InsaneDruid

On friday @Dragon01 has directed my attention to the proposed 8K82KL Proton Light launch vehicle. As this would be made from (just slightly) modified proton parts, I thought this would be a nice little thing to implement. So here we go! Enjoy the light proton - now with 100% less second stage!

Quick Status: this isn't dead, but a big influential thing named Overwatch happened, so my forum time was limited. Besides saving the world by standing on a point for a prolonged time in a comical universe ^^ I have the IVA of the VA done to a level of detail I like, including the fold-out emergency morse key. (you wouldn't want to launch without it, would you? xD) Iva sports about 30000 verts and 47000 tris with each of the major part-groups are of the complexity of my breeze-m core alone. So even without overwatch it took a while to research and model it, longer than I had planned. I am now in the process of UV mapping. So should be ready sometimes this summer.

That mesh is a total mess. Especially for such a simple shape. Redo with proper geometry.

Still not fixed, or is it?

Is your UV map normal map baked using the right coordinate system? EDIT: no, this shouldn't be the issue. I have revisited some of my models to check how I set them up, and i have a few mirrored ones, all working well. Also baked out a normal with different coordinates, no success.

Mark Sharp, that is. EDIT: no edge split modifier needed, though. Under the object data tab, under normal, enable auto smooth and set the angle to 180° if you want to only sharpen edges marked as sharp, or your desired split angle.

Oh cool.

Did a Gemini actually fly with a heat shield hatch? IMHO only VA did (AND also was reusable, too), which is kinda cool, imho.

But it is marked visible in the inspector (the checkmark on the top left in the inspector)?

Depends on the UV layout. A perfect square will need less, a rather "wild" polygon might need more. Also, visibility of the artefacts depends on the color of the different UV isles. A rather monochromatic texture is less prone than a texture where you have very dark and very bright uv isles. I also use the solidify filter from http://www.flamingpear.com/freebies.html to blend the unused texture space, giving additional padding.

Sounds ok to me. What I did on my TKS solar panels (half of a scissor) is to use an empty as an "input" (only this empty needs to be animated via keyframes) which is limited with the "limit Rotation" Constraint and then used transformation constraint or simple copy rotation restraints (where possible, i.e. whenever there was no need to scale the angle of the rotation down or up in relation to the input) to get the needed rotations of the parts (also parented to each other like you described) from the rotation of the "input" empty. This way changing the animation (speed, amount etc) is a bit easier, and its just nice to be able to extend the panels by rotating one empty during modelling of the rest of the TKS. And I just wanted to play with constraints.

Not really possible to my knowing. But you can outline the kerbals quite quickly by positioning some very basic geometry (just flat cubes) , one for the soles of the feet, one for the feets, one for the bottom, one for the back, one for the neck and maybe one or two for the neckring. Then quick export, and use the new iva overlay to see how the real positioning is, then adjust, re-export, adjust, re-export. Got my kazbek right during a rainy afternoon. Thing is: male and female kerbals are offset, see http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9009 (there you can see my placeholder geometry, too, like described above).

No, they fold flat. The zarya fairing seems to have had protrusions for the 634 MHz telemetry system antenna, which are comb-like "blades" of metal and sit with the Sirius-4 antenna (which can be folded) on the radiators above the tanks. Compare this image: with this: the white protrusion (you can see the hole in the fairing beneath it in the picture above should be for something different (though in the area of the komparus and kurs antenna). OH WAIT: the image above, and the ones i posted before show the dorsal side of zarya. But the ventral side has a non-retractable komparus antenna (and no kurs antenna) That is the side where the fairing has the white protrusion. Also, you can see in this image, the numbers of the aforementioned comb-like 634 MHz telemetry system antenna and the smaller (black) bulges match perfectly. So.. we where both right. On the ventral side is a non-retractable one, on the dorsal side are two that can be folded. (Plus the golf-club like toru-antennas on both sides, can be folded)

Which would be realistic, too. These Antennas (Komparus, Kurs-A) use a hinge mechanism to be folded down during ascend. The Fairings have no openings for them. You can see the mechanism of the Komparus and Kurs antennas on these images: https://archive.org/details/STS088-369-014 https://archive.org/details/sts088-353-008

