Sebidee's Complete Guide to Warhammer Unit Modding

[Commissar Caligula_]

I was wondering the same. Do you know any free alternative to Photoshop?

GIMP or paint.net. However since Matmannen says GIMP isn't good enough, idk really. You might be able to download a plugin to get the ability to do whatever it is you want to do?

[Steph]

I've tried to see if it can work with gimp. I can open a mask, I see nothing, but if I use the magic wand selection,, I can see that there are actually several parts, all transparent. And I can see some are pure red (with transparency) or pure green.

However, if I save, then I get a single transparent file with no parts inside...

It was easier with NTW and clearly visble maks in oure red, green and blue!

[Matmannen]

I've tried to see if it can work with gimp. I can open a mask, I see nothing, but if I use the magic wand selection,, I can see that there are actually several parts, all transparent. And I can see some are pure red (with transparency) or pure green.

However, if I save, then I get a single transparent file with no parts inside...

It was easier with NTW and clearly visble maks in oure red, green and blue!

I really can't help you in this department because I know absolutally nothing abut how to manipulate mask files in neither gimp nor photoshop.

[Werebear]

Plz tell me how to add fireball spell from bright wizard to base cavalry unit

[Dingkuhn]

GIMP or paint.net. However since Matmannen says GIMP isn't good enough, idk really. You might be able to download a plugin to get the ability to do whatever it is you want to do?

I did some research on Google, with key strings of words such as "gimp colored alpha layer plugin", yet found nothing. The problem is that if such a plugin really exist, I still have no idea what name it could possibly have. I guess I will have to get myself a version of Photoshop then.

[nordstern]

i am trying to make a new unit. I know its not lore: HE handgunners

I made a unit like you wrote. I can see the unit in the custom games, i can choose it and load a battle. But in the battle the textures are broken.
I think the Problem is, that the base of the mod was a mod with a human-handgunner-unit. And so the programm tries to give the he-armor to an human-modell.
Where can i change the race a unit is?

Or do you think there is another problem?

The unit looks like.. .spaghetti^^

[Steph]

Models are linked to animation and skeleton. And it seems you cannot mix it. So if you want to have a HE texture to a human, you need to use only HE texture and assign an HE animation to the unit.


I have another issue. i'm trying to make a blank HE shield. To change the texture later. First, I manage to solve the transparency issue with gimp (I think). I edited the normal texture to remove all the triangular points on the edge of the tower shield, and saved it. It ssems to work. The trick: I used BC3 \ DXT5 compression instead of BC1 \ DXT 1. Anyone with feedback with this? Does it really work or is there an issue I didn't notice yet?

But I still have an issue. I cannot get rid of the decal. I tried using a fully transperent texture for the diffuse, specular, gloss and mask. I tried using a fully black. But the decal is still there in black.
I tried hex-editing the rigid_models to use a texture that doesn't exist. It gives weird result (a kind of red/green dotted texture).
I tried replacing all the parts where the decal texture appears (for full path to files) with spaces. It crashes the game at loading.

So, is it possible to fully remove the decals, or make it invisible?

[Matmannen]

Models are linked to animation and skeleton. And it seems you cannot mix it. So if you want to have a HE texture to a human, you need to use only HE texture and assign an HE animation to the unit.


I have another issue. i'm trying to make a blank HE shield. To change the texture later. First, I manage to solve the transparency issue with gimp (I think). I edited the normal texture to remove all the triangular points on the edge of the tower shield, and saved it. It ssems to work. The trick: I used BC3 \ DXT5 compression instead of BC1 \ DXT 1. Anyone with feedback with this? Does it really work or is there an issue I didn't notice yet?

But I still have an issue. I cannot get rid of the decal. I tried using a fully transperent texture for the diffuse, specular, gloss and mask. I tried using a fully black. But the decal is still there in black.
I tried hex-editing the rigid_models to use a texture that doesn't exist. It gives weird result (a kind of red/green dotted texture).
I tried replacing all the parts where the decal texture appears (for full path to files) with spaces. It crashes the game at loading.

So, is it possible to fully remove the decals, or make it invisible?

All map.dds files are compressed in DXT5. Regarding the decal, is it it's own texture and does it protrude from the shield (like looking 90 degres from the side of the shield, does the decal protrude)? This is important because there are two ways of creating depth in a model. The first is the model itself, which is resource consuming since it requires polygons (and if so, there is nothing we can do). The second way is normam mapping. The solution for the illusion of protrusion with a nomrla map isa nother normal map. Simply replace the decal on the normal map with a flat surface, i.e copy paste the plat pats of the shield over the decal. Hope it helps.

Good luck.

[Steph]

The guide says to save in DXT1. And gimp doesn't i it well. Are you sayting DXT5 should be used instead (and so the guide should be corrected)?

apparently it is a different object, since when viewed from the side it is clearly not a simple texture but a mesh.

