[PREVIEWS] WIP Preview Thread

[lufc2806]

those comitatus look amazing

[juanplay]

Nice work, more filthy barbarians to kill for the glory of Rome.

[Ahiga]

Royal anstrutiones, and probably with different shields and cloaks these guys'll function as other top of the top West German footmen. Think I will remove the roman long skirt short sleeve scale and try and do a new set of it for them. Looks out of place, at least the bronze does.






Gotta fix those crotch crests, know what the issue is there.

[Ahiga]

Appreciate it. Ignore the crotch crests, I know how to fix it (need to remove old entries in the pack file) but I am waiting to do that in a lump sum.


"Royal Comitatus Footmen". Tenative plan is that they are available as regular units for West Germans, Bodyguard only for East Germans. Conversely "Royal Comitatus Horsemen" would be the reverse. Some folks breaking the exception (the Franks getting non bodyguard Royal Comitatus horse, for instance).


"Freemen Swordsmen". West German exclusive at the moment. East Germans still get swordsmen (at least Retainer and Comitatus grade, possibly others), just lack these low level and cheap warriors.




Initial draft of the East Germans, here being their levy of levy spearmen. Accounts speak to the Gothic dress being associated/stereotyped as sheepskin in contrast to the upstanding proper Roman 'toga'. To help distinguish with the West Germans the East Germans will have a lot more (or exclusive use of) furs, leathers and hide attire. They'll still have normal cloth given they had sheep to make wool (or clothing to plunder) but it also fits with the theme of a people on the move prevalent for most East Germans. Getting the proper feel to leather isn't easy - it shouldn't be too shiny and bright but it shouldn't be without any kind of 'glisten' necessarily. I tried to go with the kind of deerskin worn by native americans as a visual reference. Not literally since Native Americans =/= Goths, but it gives an idea how a people on the move might tan their leather

[char]

Great work mate

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

Many of these Goths especially 'nobles' were known to tie their hair up in a top knot, is that possible - the Suebian knot?

[char]

Many of these Goths especially 'nobles' were known to tie their hair up in a top knot, is that possible - the Suebian knot?

Should be !!

[Ahiga]

Many of these Goths especially 'nobles' were known to tie their hair up in a top knot, is that possible - the Suebian knot?

Originally I was going to keep the Suebian knot to the westerners, but if there's references to them doing topknots then I can make sure the Suebian hairstyle is available to the East Germans too.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

I will be back with some sources either historical or archaeological

PS I do not know if these terms are any use to you for nobles etc, they come from Ammianus account s of Alamanni, and would apply to majority of Germanic hierarchical structures. He describes Alamanni before battle of Strasbourg 357 and the feasting of Alamanni kings facing Julian by Hortarius.
Ammianus lists kings in a hierarchy (superior kings) Excelsiors ante alios reges, (kings) proximi reges, (princes) regales. Beneath these kings were the nobels optimates, then the warrior retinue armati

[Ahiga]

Thanks Gaius. I was leaning towards Armati in the past to describe the warrior-retainers mentioned earlier. As I understand in latin it means armed men?

And so I am not posting empty handed forgot to link the warrior-retainer (tier 2, so better than the freemen cavalry but not as good as comitatus horsemen) melee cavalry. These being the West German variant. East Germans', besides visually different, will have some sort of stat bonus to reflect the cavalry strength of Goths, Vandals and such and to offset the advantage West Germans have in infantry. Haven't figured out what stat bonus yet - it might be a mix of +20 more men per unit, higher charge rating, higher defense rating, higher attack, cheaper cost, ect.

[Hassassins]

Hello,

One question, how do you add animations in Assembly Kit? I was trying without success.

Thanks. Wonderful mod

[char]

Hello,

One question, how do you add animations in Assembly Kit? I was trying without success.

Thanks. Wonderful mod

You need to load a default CA uniform and then customise the equipment and clothing as desired. You can import your own meshes, textures and animations and utilize them as needed. Next make sure the skeleton cinematic box is ticked, choose your animation from the dropdown list, and lastly untick the skeleton cinematic box and the animation should play.
Hope this helps.

[shawn858]

Hello,

One question, how do you add animations in Assembly Kit? I was trying without success.

