civ4 modding 3dmax @ maya

[bt_oz]

Greetings all, I'm just wondering whether anyone has heard if you can use 3dmax or maya to create new units or buildings using these 3dprograms.

cheers
bt_oz

[Nikolai]

I haven't seen anything on this, but as almost everything can be changed easily now and Firaxis uses 3D graphics now, I'd be surprised if you couldn't do it with such popular programs.

[sabrewolf]

if you can convince the guy of milkshape 3D (i actually met him once in person... he went to the same university as i did a few years ahead of me) to create an importer/exporter for whatever format civ4 is using, you could even create doom3 unit

[bt_oz]

sabrrewolf, i had a look at milkshape3d and i couldn't load in anything remotely from my maya files.

I'm hoping civ4 might have a free plug in for maya or 3dmax.

cheers
bt_oz

btw, i remember playing sabrewolf on my zxspectrum back in 1982 along with so many lovely 48k games, ahhh nostaligia games bring back memories, glad commore64 was born, heaps better gameing.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by bt_oz
sabrrewolf, i had a look at milkshape3d and i couldn't load in anything remotely from my maya files.

i didn't look at it for a long time. but about 3 years ago it had importers and exporters for all FPS games and even some RPG. i can imagine that maya/3dstudio converters would cost and that it could not be acceptable for a shareware program

btw, i remember playing sabrewolf on my zxspectrum back in 1982 along with so many lovely 48k games, ahhh nostaligia games bring back memories, glad commore64 was born, heaps better gameing.

1982 it was still 16k RAM

but yes, i was really jealous about some of my friends who had C64s. i was stuck with the sinclair spectrum series (ZX80, 81, 32k, 64k, 128k (the latter with disk drive!!!)) until i finally bought a 80286 AT in 1988

[sabrewolf]

btw, in MarkG's review, he mentions that the graphics use TGA (targa) and DDS (probably some 3d animation thingy). is any of that useful in maya?

[MarkG]

for dds see this

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

[sabrewolf]

ah cool!

mark, when you write DirectX 9-compatible graphic cards. do you mean those who have support INTEGRATED? i'm not sure about mine, but it has been around longer than DX9...

[sabrewolf]

and if the meshes are saved as DDS. how are the various actions such as "die", "run", "fight", etc saved? are they purely real-time 3D with "instructions" for each limb or is it rendered into something like FLC in civ3? is that what targa TGA is here for?

[MarkG]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
mark, when you write DirectX 9-compatible graphic cards. do you mean those who have support INTEGRATED? i'm not sure about mine, but it has been around longer than DX9...

if you can run dx9 on our pc you should be fine. although you should wait for the official requirements to be 100% certain

[PhillipAWyllie]

I was thinking this for CTP1&2. You could model the unit in 3dsmax/Maya, then animate, then render to a sequence of files appropriate to the sprite making tool.
But I suppose you're thinking about exporting to video games(the 3dsmax manual/tutorials covers this briefly).

[bt_oz]

Oh well , i will just keep the new units and buildings i'v already done a couple in maya for civ4 in its own little folder just waiting to see how to to import into civ4,
But i'm sure they maynot be using maya plug ins alias is fussy about 3rdparty plugins. But i hope firaxis did some thing good

cheers
bt_oz

sabrewulf, i did have the zx81, zxspectrum 48/128k(built in tape drive) but the speccy with the diskdrive built in used non standard 3" discs not 3.5" at the time, i love my C64 with 5.2 inch disc drive, ooooooo coding on that fun, showing my age here heheheheheee
damm aging hippie i am. being programing since 1982 and loving it!

[NeOmega]

and if the meshes are saved as DDS. how are the various actions such as "die", "run", "fight", etc saved? are they purely real-time 3D with "instructions" for each limb or is it rendered into something like FLC in civ3? is that what targa TGA is here for?

The meshes are not saved as .dds. .dds is a directX specific texture format, that reduces the amount of memory textures used compared to .tga files.

Actions more than likely are stored based upon "skeleton" or "armatures" to which vertices, or the "skin" of the meshes are parented to. I am sure it is not rendered like a flc... in the 3d world, very little can be pre-rendered, except "billboard" effects.... essentially 2-d planes, with animations on them.

This has been considered as a possibility to add Civ III units to Civ IV, but I doubt they will be very popular, much like the static civ 2 to civ 3 units were not used or loved much.