AD-Edge

Haha, what the!? Guessing this was added in 0.15? No ones seen anything like this in previous releases?

Already discussed/answered within previous comments in this thread.

Ahh, good to hear Struts would indeed be difficult, not to mention impossible with the full-colour printed sandstone material I used for the Kerbals (tolerance would be too small for the material), but with something like the white strong and flexable material youd probably get details like the struts, but then of course the entire model would be white. Guess those of us into model building and painting models would like that, but yeh. Interesting idea all round.

Yes, any smaller and there might be issues. I decided what size to work at carefully, so I didnt run into any printing resolution related issues, or end up printing massive figures which meant I wouldnt have money to eat for weeks at a time. Keep in mind tho, a lot of these shots are zoomed in a LOT, looking at it with a human eye and you dont notice any artifacts, unless you really look close (and have really good vision) Hmmm, interesting idea. Similar to what that one guy is doing with minecraft - allowing people to select a segment of terrain and then getting it 3D printed, so you can have your favorite building/mountain/castle sitting on your desk. Its definitely possible, would indeed be some work though. Not sure! I imagine hed probably post a comment when he does see this. Hes probably busy coding away at the 0.15 release atm anyways.

Kinda. Its made of 2 different materials all up. The Kerbal and helmet are printed in a sandstone material, which is stronger than youd think and has a nice resin finish (Im going to spray them with gloss to see if it makes them even better). The visor is printed separate to the character and helmet, in a plastic material which is slightly transparent. I designed the visor very carefully to \'slot\' into the helmet and then be held there with little extruded plugs, to allow for flexibility - ie being able to have the kerbal wearing a helmet, without a visor, or with a visor. Plus it had to be done that way anyway, since the company I had them printed with dont do prints with more than 1 material (the printers can only print 1 material at a time) Having said all of that though, I could get the model 3D printed in a bunch of different materials - various different plastics, ceramics, and even metals (stainless steel, gold plated, bronze, sterling silver). It really comes down to what company your printing with, and what materials they have available.

Glad you like them Capt\'n Skunky! For the moment, I have no plans on selling the models, its just a fun little personal project of my own. I hope Im not burned on a stake by all the other people on this forum for this point! Ive had others bring up this concern though, and its my perspective that Squad is a small indie developer, who I have great respect for, so there would be no selling and then profiting of items where the original idea and design is owned by someone else (especially without their direct permission). Yes, and I already have a shop half setup for some of my other 3D printing projects. But basically, once you have the prototype shipped and working you can add the model to your shop, and then other people can visit your shop and effectively hit the \'order\' button, and shapeways deals with all of the 3D printing, shipping and payments (with the person who owns the shop getting payed for each sale a \'markup\' which they themselves setup) Quite a cool and innovative company! Yeh the orientation can have quite an effect on the result of a printed model, but this is not linked to the orientation of the exported model from a 3D program, the Shapeways staff usually get the file(s) and can then rotate them, and put multiple models into a single \'print job\' for the printer, so they can get rotated and moved around at this stage. These guys look like they have been printed lying down. Unfortunately the user has no control over what orientation the model is printed at (at least with Shapeways that it), but there has been talk of bringing in such an option in future, which would be very handy of course. Yes, Im looking into some options for polishing the visors in some way. Could work out very nicely. The only down side, is that I like to have my 3D prints come out of the printer and not need much tinkering. But Ill see how nice I can make the visors, would like to be able to see those faces a bit better Thanks everyone for the feedback so far! ;D

Hey guys, Im finally posting some pictures from a (still work-in-progress) project of mine. 3D printed Kerbal figurines: Ive made a discussion thread for the project if you have comments/questions etc You can find it here - http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=11954.0

