Topic: A question about doing registries...

[Anthony Scott]

I am experimenting with the Gafy and P81 blanks form new galveston, looking to name some ships....What size should the NCC lettering be in relation to the ship name above?

Like, for example, say I wanted to do a Lakota class named U.S.S Elisabeth Chopinet NCC-420606 (for my mum) how should the relative sizes be? I am using Photoshop 7 and CS depending on whether I am on my laptop or my desktop..

Semper Fi, Carry On

[ModelsPlease]

This is what I use :

The ncc and numbers are usually Star Trek Bold Extended at size 36 or 38.

The name is done in Impact at size 18.

Try that and see how it goes.
 
-MP

[Anthony Scott]

Thnaks very much...getting myself into texturing slowly...it is one thing to comment on other people's work and quite another to actually do some yourself...

Semper Fi, Carry On

[markyd]

And somthing else I learnt recently..... instead of writing it out and arcing the fonts, type them individually and position and rotate each number and letter....


Its very affective.. and ur mam will be proud...  make sure she is well armed rofl 

[S33K100]

Why bother doing it manually when the arcing tools in most paint programs do it perfectly for you? LOL

BTW for TMP ships the names on the actual studio models was always done in Starfleet Bold Extended aswell as the registry.

Fr the sizes I can't help much as I just made regs for the Enterprise from photos of the model (eyeballed it based on lining up details of the aztec pattern and deflector grid) I saved the file with the lines to hold the letters in their arc and then I just rename/number the ships as I need them (I use Corel Draw where you can keep the exact arc you want and change the writing whenever from the template one).

[markyd]

Nope try it.... when you want a really arked set of registries it skews them and they look funny... to be accurate do it individually...

[GotAFarmYet?]

You can always lay out an arc and then the program will use that arc to align the letters. It is a quick and easy way.

[S33K100]

Nope try it.... when you want a really arked set of registries it skews them and they look funny... to be accurate do it individually...

Actually corel preserves their proportions perfectly, as long as you don't distort the proportions of the letters yourself beforehand. Mine come out perfect in any case.

[markyd]

Show me please.. I would like to see this.. cos Photoshop will stretch the underside of the letters if you overdo the arc... its a pain in the butt 

Thanks in advance

[S33K100]

Erm, I've got ships up for download at Rogue's site: http://www.rogueshipyards.com/home.htm any of the ones by me, er, I think the last thing I did was the Elohim class fire support cruiser. You'll notice the letters and numbers are all still square, in corel it just angles the letters at one point in their midline so you get the proper layout and as long as you don't distort the letters before curving them then they'll never be distorted - if you play around with the proportions though it'll mess them up badly when you fit them to the curve.

[USS Mariner]

Erm, I've got ships up for download at Rogue's site: http://www.rogueshipyards.com/home.htm any of the ones by me, er, I think the last thing I did was the Elohim class fire support cruiser. You'll notice the letters and numbers are all still square, in corel it just angles the letters at one point in their midline so you get the proper layout and as long as you don't distort the letters before curving them then they'll never be distorted - if you play around with the proportions though it'll mess them up badly when you fit them to the curve.

The only bad thing about the Corel Draw method is that the letters are "stretched," which is just too distracting to my eyes.

If you import a texture into MSWord, you can make an arched WordArt arc-thing and write your text there. It keeps the same arc AND the letters are still square, though I have to fiddle with the spacing to get each letter looking normally yet still fit into a reasonable amount of space (so that registries like NCC-F3801 don't go half way around the saucer. )

The picture below shows my finished work on LS's 1024 Ptolemy, though this was when I didn't know that the true font for TOS was Modified Vertical Block (for which no TT file exsists.) Whatever.



It takes a sh*tload of work to get it right but eventually it pays off to detail freaks like me.

[markyd]

Yes... that looks very tidy... I never thought about word.. I might give that a shot... 

[USS Mariner]

Yes... that looks very tidy... I never thought about word.. I might give that a shot... 

Just a note: for the ship name or any straight text, when you make them as WordArt objects (THERE's the right word,) be sure to try and stretch/compress the object's size so that the letters/symbols are the same shape. This can also be done by adujusting the character spacing, though I should say that you cannot have two different spacings in the same object. You'll have to layer them next to each other so that the final parts of the registry are lined up on the same arc (on a TOS ship specifically, unless you don't really care if the NCC is always on the right side.)

[markyd]

Cool... thanks for the heads up 

[GotAFarmYet?]

Show me please.. I would like to see this.. cos Photoshop will stretch the underside of the letters if you overdo the arc... its a pain in the butt 

Thanks in advance

There should be a setting to fix that, PaintShop pro has it. It is like warptext or something like it just turn it off and manually set your spacing to make sure they don't over lap.

[markyd]

Ohhh thanks dude... Im gonna take a look at that