Low-spec Spaceship Design, crits?

Vrav

With a couple online comrades, I am collaborating this month as the artist for a low-spec, Wing Commander-esque, X-Wing-inspired space shooter. I've never been in charge of both conceptualization and production before, so Ninjas from the forums here has been giving me a bit of positive direction. Making a thread to post my progress through the project in hopes of receiving criticism and suggestions from a broader audience.





And these, which I did yesterday, may be a step in the wrong direction - but I think they can serve as a base of caricatures upon which to build the preferable, more believable and realistic style (as in the boat-looking ship above). If anything they provide a set of simple fantasy ships to fall back upon if the cooler art direction doesn't work out.

Richard Kain

Looks like some solid concepts. I would focus on fleshing out some additional sketches from all angles with the ones you really like. Right now all of your concepts are from one angle. For the ships you decide are worth expanding on, you are going to want more thorough concepts before you start constructing 3D models. I would advise coming up with some more large craft, like the cruiser-looking piece you have in the middle. The hero craft and small stunt fighters are of course important. But for space-fighter games, the mid-size and large craft are the real set-pieces, and will require the most detail.

I like the concept of having two different craft fusing together at some point during gameplay. That could have some real promise for livening things up.

dolemite

too phallic? impossible.

Ninjas

Looking good. I think a few of those designs are cool. One thing to keep in mind is that plausible design is often in the details. Since these are just sketches, with the right treatment I think any of the thumbs could be a plausible design.

If these were numbered left to right, with the top row being 1-4, I think 1, 2, 5 and 9 are my favorites although I think 6 and 7 have a lot going for them also.

Slum

Awesome, i really like the silhouettes in the thumbs page. The sweeping organic curves make them look alien, so try more angular corners for something more reasonable for human craft.

Vrav

Kind of furious (not really) this morning; woke up late and brewed some nasty coffee. It's sort of strange to treat a job/project as a cram study session, as I'm trying a lot of things I've never really done before—drawing an object from different angles, thinking about function, or at least faking it, and trying desperately to still implement conceptual design in shapes. All valuable, long overdue experience, but a learning process nonetheless. Very anxious to get some modeling done though.



Lesson learned here is to spend less time on the first angle of a concept, top for example, and put in less detail the first time around; lots of shapes are somewhat of an unnecessary challenge to translate into other angles (many, many crossing lines) and the overall design gets sort of lost in trying to fit everything into 3D space.

Think I'll purposefully try to work some simple, but interesting and practical shapes into a huge battleship or carrier, and put more into surface detail than protruding forms; after all, lowpoly models are going to get their details from the texture. In general, the concepts might be solid, but so is fibrous excrement; while I'd be willing to model my own boring concept, realistically I want to be creating designs that just scream a desire to be modeled... so we'll see. [/ramble]

lol@dolemite. thanks for the advice guys, will bear these things in mind!

Vrav

Larger ships, angular design, quicker execution, mild deviations from symmetry... now we talkin'? Not the largest ships to come, but maybe headed in the right direction. I'm feeling it anyway.



Space suits or something next. Got to have some little mans to man the deck and turrets on the battleship... and splat when you shoot them. kind of a fickle thing to design though, as I can't really see pouring more than 15 polys into such a tiny detail, probably a lot less even. Like 4. Boxmen. I wonder if the iPhone renders LoD? 8, 4, 2 sounds feasible. I won't dwell on it...

Edit: actually, they could probably pass as one or two at all times - side view and front view planes... animated like Doom, if need be. I did a quick sketch but it looks too much like Master Chief from far away and I don't really dig that. Subconscious mistake, wasn't thinking very hard. Maybe ditch the armored space marine route and just make wee astronauts. I do like the hooded grimace, however. It's either that or a bulky, opaque astronaut bubble. Either way, I want them to be subtly comical.

Ninjas

These capital ship designs are very cool.

SHEPEIRO

nice designs is this going to be a vertical shooter or 3d?

Vrav

Thanks Shep, Aubrey.

It's going to be 3D, something like Wing Commander below. Maybe around 50 triangles per ship, using textures mostly, and transparency... am more or less confident that I've gotten myself conceptually oriented, and should hopefully be able to explore a few more designs this weekend before starting some models.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjH2VVqUoGI[/ame]

The top-down ships in my first post are still sort of cool to me, but I don't really see that sort of style working for this project; maybe will create my own small 2D shmup sometime with them...

Vrav

Still sort of working out a style, but could not resist attempting a test model tonight. The UVs are probably the most wasteful in the history of low-poly modeling, so I think that is an area I will have to focus on... improving? Putting more thought into, at least. Tests, tests. Looking at it now, might've just merged away the four-triangle hood above the cockpit. Also might prefer to pop up the metal cylinders running out the back, as in the concept, and make the nose square again. But mostly I am still experimenting, open to change, and particularly ashamed of the wasteful, wasteful UV layout. It would seem all I can do to improve upon that is to study others' work, so at least there is a thread full of this stuff.

I mean to ask about what I've done with replicating the wings and flipping the normals for the inner surface; what is better, secondary UV sets? No idea about that. It is also four extra tris that could be used on something more interesting. One thing I'm curious about is the difference between triangles and vertices at this level, but that might be something to ask Henry, the programmer; this model is 38, and I can think of more than one way to eliminate them; merge away the hood (that's two), make the gold trim above the cockpit part of the cockpit bit itself (two more), and possibly an alternate solution to those wing faces, perhaps bringing it down eight more. But I am under the impression that UV space is just the same, so with alternate UV sets I'm really not dealing with any lesser quantity of vertices that must be run through by the engine.

... Why do I talk so much? Anyway, the unfinished thing:

Edit: yep, did the changes and am liking the new shape. More like a songbird; I have been noticing it in my concepts (moreso in some not yet posted here), that they are somewhat birdlike, so I like it when one turns out that way by accident. The crest of antennae on the top is sort of "cardinal"; it's a small ship, but might make the solar panels and such read more red, or extend the tailpipes to mimic their tail feathers. Talking things through like this helps me see my work in a different way... same with making all the stupid little collages, haha. Work out differences. Texture not changed, just tweaked the mesh; it's still sort of stumpy, so hopefully elongated body and long tailpipes will make it less chibi:

edit: word:

Maybe this post has been a bit excessive, but the ship looks decent to me now; tomorrow I will try to figure out a way to rework the UVs to be efficient, and finish texturing the model.

Ninjas

I think the first version is a bit cooler. I like the general shape of the second one also but I think the boosters could use a bit more detail in the model to help sell the shape.

Vrav

Could probably get rid of some of the shapes in the (WIP) texture, but there's this style...



I don't like the position of the 'weapon' (which is just for the sake of having something); I would probably delete it and place something directly underneath the nose. Makes more sense. Then... raise the thruster thing, not sure why I brought it down like that. And just streamline the bulk of it in texture.

The bright orange is just what I've been working on it in. I prefer any of the variants below.

Steve Schulze

Those are enormous textures for a model that low poly. What sort of system are you aiming for here?