Convert Civ 4 units to Civ 5 (Temp)

[bouncymischa]

Thus far, the process seems to have worked -- I opened up a copy of the Mech Inf .gr2 in NexusBuddy and imported the .br2 file, and when I open it up in Granny I see my Striker model. It may have the same problem Typhlomence had, though -- it appears to be standing on end. I haven't tried it in the game yet, though.

At least it's there! Yay!

EDIT: Honestly, I need to stop playing around with this and getting ready for work. But I think I missed the step where I have to use Ctrl-A to align the mesh with the ObData. I tried it again, and this time in Granny it's showing up aligning properly.

 

[Nomad or What]

Thus far, the process seems to have worked -- I opened up a copy of the Mech Inf .gr2 in NexusBuddy and imported the .br2 file, and when I open it up in Granny I see my Striker model. It may have the same problem Typhlomence had, though -- it appears to be standing on end. I haven't tried it in the game yet, though.

Spoiler :

At least it's there! Yay!

EDIT: Honestly, I need to stop playing around with this and getting ready for work. But I think I missed the step where I have to use Ctrl-A to align the mesh with the ObData. I tried it again, and this time in Granny it's showing up aligning properly.

Spoiler :

Glad to see you are making progress...we'll have you laboring in the unit grinding factory in no time!!!

 

[bouncymischa]

Glad to see you are making progress...we'll have you laboring in the unit grinding factory in no time!!!

There's several near-future vehicles I'm eager to get converted for one of my own mods. Hopefully they'll be helpful for other people too!

(And it'll keep me out of the unit grinding factory for a bit! <.<)

 

[Typhlomence]

EDIT: Honestly, I need to stop playing around with this and getting ready for work. But I think I missed the step where I have to use Ctrl-A to align the mesh with the ObData. I tried it again, and this time in Granny it's showing up aligning properly

I could have sworn I did that step... maybe because I did it before I parented the thing to the armature, it didn't do it properly.

Also, be sure to pack the textures you use, otherwise we just get a nice pink tank lol

But everyone knows that pink tanks are the best.

 

[bouncymischa]

One more post!

Time to start working on more sci-fi models!

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Success!

Spoiler :

Thanks to Wolfdog, Deliverator, Ekmek, and Nomad for helping me get this done. Now I've only got a few dozen more to do at some point...

 

[hangman]

Oh nice! Good to see we've got new unit makers around. If you (or anyone else) are interested, I have a project set up for collaborative Civ4 unit conversions... but then I'd imagine that, like most unit makers, you've probably got your own agenda

 

[Typhlomence]

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to make three successes in three posts, but I got the B-47 working properly in the right orientation. Of course the effects are a bit off but I'm not worried about that right now!

Spoiler :

My issue was that I was following the outdated instructions for making a template from an existing unit. I should have rotated the mesh by -90 degrees rather than the skeleton by 90 degrees.

But a big thank you to all of you who helped out with writing these tutorials. Now to try my hands at a human unit...

EDIT: Well, I did try a human unit and got it to work (in Nexus Viewer at least) - the Female Confucian Missionary from this pack. However, it tripped me up for a bit due to it using multiple textures. I tried to have it as a multi-mesh unit but that didn't work out, unfortunately, so I used the "Consolidate into one image" UV function and after that it was pretty easy to use both the Bone Weight method and the Copy and Paste method (with renamed vertex groups) to get it using the Merchant of Venice skeleton (probably not the best skeleton but I wanted a human that wasn't holding anything).

I'm still a bit confused, though. since the OP states I can indeed make a multi-mesh unit, so do you think that joining everything together into one mesh and using "Consolidate into one image" is okay, or should I try a multi-mesh unit next time I'm trying something which has multiple textures (or adding parts of multiple units together - for example, arming a human with a weapon who didn't have one before)?

Here's the .blend with the multi-mesh one that didn't work, if you wanted to look at it (using the Merchant of Venice skeleton again).

 

[Nomad or What]

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to make three successes in three posts, but I got the B-47 working properly in the right orientation. Of course the effects are a bit off but I'm not worried about that right now!

Spoiler :

My issue was that I was following the outdated instructions for making a template from an existing unit. I should have rotated the mesh by -90 degrees rather than the skeleton by 90 degrees.

But a big thank you to all of you who helped out with writing these tutorials. Now to try my hands at a human unit...

EDIT: Well, I did try a human unit and got it to work (in Nexus Viewer at least) - the Female Confucian Missionary from this pack. However, it tripped me up for a bit due to it using multiple textures. I tried to have it as a multi-mesh unit but that didn't work out, unfortunately, so I used the "Consolidate into one image" UV function and after that it was pretty easy to use both the Bone Weight method and the Copy and Paste method (with renamed vertex groups) to get it using the Merchant of Venice skeleton (probably not the best skeleton but I wanted a human that wasn't holding anything).

I'm still a bit confused, though. since the OP states I can indeed make a multi-mesh unit, so do you think that joining everything together into one mesh and using "Consolidate into one image" is okay, or should I try a multi-mesh unit next time I'm trying something which has multiple textures (or adding parts of multiple units together - for example, arming a human with a weapon who didn't have one before)?

