Some interesting ship models...

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
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xanoblivion
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Some interesting ship models...

#1 Post by xanoblivion »


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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Unless they're available under a license compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, they're of no use to us. Random stuff found on google likely isn't.

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xanoblivion
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#3 Post by xanoblivion »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Unless they're available under a license compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, they're of no use to us. Random stuff found on google likely isn't.
The were custom made by a player, for the game Galactic Civilization, but didn't make it into anything.

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Tortanick
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#4 Post by Tortanick »

Do you know witch player? Maybe he'd let us use them.

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pd
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#5 Post by pd »

I'd rather like doing our own, from scratch.

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Tortanick
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#6 Post by Tortanick »

May I ask why? If there is nothing wrong with someone elses models and they're willing to let us use them why not?

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pd
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#7 Post by pd »

There are a couple of reasons:

Artistically I'd like to explore new design directions. Not this usual pseudo random sci-fi stuff. I want more depth and variety.
Technically, we don't know what format those are in. It's likely that some effort needs to be made to convert and export the meshes, if they can be used at all.
Also textures will have to be reworked and new ones will have to be made(illumination, normal, ambient occlusion). I'd rather put this effort in our own designs.

I prefer to create original content instead of piecing freeOrion together from things we find around the net. It's not that we are in desperate need for such things.
Give us a chance to actually start working on this fun subject on our own. This way we'll find out what is possible technically and artistically and in return we'll be able to attract new people easier.

tzlaine
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#8 Post by tzlaine »

At the risk of nitpicking, I should point out that we probably won't be doing ambient occlusion. In addition to being CPU intensive, it doesn't make much sense in a scene with one hard light source (the system's star) and very low ambient light.

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xanoblivion
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#9 Post by xanoblivion »

Ahhh. Well, I had no intention of meaning "Copy this and put it in the game", as thats not a direction to take. It has been more to take a look at it, and see if it brings any thoughts to mind of anything you'd style for a certain race.

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pd
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#10 Post by pd »

I should point out that we probably won't be doing ambient occlusion.
We don't need a seperate AO texture. One can simply bake the information into the color map. While it doesn't make much sense in a space game, it's still worth trying as it usually adds visual interest, because it adds depth to the mesh. Btw, in a nebular environment it could make sense.

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xanoblivion
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#11 Post by xanoblivion »

This is what I found where that pic came from. It's from Galactic Civilization, and a guy posted the pic with this comment..

Guys, guys....it's a brand new game and you can play it on your old system. It plays rather well actually. I especially like the starship editor. Some guy designed these and they are better then the styles in game. I am still trying to get them to load up in a single player game:

So this is probably an ingame editor thing, so oh well.

charlieg
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Vega Strike as a source?

#12 Post by charlieg »

(this post has been merged from a separate thread)

Have you looked at the Vega Strike ships as a source for artwork for FreeOrion?

They have over a hundred - many high quality - fully textured 3D sci-fi ships in their repositories.

Some examples (off the cuff, not selective):
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... php?t=8761
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=12001
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=11819

There's a wide variety of styles, and all models are Free Software licensed, in the their SVN somewhere.

Even if you plan to have all original content eventually, this would be a great way to fill out your model collection and replace 1 by 1 over time. It would also be a great way for the projects to work together / advertise each other.
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dahlgren
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#13 Post by dahlgren »

I'm all for creating all new content but I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to start with a base and expand upon it. (Isn't that the open source way?) For example there are hundreds if not thousands of high quality 3d ships made for freespace SCP (also gpl) that could provide as a great starting point.

Here is a subset of what's available.

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.ph ... made_Ships

Another advantage is they are already sorted into groups of similar architecture and different classifications (single person to capital class)

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Josh
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A visual "How to"

#14 Post by Josh »

Ascendancy

A visual "how to" on ship lines.

charlieg
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Re: Some interesting ship models...

#15 Post by charlieg »

pd wrote:I'd rather like doing our own, from scratch.
Do you know how many man-hours that will take?

I don't think it's bad to aspire to have all-original content, but I believe it's wise to be pragmatic and absorb relevant material from other projects if it is suitable. They can always be replaced later on when artists are available.
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