FreeOrion

Vezzra wrote:However, doing things that way is a really huge waste of screen space. Using such a huge portion of the design screen just for a big image of the hull doesn't strike me as very practical. People with smaller screens in particular won't be happy with that.

Maybe have it as an option in the settings? But most certainly I'm not the one who implements it.

Vezzra wrote:Having the stats on the left side of the hull image is a different matter, that could actually work, we might have to shrink the hull images though, and rearrange the slot positions so the stats don't get partly obscured by large hulls with lots of slots.

PR: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/458 I didn't check with huge hulls on small screens, but I think it's possible to move the hull image to the right if needed

banduri wrote:What format are the 3d models and where can I find them? If I can open the format in blender or other open source software there should be no problem.

So far all the ship models are provided as Blender files (which is the preferred format, as Blender is by far the best open source 3D renderer AFAIK). There is a dedicated repo for all these assets, freeorion-assets. The ship models are located in the arts/model folder.

Made new graphics for the Spatial Flux Hull.
I intended the external slot positions to be that retractable nose-cone and the square cargo/weapons-bay door with the orange line around it.

Vezzra wrote:Will require a lot of re-rendering of those hull pics (at least where we have the 3D model source files) and redoing of the placements of the slots, but if someone is willing to do it, why not.

This was much more then expected, especially the placements of the slots. Created https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/464

Captain M wrote:Made new graphics for the Spatial Flux Hull.
I intended the external slot positions to be that retractable nose-cone and the square cargo/weapons-bay door with the orange line around it.

Looks nice - I like the idea of a ship which is 75% engine and 25% everything else

I could write the placements of the parts and merge it with PR 464 if that's fine.

Captain M wrote:Made new graphics for the Spatial Flux Hull.

Looks really cool, but the small icon might be too similar to the one of the basic small hull. Maybe make the coloring a bit more distinct?

I tried another, lighter color with a blue/cyan tint. Looks actually better I think, and different from the much darker basic hull.

Captain M wrote:I tried another, lighter color with a blue/cyan tint. Looks actually better I think, and different from the much darker basic hull.

Not 100% sure if that will be enough, but don't want to be excessively nitpicky here. As no one else has commented/objected, I went ahead and merged.

Don't forget to make the PR for the assets repo.

banduri wrote:

Vezzra wrote:Will require a lot of re-rendering of those hull pics (at least where we have the 3D model source files) and redoing of the placements of the slots, but if someone is willing to do it, why not.

This was much more then expected, especially the placements of the slots. Created https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/464

Sorry for getting back to this only now, but as that is a more substantial change I wanted to have a bit more time to look at it, but got distracted by other things... well, here we are.

After looking at the PR there are two major things that need to be addressed:

a) What's up with those file permission changes? Are those necessary/what are they attempting to fix?

b) The images in the "hulls_design" folder are supposed to have a standard size of 2000x1000. The images you re-rendered deviate from that in most cases. I think it's preferred to keep the standard size.

c) Looking at the images I got the impression that you did some slight recoloring of some of the hulls - or is that just a result of the different lightning because of the changed angle? If the former is the case, why the recoloring?

I'd also like to have some comments of the others... the content/graphics folks in particular (Mat, SilentOne?).

Vezzra wrote:Sorry for getting back to this only now, but as that is a more substantial change I wanted to have a bit more time to look at it, but got distracted by other things... well, here we are.

No problem on that

Vezzra wrote:a) What's up with those file permission changes? Are those necessary/what are they attempting to fix?

It's seems normal to me to remove executable bits from files that are not supposed to be executed. More like a cleanup then a fix.

Vezzra wrote:b) The images in the "hulls_design" folder are supposed to have a standard size of 2000x1000. The images you re-rendered deviate from that in most cases. I think it's preferred to keep the standard size.

What's the reason behind this? If I scale the DesignWnd the images of the ship start to shrink IMHO without the need, but because the blank space of the image touches the edges. Especial if the hull is not 2:1

Vezzra wrote:c) Looking at the images I got the impression that you did some slight recoloring of some of the hulls...why the recoloring?

That's right. I did some recoloring after the rendering to increase contrast or to slightly change the overall color. I think the hulls look more polished / shiny that way.

I like the looks of the hull artwork as of RC v0.4.6., but couldn't resist making blueprints out of them

So ingame, it looks something like this:


Here's a couple of examples of the png's (reduced to 1000x500).


basic-small-hull.png


heavy_fighter_hull.png


spatial_flux_hull.png


titanic_hull.png

Alternatively, using a green/black template for "darker" tastes - 2 examples:


basic-large-hull.png


basic-small-hull.png

...and what that would look like ingame:


I'll post the complete art-folder at a later time (for feedback and comments), since now it's way past bedtime

Like I said before, I'm pretty much sold on this. I'd like to see some more "interaction" between the blueprint and the slot positioning. Looking forward to trying them out in-game.

Are you generating these blueprints from meshes, or are you running edge detection on rendered images? Some outer edges are missing, while there is too much detail on curved surfaces.

Also, I'd keep the rulers, but drop the boxes that symbolize blueprint's label/description. These could be generated in-game based on actual design's name.

The Silent One wrote:Like I said before, I'm pretty much sold on this. I'd like to see some more "interaction" between the blueprint and the slot positioning. Looking forward to trying them out in-game.

Glad you like it!
Yes, it would be nice to actually position the slots in visually logic spots (if the ship design provides it).
Which alternative do you prefer, The Silent One? Blueprints or "greenprints"?
I made all of them 2000x1000 png's and did not consider the individual slot position, so it might look strange on some ship designs, but there is no real logic behind them at the moment anyway, is there? (some of the images were smaller than 2000x1000)

You can download a zip of the blueprints here and try them out if you're interested. Obviously, backup the original and place the zip content in \\...\Free Orion root\default\data\art\hulls_design.

em3 wrote:Are you generating these blueprints from meshes, or are you running edge detection on rendered images? Some outer edges are missing, while there is too much detail on curved surfaces.

These blueprints are edge-detections (and some re-coloring) of existing ingame images. And yes, some edges are missing and some surface textures remain. I quite like that though and did not bother to complement/clear the images, since it gives a a "roughness" to the print. One could work the images or models themselves to create "perfect" drawings, but that was not my intention.

em3 wrote:Also, I'd keep the rulers, but drop the boxes that symbolize blueprint's label/description. These could be generated in-game based on actual design's name.

A good idea to use the label/description boxes for information on the actual design! Some work and imagination to gather the information, but most of it should be available ingame, right? Also, if it becomes a dynamic stringbox one could retrieve information depending on what the user mounts?

The position of the slots on display is frequently something Sloth and I spent time on, but we didn't spend any time at all on some of the ships. Plus, some bits of art aren't conducive to it and some ship designs have so many slots positioning them was impossible (hello Solar Hull, I am talking about you).

I really like the look of the blueprints, I think I marginally prefer the blue.

But...

I also like (a lot) some of the other art, some of which is very recent, and currently it wouldn't be used much, it would be a shame to lost it completely but there currently isn't a space for it: perhaps replace the icon in the Pedia entries with the existing non-blueprint art? Or use it in the actual articles in some way?