[bobbtmann]

Huh. That looks interesting. It might work better with areas of flat colour, maybe some kind of pattern to break up the flatness a bit. Have you tried using Gimp? That might be easier to use.

Brings me back to when I used to mod Starcraft. I'd have to make my sprites using ms paint, and it was tough. I didn't have a 3d program either. I used a toy corellian corvette and photographed it from different angles, and then painted each frame pixel by pixel. Very tedious.

[bigchunk1]

I use gimp quite often for .pcx related conversion and editing, but I barely know my way around in it.

It seems like when people texture they use some fantastic photoshop generation functionality to create advanced looking images. I don't have much sophistication with 2d art beyond using the paintbrush tool and mouse. I am pretty frustrated with texturing since I hardly know anything about making 2d art and have little experience doing so. I'm quite tempted to just convert this model to FSO as is and call it a day, since I honestly don't think I can make a significantly better texture without some serious instruction.

[jr2]

You try this yet?  A Simple Texturing Tutorial (Warning to dialup users!) Updated with more goodies.

EDIT: And also looky here:

FreeSpace Modding Tutorials

[rhettro]

Given that most of the relief of the ship is straight and curved lines, I'd be tempted to trace the pattern with vector lines in a program like Inkscape (www.inkscape.org) and then convert it to a bitmap texture. If you have a good reference image *cough*, you could trace right over it.

[bigchunk1]

Thanks for the tutorial links jr2. I believe I have read many of them before but it's nice to give them all a runthrough in an hour of need. Most of it gives very helpful information on the process of translating a UV map to a 2d image and how to format images into glowmaps, normal maps, etc. but there was little information on what I need the most, how to make good looking 2d artwork. Perhaps it is a skill that I need to branch out a little more to find informaiton for as the need is quite broad.

I installed inkscape and after many hours of watching tutorials and being confused I have decided to release the model as is. I may or may not start work on this again, but I have included the UV template for anyone who wants to try their hand at texturing for fun or otherwise. The ship is fully converted with its own tables and sound effects. It's just missing some LODs and debris, which again I may or may not add later.

Lastly, I want to thank my teachers bobbtmann and FreespaceFreak (here and earlier) for basically showing me everything I know about modeling texturing and conversion.

Download Here

[jr2]

So, you need information on how to create a good 2D image, or how to do so in a manner to fit around a 3D object, or both?

[bigchunk1]

Look at the picture and tell me where you think the issue is. You have a decent model with an acceptable UV map and that hideous array of scribbles. I know how to UV map, I know how to draw over a template layer and orient my texture to look proper on the model. The only problem is that it is a bad texture and the artwork is low quality. When I'm making textures, basically I'm just a monkey with a crayon. The only tool used was the paintbrush and a bit of noise generation along with Gaussian blurring. I don't know how to generate textures or even tiles for that matter which look decent and I have not yet seen a tutorial which manages to explain how to produce advanced looking artwork. I am starting to believe that 2d art is more skill based rather than knowledge based and I have simply not yet acquired the skills.

I'm not in as much despair as it may seem from my posts. I gave this project a fair shot and the result exceeded my low expectations. I knew I was inexperienced with 2d artwork and to some extent actually knowing how to model when I started. Not being able to 'complete' it in the way I had initially envisioned comes with some light frustration but it's a lot better than that tangled mess in the first post.

[z64555]

Get yourself a sketchbook, and try drawing it on paper first. Once you get a good B&W sketch, make several copies of them experiment with pencil colors until it "looks about right," and then go to the computer from there.

Whenever I tried making a new model, I always had a hard time remebering what I originally envisioned when I first started (since I has a crappsty memzory). By sketching it out first, I could not only save my thoughts, but I could also take it to a nice, comfy chair. Plus, there are some effects with pencils that are far easier to do freehand than in paint. (Oh, and pencils are erasable)

[rhettro]

Looking at the above image, you can see that the model gets most of its detail from lines and patterns cut at different depths, in addition, there are lines that are peaks. For the most realistic depiction then, this model needs a normal map texture. The straight lines and ellipses could be created using the path and/or selection tools in GIMP. You might be better off trying a model with a simple pattern to learn with and then come back to this one. The 3d model is pretty nice by the way.

[Trivial Psychic]

That's some pretty good detailing on the cat too. 

[jr2]

SketchUp can scan an image and convert it... IIRC, right?  I forget.  xP

[S-99]

AAAhhh, rhettro beat me to it. But, i will note that it does have a cockpit if you feel like modelling that too.

This was one cool toy to get for christmas. Too bad i don't have it anymore.