akron
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Posts posted by akron
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Some more updates for y'all.
A few more tidbits got modeled and some parts on the bus are slowly being tweaked to add more detail to haunt me later.
A good bit of time got put into the propulsion system, including finishing up the RCS, although the feed line is wrong, I found a better pic and will fix it eventually. You'll see some orange chewy bits; those are fittings for the wiring harness.
This final low shot show off the ventral structure and the newly modeled landing radar stuff. The upside down cake/cheese wheel thing is part of the altimeter system, the big brown square is the TLDR (He he, not it's the TDLR, landing radar).
~Zzzz
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3 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:
Another thing to consider is more texture sharing. If you can find a way to pack them up more efficiently (BDB can sometimes get an entire family of parts out of a single texture sheet), you could greatly reduce the overall number of textures in the mod, which could actually result in a net reduction of size.
All the early parts are UV'd like a texture Atlas. If I am to improve quality, the texture size unfortunately can only go up. They're currently packed as tight as they're ever going to be. For example all the RTGs, batteries, and solar panels up to Juno all share a single texture (and I think it had room for more
). That style works better when you have larger areas that do not have overlapping AO though, like fuel tanks or engine nozzles (Which is why it works so well for LV mods). These dang probes though have too many intricacies.
When I started the mod I had no plan to have entire probe part families like I do now, which is a reason why texture usage has changed. I really wanted to keep the mod light for folks with older computers who may already have big part mods installed like NFT, BDB, Tantares, etc. so they barely got room for other mods like mine. You'll actually see that so far the largest texture I have is probably a 1k texture. The recent Mariner probes are on 512px texture sheets (Mk2, Mk3, Mk4, etc), sharing a single 1k sheet for the solar panels. Viking will probably need a 2k texture and will be UV'd differently than my earlier stuff.
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22 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:
I'm not sure if I ever used most of those texture variants. At least, you could probably ditch the FS switcher and go stock. However, overall, I find that fewer hand-tuned options tend to give a better experience than a larger number of generic ones. You could go with foil, blanket and (where applicable) bare metal. Foil could be switched between gold and silver, blankets could be a probe-specific mix of white and black.
Stock texture switcher lacks some functionality that I require for some complex part shenanigans, so I have to use Firespitter or maybe B9 if I can ever get it to work.
Otherwise that's pretty much exactly how it is now. I have these materials: Thermal, Carbon, Silver foil 1, Silver foil 2, Gold foil 1, Gold foil 2, Gold foil 3, Coatl Gold Foil, Bare Grey
Obviously not all parts use all the variants, but it would be a tremendous amount of work to re-do. Hand tuning the foil to each part does yield a much better result but it increases the texture work since you have to tweak one sheet per variant. It also makes it more difficult to share textures, so the size of the mod's download would increase as would the number of textures that are loaded up with the game since KSP does not dynamically load textures by default.
The trade off here was the quality but it allowed new probe parts without adding any new foil texture sheets to the mod except once in a while. So yes, I agree with you, but I don't have a way of fixing it at the moment. If I go back to refit older parts I would probably just slowly remove the texture switching altogether for more mission-specific visuals. Like I can only think of one time I saw a screenshot where someone used the Voyager core *without* the default black thermal blanket. C'est la vie
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6 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:
Could you look into making the gold/silver foil look more like ReStock one? I'm not sure if there are reflections in these pics or not, but it doesn't look quite as shiny as ReStock.
Maybe. I don't know how much you followed the mod when I did the last foil texture overhaul. The foil textures are using shared generic materials swapped by Firespitter or TU. Restock uses a different way of doing its foil textures which involves doing foil materials per part for as many different types of foil as you want (Restock has roughly three per bus).
I don't mind giving it another shot but it will be a lot of work which is best reserved for a refit of the parts since it essentially involves rethinking and redoing the texture layout for all the probes. It also means that I would have to cut back on the number of material options to about three, like Restock, to keep the workload bearable. Right now I have about seven materials, so imagine doing textures for the probe parts seven times for each one that has a foil toggle. That's about 45 different texture sheets just off the top of my head.
