Modders: I'm Looking to Team Up

[Kalthaniell]

Yup, with the new character portraits I was second-guessing the previous pics. It's so easy to make new characters that it makes sense to make the race pics the same way and simply implement them with extra work and touch. Then again, as you wrote, there is the possiblity of making alternative race images with stuff in them rather then characters. Althogh, I too prefer to see a human dude in dilomacy instead talking to a flag The third option is to make race pics as the two already made and use the character portraits which don't entirely match in terms of style. That's something we need to decide upon before making more stuff obviously. My vote is on the first option -it's the easiest.


As far as the colors go, this only proves even further that we think alike. Don't worry, I'll discuss with you any further art before I start working on anything new. The truth is,I had no idea where I was going with colors and apperance. I just wanted to see if this system would work, so I made sth more or less matching the orginal race pics. Now the real concept work begins .

[WoodMan]

We can make the race pics this way if you like. [:)]

Continuity is good so I'm happy doing like you say.  I think it should be a seperate guy for the race pic, i.e. not a guy who will also appear as a character, but can be made the same way.

[Kalthaniell]

Hey Woodman,

I have a bit of free time and I was wondering about making the 'Cynet'faction. Artificaly enhanced race right? Generally good natured?

What do you think about White/grey light armor + well designed clothing + a X theme color [they can't be white in DW]. What do you think would match the race? I can add some subtle details on thier faces to show agumentation - nothing too fancy, neat holo glasses, small skin implants, stuff like that. High tec or Starcraft protos ancient background? maybe some other style?

[WoodMan]

Here are some colour suggestions. I once had all these races in-game, a very long time ago, but I can't recall what colours I used. Nothing here is concrete! The ones with ??? are something I can only just about recall, the ones left blank I can't recall at all, the others I'm pretty sure is what I used previously.

0 Dark Blue - Mechan
1 Mid Blue - Terran
2 Light Blue - Utopians???
3 Cyan - Cynet
4 Dark Green -
5 Mid Green -
6 Light Green - Holo
7 Yellow Green -
8 Yellow - Marketeers
9 Orange - Nautilus
10 Bright Red - Datajacks
11 Dark Red - Inquisitor
12 Dark Brown - Junker???
13 Mid Brown - Junker???
14 Light Brown/Gold - Junker???
15 Light Purple -
16 Dark Purple -
17 Very Dark Pink -
18 Bright Pink -
19 Pale Pink - Utopians???

[Kalthaniell]

Concepts for Cynet:


I tried to make the characters' cybernetic aspect as subtle as possible, so no terminator-style robot half-face. I went with Deus Ex'ish skin implants and glowing or bright and vivid eyes (which by the way was a great suggestion by JHGT). As you can probably see, I used different levels of cyan colouring (from subtle to next-to-none).

Here are the main physical features of the characters from left top to bottom right:
1. No skin implants, white hair/bright skin, vivid cyan eyes.
2. Subtle skin impants, white hair/normal skin, glowy cyan eyes.
3. Vivid skin implants, dark hair/bright skin, bright green eyes.
4. No skin implants, normal Hair/skin, glowy white eyes with gadgets.
5. Subtle skin implants, blondehair/red makeup, vivid red eyes.

As for the outfits I tried to pick smart civilan clothes plus light armor + cybernetic limbs.

What combination of any of the traits is best suited for Cynet Woodman? What do you think of the background? From what I understood they were an technologically supperior faction?

Whichever you chose gets 25 brothers and sisters

[WoodMan]

Actually I like the variety above, they all look like Cynet to me, I say keep the variety above across the 25 [:)]

I think they should have normal colour eyes though, I like the idea of a blue glow for the Psi faction (telepaths).  Red eyes might look good in the Revenant faction, it's going to be hard making them, so the red eyes is one idea we can put aside for them [8D]

[Shark7]

When you get to the point of the number crunching stuff, let me know, I can definitely help with the 'coding' part. As far as the artwork goes, you guys are far better at it than I am. [8D]

[WoodMan]

No problem Shark7, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned [:D]

Once Legends is released I'll make a proper list of everyone taking part and what they are doing.  At the moment, anytime I would usually be spending working on modding I'm working on the Legends stuff, I hope to have it finished and sent off to Erik tonight or tomorrow though, the time is drawing near, Legends is coming [:D]

[Data]

Slow down a bit, don't make them release it sooner than it's ready....in other fields I mean, as for the one you're responsible I'm sure it's more than done [:)]

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Data

Slow down a bit, don't make them release it sooner than it's ready....in other fields I mean, as for the one you're responsible I'm sure it's more than done [:)]

Don't worry Data, Erik and Elliot have things well in hand. They're operating things as
smooth as Starfleet Command! [:)]

[lordxorn]

Maybe we should get permission to see what we can talk about as far as the specifics of Legends modding, because I am a tester for it. Just don't know what I can divulge about it, so I will ask in the teser forums.

There are some changes that may facilitate what your going for woodman.

[WoodMan]

I've started messing around with ships (now the Legends stuff is finished), this is a low detail WIP progress peice. It is a Terran Cruiser. It's mostly an experiment to see what kind of stuff I can come up with without using too much art from DW.