Isn't it possible to hide a part of a mesh by making it fully transparent? I've seen some details (like the ribbons on the lothern sea quard shield) hidden by some mod. What I don't understand is why i can't make this decal fully transparent, and so invisible.

[nordstern]

this mean i can not create a HE handgunner-Unit with HE armor?

Thats stupid... but i can make a HE unit with DE animation. Elven and Human are nearly identic.

And i thought it works. In the mod High Elven units pack from Hugh de Salle
linked here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...xt=elven+units

he uses for this sword&shield-Cav a empire animation

"hu1_empire_hr1_warhorse_sword_and_shield" with elven armor.

[Matmannen]

The guide says to save in DXT1. And gimp doesn't i it well. Are you sayting DXT5 should be used instead (and so the guide should be corrected)?

apparently it is a different object, since when viewed from the side it is clearly not a simple texture but a mesh.

Isn't it possible to hide a part of a mesh by making it fully transparent? I've seen some details (like the ribbons on the lothern sea quard shield) hidden by some mod. What I don't understand is why i can't make this decal fully transparent, and so invisible.

Only the mask.dds is supposed to be saved in dxt5, excluding normal.dds's ofcourse which are either saved in dxt5nm or dxt5 depending on the individual texture.

You are able to make some things transparent because of a forth channel. All textures have the three colour channels RGB (Red, Green, Blue). Through these three colours, all other colours are created. There is a forth channel called the alpha channel; it handels things like transparency. Editing the alpha in photoshop is abot complicated, but in Gimp, it is no harder than simply opening the diffuse, marking what you want to be invisible and then deteting it from the texture.

Note however that gimp is only able to do this for textures compressed in dxt1. For dx10, you'll need photoshop.

Sadly, this won't work for all textures because all are not alpha compatible, i.e, all models do not have shaders that read the alpha layer for transparency.

[Steph]

No more decals...

[Matmannen]

No more decals...

Nice! How did you do it?

[Steph]

Smartly


It's a different meshgroup. So the rigidmodel contains entries for the shield itself, plus entries for the decals. By replacing the part for the decals with 00 in hex editing, you can hide it

[Matmannen]

Smartly


It's a different meshgroup. So the rigidmodel contains entries for the shield itself, plus entries for the decals. By replacing the part for the decals with 00 in hex editing, you can hide it

Oh, ok.

Well done...

[Steph]

I've started to add many new units to the HE (see preview thread here)

My units have standard soldiers, and officer, and 5 "bodyguards", as you can see below (soldiers have a full silver helmet, the officer has the axe with golden partts, the bodyguards have silver axe, but gold on their helmet).

The guys with blue colours are the generic soldiers, and the blue is actually the faction colour.





The guys in red colours are specific to Chrace. And my idea is to have them always red, whatever the actual recruiting faction. To do this, I have added lines in Unit_Variant_Colours, as described in the Tutorial (15 lines, for all the different HE factions, all using red colours).
Initially, the soldiers where red, but the officer and bodyguards where blue.
I solved that by adding lines, and instead of always putting "soldier" as indicated in tutorial, I also added "Officer" "Flagbearer" and "Musician". I kept the red colours, but I think it would be possible to change it, and so have an officer with colours different from the soldiers, just using a line in the table, without additional textures!

And then I wanted to add the same things for Dragon Princes. But here, I wanted a little more: I have two versions, the regular one (I wanted them Green), and the elite one (I wanted them Red).

So I tried the same method.

And I got weird results:
- The officers and bodyguards have the correct colour.
- But the soldiers of the regular are blue (faction colour instead of colour specified in unit_variant_colour
- And for the elite version, half the soldiers are green, and half are red.

this is potentially interesting, it could mean we could have soldiers with different colour inside the same units, without retexturing.

Problem: I don't understand the real logic behind the way the unit_variant_colour table. I did the same with the White Lions and Dragon Princes (I think). White Liosn work perfectly. But the Dragon Princes.

Any one with experience on this topic.

[SOSolacex]

I've got a mod that crashes as soon as I click "Custom battle" or "The laboratory". Anyone knows what could be the problem?

[Commissar Caligula_]

I've got a mod that crashes as soon as I click "Custom battle" or "The laboratory". Anyone knows what could be the problem?

Do you have more than 50 units in one faction? That's the only problem that can be easily fixed, otherwise you've probably made an error somewhere or other that you'll have to trawl through the files to find.

[Steph]

How do you fix it if more than 50 units in a faction?

[Commissar Caligula_]

How do you fix it if more than 50 units in a faction?

Either remove some so its below 50 or I think you have to set their cdir_military_generator_unit_qualities value to 0. Basically the issue is that when you select a new faction in custom battles it'll try to generate an army for you, and there's over 50 units it breaks. So you have to make it so it doesn't auto-generate the army. I don't know whether changing this value affects the campaign.

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I thought the fix was to change cdir_military_generator values, but its not fixing the issue for me. I'll have to ask another modder when he gets online.