How do you make your spaceships?

i dont really make spaceships so mine just plain stink

Take a guess....

No really which parts do i love using?

The block parts?

every part? hehe lol

Nope...
carry on guessing
I'll give you a clue j__ s_____

jet setter? What about paint jobs?

Jet Setter wats that i've never heard of it

Correct!
As for paint jobs i go for the heavily textured ones on page 7 and the more colour focussed ones on page 8

I usually start with a torso, then move onto the head, tail, and finally the legs. I tend to use mostly detail parts, although most of my older ships used mostly body parts.

Lately I have been messing around with something which, for the purposes of being able to easily identify it, I have dubbed "FlexTech". Its a rather simple system, but you can pull off some neat stuff with it depending on what you do with it.
Basically, the ship only has a single body piece. The rest is completely made of details. What this lets me do is basically turn the ship into one massive action figure, which, when you make that single body asymmetrical, can be twisted and rotated into any shape or pose. My latest ship is a good example of this.

The plants dotting the bottom use this system, letting me twist them around to look like they are waving in a gentle ocean current, and can be placed anywhere on the base. The animals themselves use this system as well, allowing me to twist them around, flex their tails, adjust their fins, turn their heads, and move their jaws.
I'm gonna try and grab a set of those animated png things so I can show you guys the process from start to finish...

For parts, I never usually pay attention to the names of the parts I am using, I just use what part would best suit what I am trying to make and what I will need it for, though there are certainly some parts I use more than others. I also keep an eye on the complexity all the time unless I am using Freedom, and try to use as few parts as possible for a certain thing while still making sure it looks good.
For paint, I usually like using the scales, spotted, and stripy patterns. I forget what page they are one. Sometimes I will use other paint options though, depending on what sort of texture I want.

I usually just stick random parts together and see what shape they make.

No, seriously. Okay, it does require a bit of thought and then moving the parts around and trying to make them work, and then once you've got some bits together it helps to build on them a little more intelligently, but it's still basically what I did to make this Droner:


As you can see, the front part is just a smaller version of the main body, which comes under "building on the parts intelligently", but the original bits were put together without any idea as to what the whole thing was going to look like. I usually find that, if I have an exact idea of what shape I want to make my spaceships, they don't turn out very well at all.

Wow! It's strange to see how much of a variety of styles people have! Here, I have a challenge for you! Make a creation using someone else's technique, and then show them your attempt here! Who knows, you could end up using their technique more often

I just mess around until something looks good... that's it
It's wierd that people actually have a plan when it comes to creating!

bmpalmann wrote:
It's wierd that people actually have a plan when it comes to creating!

Haha. I'm actually rather used to designing stuff in my head, since (call me nerdy or whatever, its been done before) I actually like messing around with construction toys in my spare time sometimes (so, doing similar stuff in Spore and my preference of the spaceship editor are only natural). It used to be mostly Lego, but lately I have been doing K'Nex instead.
My latest are a set of dinosaurs which I am quite pleased with, due to the fact that they are all pretty sturdy, made to scale with eachother, and each features at least one action feature or moving part. Some examples, if anyone wanted to see:
https://2img.net/h/i471.photobucket.com/albums/rr75/Dinosaur589/DSCN0787.jpg
https://2img.net/h/i471.photobucket.com/albums/rr75/Dinosaur589/DSCN0782.jpg

Sometimes I hjave a clear pictuire in my head and sometimes I just mess around. However, I ALWAYS enter ANY editor knowing what the function of the creation will be for use in adventures, the game etc. In the case of spaceships, I go in intending to create a Fighter or a transport, and work based on those criteria, then, the sky is the limit.

@Dino: Pity the parts are of differing colours because it detracts from the mechanics.

I'm in the same boat as bmp most of the time . No real plan, but once something starts to form, exploit it. I often like to build a wing arrangement from multiple parts, clone the wing, and then either place the clone on a different part of the body or on top of the original.

Paint is a blighter for me, I've always got some colour scheme variants that I can't choose between .

Like Delta, i used to clone the wing parts a lot, they can come up with some very cool shapes.

But now i try to place each part individually, it takes more time but allows a more accurate and detailed look to the creation.

One glitch I experience in the spaceship editor very often is that, when I touch one of the morph handles of a part that is connected to other parts, the connected parts jump to different positions.

Though this is usually a nuisance, in a few of cases the glitch has produced some interesting arrangements. One of my fighters has secondary wings that float slightly , didn't notice until I'd published it.

One way to combat the jumping part glitch is to avoid letting the mouse hover over the arrows, but the floaty part glitch can come in use at times.

bmpalmann wrote:One way to combat the jumping part glitch is to avoid letting the mouse hover over the arrows, but the floaty part glitch can come in use at times.

Yeah, I discovered this a while ago. Although, nonetheless, sometimes the glitch is very hard to avoid.
And with my method of ship building it proves incredibly impractical, and occasionally occurs anyway. I've noticed it occurs the most often in legs for me, followed by the heads.

Well, I use the tab and alt keys, both of which you all probably do. I try to make realistic looking ships. Some are based off ships I have seen in PC games, others are just me throwing some parts together, painting, and working it out from there.

Then, I try to make the paint on of the last things I do. I paint it however I see fit, relative to the design and parts I used. There are many factors surrounding that, but just to name a few: purpose, size, weapons used, and even the description I give it (which is rare).

I make my spaceships with overlapping forms. I also enjoy creating mechs

Trying my best to make something that looks even remotely like a vehicle capeable of not only flying and streamline designs, that it actually looks physically possible to pilot and has an attractive or futuristic appearance.

Needless to say, I ****ing suck at making spaceships of any design.

Lol you aren't that bad! If you can't make ships that could have a pilot, scrap them an call it a robot I have loads if AI controlled ships on my sporepedia, and even hen I make capital ships which are supposed to be massive, prety much bending the law of physics and screwing around with aerodynamics

Rebecca1208 wrote:Trying my best to make something that looks even remotely like a vehicle capeable of not only flying and streamline designs, that it actually looks physically possible to pilot and has an attractive or futuristic appearance.

Needless to say, I ****ing suck at making spaceships of any design.

A vehicle capeable of flying... um most my designs are impractical and rather showy

I just walked around and kicked ass




But in all seriousness....
I had a bunch of techniques for details on a ship, so once I got the basic shape down I went nuts on it. As for the basic design, sometimes I freestyled and sometimes I had some sort of a set shape I was going for. I never wanted to get too far ahead of myself because of the limitations of the editor often didn't let you do what you wanted to. I always used the paint like function of the editor about halfway through making it, so I had an idea of what it was going to look like. And when I was done I would edit the texture a bunch to get the final product.