Designer

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The Designer is a modeling tool used to design spacecraft and building blueprints.

Architect

The person who creates a design is the architect of the design. The person who creates each part is the architect of that part. Parts retain their architect information with them.

When multiple architects work on the same design, the architect who initiates the designer instance is the architect of the design.

The analysis report for a design lists all architects whose parts are included in a design.

Blueprints

A blueprint is a design that has been analyzed and accepted for use in the game. Blueprints contain all of the information needed to make a functional building or spacecraft, such as its 3D model and design specifications. Blueprints are stored in a universal library where they are accessed by spacecraft and buildings during game play. Blueprints are identified by a unique number, assigned when stored in the library.

Blueprints can be saved onto media items in an avatar's gear. Blank paper and blank disks can each hold only one blueprint. Storage devices can hold varying numbers of blueprints, depending on the device.

Spacecraft, buildings, and storage devices reference their blueprints in the library throughout their lifetimes. Blueprints that are in use by game objects cannot be deleted. When a player deletes a blueprint, it may instead be deactivated in the library, until it is no longer referenced and it can be finally removed.

Blueprint Exchange

The blueprint exchange provides a place for players to share blueprints. Separate exchanges for spacecraft blueprints and building blueprints are accessed in the game.

At the exchanges, blueprints can be published by architects and they can be purchased by players. Prices are in cronodollars ¢, the money of the game. Cronos are not related to real money. Spacecraft and building blueprints do not cost real money.

Publishing is a way to share blueprints with other players. Publishing terms control the price and who is permitted to use the blueprint.

A blueprint does not have to be published to be used in the game. A blueprint can be saved onto a storage device in your gear, then used to make buildings or spacecraft. Interfaces that request a blueprint know how to find them in your gear.

Designer Access

The designer can be accessed both online and when playing offline solo.

Online Designer

Online, a designer is accessed by going to a design studio building or by accessing a designer station while aboard a spacecraft.

To enter a designer at a design studio, display the Building (F10) window and click on the "Enter" button of a studio. When a studio is "Vacant", you may leave the password box blank or you may enter a password of your choice. The password you enter establishes that studio's password until the studio becomes vacant. To join an "Occupied" design studio, you must enter the password that was established by the first person to enter the studio.

To enter a designer aboard a spacecraft, move to a designer station and enter the station by pressing the E key. Designers aboard a spacecraft are not password protected. Each designer station creates its own designer instance. People who enter the same designer station are placed in the same designer instance. The avatar enters the designer instance and their body does not remain at the station in the ship, like it does with other stations.

Players may work together in the same studio to develop a design. In this case, the first player to enter the vacant studio is registered as the architect and owner of the design.

Offline Designer

When the game is launched, the designer can be entered solo, instead of logging in to the game. Overall program performance is better when designing solo because no server is involved. Once a design is completed solo, it can be saved to a .SoH file. That file can be loaded into the on line designer, for storage in the universal library.

Design Process

General steps to making a design go something like this.

Create an exterior hull.
Create one or more rooms inside the hull.
Cut out doors and windows.
Create finer model details.
Apply textures and other effects to finish the surfaces.
Add details: control stations, berths, lights, display screens, etc.
Add room voids.
Adjust design properties.
Finalize the design.

Designing typically involves creating many parts. Parts include things like hulls, rooms, jigs, lights, display screens, etc.

Design Goal

Your goal as an architect is to make beautiful looking designs that are functional in the universe of Hazeron. Emphasis is placed on appearance over technical realism.

Hull sections do not have to be sculpted to form airtight continuous shells where they join each other. This is inefficient and difficult to model. It is much better to butt an engine pylon into the side of the hull, rather than carving a hole so it can make a perfect junction. Carving that hole breaks the side face into many tiny polygons. It is likely unnecessary, unless people are going to walk or see through the opening.

A design does not require the interior to conform to the exterior. Your design may represent a large intricate spacecraft that appears to have many rooms. It is inefficient and unnecessary to create all of the interior rooms and detail that would exist in real life. Like a movie set, only a few key areas inside the hull need to be modeled. This enables the designer to efficiently achieve the look and feel desired, without laborious excess work.

