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I couldnt get it to work fully in blender either,i was getting slightly incorrect normals along the top/bottom rim using the data transfer modifier + vertex groups. But clearing all the normals then doing a bit of manual avaraging+copy/pasting of the vert normals in max(edit normals modifier) did the trick for me. My guess is that something similar can be achieved in blender too but im just a lot more familiear with 3dsmax. Here are a few resources/discussions about normals editing in practical use: http://polycount.com/discussion/154664/a-short-explanation-about-custom-vertex-normals-tutorial Old one from autodesk help files(still applicable) http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal there are plenty more but these where just some i found by looking around a bit.

I had a go at it. i had to import it to 3dsmax to do the normal editing since i dont remember much about using blender. but i reimported it to blender and saved it in addition to the fbx file from max. I dont have unity on this laptop so havent checked it there. but it does look correct to me in max and blender now. btw it seems that mirroring the mesh resets the normals again so i just added a mirrored copy with fixed normals in the model files. FBX file Blend file

Try applying the data transfer modifier on both fairing halves(temporarily merged etc.)? also make sure the surrogate/dummy object has smooth nomals/shading applied(not sure if it makes any difference but i havent used blender for years so i dunno) edit: When applying the modifier in blender it is correct that it should disappear. But i also heard some mods are better left in the stack and then letting the fbx/obj exporter take care of the conversion. but that may just have been in older versions of blender.

I dont think so with the unified mesh thing. Atleast not with the stock decoupler module. In any case if its simply a mesh seam issue(doesnt look like it to me tho, but i could be wrong) you could use something like a copy normals procedure to achieve a similar merged mesh effect. Something like this in blender: or: I couldnt find a method for wings 3D In any case it should be possible and probably better to fix the root cause if the shading issue. Im a bit rusty with unity but could it be that the mirrored fairing side obj has a -1 scale etc.? Still just guessing here.

Mirrored uv map causing inverted normalmap direction? not sure. maybe someone else has a better idea. Nice N1 block B btw.

I had the same bug happen last time i tried kerbalism (in 1.1.3) same situation. But with a greenhouse(at full lighting) in addition to the lab. the vessel was mostly stable up to the 3rd highest timewarp. Power generation was more than adequate(many mostly orientable panels). No errors in the log either. Got the "kerbal burned up" message during high timewarp.

its all personal preference. I like how 3dsmax works for me but it has been a LOT of work adapting it for my use(hotkeys, custom made macros + plugins etc.) The way my setup of 3dsmax works these days is more like modo than the "vanilla" 3dsmax. But yea id say for cadlike presicion i couldnt really use anything else(except maybe fusion 123 etc. (An actual cad package))

In my personal experience: Easiest to pick up w/o experience: Sketchup Pros: very simple interface. Easy and fun to get into. Free limitations: uv mapping/unwrapping (no built in tools) and lack of more advanced modeling tools and no procedural/nonlinear workflow. Easiest after a bit of use (while still fully featured): Modo Pros: very production ready out of the box. Lots of customization abilities. Fully featured. Limitation: Has very little support procedural/nonlinear modeling workflow. Costs a bit of money(around 300usd for the indie version) Maya Pros: most if not every tool has a gui icon by default so they are easy to find. Large and feature complete toolset. Very good animation tools Limitations: most if not every tool has a gui icon so they clutter up the whole interface. Very little support for procedural workflows. Costs quite a bit of money but has free educational license Takes a bit of time to get started with but works well once there: 3dsmax Pros: good support for procedural workflows. Can layer edits as well as most operations in the stack to produce unique results. Very good toolset. Limitations: uses lots of old and spaghettified code. Some unchanged and largely unmaintained from 15+ years ago. This makes the software pretty quirky in use. The gui backend is also very old and makes customizations quite hard. Made worse by the fact that lots of hotkey customizations are needed to make it production ready. Very costly. But has free educational licence Blender Pros: Almost as good support for procedural workflows as 3dsmax. Very good customization ability. Most addons are free. As well as the sw itself. Easy to get help on the ksp forums as most use it. Ksp Craft and part model import addon exists. Limitations: some missing modeling tools.a bit quirky gui. Needs lots of hotkey customizations to make it efficient in use. Lots of addons required to become fully featured (when i used it i was running 30+ addons) Dont even think about it(:-P): Houdini Pros: completly unmatched procedural workflow. Anything in the modeling process is controllable via nodes and expressions. Limitations: The workflow is so different from anything else, its very confusing unless you have worked with nodes and expressions before.

