Nexus Buddy 2 - Granny Editor for Civ 5 2.5.3

[Emperor Franz]

Hi there, sorry about the slow response.

As explained here, there are two ways of taking a Civ 4 unit graphic and bringing it into Civ 5:

A) Take Civ 4 unit mesh and rig it to a Civ 5 skeleton so that Civ 5 animations are used.
B) Do a full conversion converting the Civ 4 animations so that they work in Civ 4.

A is preferable in most cases because the quality of the resulting unit will be better. The list of event codes for Civ 4 and Civ 5 do not match up perfectly, and the timings are different even where the events match up. Any unit that has animations converted from Civ 4 will effectively have gaps for some Civ 5 events where no equivalent Civ 4 animation exists.

"Overwrite Meshes from BR2" works by keeping the current skeleton (armature) of the .gr2 model you have open intact and replacing the meshes. For this approach to work you will need to have rigged your imported mesh or meshes to the skeleton of the model you want to use a basis.

I assume the tutorial you have been using is this one from Wolfdog.
A few point about this guide as it is a little out of date (although there is no more comprehensive alternative sadly):
* The Bake Texture process is no longer required as multi-mesh and multi-texture units are now supported by the BR2 format and Nexus Buddy 2. That whole section is a relic of past limitations. That's why the even older tutorial has NO LONGER NEEDED - MAKE A MULTIMESH UNIT INSTEAD all over the Bake section.
* The key part is that you need to select an existing Civ 5 unit to rig your imported mesh to. Every mesh must be fully rigged (have vertex groups assigned to bones) to an armature for the Blender -> BR2 -> GR2 process to work.
* It is actually no longer necessary to use "Overwrite Meshes from BR2" as the "Open BR2" button will directly convert BR2 -> GR2 without you needing to make a copy of the base .gr2 and opening it first.

I hope this helps!

Not a problem Deliverator and thank you. So I recently started on a different project that I hoped would produce more favorable results to occupy my time and I decided to port an armored cruiser (the idea being an intermediary between a Frigate and a full on battleship, though I am hoping to make it compatible with the Expanded Naval Immersion mod, but I digress) and I think I've been able to get a lot of it right. I ran into problems when I put it into Nexus 3d Viewer and the textures are red and gray checkers, not to mention I'm not entirely sure the animations work. I've rigged it to the battleship template I found on that spreadsheet you posted and due to my inability to get ModBuddy working (VIS Shell 2010 refuses to run on my Windows 10) I had to copy-paste the battleship.fxsxml and rename it appropriately. I'll attach the files to this post (it's a mess I know) and let you have a look at it. I greatly appreciate the help and I'll probably take another whack at the Omaha once I'm done with this

Edit: Through some further monkeying around with the files I believe I've resolved the texture issue, will post the updated one; however my suspicions on the animations seem to be correct in that the model is not reacting to the various triggers in Nexus; could I have missed a step?

 

[Emperor Franz]

Updated Files Here

 

[Deliverator]

Not a problem Deliverator and thank you. So I recently started on a different project that I hoped would produce more favorable results to occupy my time and I decided to port an armored cruiser (the idea being an intermediary between a Frigate and a full on battleship, though I am hoping to make it compatible with the Expanded Naval Immersion mod, but I digress) and I think I've been able to get a lot of it right. I ran into problems when I put it into Nexus 3d Viewer and the textures are red and gray checkers, not to mention I'm not entirely sure the animations work. I've rigged it to the battleship template I found on that spreadsheet you posted and due to my inability to get ModBuddy working (VIS Shell 2010 refuses to run on my Windows 10) I had to copy-paste the battleship.fxsxml and rename it appropriately. I'll attach the files to this post (it's a mess I know) and let you have a look at it. I greatly appreciate the help and I'll probably take another whack at the Omaha once I'm done with this.

Using the Blender templates like baking textures is something that is no longer required or recommended since we can directly export the vanilla models via .nb2 or .cn6 to Blender to rig new models to. As it says here, "Now it is simple and quick to create precise Blender templates direct from vanilla GR2 files via the NB2 format, or the more recent CN6 format for improved accuracy."

 

[Protok St]

Hello, @Deliverator
I stared to explore 3D part modding on my mod. For now I just need to change the textures on a models. Is there a way to just change the textures in gr2, without converting it for Blender?

BTW, there is a crash dump of gr2_viewer:

 

[Ohura196]

Hello, i opened "bismarck_scene.gr2" but can not see.
I think cause is "" in Source file...

 

[Deliverator]

Hello, i opened "bismarck_scene.gr2" but can not see.
I think cause is "" in Source file...

You need to resave any vanilla Civ 5 Granny file before it can be viewed in Granny viewer.

 

[Deliverator]

Hello, @Deliverator
I stared to explore 3D part modding on my mod. For now I just need to change the textures on a models. Is there a way to just change the textures in gr2, without converting it for Blender?

BTW, there is a crash dump of gr2_viewer:

You don't need Blender to swap the texture for another one. You can just use Nexus Buddy 2 for this. Navigate the Material in the second panel down on the left and then you can edit the name of the BaseTextureMap and other maps on the right. You should use Save As to save with a new name after editing (and potentially back up your source .gr2 before hand to be on the safe side).

 

[Protok St]

You don't need Blender to swap the texture for another one. You can just use Nexus Buddy 2 for this. Navigate the Material in the second panel down on the left and then you can edit the name of the BaseTextureMap and other maps on the right. You should use Save As to save with a new name after editing (and potentially back up your source .gr2 before hand to be on the safe side).

