HOWTO: New Unit Creation

lemmy101 said:
buildings, resources, improvements etc are completely impossible at the mo
Click to expand...

Hi lemmy,
any chance to see a fbx->gr2 building converter, like the one you made for units?

There are lots of Civ4 wonders waiting to be imported into CiV !!! :lol:
 
lemmy101 said:
Will look into that at some point soon when I have some free time. :)
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Den9510 made some C4->C5 conversions using your previous "indiestone material maker".
Now for me it's a bit unclear how to run the resulting gr2 files into the game through a mod.
Should I manually edit the original 2k building artdefine xml, put it in the main folder of the mod, like I saw you did for unit xml artdefines?
 
For me that happens when there's a problem in the Art- or XML-files. If you re-export that faulting unit those files should update.

I've got a question also, have anyone noticed a pattern in the mesh-corruption? I've got some meshes that show a little problem and I can reimport them for a better result, then there are some that I just can't get right. It also drives me crazy that they seem to show similar corruption, like around the same vertices though not identical.

There was another problem with disappearing meshes when they only had one bone. Even if that mesh was suppose to just follow that one bone (e.g. a hat on a head) I had to add an additional bone that was linked to the head and weight them both at 50%. I'm hoping there's some similar pattern to the corrupted meshes but I can't see it.
 
Yeah, I figured out the Spearman thing, it was from not making the VFS True on the Art Defines that NexusBuddy creates.

I too have the issue you have with not being able to get an uncorrupted model ingame.

Problem I have is I am Importing models from another game via Max 2011 and then trying to convert it to fbx. Doesn't seem to matter which FBX export I use, they are all corrupted in Granny Viewer. If I export it to a format that I can import into Blender, I lose the animation, but the model is correct in the imported Blender version of the FBX.

I am not a modeling guy in any sense, I just have the basics and what I glean from tutorials.

Does anyone know of a file type that can save the animations and model together like FBX does that I can fully import into Blender?

Here is the max file I am using if anyone wants to play with it.
 

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  • SM Model.zip
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That's really cool, I'm also importing models from another game. Is that SM also from DoW2? How far have you come? I've done some Space Marines, Orks, Chaos and Tyranids. I wanted to make something cool to surprise with, but oh well :)

If it is indeed DoW2 what I've learnt is that some models just won't come clean, like the Ork Boyz with Shoota (which is really strange because it's the body-mesh, not the weapon that gets corrupted). However I was pleasantly surprised that the Tyranids work flawlessly. Then there are the Ork Nobz which have some weird skinning problem with their arms that I can't figure out.

Otherwise it's just a matter of reducing the number of bones in all meshes to 32, I like to weight all the fingers to the index-finger. It really does the trick and doesn't affect the model as the animations usually have the hands closed.

Anyway, nice to see someone else doing the Emperor's work! :)

Does anyone know of a file type that can save the animations and model together like FBX does that I can fully import into Blender?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean with this, but both DoW1 and DoW2 allows you to export meshes and animations to 3DS Max and probably Blender. What I do is that I save the animations to XAF-files, then import them after eachother in the scene before I export it to FBX. Then I keep a note where all the animations start and end for the parts in the tutorial in the OP.
 
I was pulling from DOW. DOW2 was giving me too many head aches so I gave up on it.

I am to the point now, where I have found settings to export the FBX from max in a manner that is working, at least in the Granny viewer, but they don't seem to show properly in game still. For Instance I did a predator tank, and it looks great in granny, but in-game it is only the tracks.

I have extracted all the DOW model and textures, I am just not getting any where with a proper conversion. :sad:
 
EaSyKiLL said:
I was pulling from DOW. DOW2 was giving me too many head aches so I gave up on it.

I am to the point now, where I have found settings to export the FBX from max in a manner that is working, at least in the Granny viewer, but they don't seem to show properly in game still. For Instance I did a predator tank, and it looks great in granny, but in-game it is only the tracks.

I have extracted all the DOW model and textures, I am just not getting any where with a proper conversion. :sad:
Click to expand...

I'm sure I can help with that. It's just like I've said about disappearing meshes. If you click a mesh that disappears in-game in the GrannyViewer you should see that it says "Rigid" instead of "skinned" in the mesh-list.

Then if you click one of those meshes in 3DS Max or Blender you should see that they only have the root-bone as well as another bone. What you need to do is add an additional bone, in some cases the models have helper-objects you can just add (must reskin completely i.e. remove skin-modifier and restart).

Then link that new bone (in 3DS Max there's a link-button in the upper left usually) with the already existing bone so it just mirrors it completely, then reapply te skin-modifier and weight both bones at 50%. This "should" be the same as one bone with 100% i.e. a rigid object but that's just one of many buggs with the GR2-files. It says skinned in GrannyViewer and the mesh appear in-game. I've done it houndreds of times, litterally I'm up to CivMod300 or so :)

There's just one thing, if I remember correctly I don't think the DoW1-units have skin-modifiers in the modifier-stack (so you might not see that one bone I mentioned). I'm also very new to 3D programs but I guess one way would be to "purge" the animations (somehow) and the reapply the skin-modifier. Then add the bones, edit envelope, select element (since it's a tank I'm guessing entire chassi), abs. weght etc. There're a lot of tutorials on this. The closest I got was saving the scene, then opening another and merging just the mesh.

P.S. The main reason I stopped doing the DoW1-ones were that some tanks-meshes seem to have several textures for the same mesh (for some reason) which I'm pretty sure won't work in Civ5. Have you figured that out? For example the Baneblade had some textures A, B and C which all seemed be of the chassi. There might be a need to split the meshes somehow, hopefully the texture-coordinates stay the same. Another thing is that I couldn't find team-textures and such for DoW1, in DoW2 they come in layers so you can just blend them the right way in Photoshop or GIMP. However it might be easy to just grey-out the colors and made some hue in some team-colors.
 
My problem with DOW2 was the Santos tools exporter was crashing when I tried to get animations extracted.

As for the DOW models, as far as I can tell, the multiple skins are for upgrades in game. The models all have the various weapons and addons in place, the game blanks out what is not being used at the time, or until it gets upgraded.

What I was doing was removing the extra accessories and making a single model the way I wanted, for example a Space marine with Heavy Bolter, like in the file I posted.

Ill try what you suggest to see if it works. On the Space Marine model every thing seems to have a skin applied and I was starting to do the couple things outlined on the bottom of the first page of this thread.
 
Gazebo said:
Bump.

Has anyone figured out how to make custom strategic view icons for units? I (and many others, it seems) cannot seem to figure this out, even though there appears to be a way (Modbuddy now has the 'Reload Strategic View' option.)

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Isn't it just the "unit flag icon"? Possibly in a range of sizes?
 
EaSyKiLL said:
Yeah, I figured out the Spearman thing, it was from not making the VFS True on the Art Defines that NexusBuddy creates.
Click to expand...
I have this problem too, but i cant resolve it.
EaSyKiLL, what files you making the VFS True?
 
Civ5ArtDefines_UnitMembers.xml, Civ5ArtDefines_Units.xml, and all the units files (*.fxsxml, *.gr2, *.dds)
 
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