vossiewulf
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Everything posted by vossiewulf
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accidental, yes. They're specifically made for use in the technique I use for planking ships but also for general modeling work, and if you make a skew blade you make a matching pair. Or at least you do if you don't want to constantly need the other-handed one. I also do chip carving and made a series of knives for that too. To return to rocketry, here's another cool video that covers the heat shield manufacture in detail, MIT Science Report - Returning from the Moon.
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That can't be plain steel. It looks like it has some kind of finish on it, that looks more like gray paint than steel, the reflectivity looks like a non-conductive surface.
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This is a pretty good reference. And yes, various alloys can be brighter or a bit darker, but they won't stray too far from the below. Don't get me started on steel, I'm a tools geek also to the point that I buy steel from special sources and grind them to special shapes and make my own carving/modeling tools. Below is a screenshot of a matching pair of L/R single-bevel knives I made with Japanese steel and Amboyna burl (from Australia) wood, with my favorite finish of solid super glue. Brass end balances were made on my small metal lathe, they're sized to make them balance just a bit forward of center, it makes a difference (to me) If you're wondering, yes, if you bounce one into your finger it won't stop until it hits bone.
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Bah, found the video. Command module heatshield section starts at 11:15 but I recommend watching the whole thing, interesting stuff. Almost all of the Saturn and Apollo quarterly reports are on youtube, I found a couple playlists with them and stream them to my TV for several hours of intense rocketry geekdom. Another example of the interesting things you can find on youtube these days is General Dynamic's LEM proposal from 1962, that of course eventually went to Grumman. One might even say it would make an interesting addition to a mod
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Looks great and love the subtle mesh pattern, just right, more roughness than height. BTW I saw a very good quality Apollo Quarterly Report video on Youtube the other day that had several minutes on the heat shield manufacture and if anything it was redder than the one I posted above. Any interest in a redo of the recolor UI? I'd be happy to put a design together. Actually I think the first one is closer, it's just too blue. Steel, unless you're simulating tempering effects, is pretty much a more neutral gray like you have in the second, but the second one is too dark. So either lighten the value of the gray on the second one, or desaturate the first one and maybe a tinge darker. Just my two cents, your mileage may vary.
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That's some nice and interesting work also.
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I agree on the ports, but what is going on with the falloff on the rubber tires? They look like they're covered in a thin layer of translucent jello. But maybe it's always done that and I'm just noticing because everything else looks so much better.
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What it is missing is in the real one each cell has its own slightly variable gradient, what is bothering you (I think, it's what I see) is the excessive consistency compared to our picture showing the ISS' panels. Go back and look at that, the cells aren't perfectly aligned flat with each other and we have bands of brightness and individual cells much brighter than the surrounding cells, and we can also see that in the specular reflections on the non-glowing panels. When you get close like this the remaining sticking points are almost some aspect of excessive consistency in the scene, something is lacking the inherent variability of reality. Your panels have captured the effect almost exactly, but it looks amazingly smooth and unified, and that's only possible if each one of those cells is exactly identical and aligned perfectly flat with each other. An observant visual system is bothered by that. I'm pretty sure I don't have to mention this, but I can think of a couple possible ways to either create a mask with cell by cell variability or better to procedurally modify the normal map so that all the effects of a correct variability in flatness will fall out naturally everywhere it's supposed to. Bah that's not going to be easy, what you really want is each panel having a unique normal map and that's not practical. At best you could have a few normal maps and some logic to randomly choose between them, but not even sure KSP supports identical objects with differing core maps. I assume the real available panels range all over in terms of this effect from glowy yellow to glowy white or blueish to no transmissivity at all. You'll need a default and with your panels at least you could go check pictures of what they're modeled after and get it exactly right. I had missed this post, just saw it and it made me laugh. You are very much one of those guys where one can say hey I think this might work for you and they go no, no, impossible, way too hard, weeks of coding fingers to the bone, blood raining from the skies... well unless I did this, and then did that.... At that point you can walk away because they've already forgotten you're there, and you just need to come back in an hour and they have it working much better than the original suggestion
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Think we can score that one a win. And like I said, there's your other killer splash screen. nothing in KSP looks like that.
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Parts using fundamentally different shaders are just going to look different, only way to suppress those differences is by suppressing all the value out of a PBR shader with correct metal/rough surface values and accurate environmental reflections.
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Agree this is a good idea. Then you can invoke zero G also so we can test our decoupling and other vessel transitions.
