[MOD] MagisterModmod

[MagisterCultuum]

The Wandering Castle art was my own creation, based primarily on the Calabim Palace. I edited its texture to add the snow on the roof, and combined it with the Polar Bear Den (with some scale changes, not the same for every axis, and some rotations) to serve as snow piled up around it, and the blizzard to explain where all the snow was coming from.


I'm less impressed by the Orc Archmage than I'd hoped. The face looks more similar to the paladin than I'd realized, but much worse around the mouth. I had thought it might be nice to add its hair to the Rantine model, but when I put it in the game it looked bad even ignoring how it did not move with the head.




The Stoneskin Ogre has a cleaver that it might be nice to use in other units if it were not part of the same mesh as his armor.


Right now I think the top of my list for units that need new models is Averax the Cambion. Ideally I'd like him to resemble his leaderhead image. I'm currently just using a colorized version of the Ira. The Ira's head is probably the best we could ever find for Averax, but I really don't like using the rest of the Ira body for him. In his leaderhead image you can see that he should appear to be a fairly normal human from his neck down, not an odd twisted shape that turns to smoke below the torso instead of having legs. I think that head could work well with the body of Donal Lugh, a Repentant Angel, or even just the standard Axeman.


You provided me with the pieces of the Repentant Angel's armor already but did not include a version of the unit's body without the armor. That could be nice to have. You also left off the chain connecting his Pauldrons. I'd love to have some chains I could have hanging off of a unit without it needing to connect to such large pauldrons. The chain is the main reason I used the Repentant Angel as the basis for the Chainbreaker unit. I'd really prefer something with less armor and more chains. Chains hanging from shackles would be great, both for the Chainbreakers and for Laroth.


I just swapped out the Shade crown for the Azer crown on Laroth, which is a big improvement, even if it is still not quite his canonical "crown of mirrors."

Shackles snaked up through the ground and clasped onto the man wrists. Ethne turned to run but another pair grabbed her. They were both pulled through the surface of the ground, into a world without light, substance or breath. When they came out they were dropped into a summoning circle in a large vaulted ivory chamber. A man with a crown of mirrors and deep black pits instead of eyes stared at both of them. A blue skinned angel stood beside him and around the room hundreds of humans, elves, dwarves and orcs stood watching. Ethne knew they were all great people from many ages, kings and heroes.[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]"Ethne. Auric." The man without eyes said, "Welcome to my palace. There are only two choices in the world of the dead, you wait endlessly, or you rebel. I am the leader of that rebellion, I am Laroth."

I think it would be nice to edit the Manticore so that it has the tail of a scorpion instead of just being a lion with wings. Hyborem style wings might work better with it too.

 

[BossDaddy]

The Wandering Castle art was my own creation, based primarily on the Calabim Palace. I edited its texture to add the snow on the roof, and combined it with the Polar Bear Den (with some scale changes, not the same for every axis, and some rotations) to serve as snow piled up around it, and the blizzard to explain where all the snow was coming from.


I'm less impressed by the Orc Archmage than I'd hoped. The face looks more similar to the paladin than I'd realized, but much worse around the mouth. I had thought it might be nice to add its hair to the Rantine model, but when I put it in the game it looked bad even ignoring how it did not move with the head.

The Stoneskin Ogre has a cleaver that it might be nice to use in other units if it were not part of the same mesh as his armor.


Right now I think the top of my list for units that need new models is Averax the Cambion. Ideally I'd like him to resemble his leaderhead image. I'm currently just using a colorized version of the Ira. The Ira's head is probably the best we could ever find for Averax, but I really don't like using the rest of the Ira body for him. In his leaderhead image you can see that he should appear to be a fairly normal human from his neck down, not an odd twisted shape that turns to smoke below the torso instead of having legs. I think that head could work well with the body of Donal Lugh, a Repentant Angel, or even just the standard Axeman.


