The Faeries

making the effect like a magical bolt is not that problematic. what is really challenging is hooking up the animation for it. i basically can't help you on that you have to go into the animation files and add to each strike or defense the data for the effect. (if you look at the feary dragon you see what i mean, he has an effect when he strikes: his breath)
i just looked at the bones they are not that different. but keep i mind that the bones of the feary that are not linked to bones of the archer will have no animation, i.e. the hair.


edit: after looking at the files a bit more: you could just take the breath effect of the feary dragon and put it in the attack of the feary.

node 58 (NiTextKeyExtraData) controls the timing on the breath, i just need to locate the breath itself and you can edit the effect which is rather easy.


edit 2: i did not find the effect in the files you gave me, but since i have done a reskin myself there must a file called iceburst.nif or something like that. this file controls how the breath looks (which textures are used, how the particles are generated etc. you have to change this file to make it look more like a magical bolt attack. doing so however you have to keep in mind that the feary will still look like any other melee feary it is only when she attacks or defends that you will see the difference in the animation and don't know if you want to make that much work for it.
 
i just noticed something rather important:
when you go to the feary dragon and look at the texture for the wings, you had them linked meaning they will only work on your computer and nowhere else:

change those entries:

Spoiler :


to:

Spoiler :



for both the tail feathers and the wings and you are done. the textures have to be in the same folder for this to work. just click on the little blue icon next to the texture path and choose the wing texture :)
 

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@tesb: ive been working on the fae archer for most of today and have been struggling through. at first i thought of trying to attach the dragons breath attack to the fae warrior's hands, but only the sound works, no graphical effect. then i noticed there are attachables that arent defined on them, so i specified that the fae archer has a flame effect. this worked and looks pretty good with the re skin i had intended for the archer, i think we could make a decent adept/mage/archmage replacement with various effects, something like normal fire in both hands for adept, multi coloured fire for mage with some faint lightning, and bright white lightning for archmage.

but there still remains the problem of getting some form of ranged animation happening... i have another idea that may work, ill give it a shot now.
 
I figured i might as well upload these, the arcane line:



pictured are the warrior, scout, pixie and sprite (top) for comparison with the adept, mage and archmage (bottom)

I had hoped for the flame effects in the mage and archmage hands to be multi coloured, so i made new flame effects, however there does not seem to be much difference to the normal flame in the adept's hands.

see attachment for DL.

EDIT: the fire makes them more distinguishable in game, the screen shot dosnt really show this.
 

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you can also do a archer yourself:

1) take an existing archer and remove the model, so that only the bones remain
2) open one of your fearies and copy branch the model and paste it in archer nif (attach it to the some already existing node
3) now attach each bone of your feary to the according bone of your archer
4) you can now use the archer animation set with the feary model

alternatively you can just reskin an archer model.

ok, so ive finally managed to get to stage 2 (i think :p), but i don't know how to attach each individual bone of the faerie to the archer's bone. would you be able to go into more detail on how this is done? ive searched for tutorials but couldn't find anything :(
 
click on the bone node -> block details -> num children increase this by one -> click on the green circle beneath it -> you now have one additional childnode -> now just put in the number of the corresponding node of the golshan model bone node -> the bone of the golshan model is now attached to the node of the archer. keep in mind that all unattached nodes for example the hair will not be animated (it will move with the head however)

in my opinion this is really a big hassle you can simply do the following:
-reskin an existing archer
-put the glow planes on the corresponding parts by copy branch -> paste branch
-do the same with the hair (attach to the head bone node) and you are done

==> much easier, much more likely work (you can do a lot of errors if you do it the other way) and should look nearly identical. the golshan model without the hair and glow parts (which both can be easily copied) does not look that different from any other model

==> if you wish you can also put on particle emmiters. although i would use them sparsely if at all.
==> if you wish to assign a glow texture to the archer model just click on the nitextureingproperty (right click -> texture -> add glow map)
 
I had hoped for the flame effects in the mage and archmage hands to be multi coloured, so i made new flame effects, however there does not seem to be much difference to the normal flame in the adept's hands.

-make sure you use different textures for each particle node
-make sure the the node which controls the color of the particle node is changed to the color you wish

i will take a quick look at the particle effects of you mages :)

edit: i looked at them:

you can change the colors with these nodes (there are more of this kind i just picked those two):
Spoiler :


you can also assign different colored textures to each effect.


it is quite funny that you made the effect separate. if you just want to have some particle effects on your model you can attach those directly. (you can use one from other models like ones from nearly every mage with a particle effect or the amurite swordsmen etc.)


please remember that you don't need the whole animation set for every model. you need it once and in the xml you can just link to this animation set, even if it is in a different folder. just look at the thousands of warriors in ffh. they all use different models but only one shared animation. this saves quite some space.

to give you an idea:
your adept is ~550 kb if i delete all unnecessary files it is ~130 kb
 

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just to add something that you will probably encounter if you choose to simply do a reskin:
if you copy past the glowing planes it will not copy the nibillboard node (this node forces them to always look at the camera) just right click on the plane -> attach parent node -> nibillboardnode and you are done.


edit:

if the plane blocks the vision of the archer you have to add a nizbufferproperty (right click on the plane -> node -> attach property)
 
Thanks for all the help tesb, here are my results on the Archer (still need to do the rest but it should be easier now i know what to do). i took your advice and reskinned a svartalfar archer, i cant seem to get the golshan hair to show in game but i think it looks good anyway. i changed the arrow to a bolt of energy, however when they fire at enemies they still actually shoot arrows. not too sure why this is.

i couldn't find the nitextureingproperty to add a glow texture, but i think its still ok without it, at least it gives some more differentiation.