So this has been a long time coming, and I haddnt planned on posting this just yet - because its still very much a WIP project. But my impatience got the better of me! Wanted to share and get some feedback from this awesome community First, heres some pictures, then I have a bit of a \'making of\' story with additional details and even moar pictures for those interested. Bob 3D model with helmet: Jeb 3D model with helmet: Jeb 3D model, helmet off: Jeb 3D model, helmet on, visor off: Bob freaking out as per usual, without his helmet: So, now that I have you interested! The story: I started playing KSP way back, about 10 days after it was first released and I found myself (like everyone else on this forum), completely loving the game and especially the hilarious little Kerbals who would scream or smile with joy during flight. We all know Bill, Bob and of course Jeb. So after only a few days playing KSP, I decided to do some kind of really interesting/different fanart... At the time (mid-late 2011) I was messing around a lot with models for 3D printing, after having my first 3D print ordered at the start of 2011 from a company some of you might know - Shapeways (http://www.shapeways.com/). I was spending my spare time throwing some other big 3D printing project ideas around, so it was a pretty logical that my final idea developed pretty fast: I wanted to make some real 3D printed Kerbals, hopefully the first - ever! So that was it, I whipped up a basic Kerbal mesh from the limited pictures on the Kerbal website (in my program of choice - Blender), and after then being distracted for several months by other projects, uni, life etc etc... I finally got around to making a new 3D print order (at the time it was an order for another project). This is when I remembered the Kerbal model Id been working on, which was in a state almost ready to print. So a bit of tweaking later, and I had the model properly ready for print, along with a highly experimental helmet piece and a visor section which could (in theory) plug into the helmet allowing for a visor\'d helmet, or an open helmet, and sit on the kerbals head. This was tricky to work out, and all 3 parts had to be accurate down to millimeters for it to work out. Either way, a week or 2 after ordering, the models arrived! Id ordered one kerbal - a test version of Bob with a goofy pose, along with a test helmet (both of these objects were printed in a \'full colour sandstone\' material, meaning they came out of the 3D printer in full colour (no painting needed at all)), and a 3rd object - a visor. The visor was printed in a material named \'transparent detail\'. Unfortunately the visor material turned out to not be as transparant as Id hoped, but the visor itself (after a bit of sanding and tweaking), fit right into the helmet. pic of the failed visor model - So I was impressed, and a month or 2 later made another order, this time with a Jeb model, another helmet, and 2 new visors. Both visors were being printed in a new material \'Transparent Detail\', with one model being super thin, and the other just being as thin as I dared. That order arrived, and this time the visor was better. Not perfect, it had a yellowish plasitc tint and wasnt as transparent as Id hoped, but it was good enough for now. (for the record, the super thin version of the visor was a deformed blob, since the walls of the object were way too thin, Id guessed it would probably not work, but wanted to try just incase) Heres the helmet object on its own: Heres the helmet with the visor not inserted: Helmet with visor inserted: So the helmet isnt quite finished, Im still going to tweak the visor a bit (you can see in some of the pics its not quite fitting at the bottom). But its pretty damn close. Jeb and Bob with helmet: As for the Kerbal model, it was pretty much spot on with what I wanted, very impressed with the material and how vivid the colours turned out. Id spent a lot of time on the details as well, everything from the teeth of the chracter, to the belts and buckles of the suit, even the mun boot tread! Munar Boots! You might notice with Jeb as well, hes got some little bits prodding out of the \'spacesuit disk\' which attaches to the helmet underside, these were added and made the helmet a lot more stable (with Bob the helmet sometimes slides over the disk completely and didnt position itself properly) Heres a few different angles of the Jeb model: Bob & Jeb closeup (some printing artifacts easily visible): All KSP parts that have been ordered as of May 2012: I designed the kerbals to stand about 2 inches high. The helmet is about 1.5 inches - these Kerbal fellows must have some strong necks to life such a drastically proportioned helmet O_o Models in my hand, for an idea of the general sizes: So, I guess thats it for now! Look forward to hearing some feedback from you guys and what you all think. Its been a lot of fun working on these little models, 3D printing is an exciting area to play around in. The next step for this project is to get a final Kerbal printed (Bill), and 1 other helmet (so theres one for each of them), and some more finalized/tweaked visors! Thinking of making another order in June, so we\'ll see what happens. Once I have all 3 models completed, Ill more than likely do a quick little video for my youtube channel to show them off. And if shapeways ever adds a completely clear material to its available materials, Ill more than likely get all the visors reprinted, although the golden visors are starting to grow on me.... Hmmm. Should also say - thanks to Squad for this awesome game! Also the entire album of 32 images (some extra ones not in this thread) can be seen here - http://imgur.com/a/Q2gdD Cheers for now, AD-Edge

