Dragon

[Civitar]

Well, considering that we can convert NIFs with KF animations exactly the way they looked in Civ4, you'd think you could make an animation the same way as in Civ4, just exporting to FBX once you were finished. And what would the "root bone" be? Scene Root, or is it an actual bone?

 

[Deliverator]

And what would the "root bone" be? Scene Root, or is it an actual bone?

I mean an actual bone - it should be the top bone in the hierarchy, the bone that is parent to all the other bones. It does even necessarily need to be the top bone in the hierarchy - the point is that you want to be able to move this bone to a new animation position without effecting any other bone in the animation. For units imported from Civ 4 the bones MD or MD NonAccum can be good for this.

 

[Nomad or What]

Also there are some tutorials in the Civ IV forums covering Blender animation that are still useful, for example this and this.

The super3boy YouTube tutorial on animation is also a good starter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZFfLmbD2k

With all of this knowledge I will gain such incredible power! I am king of the world!

Ahem...anyway, apparently not - I am still having problems with stray meshes with the Sandworm unit, so I am king of failure at the moment...

Each mesh has fewer than 32 vertex groups, so that isn't the problem. But I also remember you mentioning here that every vertex can be weighted to up to four bones. If that is true, then it is likely the problem with the sandworm. Some of the vertices belong to waaay more than four vertex groups (bones). This one will be a tough nut to crack if the above rule is true.

Any ideas?

 

[Civitar]

Write down the bone names and save a few images of which bones assign where, then delete all bones and reassign them...or remove vertices you know are assigned to too many bones from some of those bones - I had to do that a bit with this dragon, because I don't like having vertices assigned to more than one bone unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Deliverator]

Ahem...anyway, apparently not - I am still having problems with stray meshes with the Sandworm unit, so I am king of failure at the moment...

Each mesh has fewer than 32 vertex groups, so that isn't the problem. But I also remember you mentioning here that every vertex can be weighted to up to four bones. If that is true, then it is likely the problem with the sandworm. Some of the vertices belong to waaay more than four vertex groups (bones). This one will be a tough nut to crack if the above rule is true.

Any ideas?

I have a unit that is still doing this too, despite having fewer than 32 bones.

My guess that there is still something else in data that is breaking the rules of the Granny format. What you say about vertices mapped to more than four bones could be the issue. I'm not sure whether the .br2 export script would handle that well or whether you would end up with a total vertex weight that totals less than 255 which could well confuse the Granny engine. I'll have a look into it.

Could you upload the sandworm .blend file and your test mod somewhere and I can try and take a look?

 

[Nomad or What]

I have a unit that is still doing this too, despite having fewer than 32 bones.

My guess that there is still something else in data that is breaking the rules of the Granny format. What you say about vertices mapped to more than four bones could be the issue. I'm not sure whether the .br2 export script would handle that well or whether you would end up with a total vertex weight that totals less than 255 which could well confuse the Granny engine. I'll have a look into it.

Could you upload the sandworm .blend file and your test mod somewhere and I can try and take a look?

They are attached; I basically broke the body down to upper and lower so although the lower is still 31 groups it is within "tolerance" so to speak. To give reference to the bone weighting example, you can see as you start with Bone.001 and move upward that even by Bone.013 that some vertices have been assigned to every group moving upward. So in some cases there are vertices belonging to 13 groups! There are also several vertex groups existing in both meshes but this is common and I don't believe that it matters.

I am also having issues with one of the animations (i.e., it works, but not the way it should) but I am aware of the reason and will correct it once the vertex issue can be resolved. For now, it looks fine in Granny and Nexus (except for the "run" animation). The only time the stray vertices appear is in-game.

 

[Nomad or What]

Time to blow off the dust on this thread! The last comments weren't even about the dragon, they were about conversion issues (which, fortunately have since been solved).

You asked in the OP if someone could add effects and so I decided to make this a project instead, in the vein of the Gandalf and sorcerer units. We have both learned a tremendous amount more about custom model conversion since you initially released this, so I thought ol' Acheron was due for a makeover. So, now presenting:

Dragon Series

Four different types: Spiked, Horned, Aquatic, and Wyvern with 9 different skins altogether.

Each uses various forms of breath attack, such as fire, electricity, gas and acid:

Spoiler :

In addition, I have added custom dragon sounds, including breath attacks and footstomps.

The whole series is available for download here.

 

[confus1on]

That is absolutely amazing Nomad! Can't wait to see them used in some mods.