CaptainKipard

No. The size was scaled down to 66% of real life and then the hull was scaled up to the nearest standard width, which is 5m. I'm taking a break from KSP. I wont be working on this for a while. It probably wont work well as is. It's still in alpha obviously.

Yes but not by design. For whatever reason programmers in the community haven't been coming forward with suggestions and questions as often here. Anyway, recently added Cybutek's video tutorial series near the top of the page covers some GUI stuff. I'm happy to curate the thread but honestly if I were one of two curators; the other being a programmer; the OP would look a lot better.

Anyone aware of good free UV packers or packing algorithms/plugins? The only ones of which I'm aware cost money.

Hi again. Please vote Also still looking to see if anyone has experience with free/opensource CAD programs and any other specialised programs or scripts/plugins that you use or have used. I want to expand the list in the dev sticky. Please help.

That's nice, but think about what would happen to those tanks IRL under torsion. Just something to keep in mind.

It's listed as a dependency, that means it's not included.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. WRT the dimensions I wonder just how important it is to change it to the D1. I've specifically made it with C2 proportions, because I only had access to those blueprints (scaled down to KSP size obviously). WRT the covering, I've read somewhere that the skin is going to be painted with a ceramic paint, so I'm wondering whether or not the panels would even be visible. Where did you get this information? Does anyone know whether this will look like the space shuttle hull or something else? I simple went off of the info that the plane is made with big single piece carbon fiber parts and painted with the ceramic. If the panels are going to be smooth, they wont be seen.

I don't have any links. Every edge flow is particular to every model. it's not something I learned from tutorials, I learned it by doing. Basically you should create edges where you're going to cut the model up into parts. They have to be straight along a single plane. If you don't know what edge flow and topology means you'll need to google these concepts.

Yes please.

OK? A few of those points are directly or indirectly related to improving the modability of the tech tree. You really need to actually write the "essay" to get that ball rolling though. The points have links next to them. Do I have to start making the OP comically obnoxious? I don't know what you hope to achieve with mediocre tools at your disposal. Full mod support for example is technically possible, but not with the current state of the game. The tree system needs to be a whole lot more dynamic. All of this info is already in the thread. I don't understand why I'm forced to repeat it. Nice strawman. Please don't do that. That's really frustrating. If it's unintentional then go back and make sure you've understood exactly what I tried to get across. OK, wow.... A machine gun has a sustained high rate of fire. It's not a single argument. I made mine. I have no idea what you're even talking about here. Can we please just move on already for god's sake. Again, nice strawman. You have got to stop.

Huh? I have no idea what you're looking at but this model is exactly dozens of times more complex than it needs to be for that particular shape. If you want to make it fly you will need to make the stabilisers into separate parts, and that being the case you really shouldn't have them be part of the original pre-subdivided mesh. I can see from the topology you made it one whole mesh. That's just complicating the area at the roots of the stabilisers for no good reason at all. The main fuselage is mostly straight but for some reason you have about a hundred edge loops all the way from the nose to the tail, where only about 25 would do with no difference in visual quality. The same goes for the edge lines running lengthwise. You could safely remove four fifths of those. The cross section is very simple. It even has flat vertical planes. Every flat are like the wings or the back should not have a subdivided mesh at all. TBH I don't even think subdividing is even a good idea for this thing. If you need to get the smooth shape, then one subdivision from a very low-res mesh would be enough, with a lot of cleaning up after it. In your place I'd stick to the "box modelling" method, rather than organic. The shape is simple enough to allow it. Box modelling would also let you intrude a cargo bay and cut away the doors more easily. If you're making the wings into separate parts, you'll do well to plan your edge flow ahead of time. As it is right now the edge flow will cause a lot of very ugly lighting/smoothing artefacts if you were to simply cut the wings off along a straight line parallel to the fuselage. You'll also need to plan your edge flow to divide control surfaces, and possibly to cut away gear bays inside for the same reason as above. I can't think of anything else right now. As you can see you have a bit of work ahead of you. You should adjust your expectations. The shape looks great, but your workflow needs some adjustment. It's way too early for that question. Take your time. What's the rush? You can do it quick or you can do it right.

I've updated the OP with a little note encouraging readers to engage in a more productive way. I've also added notes to the points that have been at least partially done.

And it is. Happy days. It's grouped by technology, and the parts get more advanced as you go along. What's difficult about that? Nothing. Because...? You say "e.g." as if there's an obvious connection between this and your previous statement. You can lose right away? So what? You can lose any game as soon as you start. This is a management game, ostensibly. You don't need your hand held as much as you want. It'll be fine. Trust in yourself. Don't make any of those "bad decisions". You know, like buying a KSC upgrade right when you start. That would be stupid, and you can already do that, but no one complains. And the reason is that it's not a problem anyone faces, because people aren't that stupid, or they simply quietly learn from their mistake and start again. You wont lose much progress in the first 10 minutes. This is a non issue. Again. No reason is presented. TBH I don't think it's realistic myself but still the nodes shouldn't be nearly as crowded as they are now. As arbitrary as science is it still seems a huge waste of resources to research a whole node full of parts just for that one thing you need. When I play, half the parts aren't even bought; they just sit there. I've updated that point a little. Not to worry. "Little to no" means "less than it is now". The current tree is not even a tree. It's a web. And it's really silly. Ask yourself how many games allow your to use all of your old upgrades/weapons/spells/technologies. I can't think of a single one where it's a problem. Parts become obsolete. Just deal with it. Without a complete overhaul of the parts system (which has been suggested to no avail) this point is completely moot. Squad already have one internally, so obviously it is. I don't think "controversial" means what you think it means. This thread wasn't originally mine, but I read every post in it since it started, and the response to Sherkaner's tree and all the ideas in that list have been overwhelmingly positive. They're not all mine by the way. They are the result of consensus. I update the post when something new emerges. There've been some naysayers but no one really bothers explaining their ideas in an objective way. Opinions are fine, but back them up with something substantive. Hey... now... I asked them to backup their points instead of machine-gunning opinions. That's a good thing.

This looks like you used subdivision surface, and cranked it too high. Reduce it until you start seeing angles, and don't stop until you do.

You can't do chrome textures in KSP unless you use the reflective shader plugin. In stock your only option is to use a galvanised metal texture for the colour and a modified one for the specular map. It wont look great in darkness but when highlighted it'll give the texture a nice metallic-sort-of look. I use that in my Universal Docking Ports. Have a look. Links in signature.

Are you using UV seams because this looks automatically made.

No offence but wouldn't it be better if they learned UVs themselves? The model is pretty decent for a beginner. The polygon density looks about right, and it looks somewhat plausible as a structure (I'd add some diagonal struts between both ring pairs, and I'd make the middle rings and middle struts touch the tank) If you can do this, you can do UVs. Practice reusing UVs for identical meshes. You can do it by deleting the mesh that's identical, unwrapping it, and then just copying the mesh. The UVs will stay the same.

Nope, that didn't work. Yes. When I do it the texture ends up being really bright. Does anyone know a workaround?

Has anyone tried to remove the alpha channel from a DDS image in GIMP?

I don't understand the problem.

I have a lot of work to do on this.

Individual axes are not modable like this afaik.

is the thrust transform in the right place?

Yes. Do you think it's worth it starting a whole discussion specifically for tree modding?

If you're going to try to go against the consensus in the thread, you could at least put an appropriate amount of effort into it. Some of it looks like you didn't read the links next to them or even the point itself carefully, some are just empirically false, most of it is unspported by any argument. I'd like this thread to not be a place to cast subjective votes, but a place to get a consensus, and that's not going to happen if you do what you just did. Make an actual case.