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Mother Development Thread


Bonus Eventus

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Progress continues on the 6M tank. Still not quite done with the texture. Need to add a couple more small details and some scratches to the normal map. I want to add some more detail to the specular map as well, however, the design is pretty much there. All of the liquid fuel tanks will use the same material, which has proved a bit of a challenge since I'm going between 1,2,3,4, and 6 meter parts. The material textures are all 1024x2048, giving me just enough resolution to get the job done. Since the tanks are all cylinders, its very easy to make the texture's modular. What's challenging is the top and bottom geometry. Circles waste a lot of texture space.  So usually you will want to make them quarter or half circles and then duplicate the uvs in a radial array. Sometimes, this isn't practical though because of normal maps (arg). Normal maps are very picky about how and what pixels line up with each other. Sometimes the easiest thing to do not use normal maps and instead use geometry, and that's what I've done here (all though it does use a normal map for bolt holes). 

In earlier versions the tank had more of a Saturn V feel, but I got to thinking that if I shortened the trim at the top and bottom, it would help communicate the scale (size) of the part more effectively. I also toned down the dark gray, lightening it up a bit. I wanted the part to read well at multiple distances and angles, and toning down the darks helped with that goal. 

As a style guide for myself, I've been comparing Mother's parts to Porkjet's rocket part overhaul. In fact I decided I would have to start using normal maps, do to the early pics of the overhaul. Unfortunately the overhaul wasn't realized. And, I only found out about the cancelation after I had most of the DA-42 Capsule complete. I decided then that I would just commit to the look rather than redo everything from scratch. So, I guess you could say the parts are stockish, with a near-future bend. 

If you're familiar with K+ you'll recognize the similarity to the Behemoth tanks. 

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The behemoth was a launch system that included a 6M tank, a nosecone tank, surface decouplers, stack decouplers, and a 9 nozzle engine. This time around I'm doing something similar. I'm making an ITS style 42 nozzle engine. However there is a 0.625m counterpart (raptor like) engine that will be stand alone. It will have a "naked" and surface attachable version. I'm also going to include some cool 1m and 2m to 0.625 adapters for use with this engine. I plan on making nose cone tanks, as well as half tanks and quarter tanks (base tank is 12m high, half would be 6m, quarter 4m, etc). I'm also including a stack decoupler, a engine mounting plate (it will match the 42 nozzle engine), a drone core (works with the nose cone tank), and a large procedural fairing. With this you will be able to launch some serious payloads.

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In reality if I was going to recreate SpaceX's ITS booster, it would need to be about 7.2M (in game) in diameter. I could have done this by making a size 7 part however, the height is a problem. the vab will allow you to make a 50m tall vehicle give or take a few meters, the height of the booster would have to be about 58M to be proportional. In real life the ITS is 12m in diameter and 77.5m high (first stage booster). So that's out, considering how much real estate would be taken up if I had 30m high tanks. The circumference of a 6m tank is 18.85m. If we laid out 21 0.625m raptors in a circle it would require the tank to have a circumference of 13.125m. And to match the ringed layout we would also have to have a tank with a minimum 4.375m diameter. So, 6m will still get the job done. Just for some clarity here is the formula I use to convert real world to kerbal part sizes:

r = real size

k = kerbal ratio

rsf = rescale factor

ms = modeling size

igs = in game size

r * k * rsf = ms

if r = 77.5m, k = 0.6 (kerbal stuff is supposed to be about 60% the size of real things), and rsf = 1.25 then:

77.5m * 0.6 * 1.25 = 58.125m

In game size is easy we just don't multiply the rescale factor.

77.5m * 0.6 = 46.5m

All parts in KSP are scaled down from 1.25m to 1m because there was a bug early on in development. So, when I model something I model it at 1.25M increments which KSP then scales down later in game. If you modeled a part at 1M increments then your part would be scaled down 80% resulting in a 0.8m high part. You can address this in the cfg file, but I like to have full control of the final product at the modeling stage.

 

Wow that was long. TLDR, I'm making an ITS launch system.

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Looking great, Bonus. 

I wouldn't worry too much about life-size dimensions though. The rest of your mod is kerbal sized, so from an outside perspective it would make more sense to me that the ITS is kerbalized in its size, too.

Although if you worry about the VAB size, if it were me, id just say "Screw it" and put "Hangar Extender" under the "Recommended mods" part when you release it :D hehe

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These gigantic boosters will be essential in getting the ARC's built in orbit. Oh look, it's Elon Kerman's biggest competition. I've considered superluminal now for the Icarus Initiative. If you're willing to work with me and the rest of us in getting ready, and a few edits to your mod ofc, just as FreeThinker did with helping us get a proper engine

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rough block out of the raptor-like engine. I think I'm going to end up reducing the polycount even more. I wan't this engine to be as optimized as possible when I put 42 of them under the launch vehicle :wink:

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Finished the half tank and the nose cone for series S6. I'm also working on a pdf roadmap doc. I'll be making it available soon.

Edited by Bonus Eventus
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4 minutes ago, The-Doctor said:

I would just like you all to know that I will always be MALE! And if anyone has any problem with that, TO HELL WITH YOU!

gonna need to see your man card, fam. don't believe you.

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9 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@The-Doctor I should not find your comment amusing but I do. What inspired this? ...Dare I ask.

