3-D artwork

Hello.

I have heard that many of you are making new scenarios, most of you are making ones that use the default graphics for Ares. But to those of you who plan on making new artwork, what program do you use? Personally I use StrataStudioPro 2.0 which is really quite good. I think that Nathan Lamont used Infini-D but that is a guess.

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"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth! All pity choked up, so that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quartered, and out comes Caesar, hot from hell with Aertis by his side!" - Mark Antony, Part 2, Act 2

I'm not advanced enough in the world of Hera to make a scenario myself yet, but for graphics I use Inspire 3D, a sort of light edition of Lightwave. It's good at anything for modelling ships to modelling terrains and texturing is a breeze.
For maps I use a mix of photodeluxe (hey, i can't afford the big one, right!) and graphic converter. I also have this great texture map for panels etc. which came with Inspire which is the same thing they use in the B5 ships. It makes it really simple to just add "Generic Panels" over the top of whatever textures I already have.

Sheppo

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[http://www.crosswinds.net/~pshep/page
Yeah](http://www.crosswinds.net/~pshep/page<br />
Yeah), so what if I'm an Emo Nerd?

Hmmm... Inspire 3D. My sources tell that Blizzard Entertainment - the official guru of 3-D artwork uses Lightwave and 3-D Max. Such things are out of my price range. As for texturing specifically, I have a texturemap that is so fantastic I use it on every ship (and I made it by accident). I use Photoshop to make normal texture maps, in fact this is what I do:

1. Make a ship.
2. Get i.e. a wing of the ship, and focus the camera on it (top view). Take a snapshot of the wing
3. Go into the snapshot in Photoshop and copy paste into a new photoshop document (the same size) Reduce visibility to 20%.
4. Make a new layer and trace the edges of what you can see standing out in the original snapshot.
5. Delete the snapshot layer and refer to your notes about what that specific race has for a texture (i.e. blue wavy, white metallic) and draw the outline of it.
6. Save a copy of the outline, and fill in the rest of the thing.
7. Do Noise (only a bit, monochromatic - white) to give it a weathered metal feeling.
8. Go into your texture workshop and stick that to the base texture and bump texture.
9. Go into the outline save, and colour the spots of the wing you don't want to stand out black.
10. Save the outline thing into specular map, and put it up to 100%.
11. Make a stencil map of the default race's texture, and that overlays every ship regardless of wing or engine etc... and put it on.
12. Metallic sheen or whatever the program you are using has is the key. Like for making black ships that shine out very brightly against only concentrated light, or making ships that reflect light, but around the whole ship evenly etc...
13. Apply. Often I only use special object-tailored maps for important things like the wing. For most ships I just patch on the 'default' race texture.

The Admiral used Strata StudioPro to make the ships for Ares. It's now available as Strata3D, and he pointed out the adress for it. I use it, although I'm not to good with it. I can make some pretty good-looking stuff with what I understand of it, though.

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"I can ail what cures you."

Actually, he used StrataVision 4.0, but it's basically the same as StudioPro.

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Give a man a match and he'll be warm for an hour... Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
-Polaris Confederate Recruitmant Theme
StarLance

Stravavision? STRATAVISION?!! Ho ho ho ho, stratavision is free!!! To all of you who want to do anything serious with 3-D you can only choose Strata Pro Studio 2.0. Or perhaps Infini-D except that has a fatal error - you can't group objects and that means you can make far better models in a short time, but eventually all those links will become impossible to control.

And by the way Slug I've used both and Stratavision is overwhelming inferior.
(Stratavision = $0. Strata Pro Studio 2.1 $1999 or thereabouts).

Order out of chaos people.

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We're riding along on the crest of the wave and the sun is in the sky! All those ships on the distant horizon look out for the by-ford-o-by.