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Stellaris Dev Diary #186: Necroid Ships & the Art process

Hello everyone!

My name is Fredrik Toll, and I am the Art Director for Stellaris. For this week's dev diary, we wanted to give you an insight into the development process of creating the ships for the Necroids Species Pack.

Let’s dig right into it!

Designing a new Ship Set
After settling on the theme, the first thing we do when embarking on designing a new ship-set for a species pack, is going through the core ideas of the species pack with our internal team of concept artists. In this case it was centered around the theme of death, and the various species who have cheated it. After the brief, we had everyone write down their association and ideas for this theme to know what everyone is thinking. This allows us to align more what it’s all about, share ideas, and inspire each other. By doing that we are able to highlight what is more important and what does not fit with the theme.

After this we do a search for visual reference to use in the concept process. These can be anything from patterns, statues, tiny objects, to buildings, whatever inspires us visually in connection to the theme. We look mostly for shapes, but also materials. Architecture is usually a great source of inspiration, they have great shapes, and a scale suitable for ship details. We try to avoid using other existing ships as reference since we want to develop something original, not just a variant of others, though they can still be a reference, if only to show what we don't want.
For Necroids we looked a lot at Art Deco and brutalist architecture, tombs, pyramids, as well as skulls, fossils and many other things. After reviewing and discussing the references we start sketching, going wide, anything goes. Sometimes they align a lot with our references, other times ideas come from nowhere, it’s all part of the process. This leads to a whole lot of Ship designs ideas. Here are a handful of those.

01_initial_concepts.PNG


Ultimately we settled on these two references as our direction. They felt like something far away from existing ships, as well as fitting well with the theme.

02_chosen_direction_01.png


02_chosen_direction_02.jpg


Developing the Style
These ships are only the start though. Once we have chosen one of the styles we did in our initial look development. We have to flesh out what those mean. These are just side-views, they do not tell you everything you know, in fact, opinions of how to interpret it can differ significantly. So we need to figure that out, as well as adapting it for the demands of the game, such as having sections, having turrets etc.

Usually we start with the Cruiser, since it’s a good mid-size ship close enough to all ships sizes that it’s relevant for all designs. You also have a fallback option, if it turns out that it looks too big, you can just use it for the battleship. If it turns out too small it will be the destroyer or corvette. Here you can see a few of the concepts from the process. It looks pretty straightforward, but it takes a lot of back and forward before we nail it down.

03_refinement.PNG


Creating the Concepts
Once you have the style narrowed down, it’s time to make all the actual concepts for each and every ship. Even though the style is figured out, each ship is a bit unique and each of them present new challenges, and new parts of the style to figure out. The civilian ships are different from the military ships. Each of the military types ships has a different size, and the style differs significantly from the corvette to the juggernaut. Each of the civilian ships has a very unique design and they have more in common with some stations than they do with each other. The construction ship and the mining station often share traits, as do the science ship and the research station.

Here are two different examples.
The science ship for instance, has a much more high tech appearance than the other ships. The process is made easier though from the work we have done on previous shipsets. Some standards have been set, the science ship for instance usually has a more “cool” appearance with a more streamline almost racing type ship. This helps us know where to aim, and apply the style on that.
Sometimes it's pretty straightforward – Let’s take the example of the Science Ship. First we start by making a couple of rough versions, then choose one of those versions, then make some more versions based on that one. We then continue the process by once again choosing one of them, refining the details to finish the design, and in the end we create an asset sheet. The asset sheet is for the 3D artist to model, and know where to apply which material. It speeds up their work a lot and makes sure everything is consistent.

04_science_ship.PNG


05_science_ship_result.PNG



Another example would be the construction ship. They are very bulky, usually described as a cargo hold with engines, and a bridge. Here we made some initial concepts. One of them we felt looked like a good idea for a transport so we got that idea for free.

06_contruction_and_transport_ship.PNG


There are so much more we would like to show. But as you can see here, there are several hundred images in this process.

07_all concepts.png


Ship modelling
After we are done with the concept art for all the assets, they are sent to the 3D artists. Figuring out a design in 3D while you are building the ships is very time consuming, so the idea is that the concepts are clear enough that the 3D artists can mostly trace the concept. There is still a fair bit that needs figuring out as you are building the ships, but the concept art does save an enormous amount of time.

That being said, sometimes the concept artist uses quick 3D models in the concept art phase. Figuring out a design purely in your head is very hard. So making a rough model of your idea, then doing some paint-over on top a screenshot can save a lot of time. The difference is that these models are not fit to use in game, since they are not modelled properly or economically.

Usually we have a 3D artist join the team in the concept phase though. As soon the first ship concept is finalized and the style is set we build that ship, and start working on the materials. We do some concept work for the materials as well, but you only really get a feel for it when you can move the camera around, and see how the lighting moves across the hull of the ship.

The Final Results
Then follows several months of 3D modeling, once done, we rig them for animation, export them to the game, and add particle effects. And finally, here are some examples of the finished ships:

08_necroid_station.png


09_necroid_cruiser.png


10_necroid_juggernaut.png
 
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All we get is we are looking into, we have something in mind, cant go into detail right now. Almost nothing works properly. How do we supposed to enjoy this nice specis pack?

it's ok for me when a game has a few minor bugs. But not working crisis, great khan, war in heaven, enigmatic fortress, military ai, sector ai, planet ai and such bad performance is way to much!
 
