Ok, I have a couple of quick questions:
First, I can’t seem to find the shipmaker anywhere. If somebody could post a link it would be much appreciated. And secondly, can I do this with Gimp?
EDIT: disregard the first one, I’m seem to be blind.
For those wanting something easier and cheaper than Photoshop to create/edit ships, I have found that Paint.NET (freeware) works quite well:
It can open and save the .DDS files used by GSB. When saving, remember to choose “DXT3 (Explicit Alpha)” and tick “Generate Mip Maps”.
Thanks, cliffski. The demo is fun, I’m looking forward to opening my present on Dec 25th. 
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I downloaded Paint.NET, but now I’m stuck at the channel selection part: the layers window doesn’t mention channels, neither seems to anything else. Help would be appreciated.
It may not have the option at all, but I haven’t used it, as I have no idea how to make Textures/Models/etc.
No worries. As you might already suspect, layers and channels aren’t the same thing. Basically: layers = multiple stacked images; channels = red, green, blue, alpha; alpha = transparency. GSB doesn’t seem to use layers (not that I’ve seen yet, anyway), so don’t worry about them.
Anyway, the quick and easy way is to use the Eraser tool. This simply does FFFFFF00 RGBA (total transparency).
Alternately, if you want to mess around more Photoshop-style, you can choose your Pencil/Brush/Bucket and click “More” on the Colors window to fold/spindle/mutilate the Alpha channel to your heart’s content. 
Amrynel’s quick and dirty guide for newbies to use Paint.NET to turn things into GSB models:
- First, download Paint.NET from getpaint.net and install it, then start it.
- Open your favorite top-down view of your favorite spaceship thing (hereafter called a “ship”).
- Use the Eraser tool to get rid of everything that isn’t your ship. Paint.NET uses a checkerboard pattern to represent this “nothingness”.
- If you need to centre your ship, use the Rectangle Select tool to select an area with your ship in the centre, then click the Image menu option “Crop to Selection”.
- Click the Image menu option, then “Resize”, then make sure your picture is no more than 512 high and no more than 512 wide, but make at least one dimension 512.
- Next, to make it 512 by 512 if it’s not already, click the Image menu option “Canvas Size”, make both dimensions 512, and choose Middle for your anchor.
- Click the File menu option “Save As”, choose file type .DDS, and when it asks, make sure to pick FileFormat “DXT3 (Explicit Alpha)” and tick “Generate Mip Maps”.
- You now have a GSB model.
NOTE: Thanks to Ghoti for clueing me in with his SW mod - you can also use a higher resolution of 1024 instead of 512.
Hope this helps!
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/me copy’s and paste’s steps into private text file 
Oops. I’ve edited my guide to say “Save As” rather than “Save”. Otherwise you’re overwriting your original ship picture. Oops.
Thaks for the guide, but I managed to fumble my Paint.NET, uninstalled it and now I can’t install it back. I tried all the methods Ic ould find, nothing worked, so I downloaded Gimp, which worked perfectly, until I relized it couldn’t save anything in .DDS, so I had to download a plugin. After some time I got it working, but now I found out that I can’t pick fileformat DXT3. Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Sorry for bothering (again).
Update: Sizes of 1024 can be also used in the DDS files. Edited guide to note this.
Sorry, von bork, I’m not familiar with GIMP. Can/did you try a System Restore to revert prior to the Paint.NET install?
No, I didn’t, mainly because I’m not sure what System Restore is. (I’m not terribly good with computers.)
If you could explain I would be eternally grateful.
Thanks for the Paint. Net advice, So far Ive managed a surprising amount of progress for a computer caveman.
However Ive reached the last bit and it doesnt seem to work. Ive got my ship, just a clumsy test attempt to crop a warhammer 40k Battlefleet Gothic Battleship, saved it in all the correct parameters, 512 x 512, DDS etc.
Ive put it in Bitmaps, Ships, Federation.
When I click Change in Ship Design the game crashes. Im not sure whats causing the crash, other than the existence of the file. Did I miss anything?
EDIT
Well I moved the ship to the rebel folder just in a fit of frustration, to see if I could get it then. What I managed to get is a white square. The Good thing is that there isnt a crash at least.
