Best For Creating Ship Graphics?

[President Larry]

What is the best program for creating ship graphics, photoshop is what I'm using and it doesn't pull it off well. Also I'm on a mac.

[UltraMantis]

It depends on what style you are going for. You have three choices and you will probably need all three:

Vector editor - Its easiest to create and modify shapes using vectors, in fact you could even create a complete ship just using vectors.
Raster editor - You kinda need one to sort out transparency masks or use raster effects, but i personally find it much more difficult than vectors. Slower as well.
"Pixel editor" - usually no frills MSPaint-like editor that doesn't have advanced features like feathering or antialiasing. Those just get in the way of quickly and neatly painting pixel by pixel. Less usefull for ships overall but for detailed work or small images (weapons, projectiles, drones), it's ideal.

I don't know the names but all three kinds are available for Macs, so try out a couple. I'm personally happiest in CorelDraw and MSPaint with PhotoPaint only being used to get the final transparency right. Or a quick recolor if i'm feeling lazy.

[speedoflight]

Just use Gimp. But if u say u are using photoshop and u dont like it.. u are not going to find anything better, u can try with simpliest editors, but eventually u will need advanced features that only gimp and/or photoshop can give u.

Cheers.

[DauntlessK]

Adobe all the way. You can see my mod in my signature how my first ship is going. I am currently using Illustrator to lay out, color, and shade the model. (Unfortunately I don't have a picture that shows the awesome shading... its almost done and will be posted soon) I use a layer underneath that has a grid according to room layouts so I have an idea how large the ship needs to be and all.

Then I import the vector image directly into photoshop and rasterize it at around 100-120 ppi. This will give it a better FTL pixely look... you could probably go down to 72 or even less but with my current ship there is so much detail its not really possible for me to drop it down that much.

I'm an experienced graphic designer (I work as an ad designer at a newspaper, I do this sort of thing for a living) so feel free to ask any questions about techniques, how I did something, step by step for what I did for my current ship.

Hope that helps.

[President Larry]

Damn this is more complicated than I thought. I was thought I could whip one out in a few minutes with photoshop . Gotta revise my strategy.

Anyway thanks for the help.

[DauntlessK]

It is pretty easy if you have a good existing image to draw from. Whomever did the starcraft mod was able to snap overhead shots of every flying unit super easily. Then it was just a matter of carefully cutting the ship out. But if you want to start from scratch I recommend illustrator.

If you look at my post in this topic: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1&start=10 you can see what I started from. I drew that over a grid that reflected room sizes so that I could design the ship to easily fit the number of rooms and a simple layout I need.

If you need more help or step-by-step guide on how I created mine, don't hesitate to ask!