Made ship - how to align gibs?

[arcuspilot]

I made a player ship and it works great. Only problem is that I don't know how to adjust the gibs locations so that they look attached to eachother and then fall apart like the default ships do.

Once I have this nailed, I'll upload the little beauty.

Thanks for your time,

Arcuspilot

[speedoflight]

Hm, the only thing u need to do is to "cut" every gib, and after that make some graphic design to draw the scrath and damaged interiors of every gib. The problem with gibs is that they work with layers, so, for the effect to be realistic, u need to be sure that some layers are behind others and the opposite. And of course, u need to make every gib to move in the opossite direction or so. Another tip is to change drastically the speed of every gib, so once the ship explodes every gibs moves at different speeds. But im talking about guessing, cuz i still never finished a complete gib in my mod. I plan to do so, but not for now.

If your problem is that u dont know how to "cut" the parts for the start, well , in gimp, for example wat i do is to use the free selection tool, i select the piece i want to be a gib, then invert the selection, erase the rest of the image, combine the selected layer and i save it as a gib. I repeat the process for every gib. If u forgot the boundaries of the previous gift, u can load the previous gift and paste it as a new layer on the image, for guiding. I mean, depends on wat program u using, but i guess its all pretty the same. Of course once u have all image gibs, the hard part is next, that is to "paint" the part of the gib that makes it realistic, i mean the interiors, broken tubes, scratch, etc.

Wat i think, is it will be easier to copy the interior gib parts of the in-game default ships, and adapt em to your graphic. Almost thats wat im gonna do in the future... or i will die trying...

[DryEagle]

The super easy 100% successful easy guide to having pixel-perfect gibs alignment. Requires any graphical editing program that has layer capability.

1. load your complete hull graphic image
2. load in the gib, in a separate layer
3. align the gib exactly so it matches up with the hull graphic
4. keeping the image dimensions the same, i.e. keeping the dimensions of the full hull graphic, delete the hull layer
5. save the image as gib file

6. go to the shipname.xml

Code: Select all

<explosion>
	<gib1>
		<velocity min="0.1" max="1"/>
		<direction min="0" max="360"/>
		<angular min="-0.3" max="0.3"/>
		<x>0</x>
		<y>0</y>
	</gib1>
	<gib2>
		<velocity min="0.1" max="1"/>
		<direction min="0" max="360"/>
		<angular min="-0.3" max="0.3"/>
		<x>0</x>
		<y>0</y>
	</gib2>
	<gib3>
		<velocity min="0.1" max="1"/>
		<direction min="0" max="360"/>
		<angular min="-0.3" max="0.3"/>
		<x>0</x>
		<y>0</y>
	</gib3>
</explosion>

add more as required.

[arcuspilot]

Speedoflight - thanks very much, mate - I had the gibs already; I'm using an FTL enemy ship as the base. I do plan on making originals though and your advice is well appreciated.

DryEagle - man, I love your work. It's your ships that inspired me to build my own. Naturally, your advice on aligning the gibs using the base as a starting point plus your script all worked well.
Interestingly, and I hope you don't see this as any sort of rip-off; my ship uses the same model as your amazing Crystal Shard. I wanted a small ship which was more of a dodgily tricked out sports car than one of the larger ones and this little baby is exactly what I had in mind. Mine is blue though and is called The Zot. I'll be releasing it shortly. I'd love your feedback when I do.

All the best guys

Chris (arcuspilot)