ORC - Offworld Robotic Contructs

[Caithloki]

Hello,

I am working on my first mod pack and would like a bit of input on the idea. The first two parts I am working are a welder and grabber for a rover so that it can use KIS/KAS to lay piping and such. The main idea for pack is to allow you to send a robot farm/mining rig ahead of your actual kerbals. The way I plan to balance it is to make it require alot more power and other resources and lower production then what a kerbal can do.

The first two parts I am working on would be required for any of the future ideas to work. Here is the grabber part. I still need to work on the texture

And here is the welder part without a texture yet.

My main concern is that I do not know if it would be possible to give these parts the ability to weld and move stuff like a kerbal and if it is possible would it be able to be limited to an area around the part, to prevent slapping on the part to anywhere on a ship to allow construction anywhere on the ship.

Any input would be welcome on this matter, and thanks in advance.

[Overjay]

Idea is actually good, try to do it!

[Caithloki]

Thanks for the input, I actually just got my very first part actually showing up in kerbal, its not the best currently but I am quite pleased with myself since all y prior attempts ended up with frankenstien models that did not look anything like the model I made. Here is the early look of the part.

It is supposed to be that small in case anyone is wondering but I might make it a tad bit bigger and the model will be updated to something of a less flat one color look. Currently it is only setup as a ladder part just to make sure I can get it usable as a model. Now I just need to do this for the grabber part then figure out how to transfer the KIS/KAS ability to these parts, if anyone can give a bit of insight on this or are willing to help me do so I would be grateful.

- - - Updated - - -

Slight issue though, it currently is in game and able to be added to a ship but since it has no collision mesh it cannot be selected and removed, but when given a mess it ends up not being in game anymore. Does anyone know a solution to this issue? There does not seems to be something referencing this issue in common issues on the start here for moding post.

[wasml]

Why no collision mesh?

Could you give just the base a collision mesh?

[Caithloki]

I have a node_collider (or how ever it is spelled) on the full mesh in blender ( I did not scale it down though so the mesh for the model and collision are the same size which I am not sure if that would cause an issue. But when I attempt to add the collision in Unity it causes the mod to not show up in kerbal, without it the mod shows up but once placed it technically becomes one with the part it is attached to.

Do I need to use the unity for the collision mesh or can I just use the one that is a second mesh in blender? If the blender one will allow it then I think the base only idea would make my life a ton easier if I have to scale it down by a small amount.

[wasml]

I've only made a few parts for my own use (they're rather primitive) but I usually duplicate the mesh in Blender and then pare it down for the collider. The only gotchas I aware of are a limitation on the complexity of the collider (don't remember what the max tris(?) count is (256 pops to mind)) and that you need to check the "Convex" box in Unity for the collider. Are you adding a mesh collider in Unity to the imported collider? You won't see the "Convex" check box if you're not.

[Caithloki]

Does the Collider and Model have to be two separate models brought into unity or as one object. Here is what I have at unity at the moment, without the collider mesh component added.

Here is the model selected.

And here is the collider selected.

I was using this tutorial on how to transfer to unity then from it to KSP.

Edit : well I guess I missed something the last time I attempted to add the collider, I might of picked the incorrect one. I was able to add it now and the part is now select able.

Edited July 29, 2015 by Caithloki

[wasml]

I've been building both the model and collider as two separate meshes in one file in Blender. I then export to a collada formatted file. In your screen shot above if I click on the right arrow on the Dronewelder model in the bottom center area it expands to show both the model and collider. Dragging and dropping the whole thing on to my Gameobject adds both to the Unity object. I then remove the renderer from the collider - don't want it visible - and the add the mesh collider.

One thing I just remembered - I've had problems if I didn't zero the transforms (upper right under inspector). I see both your model and collider have an X rotation of 270. Rotate the Blender meshes to the proper axis before exporting (Y is up) - will be sideways in Blender. Ah - just saw your edit - great! Is the Unity X transform still 270? New to all this myself and may have been fooling myself when I though I needed to zero the transforms.