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I have to ask, is there any chance of us getting our hands on some concept art at full resolution? (Either of this shipset or other work.)
It looks like there's some A grade wallpaper material in there
 
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I love the look! Will there by any chance be an emblem set that comes with this pack? I'm certain a lot of us would love some skulls on our flags.
 
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Lol! the Necroid science ship looks far more Arthropoid than the Arthropoid ships themselves.
 
Soon™.

We have a number of different topics we're looking into, but we won't be talking about them in more detail right now. We don't want to deploy something too risky along with the species pack, but when we make progress in something it's likely to find its way to a public beta branch sometime after that.

Thank you for an official response. Could we, at least, get a bit more detail on the general areas that are being looked into [1], so that we can somewhat anticipate and (further) temper our expectations?

[1] with the obvious disclaimer that nothing is final, things may not pan out the way it is hoped they will, etc etc.
 
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So basically we should not expect a meaningful patch together with Necroids becuse "that would be too risky".
You better start DDs about upcoming bugfixes soon if you do not want pre Emperor EU4 conditions here, if thats not already the case.
 
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Oh, I forgot to ask. I really like the ships you made for the species pack, expecially for Necroids, Plantoids and Lithoids, but compared to these I feel like the vanilla ones are kinda lacking. Are you thinking about updating the vanilla ones too? :)
 
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I have to ask, is there any chance of us getting our hands on some concept art at full resolution? (Either of this shipset or other work.)
It looks like there's some A grade wallpaper material in there
I agree, some of these are really good. I'd like also some other from previous species pack :)
 
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It looks nice. But just having a nice looking game is not enough. Its needs to actually work.

Its about time the Crisis, micromanagement and AI is fixed. Since the current state is not acceptable, many of us will not buy this dlc or other dlc and not play the game.
 
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I think this is a good example of what's wrong with the design of Stellaris.
How ships look is mostly useless. You look at them in what, one game? The first time you build them? And then you can just ignore them. You never look at them, because it requires zooming for no other reason that looking at ships. It doesn't bring informations. All ships of the same class look the same. You learn nothing from the battle by looking at it.

Lots of ressources and time goes into this design, but it's for almost nothing. What we're looking at in Stellaris is menus. Planet menus, traditions menus. That's where the efforts should go. That's what needs to be diverse, immersive and interesting.

If you're going to make awesome ship designs, be sure to make ships important. Or at least, find a way so we look at ships more often. Just imagine if in Civ6 you would only see the leader portraits when you look for them in the civilopedia or you had to click on "show portrait" on purpose. That's how useless ship models are in Stellaris.
 
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  • 3Haha
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Huh. The ships are more than just voxel pinpricks. Who knew? It's not like I ever see them in game.
Despite the models being pretty, they'll remain just pinpricks to me.
 
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*2 years have passed*
Someone on the forum: "It’s ridiculous how impatient you people are"
*2 more years have passed*
Someone on the forum: "It’s ridiculous how impatient you people are"
*2 more years have passed*
No one goes to the forum anymore
In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find...

"It's ridiculous how impatient you people are."

Loving the new designs though, Aerie. Reminds me of the description of the kill-o-zap gun in Hitchhikers Guide.
 
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So basically we should not expect a meaningful patch together with Necroids becuse "that would be too risky".
You better start DDs about upcoming bugfixes soon if you do not want pre Emperor EU4 conditions here, if thats not already the case.
Major overhauls only come with the big DLCs. That makes so much more sense.
 
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Soon™.

We have a number of different topics we're looking into, but we won't be talking about them in more detail right now. We don't want to deploy something too risky along with the species pack, but when we make progress in something it's likely to find its way to a public beta branch sometime after that.

It has been 22 months since the Megacorp debacle. 22 months. There have been hundreds of threads with thousands of very different ideas to improve performance, AI, micromanagement, etc. Many of those have been layed out in a positive, thorough and well written manner.

I am sorry but at this point, a standard response like this is rather insulting.

Btw, very nice art on those ships. A shame we can't have some for Machine Empires too.
 
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Lol! the Necroid science ship looks far more Arthropoid than the Arthropoid ships themselves.

I’m glad I’m not the only one getting done insect/beetle/scarab vibes!

I think this is a good example of what's wrong with the design of Stellaris.
How ships look is mostly useless. You look at them in what, one game? The first time you build them? And then you can just ignore them. You never look at them, because it requires zooming for no other reason that looking at ships. It doesn't bring informations. All ships of the same class look the same. You learn nothing from the battle by looking at it.

Lots of ressources and time goes into this design, but it's for almost nothing. What we're looking at in Stellaris is menus. Planet menus, traditions menus. That's where the efforts should go. That's what needs to be diverse, immersive and interesting.

If you're going to make awesome ship designs, be sure to make ships important. Or at least, find a way so we look at ships more often. Just imagine if in Civ6 you would only see the leader portraits when you look for them in the civilopedia or you had to click on "show portrait" on purpose. That's how useless ship models are in Stellaris.

I zoom in to my ships all the time, just to watch them fly through the beautiful galaxy.
 
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