How The Damage Textures Were Done

Here is a really rough guide for anyone wanting a similar ‘look’ to the current damage textures.

First, I did all this in paintshop pro, but photoshop is very similar…

I created a new layer underneath the ships hull called flames.
I created a layer above the hull called outline.
Using either the lasso tool, or the eye-dropper tool, on the ships hull layer, i selected a bunch of areas on the hull to damage, by drawing out some rough shapes, or selecting areas with the eyedropper that seemed like natural places to have holes. I then saved this selection to a new alpha channel
I then expanded that selection by a few pixels (maybe 2 for cruisers, maybe 4 for fighters).
I then flood-filled all of the expanded areas on the outline layer with black.
I then set the outline layers blend mode to ‘darken’
Then, I load in the original selection from the alpha channel, and delete that selection from the outline layer, so I now have black outlines.
I then delete that selection from the hull layer, so it has open holes down to the empty flames layer.
Then I add a new layer on top of everything called blur, set to ‘darken’ blend mode.
Then I load in the selection again, this time expanding it even more, maybe 6 or 8 pixels.
Then flood fill that bigger area with black.
Then do a gaussian blur on that layer, so that it creates a nice big black splodge around the areas, fading to nothing.
Then load back in the original selection yet again and delete it from the blur layer, so again we have holes, but now we have nice fading black gradients from them.
Then I open up a source file for the flames and internal damage in a new document. I used a highly modified contrast and color enhanced picture of an oil refinery at night, but pictures of explosions are also cool. I used the clone brush to basically ‘paint’ this texture onto the bottom layer of the image (flames) so it appears just inside the revealed holes in the hull.
Finally, I would clone-brush individual pixels from a really bright explosion onto certain areas of the flames texture, to give them better highlights.
Sometimes I’d then make a really patchy scattered black brush, and just blap a few times over the top of the damaged areas (and remove the selection areas from this splatter layer as before) in order to add some sort of minor ‘power-burn’ style stuff onto the ship.

Of course, proper artists can probably do this faster and better, but it’s how I did it :smiley:

Thanks mutchlly :slight_smile:

OH YES, this is exactly what I needed!!
[size=50]I’m beginning to think that everyone here except me have telepathic abilities…[/size]
Thank you very much Cliffski :smiley:

Uhm, what about you participating on the contest? ;D

haha we are psychic or sum-thing xD and Cliff you know you want to :smiley:

I saw this and thought, ‘huh, sounds more complicated than necessary’. So I tried another way that is like this (Oh yeah I used GIMP)

  1. I used a black airbrush and made a blotch around where I wanted the damage to be.
  2. I used the eraser in the middle of it.
  3. I made a layer under that background and used a red brush and orange brush and blurred them, which looks not so good but I could find other textures to put under.

I came out with basically the same effect:
image

This is the old method and the original method that was used in the game, but there are a lot of ways to get easier damage sprites. For example, no need to add a new layer, just “cut” the damage texture u want to use , make it a brush (if u using gimp) and just paint on the ship where u want the dmg part. Now, use a simply circle with diffuse borders brush, and the opacity to 50%, and make a surrounding curve on the damage brushes. Thats it. U can make this over a transparent background and save the brushes one by one, so for the next time u only need to pick the brush and paint it over the sprite. But i cant understand y people uses layers and so hard methods -.-

Once you get used to using layers, they’re really easy. It also makes it a lot easier to adjust what you’ve done without having to erase or start over from scratch.

Layers are good when u need to make a lot of dmg spots, but actually theres no need to make more than 5 or 6 dmg spots on a ship ( u can make very good looking dmg ship sprites without needing to add 20 dmg spots, just placing em in correct strategy points and adding smoke/sparks) , and in this case i waste more time using layers… xD. I only need 1 minute to splash the damage sprites where i want em, and thats it. If i need to re-do the dmg sprite, i make it from the beginning again or not , cuz i really dont care to waste 20 seconds in placing the dmg brushes once the first step is done (creating the dmg spots as brushes) -.-.

Closely related questions:

Is there a good flames texture lying around the forums or something, or has Cliffski not released it?

How do people do hull textures? Simple erasing and stuff?

mmm

i dont think cliff released it

you can make ur own by cutting and pasting the ones from original tho…

Alright, thanks. He did post a psd file that was simply an alpha with multiple splotches and damage sections that I’ve been using, to some good effect. Just wondering if there was an entire sheet.

Another aspect is explosions. I honestly have little idea where to begin coding with those. The Modding 101 thread mentions the bug with leaving a term last, but other than that I don’t know where to start. Any help?

could you provide a link to where he posted that please?

and i would like some more explanation on the explotions and hulk coordinates too, as my ingame editor doesnt work…

I found it from a link on the Facebook page in one of the forgotten pictures, actually. Buried within the dark recesses of the forum… viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4751

this post saved me thank you good sir :smiley:

While this is a very useful thread, you should not necro a thread that hasn’t been posted in for 2 years.

sorry didn’t even realize the date :stuck_out_tongue: