I'm not sure where to post this...

Long introduction, but I want you to know that I'm legitimate...

Hello EV forums. I don't know if any of you remember a user named Flurrie from about two years back; most of the posts were in the SketchFighter forums; anyway, that guy is me. It seems that yahoo mail deleted my email account, and I've lost the password for the "Flurrie" account name, so I'm using this new account now.

I've created this topic to ask for some advice and maybe beg for some assistance on a project that I'm working on for Nova. Long story short: I'm trying to throw together a TC for Nova in my spare time. The only problem, however, is that I'm in college right now and don't have easy access (or the resources to acquire) any 3D graphics software that I know of. Basically, I just wanted to ask you guys what software you recommend for that kind of work that is good quality but (comparatively) inexpensive. I also wanted to ask the boards in general about recoloring sprites, and the best way to make it not look uneven.

Any help, comments, or responses are greatly appreciated.

That's a real shame, I've heard yahoo mail is bad, but I didn't know it arbitrarily deletes email addresses. Anyway when it comes to 3d software I've noticed that it's free or it costs a few hundred dollars. For free software people for some obscure reason recommend blender or wings3d <_< . The former is almost impossible to use without going through some sort of apprenticeship, and the ladder can't apply textures or render ... anything. A lot of people also use sketchup. It's free, but there are some useful features that come with the $700 pro edition. Like some other guy said on the user made faq (I think it was meaker vi or starsword I can't remember) there's no such thing as the 'best' 3d modeling program. It all depends on what you are comfortable with and how much experience you've had. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick response!

I've heard about SketchUp, but the $700 price tag turned me away... <_<

I was reading Delphi's topic, and he seemed to be using Bryce for his ship modeling...do you know anything about that program?

Also, I'm having difficulty with a recolor in Photoshop...the "select>color range" tool is failing to grab all of the green areas on the Rebel IDA Frigate spïn sheet that I'm using...Any ideas on how to make it get just the greens, but not the rest of the ship or the black background?

I don't know much about bryce, but what I can tell you is using the lite version of gamemaker it is very easy to recolor sprites. Just look at these spectacular rebel ida designs of mine

Attached File(s)

• ida2.PNG (9.76K)
  Number of downloads: 19

Delphi actually uses Sketchup to make his models and then imports them into Bryce to texture and paint them. Sketchup also has a free version that is still very capable and can export to a .dae format that can be imported into Blender and probably a few other render programs.

I've recently figured out how to make some decent quality graphics using the pieces Delphi released, Sketchup, and a file Meaker VI released. Check out the gallery in my sig to see what I've made so far. The quality of actual 'rendered' stuff I make isn't true render quality, but I feel it's decent enough.

You can find an example of my fake render quality stuff in this post and you can find Meaker's file attached to this post.

Thanks for the replies! I'll look into SketchUp; if the lite version can get anywhere close to the graphics of the original game, then that would work for me.

As far as gamemaker, I'm afraid you'd have to spell out how you did that recolor...I'm trying to do it through Parallels with the same PICT file taken from MissionComputer, and I still can't figure it out completely...

Blargh, double post... XP

Does anyone know what software was used to make the ships in the original Nova game?

it was lightwave I believe, but it has a professional price tag exceeding a thousand dollars.

I suspected as much...

I've been messing around with SketchUp, but I'm finding it difficult to make things that are curved...does anyone have any ideas on how to do that? (oh, and I'm still stuck on the sprite recolor thing, although I do have gamemaker lite now)

What I'm trying to make is a ship that looks like a single-person of the Subarashii from Arpia; sleek and curving, but not alien. SketchUp does straight lines great, but it doesn't seem to like curves too much...

QUOTE (fir992 @ Sep 3 2010, 09:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Also, I'm having difficulty with a recolor in Photoshop...the "select>color range" tool is failing to grab all of the green areas on the Rebel IDA Frigate spïn sheet that I'm using...Any ideas on how to make it get just the greens, but not the rest of the ship or the black background?

If you just want to change the colours of a ship, I’d suggest you try out the Adjust:Hue/Saturation tool rather than selecting colour ranges.