Interior details have no effect on the mass calculation of the design. Rich interior designs are encouraged. There is no performance advantage to making stark minimal interiors.

Be efficient with your designs. There is no point in modeling details that can never be seen. A good example is a cargo hold full of cargo. An inefficient approach would be to build a huge room and fill it with shipping containers. It would be much more efficient to build only an accessible area representative of a cargo hold, with walls modeled and textured to look like stacks of shipping containers. Use those precious faces where they get the most impact; don't waste them.

More parts are better than less. Parts help to manage large 3D models. Rendering information is collected and consolidated efficiently when the OpenGL model is constructed. It makes no difference in the final rendering if the information comes from one part or many.

A key feature that brings together the design is the turbo lift. Turbo lifts work like elevators. They move from one stop to another, at the request of the passengers. Unlike a real elevator, a turbo lift teleports instantly to each stop. This enables separate interior sections of a design to be connected in a way that feels contiguous to players. Turbo lifts also enable separate sections to be interconnected when the geometry to create the passage ways between them might be difficult or impossible to make.

Part Mode vs Face Mode

Parts are composed of faces. Faces have vertices and edges. To edit the faces of one or more selected parts, face mode is enabled. In a typical design session, face mode is enabled and disabled often, whenever the need arises to modify the faces that make up a part.

Actions on the Parts menu operate on whole parts. Most actions on the Parts menu are disabled when face mode is enabled. Some part menu actions are only enabled when one or more parts are selected.

Actions on the Face menu operate on faces of selected parts. Most actions on the Face menu are enabled when face mode is enabled. Textures are applied in face mode.

Geometry

Parts are represented by geometry that can be painted in an OpenGL scene. Geometry of parts is described by their vertices, edges and faces.

Vertices

Vertices contain 3D Cartesian coordinate locations that describe the position of edges and faces. Vertices also contain information needed when rendering. Texture coordinates are stored at vertices. Glow is emitted at vertices.

Render information is interpolated between vertices. Thus, the glow of a vertex will fade off to a neighboring vertex that does not glow.

Vertices also contain an up direction, for lighting calculations. The face menu commands Flatten Vertices and Smooth Vertices operate on vertex up directions.

Edges

Edges are the visible lines that go from one vertex to another to reveal the boundaries of faces. Edges exist for the benefit of the designer, to see the model. Their presence or absence has no effect on the final rendering result.

Faces

Faces are flat surfaces that compose a 3D model. OpenGL paints faces in front of each other depending upon their Z-depth in the scene. This is the essence of how 3D scenes are painted by a computer.

Faces have a front and a back. Faces are not visible from the back in the final rendering result. They can be seen from the back in the designer, if back face visibility is enabled. The object menu command Reverse Faces flips their facing back and forth.

All faces are created equal. A face copied from one part and pasted into another becomes a face of the destination part. It is irrelevant if it came from a hull and gets added to a room. The part is the hull or room; the face is just a face.

Faces do not "know" how they were created. A face created as part of an extrusion is no different from a face that is created individually. The extrusion command merely assembles faces into a desired shape.

Helpers

At the center of the design space is a yellow marker, drawn as three intersecting yellow lines. It does not move when the design grid moves. The immovable yellow marker is the true origin (0,0,0) location of the design space. That is the point at which a spacecraft will pivot, when it maneuvers. The origin is the insertion point when placing a building, that determines the altitude of the building on the terrain.

Obstructions and Voids

Obstruction data describes the solid shape of the design and its accessible inside areas. The obstruction model is created automatically by analyzing the design geometry.

A lot of processing effort is required to maintain the model so it is not done automatically with every modification to the design. The obstruction model is updated using the Blueprint, Refresh Obstructions menu option.

The obstruction model is created from hull and landing gear parts. Each state of landing gear is represented so it's obstruction shape changes when the gear is extended. The obstruction model envelops each part individually. To get the best fitting obstruction model, it is beneficial to split elaborate hull parts into multiple simpler hull parts.

