Soldier Artwork - Native American?

[2nd Texas Infantry]

Good Evenening Gentlemen. The old game (TC2M) had around two or three flags made by Reb Bugler for the Indian Regiments. Flags for the Cherokee Braves, Choctaw's, and Seminoles were made and could very easily be converted to SOW. These flags were beautifully made and would cut down on any leg work. I would concentrate more on actually learning to make the Indians rather than worrying about the OOB's and Flags, as those are easy. 3d rendering of the units are another beast altogether. I used to paint 1/72nd scale miniatures and thought that was hard, creating multiple sheets of unit graphics is a task that is very time consuming and requires a patient individual. I would try and get as many "tricks of the trade" from Gunship24. I hope you stick with it, I am certain it would do yourself and those brave native Americans a great honor. Downside, you are limiting that monumental amount of work to maybe a half dozen OOB's at best. However, I plan on doing the Elkhorn Tavern Battle as one of my maps for a 2012 release for this game. These units would be a great addition. Best of Luck.

2nd Texas

[Zeke]

Who said OOBs are easy 2nd Tx!!!! lol

I have an OOB for Honey springs I'm releasing it shortly in an OOB pack converted from TC2M - re US African American troops - I believe Crikey might be importing some sprites soon from the old game. Be warned sprite creation isn't easy or straight forward you would need to do two things.... either - 1/ alter existing sprites (this would be the easiest option - paint.net or photoshop will do this) or 2/ If you have skill with 3D Max create new sprites from scratch.

Personally I've enrolled at a college (for middle age Half wits!!)to learn 3D Max Its a great piece of software but it's flipping complicated!!!:S

If you want to bring new life to an old sprite go to the TC2M site and down load the rebels and Redcoats mod into a folder find the militia sprites as these could be converted to indian foot soldiers.

**Update** or you could maybe import the indian sprites done by Alessillo for his excellent Frederick the great mod also on the TC2M site...Duh forgot about these.

[Stand Watie]

Update:

Been learning/working with 3ds Max Studio and doing tutorials on YouTube. If anybody has any models or artwork they think relevant to this project, shoot me a PM.

Hopefully soon we'll have Native Americans represented. S'gi!

[Jim]

You may have already seen it but there is a short discussion of making sprites (old style) starting on page 64 of the SDK manual, version 1.06. This style will still work in games patched to v1.4. The current expert on this (Tim) does check the boards so you can post more detailed questions for him.

-Jim

[tim]

The best starting point is the SDK as Jim says. Basically you have to make a 3d animated model of the character either in Max or Maya or any 3d porgram that can render frames. You then render out the frames of the animation at 16 angles around the model. Using the old method you would then make them in the dds sheets you see in the game. The SDK tells you how to do this and also the old tutorial for TC2M sprites will help alot.

The new method involved 'packing' the individual sprites differently using a program called TexturePacker. It's just a better (more memory efficient) way of getting the 2d images in a usable format for the game.

Firstly though you need to learn how to use the 3d graphics package of your choice - there's no easy shortcuts on that one I'm afraid.

Good luck and shout up if you need help. I did actually once make some Native American sprites for a Custer mod for TC2M but it never saw the light of day sadly an I've now lost the models. Try to get an old copy of Rome Total War if you have Max and you can export lots of models and animations from that. Its where I started. I now use Maya as I prefer it but its just a personal choice.

[JC Edwards]

Just to set the record straight......it wasn't RB who modded the Cherokee flag for TC2M......it was Crikey......as a favor for me.

The Mad One