Anyone ever built their own strut from scratch?

[Fengist]

Just wondering. Was tinkering with making a new strut, not just repainting one.  So far my results have been rather ummm... bizarre.

[NecroBones]

6 hours ago, Fengist said:

Just wondering. Was tinkering with making a new strut, not just repainting one.  So far my results have been rather ummm... bizarre.

 

Yeah, I worked on making a custom strut, and never got it to work quite right. I imported the stock strut into Blender, copied the transform positions and everything. And I got the strut to kind-of work, but the strut would never properly connect to one end's anchor. And for some reason I had to rotate the transforms 180 degrees off of what the stock one does, in order for it to work at all.  I did a ton of trial and error and just couldn't fix it, beyond that.

 

I have an oversized strut in RSB currently, but all I did is set a rescaleFactor on the stock strut and assign a different texture.

 

Here's the thread where I was working on it:

 

 

[nli2work]

you need skinned mesh for struts to work. you can get curved strut if you weigh the vertices in a gradual fall-off. All it does is place one joint at the start part, and one at the end part, the mesh is stretched between the two ends. A small collider on the base is all you need. fuel lines work the same way. 

this thread has some more info. and a sample unity asset

 

Edited August 1, 2016 by nli2work

[Fengist]

Thanks @nli2work. It seems I've repeated a lot of errors not finding that thread.  I too took the import to blender method and failed. 

I looked over that thread and decided it might just be more that I want to get into right now.  I was hoping it would be a bit easier to work out.  I'm not even sure if Wings 3D can do skinned meshes (whatever they are)

But, thread bookmarked for when my brain is more into calculations than art.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Fengist

[nli2work]

Pretty sure Wings3D doesn't do skinned mesh. you need Blender, or one of the other industry standard apps like Max or Maya. and it has to be FBX export, check "Animation" and "Skin Data" in Animation/Deformations subcategory. DAE may or may not work. OBJ or 3DS doesn't store skinned mesh data.

[Fengist]

11 hours ago, nli2work said:

Pretty sure Wings3D doesn't do skinned mesh. you need Blender, or one of the other industry standard apps like Max or Maya. and it has to be FBX export, check "Animation" and "Skin Data" in Animation/Deformations subcategory. DAE may or may not work. OBJ or 3DS doesn't store skinned mesh data.

Yea, I don't think it does either.  So, I just satisfied myself by reskinning the stock part.  It didn't look as horrid as I had imagined.  But, like Necro's problem, even the texture was rotated 180 degrees.

[PB666]

On August 1, 2016 at 1:31 AM, Fengist said:

Just wondering. Was tinkering with making a new strut, not just repainting one.  So far my results have been rather ummm... bizarre.

 Made fixed linked struts and stand alone connectors, basically for providing a scaffold for panels, lightweight and for in orbit construction.