The obstruction model includes a margin around hull and landing gear parts. This helps to prevent the eye camera of players from getting close enough to see inside, which breaks the illusion of solidity.

The hull and landing gear parts describe a solid shape. Voids are used to carve out the spaces accessible to players. Room parts exist to create the desired appearance but it is the voids that really determine where people can go.

Hull voids exclude or erase portions of the obstruction model. Depressions and cavities formed in a single hull part may result in unwanted obstructions. For example, a thruster nozzle made from a single conical hull part would be obstructed inside the cone; a hull void could be used to permit movement into the cone. Gravity inside hull voids matches the environment around the spacecraft or building. Hull voids are also integral to describing a hull door; see the section on doors.

Room voids designate areas accessible to players by excluding areas inside the obstruction model. Room voids offer a choice of internal gravity options. Room voids also enable access to the cargo hold by people in the room. Options for room void gravity and hold access are configured when the void is created. Room void properties can be changed afterwards using Part, Properties, Room Void Gravity and Hold Access.

Voids may be associated with a state of a part. Doors associate a room void with their open state, to create a passage when opened.

Rules for Voids

Faces of a void must form an airtight shell.
Faces of a void must be flat, not bent. Use triangles to make bumpy voids. Do not bend quads or poly faces.
Use voids sparingly and strictly limit the number of faces. Overall size of a void is not a factor; number of faces is the critical resource that must be minimized.
Multiple voids with few faces is strongly preferred over elaborate voids with many faces. It is far better to intersect two long boxes than to make a single cross shaped void.
Voids may overlap other voids, allowing movement from one void to the next. A small amount of overlap is more reliable than trying to abut them perfectly and it's easier to draw.
Hull voids should extend outside the obstruction model so there is no ambiguity when entering or exiting. Excess hull void that extends beyond the obstruction model is expected and it has no negative consequence.

The obstruction model cannot be seen. It exists somewhat like an electrical field around the design model.

The presence of the obstruction model can be felt by moving around the design. The menu toggle Blueprint, Solids Obstruct Movement must be checked to bump against the obstruction model.

Part Association

Association is when a part references another part by its id number.

Associations are created using the Part, Associate Parts command. Associations are removed using the Part, Dissociate Parts command.

Part associations are used by the following parts.

Barriers

Barriers can be associated with a state of a door or landing gear. This determines which barriers are obstructions when the door or landing gear is operated.

Berth Name Decals

Berth name decals are associated with a berth. This determines which name to display on the decal. Unassigned is displayed when the berth is not assigned.

FTL Drive Service Panels

FTL drive service panel is associated with an engineer station. This determines which FTL drive the service panel accesses.

Hull Voids

Hull voids are associated with the open state of a door, when making operable hull doors. This determines which voids become accessible when the door is opened.

Association of a hull void and a room void to a door causes it to become a hull door. This enables the interior room void and the exterior hull void to become accessible at once, presumably overlapping each other so a person can move from one void to the other.

Hull voids may be associated with any state of a door or landing gear to make access to the void dependent upon them.

Room Life Support Status Panels

Room life support status panel is associated with a room void. This determines which room's air pressure reading appears on the panel.

Room Voids

Room voids are associated with the open state of a door, when making operable doors. This determines which voids become accessible when the door is opened.

Room voids may be associated with any state of a door or landing gear to make access to the void dependent upon them.

Walk Paths and Ladder Paths

Walk paths and ladder paths are associated with the open state of a door, when making operable doors. This guides NPCs to find their way through the door when it is open.

Paths may be associated with any state of a door or landing gear to make access to the void dependent upon those states.

Weapon Service Panels

Weapon service panel is associated with a fire control station. This determines which weapon the service panel accesses.

Walk Paths

In order for NPCs to successfully move around the interior of a design with multiple rooms. The walk paths need to be above the floor, hip height is usually good. The NPCs will need to be able to always have a clear line to the nearest walk path end, or else they will get stuck. Walk paths need to form a full network where each walk path has to start where another ends, so that an NPC that is standing in one room can go to their nearest walk path end and then path through the net work to their destination room.

