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

[RedParadize]

@Shadowmage I know you had that part done. But do you think you could had the orange/red band at the edge of the panel?

[tater]

@Jimbodiah, up the thread a few posts, @jarraya asked about RO/RSS. you clearly have a handle on that aspect given the above image  . Maybe you could give him a hand with setup...

[Jimbodiah]

Tater, I'm not touching RO with a 10ft pole, too complex. I made a simple patch to balance ISP/thrust for a bare RSS install, no need to go further for me personally.

Spoiler

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleEngines*]]:NEEDS[RealSolarSystem]:AFTER[SSTU]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleEngines*]
    {
        @maxThrust *= 2.0

        @atmosphereCurve
        {
            @key[1, ] *= 1.6
            @key,1[1, ] *= 1.6
            @key,2[1, ] *= 1.6
        }
    }
}

// optional
@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[SSTUModularHeatShield]]:NEEDS[RealSolarSystem]
{
    @RESOURCE[Ablator]
    {
        @amount *= 2.5
        @maxAmoun *= 2.5
    }
}
 

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Duski]

10 hours ago, RedParadize said:

Yeah, that was some cool stuff. Raptor and the full system is realy intresting. Sadly the shuttle is kinda ugly.

I found it was an interesting design. But it did look odd with the heat shield but a very creative design.

8 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

 

Not really 'at last', but more of a 'likely to be done eventually'.  It may well be 6 months or more before I get to it.  Could also be sooner... really won't know until I get there.

 

Well that's still enough to get me excited that it might happen.  

[Jimbodiah]

LqdMethane is in CRP, so all you need to know is the ratio of Methalox and you can patch your own engines.

[StickyScissors]

Behold, the Arion Multi-Purpose Lander. Basically just a stretched Arion service module (used on Marduk and other Arion family variants) with landing legs glued on. Able to land on, and then ascend back to orbit of, quite a few planets/moons.

-

Launch Mass (LES included): 40.853 Tons

Unit Price (LES included): 90,830 Krubles

 

Edited September 30, 2016 by StickyScissors

[Shadowmage]

19 hours ago, RedParadize said:

@Shadowmage I know you had that part done. But do you think you could had the orange/red band at the edge of the panel?

I'm guessing you are referring to the ISS-styled solar panels?

No, I won't be adding a specific red/orange band -- I think it looks tacky and ugly.  What I'll be -trying- to do is setup the shader, material, and textures in such a way as to have those parts appear to be partially translucent on the edges so that 'back-light' will show through with an orange glow (rim highlighting of a sort); may also have some orange in the specular/reflective color.  If that doesn't work out, then they will end up mostly as you saw in the previous render.

[cxg2827]

10 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

What I'll be -trying- to do is setup the shader, material, and textures in such a way as to have those parts appear to be partially translucent on the edges so that 'back-light' will show through with an orange glow (rim highlighting of a sort)

I tried the translucent route, didn't seem to work to well since the translucent parts dont really get a glow to them from backlighting. Closest thing that might work is to play with the Rim Falloff setting in Unity. Though I'd be curious to see if you can get it to work somehow.

 

11 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

may also have some orange in the specular/reflective color.

I think it gives a nice effect

[Shadowmage]

6 minutes ago, cxg2827 said:

I tried the translucent route, didn't seem to work to well since the translucent parts dont really get a glow to them from backlighting. Closest thing that might work is to play with the Rim Falloff setting in Unity. Though I'd be curious to see if you can get it to work somehow.

 

I think it gives a nice effect

 

 

Indeed, that specular colored-reflection effect is mostly what I'll be going for on these panels.  They'll look black (or very dark orange) when not reflecting any light, but should be highly reflective/high-gloss value with colored reflection (can see this done in the SC-A-SM solar panels -- they are textured as black, but reflect gold/yellow light).

Re: RimFalloff/RimHighlighting -- There won't be any actual transparency in the parts, will be all faked through the shader/lighting.  And as I'm writing my own shader(s)... I can do some things with it that you can't do with the stock KSP shaders.  Doesn't mean that I'll be able to get it working/looking good... but I'm going to give it a try   (may be something like reading the RimFalloff value from the alpha channel in the specular texture, to allow for variance across the texture/faces).

