[C4:AC][Art and Graphics Main]

[wgabrie]

Now is as good a time as any to prepare for the upcoming graphics work on the Civ 4 mod. A good place to start is what programs we have access to and what we can do with them.

To speed up the process maybe we can give most of the in depth jobs like 3D modeling, texturing, ect. to those who can handle them and give the easier but more numorous jobs to others, with everyone picking up the slack where it happens.

I think we've got 4 grapics people, so far:
Girlfight Club
wgabrie
Platypus Rex
Lord Nword

[wgabrie]

I'll go first. In the 3d department I have:
Bryce5: 3D landscape and rendering.
Poser5: 3D Figure Creation. Bug: Dynamic hair doesn't export so hair will need to be created seperatly.
3D Canvas: 3D Object Creation. I can Import/Export between these 3D programs.

I also have Photoshop Elements For 2D editing. I have some big programs but don't let that intimidate you into leaving all the jobs to me. I am not going to put out commercial quality prints. I'm just hobbling through going with what works, just like most of you.

[Lord Nword]

I don't have any 3D programs or skills and I'm not too interested in learning at the moment.

For 2d stuff I use three programs
GIMP
Paint Shop Pro 3 (Old trial version that I've used for 900+ days out of 30 day trial )
Icon Edit Pro (icons only)

I'm really not so amazing with graphical skills (never taken a real art class, among other things) but I've been doing pixel work and animated .gifs and copy/pasting forever

[binTravkin]

Wgabrie!
You just started the Group Initiative as I described before!

Very good!

And let this be a place to discuss things for arts people and others please don't mess in here if you are not sure what things are about!

[wgabrie]

Ok, I have the game and am doing an investigation of the graphics. Which are stored in the Assets folder compressed in the file "Art0.FPK." I'm attaching Firaxis' unpack tool because I forgot where it came from.

Once unpacked the graphics files use two formats Images=(*.dds) and 3D files=(*.nif). I have been looking at the DDS files with DXTBmp a program recomended in the Paint Shop Pro and dds files thread. I can't figure out how to open the NIF files yet.

Now, the image files are divided into logical subdirectories once unpacked. It seems there are multiple files used for each graphic. There's a texture map file and a shade mask file at the least with things like water having multiple shade masks and textures. And peaks and shore have shaded masks for height and shape purposes. Also these files are large why the span of the textures are mostly between 128 pixels and 1024 pixels across and down. We are talking real-world realistic textures here. Wow! Maybe I'll post a picture.

Also the buildings and units have texture files too. The detales are painted across the file with no apparent gap in between differant sections. It's really neat but I can't really open the NIFs to see how it's mapped out.

[wgabrie]

Lets see if this works. This should be a texture of the plains. What you don't see is the alpha mask this file also contains. There is also a version with the grid drawn on, apparently the map grid in Civ4 is drawn with a second texture file so it takes a minute in the game to reload all the map textures. To top it all off there is a third file which I guess is a bump(height) map.

[PJayTycy]

If you send me a few NIF files, I could maybe find out the format. I've done this for Railroad Tycoon 3 files 3D files and programmed my own 3D viewer / modifier for those.

[wgabrie]

Ok, I'll send you a set of NIF files later tonight when I get access to my PC. I think they store 3D data so I'll also sent its DDS texture file as well.

[Mellian]

I could do the basic starting stuff of using the leader and flag pics from SMAC/X and transfer them into Civ4, while creating the civilizations in the XML files and adding the appropriate faction colors, with the barbs/animals to red for now.

How is that for a start?


Now I just need a working program that allows me to convert jpg/bmp to .dds as the dds converter keeps crashing on me.

-mellian

[Raion]

Thread about *.nif files. I do not know yet what it contains or if anything, but it seems they are Net Immerse Files, used by the Net Immerse whatever, and Gamebyro engine, perhaps.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=354313

Have not looked at the other links yet!
Does mention Civ IV, so I do not know if it is anyone here either or not!

New Link after following a another link:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/

Blender program:

http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html

Stable release 2.37a Blender program:

http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender_2_37a.496.0.html

Don't know what it all means yet, as of now!

One more link to the forum there discussing things:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=85

So briefly, one can unpack the *.nif files in Civ IV, see what or how it is written, maybe use the tool at Soureforge.net to plugin to the Blender program, and use the unpack.zip file mentioned in the forum thread to read the Civ IV files and whatever.

Have no experience with any of it so I am just looking and learning!

[PJayTycy]

niftools.sourceforge.net is a plugin for blender to load/save .nif files. It is mainly made for an other game, that uses a different version number of the .nif's

blender is the most popular opensource (so, free) 3D modelling and texturing program.


Some devellopers from niftools have civ4 too and are working on comparing the different versions of the .nif files to see if the plugin needs changing to be compatible with civ4.

Alas, not every functionallity of the .nif files has been covered yet. Especially animations are currently a problem.

[Raion]

If it is not handled in the SDK coming out for Civ IV soon though, they may be on to something that may not take all that long to add.

Yes, it would be all free -- and free means it may even work -- in the future for the game of Civ IV.

It won't be the best program, but then....................

I could not afford anything else, and probably a lot of other people also.

But doing any of that is still an ambitious project to say the least and only a few people will probably even attempt any such thing.

For any mod of Civ IV that is!
If I knew anymore about Python or xml programming, I suppose there are even people out there that might be able to call a C++ *.dll program to throw in the mod also. All of that may be possible but then right now I may be also dreaming at just the possibilities all of that would present to --- modding Civ IV!

The SDK may come out quicker, and perhaps include some of that -- anyway -- for modding!

Page 174 of the Civ IV manual!

[gkclarkson]

Hey, Greg here, I hope to lend a hand on the 3d art side of things.

I have a good amount of experience in computer modeling and have done both high and low poly work, using either 3dsmax or Maya, whichever is more convienent for me at the time, sometimes even converting between the two

Here's something I did this morning, took about 20 minutes.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/gkclarkson/monolithuntextured.jpg

See, it's a very low poly, untextured render of a monolith.

or the textured version.. very ugly and quick

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/gkclarkson/monolithcraptexture.jpg

I do much better when i have a little time to work

See: A P-51 Mustang, Done in Max

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/gkclarkson/mustangcomplete.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/gkclarkson/mustangcomplete2.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/gkclarkson/mustangunderside.jpg

Yeah

[Senethro]

Wow Greg, thats some great stuff! Welcome to the project.

[gkclarkson]

There everybody. A Unity Foil

Now you too can cruise the high mindworm infested seas of Alpha Centauri in your very own speedboat

You know you wanted an alien artifact to pop instead

I spent, like, twice as much time and poly's as I should have on this sucker