nli2work

Is it correct that as long as you stick to one material per mesh, then it is therefore technically fine to use an individual texture per mesh? I ask, because I am wary of using UV maps on buildings that only need three or four textures. And because I'm not quite ready to get in to learning the intricacies of UV mapping, regardless of the performance benefits. You have to know UV map and how it works, there's no getting around it. It's how the game engine (or any 3d app) knows what is supposed to happen on each pixel. This is rather complicated to explain because 3d modeling apps work slightly different on the surface than 3d engines. UV coordinates are some times done automatically behind your back in a 3d app like Max... but for game engines, you have to explicitly specify the UV information. Now regarding your question, I assume by "texture" you mean images like jpg, png, tga, bmp..., yes it is technically fine to do one texture per mesh, it is technically fine to break each individual triangle into their own mesh and apply a shader to each. but it would be very difficult to work with a game object with 8 thousand mesh objects each with their own texture. In the end this is something you have to learn through practice to know when to combine and when to break things up. Unity allows a mesh to be just a single face, single-sided. A box collider can be placed on a flat face. Is that ok in KSP? (I am aware this is not good modelling practice.) By flat box collider do you simply mean, no angled faces on the box? Unity comes with few primitive colliders: Box(Cube); Sphere; Capsule. Plus some advanced colliders: Mesh; Wheel; and Terrain. By box collider, I mean the primitive collider, scaled down so it's a large flat box (like the kind you buy donuts in... mmmm). Performance wise, primitive colliders are the best. Mesh colliders should be used only when necessary for complex and organic shapes. One thing to keep in mind is Unity is component oriented. components define the behaviour of any game object. The most basic game object in unity is just a simple transform, storing the XYZ; nothing else. You attach a mesh filter component so the game object knows which piece geometry it is assigned. You attach a collider, and rigid body components to give it physics characteristics. You attach a mesh renderer component to make the geometry visible to the game camera. And yeah, post some screen caps. It's better to learn from specific examples than all this abstract stuff.

yeah for 90% of cases this will be true, e.g. a car with mesh collider colliding with a building with box collider. car does not need to be set to convex. however if you have two cars colliding, both with mesh colliders, one of them has to be set to convex; or one of the is using only primitive colliders. non convex colliders work for buildings because in almost all cases, the vessel colliding into it has a convex mesh collider, or is using 1 or more primitive colliders.

- Can a mesh have more than one material? One mesh one material. A part can have multiple meshes each with their own material. One mesh is a mesh object you select in the unity mesh filter and mesh renderer component. - Can a submesh have more than one material? see above. - If a mesh can only have a single material, is it possible to have faces with different textures? no. This is a KSP limitation. - And if not, in Unity, how do you change the texture tiling, rotation etc. on an individual face? you can change tiling and offset for the shader that is applied to a mesh object. you can't adjust offset or tilling on an individual face. You have to edit your UV mapping in your 3d app. - Is it simply the case that you must use a single UV map and nothing else will work? 1 UV channel per mesh. - Can a mesh have more than one collider (for example, on one or more submeshes)? Yes. You can use any combination of primitive colliders and mesh colliders. Mesh colliders should be set to convex if it's for a part piece, and must be 255 triangles or less. for concave objects, you need to combine multiple colliders to approximate the concave shape. - If only one collider works, is it okay for the model to be more than one mesh (submeshed) or must that also be a single mesh? Unity doesn't have submeshes. see above for how unity treats mesh objects. you can add multiple mesh objects to a single heirarchy under a game object, but that's not the same as merging or attaching multiple objects in a 3d app like max or maya. - On a static model, such as a building, does a collider have to be convex? No. If you are using only primitve colliders, none has to be convex. if you are using mesh collider, one of the two colliding mesh colliders must be convex. - What's the 'secret' to having a ramp in a model? Splitting faces, solid geometry and nearly a week's worth of experimenting and I still haven't got a working collider on a single model. a series of over lapping box colliders offset in position and rotation should work for a curved ramp. if a flat ramp, a flat box collider will do.

