How To: Make Leaderheads! Ekmek's Guide

[Ekmek]

you can use any BG for any leader. But you may have to use nifskop eto resize or reposition the BG. Tell me who what file syou are trying to swap and I can give more info.

 

[Flintlock1415]

I'm having a bit of a problem with importing a leaderhead...
I'm trying to load up the Vanilla Peter the Great, but it takes 20+ minutes to load, and when it finally shows up, the nodes/bones or whatever are very large, and I can only see the leaderhead if I zoom in on it all the way, and even then it is close enough to do any editing.
Some parts, ie the eyes, mouth, & sash are misplaced as well.

I'm rather perplexed as to what I should do as the LH works in ingame (obviously) and in Nifskope.
I'll post a screenie of what i'm seeing. Any ideas/ suggestions are helpful and if nothing else could someone pm me a working blend so I can start working on my new project? Thanks

 

[Ekmek]

thats weird. I've imported peter a few times and i didnt see that happen. have you tried the nonshader.nif?

 

[Flintlock1415]

Ah, of course. That file worked perfectly, thanks!
Is there any difference in how it will look, though?

 

[ripple01]

you can use any BG for any leader. But you may have to use nifskop eto resize or reposition the BG. Tell me who what file syou are trying to swap and I can give more info.

I am using The Capo's Mindaugas as Canute and I am trying to use the BG from the Canute in CivGold. I've attached a screenshot; it works for the most part, except there is a little red showing in the upper left corner and you can also see some red at the bottom of the screen depending on how the LH is positioned.

Cheers,
ripple01

 

[The Capo]

Hey Ekmek,

I am trying to take a background for one leader and use it for another and am running into some problems. Is there anywhere that describes how to work with leader backgrounds?

Cheers,
ripple01

Seconded, I tried to change the background for Stefan Stambolov and I couldn't (which is why I wound up using your regular Ataturk BG). Despite my LH abilities this is something I havent' seemed to master just yet.

 

[Ekmek]

I am using The Capo's Mindaugas as Canute and I am trying to use the BG from the Canute in CivGold. I've attached a screenshot; it works for the most part, except there is a little red showing in the upper left corner and you can also see some red at the bottom of the screen depending on how the LH is positioned.

thats an easy nofskope fix. any bg works with anyleader but the camera of the leaderhead may position the bg too close or too far. in this case too far. if you open the bg.nif in nifskope and click on the box with the picture look at hte properties in the block details at bottom and chane the size from 1.000 to 1.15 and that wil lincrease its size and get rid of the red (i had to do this for Peron if i recall right)

 

[ripple01]

Thanks, Ekmek, this totally fixed the problem.

Cheers,
ripple01

 

[Flintlock1415]

Okay, I'm having another problem with that Leaderhead I'm making.

I basically finished it, (aside from some skinning/touching up) and I exported it fine from Blender, and I didn't move it around at all (I loaded the original so I'm sure that isn't it)
The problem occurs when I try to do the Nifswap. It Loads into Nifskope fine, but when I do the swap, it moves up and to the left, and it does the same ingame (see screenshot.)

Any ideas/suggestions? I can also post the nif files/blends if you need them.

EDIT: Okay I fixed this by using translation in Nifskope, but there are still some clipping issues. (which are more noticable in game on the beard and eyes.) Other than that how does it look (so far)?

 

[Ekmek]

it might be where you stuck the trishapes. post a screen shot of your nif tree. or just post your nif. but clipping is usually a rigging issues (it'll look fine in blender and nifskope but animations distort the model for some unfortuante reason)

 

[Huayna Capac357]

I'm confused by something. When I put the buttons into my mod they show up as pink in the game. And how do you make a .kfm file? Because my LHs seem to crash when I select them and when one goes to the Civilopedia it shows nothing except the title when I click on their Civilopedia page. I think the problems are the .kfm file and the button. Thanks!

 

[The Capo]

I'm confused by something. When I put the buttons into my mod they show up as pink in the game. And how do you make a .kfm file? Because my LHs seem to crash when I select them and when one goes to the Civilopedia it shows nothing except the title when I click on their Civilopedia page. I think the problems are the .kfm file and the button. Thanks!

The buttons should be in DDS format and around 64x64 pixels. The KFM files have to be the right animations, and they have to be in the right folder (or whatever folder you link them to in the XML).

 

[Huayna Capac357]

But I did those and it still doesn't work.

 

[Ekmek]

did you do the nifswap? if you are trying to get the nif you exported to play in game it will crash.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Nifswap? What does that mean?

 

[Infantry#14]

hi, I'm a first time modder of civ 4.

I follow this guide to import a new leader from colonization mod (taizong) to beyond the sword. I got everything fine now (there were a few minor xml errors but I managed to fixed them somehow) except the leader head buttons. On the civiopedia screen and the F4 diplomacy screen, my newly created leaderhead is currently pink. I'm not sure what to do next...

 

[Ekmek]

you need to add buttons. look at the artdefines_Leaderhead.xml and see what buttons are called and then see if you have them.

 

[Flintlock1415]

Woohoo! Another problem leaderhead!
I've been trying to make a Sam Houston leaderhead out of John Adams, but I'm having a problem with the Nifswap. Everything went great until then, when his face became extremely distorted. I figured I screwed something up in Blender, so I tried again... with the exact same results!

I'm a bit dumbfounded on this one, so could anyone help me out? I have the nif/blend attached.
Thanks!

 

[cool3a2]

I never worked with Blender, so I'm not sure. But I had leaderhads with two (or even more) exemplars of a bone. For example two right shoulder bones and so on. I guess someone did a transplantation or something, don't know. However, I also encountered problems when nifswapping then, similar to what you described. That happened, because the mesh got assigned to the wrong exemplar of its bones. You can fix that if you take a look at the skin node of the distorted mesh and correct the assignments there. Hope this will help you.

 

[Ekmek]

Woohoo! Another problem leaderhead!
I've been trying to make a Sam Houston leaderhead out of John Adams, but I'm having a problem with the Nifswap. Everything went great until then, when his face became extremely distorted. I figured I screwed something up in Blender, so I tried again... with the exact same results!

I'm a bit dumbfounded on this one, so could anyone help me out? I have the nif/blend attached.
Thanks!

and you didn't import two skeletons at the same time with the leaderhead? thats usualy the problem when this happens.

The other possibilities could be:
1) you unrigged something
2) accidentally rigged the jaw to the torso (or something like that) it would distort if animation attached
3) you changed the animations?