[UNIT] Mighty Ships Et Al

[MightyToad]

Is a gun cavalry also in the plans?

Yeah, that is next. I was thinking of rigging to cuirassier. I was going to use the Civ5 Impi as a base like the previous, but this new model may be better. The biggest obstacle is how to do the "poncho" on the rider.

 

[MightyToad]

I converted several Zulu-inspired units.

I saw in the concept art some had cloak/poncho. Perhaps that one of those is already 95% there. Only needs a horse.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

One additional thought on the warriors you've already made - the triangular gorget thing is made of brass, so I think it would be fairly glossy IRL.



I converted several Zulu-inspired units. Might do a couple of Kongolese/Great Lakes ones too. There is no playable civ for them in RI, but African minors can use some eye candy.

That sounds really cool, I'm not familiar with Kongo or Great Lakes area civs when it comes to flavor.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I saw in the concept art some had cloak/poncho. Perhaps that one of those is already 95% there. Only needs a horse.

Which one? The only one I see that loosely matches the description is the Ethiopian orthodox priest. I didn't think about converting him to a warrior from across the continent

The problem with reshaping EU4 figures in any significant manner is that I use all kinds of voodoo to drastically reduce their polycount for them to be useable in Civ 4, and after that, they take very poorly to any mesh tweaking.

Rigging to cuirassier would be one of the options I'd consider too, the other being cossack. An important detail for that unit is the hat, which is so iconic of Sotho peoples that they even put it in their flag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokorotlo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Lesotho

 

[MightyToad]

After a brief google I learned the "poncho" is just a blanket. I still went with a poncho since it was simpler. I originally had a regular hat. I modified it to look more like the strange one on the flag after your post. The one in the reference pic lacks the ornament on top though. I also added gloss to the boomerang.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/attachments/zulu_basotho_units-jpg.615188/

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Very nice as usual Toad, thankyou for making these!

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Those look absolutely fine! Can't wait to include them all in RI. The more realistic Zulu impis are an unexpected cherry on top!

 

[tantanmen]

Awesome across the board, thank you very much MightyToad! I agree, these 3 flavors of Impi are tops

And thank you @Walter Hawkwood for the Maasai Warrior - this is a splendid conversion. The spear and shield meshes are excellent (and repurposable) eye candy

I'd love to see more African units as well. Does EU4 have much in the way of Berbers / Libya?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

After a brief google I learned the "poncho" is just a blanket. I still went with a poncho since it was simpler. I originally had a regular hat. I modified it to look more like the strange one on the flag after your post. The one in the reference pic lacks the ornament on top though. I also added gloss to the boomerang.

Another thanks for all of those - they all found their homes in RI. One note on something I tweaked on my side - the skin tone is way too dark compared to what vanilla Civ 4 and most user-made units normally have. Otherwise, they perfectly filled the few remaining vacant niches the Nguni (ex-Zulu) civ had.

I'd love to see more African units as well. Does EU4 have much in the way of Berbers / Libya?

RI has a separate Berber civ, but I've never felt compelled to convert much EU4 stuff for them - Bakuel has made exhaustive unit sets for the region. I think I only converted one unit to represent Moroccan Black Guard and one or two regular gunpowder units. Subsaharan Africa is much more underserved in my opinion; I already finished with all the Ethiopian stuff I needed, now mostly finished now with Southern and Central Africa, and the only remaining region that I feel needs some additional love is Western Africa. Since Western and Eastern African dlcs for EU4 have been around for quite a while, I already converted everything from there I considered relevant for RI, and at this point, I'm mostly topping it off with AoE3 units (as I did for Ethiopia).

 

[MightyToad]

the skin tone is way too dark compared to what vanilla Civ 4 and most user-made units normally have

The original skin tone in in the Civ 5 diff was even darker. I brightened it up a bit. Originally it probably would have looked better with the specular. Adding a hint of gloss to non glossy areas really brightens them up in BTS.
A recurring issue is having artifacts from the compression with dark colors that have been extensively messed with. You can see purple pixels occasionally.

I like the Civ 5 horses. I narrowed the nose to look more Bakuel like. You can really see the texture seams on all the Civ 5 horses unfortunally.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The original skin tone in in the Civ 5 diff was even darker. I brightened it up a bit. Originally it probably would have looked better with the specular. Adding a hint of gloss to non glossy areas really brightens them up in BTS.
A recurring issue is having artifacts from the compression with dark colors that have been extensively messed with. You can see purple pixels occasionally.

Oh yeah, definitely. Brightening overly dark areas often leads to all kinds of artifacts. One usually has to at least desaturate, and often additionally kill magentas or even straight-up recolour stuff. Here's an example of what I did to Impis' texture file. Some brightening + denoising.

I like the Civ 5 horses. I narrowed the nose to look more Bakuel like. You can really see the texture seams on all the Civ 5 horses unfortunally.

Truth be told, I actually never liked Bakuel's horses. To me, they landed somewhere in the uncanny valley between Civ 4 cartoonish and the intended realistic style. I'm mostly keeping vanilla horses in RI. But yeah, that's obviously very much a matter of taste. And I agree with you that Civ 5 horses are rather shoddily textured - I guess they were never intended to be inspected close enough for people to notice that. Or, taking us back to the alphas in Civ 4 discussion, someone simply did a shoddy job.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I actually really like the vanilla CIV4 horses. They just look right for the art style of CIV4 units in general. And even close up I've newer seen anything wrong with them. I mean, I don't exactly know many horses personally to be sure but the default textures are quite good enough if you ask me.

 

[MightyToad]

Here's an example of what I did to Impis' texture file. Some brightening + denoising.

Much better. De-ionizing. I'll try that on the next one.
I've attempted to blend the texture seams on the brown horses, but not on this last grey horse.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I'm using Photoshop for working with dds files, so it's mostly automated - both the Shadow/Highlight and the Noise Reduction functions require very little human participation.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Found these when I was looking up images of Petra and the Nabataeans and thought you might be interested Toad:

Spearmen:

Version 1:

Version 2:

Early Axeman and Archer:

Axeman:

Swordsman(with metallic face mask:

 

[<Nexus>]

Swordsman(with metallic face mask:

Is that serious? I mean, it's okay for a Leaderhead or maybe Great Genarals, but not general units.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

i believe it is serious

 

[MightyToad]

Found these when I was looking up images of Petra and the Nabataeans and thought you might be interested Toad

These look cool. I like the mask. I'm not up for making new models ATM. I'll get to it eventually.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I'm glad you like them. Hope all is going well with you Toad.

 

[Matsuda123]

No need to make new models, I've made one instead actually. Haven't had much time or drive lately with work and other issues, but I finally got this one ready to go. A Water Tribe ship from Avatar the Last Airbender. It would make for a good Native American ship with edits to the texture I think, but for now the basic texture is fine for sure. I think the high resolution photo from the art book page in the files included should make for an easy texture, I hope anyway. Of course, this is if you want to / have the time, MightyToad.