The Capo's LH Gallery and Self-Help Thread!

Actually, I retextured him slightly and he doesn't look so bad anymore. I gave him this BG but I'm not sure it looks too good with this LH. Here is what it looks like in game. Any suggestions? Or do you guys think its good to go?
 
Actually, I retextured him slightly and he doesn't look so bad anymore. I gave him this BG but I'm not sure it looks too good with this LH. Here is what it looks like in game. Any suggestions? Or do you guys think its good to go?

Can you give him some hair up front to cover up the distorted forehead? It looks kinda weird there.
Besides that, looks great.
 
Edit: I moved the crown down a bit and it looks better, but the top of the head pokes out a bit so I'm going to have to edit out those parts so it looks good. It actually looks a lot better with the crown moved down. I think I'm also going to change the color of the collar and his sleeves (I know you can't see it from the image I posted, but he has a chain-mail "t-shirt" on underneath his armor and the sleeves are purple too) but its too much purple and I think it would look better with some dark red thrown in. I also removed some of the color saturation from the background so the LH stands out a bit more. I am going to get some dinner and see a movie tonight so I am not sure when I can get this thing up, hopefully tonight before I go to bed.

When I post him I'll name him Paleologos or Heraclius or something like that... so don't worry Ekmek. ;)
 
thx. with that arabian leader posted people are jumping all over my sh$@#t :lol:

LOL, well at least I didn't just reskin one of your LHs. I just tried to replace one! :p

Really though, the only reason I did that was because it looked too much like Huayna Capac, that's the only reason I did that. Also because, like I said, it just came to me when I was toying around with Alex's armor. I saw the scaling on that Burebista LH and thought "well that looks kind of like Byzantine armor, if I put that texture on this armor I could make a cool Byzantine leader" and I always thought Basil would be the best second leader for Byzantium. But don't sweat it, there are plenty of Byzantine leaders to use and they all generally look the same. His attire isn't specifically based on anyone in particular.

Besides, now you know what NikNaks feels like after we (ganged up and) destroyed his Hitler (sorry NikNaks).
 
i'm just joking. actually i did basil only because the reskin using for civgold was pretty bad so i quickly whipped up the crown and some retexturing. but it looks like civgold is going to have mainly unique looking leaders so i think my work there is done :D

Actually its funny you mention that, the reason I ever got into modding was because I originally played CivGold and Thomas' war and I hated that certain LHs looked just like reskins (Solomon, Basil etc.) although sometimes I didn't mind (the Taharqa/Piye reskin of Ramasses is awesome looking). So I figured I'd try to make my own LHs and here we are today. Anyway I altered him a bit so he has on a red and gold tunic underneath the armor. That way he doesn't look so uniform and looks a bit more ornate/colorful like I'd imagine a Byzantine Emperor would look. I still think the background doesn't look right so what I want to do is try to find a new BG for this guy that is a little less gawdy. I could use your Basil LH's background but I have a feeling that people will use both LHs since they are both good. So once I find something a bit better I'll post him up.
 
Okay, well I tied up the knots on this one and put it out. I didn't test it too heavily so if there are any problems with it please let me know. I present to you...


HERACLIUS

Well, originally I intended on making this Basil II, but since Ekemek has already made one and because of that I am sure he won't be used as Basil I might as well call him Heraclius at Ekmek's suggestion. Heraclius was the first Byzantine/European leader to engage the Muslims, although this was mostly out of happenstance rather than any religious purpose. He held the Arab invaders at bay and ruled over Byzantium for over thirty years, regaining much of the land the Eastern Roman Empire lost and holding on to the important port of Carthage. He was generally one of the best Byzantine Emperors there was, falling just short of men like Justinian, Basil II and Constantine in prominence. In fact he is lauded by friends and foe alike, even in such far off lands and times as sixteenth century Kenya! So download him and let the legend live on!

byzleaderpic_yN3.jpg


>>DOWNLOAD<<

Now I can move on to the other LH projects I am working on. I PROMISE Nagy will be fixed right after Alex comes up! Sorry Cool, I get distracted easily...
 
Great LH! Though I think he could also work well enough as Constantine XI Palaiologus, the last Byzantine Emperor.
 
