[RESTORED] Adding MARKA Horses in your mod or create new versions of them. Knight Order MARKA horse added as free sourse.

[AnthoniusII]

How you can add or modify Marka Horses in your mod.

First of all I would like to thank the Rusichi/Marka TW team for its huge contribution to the moding community. They offered to all of us an ocean of resources that help us to create our mods every day. Personally I find the creation of their famous horses the team’s greatest contribution.
Now many of us want to add those magnificent horses in our mods.
In order to make this happen we need the following materials.
1. The Rusichi TW animation pack plus their descr_skeleton text. Or the mod that we wish to add those horses must already have these animations and descr_skeleton entries added in its own ones.
2. The Marka horses mount meshes plus their textures. Caution: These horses use different size textures.
3. GOAT 1.1
4. Photoshop or GIMP
Actually there is no need to add the Marka horses descr_mount entries unless you want them as they are.
This mini tutorial will show few basic steps that will allow you to replace the “vanilla” horse models without change neither the bmdb nor the descr_mount texts.
Step one:
We download Rusichi TW mod.
In there we find the primary resources for our work. There are two different horse models, both with the definition term “Marka”. Example: mount_medium_horse_Marka_lod0.
Let’s suppose that we want to change the “mount_pony” that exists in almost all mods and in the original game.
We simply rename the “mount_medium_horse_Marka_lod0” to “mount_pony_lod0”.
We replace the original mesh in our data/unit models/mounts and delete the other 3 meshes with the extensions lod1, lod2 etc.
In bmdb the mount pony had these entries:

10 mount_pony 
  1 3 
  52 unit_models/Mounts/Medium_Horse/mount_pony_lod0.mesh 121 
  52 unit_models/Mounts/Medium_Horse/mount_pony_lod1.mesh 1225 
  52 unit_models/Mounts/Medium_Horse/mount_pony_lod2.mesh 10000

Now you must change it to:

    10 mount_pony 
  1  1
  52 unit_models/Mounts/Medium_Horse/mount_pony_lod0.mesh  10000

Marka horses use slightly different animations than the “vanilla” horses so in the end you need to change to animation entry of the “mount pony “too. The mount pony has this animation entry:

0 
  1 
  5 Horse 
  8 fs_horse 0 
  0 
  0 
  -1 0 0 0 0 0 0

You have to change it to this:

0 
  1 
  5 Horse 
  14 fs_horse_marka 0 
  0 
  0 
  -1 0 0 0 0 0 0

Otherwise the horses will look strange with broken legs.
Remember:

1. You must either rename the Rusichi textures (both texture and normal. texture) with the texture entries that already exist.
2. Or you use Photoshop or GIMP to create new textures based on the Rusichi ones or entirely new ones made by you using the names of the textures that already exist in bmdb.

With the armored Marka horse model we can create and replace all “vanilla” horses.
But in the case of horses that use clothing or armors some modifications must be made.
Also you will have to modify the textures or create new ones in order to have proper look of these new horses and avoid all of them to look the same.
You can find many good skinning tutorials in the TWC. Skinning horse armors is not different than skinning warriors’ models.
Now…if we want to modify the armored horse model and create a new one
We open GOAT 1.1

• We press the button “Mesh to ms3d converter”.
• We select the horse’s mesh we want to modify.

GOAT creates a “mount” ms3d file with the same name with the mesh. Careful NEVER change or delete the word “mount”. It helps GOAT to recreate the proper skeleton. If you delete the word “mount” GOAT engine will create a standard human skeleton instead of a horse one.
We hide the groups one by one and unhide them until the moment that we will find the one that fits to our concept. Then we delete everything that does not fit. The next step is to select that group (armor or other group) and duplicate it as many times we need always changing the “new” groups names and comments just like we do in every model we make.
That technique allows you to avoid extreme changes on the model and all you need is to use the armor’s –that you kept-existing skin as basis to reproduce the new skins for that armor that fit to your concept. Then go to the original Marka horse texture and erase all the armors that do not fit to the armor you kept. Then duplicate the armor 2-4 times on the texture’s empty space and make your own skins on them. The final number of armor skins depends on the size of the armor we have chosen. Then when you have done save the final texture with a name that already exists in bmdb.
When you thing that you have finished everything on the model then save it with the vanilla name of the horse you want to replace (ex: mount_barded_horse.lod0). Then follow again the example with the minor changes in the bmdb like the ones with the mount pony example above.
BEWARE : When you will change a vanilla horse model, with a new one this will change all horses to all units that use it. If you chose that way you need to recreate all vanilla horse textures that used by those units or make them use the same one in bmdb.

