Nmn

Hello there! I have decided to write a tutorial on making Doom-styled weapos using Your favorite Graphics Software. There are several reason why I've decided to do this. My biggest reason is naturally my own-I'm still learning to be as best as possible in this category (Yes, I have my reasons for this, One actuallye.. err.. ;]), but also I've seen some people around the forums trying to produce some weaponry but with rather poor results (tough this is no humiliation. You're lucky You haven't seen my first weapons :), everyone needs to start somewhere..). Learning to make good weaponry (learning to produce good art in all) is no different than any other thing You can learn-anyone can learn it. You can learn to be a great illustrator just as You can learn mapping, programming, etc. One thing You need to learn tough is self-motivation. If You cannot get over Your lazyness get out, drink some coffee and come back once You will have the will to overcome Your disadvantages! With that said I would like to present You with my tutorial on making weaponry. So far we only have 1 tutorial on this subject-by Scuba Steve, plus he has given several good pointers on the forums (including the basic info on the vanishing point technique), so I suppose additional help on this subject won't hurt anyone, more, it will be useful. Before we begin I want also to point out that this is my first tutorial, so I'll try the best I can NOT to leave You with any question marks on whatever may cause trouble. I will provide You with good links that will surely help You in weapon art, but my focus here is on making a Weapon for Doom. Also I want to add that I am still learning, so comments or corrections are very welcommed, plus, the method I used to produce this weapon is my technique, not the Best technique. Feel free to develop Your own to produce weapons and remember-the results are what counts-not the procees of creation. As a final note I also want to mention what tools You need: 1.Any Graphics program that supports layers-I use PSP, but feel free to use Photoshop, Open Canvas, whatever. Layers are IMO the thing any good graphics program cannot lack in. I encourage everyone to quit using MSPaint as it is absolute shit and most artists whom documents I have read share my opinion. 2.Graphics Tablet-this thing is a must for every artist. You not necessarily need it, if the mouse suits You, feel free to use it, but myself, I cannot work without a tablet. 3.Scanner-also essential for graphic artists, but not very helpful for this tutorial. If You prefer to make concept drawings on paper (like me) and scan them into the comp-go for it. I lack the scanner unfortunately :'( Now: open Winamp, load Your fave muzak, get Your favourite drink and let's make ourselves a weapon! In this tutorial we will create a very basic weapon with a basic name- Blaster. Before You start I reccomend making some rough concept pictures-You can lay down Your ideas on paper and store them in a visible way-it's much easier to work with concept pictures rather than what You have in Your head. Naturally the final effect can differ greatly from Your concepts-You may develop new great ideas while You work-but the basic idea should be visualized before getting down to work. Here's a rough concept pic of the weapon we're going to make: As You see it's very basic, just a rough barrel and some details. I'm planning a much more complicated weapon for the next tutorial, but since this is the first instalment let's stick to easy stuff. I reccomend making Your own concept pictures as it never hurts to practice drawing and having great fun doing so :) Remember one thing-if You screw something up, do it again. Don't give up, never give up, even if Your result will be different (in the bad way) from the weapon I have made while making this tutorial. Oh, don't even think about saving Your gun in JPEG-I did only for purposes of this tutorial-JPG's are quite fast to load in browsers-and while You're making Your weapon save in PSD format (Photoshop format) as it supports layers-otherwise You will have everything merged which is not good while still making the gun. So let's begin our work! Open up Your fave program and make a new image sized 320x200. This is the standard resolution for Doom weapons and this size greatly helps in finding the center of the screen which is VERY important-so our weaopn is pointed front, so it's easier to aim our enemies before we get a bullet in our body. Color the background-White will ********ly Hurt Your eyes. So goes for Cyan, but I'm pretty used to it-as Doomish transparency-I recommend a low saturated tone. Some say that it's a good idea to color the background with the same colour the colour of the light in our picture will be.. but we have cyan here :b Create a new layer and divide the screen with 2 red lines (to do this turn on the grid and grid snapping and set the grid spacing to Horizontal: 160 and vertical 100). Now draw the lines and locate the center of the screen like so: That way we locate the center of our screen and the Vanishing Point. This is a point where all lines go to infinity and is perfect for creating depth and perspective-that's right, remember this word. Perspective is what makes You a half-pro-artist IMO, You may not know anatomy, You may not know planes and shading but if You know perspective You can draw everything correctly-this is the thing You absolutely must learn if You're planning to mess with graphics in future. I