Daemoria

What is your technique for reducing triangles in these truss sections? Flat quad with an transparent texture? That is a really cool piece as well, I guess I missed the original post... The default pieces just look so haphazard when they are radially attached to a stack. This provides a very nice solid base.

The wings fell off in re-entry... or something. Still working on this, in between my own SRI dev. -- Edit: Added wings.

I personally think the previous lifting body shape had more personality. The new shape is very basic, with nothing really going for it. I wouldn't mind throwing my effort at the original design.

This is turning into a simply amazing mod. The only thing i can think of adding at this point is some very simple baked lighting into the textures of the control room, and maybe a Kerbal-tech head positioned in front of the other two stations.

Thanks for pointing out non-ion electrical propulsion. A lot of potential exists there. Namely 'free' fuel from any surface you can extract materials from; thus the GLASS drive. Its got sparkles. But what about ground based elctromag propulsion you ask? Now introducing the UHV linear rail, and the launch fairing that prevents the contents from spontaneously disassembling. To move it around away from the launch pad we need to be a little creative. How about some sweet crawler action? -- Itsdavyjones: are you referring to the mod as a whole, or that ship sketch? Because I hope both work out in the end too. Seshins: I haven't really thought about colors too much yet. I think if I can get the firespitter texture swapper to work, i'll be using that to give users the choice. But i'll probably have a high visibility scheme (white/red/black). A muted military esq scheme (grey/silver/black) and maybe a specialized 'construction' scheme (high contrast orange, grey and white) cziken20: I don't know of anything other than maybe an Alcubierre drive that would be fitting for your requirements of powerfull/high thrust/small. I dont really plan on doing FTL in this mod. I dont want to bite into Interstellar's territory. FractalUK has that section covered nicely. -=- Its the weekend again, so i've got time for modeling again. Concept doodles are fun and quick tho, so any ideas that you guys and gals(?) have, it's no sweat off my brow to draw them anytime. I'm liking the suggestions people are making, it'll only make this a better mod in the end.

You can always do mass calculations based on real life examples of materials. Take the area of a cylinder, multiply it by the weight of steel/aluminum (or whatever you are building your part out of), times how much of a percentage that material comprises that part, and you have a realistic estimation of your part. Of course this does involve a lot of math...

Somewhere between huge, and massive. The titan bay is, according to my notes, a 6m radius part. This section of the interplanetary stage is almost as long as my entire tier 1 launch vehicle is tall. That one being the meshes that i'm working on currently.

Top tier tech right here. This is a variant on the very heavy interplanetary vessel posted on the first page. It has 2 radialy attached Lampetra SSTO lander parasites, and a massive cargo bay for all of your potential extra-planetary development missions.

Holey Smokes Batman! Those are some nice exhaust flames. I just wish the heatmap extended to the engine fuselage section, to simulate some light from the flames hitting it.

sojourner: I actually didn't even look at the Ares I launcher before you mentioned it. It's now added to the massive pile of reference, so some of it might show up in future related meshes. Taki117: Thanks for taking the time to get the images for me. I actually do have some inter-stage decouplers that resemble those. The wire designs are just meant to provide both staging and hold an engine, while remaining light. I just have to get to a design that calls for the smaller mechanical decouplers to be modeled for you see them. :] BahamutoD: Don't you dare let me stop you from making your own part set. The only way you improve is from practice, and nothing is better than making a couple hundred parts. Greywind: My time is very limited during the week, but I'll see what I can do. I'm currently exploring how to make some interesting looking (compact) payload modules and some nice Interplanetary stages. I'll get some drawings up soon-ish.

You can either use the heightmap from the planetary shader, or use a z-depth pass to get the information in realtime. Zdepth would only work if the camera was perfectly perpendicular to the ground tho. I would recommend looking at the SCANSAT plugin to see how he does it.

Our cats should collaborate. Fluffles here is responsible for all of my concept art. Nice start, if a bit simple at the moment. How in depth are you planning on taking this?

Wow, those flames look niiice, such a nice change from the bog-standard white/off yellow default flames. I eagerly await the particle fx tutorial.

