Advanced Base

[icosahedron]

Thanks for the feedback, Loogie. I'm just a noob at this drawing stuff, so most of your suggestions are way beyond my skill. No doubt I'll improve a little with experience, but I still think that people with an 'art gene' start out at a level that others (like me) can only aspire to - and most of the regular posters here have it.

One person's 'easy' is another person's 'hellish difficult'. I've seen 5 yr olds with better hand drawing skills than me! I'm just taking part here for the fun of it - and to kick my own butt into not giving up.

I can't even make 'sterile' textures yet, much less 'grungy' ones! Yes, it would be good to put a few scratches and smudges and dirty footprints here and there, but probably not yet awhile.

When I get a little time, I'll try reworking a folding table, some twin-use chairs and maybe a cryo-bed, a new fridge and a more realistic 'engineering module'. There's a few weeks to go yet.

Ravells, I've poked about with Inkscape and found a couple of online tutorials about gradients, but I can't figure how you did the control panel on that bed - the way it looks bevelled and blends in with the rest of the bed curvature.

Any chance of a mini-tut?

[ravells]

Ah I'm not an inkscape user, but in Drawplus there is a bevel command which just does it at the click of a button. I did a quick google and found this tutorial for bevelling text in inkscape but it's a lot more involved.

[Redrobes]

Redrobes, if you're lurking, the hazard strip is 50% transparent to let the treadplate pattern through and consequently it floats above everything. How do I nail it to the floor?

Bit late to the party here... As you know the app puts transparent items on top of all others - well all other not entirely transparent ones anyway. So you can change one or more pixels of the image to fully opaque and then it will act like a 'regular' mix of transparent / opaque icon. I could add a feature to checkbox something in the import to say treat the image differently than the default but that should be used really sparingly otherwise it would render incorrectly in some instances but for these cases where the icon is a modifying type instead of an item by itself then its probably correct to override it. You could get a transparent icon out, put some floor on it and then the hazard stripes on top and make a screen created icon out of it which would permanently affix the stripes to that bit of floor.

[Redrobes]

I can't even make 'sterile' textures yet, much less 'grungy' ones! Yes, it would be good to put a few scratches and smudges and dirty footprints here and there, but probably not yet awhile.

Ah well this is where that same 'problem' with the on top transparency can be used to your advantage.

I use a lot of cgtextures.com stuff and they have a whole section of grunge maps.

http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=318

So take one of those, scale or cut down to a sensible size like say 1024x1024. Then create a pure black, brown or rust colored square of the same size and use that for the color and the grunge for the alpha. Before you import the alpha just darken it quite a bit so that it has values from pure black to very dark. Then when its added it will be completely transparent to mostly transparent so the grunge will sit on whatever you put it on. Instant grunge.

Saves having to mess about with filters, painting and effects to create the grunge. You can also do the same thing with metal perforations, rivits and other things like that. See pic 2 for super grunged up plate.

Pic3 - ok so I am just messing about now. This is more cgtextures stuff - looks like pidgeon poop to me...

Actually just noticed that pic3 is an excellent example of why the transparency is always on top. The poop is not a fully transparent image and has some pure opaque poop in it - as anyone who drives a car well knows... If the transparency of the tread board was on top of the Hazard layer then the poop would be on top of that. But since the tread is on top of everything then it shadows both the Hazard and the poop at the same time so giving the effect that the poop follows the embossed surface of the Hazard floor as well. The addition of those two textures on top of the floor really brings it alive as a working industrial floor.

http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=1472
http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=226
http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=318
etc

[icosahedron]

See? - art gene! All the regular posters have it.

Thanks Redrobes. I'm juggling 3 new drawing apps now. I could be some time...

[loogie]

lol. i'm going to put that to experience... been here long enough to know these guys know their damn programs.

I can't say I'm artless, but I'm not super good. I've found if you take things slow, you can get some good control over what your going to do, then the next time you do it you can make it a bit faster. Hang in there, you will get better.

Besides all that transparency stuff flying over my head, it was a cool effect.

[Redrobes]

But... but... I didn't draw anything ! Well apart from the hazard floor example surface. All the grunge was already made.

[icosahedron]

Well here's version 2.

It's still WIP, but I've taken note of some of the comments and some of my own dislikes.

The pub table has been replaced with a smoother, lighter table. I toyed with the idea of a table that folds out of the wall, but decided it wasn't as versatile as one you can move anywhere. I made this myself in Inkscape.

The dining chairs have been replaced by some dual-purpose cushioned storage barrels (Inkscape again, with seat texture from Gimp).

I've replaced the old brown fridge with a similar white one, and having made it myself, I was able to change the colour to make a couple of proper power/life support units.

I replaced the plain black doors with some proper hatches, again in Inkscape.

While I had the shape available, I used it as the basis of some cryo-capsules doubling as beds. The downside of this is you can't convert the settee into a capsule, so the cabin is now 4 berth instead of 6 berth.

Next up is probably those steel tables, and maybe the floor, and just possibly some grunge.

It'll remain just 'objects plonked down' though - It's not a work of art, it's a working mix n match diagram that beats graph paper sketches and bits of cut up cereal packet for gaming with.

Inkscape is really great! Thanks to everyone who recommended it.
I can see me using it more than Gimp; it's more suited to the stuff I want to draw.

I'd heard it was difficult to learn, but I'm picking it up ok. I had to look up a couple of tutorials on how the gradients work, cos they're not intuitive, but it's easy enough now, and they're very useful.
If only you could do linear gradients in two dimensions...

[ravells]

Looking much better! I'd lose the cooker hob though....not very SF!!

[icosahedron]

Sorry, Ravells, I like the hob. We've been using pots to cook in for 10,000 years, I think they're here to stay, and one heat source is as good as another.

Here's version 3 with a better kitchen and a nicer floor. Yes the kitchen is contemporary, but I'm not sure where things might go in the future - you still need preparation surfaces of some sort.

Kitchen made today in Inkscape/Gimp. Still WIP.