Manwith Noname

Do you mean with the recolour pack or making your own configs and textures? With the pack, it should just be a case of selecting the appropriate texture set and playing with sliders in the GUI. I knocked this up quick and forgot to highlight something (as always) but the RGB highlights cover most of it. This has come up before so it seems mocking up some sort of visual aid might be useful. When everything is installed correctly, a new slider appears in the part menu, by default, it will be set in the "Squad" configuration (Red), which should allow people to choose the standard stock shaders if they wanted to. Clicking the arrows either side of the slider or in the slider itself will switch over to a different configuration. For this instance, I've selected the recolour set (Green). This will make the glass reflective amongst other things where the colour masks do not allow user control. Now, the bit I forgot. When a recolour set is detected by the Textures Unlimited plugin, a new button appears at the bottom of the part menu, "Open Recolouring GUI". Clicking this will open the menu on the right of the image. The Specular slider (Blue) is essentially the control for "reflection". If this is not functioning correctly for you, could you provide a screenshot from in game that might allow me to see what you see. As we covered in the main thread, not having reflections enabled is likely to cause some weirdness in the behaviour, in fact, I might just go and test that on my end to see what occurs. Edit: Oh...and of course...something else! Stock parts with heavy "Variant" integration don't have this slider, recolour texture sets will appear in the stock variant switcher...which at one point I was going to set everything up to use for consistency but...uch...I hate it. Once the bar fills up with so many sets it gives no indication as to how many more exist (they just disappear of the end of the bar) amongst other things. Another edit: Alright, yeah, I suspect based on your description this is related to reflections being enabled / disabled... This is the same scene only in the top half I disabled the reflections. With no reflection data available to use a part setup for reflections has nothing to display, essentially. In the game options, this is named "Reflection Refresh Mode" and as mentioned previously, anything except off should work.

@Lisias Hehe, no worries...but wait! Lebowski plays KSP?

You can have any settings so long as the reflections are enabled, so any update besides none. Personally, I use every frame but what you set comes down to preference and capability of your hardware. Not that I find the reflections particularly demanding. If you have Restock installed, 99% of the stock recolour is disabled both via configs and use of the blacklist plugin. Basically, right now, if you're going to use Restock the only parts you'll be able to recolour are those made by Porkjet or other external mods. Do you have the main Stock recolour installed? If not, these will not function as they rely on modifying existing texture sets created there. A later edit specific to this point: I just got round to downloading the latest official release of TU and put it in KSP 1.9, the pWings configs should work if you have the main recolour pack too. If this isn't the case, as below, please raise the issue in the recolour thread. Edit: Also, if you're having problems specifically with the configs and texture packs I have put together, might be best to take those queries to the recolour thread.

Heh, having taken a quick peek at the discussion there already, I think that might just confuse things. Anyway... Exactly, this was my point. In any case, if you are aware of that then I suspect I've misunderstood the post and run off on a tangent so, I've trimmed my post because while trying to keep other parts simple I'm just making things worse and leaving an opening for huge off topic ramblings.

Or the light spectrum of your monitor.

I don't keep a list other than what is in my head, I could reel of a whole load of things I know of that need work. Mainly, this comes down to revising normalisation parameters and finishing off masks and maps. In a simple form, a lot of utility and structural parts. I had also considered putting things on github, mainly from the point of view of enabling pull requests on configs but I'm just so used to managing everything in the way I do, dipping in and out of making improvements and additions as and when I find the time and enthusiasm. I quite like it here though, in the quiet of the development thread where only keen eyes wander.

To explain it fully is going to take so much explanation. If I take the last point you make, "Kerbals under a red star would still see white as white". This suggests to me, coupled with the rest of the post that you think nature has something encoded within it that means all life will try to make itself see light a certain way (the same way as we do under our star). By extension of that thought process, all life on Earth would see things exactly as we do because we all live under the same star and we are quite sure that isn't the case.

Darwin wants a word.

Additionally to what @Shadowmage mentioned, make sure you have reflections enabled in the game options, without that, parts configured to make use of them tend to appear quite dark. Also, if you're sending mirror like objects in to space they tend to look black too. As for why pwings doesn't work, I'd need to see the config as I take it you managed to get the recolour pack working.

This should automagically fix itself in the next TU release. There was an odd issue when using an old release of TU in newer versions of KSP, though I found they didn't fully manifest themselves unless KS3P was installed. If KS3P wasn't present, they worked.

Yeah, you need to expand the + Advanced options during export and tick the checkbox. Like I said, it might be essentially the same as some of the arguments you are putting in the nVidia tools command line, I just did a quick comparison some time ago with arguments I found. Anyway, here's an example to show what I mean because a picture is worth a thousand words... The top part which is ultimately the "background" in this image is the "artwork" in GIMP. The middle is a straight DXT1 export without any fiddling and matches pretty much exactly what I experienced with everything I compared with at the time (tested by exporting the GIMP stuff as a PNG and converting in other applications), including the limited nVidia arguments I happened to find back then. Bottom is a GIMP export with the error checking box ticked. I suspect those arguments (triangle and quality, which I don't recall having at hand because to be fair, I only searched for arguments so much) you list are essentially the same thing as I'm fairly sure the nVidia tools are the base for pretty much all DDS / DXT conversion tools of this era. Edit: ...and I only did this testing because of changes to how TU was handling the recolour. In ye olde way back with tinting mode, these blocks were barely noticeable. It was only when moving over to the normalisation I found these artefacts to cause me grief (and this was by far the worst scenario I encountered). In the end though, everything turned out for the best