Finalize

When a design is complete, it undergoes a finalizing process to insure that it is usable for its intended purpose. The result of the finalize process is presented to the architect in a list. The list may contain green notes, amber warnings and red errors.

Green notes are merely informative, providing information about the finalize process.
Amber warnings bring attention to things that may indicate a design error or oversight was made. Warnings do not prevent a design from being finalized.
Red errors highlight aspects of the design that must be changed before it can be finalized.

In the on line designer, a design that finalizes with no errors can be saved into the universal library. Once saved to the library, a unique blueprint number is assigned and reported back to the architect. Then the design can be built in the game and it can be published in the appropriate exchange.

In the solo designer, a design that finalizes with no errors reports that it could be saved to the library if it was finalized on line.

Designer Interface

The designer interface is dominated by a first person 3D view of the design space. It is in this space that the design will be created.

Hover the mouse pointer over most buttons and controls to see a tool tip. Tool tips on buttons explain their function and they sometimes reveal features that are not obvious at first. The tool tips on some buttons change, depending on current conditions.

Menu Bar

At the top of the designer interface is a menu bar. Most functions of the program can be accessed using the menu bar.

Input Tool Bar

The Input Tool Bar appears below the menu bar, at the left. It can be moved by dragging the dotted grip at the left end. Tool tips on the buttons explain their function.

Reference Tool Bar

The Reference Tool Bar appears below the menu bar, to the right of the input tool bar. It can be moved by dragging the dotted grip at the left end.

Parts

The Parts window is displayed using the F6 key or the menu. It is typically docked at the right side of the designer window.

The parts list contains every part that is in the current design. This includes hull objects, imported meshes, rooms, berths, etc. This allows you to easily see everything within the design at once, and also provides buttons for toggling the visibility of each part, as well as other part properties.

The Parts list is also useful for selecting parts and deleting parts.

Id Column

Every part in a design is assigned a unique id number. Part id numbers may range from 1 to 65,535.

Part id numbers are not preserved when copied and pasted between designs. Parts are assigned new ids when pasted into a design.

Name Column

The name column starts with an icon that indicates the kind of the part.

The icon is followed by a text name assigned to the part. Names are assigned by the designer based on the type and properties of the part.

Group Column

The group column shows the name of the group assigned to each part.

Select one or more parts and right-click to assign them to a group. Group names are chosen by the architect. Parts are assigned to groups as needed.

Groups organize parts together.

In building and spacecraft designs, groups define the rooms.

Group names become room names in the final blueprint, if the group contains a room void.
Room voids in the same group have the same internal air pressure.
All parts in the same group are lit similarly, according to room lighting.

The Hull group is reserved for hull parts; it is never considered to be a room. Hull parts are lit according to the external environment of the building or spacecraft.

Parts with a blank group name are grouped with the hull, for lighting.

In fence and wall blueprints, two groups are required: Post and Section.

The Post group appears at each post of the final fence. The blueprint origin is where the post is placed on the ground, with +Z up according to the direction of gravity at the placement location. The post is oriented to align with the fence line on the ground.

The Section group forms the fence between the posts, from post location to post location. A section of fence is designed from the origin, extending along the +X axis, with +Z up at each end. The +X extent of the section defines the typical post spacing of the fence.

When placed on a world, the fence section is morphed to fit between two post locations. Post locations may vary in altitude and gravity direction and their spacing may vary from the typical section that is drawn.

The section origin, at Z=0, is placed at the first post.
The section +X extent, at Z=0, is placed at the second post.
The section geometry stretches accordingly.

	On	Off	Description
Visibility Toggle			Toggles whether or not the part is visible.
Lock Toggle			Toggles whether or not the part can be modified.
Omit Toggle			Toggles whether or not the part is included in the final design.
Seal Toggle			Toggles whether or not the part is sealed.