Thanks. Wonderful mod

please tell me you're working on an animation mod! We need ACTUAL spear-walls with spears out forward and not just held at a 45 degree angle. We need ACTUAL fulcums. We definately need better attacking/defending matched combat that doesn't involve elaborate and cheesy choreography

[Ahiga]

Have to applaud CA's tinting design. I hope it's a constant feature of future total wars as I like the capacity to edit it right in the VMD, not having to do so in another table. And it allows you to quickly do texture variations without having to do a brand new texture (and the small size increase of additional models). Besides using it for tunic color variations I've been able to jury-rig their leather lamellar to be tintable.



On the rightmost is my first metal lamellar attempt on this model. I'm not sure how satisfied I am with it - despite lamellar being very straightforward I've had trouble wrapping my head around it.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

Well I am impressed

[Ahiga]

Was waiting for the patch today since I'll have to add in the new gear and there may be new models better suited for textures, so as a break from working on the Germans I went ahead and did a proof of concept test for 'long skirt lamellar (or theoretically scale)'. The earliest presentation I know of for this type of armor is the 2nd-1st century BCE Kurgan-tepe artwork (The inspiration for EB's Saka Cataphracts with the high collar armor), but continued in use through to the 7th-8th century (Penjikent: http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads...28_f31_300.jpg) and beyond.

All I did here was a proof of concept test to make sure that there was no/limited clipping and everything looked right. It does for the most part, possibly I'll need to do some finaggling to get a different top tunic (to avoid the neck flesh being visible from the side - you can't see it here) and a different bottom skirt. In terms of who would use this type of armor it'll be primarily the Hunnic Nomads, the Sassanians, and probably a few of the top echelon Sarmatians.

[Maximus183]

It's looking good for sure, nicely done!

PS, how do you get them to assume the different postures in the variant editor? Never managed to figure it out myself.

Anyway, recently I've been squeezing in some modding where I can, so I decided to "go back to my roots" and work on the generals a bit. I'm starting off with the Romans to see if I can get something prettier in there. Here's a shot of one the new generals as faction leader of the WRE, aka the Emperor.

[Ahiga]

Looks good! You'll have plenty new assets to work with when Last Roman comes out today. As for poses, Char I believe told me how - load up a vanilla VMD (so like Att_ger_whatever), then uncheck cinematic skeleton or whatever it is called. Once you save the VMD (even if you save it as the vanilla name) and then try and reload it, it 'loses' the skellington rigging. So my recommendation is if you need to see how it looks in action, either equip them accordingly or before you load TWEAK throw your unit VMD (_fote_roman_cavalry_whatever) into the armor folder or whatnot, and delete everything in that vanilla VMD so that you can load the 'false armor' (That is actually fote_roman_cavalry_whatever) and it'll equip them with it.

[Brivime]

Was waiting for the patch today since I'll have to add in the new gear and there may be new models better suited for textures, so as a break from working on the Germans I went ahead and did a proof of concept test for 'long skirt lamellar (or theoretically scale)'. The earliest presentation I know of for this type of armor is the 2nd-1st century BCE Kurgan-tepe artwork (The inspiration for EB's Saka Cataphracts with the high collar armor), but continued in use through to the 7th-8th century (Penjikent: http://www.iranicaonline.org/uploads...28_f31_300.jpg) and beyond.

All I did here was a proof of concept test to make sure that there was no/limited clipping and everything looked right. It does for the most part, possibly I'll need to do some finaggling to get a different top tunic (to avoid the neck flesh being visible from the side - you can't see it here) and a different bottom skirt. In terms of who would use this type of armor it'll be primarily the Hunnic Nomads, the Sassanians, and probably a few of the top echelon Sarmatians.

Those look like they were posed in TWEAK am I correct?

How do you do that? I've been trying to figure it out for a long time. When I try that method you mentioned above it still loads in the crossed pose.

Amazing work you've done btw.

[Ahiga]

Thanks Brivime. Char told me how I think. You need to load a vanilla VMD - Att_rom_limitanei_borderguards or att_ger_germanic_nobles or anything like that. Officers and standard bearers may not work - they sometimes do, sometimes don't.

Once you do so you can pose them accordingly after you uncheck the cinematic skeleton box. But once you save that VMD and reload it you lose the TWEAK rigging.

So basically load up a vanilla VMD, delete everything necessary and then equip them as you want them to. If you want a shortcut, drop the VMD completed (let's say "brivime_arab_levy_spearmen") into any odd man-item folders like weapons, armor, skin, trousers, tunic, ect. Then reload Tweak so it shows up in the registry and load it as if it were an item.