@JadeOfMaar, it seems our @The-Doctor is resisting the inevitability of the latest regeneration, just like his character in the series. At least until the Christmas Special episode when it all comes out in the wash. 

Jodie Whittaker: Doctor Who's 13th Time Lord to be a woman

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will become 

_96965516_doctor_1.jpg

 

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12 hours ago, Weywot8 said:

@JadeOfMaar, it seems our @The-Doctor is resisting the inevitability of the latest regeneration, just like his character in the series. At least until the Christmas Special episode when it all comes out in the wash. 

Jodie Whittaker: Doctor Who's 13th Time Lord to be a woman

_96964494_doctorfirst_pa.jpg

will become 

_96965516_doctor_1.jpg

 

Change for the sake of change is MADNESS! The Doctor should always be a white British male, and I am black, no I don't want a black Doctor. After 50 years to change him to a her is absurd. This shows women can't create original and popular characters but must appropriate something popularized by men first. This is sexist towards women

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Coming from a point of wanting your parts to look as great as possible, Bonus, can i ask about the bell exhaust part of the rocket looking low poly? The entire part looks awesome and really well detailed and hides the low poly look great, but im wondering if it would break the poly bank to add just 1 more egdeline between the bells' current polys, like this.

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Obviously im coming from a point of ignorance, since i've no idea how big the part is ingame nor how many polys the part is currently at, but it just seems to me that doing this might add only about 20-100 faces whilst making the bell part look as smooth as the detailing pipes above it.

 

Edited by Stevie_D
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Thanks for the input :wink: The part is 0.625m diameter or 0.5m in game. Since it's half the diameter of a normal engine I thought I could get away with it. I was trying to keep the polycount as low as possible because it's going to be used a lot. However after looking at your comment, I decided I could up the polycount some (it's still under 5000 tris) since the compact version will have far fewer polygons. 

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Always happy to give a fresh perspective, Bonus. Wow, im even more impressed then. I thought that was so well detailed it was going to be a 2.5 / 3.75m thing. That's awesome!

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Works beautifully, thanks to @CobaltWolf and @Nertea (they gave me some debug help).  Also, @Stevie_D deserves a mention for the above comments. He was right, the nozzle looks better with 24 verts.

The engine's control arms use FXModuleLookConstraint constraints. They work perfectly. I even added some bone animation to deform the turbopump intake hose. Heat animation works great too. To top it off, I did this with a modular texture set. The engine only takes up 512 pixels of a 1024 texture, so there's room for 3 more (or several more if I reuse the textures by combining them, I plan too :D). Now I'm off to do some custom particle effects and some sound design.

Edited by Bonus Eventus
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On 7/21/2017 at 4:14 PM, Bonus Eventus said:

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M1-D V and M1-D SL without shrouds.

 

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M1-D post first stage burn.

 

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A million M1-Ds slapped on a couple S6 tanks. SSTO was easy. Maybe too easy...

 

SSTO's are never TOO easy, plus remember RSS

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Last weekend I worked on the 30M Centrifuge rig ( Must come up with better name. Feel free to shout out some suggestions :) ). I was able to overcome some technical hurdles with the extension arms. The extension arms help guide the extension of the centrifuge hull as it deploys. The arms have to both rotate and telescopically extend/retract. Because the arms will be at an angle when the ingress passage extends, the arms also have to be direction constrained, continually pointing at a null. The null is parented to the coupler at the end of each and it's this locator which I wanted to drive both rotation and extension of the arms. This was tricky.

Each arm has five sections which can extend or retract. I placed another locator in each arm at the exact place where the coupler control locator was positioned. These locators acted as proximity sensors. The rig measures the distance from the proximity sensor to the coupler. As the distance increases, it takes the distance, divides it by 5, then subtracts that amount from each arm section's y position.

TLDR, the extension arms now extend and rotate as they should. I still have to rig the ingress passages (should be easy and straightforward).

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I started unwrapping more of the centrifuge as well. I us a standardized and modular approach to building Mother. I have many parts which use multiple models which have their own material as part of a set of atlases. For example, the hatches on the DA-42 capsule are the same hatches used in the modular iss style habs. I plan to use those same hatches in the couplers on the centrifuge. When I took a look at them though, I realized that I could have optimized the textures better, and also for some reason I didn't include any normal maps the first time around. So I did a quick redesign.

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The models shown have 2k textures, but the dds textures are 256x256. 

PS: I also added a size 6 to size 4 adapter tank and defined all the 1m tank cfgs.

EDIT: While looking for nuclear reactor reference, I found this old concept for the nuclear reactor in K+

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This was one of the first models I attempted outside of Sketchup in December of 2015. I remember being very proud of the tubes, lol.

Edited by Bonus Eventus
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PSA: I updated the roadmap section regarding inflatable tanks. 

Here's the gist:

  1. When the tank spawns in the editor it will have full resources like any tank.
  2. There will now be no deploy/retract ksp action
  3. When fuel is transferred in flight or reduced in editor, animation states will inflate or deflate in sync with those changes 

There's a reason for these changes that is actually really cool. If all goes well I'll make another announcement soon.

BTW, the external part of the 30M centrifuge is nearly complete. I'm doing the final rigging and texturing today. Pics will be coming soon :wink:

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