Initial look at Nexus, 3D Unit Art and reskinning

[Deliverator]

Could someone tell me what are the necessary steps to import some unit graphics (from Civ IV)

This can't be done yet since the FBX Asset Import in Nexus is:
(a) not working properly.
(b) not documented or understood by anyone.

See this thread for the attempts that have been made to import 3D graphics so far.

I'm hopeful that unit conversion from Civ 4 to Civ 5 will eventually be possible, but it is unlikely to be especially easy or fun.

 

[ambrox62]

it seems we may only be able to add new content rather than editing existing content i.e. do reskins and conversions.

It means that mods and modders MUST use existing Civ5 art stuff only at the moment. Am I right?
In the process of adding new units, for example, we MUST link existing arts, as Kael showed in his tutorial. Right? No axemen, no javelineers, no team color on Civ5 UUs !!!

 

[ambrox62]

Only Nexus can open them and Nexus provides no facility (yet) to switch the textures or meshes, or really do anything to the existing 3D content.

There are no freeware tools able to create/edit gr2 stuff. Granny and 3DSMax are commercial suites. No more free tools like blender and nifskope. I see a marketing operation behind that: next Civ5 expansions will be fullfilled with graphic stuff.

 

[Deliverator]

I see a marketing operation behind that: next Civ5 expansions will be fullfilled with graphic stuff.

If the Babylonian art assets for Nebuchadnezzar and the Bowman could be extracted there would be nothing to stop Babylon being released as a community mod which would totally undermine the DLC model. DLC and complete freedom for the modding community are opposing forces. Personally, I think Firaxis have made a poor short-termist decision - failing to understand what has made mods like FFH2 possible.

No more free tools like blender and nifskope.

While Nifskope is certainly no use for Civ 4, Blender does have FBX export scripts which should allow new units to be made. See here.

The trouble is, without being able to use existing skeletons and animations as a base it's going to be harder to create new units from scratch. That's why I think a conversion process for Civ 4 units could become the predominant source for community created units in Civ 5. We'll see what happens.

 

[ambrox62]

Blender does have FBX export scripts which should allow new units to be made

How it works exactly? What should happen after I've exported a unit in fbx format?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

The trouble is, without being able to use existing skeletons and animations as a base it's going to be harder to create new units from scratch. That's why I think a conversion process for Civ 4 units could become the predominant source for community created units in Civ 5. We'll see what happens.

If we can convert Civ 4 Units we can create them from scratch as well, also animations. For one civ4 animations are very similar but don't seem to match exactly so they would have to be altered slightly. For that we'd either need to be able to import existing assets in order to study them ourselves or Firaxis must provide an example file usable as template (ideally with detailed instructions) like they did for 3ds max for civ4, either way I exspect this must come from Firaxis unless some pirate genius is going to crack their propriety format which is unlikely going to happen. Of course the nexus importer would have to work properly too...

Well I hoped to be able to study at least some basic info on how units and animations are set up for CiV with the nexus asset viewer but unfortunatly it keeps crashing when I look at animated files.

So to bump my earlier question:

Does some else using windows 7 have similar problem?

 

[Deliverator]

Does some else using windows 7 have similar problem?

I have Windows 7 and I can view animated files. Everything I did and described in the opening post was done with Windows 7. Which file are you looking at?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I have Windows 7 and I can view animated files. Everything I did and described in the opening post was done with Windows 7. Which file are you looking at?

Pretty much any unit I tried doesn't work while buildings show fine. Weird. I noticed my registry is a little different from yours as there was no toolasset path, running the extract script worked though. I might try a new install later. Thx for the answer.

 

[Ekmek]

Deliverator,

Can youcompile a list of issues and requests. I'll try to get them to the Firaxis guys.

Mostly what I see in this thread is that we need access to the material editor for a firaxis.gr2 and then compile a new fxsxml file from it. So its just text and dds files for reskinning instead of additional models.