How to create unique style armors for the MARKA horses.

This section could easily have the title “How the buttons in ms3d, delete, duplicate and regroup will be your best friends “.

In this option you must a have a clear view of the concept on which your final model will base on.
So go back to mount_heavy_horse_Marka_lod0 that you have already converted from mesh to ms3d model with GOAT and NEVER saved your changes in that name…
Let’s suppose that you want to create a horse with armor only in its front side. We are going to call it “steppe armored horse project”.
As we mentioned above you can either save the final model with a name that already exists in the game but knowing the fact that every mounted unit that uses that shape of horses will now use the new one you made.
So…our “steppe” horse needs its body (already included in the basic model), needs its headgear (Bridles, head armor etc) and the basic armor (with or without neck cover).

• We open the mount_heavy_horse_Marka_lod0 ms3d file.
  
• We press select all and then hide selection.
  
• We go to groups and select each one of the original armors and press “unhide”.

If that armor has something that fits in our concept then we press twice on its name and then we select duplicate.
We “hide” the original armor group because if something goes wrong we will need it again.
Let’s suppose that from the armor we have chosen we need the Bridles.

1. Then we press the button on the main ms3d menu “select” and we select everything except the parts we are interesting in.
   
2. Then we press delete and all we have is a group that contains only horse bridles.
3. We do the same procedure with all the rest of the armors.
4. Finally we will have a horse model that it will contain the original horses, the original armors and various parts of armors waiting to get fit in new groups.

Now let’s suppose (see our steppe horse image) that the armor in front of the horse remains the same but we have chosen different head gears for variation.
You have the same options you have in any model you made.
Head gears can be commented separated just like you do in helmets in human models.
In this case you create a number of head gear equipments and give them the proper comments.
If the armor needs to have different skins of the same shape then go to the armor group you selected and duplicate it as many times as you wish and the texture can fit in.
Give the armors the proper group names and comments (see original comments) and finally if you think you have what you wished of erase the original armors from the model.

The 2^nd option is to duplicate the armors as many times as the head gear groups are and select one of each (one armor and one headgear) and then press regroup.
Go to the regroup and give a new name and proper comments (I prefer the original Marka ones for the armors ex: obves_01 etc).
Save it in any name that starts with the word “mount” (mount_steppe_horse_lod0) but in no case as mount_heavy_horse_Marka_lod0 because you may need the original model for other creations of yours.
The final mount_steppe_horse_lod0 can be renamed as you wish later when you will decide if the model will replace an existing one (see mount_pony example) or you will create a new entry in the mounts.txt and in bmdb in your data.

IF You want more horse skins varietions in the same texture you need to open the MARKA horse in milkshape, chose UV maps , select one of them and select recerse by the scale button addonh the symbol - in one of the boxes.

In the original Marka textures a horse UV mapss look like this:




By selecting one of them in the scale options you can add the symbol - and reverse the one you have chosen.


Then move the chosen UV maps over the other one. That way you can add more horse color varietions in the same texture.


With this technique you can create your own unique horse textures like the example below:

As you can see in this example 6 horse bodies and 4 armors managed to be in the same texture. Withour armors almost 8 - 9 horse bodies can be inside the same texture.

Adding new parts on the horses’ models.

Well, in many cases you may need something more unique (like horses that can be used in TATW mod).
The material we are going to be added must be in .obj format. Let’s suppose that we create a new saddle for our horse.
We can either “compose” it with material that already exist or create it as ms3d model and export it in .obj format.

Then we open our horse model, we select the button “import”, the select wavefront.OBJ and select our saddle.



That model though will have not bone weight. You must have the original saddle as example to assign the new one’s vertices in the proper skeleton bones.

When you finish you can regroup the saddle with armor or you can keep it as separated group with the proper group comments.
Finally go back to our instructions and save the final horse model as we described above.

Examples of horses that have been created by this tutorial:

NORMAL MAPING
I left the "un armored varietion that explain in the begining of this tutorial last for a reason.