To comment on the texture tools, I find GIMP better than nVidia texture tools, at least as far as exporting colour masks to DXT1. I did a test a while back and it produced the least artefacts. I compared GIMP, nVidia Texture Tools and DXTBMP. The main selling point for GIMP was the perceptual error checking. Without that, all results were much the same but the error check got rid of a fair few 4x4 blocks in certain scenarios. This may still be possible to achieve with the nVidia Texture Tools command line interface but I just found it much simpler to tick a box during export in GIMP where the rest of the project is based. From what I could make out, most tools use the nVidia tools as the basis for their conversion. More recently, I've been looking at something that can handle BC7 out of curiosity. I haven't tried anything yet but I'll post the things I have come across so far that I'll be looking at checking out... https://github.com/GameTechDev/Intel-Texture-Works-Plugin If you use Photoshop, then this ^. Most of what I have read is that the Intel algorithms provide the best result. If someone knows of a standalone tool using this then I'm all ears. https://vvvv.org/contribution/texconvgui This is what I'm probably going to test at some point as I have not used Photoshop for years. It is essentially a GUI for Microsoft's texconv.exe previously mentioned from what I can tell. I didn't check but I imagine both will have support for BC5...at least I'm hoping so.

This is what made me laugh so much when it appeared. "What? A single cat bouncing across the bottom of the screen offends you so much? Here, have a hundred cats swirling around showing their prancing prowess!"

Yeah I know. It's just I'd never seen this particular display. Not sure how long it's been there but I'm more familiar with this one...

@juanml82 You need to change the config. Specifically, find and replace all... shader = SSTU/PBR/Metallic ...with... shader = TU/Metallic ...will be an improvement. Might be more changes needed but I'd start there at least. Edit: You'll also want to find a suitable replacement for... shader = SSTU/PBR/StockMetallicBumped Another edit: Oh wow, all TEXTURE entries should be changed to MATERIAL too, this config is really old.

Haha, good one! Not seen that one before.

So, to hopefully shed some light on this. All that changed was a typo on the green and orange fairings bumpmap setup (path started with SSquad ) and I remade the placeholder textures to conform with something more standard. To cut a long story short, what I have concluded after encountering other problems, the bumpmap needs to be in dxt5nm format. Right now I'm seeing stock supplied bumpmaps behave strangely because they appear to be shifting layers around correctly but as dxt5 I think or some program specific export. If I fiddle with them in GIMP and export them as I would anything I make, they function correctly at least. On the plus side, it got me to try something I've been thinking of doing for quite a while... I like bumpmaps but the artifacts that become apparent at high specular settings have always bothered me.

For anyone that downloaded the main stock recolour pack in the past week, the link has been updated which should future proof for forthcoming releases of Textures Unlimited. Still a 1.8.x target as far as parts are concerned but it includes a typo fix I hadn't spotted previously and changes to placeholder textures which the latest Unity version doesn't like. Well, hopefully. It's late, I'm tired.

I'll add this one to the pile... FAR has something and I think Correct Centre of Lift too. Edit: Not sure of the current compatibility or potential of future updates with these various mods mind you. Another edit: Just realised I've misunderstood the request but hey, cool mods are cool, right?

@garyhoover Agreed. @moguy16 Yes, current downloads are for 1.8.x. Edit: Edited title to reflect that.

I can neither confirm nor deny my involvement with add on projects that may or may not be ongoing.

On repeat...

Alright, updates. Stock recolour is configured for KSP 1.8.x. Should fix the missing EXTRA_INFO header on the coupler variant. MK2 and MK3 Expansions updated to whatever release I grabbed at the time (around Oct / Nov) last year. Additions: Procedural Wings - I sort of want to revisit this at some point but it was a quick (and a little uninspired) job to mimic the existing textures and add some specular detailing. The curved surface wing kinda works but the part was never finished it seems as there are no base textures and no UV data within the model from what I can ascertain. MKIV Spaceplane Systems - This one has been brewing in the lab for well over a year. Well, maybe festering might be a better term. Colour masks were mostly done in 2018, then it sat for nearly a year before finally motivating myself to finish it. I still want to add some layers here and there but for now, it's mostly a two tone affair with smatterings of a third layer on a few parts. Thanks to @Nertea for wondeful 60's puppetry sci fi inspired nostalgia and permission to release. No pics, no clicks... As always, completely remove any existing packs and dump the new ones in place. Failure to do so will result in bad things happening. If you paint a part that doesn't use all possible colour layers then I advise making the unused layers the same colour as the primary just in case they're added one day. If anyone notices something they think might be missing, broken or can be improved (there's quite a bit in my mind), don't be shy. I don't play KSP "properly" and haven't for some years. Testing is mostly limited to "does it show in the editors and then in flight". While I make every effort to double check things when I'm setting them up for the first time, there may be changes I miss as time goes by and KSP / mod updates occur, or sometimes I break things unintentionally by rewriting the config (goodbye EXTRA_INFO). It's only really those who use them in anger a playing environment that are likely to catch them and you'll probably be reminding me of things I've long forgotten. Edit: Forgot to mention. These should be considered releases for KSP 1.8.x.

@Drew Kerman Here's a grab with it enabled. If you watch the sun set you can see the shadows "grow" towards you as it lowers behind the mountains. I can grab something with it disabled at the same UT easily enough for comparison in a bit, gotta run right now though. This is 1.9 stock. Edit: Here's a similar view, same UT with the terrain shadows disabled...

Doesn't stock do terrain shadows now? I seem to recall an entry in the settings.cfg appearing a while back something along the lines of "celestial bodies cast shadows" which people thought would be eclipse casting but I've got a vague recollection it was in fact much like the terrain shadows implemented in Scatterer.