Civ4 Plugins for 3dsmax 6 and 7 now available for download

[TheBladeRoden]

anyone get animations working?

 

[sharick]

New feedback.
The first one wasn't so great, I don't do the units that way anymore. LOD is still valid though.
One thing I'd like to know more about and I can't find info anywhere is Civ4 specific shader.
I haven't touched animations yet.
Could they please, please release more example files.

 

[Kael]

New feedback.
The first one wasn't so great, I don't do the units that way anymore. LOD is still valid though.
One thing I'd like to know more about and I can't find info anywhere is Civ4 specific shader.
I haven't touched animations yet.
Could they please, please release more example files.

Thanks Sharick, keep the feedback coming.

BTW: nice job on that futuristic tank, very nice!

 

[gurp99]

Hey, im trying to open the sample figures and tanks for civ 4 in 3d studio max but when i go to file>Open, i get a message that screen that says "missing Dlls". HOw do i open these files?? thanks

 

[vingrjoe]

Gurp, if you are not using Max7, you will get those errors. I got them using Max6.

 

[Sir Aragorn]

Hi guys,

I've created some new unit models with full animation but I have some trouble exporting them to .nif

In fact, everything is ok but in games I dont see any texture. My unit is all red. I dont use .dds. When I export my .max file into .nif et .kfm, in texture checkbox, I check "Inclue in main NIF" as you can see on the picture...

CAn someone help me on how to export texture... do we have to use .dds and if yes can someone help me with this because Im not an expert with .dds if we really have to use it

thanks

 

[sharick]

@Sir Aragorn - first check your unit in SceneViewer. If everything is ok there and you still can't see your texture in civ then you probably need to change something in CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml. See the tutorial.

 

[Sir Aragorn]

OK sharick, everything works fine with Scene viewer but only if I
put BoudnShape.nif and my unit.nif in the same folder

do I have to put BoudnShape.nif in the art\units\myunitfolder\
to make it works?

i check my civ4artdefines_unit and everything is fine escep maybe the unitshadow.nif...I use the shadow of another unit...

thanks

 

[Sir Aragorn]

ohhhh it finally works my unit is perfect but withtout texture...
civ use the color of 3dsmax

I use Edit Material to add texture tu my unit....is it the good way to do it?

thanks a lot

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Is there some sort of manual for this?????

 

[Kael]

Is there some sort of manual for this?????

Firaxis wrote some documentation that is linked in the first thread. If you are looking for general 3dsmax help there are tons of websites as well as tons of books about 3dsmax.

 

[dalek master]

grrrrr.....

why 30 days? why not forever?

 

[Paasky]

dalek: Just don't ever get a keygen. Because that's not allowed.

 

[Duke Anselmi]

Those links at the first thread arent working! I need a example unit for training, where cuold i get one?

 

[Kael]

Those links at the first thread arent working! I need a example unit for training, where cuold i get one?

Sorry about that, I fixed the links.

 

[Rabbit, White]

ohhhh it finally works my unit is perfect but withtout texture...
civ use the color of 3dsmax

I use Edit Material to add texture tu my unit....is it the good way to do it?

thanks a lot

I think even when using the "include texture in NIF" option you should use DDS files for the textures. You should also use the Civ4 shader as the material, not Blinn.

 

[Duke Anselmi]

Sorry about that, I fixed the links.

Thanks alot!

 

[dalek master]

dalek: Just don't ever get a keygen. Because that's not allowed.

thank you so much for the temptation

 

[Grey Fox]

I would like know more about texture requirements for the units, in terms of size.

How much of an impact will it cause to go from 128 textures to 256 (as in, if majority of units in a mod use 256 textures)?

What about 512 textures, are they a big no-no or can the engine handle it as long as there's a decent hardware behind it (by decent I mean mid to high-end, as oppose to bleeding-edge-nitro-cooled systems, it is a strategy game after all )?

What is better performance-wise, one 512x512 texture or two 256x256 textures, or maybe a one 256x512 texture?

Going from 128x128 textures to 256x256 textures increases filesize of the texture 4 times, so it will take 4 times as much Video Ram. Going to 512x512 means 4 times more.

One 512 would be using twice as much memory as two 256, but Im not sure if that means it would be worse performance-wise.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Going from 128x128 textures to 256x256 textures increases filesize of the texture 4 times, so it will take 4 times as much Video Ram. Going to 512x512 means 4 times more.

One 512 would be using twice as much memory as two 256, but Im not sure if that means it would be worse performance-wise.

Well yeah, that's the straight math, but there's more to it than that. For example handling two textures is different than handling one, so performance-wise two 128x128 textures is not the same as one 128x256 texture.

There's also the matter of having textures of different sizes. It's always better if all the textures in the game are the same size because then swapping them is easy and fast, of course that's not very realistic. So there's the question of how having many units use 256x256 textures will impact a game that uses mostly 128x128 textures?

And when we're getting to 512x512 textures then with the sheer amount of textures in this game, it's possible that using a lot of those will require more memory than a graphics card might have (especially in case of 64mb cards, and maybe even the 128mb ones). So then the question is how well can the engine handle that?

Obviously all this is not going to matter much when talking about few units, heck I'm sure on even an average computer you can get away with having some units with 1024x1024 textures.

In any case, I'm sure the folks at Firaxis did a lot of performance testing using various texture sizes and they might have, if not a definite answer as to how many and what size is too much, but at least a slightly more detailed guideline than just "use powers of two textures, not exciding 128x128 size". In fact, I'm not so much interested in what I should use as in, what kind of a performance hit or increase I can expect when going between different texture sizes, quantities and/or proportions. I realize this might be a bit technical but there's no harm in asking.