CobaltWolf

I create my specular and bump/normal maps by just duplicating layers from my diffuse texture onto a new document. I then just go through and do adjustment layers one by one to get the desired effect. Takes 20-30 minutes tops to create specular and normal maps for a texture sheet, and mine are pretty complex. The boost to the quality is well worth the time invested IMO.

Very cool! Any idea what the final station design will look like? Or will we have to wait?

Best was still the time some troll reuploaded BDB to Spacedock and the file in the download was just a renamed FASA.zip

Should be! If not (or if CKAN thinks the mod is outdated) please let me know so I can poke the CKAN peoples and ask them to update our listing.

@pap1723 hasn't logged in since mid-November. We'll have to see.

Dev stream is now live!

Is that polygons or tris (triangles)? Tris are the actual number you want since the mesh will get converted to tris in Unity anyways. Those is fairly high - most KSP engines, being (on average) some of the most detailed parts, aim for somewhere between 3000 and 5000 tris. NOW, with that said, there is certainly nothing stopping you from having that many; it's definitely not wrong. Part of the reason for sticking to that range of polygons is (in my opinion) to keep the style relatively simple/cartoony, which isn't what you're going for - at least, not to the same extreme as the stock game. It's a bit late to be changing those things now, but if its something you want to worry about in the future, some things to watch out for would be stuff like how many sides are on your cylinders and pipes. The difference between a pipe with 6 or 8 sides, and one with 24 or 12, is barely noticeable - but the number of tris is exponentially less. tl;dr: Yes, that's high, but if it's not something you're worried about (ie you want these to be high quality, detailed engines) then don't worry. Definitely something to keep in mind though. @Alcentar quick follow up. I've noticed you've modeled in a lot of details that could be done way more efficiently with normal mapping. That's another thing to keep in mind. I know that they won't look QUITE as good, but the other thing to keep in mind is that most of the time the engine will be very small in the player's window, and the difference won't be visible. I've circled the details that could be replaced with normal mapping in red. Also, how are you creating those pipes? (I've circled some in green) If they are being created using curves, playing with the values for the geometry can save some polygons. Play with it until you find the balance between quality and polycount, and then you can go in and hand merge some extra vertices in select spots. Apologies if this is unhelpful/unwanted.

Understandable. Do you know what kind of polycount the engines are?

What is the reasoning behind working at double resolution? And do they have to be 1024x768? EDIT: Just to throw in the tag, @DoctorDavinci

Proud to offer our services! Trying to get back into the swing of working on KSP stuff. Going to try and stream tonight, get some work done on trying to clean stuff up for the release. Starting some time between 6 and 7 Eastern time, over on Twitch. Gonna fiddle around with an idea I had, and try to get the Blok V Apollo parts in game.

Looks heckin' beautiful! Are you going to make Specular/Normal maps for them?

You installed the stock scale MM patches (to make the parts, well, stock scaled instead of real scale) but are trying to use the real scale craft files.

@Nhawks17 we had a question over at BDB. Is it possible to use have the plume change based on the part upgrade system added in 1.2? Size/shape/etc, but also one of the proposed upgrades converts the Redstone from LOX/Ethanol to LOX/Hydyne (aka Bagels and LOX), which is a storable propellant. If that is possibly it would be very cool.

Uhm, is it ready to be released? That's the question I think. I don't remember where I left off.

As Foxx said, none of the full time devs for BDB work on IVAs. The return on time investment is almost non existent. There are volunteers working on IVAs but I'd rather not call them out; they're not under any obligation (at least, not the same way I sort of am) to finish whatever they start working on. @StarStreak2109 looks awesome!

Doesn't this pack have/support having big radiators like on the ISS? They're supposed to be fragile station parts. I don't see why they'd need good heat tolerance.

I believe the dev version is 325 or so right now.

Just turn down the science return % when you start a new career.

Not a rare story around here

ded mod pls update after you finish your project for me

Not unless someone else makes it for them...

IVAs aren't worth the time investment typically. Most players don't use them or only use them once or twice. I'm still surprised - for how vocal of a minority IVA players are, there seem to be almost none willing to step up and make them. @AndyMt you're one of the good ones.

I, uh, never got around to packaging up a release. You can download the master from Github however.