REDACT3D

nice plumes man! Woot! outstanding bud thanks! Was messing around with part tools inside unity and found the FX folder with all the Mu's for the stock ones but couldn't figure it out. good stuff

bump The FX .mu files are located in the FX folder. however, in blender they load as empty game objects

Do any of you folk have any relevant insight on mod development for ksp2 I imagine it is still unity but HDRP and hope that it still uses the same kind of files used in ksp1. but no idea. Any insight on this topic? I quite enjoy makin' parts. and I notice the wing change eliminating the need for tiny variations. but could add more complexity. the same goes with the multiplayer. I imagine it will have navigation more automated and more consistent with the abilities of the majority of players. maybe this will eliminate the need for navigation mods for example.

Hello again guys, I'm back with more questions! Lucky you right? Anyhoo, I would like to create particle effects for my new engine parts but I'm not sure how exactly this is done. I've got experience in Unity, and blender is my main 3d building environment. Been using the Blender addon to compile the part folders and such but the particle effects seem to be pre-existing game object prefabs that are instantiated in-game for the desired effect. I cannot locate thease prefabs to see how they are structured or know the naming convention to accomplish this task. it would be amazing if someone could point to a youtube video or document that describes the workflow for this. Sure. it's just graphics and doesn't impact the motion of the ship or how the part works. but it's that extra touch that makes it neat for the player. I'd rather make the entire game asset from scratch that way I know where it came from and can let people consume it ^.^ thanks guys later

I'm on 3.3.0 of blender

Okay let me get back to you on that one. but I suspect that KSP uses unity's built-in particle system that is extremely well documented, and I use it all the time for a wide variety of effects. From smoke and trails to particles that trigger events and collide with the word. It's a possibility that it uses the FX system that is more shader based. but since KSP appears to be built using the Universal Render Pipeline this points to the older particle system. Each style of render pipeline has it's own custom shaders basically. because the scene is being renderd using a different style of rendering. Forward rendering seen in HDRP and deferred rending in the Universal Render Pipeline. There's also the Standard Definition Pipeline that is more or less devoted to mobile and you can create your own render pipeline. See lots of people always complaining about the STYLE of render pipeline. Because things are not the same for every render pipeline as you can imagine. It's like a setup file config. You'll have a guy showing how to "make a thing" but it only works in that one pipeline. I bet KSP at first probably had the URP as standard and added stuff on. But all speculation. The only difference between HDRP and URP in relation to particles from a user standpoint is how you need to select a new shader type from the drop-down that is compatible with your change. And the alternate code you need to type to reference that version of the thing. Doing this "unlocks" or makes new or alternative options available in the inspector. For example, you don't have the option to disable 'cast shadows' with an HDRP material (even debug doesn't work) you need to use Layers to define what shadows interact instead. A different thing. (because hdrp shadows cost more performance so gotta use a new way ) (I think?) all versions in Unity have a basic diffuse shader. That is, will display gradient color and handle the surface smoothing and all that but no fancy stuff like emission, transparency, metallic and what not. Normals are mostly standard. Bump maps are old-school. The reason all this matters for particles is not only because they need to actually render and need a shader, but because of how they are rendered. like say if you check the ☑ Enable GPU Instancing. This not only does stuff in the background to help you spam those particles with no lag, but also reveals new options in the inspector as well. I think doing this inside unity would help? Blender has this issue how Black and White are swapped values and the scale of the values when you try to directly import over. The black and while ( 1 - 0 ) values are used to determine float values. like smoothness and so forth. So if those are flipped.. it's going to look funky at minimum lol. I imagine the ksp adon does this conversion. (and maybe why vertex color is black at first?) Particles are just a component you add to a gameobject, with slide bars and numbers to change while you observe the changes until you get what you want. it's really cool. Gets more complicated to add sound to particles. this requires adding an AudioSource component to reference. You can set the particles to begin playing (or looping or bursting whatever you make) immediately when the game object that had it applied to it is spawned or otherwise "wakes up" or you can just directly tell it to play. The issue then becomes do you want the particles to be interrupted? And what interrupts it? Does it get destroyed? You don't want the smoke to stay while the fire go. lol For stuff like candle flames, you can use a shader on a mesh to displace it like grass blowing in the wind, so there's a point at when you switch from particle to static mesh. depending on the speed of the effect. dont' need to spam particles for a slow moving flame. I hope that it works with the particle system in unity. lol Take this standard weapon layout. the formatting of the hierarchy. how it's contained within the character controller. I need a point to play smoke from the pew pew. But it has to match the players animated weapon right? So you add an empty game object to locate the origin point and rotation relative to the gun in local space. And when the animation plays for the shot, the playhead will travel across Event Triggers that are embedded in the animation. Or you can animate the game object disable and active. and set the particles to play on awake like the sounds. the standard particle component

Smallest engine in the game. ^.^ decided to bake normals for the foil and put it on a gimbal lol Say, do you have any insight on building particles like smoke or engine effects? I assume it's a prefab made in unity? Does it use the standard particle system and runs on awake? (object pooling? )

Nice! A fix for the glitchy rendering! woot! It's like I'm suddenly playing ksp2! I wonder why this is not just a patch? Fantastic! And when I record video, it won't look like potato power too. It actually improves the contact shadows also! What the heck man, why didn't I do this before LOL Hearing about how you started off, ALMOST makes me think I'm missing out on that part of the quest. But then I think back to all those darn phone-book size code books, and I'm like nah' this is way better. Not only because we each learn "faster" but more that we can share what we've learned with others. To advance the overall knowledge base. I like to say: "teamwork makes the dream-work". puts a smile on folk's face and, it's true. I would gladly share any information about blender or unity if you ever need, just let me know. Maybe if you need any models made I could help with that. you know, no obligations or anything. Just let me know. I HATED blender until they updated the UI to non-alien interface hahahow you can bake textures and normals is crazy. if only blender and unity was built into the same app lol what the heck Z up! I reccomend Unity's "new" Visual Scripting for guys who want to get into doing logic and stuff. you can do anything you can do with regular code, but with graphical nodes. it's actually quite the rabbit hole. It's not for everyone. but it's an interesting way to do things at the least. But it kind of works how the shader graph works. so it's like a language worth learning. I was always tryin' to program stuff but needed graphics for it. So I forced myself to learn blender. Took roughly a year before I could sit down and build anything and know what every button did. Now I can cruze around it like a video game and just do what I think to do. It's all about the selection tools, mirroring and otherwise controlling the lines and dots to move how you want. Once you do it enough, it just becomes automatic, and you reach for the right tool at the right time. Not everyone has a year or two to fart around however lol. you've definitely made a positive impact on my progression and understanding. Thank you for putting the effort in to communicate in detail. A rare thing to find. keep payin' it forward

Below is a video showcasing the k2 as part of a larger stealth aircraft mod.

Thanks bud Good eye as usual man! Here, I was testing what the highest level is. looking to see if it was clamped. Spoilers, it is. good to know that the game does not crash if this value is exceeded! (or at least not right away lol) Since I'm building from a reference in blender the idea is to get all the parts for this ship to the same relative scale in relation to the reference. Knowingly walking into that unit scale conversion issue. Once the model is completed at the reference scale, I will then rescale the objects to the scale I'm lookin' for with all of the attach points in the right places. Using blender to set the hard-scale to 1. I don't see scale as an issue. just an extra step to mess around with. Except how it requires an extra Empty gameObject so the local position is not affected by scale changes. This, I was doin' so I could leave the script identical each time it is copy pasted with less chance of typo error. As I usually only make a single animation track for a payload door. I assume the animations are played locally in relation to the part root gameObject. or in other words, is contained in that game object. Or any animation track on any part would also play while this plays. But it seems to be contained in the module? Super easy to name them. also describes what the animation is for better when looking at the code, so this helps thanks man! Buhahahaha! just for testing the inputs hehe. To make certain that the reaction wheels are applying the correct rotational force to the wing in an overpowered manner. At this point all the control surfaces work correctly and can be mapped to Depoy as breaks and such. Roll on the outer fins ( 1 and 2) was tricky. as the pitch and yaw was correct but roll was inverted. but all good now. Just want to get all the parts exsisting in the game before I tweak all of the game related values that make it a challange. Right now, it'll fly like it's being programmed to fly perfectly. Starting at perfect and nerfing down to realistic. This way I can get a visual going in my head about the numbers in relation to the actual forces. if that makes sense. This is why you will see outrageous numbers in some of my test stuff. The ones that are intentional anyways. lol Here you can see the scripting environment I used built into blender if you're interested. engine next as you can see on the top left. going for surface attach to the wing when I export the model, the script is also exported (and stuff automatically gets added/changed/assigned/ It's just as easy to edit a single value in script and re-export, as it is to do on say notepad, but this allows me to change things like the textures and other mesh stuff too with the same turn-around time. I believe what I could do is have several Scripting tabs open, each named for the appropriate part, and it'll export them all at once. based on your exporting multiple idea. beauty! This is the link to the github for the blender addon GitHub - taniwha/io_object_mu: Python .mu reader/writer and blender import/export addon And this is the video I found that started this all.. explains how to setup the addon and use it lol Oh! also - Notice how "6" never plays in this video as it is coded https://i.imgur.com/HCSS6dH.mp4 The texture turned out okay too. next on to the code and stuff