Looking very good. Heraclius was pretty awesome, so it'll be nice to see him along side Basil. Hell, that'd mean in Diplomacy we'd have all four of the Byzantine greats.

I've been wanting to ask something, but I don't really want to add to your load.
Was thinking, if I could request a leaderhead? Just whenever you have freetime, no rush at all.
I've always wanted to see a JFK leaderhead, been surprised that I haven't seen one. He seems fairly simple looking (compared to other leaders already created, I mean.)
It'd just be kinda fun to mod in JFK into my games so I can go against Castro for fun. Give him my own diplotext all done in exaggerated Kennedy speak.
 
You know, looking at Kennedy's face I couldn't figure out a good representative. I really admire him too so if I were to do a leaderhead it'd have to be really good. So having said that, I basically gave up on the idea because I thought it would actually be too hard (believe me, Kennedy would be harder than he looks) until I saw this...

bartlet_portrait_Db8.jpg

Now, I am also adverse to giving myself more work, but I honestly think if someone just grabbed that LH, retextured his face and hair, and maybe fooled around with the model a little bit you will have Kennedy. I mean the headshape is practically the same (they ARE both Irishmen after all), so I don't think it'd be much of a stretch.

EDIT: See, pretty similar face/hair situation going on here...

john_f_kennedy.jpg
 
You know, looking at Kennedy's face I couldn't figure out a good representative. I really admire him too so if I were to do a leaderhead it'd have to be really good. So having said that, I basically gave up on the idea because I thought it would actually be too hard (believe me, Kennedy would be harder than he looks) until I saw this...

bartlet_portrait_Db8.jpg

Now, I am also adverse to giving myself more work, but I honestly think if someone just grabbed that LH, retextured his face and hair, and maybe fooled around with the model a little bit you will have Kennedy. I mean the headshape is practically the same (they ARE both Irishmen after all), so I don't think it'd be much of a stretch.

EDIT: See, pretty similar face/hair situation going on here...

john_f_kennedy.jpg

They -do- look somewhat alike. With a bit of work that'd be perfect. Maybe just, besides the texture, make his face a bit less wide and his eyes smaller.

I'll also say this, although JFK seems hard, there are -many- harder US political leaders.
Just imagine trying to make Nixon. Nixon sort of defies human genetics, looking like some Dr Moreau experiment gone wrong. As the joke goes, Nixon was the only US president to come pre-caricatured.
 
Well, unfortunately I am not going to do it right now. Maybe later, but it was a suggestion if someone else wants to pick it up. I just looked at the Bartlet model and basically what you would have to do is reshape and retexture the hair. The face/head is actually not that far off, even from the profile view, of what Kennedy's face/head was shaped like, you might want to remove part of the double chin but this shouldn't really be much of a project honestly.

EDIT: Also I have no business retexturing anything, this is a job for someone else. But I still think the idea has a lot of merit.
 
Not bad Heraclius! I love the new background you gave him, looks unique and doesn't "swallow" the LH. Anyway, are you going to use him as Heraclius or as Basil II, like you wanted?
 
Not bad Heraclius! I love the new background you gave him, looks unique and doesn't "swallow" the LH. Anyway, are you going to use him as Heraclius or as Basil II, like you wanted?

I'm not sure just yet. I'm still in the early stages of my mod so I haven't got to that point.
 
I took a look at Nagy, and I think what is wrong here is that his eyes are not in the proper position, nor is his mouth (and by that I mean teeth really). Looking at the model in-game the eyes seem to slightly clip with the eye-sockets/lids or whatever and there are a few cases where the bottom row of teeth (or the gums or whatever) clip on the chin. I tried to Nif-Swap him on to Alexander and that did not work. So I think the following things are going on:

1) It seems that the original model was formed from either the Rufus T. Firefly LH by CFK or the Trudeau LH by Bernie.

2) In my experience, when you model an LH from a premade LH it is important to know the process used to create it. At this point I can not do much to fix this LH because I can't resculpt the head the way you did, I am not good at doing that (I am capable of making minor adjustments, but to completely reconfigure the head the way you did is beyond my abilities and, quite frankly, beyond my available time).

