QUESTION: how to add unit effects?

[SaibotLieh]

Good work getting the glow working.
All BIPs in the purple box have to be changed. You won't need to change the ones in the blue box, because they will change automatically with the purple ones. They are, in fact, the same nodes. That you can see by their same numbers. Nodes can and must be often childs of different parent nodes.

 

[j_mie6]

I edited all off those names in the picture in the _fx.nif only and this is what happened...

Spoiler :

The head is weird.. and the sword sticks through the sheild...

The sword and sheild are present just at the end of the becoming a super specialist...

what do I need to do I am just about to try just doing the standard Nif too....

 

[j_mie6]

no using the other nif has no effect... any suggestions?

 

[j_mie6]

well I just did the cape and that works fine so thats the glow and cape done... now I have just gotta get those animations working, well the animations work fine (apart from the hovering sword) It's just the way he gains that extra peice around the neck that needs fixing...

Spoiler :

I have an idea for the animations... I noticed that the KFM used as the animation is made up of many KF. So maybe if there is someway to combine the idle Praetorian animations with the Warlord's activate and the Warlord one where it is leading the unit in battle and join them into a new KFM... that may work. do you think it is possible?

 

[SaibotLieh]

Great work so far. I think the problem you now face is that the skeletons of the Praetorian and the Warlord might differ in some way. Could you load up your modified unit, so I could take a look at it?

Combining different animation sets is possible, but a real pain if you want to combine an old and a new one. If you want to do so, you'll have to modify the animations of one of the two sets so that it fits to the "BIP" respective "Bip01" skeleton.

 

[j_mie6]

Ok but now there are 2 ...

these only have the cape and glow not the edited BIP -> Bip01

 

[SaibotLieh]

Well, I look at the nifs and I think using the Warlord animations isn't the best idea, because the skeletons differ to much. The problem you directly see has its root in the fact that the Warlord skeleton has a "Bip01 Neck" node while the Praetorians skeleton has no "BIP Neck". This can be fixed, but there are still other things that makes the unit look wrong. I guess a better way would be to use some of the Praetorians animations for the missing ones.

For this, you must first see which animations a Warlord uses and which are already available. If you compare all the .kf files, you'll see that the Warlord has these files that the Praetorian has not:

Warlord_Ancient_MD_Activate.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Command.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Command_Idle.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fidget_A.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fidget_B.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fortify.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fortify_Idle.kf
Warlord_Ancient_MD_Surrender.kf

Some of them have a similar, but not direct equivalent (Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fortify.kf and praetorian_md_fortifya.kf for example). You now need to choose from the available Praetorian kfs the ones you want to use for the surplus Warlord kfs. To make this easier, you can look at the animations via NifSkope by opening the units nif, then "Spells->Animation->Attach .KF".
Some of these are easy to choose (Warlord_Ancient_MD_Fortify.kf and praetorian_md_fortifya.kf for example again), but some need a bit creativity.

I'll give you an example for Warlord_Ancient_MD_Activate.kf:
For this one I would use the praetorian_md_fidget.kf. However, if you look at that animation, you'll see that it has a duration of about 5.667 seconds, while the Warlord_Ancient_MD_Activate.kf has only about 3.1667 seconds. This can cause problems. But it can be fixed by modifing the animation. To do so, open the praetorian_md_fidget.kf with NifSkope. After a leftclick on the NiControllerSequence node, you can see details about the animation in the Block Details window (the one below the other two). There should be an entry called "Stop Time". Change its value from 5.6667 to 3.1667. Then save the animation file under a different name praetorian_md_activation.kf for example. Be sure that you have choosen .kf as data file for the save.

Now that you have the animation files, you need a fitting .kfm file for the animation files. For this you could modify the praetorian.kfm. This can be done, but it should be easier to just use the Warlord_Ancient.kfm for this. To do so, first copy the Warlord_Ancient.kfm into your Praetorian-Warlord folder. Then rename your praetorian .kf files to the respective Warlord_Ancient .kf names.

After this, hopefully your new Warlord should work as it should.

