KSP 1 , Parts Modding modelling help.

R_Skoklater · January 14, 2021

Hello I am a KSP player ,it has been a year now but I am new on the forum so I apologize if I do something wrong.

So I saw the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) the one on SLS Block 1 for artemis 1 , and I wanted to make the ICPS for KSP 1.11 with separate LOx and LH2 tanks and the truss mount as a decoupler with monoprop tanks. I have made the parts successfully and they look good so far ( made in Maya 2018 ).

I wanted to ask what should be the tri count for a fuel tank and detailed parts for ksp 1.11 ? I tend to add supporting edges and sharpen the edges to get a nice smoothed preview. But do I need to add supporting edges at all for a crispy smooth preview in Maya ? Or do I leave it unsmoothed and not add supporting edges to lower the tri count and save performance in ksp. I currently have 15k faces for the LOx & LH2 tanks, truss mount and spacecraft adapter parts combined.

I also wanted to ask. What is the easiest way or your way to make those multi layer insulation wrinkles (MLI) (the golden foil around satellites) ? Do you sculpt them by hand ? Put a displacement map ? Sculpt with alpha ? I want to modify my LOx tank and wrap an MLI around the spherical tank. ( I use Substance painter 2019 for texturing )

Last question is , so ksp doesn't have any orange fairings yet ( actual orange not the orange&black variant). And I want to make my own orange variant which will have identical textures as the 2.5m orange tanks. I only want it as a v,yariant though, so the models have to be the original fairing models but only the normals and colors can be changed. How would I approach that ? How could I add a custom orange fairing variant ?

hemeac · January 16, 2021

@R_Skoklater, I don't know how well skills with Maya transfer to Blender, but there is a mu import tool for Blender:

I've been finding that helpful to see how other modders have approached modelling parts. 15k faces if they're quads sounds a bit high for a fuel tank. Using ReStock as a reference, their LF fuel tanks have around 5k tris. It is standard to use a 24 sided cylinder for tanks typically.

Displacement maps do not work with unity, so the gold foil look is achieved through the use of a normal map. I am not an expert at texturing, but go through the ReStock mod to see some great examples on how to accomplish that.

R_Skoklater · January 20, 2021

On 1/16/2021 at 2:55 AM, hemeac said:

@R_Skoklater, I don't know how well skills with Maya transfer to Blender, but there is a mu import tool for Blender:

I've been finding that helpful to see how other modders have approached modelling parts. 15k faces if they're quads sounds a bit high for a fuel tank. Using ReStock as a reference, their LF fuel tanks have around 5k tris. It is standard to use a 24 sided cylinder for tanks typically.

Displacement maps do not work with unity, so the gold foil look is achieved through the use of a normal map. I am not an expert at texturing, but go through the ReStock mod to see some great examples on how to accomplish that.

Hello , thank you so much for your reply it was very informative and sorry for the late reply.

The total polycount is actually 13k tris for all of the LOx tank + Truss Mount + Spacecraft Adapter + LH2 Tank. Based of 24 sided cylinders.

The only problem now is if I add reinforcing edges my polycount will go up and I don't know if I even need to reinforce the edges since the mesh will get triangulated in unity anyway. Or do I need to reinforce those sharp edges so it doesn't cause problems with my normal maps later on ? This is the step that I have no clue on how to properly and correctly do while balancing with performance saving and the step that is blocking me right now.

My second question is still about that Orange fairing variant (Not the Black&Orange in Stock) . How do I make a fairing variant that has the normals and the albedo/color of the rockomax 2.5m Orange tank texture while retaining the fairing model ?

I have attached images of the project I am working on right now. It is not a very close replica to the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) since I have not planned to make an Orion Spacecraft adapter that contains the cubesats yet.