You provided me with the pieces of the Repentant Angel's armor already but did not include a version of the unit's body without the armor. That could be nice to have. You also left off the chain connecting his Pauldrons. I'd love to have some chains I could have hanging off of a unit without it needing to connect to such large pauldrons. The chain is the main reason I used the Repentant Angel as the basis for the Chainbreaker unit. I'd really prefer something with less armor and more chains. Chains hanging from shackles would be great, both for the Chainbreakers and for Laroth.


I just swapped out the Shade crown for the Azer crown on Laroth, which is a big improvement, even if it is still not quite his canonical "crown of mirrors."




I think it would be nice to edit the Manticore so that it has the tail of a scorpion instead of just being a lion with wings. Hyborem style wings might work better with it too.

I haven't been able to open the ogre warchief, stoneskin ogre, or Tumtum in blender yet. There was a comment from Deliverator (which I can't find now) who said that this is because blender is using the root node in place of the skeleton node or the other way around. I can't recall which. He also said he had written a script to get around that so that blender could open the file, but I haven't found that either. It's a shame because those are very nice models. The great unclean one unit that has been made has a large sword that might be a good asset for some units. I can see if I can split that off.

I did throw the archmage head onto the bhall orc and I thought it looked pretty good. Was the veil something that could be useful? Do you want me to try to combine the lower legs from the archmage and the body of the orc paladin to make a baseline orc? I'd also like to check if the armored pieces around the collar bone and abdomen can be removed.

Since uploading unit a bit ago, I have gone back to the repentant angel and tinkered with him some. I also like the chains on his armor. I think the chains on the scourge are even better. I was going to use these on the eater of dreams, but went down a rabbit hole with the tentacles. I'll provide a few versions that might be adjustable in nifskope. Describe what else you'd like the chains added to and I'll put that together as well.

I could try to edit something that might be a better fit for Laroth and provide that. I have also wanted to adjust the angles on the azer crown, duplicate the protrusions, and possibly rescale. I am curious how it might look as a circlet or torc.

I'll take off the scorpion tail and add that to the manticore. I'll also provide just the tail in case you could use that as an asset. The wings on the Infernal beastmaster are pretty nice looking. I'm going to split these off. Two sets of well made wings will be a nice resource.


Edit: This might mean more to you since you're proficient with nifskope. I'm reading up on it and experimenting when able.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...animations-using-blender-and-nifskope.435755/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unit-requests-thread.157708/page-177#post-9203025

I've noticed that my exports from blender to nifskope seem to fail with bone nodes. Blender makes another set of bones at the bottom of the tree instead of overwriting. Everything moves correctly in blender's pose mode, but the model still doesn't animate. I think doing this in nifskope rather than blender is the way to go.

 

[BossDaddy]

I haven't checked this in game. I exported from nifskope to a .obj, imported that to blender, and then exported it back as a .nif. The textures look a little worse to me in nifscope after doing this, but might not be noticeable in game. I don't think positions came over from the import/export either. Regardless, which file structure is better for you? In one folder I split off most things I thought might be relevant and kept it all in a single nif. In the other folder the objects are their own nif. I'll do the repentant angel tomorrow.

 

[Nothrazim]

I recall reading that some of Kylorin's apprentices cannot be acquired in an ordinary game, as they don't have a sluagh that spawns as part of map gen. I found the sluaghs of 19 of the archmages, and was able to resurrect most of them with a combination of Life Affinity & Undeath Affinity (thank the gods for Meta archmages - summoning 3 djinns with Master of Magic gives insane flexibility).

However, i was unable to resurrect the sluagh of Paimon, Laroth or the Red Jester. Casting Mass Resurrection on the Seven Pines gave me an Elder Dragon instead, and i was unable to recast the resurrection. Is he exclusively available to the Grigori as their hero, or is he intended to be brought back by other civs? (Likewise, is the Red Jester Balseraph-only despite the sluagh in the Palus?)

Similar question regarding Laroth; i found his sluagh in Bradeline's Well but whether it is sealed or unsealed, i cannot resurrect him using either Life Affinity or Undeath Affinity. Is it intentional that he cannot be resurrected (at this point), or am i missing a step?

