[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[Shadowmage]

5 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

What's the difference with the PBR setting on the apollo CM vs the metallic (behind the scenes)?

Ahh, -those- PBR textures. 

The difference is -- the 'high-res' PBR textures will not be recolorable;  they are actual full-color textures, as opposed to the recoloring system's grayscale detail masks.  The 'high-res PBR' textures will feature more details, including wear and damage -- stuff that simply can't be done under the recoloring system.  I had briefly toyed with the idea on trying to get them to be recolorable as well... but it is simply not viable given the way that colors are blended and used on a real texture.

[tater]

Regarding LC parts, one thing that they have is an IVA. That can be leveraged for other parts. Here is a crappy clipping version:

I have posted design studies (Boeing?) of landers that have a COS-like crew area, with the windows very much like the LC, or with a cutout "looking" down, so the pilots can see the terrain.

Seems like some of the lander parts could have the same (or plausibly similar) IVA as the LC, and be able to use it.

Those are vertical landers, obviously.

Oh, wait, I saved the pic link I think...

Clearly different, but you get the idea. I'm always thinking in terms of all the cool stuff we already have that is _this_ close to being perfect for another purpose.

 

That makes me think about something that could save a part, and be useful with extant SSTU parts repurposed for landed use...

A hatch/ladder.

A ladder that doesn't suck, but with a door, like the one above. There's a mod that adds hatches, right? Or must the hatch then have a crew slot?

 

Edited November 14, 2017 by tater

[Jimbodiah]

Gotcha, Mage! i thought it was just a metallic effect not related to the PBR, as I saw several PBR-labeled options.

Is there a new location for the ColorPresets.cfg, or has it been renamed? 

[Shadowmage]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

Or must the hatch then have a crew slot?

^^^ a crew slot is mandatory to use a hatch.

But it is still a workable idea for those times when you -really just need an accessible hatch- because you clipped/covered up the rest (or none exist, e.g. the COS).  Ladder might even be made into a mesh-switch option, as they are really nothing more than an animated mesh with a specific tag on the collider (and mesh-switched animations are something I can actually do).

Just now, Jimbodiah said:

Is there a new location for the ColorPresets.cfg, or has it been renamed?

It now lives in the 000_TexturesUnlimited directory.  Should have the same file name, and internal contents, just has a new home.  (all the recoloring system is included in TexturesUnlimited as well, so it was necessary to include the color presets)

[Jimbodiah]

Hah, so used to there only being the one SSTU directory... Thanks!

[regex]

1 minute ago, Shadowmage said:

^^^ a crew slot is mandatory to use a hatch.

But it is still a workable idea for those times when you -really just need an accessible hatch- because you clipped/covered up the rest (or none exist, e.g. the COS).  Ladder might even be made into a mesh-switch option, as they are really nothing more than an animated mesh with a specific tag on the collider (and mesh-switched animations are something I can actually do).

Pretty sure Nertea does this in one of his mods, the station parts one I think. It's a good solution IMO but it can end up being a bit funny when filling the craft for launch because some dude can end up  stuck in the EVA dressing room hanging on for dear life.

[tater]

In the spirit of reduced part count, such a hatch/ladder could also have a light illuminating it.

[Jimbodiah]

I'm ruined now.. whenever I add a stock part I think "dammit, where is the recoloring GUI".

 

Maybe we can now have a coloring competition for X-Mas, who makes the most awesomely pimped rocket?

 

 

ProTip if you are trying to figure out how the new sliders work: 

Specular = Shinyness, how much gloss/mirror effect the surface gets

Metallic = Contrast, more/less difference between bright and "shadowed" part

 

 

And just ofr fun... who said it has to be a rocket?

Edited November 14, 2017 by Jimbodiah

[Nightside]

Not sure whether to post here or over on the TU thread, but what is the compatibility of the new graphics options with intel graphics cards?

Do I need to do anything special to during install of the latest SSTU or start up of KSP to make it work for a non-nvidia system? 

I haven't had a chance to try anything yet, but I'm hoping to sort it out before I get a chance to play this evening.

[Shadowmage]

10 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Not sure whether to post here or over on the TU thread, but what is the compatibility of the new graphics options with intel graphics cards?

Do I need to do anything special to during install of the latest SSTU or start up of KSP to make it work for a non-nvidia system? 

I haven't had a chance to try anything yet, but I'm hoping to sort it out before I get a chance to play this evening.

If you are not interested in any of the PBR stuff, there should be no functional difference from the previous SSTU releases -- all of the shaders and plugin code are the same, only the packaging has changed.

 

As far as the PBR stuff being usable on Intel -- very good question.  I think it would depend on just how old/new your Intel GFX are.  If it supports DX10/11, you are probably fine.  If it only supports DX9... it will likely still work, but look bad and probably have not-so-stellar performance.

[Shadowmage]

23 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Do I need to do anything special to during install of the latest SSTU or start up of KSP to make it work for a non-nvidia system?

Shouldn't need anything special - - just make sure to remove any previous versions of SSTU as there have been a ton of internal changes that will make a merged-update crash out.

