The task for this project was very simple, create a overhead “Fleet composition” map to use for personal showcasing. Utilizing 2d Silhouettes of my own personal model designs to engage in a new formatting type for personal use cases.
The first step was to review my existing models and choose ships to utilize, which required me to open my large file of Star Wars themed ships, and choose a few on the same theme, the theme in this case being “Judicial Republic Ships.”
The following step was to bring the selected models into their own blender file, where I would use the orthographic camera to take top-down images of each respective model, removing any texturing they had to create a transparent solid black silhouette. Showing only the protrusions of the general hull shape, while still having a quick render time due to lack of specific detailing.
The advantage of doing it like this involves it guaranteeing a transparent background through Blender’s rendering system, while also making the creation of singular colors easy, which then allows for simplified color editing for future projects.
The next step is to begin compositing the silhouettes. In my case I chose to create them together in Adobe Illustrator, since it is exceptionally good at handling lossless scaling.
The final step for the design is to layout how you want the ships to appear, scaling, copying, and pasting them in accordance with your own personal preference. Which I then followed up with a border around the entire thing simply to make it look better.