 

[j_mie6]

ok I think I have got that... I will try when I get home which will be in about 7 hours lol...

would It be the same for the Phalanx?

 

[j_mie6]

wait... if I do this do I still need to change the BIP -> Bip01?

or will I only be using the preatorian's kf

 

[SaibotLieh]

The BIP > Bip01 change isn't necessary anymore because you are only using the praetorian's kfs now.
For the Phalanx you'll have to do the same, but this time you must choose among the Phalanx's kfs of course.

 

[j_mie6]

thanks I will try it when I get back...

 

[j_mie6]

do all of the praetorians animations have to be changed to warlords time? Also when I play the new Praetorian_activate in nif scope it still lasts for the 5.something seconds but it just stops at the 3.something seconds and carries on with the unit frozen...

 

[j_mie6]

well... it works fine the animations work but one thing... the praetorian stands completely still when not doing idle animations but that isn't really the problem... The problem is this...

Spoiler :

as you can see the Praetorian stands in the standard NifSkope view (without any animations) in the portrait in the bottom left.... how is this fixable

It could be because I only used the 9 warlord KF and missed out the Idle animation of the preatorian... In anycase how to fix?

EDIT= Just found out that I didn't add the idle animation which was making it go weird as it has no idle to go to but.... after adding the Warlord_Ancient_MD_Idle to the animations it then completly failed... the palace in the city became a red blob, the great general lost his portrait completly but he had his idle animations back... but he lost all of his commands...

so... Weird without the Idle but worse with it.... any suggestions?

 

[SaibotLieh]

do all of the praetorians animations have to be changed to warlords time? Also when I play the new Praetorian_activate in nif scope it still lasts for the 5.something seconds but it just stops at the 3.something seconds and carries on with the unit frozen...

Most will have to have the same time, while some are flexible (the idle and figget animation for example). Best way to find out is to look at different models and compare the times. If they are always the same, you should change the time accordingly.

That the animation still has the old time in NifSkope doesn't matter for Civ as far as I know.

well... it works fine the animations work but one thing... the praetorian stands completely still when not doing idle animations but that isn't really the problem... The problem is this...

Spoiler :

as you can see the Praetorian stands in the standard NifSkope view (without any animations) in the portrait in the bottom left.... how is this fixable

It could be because I only used the 9 warlord KF and missed out the Idle animation of the preatorian... In anycase how to fix?

EDIT= Just found out that I didn't add the idle animation which was making it go weird as it has no idle to go to but.... after adding the Warlord_Ancient_MD_Idle to the animations it then completly failed... the palace in the city became a red blob, the great general lost his portrait completly but he had his idle animations back... but he lost all of his commands...

so... Weird without the Idle but worse with it.... any suggestions?

Did you add the original Warlord_Ancient_MD_Idle.kf to the mix or the Praetorian_md_idle.kf renamed to Warlord_Ancient_MD_Idle.kf? The second chase should be the one to do. In fact, the only file remaining from the original Warlord_Ancient files should be the Warlord_Ancient.kfm.

 

[j_mie6]

thats the thing... I added the praetorians idle and renamed it....

 

[SaibotLieh]

Did you already try to rename the praetorian.nif to Warlord_Ancient.nif and the praetorian_fx.nif to Warlord_Ancient_FX.nif? Sometimes it helps to have the .nif have the same name as the .kfm.

 

[j_mie6]

no... I will try that later...

 

[j_mie6]

It works fine now except that when merging to a unit or a city he just stands there but he does his leadership animations and stuff... any ideas for that? but it doesn't matter that much...

 

[SaibotLieh]

Do you mean that he doesn't do anything? Than your Warlord_Ancient_MD_Activate.kf does not work. Or does he something, but there is no Warlord effect (the "lightshow" + sounds)? That's something you'll have to add to the .nif and .kf files. I can teach you how if you want. Also, if you upload your latest Warlord with animation, I could take a look at it to see if something could be improved.

 

[j_mie6]

ok well before I had added the idle animations the activate worked and yes I would like to try the effects...

here it is I will add the intire file