Chalid
Black Dragon
As Kael still uses his old reskinned fighter as falcon i thougt i would make him a new bird. And to experiment some more i gave it a chokuno (provided by firaxis via the example files for the SDK) as rider. The bird + rider have own custom animations but do not feature any actionsound soundtriggers at the moment. They can only be used as DOMAIN_AIR units.
Furthermore there are two drawbacks, but i hope that both will be overcome in the near future.
The first it has only descent air strike animation, but no intercept animation yet (there is no other fantasy air unit that it could counter and figting against an interceptor seemd kind of senseless).
The second drawback is still a mystery two me. Its about the fading at the beginning and end of an attack. It works very well for the bird and i think for the weapon too, but i could not get the rider to fade at the right time. Instead he seems to fade spontaneously (even during idle animation). It has to be some animation sequence that came with the chokuno but i was not able to find it until now. I used the alpha track within the shader to make the bird and weapon dissapear, and changed this track for the rider too, but it did not work for him
If someone has a clue i would be very grateful.
Oh and the birds skin was created within 5 minutes so it might look not as convincing as one would wish. So if someone would make a better skin...
One more thing: It might be possible to replace the rider with any Civ Biped, but i unintentionally changed the orientation of the bones at frame 0, so you might generate freaks when trying to replace him (and the headbone must be renamed to BIP head01, as the bird has the BIP head-bone).
So enjoy
Furthermore there are two drawbacks, but i hope that both will be overcome in the near future.
The first it has only descent air strike animation, but no intercept animation yet (there is no other fantasy air unit that it could counter and figting against an interceptor seemd kind of senseless).
The second drawback is still a mystery two me. Its about the fading at the beginning and end of an attack. It works very well for the bird and i think for the weapon too, but i could not get the rider to fade at the right time. Instead he seems to fade spontaneously (even during idle animation). It has to be some animation sequence that came with the chokuno but i was not able to find it until now. I used the alpha track within the shader to make the bird and weapon dissapear, and changed this track for the rider too, but it did not work for him

Oh and the birds skin was created within 5 minutes so it might look not as convincing as one would wish. So if someone would make a better skin...
One more thing: It might be possible to replace the rider with any Civ Biped, but i unintentionally changed the orientation of the bones at frame 0, so you might generate freaks when trying to replace him (and the headbone must be renamed to BIP head01, as the bird has the BIP head-bone).
So enjoy