Avindair

First off, I'm having far, far, FAR too much fun with this pack. Well done, Helldiver and crew. This is an amazing piece of work. My fifth flight with the Orbiter stack was one where I got to test a goofy idea I'd had as a kid: Why not jam an Apollo or Gemini inside the cargo bay, lift it on orbit, and dump it there so it could do its own mission while the shuttle did its work? Yeah, not a brilliant idea, but hey, I was a kid. Now I'm an adult with KSP, with a pretty good shuttle added to it. Behold STS-5. SUCCESSES: 1. Good launch. 2. Excellent orbit insertion and circularization. 3. Good EVA to pod in bay. 4. Picture-perfect separation of pod from bay. 6. Good maneuvering between vehicles. 7. Excellent recovery of Kerbanaut from pod to vehicle via emergency EVA. 8. Solid re-entry profile. 9. First no-damage landing of the shuttle at the KSC. FAILURES: 1. Mounted incorrect engine with fuel tank on pod. ROOT CAUSE: Design engineer was tired. IMPACT: Unable to perform de-orbit and recovery test portion of flight. ACTION ITEMS: Re-design after morning coffee. 2. Unable to re-dock with bay mount in shuttle. ROOT CAUSE: Design engineer was REALLY tired, and didn't notice that the mount wasn't a docking port. IMPACT: Pod was unable to re-dock with shuttle in bay for recovery purposes. ACTION ITEMS: Add a docking port at that spot in the bay for future flights. All in all, a really, really good flight. For a more -- ehem -- colorful description of this entire flight, with images, check out the images below.

Just knocked this together with my son's Kerbal mesh. (I've officially retired my "just for fun" mesh that was inspired by Kerbals back in 2011.)

I like seeing him on the Mun! Nicely done.

Thanks, everyone. Truth be told, we\'re about 50% happy with it. Unfortunately, we have some other things on our plate now, so we had to move on. I suspect we\'ll revisit these Kerbals in the future, though...

Morning, everyone -- Earlier this year, my son and I decided to knock together a 3D short using our Kerbal elements. No reason: We just wanted to give something back to this awesome game and its community. Of course, as things tend to work out, we got far busier than anticipated, and only got back to it about six weeks ago. Here, then, is the final product: http://youtu.be/PB8bIun1FRk Couple of things: [list type=decimal] [li]I used the taller, stylized Jebediah Kerman model I knocked together last summer because I didn\'t want him to go to waste.[/li] [li]Jeb actually does have hair for most of the video. It\'s just under a helmet and hidden by lighting and reflection.[/li] [li]I used some standard game parts and a couple of mod parts as elements, and have credited the modelers in the end credits. If I got that wrong, please, please let me know and I\'ll adjust the credits accordingly.[/li] Okay, folks. Please enjoy 'Kerbal Space Program: Jebediah Begins'. Avindair

So, now that my work life has slowed down a bit, I\'ve managed to find some time to work on a little animation based on Kerbal. Included are three shots from the completed scenes. Sadly, my avatar is supposed to be an animated .GIF, but sometimes AfterEffects doesn\'t do such a grand job converting data out to looping .GIFs. Oh, well. Anyhoo, here are three shots.

sorry for the squared paper, i finished the white ones... Suh-weet! ;D

I can\'t express how much 'win' is in that painting. Wow! PHENOMENAL WORK!

Very nice! Will you be working in traditional media, or are you thinking of using ZBrush and printing out a mold from a sculpt there?

Okay, this just rules!

Okay, that is just sweet. (Damn it all, I wish you guys wouldn\'t keep coming up with 'that-would-be-neat-to-build-in-3D' images. :) )

I liked this image so much that I just had to try to build her in 3D. Her hair is shorter, but I\'ve done my level best to capture her look. Oh, and I decided she needed a name and a job. Enjoy!

You, sir, are made of win.

Hey, folks -- I decided I needed to make a short animated video tribute to the Kerbal Space Program, and to Jebediah Kerman. Take a gander at the 51 second video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrThKiUZoiw NOTE: I'm likely going to re-encode on the Premiere side, as it's rather lossy on YouTube. You're not seeing any of Jebediah's skin texture here. Enjoy! Tony Bruno

Yep, it should. Poor Jeb was the only one up front when that happened. (Actually, it was because I was only working with one Kerbal mesh for that image.) Not anymore.

