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Transparent background PNG files of ships w/ engine trails
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Gogela
Epic Ganking Time
CODE.
#1 - 2012-12-30 06:15:28 UTC
Reclaimer: I'm a web designer.

So, CCP wants the game to look good on fan sites, right?

You, as a web designer, want your site to look **** hot, right?

Here's the deal: HTML 5 is giving us some phenomenal tools with which to make interactive sites. I actually just started building some sites for my own corp (nothing up yet). I won't lie... things are looking really good. But when I look at other killboards and forums what do I see? The same recycled 2D "wallpapers" serving as the foundation of the site. That s*** is played out. Here is what would help: HTML5 assets. Here is an ideal list of things that would make everyone's life easier:

- Transparent background PNGs of ships WITH engine trails as they look rendered in eve.
- 3d HTML 5 models of ships... pick your compliant format.
- Any particle effects you already have made and ready to go.
- Layered backgrounds (transparent PNG) with the script to make them float by / move independently.

I'm going ahead with my design sans these assets. I'm just going to make them myself. That's fine... pain in the ass but at least I can style it to my liking. ...but from what I can see most of the people putting up forums and killboards are only vaguely aware of the technology behind them, and are just trying to make it look "pretty good for the effort". I would bet you if those HTML5 assets were available the people putting up these boards would know enough to figure out how to use them, and all these fansites would start looking a lot better.

Just wanted to throw that out there. I'm adding particle effects to 2d cutouts and it's annoying Roll

Signatures should be used responsibly...
Joepopo
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#2 - 2012-12-30 07:32:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Joepopo
Did you takes look at the webGL ship viewer CCP announced at last fanfest?

There are 3d ships and you can have trails on them.
Gogela
Epic Ganking Time
CODE.
#3 - 2012-12-31 05:26:17 UTC
Yah I looked into it... not sure I understand it yet though (and by that I mean I do not). I need to figure out how to remove the background in the player if that's even possible. Lotta work to do there. Need to instance it too. I'm looking into it. I have actual work to do so not sure when I'll get around to it but if I ever get this new site up I'll explain it. ...maybe write a tutorial for other site designers too...

Signatures should be used responsibly...
Joepopo
Worthless Carebears
The Initiative.
#4 - 2012-12-31 08:06:08 UTC
The ship viewer is something you embed in your pages. But using it and a bit of photoshop you can probably get images of ship with trails like you wanted.
Gogela
Epic Ganking Time
CODE.
#5 - 2012-12-31 10:34:29 UTC
Joepopo wrote:
The ship viewer is something you embed in your pages. But using it and a bit of photoshop you can probably get images of ship with trails like you wanted.

Ah I see what you are saying.... the problem is with getting transparent PNGs of the trails. You can't just cut them out. It looks bad. I would need to either render them on a pretty close background and add effects or render them in real time on the page. I'd prefer the latter and I'm trying to figure out a way to do that. I actually may be able to do that with the viewer I just have to figure some stuff out. If I can do it on my page anyone can do the same, and cool stuff will come of it.

Signatures should be used responsibly...
Cyerus
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2012-12-31 13:52:08 UTC
Gogela wrote:
Joepopo wrote:
The ship viewer is something you embed in your pages. But using it and a bit of photoshop you can probably get images of ship with trails like you wanted.

Ah I see what you are saying.... the problem is with getting transparent PNGs of the trails. You can't just cut them out. It looks bad. I would need to either render them on a pretty close background and add effects or render them in real time on the page. I'd prefer the latter and I'm trying to figure out a way to do that. I actually may be able to do that with the viewer I just have to figure some stuff out. If I can do it on my page anyone can do the same, and cool stuff will come of it.


I'm not sure what you are saying here.

First of all the 3d ship viewer on their website doesn't hold all the different ships, nor multiple render with different skins of the same type of ship, so you are limited to what they release.

Second, if you want "moving" engine trails you are going to be stuck with some kind of engine (like the model viewer itself), so why not use the model viewer for that, as it's build in js and can be easily implemented in any website you'd like.

You can also change the background image of the model viewer to a weird color, and use that color in photoshop to make the background transparent. By doing that you can angle the ship to any position while providing you with a normal (unmoving) engine trail.

All in all I have to agree that more freedom (more resources) would be nice.