Here's the .blend with the multi-mesh one that didn't work, if you wanted to look at it (using the Merchant of Venice skeleton again).

You can do either, but just remember that no single mesh can have more than 32 vertex groups assigned. If it is a simple unit with 32 or fewer bones you shouldn't need to worry about this. See this post for details.

I sometimes consolidate meshes and then bake their textures together when I import units from other games that have very few bones but different .dds files. Another technique I use (such as from my Orcs lineup) is to have a mesh that I can add or remove easily for armored and unarmored versions of the same unit. The only tricky area is to remember the 32 vertex group limit per mesh (but a minimum of 2 per mesh - you cannot have a mesh with only a single bone assignment).

 

[Typhlomence]

I managed to get multimesh units working - just needed to give them the armature as their parent one at a time and then export to nb2.

I also managed to give that missionary model a bow and arrow...

Spoiler :

 

[DoctorMcGann]

Will this tutorial work with Nexus Buddy 2? None of the copies of Nexus Buddy I'm finding work.

 

[Deliverator]

Yes, Nexus Buddy 2 is fine for this. This tutorial is actually quite out of date. Wolfdog created a much more up-to-date one here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=539501

 

[bouncymischa]

Since I'm still mostly using this method in Blender 2.49, I'll post this here. I've run into a problem while trying to convert the Coracle for lordrj15. Originally I'd tried rigging the Coracle to a Caravel, which I got to work okay, but the animations for its cannons firing distort the mesh a bit, and are rather unrealistic for a Coracle. So I figured I'd give it a try rigging it to the Galley instead, which it resembles a lot more, but for some reason I keep getting an error about the mesh having unweighted vertices, although as near as I can tell the bone weight copy went through fine:

Spoiler :

All of the vertices appear to be in vertex groups, so I'm not certain how to track down the source of the error... I've included a copy of the .blend file if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Coracle Test 3

 

[Wolfdog]

Since I'm still mostly using this method in Blender 2.49, I'll post this here. I've run into a problem while trying to convert the Coracle for lordrj15. Originally I'd tried rigging the Coracle to a Caravel, which I got to work okay, but the animations for its cannons firing distort the mesh a bit, and are rather unrealistic for a Coracle. So I figured I'd give it a try rigging it to the Galley instead, which it resembles a lot more, but for some reason I keep getting an error about the mesh having unweighted vertices, although as near as I can tell the bone weight copy went through fine:

Spoiler :

All of the vertices appear to be in vertex groups, so I'm not certain how to track down the source of the error... I've included a copy of the .blend file if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Coracle Test 3

I would try and use something else as your template. I can not even get the unmodified galley to export without that error. Something is not quite kosher with the galley.

 

[bouncymischa]

I would try and use something else as your template. I can not even get the unmodified galley to export without that error. Something is not quite kosher with the galley.

Well, that's annoying. I'm not sure if I want to use the Trireme as I can't recall how complex the animations are with the oars. Are there any other sailing ships which use the archery attack?

 

[Ekmek]

if you wanted to get rid of the cannon animation you just remove it in the fxsxml though

 

[bouncymischa]

Okay, so... this technically isn't a Civ 4 model, but using the method that has worked reliably for me so far (with a variety of models) has suddenly hit a bizarre snag.

Basically, I've got this model in Blender:

But when I do the .br2 export, and overwrite an existing mesh in Nexus Buddy, I end up getting this in Granny:

On the other hand, I can export the model as an .fbx and open it up in Nexus Buddy, and it looks like this in Granny:

But it's not rigged to any animations.

Any idea what's going wrong with the .br2 export? I've tried it from both Blender 2.49 and Blender 2.72, and both times it ended up looking all garbled...

 

[Wolfdog]

Looks to me from the picture that it may be that you need to re calculate the normal's. It seems to be getting confused as to which surface is outside and which is the inside.

Though that does not explain why it works with .fbx.

 

[bouncymischa]

I was talking with Typhlomence about the issue, and he said it looked like I needed to triangulate the mesh, since Civ V can only handle faces with 3 sides. I checked the original mesh and it did have a lot of faces with more than 3 sides, which would explain the jagged look of the rendered model. I triangulated the faces in Edit mode by using Ctrl-T, and now when I import the .br2 it shows up properly in Granny, so that would appear to have been the issue.

I still need to test and make sure it renders properly in-game, but the successful render in Granny bodes well. :3

EDIT: Just tested it, and it renders properly in game now, so that would appear to have been the issue. A cautionary tale for anyone planning to use meshes from sources other than versions of Civ...

 

[Deliverator]

I was talking with Typhlomence about the issue, and he said it looked like I needed to triangulate the mesh, since Civ V can only handle faces with 3 sides. I checked the original mesh and it did have a lot of faces with more than 3 sides, which would explain the jagged look of the rendered model. I triangulated the faces in Edit mode by using Ctrl-T, and now when I import the .br2 it shows up properly in Granny, so that would appear to have been the issue.

I still need to test and make sure it renders properly in-game, but the successful render in Granny bodes well. :3

EDIT: Just tested it, and it renders properly in game now, so that would appear to have been the issue. A cautionary tale for anyone planning to use meshes from sources other than versions of Civ...

As you have discovered the BR2 export process and Civ V engine expects all faces to be triangles not quads.