Everything you ever wanted to know about banners!

[miniwally]

Whats the alpha texture?

[Lü Bu]

With alpha you can make object transparent.Black=invissible,white=vissible,grey=medium vissible

[Bwian]

Only in the M2TW engine, there is no grey....it's all black or white.

Seriously...there is a wonderful tool called 'Google' that should answer questions like that.

[Lü Bu]

Oh,sry Im new in Medieval units modelling...

[Zizzapowa]

very useful, thanks!
for who's wondering, also region and border colors change when changing primary color in descr_sm_factions. ('cause I was wondering myself)
cheers

[Comrade the Colonel]

just what i was looking for!

[Moon]

This link will tell you what each part of the faction banner represents.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=84875

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I've edited banners and had them working in the "base" M2TW folders before, but when I try to get them working in mod folders I'm having problems (only seeing black banners still). I have them named correctly (we changed internal faction names, but I've got the proper ones and even using the original ones too just in case), but they aren't showing up. Converted them to dds, then edited in photoshop, then saved as dtx5 dds textures and reconverted them back to .texture files. Do they have to be specified in a text file somewhere before they work? Any thoughts? I also made desaturated and darkened trans texture files of the same ones too. Is there something somewhere that must be changed to somehow "trigger" them to work?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I seem to be seeing that descr_banners_new.xml in a mod folder won't work. Is that correct? Is it impossible in M2TW to completely mod folder a mod that has new factions in it because of this issue?

[Socal_infidel]

I seem to be seeing that descr_banners_new.xml in a mod folder won't work. Is that correct? Is it impossible in M2TW to completely mod folder a mod that has new factions in it because of this issue?

This can't be true, my mod is completely mod foldered and adds completely new factions (e.g. not renamed vanilla factions) and our banners show up.

[Killerbee]

Err .. My banners don't show up either .. I'm using a modfolder , and they just stay vanilla ones

And i tried both .dds and .tga files ..

[SigniferOne]

Check Third Age Total War. I'm pretty sure they have custom banners, yet it is completely mod-foldered. Hmm, on the other hand they only use vanilla factions (renamed).

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Check Third Age Total War. I'm pretty sure they have custom banners, yet it is completely mod-foldered. Hmm, on the other hand they only use vanilla factions (renamed).

Thanks - will do that. I'm using the base M2TW folders for now.

Another banner question:

In RTW it was pretty easy to get distinct banners for each rebel "counter faction", at least on the battlefield. This way we had the appearance of rebel "factions" for every single real faction. Is there a way to do this with M2TW?

To compare - in RTW, you had this:

faction				spain
standard_texture	../eb/data/models/textures/standard_spain.tga
rebels_texture		../eb/data/models/textures/standard_spain_rebels.tga
routing_texture		../eb/data/models/textures/standard_routing_barbarian.tga
ally_texture		../eb/data/models/textures/standard_spain_ally.tga

in the descr_banners.txt file. And you could change the rebel texture to whatever you wanted. But now, is anything like this possible?

But I don't understand how I can make the entries for M2TW (like this one below) into a rebel one:

            <Texture Faction="Rebels" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally0" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally0.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally1" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally1.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally2" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally2.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally3" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally3.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally4" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally4.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Ally5" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_ally5.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy0" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy0.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy1" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy1.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy2" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy2.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy3" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy3.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy4" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy4.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy5" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy5.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Enemy6" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_enemy6.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Saxons" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_saxons.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_saxons_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Normans" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_england.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_england_trans.texture"/>
            <Texture Faction="Slave" DiffuseMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels.texture" TranslucencyMap="banners\textures\Faction_banner_rebels_trans.texture"/>

Is this one area where RTW had a lot more room to be creative and maneuver than M2TW does?

[Tokus*Maximus]

Dear Bwian and all passonate battle banner modders!

I've just completed a richly elaborate full set of battlefield banners for Divide & Conquer, the expanded faction sub-mod for King Kong's tremendous Third Age Total War. Every faction (and there are many added in our sub-mod) have unique Banners plus the Royal standards too. I've followed your excellent tutorial Bwian and have made trans versions in monochrome darkened by 25% of each file. All are in .dds format. So far so good.

However, my problem is the two converters I've been able to unearth at the TWC tech 'n' tools forum won't recognise the .dds file format as .dds at all and so will not convert them to .texture. might you be able to suggest what I may be doing wrong? A wrong setting perhaps on that Nvidia panel before saving each one? I'm an artist and struggle to meet the demands of the technical aspects (I'm also an old git which doesn't help!).

Please advise,

Tokus*Maximus
DLV & DAC artist modder

[Tokus*Maximus]

Dear Bwian (& gang),

Thank you for your PM; the format to save the .dds in that your suggested did indeed convert the banners to .texture.
Many many thanks, hope this finds you well,

Tokus*Maximus

[Subuatai de Bodemloze]

Is there a way to get each settlement to show its own banners individually of the factions?

[Icedie El Guaraní]

But when i edit the models_strat/symbols_england.cas and set my custom image to it from models_strat/textures/#banner_symbol_custom.tga , the settlement simply appears with no banners, this result is not what i have anticipated but i stil like the look of it. for now.


EDITED:

I manage it , i have all factions completely in custom banner, pretty simple process, edit the symbol_faction.cas from vanilla in 3ds max, select te new custom banner tga, and export it as cas, place it in strat_models, and the texture with the strat_models/textures folder.
one last thing, edit the descr_sm_factions and change the

symbol                        models_strat/symbol_east_anglia.CAS
rebel_symbol                models_strat/symbol_north-saxons.CAS

the rebel_symbol is for the rebels of every faction, you should also add the new symbol_rebels.cas like i did.

[IZob]

"OK...not the most earth-shattering of topics for a tutorial"

What?! This is one of the most important aspects of any mods.

[IZob]

Battle Banners:

There is still one element of banners that we have not covered. These are the ones that display over your units on the 3D battle map. Changing these is quite a simple matter, especially for those who have access to photoshop! B Ward has kindly made available a set of blank templates for the file you need to work on. They can be found here : http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=2066

For the rest, you will need to work from a stock one and build it up from there in your paint-program of choice.

The files that you need to change are found in the data/banners/texture folder. For the game to use them, they need to be in the .texture format, so you will need to get hold of hte tool to convert texture to dds and vice versa.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ture+converter

Just thought It would be a good idea to add this link to the second post. It has the download links to the dds/TEXTURE converter made by alpaca. I couldnt find anything called the "hte tool".

[Prince of Yunderup]

Thank you this has been very helpful much appreciated. (+rep)