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Jester’s Trek: Getting back to basics
It turns out that if you have a bunch of artists sitting around that no longer have to design NeX clothes and WiS environments, they can get a lot done. 
CCP has now released two video blogs from the art team, which you can find here and here. Both are rather short videos, about four minutes each, and as such are well worth your time. I recommend going ahead and watching both. The first focuses on the new nebulae that should be included in the winter expansion. The most interesting thing about the nebulae is that they will be regional in nature. If a nebula exists in, say, Pure Blind, when you’re flying through Pure Blind, that nebula will surround you. However, fly over to Syndicate and it will instead be visible off in the distance while Syndicate’s nebula will be the one that surrounds you.
It’s a cool idea and certainly will increase immersion, but one hopes that the art team doesn’t overdo it. I would like to see occasional plain black space here and there. The first video concludes with a few seconds on the new Raven model… which looks pretty much like the old Raven model, except the bridge appears to be moving.
The second video focuses on the new tier 3 battle cruisers, and at this point, we now know what all of them are going to look like. CCP have themselves already released information about the Tornado and the Talos. During the early part of the video, it’s confirmed that the Amarr Oracle will be based on the Mentor, which won the second round of the EVE Create a Starship contest that CCP ran themselves after the DeviantArt one concluded last April.
The Naga, meanwhile, will be heavily based on the Ascog, which despite being (IMO) the best Caldari design shown in the first DeviantArt contest, didn’t even place in that contest. I love this one’s slab sides and all-business look. It couldn’t be more Caldari. As a result, the tier 3 that I’m least in love with visually is the Talos, which I feel like doesn’t really show off any of the Gallente design aesthetics. It’s inorganic, all straight lines and rear-heavy, which in fact is about the opposite that we’ve come to expect from Gallente ships. It’s at least receiving a thin, wing-like formation at the nose, which will help with the latter.
We also get out first brief look at engine trails with a static image, and the new cyno effects are mentioned. There’s apparently also going to be a revamp visually for one or more of the Titan doomsday weapons, and the warp tunnel effect. It’s implied that we’re going to see most or all of these changes for the winter expansion. So there’s a lot going on!
Something that isn’t explicitly mentioned is that someone else has done a pull of the visual database records attached to Singularity, and found this model associated with the Crow and Raptor — and presumably, by extension, the Condor — records (click to enlarge):
Here’s a 360 degree horizontal rotation of the model. Quite pretty, don’t you agree? In fact, I think in its black-and-red paint job, this would vault the Crow from the worst-looking to the best-looking interceptor in the game.
What we are promised in the devblogs is that most or all of the ships will be getting once-overs of lesser or greater degress with an eye toward the “v3 project”. The name clearly refers to the original EVE graphics, then their v2 upgrades released in Trinity.(1) A big focus is going to be on visual ship customization with corp and alliance logos, but hopefully with a long-term eye toward custom paint-jobs and skins. Certainly, there are many players that are saving their AUR for use on such skins…
Trinity, when it was released, was hailed as the biggest expansion in EVE’s history and caused a massive spike in subscriptions and logins. If CCP is looking to emulate an “old school” expansion, there are definitely worse models to choose from than Trinity…
So, as I said, a lot going on! To the CCP art team, I say, keep up the good work! Go go go!
(1) Four years later, and despite a near-complete lack of action or dialogue, this is still one of the best trailers CCP has ever done.
About the Author: Playing EVE Online for more than four years, play under the main Ripard Teg. Currently afflicted with the much maligned “Bitter-Vet” disease, Ripard Teg travels through the New Eden landscape in search of a cure… and hopefuly a good adventure to share with his readers.
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The Condor remodel was confirmed by CCP to be a player creation.
That is to say, That model will not be appearing in game.
That is to say, thta model -might- not be appearing in game.
No they redacted that in the same thread. Quoting CCP Navigator.
CCP Atropos got in contact with me over the weekend to correct my mistake here. Apparently this was not a player created ship and was a prototype model created by our own art department.
I really do apologize for giving you guys misleading information. Someone, and I will not say who, had told me the wrong information to begin with so I am correcting this for you as it is the right thing to do.
Yaaahee! Finally my beloved Crow will be awesome looking…
Well, keep dreaming because it's already been confirmed as a fake.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts…
This is it with the proper materials and textures. I rendered it with the settings right out of the red. file.
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1110/crow.jpg
"the new Raven model… which looks pretty much like the old Raven model"
Since the scorp, maller, and whatever else one-offs they got done before ignoring FiS for 18+ months it's been inevitable that they're going to spend countless hours of art-dev time redoing every single ship model (and then probably a ton of other static in-space models) but it's a big waste of resources. They all look great already. When you consider there's huge sections of core-EVE functionality that have barely been touched since it was introduced (roles system, starbases, parts of manufacturing & research, factional warfare, new-sov that was to be iterated, overall UI performance) not to mention the forever-wants like an workable bounty-system and fleet formations and a dozen other things, that CSM and devs alike have consistently promised over the years… when you consider all those things… it's hard to get excited about new models for ships that already had decent models
Don't dismiss new models — even new models with only minor changes — out of hand. Devs have said they want missiles, reppers, and energy transfers to have external turrets on display. The new Raven model could be about that. I specifically asked on Twitter if those hard-points had been included and didn't get an answer.
But I'm sure hoping they were…
That's exactly the problem I have with it. If it were just one or two models that had serious one-off defects it'd be fine. But the signs are they want to redo every single ship to bring it up to date with the capabilities of the graphics engine and there's hundreds of ships.. enough work there to keep an expensive art department employed for the next 5 years
The oft-quoted explanation from CCP for doing less-useful artwork (epitomised by Dominion's planets) is that artists can't code. But when they're firing so many people to cut costs it's a golden opportunity to lay-off the guys pointlessly redesigning the Raven instead of coders that could fix the roles system
Extravagant model redesigns are what we should have had during the 2006-2009 golden age (instead of the pointless spending on Incarna/WoD/DUST). I'm not totally dismissive of the need for competitive art, just seems the priorities have been out of balance for a long time
A closer look at the raven model shows that the large wing out to one side is mirrored much like the scorpian model gained equal wings on both sides.
Well you mention an expensive art department. Maybe those guys are tied in with contracts to CCP and were working on World of Darkness. If CCP are refocusing on EVE then those workers need work. We might just be seeing a side affect of worker retention while a project is shut down.
Problem I see is that while finding coders that can work in Python is not too much of an issue . . code is code for the most part. . . finding artists that "get" the EVE setting and style isn't likely that easy.
If anyone thinks that visual art (which is communicating in a non verbal medium) isn't hard, play me a fast round of Pictionary.
Complete opposite sides of the brain and thought process from writing code and I'm sorry to say, a rarer talent.
Ship paint and customization, may be the only thing that will give the whole AUR debacle some sense.
imo they don't have to redo the cyno effect, I just want the old one back.
what about bringing back the old/new cloaking effect? the one where it runs along the ship model?? the curent one is pretty dire,
+1 for bringing back old cyno and jump gates sounds/graphics.
Even before Navigator redacted his statement, I still thought that perhaps he just wasn't away. Mainly because I pulled the new Crow model right out of one of the builds myself.
Was so that I could render it with the proper material settings from the .red file.