How to import rigged models and getting the Civ 4 rig on meshes?

[Segsara]

Circa 2024 this is very difficult information to come by, but after seeing hyborem from FFH2 as a fully animated bloodthirster from dawn of war 1, it's evident that a model with any kind of rig can be brought into the game. However, the method for doing so cannot be found anywhere it seems, not even on civfantics as far as I can tell (still looking). Along with that, there's getting the rig from Civ 4 to apply to meshes and then importing them back into the game, also this has proven illusive as well.

I've been across reddit, several half-forgotten discords, other forums, and here. So far nothing has turned up, is there anyone left who remembers?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

When I want to do that, I get rid of the old rigging, pose the model (if it is a biped) to roughly coincide with the unit that has the animations I'd like to use and use 3ds Max's Skin Wrap function. Usually comes out non-ideal, but can be easily corrected manually if in-game testing shows some flaws.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Most of what you need to know speficially for Civ4, you should be able to find 'somewhere' within the tutorial subforum, but it is certainly scattered. This

In general, it depends what kind of software you want to use. For 3ds Max, this tutorial should be helpful: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tutorial-converting-units-from-kohan-ii.356101/
I think it also explains how to do stuff with Blender, but I never looked deeper into that part. You can certainly do the whole process with Blender as well, but I am not sure if there is a good thread for the whole process covering custom animations as well.

If you 'only' want to import the mesh, but rig it to a Civ4 mesh to use those animations, this tutorial should be helpful: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bone-weight-copy-blender.320560/
While we are on the topic of Blender, you probably will need to use an older version to get the whole process working. I am still using 2.49b, which works fine for me.

And in any case, you probably will want to use NifSkope as well, for which this is a good thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tut-nifscope.305606/

Finally, as a bonus, here are two threads about animating with Blender:

[Tut] Animate with Blender and Nifscope

The main target of this tutorial is to give a short introduction how custom animation can be created using Blender. For this you must use the newest (atm beta) script, 2.3.12. In this version the export option was activated. What else is needed, basic knowledge about modelling, a model to...

forums.civfanatics.com

How to modify existing animations using Blender and NifSkope

Introduction Since I've gathered some knowledge about unit/leaderhead creation and custom animation creating now I think it's time to share some of this knowledge by writing some tutorials. Please note that I don't claim to present the best solution for the tasks at hand here, most of the stuff...

forums.civfanatics.com

Hope these help you forward. They mostly only cover the Civ4 specific stuff, you probably will need to learn how to use 3ds Max / Blender seperately as well.

 

[Segsara]

Most of what you need to know speficially for Civ4, you should be able to find 'somewhere' within the tutorial subforum, but it is certainly scattered. This

In general, it depends what kind of software you want to use. For 3ds Max, this tutorial should be helpful: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tutorial-converting-units-from-kohan-ii.356101/
I think it also explains how to do stuff with Blender, but I never looked deeper into that part. You can certainly do the whole process with Blender as well, but I am not sure if there is a good thread for the whole process covering custom animations as well.

If you 'only' want to import the mesh, but rig it to a Civ4 mesh to use those animations, this tutorial should be helpful: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bone-weight-copy-blender.320560/
While we are on the topic of Blender, you probably will need to use an older version to get the whole process working. I am still using 2.49b, which works fine for me.

And in any case, you probably will want to use NifSkope as well, for which this is a good thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tut-nifscope.305606/

Finally, as a bonus, here are two threads about animating with Blender:

[Tut] Animate with Blender and Nifscope

The main target of this tutorial is to give a short introduction how custom animation can be created using Blender. For this you must use the newest (atm beta) script, 2.3.12. In this version the export option was activated. What else is needed, basic knowledge about modelling, a model to...

forums.civfanatics.com

How to modify existing animations using Blender and NifSkope

Introduction Since I've gathered some knowledge about unit/leaderhead creation and custom animation creating now I think it's time to share some of this knowledge by writing some tutorials. Please note that I don't claim to present the best solution for the tasks at hand here, most of the stuff...

forums.civfanatics.com

Hope these help you forward. They mostly only cover the Civ4 specific stuff, you probably will need to learn how to use 3ds Max / Blender seperately as well.

Words cannot describe how useful this is, thank you.
On a tangent I was testing to see if .gif files could be used in place of a .dds image for a leader head, and from what I could tell.. It does not.
Is it possible to use a .gif, .mp4, or even a .webm as a leader head portrait? Alternatively I could pose a head/bust of a person in blender (still learning 3DSMax) and give it a standard idle animation, export it to .nif, but would that work in place of a leader head? It would just have the idle animation and no reactions (happy, angry, etc.)

See attached for an example.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

No, it is not possible. The game will only accept .dds files.

As for exporting a model with custom animations the situation is basically like this. Each thing, be it a unit, building or what ever else has a .nif file containing the model and a set of .kf files containing the individual animations. The names, durations and other details of these animations are hardcoded into the game. And the game will use hardcoded trigger conditions to initiate these individual animations. And you also have a .kfm file that's basically just a list of .kfs that your model uses with the name for the game to reference. If an animation file (.kf) is missing for your model than the game will simply skip it and continue playing what ever animation was playing previously.

So in order for your model to work and be animated you have to have to make a model and than make what ever animations you like and export this as a combined nif + kfm + .kf file set. Where the .nif is static and the individual animations match the individual .kf files defined by the game as a template logically and in duration. So if you want a fully custom leader you would indeed need to make a fully custom animation set.

The way we all get around having to do that is by first selecting a base model we like and than importing that model as a starting point. Because if your model is made so that it can be skinned over an existing leaders skeleton than you can reuse existing animations and you only need to make the non animated nif.

I do that for all my units all the time. By taking a similar existing unit as a base I only need to make the custom animations I need and can reuse the rest.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Would also not know how integrate an animated texture file into Civ4. If you are okay with a static image for each "mood" of the leaderhead, you could try out this:

Variable Static Leaderhead

With these files it is possible to make a static leaderhead that shows different images for each animation an animated leaderhead would do. Each different image is stored in the respective .dds file, just replace the graphics. If desired, the...

forums.civfanatics.com