[GRAPHICS] What If Unit Thread: Matsuda123, Kine100, and Mattem's Latest Additions

[Matsuda123]

I'm glad to hear you like it too. I think it'll be a good unit for Japan. Maybe a bombard unique unit.

Yeah I do have ideas for making cultural versions of unique units too, at least some of them. I want to make an Egyptian/Middle Eastern Samurai, or an Aztec/Meso Samurai. Might do something with Hwachas too.

 

[MightyToad]

I think you all will be pleased with the Fire Cannon so far. I gave it a lot more TLC than the others. The wheels were a real PITA. I decided to just trash them and replaced them with the wheels from the vanilla cannon. One benefit of them is you can easily paste any wheel you like over the one in the texture file. You could use pimpin spinners if that's your thing.

I swapped the cannonier out with the samurai since wikipedia says the samurai are the ones that used the fire cannon. Theoretically, you could just use any unit with the standard BIP skeleton. Most of the melee units do, as far as I know. One problem is it holds the cannonier tool slightly off because the samurai mesh has longer arms.
I also experimented with using the samurais melee attack, but it looked stupid with them whacking at the enemy with their giant Q-tips.
I tried a ton of combinations with the attack animations. I tried using only vanilla animations. A combination for the galley fire arrows and hwacha rockets looked the most convincing. But not good enough.
I made a custom animation based on the hwacha rockets using the cannons fire arrow dart thing. And added the galley fire arrow flames with artillery explosions.
You will have to add the effect into the effects XML. I've included what you need in the text file.

 

[Matsuda123]

I am very pleased with the results so far. This looks like it'll be a great unit when it's all done. I'll texture it this weekend and then we will be able to release it, as well as finish up stuff on the Yamato Spearman. Very exciting. I love the flaming bolts.

 

[Matsuda123]

Here is the Japanese Spearman. All the textures are complete except for the Hands, which I honestly didn't know how to do. :/ I am also including a new Walls set for the Sino culture group. I created it by piecing together the walls from EU4 I think, and an old Asian Tower model I found in the Civfanatics database. Let it be known that I did not model either, I just combined them and altered the textures. Hopefully these work for you all. Please test and see if you want, and if they don't work, I'll try to find a way to fix it. I'll likely do the same for a set of proper Japanese walls too soon~

I think I may make a Japanese Siege Crossbow unit soon, basically an O-Yumi.

 

[MightyToad]

Here is the Japanese Spearman.

I pasted the hands from the vanilla spearman in and re-UV'ed the hands. Looks good enough to me. I also made a half assed gloss texture to make his armor shiny like lacquered samurai armor.
I've been trying to figure out the gloss textures for a while now. Only just now found a post by Sabolieh from 3 months ago explaining you have to make a skin partition for it to work. Soon I will learn all of saboliehs powers and I will overthrow the Jedi.

One thing I should mention is the vanilla spearman "strikeB" animation has an over head attack. The problem is he spins the spear around and switches to a hidden one that appears for that attack. This unit doesn't have that. The spear isn't a separate mesh, and is part of his hand.

The solution is to just use a different KFM. The maya holkan has all underhand spear thrust attacks. So, doesn't have this problem. I think it looks better anyway.

Here are some screenshots of the vertices that were rigged wrong. These are the ones that were rigged to the head bone:

You can see parts of the helmet aren't rigged to it like I said before. Also, some parts of the chest are rigged to it as well.

This is after I cleaned it up. Also, some parts of the shoulder, chest, and arms were off, but the script didn't do a terrible job really.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Why not just separate the spear from the mesh? Should be trivial to do. And you'll want to do that anyway for easier editing later if you want to add different spear designs or something.

EDIT: Here you go. Not tested it but it should work.

 

[MightyToad]

Why not just separate the spear from the mesh? Should be trivial to do. And you'll want to do that anyway for easier editing later if you want to add different spear designs or something.

EDIT: Here you go. Not tested it but it should work.

Yup, that works. Although, you forgot to set the shader to TCiv4SkinningGloss, and the skin partition. More of a bonus than a requirement.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I did forget the shaders, but as for the skin partitions I got rid of those on purpose when exporting because in my experience the skin partition modifier can cause serious graphic glitches like parts being invisible for no discernible reason.

 

[MightyToad]

I've only been doing this for a month, and only just learned about skin partitions yesterday. I'm not really comfortable with it. So, could be unforseen problems. But the gloss shader won't work without it.

I'll leave it to matsuda123.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

What does the gloss shader do anyway? CIV4 models don't tend to have as many subcomponents as your unit does. And frankly I have no idea what most of them do.

