Assuming that there will be a model importer/exporter:
Each soldier in M2:TW is build up from various parts; a head, arms, legs, torso, weapon and shield. Look for the part that has the most variations; a head might have 4 variations while the torso might only have 3. Note: it might be that only the head part has different meshes and the other parts are using a single mesh and simply use different textures. This reduces freedom somewhat but you should still be able to use the tricks below.
The trick is then to create entire soldier meshes and save them as a head part. All the other parts are empty meshes, or if that is not possible, a single transparent triangle.
Lets say that you want to create a Wars of the Roses unit in which Men-at-Arms intermingled with Billmen. With the above trick you could then have one man-at-arms and 3 billmen variations. The result is an unit composed of different soldiers with a 1:3 ratio.
Another use of this trick: let's say you want to create a knight unit. Knights generally had a surcoat which displayed their coat of arms. You can get an incredible variety of CoAs by dividing the surcoat into 4 quarters, each with its own design. Now assign 1 quarter to the head, 1 to the legs, 1 to the arms and 1 to the torso part. The result could be over 100 combinations in coat of arms! You can expand this by doing the same for the shield.
Note that soldiers within the same unit cannot have different animations so do you have to pick units in which the soldiers used the same weapon type. Although for the above example you could give the man-at-arms a pollaxe and the rest billhooks and halberds (if you do, make the weapon part invisible and add the weapon to the soldier mesh).
This way of using the system will represent some medieval units much better as they were far from uniformly dressed or equipped. With CA's system you will still get very similar units as the different parts still need to match visually and geometrically. Of couse CA's system will work very well for units such as bowmen.
Remember to keep thinking out of the box while modding!
Cheers
Duke John
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