 

[asioasioasio]

So to bump my earlier question:

Does some else using windows 7 have similar problem?

It crashes like a mad - I never quitted Nexus so far, it alway crashed. When i try view mesh also.

I click asset import - bang crash

 

[Louis XXIV]

Couldn't modders just make their reskins available for download here at Civfanatics and just bypass the darn mod browser? People would have to overwrite their files in resource/DX9 but they could be given instuctions to make backups first. That way we could at least reskin the units in the game for the time being. I don't know; would that work?

The mod browser and here would not be any different. If Firaxis doesn't want it released, it will be deleted (CFC tends to cooperate with Firaxis to the best of their ability here). All this being said, my impression is this. If you can't use the unit for its original DLC purpose, they will have no problem with it being released. If you can reskin a Bowman so it looks like he's a Zombie Archer, they aren't going to stop you. But, if you change the helmet color to a slightly different color, they are.

Anyway, I think all this depends on Nexus. Once they get that fixed, there won't be as many concerns from people.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

It crashes like a mad - I never quitted Nexus so far, it alway crashed. When i try view mesh also.

I click asset import - bang crash

Ah ok then I'm not the only one, glad to know that

 

[Kahotep]

how do I tell modbuilder to simply change a single .dds file which is located in the resource/DX9 directory.

For example : A simple change to make those Modern Euro City Sets more vibrant and colorful.

Simply done by reskinning "euro_mod_city_diff.dds" from "resource/DX9".

Now how do I make a mod out of this ?

Simply attaching the texture to the mod in modbuilder doesn't work. Adding a path to it in "Content" or "Actions" doesn't work too since I don't know which "type" I actually have to name it.

Simply replacing the file in the root folder works fine, but this can't be the way to publish it since the .fpk's need to be extracted.

I have a similar question, except in my case I'm reskinning the Egyptian War Chariot to look like this:

 

[RandomPete]

One thing I've noticed that may be a source of a lot of Nexus crashes. When you start Nexus, it starts the Civ 5 engine as a background process. You can see this in Task Manager (hence why it also has a "restart Civ" button).

If I start Nexus first, then try to run the Civ 5 game in DirectX9, the game will always crash. If I start the game first, then Nexus, I think Nexus has problems because the game is using the files. So make sure Civ isn't already running when you start Nexus.

Of course, it could just be that the tools are horrendously buggy. Makes me wonder how they ever actually finished developing this game!

 

[Lord Shadow]

Quick question, fellas.

What's the difference in purpose between a <unit>_diff.dds texture and a <unit>_sref.dds one?

 

[CaptainBinky]

diff is diffuse texture, sref is the specular reflection texture. So if the specular works in the same way as they usually do, black would be not shiny, and white would be shiny.

 

[Pazyryk]

Pretty basic question here: Do I need Nexus at all to add 2D art? Kyoss has an excellent tutorial for adding a new resource. He used the .dds directly from photoshop without Nexus for the icons. Would this also work for 2D leader scenes (the one at game start) or any other 2D art?

 

[Ekmek]

Pretty basic question here: Do I need Nexus at all to add 2D art? Kyoss has an excellent tutorial for adding a new resource. He used the .dds directly from photoshop without Nexus for the icons. Would this also work for 2D leader scenes (the one at game start) or any other 2D art?

you don't need nexus for 2d buttons and such. and for some reason 2d leaderhead scene art isnt work. it should just be a dds. but it isnt working (Kael and I both tried) so Firaxis is looking into it

 

[Pazyryk]

Thanks Ekmek, I figured out the answer to my question with some trial and error.

And while I was at it, I figured out how to make 2d art work for leader heads (Kael couldn't figure this out? Really?).

Spoiler :

Details over here.

 

[Ekmek]

goodjob. Its a great work around but the problem kael and I had was having was trying to have the game play a 2d image yet still have the 3d ones work. it crashed each time for us.