Kitbashing original ship sprites.

Hey. I'm not much of an artist, but I've still managed to make a few ship sprites that I'm pretty happy with, and all it cost me was the time to make it all. Here I'll show you what I used and how I did it.

Tools and Resources.

So the tools I used were pretty simple. Windows paint. Paint.net. Jan's Modtool.

That's it.

If you haven't yet, I suggest taking a look at the guide Allogonist created for creating and uploading your ships. If you're already a good artist, his guide tells you just about all you need. I might have some tips for you starting with the Mod Tool section though.

Creating and sharing custom ships 

A Guide for Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls

By: Allogonist

Official guide for converting an image of a space ship into a ship profile that can be used in Wayward Terran Frontier and how to upload it to the workshop as downloadable user generated content.

You'll find the links for paint.net and more importantly, Jan's mod tool there.

After that what I had was a resource I found some time ago when playing a game called StarSector. Someone had collected a bunch of sprite parts for yet another game called Battleships Forever which had a pretty robust ship editing feature in it. Forum post here - http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5764&sid=2f3a32ca2ceba0fedc479c7f2d20b779

This stuff was put up for public use for whoever wanted to make their own ships. This stuff is what I've been using for my own sprites.

The mediafire download still works as of Oct 6, 2017.

Its more than just sprites. The download will contain the ship editor for battleships forever as well, but for Zero Falls, we're not interested in that. You'll get a file called 'ShipMakerRepackV6.zip. Open it up and navigate to the 'Custom Sprites' Folder. You'll find a bunch of seperate folders that contain sprite resourches from various artists.


I would suggest sorting through the folders and getting rid of the stuff you don't like/need. There's probably a bunch. I went through and got rid of all the engine trail, weapon projectile and straight black and white images. I kept all the images with coloured backgrounds then tossed it all into one big folder for easy viewing. There are a few coloured parts, but most of it is greyscale.


I got rid of quite a few files, but do note that there are a bunch of duplicates between the black and white stuff and the grey sprites with colour backgrounds.

Once you've got paint.net, the mod tool and all the sprites sorted, then you're all ready to go.

Putting it together in Paint.

So a disclaimer first: I'm going to be pretty thorough with my descriptions for the sake of people jumping in without much experience at all. There are quite a few little bits to put together to make it all work, but I've been pretty happy with most of what I've put together so far.

For this project I'm going to make a square, blocky design. It will also be symmetrical. Asymmetrical designs work just as well with how I do this, but take more time to get everything settled.



I start by deciding how large I want the image to be of course. For those who still wonder, one pixel in the paint editor is equal to one tile in the Zero Falls in game profile editor. So 1 pixel = 1 energy conduit tile/armor tile, etc. As you see, this one is 100x100 pixels. For reference the civilian vulture is approx 42 pixels wide and 110 pixels long, the canvas for the vulture is 94x144. Before anything else, I create a new layer and delete the default white layer. The Modtool wants a blank background for your base sprite.





Before I do anything else in paint though, I pick a part from my collection of sprite parts and open it in windows paint. This is because I've found it much quicker to rotate parts outside of paint.net. So thats what I do, before I bring any sprite part into paint.net I'll flip and rotate it in mspaint. That being said, there is a rotate tool in paint.net, but it's a bit more unweildy. Flip vertical and flip horizontal work quite simply though, I'll do that in paint.net.







Once you've got it facing the direction you like, paste the image into paint.net. From there pick the magic wand tool, select the red and use ctrl+x to get rid of the red. And don't forget to turn your tolerance down. 50% is too much and will cut into the sprite. I find 20% tends to work great for most of what I do.

Incidentally, try to watch out when pasting in new parts from mspaint. Make sure you've created a new layer and that you're pasting into that new layer. This is a mistake I'm still constantly making. Fortunately, one of paint.net's best features is near unlimited undos.




You'll often have to deactivate any left over selections when importing and cutting images. I use the box select and just click once on screen to disable the selection. From here pick the blue arrow tool and move the part to approximately where you want it. Once you're happy with it there, duplicate the layer.

Never paste into a layer that already has stuff in it. It'll mess with the stuff thats already there in ways that'll make you scratch your head.






You have to make sure you're in the layer selection here. Choose flip horizontal and you'll have a layer mirrored to your first one. Go back to your layer controls. You'll want the merge layer down selection which is right next to duplicate later. This will of course merge your currently selected layer to the one underneath. You don't actually have to do this, but I do in order to keep my layer list a bit more tidy in case I have to come back here later.

From here just keep repeating steps. Open sprite parts in mspaint. Orient them in the direction you like and copy them into paint.net to put your ship together.



After a bit of work I ended up with this. I was happy enough with this result so it was time to move onto the next step.













