Saibotlieh's Leaderhead Collection

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Not a bad idea...I'll have to look for a shield that would work in that capacity. Thankyou Spills!

 

[CyprusTree123]

Hi SaibotLieh, I know you are more or less retired but I have a request for something I am very passionate about. I am new to the civ 4 modding scene and I am making my first mod. I was wondering if you could make LHs. You don't have to if you don't want to. You could do one or the other if you want. I was wondering if you could make a Ariadne LH and a Prince of the Lilies LH. My family is from the Mediterranean region so it would mean a lot to me.
Here are some reference images of Ariadne: Prince of the Lilies reference images:

 

[SaibotLieh]

Hi SaibotLieh, I know you are more or less retired but I have a request for something I am very passionate about. I am new to the civ 4 modding scene and I am making my first mod. I was wondering if you could make LHs. You don't have to if you don't want to. You could do one or the other if you want. I was wondering if you could make a Ariadne LH and a Prince of the Lilies LH. My family is from the Mediterranean region so it would mean a lot to me.
Here are some reference images of Ariadne: Prince of the Lilies reference images:
View attachment 639567View attachment 639569View attachment 639570 View attachment 639571View attachment 639572

Hi CyprusTree, more more than less retired I would say, but there is the off-chance I run into the combination of free time and interest in stretching my Blender muscles. No chance for the prince, but Ariadne is a possibility. Will not be from scratch though, would probably use my Helen or Ulpia LH and rework the torso. Any preference for one of the two? Again, no promises and will likely take some time.

 

[tantanmen]

rework the torso

Hello SaibotLieh and CyprusTree!

I don't know if this will help save you time and effort, but here are a couple blend files and textures for the Female Mycenaean Avatar from Humankind. Not exactly Minoan, but maybeee in the ballpark? I can also convert some new hair meshes if they would be of any use. Thank you very much SaibotLieh~!!

 

[CyprusTree123]

Again, no promises and will likely take some time.

It's ok if it takes some time, I am just glad you are willing to help. It means a lot.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Hello SaibotLieh and CyprusTree!

I don't know if this will help save you time and effort, but here are a couple blend files and textures for the Female Mycenaean Avatar from Humankind. Not exactly Minoan, but maybeee in the ballpark? I can also convert some new hair meshes if they would be of any use. Thank you very much SaibotLieh~!!

View attachment 639638View attachment 639639

Since rigging is now often more work for me than sculpturing, I would probably come up with something on my own, but many thanks for the suggestions and materials. Hair is often a lot of work even with meshes present, so I will probably just keep the hair the leaderhead has already. You can still post some meshes you think fit well if you like, but anything covering the shoulders is certainly a no-go work-wise.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

The textures may provide inspiration for the leaderhead's clothing at the very least no?

 

[SaibotLieh]

The textures may provide inspiration for the leaderhead's clothing at the very least no?

I will have a look, but probably will rather go for a look similar to the real person image. The pattern of her dress look vivid while being relatively simple at the same time.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Not a bad idea either.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Alright, here we go: I have posted a new leaderhead, Ariadne, Cretan princess in Greek mythology:

Spoiler :

Download link:

[LH] Ariadne

The body of this leaderhead is a converted from Mass Effect 2 and the hair is taken from the Skyrim mod "Hair packs of Fallout3". Therefore, while modifications of the models and artwork were made by me, I take no credit for both and all rights...

forums.civfanatics.com

Enjoy!

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Not bad, not bad at all I like how you made that work I recognize the base you used, but its quite different on its own.

 

[<Nexus>]

It's really nice
May I be so unblushing to request a Sissi leader head?

She was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary.

 

[tantanmen]

Ariadne

She's exquisite, thank you very much SaibotLieh~!! Deity- level texturing and shadering We are so incredibly lucky to have you flex your blender (and artistic) muscles every now and then. Thank you!!

 

[SaibotLieh]

Glad you like her. I think the dress works better in profil like in the photo, but altogether I am pleased with how she turned out.

As for the Sissi leaderhead, I am not really interested in creating that one, sorry.

 

[<Nexus>]

As for the Sissi leaderhead, I am not really interested in creating that one, sorry

No problem

 

[SaibotLieh]

Small update: tantanmen (thanks a lot) notified me that there is a small problem with the background of the Ariadne LH, turning pink when the transparent part of the hair overlays it. This is fixed now with the updated download.

 

[tantanmen]

Great, thanks for fixing this. I agree, she looks really nice in profile

SaibotLieh, I’d like to ask your advice about how I can make that next step (leap?) in LH making.

So far in Blender I’ve learned how to convert assets from various games. I can do simple things like add pre-existing textures to meshes (which are already UV mapped), and I can Separate, Decimate (if needed) and Join, but then I panic if I accidentally right-click on a polygon and it starts stretching like taffy

I thought I might try to learn how to rig armors to LHs, but you mentioned above that this can often involve more work than sculpting.

Should I focus on unit making for now, as an intermediate step to LH creation? Idk if rigging armors to units is easier? edit: I might mention that I am fairly familiar with nifskope at this point. I can do basic swaps and add gloss & env light to units.

I've also dl'd a few tutorials, including those by Ekmek, The_Coyote, and MightyToad. They're very thorough, but for me it's too much info all at once, and I'd rather concentrate on developing in one area at a time.