here's a pretty clear walk through of the export process from Unity to KSP

to expand on this a bit... KSP applies default scale factor of 1.25 to external parts, so you model a 1m diameter part (in blender or Max), it becomes 1.25m in game. But IVA's scale factor is 1, no apparent way to match it to external part scale factor. so if you build size 1 part for external, and build IVA inside of it, IVA will be too small in game. if you look at rescaleFactor of all pod's with IVA, you see they are set to 1. Where as parts without IVA varies, some are set to 1; some more or less than 1; some without a setting, relying on game's default 1.25 rescaleFactor. You need to force External part's rescaleFactor to 1 in the Pod's config file. and build the mesh at 1:1, meaning 1.25m in your modeling app for 1.25m part ingame, in order for IVA and external part to match up correctly.

small additions to EVA mesh at the crew hatch; IVA sorted out, IVA texture 89% there... more set dressing to do.

Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for. oops. spoke too soon. The model code seems to be pointing to the folders... each individual prop still requires their own model, texture, and config files. I was hoping to share 1 texture between multiple prop models by atlasing the prop textures onto a big sheet. Creating individual folders for config and model file, and pointing texture path to a common location doesn't seem to work. no biggie though. things to know about the pipeline for future references.

is there a way to specify mesh for a prop in the prop config? like the way part config file works? I tried "mesh =" line in the prop config, but that doesn't do anything. all different prop configs pull the same mesh.

yeah Justin is right, if your vessel has convex collider then the building doesn't require convex collider. Only 1 of the 2 colliding mesh colliders has to be convex. you can just model your building and apply mesh collider and use the building mesh as your collider mesh.

1. Nope. 2. everything gets triangulated in the end whether you want to or not. don't sweat it when exporting. The only time when you want to manually triangulate is to fix oblique triangles that you sometimes get from automatic triangulation that happens, they create shadow artifacts in certain lighting conditions. 3. FBX is fine. make sure you exclude lights and cameras from your exports 4. set your system unit to meters, size 1 for 1.25 m parts; 2 for 2.5m parts; 3 for 3.75m parts. , here's a good overview.

use primitive colliders for building, stairs, etc. Convex mesh colliders are for complex shaped meshes that require physics interaction with other mesh colliders. non-convex mesh colliders will work fine with other primitive colliders.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71030

by this you mean their transforms must be at the same position and have same orientation in Unity correct? They can be in different parts in the wheel hierarchy?

is there a helix tool in blender? I use max, I'd use a helix primitive to get the grooves, then extrude a shape along the helix path. you could also try displacement map... make a cone, sub-d it a few times, and apply a texture to "cut" into the mesh. after that you can bake the normals back on to the simple cone. looks like this is the tool to use? http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Editing/Duplicating/Screw

the fairing looks like Size 1 in 3dsmax, 1.25m in game. but it's very thick. you can only fit a .625m probe inside.

put that thing into orbit where you don't lose 60% of power through the atmosphere!

IVA needed props, so I made a few, somewhat stock-alike. Download link in 1st post.

I'm guessing he's going for the 8-bit look.

chimpanzee

looks good!

man. amazing pod, you certain take IVA to whole new levels

check the b9 config file from Interstellar, it adds radiator module to the HL cargo bay doors. you can copy that onto the B9 wings.

if you have sun beam mod you can have it vomit lasers. IVA space, some more bits to add before exporting to unity to add props.

The KSP Unlit Alpha shader reads the texture's Alpha channel to determine per pixel transparency. The large box controls the color of the rendered mesh. if you want a red tinted window, set it to red. the small slider under it, white at start, determines the overall strength of the texture's alpha channel. Think of it as a multiplier to your alpha channel. Alpha channel ranges from 0 to 255 value. 255 is opaque, 0 is transparent. the shader slider multiplies it. so if the shader is set to half way, then the values of your alpha channel is multiplied by 0.5. It's an extra layer of control in Unity to fine tune the look.

fianlly figured out what the hell was wrong with my IVA... wrong layer. such a simple thing. haha.