Image > Flatten will merge all visible layers. If you have any layers unchecked to make them invisible, they will be discarded. I then select and copy the image. Then I use ctrl+z to undo and return to before I flattened the image. Add a new layer, paste to that layer. You'll now have a single layer image. Truthfully, you don't have to do this. you could simply flatten it and be done with it, but I occasionally find I'm unhappy with how the final product turned out. Keeping these layers in reserve lets me go back and change or fix things with ease.

















So all those black border lines? Those are actually counter-productive to the final product. I've found things look much better if I don't leave those dark black borders on the sprites. So back to the magic wand tool. Click on the light bulb next to 'flood mode' and it'll turn to global. Exactly as it sounds, click on one black section and it'll now select all the black on the layer. You can increase the tolerance to broaden to the darker greys as well. As an extra note. Whenever you are using a selection tool you can hold ctrl to add to your existing selection or hold alt to remove from your existing selection.

















So here we go into 'Adjustments' dropdown menu and choose 'Brightness/Contrast'. I crank the brightness to max and leave the contrast alone and this is the result. This is your base image. Now duplicate the layer so you have a back-up in case you don't like how the next steps go. Then duplicate it again! You'll see why after the next step. That's all we need to do here.

















The image is coming along pretty good, but right now it's still pretty flat. We need to add some depth or when we take it to the mod tool and into the game it'll look really flat there too. So first I take the magic wand and select the empty area. I then go to the Edit dropdown and 'Invert Selection'. This is to keep any changes I do from spilling off the sprite. Effects spilling can be pretty annoying if you have gaps within the sprite.



















Now the sprite selected. Double check to make sure you've got the top layer active. From there it's deciding what kind of blur tool I want to use. I've typically used gaussian blur and zoom blur, although this time I go with surface. Just a note, I've found zoom blur seems to work really nicely for mid sized sprites, but is hard to make work for small ones and really doesn't work for extremely large sprites. The values I use for Zoom blur are all over the place really. Gaussian blur works pretty good in a pinch, but I typically only have a value of 1. I might use 2, but never more.






I use the blur tools to add more gradient to the images, but I don't want to lose the shape of the image. The surface blur here wasn't bad, but gaussian and especially zoom blur will obliterate the definition of the original image. So what do I do? Remember the extra layer I had you duplicate? We combine the blurred and the original. To do this, double click on the layer you've blurred. Turn the opacity down and the blurred layer will blend with the unblurred layer below it. Somewhere from 100 to 160 should be good. After you're happy merge the layer down. Your base sprite is complete.

Dressing it up.

We could toss the image into the modtool right now and it wouldn't look bad, but personally I want some colour in there, you probably do too.





So the first step is curves. It can be used two ways. Luminosity and RGB. It's nice for changing the overall darkness/brightness of the image with luminosity because it gives you better control over the final result. This part is optional of course, you might be happy with what you've got as is. The different blur tools can have an effect on the brightness of the sprite before we get here.



















From here we want to add some colour. Now, I could just colour the whole image, but for this one I feel like leaving the bright areas a silver colour and having the darker areas something else. So once again, the magic wand. I raise the tolerance a bit, select an area, hold ctrl and select another area to expand the selection until I've got all the dark areas I like. I then copy selection, add a layer and paste into that new layer. The pink layer I have in there is because I was looking for holes in the sprite. Bright colour make those holes easier to spot.



















Ok then. I've got all the dark areas on their own layer. I then go to the curves tool again and switch it to RGB. I'll adjust and seperate the rgb lines until I get something I'm happy with. Honestly I find the rgb curves to be annoying to work with sometimes. I'll often get something I'm marginally happy with and then try adjusting it further with the 'Hue / Saturation" tool that can be found underneath "Curves" in the dropdown. This time wasn't so bad, I was able to get something I was happy with using only curves.



















Next we want to add lights to our sprite. Now. I was really lucky here because the sprites I chose to use had some already drawn in. Most of the sprites I've done before hand have not had these. But you've already done the steps for this part. I'll use the box tool to select small areas that look suitable for lights. This is where ctrl and alt are handy for adding or removing from the selection. When I've got the areas I like, I copy, add a layer, paste into that layer. I'll then use 'curves' then 'hue / saturation' and I'll have my lights.



















We're just about done with paint.net here. Turn off any extra layers you don't need until you have your sprite with the blank background. Now go save as. Use the dropdown menu for types to change to png. I named my sprite Archer. Of course you can pick any name you prefer.





















It'll often start on autodetect. You probably want it on 32-bit. Thats what I save my files as. Next it'll want to be flattened. This is fine. Flatten the image and save. After you've done this, just ctrl+z to undo and retrieve your layers.






















