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"Step 1: spawn in a core
Step 2: add pipes" Napther 2016 in reference of myself
So, this is something I have decided to make to help new builders, builders wanting to get better, "wannabe master builders" and to help already good builders try new things.
The first thing you will need is a ship core, this can be spawned in with "x" or whatever you set the keybind to last update saber... Now of course you will need blocks, but before then lets talk about something that is sometimes forgotten about but is one of the most loved features for shipbuilding, symmetry.
Most often you will use left/right symmetry because this splits the ship in half so you only have to build one half of the ship, and using the other symmetry modes you might only have to build an eighth of the ship (pretty darn decent if you ask me) BUT, don't go overboard with the symmetry. A ship that is the same on the top and bottom gets boring quickly, and no one likes a cube unless you are a Borg.
Now to talk about how to use symmetry effectively: Turn it off. Yes you heard/read me correctly. By turning off symmetry every-now-and-then you open yourself up to a wonderful way of building a ship, asymmetry. Now you can build most of the ship with two symmetry planes, but the ship will (usually, however not always) look better if the bottom is different to the top of the ship, same thing with the front to the back of the ship, engines look nice and so do prows.
Greeble, that is a word that can confuse a new player to the point of them thinking "why the actual heck did I think I was a good builder" and we don't want you to think that, we want you to think "oh cool, I can be a good builder if I practice enough". Greeble is the small details that are often used to make a flat area more interesting, or to make something look mechanical, to make armour look bolted on, or even to make a massive space-bug-of-death look like it has warts. The best way I can describe greeble is via a picture, so here goes!
This wonderful grey ship was built by the wonderful AtraUnam and showcases effective use of large "greeble" plates to make armour panels over the hull. Go try it on a flat wall of hull, use different coloured blocks to make the greeble stand out more, and make sure to experiment with asymmetry.
Another example of some greeble is...
This ship uses "random and all over this specific area" greeble to a somewhat good effect. As you can tell, it makes what would have otherwise been a flat boring panel interesting. Also what can be seen in the dark grey "wingybit" is another type of greebling that involves using slabs to make indentations into the hull to detail it. This can be used to great effect on armour panels.
That is all on greebling for now, feel free to add to this below in the comments.
Now onto a wonderful thing called shape.
In starmade you have a variety of shapes: blocks, wedges, heptas, tetras, corners, and slabs. Feel free to use these. Many a new player will build a large rectangle and call it a day, or make a rounded large rectangle and wedge it, this is rather boring, so experiment around with adding shapes to that rectangle, and adding greeble. A good way of starting off when building a ship is to make a 2d wireframe of the rough top-down shape of the ship you want to make. When doing this try to add odd angles and to mark out areas that could be cut into on the ship. And now do something similar but as a 2d wireframe profile of the ship to get the general idea of what the ships silhouette will look like.
Not every builder builds like this, but this is as good a place as any to start.
Now to another wonderful feature that starmade has in the advanced build mode (holding down left ctrl) copy paste (or copy pasty if you are me)
Because of this, it is a good idea to build "templates" (small highly detailed things that you can use later on) and you can copy these by selecting copy and then using the advanced buildmode sliders to set the dimensions of the "copy" and then by left-clicking when the entire object is inside the "copy" area. You can save these "templates" by clicking save (the button next to copy) and by naming the template something like..."pretty doorway1" then by clicking paste you can paste that template to your hearts content (oh and by using the mouse wheel and ctrl and shift you can orient the "paste" differently) If your build area is big enough you can copy and paste entire hull sections, so the entire ship has very high levels of detail.
Now a nice thing that starmade has that is very often forgotten about is....(drum roll please) THE STARMADE DOCK CHAT yes, that area of SMD that for some unknown reason children are scared of. How to use this "feature", step 1: take a picture of your ship using either f5 or f6 (if using f5 make sure to use tab+g to hide your HUD) step 2: upload the picture to an image sharing site (most use imgur because it is easy and you can link the pictures in chat) step 3: ask on how you could improve the ship.
It is a very useful thing having a 3rd party give you tips on how to improve your ship, as "you are your worst critic" I have found many a time that I could improve my ship someway through the wonders of the SMDchat and so can you.
