This is a thread for all the new modellers around here, who want to create their own starships - a small compilation of what you need to get them modelled, painted and in-game.
First of all, you will need
a 3D-modelling package, such as
Milkshape (great to learn the absolute basics of modelling, but nothing more),
Blender (it's FREE) or
3dsMAX (proffessional modelling tool, expensive as heck. so beware!).
After that you may want to start texturing your ship, for that you will need experience unwrapping the model (this is covered elsewhere in this forum) and painting (texturing) it. For that, you will need a 2D graphics program such as:
Adobe Photoshop (industry standard),
Corel PaintShop Pro (much cheaper, a great allround program with a fantastic vector tool) or the
Gimp (goes together greatly with Blender, since both are FREE!) or
GIMPshop (that is Gimp, with a photoshop-like interface).
Once all this is done (watch it, steep learning curve) you may want to use
Nifskope to convert your textured mesh to BCs native *.NIF format.
After that it's scripting and hardpointing (an area I'm not proficient in, so I will leave part two of this tutorial to people who actually know what they're talking about
)
Comments will be greatly appreciated and perhaps incorporated in this tutorial.