was shocked and angry at myself when I looked at my older drawings after I've studied perspective more toroughly-that they are so lame. Perspecitve is a complexed thing to study so I reccomend You read about it. Here are 2 sources to obtain Your knowledge: http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atpm.com%2F9.09%2Fdesign.shtml This site has 1, 2 and 3 point perspective explained in a simple way. Great for beginners as well as veterans. saveloomis.org This page contains links to Andrew Loomis's books-the man who really deserves a statue-these books are no longer printed but You can obtain their contents on these sites. Reccomended for every artist out there. For this tutorial it is advised to read about Perspective and Lighting-especially the "planes" in his book: Successful Drawing. The knowledge You will obtain, altough may seem unnecessary for just a weapons tutorial, will greatly pay off in the future if You like messing with graphics-mark my words. After You get some knowledge on Vanishing Points make lines on the same layer (try not to make anything on the background layer) that go from the center of the screen-these lines are parallel in pespecitve and go to infinity-they are just the thing we need for adding the 3rd dimension in our drawings-remember, everything we ever draw has 3 dimensions, altough it's constructed on a flat surface it needs to be 3d really. Try to understand it. In Weapons pointed front we're dealing with 1 point perspective-easiest. Do it like here: Now lower the opacity of the layer and make a new one. Name the layers in any way You want-I usually stick to random names as I check which layer is which by toggling them and seing what happens-anyway-create a box. Not a flat shape-but a real box-the King of All shapes, believe it or not, constructing a correct box on paper isn't that easy, You must know perspective. Any 3d shape can fit into a box thus we can use it as our position marker-where the weapon will be placed on the screen-and our size determiner-how large our gun is. The sizes are very important for our weapon. Look here: As You see the weapon is pretty average in terms of size-a generic rifle. It is also positioned on the right part of the screen. I am NOT going to start discussing and arguing what placement of the weapon on the screen looks more or less doomish and what is better-centered or off-centered. I fully agree with Scuba Steve on this subject-You can put more details to angled weapons... If You're having trouble with construction of the box try thinking of extrusion of a rectangle-draw a simple rectangle and follow the vanishing lines from the VP and extrude Your shape to make it 3d. This is a thing that really needs practice and remember-the more You practice the better You become in this stuff. Now that we have our size and placement let's start fleshing our gun and building a 3d skeleton-this will be our guide when shading our weapon. Make a new layer and let's begin. Myself am using the Line Tool a lot here and I suggest You do the same: You can see our gun is beginning to look like what we have on our concept pictures. Here I've angled the edges of the gun-altough the box is the King of shapes try to avoid blocky shapes-angle corners and try to create interesting shapes whenever it is possible. Don't worry about how cool it will be at the moment-worry about it being correct perspectively. Remember-if You want to add more vanishing lines switch over to Your vanishing point layer and add some-this is important and useful in this procees. It's starting to look like a weapon. Nice. If You're having trouble in creating angled planes try to think of connecting points-draw a box, mark off 2 points on the bottom of Your box and make a corner-then extrude it to make a slanted surface. You may see that this weapon is going to have an ammo displayer on the top of it-this is obviously influenced by Doom 3's Machine Gun ;) There's nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other weapons-if You're in need of ideas go play something, or scuttle the internet for cool pictures of interesting weapons. Keep Going. Remember that the lines we're making here (skeleton) won't be present in the final weapon, so imagine them like drawing 3d objects on Geometry Lessons at school-add the lines that won't be visible as well-this is Your guide so use everything that will help You visualize this weapon in 3d. On a side note You can see that I've added another layer with Vanishing Lines-when working on a 320x200 stuff can get pretty messy, so I've added a new layer to make it easier to see the damn lines and I've lowered the opacity of the primary ones. Simple stuff. You can also see I've added this side-thingy on the weapon's front. Mostly You should worry about the purpose of the weapon but create whatever You desire-if it just looks cool-why not? I've enhanced the barrel because I felt it could use stuff like that to spice things up a bit. At this moment I want to make the nicest shape as I can-more slopes. Look here: Sloped that ammo displaying thingy on top of the gun. This is a good moment to pack details into Your gun, however, if You won't add something now, You will still have a chance at the latter stage. Continue: I've added a border on the rear chamber, ammo displayer screen and some slight perforations on the mid chamber-these are always pretty and easy. I'm pretty much satisfied with the shape-a basic weapon to suit a basic tutorial :)

