Jump to content

[1.2.x] Structural Tubing


DrunkenKerbalnaut

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

-snip-

Really? I mean we all know triangles, but kinks are usually welds, therefore good places for stress to propagate? I'm referring to your real world experience. Of course, bends usually make the tube material thinner to maintain the axial profile, so naturally that's an issue.

Ive never given that much thought. Thanks for weighing in. Anyone else care to? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

 welds, therefore good places for stress to propagate

Indeed they are, but there's a but, a well formed weld on a well prepared joint is very unlikely to cause any issues, especially if proper pre and post heat processes are observed.

Most if not all the tubes you have could easily be formed by a modern cnc tube bender requiring no welds. Modern cages these days have far fewer welds than you'd imagine and quite often the main hoops being 1 complete length only have 1 weld , that being required to join the two  ends together ,

You'd actually be suprised how much weight even bicycle frame thickness tube can stand when formed into a load bearing cage (lots of tonnes)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

You'd actually be suprised how much weight even bicycle frame thickness tube can stand when formed into a load bearing cage (lots of tonnes)

I actually built the bicycle I recently wrecked. From the tubes up. I didn't mill the bottom bracket, and I bought prefab rear triangle, steer tube, and fork, but I have an understanding here. Luckily the internet is awash with good reading on the matter. Brazing is nerve wracking, when it's gotta keep you alive in traffic. Notwithstanding soccer moms, that is :mad: .

Edited by DrunkenKerbalnaut
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many thanks for your excellent mod, but

16 hours ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

kinked style bends

For what? Visually it's almost insensibly. IMO for this mod would be very desirable built-in WELDING ability (transform to 1 part) for close-contour assembles. And, may be, procedural plates and triangles. All basic tubeframes-design stuff in 1 mod. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Aerospacer said:

For what? Visually it's almost insensibly.

It seems to me pretty obvious that folks may want curved/kinked as it suits their design goals. See @SpannerMonkey(smce) response above. Even if they share the same collision mesh(es), it's an aesthetic choice. And I'm ok with that, if that's what folks want. There's a few things I'm doing with the mod that may not be the right answer for everybody, because these parts suit a lot of different uses. But allowing you to choose your bend style is relatively easy to achieve, and only serves a wider audience. Personally, I'm good either way, so that's why I ask you folks. 

6 minutes ago, Aerospacer said:

 built-in WELDING ability (transform to 1 part)

Were I to do that, I would be simply re-inventing the wheel. I think the mod you are looking for is UBIOZOR welding, or something like that. 

 

9 minutes ago, Aerospacer said:

procedural plates and triangles. All basic tubeframes-design stuff in 1 mod. :)

I've considered that, but it would be a separate release if I do it. No promises, but if it happens I will link to it in this thread. In the meantime, I recall reading that the latest iteration of Procedural Wings or PWings or whatever it's called is adding procedural panelling. 

 

12 minutes ago, Aerospacer said:

Many thanks for your excellent mod

Oh, I've had plenty of help. Glad you like it. Stay tuned!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see it in the test rig but is the 45 degree bend a curve or a kink still? I'd reckon that one and the small 90 degree are the most important to have available as sharp angles. The larger kinked bends could then be put together piecemeal, theoretically anyway. But of course more variety, simpler usage and lower total part count is generally better. I like the curves as well, I can imagine they're useful for all sorts of non-obvious stuff, piping, wheel arches, floral arches for when Val gets married...

BTW @DrunkenKerbalnaut I forgot to ask earlier when you were redoing the unwraps, do you need bigger versions of the solid color textures since they were smaller than the rest?

Edited by BureauJaeger
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

-snip-

Yeah the 45 to 45 piece fell to my simplification/standardization efforts. It felt sloppy trying to make it meet nodes at 25cm intervals in a way that two separate 45s could already do. It can be added back in quite easily, I was just trying to hit on the basics. That's like a 30 minute affair, now that I've worked out some of the continuity issues. We'll address that immediately after release, if folks see it as a need-to-have part. 

Right now, I have a list like this

45-small

45-large

90-small

90-large

180-small

180-large

and then all the straights and tees and Xs and Hs and toroids... The difference between small and large is radius. They wrap around a 25cm or 50cm radius. We can add bigger if we need them after release. Once again, not a problem. 

Textures: no I actually decided to use your size as the standard. I've got the texture file just under 1MB, and still .png for ease of customization. Textures were bloating this mod quickly (mostly due to my poor file structure), and they happen to look just fine at your original size. If there is a need, we could always do a separate download for hi-res versions of the textures, but even at max graphic settings I think the only one of your textures that might suffer would be the hexagonal sandy one. You did a great job on those. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

All right, good to hear! Yeah I think the small size works fine, I think the 5 meter piece was pretty much only one where the stretching got a bit too obvious.

And that particular tube has it's texture "folded" now, so not an issue. The texture follows the length of the tube to about the mid-point, turns around and comes back. Well, kinda. You'll see. It looks much better with detailed textures. 

Where plausible/possible, I've made sure that all the UVs run North-South, so we have consistent scale, "wrap-around", and patterning. Or at least as much as possible. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

And that particular tube has it's texture "folded" now, so not an issue. The texture follows the length of the tube to about the mid-point, turns around and comes back. Well, kinda. You'll see. It looks much better with detailed textures. 

