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Author Topic: Ship Pipeline for Lost Stars using primarily Blender and Photoshop  (Read 1149 times)
Benjamin Parker
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« on: August 23, 2015, 12:28:24 AM »

This is a Devlog originally posted on the games site at: https://loststarsthegame.wordpress.com/

Hello and welcome to the first Art Department Devlog. This is my process for creating the ships in Lost Stars. Specifically, I’ll take you through the step by step creation of the Savage BattleShip:



STEP 1: THINKING

Before I start making a ships I have the mood and design language of the faction already in place. After this I think. Thinking might sound like an obvious step, or one that’s silly to point out, but it’s where I usually go wrong.

No game plan can waste hours of work, and lead to frustrating and awkward outbursts at Starbucks.

First, I identified the points that make up the design language of the Savage faction.
A. fang like motifs and triangular highlights
B. organic outer shells over darker busier internals
C. ships that look almost like animals

Then I identified the requirements for the Savage Battleship.
A. 6 cannons for brutal broadsides (sorry players)
B. bulkier than the other Savage ships
C. not a playable ship

STEP 2: ROUGH SHAPES

Next I get some rough shapes that seem like they have the right design language for the faction. There are a number of ways I can go about this, from drawing the hardpoints and sketching around them, to making silhouettes in photoshop, to using the lasso tool to make near random shapes from photos. The Savage ships are the most bizarre and alien so I used the program Alchemy to generate semi random shapes, then I stared into them like some sort of Rorschach test trying to find inspiration.

They usually look something like this:



STEP 3: CONCEPT ART

Typically I’ll take my favorite of the Silhouettes and push them to be something more like a ship, and more aesthetically pleasing, then I will sketch over them. I prefer to work on a bunch of ships at the same time as it’s more efficient. After I sketch a few pages of rough designs, I take the least crappy ones and put them on one page to run it buy the sorcerer (programmer?) of a CEO.



We discuss the designs, see what needs to be fixed, what would lead to good gameplay, then I either A. go back to the drawing board and start again, B. refine the designs more, or C. start modelling in 3D! Some of these designs worked pretty well so any necessary adjustments were made during the 3D modelling phase.

STEP 4: 3D MODEL

I use blender, from blender.org, with some zbrush, but mainly blender. If any of the people who make blender are reading this, I love you! If I can ever work my way up in the world from a bowl noodle diet and shoes from a Korean dollar store (I’m in Korea at the moment, the shoes are really uncomfortable), I’ll spend some money to support your program.

The 3D modelling can be tricky when I am getting the initial shape down because often lines and shapes that looked cool from an orthographic view in the concept art just don’t make sense in the real world. Some of my designs would make Escher proud, but as good as blender is, it doesn’t let me model finite stairwells to infinity.
So, first:
I make the rough shape,
I tweak the proportions and solve any bizarre problems from the concept art
I start detailing,
I keep detailing until my eyes glaze over,
I keep detailing until my eyes start to bleed and I run out of coffee.




STEP 5: RENDER AND PAINT

Now it’s time to render! I render a few different colors to composite in Photoshop. The ships can rotate so I make sure that the lighting is perfectly centered above them so they don’t clash with the environment or other ships when turning (ie. one ship lit from the left, other lit from the right, jarring). Here is an example:



In Photoshop I composite the different renders, add photos for texture and extra greebles using overlay layers, adjust the contrast and colors, then start painting details. The end result is an image like this (actually this is half the size of the original, I like to paint big so it looks very detailed from far out):



That I shrink to the in game asset which is something like this:



STEP 6: FINISHING UP

All that’s left now is to make a graphic explaining how things work to the programmer, who will use his black magic to make the ship kill me on my phone over and over again.



And that’s it! If you have any questions about the process, or harsh criticisms of my workflow, or if you think the Savage Battleship looks too much like a surprised frog, leave a message in the comments.

Ben Parker
Lead Art Slave,
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