Will it be possible to mod in the old races, such as having the Empire facing the Terrans? At first glance it seems easy, but there’s probably a hundred things I haven’t considered.
So, thoughts?
This is not going to be possible in GSB2 until Cliff provides the modding community with better versions of the original GSB1 ship sprites. The critical points here are:
- the original artist’s 3-D bumpmaps need to be intact,
and - resolution of the files must be at least 2X higher than what was in GSB1’s actual gameplay.
Without the bumpmapping, GSB2’s cool new shaders & lighting effects will not function with the GSB1 sprites. The resulting ships will [size=125]not[/size] blend very well with the sprites that are native to GSB2. 
That will tend to break player immersion, which is bad for gameplay of mods.
As for the pixel dimensions of the files – the great majority of GSB1’s visual modding results were kit-bashed from vanilla sprite assets. The more resolution we have available in those source files, the better that the resulting modded ships will look after small parts from the GSB1 sprite files were copied/pasted. Modders often re-use small graphical selections at a larger size, or take already-big selections and re-scale them to be vastly bigger. That re-scaling can cause blurring or nasty interpolation artifacts unless the source file has a lot of pixels.
We want to create the best modded content that we can. Even though visual assets do not affect the functionality of in-game weapons and defenses, nobody wants to make an ugly fleet of ship sprites. 
Therefore, we urgently need Cliff’s help to avoid this.
I would VERY much like to see it happen – there’s a lot of modder creativity which is currently held back by the lack of this.
i think it would be easier if we were to just get all the 3D models themselves
Theoretically this is simple, but it may be harder than it sounds, and possibly involve a lot of fiddling to get it right. Once the mania of the launch dies down I shall look into what is involved.
Yay! I would love to see Empire blasting Terrans - THE ORIGINALS SHALL PREVAIL :DDD
I’m too busy now, but next chance I get, I’ll do some experimenting. I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be modified to work in the new engine.
Cool. I just had a thought – one of the biggest aspects of GSB 2 compared to GSB 1 is ship construction aesthetically. I wonder if it would be possible to make GSB 1 ships compatible with that…
I’m encouraged by the replies from both cliffski and Irrational. The sooner you two can get this into motion, the better; please keep the modding community in the loop. 
Is there any further progress on this subject yet?
The sooner it has a solution, the quicker that significant GSB2 mods can be born. Not everybody who wishes to mod this game is in ANY position to teach themselves 3D content-creation from scratch (let alone buy the appropriate program), especially if all their experience to date is solely with 2D graphics-work for modding and nothing else.
It is important to eliminate as many “obstacles to entry” as possible for modding GSB2, and the 3D modelling/rendering normal maps requirement is not a modder-friendly gatekeeper. Sure, the modding guide claims it to be “optional”, but let’s be realistic here: no modder wants to willingly add [size=110]non-[/size]bumpmapped sprites into a game whose official content makes such strong and distinctive use of bumpmapped sprites – all modded content without those intrinsic qualities is going to stick out like a metaphoric sore thumb, which is a very “mixed blessing”.
Multiple hopeful GSB2 “kitbashers” need access to higher-resolution, bumpmaps-already-available hull sprite assets from GSB1. We appreciate your continued attention to this, Cliff.
you could try experimenting with google sketchup which is free (but isn’t perfect). then again you have a life, unlike myself
You MIGHT be able to cut up some of the older ships and use pieces of them as components. You can generate any lighting or texture maps you need with creative use of gimp or photoshop. However, it’s a lot of extra work merely to get it to look right. I think this is going to scare a lot of people away. Isn’t GSB2 modding supposed to be easier than GSB1 modding???
[size=125]It is indeed supposed to be easier.[/size]
And if it does not become easier Real Soon Now - or at all, ever - that WILL scare numerous customers away.
It’s up to cliffski and Irrational to address this major obstacle to graphical modding of GSB2. We’ve been waiting patiently for five months, and it’s honestly difficult to remain patient any longer. The foundations for this process should have been fully considered back during the alpha stage of the game, and a complete plan of action created at that time. O.o
Erm… sketchup. Within less than 1 hour you have a really good looking ship. And once you have experience, you will be able to make good looking ships almost within half an hour… Not to mention it is ideal to design ships. Ive been modding for a few years now creating everything in sketchup since it was released xD. Its amazingly easy, modable and for ship designs it is perfect. If you dont have “patience” to work in such program… i think the problem is something else… lol. Right now i am working when i can in a Stargate mod that i want to translate in GSB2 (not very soon thou lol, i still didnt even chekc how modding is done in GSB2). Also worked modding for GSB1 (i was the guy who made the star trek mod, the galactic concordium mod, and others) so i stopped there.
