Google’s answer to 3D modelling, Sketchup is a program used recreationally by amateurs or professionally by architects. Though having been handed over to Trimble Navigation, one of the key advantages of Sketchup remains: almost all that you need is utterly free.
With this in mind, I believe Sketchup’s principal audience is those who are not experienced with modelling, rather than veterans of far more elaborate software. Sketchup’s tools generally work as one would expect and Sketchup attracts users who otherwise would be clueless when it comes to modelling by presenting the user with a clean Interface which is not overly crowded with buttons. Its intuitive tools work as one would expect and are clearly explained through both Sketchup and the program’s tutorials.
Yet how does a program, designed with architecture in mind, come to be of use for modding Total War Games?
Sketchup’s primary strength being the modelling of buildings, such as those seen in Google Earth or when your local supermarket presents an image of how its new store will appear; therefore it is natural that it be used for modelling similarly in Total War games. Currently, I have been using the tool for modelling Campaign Map Custom Settlements such as the ones seen below, using the accompanying tutorial to implement them into the game.
Simply by browsing the 3d Warehouse - Sketchup’s online collection of user-made models and resources - one can see the capabilities of the program, extending beyond buildings to vehicles (custom boats surely?) and people. Though I am uncertain of how a unit would export, Sketchup could be used for modelling units.
Not only can Sketchup model but also texture (and in doing so, UV Map). The tool not only allows you to apply a material to a face, but also manipulate the material’s size, orientation, position and more, making it possible to map a many sided model with only a single texture made up of differing surfaces - much like a vanilla M2TW’s building texture (an example of one below-right).
However I must note the issues with the “Free” version of Sketchup. I’ve been using a professional version for some time now and to be honest, I haven’t used any of its additional tools yet. The most notable advantage though of forking out an extortionate sum of money (£334 or $495 although a massive student discount is available if you are eligible) is that it allows you to export models to various formats - a feature excluded from the free version. However, having personally encountered issues exporting directly from Sketchup to Milkshape (the model tends to be upscaled without reason), I prefer and recommend using 3ds Max to import Sketchup models and then export them to Milkshape as .obj.
To wrap up, Sketchup is easy to learn and simple and enjoyable to use. It isn’t demanding on ones computer, it exports - as far as I can see - without issue to 3ds Max using either the Pro exporter or Max’s importer, though one of those will set you back money-wise. Overall I think the program offers a lot of potential to modders.
Programs such as Autodesk 3ds Max or Maya can be used for modelling, as well as Sketchup. For texturing, I would recommend either GIMP or Photoshop.
When you are just starting to model for the strategy map, I recommend working on an existing model to give you an idea of the dimensions you need to keep to.
Firstly, you will need to ensure that you have extracted the models_strat folder in order to find a suitable template model.
The vanilla models are located in ...\Medieval II Total War\data\models_strat\residences as can be seen below. Here you can chose the sort of model you need, but for the largest, I’d recommend choosing a huge_city model.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Now that you know the model’s location, open IWTE and navigate to the “Specials” tab where you can find the buttons needed to convert the model to a workable format
The IWTE Interface - The Specials Tab
Select Read Strat Cas, navigate to your chosen model and open it. A new window will appear allowing you to view the model you have selected. If you are satisfied, select Write Strat Cas to MS3d and your model will be converted. In the above Windows Explorer image you can see that two converted models were saved to that location.
If you chose to use a template, it will be saved in Milkshape’s MS3d format which you may not consider to be the best format for modelling. I recommend exporting it as .obj to get it into 3DS Max (talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire).
Left: A personal test of how an immense city could work as not one, but two settlements.
Here the settlement is considerably larger and units are able to walk freely inside the model - yet the impassable walls have been simulated by the use of impassable terrain. In your chosen modelling program, the template model will give you an approximate wall height, tile size, tower height and so on and though all these can of course be exceeded, bare in mind that the model has no effect upon where units can walk - if it takes up more tiles than it should, Units will walk through the model regardless to get to the Settlement Tile in the centre.
A note regarding the cuboid atop the model: this is the “Symbol” which appears in-game , not as a box, but as the flag bearing the faction symbol. More about that in the next stage.
