[TUT] Using NIF Viewer to edit units (long)

[Rabbit, White]

Well, no worries; I downloaded NIFscope, and it's similar. I have just one question: You said to do the same thing with the swordsman_fx file, right? So do I still copy from the plain knight file, or the knight_fx one?

You can use the sword from the plain knight, you can even make your life easier by loading the plain swordsman you just created (i.e. the one with the knight's sword) into swordsman_fx and moving the sword from one swordsman to the other. This will mean that the sword will be already properly oriented, just make sure to delete the correct swordsman after that.

There is also another way to create the fx version, though it's not reliable if the model you use have gloss on the body, but if you're just doing it with a swordsman it's not a problem. Go to the 3rd tutorial in this series and towards the end find the section titled "Finalizing the unit - creating FX version", in it I provide a way to create an fx model out of a plain one - it just involves one change to the properties of the model and a save.

 

[Viking Krieger]

I am having trouble getting a weapon on to a unit

 

[timboobaa]

hello, thanks for these tutorials.
I've just started to 're-skin' some units for Civ (had some experience modding Warcraft 3).
I have a question; some of the units ,in particular the 'Unique' Asian Unit, I think it's called Chonoku or similar (i'm not on my main PC so can't check at moment), appear in the Scene viewer without a skin, even though there's a texture file in the folder.
I've checked all folders for the unit in each of the 4 Pak files, and it's the same...the unit appears in the Scene-viewer as pinkish. You can just about see the skin in one of the nif files, think its the Fx one, but the whole unit is tinted that pinkish-violet, perhaps it's team-colour?

Also,I wanted to work on some of the 'Charlemagne' Units from BTS, the model files appear with the skin on in Scene Viewer, but with the same pinkish tint.
Not great for seeing your skin/screenshots obviously!

Can anyone help here? Thanks in advance.
PS I understand you only need the model file and the 'fx' model file (plus skins of course) to get the unit in game, but i was curious as to what the 'freeze' files are? part of the animations it seems, but definitely not needed?(I'm only working in Scene-viewer at moment trying to get a few skins finished, have't attempted to put anything in game yet!)
Thanks!

 

[Rabbit, White]

@timboobaa: If you can sort of see the skin through but everything is also very pink that's the gloss map showing, although it should only appear that way when you view the non fx version. Also, it usually is limited to the metallic parts obviously. I don't remember having any trouble with the chonoku and certainly not with charlemagne units, which I actually viewed recently. If you're seeing the gloss pink over the entire unit then that usually means you're missing the gloss texture (so the engine assumes you have 100% gloss all over). If you do have the gloss texture in the folder then it might be just some conflict between your graphics card and the shader. As I mentioned this should not appear on the fx version of the unit, if it does than either I'm wrong and you're having a different issue or again it's a problem with a shader, which probably means there's nothing you can do about it (well you could try updating drivers but I doubt that'll help).

It does seem like this is limited to the viewer only, so if you can ignore it then you can still work on units to some extent

The "freeze" files are there for those that use the option "Freeze Animations" - they basically represent a few basic positions for the unit that it uses when the animations are suppose to be frozen. You usually don't need them though - in all my time making units only recently did I encounter posts mentioning a bug that occurs due to not having those files. However, for completeness' sake, if you're making a not-too-drastic change of a unit - for example, texture and a different weapon, then you can copy the original freeze files into the same folder and for those that use freeze animations, the unit will sometimes appear as a bit of a mix between old and new units - i.e. it'll have the new texture but an old weapon. Thing is, freeze positions are only used when the unit is not selected, in fact, even though there's usually an "attack" freeze position, when units attack they're always animated.

Of yeah, one last thing about freeze files, they have to match the KFM file used by the unit, regardless of what the original NIF was. In other words, even if you took a grenadier and redid him and gave him warrior animations (for whatever reason) the freeze files must be "warrior" freeze files. However, although I haven't tested it, it should be possible to grab grenadier freeze files and rename them to warrior freeze files (basically so you don't get a warrior pop up whenever freeze position is used ).

 

[timboobaa]

Aah great, thanks White Rabbit, I'll take this away and test it... find those gloss files ..
I've got some finished skins which I haven't tested in game, so I can't put em up for Download, is there anywhere 'round these parts I could post the screenshots.. like a gallery or sumthing?
thanks for the reply WR.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

im having trouble with the Nif Viewer. its not even opening (see error)

i hope someone sees this soon...

