CivNexus6 1.3.3

CivNexus6 is a tool for importing/exporting .fgx files for making custom Civilization 6 graphics. (In other words, this is Nexus Buddy 2 updated to work with Civilization 6.)

The Blender scripts for Nexus Buddy 2 also work with CivNexus6.

Screenshot



Installation
In order to run CivNexus6 you need to perform the following steps:
1) Create a folder called "Dummy" somewhere on your hard drive. Within it create two folders one called "Assets" (plural) and one called "Resource" (singular).
2) Now using Regedit create an entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Firaxis\Tools called "ToolAssetPath". Set the value to the location of your Dummy directory. You will need to create the ..\Firaxis\Tools folder if it does not exist.
3) Now you should be able to run the CivNexus6 executable from wherever you have unzipped it.



For the texture conversion feature to work you need to have Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2017 installed.

https://www.itechtics.com/microsoft...inks/#Microsoft_Visual_C_Redistributable_2017


Features:


NB2/CN6 Export for Models and NA2 Export for Animations to get 3D art from Civ 6 into Blender

* .cn6/.nb2 export for models and .na2 export for animations which can be then be imported into Blender via the Blender scripts.

* New Import/Export format .cn6 can be used instead of the old .nb2/.br2 formats. Old formats can still be used via a radio button.

The .cn6 is a development of the .br2 format with the following improvements to Blender Import/Export scripts and CivNexus6 Import/Export:
1) Support for up to 3 UV layers per mesh - used for Emissive layer (night lights) on Buildings etc.
2) Support for up to 8 Bone Indexes and Weights per vertex (up from 4 in Civ 5).
3) Support for Materials Import/Export (names only).
4) Support for multiple Triangle Groups per mesh each with their own Material assignments common for various entities in Civ 6.
5) It turns at that until now that Blender has always been recalculating it's own Normals for each vertex rather than using the custom ones from the .nb2 file. This explains why some meshes didn't look as smooth when imported to Blender as the original .fgx does in FGX viewer. Since Blender now supports custom normal import I can now import vertex normals properly. Also the original normals, binormals and tangents are preserved for export as far as possible using a dummy vertex group called VERTEX_KEYS. If you want to force Blender to recalculate vertex normals, binormals and tangents then you can just delete the VERTEX_KEYS Vertex Group for the mesh.

* Materials are now assigned at the level of a Meshes Triangle Groups rather than at Mesh level which is a proper representation of the internal .fgx Granny structure. Use the Edit Mesh Material Bindings tabs to switch assignments and to rename Meshs. Use the Edit Materials tab to Add or Remove Materials and rename Materials.

* Import/Overwrite Meshes can now use 3 Mesh Vertex Formats:
1) Bone Bindings, 1 UV (layer): used for Units, Leaders & anything animated.
2) No Bone Bindings, 2 UV (layers): used for Static objects such as Unit weapons and shields.
3) No Bone Bindings, 3 UV (layers) : used for Improvements, etc that have an Emissive map.

* Fixed Export for models that use Indices rather than Indices16 (e.g. LEAD_AZTE_Montezuma.fgx)


BR2/CN6 Import and Overwrite for customized models and meshes to get 3D art from Blender into Civ 6

To use it first export your rigged model from Blender via the .br2/.cn6 scripts.

Note: I would recommend exporting from Blender 2.7x even if you are working in Blender 2.49 as Blender 2.7x exports binormals and tangents for vertices which should make for smoother looking meshes.

Then you have two options:
1) Use "Open" to load both skeleton and mesh data from the .br2 /.cn6 file.
2) Make a copy of the vanilla .fgx model that you have used for your base and use "Open" to open it. Now you can use "Overwrite" to just overwrite the meshes with the mesh data from your .br2/.cn6 file leaving skeleton untouched.

After you do either of these you should immediately use "Save" to save the .fgx for stability reasons.

Material Support

You can add, remove and rename Materials and reassign the Material Bindings for meshes. Only the name of the Materials matters - the rest of the work is done by the Asset Cooker based on the .ast and .mtl files in your Modbuddy project.

Generate XML metadata for Modbuddy

"Create GeometrySet .xml for .ast" can be used to autogenerate the <m_GeometrySet> entry in your .ast file for your .fgx model. Then all you need to do is hook up your Material name.

"Create Geometry/Animation (.geo/.anm) File" will now create a .geo if the current file is a Model and a .anm file if the current file is an Animation.

The class for .geo/.anm/GeometrySet export can be selected via the "Class" dropdown e.g. Unit, LandmarkModel, etc.

Support for migrating Civ 5/Civ Beyond Earth .gr2 models and animations to Civ 6

See here for a tutorial on converting units from Civ 5/CivBE to Civ 6.

Can now open Civ 5 .gr2 files - will immediately be resaved as .fgx files on load. Warning you will need to overwrite meshes from .br2/.cn6 before these files will work properly in Civ 6.

"Convert all .gr2 Files in Directory to .fgx/.anm" can be used to batch convert Civ 5 .gr2 animations files to the .fgx/.anm pairs needed for Civ 6. You will need to use Nexus Buddy 2 to batch re-save them all the .gr2 files first.

See here for a tutorial on how to get your modded .fgx files into the game.

To use it you will need to have the Windows registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Firaxis\Tools
ToolAssetPath set to any directory that contains two directories named "Assets" and "Resource".

.NET Framework 4 may also be required.