3D Leader Test (issues)

Ekmek · Feb 9, 2013

So I got a 3D leaderhead model to show up. Don't mind that its Mansa Musa from Civ4 backwards thats minor. The bigger issue is that I cant get the weird lighting off of him.

This was done playing with the DLC files so I'm not sure it loads with a mod. I'm really look for help from those that know nexusbuddy and grannymaterialhacker well:

* so I export an FBX from blender I have to make sure its "human" not "blended_root" or it won't show
* the game won't display the model unless it has a leader's materials, if its using unit which is the default for nexus buddy it won't show.
* I can't make leader materials with nexus buddy I have to use the older GrannyMaterialHacker that Lemmy made
* I make leader materials by copying the materials using Lemmy's GrannyMaterialHacker (for reskinning) but when I do it I am only using one material, the first one and that has two materials assigned "LeaderLighting" and "LeaderSkin". In his program leaderskin has a texture associated with it that I can change the sref but I cant do anything with the diff file (cant delete or asign a texture to it). All of the materials (skin, cloth, hair, etc) get copied over to my model and I cant get rid of them because the GMH says unbind it to the mesh but it does nothing.
* Nexus import asset is broke. You cant load anything to edit materials. this was my hope at fixing lighting but you cant do anything as is. I went to this after using Lemmy's tools.
* the biggest issue is the lighting/diffuse. If I can find some way to not use it or find a leader that doesn't use it (checked most without any luck) I probably can get a decent nonshader Civ4 leaderhead in and animate it.
* Did Lemmy give the soure code to his nexus stuff to anyone????

cool3a2 · Feb 9, 2013

Good to see that you still didn't give it up, Ekmek! Unfortunately, I can't help you practically, but maybe some moral support may help

Hope you get it working, so you could create an István leaderhead for me one day :goodjob:

Rob (R8XFT) · Feb 9, 2013

Likewise; I'm sorry that I don't have the technical skills to help but really wish you well with it.

Bonci · Feb 9, 2013

I know that ww2commander had a similar problem with his ww2 units somewhere in this thread and then he fixed it!

Maybe you can ask him

Jabberwockxeno · Feb 9, 2013

I'm afraid I can't help with the importing and use of the modtools, but I can help with the modelling.

Ekmek · Feb 11, 2013

Jabberwockxeno said:
I'm afraid I can't help with the importing and use of the modtools, but I can help with the modelling.

what do you use?

Ekmek · Feb 13, 2013

Well I think I exhausted everything and I'm stuck but here's my notes in case some gets a better idea

BLENDER
* Imported nif
* resized nif.
* joined and baked all objects (well with musa you don't have to)
* has only one material exported to fbx
* also exported as fbx another version with two meshes
* also exported a version where I joined the two meshes with different materials to have multiple materials (you'll see why later)

NEXUSBUDDY
* Imported as "create unit" thats the only option.
* tried various options
* tried to switch to leader materials but the leader option doesn't create the submaps to a material that GrannyHacker does when it copies over a leader materials
* bottomline: you cant make a working gr2 with nexus buddy. You can use any material you want - unit, leader - but it won't show and often crashes the game. to get it into you need to use GrannyMaterialHackerV2

GRANNYHACKERV2
* Select a firaxis leader as source; pick your GR2 as 'My GR2'
* you only have one material but Granny hacker will copy all of them over even if you try to unbind. Bind and unbind appears to do nothing.
*The new GR2 you make here will show in game (if you put it in DLC folder, I didn't bother with a mod) BUT it appears to use the first material in the firaxis gr2.
* you can only change the sref material in source gr2 materials which means you just change the gloss and not the real texture.
* this means that in the case of TEETH or worse eye glass you basically get thattexture and then your DIFF Skin.dds comes over it. In my screenshot it looks like gloss on the skin but I think its actually the opposite.
* unfortunately you cant delete any source materials and so far all the leaders I checked don't start with the one you need (usually skin), its usually sword, teeth, eye glass. All that look crazy.
* I tried an fbx with multiple materials and NEXUSBUDDY will export it (but it won't show in granny viewer) and looks like its broken, Trying to GrannyMateialHacker on that one doesn't work. So my attempt to have a mesh with multiple materials or multiple meshes with multiple materials and hoping they would one to one match (so I can get to the skin material) failed.