You can see that all muscle details are visible that is because I use the MARKA normal map texture for their horses. Its a comon mistake most modders make creating Normal maps for their new horses based on the same technique with "human" normal map textures. The result is that in dark colors the default technique loses all the horse muscle details. Luckily MARKA team used Z-Brush when creating the horse muscles.
Go to Medium_Marka_horse_lod0 normal map from Rusichi mod. Select the proper normal map that fits to horse body (there are horses with different eye placing and shape) and put over you own normal map texture and if possible adjust the horse texture based on the normal map one.
The result will be astonishing.

The black stalion skin is a creation of Dome. But with default normal maps its eyes and its nostrils of the nose were invisible. I copied the eyes od a brighter skin and colored black like the rest of the horse and now even that dark horse can reveal all its details thanks to MARKA normal map textures.

CREDITS:
MARKA TEAM: for their wonderfull horse models.
DOME: For his wonderfull horse textures
RAZOR: For many horse 3d parts.
Paradamed: Fully closed head gear.
AnthoniusII : Horse bone assignment and armor vertices bugs fixing.

PS:
This horse was originaly created for Rusichi mod to replace the teutons horses. With proper armore re-skining it can be used for every late knight horse with this sudle or the Marka version one:



You can download it :
From TWC :
From Mediafire:

By creating a cloth normal map as base for this example you can create a multiple texture for every faction that uses the same kind of horses keeping the comon normal map texture because paint has no 3d print.

[paleologos]

Many thanks for this tutorial, naturally it commands at least one rep point!

[AnthoniusII]

No rep requires. Knowlege must be shared. I was benefited by many people and return the benefit.
As a chinese quote says "its better to teach one how to catch a fish than to give him one to eat".

[_Tartaros_]

very good tutorial!

[stevietheconquer]

great tutorial,that hospitaler\teutonic mount loks very nice especially the sadle.

[AnthoniusII]

deleted

[+Mr.Crow+]

Very well done! I was searching just something like this in the past weeks!

Anyway Anthonius do you think that this fix to marka horses can be useful? http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-animation-fix

[Aneirin]

Please excuse my silly question, but what is the exact difference between the marka and the normal horse animation?

[AnthoniusII]

Very well done! I was searching just something like this in the past weeks!

Anyway Anthonius do you think that this fix to marka horses can be useful? http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-animation-fix

Yes..But personaly i failed to add the fix in TGC animation pack. I simply can not do it, and TGC has unique animations that can be lost.
Also if you can repack animations you must consider this fix as well.

Hi AnthoniusII

I've attached the fixed charging animation. Try it and see it is any good for you.
In this picture you'll see that I've modified the .cas file by moving the rider's pelvis into the default 0,0,0, cordinates, so there is no body lifting anymore. (
Maybe the pic doesn't show it very well..but try it , it works.

Markhaselb made that modification but when he added some new animations he forgot to do it again in few of them.
If you can make that fix it will make your riders look natural on these horses.

Please excuse my silly question, but what is the exact difference between the marka and the normal horse animation?

MARKA HORSES have slightly diferent animations from vanilla horses.
My exepriments to give Marka horses the vanilla hosre skeleton did not have any effect.
This is what happens if:

• You add the vanilla skeleton.
• You do not change the animation entry in bmdb

Notice the horse legs effect.

[Aneirin]

Ah I see, many thanks for your explanation

[AnthoniusII]

Tutorial updated with more info and pictures.

[paleologos]

I guess it is better this way!

[AnthoniusII]

deleted

[AnthoniusII]

Knight hospitaler Marka Horse added as free source in 1st post.
Do not forget to give Paradamed Credits.

[paleologos]

That's a nice addition, post a link to Paradamed.

[Arthalion]

hello, it seems there is a problem with the texture size of the marka horses.
they are in 1024*2048 and when i try to edit model et convert it back to mesh with goat, i have some glitch with UV map who seems to be set for this size.
I tried to rescale texture in photoshop or UV maps in milkshape but it didnt work properly.

pic :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

files : http://www.mediafire.com/file/94514a...od0_3.rar/file

any idea/help?

[AnthoniusII]

deleted

[Arthalion]

ok i found the problem comes from GOAT 1.0, i updated it and alls fine.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

thx for your time

[AnthoniusII]

Bravo...enjoy the new horses.

[kingman1337]

How would I be able to attain the Mailed Marka horses? Those are beautiful! I am making a mod entirely for personal use (as in I do not plan to release it, its just for my own use) with the Stainless Steel Historical Improvement Project.