Artists Guide

There are two main areas where artists can contribute: Modelling 3D objects and the texturing thereof, which requires different skills and doesn't need to be done by the same person. Most of our modellers use Blender, however which modeller you use is not important as long as it can export meshes to the OGRE format. For creating scenario backgrounds, textures for models, scenario decoration and stuff, we actually need people who are good with Photoshop, GIMP or any other image manipulation software.

Have a look in the art workshop and the sound studio in the forum.

Modelling

The mesh of the foundry

We got rid of the old graphics from Clonk Rage which were so tiny that it was already hard to play the game in a proper resolution. (The character you control smaller than a mouse cursor? Come on!) For OpenClonk, the graphics are about three times as big and detailed as in the old Clonk series.

Unlike in previous clonk titles, most objects are actually models that are rendered in game. The file format we use for this is the OGRE format as it is a format designed to be used in games plus all important modellers can export into this format. However, we do exchange of the models in their native format (mostly .blend).

Now, for creating models that are to be rendered ingame (in OpenClonk), there are a few additional things that have to be considered if you are used to creating models that are rendered before the start of the game. Apart from the polygon count, for each model we only use one UV-mapped texture rather than zillion materials with different colors/googled textures. More guidelines on how to create a real time model for OpenClonk can be read here: Modelling Workflow.

You might ask yourself if there is a guideline of how many polygons a model should actually have. Yes, there is one: So many, that the object looks both good ingame with a 3x zoom and on it's picture graphic (whichever is bigger). Also, unanimated inventory items like materials don't need to be rendered ingame. As sprites, the polygon count doesn't matter.

Also, if you want to contribute a model, please always include the 3D-model when you attach a rendering of the same to your post. Otherwise, if you somehow loose your model, all the work was in vain.

Textures

We use the CC-by licence for OpenClonk and ask you to license your contributions under the same license. As many textures in texture archives have licenses which are not compatible with CC-by, we will have to create many textures on our own. But don't worry, it's quite easy and there are some really good tutorials on how to create quality textures from photos.

Here is a list of bigger texture archives and it's licenses which is a good source for resources: Texture Archives

For material textures, we need seamless textures. Regarding this, there are different methods to create seamless textures from (a set of) photos, here is how I do it: Tutorial: Creating Seamless Textures. For GIMP, there are two filters which can do this automatically: The plugin Texturize and the filter Resynthesise. Both work good with textures with small random patterns like gravel, plaster, sand or ground. However, they don't produce quite as convincing results for bigger regular patterns like (roofing) tiles, bricks, wickerwork, pavements etc. The manual method that I proposed always produces better results and if you are experienced in this, it's a thing of five minutes.