Trick: How to get different visual variation within an unit

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 :medievalcheers:
Duke John

Realy helpful, thanks alot.

I assume that this will help to make various melee weapons for knight unit, not only single generic sword for it, but different maces, falcions, axes and other sword types.

Hmm does anyknow know if there will be ability to have three weapon system (lance for charging, sword for close combat, bow or javelin for skirmishing) for cavalry?

Its a good idea though i very much doubt that it will work.

Firstly looking at the screenshots i very much doubt that every different unit has a different mesh. Actually i know they dont. They are simply applying different textures to the same mesh.

Whether or not the meshes within a single soldier are divided into several files and assembled dynamically by the game engine is also very doubtful. First off that doesnt seem a very efficient way of doing things overall. More importantly that would most likely mean that (using your example of having the entire soldier within the head mesh) you would not be able to skin and animate the entire rest of the body. Even if somehow you could there would be huge limitations. All the units still have to use a single set animations for one so you couldnt have units with very different weapons together.



In my opinion the game will reference a single unit model and then proceed to apply the different textures to the model. How exactly it will be divided up is still uncertain though i would assume that the different body regions (head, legs, arms, torso, shield, primary weapon, secondary weapon) will have to be in seperate meshes (all in the same file of course) that way the engine will no which textures to apply to which mesh (most likely on a mesh name basis like in RTW). My guess is also that each body region will now have its own seperate texture and six different textures for each. That means a grand total of 42 textures per unit though granted each will be much smaller than a normal RTW texture which included the entire unit.

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They are simply applying different textures to the same mesh.

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I could swear I've seen different helmet meshes within units. Also some archers in the units have hoods and some don't no?

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Originally Posted by Myrddraal

I could swear I've seen different helmet meshes within units. Also some archers in the units have hoods and some don't no?

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I attributed that to alpha channels. Itd be pretty simple to do.

I mean you would assume that there would be alot more variation if completely different meshes were used. At least maybe different shaped shields and such but you dont see any of that. As you mentioned the only real shape variation you see is perhaps a slightly pointed helmet instead of a rounded one. Really small simple stuff basically.

You can really do alot with creative use of alpha channels.

No, the variation is greater. As Myrddraal said, some archers wear hoods, others have helmets. In some (old) screenshots you can also see some seams, showing that head and body are seperated.

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I attributed that to alpha channels. Itd be pretty simple to do.

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I doubt it, it would unnecessarily burden the computer as it still needs to calcuate the mesh even when having a transparent texture. It is far easier to just make seperate elements and disable all but one variation.

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Whether or not the meshes within a single soldier are divided into several files and assembled dynamically by the game engine is also very doubtful.

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R:TW already dynamically switches between primary and secondary weapon. My guess is that a model has several head parts. M2:TW will then select a head part for each soldier at random. The others are not shown or removed (depends on what is best for performance).

One problem with using this method might be the same as weapons in RTW. I experimented alot with making unit's put primary weapons on their back while using secondary.

Still this wasn't possible due to the limitations to the bones bones you could weight the meshes to. If the same limitations apply to these parts, you won't be able to weight a helmetpart to any other bone then the head.

However the possibilitys with creative alphaing still opens for a huge ammount of variety using complex meshes, and alpha. Im rtw i managed to make a horsemodel witch, by only using alpha apeared to be 10 diffrent models.

-Skel-

Using the alpha channel to make parts invisible is a bad for performance. The faces are still calculated, they just have an invisible texture. I wouldn't use it, it's an unefficient trick.

Sure you must compromise variation with preformance, and consider how mutch details you can put in one part of the model compared to other parts. If i have special parts or accessories that is crucial to defy a unit, i allways try to find ways to lower the polycount in other parts of the model, so that i can add that crucial part. I allso consider how many of that unit witch will appear on the battlefield. If it's an eliteunit with small unitsize, i dont care so mutch about the polycount, and focus more on making this unit look good.

Allso creative use of alpha can allso reduce the number of polys in pieces that can be sculptured by using alpha instead of meshes. A blade for a sabre forinstance can be made by a broad single twosided plane (8 poly's) and sculptured with alpha to both reduce the polycount and make the angles smoother. You can then allso change the shape of the blade to wathever you whant, with only changing the alpha texture. So, by using this method, you can have a variaty of diffrent sabres, and less polycoun. (Win - win situation.)

Sure the blade will be totally flat, and might disapear if you view it dead on, but the gain in variation and preformance makes up for that imo. This method must ofcource be considured from model to model, but i when possible, i allways use this method.

-Skel-

Hey Skeletor mate I tried to PM you but your inbox is full. Sorry to hijack the thread.

I'm fairly sure its been confirmed that there are different meshes that are interchanged between units but I'm afraid this trick would not be possible because of the skeleton limitations. The head mesh would only apply to one bone and not to the whole skeleton and so it would be impossible to skin the mesh so it would animate properly.

Yes its been confirmed in one of the blogs that the game actually swaps out different meshes which is very good news for moddability.

From a screenshot I concluded that the head part was skinned to both the head and torso bone.

Anyway, I just thought I would post this before I leave TW entirely. Do with this whatever you want.

It's possible the neck is part of the torso and that is the object that has the skin modifier. The head itself might be just connected to one bone and no Skin modifier is allowed. I see this as the most logical extension to their game engine as it's practically the same system as the primary/secondary weapon swap.

Perhaps this is also why the torso is only one mesh (even with multiple textures): because it has a skin modifier?

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From a screenshot I concluded that the head part was skinned to both the head and torso bone.

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:yes:

I think so too. They may just have a skin modifier on each mesh, which means you can use any bone you like...

Oh and btw:

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Originally Posted by SEGA

• Improved individual units with different faces, clothing, armor and shields, swinging different weapons and riding various horses.

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(bold added by me)

Yeah its already been mentioned by CA that shield and weapon meshes will be in seperate files and will then be attached to units via a text file. I believe they said that each unit can reference up to 10 different weapons and shields.

Sorry to post here - but skeletor, could you please PM me. Your pm message box is full. Thanks!! (he's been off the site for months, so i'm very excited to see him posting in this thread :grin:)

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Originally Posted by Myrddraal

:yes:
I think so too. They may just have a skin modifier on each mesh, which means you can use any bone you like...

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Just going back to this point. Don't forget that the head bone itself is a child of the torso bone and eventually needs to be connected to the scene root or it would just act independantly. For this reason I would expect the full skeletal structure would apply to the head but this doesn't mean that the whole skeleton will be included in the file for the head.