Thanks to Deliverator's brilliant work with NexusBuddy improvements (see this thread), existing CiV unit .gr2 animations can now be extracted and imported into Blender. Many aspects of 3D custom modeling that were formerly difficult or virtually impossible are now much easier by virtue of the ability to extract an animation. This is particularly dramatic when coupling animations to effects, since new effects cannot presently be created for CiV.
For fantasy modding, since many units are not humanoid, custom animations are paramount. That is why it's such a breakthrough. The typical unit in CiV has roughly 45 animations; many of the unique custom animations have about 10-15, which is why they appear somewhat "clunky" in the game. In addition, custom models are usually tied to a CiV unit's effects, creating unusual sounds and oftentimes ridiculous visual effects. The best thing to do is to practically eliminate them from the .ftsxml "triggers" file altogether to make it look decent.
Now all of that has changed, as this thread will demonstrate increasingly over time. The potential is virtually limitless. Imagine, for example, extracting the 45 animations from a CiV Swordsman, adding the bones and mesh of a pair of wings to it, and tweaking the animations. Once exported back to a .gr2 animation it will still behave like a CiV Swordsman in all regards, but with wings! Now you have a full-fledged "CiV" Angel or Demon animation set that can easily be re-skinned to heart's desire. What about a Troll? Extract the Aztec Jaguar animations, extend the arm bones a bit to get the "knuckledragging" effect, tweak the animations, export, and voilà! A perfect set of Troll animations or any similar beast of that type. Mûmakil, anyone? African Forest Elephant animations, make the elephant bigger and modify the riders a bit, done.
The best part is that since we can extract the animations, we can now also study the effects - particularly the timings - and tweak them accordingly. Plasma rays will shoot from hands at the precise time, as will the sounds. Lengthen an animation or shorten it to match your custom sounds; it's up to you.
So, those are potential ideas. I would love to hear a "dream sheet" of animations that you would like. I would also hope that there will be others modifying animations, because I certainly can't build them all myself! Post on this forum your ideas, tweaks, and creations - however minor - and I will present them in this original post.
I will begin with something simple: a single animation tweak of the Scout unit that I use for the Gandalf Wizard and Sorceress models. The base animations have two attacks with a staff plus the city attack. I don't particularly like the way the "spell" effects erupt from the staff with the base Scout animations, so I decided to tweak one of the scout attacks to look like a spellcast emitting from the outstretched hand instead. I also tweaked the .fxsxml file so that all of the attack animations use this attack. Finally, I adjusted the timing of the plasma ray effect so that it emitted at the appropriate timing of the animation. It looks like this:
Basically, the unit still uses Scout animations for everything except attacks, using a single unique animation partial to this type of unit. That was easy, huh?
You can download the animation, as well as sample .fxsxml and .ftsxml files (to assist with understanding how the technique is performed) from here.
Planned animations:
Hunter (uses both sword and bow attacks)
Ranger (mounted unit that uses both bow and sword attacks)
Angel/Demon (land version using a mash of CiV Swordsman animations and the Angel unit wing animations)
Troll (Tweaked CiV Aztec Jaguar animations for a "Knuckledragger" unit with hulking frame and longer arms)
Mûmakil (Tweaked African Forest Elephant animations)
Sorcerer (Various glowing hand movements for attacks)
...plus your ideas. Let's see them!
For fantasy modding, since many units are not humanoid, custom animations are paramount. That is why it's such a breakthrough. The typical unit in CiV has roughly 45 animations; many of the unique custom animations have about 10-15, which is why they appear somewhat "clunky" in the game. In addition, custom models are usually tied to a CiV unit's effects, creating unusual sounds and oftentimes ridiculous visual effects. The best thing to do is to practically eliminate them from the .ftsxml "triggers" file altogether to make it look decent.
Now all of that has changed, as this thread will demonstrate increasingly over time. The potential is virtually limitless. Imagine, for example, extracting the 45 animations from a CiV Swordsman, adding the bones and mesh of a pair of wings to it, and tweaking the animations. Once exported back to a .gr2 animation it will still behave like a CiV Swordsman in all regards, but with wings! Now you have a full-fledged "CiV" Angel or Demon animation set that can easily be re-skinned to heart's desire. What about a Troll? Extract the Aztec Jaguar animations, extend the arm bones a bit to get the "knuckledragging" effect, tweak the animations, export, and voilà! A perfect set of Troll animations or any similar beast of that type. Mûmakil, anyone? African Forest Elephant animations, make the elephant bigger and modify the riders a bit, done.
The best part is that since we can extract the animations, we can now also study the effects - particularly the timings - and tweak them accordingly. Plasma rays will shoot from hands at the precise time, as will the sounds. Lengthen an animation or shorten it to match your custom sounds; it's up to you.
So, those are potential ideas. I would love to hear a "dream sheet" of animations that you would like. I would also hope that there will be others modifying animations, because I certainly can't build them all myself! Post on this forum your ideas, tweaks, and creations - however minor - and I will present them in this original post.
I will begin with something simple: a single animation tweak of the Scout unit that I use for the Gandalf Wizard and Sorceress models. The base animations have two attacks with a staff plus the city attack. I don't particularly like the way the "spell" effects erupt from the staff with the base Scout animations, so I decided to tweak one of the scout attacks to look like a spellcast emitting from the outstretched hand instead. I also tweaked the .fxsxml file so that all of the attack animations use this attack. Finally, I adjusted the timing of the plasma ray effect so that it emitted at the appropriate timing of the animation. It looks like this:
Spoiler :
Basically, the unit still uses Scout animations for everything except attacks, using a single unique animation partial to this type of unit. That was easy, huh?
You can download the animation, as well as sample .fxsxml and .ftsxml files (to assist with understanding how the technique is performed) from here.
Planned animations:
Hunter (uses both sword and bow attacks)
Ranger (mounted unit that uses both bow and sword attacks)
Angel/Demon (land version using a mash of CiV Swordsman animations and the Angel unit wing animations)
Troll (Tweaked CiV Aztec Jaguar animations for a "Knuckledragger" unit with hulking frame and longer arms)
Mûmakil (Tweaked African Forest Elephant animations)
Sorcerer (Various glowing hand movements for attacks)
...plus your ideas. Let's see them!
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The difficulty would only be with how detailed you wanted to make the animations. Since the scorpion animations are limited and don't use transition animations, I actually think that it would be easier to use the tank animations as the base and incorporate the scorpion leg bones to it, animating when necessary.
