Convert Civ 4 units to Civ 5 (Temp)

[Civitar]

How do I get the textures into blender? My elf archer is imported from nb2 and he's black at first like your Zulu example, but when I do what you did to display the textures mine just turns white.

 

[Ekmek]

Its a few steps. Its best to DL my leaderguide and look at the blender steps in there.

 

[Civitar]

OK, I managed to get the texture to display in blender, but now when I bake the texture following letter-by-letter the tutorial, I get a black texture file with white patches in the shape of the pieces of the UV mapping. What I cannot understand is the fact that this has worked for other models, like a Chaos Marauder or Direwolf.

I take back the part about not wanting you to do it for me Ekmek. As long as that elf gets uploaded to civfanatics with archer animations and the correct textures I don't care.

 

[Wolfdog]

OK, I managed to get the texture to display in blender, but now when I bake the texture following letter-by-letter the tutorial, I get a black texture file with white patches in the shape of the pieces of the UV mapping. What I cannot understand is the fact that this has worked for other models, like a Chaos Marauder or Direwolf.

I take back the part about not wanting you to do it for me Ekmek. As long as that elf gets uploaded to civfanatics with archer animations and the correct textures I don't care.

Do you need to bake the texture? It may be easier to have a second mesh with a couple of vertex groups assigned to it if you have a second texture.

 

[Civitar]

I need to have one mesh on the elf so that I can do Ekmek's Bone Weight Copying. Unless you know how to make one mesh have a texture from multiple .dds files, yes, I need to bake the texture.

 

[Deliverator]

I need to have one mesh on the elf so that I can do Ekmek's Bone Weight Copying. Unless you know how to make one mesh have a texture from multiple .dds files, yes, I need to bake the texture.

If you have a unit that is made up of multiple meshes you can use Overwrite Meshes from BR2 in Nexus Buddy 2 so that you don't need to bake textures - this outlined under from Blender to Civ 5 here. You can also use Bone Weight Copy on each individual mesh in turn. If you need to split a mesh that uses multiple materials and textures you can select all vertices that have a particular material in Blender and use P to separate the selected part of the mesh. The whole reason for creating the BR2 method was to allow models with multiple meshes and textures to be imported to .gr2.

 

[Civitar]

OMG, I think Blender hates me. It doesn't matter what I do, my textures always are either all white or all black.
Could one of the modellers here please bake the texture for me in the blend file I attached and then after baking the texture attach a blend file of the model with a baked texture and one mesh?

 

[Ekmek]

I looked at it and for some reason I cant bake either. I'll look more into it this week by seeing how materials are handled compared to civ4 ones. In the mean time I'd stick with not joining meshes.

 

[Wolfdog]

OMG, I think Blender hates me. It doesn't matter what I do, my textures always are either all white or all black.
Could one of the modellers here please bake the texture for me in the blend file I attached and then after baking the texture attach a blend file of the model with a baked texture and one mesh?

There is one more thing you can try and I have used with some success and that is to run the "Consolidate into one image" script in "UV/Image Editor" view "Image" menu.

 

[Civitar]

Blender definitely hates me. Using the black-and-white "baked" texture for the archer as a layer mask I was able to make a texture from the original fyrdwell textures that displayed correctly in Blender. And, of course, now the .br2 export acts up again. I go to export .br2 and get the doggone-near eternal Python script error: check console. I don't just get that error when exporting the elf, but when exporting nearly ALL units now.
I've attached a zip containing two blend files of the joined mesh with the working UV texture, one with a skeleton and one without. If it helps, the Python window that opens with Blender always gives this error (not only when working on the elf, but whenever I try to export .br2 and fail):

[B]Traceback <most recent call last>:
File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts\export_br2.py", line 126, in saveBR2
if not parentArmOb.name in modelMeshes:
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'[/B]

In case that helps anyone...

 

[Deliverator]

Blender definitely hates me. Using the black-and-white "baked" texture for the archer as a layer mask I was able to make a texture from the original fyrdwell textures that displayed correctly in Blender. And, of course, now the .br2 export acts up again. I go to export .br2 and get the doggone-near eternal Python script error: check console. I don't just get that error when exporting the elf, but when exporting nearly ALL units now.
I've attached a zip containing two blend files of the joined mesh with the working UV texture, one with a skeleton and one without. If it helps, the Python window that opens with Blender always gives this error (not only when working on the elf, but whenever I try to export .br2 and fail):

[B]Traceback <most recent call last>:
File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts\export_br2.py", line 126, in saveBR2
if not parentArmOb.name in modelMeshes:
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'[/B]

In case that helps anyone...

