Lord of Rigel has twelve full fleets of ships and stations ranging from frigates to planet destroying behemoths. Each of these models involves building meshes, textures, materials and debris. The amount of effort that goes into each ship seen in tactical is staggering and our artist designed each ship at scale with thought on details such as the bridge, reactor, locations of each weapon type, and escape pod locations. These details were then used to help place the firing points for different weapon types and firing arcs used in the game.
For those interested in the “guts” of how models one in the game, one master pixel shader is used for the ships and solid body objects in LoR. Individual “material instances” get used for each object that can be adjusted on the fly in game for things such as ship speeds or engaging cloaking devices.
Ships in LoR use a few techniques such as detail maps for hull “Aztecing” a term coined by the details used on the Enterprise model for Star Trek the Motion Picture. Each species in LoR has its own aztec pattern. Parallax occlusion mapping is also used so individual hull places look raised. Engine glows are also dynamic and tied to ship speeds in tactical combat and engine pulsing varies depending on the species. Less technologically savvy species such as the Katraxi and Tharrn are larger more visible and varied engine pulses.
Image 1. Katraxi Destroyer in Editor
Image 2. Parallax occlusion and normal maps only
Image 3. Example of Starship Material
Image 4. Katraxi Destroyers in tactical firing missiles
Image 5. Katraxi Destroyer wireframe model.
Image 6. Katraxi Destroyer clean model.
Image 7. Katraxi Destroyer full model.
That's it from us! Let us know if there's anything you'd like to see a devlog on in the future.
