All newbie modders plz read. Planning a beginners tutorial on graphical assets.

[duckofthemoon]

I understand. Here's my thinking:

As a tutorial user: video and text tutorials serve a different purpose for me. I tend to watch or listen to video tutorials to quickly get a rough idea of how to do things, but I hate rewinding and skipping through a video

I tend to look for text tutorials when I need something explained in depth, or when I need specific information that I can just search for.

I think video tutorials tend to be good when short, and text tutorials are best when long, as long as they're well organised.

+1

I have tried, and given up on making an addon just because of how hard it is to get specific information out of a video.

nli2work has the point that there is already enough resources out there to learn, they're just harder (for me) to learn from than what you are proposing.

This is because I have the general idea of the process but things like origins, and orientation and formats need clarification and I don't want to have to watch a 20min video.

I am also a fast reader which means everything is quicker

/ramble

[wasml]

I like this idea. I can get a basic texture onto a model but beyond that... any tutorial(s) would be welcome.

One thing I've been meaning to look into but haven't gotten around to (among many other things) is normal maps from a high poly model - and how to keep the high poly and in game model in sync.

+1 for the written tutorial - though if lo-fi does a video we'd have the best of both worlds.

[CaptainKipard]

I went over the thread and made a list of items to cover in no particular order.

WRT animations and modelling:

I think those should be their own dedicated tutorials. I have some ideas about how to gear it towards KSP modders, but if anyone is considering writing a proper tutorial for these, then go right ahead. Don't wait for me.

• Start with a simple unwrapped and textured model, something more complex with layers and tags.
  
• Dimension units
  
• Modelling mesh colliders
  
• Unity version
  
• Unity setup
  
• Projects and scenes
  
• PartTools
  
• Hierarchy
  
• Origin
  
• GameObjects and Components
  
• Materials/Shaders
  
• Layers and Tags
  
• Model importing (from blender, but fbx also has its uses)
  
• Mesh and primitive colliders
  
• NODE{}
  
• Camera and lights for preview
  
• Prefabs (I don't actually know anything about this)
  
• Writing the part
  
• CFG
  
• Testing(?)
  

Did I miss anything?

There's just one item lo-fi wrote that I don't understand.

Saving the scene and organising assets.

What does that mean?

Also how are we going to go about this? We'll need to coordinate a bit, so do you think it's a good idea to treat the development of this as you'd treat the development of a mod?

I could write a section and post it here for your criticism (keeping your future video in mind) and feedback from anyone else who's interested, correct it and move on to the next section. Afterwards I'd compile and format everything and send it to you to review, criticise and use for scripting your video. What do you think?

Finally, what part should it be? I don't mind making a few simple parts for demonstrating everything in the list above, but the fewer the better. Is there any simple part that uses both tags and layers?

Edited December 4, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[nli2work]

for Dimension and Units, I'd put it this way: what you set your modeling app to doesn't really matter. What matters is Scale is 1,1,1 in Unity. FBX out of Max is centimeters, so in Unity scale is 0.01; DAE out of wahtever is set to 10cm (C4D for instance, for whatever strange reason), in Unity it comes in at 0.1. Whatever your import comes in at, set the scaleFactor in the model's import setting to 1.

for model imports, it's FBX if you want to bring animations in. you think you are drag/dropping a blend file when importing, in reality Unity is starting blender in the background, and exporting a copy of FBX for itself using who knows what settings. If your blender's FBX exporter isn't installed correctly, Unity will throw an error when you try to drop a blend file into a project. If you only want to import mesh and UV data, OBJ, DAE, 3DS, all will work as well as FBX.

I would group Unity Install/Project Setup; Parttools install (drag/drop really) into one. Model Import and initial configurations (scaleFactor, Normals/Smoothing angle, import materials, rig settings, animation clips) as one.

emphasize the little book icon in the inspector panels that directly links to the Unity documentation on the component. http://i.imgur.com/J2aZPLd.jpg

Prefabs are useful for saving your part after it's all configured properly, and you can make changes in a scene, then revert to the original prefab if you didn't like the changes. It's a kind of instancing thing. It also lets you change objects in a scene en masse, like a color of a chair, where you have a hundred chairs in a large room type of scene.

I had in mind to do a Unity4 overview. but I'm going to be on travel in a week until 2015.

TL;DR, I'd do one bit on Unity/PartTools setup, go through the interface and the basics. then just alternate between doing different parts, simple and complex. Whatever Unity, and KSP related stuff will be picked up along the way. You can do a tutorial series on anything, but without practical use of whatever material you are covering, people would forget the stuff you covered in the beginning, by the time you are 2/3rd the way through the series.

Edited December 4, 2014 by nli2work

[riocrokite]

As a starting modder I would say that there is sufficient material on youtube and forums about how to make your first part from start to finish.

Personally I'm most interested in efficient uv unwrapping / uv bump map creation and animations (possibly multiple animations - firespitter since it's quite popular) but it's mostly because I haven't touched them yet.

What about some tutorial in form of: tips and tricks / how to increase your productivity when modelling/texturing / things you didn't know about and can change your ksp modding life / bad - good habits when modelling/texturing / things that you usually forget.

For example is it better to do meshes in unity or blender, how to prepare your part so it starts in correct position in KSP, is it better to export as one joined object or multiple objects, number of tris / meshes / collission meshes / textures and GPU - CPU efficiency, one big texture for multiuple parts vs separate smaller textures for each one, efficient workflow (especially when doing multiple parts) to avoid time consuming corrections.

[SpeedyB]

Some up to date tutorials would be fantastic!

As far as part complexity goes I would start with something like a fuel tank with a ladder on one side. Then move on to an engine with gimbals and glow. Finally something with animations like a solar panel.

After all that maybe something with an IVA.

[CaptainKipard]

lo-fi please reply to this post and subscribe if you haven't already.

[lo-fi]

Aye aye, cap'n.