Import models?

[Daver690]

It's not possible right? From the mods I've seen it seem to only be possible to replace textures. Just curious is there any specific reason no such mods exist? Is there no interest or is the engine unknown? I remember from Civ 5, also from Firaxis they kept re-using the GR2-format so other tools like the Granny Viewer still worked even though it hadn't been updated for that game. Also in Civ 5 importing / exporting models was possible but barly any such mods exist, so maybe there's just no interrest in XCOM? Still doubt it though since I've seen no such mods... Would be cool to just replace guns and stuff :smile:

[Zybertryx]

I think it's an issue of ignorance, a peculiar obstacle yet to be disclosed, or a lack of competence among those few actively modding XCOM currently. Those who are actively modding XCOM are truly talented code-crunchers whose work has improved this game immensely, but that seems to be their forte, so map manipulations, new graphic assets etc may just be outside their area of expertise.

 

That this game uses Unreal Engine 3 though would mean that comparisons to the method of model exporting/exporting, animating, and so on, including the necessary third party programs required would, I imagine, be worlds apart from, say Civilization V. That said, because it's such a 'glossy' and popular engine, I'm sure there is a lot of documentation and third party support for doing so. You couldn't exactly call UE3 'nichey'.

 

Of course, there may be a good reason related to the nuances of how Firaxis compiled the relevant details on the graphics side of things that I'm not aware of that explains the lack of any mods on that front here thus far.

 

I know that texture swapping in XCOM can be done via "Texmod" but that the process is a little convoluted (and might need to be initiated every time the game is launched).

 

Perhaps it's simply 'early days', or perhaps someone much more savvy than myself will let us both know exactly what the obstacles are in this regard.

 

Z

Edited June 29, 2013 by Zybertryx

[Amineri]

I know that gildor's umodel tool (http://www.gildor.org/en/projects/umodel) supports viewing all of the models in the game, as I've used it to browse through the 3D models, animations and textures.

 

The umodel tool can definitely export textures (that's how bokauk extracted the perk icons for ToolBoks), and should be able to extract the 3D models / textures, I'd guess. I think the issue has been trying to add new art assets to the game.

 

From what I gleaned from the forums the early mod attempts to change or add models ended in failure, as Firaxis apparently used a customized version of Unreal Engine 3. Apparently all previous attempts to use existing available tools (e.g. the available UE3 SDK) just didn't work.

 

However, I'm definitely not an expert in the field of 3D modeling and animation. As Zybertryx correctly points out, my area of competence is algorithm development and coding.