[FfH II Art Team Blog]

[Tasunke]

Well yea ... I knew it wasnt a direct upgrade ... referring only to line progression, seeing that there is an empty tier ... but now that I think of it ... I do remember it seeming too much of an investment to get Myconids, and now I know/ remember why (even if its not rly THAT big o' an investment ... it sure feels like it)

 

[hansdampf]

Well the Druids seem to take over that part too, and you need the Myconid pre-techs for Druids too. So it´s not that useless an investment.

 

[Fenboy]

Y'know, Khazad have quite a few blank spots at Tier 3. They can't train Horse Archers, Longbowmen, Mages or Rangers.

 

[Lord Alvon]

I like the idea of every unit with unique art... Especially for the Hippus Champions and Berserkers. The current champions look rather lame - their heads are too small - they should have the red scarf masking their faces like the phalanxes. Same with the berserkers. I can picture what they would look like in my head, and it looks kind of like the other Hippus units, except it wields axes instead of pikes, spears, bows, etc.

All the rest of the Hippus art is amazing. You guys do a great job.

 

[sylvain5477]

Hi,

I started trying to modify some small things in the FFH unit arts, but I ran into something seemingly too big for me: Tar Demon.

I simply want to change the color of the texture of the demon to make it snowwhite, but when I open the nif in blender I only see a great prophet ! WTH ? (as you say...)

I'm guessing the Tar Demon itself is maybe only some effect ontop of the prophet, but I cannot find it (and so how to change it's color) in blender when importing. Does someone knows how to do it ?

Thanks

 

[WarKirby]

Well the Druids seem to take over that part too, and you need the Myconid pre-techs for Druids too. So it´s not that useless an investment.

I don't think you do. Last I remember, the recon path diverges after feral bond, into animal mastery, and commune with nature. I believe you can research either seperately.

 

[WarKirby]

Hi,

I started trying to modify some small things in the FFH unit arts, but I ran into something seemingly too big for me: Tar Demon.

I simply want to change the color of the texture of the demon to make it snowwhite, but when I open the nif in blender I only see a great prophet ! WTH ? (as you say...)

I'm guessing the Tar Demon itself is maybe only some effect ontop of the prophet, but I cannot find it (and so how to change it's color) in blender when importing. Does someone knows how to do it ?

Thanks

I remember reading this somewhere. The tar demon is an effect of some sort on the great prophet. Look under Node 49 in the nif. It has ATTACHABLE_HIGHLIGHT_TARDEMO (there is no N)

This is different from the normal great prophet, which has ATTACHABLE_HIGHLIGHT_PROPHET there instead.

There's an Attachables folder somewhere in the fpk, so look for that, and find the tar demon one. Go from there. perhaps under art/effects


Edit: check assets/XML/misc. there's an attachableinfos file there which references the tardemon thing.

<AttachableInfo>
			<Type>ATTACHABLE_HIGHLIGHT_TARDEMO</Type>
			<Description>Highlight effect for the Tar Demon</Description>
			<fScale>110.0</fScale>
			<Path>Art/Effects/OilySlimeBlob.nif</Path>
		</AttachableInfo>

So have a look at the path mentioned there. The oilyslimeblob.nif has some color information in it's texturing property, as well as pointing to a few textures. You might want to change it's color to white, and increase brightness on the textures it uses.

I'd suggest making your own attachableinfo though, pointing to a new nif. And edit that into your new tardemon. Just so you don't do stuff to the old one.


The tar demon is one of the most complex units in existence D:

 

[sylvain5477]

Whoua

Thanks a lot. I'll check all that.

 

[WarKirby]

It's important to note the scales here, too. The attachable referenced above has a scale of 110. As in, 110 times it's normal size. Compared with the average scale of 1. It's clearly something that was made to be small, but blown up massively.

Also important, the scale of the Great Prophet model that it's attached to in the tardemon's nif. The artdefine for the tardemon sets the scale at a very low value. something like 0.01

I'm guessing they cancel each other out, so that the effect is actually only 1.1 times it's normal size. The scale of the artdefine probably scales attachables too. If the scale of the greatprophet.nif was set to 1, the tar demon would probably fill your screen, and extend over the edges, covering hundreds of tiles. Or maybe the game would crash. I've never actually tried that.....


Also, everything I've told you in the last post, was discovered as I was writing it. I barely knew anything about the tar demon before today, but a little detective work goes a long way.

 

[sylvain5477]

I had actually worked out most of it (particulary the scale thing), but I missed the attachable something (the most important part in fact!). I'm still wondering how to change it in the nif but I'll figure out.

EDIT : OK nifscope if my friend.

 

[Lade]

Is there any way I can download programs to edit my own unit art, or do you guys have access to some holy site that if any mortal looks at their eyes will get burned out.

 

[WarKirby]

I use Blender (which is free) for model editing, Nifscope (also free) for adding shaders, and general tweaking that makes a unit work. And Photoshop CS3 (a few hundred dollars) for making textures/skins etc. There's a free alternative to photoshop, Gimp. I don't know enough about it to say if it's good though.

 

[seZereth]

I use Blender (which is free) for model editing, Nifscope (also free) for adding shaders, and general tweaking that makes a unit work. And Photoshop CS3 (a few hundred dollars) for making textures/skins etc. There's a free alternative to photoshop, Gimp. I don't know enough about it to say if it's good though.

exactly what Kirby said. go to: http://www.blender.org/
and look for the nif tools tutorials in the tutorial section (there should be links to the programs as well).
I am using Adobe Photoshop 7, which is several years old, but still works fine.

cheers and good luck

 

[Lade]

Thanks. I've got a few weeks open this summer, so I hope I might actually make something

I've got a little experience with Gimp, but I only did the most simple of changes to a picture that most people who have read any posts by me have seen

 

[Squiggs]

I've got a little experience with Gimp, but I only did the most simple of changes to a picture that most people who have read any posts by me have seen

Keep working on it. Gimp is a great tool and has a lot of power in knowledgeable hands. You'll probably spend a lot more time than you need to on some things (I still redo a lot of steps), but practice will help that. Plus, you basically can pay yourself a dollar every time you use Gimp instead of $purchasing$ a program like Photoshop.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Gimp is great on non .dds files. Well that is for me and a few people - I cant get the .dds plug-in to compile and the link to get the program to do so crashes. SOO I do it the hard way and use a converter to convert the .dds into other file type and then do what little editing I can... The directions are weak at best and useless at most.

 

[Ajidica]

GIMP works fine, just experiment with it and it will work for civ quite well.

 

[WarKirby]

Hey seZereth, are you working on any more art at present? and if so, any chance you could say what?

I don't want to duplicate effort by making something you're already working on.....

 

[Fenboy]

And if not, could you give us a few spoilery hints of what you'll be working on in the future? Elohim? Balseraphs? Calabim? Kuriotates? Something completely different?

 

[seZereth]

Hey guys.
Sorry havent worked on anything lately,... sadly I simply dont find the time these days.
But what I wanna do next are Elohim (and some Balseraph). I wanted to create them for ages, but always had higher priority stuff on the list.
Maybe I´ll find some time soon.

Anything else you could probably work on
but I think FF has lots of placeholders for the new civs anyway, so maybe you can help out there?