There is a runway on the front for fighters, Andromeda Project setting is quite low tech, so this fits well [:)]

Edit: I mention low-tech, so lets start discussion. It looks like we can rename techs and we already know weapons graphics are moddable. I'm thinking for a start the energy torpedoes should be replaced with mines - Magnetic Mine, Heat Seeking Mine, Laser Guided Mine, Artificial Intelligence Mine etc

We can also have Mass Drivers (bullets), Autocannons, Flak Cannons, dunno, suggestions welcome, also weapon graphics modders welcome [8D]

Further Edit: Also shields... are they too high tech for this setting? (There ain't any in Babylon 5 for example, that I can recall anyway). What do they do in Enterprise? Is it called Polarizing Hull Plating or something, or maybe we could go with Babylon 5 style, intercepting weapons fire with other weapons fire, anyway Shield Tech names and the graphics for when a ship is hit on the shields are both moddable.

[lordxorn]

I love it, nice looking ship, do you hand draw your ships? I am interested to know your work flow, and the software you use.

I was thinking though, since Elliot has really implemented Carriers and fighters, wouldn't it be more prudent to include that cool looking launch deck in a pure Carrier class now that it is in Legends? I understand some people may add fighter bays to non Carrier classes, but maybe you can add like Side Ports that allow launching of maybe 2 fighter/bomber wings, which is the most a Cruiser can carry.

Just my two cents.

I really enjoy drawing and have all the tools like a Graphire, Photoshop, 3DSMAX, MAYA, etc.. I guess I just need a reason to be whipped into drawing something. I can flesh out a shape with some line drawings however texturing and coloring really scares me, that is why I would like to learn more about that and help you out with the art assets.

So if you want to assign me a specific race, and ship class I will try and knock those out for ya.

=)

[tjhkkr]

Anything I can do to help you Woodman...?

Some of the ST stuff on ships that have no shields call it 'deflector plates'

Some words for weapons
dagger (I like the word hyper-dagger and use it in my novel)
arrow

[WoodMan]

Hey Xorn,

I need to try handrawing ships (large then shrinking them and adding pixel detail) but always feel in too much of a hurry.

For this ship I found a texture online, 3D brown blocks, I draw it down randomly, make it symetrical and cut out rough shape of a ship. Then I do same again but instead of cut out shape of ship, cut out smaller shapes and put them on the ship for more detail. I reduced detail by using Cutout filter, so it no longer looks so obvious like cut up blocks. I paint some colours onto some parts by painting in Overlay, the selecting, changing layer and desaturate the layer underneath. The runway was an actual picture of runway shrunk down, made symmetrical for seamless pasting (but I only needed to do it once so that was pointless this time and drawing in the lights with the pencil. I used a photo of some pipes from a gas works to do the vertical piping bits on the mid sides and the pipes on the backend you can barely even see. I cut the big exhaust off of a Distant Worlds ship and the aerials too. I go over some lines with dark grey on overlay to make them standout and use some dodge and burn, but I forgot to burn the left and right hand sides of ship to make it look more 3D and dodge down the centre, sometimes I did that on Diverse World ships but forgot here and it does look "flat" in-game. Finally sharpen [:)]

[Igard]

Really nice job there WoodMan.[:)]

[ehsumrell1]

Dr. Woodman.....Head Designer of the Utopia Planetia Galactic Shipyards! [&o]

[WoodMan]

The runway doesn't show up in RotS, too blurry [:D]
I guess we have to wait to see if Legends new rendering engine can handle things like this.

Thanks for kind comments Igard and ehsumrell [:)]

lordxorn
Sorry for not responding to your question immediately, I had to think about it for a bit because I'm (probably unhealthily) obsessed when it comes to art assets with what  Kal and I previously referred to as "everything looking like it has come out of the same box".  For this mod I would like to take sole responsibility for creating the ship artwork, please read on and please don't be mad at me [:(]  

I really love that many people want to be involved with the mod, it is what I was hoping for, and am loving Kals characters and looking forward to somebody (preferably not Kal as he has a big job already) taking on the job of converting most of DW weaponry and shielding away from energy based weapons into conventional weapons, also someone having a go at new flags of course (which can now be included in modding folder). 

Furthermore, there will only be one set of ships in Andromeda Project.  This probably sounds a bit crazy, with every race now being allowed its own shipset (actually thats been possible since RotS), but let me explain:  The set will be bigger than 26 (somewhere between 40 & 60 most likely) and spread across the races.  For example, the Slaver faction are the inhabitants of the prison world, a whole planets worth of escaped convicts.  The ships they use will be logical to them: Freighters the same as Terran, these are the supply ships to the prison world, they don't need a special design.  Military ships: heck no, they don't have access to Terran military hardware, they may have Escorts as probably some were stored on the planet to escort incoming and outgoing prison transports, but the rest will be prison ships, converted to another purpose with added weaponry of course, but they are still part of the same "set", the Terran Empire set.  Mechanoids may be an exception to this rule and have their own set, but of course they were designed by the Terran so they won't be too different.

We can discuss this more in future, once the Terran design is down (I don't like the above anymore), there may be opportunity to make Mechan ships. More news later!

[Kalthaniell]

First and foremost, I love the ship you made Woodman. The concept of adding a runway for smallcraft is great and it matches the design perfectly. I wonder if you could use some parts from ships from my spaceyards to explore new avenues with this mod. I suspect you could do wonders tampering with some new resources.

Lordxorn - I think it's great you are willing to learn about colouring and textures. IMHO, it's the hardest and the most rewarding thing about making graphics. Maybe you can repaint some independent or pirate ships if Woodman allows it? Something similar to what I did with the pirate ships in my shipyards. Freighters with custom company trademarks etc. Or planet art?
What do you think Woodman?