Finally, i assume Os-Gabella is WB exclusively, being a civ leader. Is Leucretius likewise WB only, or is there some way of bringing her back? I couldn't find her sluagh on any unique features.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You cannot resurrect units with Mass Resurrection unless you meet any technology and civ prereqs. That means that only the Grigori can raise Paimon and only the Balseraphs may raise the Red Jester (I'm thinking I may change it so that the Red Jester is a Balseraph hero while the Momus can be raised from the Palus, even if the name is the only thing distinguishing the units. I guess I could also have one with and one without the red mask.)

You should be able to raise Laroth. I think there was some issue preventing the resurrection of Laroth at one point but I believe I fixed it and cannot now remember what it was.

Leucetios is WB only. It doesn't really seem right to resurrect an eternally youthful woman who is probably immortal would need someone to resurrect her. I don't know her canonical status in the Age of Rebirth, but I like to imagine that she and was captured by Os-Gabella and imprisoned alongside her father Nemed for use in experiments to help her captor try to find a means of suicide. I like to think that one reason for the average lifespan was still so much higher in the Age of Magic was that most people were only a few generations removed from Nemed via Leucetios's many children, but that Gabella did not allow any of the products of her immaculate conceptions to escape and enter the gene pool during the Age of Ice. It could be that she escaped with Nemed during the Age of Rebirth. (She could also have been captured by Alexis, who would surely value her as a limitless source of sustenance for vampires.) From a game mechanic perspective, it seemed too powerful to allow easy access to a unit that can make all your units immortal and raise all the other members of the Imprimatur Council.

A Merry Dancer is a demon who has been saved by the compassion of Sirona. They have repented and forsaken all forms of violence and hatred and are now creatures of joy, beauty and peace.

I'm thinking of giving the Brotherhood of Wardens access to the Merry Dancer as their religious champion.

It would be a defensive-only Angel that defends first against various Demons and has access to a new "Forgiveness" spell which lets you take control of rival demonic units, after purging them of any evil religion or promotions and transforming them into more Merry Dancers. The ability of course can be resisted, and would probably not be allowed to work on any heroes. Still, I think it could be fun to send angels into Infernal lands to seduce entire armies of demons away from evil and back to the side of good. Canonically Repentant Angels are also creature of Sirona, so I might let the Merry Dancers upgrade to them if you absolutely need to make the pacifist units turn to fighting you wars.



I was just playing around if NifScope and I found that the golshan.nif model used for numerous Fey units in the Master of Manamodmod
(which I already use for the Kuriotates Dryad and the Tomb Wardens) actually looks pretty good with Angel Wings. If I attach them to the clavicles as in most units then the wings become static, but if I attach them to the bones used for the unit's flowing hair then they flap nicely. The only problem with that is the hair intersects and passes through the wings a bit. I can remove all the right and left sections of the hair but have to leave the middle top section or else the whole unit disappears. The hair on top still flapping around isn't too bad but it is a little disconcerting how it always remains behind the wings at any angle. I ended up deleting that part of the texture so it is transparent.


I was initially planning on using this for the Merry Dancer, and may still do so, but I'm starting to think would be a fetter fit as a Slyph.

I went ahead and added it to an Air Elemental the same way I did Greyson. If it is used with golshan.kfm then the whirlwind is static while the unit is nicely animated, but with with Airelement.kfm the unit is static and flies around in the whirlwind like Greyson does. I'm not sure which version I like better. It would be nice if I knew how to combine animations so that the unit could flap its wings while flying around in circles forming the whirlwind.

Combining the animations is not a high priority as I do not yet have any plans to add the Slyph as a unit in the game, but I thought the unit looked nice enough that I'd share it.

