Tutorial: How to add new creature parts
In this tutorial, we will see how to create the most famous type of Spore mod: a mod that adds new parts to the creature editor. Adding parts to other editors is quite similar to what we will do here, so we recommend you try to do it as well.
Each creature part is made of:
- A list of properties of the part, such as its cost, what abilities it has, etc.
- A 3D model of the part. This defines the geometry of the part, as well as its animations (for example, how a mouth smiles, opens/closes, etc.) and morph handles (the arrows you can drag to deform the part).
- Multiple textures that define how the part is painted. We will discuss them with more detail later.
In this tutorial, we won't teach you how to create the 3D model nor the textures. The reason is simple: it's something not Spore specific, so it is better you follow a Blender tutorial of someone who knows well how to do this (I'm not an artist!).
There are some things specific to Spore that you will have to do in Blender, such as defining the part animations and exporting the model to the correct format. We made another tutorial for that: How to use the SporeModder Blender Addons. There we guide you through everything you can define for your 3D model, and we even provide you with an example project that you can use to test it on the game.
You will also need textures to bring color to your parts. We won't teach you how to draw those textures (you can use software such as Photoshop, Gimp or even in Blender itself), but you need to export them to the correct format, like we explain in this tutorial.
If you just want to follow the tutorial and don't want to worry about models and textures for now, we give you the models and textures of the example part we will be using in the tutorial. It's a Willosaur mouth, which you can download here:
This is the result of this tutorial:
Let's get started! Create a new project, like we have done in previous tutorials.
Your parts need to be shown somewhere in the part palette, so the player can put them into their creatures.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION