Replacing LH with art

[Stetson]

Hello Civfanatics! Nice to meetcha all!

This is my first real venture here, so lemme know if I'm in the wrong forum, etc etc. I love Civilization IV, it's brought back the joy of discovery from two, and I can see it already has a broad modding community... I'm not sure if I like it 'more' than two or three right now, but I certainly enjoy it a lot! One of my main... Maybe even my only gripe, is the fact that the leaderheads in the game look... Ah, I don't know. To my eyes, Gandhi looks like a light breeze could knock him over, Justinian apparently was more of a vampire than Vlad Tepes/Dracul, and Pacal apparently suffers from lazy eye.

I was wondering if there was a way to replace Leaderheads with static images, specifically clips of art, portraits, whatever. If someone's already done the work, great, otherwise, if it's not too much trouble to give me a few pointers, I'd be interested in doing it, and adding a few leaders while I'm at it. Also, if you could all give me the directions to a few DYP style mods for BTS on top of that, well, that'd be icing on the cake. Thanks loads!

Stetson

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

That's actually very easy to do. We in Total Realism have long used static leaderheads like that. All you have to do is create a .dds of a leader you wish to replace, and then just specify it in XML that defines the leaders, simply replacing the original animated .nif - it works surprisingly well.

Could a mod move this to the general c&c forum?

 

[Wyz_sub10]

Further to WHs comments, find a JPEG you want to use. Re-size it to 512x512 pixels. (You may have to crop the JPEG to preserve the symmetry - i.e. cut out a square portion of a non-square picture).

Take the new JPEG and convert it to DDS (using photoshop or paint shop pro with a plug-in, or more easily with a tool like DDS converter).

Edit the ArtDefinesLeaderhead XML and replace the line with the NIF to the path with your new DDS image.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Further to WHs comments, find a JPEG you want to use. Re-size it to 512x512 pixels. (You may have to crop the JPEG to preserve the symmetry - i.e. cut out a square portion of a non-square picture).

Take the new JPEG and convert it to DDS (using photoshop or paint shop pro with a plug-in, or more easily with a tool like DDS converter).

Edit the ArtDefinesLeaderhead XML and replace the line with the NIF to the path with your new DDS image.

One more tip - it is even better to cut 512x614 (width-height) pixels and THEN resize it to 512x512 (image will appear distorted to you) - this way you get non-distorted image in-game.

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

Hey, why are you complaining about Gandhi? Don't you know he fasted?

 

[Stetson]

Thank you so much, Walter and Wyz! I really appreciate this, and am off to go change things around right now... It'll be nice to be able to look at art instead of cartoons, for once. Like Civ II, kind of. I'm also going to check out Total Realism, since with a name like that, it has to be good!

Hey, why are you complaining about Gandhi? Don't you know he fasted?

Very true... But shouldn't his head be a bit, ah, smaller, then? To be honest, it's not that the LH are bad, I just like static, slower-loading time, artistic stuff, blame my folklore lovin'.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Thank you so much, Walter and Wyz! I really appreciate this, and am off to go change things around right now... It'll be nice to be able to look at art instead of cartoons, for once. Like Civ II, kind of. I'm also going to check out Total Realism, since with a name like that, it has to be good!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9484

Here's your destination then. You can also borrow all the static leaderheads you like from our mod, we have a-plenty.

 

[none]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9484

Here's your destination then. You can also borrow all the static leaderheads you like from our mod, we have a-plenty.

I would be interested in having a look at the learder heads from your mod but the link is an exe for Warlords (and since I'm playing BTS I don't want to mess up my game). I wonder if the files could be available in an archive (zip or rar). Thanks.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I would be interested in having a look at the learder heads from your mod but the link is an exe for Warlords (and since I'm playing BTS I don't want to mess up my game). I wonder if the files could be available in an archive (zip or rar). Thanks.

Well, simply installing a mod can't mess up anything, because mods don't replace any gamefiles, they just add new. But anyway, it is easy to grant your request. Here: http://rapidshare.com/files/144940548/leaderheads.rar.html

 

[none]

Well, simply installing a mod can't mess up anything, because mods don't replace any gamefiles, they just add new. But anyway, it is easy to grant your request. Here: http://rapidshare.com/files/144940548/leaderheads.rar.html

Better safe than sorry. Thanks a lot for the file.

 

[Ringan]

I've got a bunch of .dds static leaderheads based on paintings, sculpture and photos of the leaders. Let me know if you'd like to use them. And if you want to make your own, Wikipedia tends to have the most & best images by far in my experience (and largest images).