3D Leader Test (issues)

[0Artur0]

Because none exist.

so far I've attempted two custom models but got stopped with blender errors.

Well, that's a bummer.
I have my doubts now. I know how to design, model and animate but I'm just starting to learn this modding business. I went through numerous tutorials and read almost every relevant post here on Civfanatics about modding. I don't anticipate any major problems with creating new civ except importing 3d leader was a bit of a mystery.. now I know why. Because it has never been done.
The thing is this takes a lot of time and my time is somehow limited so I'll have to think about it a bit more. My programming skills are intermediate at best so I don't think I'm going to discover anything new.
We'll see how things unfold.

Another random question.. if we have to use existing model animations does this include mouth movement?

 

[Deliverator]

so far I've attempted two custom models but got stopped with blender errors.

If you post your blend files then I can investigate. I take it the problem is with BR2 export?

 

[Ekmek]

Another random question.. if we have to use existing model animations does this include mouth movement?

Its like units. Basically what we can do is import the original civ5 model and its skeleton then make changes to it. So as long as you keep the mesh assigned to the bone that it was imported to it will move like the civ5 model.

It sounds like your new to the 3D modeling process I highly recomend you start small with a unit first. Leaders are crazy complex.

 

[Ekmek]

If you post your blend files then I can investigate. I take it the problem is with BR2 export?

Thanks Deliverator

Here's the blend. I was just trying to do something simple with Darius. To make him look more like Leugi's David Icon I was reshaping the crown and reshaping the beard. This included copying some vertices and reshaing them and placing them with the original mesh.

If I had to guess I think its either not matching the bones or adding vertices to an existing mesh is throwing it off.

Thanks

 

[0Artur0]

It sounds like your new to the 3D modeling process I highly recomend you start small with a unit first. Leaders are crazy complex.

You're probably right. I wanted to tackle the toughest thing first or at least get to know the situation. Since nobody successfully created a playable mod with custom 3d leader so far I guess I'll keep playing around with small stuff for now.

 

[Hashishim]

Ekmek, okay i know it was mentioned before but I it wasnt 100% clear since the latest developments made, I currently running the beta version of the SDK (Think it still is in beta) and I am running BNW, anyway what do I need (in terms of programs) and what steps do I follow so I can start experimenting with this aswell?

I know for civ iv although was a bit crappy and not so perfected via textures to make it more real but I managed to edit and customize a lot of the leaderheads, never put up half of them though.

And finally how can I test it on game(kind of dumb question but hope understand ) and one the model is modded, is it possible to change the background?

Another question i dont realy mind reusing the same animations, but as someone mentioned if it for e.g on a horse or sitting on a chair and then standing up will the modded leader head do the same action? will we have to find a replacement for the "chair" or the "horse"?

Isnt it possible to edit that part of the animation out of it? or we dont have the capability yet from the tools given?

Thanks in advance for the great work and when you answer the above

 

[Ekmek]

Ekmek, okay i know it was mentioned before but I it wasnt 100% clear since the latest developments made, I currently running the beta version of the SDK (Think it still is in beta) and I am running BNW, anyway what do I need (in terms of programs) and what steps do I follow so I can start experimenting with this aswell?

Deliverator has everything in the folder. you don't need the sdk anymore to use the app. the app lets you convert the gr2 into something exportable (nb2 file now). then you need blender.

if you are not taking parts from civ4 you only need blender 2.49 and deliverator's scripts

And finally how can I test it on game(kind of dumb question but hope understand ) and one the model is modded, is it possible to change the background?

so far I just added them to the DLC01 folder under a new name with Genghis. then I changed Genghis's scene.xml to reference the new fsxxml files and it showed in game. this included changing the background. I have a draft of a plain background (for reskinning basic backgrounds like civ4) in-work

Another question i dont realy mind reusing the same animations, but as someone mentioned if it for e.g on a horse or sitting on a chair and then standing up will the modded leader head do the same action? will we have to find a replacement for the "chair" or the "horse"?

Isnt it possible to edit that part of the animation out of it? or we dont have the capability yet from the tools given?

there isn't a way to edit animations. The way I'm approaching it a change to animations is to just rename files. so atleast the intros look different and ci5 has way, way more animations than civ4 so it'll be easy to vary it IMO.