Depending on your 3d modeling package, there is multiple ways to actually apply the UV coordinates to the mesh. In 3d Studio Max, you apply a modifier on the model called UV-unrwap or UV-map (the second one is a semi-automatic procedure). For Cinema4d it all done through the UVcoordinates Tag. As for Blender... there is a lot of documentation available, here, check these links out. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/UV_Map_Basics http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV As for texturing, its best to select a limited color pallets to work with, and to separate out your mesh based on materials. You can then separate the UV islands (distinct areas of the UV map separate from other pieces) based on those materials/colors and quickly select them in Gimp/Photoshop with your select tools. With the areas selected, its just a matter of filling them in with the fill tool, and then adding some details on top. If in doubt for texturing, look to real life for inspiration. Also, for more technical look at texturing, the polycount wiki is a good place to start. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV

It almost looks like your normals are not aligned to one direction. The sketchfab mesh with textures enabled makes it look like there are some inverted faces, if you rotate the model where the angle of the lighting reverses, you can see what I mean. Untill you fix that issue, you're going to have broken textures and lighting.

Amazing what you've done with KSP! That naval battle put me in mind of the older submarine/navysims when you do surface engagements. The fact that you get semi-realistic part destruction on the larger vessel is even cooler.

This looks really cool man. I'm glad you went with your own design for the CIWS emplacement, the more compact turret design looks like it's easier to fit in more roles. When will Part2 be uploaded, I really want to see those weapons chew apart aircraft.

I'll see what I can come up with once I finish these pieces. I was thinking of doing some .5 meter range fuel tanks actually, for unmanned low-tech launches. Essentially ballistics testing/high altitude atmospherics science. As for probes that leave Kerbin SOI, if they leave their staging behind they would most likely rely on a series of radial attached fuel tanks. Ion drives don't exactly need massive amounts of fuel, so the smaller side tanks would work in that instance... I agree, standard fuel cylinder tanks can look kinda ugly on small satellites/drones, so I'll definably look into it.

Taki117: If you can provide a picture of the low profile decoupler you are referring to, that could possibly sway me into including a set of them. As of now, unfortunately, the majority of of the couplers that i've planned are all skeletal, like that one above. cziken20: I plan on including 3 sizes for all the fuel tanks. Short, standard, and long. They are respectably 3meters tall, 7meters tall, and for the longest ones, 15meters tall. Currently i modeled the 1/2 meter adapter tanks in the long and short versions. If those don't appeal to your ship's design, you might have better luck with the standard piece. It's like you want, a more even transition between the two sizes. I just haven't modeled it, because non of my example ships require that particular piece, but the option will be there in the final release. Sponsor logos might be a bit out of flavor for these ships I guess, but I do want to have some insignia or names on the sides of the largest pieces, to add a bit of color. I'm completely open to suggestions in that regard, no matter how strange they might seem.

Hm, this ship is getting a bit too tall to fit on my screen/show off the detail at the same time. And it's still missing the payload section. . . Lots of blank real-estate on the side of the second stage for some Logos and Signage. I wonder who would be a good sponsor for this vessel.

What's even funnier is that it automatically censored url links as well, so i have to obfuscate some of my image names. That's pretty impressive what you've managed to fit inside that one cargo section, it's a shame that the rover is so derpy. The opening angle for those doors looks perfect.

Well...that's certainly beautiful...color me impressed. Are those particles in the rings physical objects with collision, or are they just like the ground scatter?

I really like that cargo bay, the opening mechanism is very unique. Small critique if I may. I know it's still a WIP, but perhaps tweak the final angle of the doors so that they are angled a bit further out. The attaching joint on the inside might have to be permitted a small amount of sliding to prevent interpenetration. This tweak would let cargo in and out of the bay without having to worry about hitting the doors as much. I look forward to all progress on these parts. +sub'd.

This vessel fits the slightly exaggerated Kerbal aesthetic perfectly! The new mesh is coming along nicely, keep at it and don't get burned out on the details. Modeling for real-time applications, you can take some certain degree of liberties and still pull off a very nice looking vessel. The 3d imbedded mesh is cool. I wish more people did that, it helps to show off the work that's been put into these projects.

Seshins: Sorry about the confusion. This thread moves too quickly to keep track of, expecially when I'm sleep deprived. frizzank: I've pulled inspiration from the Soyuz space program, and other past and near future space programs. Also a lot of my designs are based off of my previous experience with concept art and are entirely origional. An example of my other work.