Once you have created a model, it needs texturing. Textures will be later assigned in Milkshape, yet the model must be UV Mapped for it to apply properly to each surface. If you are using 3DS Max, there is a UV Mapping feature in-built, but alternate software, LithUnwrap for example, can also be used. Once this is all done, export to Milkshape for the finishing touches.
The final stage is to apply the texture, so with your model open in Milkshape, navigate to the “Materials” tab. If you applied any textures to the model elsewhere, they will be listed, if not you will need to create a new material and assign it a texture. Make sure these are in .tga format. If the texture colour seems incorrectly displayed, try modifying the colour in the Ambient, Diffuse, Specular and Emissive buttons. To assign the texture, the best means is to ensure the model has been grouped. To do so, select all the faces using a single material, select Regroup in the “Groups” tab and then in the “Materials” tab, select your chosen texture and click Assign.
Next, go to File > Merge and select the template model you imported earlier. It is best to do this to ensure the model is orientated correctly (not all of you will necessarily have this issue), as importing into Milkshape seems to rotate the model by 180 degrees - to fix this, select Rotate in the “Model” tab, tick Origin under “Rotate Options” and set Y to 180 before clicking Rotate.
The template also supplies you with a “Symbol”, a plain box with a Material assigned to it called “nomaterial”. This group can be freely moved about your model to where you want the banner to stand using the Move button in the “Model” tab.
Finally, save your model as .MS3d.
Now that your model is ready, open IWTE and navigate to the Specials tab. There you can find all the buttons needed to convert the model to use ingame.
First select Read MS3d Strat Cas and open your model. Unlike when you are reading a .cas file, no preview window will be shown.
Secondly, ensure your texture is assigned correctly by selecting Chg Strat Cas Textures. In the box which appears (right) the Meshes which make up your model are listed along with their respective texture. In the example image, the mesh titled “Storms End” has the texture “storms_end.tga”. From where the strat model is located, the .tga files are typically kept in the “textures” subfolder. Thus, in order to correctly assign the texture, you need to change the path to: “textures\storms_end.tga” and ensure your .tga file is in the Textures folder.
The “Symbol” mesh is the aforementioned settlement banner which is not assigned a texture manually and is therefore greyed out.
When this is done, click OK to apply your changes.
Finally, click Write Strat Cas to save the texture changes and convert the model to one which is compatible with the game engine.
Here you are faced with a choice - is this model for generic settlements of a particular size - e.g. is this for all northern european huge cities? - or is this model unique to one particular settlement?
Making it a Generic Settlement
Simply browse to [Medieval 2 Directory OR Desired Mod Folder]\data\models_strat\residences. Copy your model into this folder and your texture files(s) into the ...\\residences\textures folder (presuming that is where you directed the game to look for them in Stage 4). Finally rename the model according to which settlement type/level you desire to replace, appropriate levels include:
The Culture must precede these to create a name such as northern_european_huge_city.cas. Check the Vanilla residences folder for a full list, including port and fort names.
With your model renamed appropriately, launch the game and hope it works.
Making it a Unique Model
This works by assigning the settlement a “faction_creator”, different to the owner of the settlement. If, for example, I choose England as the settlement’s “creator”, then all English settlements of the same size will use this unique model. Therefore the “creator” ought to be an unused faction such as the Normans or Saxons are in vanilla Medieval II.
If, therefore, I chose to use the Normans, I must name the settlement according to it’s creator’s culture, not according to it’s owner’s culture - therefore an arabic city, created by the Normans, will be called, northern_european_city.cas.
First, create the following directory: ...\data\models_strat\residences\faction_variants.
In here, make a folder named after your chosen faction “creator”. In this you place your model, named after it’s creator’s culture and the settlement size, appropriate levels include:
Within this new folder, make another called ...\textures (presuming that is where you directed the game to look for them in Stage 4).
Now, you need to inform the game of the unique settlement’s existence. In …\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, open descr_strat.txt and browse to the settlement you wish to assign the unique model to.
Code:
faction spain, balanced smith
ai_label catholic_faction
denari 6000
denari_kings_purse 600
settlement castle
{
level large_city
region Storms_End_Province
year_founded 0
population 9300
plan_set default_set
faction_creator normans
buildings
The blue shows you the faction’s name and how it differs from the settlement’s “Creator” in green. In your descr_strat.txt, simply enter the name of your chosen “faction_creator” like above and save the file.
