A frenchie in the Kerbal's adventure. Graphic content

[Da_Pedro]

Hello there !

I'm a new Kerbal explorer and happy to became a player of this awesome game. 

In real life I'm a digital designer (that mean I work with industry to make your everyday product very sexy, all that in 3D) and
a 3D graphist (i began with that at the origin with Blender 12 years ago !!)

My first impression of the game was "awesome, a fantastic game where you have to do EVERYTHING to explore the space, note like
EVE or Star Citizen (RSI)". 

I played for 1 week long and understood the working process of the game. 

Well, after this week I feeled a bit desappointed : OK this is a great sandbox with tons of possibilities, but the fact is there
is not any background like (in French) "Les Lapins Crétins", no emotionnal attachement to the character (despite I preferred to
start again a mission instead of sending my kerb dead outer far space).
I mean the common player won't stop on this game because there is no real graphic identity, and very, very, very basics graphism
... 

BUT I'm not this king of guy who said it's bad and do not do anything. 

So here is my project : 

 

1. Bring better graphics

This is the first and non discutable point. At all.
So, I search to know how the game was made and was happy to read that the next update will use Unity 5.0. So now, tell me if I'm wrong but :
    • there will be x64 support
    • more textures size possibility (not necessary to keep below 4gb RAM ressources) so 1024² will be good
    • more geometry possibilites. 

 

Here is my first attempt during last evening for validating process (using basics shaders of UNITY, didn't installed the KSP addon)
Just modeling and using normal baking to stitch it to a single plane (2 triangles here)

 

 

 

Then, the test was OK for me, I used to reproduce the TR-18A Decoupler. Build from scratch, just taking print screens.
280 tris total, I'm pretty sure I'm not far from the original count with 1024² textures (512² original)

The final result is "good" but I want tu push this little simple piece to a very good detailed one. This is just the beginning like a warm up.

 

So this first goal will be to take each piece of this game and do real good graphics. Like "ultra graphics" for those players like wo loved to see the britle of the sun on each piece of my fu**ing awesome ship. Big goal ! 
Now, I will take a look how to bring back each parts for editing them, hard part too for me (remember I'm a graphist, not a developper)

 

 

2. Environnement, what the hell ?

 

My first look on the buildings of the game was "Oh my god, in what year this game was made ...gush, it's still on developpement ... did they killed their graphist ? " 
And when you undrestood the basics, you didn't stick a long time on the planet : for me, the beginning has to be harder, and would begin with a water rocket. No Kerbal in a box, just water and pressure. 

My goal after bring better graphics to parts is to bring theses to the environnement which will be remodeled to fit better with the Kerbals (see below my vision of Kerbals). In full carreer mode you start with these buildings very far from each others. 
My think is at th beginning, the Kerbals didn't think that putting some tons of explosives nearby the astronaut schools or even public was dangerous :

    • The base has to be very small at the beginning : 2 or 3 kerbals are walking on an open build area, and the launch is made on this build area. A launch what ? oooooooh ok, let put some credits for building a launch area, good idea ! A traelling
what ? Oh you mean a machine for bringing the rocket from the build area to the launch area ... And there you had, just on "few" works (I know that few means A LOT. A TON. A FULL BUNCH OF TONS) many things the player has to develop to make bigger and bigger this area. 

For exemple, the build area is very huge at the beginning. No one Kerbal could imagine a rocket will be this taller at the beginning. Impossible.

    • The base MUST match with Kerbal style. We have here a copy/paste of NASA buildings. Kerbal people must have their style (more "toon" I think - don't forget they smile like idiots during the launch phase).
    • Then, and this is a big-huge-mega-then, add a small town where the Kerbal will rest when they are not working veeeeeery hard. Adding vegetation would be difficult, that's why i'm not talking about that right now.

3. We have Kerbals people.

They didn't look human at all, we feel really their stupidity, but we can't be attached to them because they seem to identical. A pilot would not be like a scientist. They MUST have a very recognizable look : 
    • a pilot will be very "sexy" (kerbal's sexlook ... well let me think hard to that) or Russian look (in all movies at least one pilot is Russian and probably crazy. True story)
    • a scientist will wear glasses and will be tiny, focused on his mission, but if a butterfly pass no one will be able to focus him again and a Kerbale (with a E, female version) will put him on his worst fear ever. 
    • an engineer : smoke nearby a fuel tank ? No problem at all ...
    • etc ... 

