MAKE LOW-POLY FTL STARSHIPS IN BLENDER
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One of my favourite realtime strategy space games is FTL: Faster Than Light. While not having the most up-to-date graphics, the gameplay has stood the test of time and still draws in players every year. The fanbase is loyal and I wanted to pay homage to the look and feel of the game by making some ships that reflect the style and simplicity.
FTL was developed by Subset Games in 2012 and grew in popularity over the last nine years. It is infinitely playable and has the feel of an older game with bitmap graphics and top-down deck plans, in which the player looks after a single craft.
Since I was a kid I’ve been drawing and modelling spaceships and I always used to draw the internal deck layout. In this tutorial we will focus on a low-poly ship that suits the game’s aesthetic but in reality, we are building a far higher quality model as there is virtually no 3D in the game! Refreshing, right?
We will use the latest Blender version, but as with my last tutorial I want to try and use the core polygon toolset; in upcoming tutorials we can dive into things like Hard Ops and Boxcutter. For now, let's assemble some polygons into an FTL fleet!
01 DON’T DELETE THE CUBE
I’ve wanted to say this for ages – open up a new Blender file and don't delete the cube that appears on screen! Normally, the first thing a tutorial will tell you to do is to delete that
