purpleivan

I just started this myself at the weekend, I work in games dev so I had a head start to some extent, but there were some thing for me to learn before getting something into the game correctly. I think most people are using Blender as a modelling tool, although I use 3ds Max. Howeveer you should be able to use anything that can output a file that the Unity engine can import, such as FBX. Here are some useful links that I used. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Making_an_asset_from_start_to_finish https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Part_Modelling_Guidelines#Scale_Factor

I am now getting somewhere at last @wasml as I now have the parachute deploying and animating correctly, with a couple of minor caveats. Everything is fine, except that at the point when switching between the animated states (semi deploying and fully deploying) and the unanimated states (semi and fully deployed) the entire canopy is instantly rotated around its vertical axis by 180 degrees. I wouldn't have noticed except that I'd put a big black square on one side of its texture, to allow me to compare orientation of the object in Max and Unity. At the same time as the 180 degree rotation occurs, there's also a small clitch in orientation between the end of animated and beginning of unanimated states. I might try exporting without animation compression to see if that's the issue, although I doubt it. BTW... my solution, after many attempts at changing the rotation within the object of the vertices and of the object itself, seems to be no different than where I started. So I'm guessing that there was something else that I was screwing up. One thing I did notice is that my working version has a different orientation in the animation player in Unity than your example. Whereas your example chute sticks out to the side, mine is orientated verticaly upward. But both work in-game... wierd. But at least it.s progress One more thing, the slow speed of the fully deploy animation is due to a setting in the CFG (deploymentSpeed) which is set to 0.12 whereas the one for semi deploy is 0.5

You could give this mod a try... it's what I use for setting up my transfers.

Thanks for the info @wasml I'll take a look at my chute later. I did think that the 90 degree rotation shown in Unity looked wrong, even if the part looked right. I'll also take a look at your templat parts. I'm using Max rather than Blender.

I started work on a set of parts for Purpleivan's Land O' Junk, a purveyor of fine recycled parts with a more junkyard appearance than the stock ones... opening sometime soon. So far it's just a couple of fuel tanks, a parachute (but not quite worked out how to get the animation working right yet) that I've made so far. I've also made a start (not shown) on the ROK-T45 engine (equivelent to the Swivel). If Jeb's Junkyard's hightech parts are a little out of your price range, Purpleivan's Land O' Junk has what your space program needs, at low, low prices (no guarantees, no refunds). Also useful as props for screenshots etc.

@wasml I made the changes you suggested to the animation setup of the parachute in Unity, but I'm experiencing some issues with the animation and parachute behaviour in-game. Issue 1. When the parachute part is staged it deploys upward, unaffected by the upward movement of the vehicle, into the semideployed state. At the end of the animation, it pops to being dragged behind the vehicle. Issue 2. Once it has fallen to the altitude for the fullydeployed state, the correct animation for this plays, but slowly, probably about 1/3 of original animation speed. Issue 3. Even though the CFG file for the new part is a duplicate of a stock one, with only the entries for Name and Title changed (i.e. nothing that affects it's functionality), the parachute appears to have no drag and the vehicle crashes into the ground. Here's a video of what happens when staged. Here's the setup of the animation of the part in Unity. The entry in the field Animation is set to Non (Animation Clip) which seems a little wrong, but changing it via the small circle selector next to it, to one of the alternatives (semiDeployedSmall) gives the same problematic behaviour in-game. Any advice you have on this would be well appreciated.