In resume bring via good graphics a real personnality to each Kerbal. A character modeler ? Why not ...  

 

Well, this is a ton of text and I have many work to do on this, only during my free time. The other time I have to work on projects not very funny (see here : http://www.p-ka.fr ). So be gentle I will not have a killer cadence on modelisation/texturing each part. 

But maybe one day I will work as freelance for KSP during my professionnal time ! Who knows ! (nobody but I hope a lot :-D )

 

See ya in few days, until I update other graphic stuff here after editing pieces and integrated them in the game :-) 
Thanks for your patience and kindly toward my English (not bad but not perfect)

[CobaltWolf]

The problem with trying to make Kerbal look better and bring higher resolution textures into the game is RAM. In many game engines it is acceptable to use a 2K or even 4K texture on, say, a single character. But in Kerbal everything is loaded into your system RAM on startup. The game is 32bit, which means that once you use >3 gigabytes of RAM, the game will crash. While 64bit KSP is on the way, which support unlimited RAM, that does not help many players who do not have much to begin with. Many play the game with 4 or 6 gigabytes of RAM, which means the game is still very limited. Larger textures also mean longer load times, and a slower game.

(I realized too late that you understood most of this)

With that said, your textures look very good if you're going for an HD refresh of the KSP parts. @DangerouslyDave has been working on a similar project. However, one thing that I see that sticks out to me is this:

How many sides is your cylinder? It seems like you're using some strange number of sides. KSP parts use 24 sided cylinders, though obviously you're free to change that. Overall I think your texture is good for a start but one of the distinctive things about the KSP art style is the layer of grime and wear that is on all the parts. This looks too clean. Just my two centimes.

@RaendyLeBeau @DiscoSlelge you two speak French.

EDIT: Your webpage is very very cool. I wish I actually had more to put on mine.

Edited February 18, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[Da_Pedro]

Hello Cobalt. 

 

Thanks a lot for your review. 

Quote

(I realized too late that you understood most of this)

Yes, sure, but I wanted to have a validation of all that I was thinking. You made this  
 

Actually, I have a 20 point circle. When I looked at the decoupler, it was my count, but nobody is perfect. 
Thanks for the precision

The "layer of grime", I was not sure. 512² textures don't let people see clearly the style. Hope the next version will help on definite this. 

The project of Dangerously Dave is very intersting, he is pointing to where I want to go. 

I'm aware many players have "low" configuration, but I'm thinking about many people who have gamer configurations, and can enjoy a very high quality. Plus, the time it will take to me to developp my ideas, people will have 1to of RAM  

Thanks for my site, I'm still developping the new version (parallax, smoothr version, etc ...). It's an old one, and very difficult to edit   

 

[CobaltWolf]

Yeah, I figured that you were aiming for people with on the higher end of hardware. More power to you! I think there's definitely a demand for it.

Generally speaking, every cylindrical stack part is a 24 sided model with a 16 sided collider mesh. I don't know if you're planning on increasing this - on certain things it is noticeable, especially on larger parts that could benefit from having more polygons.

The layers of dirt/grime/lubricant smears etc are helpful just for giving your object more detail. At present you have a nice texture but it looks to repetitive. Having extra grunge serves to break that up.

My webpage is basically just a landing page with my reel. I don't have much to put on it at the moment. Hopefully in the future I'll have plenty of stuff.

[davidy12]

Very NICE

 

However, I agree with @CobaltWolf: You're VERY lucky to have such a powerful computer. I think you'll fry my CPU if you remade all the parts.

[RaendyLeBeau]

Hello everybody,
my experience goes in the same direction like @CobaltWolf. to hold focus on deep memory consumption on moding my parts. at the end, I have decided to take advantage of good graphic shader features, but dont use high resolution-textures (in my mods i use max. 1024x1024 or 512x512 per part - ). super hd textures really do not help because most people after the first ksp-crashes, will turn the game anyway to run just only in 1/2 resolution.