 

[BossDaddy]

Repentant angel assets and Averax's head on Donal's body. Use heavyswordsman.nif and uses Donal's animations and follows the body correctly. I'll fine tune some other time. The head is a separate mesh so you can recolor it or the body. Fixed transparency issues on the chains from the repentant angel. Same issue as the orc paladin with the lower legs. I attached both with and without.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Repentant angel assets and Averax's head on Donal's body. Use heavyswordsman.nif and uses Donal's animations and follows the body correctly. I'll fine tune some other time. The head is a separate mesh so you can recolor it or the body. Fixed transparency issues on the chains from the repentant angel. Same issue as the orc paladin with the lower legs. I attached both with and without.

I think the head is too small there and that it matches the fur on the back of Donal Lugh too closely. If I remove the fur then there is a big gap on his back.

A 1.5 scale Ira head on the body of the Repentant Angel looks better, but the portion of the torso that is included in the head mesh is too much and stick out from the chest and back. (I would have gone larger than 1.5x but then it would stick out way too much.) In this version I added the hip armor from the Elohim axeman, which is also a bit awkward as I cannot see it change when I try to scale or move it in NifSkope. I tried the Orc Paladin waist section first but it was even more awkward without being able to see how it was scaling and moving.


I'm starting to think that the Sheaim Adept might be a better candidate for the body to gain the Ira head and axe, but I don't have a headless version to base it on and am not sure how well it would work with axeman animations.

 

[BossDaddy]

I think the head is too small there and that it matches the fur on the back of Donal Lugh too closely. If I remove the fur then there is a big gap on his back.

A 1.5 scale Ira head on the body of the Repentant Angel looks better, but the portion of the torso that is included in the head mesh is too much and stick out from the chest and back. In this version I added the hip armor from the Elohim axeman, which is also a bit awkward as I cannot see it change when I try to scale or move it in NifSkope. I tried the Orc Paladin waist section first but it was even more awkward without being able to see how it was scaling and moving.


I'm starting to think that the Sheaim Adept might be a better candidate for the body to gain the Ira head and axe.

The head is definitely too small. That version is already rescaled to be an approximation of what too expect. I can make the head bigger, however I will need to rescale the trapezius and shoulder areas. I have a version with those already rescaled, but I did not have that animated properly and wanted you to have an idea of what it would look like. Would you prefer I continue to rescale to match Donal's body or would it be better to start with the Sheaim adept?

 

[BossDaddy]

Redone head with two different, and larger sizes. Also a version with the Sheaim archmage shoulders with the spines I had added. Shield removed to better see the entire model.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How does this look?

It is a reskin of your DonalBody.HeadLarger2. I decided that rather than simply use a recolored version of the Ira head, I would copy part of the the leaderhead dds over it so that the face would match more closely. I couldn't get the head and torso skin tone to match perfectly, but this may be good enough. I edited the Donal kopie to remove the Bannor emblems on the armor and add the Sheaim symbol on the greaves, and copied the leaderhead armbands onto the arms. I couldn't get the baldric to work given how the chest is laterally symmetric.


I also included a minor update to the Svartalfar Archmage. I never liked the Svartalfar Adept vaguely skull-like belt buckle and I thought the rune I had copied from the hanging cloth on the Svartalfar mage into the shoulder armor of the archmage as too blurry and didn't look good at many angles. I made a new belt buckle based on the Orc Paladin waist armor desaturated, resized, and with a dark gem in the center with the rune I'd removed from the shoulders placed on that gem instead.

 

[BossDaddy]

Looks like I can export models from Oblivion into Civ 4. Here's my first test.


Here is another example. I grabbed this armor and exported it to civ 4.

 

[BossDaddy]

How does this look?

It is a reskin of your DonalBody.HeadLarger2. I decided that rather than simply use a recolored version of the Ira head, I would copy part of the the leaderhead dds over it so that the face would match more closely. I couldn't get the head and torso skin tone to match perfectly, but this may be good enough. I edited the Donal kopie to remove the Bannor emblems on the armor and add the Sheaim symbol on the greaves, and copied the leaderhead armbands onto the arms. I couldn't get the baldric to work given how the chest is laterally symmetric.