Nice. Very Blade Runner. Awesome.

Oooh! Sweet! Mind if I incorporate those into some of my work?

LOL. I also think 'Kouston...about the heat shield...' Here are a couple of new shots. I'm working with getting the Kerbals into the space of their Pod. It's a tight fit. Lighting them in that space is a challenge, especially with the way LightWave handles lighting within objects. (That's why I 'wilded' the bulkheads to allow more lighting options.) Enjoy!

Thanks! It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too high for a game asset. 90k polys, most of them eaten up by the piping on the sides, the radial pipes on the aft hull, and all of the buttons. (Yes, I actually just arrayed a low-poly button model for the cockpit. You'll see why in a bit. ) Ironically, I never intended to build the whole pod. I was actually just going to build the interior set for some shots and animation I wanted to do. But as I used the in-game model as reference, I, um, I kind of lost my self-control. There is an actual downside to this: I didn't create a high-enough poly external hull. The result is that it's really not good for close-up shots. You're seeing her at about as close as I'd want to bring the camera in now. That bugs me, but I'll live. Once I lock some details, I'm going to shoot some high-res orthos and then create another low-poly asset. I'll then pain the high-res ortho images to give the impression of high detail, but at a really low poly count. Once, you know, I'm done playing with the Kerbals. Thanks again!

Thanks, SkunkMonkey! Gotta say it; the Black Pearl IV looks just plain S C A R Y.

Thanks! (And don't call me 'sir'. I work for a living. )

Folks, don't you think the Kerbal's ride needs a little love, too? Here's the Mk1 Pod, setup for shooting images with the Kerbals as well. Enjoy! ;D

Hey, folks -- As it turned out, LightWave's .OBJ and .DAE exporter turned out to be a bit lousy. I've seen been following this process: 1. Model object in LW. 2. Model collision object in LW. 3. Export Model as .OBJ. 4. Export collision as .OBJ and different name. 5. Import OBJ into Blender 2.5x. 6. Press 'n' and rename item as needed. 7. Import .OBJ collision object file into Blender 2.5x. 8. Rotate object place (press 'n' and rotate numerically by 90 degrees in 'x') 9. With object still selected, rename object 'node_collider'. 10.Change surface material on node_collider to .5 Alpha under transparency. 11. Export .DAE file. 12. Open in PartLab. That process has worked fine. In fact, since LightWave works with real-world units, modeling to scale is a simple matter. (Just don't try to create a UV in LW; it's not its strong suit.) Thanks, everyone! Tony Bruno

Just a little tribute piece I created in LightWave. The 'Jebediah' model is fully-rigged, and has 40 facial morphs. This is just the start for him. Enjoy! Tony Bruno

Hey, everyone -- I discovered KSP last week and, needless to say, I'm hooked. Since I'm also a 3D Modeler and Animator, I decided I just had to make some new assets for the hangar. Unfortunately, I've run into a snag. I work primarily with LightWave 9.6 and 10.0, with Blender 2.5 being used to generate my UV islands. Having read the wiki, I've created my objects as folows: 1. Generated base part mesh. 2. Generated collision object. 3. Named part 'collider_node' in LightWave. 4. Assigned new surfaces to both the base mesh, and the collider node. 5. Set collider node surface (aka 'material') to 50% transparancy. 6. Ensure both meshes exist in the same layer in LightWave modeler. 7. Export the object either as an .obj or as a .dae file. 8. Created new folder for the new object, with 'mesh' and 'textures' sub-directories. 9. Placed the .dar or .obj file into the folder (not in the 'mesh' sub-directory). 10. Modified an existing part.cfg file, ensuring to update all appropriate information, and pointing to the new .obj or .dae file. 11. Moved the file into 'Parts' subdirectory. 12. Started KSP. ...and that's where I get stuck at the 'Loading...' screen. My research indicates that usually means there is no material associated with the object. I've ensure that there is by loading the objects in Blender 2.5x. They import just fine. I've attempted to use the 'PartLab' found in the KSP_SDK_v01, but I have yet to see any of my meshes load up there properly. In short, folks, I'm stumped. I'm attaching a quick SRB I knocked together in a couple of minutes in both .obj and .dae format. Maybe somebody with more experience with both Unity and KSP will have more luck finding the step I'm missing. Thanks for your help!