How To: Make Leaderheads! Ekmek's Guide

[Ekmek]

On the un-nifskoped one, it's like this:

NiNode (Scene Root)
-----NiNode (with Isabella's crown stuff in it)
-----NiNode (with all the Champlain stuff, including the hair, in it)

ahhh. then for some reason it "remembered" Isabella's stuff. expand those out and see the trishapes. click on the hair and copy that branch and put it directly under scene root or isabella. not sure which one with out testingit myself.

On a second note this might mean that you left a "bone" try see if the model looks ok in-game, because you might have to go back to the blend.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Thanks. I'll see what I can do

EDIT: I heard you can also view it using Scene Viewer, since my Civ IV is lagging a lot recently. Where do you get this?

 

[cfkane]

is the hair its own node or under another node. click on it and show where it is in the tree plz.

@cfkane
post the nif and blend and I'll take a look

Here you go: http://www.filefront.com/13945606/Nehemiah Scudder.zip

 

[Ekmek]

@huayna
I don't use scene viewer its not worth it in my opinion

@cfkane
looks like you did import two skeletons i see a scene root then i see a sceneroot.00. you might have to start over but the one you might be able to save it is using your exported blend rename scene root.00 to scene root then copy over. essentially you have two skeletons (scene roots). the game animates the sbcene root but you have all your meshes on the scene root.00 which is why it crashes. you must have imported a second skeleton at some point.

 

[Ekmek]

EDIT: NOW UPDATED!

Attached is my guide that will take you from Blender through Nifskope and has Wolfshanze's XML guide. Please give it a shot and tell me if something is vague or unclear. Start with these downloads:

DOWNLOADS
To get blender to work with Civ files you need to download these programs and install in THIS SEQUENCE. Downloads for 32-bit windows and tested on Vista.
1. PYTHON 2.5.4 (32 BIT WINDOWS)
http://python.org/ftp/python/2.5.4/python-2.5.4.msi
2. BLENDER 2.49RC3 (LAST PYTHON 2.5 VERSION FOR 32-BIT WIN)
http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.49RC/blender-2.49-RC3-windows-py25.exe
3. PPYFII PY 2.5
http://sourceforge.net/project/down...name=PyFFI-py2.5-2.0.0-windows.exe&a=45602585
4. PPYFFI 2.5.2 NIFSCRIPTS
http://sourceforge.net/project/down...nder_nif_scripts-2.4.9-windows.exe&a=53574211
5. NIFSKOPE
http://sourceforge.net/project/down...e=nifskope-1.0.20.4748-windows.exe&a=77985573

Download

 

[The_Coyote]

great tutorial (nice to see some of your tips - didn´t know all of them - think it´s also a good start up for potential units makers) [30 MB and 47 pages ]

 

[cfkane]

@cfkane
looks like you did import two skeletons i see a scene root then i see a sceneroot.00. you might have to start over but the one you might be able to save it is using your exported blend rename scene root.00 to scene root then copy over. essentially you have two skeletons (scene roots). the game animates the sbcene root but you have all your meshes on the scene root.00 which is why it crashes. you must have imported a second skeleton at some point.

Tried it, and I'm having the same issues.

I don't think I explained the problem well enough. Here's the leaderhead in nifskope

It's the original Zara Yaqob with an adapted object nifswapped for the original object (I'm adding a suit later). Now here's how it looks in the game.

See what I mean?

 

[Ekmek]

yeah but in the nif file you post everything has scene root.00 when it should be scene root do you see that?

 

[cfkane]

I did see that, and I've adapted the nif as you suggested. The problem hasn't changed.

 

[Ekmek]

post your latest one

 

[Vortilex]

open is not the same as unpak. the h file i this is the sdk stuff. i don't know what you are doing.

but you might be far enough along in blender to export a nif. I hurried up and finished te nifskope/nifswap guide. I'll finish up the blender part this week. I guess huayna capac could use the nifskope guide as well.

see attached

I did unpak them, and some of the files that it unpaked ended in .h, .dta, etc. What do those mean? I probably don't need them, but it piqued my curiosity. Also, what was attatched?

 

[Vortilex]

Oh, btw, who'd you use to make Santa Ana, Bolivar, O'Higgins, and (if aplicable) San Martin? I don't recognize the base leaderheads you used to make the ones you did. I guess that's just practice though I'll try to post some once I've made them.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Santa Anna was based on San Martin, Bolivar was Alexander, O'Higgins was Augustus, and San Martin was from C4C.

 

[Vortilex]

What/Who's C4C? I plan on creating a Peru Civ, and since Peru did control Chile for awhile, and there was a president of Peru named Santa Ana, San Martin and Bolivar were both presidents, and O'Higgins, being Chilean, well, was part of Peru. I get kinda technical there, so ignore some of the more biased opinions I have about South America.

 

[cfkane]

post your latest one

http://www.filefront.com/13950356/Nehemiah-Scudder.zip/

 

[The_Coyote]

@ cfkane

add the shader name to the part which disappears in game (atm you have, shader: yes , shader name: 'no entry', unknown value: -1 ; shader name should be 'TLeaderheadShaderNoSkin_20'). The values can be found in the block details of the NiTriStrips (in your case: zara)

 

[Vortilex]

@ The_Coyote: Does that explain why some of the default leaderheads will appear as all red or as just eyes or something like that? With me, it sometimes will show a pure red Mehmed except for the eye_shadow.dds I think, that comes through. In Wang Kon, it shows him as just the eye_shadow.dds and part of his crown. With Ragnar, the middle of his beard is missing. Are these due to what you just said? For Mehmed and Wang Kon, swapping the names of the nonshader .nif and the shader .nif fixed the problem, they just look like they need some color in their faces It didn't work on Ragnar.

 

[The_Coyote]

it sounds more like a technical problem, the game tries to use the shader version but because of for me unknown reason you have problems displaying them (without the entry above, nobody with a shader able PC should see them), have you updated your graphic card driver? (and nonshader nif are normally a bit weaker optical)

why Ragnar did´t work (no idea what is special about is beard, never looked at his nif so far)

sorry that i couldn´t provide you a really good answer

 

[Vortilex]

I've got the most up-to-date graphics card to my knowlage (according to Ori regarding an uncached XML problem). Also, for some reason, when I tried installing Shaherezede by someone, it gave me her .tga file as her background. I deleted that, and now, her background is normal-ish. About 3/4 of the background is a blue sky with white clouds. The remaining 1/4 is just a red block. The leaderhead itself is okay though.

 

[cfkane]

@ cfkane

add the shader name to the part which disappears in game (atm you have, shader: yes , shader name: 'no entry', unknown value: -1 ; shader name should be 'TLeaderheadShaderNoSkin_20'). The values can be found in the block details of the NiTriStrips (in your case: zara)

Okay, I changed the shader name as you asked, and the objects are showing up in the game, and they aren't causing crashes. But, they aren't animated. I'm guessing it's a problem with the values. Can you explain that part to me