Sworddemon (Skuld)

[SaibotLieh]

My next converted Atlantica Online unit.

Spoiler :

The unit is called Skuld in AO, I just called her "Sworddemon" to make her description more informative.

This time I've gone a bit further and also converted the AO animation of the unit, similar to what Deliverator did with some Kohan II units. For example, Skuld attacks with all 14 swords instead of just her handheld one:

Spoiler :

It's in fact this is not very hard to do, because the animation files can be converted via Blender where they can be modified to fit to the Civ4 animation timescales. Only the swords made some problems, but I solved them in the end (hopefully )

I tried to keep the polycount low, but this time I made not a very big effort of it. It's now at about 4250.

More information in the download section.

Download link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=15382

Enjoy!

 

[tom2050]

Glad someone else could make some use of AO units and animations for Civ 4 that I started doing a year ago for Civ 3.

 

[The_J]

OMG !

 

[siam]

Master!

 

[SaibotLieh]

Thanks.

Glad someone else could make some use of AO units and animations for Civ 4 that I started doing a year ago for Civ 3.

In fact your work made me notice the AO models in the first place. Good and especially lot of work you do there. It's a shame I don't play Civ3 however...

A big problem in converting the models for Civ4 is the relative high polycount. Because of this, I mostly used them for leaderheads so far, they match more or less the polycount of the original leaderheads. However, I also made another unit convertion prior this one, but because I didn't use the AO animation set that time I guess Skuld is the first real unit convertion I made. Still the reducing of the polycount is a pretty unsatisfying work. Making a nice model worse than it was is no fun at all.

 

[tom2050]

It is tough to reduce polycount sometimes without the original model getting distorted. At least in most models, AO purposely did not include things like model legs if the model is wearing a dress or sleaves e.g. which is a good thing.

They look great though... I started by doing Kohan II units that I saw another member doing conversions of... and went from there.

I don't know what Blender has, but MultiRes modifier of 3ds works very well for more complex models in reducing polygon count without destroying the model. Perhaps Blender has something similar. The Wolf model (at IIRC 1622) was reduced to 682 with hardly any major effects. (of course leaving it to these things doesn't always produce the best result)

This looks like one of the best looking units 4 has now.. always a plus.

 

[SaibotLieh]

It is tough to reduce polycount sometimes without the original model getting distorted. At least in most models, AO purposely did not include things like model legs if the model is wearing a dress or sleaves e.g. which is a good thing.

The first c. 1000 polygons are pretty easy to delete most of the time. Teeths, eyeballs, stuff that is still hidden beneath other. Also exchanging the hands with standard Civ4 hands helps a lot. But after that, the model has often still 2 to 3 times the polycount a normal Civ4 units has.

They look great though... I started by doing Kohan II units that I saw another member doing conversions of... and went from there.

I don't know what Blender has, but MultiRes modifier of 3ds works very well for more complex models in reducing polygon count without destroying the model. Perhaps Blender has something similar. The Wolf model (at IIRC 1622) was reduced to 682 with hardly any major effects. (of course leaving it to these things doesn't always produce the best result)

This looks like one of the best looking units 4 has now.. always a plus.

In fact Blender has something similar, called Poly Reducer. I used it for the swordswoman, but it's mostly only usable for larger areas like the torso. It has a tendency to remove lowpolygon details like strands of hair. But I guess the main problem is that I'm to close-up to the models with Blender. Most of the details that are lost with the reducer wouldn't be seen in the game anyway, but I can see their loss in Blender and just can't accept it.

I don't put that much effort in reducing the polycount anymore now, because I think for single mesh units a higher polycount should be alright. This way I can spend more time with the other, more fun parts of unit converting.

 

[Dumanios]

She looks like she'd be a good hero in a fantasy mod.

 

[Le Sage]

Wow! She HAS to be used. Again.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Once again, amazing.
I bet you do not know this (or particularly care either) but your units are the reason that pushed my hand into downloading the Fairy Tale mod.

And your leaderheads are the only thing still keeping me from leaving base civ completely in favor of FFH...


BTW, how many more units are there in that game for you to rework?

 

[Cybah]

omfg. too bad my mod is for realism.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Thanks all.

She looks like she'd be a good hero in a fantasy mod.

I think so, too. And it looks like Le Sage will make sure of it:

Wow! She HAS to be used. Again.

Once again, amazing.
I bet you do not know this (or particularly care either) but your units are the reason that pushed my hand into downloading the Fairy Tale mod.

And your leaderheads are the only thing still keeping me from leaving base civ completely in favor of FFH...


BTW, how many more units are there in that game for you to rework?

Did not know this, put I'm very happy to hear it.

There are a lot of units in fact, you could browse through tom2050's work to see many of them animated. I'll try to make some more conversions in the future, I don't want you leave FT and/or base Civ.

omfg. too bad my mod is for realism.

Aye, that's one of the few problems I have with the AO models. Naturally, they don't look or act very realistic, so most of them are useless for realistic civ mods.

Maybe I can make some missionary units out of the non-combat models.

 

[smeagolheart]

Thanks all.

Maybe I can make some missionary units out of the non-combat models.

Can you convert more models to leaderheads? They don't even have to be anyone in particular just "look good" and we'll fill in the rest. I couldn't even get blender installed correctly so far much less start doing some conversions.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Can you convert more models to leaderheads? They don't even have to be anyone in particular just "look good" and we'll fill in the rest. I couldn't even get blender installed correctly so far much less start doing some conversions.

Well, you'll have to remember that I in fact are more a unitmaker at heart and the leaderheads were more an experiment of mine. That doesn't mean that I won't do any more leaderheads, but at the moment I'm more inspired to make some units out of the AO models than leaderheads.

 

[hrochland]

Excellent

 

[General Tso]

Awesome! The master of swords.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Thanks guys.

 

[Le Sage]

Here she is in-action! I mean - WOW!

​