Warhammer FB Mod

[Talon500]

Nice, anyway I still need that new link. Also since Im feeling a little bad I can offer you something, a website I can make us a website for our mod if you would like me to.

 

[woodelf]

Someone better sign up neener!

 

[HahnHolio]

SKAVEN ... that´d be awesome ...
howzit coming along with neener?
me loves skaven

greetz

HahnHolio

btw: haven´t tested too much of your mod now, but i´m gonna give u some feedback later today

 

[neener]

Hey all, sorry about the delay. I was a lot busier the last couple of days than I thought I would be. Nevertheless, I got a rough Skaven together. I decided against a Clan Eshin Assassin, and instead went for a Stormvermin, mainly because it was an easier posture! Hopefully it looks decent enough.

Now, obviously that's in Max, not the game. As I said, I'm not entirely sure of what we can and can't do in Civ 4. I haven't been following the scene from the beginning (I've been playing, instead!) so some nice people might have to fill me in. From what I gathered, models should be no more than 1000 polys, so this guy is actually a very skinny 676 polys, including the halberd. Most of the detail is in the texture, and that's what I'm more unsure of. It's a 256x256 file, and I wasn't sure what Civ can handle. I can lower it of course, but then you'll lose his lovely beady eyes! In all honesty I don't even know if you can do skins that way in Civ4. I made a single file unwrap using texporter like I would for any other 3D game (Unreal, for example) so I'm hoping Civ is the same, but for all I know you have to do some sort of bizarre trickery with these .dds things.

Oh, and he's obviously rigged and moved into a pose.

Anyway, so yeah, is that okay? If you think you can use that kind of thing, then let me know what to work on and I'll have a go. If not, let me know what to change and I'll try that too!

 

[Talon500]

Wow, that looks amazing Neener, nice job!

 

[woodelf]

That is frickin amazing! I can't wait to start bugging you with max questions now as well.

Texporter is what I use and if you did that in a single unwrap you are my hero. That is killing me.

There is a document to read about getting your models into Civ4 located here.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Hey all, sorry about the delay. I was a lot busier the last couple of days than I thought I would be. Nevertheless, I got a rough Skaven together. I decided against a Clan Eshin Assassin, and instead went for a Stormvermin, mainly because it was an easier posture! Hopefully it looks decent enough.

Now, obviously that's in Max, not the game. As I said, I'm not entirely sure of what we can and can't do in Civ 4. I haven't been following the scene from the beginning (I've been playing, instead!) so some nice people might have to fill me in. From what I gathered, models should be no more than 1000 polys, so this guy is actually a very skinny 676 polys, including the halberd. Most of the detail is in the texture, and that's what I'm more unsure of. It's a 256x256 file, and I wasn't sure what Civ can handle. I can lower it of course, but then you'll lose his lovely beady eyes! In all honesty I don't even know if you can do skins that way in Civ4. I made a single file unwrap using texporter like I would for any other 3D game (Unreal, for example) so I'm hoping Civ is the same, but for all I know you have to do some sort of bizarre trickery with these .dds things.

Oh, and he's obviously rigged and moved into a pose.

Anyway, so yeah, is that okay? If you think you can use that kind of thing, then let me know what to work on and I'll have a go. If not, let me know what to change and I'll try that too!

That looks amazing man!

As for your questions...

676 polys is perfect for that guy, it looks like it would be one of those weak but plentiful units. In general, the rule of thumb is that the smaller units, the ones that usually appear in groups of three (though in WH that might go up to 5 or even 10) should be around 1000 polys and the lower you can get w/o loosing quality the better. That's not a very hard rule though, because you can obviously go much higher if a unit is mounted on a horse for example (vanilla mounted units are around 2000 polys). Then the big units, the ones that usually appear single, they can go up to about 2000 polys. However, I wouldn't hesitate to push it even higher if it was worth it. Especially for maybe something like hero units, ones that only appear once in game, I'd say if you need the detail to really flesh it out then 2500-3000 is still fine.

As for textures, in vanilla most textures for organic units are 128x128, for mounted it's usually 128x128 for horse and another 128x128 for rider. For mechnical units such as tanks and planes they usually use 256x256. In general I'd say that 256x256 is ok for any unit but again, if it's a small unit then unless you zoom in you probably won't be able to tell the difference between 256 and 128 textures. For the skaven above, I gotta say the eyes look great but at the default zoom level in civ4, even at a semi-zoomed-in level you won't be able to see the detail. I'd say just make em one orangy/redish tone and that's it. In general with textures, if you feel the need to increase the size because you're not getting the needed detail I'd say first try to just double the texture, i.e. from 128x128 to 256x128, and only if that doesn't work then go for 256x256. I wouldn't recommend going to 512x512 at all (even for the hero units) as it might impact performance noticably on the slower systems.

Take a look at the documentation in this thread, some good info there on making models civ4 compatible.

 

[HahnHolio]

Hey all, sorry about the delay. I was a lot busier the last couple of days than I thought I would be. Nevertheless, I got a rough Skaven together. I decided against a Clan Eshin Assassin, and instead went for a Stormvermin, mainly because it was an easier posture! Hopefully it looks decent enough.

Now, obviously that's in Max, not the game. As I said, I'm not entirely sure of what we can and can't do in Civ 4. I haven't been following the scene from the beginning (I've been playing, instead!) so some nice people might have to fill me in. From what I gathered, models should be no more than 1000 polys, so this guy is actually a very skinny 676 polys, including the halberd. Most of the detail is in the texture, and that's what I'm more unsure of. It's a 256x256 file, and I wasn't sure what Civ can handle. I can lower it of course, but then you'll lose his lovely beady eyes! In all honesty I don't even know if you can do skins that way in Civ4. I made a single file unwrap using texporter like I would for any other 3D game (Unreal, for example) so I'm hoping Civ is the same, but for all I know you have to do some sort of bizarre trickery with these .dds things.