Would also like to figure out how to get some of the prismatic reflection effect that happens on some of the solar panels... may require yet-more custom shader work though (probably pretty easy to do through a shader actually).

Basic resources on the subject: http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_ch16.html

 

On that note, wrote up a 'custom shader applicator' yesterday.  This will allow me to run my models through PartTools using the standard KSP shaders, but replace them with the custom shaders (and material/textures) during KSP's database loading, prior to parts being compiled.  Basically just a workaround to Unity's Shader.Find() not working with user-added shaders... but allows for a PartModule-less solution to setting custom shaders and textures on model prefabs (which will then be cloned to the actual models used by the parts and icons).  As it also supports setting of textures (needed for the custom shaders), this gives an opportunity to 'override' whatever texture a model was exported/compiled with... basically just a small version of TextureReplacer.

 

[Nertea]

On 9/29/2016 at 2:16 PM, Shadowmage said:

Just keep making more awesome models   Yours are some of the few 'stock-alike' textured models that I think look nice and don't make me cringe; I think its mainly due to the use of AO/shading and the 'abstract' level of detail on your models (not spartan, but not 'busy' looking either; a good middle-ground).

 

Daww. I can handle that  I am looking forward to implementing your clustering engine modules at some point on my new ions, it should look lovely.

[Shadowmage]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

Daww. I can handle that  I am looking forward to implementing your clustering engine modules at some point on my new ions, it should look lovely.

Let me know if/when you get there on the engines, can give you some pointers on getting them setup if needed.  Or, who knows, I may do them up myself for my next career playthrough (which likely isn't too far off).

 

Testing out (okay.. playing with) shaders a bit more. 

Rim-lighting was not really the answer I was looking for, as that was based on view direction and surface normal... which means it is present even with no light in the scene (or at least the KSP implementation of it).  However the rim-lighting is used by the in-game part highlight functions so it is probably good to have support for it anyway.

Added 'back-light' capability based on alpha channel in specular mask, using specular color/map for the color data; effect amount is based on the (clamped) negative dot between view direction and lighting direction; so if you are staring at the panels with the sun behind them, it'll light them up/make them glow a bit.  Basically a very cheap type of semi-transparency or sub-surf-scatter effect; you can't 'see' through it, but bright light can pass through at some angles. 

In the image below the light source is a directional light pointing mostly at the camera, the two orange tones on the panels are differences in the 'back-light mask', whereas the black lines are part of the specular color texture (not possible to have backlight without specular reflection on that fragment, a separate 'backlight' texture would fix that limitation though).

 

Still a bit of work to do (on both the texture and shader)... but getting much closer to the desired effect:

 

And looking at the panels a bit more, there really is an orange band around the edges... still not sure how I feel about it though, and may leave the setup as-is... we'll see.

(pic for reference)

 

[tater]

For future reference:

Raptor.

[Jimbodiah]

If anyone knows the Methalox F/O ratio for KSP, I have the engine files based off the Merlin 1D and 1DV already (as Elon said the Raptor is roughly the same size as the 1D) with 7.5:1 F/O ratio but don't know if that is accurate (Methane needs twice the oxygen vs Hydrogen I know, but the ratio is not mole based). Maybe José can add the two engine clusters to his Nova Pack, and we are all set with placeholders for the early adopters?

Edited October 1, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[tater]

BTW, I was looking at the proposed replacement for Progress, and it got me thinking about the docking ports that are available. Is it possible to have one scaled to the same size as the Soyuz ports? It need not be a separate part, just scaled so that it's the same diameter.

I made the GEN-DP-2P by scaling the 1P to 0.75 (it's very slightly large at 75%):

Seems like it should be an option for the Russian station modules. I can work a bit on the exact scaling and follow up here if you are interested.

The stock docking ports are odd scale wise... The pass-through on standard docking ports is usually 80cm (Apollo was 81cm). Even if the structure around the port brings the outer diameter to 1m, that would make a kerbal scale port 0.64. So the smallest port is actually biggish (which is good given their heads). The 1.25, OTOH, is huge.

