Unit Creation help

[hugojackson18]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working on making my first unit for Civ 5. I've looked everywhere in these forums to find a couple of answers about the gaming modeling constraints. I'm coming from Film Visual Effects, and I'm trying to learn how to adapt to the game world.

Basically, what I want to do is get this truck into the game to replace the modern caravan.

It's a model that I created for my short movie Electroshock, and it was modeled in high res of course. So I've been cutting down the poly count, and I'm actually lowering the resolutions of the textures.

What I want to know is what is the max poly count (or recommended) for a unit that would be a Single unit on the Hex, and how small the resolution of the texture should be. At the moment, I've managed to lower the poly count to 8000 triangles, and the map looks great still at 512*512. Is that enough?

Thanks guys for any answers!

 

[Gedemon]

That's a nice looking truck

I can't help you at all on the creation process, and the current tutorials are focusing on unit's conversion IIRC. But there may be another problem specific to caravan's models, I'm not sure if they can be changed, I need to test that...

Moderator Action: And thread moved to main Creation&Customization section, no questions in the tutorials section please

 

[hugojackson18]

Thanks! Sorry for being in the wrong thread.

I am not necessarely willing to use the caravan's animation. I'm willing to make my own, and create a unit from scratch. I'm just looking for some basic infos on poly count and texture maps size, just to be sure I'm not overkilling it!

Cheers =D

 

[Nutty]

From looking at a sampling of Firaxis' units, I'd try to keep it under 4000 triangles. (Their truck is only 1714 triangles.)

EDIT: Oh, and their textures max out at 512x512 (most are 128, many are 256, some 512; their truck is 512x256). You should probably use DXT5 compression, like they do.

 

[hugojackson18]

Awesome! Thanks so much Nutty, that's exactly all I wanted to know!

 

[Nutty]

I'm excited to see a 3D artist trying his hand at CiV units (there aren't many). If you decided to take requests, you would suddenly have a lot of friends.

 

[hugojackson18]

Once I got the hang of it, I'd be happy to take requets! Incorporing Civ III units to the game back in the days actually is the reason why I chose to become a 3d Artist in the first place, so I'm happy to finally start making my own!

Thanks for the help guys

 

[hugojackson18]

Hey guys, sorry for bringing back this thread to life, but now that I finally manage to make my unit, I would like to know, specially Gedemon, if there is news about replacing units like Caravan. Have you looked into it or is it something we don't know? They seem to be a special kind of unit...

 

[Gedemon]

Not yet.

I've seen some other new units in the database that could fit other era and ethnicity for caravans, and plan to look at them (and now your truck) for next R.E.D. release, but I'm currently working on another mod and I usually avoid to switch my workflow from mods to mods in the middle of something...

The tricky part is having both era and ethnic change, and I'd like to avoid workaround in Lua for R.E.D. Modpack.

 

[whoward69]

if there is news about replacing units like Caravan.

Caravan and cargo Ship are hard-coded in the DLL to be the same for all Civilizations, same for the religious units.

 

[Gedemon]

Caravan and cargo Ship are hard-coded in the DLL to be the same for all Civilizations, same for the religious units.

Ho, not even a workaround possible in Lua then... and a DLL workaround ?

Nutty, did you made some test about mixing era and ethnic change ?

 

[hugojackson18]

Gedemon of course, I understand. I look forward to hear when you start working on RED again. Let me know if you want to integrate my track and think of anyway you'd like the trucks to look for different civilizations.

And whoward69, damn thats a shame. Does that mean they are unreplacable? Their actions are quite specific and different. Could we give a unit the properties to work like a caravan maybe?

 

[whoward69]

and a DLL workaround ?

My DLL already fixes the occurrences of Unit and Building where they should have used UnitClass and BuildingClass respectively - search for BUGFIX_UNITCLASS_NOT_UNIT and BUGFIX_BUILDINGCLASS_NOT_BUILDING

 

[Gedemon]

thanks