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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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devs read the room, you could not have chosen a worse time for this. the game is a mess, the forum is on fire, my cat is oblivious and so are you if you think people are going to be happy when you add more unnecessary stuff on top of a broken game. then you say that you won't be fixing it with this update even though you know full well how busted it is? You are releasing something on par with many mods on the workshop and are expecting people to buy it at a time like this?

i have nothing against the species pack and if the game was in a functional state i would buy it just for those gorgeous ships alone, i don't much care for the morbid theme but the ships are cool enough for me to be willing to buy it. IF THE GAME WASN'T BROKEN. fix the damned game and i'l pick this pack up the day after i check to see that the ai actually works and micro isn't hell, but until that day i will being giving this pack a pass.
 
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I will never understand how management or marketing would ever allow a post like this to happen. There hasn't been a patch in 4 months, almost no communication we finally get is "don't expect anything to be fixed."


I have a fairly high end PC but play on small maps in 4x games for quicker, 1 day games.

I loaded up on large one time and my brain meltee because I was always someone with no performance issues... ouch.

I'll almost certain buy this pack on day 1, but the people that play on bigger SUPPORTED BY PARADOX maps have a legit gripe.

I honestly would love 3.0 to basically go back to a tile system and cap planets at 50 pops. Wiz's New Economy flatlined the game.
Stellaris must be in a bad place when you can suggest bringing back the old tile system and not have heaps of negativity thrown at you.
 
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Stellaris must be in a bad place when you can suggest bringing back the old tile system and not have heaps of negativity thrown at you.
it's actually the most common suggestion to fix the ai and the micro hell and the lag, believe it or not it would almost certainly work
 
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I preferred the tiled versions to be fair. It was minimalistic but it didn't break everything else in the process.
i actually enjoy the new economy but its problems outweigh any benefit it has, i'd rather have the simple boring old system over our current micro dumpsterfire
 
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The Devs don't play their own game. Otherwise, they would have noticed every issue we are complaining about for almost 2 years. Nothing will change in the future.
 
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The Devs don't play their own game. Otherwise, they would have noticed every issue we are complaining about for almost 2 years. Nothing will change in the future.
i try to stay positive, although that has been difficult as of late. i know the devs are at least trying to fix the game, there has to be some reasonable explanation why they have not been able to repair the game after two years. at least that's what i tell myself
 
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i try to stay positive, although that has been difficult as of late. i know the devs are at least trying to fix the game, there has to be some reasonable explanation why they have not been able to repair the game after two years. or at least that's what i tell myself

Well, at the beginning of Sep, a Dev Diary had this nugget:

I can’t write this dev diary without telling you about the “Happy New Year” bug. Basically, we were playing dev MP on a reasonably large galaxy and reached reasonably late into the game, and since we were all working remotely on wildly varying computers and internet connection speeds, the performance was perhaps a tad sluggish, but still acceptable for the most part. Then, suddenly, we noticed huge lag spikes - 20 seconds and more - on the 1st of January. So noticeable were these spikes that we began wishing each other a Happy New Year each time the game froze!

Now, I know this has been a known and reported issue since at least 1.8. In fact, for as long as assimilation has been a thing. So, having a dev notice now was... striking to me.
 
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Unpopular opinion: The developers are human, too, and harping on them for not releasing a free update to a game that is still very much playable and enjoyable is selfish and rude. I don't see you jumping up and down, waving your arms and screaming "Paradox, hire me, I can fix your broken game!" Yes the mid/late-game slowdown fucking sucks, yes, I get it, yes, I want to see it change, too. Yes, I'm going to buy this species pack, because I like space liches. Fight me. But, please, just remember that these people are people, too, man.

Edit: Imagine getting downvoted because people refuse to believe that game developers are people
 

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The communication this year has been of poor quality when compared to the standards set by Paradox communication in previous years.

In previous years, we knew that a diplomatic update was coming at some stage in the future. Now I don't think anyone knows what the direction is that Stellaris is heading in. What features are being looked at and worked on? A 'roadmap' dev diary would be very welcome.
 
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Species packs, content packs, any other form of DLC..

I will not be investing another penny into the game, no matter how attractive they look, until the fundamentals of this game that have been mentioned a thousand times already are addressed.

I haven't played Stellaris for around 6 months, and yet I check each week for the dev diaries, in the hope that this week is the week I see some progress being made. I do this because I am desperate to play the game again. But I simply refuse to load it up again while it is in its current state.

It's a real shame, because a working Stellaris is easily one of my favourite games of all time.

It's just a big shame really.
 
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Unpopular opinion: The developers are human, too, and harping on them for not releasing a free update to a game that is still very much playable and enjoyable is selfish and rude.
I'd say it's "just about playable and enjoyable" rather than "very much playable and enjoyable", and I don't have much performance issues.
 
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.
For the record, next time please include this in the dev diary itself. I can understand not wanting to promise or give away too much, but I think your core customers deserve something more reassuring than silence and "look shinies!". No matter how pretty and well done those ships are, there's no way I'm buying the pack simply because I can't play the game. I can run the game, I want to play, but everything is so borked and mid/lategame so slow, what's even the point?

Stuck at home for 7 months in quarantine, haven't played Stellaris for 6 of those. That should be a clue as to how mind-numbingly annoying the game's issues have become now. I suspect this DLC will go over about as well as EU4's Golden Century and Imperator at release did. Imperator and EU4 redeemed themselves with large-scale redos and time investments, I just hope Stellaris can do the same.
 
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I'd say it's "just about playable and enjoyable" rather than "very much playable and enjoyable", and I don't have much performance issues.
Guess what, AI issues are deep-set in the code. Fixing a single issue means reading through what is probably hundreds of lines of code, isolating the problem, and then fixing it, and likely re-writing hundreds of lines of code to actually be able to run now that the issue has been fixed.

Again, do you know how to code AI? No? Then give the poor bastards time.
 
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Imagine thinking that two years isn't somehow plenty of time to get their s*** in order.
Fix the problem yourself if you're so much better at it than them.
 
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We have Starnet and Glavius, so we know that the AI can be fixed, even with limited resources and without access to the source code.
Then, like I said... Fix it.
 
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Then, like I said... Fix it.
Did you miss the part where he pointed out that other people literally already have? Nevermind that they're the developers, fixing the game is their job. Your argument of "Well you fix it then!" is tantamount to "This movie sucks." "Well I don't see you making a better one so shut it!"
 
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