The colour maps that I posted above, on the other hand, use polar stereographic and Mercator Projection. These two projections have less severe distortion than the Equidistant Cylindrical Projection, especially near the poles. The colour also increases the altitude resolution because gray scales are limited to a resolution of just 256. My maps have some slight artefacts that result from my altitude interpolation algorithm (I will work on improving the algorithm), but otherwise the two maps seem to be very comparable. Has stuff like this been done for Kerbal yet? Ill be needed some full surface maps soon, in colour preferably, similar to this Munar map.

The problem I have with this thread is the title - \'a few short years\' It will more than likely be a few short (wha?) decades before any human really makes progress towards Mars. Id happily be proven wrong, but its unlikely.

Super impressed! You really took advantage of the new camera system. Some very cool shots in that video. Most people dont even bother to get some interesting shots into a video, yours consisted of only interesting shots! The music was perfect too. Sucks that one strut glitched out the the final lander as well, glad it didnt stuff everything up though and wasnt too distracting. And the water landing was impressive as well, for a start I didnt know that was possible (at least to land and then relaunch a rocket from the ocean - wtf!?), and secondly Id never considered using multiple parachutes to land a larger rocket back on Kerbin ready to use again. Very interesting setup indeed. Also - so much for me feeling accomplished the other week, for landing my first rocket on the mun! ???

Nice work so far! Any hints about the story? Seems like its about one of the kerbalnaughts and his wife or girl \'back home\' who he may never see again. I have a script written for a Kerbal related 3D animation/short, and Ive started working on some 3D assets. Not sure if Ill ever get it done however... Awfully busy this year... But if I get a whole bunch of pre-production stuff done by the end of 2012 I might be able to whip it up and have it finished by the end of 2013. Might even coincide with the official release of KSP at that rate... Hmmm...

Depends on whether an assisted landing counts (which would most likely be a subjective question) Personally I would call it \'cheating\', because the true challenge is being able to land using your own skills - completely unassisted. And yeh, up until a couple of weeks ago I haddnt managed a proper Mun landing, and Id been playing since 0.7.3... Sometimes youve just got to sit down for a couple of hours and work on it, it can take a lot of effort. Also, watch some video demonstrations of Munar missions, the thing which helped me most was learning about the most efficient ways of getting to the Mun (like trans lunar injection techniques), and then having a much more structured approach to the mission. It takes work, but you guys will get there - also make sure your lander section has RCS, my first didnt, and it was one hell of a battle getting that thing to stay stable, previous missions ended in disaster because of some last second non-rcs mistakes.

Heh, love all the debris scattered around deadshot.

Yep exactly. A planet you want to land on may be in the wrong position to go directly from Kerbin, so hook it around the sun, or a planet (or both). Honestly it will just add to the experience. Either wait for the planet to come around and launch some other missions during the wait, or make your own path. Along with that idea, remember that soon we\'ll be getting a flight planning system, and whatever else that will lead on to bring. This is the perfect time for such a system to be introduced, because it will make the transition into a multi-planet solar system much smoother for the general players (when some new planets come along post-0.15 release) Squad know what they\'re doing

And so it begins Feels like just yesterday that people were getting impatient for the Mun to be added. You young kerbalnaughts! Should be glad you have a Mun to land on let alone Mars! Back in my day... *waves walking stick around like an old man* Regardless, it just occurred to me, what will the Mars in the Kerbin universe be called?? Mars is a bit too originial, just as the moon was, so everyone started calling it the Mun. Murs? Hmm. S:|

Yes thats very true, my mindset is to stick as close as possible to the equator, which unfortunately leaves a whole lot of interesting terrain out of the trip, but makes up for it with some island hopping It does lead to quite a bit of unbalancing, but since ive done hardly any driving with simply the cart, its what Im used to Plus if anything, the wings make it a tiny bit easier to drive by distributing some of the weight to the sides, out over the wheels + the aerodynamics can hold it down to the ground like a spoiler on a fast car when turning (if you do it properly). So its better than just driving around with a stack of boosters on the back alone Ill quote a more detailed explanation of some reasons why I enjoy this setup, which I wrote in a topic on reddit (cant be bothered rewriting at this moment!)

