scale your custom unit to 1.4 (for example) in order to appear the proper size in the game, then your effects (city attacks, etc.) will be 10x their original size as well. The only way I have found to overcome this is to use proper scale correction when originally importing the .nif so that the scale is proportional to a base human model for the intended effects.

I had a terrible time importing the Bloodthirster unit from Civ IV to CiV because it was rife with all sorts of anomalies that prevented it from working properly. After this exhaustive trial and error I wrote a brief rundown of how I managed to convert it and referenced in the Bloodthirster thread. I will repeat it in the below spoiler for convenience:

Spoiler :

STEP I: Cleaning up the mesh
1. Import original .nif file (no anims) at scale 1.0 in a blank .blend file
2. Clean the mesh and vertex group assignments in a .blend (every vertex is assigned to a group, no more than 32 groups per mesh, etc.)
3. Delete the bones and all modifiers (nothing left but mesh and materials)
4. Save mesh data as a .blend file to import later

STEP II: Cleaning up the bones and exporting a clean .nif
1. Import original .nif file (no anims) at scale 1.0 in a blank .blend file (again)
2. Delete all mesh
3. Delete all non-object bones (effects, sound, cameras, etc. that are commonly used in other games, but are useless in CiV because they are defined elsewhere)
4. Object copy/paste clean mesh (should already have correct vertex group assignments from previous cleanup)
5. CTRL+A | Apply Scale and Rotation to object data for all objects
6. CTRL+P | Parent Armature to bones for all mesh objects
7. Save file as .nif to be used as a clean import

STEP III: Create the base files at proper scale correction (CiV human scale)
1. Create a new .blend file and stretch the default cube so that it's roughly the same size as a human warrior (approximately 120h x 60w x 40d, it doesn't need to be very precise as it is solely for reference)
2. Import newly-cleaned .nif file (no anims) at 1.0 into your existing .blend file with cube
3. Scale the .nif in object mode until it is the same size as the cube (particularly in height) and record the value that the .nif needed to be scaled in order to match the size of the cube
4. Once you have recorded the scale, close the .blend file
5. Import newly-cleaned .nif file (no anims) in a blank .blend file at a scale correction that is INVERSE of your recorded scale value (so if you had to scale the .nif 20x to match the cube you will now use a scale correction of 1/20 or 0.05 when importing the .nif). The imported .nif should be roughly 120 units high (base human scale)

IMPORTANT!!!: ALL .nifs should be imported to a scale correction matching base human scale (even monstrous units) because CiV effects scale based upon human scale, which is roughly 0.14 in the ArtDefines. If you make your final unit larger than 0.14 in the ArtDefines (like 0.20 for the Bloodthirster unit) then your effects will still scale properly if imported at base human scale originally. Effects in the game are scaled in the ArtDefines, not here!

6. Save the file as a .blend and export to .br2, .fbx. and .nif to be used for all animations
7. Create .gr2 from .fbx w/ .br2 overwrite and ensure that it appears properly in Granny Viewer

STEP IV: Creating the animations
1. In a blank .blend file, import the newly-scaled .nif file with the desired KeyFrame animation at the proper scale correction you just used to create the .nif (e.g., 0.05 or whatever)
2. Once imported, ensure that it is at proper scale and play the animation to ensure it moves properly. If it doesn't then the .nif probably has other issues that I will not discuss here
3. If it does, try to export it as an .fbx with the -90 rotation enabled
4. Create the .gr2 animation and apply it to the base .gr2 you just created. If it rotates back 90 (Blue "Z" axis horizontal and Green "Y" axis vertical) and animates properly then repeat for all animations
5. If the .gr2 animation DOESN'T animate properly or rotate back as it should, you will need to perform manual rotations for every animation before exporting. Repeat steps 1+2 then proceed to the following step
6. If your animation is correct in Blender but didn't export to .fbx properly you will need to manually rotate the animation before exporting
7. Ensure that your 3D Cursor is set to the origin point (0,0,0) and that your Rot/Scale Pivot is set to 3D Cursor
8. Go to View (NumPad) 3 (green "Y" axis visibly horizontal and blue "Z" axis vertical)
9. Select the bone object and switch to EDIT mode
10. Select all and rotate the bones in EDIT mode -90 degrees (Quick Keys: A, R, X, -90, Enter) and return to OBJECT mode. The mesh will most likely be wickedly deformed; that is OK
11. For each mesh object, select it, go to EDIT mode, select all and rotate -90 degrees just as you did with the bones
12. Once complete, your objects should all appear rotated in OBJECT mode 90 degrees backwards so that they appear to be lying on their back
13. Test the animation and ensure that it still animates properly. If it doesn't then the .nif has problems that I will not discuss here
14. If it does, export the animation to .fbx WITHOUT -90 Rotation enabled
15. Create the .gr2 animation and apply it to the base .gr2. It should now rotate back 90 (Blue "Z" axis horizontal and Green "Y" axis vertical) and animate properly. If so, then repeat for all animations as usual.

 

[Deliverator]

Thanks Nomad. I've updated the OP with a link to this information.

I found this out when I was converting the Flying Dragon recently. It is disappointing that there's no way to scale/edit the visual effects via a mod.

 

[Nomad or What]

Thanks Nomad. I've updated the OP with a link to this information.

I found this out when I was converting the Flying Dragon recently. It is disappointing that there's no way to scale/edit the visual effects via a mod.

I agree; I still have to revisit many of the earlier units that were imported at the wrong scale, find the source material (.nif/.kf files), and essentially re-create the unit from scratch at proper scale correction. I suppose I should be thankful that there are only about a dozen or so lol!

BTW, the flying dragon and dinosaur series are awesome - thank you very much!

 

[Deliverator]

I agree; I still have to revisit many of the earlier units that were imported at the wrong scale, find the source material (.nif/.kf files), and essentially re-create the unit from scratch at proper scale correction. I suppose I should be thankful that there are only about a dozen or so lol!

You'll be pleased to hear that I've got a workaround for decoupling the scaling of units from scaling of effects! I've added a new feature to Nexus Buddy 2 that will insert an additional scaling bone into the skeleton of a GR2 model. This allows you to scale the model independently of the effects. So you can, for example, increase the size of the unit effects using the <Scale> in the Art Define xml, and offset that increase adding a scaling bone that reduces the model size by a proportionate amount.

The only thing that is different between these two fiery T-Rexs is the scale of the scaling bone in the model .gr2 and the <Scale> value in the Art Define xml. The one the left has model scaled to 0.14 and <Scale>1.05</Scale> in the Art Defines; the one on the right has the model scaled to 0.7 and <Scale>0.21428</Scale> in the Art Defines. The result is that the visual effects for the unit are rescaled without affecting anything else.



This should save us time in getting effects matching the units scale!

 

[DigoBlaze12]

Thanks for the support!