Ship Sets: How Do You Do Them?

[Antonin]

I'm curious about how ship sets are designed, because I'd like to maybe try my hand at it, to maybe contribute a couple of generic sets.

1) How are they done?

2) Are most of you designers professional artists?

3) Is it necessary to use expensive software?


I know very little about graphics software. But I sometimes read Computer Arts magazine, and I wonder if the freeware they feature sometimes on their CD is enough. In a recent issue they featured an interesting little freeware 3D sculpting program called Amphorium (spelling?).


I'm not interested in spending a lot of money and I don't have gobs of time; I just want to see how hard it would be for somebody like me to develop and contribute some ship designs.

While I currently make my living as a writer, in junior high school (LONG ago...) I used to doodle drawings of rockets and spaceships in my notebooks.

I know that doesn't mean I have any sort of talent for design, but how thrilling it would be to contribute a ship set for general use by the SEIV community.

On a similar note...how does one go about designing an AI? I don't mean modifying an existing one, I mean designing a unique AI for SEIV...

Thanks in advance for any advice...

[This message has been edited by Natsef-Amun (edited 31 August 2001).]

[Atrocities]

They are easy, but consum a lot of your time. The first thing to know is what are you going to do a ship set on?

Are you going to use exsisting picture, or make new ones?

To make new ones, you'll need to know 3dmax, Lightwave, Broyce, etc.

To make one based off of exsisting pictures is easy. Just gather the images you want to use, decide where you want them to go, IE Dreadnought, WeapPlatform etc.

You'll want all of your images BEFORE you start. Once you get going on it, it will take between 6 to 24 hours.

I started on the Starwolf Race Last night at 6 pm, and finished it about an hour ago. Total time working on it 8 hours. I have made 13 Ship sets, and they are a lot of fun to make, but tedious to do.

You'll need to know how to use PAINT, and you'll want to get ACDsee from www.download.com

I use ACDsee to crop and resize the images. I use Paint to mask them, and touch them up.

Gather your info, and then post what it is you want to do. I will then be more than happy to post a walk through. However, I have posted these before, and you can search for that if you wish.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Captain Picard STNG
New Age Ship Yards

[Puke]

I want to make a shipset with some very simple 3d shapes. It could be done entirely with textured spheres and oblongs, but liquid effects and translucense would be nice as well. what would be ideal is to be able to plop down a high polygon sphere or two, and 'drag' extrusions from it.

any recomendations on a free 3d program that i can download that would make this fairly easy to do? or if not, what would let me plop together some textured spheres and oblongs?

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Antonin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Atrocities:
The first thing to know is what are you going to do a ship set on?

Are you going to use exsisting pictures, or make new ones?

To make new ones, you'll need to know 3dmax, Lightwave, Broyce, etc.

To make one based off of exsisting pictures is easy...

---

3d max, Lightwave...Yikes! (*grabs his aching forehead*)

Doesnt using existing images raise copyright issues, though?

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"Gentlemen, we have nearly a thousand ships waiting to be thrown into the fight at the proper moment to seize control of the Foundation. I say we should change that. I say, throw those thousand onto the board now--against the Mule."
-- Randu of Haven, from "Foundation and Empire," by Isaac Asimov

[Atrocities]

No, they do not raise Copy Right issues so long as you do not profit from them, and have the permission of the artist to use them.

You don't need the big gun software to combine exsisting ship sets. Just combine them, and name them what you need them to be.

IE Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, etc.

Just be sure that all files start with the same name. IE Myshipset_Mini_Escort Myshipset_Portrait_Escort Myshipset_Mini_Frigate Myshipset_Portrait_Frigate etc.

[Rollo]

Puke,
this is a strange coincidence. I am currently downloading 3D Canvas. It's freeware, about 17megs. I'll let you know, if it's any good.

Rollo

[edit]typo

[This message has been edited by Rollo (edited 31 August 2001).]

[Antonin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Puke:
I want to make a shipset with some very simple 3d shapes. It could be done entirely with textured spheres and oblongs......any recomendations on a free 3d program that i can download that would make this fairly easy to do?

---

I'm very new to 3d modeling, but the Amorphium 1.0 software I mentioned below may be what you want. It's freeware and came with the Aug 2001 issue of the UK magazine "Computer Arts."

In the US the magazine is sold in stores like Borders, Barnes & Noble, Comp USA, etc.

When you open it, the default workpiece is a sphere, and you can deform and shape and paint it all you want.

Playing around with it the other day made me think about using it to design shipsets.

But like I said, I really don't know much about this kind of thing...



------------------
"Gentlemen, we have nearly a thousand ships waiting to be thrown into the fight at the proper moment to seize control of the Foundation. I say we should change that. I say, throw those thousand onto the board now--against the Mule."
-- Randu of Haven, from "Foundation and Empire," by Isaac Asimov

[Rollo]

Hi,
I played around with 3D Canvas a little. The program looks very good, but the smooth tool seems to be buggy . I don't know, if it's just my computer or not. I reinstalled it and still got some real weird stuff, when smoothing.
Does anybody know, where I can get Amphorium for download? I did a search, but all the links were broken.

Rollo

[Atrocities]

I will post a guide to basic ship set making later today or early tomorrow. It is really easy to do, but you have to dedicate some time, and get ACDsee from www.download.com in order to follow the directions I will be giving. Until then, later.

------------------
"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Captain Picard STNG
New Age Ship Yards

[Rollo]

Thanks, Atrocties .

Puke, I have been looking around for free- and shareware a little more and found something called ZBrush from Pixologic. I downloaded the demo and it looks really good. You might want to check that out. From what you desribed it could be pretty close what you were looking for. It's kind of a mix between 2d and 3d.

Rollo