Thanks, man. I used the recolor technique and it worked like a charm. It turned the engine nozzles a little bit green, but I'll get over that...thanks for the help!

Alright, so...I have a non-graphics related question. In fact, it's not really anything important, just a little tiny detail thing. I'm turning the IDA Frigate into a military vessel, and I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not to keep its current 'variant' theme (350 NC, 1150 NC, etc) or change to one like the Federation uses for destroyers (Heavy Missile Variant, Light Carrier Version, Auroran Outfits, etc). I don't want to make the ship more powerful than the same race's destroyer-class ship, but more powerful than the civilian versions of the IDA, and I do want there to be more than one military version of the ship.

Any ideas, suggestions, flames for my even bothering to type this out, are greatly appreciated.

You could always use a new year for the NC designator, and maybe add Combat or Assault Version or something like that to the end of it. That would work with the rest of the IDA ships then too.

You could even get creative and make your own system. That's the beauty of making plug-ins: you decide!

Thanks for the input, guys.

Here's what I've come up with:

The Lycians will have two classes of frigates in their fleet: the normal one, with the "Escort Class" subtitle, and the heavy one, with the "Assault Version" subtitle.

- Escort Class -
2 medium blaster turrets, 2 radar missile launchers + 30 ammo, 1 quad light blaster turret

- Assault Version -
2 medium blaster turrets, 2 light blaster turrets, 4 radar missile launchers + 60 ammo, 1 heavy rocket launcher + 6 rockets

Civilian versions of the craft run like this:

- Civilian Capital Class -
1 light blaster turret, 1 medium blaster turret, 1 Javelin rocket pod + 20 ammo

- Civilian Light Destroyer -
2 medium blaster turrets, 2 Javelin rocket turrets + 40 ammo

- Civilian Carrier Class -
1 light blaster turret, 1 medium blaster turret, 1 Civilian Longsword bay + 2 Longswords, 1 quad light blaster turret

- Heavily Modified -
2 medium blaster turrets, 2 quad light blaster turrets, 2 100mm fixed railguns, 2 150mm fixed railguns, 4 radar missile launchers + 40 ammo

This post has been edited by fir992 : 05 September 2010 - 08:10 PM

QUOTE (fir992 @ Sep 5 2010, 12:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I used the recolor technique and it worked like a charm. It turned the engine nozzles a little bit green . . .

Depending on how much work you’re willing to put in, you could probably mask off the parts you don’t want to change before you change the colours. Even a simple feathered selection might do the job.

Yeah, I just masked over it in quick mask mode and it deselected those parts.

I'm also experiencing a slight problem in Mission Computer: my TC file has reached ~14.5MB, and I'm needing to split it into smaller portions, but I can't get Mission Computer to use the other parts of it in the 'open special' menu, and they don't show up in the resource selectors. Adding them to the 'open special' list under Preferences isn't doing anything. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

To split it all you need to do is tell Mission Computer to make a new plug-in and copy resources from your first file to the new one. Then delete the files you copied from the first file. Then you're done!

True, but if i wait until I have all of the resources in the first file, it'll be HUGE (~90 MB), and I don't want it to get damaged before I get to split it...

This post has been edited by fir992 : 06 September 2010 - 12:26 PM

QUOTE (fir992 @ Sep 6 2010, 09:07 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

. . . I can't get Mission Computer to use the other parts of it in the 'open special' menu, and they don't show up in the resource selectors. Adding them to the 'open special' list under Preferences isn't doing anything.

So they don't appear in either Open Special or the Resource Selector's pop-up menu? If you quit and re-open MissionComputer, are they at least still listed in Preferences?

QUOTE (fir992 @ Sep 6 2010, 01:26 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

True, but if i wait until I have all of the resources in the first file, it'll be HUGE (~90 MB), and I don't want it to get damaged before I get to split it...

Definitely don't wait to split the plug-in, no matter what the inconvenience. Most major plug-in projects of the old days experienced resource loss from over-large files, including the scenarios of both EV Override and EV Nova. Also, the total file size is not the only one in effect, but it's the only one that MissionComputer can monitor, so it's better in every way to split sooner rather than later.