Ok. Now make sure the layer with your lights is on the very top. Then create a new layer below it and paint bucket it full of black. You'll then save this as a seperate file. I usually just name it 'lights.png'. Then you go through the same steps of choosing configuration (32-bit) and flattening the image. Once this is done, You're set. Unless you want to make variants. In fact, this is a really good time to decide if you want to do so. It'll make your life easier in the mod tool. Maybe a pirate version? Here's a trick I'll use on some of my ships that's actually pretty flexible.

















So This is really good for adding details to boring areas, or adding decorations to the ship over. First we find a part that we like. I'm going to add some 'pirate paint'. First we find our part and clean the red off of it like usual, then get it placed where you like. Once it's placed, use Curves and Hue / Saturation to get the colour you want. I find I need to use Hue / Saturation whenever I want the colours to be really bright.



















Now to really make it pop, I have to go back into the layer properties by double clicking the layer. I open up the properties of the new decoration and then I play with that dropdown menu that will say normal on your screen. Now I've chosen colour burn, but to be honest you should go through them all and see what you like best. Color Burn just happened to be the one I liked this time.

Another way to use this is to put a layer above with small sprite parts, not colour them, leave then on normal and crank opacity down to somewhere around 50-100. This is a really good way to add small and subtle ship detail to large, boring areas.




There are some problems in there. I'd accidentally moved the primary sprite down, and you'll notice the decoration spills into blank space as well. The game does not like this. Make sure to remove any spill. It might not be a problem if you are doing everything from scratch through the mod tool, but if you are only doing minor edits to already made profiles, problems come up. The moved sprite isn't always a huge deal, but be aware that little mistakes like this can lead to your ship not being symmetrical. If this happens you wont notice until you try to add modules to it in game. Then you'll notice the moment you pull out your mirror tool and nothing lines up right.





I also made a new copy of the lights layer and used "Hue / Saturation" to change the lights from blue to red. I then saved a new copy of the sprite and a new copy of the Lights layer as 'PirateArcher" and "PirateLights". With that we're done here. Time for the ModTool.

The Modtool

The Modtool. It's pretty simple... and It works pretty good. I've had very few problems with it.














So choosing 'New' will empty all fields and start you over from scratch. When you open the modtool initially, it's ready to go. First click on Diffuse, and navigate to your base image, so I load up Archer.png.























It's there! I swear it is. It'll barely show up until we start adding in everything else.






















Next select the Emission slot. That'll load in your lights. You can change how bright they are with the Intensity slider. I rarely have to change this setting though.





















Next you'll want to generate a normal map by hitting the 'Generate from Diffuse button'. With that we'll have the first real texture and visibility to your ship.






















But it could still look better. And with minimal effort. Next, active 'Generate horizontal profile' In the normal section. Imagine it as if you were looking directly at the engines on the back of your ship. Horizontal profile is saying how tall that part of the ship is.




















Looking much better. Using the horizontal profile gives it a much flatter and straighter reflectivity. If it helps you can also toggle the light on the lower right of your screen. It'll turn your mouse cursor into a light you can wave around the ship to see how it looks from different angles. Also, If you wanted to make a varient, this is where you can save time and trouble. Horizontal profiles aren't saved. A copy of this layer is exported for the sake of the game, but if you wanted something similar but not quite the same? Well, have fun figuring out your old settings.


















When you're done, click on the Export button. You'll land in the same folder you selected your lights and diffuse from. Just type in the base name of your ship, I typed Archer. The game will then spit out 5 files. ArcherBot, ArcherBump, ArcherEmit, ArcherSpec and ArcherTop. If for any reason you mess up the names on these files, it can cause either visual problems in game or make the game crash on start-up. So if your game crashed, this is a good place to look first. Anways, put these 5 files into a folder with the same base name. My folder of course is named 'Archer'. If you don't have the name right, it will not load. From here you place this folder into your Steam/steamapps/common/Zero Falls/profiles folder.
















I have to admit, my profile pictures always seem to look pretty bad right here. Anways, from here you can edit your ship in game. If all you wanted was to play with your own custom ship in game, congratulations, you're done!





















Of course if you have any variants, they'll need their own profile folder. Lazy man tip here. If you want them to have a very similar module set-up in game, you can copy the Bot.png from your first profile folder into the variant folder. As long as nothing is moved and there are no misplaced pixels it'll work fine. I did this for the sake of this screenshot. I just copied ArcherBot.png and renamed it to PirateArcherBot.png and done.

Flotillas and Workshop.

Soon (tm)

[MyNameMeansBentNose]

That makes it all worth it, thanks.

[Keq]

Thanks for making this guide it was easy to understand let the kit bashing begin :) .

[MyNameMeansBentNose]

It almost takes longer to read than it does to actually do. I can knock off small to mid-sized ships in less than an hour doing this, although bigger ships naturally take longer.

[Feyn]

Hehe, thats alot of reading xD.
awesome guide :D