I’m new to the forum, but I really want to get into modding. Does anyone have suggestions for how to make ships that look as good as the ones in game, or in mods like Unity, Union or Praetorian Industries?
Practice, my friend; reading and using the guides in the Modding 101 thread; asking your questions here and trying and failing.
In my opinion if you want to make an entire mod, i suggest you to start making some modules, learn to make them. After that start making visual FX for your new weapons, then turrets (in that step you will need to learn how to make turrets). When you have modules and weapons, you should be ready to start making hulls, it is pretty easy, basically is just cut and paste parts of other hulls. When you have some finished designs, you just need to code them, something that i find extremely easy to do with the in game editor. After doing that, balancing, some scenarios and tah-dah! a new mod.
I have explained you how to make a mod in some words, if you have a previous experience making mods you will find GSB VERY easy to mod, if not, do not fear, you have a lot of people that will help you without problems ^^
G’Day cstar
I hope you don’t mind but I am going to break your post down into several components so I can give you enough information so you can start creating your Ultimate Mod.
First of All welcome to the forums cstar. The Modding 101 Guide is the best place to start. I would strongly advise that you quickly skim through that guide first. While some of it will not make sense, as you proceed it will all become clear and you can come back and read in detail the various sections.
Excellent news 
To mod GSB you need 3 things
- text editor
- graphics editor of your personal preference (ie photoshop / paint.net / gimp)
- an idea
The advantage to this forum is that we are all a friendly bunch - so feel free to post any questions you have about modding in this thread.
If i do not miss my guess, Irrational was the creative talent behind the ships used in GSB. The ships are fully 3D and were made by using Lightwave, from there a top-down image was taken with a light source placed ahead and elevated above the bow to create the shadows.
If you have a Licenced version of Lightwave there are some resources available.
To be honest, this method is quite beyond my skill level. But if 3D modeling is your forte, then you will be able to create some kick@ss designs.
Uni-T
To make the Uni-T ships, I used Photoshop to copy parts from the various vanilla ships and other online resources posted by cliff to create the AI Armada. If you take your time with placement and blending the components you can create some rather incredible designs.
For example, what I think would be my best Chop Shop work can be found in Archduke Astro’s Classic Dreadnoughts mod. (the reason why these ships worked out so well was that Archduke Astro provided me an extremely clear description of what he wanted these ships to look like)
P.S. That mod’s story thread is a true epic in its own right - well worth a read
Union
Believe it or Not, but Cen2050 started out asking how to change the colour on a beam - fast forward and he has turned that question into a mod. Cen2050 also used the Chop Shop method to create the ships in Union. (there are a few in there that I made as well
The Starburst Carrier is a slight exception since I used an image from the web of a Warhammer 40k Gothic Imperial Battle Cruiser mixed with the design concept from the Battle Star Galactica (no vanilla components were used in the making of this hull)
P.S. - once again, more good reading - i really have to lift my game with Uni-T 
Praetorian Industries
A majority of these hulls for this mod have originated from various members of the forum. Awhile ago the Modding Community ran a ship design contest for the Community mod. If you look through the ships that have been submitted you can see a range of techniques. (Its Image Heavy but well worth the look - Here is the Epic Conclusion)
Other Methods.
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Import from other Games/Media: If you can get your hands on a top down sprite of the ships, you can generate your own ships. The trick is to find or generate these images. (suggested resolution is 512x512)
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Google Sketchup: There are a few mods that are using Google Sketchup to create the 3D versions of the ships then taking top down images to use ingame.
Really, there is no right or wrong way to make ships in GSB.
In my opinion the hardest thing is to come up with is a ship concept. But once you have a clear idea on what your ships look like, it is all a matter of time (and finding the parts you need)
Once you have your ships, the hardest part is over
(well in my opinion anyways)
Would anyone mind telling me what is needed to be done to open the hull editor? I am very familiarity with the mac file structure and may be able to turn it on in mac.
Thanks
Cstar
Read this. Try it out, and let us know if it succeeded or not.
I also linked that older post of mine to the GSB Modding 101 Guide. If my listed solution to the problem has errors, let me know and i will update every instance where I posted my original solution. The Hull Editor’s how-to data was spread across far too many forum posts and also was badly in need of being cleaned-up and centralized.
Darkstar’s right my friend, I originally started with Gimp and simply playing with the colors of laser beams. For hulls. EVERYTHING I made was cut and pasted from other ships in the game.
You can REALLY see that with the Windreaper Assault Frigate I started with the Body of the Fenrir Cruiser, and added the wings of the Atlantis Bomber too it. The engines are from one of the rebel frigates (the Odin I think), and the cross bar linking the 3 forward “guns” is actually the rear stabilizer bar of the Valhalla Cruiser that I simple turned upside down.
Perhaps the BEST example is the Resolute…however it’s also the hardest because Darkstar made the transitiosn literally seemless!
Contrary to what Praetors suggested I went from Beam FX right into hulls…Turrets confuse and frustrate me to no end.
Just a note to anyone who has bought the mac version of the game. Red Marble will send you a free copy of the windows version of anything that you have bought.