- Since I have bought a GTX 960 my problems with KSP game (32 bit) are disappeared. the pc (processor i7 2.8) is relatively old for .. I have two super fast SSD .. the pc games today are anyway only graphics card-based (usually Nividia) - pc speed is secondary to irrelevant, at least for pc-platform. ( game-consoles such as sony, x-box etc. which looks again different)

- So now I have but talked enough

 

- yes I know my english suxxs - nevertheless 

 

& happy moding

 

Edited February 19, 2016 by RaendyLeBeau

[CobaltWolf]

2 minutes ago, RaendyLeBeau said:

Hello everybody,
my experience goes in the same direction like @CobaltWolf. to hold focus on deep memory consumption on moding my parts. at the end, I have decided to take advantage of good graphic shader features, but dont use high resolution-textures (in my mods i use max. 1024x1024 or 512x512 per part - ). super hd textures really do not help because most people after the first ksp-crashes, will turn the game anyway to run just only in 1/2 resolution.

- Since I have a GTX bought 960 graphics card, are my problems with KSP game (32 bit) disappeared. the pc (processor i7 2.8) is relatively old for .. I have two super fast SSD .. the pc games today are anyway only graphics card-based (usually Nividia) - pc speed is secondary to irrelevant, at least for pc-platform. ( game-consoles such as sony, x-box etc. which looks again different)

I tagged you (I don't know why I tagged disco haha) because you might be able to answer any questions via PMs, since you speak the same language.

KSP is actually the other way around. KSP needs a strong CPU for the physics calculations on larger / more complicated ships, while the graphics are fairly unintense.

(Also compared to many of the KSP audience that is a very good PC build haha)

[RaendyLeBeau]

5 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

KSP is actually the other way around. KSP needs a strong CPU for the physics calculations on larger / more complicated ships, while the graphics are fairly unintense.

ok, did not know the ksp so intense pc computing operations performed. I read somewhere that, the physics calculations in KSP performed in real-time. these are considerably simplified. resp. all SOI. Calculations can be reduced to the "Two-body_problem". - - Realistic physics the calculations such as "The Three-Body Problem" are in ksp not performed .. - some pc's have so problems these calculations carried out in real time.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Sphere_of_influence

 

[CobaltWolf]

31 minutes ago, RaendyLeBeau said:

ok, did not know the ksp so intense pc computing operations performed. I read somewhere that, the physics calculations in KSP performed in real-time. these are considerably simplified. resp. all SOI. Calculations can be reduced to the "Two-body_problem". - - Realistic physics the calculations such as "The Three-Body Problem" are in ksp not performed .. - some pc's have so problems these calculations carried out in real time.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Sphere_of_influence

 

That's not the kind of physics I was talking about. I meant the physics on a part level, where it has to calculate the colliders for each part. That's why you want simple colliders - easier on the computer.

[RaendyLeBeau]

OK, back to business. the points listed, I find really good. each of ksp a few days has played knows that it has a lot of potential and charm.

Think about the points at which it comes to graphic improvement (1. Bring better graphics) is much new to come soon ksp on unity 5 engine is running.
  - The current limits In is large and it is not much more out. Today you have make compromises wehn you to moding-KSP because many user load various amount of mods down, then the game runs often to the limits. - i think Luxury graphics are currently unfortunately a little bit illusory. (at least from my point of view)

- To improve the approach the gameplay ( "3. We have Kerbals people." + "2. Environnement, what the hell" )  I find really good, especially with the exaggerated characters. I like it very much.

would be nice if KSP would expand even more in this direction as proposed by "Da_Pedro"

 

cheers !

Edited February 19, 2016 by RaendyLeBeau

[InsaneDruid]

@Da_Pedro If you are going tho focus on the high(er) end player, and with the change to unity5 in mind, which will resolve many of the current limitations I would suggest going for a higher polycount on the parts. Like for 2.5meter Parts, using 48-sided parts works really nice even today, and it looks so much better. As said before, the gpu is more ore less idling in ksp while its totally cpu-limited. Bigger Textures should also not affect the game so much after 1.1. Even in 32Bit, as I hope that squad finally brings proper content streaming to the game. Even if not, theres a mod for this, that only loads the lowest mip on startup, and only loads to full res for the parts actually used in a given scene.

Long Story short: the rules of keeping ultra-low textures and ultra-low polycount, while having a true and tested history, are a bit to agressive in my mind. Especially as there are other, more important factors, like drawcalls. I see so many mods that use literally hundrets of small textures and split every mesh into tiny submeshes, not realizing that while a small texture looks like nothing the amount of drawcalls generated can be a huge disatvantage over a few 4k texture atlases and some high poly single meshes with few materials.