[Caithloki]

I do need to fix that welder, it does point directly up when selected it KSP, I will be fixing that next and also increasing its size a bit. I also just finished the base idea for a container, while the shape at least, I will need to improve on the texturing for all my models. Here are pics of the container and the idea with stock parts (I hope to replace the probe body with one of my own making).

The container will only be for a small amount of parts, that is why it only has 4 slots and 200L of space. I might even lower it further since the pipes are only about 6L. I only want the rovers to be able to set up piping and pylons for the pipes.

Here is the rover concept with stock parts.

I have the container pretty short to help keep it from flipping the rover and plan to make my own solar panels, probably curved to follow the shape of the container. Also you can see how small the welder looks like too, way to tiny for the rover size. For some reason the mod making install I had did not have the rover body so i couldn't test out the size compared to it.

[wasml]

Re: probe body in Blender - Have you seen the Blender add-on for importing mu models? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/111483 I've used it a couple times and its worked well.

Agree with keeping the container low profile. Even built low rovers are easy to flip.

If the solar panels are contoured to fit the container will they be usable anywhere else? If not I would suggest having them part of the container to reduce part count. Though this sort of goes against the point of the game for me - I like to design things and see if they work. I would suggest making the panels so they could be used stand alone or with the container.

A thought - can you make the arm appear to have a joint like a folded up curiosity rover arm. I realize it wouldn't really move but would look more versatile (not quite the word I want but...)

[Caithloki]

With the original drawings I did for the welder it had a joint in it. I kinda just made the model quickly to see if I could get it into the game since I had so much trouble before (All because i was using unity 5 instead of the 4.2.2 version or lower).

For the solar panels I agree with you, it would be better to have them usable for other ships, so I think I might just make ones long enough to cover from side to side of the container. The would be wider shorter version of the ones in the picture above.

And to verify, is that link you mention a program that will let me bring any part/ship into blender to use as a comparison to the model I am making? If so I am elated. I would be downloading it right now and testing it out but I just popped on while I ate breakfast.

[wasml]

That link is to a python script(I think) that imports a KSP model into Blender. I've imported two models to see how they were arranged with the hopes of learning something. Note they were simple models - no animations - not sure if it would work on those.

[Caithloki]

I just tried it out and it is wicked, It is going to make it a ton easier to size up everything, now I don't need to spend multiple load times of KSP to verify the sizes. Thanks man.

Do you happen to know any way to remove internal faces with blender? I have been attempting to look for this answer online but to no luck, here is a picture to show what I mean.

The part inside of the main part has a ton of triangles that I could remove but for the life of me I cannot find out how to do so.

- - - Updated - - -

Here is that part also, It is either going to be a battery or small reactor. I am not sure yet I am still working on it.

[wasml]

I've clipped faces at intersections before but only a few times - had to go back and re-find instructions each time. Involved the Boolean modifiers under the little wrench below the ... can never remember the names of all the windows - might try googling gimp Boolean modifiers. Even when I got it to work it was a struggle to get it to do what I intended to do but with saves after each step and lots of experimenting it did eventually work. Good Luck!

[Caithloki]

I saw that mentioned but never could find the boolean mod, went back and looked and now found it. Guess I need to just look harder.

I checked it out but it seems to actually increase the amount of triangles while lowering the face count. I think I might just leave as is.

[Caithloki]

I decided to go ahead with the boolean mod, It helped lower the amount of UV work removing the inner faces so I went with that option. I also finished the model for the drone body for the mod.

It is a little bit bigger then the in game probe body and has attach points for wheels. I am going to set up attach points for each one. I am not quite sure if I am going to setup my own tires or not. Alot of the work left for the parts I have made so far is just setting up textures, I am not the best artist but Its a learning process.

This mod pack will be a nice learning process for school, I am taking animation in about a month for two years.

Also I did a remodel of the grabber part, I learned that suction cups would not work in space (No atmo so no different pressure zones, duh). Here is the new model and I decided to go with magnets instead.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Caithloki

[Caithloki]

Here is the drone body in game, again with still bad textures .

This is a pic of the original model. It is smaller then the current probe body, I have resized the model to be larger.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Caithloki