View attachment 552870

Yes, thanks. I've solve it yesterday and made this colored units:

Spoiler :

Another question I have is: What tutorial I should to read for teach my Granny to show not only models but with textures?

Your programms is very COOL!

 

[Deliverator]

Another question I have is: What tutorial I should to read for teach my Granny to show not only models but with textures?

I think for Beyond Earth your only option would be to import the model into Blender to view the textures there.

There in an old version of the Civ 5 Nexus tool (not Nexus Buddy!) that can display textures but I don't know it that will work with BE models.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-5-sdk-old-version-working-nexus-3d-viewer.22237/

 

[Protok St]

I think for Beyond Earth your only option would be to import the model into Blender to view the textures there.

There in an old version of the Civ 5 Nexus tool (not Nexus Buddy!) that can display textures but I don't know it that will work with BE models.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-5-sdk-old-version-working-nexus-3d-viewer.22237/

Thanks. I opened it and loaded the fxsxml. Textures still invisible. Any special action I should done?

Spoiler :

 

[Ohura196]

You need to resave any vanilla Civ 5 Granny file before it can be viewed in Granny viewer.

View attachment 552869

1. I copied for "bismarck_scene.gr2" from \Resource\Common to "a" folder
2. Resave All GR2 Files in Directory "a" folder
3. opened bismarck from resaveBatch
Is this understanding mistaken?

 

[Deliverator]

1. I copied for "bismarck_scene.gr2" from \Resource\Common to "a" folder
2. Resave All GR2 Files in Directory "a" folder
3. opened bismarck from resaveBatch
Is this understanding mistaken?

There is an extra step that is needed - sorry I forgot as I haven't done it in a while. Before doing any of the steps above do the following:

Use the Load String Database button under Additional Actions in Nexus Buddy 2 and open the file leadermodels_stringdatabase.gsd that can be found in the LeaderModels.fpk package file.

Then you can do the other steps as before but the resaved .gr2 file(s) should have string data properly populated.

 

[Deliverator]

Thanks. I opened it and loaded the fxsxml. Textures still invisible. Any special action I should done?

Works for me. Here's what I did.

1. Make sure the *.fxsxml file is in the same directory as all required .gr2 models/animations and .dds textures used by the model. You can confirm this by looking through the Materials in Nexus Buddy 2 if needed.
2. Open the Old SDK version of Nexus directly using the executable e.g. ..\Civilization_V_SDK_Old_Version_3D_Viewer\sid meier's civilization v sdk\Nexus\x86\Nexus.exe.
3. Assets tab > Asset Viewer > Open > select the *.fxsxml you want to view in my case I chose xenocavalry.fxsxml.
4. The 3D View window should open with textures viewable.

 

[Ohura196]

There is an extra step that is needed - sorry I forgot as I haven't done it in a while. Before doing any of the steps above do the following:

Use the Load String Database button under Additional Actions in Nexus Buddy 2 and open the file leadermodels_stringdatabase.gsd that can be found in the LeaderModels.fpk package file.

Then you can do the other steps as before but the resaved .gr2 file(s) should have string data properly populated.

Thank you, went well

 

[Protok St]

Works for me. Here's what I did.

1. Make sure the *.fxsxml file is in the same directory as all required .gr2 models/animations and .dds textures used by the model. You can confirm this by looking through the Materials in Nexus Buddy 2 if needed.
2. Open the Old SDK version of Nexus directly using the executable e.g. ..\Civilization_V_SDK_Old_Version_3D_Viewer\sid meier's civilization v sdk\Nexus\x86\Nexus.exe.
3. Assets tab > Asset Viewer > Open > select the *.fxsxml you want to view in my case I chose xenocavalry.fxsxml.
4. The 3D View window should open with textures viewable.


View attachment 553014

Thanks. Seems I lost some FX textures. Now works nice.

 

[Protok St]

@Deliverator What should I do to see the different animations of model? Is it possible thru Civilization_V_SDK_Old_Version_3D_Viewer ?

 

[Deliverator]

@LeeS What should I do to see the different animations of model? Is it possible thru Civilization_V_SDK_Old_Version_3D_Viewer ?

(I'm not sure LeeS will know the answer to this one.)

You can view them in either:

1) Granny Viewer - drag and drop a resaved .gr2 animation file onto a resaved model .gr2 file in Granny viewer then switch to the animation tab and select the animation to watch it playing.

2) Nexus 3D Viewer (Old Version SDK) - in the 3D View select StateMachine from the drop down then the Animation code you want to play - then in the State Graph panel press the Play button.

 

[LeeS]

Deliverator is the expert in all things art/

I'm still quite the novice in making anything art-ish appear in game other than giant red exclamation points.

 

[Protok St]

(I'm not sure LeeS will know the answer to this one.)

It was a typo =)

When I try before, there was not such active options in the list of StateMachine. It was blanked.
Now I copy all texture/models files to Dummy/Resource. Animations is thee now, but the model it self is invisible. Why would this happen?

Spoiler :

 

[Protok St]

Here comes another question. How can I change the Type of Material? Is there a possibilities wih NexusBuddy2?

Descript. I want make a TeamColored Stations. And I can change the textures on the model like I done with units.
But, there on stations is another way of game reaction on alpha channel. Texture becomes transparent instead of colorizing. Here is example:

Spoiler :

If I need to change type of material "03 - Default" from "BuildingShader" to "UnitShader_Skinned" what should I do?