Transferring meshes from one game platform to another

[cfkane]

I believe it's been done with some of the characters from Sid Meier's Pirates, but I wanted to try it with some models from a game called Freedom Force. If you don't know it, it's a superhero-themed tactical game that came out about five years ago.

All of the meshes for the game are .nif files, and I have Blender as a 3D editor. I have a .nif importer for the program as well. I suppose I could easily import the Freedom Force nif files into Blender and then export them as Civ 4 compatible nifs. But I'm not sure that simple a process would accurately make the mesh ready for Civ 4 (I'd have to re-work the keyframes, for one).

Here's a site with some custom Freedom Force meshes that I hope to transfer. If you have Blender and a nif add-on for it, you could help me experiment with adapting the meshes.

 

[Refar]

As far as i know you cant export anims form blender for Civ4 (I am not blender user, so might be wrong) - if so messing with key-frames would be waste of time.

The simpliest way to make it game ready would be import a Civ4 unit (where you want to borrow animation from) and import the other model in one scene, then rig the new model onto the Civ4 skeleton.

 

[cfkane]

Okay, that's going to be a problem. I was hoping to import the animation from the FF meshes into the Civ4 game, hopefully just by renaming them to fit the animations of the Civ4 units. The characters I was hoping to import (Superman and Captain America to name a couple) have very specific and iconic fighting moves that don't really match any of the units in Civ4.

 

[Refar]

Just renaming the files will most probably not be enought.
There is information stored in the files them selfes (event code to trigger the anim, most notable). It might be possible to add these strings or key notes in nifscope.

I took a look at the website you linked, but it is somewhat unclear where is what to me, and i dont really feel like finding out.

However if you package and upload a complete matching set (one model + the anims you require/want to port over) i could take a closer look at the files and maybe tell you something more specific.

 

[cfkane]

No need. The files are pretty easy to download, so long as you have WinRar or something similar.

I was going to start with the Superman mesh on the site: http://www.renegadetoybox.com/toybox/SmanREN.zip

The file has the character mesh, the skin, and keyframes. You should be able to view the mesh with Nifscope and hopefully you can import it to whatever modelling program you use.

 

[Refar]

Ok, so the files certainly not compartible with Civ4 as they are.
I can not import the anims in Max either nor load them in NifScope (it say improper format) i think it's very old format or something.
I don't see much hope for using the anims.

The mesh however can be imported, so what i described in my first answer should work.
You might even be able to re-rig without Max or Blender - using the old "Bone Transplant" technique.

Sorry for not having better news.

Another - faint - chance would be - You could try contact the original creators - if they share the source files, there might be a chance - depending on what tool they used to port these over.