Now, there is foily shininess on there but the pics don't do it justice; plus I am not using the foiliest of the foils I made
. It is using TextureUnlimited's shaders. I have never tried the new stock shader, but I think I will for upcoming soviet parts/remakes
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Okay, I think I am going to slowly retrofit parts to use @JadeOfMaar's excellent PlumeParty effects. If anyone wants to help write up configs, I'd appreciate it.
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4 hours ago, macc92 said:
Whilst I havent exhaustively tested its just the cassini parts, the others i've used seem fine, on versions 1.7.1 and 1.7.3
output_log is here
https://drive.google.com/open?id=13tlRHyyCBaFkFqryVsFzaLzJ-2VLQghy
Okay. I was able to replicate it. I am working on a fix
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6 hours ago, macc92 said:
I downloaded from the github, I can see the mariner parts, but still have the bad plumes
That's odd. All parts do that? What version of KSP are your running, or a log would help.
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1 minute ago, hieywiey said:
The version I downloaded about a week ago still has the Cassini RCS issue, so I'd say it isn't fixed.
From the Github repository? Or from, say, Spacedock?
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Some quick progress update pics below. The Meteorology mast is done. Yes it was a bit of a pain but a kinda fun too mostly because I had no good measurements on it.
Might try to bump map some of that detail on the mast instead.
~cheers
@macc92 What version of the mod are you using? I could have sworn I fixed that already
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15 hours ago, PriusMann said:
Does this mod work with KSP 1.7.x?? Curious AF! yet by the looks of it... it looks bueatiful
Thanks! The Mod does work but if you read back a few pages, some folks are having issues which you may experience as well. Click on my signature to read the FAQ which will also help you with collecting a log should you have problems.
Also, download the Github repository for the latest version, instead of the last release, which is pretty old.
Hey and try not to quote long posts in the future, you can use mention feature instead. Like this: @PriusMann
Thanks again! Sorry for the late reply, I've had major internet outages intermittently for two days
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40 minutes ago, Machinique said:
What log do you need to help troubleshoot the problem?
That's a new one one! I think I need KSP.log
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15 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:
Any chance of a dev stream?
No I wasn't able to. Still trying to get figure out a good way to fit streams back through our work and family schedules.
Tonight's work concentrated on the Aeroshell. I need to have the structure modeled so I can figure out where to squeeze the Viking bits. Unfortunately some of the shaping does not lend itself very well to doing a block-in.
I still need to finish the aeroshell back/top structure (underneath) but I cut the parachute mortar pretty deep to give myself enough wiggle room to add it in later above the science instruments.
Viking's Heatshield was fairly complex, having its own propulsion system and fuel, valve control, navigation and even science experiments. I simplified a lot of it and I don't think I'll add any science but I did mostly finish the propulsion system
The more detail I add, as fun as it is to do, just means more UV and texture to mess with later.
The thrusters on the heatshield were actually used to de-orbit the lander as well as for attitude control so there's a bit of dV in there. I also finished the seismic experiment but I forgot to take a pic. It's not the most exciting part though.
Figuring out the better way to do the boolean cuts on the aeroshell was not the most fun thing I had to to do. I hope the normals behave well enough in-game
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9 hours ago, hieywiey said:
Could we get a status update on Viking?
Yes. I'll be working on it tonight. I will post an update afterwards with the latest progress
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37 minutes ago, MooseMoi said:
So do you plan to make the earlier ones
Not really. Like I said, they feel redundant
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@sslaptnhablhat Thanks, looking forward to many more
3 hours ago, MooseMoi said:Well it showed vega 1 and 2 but the venera series it only showed venera 15. Im just curious if this mod has the parts for the whole venera series.
Welcome to the Forum, Moose! The Mod includes the 4MV/5VK bus of the Soviet Venus missions but not the earlier iterations. There was frankly little reason to include them since they all were mostly the same missions profile; so I went with the newest/most feature complete ones. Additionally, the lander itself was graciously donated by Beale from his Tantares mod, and that lander was already based fairly closely on the later 4MV landers.
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15 hours ago, drtedastro said:
NOTE: i found a ref to this problem back a few pages. i will try to go to map and then back to see if that kick starts it for now.
kool.
