Ne w Modder ....looking to see what is/isn't possible

[OldeDogge]

I have been doing a lot of reading in between my gallopping around Calradia removing hte heads of the naughty with a big axe, but now have the urge to do more than just play the game. To be truthful...I bought Fire and Sword and hated it...so have gone back to Warband

So I figured there was fun to be had with modding.

I am no rookie when it comes to game modding, modelling, texturing etc. so have been focusing my efforts on the pipeline for 3D import as well as the supporting text editing. The text ( well...Python really) side seems pretty well documented and laid out and all the tutoriala I have found and followed have worked well and done what htey should...always encouraging!

What I wanted to know was what can be done when it comes to the models....or more specifically....the skeleton/rigging side of things.

1) Can new skeletons/animations be put into the game? I can't figure out if the skeleton is actually stored as part of the model file, or if it's the other way round. If I move a pivot in the model, does the game recognise this, or just ignore it and carry on as it was. If so, I need to limit what I make to things I can fit around the stock skeleton. I know from modding TotalWar games how limiting that was until a way was found.

2) Can anything similar be done with mounts to make non horse mounts. Would like to have some other silly mounts in the mod to add interest, though I don't think it's possible to have more than one rider on a single mount.

3) Are there any other limitations I should know about on poly count etc. for an effective model? No point in making beautiful things if they drop the framerates to a crawl when they show up in a battle!

 

[Openshaw]

1) Can new skeletons/animations be put into the game? I can't figure out if the skeleton is actually stored as part of the model file, or if it's the other way round. If I move a pivot in the model, does the game recognise this, or just ignore it and carry on as it was. If so, I need to limit what I make to things I can fit around the stock skeleton. I know from modding TotalWar games how limiting that was until a way was found.

2) Can anything similar be done with mounts to make non horse mounts. Would like to have some other silly mounts in the mod to add interest, though I don't think it's possible to have more than one rider on a single mount.

3) Are there any other limitations I should know about on poly count etc. for an effective model? No point in making beautiful things if they drop the framerates to a crawl when they show up in a battle!

1) Yes they can. If you use OpenBRF open some BRFs that contain Skeletons, you can play the animations etc. Take a look here, it's a Tutorial on how to manage Animations.

2) Yes, afaik there is a Mod which uses other Meshes for Horses. Don't know about performance tough.

3) I've gone pretty high on some models (10-20k) and had no problems. I don't know what Warband uses for spatial indexing (Octrees ? Occlusion Culling ? Scene Graph?).

Anyways, i hope this response is helpful to you.

 

[cmpxchg8b]

3) Max 65535 vertices per mesh (D3DFMT_INDEX16 index buffer format).

 

[OldeDogge]

thanks guys ... looks like I will be able to mod the underlying skeleton to tweak things around. I really just want to tweak a few pivots locations so the models can take on the dimensions I want rather than being stuck to the stock human shape. Need to do some more reading and experimenting to pin down the way it all hangs together, but lots of what I have seen is fairly familiar in how it is done.

My first experiemnt will be to turn stock peasant grade troops into Franken-troops so I can check my methods without worrying about too much model work going to waste. If I am going to make a troll mesh I want to know it will work first...so I will turn a stock mesh into a troll shaped creature by moving the bones/verts around to get the proportions right. Once I know that works....then I can start on the meshes and textures I want
While I am asking...is it possible to add extra bones? Say to make a 4-armed creature? There is a nice dodge/workaround if it isn;t possible...but it's always nice to do it properly!

I will look for the mod using other meshes for mounts to see what sort of things they did.

Don;t think I will be going so far as hitting 65K verts on a model though That's quite a lot of polys to render! Plenty of scope to work within that limitation. I am used to having to design down to 1-2K polys for a higest detail lod, so this is luxury for me