Spoiler :



ill wait to see if you have any more advice before i make the longbowman etc :p
 

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i looked at the file:

1)
Glow Map:
to add the glow map: right click on the node #271 NiTexturingProperty -> Texture -> Add Glow Map

Spoiler :


2)
Hair:
if the hair does not show make sure you have done the following things:
-right click on the hair of the golshan model -> crop to branch -> you should now only see the one hair you selected -> right click on the hair -> copy branch
Spoiler :





-open the archer model nif locate the node: BIP Head and choose paste branch. if you just copy paste the hair somewhere in the nif, or even at the end it is not linked and thus will not show up.

Spoiler :


-the hair need to be upscaled, moved and rotated so it fits on the head, to do that rightl click on it -> transform ->edit

Spoiler :



3) Texturing:
it is always good to keep the size at minimun. as you can see you only use a some small parts of the texture from golshan model -> make a new texture with only those parts -> choose your hair and glow planes and link to the new texture. you may have to redefine how the texture is used just right click on the hair or glow plane -> texture -> edit uv
 

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just a minor aesthetic thing: i would remove the quiver :)

if you have any problems/question please feel free to ask :)

edit: to add to point 3) from above. you can also choose the texture of most other things (like the bow and quiver) and reassign them to the body texture. for example my archer for the new upcoming civ (see my thread) uses the same model but only 3 textures:
the base texture, the glow texture and the last one is for the arrow

edit 2:
i changed the arrow to a bolt of energy, however when they fire at enemies they still actually shoot arrows. not too sure why this is.

that is because the archer uses the same animation as any other archer, in that animation is the effect for the shooting arrow which contains a normal arrow. basically if your archer reloads it has the bolt but as soon as you see the shot you will see a regular arrow. if you want to change that you have to locate the animation file, and change the arrow there too, but don't ask me how to do that :(


edit 3: i would also remove the ears. you can't see them anyways with the glow stuff around the model :)
 
Hi again. Nice work on the fairy models. Now it really looks like fairies.

Is it possible for you to upload the codes that modify the ressourse transformation to eternal fruits/etc and the chain that makes the new scout/warrior/adept/archer/horseman(?) fairy units upgradable to the other fairy units such as sun fairy, etc? And would them break saves?
 
@The Changer
-i found the issue i talked about in post #102 all over your other models as well (summer and winter lord for example)
-you don't need the animation files for those in either folder since the animations already exist, just use the kfm entry in the xml files from the mercurian death angel.

for example you can delete all files in the the folder summerlord/seraph/ except for
-deathangel.nif (the model file)
-angelwings.dds
-environment_fx.dds
-summerlord.dds
-sword.dds
-angelwingsglow.dds (although i suggest you redo the glow texture since it is still the old one)

which brings the size of the folder ~1,5 mb down to 419 kb



edit: if you are done with your models and you want this, you can upload them here and i will take a look at them before sending them to sephi. if you do so i would ask you to upload the unit art defines xml as well. :)



i have also an other suggestion:
-change the flame effect on the sword of the summer and winter lord or remove them (a winter lord with a fire sword?)
-change the body texture of the winter and summer lord to more something akin the the rest of the fearies (or even more akin to the hero)
 
some are already included afaik. if you want to add the ones that aren't you have to do the following:
-get the models and put them into assets/art/somewhere
-open up the FAERIES_CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml
-find the entry for the unit you downloaded and change the path of the model and the animation to the new model
-you might want to change the scale of the units, there is a tag for that too. if you increase the number the model gets larger.

personally i would wait until the changer is finished with the models and enjoy them when they are officially done :)
 
ive made the longbowman and marksman models, thay look pretty good now :) i still havent been able to get the hair to work but i dont think its necessary, it dosnt look very good in nifscope anyway. i got the glow to wrok thanks tseb :) and ive removed the unnecessary files (ive kept all the animations and what not in the fae warrior file, ill upload them all together when its done.)

im working on redoing the summer/winter and fae lords textures.

quick question tseb: what other fae units will need retextures besides the flurry and firefox?
 
i don't know, do you have models for the immortal, phalanx and berserker units?
 
im fairly sure immortal is the summer/winter lord. phalanx is wood spirit and berserker is troll... unless im mistaken
 
Attached are some screens of the recent developments with the archers and the reskins of the summer winter and fae lords, and Larincsidhe.

all i have left on my to do list is the flurry and foxfire, tidy up any more un-needed files and assemble all the xml filesi used and ill upload them all in one big file :)

EDIT: for some reason Larincsidhe's sword is pink...
 

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pink often means that the texture is missing. make sure to have the texture properly assigned (like in post #102) and make sure it is in the same folder. if this is already the case and the sword is still pink check the color values within nifskope of the sword.


an other possibility is that you forgot the environment_fx.dds. the sword has a gloss texture meaning it will reflect the light source. if you forgot the add the texture of the light source the light is pink and your sword will reflect that pink light.
edit: after looking at the picture my guess is that this is the case. an other fix would simply removing the gloss map by disabling this option the nitexturingproperty of the sword


otherwise very good work :)
i would change the alpha channel of the summer and winter lords a bit (the lower parts) so it looks more like the Hero, (make sure to add/ change the alpha property and set it to 4845) i.e. more transparency. (you may also want to add a nistencilproperty if it is not already on the model (this node basically textures the model from the outside and the inside))
 
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