Valkrionn
The Hamster King
.......Must steal for Mazatl. 

Yeah it looks pretty nice as it is, but if people want 3 levels of spellcaster for the Kuriotates Arcane line then they could use 3 reskins for the variants like in C.Roland's original:
Ive reskinned the Storm Drake as a Coatl, a mythological Aztec dragon with rainbow featherd wings.
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<<<<<<<<<<DOWNLOAD COATL ATTACHMENT
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
To hook up effects and sounds to a unit you need to look in the NiTextKeyExtraData node of the KF animation file in question, in this case storm_drake_strike1.kf:
Spoiler :![]()
You have a start and end entry that mark either end of the animation. In between you have entries beginning EFFECT or SOUND.
The EFFECT entries tell the engine, for example, to trigger the Drake Poison Breath effect 0.2 seconds into the strike animation. Effect_Mouth is the node in the NIF that you want the effect to be emitted from and EFFECT_DRAKE_POISON_BREATH is the entry in CIV4EffectInfos.xml.
The SOUND entries tell the engine, for example, to play the Drake Fire sound effect 0.3 seconds into the strike animation. The string AS3D_DRAKE_FIRE corresponds to an entry in Audio3DScripts.xml.
These can be easily amended in NifSkope. If you ever need more entries you can just increase the Num Text Keys value and click the green refresh icon. It is not necessary to enter the text keys in chronological order.
You'll want to start with the storm_drake_strike1.kf file corresponding to the breath that you've recoloured. So, if your purple breath is a reskin of the poison breath, then use the storm_drake_strike1.kf from the black_drake folder as your start point. This is because the pattern of triggering is different for each effect type. For example, the lightning breath only triggers twice during the animation, whereas the fire breath triggers about nine separate 0.033 second bursts to ensure that the fire always comes out of the drakes mouth rather than somewhere behind its head.
Edit: By the way, if your creating different colours of breath it is definitely worth tuning the colours and alpha of the NiMaterialProperty for the NiParticleSystem. I've found this has a more profound effect on the final outcome than the texture file used. For example, the texture for the frost breath is just a grey cloud, but the NiMaterialProperty turns it into a nice misty white. If you have 3DS Max and SceneViewer installed you can just drag and drop effects NIFs into SceneViewer which greatly improves the tweak and re-test times. Otherwise, going back to Main Menu and starting a new game seems to reload effects so you can tweak and re-test that way.
Hey P_L, I think you should remove the arms and legs to make it a feathered serpent ,)
id love to, but im not sure how to remove the legs lolthere are no arms though so thats ok at least
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seZereth said:nice work on porting the Dragons!
cfkane said:I've been looking for a mermaid model...
Valkrionn said:How do you copy an effect from one unit to another? For example, the flame effect on the fireball. I'm assuming that as it's on the unit itself, I don't need to touch the kfm? Can I just copy the EFFECTS node (NiStringExtraData) from one unit to another? I ask because I'm trying to create a version of the Floating Eye which is on fire....
I'm away from my modding machine at the moment, but I think it is likely that the Fireball uses an Attachable rather than an Effect. Attachables are basically like permanently playing Effects, specified in CIV4AttachableInfos.xml rather than CIV4EffectInfos.xml and link to the unit using a special ATTACHABLES node in the Nif file. This can be cut and pasted from one instance of NifSkope to another if you want. You just need to ensure that the target node for the Attachable exists in the NIF you copy it to. You may need to create a simple NiNode to fix the attachable to.
surely it's just a question of importing the model using the NifTools scripts
To hook up effects and sounds to a unit you need to look in the NiTextKeyExtraData node of the KF animation file in question, in this case storm_drake_strike1.kf:
Spoiler :![]()
You have a start and end entry that mark either end of the animation. In between you have entries beginning EFFECT or SOUND.
The EFFECT entries tell the engine, for example, to trigger the Drake Poison Breath effect 0.2 seconds into the strike animation. Effect_Mouth is the node in the NIF that you want the effect to be emitted from and EFFECT_DRAKE_POISON_BREATH is the entry in CIV4EffectInfos.xml.
The SOUND entries tell the engine, for example, to play the Drake Fire sound effect 0.3 seconds into the strike animation. The string AS3D_DRAKE_FIRE corresponds to an entry in Audio3DScripts.xml.
These can be easily amended in NifSkope. If you ever need more entries you can just increase the Num Text Keys value and click the green refresh icon. It is not necessary to enter the text keys in chronological order.
You'll want to start with the storm_drake_strike1.kf file corresponding to the breath that you've recoloured. So, if your purple breath is a reskin of the poison breath, then use the storm_drake_strike1.kf from the black_drake folder as your start point. This is because the pattern of triggering is different for each effect type. For example, the lightning breath only triggers twice during the animation, whereas the fire breath triggers about nine separate 0.033 second bursts to ensure that the fire always comes out of the drakes mouth rather than somewhere behind its head.
Edit: By the way, if your creating different colours of breath it is definitely worth tuning the colours and alpha of the NiMaterialProperty for the NiParticleSystem. I've found this has a more profound effect on the final outcome than the texture file used. For example, the texture for the frost breath is just a grey cloud, but the NiMaterialProperty turns it into a nice misty white. If you have 3DS Max and SceneViewer installed you can just drag and drop effects NIFs into SceneViewer which greatly improves the tweak and re-test times. Otherwise, going back to Main Menu and starting a new game seems to reload effects so you can tweak and re-test that way.
oh really?
ill have to find a tutorial for that now...
This was a huge helpthanks a lot. here are my results:
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now i just need to get rid of the coatl's legs and add arms to the other drakes and im all set!
Before adding arms, you should post your units so I can steal them.
Psychic_Llamas said:ive only been able to find tutorials for porting nifs into blender, and my nifSkope dosnt seem to be able to export .obj files correctly, it comes up with heaps of errors :/ anyone able to explain how?