https://imgur.com/a/cTmyC1l longer video showin' more

Sorry for the late response. Got distracted playing with thunderbirds for a while. had to put a pin in the base going in the mountains so I could get back to work on my K2 project haha. the detail is awesome haha. memory lane. Not that I am complaining. but for me some of the meshes used in the thunderbird pack do not have auto-smoothed surfaces. If you are aware of this or not. could be fixable in blender. maybe it sucks re-releasing a mod. haha thunderbirds go! The Sr71 is looking great man. If you want my expectation of what the inside view from the cabin should look like > gotta beable to see the curvature of the earth with blackness of space. but small windows and clamped head rotation due to helmets lol Been thinking about interiors. Anything you wish you'd have known before doing them? https://imgur.com/a/N0nP3zM Ended up debugging sound like this video above. Here's the animation and sound script for the instance that shows up in the video linked above. because I have my animation starting "open" at frame 0 and "closed" at frame 100, I want to make sure that the sounds are playing at the appropriate time. The Volume 0 0 was throwing me off at first. How it's like: Volme number number Volme number number had to debug that PART { name = CockpitK2 module = Part author = REDACTED rescaleFactor = 1.0 CrewCapacity = 0 TechRequired = precisionEngineering entryCost = 4900 cost = 650 category = Pods subcategory = 0 title = CockpitK2 manufacturer = REDACTED description = Could become self-aware. attachRules = 1,1,1,1,1 mass = 0.2 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.15 angularDrag = 1.5 crashTolerance = 12 maxTemp = 1200 explosionPotential = 0 vesselType = Probe bulkheadProfiles = size0 crossfeed = true tags = #autoLOC_500342 MODEL { model = REDACTED/Parts/Command/CockpitK2/CockpitK2 } MODULE { name = ModuleCommand minimumCrew = 0 hasHibernation = True defaultControlPointDisplayName = #autoLOC_6011003 RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 0.025 } CONTROLPOINT { name = forward displayName = #autoLOC_6011001 orientation = 90,0,0 } CONTROLPOINT { name = reverse displayName = #autoLOC_6011004 orientation = 0,0,180 } } RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 1000 maxAmount = 1000 } MODULE { name = ModuleReactionWheel PitchTorque = 300 YawTorque = 300 RollTorque = 300 RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 0.05 } } MODULE { name = ModuleSAS SASServiceLevel = 7 } MODULE { name = ModuleAnimateGenericEffects animationName = NlaTrack startEventGUIName = Close Top Hatch endEventGUIName = Open Top Hatch actionGUIName = ToggleBayDoors //defaultActionGroup = Gear layer = 2 deployEffectName = deploy // is the effect(s) which should be played when deploying postDeployEffectName = deployed //is the effect(s) which should be played when deployment is completed postDeployEffectLength = 1 //is how long the post-deployment effect should be played retractEffectName = retract //which should be played when retracting postRetractEffectName = retracted //is the effect(s) which should be played when retractment is completed postRetractEffectLength = 1 //is how long the post-retractment effect should be played animSpeed = 1 } EFFECTS { deploy { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/1 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } AUDIO_LOOP { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/2 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } } deployed { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/3 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } } retract { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/4 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } AUDIO_LOOP { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/5 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } } retracted { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = REDACTED/Sound/6 volume = 0 0 volume = 2 1 pitch = 1 } } } } // end Note that this script is missing command modules usually used. this is for testing of the animation sound only. This is how she's lookin' so far. Only two wings, a cabin and control surfaces. The Cabin has a top payload door located where the fuel transfer port normally would be. with an attach node inside to allow mounting. Like the Square piston. or a camera etc. Plan to make a Clip-in style fuel port for folks who want to try and git good. lol Here you can see how i left room for a lower payload area to be attached at the bottom. this way i can have the lower profile and have that clearance to put lots of stuff in the main payload area. before moving onto the engines and landing gear. I imagine the gear will be complex due to the spring component. dono yet.

looks real crisp Concodroid good work! when danger zone kicks in! Totally worth the copyright strike imo ^.^ I chickened out and used a midi :p Wow, Outstanding ColdJ! Thank you for taking the time to explain all that! That answers all of the questions I had. holy smokes bud! Oh sweet, yeah I was lookin' at that. Nice. So, for example: If you make an engine mount with 4 attach points and toggle on symmetry or mirror, this determines both IF you want it filled and the quantity of nodes needed? I'll have to experiment. So this is why some engines don't mirror on some engine mounts, even if you have the in-game symmetry tool selected to the appropriate setting eh? It's a shame we can't tell ksp to rebuild the mod list with a command line in-game or somthin'. The reason I ask is to save iteration time for testing changes. Bummers it doesn't work that way ^.^ Currently I just drag of the mods in the GameData folder to backup. that speeds up load times for this. I've been spoiled on unity with the ability to edit code while the game runs haha. I feel like I will need to experiment with this to understand this part. Will have to come back when I do. Isn't thunderbird 3 the one that looks like the TinTin Rocket? the red rocket shaped one? couldn't get them to work? maybe related to the building editor? like did you try to build it in the hanger or vab? just thinkin' Just random thinking don't mind me >.< This is outstanding! So good it can't be hidden in a nested code window! Paste this thing on the front page! Excellent! Lots of good stuff packed in here. wow

Oo

ohh success first try on wings! fins next,