Modding the units art

[Verdolaga]

Hi there, I wanted to know if there is a tutorial about modding the art of unit. I mean not to put them ingame or mod their animations and such. I`ve seen tutorial about that.
I would like to learn how to change the look of a previous unit or create entirely the art of a new one.

Regards!

 

[SaibotLieh]

Hi there, I wanted to know if there is a tutorial about modding the art of unit. I mean not to put them ingame or mod their animations and such. I`ve seen tutorial about that.
I would like to learn how to change the look of a previous unit or create entirely the art of a new one.

Regards!

If this is not just about swapping assets like weapons or shields, you will have to learn to use a 3d modelling software. If you do not have any software of that kind so far, Blender would be a good candidate since it is free and most other Civ4 modders use(d) that. You likely will have to use version 2.49b though, since most tools that work for Civ4 are not working for newer versions anymore. There should be a lot of Blender tutorials out there, not that many on this site though.

Once you have a basic understanding of Blender, you will need a way to import/export the nif files. Niftools is therefore your next stop, which consists of a plug-in for Blender and a program called NifSkope that you can use to look at nif files and modify certain attributes. At this point, the tutorials on this site will become very important. For starters, this thread has a good collection other threads about NifSkope shenanigans.

Be advised that this will take some time until you get your first results and the best course of action will be to start small, like removing or adding little bits to a model, maybe even just trying to import a nif, export it again and get that working in the game. Once you know how to take these steps, you can improve on them.

 

[Verdolaga]

If this is not just about swapping assets like weapons or shields, you will have to learn to use a 3d modelling software. If you do not have any software of that kind so far, Blender would be a good candidate since it is free and most other Civ4 modders use(d) that. You likely will have to use version 2.49b though, since most tools that work for Civ4 are not working for newer versions anymore. There should be a lot of Blender tutorials out there, not that many on this site though.

Once you have a basic understanding of Blender, you will need a way to import/export the nif files. Niftools is therefore your next stop, which consists of a plug-in for Blender and a program called NifSkope that you can use to look at nif files and modify certain attributes. At this point, the tutorials on this site will become very important. For starters, this thread has a good collection other threads about NifSkope shenanigans.

Be advised that this will take some time until you get your first results and the best course of action will be to start small, like removing or adding little bits to a model, maybe even just trying to import a nif, export it again and get that working in the game. Once you know how to take these steps, you can improve on them.

Great! Thanks a lot for your answer, you ´ve pointed me in the correct direction. My experience is zero, so I guess it´s gonna be a long hard road. I´ve seen that you can import to Blender previous man/woman figures that are compatible and just "dress" them. Will that be recommendable? I mean, usually the game has the same body type for mostly all units, and all it changes is the clothes/armour/skin colour/hair that you put on them.
Regards

 

[SaibotLieh]

Great! Thanks a lot for your answer, you ´ve pointed me in the correct direction. My experience is zero, so I guess it´s gonna be a long hard road. I´ve seen that you can import to Blender previous man/woman figures that are compatible and just "dress" them. Will that be recommendable? I mean, usually the game has the same body type for mostly all units, and all it changes is the clothes/armour/skin colour/hair that you put on them.
Regards

It certainly is a long road, but also very rewarding.

It is a good idea to use the models from Civ4 as base, creating a unit totally from scratch is much harder. Only problem is that the units often have slighly different animation skeletons, so they need a bit of adjustment if you want to switch them (for example, use the longbowman model with the swordman skeleton/animation). Also the older units use "BIP" as prefix for their skeleton bones, while the newer ones use "Bip01". You will have to rename one to the other if you encounter that problem, but I am already getting into details here...

Another thing I did not mention before is that there is also reskinning of units, so to say changing the "paint" on the 3d model. For this, you will have to modify the dds file(s) of the unit. If you do not have a graphic program capable of doing so, Gimp is a cost-free alternative, and I think there are also some tutorials here how to use that software for reskinning. Also NifSkope will be of help here again, since it is much quicker to look at the model with that program instead of (re)loading the game.

Also, with NifSkope you can make basic changes to how the model uses the dds file. For more complex changes I would recommend using Blender again.

Have fun.

 

[Verdolaga]

It certainly is a long road, but also very rewarding.

It is a good idea to use the models from Civ4 as base, creating a unit totally from scratch is much harder. Only problem is that the units often have slighly different animation skeletons, so they need a bit of adjustment if you want to switch them (for example, use the longbowman model with the swordman skeleton/animation). Also the older units use "BIP" as prefix for their skeleton bones, while the newer ones use "Bip01". You will have to rename one to the other if you encounter that problem, but I am already getting into details here...

Another thing I did not mention before is that there is also reskinning of units, so to say changing the "paint" on the 3d model. For this, you will have to modify the dds file(s) of the unit. If you do not have a graphic program capable of doing so, Gimp is a cost-free alternative, and I think there are also some tutorials here how to use that software for reskinning. Also NifSkope will be of help here again, since it is much quicker to look at the model with that program instead of (re)loading the game.

Also, with NifSkope you can make basic changes to how the model uses the dds file. For more complex changes I would recommend using Blender again.

Have fun.

Thank you again man!! I will start exploring theese programs and apps and try to came up with a good result. Thank you so much