One thing that could be in our favor is that it looks like animation looks at the camera. as you see in my selaisse example I used a different camera (Isabella's) and he's on the other side but still looking at the camera. so its possible that the animations lok at the camera so if we change Suleiman he may look from another position9i haven't tested it yet though).

but you can rig leaders to different animations AFAIK. So for example using an Alex model on Attila's animation I'm not sure what will happen. I haven't tested it but it could be an easy test that I'll do when I get a chance.

 

[Hashishim]

do you have the links to the folder?

Okay nevermind found it

Deliverator Blender Scripts V5 (35.7 KB)
Nexus Buddy 2.0 beta 6 (3.83 MB)
Granny Viewer 2.8.45.0]

Those ones are fine?

 

[Ekmek]

its in your steam civ5 folder under assets dlc

 

[black213]

Bump because I want to see progress!

 

[Deliverator]

Thanks Deliverator

Here's the blend. I was just trying to do something simple with Darius. To make him look more like Leugi's David Icon I was reshaping the crown and reshaping the beard. This included copying some vertices and reshaing them and placing them with the original mesh.

If I had to guess I think its either not matching the bones or adding vertices to an existing mesh is throwing it off.

Thanks

Sorry about the long delay in looking at this - I've been busy moving into a new place and travelling.

I was able to fix the BR2 export by changing line 332 in export_br2.py from:

filedata += '%i %i %i\n' % tuple(triangle)

to:

filedata += '%i %i %i\n' % (triangle[0],triangle[1],triangle[2])

Not sure exactly why this fixes the problem but it does - at least in the case of your amended Darius/David .blend.

After this I performed the following steps to get your amended leaderhead animating in GrannyViewer:

1) Alter skeleton and all meshes so they are stood upright in Blender (Z-axis up) and then do Ctrl-A > Scale and Rotation to ObData. This ensures that the skeleton and all the meshes are in the right orientation to each other.

2) Export to BR2.

3) Make a copy of the vanilla Darius GR2 and open in Nexus Buddy 2.

4) Do 'Overwrite Meshes From BR2' and select the exported BR2.

On viewing the GR2 file you should see that the meshes from the BR2 have completely replaced the meshes from the vanilla leaderhead. If you drag and drop a GR2 animation that has been 'cracked' by opening and saving in Nexus Buddy you should see the Leader animate properly.

I haven't checked in game yet - but it should work - once materials/textures are assigned. I've attached the BR2 and GR2 files and the declare war animation so you can test in GrannyViewer.

This Overwrite Meshes From BR2 technique is now the simplest way for creating/porting multi mesh units as well. I'll try and do some updated tutorials soon seeing as it seems a lot of people are stuck and no one really using the new capabilities of the tool yet.

 

[Ekmek]

Ok I know it has errors with the alpha. I think that is easily fixed - we are still in the space monkey stage after all. But I proved a few things

1) working model in game
2) changing the scene for leaders redirects their eyes. This means just borrowing the camera/scene from other leaders make them look and animate a little more unique (i couldn't really tell it was plain darius animations!)
3) most importantly, and the nation icon at the bottom should have gave it away. But I got this working with Leugi's mod. And I mean as part of the mod for the graphics files!
- my first test was DLC over write with Genghis like I normally do (worked)
- 2nd test was load mod but map to david_scene.xml in DLC (worked)
- 3rd test was that I modified the modinfo and added the few fxsxml, gr, and dds files to the mod folder and the result is above.

Things I need to do:
- clean up the model
- that novator for the art
- fix the alphas
- change the background to use the one leugi gave AND make that background a simple generic model for reskinning.

fingers crossed I have time to do it.

 

[Nutty]

Good job!

 

[TPangolin]

Amazing!

 

[Leugi]

Heh, what's David doing in Catherine's palace?

Amazing Ekmek! We're getting near hehe... Here's hoping one of you guys manage to do a nice tutorial once the first Leaderscene gets there

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Great to see this progressing!

 

[Irkalla]

Heh, what's David doing in Catherine's palace?

Yeah, Solomon would probably be the better candidate

 

[Ekmek]

Version 1 of David is ready for download

I made the background a real generic one DDS flat mesh (like civ4). Its really easy to change to make new backgrounds - just use the montezuma camera. I learned that lights can be modified but I think I left some of montezuma's blur in there. Overall it looks like there is A LOT we can just do with cameras and backgrounds to make these guys look more unique.

 

[Ekmek]

I guess we can close this thread since I finally did it

 

[Deliverator]

I guess we can close this thread since I finally did it

It might be worth opening another thread for 3D Leader development to share knowledge, new discoveries, etc.