[MOD] StelliFer Labs: Armor Item Graphics

A place to discuss mods in development and concepts for new mods.
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BlakeG228
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These are kick ass graphics man! We need more people with your skills contributing to this game! Thanks for all your great additions! :D
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SiaFu
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Wurmish wrote:I'm curious, what program did you use to alter the armor pictures?
For rendering - I've downloaded TrueSpace 7.6 (which is now free, there's a thread somewhere on the forum...) and used the Transcendence Art scenes George Moromisato has gracefully released to the community.
Renders were then photoshopped (but GIMP, for instance, is a free raster image editing tool). And for vector-based design I'd suggest some free CAD or vector program that has mirroring, polar array and hatch functions, like FreeCAD.
Last edited by SiaFu on Fri Sep 24, 2010 4:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Wurmish
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I have GIMP and access to PS through school at the moment. What is the comparison in functionality and usability between free CADs and the lovely expensive ones like AutoCAD?
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SiaFu
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I'd say the difference between commercial products and free projects boils down to possible specialized purposes, knowledgebase/community, tech support, and any special-case capabilities (scriptability, add-ons, procedure streamlining - anything to save time and money for the engineers using it).
So, unless you intend to design your PlayerShips with full piping and heating plans :D any CAD should do for a few quick sketches.
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Atarlost
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I wouldn't recommend doing ships in CAD. Those that were done in a CAD program have flat lighting, no shadows, and just plain look wrong.

Item icons are probably safe to do in CAD.
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SiaFu
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Sorry, edited wrong post... now, made a new one.

Regarding CAD:
To keep the thread on topic, here's the new Sung coffin made entirely in TrueSpace, with some photo editing (the silhouette and barcode).
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I used CAD only for sketching and in the SFs30 ship HUD design. Although, flat rendering is a thing of the past with modern CADs. With small ships there's almost no difference if they support ray tracing as we don't need volumetric effects in space.

However, an important feature of rendering in Truespace is that it even exports lights, shadows and geometry in different layers of a .PSD so you'll have an easier time in GIMP and making the Alpha mask afterwards. OTOH, Wolfy made a script for ship facings in GMAX, which in Truespace is a slow and tedious task because of the dual 7.6/ 6,0 interface.
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stealthx
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SiaFu wrote:I have a question first: what is the significance of the

areaSet="0,2" part of the ArmorSection definition?
In the original ships the values are: Front: 0,2; Left(Port) 3,4; Right(Sbd) 7,13 and Aft 1,6. Northwinds 5-seg armor just reuses the combo and I can't find the definition in the Wiki.


Back to graphics: Here's the HUD for the SFs30 Indigo: Bashed up with full shields, sporting Iocrym plate for armor strength display placement (1-4 digits, centered); then unscathed with shields at 60%, then armor at 20% with shields down.
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Until I've successfully implemented the HUD I won't have time to make changes to the model. I planned to add some detail with a custom bump/texture and redo the wings, but It'll probably be for the SFs31.



And there's the 7-scale Sung armor. To me this looks more like studded than scale plate as the connecting studs seem to stand out.
Detail is constrained by the 96x96px format. I've tried adjusting the lights in the standard scene to reduce the burned out white areas, but I'm limited by the camera perspective.
Wow, these are way too kool! (I am jealous already :P ) Are you going to make your own custom ship interior image too?
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SiaFu
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Custom dockscreen graphics will go last, hopefully.
I did want to make a representation of the command core. It's supposed to be in the ship center mass (since we don't get escape pods anyway), away from viewports and exploding control panels :twisted: with a nice holo display of the surroundings fed through a series of redundant micro-cameras scattered about the hull.
The problem is that it'd be a static display, not representative of said surroundings and status of various HUD elements, so I'm skipping it until I figure out what to do.

And, I'd like to finish the quests first.


On a technical note....

I'm still having trouble with the right wing armor HP placement, as it's stuck at +82px and doesn't move, no matter what value I put for hpX=" " in the XML (and on Wolfen it goes over 90px).

Code: Select all

<ArmorSection start="155" span="50" armorID="&itSFPolymeshArmor;" areaSet="1,6"  />

...

<ArmorSection name="Stbd Wing"
imageID="&rsSFs30IndigoAMR;"
imageX="277" imageY="0" imageWidth="50" imageHeight="44"
destX="68" destY="56" hpX="86" hpY="71"
nameY="57" nameBreakWidth="360" nameDestX="8" nameDestY="8" />
Anyone care to explain the areaSet variable?

I had ordered the armor segments counter-clockwise from the nose to starboard bow, but I've had to put port stern and starboard stern last, after "Aft" as their HP displays were being overlapped by segment damage colouring. So now they're a bit in disarray when you scroll through armor repairs and coating.

The various armor item graphics are all set (Dark matter and Hierosteel are excluded), some item graphics are done as well and the custom weapons from StelliFer. Some sounds were added too, up to particle.

I've been testing the ship so it's playable and bug-free, although it has a bit simpler flat HUD armor coloring right now. I'll need to change the design of the nose as it's too dark when facing away from the light source, now it was just brightened.

Initial loadout:
Starting armor will be a nerfed L2 polymesh (expensive repairs, laser vulnerable), offset with the laser deflector so you need to replace those armor segments before facing the Charon. And you get a shoddy 16MW reactor but also a front 160° swivel light recoilless turret.
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Atarlost
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One warning: If the swivel is in the ship rather than the item it gets inherited by any weapon placed in the slot. This means that later in the game the player would be able to put some vastly more potent weapons on a swivel that really shouldn't have that capability.
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Song
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Atarlost wrote:One warning: If the swivel is in the ship rather than the item it gets inherited by any weapon placed in the slot. This means that later in the game the player would be able to put some vastly more potent weapons on a swivel that really shouldn't have that capability.
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SiaFu
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It's the weapon, and it's in every aspect a weaker weapon than the omni laser the Freighter would get (since Centauri are kinetic resistant). I made the light recoilless swivel because of the ship's somewhat slower turning rate.
The ship has no special abilities aside from having 8 armor segments and a generous number of device slots.

Any tips on the AreaSet and my hpX positioning woes?
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