Sorry if this is too generic but http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28746/how-do-you-access-the-ruler This is basically how i used to get the spesific measurements of things in blender when polymodeling. In 3dsmax i use the measurement tool to check measurements and lathe(splines) to quickly create cylindrical stuff with cad-like precision(this also enables me to change the segment count on the fly) Pro tip: In blender you can scale while snapping (something you cant do in 3dsmax atleast. Altho there are other ways to do it) this enables you to scale a n extruded cylindrical cap(etc.) to an exact point in space or to another cylinder with the radius you want the extrusion to have.(set snap from highlighted vertex) Also: http://blendermama.com/precision-work-in-blender.html

Porkjet (the guy who made most of the new stock parts) did a written outline on his process Here there is no pics so you should be familiear with the software youll be using as well as general texturing before trying it out.

There are a few who use maya here on the forums. Daishi(universal storage) uses it and some others. Iwe tested it out myself and its a pretty good package. There is no reason you cant use it for ksp modeling. For the question in the latest post its probably best to do a single export/import of all objects to unity. .Fbx is recommended. .Obj would be the second choice.

Here are some pictures of assorted rocket engines for modeling reference. Rocket Engines There are more on google( i also keep an archive on my computer that is much more comprehensive and higher res ). but this should suffice for anyone looking a condensed library of rocket engine references.

Unity can be mean lol. I dont have enough info from looking at those two images to tell for sure what is wrong. I cannot see the body object in the unity list( but there are objects in that list that i cannot see as they are outside the view ). To me it looks like the issue can atleast be narrowed down to the "body" object(s)(as they seem to be the only ones missing? inside unity) So first make sure it doesnt have inverted faces in max (add a normals edit modifier and check that the arrows face out). If not then add an edit poly select all faces and flip normals. Collapse the stack. Also apply the reset xform utility. Export as fbx.

Yea texture painting in 3dsmax is a chore( there is some minor functionality but its been abandoned long ago ). Use an external program like photoshop or gimp. To apply a texture is quite simple. you can make it as simple as just drag and dropping a png to the object. But the preferred method is using the material editor (M key. I like the compact mode instead of slate mode) to apply it in the diffuse slot of the material you want to use. Just make sure you have unwrapped your model (use one of the two uvw modifiers) or its probably gonna look like a mess. But this is a very complex subject. So to get a better walkthrough id suggest you to look at some of arrimus3d's tutorials on youtube. https://youtube.com/channel/UCSLLdTBwLMfTKWS56tOiQpw He has some good ones on texturing as well as on modeling in general in 3dsmax.

I Agree. Taniwhas mu exporter for blender is well made. but in my experience its just not as flexible as using unity for packaging models. I dont use or really know much about how to use taniwhas plugin ( other than that iwe tested it before to import some models into blender and exporting them again as .mu ) so i cant really comment further than that.

O i understand. You have to change the coordinate system to local. In unity this is called local/global gizmo display. This does not effect the result but it allows you to see in the editor the actual rotation of the transform. http://docs.unity3d.com/410/Documentation/Manual/PositioningGameObjects.html

This was explained well above. But if you want the TL;DR: The transform (named empty gameobject) is not rotated to face the correct direction.

Iwe also tried looking several times and cant see the issue. As portjet said i can only see mipmaps in action.