It is advisable to always have a Blender window set up with the Outliner as this makes it much easier to see any structural issues with your model.

I opened your elf_archer_post_bake_pre_br2_with_skeleton.blend and checked the Outliner. You have an extra object there - the one named Archer_MOD. I deleted this using right click in the Outliner and then I was able to export BR2.



Somehow although this second object had been made invisible, it is still part of the session and can't be exported to BR2.

Blender doesn't hate you! The errors with the BR2 export script are because there is real issue with the structure of your unit. It is just a question of figuring out where the problem is - which does take some knowledge and investigation. Once you learn how things work and what the structure of the unit needs to look like it in order to export then it is really quite straight-forward. The most common issues are due to the fact that you have rogue objects or meshes not properly parented to armature objects which can be checked using the Outliner, or you have vertexes that are not assigned to any bone vertex groups.

 

[Civitar]

Thanks so much for your help Deliverator and Ekmek. I've gotten much farther in a week with you two helping than in two months by myself. I managed the export to BR2 by doing as you said, and now I'm wondering, shouldn't the skeleton (or whatever the dotted lines with big lumps on them are) be deleted before export?
Also, I'm still having trouble with other models when I export to BR2. I guess the problem is I don't know what to look out for yet.
But yes, thanks a lot for all your help, Deliverator.

Heck, who am I to complain, you had to figure this all out yourself.

 

[Deliverator]

I managed the export to BR2 by doing as you said, and now I'm wondering, shouldn't the skeleton (or whatever the dotted lines with big lumps on them are) be deleted before export?

Actually it's the opposite - you need both a skeleton and a mesh that is fully rigged to it via vertex groups in order to export to BR2. If you are only intending to use Overwrite Meshes from BR2 in Nexus Buddy 2 then only the mesh data will be used, but you still need both the skeleton and mesh to be there for the export to work.

 

[Ekmek]

Actually it's the opposite - you need both a skeleton and a mesh that is fully rigged to it via vertex groups in order to export to BR2. If you are only intending to use Overwrite Meshes from BR2 in Nexus Buddy 2 then only the mesh data will be used, but you still need both the skeleton and mesh to be there for the export to work.

definietely do the overwrite. I found with bismarck/henry parkes that sometimes the skeleton won't work on the animations directly from the br2 conversions/ Its most likely due to multiple meshes but the overwrite method fixed this issue.

 

[Civitar]

OK, thanks once again to Deliverator and Ekmek I have gotten one or three steps farther towards getting this doggone elf working. I've bone weight copied, joined, separated, deleted weird double mesh, etc etc, exported successfully to br2 (hurray!), overwritten meshes from said br2, and modified an fxsxml like I've done 50 times before on reskins...and had the nexus viewer fail to properly work the archer (Oh well, I get a block at every new program, this probably won't be any more solid than the last three). Anyway, I've attached a zip with all my latest stuff so far, if someone could take a look at that please? It includes a readme explaining what each file is in case that is needed. I did not do anything with the sref in case that matters (and actually, I don't know how to make a sref)
The unit shows correctly in Granny Viewer and even animates correctly! Except...well, look at the screenshots attached. The first one is the non-animating model in Granny, the second is the model using archer animations (and it does them correctly except for that one thing on the bow the point of which never moves from its place on the elf's shoulder), and the third is the monstrosity in Nexus Viewer. I suspect that the two problems are related for some reason.
Sorry to keep bugging the modellers here, but I'd really like to join them...

 

[Wolfdog]

Have you tried playing an animation in nexus viewer. Sometimes it looks messed up but as soon as you play an animation it goes ok. Also it looks like you have not applied a skin to I after you overwrote the mesh from br2

 

[Civitar]

Animations don't work in Nexus, the blob doesn't move at all. Also I definitely applied a skin in Nexus Buddy (but not a sref) and in the fxsxml. I know I did the skin part right, I've done plenty of reskins. You can look at the zip to see exactly what I've done.

 

[Ekmek]

hmmm. It looks like some stuff isn't rigged right (the stretched stuff - you might have misnamed the vertexgroup) and then I think you changed the UV mapping so its not mapping to the rght texture.

 

[Civitar]

I didn't do any vertex naming, only bone weight copying. I wonder if one vertex on the bow is assigned to the head vertex group? Could that happen considering that the elf bow is a bit longer in both directions than the basic bow? Also it looks just fine in Blender's texture view.

 

[Ekmek]

It could be. Bone weight copying can do 90% of the work but you should double check it.