I also included a minor update to the Svartalfar Archmage. I never liked the Svartalfar Adept vaguely skull-like belt buckle and I thought the rune I had copied from the hanging cloth on the Svartalfar mage into the shoulder armor of the archmage as too blurry and didn't look good at many angles. I made a new belt buckle based on the Orc Paladin waist armor desaturated, resized, and with a dark gem in the center with the rune I'd removed from the shoulders placed on that gem instead.

That Averax model is looking good. I'm going to upload the head on the other models you mentioned now that it's the weekend and I have time. If I can export models from Oblivion, it might open up a pretty huge rabbit hole, but would create a lot of possibilities. Given how deep the lore is for your mod, I would like to continue to see more unique and faithful models created. Your texture work is good and I'm getting better at some things on my end. It will probably be beneficial to create a list of what to work on. I've been doing some things that strike my fancy or trying to supply what you send as a priority. I'm thinking now it might be good to focus on certain areas. Heroes first, specific civ units, statics, etc.


Averax's head on the repentant's body. I brought the axes over as well. Two models where he is holding a double-headed axe. Upload your model with the baldric and I'll try to tweak it.

Sheaim adept.

 

[BossDaddy]

Which of these do you want?

 

[BossDaddy]

Manticore

 

[BossDaddy]

I changed the pegasus to a modified version of Stephanoes' mount and modified the wings from the angel of death. The units are animated now so they move. As an experiment, I was able to remove everything from Ars except for the meshes. I then was able to change the lich to use his meshes and animate with the swordsman move set. I'm going to try to get the attack animation for the scorpion tail on the manticore.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

In terms of art feel free to use anything from my module. Also if you have any specific requirements with like a detailed description of what you want message me and I might be able to do something.

 

[BossDaddy]

I'm able to put Oblivion assets into Civ 4 no problem. Statics meshes like architecture, items, anything that has a mesh and no animation is easy. The animations are taking more work because I'm learning as I go, but I've gotten things rigged so far with by welding armor meshes together and then applying those to the bones. Creatures will prolly be a faster to do so I'm going to work on a few of those. Here's a side by side of the FFH imp next to an imp from oblivion. I'm not suggesting this as a replacement. I'm posting this so that the quality of the vanilla asset can be seen.

Edit: The second screen shot is the vanilla lich. Personally, I enjoy and prefer the aesthetic that already exits in FFH. It would be much easier to utilize some pieces and incorporate and modify those into existing units. The lich has a very nice pauldron and helmet for instance. I'm not much interested in playing with stock Oblivion assets myself, but can provide whatever for people to use.

 

[black_imperator]

that does look good. I agree with you that i wouldn't want every unit into this style, but for some specific heroes/ event units, that might be interesting ( especially the ones that look a bit too much like normal units).

Is there somewhere we can browse a library of oblivion assets to see what would fit best ? (full units or pieces)

 

[PPQ_Purple]

As far as animations go my advice would be to just dump the old animations entirely and rerig the model to an existing civ animation. Much faster that way.
Also, I would advise you take special care when trimming the models down to make sure they are in fact small and in the same range as CIV4 models usually are. Oblivion is a game where the models are much larger on screen and made to be seen from much closer up so they are going to have much, much more details both in the mesh and texture department than you need for CIV4. And just loading those up into CIV directly will not lead to good things.

 

[BossDaddy]

that does look good. I agree with you that i wouldn't want every unit into this style, but for some specific heroes/ event units, that might be interesting ( especially the ones that look a bit too much like normal units).

Is there somewhere we can browse a library of oblivion assets to see what would fit best ? (full units or pieces)

I'm converting them now. I'll upload some or all here shortly. I'm testing these in game to make sure they show up correctly as well. I've removed the armatures, but I've left all the nodes. Those would need to be renamed or removed to rig these to existing animations I believe. I was doing it the way you suggest too PPQ. It's much easier and I like the existing animations for FFH anyway. After you look through these, let me know what you think. I think I will go back and reduce the number of polygons. There are many more on these models and they're not necessary for Civ.