3) In all honesty the issues are quite small, and the LH doesn't look horrible as it is now. If you want to fix it you might have to go back to the drawing board. What you should do is look to the original model used, I'm guessing you used Rufus T. Firefly. Did you check that it worked to begin with? Are these problems apparent in the RTF LH as well? If they are the problem is in the original model and not a whole lot can really be done to correct them. What you should do in this case is open up the original Rufus T. Firefly in Blender and try to correct the issues there (make the head a little bigger so the eyes don't clip with the lids, and do the same with the chin.

I know this sounds like pretty bad news, and in a way it is. But the only way to learn is by making mistakes. If the Rufus T. Firefly LH has the same problems that this one has then there is little you can do unless you really want to learn to make leaderheads and learn all of the tricks of the trade. I did manage to change the camera and BG a little bit so the leader looks a bit more prominent in the diplomacy screen. So I at least was able to manage that part. This isn't completely over, but an overhaul is certainly in order. Now what I think occured was this; CFK used Trudeau (who was based on Alexander) to make Firefly. He altered the face in a way that caused clipping, you took this LH and in turn altered it yourself (I am not sure if you resculpted the face as I am not familiar with the Rufus T. Firefly LH). So there is a double alteration here from the original Alexander. A NifSwap did not work on Alexander and I am not entirely sure why as I have never seen this recursive error message that pops up in my leaderhead expereince.

I basically have two suggestions here. The first is that you check the Rufus T. Firefly LH you based this on, in game, and see if the same issues pop up. If they do not you are in a good position because it simply means you need to go back and attempt the LH over again. Try NifSwapping it on to Alexander rather than Rufus. If this does not work try NifSwapping it on to Trudeau (although it is always better to NifSwap on to the original model), if this does not work try NifSwapping on to Rufus (although this is the least desireable option). Then test it in-game again. If you encounter the same problems you will probably have to start over. The second option I'd suggest is to try and recreate this LH from the Trudeau LH, the reason I suggest this is because it is going to be hard to sculpt the face from Alexander into Nagy without good experience which I am assuming you don't have much of. Another reason I suggest this second option is because Trudeau, as far as I know, was the LH that the Rufus T. Firefly LH was based on to begin with and you MIGHT find it easier to sculpt in Blender. If you are able to successfully accomplish this try the NifSwap on Alexander rather than Trudeau, if that does not work this may be a lost cause which brings us to the third, and ultimately least disireable, option; start from scratch. :sad:

I know it isn't great news, but as I said the problems are not THAT terrible. If you want to skip all of these steps and just go with the Nagy you have I altered the camera a bit so I think it looks a little better. Here is the LH with the new camera settings... Sorry I couldn't do more for you but its hard to work with a leaderhead based on a leaderhead based on a leaderhead based on a leaderhead.
 
Alright everyone, schedules schmedules (or whatever). I know most of you follow my mod's thread too, where I am working on a new mod. In that thread I have announced that the Polynesians will be added as a base civ. So because of this I am going to have to interrupt my regularly scheduled LHs (also I am awaiting the Alex LH to be finished so in the meantime I'm doing some improving on existing LHs) and work on fixing up some existing Polynesian LHs.

Right now I am working on fixing up Methyl's Kamehameha, which is a great LH but if you look at it in NifSkope it could use a bit of work, so I've decided to do it. I came accross a strange issue though; I ripped off Lincoln's collar/tie situation and used it for Kamehameha but for whatever reason no texturing is showing up. I can't seem to figure out what to do about this. Does anyone know? I have posted a screenshot of the WIP with the picture I am using as a model. I have also posted a screen showing where there is no texture for the tie and collar portion of the LH. If someone can tell me what to do here that would be great. I would also appreciate any suggestions you might have for me about the LH.

And to those who have been waiting on other things I said I'd do, do not worry. I am still planning on making them, like Ulmanis, Cartimandua, Ptolemy and Nasser et al, for example. I just have a heavy workload so with a little more patience you will have your LHs. And as always I try and keep everyone posted on what I am working on with screenshots and everything so you know I'm not sitting around on my ass... although I often do just sit around on my ass sometimes...
 
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