Where plausible/possible, I've made sure that all the UVs run North-South, so we have consistent scale, "wrap-around", and patterning. Or at least as much as possible. 

Nice, that opens up possibilities for more specific repeatable patterns as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

Nice, that opens up possibilities for more specific repeatable patterns as well.

Yes, except with parts that are three-dimensional, like a T that has a node in all (x,y,z) vectors. There's no good way to unwrap those and make it perfectly repeatable. Goofy textures like candy cane stripes wouldn't work well there, because the textures would almost certainly not align at the junctions. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

Yes, except with parts that are three-dimensional, like a T that has a node in all (x,y,z) vectors. There's no good way to unwrap those and make it perfectly repeatable. Goofy textures like candy cane stripes wouldn't work well there, because the textures would almost certainly not align at the junctions. 

Yep, that's understandable. But then again that's not a huge limitation and the workaround would be to simply use different texture for joints in those cases. Would stuff like the style of stock airplane parts, with some panel edge lines running perpendicular and parallel to the main axis work ok now on the non-three-dimensional pieces?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

different texture for joints in those cases. 

Yeah, as long as you don't mind un-wrapping the joints separately. Cuz I totally didn't do that. Haha. 

8 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

Would stuff like the style of stock airplane parts, with some panel edge lines running perpendicular and parallel to the main axis work ok now on the non-three-dimensional pieces?

Theoretically, yes. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

Yeah, as long as you don't mind un-wrapping the joints separately. Cuz I totally didn't do that. Haha. 

Theoretically, yes. 

Right. :) No but I meant 'use' as in me making a fitting pair of textures, one with some kind of pattern, the other without, to choose in the VAB/SPH. Anyways, I'll try stuff out once you get the refreshed version out, see if I'll come up with something new and useful. Probably not for the main pack this time though to avoid unnecessary bloat, but a separate download perhaps.

Hmm, it might also be useful to make versions of my textures for the procedural parts come to think of it, the tubes and the procedurals could then be used seamlessly side by side... Too bad I'm extremely lazy, so we'll see. :D

Edited by BureauJaeger
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, DrunkenKerbalnaut said:

@BureauJaeger I just realized I may have misunderstood you. If by "joint" you meant the hemispherical ends, then yes. Those are all unwrapped seperate, and they all have their own spot in the texture. Top right corner, to scale ( About 100px across, if the texture were 1024x1024 ).

No no, I was referring to the multi-node parts there, the T's and such that you mentioned.

That reminds me of another thing. Would it be difficult to make a strut connector resembling the tubes? The start and end pieces basically like the end sphere of the tubes and either the basic space tape or a fuel line type mesh in between. That would come in handy when closing loops of symmetrical structural frames for example. The stock strut is quite bulky compared to the tubes and the end piece tends to orient itself in weird ways (or to put it crudely accurately, it's fidgety as f*** :)). Anyway, that's an aesthetic thing really, nothing functionally critical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, BureauJaeger said:

No no, I was referring to the multi-node parts there, the T's and such that you mentioned.

That reminds me of another thing. Would it be difficult to make a strut connector resembling the tubes? The start and end pieces basically like the end sphere of the tubes and either the basic space tape or a fuel line type mesh in between. That would come in handy when closing loops of symmetrical structural frames for example. The stock strut is quite bulky compared to the tubes and the end piece tends to orient itself in weird ways (or to put it crudely accurately, it's fidgety as f*** :)). Anyway, that's an aesthetic thing really, nothing functionally critical.

You're a mind reader. It's on the list of things to try as far as making procedurals.  :wink:

My idea was to make the endpoints spheres, and they surface attach at their center point. 

However, the struts don't have colliders for the center piece. So that's a bridge to cross. When we cross that bridge. Fun with words. :P  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, BureauJaeger said:

Wait, I don't follow, why is the lack of colliders a problem?

That depends on how you're using this theoretical part. If it's just a visual-only means of completing a loop, and isn't part of -say- a rover rollcage then your good. 

If it's protecting a squishy Kerbal or delicate science probe from a violent impact with a celestial body, it would be nice to give it some impact resistance - which makes a collider necessary. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hey, thanks for the great mod, one of my essentials now. Just two things:

1. Can I change the default texture? I usualy use dark grey and clicking the "next texture" five times every time I place a new part is a bit overwhelming.

2. Tubular Platform and Torus are sometimes hard to attach by their middle nodes due to lots of side nodes. Can you put a right click menu option to disable their side nodes temporarily?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 3/15/2017 at 9:58 AM, Eckee said:

Hey, thanks for the great mod, one of my essentials now. Just two things:

1. Can I change the default texture? I usualy use dark grey and clicking the "next texture" five times every time I place a new part is a bit overwhelming.

2. Tubular Platform and Torus are sometimes hard to attach by their middle nodes due to lots of side nodes. Can you put a right click menu option to disable their side nodes temporarily?

Sorry to say it but I'm not sure if this mod is being maintained. @DrunkenKerbalnaut was hurt. Not sure if he's okay and I'm honestly worried

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...