Visibility Column

Shows and controls the visibility state of parts.

Parts can be made invisible to simplify the design view. Invisible parts are not selected when using the mouse in the scene. Editing functions do not operate on invisible parts.

Left click to toggle the visibility of the selected parts. Right-click to choose visibility from a menu.

Making a part invisible does not exclude it from the final design. Invisible parts are included in the final design.

Lock Column

Shows and controls the locked state of parts.

Lock parts to protect them from accidental editing. The locked state of parts has no effect in the final design.

Left click to toggle the lock of the selected parts. Right-click to choose the locked or unlocked state from a menu.

Omit Column

Shows and controls whether a part is omitted from the final design.

Omit parts to prevent them from being included in the final design. Omitted parts are excluded from the design analysis report. Some parts are always omitted; they cannot be included.

Excluded parts can be useful for reference purposes, as a way to keep images or geometry in the design that are not intended to be part of the final design. Parts that exist only as design tools are omitted regardless of this setting, e.g. door jigs.

Seal Column

Shows and controls whether a part is sealed.

Parts remember who their architect was. Seal parts to prevent other architects from editing them in face mode. Only the architect of a part can seal or unseal the part.

Sealed parts can be used in part mode like other whole parts. They can be moved, stretched, rotated, copied to the clipboard and saved into files. Whole part editing operations are mostly disabled when a sealed part is selected, to protect the design of the part from changes.

A sealed part can be used as a jig but it cannot be cut using a jig.

Only the architect of a sealed part can enter face mode when the part is selected. This prevents individual faces of sealed parts from being modified or copied to the clipboard by other architects.

The design report lists all architects whose parts are included in a design.

State Column

Shows the current state of parts that can have multiple states, such as doors that can be open or closed.

On some kinds of parts, a slide bar is shown for adjusting the transparency of the part.

Texture Wrapper

The Texture Wrapper window is displayed using the Shift+F6 key or the menu. It can be docked stacked on top of the parts window; tabs will appear at the bottom, to choose between them.

The texture wrapper provides functions for applying textures to the faces of a design. The texture wrapper is only used in face mode.

The menu buttons

This section describes what each of the menu buttons generally contain at the top of the interface. Note that all of the buttons under these by default give a usage tip on click.

Menu Buttons
File contains a bunch of options related to the management and saving of the entire design. Includes options such as creating a new spacecraft design, saving the current design, importing .3ds objects, and quitting. Edit contains options related to basic object manipulation. This includes functions such as copy and paste, select all, grab, and rotate. This also includes the settings menu. Design includes options related to the creation and overall manipulation of objects within a design. This includes the ability to create rooms, hull pieces, jigs, and convert objects to other types. Also allows for viewing ::of design properties and finalising designs, which checks for errors. Object includes everything related to detailed object manipulation. This is often used for singular parts at a time. This allows the modification, cutting, joining and shaping of individual faces, vertices, and edges. Surface contains options related to face aesthetics. This includes options such as painting, glow, transparency, polish, and some effects which can be applied. This also normally is used on individual faces within Object ::Mode. Stations contains options related to Spacecraft Consoles and troop posts. This allows for the placement and sizing of console screens or old swivel style consoles, for all different console types. Panels contains options for placement of screens that allow for management of a ship. This includes service panels for repairs/upgrades and status panels and world maps. Vehicles contains options for placement of different vehicle types. This includes vehicles like boats and motorbikes, while also allowing for space vehicle launch and recovery slot creation. Details contains equipment which is placed around a spacecraft. This includes headlights, game tables, berths of all types, and decals such as empire name and empire flag. Paths allow you to manage in-designer gravity and collision, alongside placement of hull voids, room voids, ladders and paths. Helpers contains options for manipulating the grid and overall designer. This includes options such as changing the grid position, the designer bounding box size, etc. View allows you to individually select what elements of the designer interface to see. Options such as back faces, and the Texture Wrapper are found here. Help contains information about the designer, including a general guideline of what to do and links to the Wiki.