Launch the game and fingers crossed.
CTD whilst loading a Campaign.
A common cause of a CTD during the loading of a Campaign tends to be that a texture has been applied incorrectly. Open your .cas in IWTE and check the texture is correct by clicking the Chg Strat Cas Textures.
Ensure that there are no spelling errors and that the “ \ ” is correct. Ensure that it also directs to a .tga file.
This tutorial was sent to me by Louis Lux via a private message and I decided to add this as an article for the 6th Illustrator to honor him for his great contributions to this site as well as showing the reader some great techniques.
Radboud
Illustrator Director
I'm going to show you two methods to enhance your image, they can work separately or together it's really up to you.
Open the file with your rendered unit in it, in my example it's an Isenmach Axemen in a pose taken from the fatality animation with a file size of 640x480 and a transparent background, for me it's better to work with a bigger image and then resize to fit the unit card.
Filter Method
1 - Left click the layer and click in Duplicate Layer, I find that it's best to apply the filters to a copied layer and give it a transparency option.
"The first image is no longer available"
2 - Normally I use the Soft Light option with Opacity and Fill set at 60%, this gives a certain glossiness to the image and increases contrast if you want it to be lighter you can set the layer to Lighten or Lighter Color.
3 - Go to your filter gallery and choose the Diffuse Glow option under Distort, make sure the background color is white or a light color. Set Graininess to 0, Glow Amount is the intensity of the Glow and Clear Amount is the size of the Glow, you can use the same settings I did 6 and 12.
4 - Now go to Render/Lighting Effects
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
5 - In the Lighting Effects Window you can set the Style to Crossing Down, if you want the light to be stronger increase the Intensity and Ambience options.
6 - Although not really necessary you can apply a Gaussian Blur to the layer at 3%.
7 - You can now save the file in .psd if you don't want to loose your layers. You can now merge the layers (ctrl+E) and apply one of two filters of the Filter Gallery depending on the effect you want. If you want the image to be lighter go to Artistc/Film Grain and use the settings Grain 0, Highlight Area 1 and Intensity 1. If you want the shadows to be darker go to Texture/Grain set the intensity to 0 and the contrast to 55.
Levels Adjustment Method
8 - Open the file then go to Adjustments/Levels
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
9 - In the Levels Window click in options, here you have three options, the first one will preserve the color of your image and the other ones will modify the color mainly reducing warmer colors, in this case you want to preserve the color so click in Enhance Monochromatic Contrast and then OK.
10 - In the Levels window you have some preset that you might want to try it out like Lighter. You can also move the handles yourself to see what you looks best.
11 - You can also edit the amount of shadows, midtones and highlights according to the color channel. This is not very helpful in this case but very handy when it comes to portraits. To use this it's best to have a good notion of color theory and it takes a lot of experimenting to get comfortable with it.
12 - In the Blue channel you can move the shadows handle to a value of 10 this will decrease the amount of blue in the darker parts of the image which will make them more yellowish that will result in a image with a orange/brown hue.
13 - In the case that you want to have some freedom to experiment with this or if you have several unit cards in a single file I suggest to do the following. Press Alt and left click the half white half black circle and hold it clicked, now slide the mouse to the levels option and release.
14 - You will be prompted with this window, check the box saying Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask and click in OK.
15 - Now you'll be able to edit a Levels Layer located in the Adjustments tab anytime you want that will be applied only to the layer below it.
The freebie for this edition is provided by Emperor of Hell and contains 4 high resolution (1024x1024 pixels) textures for texturing models or to be used on background images.
Please give the creator of these textures, Emperor of Hell, credit when you use these textures in your artwork and release it.
That is all for the 6th edition of the Illustrator Art Publication! We sincerely hope that you enjoyed the read and that you will be here next time for the December Edition ~The Illustrator Team
Last edited by Omnipotent-Q; October 08, 2012 at 05:25 PM.
I would like to add that when you use the freebie of the month for your artwork, it would be nice to give credit to the original creator Emperor of Hell.
"See that they are well supplied with beverages, with their drink avidity satisfied by giving them as much beverages they want. Then they will easily get defeated by their lust of yeast as by roman arms" Tacitus, Germania 23