Spaceships

I modelled a few spaceships... These models have no use at the moment, but I still have a certain game in mind that I want to create, and having a few models then would be a plus. So if I feel some inspiration, I am modelling (instead of playing) a bit and this is the result:


This was the first ship that I've modelled using a technique that I developed for myself in the past. Making a model requires three steps:
1. modelling
2. uv unwrapping
3. texturing
I like the first part the most, while the second part is the one that I hate, while painting the texture itself is quite some fun.
Each step requires nearly an equal amount of time for me. However, the first part does not take the longest in most cases.
For these shipmodels, I used a different technique, using a texture atlas:



So the ship you see above was textured just using the texture here. I just moved the uvs in a way that each triangle takes the piece of texture it needs. The advantage of this is, that the uvunwrapping is fairly easy and that there is no additional texturing - even if more objects are created, and this is another advantage: Different objects can share the same texture. Like this:

Of course this has drawbacks - normalmapping is likley to be not working and it should be avoided to stretch the textures too much. Additional triangles might also be required for the purpose of texture mapping the right parts of the texture.

But it is also fun to work this way, since it does not require too much time to create a model, once the texture atlas exists. Maybe it is also possible to create different skins, altering this single texture and changing all the shipmodels using one texture. For example, if two teams are required, the texture could either contain red colored texture components or bluecolored. Or the type of texture could be changed, more rusty for example.