EDIT: just noticed lots of people have this problem but no one knows how to fix it

 

[Amra]

im having trouble with the Nif Viewer. its not even opening (see error)

i hope someone sees this soon...

EDIT: just noticed lots of people have this problem but no one knows how to fix it

Me too. I think it may have something to do with newer graphics cards, perhaps from ATI. I used to use this program all the time to work on the leaderheads in my modpack but have since built a new computer with an ATI 1950 Pro. Now it gives me the "renderer creation failed" error. I need to figure it out or there will not be an Amra's Modpack version 3, so I will post a solution if I find one.

I've spent the better part of today updating video drivers, DirectX, chipset, etc without any luck though, so...

 

[ViterboKnight]

I'm trying to put a great merchant on an horse. I've taken the horse from a conquistador.
I've followed Rabbit White's indications. Loaded the Great Merchant and removed the camel (allright), added the Conquistador (allright), moved the Horse to the Great Merchant correspondant node, and removed the Conquistador nif. It seems allright.
Now, if I save the GreatMerchant nif, an error occurs, the program exits, and the file is not saved (the file has even been corrupted).
Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[frekk]

I'm having trouble with the scene viewer/nif viewer too, but it's opening up fine - although it does open with an error message, "No Civilization IV shader libraries found to open."

It displays the .nif file just fine (and yes, I have the boundshape nif and tga in the same directory). Everything seems to work, except it won't save my changes!!!

All I'm trying to do is brighten or dim a few units, following another tutorial on here about using nif viewer to change the lighting. I change the dimmer value in a couple of the light-bulb nidirectionallight thingies from 1.0000 to 0.5000 but when I reopen the file after saving, they're back to 1.0000. I'm at a loss because I can't get it to save. It SAYS it's saved the file, but the changes are never reflected.

 

[achilleszero]

I'm having trouble with the scene viewer/nif viewer too, but it's opening up fine - although it does open with an error message, "No Civilization IV shader libraries found to open."

It displays the .nif file just fine (and yes, I have the boundshape nif and tga in the same directory). Everything seems to work, except it won't save my changes!!!

All I'm trying to do is brighten or dim a few units, following another tutorial on here about using nif viewer to change the lighting. I change the dimmer value in a couple of the light-bulb nidirectionallight thingies from 1.0000 to 0.5000 but when I reopen the file after saving, they're back to 1.0000. I'm at a loss because I can't get it to save. It SAYS it's saved the file, but the changes are never reflected.

Are you changing the name of the nif when you save? If so make sure you save it as XXXX.nif and choose nif as save type. And make sure your actually saving it to the right folder, it will save by default to the folder you pulled the nif from.

If your not changing the name, you should still double check the things I mentioned above. Then after save, look into the folder and see if it didnt save it as another type of file. Occasionally Ive seen it save a nif as another type of file even with nif checked as file type. You should notice if it doesnt ask you to replace a file of the same name, thats when it usually happens.

 

[frekk]

Are you changing the name of the nif when you save? If so make sure you save it as XXXX.nif and choose nif as save type. And make sure your actually saving it to the right folder, it will save by default to the folder you pulled the nif from.

If your not changing the name, you should still double check the things I mentioned above. Then after save, look into the folder and see if it didnt save it as another type of file. Occasionally Ive seen it save a nif as another type of file even with nif checked as file type. You should notice if it doesnt ask you to replace a file of the same name, thats when it usually happens.

Nope, that isn't the problem.

 

[kujezub]

I was also getting the "Renderer Creation Failed, Please restart application" error. I managed to fix it by patching NiDX9Renderer20VC71.dll (v6 and v7+ have the same files):

< 00029920: 5750 e839 cd00 008b f085 f675 2468 600c  WP.9.......u$h`.
---
> 00029920: 6a03 5890 9090 908b f085 f675 2468 600c  j.X........u$h`.

sha256 original 2e9a5157b7189eabe10aeaf8138d0fe070c230e2f79ae5746591f4916a80e9fc
sha256 patched  54ed958892538d699d8534b18fc71634254661071668dcfa658a44e6f49963a9

It was trying to create buffers with weird formats, that newer OS/drivers probably no longer bother to support.

Not sure if I should upload the actual patched binary, legal stuff and all.