Creating Custom Leaderheads!

[Firehazurd]

You may or may not know that I've been working on creating a leaderhead from scratch. Thing is, I've hit a bit of a dead end. Basically what I'm trying to do now is take the 3d model I made and turn it into an unanimated, yet 3d, Leaderhead.

I've pretty much done everything I can think of. All the tutorials out there involve editing preexisting leaderheads. We know we can add new models to the game because we can add new units and buildings. I'm certain that there is some simple naming convention or some box that needs to be checked in order for this to work, but I cant figure it out.

If we can pool our knowledge together, we can get this to work. Then we can open a new door to customization (a good thing). Let me know what you think.

Here are some screenshots showing settings and whatnot.

 

[asioasioasio]

And what's the problem? Umbarra doesn't appear, game crashes (for me game crashed when i was trying to add mussolini some times ago - now it's also dead project but things get changed - now we have much better plugins and i have bigger experience etc.)?
If it's ok you can mail me model and texture and all you have done so far to asiox3@yahoo.com
I'll try to figure it out - i won't help you much with animations, but i exported units many times so perhaps i'll be succesfull

 

[Ploeperpengel]

It a seems to be different with Leaderheads. I just have a similar problem. Any Leaderhead nif I produce won't show but crash the game. Even a clean import/reexport without touching the model in any other way.
I never had such problems with units

Edit: Note the model opens and shows fine in the nifviewer but wont show in the game and even crash it if you try to select the Leader for playing. I earlier thought this to happen because the imortscripts might miss to import something necessary but since you created your model from scratch I'm pretty convinced the error is about the exportscripts. Either we miss something in the export procedures or even worse Firxis didn't provide the necessary tools to export Leaderheads just units and buildings.

All existing custom 3D Leaders seem to be either nifedits or no shader Leaders made with blender. Or did anyone already succeed in exporting a Leader with max?

 

[strategyonly]

A person (esnaz) did all my Leaderheads just from a pic and made them animated in a matter of days, but he has sense left this community, you might be able just to talk to him, dont know??

 

[Ploeperpengel]

The Leaders I saw from him are all nice but seem to be mere reskins with no changes to the model itself. Or am I mistaken?

 

[strategyonly]

Dont know for sure look at the top portion of my MOD thread he did alot of them from just a pic. Some he didnt. Dont really remember what he did and didnt do. sorry. Just thought i'd say something is all, later.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Looking in the Vanilla XML files, the only wonders Barbarians can build is the Pyranids and the Stonehedge.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Looking in the Vanilla XML files, the only wonders Barbarians can build is the Pyranids and the Stonehedge.

Err, thx for that info now!

 

[Firehazurd]

Well my leaderhead doesn't actually crash the game. It just leaves the blue box where the model should be blank, and for some reason makes all the other information in the civlopedia page dissappear. I can still play, just that every time the leaderhead should be shown, it's not.

Does anyone know if any Firaxis employees frequent these boards? Maybe they could help us out. Or at least let us know if our efforts are in vain.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Did you already try other shaders for the material - i.e. simply use default shader? I think it's unlikely any Firaxian will show up here.

 

[Firehazurd]

Yeah, I originally tried the default shader, that was before I discovered that they included a Civ4 Shader group. I figured that the leaderhead shader would be the most appropriate. Both ways yielded the same result, none.

Is there an xml that references the art of leaders or something that we are missing? (other than artdefines obviously)

 

[Ploeperpengel]

No I don't think so. The missing pedia could depend on missing/wrong animation - I had similar experiences with units. But that doesn't explain why your model doesn't show.

 

[Firehazurd]

Maybe the game wont accept the model because it has none of the animations it is expecting? Would it try to play them and then get confused because they arent there to play? I'll do a quick expiriment.

 

[Firehazurd]

Looks like my expiriment yielded some results. I added some simple animations and exported and now the civlopedia info is showing and there is a small moving spec in a vast field of red. That must be the leaderhead... I guess there are some scaling issues.

Lets see if we can crack this before I go to work in an hour.

 

[Firehazurd]

So it turns out the model is actually showing in that screenshot, but for some reason it is spinning around on it's x axis and only animates when you aren't looking at it. So I click on another leader and go back and more/less of it is visible. But it is there.

It's very touchy. I tried to add keyframes to the entire scene and it stopped loading... so I'm going to do some work on it tonight maybe tomorrow after work and see what I can get done.

For now, I need to go earn my eatin money.

 

[asioasioasio]

Maybe try to switch model in nifviewer ? i don't know

the red color signilizae some issues with animation files .kfm i suppose

 

[Ploeperpengel]

So it turns out the model is actually showing in that screenshot, but for some reason it is spinning around on it's x axis and only animates when you aren't looking at it. So I click on another leader and go back and more/less of it is visible. But it is there.

It's very touchy. I tried to add keyframes to the entire scene and it stopped loading... so I'm going to do some work on it tonight maybe tomorrow after work and see what I can get done.

For now, I need to go earn my eatin money.

That's because the animation isn't looping. Click the loop checkbox in the civanimationscript

 

[asioasioasio]

@Firehazurd - send me max file and texture i'll try to work on it it if it's not a problem

 

[Firehazurd]

I basically work until tomorrow, so I'll get back on this then... maybe tonight after work

Sorry for the delay.

 

[Firehazurd]

Ok, so I'm compiling a list of do's and dont's for leaderheads, this'll be edited as I discover them:

Don't - make any keyframes for the models root... game doesn't like that.
Do - include animations in your leaderhead, else it wont load.
Do - create a bump map for your leaderhead or it will load the last bumpmap you were looking at.
Do - include a camera. It doesn't load if you dont. (may be a way around this since I dont see any cameras in the other leader heads)