Hello! I am new!

Topics about the face generator.
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Evarchart
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Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:34 pm
Location: Preston, Lancs, England

Hello! I am new!

Post by Evarchart »

Hello there!
I don't know the proper etiquette on this forum for introducing yourself so I thought I'd go with a straight forward hello!
I am an artist in my spare time and REALLY want to contribute to this game. The ship designs are amazing and I would love to tinker with the skins if that's a possibility? I guess I'd need to chat with the 3D artist about that.
I am looking at the face generator and figuring out how to make it generate less...mockable and more in-line with the original but with an artistic spin on the content, I'm not saying this will be done in a week or 2 but more likely months...or more, there's just so many assets to create there. I was thinking about it last night, so much so I dreamt about it and saw cyborgs and also droids and wondered if this would be something you'd want to see in the game? Of course you can't have a droid with the name 'Sandra Smith' etc, you'd need a serial number, a Star Wars-y style name, maybe. Although a droid called Sandra would be amusing in the extreme and endearing too.
Loving the game, you guys are doing a stunning job at recreating one of my all-time favourite games and not only that, those ship designs are gorgeous.

Examples of my arty stuff:
http://captainnow.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/
impaktor
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by impaktor »

Welcome!
I'm not saying this will be done in a week or 2 but more likely months...or more, there's just so many assets to create there
Feel free to show the first sketches (once you have them) so we can give some feedback.
I dreamt about it and saw cyborgs and also droids and wondered if this would be something you'd want to see in the game? Of course you can't have a droid with the name 'Sandra Smith' etc, you'd need a serial number, a Star Wars-y style name, maybe. Although a droid called Sandra would be amusing in the extreme and endearing too.
I don't know where we stand on droids. oh, right: we can buy Robots in the commodity market, so all systems go I guess. Robots might be on ship repair and service?

(For now pioneer universe is all human. I don't know if we've said anything against aliens? I guess at least one could have mutants/disfigured humans, or bioengineered, etc. if one want to diversify the facegen-population some, but this is where the current facegen looks the worst, in my opinion. Step one would be to just get some decent human faces into the game, I guess).

What I'd like to see is different police uniforms (and military, once we add that to the game) for the 3-4 factions (Federation, Confderacy, "Red" etc.) we will have. Something to give you a feel that when you're in faction X the police (and military) look like so-and-so. Maybe a few minor, consistent, variations to the uniforms of each faction. Possibly as minor as changing the rank/stars and stripes, etc. But this is for later I guess.
FluffyFreak
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by FluffyFreak »

Welcome to the forums Evarchart :)

Go right ahead and tinker with the skins. Don't be afraid/put-off by this list of links, a lot of the pages they go to are quite long, it's just that the bits of info that are helpful are spread throughout them:
* Model System - Patterns - the way we texture and modify the ships ingame.
* Pioneer Mod System - we recommend creating a mod of your new ships/textures/patterns/etc before asking it to be put into the game, this is so others can test it and give feedback or advice.
* Style Guide - nozmajner's visual style guide explaining why and how the ships looks as they do.
* Making your first ship - just in case you're interested in doing so.

Some time ago I added the ability to have species other than human, someone requested it but never had time to work on it.
So adding droids/cyborgs/aliens/etc is perfectly possible.
Assuming that you have the game extracted to a folder called `Pioneer` take a look in the folder `Pioneer/data/facegen/` and you'll see that there is a `species_0` folder.
Copy that and rename it `species_1` and you've now got two species as far as the game is concerned. They will of course look identical because you've just copied them over :) but this is where you can start to customise them.

For the time being they will all have the same names I guess so you really will get Droids called `Sandra Smith`, but if you can live with that for the time being then we can fix it later.
Evarchart
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by Evarchart »

I'd love to be greeted by a droid at a space station for instance, or to hire them for crew. I always wondered what the 'Robots' in Frontier were and given I am a massive sci-fi (Star Wars nerd) I would love to have a crack at realising them at some point. I agree that the priority for now is generating a more pleasing humanoid form.
I am going through the assets now, I didn't realise I could access the ship textures too...I will fiddle with those another day, I am just trying to pin a way of making these humans to look nice.
My style will be more stylised though (more arty and less 'realistic') and hopefully it will suit the game. I will work on several sketches today and go from there.
Thanks for the warm welcome guys, I really hope to help out here.
nozmajner
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by nozmajner »

Hi Evachart
Nice stuff on your DA page! :)
Don't hesitate to stylize the facegen. My plan was the same anyway (but lack of time...). The current one is a vestigial placeholder anyway.
I can give you the source files for some of the ships, if you need them for tinkering with the textures. Most of them are up on the asset git, but some of them were too big for it (malabar mostly).
There's also a WIP ship Varada that I didn't got around texturing yet, so if you want to have some fun with it, I can send you the files. :)
Evarchart
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by Evarchart »

Thanks Nozmajner! I will be having a poke around in the files to see what I can change etc.

I've made a REAL quick and dirty android here, I would need to look at how the face is assembled but I am confident I can create something really cool in-game.
I would be looking to make the humans similarly stylised.
Image
nozmajner
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by nozmajner »

Nice one. Maybe a bit menacing (especially the eyes), but that depends on the place of use anyway.
I like this almost pixely style.
Evarchart
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by Evarchart »

As I was drawing this I couldn't help but think Dr Doom haha...and I tried to not draw him, but he's in there a little bit.

I was always very influenced by Dan Malone's work, especially for The Chaos Engine and Speedball 2. I would texture the artwork more than this though as it's very clean.
But this is the sort of style I would be generating for the game, if you were to like it and also the droids I would design a stack of softer/harder features for the facial generator.
nozmajner
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by nozmajner »

I think this amount of texture is good, no need to clutter up too much more.
Evarchart
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Re: Hello! I am new!

Post by Evarchart »

I'll probably regret suggesting this, but what about blinking animations? They would be easy to create (graphically) and give a little life to the folk you interact with in game.
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