Yet more wonders in the land of ship design! FLASHY LIGHTS
These use a logic clock. Now to all you "death to logic" people, this might sound slightly intimidating. Don't worry, to make a simple clock you can use a button connected to a delay connected to a delay connected to the button. Simple! Now all you have to do is link all the lights that you want to flash and there you go, flashing lights on your ship.
And now onto rails!
These are complicated things that can be used with logic to make some very nice looking doodads. All I can say with these is to use the rail basic and a rail docker and to experiment with different methods of making a rail, and again SMDchat will help you a lot here. (psst if you want the rail to go faster, connect a rail speed controller and some activator modules to the rail, the rail will move as fast as the percentage of the total amount of active activator modules from the total amount of linked activator modules to the rail speed controller, so if you have two activator modules and one is active, the rail will move at 50% speed)
Using the decorative blocks! woo!
(as you can tell, the advice is starting to fall down to "experiment") be not afraid to use these, and be not afraid to use the system blocks as decorative blocks either, such as using cannon modules to detail inside corridors or missile modules as drains. But really all I can say is for you to experiment with what looks good (pipes look good, pipes always look good)
Now on to making your corridors look good! step 1: make the actual corridor. step 2: add "ribbing" or other details every 5 or 7 blocks to make it interesting. step 3: wedge the inside of the corridor to make it less "square". step 4: use decorative blocks such as metal grills and mesh to make vents in the corridor. step 5: add lights behind these vents to illuminate the corridor. step 5: now delete it all and try again, but use different details and make it look like what you want it to look.
Corridors are important parts of almost any ships interior, and it is important that they look good and not boring so you will want to spend time inside the ship walking around. Now do a similar thing with the rooms in your ship and make sure that you give a little bit of personality to each room in the ship to make the ship look like you could actually live in it. (kitchens, beds, showers...)
Yet more important stuff is........you. It is your ship so build it in your style, and your way.
(your style is normally developed from building ships in different styles and you pick up detail techniques along the way)
Now that is all that I know personally, I cant really speak for anyone else and how they build, but this is what I know and I hope it can help other builders in some way. Also I would want for you kind people to post below what you would add to this, I want this thread to actually be useful and not just one of my ramblings? :P
-jontyfreack, "the pipe-god-emperor of starmade"-
Step 2: add pipes" Napther 2016 in reference of myself
So, this is something I have decided to make to help new builders, builders wanting to get better, "wannabe master builders" and to help already good builders try new things.
The first thing you will need is a ship core, this can be spawned in with "x" or whatever you set the keybind to last update saber... Now of course you will need blocks, but before then lets talk about something that is sometimes forgotten about but is one of the most loved features for shipbuilding, symmetry.
Most often you will use left/right symmetry because this splits the ship in half so you only have to build one half of the ship, and using the other symmetry modes you might only have to build an eighth of the ship (pretty darn decent if you ask me) BUT, don't go overboard with the symmetry. A ship that is the same on the top and bottom gets boring quickly, and no one likes a cube unless you are a Borg.
Now to talk about how to use symmetry effectively: Turn it off. Yes you heard/read me correctly. By turning off symmetry every-now-and-then you open yourself up to a wonderful way of building a ship, asymmetry. Now you can build most of the ship with two symmetry planes, but the ship will (usually, however not always) look better if the bottom is different to the top of the ship, same thing with the front to the back of the ship, engines look nice and so do prows.
Greeble, that is a word that can confuse a new player to the point of them thinking "why the actual heck did I think I was a good builder" and we don't want you to think that, we want you to think "oh cool, I can be a good builder if I practice enough". Greeble is the small details that are often used to make a flat area more interesting, or to make something look mechanical, to make armour look bolted on, or even to make a massive space-bug-of-death look like it has warts. The best way I can describe greeble is via a picture, so here goes!
This wonderful grey ship was built by the wonderful AtraUnam and showcases effective use of large "greeble" plates to make armour panels over the hull. Go try it on a flat wall of hull, use different coloured blocks to make the greeble stand out more, and make sure to experiment with asymmetry.
Another example of some greeble is...
That is all on greebling for now, feel free to add to this below in the comments.
Now onto a wonderful thing called shape.
