TROVE ITEM CREATION GUIDE

     Creating an item for Trove is good all around: it is a fun task that stretches your artistic and spatial reasoning abilities, contributes to Trove, and earns you some credits. This guide will show you how to do it and how to have fun doing so.

1. Should I create an item for trove?

     The first question you should ask yourself is not what you should create, it is if you should create. Why are you doing this? If your answer is, "I want to contribute to Trove, and do my part to make this great game even better," then you are good to go. This is the right incentive. Any other motive will leave you frustrated with your work and feeling unfulfilled.

     Creating a peice of Trove equpment awards 500 credits (the shiny purple ones), a hat, and your name in the item's tooltip. This is nice, but should NOT be your reason for creation. If you merely want to earn credits, here is my one-step guide:

1. Get a minimum-wage job.

Greed and art do not belong together.

2. Coming up with an idea

     The hardest part of item creation is coming up with an idea. Even if you already have an idea, read this first. You may change or modify your idea.

1. Biome: If you can't think of anything to create, base it off of your favorite biome. (ex. I like Desert Frontier. There are snakes in deserts. I decide to create a snake.)
2. Type: You can create a hat, face, or any of the numerous weapons. If you don't want to create clothing or tools, you can create a cornerstone decoration. (A snake could be a hat (coiled up), but to me, a straight staff seems like a better option.)
3. Class: Sometimes, making an item that works well with a certain class or costume is a good idea. (Tomb Raiser is my favorite staff class, so I decide to make a skeletal snake staff. This also has a higher chance of acceptance as it could be for Cursed Vale or Desert Frontier, whereever it is needed.)

This is an example. I am not actually making this staff. To see an item I created, click here.

3. Guidelines and rules

     Next, you must read the overall style guidelines and the guidelines for the speccific item type.

     Read this first: Style Guidelines

     Next choose the item from this list that you are making. You may have to scroll down.

     To make sure you actually read them and didn't just skim, quiz yourself with the following questions. If you got them wrong, go back and read them again. It is important to understand these rules. Some are easy to fix if you forget, however others involve restarting your creation from scratch.

     1. What are the maximum dimensions for your item type?

     2. Why is the (255,0,255) voxel special? (Hint: It's neon pinkish/magenta)

     3. Why can I not use black? What should I use instead?

4. Using Troxel

     Now for the fun part: Creation! Go to Troxel by clicking here, which is a free, easy-to-use, online voxel editor (no download required) created by Ignitas specifically for Trove! 

     Troxel will open to a blank screen. Click the blue "Open Model from File" button at the top of the screen, then "Empty Model (New)". Set the dimensions to the presets specified in your item's creation guide, make sure "add attachment point" is unchecked, and click "open model". Make sure the dimensions are in the right order (X  Y  Z is not the same as Z  X  Y for example).

     You will be presented with a empty box, with only three sides filled by a grid.

     There are two modes, which you will switch between quite frequently. Switch at the top right of the screen.

EDIT MODE: In edit mode, you:

There are 2 kinds of edit mode. You can switch between them under "editing options" at the top right of the screen.

ADD/REMOVE MODE

Left mouse click to place a voxel

Right mouse click to delete a voxel

Middle mouse click to set your color to the color of the voxel your mouse is hovering over (color picker)

FILL MODE

Left mouse click to recolor the voxel

Right mouse click to recolor all connected voxels (paint bucket) (you can choose to do all connected voxels or all connected voxels of the same color)

Middle mouse click to set your color to the color of the voxel your mouse is hovering over (color picker)

VIEW MODE: In view mode, you:

Left mouse click and drag to rotate camera around item

Right mouse click and drag to move camera on a plane

Middle mouse click and drag (or just scroll) to zoom

 Other Things

     In edit mode, click on the color bar to open up the color selector! Click on a color and use the sliding bar on the right to change how light or dark your color is. You can also enter RGB decimal values from 0 to 255. The letters "AP" next to the color bar stand for "Attachment Point." Click here to change to (255,0,255), which is where your item will be anchored into the Trove world. With weapons, this is where your hand grips it. See the guidelines for your item type for more info on APs.

     There are 2 noise sliders in edit mode: HSL and bright. Ignore HSL unless you already know what it does or are a really good artist. Bright edits the brightness of your color slightly for each voxel placed by multiplying the RGB values by a random number. This means that each voxel will be slightly lighter or darker than your selected color. In small doses it makes something more interesting, in larger ones it makes something look worn down. It can be used for other things, too. (Click here to see a weapon I made in Troxel. Look at the "white" of the eyeball. It is not pure white, if it was, it would look plastic and fake.) Do not use noise for anything you want to look perfect or unblemished, such as crystals or jewels, or the blade of a sword.

     There are two dropdown menus that are very important: Type and Specular. Type changes the kind of block, with the options of solid, glass, tiled glass, glowing solid, and glowing glass. Specular determines how mirror-like the voxel is.

     When using glass, keep in mind that it is VERY transparent in Trove. Unless the point of your item is that it is essentially invisible, try to only use glass as an overlay to solid blocks.

     Did you orient your item the wrong way? It's okay, you can rotate, move or mirror your item if you scroll down the menu on the right.

5. Downloading and previewing

     Your first step is to download the Qubicle (.qb) files. I say files because there are 4: the normal one, the alpha map, the specular map, and the type map. Click "Export model as..." at the top of the screen, make sure that the option for a compressed file is unchecked, then click download for each of the 4 files. Put them all in the same directory (such as a desktop folder), then...

If you are on Windows:

     Open your file explorer, and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Glyph\Games\Trove\Live if you use Glyph or C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Trove\Games\Trove\Live if you use Steam. Drag the color map of your item (the one that does not end in _a.qb, _t.qb, or _s.qb) onto devtool_convert_to_blueprint.bat. A blueprint will be added to your Trove game files and to whereever your .qb files are.

If you are on IOS: 

     Make sure all of your files are on your desktop (don't worry, this is only temporary). Then CLICK HERE.

Previewing Weapons:

     Go into Trove and type in /wp weaponname and hit enter. For example, with myCoolWeapon.blueprint, which came from myCoolWeapon.qb, use /wp myCoolWeapon. Use /screenshot to take a screenshot (bugged at time of guide creation, you have to take a screenshot with your OS (windows+prt scr on Windows)).

6. Submitting

     Go to the Trove creations Subreddit and click Submit a new creation. Upload your screenshots to Imgur and create a post with a Troxel link and a link to the Imgur pictures. Then set your flair (by clicking flair after posting) to "Active". You may only have one active post at a time. People will judge you. If a few people do not find anything wrong with it, set the flair to "Review". Mods will now know to approve your work for in-game use.

CONGRATulations, you are done!!!

Created by DarkPineapple58, 7/25/2016 - 8/1/2016