[Enceos]

It's always a pleasure seeing artistic people  Welcome to the community, Da_Pedro!

I believe the modding community will explode with new high res textures when KSP 1.1 comes out. The original game will always stick to its "Stock-Alike" type of textures, we can't change that. They're kinda toonish, simplistic, matte, not RAM heavy and something many people grew to love.

I personally love deep textures with all the maps you can get (gloss, metalness, specular, diffuse... you name it). They really brings the feel of the material you're looking at. Current KSP supports only 3 maps: bump map, diffuse or diffuse + specular in the alpha channel. There were several texture revamps done to the stock parts. Probably the most favored by the community are Ven's Stock Revamp and Renaissance Compilation. There is quite a bunch of extra part mods which look very realistic.

Textures for Kerbals have been worked on the Texure Replacer thread, this mod gave an opportunity to customize each Kerbal's skin and suit to your own liking, includes dependency from the Kerbal's profession.

Buildings type mods currently include KerbinSide for placing buildings (assets included) and CustomBarnKit for tweaking the buildings (hopefully the planned feature of replacing meshes and textures of the current KSC buildings will be realized).

There are many endeavors in the revamping the atmosphere an looks of the planets (one such example):

 

As for the game start if you feel KSP jumps to rockets too quickly you can try the Better Than Starting Manned and SETI Unmanned Before Manned mods, each gives a different start to the game. They don't go as far back as to water rockets, but hey that's not impossible to make ) There are Sounding Rockets by Roverdude and other early start mods.

Just filling you in,

Cheers

Edited February 19, 2016 by Enceos

[CobaltWolf]

3 hours ago, Enceos said:

I believe the modding community will explode with new high res textures when KSP 1.1 comes out. The original game will always stick to its "Stock-Alike" type of textures, we can't change that. They're kinda toonish, simplistic, matte, not RAM heavy and something many people grew to love.

Sorry to keep derailing this thread, but the stock textures are actually VERY RAM heavy, often using a 1024 texture map for a single part such as an antenna. :/

[Da_Pedro]

Hello Everybody !

 

Glad to see my post was not a lost bottle in an ocean. 

Well, my goal is to optimize the weight : I worked many time with a start-up which created web application in real time. I was very very constrained (512² square, only diffuse), and this experience prove me that you can do amazing things with not many things. You are an artist or not

New item this week end, the decoupler was a test, I'll see what I can do very professionnaly

 

[Enceos]

1 hour ago, CobaltWolf said:

Sorry to keep derailing this thread, but the stock textures are actually VERY RAM heavy, often using a 1024 texture map for a single part such as an antenna. :/

Yeah, I meant the whole Stock-Alike texturing style. Everything is painted onto the texture, shadows and glints as if you were painting a picture with brushes.

Realistic texturing requires a whole different approach using texture maps to breathe life into the material. With x64 KSP and probably procedural loading of the assets we might have a chance to bring photorealistic look into the game. There's certainly much demand for that.

P.S. I resized almost a third of the stock textures on my install, cause some as you have said just don't need those sizes. Take a look at mobility enhancers, heh.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Enceos

[CobaltWolf]

Just now, Enceos said:

Realistic texturing requires a whole different approach using texture maps to breathe life into the material. With x64 KSP and probably procedural loading of the assets we might have a chance to bring photorealistic look into the game. There's certainly much demand for that.

IIRC we're not getting asset streaming in 1.1. Everything still gets loaded in at startup. :/

There's a pretty convincing argument for completely deleting the stock parts and replacing them with mod parts. FASA launch clamps, etc.

[Da_Pedro]

Hello there ! 

 

Small update for the week end  I worked on an other small piece, i'll came back later on the decoupler. 
My goal is to find the best way to work on many parts and I think I can have something, I have to be sure before sharing something stupid  

So, last thing will be the diffuse map. 
I have here 2 maps 1024² (one normal, an other basic diffuse for the moment), and KSP shader (less precise than unity basic  )

Polycount is exact same as the original. I'm thinking about adding some faces (not for the cylinder, but some tiny details). What do you think ? 

Enjoy  

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2016 by Da_Pedro

[Enceos]

I'd love to see your models textured. That was always the hard part for me.