Rendering Nova-Esque Graphics

I remember ages ago (waaaaay before I had even conceived of Anathema) reading and screenshotting something that somebody (then-Pipeline? Frandall?) said about how to make ship graphics mesh properly with Nova's. 45° camera angle, -100, 100, -100 100% intensity spotlight, a filler light, etc. I can't seem to find it again, so although I and I'm sure others here know the specs well, there are some aspiring graphics developers who don't.

There's also the trick of getting outfitter graphics to mesh with Nova's (something which I've been perfecting the past few days), which I don't think I've ever seen posted here. Do you all think it would be a good idea to make a little help thread with all that info in one place? Or does it already exist? I have been known to exhibit debilitating refrigerator blindness.

Details on Nova's ship sprite light setup, from the important links topic

Aha, that would be it! Although for some reason I think that I had to flip one of the axes on the lighting.

How's about outfit graphics though. I don't think I've seen anything along those lines; not that it's highly important to get those to match up, but it does create some continuity between plug and stock.

Well you could always ask Dave pipeline ( it feels so weird to call him that instead of pipeline ).

EDIT: After I wrote that, he changed his name back to pipeline.

This post has been edited by gray_shirt_ninja : 20 May 2008 - 08:39 PM

A really good question. I'll look up some of my outfit graphics and post my notes on how I did them. I may as well post my notes on ship 200.200 shots as well.

@pipeline, on May 22 2008, 05:51 AM, said in Rendering Nova-Esque Graphics:

A really good question. I'll look up some of my outfit graphics and post my notes on how I did them. I may as well post my notes on ship 200.200 shots as well.

Hey, awesome! So far, I've been rendering the foreground with good lighting, background with just one plain ambient, layering in Photoshop with luminosity on the background and taking the opacity down to 35-50%. The only real trick I've run into so far is rather than rendering at 400x400 and 2x2 oversampling is to render at 800x800, no oversampling, and reduce size to 1/4 afterwards to avoid the black/grey outline that you get if you oversample it.

While you're here, do the target pics just use the SY pic? I could never quite get those to look right.

P.S. ZOMG it's back to pipeline! Now we just need to go back to the old black&red forums and it'll be just like the glory days!

Don't ever use ambient light. Ever. All it does is wash out your work.

Use directional spotlights with no shadows. Multiple of them from different angles, if you must, but just don't use blanket ambient light.