http://grubber.drdteam.org/index.php?page=topic&id=64

Get all the weapons from this thread: http://paul.drdteam.org/Stuff/Bucket of Weapons.zip

I don't.

Ok, I've browsed through the thread and collected those weapons I could get (mine and others as well) and zipped them all into a single package. I haven't included the crap. .. by that I mean rips or junk/lousy attempts. Sorry, I don't want to sound offensive, but this thread was made for artists to grow their skills. Some people who were basically not into art at all (like DartmerC or Xaser) suceeded in creating good weapons, I've included those, but putting them side by side with crap simply beats the purpose of this thread. I've topped this cake with some of my unreleasies. Keep in mind that most of the stuff has been collected on the fly, some weapons lack pickup sprites, others lack muzzle flashes. It's easy to add them if you know how, being honest. I've updated the first post in this thread with the link to the package. Enjoy. EDIT: I've counted about 70 weapons (including remixes of some guns)

Aww dude, it's no big deal :) really. @Veddge-I could write something like that, but there are other talents for DEC lump. Try asking Dark Archon or Wild Weasel.

*bows* Thank you kindly.

Thanks for the kind words guys, but I don't think my skills are anything special. Pretty standard. As for taking the throne, or whatever you'd call it, Corrupted does the job well ;)

l33t. Can't wait for the release.

Bumpage! Here's most likely my final weapon as I'm really not into Dooming these days. I'll prolly not make my final mods, but here's a weapon I made for the mod. It's called Embrator and fires hot coal projectiles. Here's a prev: And here's da thing Oh yeah, the mod I was making it, a collapse of my unreleasies- Haze and Fear The Shrill-is canned. Well.. sorry. I really don't feel like making it ever.

Yep

Don't forget Eriance Browsing that thread oughta give you some good results, as he creates weapons that look doomy and are centered.

Sure. And thanks :)

http://www.doom2.net/~doomdepot/music/psx doom/level 21 (mt erebus).mp3

PSX Doom is UDoom + Doom2 minus some maps, added other maps. And it's also Doom2 Map 06 "Crusher" where the babies are ;) The music repeats it's self on latter levels. The tune with the babies (one you're looking for) is Mt. Erebus's PSX Music.

I suggest people make multiple maps. This is an enhance of winning over others, then again, it's not. When the judges play the maps they will decide 1 winner and that is the winner, while everything else gets placed in 1024 Congestion part 2 wad. That's my 2 cents. If the ammount crosses 32 (most likely it wont) there would be a need of a dual wad megawad ;) Having that said, I'm already making plans for my next 1024 map(s). If it's against the rules, pity for me then, there are people around who would surely play my maps when I post them and that's enough reasons for me to map them ;)

Thanks for the comments guys :) @Dr Zin-I've updated the link to my map with the error fixed. I see now what you meant. It's just I didn't really have any proper beta testing before the release. Thanks for the tip. 2 more maps on their way ;)

My 2nd entry to the competition: Dwarf Town

Bhahaha. Masterpiece. Looking forward to episode 3.

Here's my 1st entry while other 3 are still in production. Right click and "save as". See if you can dance with a chaingun. A key tought to remember is not to let go of the trigger ;)

Excuse me, but that's complete nonsense. I advise you to read some books on drawing (not how to draw Batman, but something more serious, like "Eye of Painter" by A.Loomis).

Rathe nice design over detail in my opinion. But I agree with you there, brother.

Can Vodoo dolls be outside the 1024 block? Or does that count as a brake of the quoted rule? Vodoo dolls are actually player starts.. so I'm confused. The player never reaches the dolls's (the real player) conveyor belts though.

The new shots at ModDb are top quality! I can't wait for Fhood to come out. Great work Brian. :)