The buttons on the black bar are also very useful. Note that hovering over any of these buttons gives a tooltip for usage.

Black Bar buttons
The "Design Properties" button shows you properties of the design, and allows you to change module types. The one to the right refreshes collision data, while the collision and gravity buttons to the right of it are for ::toggling collision and gravity within the designer respectively. The box next to these buttons is for entering co-ordinates. This moves objects/faces if one is selected, otherwise sets co-ordinates of points when designing shapes. The next 4 buttons are for enabling object mode, and the view of vertices, edge lines, and faces. Object Mode is useful for modifying individual objects in detail, with each element being toggle-able if needed. The next 3 buttons are for enabling the view of edge lines, front faces, and back-faces of objects. These are visible even when not in Object Mode. The "Move Grid" button to the right of these allows for positioning of the grid. The co-ordinate box can be used for this. The next 3 grid buttons are for setting the grid direction. XZ sets the grid to face vertically, while YZ switches the X and Y axis around on the vertical grid. The "Position Grid" button is used for setting grid position and rotation. The drop-down which has a distance unit on it is used for setting the spacing of the grid lines. The "Show Grid" button is for toggling grid visibility. The "Grid Follows Work" button to the right of this is for making the grid follow any new co-ordinate entered. The next 3 buttons are for adjusting snapping of the cursor.

General Design Process

There are several steps to creating a ship that can be finalised. In general, from the in-designer Usage Tip, the order is like this;

Create an exterior hull.
Create one or more rooms inside the hull.
Cut out doors and windows.
Create finer model details.
Apply textures and other effects to finish the surfaces.
Add details: control stations, berths, lights, display screens, etc.
Add room voids.

Design -> Finalise Design performs checks to ensure that the ship has valid paths, rooms, hulls, and that specific elements are reachable. This is what is used to prepare a spacecraft design for manufacturing. This will list errors such as no fuel, no capacitor, no doors, missing hull, etc.

Most equipment from the old designer has been removed, however, elements such as lighting and console stations remain. This equipment is found under "Vehicles", "Details", "Paths", alongside "Stations". This equipment mostly functions the same, and is still required for a functioning spacecraft. A table below shows what each unit does.

Jigs

Jigs are found underneath the Design Menu button. There are many different types of Jigs, such as Door Jigs, Window Jigs, Launch Tube Jigs, Cutting Jigs, and Decal Jigs. They are created like any other hull or room objects, by selecting the Shape type (Extrusion, Sphere, Tubing, Spindle) and drawing the shape wanted. A physical object is then created and added to the Parts list as a Jig of the type selected.

Jigs are used by positioning the created Jig object between two rooms, or between a hull and room, ensuring that the Jig penetrates both walls. Once this is positioned correctly, select all 3 objects at once using the Parts panel, and then select "Jig Cut" under the Design Menu button. The jig then cuts the walls in the shape of the jig, allowing you to create tube hallways as an example. The cut walls are then converted to the object type of the jig, such as the walls being converted into transparent glass if using a Window Jig, or door objects if using a Door Jig.

Jigs can be used in order to create different types of objects, exits or walls between two rooms or the interior and exterior of a design. For example, the Door Jig creates a door between whatever rooms the Jig is placed between. The Window Jig creates a Window between the rooms, while the Launch Tube and Cutting jigs just create holes between the hull and room and cut the faces of each side, respectively.

All jigs create faces between the two walls that they penetrate, in order to give walls thickness and prevent you from seeing any back-faces.

Editing existing models

If a quad or a face gets moved then it will distort the texture on it. For this reason triangles are preferred to be used if the model is going to be sculpted. When creating a triangle or quad, drawing it clockwise will have it face the camera. Building it counter clockwise will have it face away from the camera.

Vertices that are at the same spot will stick together. If you want to pull off a face or a triangle then select the edit face and move that. Always be ready to press Ctrl Z to undo things if things go wrong.

Spacecraft Design

For spacecraft designer specific information, see the Spacecraft Design page.

Building Design

For building designer specific information, see the Building Design page.