Oh, and he's obviously rigged and moved into a pose.

Anyway, so yeah, is that okay? If you think you can use that kind of thing, then let me know what to work on and I'll have a go. If not, let me know what to change and I'll try that too!

This is AWESOME man!!!!
*gives free coffe and beer and snacks and whatever*

keep going and i might loose my employment coz of this fantastic mod

 

[Gerikes]

Anyway, so yeah, is that okay? If you think you can use that kind of thing, then let me know what to work on and I'll have a go. If not, let me know what to change and I'll try that too!

You guys might want to give neener a 5-year deal

 

[Duke van Frost]

That´s just perfect!!

Getting that much detail with only 676 polys is Highclass and textures with 256*256 isn´t any problem at all, shouldn´t go too ahrd on the system.

Texporter is perfect for cIV units and one texture per model is and should stay standard. And as far as I know you don´t have to do any tricky thing with the .dds files - you can or can not use mipmaps if you want, SeZ likes to do his NifEdited units without mipmaps, I do buildings and resources with mipmaps - depends on you and what you like better.

 

[Talon500]

OK team, I am making a website for the mod. I will post the link when its done so if you have any idea for a banner tell me since I can make one.

 

[Duke van Frost]

I´m not sure If we need a homepage for the mod, maybe we should discuss this a little bit more. The forum we got right now is enough for me.

 

[Talon500]

Well I am already in the process of making it... uhhhh, it could be a HQ for our team if that works.

 

[Rando]

WOW! That Skaven is awesome! Very nice!!

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Hey all, sorry about the delay. I was a lot busier the last couple of days than I thought I would be. Nevertheless, I got a rough Skaven together. I decided against a Clan Eshin Assassin, and instead went for a Stormvermin, mainly because it was an easier posture! Hopefully it looks decent enough.

Now, obviously that's in Max, not the game. As I said, I'm not entirely sure of what we can and can't do in Civ 4. I haven't been following the scene from the beginning (I've been playing, instead!) so some nice people might have to fill me in. From what I gathered, models should be no more than 1000 polys, so this guy is actually a very skinny 676 polys, including the halberd. Most of the detail is in the texture, and that's what I'm more unsure of. It's a 256x256 file, and I wasn't sure what Civ can handle. I can lower it of course, but then you'll lose his lovely beady eyes! In all honesty I don't even know if you can do skins that way in Civ4. I made a single file unwrap using texporter like I would for any other 3D game (Unreal, for example) so I'm hoping Civ is the same, but for all I know you have to do some sort of bizarre trickery with these .dds things.

Oh, and he's obviously rigged and moved into a pose.

Anyway, so yeah, is that okay? If you think you can use that kind of thing, then let me know what to work on and I'll have a go. If not, let me know what to change and I'll try that too!

Neener that's just freaking awesome. You're invited to join the developement team and we are all more than happy to welcome you in. Read your pm!

 

[Talon500]

nevermind....

 

[neener]

Thanks for all the kind words!

That is frickin amazing! I can't wait to start bugging you with max questions now as well.

Feel free! I'm always happy to help any way I can.

Texporter is what I use and if you did that in a single unwrap you are my hero. That is killing me.

Just to clarify, I meant it was one graphic file, not one continuous Unwrap UVW modifier. I used something like 12 separate Unwraps, but pieced them together and texported them as one file. Just in case you thought I'd done the whole thing with just one modifier or something.

676 polys is perfect for that guy, it looks like it would be one of those weak but plentiful units. In general, the rule of thumb is that the smaller units, the ones that usually appear in groups of three (though in WH that might go up to 5 or even 10) should be around 1000 polys and the lower you can get w/o loosing quality the better. That's not a very hard rule though, because you can obviously go much higher if a unit is mounted on a horse for example (vanilla mounted units are around 2000 polys). Then the big units, the ones that usually appear single, they can go up to about 2000 polys.

Ah, ok. That's good then. I easily could have added more detail to the Skaven but to be honest I didn't think it would have added anything. It seemed silly to add detail for the sake of it. The only things I could think of would be extra objects like a banner on his back or something. [geek talk starts here, skip ahead if need be!] I mean, theoretically this guy is a Stormvermin, who are the elite troops of the Skaven and should be pretty tough. The totally expendable units for the Skaven would be Night Runners or Gutter Runners. So maybe I should add more detail to reflect their status. I'm not sure.

In general I'd say that 256x256 is ok for any unit but again, if it's a small unit then unless you zoom in you probably won't be able to tell the difference between 256 and 128 textures. For the skaven above, I gotta say the eyes look great but at the default zoom level in civ4, even at a semi-zoomed-in level you won't be able to see the detail.

Hehe, yeah, I know. I just liked painting them! To be honest the whole model was very quickly and roughly put together to show you guys. I'd spend more time on a real model and make it work with 128x128, I think.

 

[woodelf]

Just to clarify, I meant it was one graphic file, not one continuous Unwrap UVW modifier. I used something like 12 separate Unwraps, but pieced them together and texported them as one file. Just in case you thought I'd done the whole thing with just one modifier or something.

This I need help on!

 

[Rabbit, White]

To be honest the whole model was very quickly and roughly put together to show you guys. I'd spend more time on a real model and make it work with 128x128, I think.

You don't have to rub it in you know, I mean for some of us it's actually hard work to make something like that, and takes more than 5 minutes to whip it up.

Seriously, if this is what you can do by putting things roughly together in half an hour or so then I cannot wait to see what you'll do when you really get down to work. (I'm also insanely jealous but that's my problem )

 

[Ploeperpengel]

This thread is DEAD

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