Unity does a nifty process where if you have blender installed it will perform a silent call to blenders fbx exporter if there is a .blend file in the asset folder(i think all it requires is that blender is installed in the default dir and that unity has read permission to that dir). I like to have full control over that process myself, so i would export it to the asset folder as an fbx manually. But i can see the advantage of just using the .blend file directly. Dae should probably be avoided alltogether as it is probably on its way out. And obj does not support mesh skinning or rigging. So .fbx or .blend (if blender is your game) is probably the way to go. The 0.01x scale import preset thing is just plain stupid i think (Why does unity do this?). I think i read an article on how to change the default but dont remember how or where it is. Edit: The 65534 semi-hard vertex count limit does not come from the obj format but from unity itself. Over 65000 verts is a quite large number and you would need to model something very complex (in ksp terms) to justify exeeding this number. I got unity to import an fbx containing meshes with over 65534 verts but i had to specify that the model should be split into several mesh objects.

I can indeed confirm that NODE {} works pretty well. Now i havent completed a parts pack for ksp (lost my motivation to do so) so i dont havent faced all situations and issues that may accur. But in all the 10 or so cases where i set up the nodes in this way it worked exactly as expected in the game. This was in 0.23. I cant imagine things have gotten worse since then.

Im curious as to what this plugin you are missing does? I cant think of anything script / pluginwise i cant find out there. In any case yes power of 2 textures are used. texture formats used and supported are generally .dds (reccomended), png, tga and perhaps a few more. Other than that you got an as-is result from your 3d model. But the unity step is required to setup the shaders and materials for unity and for colliders, as well as exporting the model as an .mu file (the model asset format used by ksp atm). All the attachement points are spesified in the part.cfg file (look in your ksp dir for examples or here on the forums for complete tutorials on the whole process) the coordinates use meters as scale but this is dependent on the scale set for the model on export(from 3d package) and on import (into unity) as well as your "rescale" multiplier inside the part.cfg file. Be aware however that if no rescale parameter is spesified it defaults to 1.25x the actual unity model scale.

Actually youll be happy to note that .mu will not be depricated(well. In the sense that it likely will still be used by most, if not all of the stock parts in 1.1) you will have the option of using the much better unity .assetbundle format but your .mu's will still work. You can also use a single blender armature for all the animations including parented rig animations by just parenting the objects to the bones directly and not skinning them. Good luck with your release

Im not exactly sure which of the surface effects seen here are the strange effect mentioned. As there are two seperate things i can see in the picture. The first is an even surface shader effect that looks a lot like it comes from a tiling normalmap. The second are some crossing dark lines. The first could be from some unintentional normalmap being applied the second looks like it could be uv mapping bases artifacts.

You have to understand that any model you would get out of the process of 3d scanning such a piece of equipment would be super high poly, uneven/full of artifacts from the scanning process, blotchy and would have to be completly reworked inside a 3d package to be even remotely usable in the game. With such a high level of work needed it would actually be much more productive to take several detailed pictures(top,bottom,left,right++) of the instruments in question and just model them using those pictures as references.

Glad to hear you solved it. As i am sure you figured out the two animation clips need to hold the appropritate start and endframes. For example 1-30 for the deploy/retract and 31-60 for the looping rotation animation(which also needs to be set to run as a loop). Writing it here for other people who may stumble upon this thread wondering what was the issue. The only remaining issue i can see in the unity setup is that you seem to have a single big box collider around the entire centrifuge "wheel" but there are gaps between them in the visual model. So if you where to try evaing and floating through those gaps you will be stopped by the collider. I am afraid the only way to solve this is the way i outlined in my earlier post. Which is to build the shape outline out of several primitives(probably boxes). This may seem unintuitive since why not just create a single mesh collider out of the meshes? The reason for this is because you cant have proper collisions in unity between concave colliders. They need to be convex. There are also issues with both multiple mesh colliders (may have been solved in newer versions) and animated mesh colliders. with ksp 1.1 and unity 5 this will be even more important.