The white square means that the alpha channel of the .dds file was done incorrectly. I would recommend going back in to paint.net and making sure that the background is completely black, and that the alpha channel is correctly done. I’ve found myself having to completely restart the .dds file a number of times because I couldn’t get the stupid white square to go away.
When you say black, do you mean devoid of everything, or the actual color black? Because if its pure black wont it be like a ship in a black square on grey space?
In any case, Ive managed to get my ship into the game, but Im not too sure how to assign it modules that will fit onto it realisitcally so you wont have weapons that arent on the ship. That looks much more complicated, and the first page’s post is a bit over my head in the last part. I basically folllowed your example of the excalibur hull, and then tried to fiddle with the turret numbers to fit coordinates on my own ships DDS file, but its causing crashes.
Yes, I meant completely black. I’m not sure that doing so is absolutely required, but I’ve found that there seems to be something wrong much more often when I try to do a color other than black.
For the module point placement the system is pretty straightforward.
0 = 128.00,179.00,TURRET,(98.00-180.00),(158.00-180.00),
The zero up front is simply the number of the module point. The next number (128.00) is usually the x position of the turret on the ship hull, but in this case it is simply the where the module placement spot will appear in the ship designer. The next number (179.00) is the y position of the turret ship on the hull, but this time will also just tell the game where to put the placement spot in the ship designer. Next we have the module type which can as of right now only have two options entered into it TURRET or STANDARD. After that we have the numbers in parenthesis. These numbers are the positions of the white lines and dots we see in the ship designer. They point to places where the turret will actually appear when in a battle. The first number is the x position then you put a dash followed by the second number which is the y position. This can be repeated multiple times, although I’ve never had more than 3 for a single turret.
A few things to watch out for when messing with the turrets is to go ahead and put two decimal places behind every number (it may not be required, but you might as well keep everything looking the same), and to make sure that if you take away any turrets from a ship that you have already placed weapons on that you delete the design first. If you don’t delete the design the game will crash when you open up that ship in the designer (or possibly before I don’t remember which).
What error are you getting when the game crashes?
Been lurking for a couple of weeks now, and wanted to pop in and say thanks to everyone writing how-tos on modding. I’ve only been taking a crack at it for about an hour now, and wanted to share my results. I attached 1 pic of each of 2 versions of the Battlestar Galactica im working on. The first (19-20-24) is the stock image, only having modified what has been said to do in this thread. The second version (19-47-24) is the same image but run through the sharpening effect in Paint.NET. Anyone care to offer a suggestion as to how I might make this look a little more “factory polished”? Regarding the image itself only please, I have not had a chance to properly mess with turrets or engine lights.
Once I figure this out im moving on to Vipers (MkII and MkVII), then Basestars, Raiders, Raptors, and Heavy Raiders in that order. If i’m not burned out by then ill move on to some colonial support ships (the mining ship actually has anti-fighter weaponry, you just never see it used), as well as Cylon support (Resurrection ship with fighter repair bays???). Obviously I’m gonna go a little out of the box here. Yes, I do have plans to make the Blackbird, just no idea what to do with it seeing as it wouldn’t make sense to have a squadron of them. Also: Pegasus, TOS Raider, and Colonial One for the hell of it 
Maybe in the future someone could mod, or maybe Cliff already has plans for this, but a different scenario where you have to gratuitously protect a ship (Colonial One) or the entire fleet (Departure from Ragnar Station or every 10 minutes of 33). I’m sure other franchises have examples as well.
Thanks again and happy modding.
tl;dr: thanks for the tips/how do i make images prettier
edit: typo
I’d also like to know. I was thinking of doing a freespace mod and was playing around with a couple of ships… but I’m no graphic artist so they look rather bad when zoomed in at all.
i’m making progress on this process, but not quite there yet.
Any clues on how to fix the obvious problems?
To make the .DDS, i used photoshop with the nvidia plugin. It wouldn’t let me save from .pds to a .dds directly, it gave me an error saying “too many channels (5)”. So i saved the picture as a .gif first, then opened the .gif and saved it as a .dds and it worked just fine…till it hits the game.
I was able to use the utility from another forum member to place all the turrets an modules without a problem.
Gonna worry about the glow and stuff later.
A self-made hull, but encountered many problems …
Bellator Battlecruiser
width = 260
height = 663
A lot of slots beyond the design of the screen …
But the battle is no problem
Now those are some cool pictures!
I would try to scale it down a bit though.