bcink

My pleasure! Nice! Thanks Still no symmetry, unfortunately. And I'm not sure if bi-symmetry works actually, I was just placing them individually, lol Absolutely. I checked the box to add to CKAN from Spacedock as I've done in the past. I don't know if I need to do anything else to be honest.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/als3st18ymndo2u/MAH-Release-1-2.zip?dl=0 Get it while it's hot - that Dropbox link may not last long

Great insight. Had no idea about weights (my skills are not very advanced). True on that example as well. The final release had no bones even and just used constraints in this case as well.

Ouch. Yeah it looks like S.D. is down, as I am unable to download anything from there.

Exciting. I wouldn't mind a restart, myself. I vote for smaller, nerdier episodes.

My understanding of armatures is such that they work with bones and allow you to "join" multiple objects in an animation to reach a desired rotation / location with the parts as shown here: In the above example the objects themselves do not change in any fashion, only their location and rotation. The objects are parented to the armatures / bones and perform the rotations based on the joint locations. Blend shapes would allow the objects themselves to change. It wouldn't make much sense in the above example to use shape keys. The below example is another demonstration of the shape keys being used on a single shape (from the double-stack hab with inflatable top from new M.A.H. lander pack). Notice the original shape of the expanding top is both a concave and convex single object. With the shape key animations, you are able to morph the actual mesh through animation to reach it's desired final shape. I don't believe something is possible like this with the use of armatures / bones. I hope that helps a bit? Let me know otherwise. Thanks!

Please confirm you have the latest version of Textures Unlimited installed. Thanks,

Update 1.2 has been released. Added 4x attachment nodes to the ascent stage for the RCS thrusters RCS thrusters now have an attachment node Reduced size of RCS thrusters slightly to not look awkward on ascent stage Fixed some funkiness with the airlock hatches on all modules Fixed inaccurate plume on ascent stage engines Added Real Plume configs for ascent and descent engines Fixed center of mass and adjusted attachment nodes accordingly on all parts Ascent stage now has an IVA IVA has extra props when using Near Future Props Fixed Kerbal Inventory System and Connected Living Space patches (They now function properly) Greatly reduced fuel volume in descent stage (without BDB addon) Ascent stage now supports 4x Kerbals @MaverickSawyer @Kablob @Drakenex @Barzon Kerman @ddavis425 @Gyrfalcon5 - Folks, thank you very much for your feedback and reports. I hope this addresses everything and more. Sorry again about the issues. Download Available Now on Spacedock

Update 1.2 has been released. Added 4x attachment nodes to the ascent stage for the RCS thrusters RCS thrusters now have an attachment node Reduced size of RCS thrusters slightly to not look awkward on ascent stage Fixed some funkiness with the airlock hatches on all modules Fixed inaccurate plume on ascent stage engines Added Real Plume configs for ascent and descent engines Fixed center of mass and adjusted attachment nodes accordingly on all parts Ascent stage now has an IVA IVA has extra props when using Near Future Props Fixed Kerbal Inventory System and Connected Living Space patches (They now function properly) Greatly reduced fuel volume in descent stage (without BDB addon) Ascent stage now supports 4x Kerbals @MaverickSawyer @Kablob @Drakenex @Barzon Kerman @ddavis425 @Gyrfalcon5 - Folks, thank you very much for your feedback and reports. I hope this addresses everything and more. Sorry again about the issues. Download Available Now on Spacedock

Absolutely. Now we just need some folks to take advantage of it

Oh wow. I guess I just learned the game calculates the center of mass based off object origin point. My bad, I never knew that. I guess I'll get on fixing every part. They're all like this. The descent stage origin is the very top flat center point, the ascent engines are the top flat center point, etc. I'll have to recompile all the parts and fix all the attachment points. Sorry........ I'll try and accomplish this tonight.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaas!

Ahh, lol. Someone is creating a video of the mission for us

Awesome!!! Thank you!

What do you mean?

Resolved that issue, but it was a bit of a mess. The fix involved recompiling the part (save breaker). I have RealPlume configs created as well. The stuffs not exactly imperative so I'll probably wait a bit and see if there's anything else I can update or some other mods to mix with it, or something before I do so.

Thank you! As long as you have Textures Unlimited installed, the habitat units will be available under the utility category. The "DuBois" Inflatable Habitat and the "Bashara" Mk3 Habitat are the inflatables. Right-clicking the part and clicking deploy will play the animation. Ah, wonderful! Thank you! Interesting.... it looks like when I changed the KIS configs to be "NEEDS" instead of "HAS" it decided to ignore the boxes. All the habs and ascent stages still appear fine. I don't know why. I could set the needs commands inside the actual part configs and it works fine from there so I may need to do that. It would eliminate a config file all together... I don't know what kind of impact that would have on the downloading of "optionals" from CKAN but I guess they would just not be present and everything would be auto. Will investigate and get something together. Thanks! Good eye on that exhaust. I've tried screwing with it for quite some time this morning without any success. I'm not really sure what's causing it. Might take some time to figure out the solution here. @hieywiey might be working on these currently per our last conversation. Definitely to come. If you have BDB installed, as-is currently, the engines will default to BDB RealPlume config, so it would just be necessary for the stock variant. I'm not sure a thank you is appropriate on this one. But I think I get it

Thank you!! Thank you!!

