Propeller Driven RCS

[AxiomK]

I am currently working on my first mod. I'm making a deep submergance vehicle (inspired by the Alvin) which has 7 thrusters which are used to maneuver. Since they are used similarly to RCS ports in KSP, I thought it would make sense to have them operate as such.  But I'm wondering, should I animate the rotation of the blades in Blender just as you would for a jet engine? And then trigger the animation when the thrusters are used. Similar to how the RCS ports produce the thrust plume effect when they are being used.

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by Kerbal Astronautics

[Shadowmage]

Hmmm... this sounds like an interesting problem.  Sadly I do not think that you can reference standard animations in particle effect definitions (which are what the RCS module uses for the thruster plumes).

As far as existing solutions go, I think FireSpitter -might- have what you are looking for.  I do know that it has support for bladed/propeller driven engines, but I'm unsure if it has been applied to anything RCS related.

If you were up for writing your own plugin script I don't think it would be too hard to code a PartModule to manage an animation to correspond with RCS thruster use.  Again, I think FireSpitter would probably have quite a bit of example code on how to accomplish what you are looking for.

Either way I think you would want to animate the blades in Blender, and reference that animation in the corresponding PartModule (FS or custom).  I think FireSpitter even uses two separate meshes for the spinning blades -- one standard mesh of the actual blades for when RPM is low, and a secondary 'blurred disk' mesh for when RPM is higher -- blending between the two animated meshes through the plugin code and material transparency.