Ah I see. You mounted the TKS quite realistic. In the real world, this is not a girder-like structure, but actually, the fairing base, which is usually just 583mm in height is extended to 2250mm. That means, the actual fairing itself which can be jettisoned, doesn't encapsulate a TKS craft completely, but just reaches to the ring in the TKS double cone. The fairing and the TKS are mounted to the extended fairing base. Here is a link with drawings and dimension of the multiple fairings used for different TKS variants. You can see the difference between structure (the longer fairing base) and the actual fairing itself. http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1/East_Europe_2/Proton/Fairings/Proton-TKS.htm (though Kwant is wrong as its missing the FGB that was used as a spacetug). You can also clearly see this on assembly and starting images of various proton flights. Zarja and its extended fairing base: Priroda being encapsulated: Zarja on the way to the launchpad (note the position of the holding clamp, this is where s3 ends) A TKS/VA (short FGB) with extended fairing base mounted. Compare it to the (green) fairing base used in the exomars mission (standard PLF). This images also shows the location of the holding clamp nicely again. DOS based vessels, like the Almaz, Saljut, MIR core and Zvezda, also use an extended "fairing" base, but this time, the fairing only reaches down to the beginning of the largest diameter of these parts at max Even less on some launches. The Part of the largest diameter itself isn't surrounded by anything, it is its own fairing. http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1/East_Europe_2/Proton/Fairings/Proton-Almaz.htm (some minor errors again, like "Saljut2" (which was an ALMAZ IIRC), compare with this image, but shows the basic idea quite good) The brighter grey part to the far left is the base, the dark one (with the SALJUT 2 witing on it) is the actual saljut station and the white parts to the left are the only jettison-able fairing parts. You can see the covers of the actuators that separate the fairing halves just where the holding arm is attached, they are quite identical with other fairings. Just some pushers. (could be the hinges, too if I think about it. The bulge in the top part could not be cleared if it would split top/bottom)

That fairing is wAAAAy to wide. Proton never had this. And Zarya, beeing an TKS based vessel is 4150mm in maximum diameter and its characteristic double cone is actually derived from the bottom of the third stage of proton mounted to a shortened DOS. So they are very close to the 4100mm of proton itself. Also, the interstage that actually holds TKS based vessels on the proton (and covers the aft section of the TKS doible cone) is missing. Nice stickers though. I like them. Are you using flag meshes to change them? Or replace the whole fairing texture?

Just recognizing: Is there a deeper reason why the main cabin of the LK rests on this "blade of sorts" instead of the spherical tank upper side like in RL? The cabin floor of the LK is not flat, but a dome shape bulge inward, to make room for the tank. Also, actually the LK could never fiit two man/kerbals, as the rear section of the main cabin is separated from the cockpit area by a huge bulkhead, too. View from the pilots position towards the hatch, on the left the bulkhead of the rear compartment can be seen bulging way into the cabin, and the floor bulges inwards, too, to fit the top section of the main tank. (which itself is a sphere section with a frustum underneath, sitting in the frustum of the tank/engine compartment.) Cockpit view. Again note the huge bulkhead of the aft compartment. Another view of the cabin floor: View of the main tank: View of the tank mated with the engine compartment: LK external view: its clear the main cabin sits on the tank, not a blade. PS: for those making a real two stage LK: the stage leaving the landing gear behing is NOT a double frustum, but (besides the main cabin of course) consists of a sphererical section, a frustum and a shperical section again. (the main tanks are the spherical section + frustum shown above and an toroid surrounding it. Like many russian designs use toroids. The engine sits in the toroidal part and is covered by a spherical heat shield (and a two-part movable blast shield to protect the nozzles during landing). With and without the heat shield: Cut image of the toroidal tank and the frustum of the other tank:

No animation is needed. -Z forward Y-up No such modifier needed. Don't click on "generate colliders". Colliders are set up as meshes in blender and you remove the renderer from them and assign a mesh collider (convex ticked) to them.

Its a property of the texture file itself. So you set it up in Photoshop or Gimp. You can paint it just normal in grayscales, where black is non reflectivity and white is 100% reflectivity. Then copy everything together and paste it in the alpha channel. You can also open one of the original textures of fasa and have a look at the values they use for their parts. Just for illustration purposes, here is a texture and its alpha channel pictured side by side. you can see what areas should be more reflective and which are not.

First educated guess: missing or "false" (different to the original) alpha channel in your texture which controls the specularity.

Also try without angle snapping ("c").

That's cool. Single stage LK is a no go^^

Advantage? Realism, applicability, beauty. Ladder? should be two parts. A fixed one on the fuel tank, a folding one on the landing leg part, able to fold out.

You can also implement a scale definition into the MODEL{} node: MODEL { model = HGA/TKS/parts/va_capsule scale = 0.60976,0.60976,0.60976 } rescaleFactor = 1.0 scale = 1.0 makes it easy to model in 1:1 real scale in blender and downscale the model to the desired size in KSP (here: 4100mm ->2500mm in game)

IMHO there is no (modder controlled) LOD system in KSP. (besides mipmapping on the texture side). On the other side, KSP is far from limited by geometry. Even parts with insanely high polycount (models intended to be rendered offline slammed into ksp as game models) run fine. Avoid unusual high drawcalls by not using separate meshes for details (always join meshes as far as possible), using as few materials as possible etc. Also use only as much colliders as you need, and use primitive colliders like sphere and capsule instead of mesh colliders where possible.