 

[MightyToad]

What does the gloss shader do anyway? CIV4 models don't tend to have as many subcomponents as your unit does. And frankly I have no idea what most of them do.

I won't pretend to understand half of what it does. I swapped into the vanilla spearman which has gloss for the bronze armor. I switched the bronze glow texture to the grey metal used by the knight. The lights came with the nif. Although, i may have had to link them manually to the texture controller. I don't remember now.

As for what it does? Makes it shiny.
I don't know, but it looks like it overlays over the base texture sort of like team color is overlayed by the texture on most units. Or, like how the damage texture overlays on mech units.
Just a guess, but apparently it makes black alpha or something. Because otherwise the rest of the unit would be black.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

That it does apparently. I even used it in some of my old models but forgot about it since it was like 2 years ago. Sadly my notes from the time tell me about as much as you did. I was... shall we say less scientific about my work back than.
Either way I have to say that I am immensely happy to see the CIV4 modding scene being alive and strong. There was a point where I was beginning to question if I was the only one doing units and that made me almost lose heart.

 

[MightyToad]

Here is the post about making a skin partition by sabotlieh:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...on-shadered-leaderheads.653417/#post-15639905

He seems preoccupied with LHs rather than units.
I wouldn't say the modding scene is strong. At least as far as new units is concerned. Which is why I dived into it in the first place. I was frustrated with the lack of new units.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I wouldn't say the modding scene is strong. At least as far as new units is concerned. Which is why I dived into it in the first place. I was frustrated with the lack of new units.

It's stronger than it was this time last year. And it's dam strong for a game this old. Thanks to you guys and I guess my self.

 

[Spillsandstains]

I’m sure I’m not the only one who appreciates your efforts and follows this thread with interest, keep safe bunnies x

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I really do appreciate the work everyone is putting into the creation of new units!

 

[Matsuda123]

MightyToad, do you think it would be possible to compile all that you have learned and put it into video format? Or perhaps a PDF of sorts? I've tried reading Sabotlieh's guides a great many times, but unfortunately I have failed to grasp them. I think if we compile all out knowledge and thoroughly explain it somewhere, Civ IV's modding can surely grow. But that's if you have time / want to, and if not that is ok too.

Alright, here is the Fire Cannon, all prettied up. It was already a pretty good texture. I just added some grit and lighting stuff, as well as making the Fire Arrow look like a true exploding bolt. I have also included another Samurai model in there for variety, but didn't rig it as I am very dumb and do not know how unfortunately.

I also discovered another unit I forgot I modeled. Here is a Japanese Transport replacement unit. Hopefully it is cool enough...

I think I will surely model more Japanese stuff later. But for now, I think I'll add to Europe. The Pot de Fer, in keeping with siege units, is the first cannon in Europe. It's basically an Iron Vase that shoots slightly larger, non fiery arrows. Then, I wanna do something for Africa. Similar to Asian units, not much gets made for it, especially in the way of "What if" stuff. I'd like to hear suggestions on ideas for a possible bombard replacement. What might it look like? Zulu aesthetics could be pretty cool for that...

Is the Yamato Spearman ready to release?

 

[Matsuda123]

By the way, I'm glad to be working with you all too. We may not be many, but that doesn't matter. We can really get a lot of cool stuff done together. Civ IV is definitely worth learning modding skills for. It just gets cooler all the time.

 

[MightyToad]

MightyToad, do you think it would be possible to compile all that you have learned and put it into video format?
Is the Yamato Spearman ready to release?

I've thought of making a walkthrough with screenshots of doing one of these units. I agree the Coyote's tutorials are a bit hard to read. English isn't his first language. Also, most of the tuorials are written by people that have been doing this for years, and have forgotten the little things people don't get in the beginning. That said. I doubt I could do any better honestly.

Is a unit ever really done? I think you get to the good enough zone. Release and move on. So, you should release em if you want, man. Thats up to you. I would definitely include the text about what KFM to use, and what to put in the effects info XML.
I forgot I left the melee attack KFM in the folder. That won't do anything without the samurai strike KF. I would just remove it to avoid confusing people.

The transport looks like a piece of cake. The fire pot sound promising.

 

[MightyToad]

That reminds me. Matsuda123, you forgot to include the trireme damage texture with the haida galley. So, in game it will appear pink because of missing textures. You also don't mention what KFM to use.

Someone that doesn't know to open the nif and see what textures it uses won't know what to do, or what KFM to use. Assuming they already had the trireme unpacked from the FPK in the first place.

So, something to keep in mind.