Bones: Do they work in ksp?

[USB4]

I made a landing gear model with 4 small armatures to animate a linkage (I think), bending. The thing is however, I dont think it works. Unfortunately for the purposes of suspension, I dont think an animation would work, so is it at all possible to have bones in ksp?

 

Spoiler

 

Edited December 31, 2017 by USB4

[CobaltWolf]

I don't think you need to animate the linkages, they work with constraints I think? But they should work, yeah.

[USB4]

4 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I don't think you need to animate the linkages, they work with constraints I think? But they should work, yeah.

Different View

Im not sure its possible to make from just constraints, at least the ones in ksp. If they had influence levels I could see it, but without them Im not sure how.

[CobaltWolf]

2 minutes ago, USB4 said:

Different View

Im not sure its possible to make from just constraints, at least the ones in ksp. If they had influence levels I could see it, but without them Im not sure how.

Hrmm, it's late but I definitely think there's a way to do it if you're just smart with your hierarchy and fxModuleLookAtConstraints. Just have an empty node in the middle there that moves up and down with the wheel? and have the two linkage arms aim constrained to the point?

[USB4]

1 minute ago, CobaltWolf said:

Hrmm, it's late but I definitely think there's a way to do it if you're just smart with your hierarchy and fxModuleLookAtConstraints. Just have an empty node in the middle there that moves up and down with the wheel? and have the two linkage arms aim constrained to the point?

Thought about that too, but then one of them would never move while the other would move  and disconnect from the joint between them both. The empty would have to move half the distance of the wheel.

[CobaltWolf]

12 minutes ago, USB4 said:

Thought about that too, but then one of them would never move while the other would move  and disconnect from the joint between them both. The empty would have to move half the distance of the wheel.

Oh damn, you're right. So you'd need an IK chain... I don't know if those would work. They're probably not coded into the .mu format.

Edited December 31, 2017 by CobaltWolf

[USB4]

6 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Oh damn, you're right. So you'd need an IK chain... I don't know if those would work. They're probably not coded into the .mu format.

Yup. Thats what I have in Blender, but it doesnt seem to translate

[Skalou]

I used bones to revive the @Porkjet atomic jet engine, bones allow to move the vertex of a mesh with an animation for the nozzle,
i haven't used it myself for animating different rigid pieces of a part, specially driven by the physic but maybe there is a way to do it by using this stock module (also used in the atomic jet engine)?

	MODULE
	{
		name = FXModuleConstrainPosition
		matchRotation = false
		matchPosition = true
		CONSTRAINFX
		{
			targetName = thrust01
			moversName = 01
		}
	}

you can grab the blender engine model for an example here:
https://github.com/linuxgurugamer/RecycledParts/tree/master/AtomicAgeUpdates/BlenderModels
and the mod itself here:
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/164829-131-spacetux-industries-recycled-parts/#comment-3157698

 

Edited January 2, 2018 by Skalou

[DMagic]

Bones and armature animations work fine in KSP, but Unity doesn't understand bone constraints from modelling programs, that information all just gets dropped in Unity. To get armature animations working properly you have to bake any bone animations before exporting the model to Unity.

The flexible docking ports from this mod use some ridiculous bone setups to work by simply baking several animations and blending them manually in KSP.

 

There are some instructions in Unity for importing humanoid models to work the IK in Unity, but I don't think that translates in any way to something generic, it's just for human legs and arms. There are almost certainly ways of getting IK chains to work, at least for relatively simple cases where the joints are constrained and don't have much freedom of movement (my understanding is that long IK chains can have a large performance impact), but CobaltWolf is probably right that such information would be lost in the .mu files.

I found this a while ago discussing how to set up your own IK chain in Unity, it seems somewhat similar to the wheel joint setup you have: https://www.alanzucconi.com/2017/04/10/robotic-arms/

But it would require some coding to get everything integrated and working in KSP.