Ignore the question below... the problem is fixed now. I noticed that although my fuel tank appeared in the VAB list, the stock one on which it is based did not. So I thought that there was probably another identifier, other than the Title in the CFG file. It turns out that identifier is of course the Name of the part (doh!) and as I was working with a copy of the FL-T400 cfg file and hadn't changed the name, then my part just overwrote the stock one. Once I gave both my tank and parachute parts new names in their CFG's, both appeared in the VAB. Today's lesson kids is read the docs, in this case the Part Modelling Guidelines which says " Just make sure that the name field in the cfgs are unique ". ---------------------------------------------- So far I've successfully added a fuel tank part to the game via Unity. However I'm having an issue with parachutes. The problem isn't with getting something I've made into the game (my exported part from Unity didn't appear in the VAB), but even a name changed duplicate of one of the stock parachutes fails to show up in the VAB. To create the duplicate I copied the parachuteMk1 folder from GameData\Squad\Parts\Utility to my own parts folder in GameData. I then renamed the copied parachuteMk1.cfg file to parachuteMkx.cfg and changed the Title of the part in that CFG to Parachute Mk X. On loading the game no new parachute part appeared in the Utilities part tab. To check my process, I carried out the same changes on a copy of a stock fuel tank and that appeared in the VAB. So does anyone have any knowledge of getting parachutes into the game that might be relevant? Just to be clear, this isn't at this stage about the process of getting a parachute through Unity, just trying to find out if there's anything special about them, regarding gettting even stock duplicates to appear. BTW.. here's my first rather simple creation. My plan is to make a set of parts that a more literally junkyard style than the stock ones, which can also serve as props for anyone wanting to put bits of junk in their screenshots etc.

Thanks for the suggestion... I'll check what you've suggested tomorrow.

Kennel Kraker

I found out that the version of Unity (the latest) that I was using, is not compatible with PartTools. I installed the required Unity version and the issue I had with the Set button is now solved... i.e. I have one now.

Thanks for the info. When you say "File URL label" is this the "File Path" text field... can't see one for File URL? I can't see a Set button in the PartTools tab. Here's what I see after adding PartTools to my root GameObject using the Add Component button. BTW... do you know anything about animation import into Unity. I'm trying to get the rigid body animation of my parachute (a few scale animation keys) imported, but so far without success. Unity import picks up on the FBX file as containing an animation , but the animation doesn't seem to play in Unity (hitting the scene play button or scrubbing the slider in the animation tab for the animated object).

This post contains the original question, now answered, however I came across a new issues that I describe in the 7th post. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm having my first crack at making parts for KSP as well as using Unity (far from my first games assets though... that's the day job, but currently using UE4) and I'm having an issue with the installation of PartTools. I'm following the guide on making KSP parts here and at Step 5 "Setting up Unity" is where I've hit my snag. I downloaded the latest version of the PartTools package from this thread and imported it into Unity. I can see installed folders and files under Assets in the Project tab, but according to the guide I'm following, I should also see a PartTools window with "a button called "Set Data Dir". Unfortunately I'm not seeing that window. Is this something that is now out of date in the guide I'm working from? If it is, how should I set GameData as my Unity Data Directory? In case it helps, here's a screenshot of my install of the Unity editor. There is an error in the log about duplicate DLL's for one that comes with Visual Studio. I'm guessing that's not related to this issue,

Time to post some times. Abu Kerbi 1:13.44 Gaarst 1:01.12 Hunkaroring 1:28.52 I'm not particularly happy with the first two (especially Gaarst) but my vehicle is not best suited to anything tight and twisty. Hunkaroring time is ok though.

I started to do some laps time on the Hunkaroring track (managed to get one pretty decent time) but something I noticed is that if you Abort Race, the penalty time for any missed gates on that and any previous runs doesn't get cleared. The only way to reset properly seems to be to load the race, rather than just abort and try again.

The craziest things that have happened to me have both been on the runway island. The first time I sent a vehicle there, it roved around for a few minutes before suddenly appearing (minus a few parts) a couple of thousand km above Kerbin and heading away at high speed. Before. After. The seconds event occured when I was sending a large lander there, with the intention of putting it down on the control tower roof, as part of a challenge entry. This is the one I landed later for the challenge entry. The first attempt had the lander come down about 100m from the tower, so I decided to take the pilot out and go for a wonder around. But then once the pliot was walking away from the vehicle, it started to very slowly float up into the air, leaving him behind. It was probably moving at about 1m/s and was the creepiest thing to see. That place should have a big concrete dome over it. Either that or a band of young kerbals in a colourful minivan needs to take a trip there to solve the mystery.