How To: Make Leaderheads! Ekmek's Guide

ok i checked the hat. you assigned the hat to the spine bone. you need to remove it from the spine bone and assign it to the head bone. i guess early on you got confused as to what the bone names meant. i think you understand that they aren't really "bones" but names for the part of the body that the animation will move in-game.

so like you reasigned the arms- reasign the hat to the head and remove it from the spine and it'll be good to go.
 
Nothing appears to be happening, and I changed the glossiness or whatever to ten and it looks exactly the same.

Nevermind; but only his face is now lit in red, and his body still in blue. Why didn't his body change? Or is this just a coincidence?
 
Okay, his face no longer has light right on it (I went through a bunch of different colors and now it looks good. But that "blue light" that seems to be shining from below him (on his arms, belt buckle, and small parts of his face) isn't changing at all. What is that from?

BTY: This is obviously not supposed to be Meiji, I just used a copy of my mod and replaced Meiji's art with Gustav's.
 
Here's the problem, and this picture illustrates it pretty well. When I change the values the color changes. That I understand. But I've changed them to red here, and there is now red light on his chest, but the blue light that seems to be eminating from below him (see the hat, strap-buckle, and sleeves) is still there. I can't figure out how to change that.

EDIT: Yes I saw the hat problem, thank you. I don't have to redo the nif swap do I? I can just import the nif and edit in blender now right? And then export it back?
 
Aww, I had him looking pretty good and then I thought I could just edit the nif in blender and fix the hat thing. Apparently you can not do that. So I have to go back and redo everything all over again... DAMN IT!

But I guess the repetition will be good for me, so I am used to doing this, or whatever. Anyway that pesky blue light at the bottom of the hat was still there, and I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. But its coming along pretty well, and I think once I am done getting the "lighting" right I am going to release it as a version 1 before reskinning it, in case I screw that up beyond belief too.
 
The Capo said:
Aww, I had him looking pretty good and then I thought I could just edit the nif in blender and fix the hat thing. Apparently you can not do that. So I have to go back and redo everything all over again... DAMN IT!
Click to expand...

no you don't. once you export the the blender nif - just swap the hat.

You gotta get use to the idea that the parts are separate and you can mix and match. :)

fr the lghting. Did you try minimizing the specular color values to 0.010 and making the emissive color higher thatn the specular color (like 0.100)?
 
:beer: FINALLY!

Thank you for that advice, I got it finished and now it is ready to be reskinned... Let's see how I royally (<---is that how you spell that word? Doesn't that look strange?) screw that process up. Here are some pictures with the background I chose (I could go with a different BG though, its just something I threw together).
 
The Capo said:
:beer: FINALLY!

Thank you for that advice, I got it finished and now it is ready to be reskinned... Let's see how I royally (<---is that how you spell that word? Doesn't that look strange?) screw that process up. Here are some pictures with the background I chose (I could go with a different BG though, its just something I threw together).
Click to expand...

:cheers: Now you finally finished the brutal initiation into the LH-makers club!

For the texture, fortunately there are a lot of skinners out there. you might even be able to recruit one to do the skinning for you (maybe PW90 or wolfshanze).

I let you get some more practice with doing other leaders, then I'll tell you how to add Julius's scalp to your gustav's head so you can get rid of the hat ;)


(its like adding the hat but then you "connect the dots" by clicking two dots close to each other and hitting Alt+M and merging them, butthen you have to redo the UV which a lot more training)
 
Don't initiate me just yet Ekmek.

So I tried to parlay my skills on to a new LH, just to see if I can do it totally on my own and I must have screwed something up. I tried to make an easy one that required no skinning and had no arm movement. I am trying to make Charles V using the Castro from Amra's mod. Anyway I have attached some screen shots and the blend as well. There was an error when I attempted to do the nif swap, I have circled it in one of the screens.
 
that happens sometimes.

It can be fixed in nifskope. for the trishape/part you want to copy over expand it and find the niSkininstances. Click on that. then down at the bottom it will havea line thaht says skeleton root. It probably have the nif name you pasted here. Find the scene root number in you EXPORT Nif (its the number if front of NiNode) and change the number from the one the nif is using (its probably using 0, 1, 2, 3, 4) and change it 5 because thats what it looks like your scene root is using. then do the swap.
 
Alright, well I tried to do what you told me but I don't see a way to change any numbers. I clicked on it and all it does is allow me to change the name. I think I pulled open the right things here's a screen shot. What do I have to do here?
 
Alright, sorry I'm an idiot. I figured that out, but apparently something else is wrong because it didn't move on to the body, it just pasted next to the skeleton, do you know why this happened?
 
The Capo said:
Alright, sorry I'm an idiot. I figured that out, but apparently something else is wrong because it didn't move on to the body, it just pasted next to the skeleton, do you know why this happened?
Click to expand...


ok, first which is the one you are copying from and which is the in game one.

second, are you trying to do a direct nifswap from castro to charlie5 without blender? its do-able, but risky. in fact i've only begun experimenting with it in the past month.

third the shift in skeleton might be because the skeleton is named different than 'scene root' - which may be the case for castro because it was made by bernie and not firaxis

also post nif&blend files - so i can see whats happening faster.

i'm attaching my nifshot on the skeleton root for archive sake ;)
 
No, I made it in blender, I posted the blend above if you want to DL it and take a look at it. The one on the left is Castro, the one on the right is Chucky Five.
 
Okay, here is the nif and the blend. Sorry, I don't know how I manage to do it, but I always stumble into something difficult when I think it is going to be easy.

Thanks for helping me, once I figure this out it'll be simple to finish and if you ask me this is going to make a better looking Charles V than the one out there based on that space-scenario or whatever.
 
no problem. i never ran into this before because i never reused a leaderhead that had nifs ninode ahead of the scene root ninode.

but i think i figured it out. when you are copying the branch over to castro don't pick the top castro.nif ninode, make sure you pick the scene root ninode, then it'll be on the skeleton.
 
Hmm, alright. I'd be lying to you if I said I knew what all of these terms meant, but I'm sure I'll learn over time. I'll try and get Chucky done tonight because I am shocked that he has never been in a civ game before. Especially considering they have the HRE now. I'm almost certain they had him in CivIII for one of the expansions, just the LH though because I was playing fall of Rome or something and there was a leaderhead there that looked out of place (like he was from the renaissance) and looked at lot like Charles V.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

kochman
Custom Leaderheads Pack
Replies
15
Views
16K
Abner Jenkins
Abner Jenkins
Back
Top Bottom