[Jimbodiah]

Euhm... [looking down, fidgeting with fingers]  Anyone here with the skills to make the Procedural Fairing clamshell be able to use the recoloring GUI ?   (I know mage will start steaming from the ears, so I won't ask him)

[Temeter]

You mean the SSTU one? Already supports it. Or do you mean old PF mod?

[Jimbodiah]

old?   Yeah, the actual PF ones, the other shells which are now always white.

 

 

Starts singing national anthem.

[Aelfhe1m]

19 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Starts singing national anthem.

Which anthem would that be? "Wilhelmus" perhaps?  Or one of the many other countries with red, white and blue flags?

[MaeharaProjekt]

4 hours ago, Jimbodiah said:

I'm ruined now.. whenever I add a stock part I think "dammit, where is the recoloring GUI".

Maybe we can now have a coloring competition for X-Mas, who makes the most awesomely pimped rocket?

ProTip if you are trying to figure out how the new sliders work: 
Specular = Shinyness, how much gloss/mirror effect the surface gets
Metallic = Contrast, more/less difference between bright and "shadowed" part

And just ofr fun... who said it has to be a rocket?
[http://jimbodiah.com/ksp/sstu/aa.jpg]

 

yeaaaah...  after shadowmage's latest release this week, I've started unloading some older parts mods that while cool, are effectively orphaned and need a lot of TLC from someone who has the time and skill to make them skookum choochers once again. The loss of these won't break my current savegame.

@Shadowmage This is not a complaint - you've raised the bar again and, well, I've gotten tired enough lately to keep trying to see my reflection in some of these fuel tanks. My wife keeps asking me why I've got my face so close to the monitor.

[Jimbodiah]

Guess what season is a'comin' ?

 

[Jimbodiah]

42 minutes ago, Aelfhe1m said:

Which anthem would that be? "Wilhelmus" perhaps?  Or one of the many other countries with red, white and blue flags?

Wilhelmus natuurlijk!

[vossiewulf]

Geez 43 new messages I can't even keep up. Love the creations of the early adopters who are bravely finding the bugs  I'm figuring on waiting until about the third release where bugs will no longer be of the scale like "I turned up my reflections too high and the shininess swallowed Duna. No really it's gone from space and the whole solar system is unstable now." 

[Shadowmage]

New/updated PBR solar panel shader (and updated textures)

Cranked up the glow a bit... might tweak it a bit more, but its pretty glowey...

Blue ambient on the metal parts provided by Laythe.

 

 

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

New/updated PBR solar panel shader (and updated textures

Cranked up the glow a bit... might tweak it a bit more, but its pretty glowey...

Blue ambient on the metal parts provided by Laythe.

Mostly spiffy, however glow looks too much to me. But then again I can't say that I've spent many hours looking at backlit solar panels in space.

And I thought I was joking above, but Mage's shader is causing people's ships to explode when they're using certain fairings! That's AWESOME!  I'm with you though as I'd love to know how a shader could cause a huge fairing explosion.

And it looks like you're both right and wrong on the glow and the answer you choose will be a compromise unless you build in more complexity - see below, glow very near axial with the solar body is almost exactly like you have above, but also see they change rapidly as they move off axis to almost no glow. So if you can have them figure out their orthogonal distance from the line between the solar body and the camera, you could use that to correctly modify the glow. Wait no what you need is that distance to get the angle off  the camera/solar body axis and use that value, that should work. Otherwise you'll have to pick some compromise or other.

Edited November 15, 2017 by vossiewulf

[Shadowmage]

33 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

So if you can have them figure out their orthogonal distance from the line between the solar body and the camera, you could use that to correctly modify the glow.

The good thing is I already built those parameters into the shader.  Wasn't sure what to call them, but it is kind of the inverse of the normal specular calculation.  The dot products of the light direction, camera direction, and surface normal all have independent inputs/controls (view x light, view x normal, light x normal).

There is also a 4th parameter that functions as a boost/multiplier for the input emissive texture, which is actually what I had done in the screenshot above (2x boost)

I'll play around with the directional stuff a bit more -- I'm pretty sure I can get the angle based falloff to mimic that pretty well with the controls I have (just some config edits once I figure it out in the editor).

 

[vossiewulf]

2 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

I'll play around with the directional stuff a bit more -- I'm pretty sure I can get the angle based falloff to mimic that pretty well with the controls I have (just some config edits once I figure it out in the editor).

That'll look super spiffy if you can get that to work, that'd have its own ooh ah factor along with the shiny metal reflections.

[Shadowmage]

Think I just need to add a bit more contrast in the texture itself, and increase the exponential falloff a bit more, but I would say its totally doable.

Edit: one moment.. will probably have it updated

Closer.... (def. going to need some minor texture adjustments; the dark areas need to be a bit darker; will make the off-axis stuff a bit darker and redder)

One more before I'm off to sleep...

Edited November 15, 2017 by Shadowmage

[Temeter]

Typical, you point out a critical flaw, next moment ShadowMage says he already solved it xD