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Good point. That's probably how it works now, glow is relative to light output, and maybe he's already set a correct baseline so those images are a bit less glowy.
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I know. I wish my guys at work were that fast. BTW, very close Mage, but center glow needs to be stronger
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That'll look super spiffy if you can get that to work, that'd have its own ooh ah factor along with the shiny metal reflections.
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Mostly spiffy, however glow looks too much to me. But then again I can't say that I've spent many hours looking at backlit solar panels in space. And I thought I was joking above, but Mage's shader is causing people's ships to explode when they're using certain fairings! That's AWESOME! I'm with you though as I'd love to know how a shader could cause a huge fairing explosion. And it looks like you're both right and wrong on the glow and the answer you choose will be a compromise unless you build in more complexity - see below, glow very near axial with the solar body is almost exactly like you have above, but also see they change rapidly as they move off axis to almost no glow. So if you can have them figure out their orthogonal distance from the line between the solar body and the camera, you could use that to correctly modify the glow. Wait no what you need is that distance to get the angle off the camera/solar body axis and use that value, that should work. Otherwise you'll have to pick some compromise or other.
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Geez 43 new messages I can't even keep up. Love the creations of the early adopters who are bravely finding the bugs I'm figuring on waiting until about the third release where bugs will no longer be of the scale like "I turned up my reflections too high and the shininess swallowed Duna. No really it's gone from space and the whole solar system is unstable now."
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If certain mod developers could read, they would know that probably 80% of mods in development have download links because the bug reports make it much easier for them to actually finish. So it's perfectly normal for someone to be confused when they see one without a link and to ask. But you go on thinking you're the one who is normal, I will watch and be very amused by how unhappy all your users make you by doing anything at all other than what you specify and you say they can or can't do. I'm sure you try that in RL and have just as many friends as a result. And here's a little cheers for you
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That's... odd I'm not sure I want to know what quirk of the underlying framework is causing that. Do I want to know?
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That sounds like it's worth a mini-mod, especially for anyone who wants to run stock- it's a mod that would just be making Squad content look like it was intended to and shouldn't break stock status. Everyone else should be running Venn's
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You don't know the half of it This is NOT something Mage has been working on for a year, or even many months, he has developed this starting from a simple suggestion I made based on my own experience that he should give Substance Painter/Substance Designer a try and see if he could apply it to his mod um... just a bit over a month ago. It started here on October 5th, when I posted some of my non-KSP work offering to do a little modeling as possible for SSTU, and explaining I use MAX/Flatiron/Substance Painter as my main workflow. He asked whether I thought Substance Painter was worth it, I replied here with some more examples of my work showing what could be done with an emphatic YES, anyone involved in texturing who can afford to do so should grab a Substance Painter license, they're on a reasonable subscription model now that doesn't require $200+ upfront outlay. I gave him some very basic explanations and suggestions once he dove into Substance Painter, but it was very minimal - he's picked it up like the proverbial fish to water, and if he isn't already he'll be way ahead of me shortly. And many more good things are coming since he's diving headfirst into Substance Designer also, someone who really fully understands the tapestry of functionality that those two create can do some pretty amazing things. So it's been zero to KSP-changing shader release in basically one month. Also keep in mind that he could have just used this for SSTU, there was no requirement to package all of this and provide the required documentation so that other modders could make use of it. He's put in considerable work just so he could make his breakthrough available to everyone. So yes, modder of the year, and one of those guys who you just have to point at a problem and hand him the tools he'll need and then get the hell out of the way.
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Yeah I had started giving the guy a little advice since he was brand new, then Mage got interested and showed up and has been walking him through with much more knowledge than I, and somewhere in there I assume they chatted about the new shader. I'm very impressed with the guy, go look at his release thread and you see a whole series of people making suggestions about modeling and texture methods and an hour later he's figured out some new animation feature he's never tried before and has it working perfectly. If @bcink sticks with KSP chances are good many more good things will come from him.
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Saturn V (Reincarnation). Release in last page
vossiewulf replied to DECQ's topic in KSP1 Mod Development
Would be sad if he couldn't at least pass the models and textures over to one of the experienced modders, it is very nice work, it should not just collect dust. -
I think it's a given that you're going to get a special episode of KSP mods and there's going to be much discussion in ModLand about what everyone is going to do now that Mage raised the bar to keosynchronous orbit.
