Need some help about NifWiewer

[ComG]

Hello all,
I tried to do some mixed-units with NIF Wiewer (based on this tutorial (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=163585) thanks to Rabbit,White)

But i've got some problems...

I try to get the bodies of Phalanx, Hypaspist and the Companion to do any Archers, Swordmen, Spearmen, Riders and Archers mounted...

So i replace the body in the vanilla files, but i can't save my new units !
It is a problem caused by the animation? the bones?

Please help me !

I wanna to do something like this :

Based on this :

Apologize for my english !

Bye and thank to all !

 

[Ploeperpengel]

That's a complcated thing to do. Check this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166690

Archer though I think won't work but try.

 

[ComG]

Thank you Ploeper i will try !...
If somebodyelse got the solution, answer me please !

EDIT : I don't understand anything...
I give an example :

I want to do an horse archer with the body of a phalanx.
So i open horsearcher.nif, i add phalanx.nif. Then i put the body of the phalanx in the same node than the body of the rider.

What i have to do now? Can i remove the phalanx.nif from the file? Can i remove the body of the rider? How can i attach the body of my phalanx to the bones of the rider...?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

No you can't delete just rightclick and hide the original bodymesh. this method gives high polies unfortunatly. Did you check the little Tutorial Assassin gave in the thread I mentioned?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3922602&postcount=16

Really everything explained there. Download some of his units to see how he made it.
Be aware that this method can lead to graphicerrors if the bonestructure of the models is too different. So instead of archer better use Longbowman i.e.

 

[ComG]

I don't understand some things : "I attached the grenadiers head bone onto the riflemans neck bone"... How he does this? how can i attache a bone to another?

I have got some unit (like phalanx) that i can't isole the head (i can't remove them arms and foot, only)

 

[Ploeperpengel]

you always have to attach the whole model you want to use to the one yo want the animation from. after that! you can just drag and drop the bones like if it were meshes. This is difficult to explain the detail. Cause I'm not at home now. Have a close look at the model assassin made to see were everything is put correctly. After you put a bone to another you set the angles of it to
100
010
001
that almost fits and will just need a little finetuning then.

 

[Rabbit, White]

By bones Ploep of course means the various "BIP something" or "Bip01 something" nodes. The way it works is that parts of the model are skinned onto the bones (i.e. those nodes), which means that no matter where the mesh is itself located, its various parts (legs, arms, head) will go wherever the bones tell them. So what AlazkanAssassin has done is attached the various bones from one unit to the equivalent bones of another unit, and so they are now actually controlled by those bones and their animations instead of by their own animations. Imagine if you were tied to someone leg to leg, arm to arm and so on. Now imagine if they were made invisible and then started doing something, it would look like you're doing it but in reality they're in control. This is what's going on here.

Bones of one model are attached and so are controlled by bones of another model. The unit itself contains the meshes of both units' bodies but by making some bones very small certain parts of one unit's body can be made hidden. So you take for example the bone of unit A's head and scale it down to 0.1 and then the attached bone of unit B's head is scaled up to 10. Then to hide rest of the body of unit B all the other bones are scaled down as well. The result looks like you replaced unit A's head with unit B's head.

Of course this is a complicated procedure and unless you're a surgeon it's the closest you'll get to an organ transplant.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Think that's a better explanation Should leave this to the native speakers

 

[ComG]

I will try to understand what you say... lol...
I increase my english with this mod ! lol