My advice would be to definitively start from what already exists for two reasons. Firstly, the pack already has a lot of civs that are very well done and you can focus on tweaking them. And secondly the pack contains a lot of units that could with little work be adapted to fit the needs of entirely different civilizations. This is especially true with modern units for whom the change would often literally be replacing the emblem or tweaking the cammo. If you want to go all out with this you can even implement my teampflag system for them.
Of course. I will use a lot of models from Varietas Delectat.
A quick question, do you know if by any chance there already exists a unit pack for the list of civs I said in the comment above?
In that case you should definitively look at VD as it has quite a lot of aircraft and tanks handy. That's actually something I might be interested in doing. If for no reason than as a break from modeling orks.
So like call me when you have done the various medieval units with flags and logos for the civ that I can use and I'll see what I can do to fit those onto the modern vehicles VD has. How does that sound?
In that case you should definitively look at VD as it has quite a lot of aircraft and tanks handy. That's actually something I might be interested in doing. If for no reason than as a break from modeling orks.
So like call me when you have done the various medieval units with flags and logos for the civ that I can use and I'll see what I can do to fit those onto the modern vehicles VD has. How does that sound?
Good! Anyway I am not actually good at creating units but I learned a bit from topsecrets tutorial videos, the only thing I do is give units a different color to make them more unique for a civ.
Good! Anyway I am not actually good at creating units but I learned a bit from topsecrets tutorial videos, the only thing I do is give units a different color to make them more unique for a civ.
That's a good start. All you really need to do to create lots of different looking units is to change the texture and transfer the occasional art asset. As in say a grenadier with the sword from the explorer, or giving your knight a unique and different helmet that you cut off from another model, that sort of thing. 3D modeling is a big bonus but it's not essential. Especially not if your units are meant to be humans and mostly historical. There just ain't that many warriors with spider arms growing out of their back or armored clockwork horsemen in our past after all.
One thing I would advise you though is to not bite off more than you can chew and think about unit groups early. If there is one thing I learned from doing all the CIVs in FFH its that you can't make every unit unique. It just ain't possible. It is much easier and better to split civs into groups whose units all look the same, just with different colors and than have distinct models between these civ groups. Like for example with my work all elven units or all dwarven units have the same general model but civ specific colors and textures to make them fit more. And with some units like ships this "difference" can literally just be that one is green and the other black.
So try and figure out unit groups that make sense historically. Like in your example almost all of the civs are in the same general "Spanish" group except for Aquitaine which is clearly in the "French" group. So you can get away with using the same models but with different colors for each group, but than have completely different models (like say a knight with a lance vs one with a sword) for the two big ones. That approach makes for much less work and still looks good.
I think I'll throw you together a couple helmets and stuff from the units I made (or cut out from VD models) for you to use for this.
Yes that is right but all the civs I mentioned have a different coat of arms, so I will have to create a unique art style for all of them so that all of their shields have their specific coat of arms.
But a grenadier with an explorer sword is an idea! It could be a Napoleonic Grenadier. Now I know what unit I'm creating next!
Unique art style yes, but not necessarily unique unit models. You basically have two tiers of uniqueness:
Unique model: The physical model looks differently. As in a knight with a lance vs one with a sword.
Unique texture: The physical model looks the same but is colored differently. As in two otherwise identical knights but with a different crest on their shields.
The former looks better but is a pain to do when you have a million units to make. So you end up resorting to the later a lot. And it still looks quite good.
Yeah that is easy to do. My method is take the dds file containing the color and convert it to JPG. Then open it in Inkscape and do whatever I want with the color. After I finish I click export PNG image, then I convert the PNG to DDS and I successfully changed the color.
Personally I use Paint.Net as it can open DDS file without any conversions. But if you are going to do it that way I would suggest you use PNG for both steps and not JPG because JPG blurs the picture and generally looses quality (as you might have noticed) where as PNG does not.
It would be cool to create a thread for VD Revived: Spain Expanded.
Also, on the subject of creating units… Has anyone ever tried to put an emblem on a single side of a unit’s chest, as seen in these pics?
SpoilerEmblem on One Side of the Chest :
Louis made a valiant attempt but he found it really difficult. I’m not faring much better
If there’s a technique to be learned, I thought it would be useful for all the Spanish units that Louis wants to make But I’m trying to remember if I have ever seen this on a unit
Anyway, Louis did a fantastic job on reskinning this spearman – it looks like he converted it straight out of the other game! Thanks Louis
p.s. the spearman file is attached for reference (X marks the spot )
I hope you’re making each and every one of them a special kind of ugly If you ever need a break from orks, but want to stay within the FfH continuum, I have a project that might interest you:
SpoilerHere be dragons... :
SpoilerThe Cherusci Confederation, led by Arminius :
I’ve kept it really simple so far by doing what I call skin-swaps, to try to vary the feel of the different eras. But now I’m beginning to modify the nifs. For example, I took a FfH unit, did a shield-swap (with the plan to paint it more Germanic). I’m going to attempt to reskin the helmet as well:
SpoilerCherusci Heavy Footman :
A humble beginning, but I’m also drawing some inspiration from Total War Rome 2, and I might try to take this unit in a direction more like…
SpoilerTotal War Rome 2 Vision Board :
I thought it might be fun to give these guys rifles and hand grenades. They’ll also need badass vehicles to drive around in
Let me know what you think, I definitely owe you "first dibs" if you're interested.
So let’s say I have some of my own WIP civs that I am ready to unload, erm share. They are reasonably far along - as far as I've been able to take them on my own. I'm considering opening some "Development Threads" for each specific project.
Here's a quick mock-up, to try to tantalize you:
( In honor of @Louis the XIV) VD Revived: Romania Development Thread
SpoilerRomania :
VD Revived: Sweden Development Thread
SpoilerSweden :
VD Revived: Cherusci Development Thread (can be viewed in the post above)
VD Revived: Any Mesoamerican Civ@Sword_Of_Geddon Development Thread
p.s. @rtt4a I would really like to hear your thoughts on this. If you have any ideas or there is anything you might like to see, please let me know
I don’t want to get into the specifics of what these Custom Civs will need to fully shine, but I'll say quickly:
(1) Romania might benefit from a couple touch-ups or replacements and certainly could use some modern vehicles.
(2) Honestly for Sweden, I believe that line of infantry units in white are actually Finnish. I tend to prefer World War Era infantry lines, so I went with the Finns for now because they look cool I'll keep mum about whether or not I think there might be a better alternative for a line of Swedish infantry units or whether or not there exists a plethora of modern Swedish vehicles out there ( @MatteM )
(3) The Cherusci are more of a What-If civ, so for a rough template I just borrowed the Armenian infantry line because they’re blue and they're wearing fur. Hey it’s something. I’m just trying to pack bodies in the field
In these instances I’ve created a rough template. It’s something to look at and analyze. Let’s call it wishful placeholding. The packages are distinctive but they are still not fully polished. This is where I’d like to call on community support
So now for me the big question is: How should we enlist community support to develop VDR civs? What kind of unofficial forum/space should we try to create? Should we just open a new Development Thread for each civ?
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But I’m trying to remember if I have ever seen this on a unit 
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I'll keep mum about whether or not I think there might be a better alternative for a line of Swedish infantry units or whether or not there exists a plethora of modern Swedish vehicles out there ( 