The new IBDM is 1.42m across (outer) with an 80cm passthrough.  The Common Berthing Mechanism outer diameter is about 2m, which to kerbal scale is 1.28---so the larger kerbal ports are CBMs.

Edited October 1, 2016 by tater

[Shadowmage]

Apparently the backlight shader works fine with shadows, and also looks much better after I made it use a separate RGB texture.  A bit more work on the texture and I think it'll produce the desired effect.  Will be doing some in-game testing on it soon, and will see how it looks under real lighting scenarios.

Have decided that this will end up being a separate shader specifically for solar panels as I have no need for the back-light capability for most other parts. It does use an extra texture slot and a few extra lines of shader code, and it would be good to not carry that around for parts that don't need it.

 

Edit:

Going to call this one a 'Mission Accomplished'(tm), at least on the shader.  Still more texture work to be done, but it creates the effect that I'm looking for quite nicely.  Custom 'shader applicator' code also works, allowing to set both textures and shader properties (colors, values).

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by Shadowmage

[falken]

Very nice! Can't wait to make a station with those.

[StickyScissors]

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

EDIT: Nevermind, disregard. This isn't an issue specific with SSTU, it's happening to everything. Now i have to spend forever tracking this down, oh joy

EDIT2: Figured it out: OpenGL and KVV = Big no-no, this is not something that KVV likes

Edited October 1, 2016 by StickyScissors

[falken]

One thing I was wondering Shadowmage is if you have plans to ditch liquidfuel+oxidiser for something else? I'm really liking using hydrolox and hypergolic fuels.

Also, RCS that fires using hypergolic?

[StickyScissors]

8 minutes ago, falken said:

One thing I was wondering Shadowmage is if you have plans to ditch liquidfuel+oxidiser for something else? I'm really liking using hydrolox and hypergolic fuels.

Also, RCS that fires using hypergolic?

All of that is Real Fuels territory, something that shadow has expressed he doesn't want to duplicate if it already exists.

 

Although, he did previously mention potentially making -all- SSTU RCS pods use Aerozone/NTO instead of just the ones integrated into service modules/capsules.

[Jimbodiah]

LF/O is basically Kerolox, no need to go RF with that.

[Pappystein]

On 9/30/2016 at 8:25 PM, Shadowmage said:

And looking at the panels a bit more, there really is an orange band around the edges... still not sure how I feel about it though, and may leave the setup as-is... we'll see.

(pic for reference)

 

IIRC the Gold is there as part of the passive Heat management.   IE they are minor radiators to bleed off any heat generated by the solar panels themselves.   This is not a Radiator for the ISS itself but rather just the solar panels.

 

The Path of electricity is run up and down the panel with the central Girder Pylon being Ground.   The large gold foil pieces at the end have all the wires running THROUGH them (You can clearly see if you zoom in.)  Even the best non Superconductor wire heats up with electrical flow.   The Gold at the end isolates the heat from the station structure (reducing the amount of heat the Solar panel "Gives" to the Station structure.    We are talking a few hundred watts or Joules, if you prefer, of energy (maybe even a couple three kW.  Nothing like what the Stock or @Nertea's Radiators dissipate

please note, a lot of Solar Panels have HUGE radiators on the "Dark" Side of the panel.  I am not talking about those in the description above.

 

Edited October 2, 2016 by Pappystein
Fixed quote (Snipped more non pertinant info.)

[RedParadize]

Damn. That solar panel is amazing!

Its weird to imagine that in few month most of the stuff in Kerbal will be shaded like this.

[Nerfclasher]

Hey @Shadowmage I have a present for you 

[Sudragon]

On 9/21/2016 at 5:57 AM, tater said:

 

1 hour ago, Nerfclasher said:

Hey @Shadowmage I have a present for you 

mmmmmm...rockety.

1 hour ago, Nerfclasher said:

Hey @Shadowmage I have a present for you 

mmmmm...rockety.

Grrrr. Stupid internets.

 

[blowfish]

Still not enough detail to make an accurate engine I don't think.  Given that it's FFSC, there should be a second, somewhat different turbopump assembly hidden behind there somewhere.