For example, I have a couple specific LH projects in mind, and they seem like they would be simple and straightforward... but I'm not quite there yet in my knowledge, so they might be more challenging than they appear.

Sorry about my inexperience and overly generalized fumbling / stumbling forward, but I'd really like to learn.

If you prefer, I can also pose questions as they arise in this this thread.

Thank you for any help and guidance

 

[SaibotLieh]

Great, thanks for fixing this. I agree, she looks really nice in profile

SaibotLieh, I’d like to ask your advice about how I can make that next step (leap?) in LH making.

So far in Blender I’ve learned how to convert assets from various games. I can do simple things like add pre-existing textures to meshes (which are already UV mapped), and I can Separate, Decimate (if needed) and Join, but then I panic if I accidentally right-click on a polygon and it starts stretching like taffy

I thought I might try to learn how to rig armors to LHs, but you mentioned above that this can often involve more work than sculpting.

Should I focus on unit making for now, as an intermediate step to LH creation? Idk if rigging armors to units is easier? edit: I might mention that I am fairly familiar with nifskope at this point. I can do basic swaps and add gloss & env light to units.

I've also dl'd a few tutorials, including those by Ekmek, The_Coyote, and MightyToad. They're very thorough, but for me it's too much info all at once, and I'd rather concentrate on developing in one area at a time.

For example, I have a couple specific LH projects in mind, and they seem like they would be simple and straightforward... but I'm not quite there yet in my knowledge, so they might be more challenging than they appear.

Sorry about my inexperience and overly generalized fumbling / stumbling forward, but I'd really like to learn.

If you prefer, I can also pose questions as they arise in this this thread.

Thank you for any help and guidance

Sure, no worries.

If you can freely decide between making units or making LHs for now, I certainly would advice to start with units, since they are a less complex to rig due to the smaller number of bones. For both units and LHs, the "Bone Weight Copy" function (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bone-weight-copy-blender.320560/) is very helpful to get a good starting point for the weight map, but normally you will have to clean up the results a bit, especially when bones with a lot of movement are falsely rigged to a non-neighbouring bones with little movement (for example, some forearm weight got onto the lower torso area).

Another advantage of unit rigging is that there is a higher tolerance for errors, since they will be displayed much smaller than LHs. They do sport more extreme movements though, but to be honest, most of the time errors for those will be hard to spot in-game, since they happen during very quick animations. You only need to care more for the ones you will see often and repeatedly, which are the idle and fidget animations.

You can try adding meshes via NifSkope, but besides the weapons for units, I would advice to learn doing it with Blender. Meshes that are not rigged cannot be shadered and will limited how nice the result will look like. Again, not so much a problem for units, but for LHs you definitely want to be able to shader. When exchanging parts of the original meshes in Blender, I would always try to keep the extremities of the original mesh, meaning feet and hands. For units, these are the parts that interact with other meshes (weapons and ground) the most and this way they will fit as they do with the original. For LHs, the hands contain the most bones, and by using the original hands, you avoid all that rigging work. Keeping the arms is certainly helpful as well, but of course at one point you want to start the exchange with new stuff.

For the question if it is easier to exchange in new stuff and then have to rig that or sculpture old stuff into new forms, this depends on what you are better at and might change over time. For me, it was easier at the start to change existing meshes in and then rig, but over time I got used to the sculpturing a bit and now it can be easier to avoid the rigging part.

Now, if you want to keep existing parts of the mesh you modify, you most probably will run into problems other problems with those assets. For example, if you are using a male LH as base for a female one, the hands will probably be too large and the teeth and eyeballs will likely be in an unfitting position. To adjust these problems with size and/or position, which is not easily fixable in Blender, I use dummy nodes in NifSkope. These are NiNodes I insert into the skeleton before the nodes I want to modify, to for example between "b_forearm_R" and "b_hand_R". Now I can change things by changing this dummy node, which is much cleaner and more reliable than trying to modify the original nodes. If you check the skeletons of my units/LHs, you will find lots of these nodes most of the time.

In general, I would advise to always Nifswap into original nifs instead of trying to make the Blender export work in Civ4. Also, always be generous with creating new files/versions when modifying meshes/nifs. When things go wrong somehow, you can fall back to the last working version and should not loose too much work that way.

Hope these are some helpful tips for now, feel free to post question that are not answered thus far / pop up later.

 

[tantanmen]

always be generous with creating new files/versions when modifying meshes/nifs. When things go wrong somehow, you can fall back to the last working version and should not loose too much work that way.

Thank you SaibotLieh, this is very helpful and generous of you. I really appreciate everything you've done and continue to do for this community.

I still have no idea what I'm doing, but that's never stopped me before

Here's a new thread where I'll be going heavy on file-saving. Thanks again for all your help.

Unit Rigging

Hello fellow hobbyists! Picking up from our most recent exploits (thanks again SaibotLieh), I would like to attempt to rig a unit. I've been staring at guides until my eyes glazed over, so I figured why not just plunge into it? Using the civ5 warrior, my goal is to create a new Unit Class: The...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Ekmek]

There is a rigging function, I can't remember off the top of my head that will copy all the rigging from one mesh to an unrigged meshed so you don't have to do polygon by polygon. You may have to do a little polygon by polygon cleanup (unrig/unassign and reassign to a better bone). I can't recall the tool (bone weight tool or something) but I used it when I started with the Civ5 heads because the rigging was way harder than the Civ4 heads