In starmade you have a variety of shapes: blocks, wedges, heptas, tetras, corners, and slabs. Feel free to use these. Many a new player will build a large rectangle and call it a day, or make a rounded large rectangle and wedge it, this is rather boring, so experiment around with adding shapes to that rectangle, and adding greeble. A good way of starting off when building a ship is to make a 2d wireframe of the rough top-down shape of the ship you want to make. When doing this try to add odd angles and to mark out areas that could be cut into on the ship. And now do something similar but as a 2d wireframe profile of the ship to get the general idea of what the ships silhouette will look like.
Not every builder builds like this, but this is as good a place as any to start.
Now to another wonderful feature that starmade has in the advanced build mode (holding down left ctrl) copy paste (or copy pasty if you are me)
Because of this, it is a good idea to build "templates" (small highly detailed things that you can use later on) and you can copy these by selecting copy and then using the advanced buildmode sliders to set the dimensions of the "copy" and then by left-clicking when the entire object is inside the "copy" area. You can save these "templates" by clicking save (the button next to copy) and by naming the template something like..."pretty doorway1" then by clicking paste you can paste that template to your hearts content (oh and by using the mouse wheel and ctrl and shift you can orient the "paste" differently) If your build area is big enough you can copy and paste entire hull sections, so the entire ship has very high levels of detail.
Now a nice thing that starmade has that is very often forgotten about is....(drum roll please) THE STARMADE DOCK CHAT yes, that area of SMD that for some unknown reason children are scared of. How to use this "feature", step 1: take a picture of your ship using either f5 or f6 (if using f5 make sure to use tab+g to hide your HUD) step 2: upload the picture to an image sharing site (most use imgur because it is easy and you can link the pictures in chat) step 3: ask on how you could improve the ship.
It is a very useful thing having a 3rd party give you tips on how to improve your ship, as "you are your worst critic" I have found many a time that I could improve my ship someway through the wonders of the SMDchat and so can you.
Yet more wonders in the land of ship design! FLASHY LIGHTS
These use a logic clock. Now to all you "death to logic" people, this might sound slightly intimidating. Don't worry, to make a simple clock you can use a button connected to a delay connected to a delay connected to the button. Simple! Now all you have to do is link all the lights that you want to flash and there you go, flashing lights on your ship.
And now onto rails!
These are complicated things that can be used with logic to make some very nice looking doodads. All I can say with these is to use the rail basic and a rail docker and to experiment with different methods of making a rail, and again SMDchat will help you a lot here. (psst if you want the rail to go faster, connect a rail speed controller and some activator modules to the rail, the rail will move as fast as the percentage of the total amount of active activator modules from the total amount of linked activator modules to the rail speed controller, so if you have two activator modules and one is active, the rail will move at 50% speed)
Using the decorative blocks! woo!
(as you can tell, the advice is starting to fall down to "experiment") be not afraid to use these, and be not afraid to use the system blocks as decorative blocks either, such as using cannon modules to detail inside corridors or missile modules as drains. But really all I can say is for you to experiment with what looks good (pipes look good, pipes always look good)
Now on to making your corridors look good! step 1: make the actual corridor. step 2: add "ribbing" or other details every 5 or 7 blocks to make it interesting. step 3: wedge the inside of the corridor to make it less "square". step 4: use decorative blocks such as metal grills and mesh to make vents in the corridor. step 5: add lights behind these vents to illuminate the corridor. step 5: now delete it all and try again, but use different details and make it look like what you want it to look.
Corridors are important parts of almost any ships interior, and it is important that they look good and not boring so you will want to spend time inside the ship walking around. Now do a similar thing with the rooms in your ship and make sure that you give a little bit of personality to each room in the ship to make the ship look like you could actually live in it. (kitchens, beds, showers...)
Yet more important stuff is........you. It is your ship so build it in your style, and your way.
(your style is normally developed from building ships in different styles and you pick up detail techniques along the way)
Now that is all that I know personally, I cant really speak for anyone else and how they build, but this is what I know and I hope it can help other builders in some way. Also I would want for you kind people to post below what you would add to this, I want this thread to actually be useful and not just one of my ramblings? :P
-jontyfreack, "the pipe-god-emperor of starmade"-