Bottomline - you can get a GR2 in. -> you have to export a fbx of a single mesh like units, it can have a civ4 skeleton, then you have to convert it to a gr2 in nexusbuddy. then using grannyhacker you have to give it leadermaterials for it to show in game although the materials are messed up.

We are SO close to get leaders in but our tools don't really let us edit materials to do it! If I had the functionality to really bind or unbind or just copy over one leadermaterial I'm sure I could get a playable 3D leader in.

Well thats what I found maybe I'm missing something? Maybe someone can crack the code?

Jabberwockxeno · Feb 15, 2013

Well, can you get different animations to play based on their disposition?

I think that'd be the biggest obstacle.

Ekmek · Feb 15, 2013

I think animations will play fine. but if we use civ4 as a base there will be a lot of repeats.

I still havent found a way around the lighting/texture issue.

Jabberwockxeno · Feb 15, 2013

Ekmek said:
I think animations will play fine. but if we use civ4 as a base there will be a lot of repeats.

I still havent found a way around the lighting/texture issue.

Well, I would focus on the animations.

You said we can reuse in game leader animation materials, right? We can just do that, and make sure we keep in mind we don't have control over lighting.

Deliverator · May 13, 2013

Ekmek said:
The bigger issue is that I cant get the weird lighting off of him.

The weird lighting could be fixed if you could assign your own textures to the material I think.

For units I made the following notes on what the different textures do:

Diffuse (Archer_DIFF.dds) = The basic skin
Environment Dull (Environment_Steel_Dull_32.dds) = The image that appears in shiny but a more blurred dark version
Environment Sharp (Environment_Steel_Sharp_64.dds) = The image that appears in shiny surfaces
Irradiance (CubeLight_Generic_32.dds) = Has something to do with how the model is lit from within? Not sure.
Specular (Archer_SREF.dds) = Controls which parts of the image are more or less shiny

You can remove all reflections by making a 4x4 black square DDS (the smallest a DDS can be) and using it for the Environment Dull, Environment Sharp and Specular textures. Then there will definitely be zero reflections showing on the unit. The Irradiance layer seems to control the brightness of the unit as far as I've worked out. With a 4x4 white square as the Irradiance texture the model appears bright in 3D Viewer but I haven't checked the effect in the game engine.

Between the source code for Material Hacker and the two versions of Nexus Buddy it ought to be possible to include Leaderhead material support in a new version of Nexus Buddy.

Ekmek · May 13, 2013

I think the issue with material hacker was that only SREF file could be replaced. So the gloss look I'm getting is from the previous diff. But my mansu Musa Diff 9which I used to replace the SREF) is what gave it the original colors.

I'm going to see if a building shader worked. I didn't think about it before (I tried leader and unit) when using nexus buddy. But if I get the materials in then it will be possible to have civ4 leaders in with civ4 animations.

I will note that this was done placing the files in the DLC folder and not a mod. So there may be that hurdle of trying to get the art called in the mod too.

Nutty · May 13, 2013

Ekmek said:
I think the issue with material hacker was that only SREF file could be replaced. So the gloss look I'm getting is from the previous diff.

Maybe you just mistyped, but to be clear, the sref is the gloss layer.

Deliverator · May 16, 2013

I'm progressing towards a new version of Nexus Buddy that will support Leaderhead materials. It ought to be relatively simple to add the ability to edit these to the tool.

The Shader types I've discovered so far are:
Leader
Leader_Skin
Leader_Glass
Leader_Transparency
Leader_Hair
Leader_Opaque_Hair
Leader_Fur
Leader_Fur_Fin

Here is the output I've generated for the Catherine materials:

Spoiler :

Deliverator · May 16, 2013

Ekmek, would you mind uploading your Mansa Musa files so that I could test with them?

Ekmek · May 17, 2013

Here is my MUSA file.

What I did was create a Mali folder under the DLC Expansion folder. I then changed a leader's scene file to point to my MUSA.fxsxml ( thats in the zip) instead of the regular leader.fxsxml

Ekmek · May 17, 2013

I did do a test trying the buildingshader in NexusBuddy and it didn't show but GrannyHacker still made it show by copying a leader skin. I hope you crack the code!

Deliverator · May 20, 2013

I've got Leaderhead textures working for most of the Leader shaders now. I'll upload a beta Nexus Buddy 2.0 soon so that you can try it out.

Deliverator · May 20, 2013

Link to Nexus Buddy 2 beta 2.

Ekmek · May 20, 2013

Whoa! Thanks!

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