Thank you for the update. What version of KSP are you running? If you have a log, I can check for potential mod conflicts. Right now I am testing with very few mods installed, so I may not be able to replicate it if I don't have the same mods installed.
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On 6/9/2019 at 10:15 PM, KerBlitz Kerman said:
@akron, I just want to say thank you for this amazin' mod (and for devoting so much time to the community)! Both the parts and textures AND implementation are fantastic!!! Keep it up!!!
Thank you for your kind words. I sincerely appreciate it! I wish I could work more and faster. Got so much left to do still!
On 6/10/2019 at 4:58 PM, Cheesecake said:For me Firespitter and your mod works well in 1.7.1.
After some voodoo I think I got it working but there are still some issues. The texture system might need an overhaul
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13 hours ago, Spike88 said:
Just curious, what type of issues are you having with 1.7.1?
A few mods not loading correctly and throwing MM errors, including Firespitter, which is a dependency for textures
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No worries, I did get back to it but I didn't finish any complete sections so I don't anything fancy to show off. I've been testing the game in 1.7 and then 1.7.1 with the new DLC to see if there's anything Breaking Ground considerations I need to have. Doesn't look that way.
From my testing though, things are wonky and a little incomplete in 1.7.1 modding compatibility-wise. If you're still using ProbesPlus! parts I would suggest staying at 1.6 or 1.7.0 (No DLC) especially if playing career mode.
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I find most video game achievements a little bit tacky, but I certainly underestimated how much having a simple little colorful trophy can add so much to a career game.
On multiple occasions, I've loaded up a really old career save and just looked through the ribbons that the crew received and just reminisce on the missions that helped them earn them. Seriously, this mod adds a lot of character to KSP.
If I haven't said so before, thank you for keeping it alive
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Hello all! Please pardon the lack of recent updates. Had some sudden maintenance work I've had to do at home this week. Can't wait to get back to work on this hopefully Sunday-Monday
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7 hours ago, drtedastro said:
looking great....
cheers.
Thank you! I am happy how it's turning out
EDIT: I ended up fiddling with the RTG covers and I improved the jagged curve at the front, but forgot to take a screenshot.
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I hate to post tiny bits of progress but I am trying to stay more focused to complete sections, so I figured might as well. Antennas are finished and I took a whack at the RTG covers.
Cool story: Once I did these new RTG covers with somewhat proper dimensions, they ended up wider than the block-in which forced me to shift them a little bit on the Z+ axis so they would not clip into the cameras. Originally I wanted to leave them exactly in the middle for simplicity. Anyway, this more or less lined them up with the real Viking spacecraft which actually had them shifted in Z+ pretty much the same way I had to, except on the real spacecraft it was done to line up the Center of Mass. I must be doing something right.
Will smooth that front curve with maybe some bevels but for now, don't talk to me or my
sonRTG covers again. These things are a major pain with weird angles and some other BS. Anyone wanna UV unwrap this thing when it's done? I will literally ship you a cookie.
). That style works better when you have larger areas that do not have overlapping AO though, like fuel tanks or engine nozzles (Which is why it works so well for LV mods). These dang probes though have too many intricacies.
[WIP] Coatl Aerospace ProbesPlus Dev Thread [Beta] 10/19/2020 (1.8-1.10)
in KSP1 Mod Development
Posted
What a day to celebrate! Decades ago humanity cemented its place in the solar system with a historic touchdown in another world. On July 20th, 1976, Viking 1 safely landed on Mars at Chryse Planitia; marking the end its dangerous voyage and the beginning of a fruitful scientific mission. Viking 1 returned the first scientific data from the martian surface and performed numerous measurements to investigate the potential habitability and presence of life on Mars.
The lander was not alone. Its companion orbiter conducted its own science in orbit above and the Viking 2 duo was fast approaching behind; arriving on Mars in August of the same year. Viking 1 continued to operate on the martian surface for an astonishing six years until it finally shutdown in 1982.
Happy 43rd Landing Anniversary to Viking 1!
Oh, I guess Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong did a thing too. Whatever. /s
~ZZZzzzz