It is certainly possible to use the same model (or rather a copy thereof) with different skins. All of the unit artwork that I've created works that way, as does most of the art that anyone else made for any other mod of Civ4.
Glad to hear this. I was getting all worried about having to learn the ins and outs of 3ds Max to completely redo the texture, model and animation of any new unit I wanted to make.
The unit art defines (found in Assets/XML/Art/CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml) look like this:
The .nif files are the models, and the .kfm files are the animations that go with those models. Notice that there are no mentions of the skins/textures. The models and animation files themselves contain those references. In all the cases I've seen they seem to only look for these files within their own folders. Technically each unit with unique art needs it own nif, but there is no need to make any actual changes to the file except for copying it into a new location. To make the art unique you would then edit the dds files found in the same folder.
Gotcha; thank you for the explanation.
I'm sure it is possible to make a alternate graphics for the hell version of Wine work using the LSystem. I just expect it to be a major hassle and so do not look forward to trying it.
While it's always interesting to watch others make discoveries, please don't think that I'm pushing you to spend an inordinate amount of time on the Grapes of Wrath project. Even if the souls of the forsaken
would add a mighty fine bouquet and flavor to a nice vintage Pinot Noir...
Seriously, though, feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you've more important aspects of your modmod to work on than Hyborem's beverage of choice.
(This probably also means that uploads could be made a lot smaller by moving the many identical dds files to Shares instead of keeping them with their models. There are already so many different dds files with identical names being used though that giving them unique names and editing all the models that reference them would be a lot of work.)
If this were the case, I suspect that Kael and his original team of modders would have done so to save as much space as possible.
I was thinking that the Wine resource's model would contain some complicated relative path to the file GrapeBunchandLeaves.dds, made necessary because it is not found in the model's own folder as is usually the case.
Perhaps the game is set to look under Shared whenever it cannot find a piece of art in the same file as the model.
And this is because multiple models of grapes/vineyards use the same .dds texture, correct? It's in the "Shared" folder because they share a texture?
I thought that if I copied the whole folder for the resource and I typically do then it would either still point to the same file or get completely messed up. It does not actually seem to include a path though, just the file name as usual.
I could probably include an altered version of the file within the folder for the grapes of wrath resource without it changing anything else.
My understanding of this is sketchy at best, if the game IS set to look under the Shared folder when it can't find a piece of art in the same folder as the model, your proposal might lead to problems given all the unknowns with the LSystem. Alternate theory - What would happen if you were to create a second .dds in the Shared folder - a recolored and renamed GrapeBunchAndLeaves.dds? Make blood-red grapes with black leaves or whatever, call it GrapesOfWrath.dds, and have your second folder with the .nif and kfm. files for the grapes use the name GrapesOfWrath, since a file name is the only reference given?
Once again, thanks for taking the time to answer all of this newbie's questions.
