Reskin tutorial

[Rob (R8XFT)]

The various tutorials on converting units from Civ 4 and using blender to create units are great - and well written - but seem quite daunting and, to be honest, probably a little off my skillset for now.

All I want to be able to do is take a unit, "colour it in a bit" - i.e. give it a different shield design, perhaps re-texture/re-colour the outfit and then be able to use it in the game. I can do the "colouring in" part but come a cropper getting it into the game, as each one needs to be put through the granny editor. I've been told it's quite straightforward...but not been given a clear "how to" guide for dummies.

If someone could do a brief tutorial, it would be sensational. What would also be great to include is how to get "civ colours" into the mix; with Civ 3, I applied a specific shade of blue for the civ colours on a unit and I'd imagine it to be much the same with these units.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering why I'm wanting this tutorial - it's to add some polish to the forthcoming Anno Domini BNW edition. I'd like all the Spartan units to carry a Spartan shield, etc.

 

[Nutty]

There's this old tutorial; the app used to edit the .gr2 is GrannyMaterialHacker, but it's a similar process in Nexus Buddy. The art defines step is obviously out of date.

You know how to do the recolor, so go to it, and save it as a DXT3 .dds file.

To preview the unit outside of Civ, you want to get Nexus from the old SDK working; I'm going to assume you've done that step, but let me know if you need help doing so. Nexus Buddy should be installed in the same folder (path-to-old-SDK\Nexus\x86).

Here's a quick walkthrough of the .gr2 step in Nexus Buddy:

Rename the .gr2 you want to use, then open it in Nexus Buddy. Below is what the old version of Nexus Buddy looks like (Nexus Buddy 2 is very similar, but if you have trouble getting it to work, the old version, 0.1a, is great for simple reskinning, and more stable):

Click the material(s) in the second box on the left, and you'll see the textures of that material in the box on the right. BaseTextureMap is the diff (diffuse) texture, which is the main one you want to reskin. SREFMap is your sref (specular) texture [a grayscale version of your texture file where whiter is shinier and black is not]. Change the BaseTextureMap and if necessary, the SREFMap, save, and you're done.

Make similar changes to a renamed copy of the .fxsxml, referencing the renamed model and textures. Then open the .fxsxml in the Nexus viewer from the old SDK to make sure you've done a good job.

Note I already did a teamcolor tutorial for Photoshop.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Thanks Nutty! Once I've solved another little puzzle with the mod I'll move straight onto doing a reskin and will give you a shout if I get stuck!

EDIT: My goodness, that was easy!! Thank-you so much Nutty!

I think I was "yitten" by IndieStone. (It's a colloquial word, yitten, which means to be apprehensive or even scared of something that turns out to be quite tame).

 

[Civitar]

So how do you make parts of a reskin transparent without making the "transparent" part teamcolor?

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

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