There is no excuse since time ago to “design” ships in 3d, thanks to sketchup. People modded using GSB1 vanilla parts because they were just too lazy or because they just wanted to do that, but not because they didnt have tools to model in 3d. Sketchup was born a lot of years ago…
As far as i notice until know, it isnt. Maybe it has more possibilites, but easier??? not a chance. Only modding the components is a big step in “difficulty” (not that it is difficult but everything adds up). We could say that now, it is easier because the engine can grabb the mod from any place in the folder. But only because of that… the real “work” is harder.
In fairness, having the tools and being able to use said tools are NOT the same thing. On the occasions I have used Sketchup, “within less than 1 hour” what I have is a 3D representation of a cross-eyed three-year-old’s crayon scribblings and a deep desire to punch the Sketchup developers repeatedly in the kidneys.
All I’m saying is that the existence of one 3D modeling tool like Sketchup does not make an easy 3D modeling environment for everyone. 
I learned sketchup in 1 day. In two days, within 1 hour i was able to make really good looking ships, and i am not talking about 4 squares and 3 circles lol. Of course, im talking about the model process, not texturing. Thats a different thing.
Well, because sketchup is based on user-made plugins mostly. There are out there hundreds (if not thousands) of plugins you can add to sketchup that makes it an amazing 3d modelling tool (i guess you didnt know about this? lol). And things like organic models, tubes and pipes and other things are amazingly easy to make using plugins. Not that you need that to model ships, most of the times you will not need non complex surfaces. Reason why sketchup is ideal. Nowadays, im surprised a tool like sketchup is still free, and honestly, including all the user made plugins there is actually nothing sketchup can achieve.
Easy?? dude, i NEVER EVER tried any 3d modelling tool in a serious way in years until i discovered sketchup. I am a complete mess and still i managed to learn it in just 1 day. Dude, its amazingly easy. Of course there are different grades of lazyness… lol. For me, having such an easy and great 3d modelling tool where i can model almost anything i want, and i dont need to learn complicated and expensive 3d tools like 3dstudio. It is a jewel in my opinion.
I tried 3dstudio once, i think i gave up after 30 minutes. I tried blender, i gave up after more or less the same. I tried maya, i did last for a bit longer there, about 45 minutes. I could go on… as you see, i am not a patience and learner person. Sketchup is completely different.
When modding for GSB1, i never needed to build vanilla monsters because of my lacking 3d modelling skills. If i wanted a ship, i just made it. Because i had sketchup. lol. In normal circunstances you would think “but if i need to waste days to model a ship… dont think so”, but talking about sketchup that the whole process of modelling and texturing and rendering takes (once you learn enough) a few hours… thats priceless.
can you post some names of those plugins so i can add them to mine?
Depends on your needs. I actually have over 50 plugins installed… it will be almost impossible to list all of em, but for example,
lines2tubes - > converts any line in to a tube
curviloft → creates joins between surfaces (for example if you have 2 tubes and you want to “join” em to create a curved tube, or any other surface).
shape bender → changes the shape of a component or group (for example if you need to make curved doors for some reason, you pick the normal door and you “blend” it xD).
uvprojection → adapts a texture to curved surfaces (for example tubes)
uvtools → to work with textures, copy uv coordenates (to copy/paste textures with the same size/position for example), or rotate em in a curved surface or other things.
cleanup → to clean unused materials/components. To reduce unused lines, to erase duplicated faces, etc
1001bit tools → to create arquiterctural components, like stairs, doors, roofloors, etc.
3dgrid (or something like that) → to create 3d grids
tools on surface > for a lot of things, like drawing offsets contours, and to draw regular shapes in curved surfaces, erase edges and corners (without screwing up the lines or faces attached), etc
roundcorner → the name says it all. To round corners/edges and bewel em. This extension is priceless…
push/pull (cant remember the exact name) → to push/pull surfaces in any direction you want, not just straight (the only way sketchup lets you) and groups of surfaces.
And a lot more i cant remember right now. Also i have a couple of extension to make organic surfaces (convert a surface in a organic “grid” if you want to make faces or things like that) but i never use em (for now).
There are thousands of them, and i only have installed the ones i should use at some point. Most of em are free, others arent.
thank you
First off, im kinda back from the dead, glad to be back.
I love the idea of implementing the GSB1 Era’s races to GSB2, and to be perfectly honest, from what I’ve seen it should be (fairly simple) to recreate the GSB 1 era ships in a modelling program, such as Beldner, or sketchup. Thank sto the pre-existing sprites of GSB-1 as well as the origianl 3-d Referances of the original ship models i feel fairly confident that such an under-taking is very achievable. My understanding of the bump mapping/normal system in GSB–2 is that the models have all of their height information baked oonto a 2-D plane that intersects with the midsection of the model,which is to be honsest a fairly simple thing to do, though i doubt that was the way that the ships packedged with GsB2 followed such a basic procedure. If any one would be interested, I would be more than willing to assist in the creation of such models, though I have very little modding understanding of GSB 2, i could supply the required art assets, with proper documentation/information regarding actual implementation within this engine
Cheers,
Flavoredpickle