Artists Guide
There are two main areas where we artists can contribute. We need 3D models and textures for the same and the landscape.
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.
There is a list of bigger texture archives and it's licenses which is a good source for ressources: Texture Archives
How to create seamless textures
Especially for material textures, we need seamless textures. 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.
How to create normal maps for textures
If materials or models get normal maps or not is still in question. However, here are two good tutorials how to create normal maps from photos.
- From photograph to normal map, how to... - Excellent tutorial including tips how to photograph right
- Creating Normalmaps - Very practical but little background information
Modelling
The size in which the graphics are displayed will be about 3x as big as that of Clonk Rage. Additionally, it is planned to directly render the bigger models in game (real time rendering), most probably with OGRE.
The workflow
I explained the workflow of creating a real time model with the example of the lorry: Modelling Workflow