need help making player ship graphics.

[andrewpen]

hi i have just begun trying to make player ship graphics using blender(which i only started using to day) but i am a bit stuck. i have a basic shape or model but now i don't know how to get the ship "playable." so i ask how do i get the ship rendered and ready to go for my first mod with custom graphics?

[andrewpen]

Ok I got the ship rendered but it looks rather dull. How do I add colour using blender?

[steelwing]

Use materials and textures. The Blender material system is very cool and extremely flexible.
Here's an example of what I've been able to produce in Blender...

SelectionImage.png (78.78 KiB) Viewed 6488 times

This uses a Voronoi texture with yellow layered on top of a base color. I'm at work right now, so I don't have access to get you the actual texture settings I used to do this. If you're interested I can get it for you later...

[andrewpen]

I am new to blender so could u got into more detail I have only started trying graphics this week. Also how do youmake the mask I haven't got it right. I am using wolfy's sprit sheet genirtator.

[steelwing]

I am new to blender so could u got into more detail I have only started trying graphics this week.

Sure.
Start with your ship body in object mode. I don't know what Blender version you're using, but I'm on 2.63. Below is what my screen looks like right now:

Blender 002.png (255.38 KiB) Viewed 6463 times

Currently the Materials panel is selected. This is where you can add and remove Materials on your model. Once you've added a material using the plus sign to the right of the Materials list, you can set its base colors and then click Textures to add texturing.
Materials and textures have a huge array of stuff that you can do with them. About the only way you can learn what most of this does is to play with it. I can tell you that Voronoi noise textures are incredibly flexible. Here I'm using two textures layered to produce the effect in the above screenshots.
Layer 1 is a Voronoi texture (size 0.25, nabla 0.025), used entirely to generate the color effects. The mapping subpanel lets you set what values of the material will be affected by this texture (only color is selected here).
Layer 2 is a Stucci noise texture (size 0.1, turbulence 6.0), used for the raised ridges that you see in the texture. This texture maps only to the "normal" attribute of the material.
Which textures you use depends entirely on the effect you want. Again, I can only advise you to play around a lot and see what fits your vision of what you want an object to look like. It's also possible to use Blender's sculpting tools to influence your object's appearance.

Also how do youmake the mask I haven't got it right. I am using wolfy's sprit sheet genirtator.

I make my spritesheets using ImageMagick. It's a command line tool that's very scripting friendly. If you're on Windows, you can use PowerShell as the scripting engine, which worked out wonderfully for me. The graphics.zip file I've attached has my own current spritesheet and mask, along with the script that I used to generate both based on the set of facings that I rendered from Blender.
The basic steps are:
1. Make a spritesheet.
2. Replace the non-black parts of the spritesheet with pure white.
3. Save.
In ImageMagick, I join all the images together to make the spritesheet and save it as a .png (with alpha turned on). Then I add transparency to all non-black colors over a white background, also saved as a .png with layers. That's the mask. The final step flattens the mask and saves it and the spritesheet as JPG.

[RPC]

Steelwing:
How did you render the facings? Did you individually render them/have your own rotation track/ know how to use one?

[andrewpen]

Thanks steelwing. I will try what you have suggested and let you know if I need more help.

[digdug]

The basic steps are:
1. Make a spritesheet.
2. Replace the non-black parts of the spritesheet with pure white.
3. Save.
In ImageMagick, I join all the images together to make the spritesheet and save it as a .png (with alpha turned on). Then I add transparency to all non-black colors over a white background, also saved as a .png with layers. That's the mask. The final step flattens the mask and saves it and the spritesheet as JPG.

What I do is to re-render the ship with a black texture and a white background, then invert the colours of the resulting frames. Then stitch the frames with GIMP.

[steelwing]

Steelwing:
How did you render the facings? Did you individually render them/have your own rotation track/ know how to use one?

Individually, via a script. That's what that text panel is: a python script that renders the ship at 40 facings.
As far as "rotation track", no, I have no clue what that is.

[steelwing]

Thanks steelwing. I will try what you have suggested and let you know if I need more help.

Good luck!

[andrewpen]

I have been such an idiot. I found that I can use the microsoft office to make the bmp mask.

[steelwing]

I have been such an idiot. I found that I can use the microsoft office to make the bmp mask.

Office?? Which version, and how?

[andrewpen]

2003 I went to edit pictures, colour ,then I put the saturation and hue down until it was as white as possible then I pressed the enhance colour button and it said click on the picture were it must have white so I clicked on the coloured ship and they all turned white (it may take a bit of fiddling to get it right) I did it with png and bmp sprit sheets rendered with wolfys sprit sheet generator.

[andrewpen]

My avatar is an prototype of the ship I am making.

[steelwing]

My avatar is an prototype of the ship I am making.

Cool! Reminds me of the graphics style of Oolite.