Ah yea - so this.... The Unity design? or Kerbal implementation? of the suspension system is complete garbage. I spent about 14 days in total and received help from at least 5 different people on those things. It's basically as good as it's going to get using stock code. In comparison, in all tests I have done, the amount of movement is significantly less than the stock expanding landing legs from Squad, so in my book, that's a win. I dabbled with the idea of releasing a suspension-less version, as well as a version using KSPwheel for different plugin code, but settled on this as I actually had very good results all around as far as the grip and bounce and everything else. Hope it works well enough. If it ends up being terrible please let me know and I can think about an alternative, or maybe even a side option.

Yes, I am very sorry about that. A last minute technical caused this and has just been addressed. The normal map texture on the landing legs was broken and is also fixed. They look much sharper now. In addition, I was pushed by some other devs to change all the config patches to reside inside a single patches folder inside the MAH folder and changed two that weren't automatically detecting installed add-ons to do so. Now, no action is necessary involving config files. They will all automatically detect installed add-ons and function appropriately. Very sorry about this again. Update available on Spacedock now: Download Thank you!!

I'm very sorry about that, folks. Technicals along the way. Fixed and fixed. Broken normal map and biffed rotation from descent stage. The legs look pretty crisp now. All compatibility patches are now changed to "Patches" folder and two that were no longer set to automatically detect KIS/CLS now do so. (Very sorry to CKAN team if already adding to the system.) No action needs to be taken on the user's part. Drag MAH into GameData. Any installed addons will automatically detect and function. Very sorry again about this. Update available on Spacedock: Download And this I'm very much looking forward to. And thank you very much!

This thread will instruct you on how to create Kerbal parts using animated meshes, known in Blender as Shape Keys and known in Unity as Blend Shapes. Disclaimer: This guide assumes you already have a basic understanding of modeling, animation and creating simple Kerbal parts. Why??? The benefit of using animated meshes over regular scaling or rotating of a part allows you to yield complex animations from a single object, regardless of its shape. In the Kerbalverse, these parts are most noticeable with inflatable habitats. To my understanding, the only few on the market are those created by myself. With that said, I am hoping this will encourage others to take advantage of our new ability to use Blendshapes in Kerbal thanks to the hard work of @Shadowmage and his Textures Unlimited plugin, which allows for the loading of Asset Bundle-based models. Asset bundle based model loading is currently the only way to accomplish having these parts in Kerbal. For example, it would not be possible to create the egg-shape of the KEAM (BEAM module recreation) if I were to just scale a cylinder. The end resulting animation and shape would not be appropriate. See wireframe example of the KEAM's expansion using a single object: To start, create your model as normal. Create your desired animation with your object using Shape Keys (if Blender) (please Google for simple tutorials on this if you are unsure about animating with Shape Keys. The idea is very similar to animating a regular object. Where you would hit the I key for keyframe over the timeline, you instead do it over a new Shape Key on the side menu). If using Blender, it's best to save the .blend file within your Unity project location and work from that file within Unity. If you prefer or require FBX format for any various reason, ensure you have the "Baked Animation" option checked under the Animation tab in your export options. Check "Key All Bones" if using bones for anything. Inside Unity, you only need to verify your BlendShapes numbers under the Skinnded Mesh Render component of the animated object match the numbers in Blender. Warning: I noticed some issues above 9 Shape Keys where it seems that Unity only recognizes a total of 10. Avoid going above 9. It is very important to note, if you are using a model that contains any sort of part triggers, layers, or tags, like an Airlock or a Ladder, is is MANDATORY that you set up your part tags EXACTLY as shown in the following picture or they WILL NOT WORK when loaded in Kerbal: The final result on your model must still contain the proper tags and layers, for example with an airlock / hatch: To create the prefab ("Asset Bundle object file," as I call it), simply drag the ROOT part of your model FROM the hierarchy into the project folder window below. This action will create a prefab file. Select this prefab file so that you are viewing the preview of it in preview window. There is an AssetBundle "tag" location on the bottom of this window. Select the dropdown and create a new name for your asset bundle. Click KSPAssets on the top toolbar of Unity and select Asset Compiler. Click "Create" for your asset bundle, followed by Update and then Build. This outputs an assetbundlename.ksp file to your Unity project's "Asset Bundle" folder, one directory up from your Assets folder. The final step is to rename your finished asset bundle file to have an extension of .smf instead of .ksp Finally, drop your .smf file into your Kerbal addon folder inside GameData along with its textures and config file and as long as you have Textures Unlimited installed, the .smf file will be loaded like a normal part. I hope this can be of great help to the community or even just one person as I would love to see more complex animations in the Kerbal universe! Thanks!!!

Thank you!!

Thank you very much!!!!!!

Other than PBR textures, TU has the added benefit of being an asset-bundle-based model loader. This allows for models with animated meshes (blendshapes / shape keys) as opposed to just scaling / rotating of objects (the method for the "fancy" inflatable habitats as well as what makes the KEAM and KA-330 in Kerbalow Aerospace function the way they do). I know... I can only hope they improve.