Art Assets in Civilization 6: A Modding Guide

[Deliverator]

The good news is that Beyond Earth units go into Civ 6 just as easily as Civ 5 ones do. It took about 15 mins to get this in the game animations working fine.

 

[Deliverator]

As a demonstration of custom 3D Landmarks, Sukritact has done an amazing job replacing the Commercial District with the Floating Market for his Siam mod:

 

[steve7233]

When I extract the project to My Documents\Firaxis ModBuddy\Civilization VI, Windows 7 says its invalid.

 

[steve7233]

When I extract the project to My Documents\Firaxis ModBuddy\Civilization VI, Windows 7 says its invalid.

I figured it out the path is a little different. I am using Win 7. you must be using a new version so the file path is a little different.

 

[Deliverator]

Update: Super-helpfully the Asset Editor now has a preview facility so you can see how your Asset will render in game:

 

[Alucard648]

Hoping one day it will be possible to create all new wonder art asset, complete with construction animation.

 

[snafusmith]

Update: Super-helpfully the Asset Editor now has a preview facility so you can see how your Asset will render in game:

I noticed this the other day - it's probably my favorite part of civ6 unit modding so far, especially given the new texture formats. Super helpful for making sure things look right!

 

[chrisgatt7]

Wow this is such amazing work

 

[chrisgatt7]

This is amazing work with the ability to add CIV 5 units and beyond earth units really expands the game to great lengths

 

[chrisgatt7]

What about the modded units used for CIV 5 mods like the A-10, Stuka dive bomber skins they would work to assumingly ?!? And do es that mean we can import beyond earth resources to CIV 6 ?

 

[Deliverator]

Civ 5 modded units should also work OK. At the moment there is the issue that Wolfdog raised with some Civ 5 animations being twisted when used in the Civ 6 engine. I think it might be possible to resolve this now by converting the animations via Blender and the .fbx format. Any 3D graphics file from Civ 5/Civ BE should also convert including but not limited to Resources, Improvements, Wonders and Leaders. Whether they will look OK in Civ 6 is another question. Civ 5 units in particular are much less detailed than Civ 6 in terms of poly count. However with updated higher resolution textures many could work OK. Regarding Visual FX (particle effects, weapons trails, flame, smoke etc): it might be possible to reuse these from Civ 5/Civ BE as the same Fork Particle Studio format is used. I haven't even started exploring that area though yet.

 

[Deliverator]

@sukritact is leading the charge of new Landmark 3D assets with his new Mount Fuji Natural Wonder and the mud brick mosque for JFD's Mali:

 

[chrisgatt7]

Wow really amazing ... so I got a question... suppose I were to purchase 3D models for the community from a website like turbosquid how am I able to determine which are capable of being used ?!?

 

[sukritact]

Wow really amazing ... so I got a question... suppose I were to purchase 3D models for the community from a website like turbosquid how am I able to determine which are capable of being used ?!?

Check if there's a proper UV and make sure the poly count is reasonable (what is "reasonable" depends on the model, but I would avoid going above 5000~ for a building or unit personally).
Purchased models are rarely usable and are overly expensive IMHO.

 

[chrisgatt7]

I guess I should check with yal before I buy it then

 

[Fred_Bear]

Hi there!
Thanks for the info and the tools.
A few questions :
Bit lost to what's the go with hair? I think (very much guessing), for leaders at least, there is use of curves - guides and instancing fill similar to a fibremesh or xgen hair generator software used in the game internally. Any thoughts on what's going on here?
From what I can gather, in the ModBuddy Asset Viewer the .ast files has "Mesh" containers for particular character items including hair, eyebrows & beards etc, along with cloths, head, eyes, & etc.
Each of these "Mesh" containers is of a particular Class - which may or may not define some attribute (ie. is polymesh, or is curves), or it could be the material that defines how its rendered and every "Mesh" container is a polymesh. The hair materials do have "Clump Count" and "Clump Profile" parameters.
I have tried exporting Teddy, but there doesn't seem to be anything where the hair is supposed to be, which kind of has me guessing that there are curves.
Does the .wig files have something do with it? Maybe these are curve guides, but how does Mod buddy use these though?
Can this be done via .fbx in CivNexus6?.
Can .fbx be imported directly into mod buddy or the asset editor? All source files seem to be .ma, maybe Maya can do it.
Is there documentation somewhere? - other than the short read me in the SDK folder.

Thanks and all the best.

 

[TPangolin]

Have we looked into animations for improvements/buildings or resources just yet? Custom animations for buildings would be fun to play around with (i.e Suk's floating market with boats that move around), but custom animations for resources could open the door for some pretty fun inclusions in the future.

 

[Deliverator]

Importing custom animations should work the same for Improvements, Buildings and Resources as it will for Units and Leaders. Not tested it fully but I think that imported from FBX format will work for all of these as described in the second half of this post.

 

[Fred_Bear]

Ok .. so in the OP Geo file section step 6) you mean .fgx not .fbx it will be saved as. Got that way working for importing stuff now, but no joy with .fbx yet.
Also using Open fbx option, only the animation is in the created fgx, no mesh or materials. Or is that only for animation? Is fbx version important, I am using fbx 2015 version.

 

[Deliverator]

Ok .. so in the OP Geo file section step 6) you mean .fgx not .fbx it will be saved as. Got that way working for importing stuff now, but no joy with .fbx yet.
Also using Open fbx option, only the animation is in the created fgx, no mesh or materials. Or is that only for animation? Is fbx version important, I am using fbx 2015 version.

Thanks for the correction!

For FBX I've only seen the ASCII version from old 2.49 Blender working. You need to make sure you enter the Mesh name in the Node box then both mesh and skeleton will work. To make your skeleton and mesh .fgx you want a .fbx without any animations - and then each animation .fgx will need a separate .fbx file. Generally the .fbx is not good quality for meshes and only supports a single mesh which is why I made the .br2 process.