Using wings and the physics built into the game to skill-fully jump from one continent to another hence missing a week long excursion to the north pole is considered cheating but attaching modded battery/ion engine/solar panels to have infinite recharging fuel is a legit suggestion? *Edit* Having said that though, the cart mod at the moment does have infinite energy, as in the power to the wheels never runs out. Would be cool to take the mod further so you have to add batteries, which run out, which require a solar panel to recharge. Youd be stuck for a while on the dark side of a planet if you ran out of battery juice

Heh, I still remember building rockets without the symmetry mode back in 0.7.3 Youd be spending ages zooming in and lining the fins up with bits of detail on the fuel tanks, because if one was out of place (relative to the other fins) by even a tiny amount your rocket would twist mid-air and meet its demise - unless you had it crammed with SAS. I also remember my first full orbit, was quite an achievement seeing the KSP center coming over the horizon after spending so long on the dark side of Kerbin (no time fast-forwarding at-all) Then trying to land near the center again, so much pressure! No saving and if you made one mistake youd have to do the whole fight all over again, and spend another 30mins drifting around in orbit. Not to mention water was a death trap at the best of times. Thats the kinda stuff you get up to when there isnt a Mun to aim for ;P

+1 to this exactly Was just about to say the same thing! But yes, this kind of thing is really interesting, always like to know the stats. Its good to know if a game your interested and invested in is doing well financially as well. Even if it is a bit nosey

Ive now designed and tested my own little vehicle to attempt such a trip - The Delta Jumper MkII: The booster really helps, and I can fly/glide/jump it for relatively long distances. The only issue I forsee is that I only have one tank of fuel, which wouldnt be enough to make a decent amount of impact on a round-the-planet-trip. So my plan is to wait for 0.15 and the ability to dock and transfer fuel. That way I can launch a series of smaller ships with extra fuel out to particular areas around Kerbin to serve as waypoints and fueling stations. This way I can also do a more \'around the equator\' trip for some parts, like the one area where youd need to be able to jump over to a couple of islands, instead of heading up north to the polar region and then back down again. Theres only one area where Id have to do that with this vehicle by the looks, since the ocean is too vast to fly over in that one particular spot. *Edit* Just checked out the planet again, looks like it will be possible for a very direct/equator run with my vehicle. With one big ocean-jump right at the end to get back to the continent where the KSP base is located. w00t! Any progress though Phoxtane?? Looks like youll be the first to achieve this.

Haha this is epic. I plan on doing the same thing now, even though it will take days... Then once completed, get the same vehicle to the Mun and drive all the way around the equator there as well. This should be done for every planet added in future as well (Mars will be a nice challenge) Either way, time to start developing a decent little vehicle! Look forward to seeing your progress.

Heh, on my bookshelf I have a logbook and little box of recovered/burnt out rocket \'shells\' from back when I used to make heaps of little rockets and launch them. Good times ;D

You wont need a rocket all that much larger than one youd use for the Mun really. In fact my first challenge when the Mars planet is added will be to get to it using my current Munar rocket. Its a similar trip, you just have a lot longer between the take off and landing, so youll be drifting for a long time with the engines off (hopefully we\'ll get some vanilla ion engines or something to make the trip quicker). I guess predicting where the planet will be so you can get into its orbit and not miss it will be somewhat more difficult, but I imagine it wouldnt be impossible doing simply from line of sight and in the map view. Youd just need to make a bunch of corrections on the way to the planet. The part I can foresee as being a real issue is the landing, since the gravity and atmosphere will be similar to Kerbin so youll use a but more fuel (or perhaps just parachute down?). Then making a return trip?? Things will get tricky.

God-damn this is awesome, I literally sat here shaking my head in disgust at the amount of awesome in this image. Love the expression of the Kerbal on the right, priceless! And the fact that this was made just as the blue-shirt-kerbins haven been recently created is even more awesome.