How to create a creature

This page helps you to create a creature (i.e. a unit that fights in a battle) for a creature mod or inside a bigger mod like a town mod.

Utilities

You need to download the two utilities DefPreview and H3DefTool from the internet:

• DefPreview converts a .def file to .bmp images
• H3DefTool converts .bmp images to a .def file

But you can create a configuration that directly reads your image files. Most of the existing mods are coded with .def files but direct images are recommended.

Make a playable creature

First of all, retrieve an existing creature and be sure you can clone it and make it work independently without any new content. If it already fails, don't waste your time to draw the new animation. It should work first.

Battle render

The sun is always at zenith, so the shadow is always behind. The reason is that the creature render may be mirrored. There was no strong rules in the original game but usually, the shadow is twice less higher than the creature.

You can render your creature using a 3D software like Blender. The map creatures are not rendered on the map with vanishing points but in isometric. You can get an orthogonal render in Blender. You can start with those free-licenced rigged 3D models:

• Fantasy-bandit
• Monster-4
• Crypt-fiend-modular-character
• Solus-the-knight
• Ancient-earth-golem
• Shadow-golem-elemental
• Earth-golem-elemental
• Kong-2021-rig
• Shani

You can also use an AI to generate the main creature representation like Flux: https://huggingface.co/spaces/multimodalart/FLUX.1-merged

Then you can add random animations for idle states with SVD: https://huggingface.co/spaces/xi0v/Stable-Video-Diffusion-Img2Vid

For specific animations, I recommend to use Cinemo because it adds a description prompt but the resolution is smaller: https://huggingface.co/spaces/maxin-cn/Cinemo

You can draw the first and the last images with a prompt with ToonCrafter: https://huggingface.co/spaces/ChristianHappy/tooncrafter

Battle sound effect

To create the audio effects, I recommend to use Tango 2: https://huggingface.co/spaces/declare-lab/tango2

The quality is better than Stable Audio.

Map render

There was no strong rules in the original game but usually, the shadow is twice less higher that the creature on map. If you are creating a creature and its updated version, most of the time, the both creatures are not oriented to the same side on the map. I think that the animation on the map is usually the Mouse Over animation on battle.

You can see that the view angle is higher than on a battle. To change the angle from a battle sprite, you can use Zero 1-to-3: https://huggingface.co/spaces/cvlab/zero123-live

You can get higher resolution using this Video AI that can control the motion of the camera: https://huggingface.co/spaces/TencentARC/MotionCtrl_SVD

If you have a 3D software, you can get better quality by converting your image into 3D model and then render it from another angle using Unique3D: https://huggingface.co/spaces/abreza/Unique3D

Follow this comment to retrieve the color: https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/TripoSR/discussions/1#65e8a8e5e214f37d85dad366

If you need to increase the resolution or the quality of your template image, use SUPIR: https://huggingface.co/spaces/Fabrice-TIERCELIN/SUPIR

Modding related articles

Main articles
Modding changelog	Modding guidelines	How to create a town mod	Mod Handler

Formats
	Mod file Format
Town Format	Creature Format	Hero Classes Format
Artifact Format	Animation Format	Hero Format
Bonus Format	Object Format	Spell Format

Work-in-progress formats
Building bonuses		Map format
	Bonus Type Format	Random map template

Outdated pages
	Mod system proposal