Author: Jaymioz
Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
For this tutorial I am going to use the American Ranger from Command And Conquer: Generals Zero Hour.
I'm going to edit his weapon to make a pistol, and then for the animation section create a second pistol for the other hand.
Firstly, I am going to explain the concept of how the infantry models and animations are setup in the .BIG files. If you are already familiar with this, feel free to skip past this section.
Infantry are split up into separate files.
- _SKN.W3D – This is the skin file: the main model itself
- _SKL.W3D – This is the skeleton file: contains just the bones for the normal SKN file, which in essence you have to model around.
- _RNA.W3D – This is the running animation. Animations use the bones only (skeleton), so when animating you can only see the bones. I will explain later on a way of seeing the model over the bones whilst animating.
- zhca_model.tga – This is the texture skin file for the infantry model
There are usually about 10 to 40 animation files depending on which model you use. Some of these include: standing still, running, altering gun to fire, firing, putting gun back, etc. The full list of the Ranger’s animations can be found here.
By default, all the .W3D files can be accessed from:
C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command and Conquer Generals\W3D.big
Open W3D.big with FinalBIG, and use it to extract the all the Ranger’s files to:
C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour\Art\W3D\
The folder should now have the files in it as shown below:
Now find textures.big in the Generals folder and open it with FinalBIG. Using FinalBIG, locate the file zhca_airanger.tga and export that to:
C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour\Art\Textures\
Next we’ll go onto editing the ranger's model. When you're ready, continue on to the next page.
