XLjedi

That's basically what I did... thankfully the existing texture files are using a grayscale (mostly white) with an alpha channel and I could not have asked for a better starting point. It's exactly what I would've tried to create if the parts were painted different colors. I haven't quite fully grasped how exactly the alpha layer translates onto the model... I think it gives it a slightly dull/matte finish, but will have to tinker with it a bit if no explanations exist. I noticed some stock parts had at least 2 dde files and one of them was clearly intended to be a bump map; so I left that one alone and it continues to work exactly as it did before. This led to me wonder about the other texture file with the alpha channel and whether or not I was drawing directly on what was intended to be a matte finish overlay. Sometimes devs are nice enough to post the wireframe image of the dde texture file so I don't have to waste time trying to guess where the black interior part of an air intake might be located. The small retract landing gear texture file has been particularly bewildering. That .mu plugin for blender may be perfect if it brings in the model mesh with the texture file mapping... then I can generate my own wireframes as GIMP layers. I'd like to have my parts in their own folder... how did you manage your parts in your mod? Do you just use the existing categories? I wanted it to be easy to hide my green/yellow parts in the SPH/VAB editors.

I'll look into the various methods... As you can see from my referenced thread, I already went down the path of repainting the texture files, so that's fairly basic and I've built and skinned models for other games before, so not starting entirely at ground zero. So far, I only went the extra step of duplicating the stock parts and modifying the associated config files so my green parts showed up seperately from the stock unpainted parts. Ven was nice enough to make all his .blend part files and .xcf files for the textures available. I may dig through these a bit and see if the stockalike approach would warrant repainting the parts. Nice thing about having the .blend files is I can unzip them in different ways if needed. Not all of the stock parts would easily lend themselves to a single racing stripe for instance. These are all very helpful comments... I'll definitely take a look at mod manager to see what all it does exactly.

Seems to be a problem for the Saitek series of FCS controllers... would be nice if I could use my throttle block and all the programmable buttons but seems to be a 3-way fingerpointing match between devs of KSP/Unity/Saitek that's been going on for years. Presumably, more of an issue between Unity & Saitek, but I did see a post where a KSP dev mentioned they were aware of the issue and would get around to fixing it eventually. In the meantime, the keyboard is OK... thankfully this is less flighty and more RCS fine control, so it hasn't bothered me too much.

This looks promising! ...I can't get to the linked files at the moment, but will check them out this evening.

...and that's just what a spambot would want you to believe.

It's fairly well documented and has been around for quite awhile from what I've read...

no worries, and if it keeps the spambots away, all the better!

Just sayin "Hello" and wondering how long my content needs to be approved by a moderator...

KSP is the only flight-ish game that I have to play with the keypad... cuz the joystick controls are lagged so bad to render my flight system useless. So no, that has not happened to me and still hopeful they might do something to fix the joystick lag so I don't have to use the keyboard.

Taking a step back from the "Basic Parts" tutorial which makes the assumption that I wish to add new parts... Is anyone else doing anything with just painting the existing parts by modifying the .dde texture files? It seems apparent to me that I'm coloring something (a texture file) maybe not meant to be colored? ...and wondering if I'm taking the wrong approach or if this is frowned upon as infringing on other people's work? I like to work with the stock parts... but had this idea for a cute Green Cherubs flight team and just had to paint them accordingly. I would like to release a mod for my Green Cherubs flight team which is basically just repainting the stock parts, but I also don't want to offend the Squad devs and/or original authors (PorkJet, NovaSilisko) by releasing a mod that is just their parts with a painted .dde file. Any thoughts? I have not tried to reverse-engineer my way back thru Unity by attempting to reload a .mu file, not even sure if that's possible? Anyone know if the underlying parts already allow for a base color layer? ...if I could get the mesh outline of the part file that would be wonderful. My preference would be to have a clean color map layer for livery and leave the texture file either untouched or maybe polished up a bit for a glossier airshow finish. This is basically what I'm doing:

Sorry, I noticed this would be more appropriate for the Fan Works / Mission Reports section... If a Mod would kindly move it over, I would appreciate it!

An album of sequential pics from the first annual Kerbal Beach Air Show! ...featuring my favorite flight team, the Green Cherubs! Overall, a huge success! ...no major explosions, Jeb walked away with a few minor scrapes, and only one Kerbal MIA... but I'm sure we'll find her. If you'd like to try your hand at flying the official jet of the Green Cherubs, you'll find the blueprints on KerbalX. (green & yellow paint sold separately) https://kerbalx.com/XLjedi/FA-02-Kounter Woohoo! Go Cherubs!

Yes! ...please do something to "fix" the thrust limiter sliders. The 0.5% increments are extremely aggravating. I would not mind having some "snap" areas at 10% increments that I can click on. I find myself wanting to set these to 10% or 50% frequently, and then getting stuck with one that bounces back and forth between 51% and 49.5%. Text entry would be OK, I'd even settle for a 1% or 5% increment, just get rid of this stupid granularity please.