Making New Ships

Hi everyone. Before I say anything else, I would like to state that I am a Windows user making plugs with EVNEW. I'm just wondering how to create ships that has turning animations. I've looked at several plugs (such as EVN Azdara) and noticed that under the rle8 and rleD there are "pictures" (I don't know what else to call them) that have rotated views of a certain ship. Now I assume that to create a ship with turning animations you need to have these pictures. Question: How do you make these pictures? I know that on the Mac there is a program that combines all of the rotated images of a certain ship into one picture, but how would you do this on a Windows? Is there a program for this?

@nomad, on Feb 23 2007, 11:39 PM, said in Making New Ships:

Hi everyone. Before I say anything else, I would like to state that I am a Windows user making plugs with EVNEW. I'm just wondering how to create ships that has turning animations. I've looked at several plugs (such as EVN Azdara) and noticed that under the rle8 and rleD there are "pictures" (I don't know what else to call them) that have rotated views of a certain ship. Now I assume that to create a ship with turning animations you need to have these pictures. Question: How do you make these pictures? I know that on the Mac there is a program that combines all of the rotated images of a certain ship into one picture, but how would you do this on a Windows? Is there a program for this?

You have a couple different options. To be honest, the most basic way is to use MS Paint; use a screen capture function or similar in whatever program you used to create the ship, then layout the images in a gridded format within MS Paint. After that make sure that you know the dimensions on your grid and import the grid in EVNEW. If done properly, you'll see the same grid of images that all of the other ships have.

If you have difficulty getting it right, try exporting one of the grids first and then re-importing it so that you can see how the different settings work.

Thanks for your help. I'll try it out.

Well you can do it that way if you want to waste tons of time, otherwise I'd suggest SpinApp.

It requires the Java Virtual Machine. Which you can get at Sun Microsystems.

When I make ships in Blender I render the ship from at least 36 (you can have more) different angles and I come out with 36 different images which are of the ship from different angles. Then I use Spinapp to stitch the images together and then I use GIMP to apply the mask and see what it looks like with the mask on, If I see and holes I use either a white or black brush to fill them in.

EVWeb's way seems more appealing to me, and I have downloaded SpinApp. Where do I put the files? I already have Java so I don't think I need to download it again.

Once you extract SpinApp.zip you should just be able to double click and open it and it'll give you some instructions.

That's what I get when I double click on SpinApp.class

Um... don't extract the .jar, execute it.

Sorry, but I'm truly lost here. Would you be kind enough to post a set of directions, starting with right after you extract SpinApp.zip? If you don't, it doesn't matter.

1. Expand the SpinApp4.zip

2. Locate the SpinApp.jar file.

3. Run SpinApp.jar, it should not expand, it should bring up a dialog giving a list of instructions.

If you're still lost, I'd suggest you wait for someone else to post instructions as I do not own a windows PC so I can't actually do this myself.

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 25 February 2007 - 05:31 AM

I have it working now. Thanks so much for your help.

Bear with me a little longer, I have one more question. When I import the spin, it comes out like this:

Why is that? I speculate it has something to do with the width and height, but I am not sure. Could someone clarify this for me?

And yes, for my first ship I just used a picture of an escort carrier.

This post has been edited by Nomad : 25 February 2007 - 02:53 PM

What image format are you importing into SpinApp?

Also, try posting the image/images you're importing and let me try as I'll be able to debug.

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 25 February 2007 - 02:55 PM

The ship:

It is a .gif file.

Okay, yeah, it has to do with the demensions of your image, it should be square, also, I'd recommend using jpegs over gifs as I still haven't figured out how to handle gif transperency.

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 25 February 2007 - 04:14 PM

Square, no wonder. Thanks.

But how would I find the width and height of my spin when I import it? I experimented with different widths and heights, but they all dont work, the frames of the ship seem to be disconnected and jumbled.

Edit: NEVERMIND, I figured it out! Thanks for all your help EVWeb, and Guy for your advice and reference plug.

This post has been edited by Nomad : 25 February 2007 - 04:57 PM

What?? Don't use either of those formats, they're both lossy! SpinApp also allows png, use that instead.
If you want a red Escort Carrier though you can find one in this plug.

I know I'm annoying, but I have one more thing. How would you make a mask of the ship to put into rle8?

I posted an updated to SpinApp on my site, it can now correctly spin non-square images. It also contains a very short read me with how to get it running.

SpinApp 5

@nomad, on Feb 26 2007, 11:00 AM, said in Making New Ships:

I know I'm annoying, but I have one more thing. How would you make a mask of the ship to put into rle8?

I don't know where you got the idea that rle8s store the sprite masks but this is incorrect. Just ignore the rle8s, they're not important. To add a mask to your sprite, assuming you already have some sort of mask from the same place you got the original sprite from, you'll need to spin it with SpinApp again to get the 6x6 grid and then open the rleD for your sprite in EVNEW and choose import. Select the mask radio button and find your mask image. This will be imported into the same rleD as rleDs contain both the sprite and the mask in the same resource.