esinohio

Not very good at Gimp but I threw this together, hope you like it. (Refining by further removing edge lines) deleted, see below.

I use Fraps or the NVidia Shadowplay feature on my video card for my recording. Toss in a few of the camera mods and your in KSP video buisness.

Following the announcement of the first annual 100k Duna midlands race Jeb excitedly tested his prospective entry, The Dune Chaser! Designed by Levelord. Craft file and forum thread linked below. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/47650-Dune-Bike-Dune-Chaser psa : Jeb respawns, wear a helmet kids!

Jeb gooses the throttle and pulls back on the stick bringing the Gull Wing trainer off the runway. Changed the image a bit by adding a Kerbal for some scale. This is a low sample render so there is noise in the glass face plate. Kerbal can be found here in the forums.

A swarm of Mouse IV's emerge from the wheat fields to confront two Maelstrom tanks. Rendered for Zekes of the Zokesia Skunkworks.

Thought this awesome looking "trainer" style aircraft needed a render. The Gullplane II designed by Zekes of the Zokesia Skunkworks (minus Kerbal pilot for now). Found here. - - - Updated - - - Very true! Those shots are mostly uncomposited for the moment so they lack any real fog glow or glare.

Working on a new batch of planets for future renders. Most of these are just simple high resolution surface map images taken from various NASA sites and then doctored with normal, occlusion, specularity, and displacement maps. They should make for some interesting backdrops for the various crafts and space stations I'm wanting to render. So far I have a Duna, Mun, Eeloo and the brownish one could be Moho or maybe Pol. What do you think?

Having launched her missile the Maelstrom Alpha watches the Ratte's turret exploding skyward.

Well, I guess the key part of that video is how the Smoke domain nodes are setup. So you can see how he adds the fire emission and colors. So the quick way would be to just add a circle and fill it with an ngon. Scale it and move it behind your engine. Press spacebar, and type Quick Smoke and select it from the list. Boom! One quick smoke sim. Scale that box that was added up so the smoke your after will fit inside nicely. Select your circle, go to physics tab and under the flow type change that to either fire or fire and smoke. (They both produce smoke) Just one more than the other. Now select that box that was added, the Smoke Domain, and go back into that physics tab. Find the Temp Diff value under Behavior and change that to 0. (This changes the sim so the smoke/flame doesn't rise like it normally would, helpful in getting that blast effect) After that you should have basic fire spitting out of your circle thus appearing to be from the engine. Key smoke domain settings: Under Smoke flames you can play with the Speed value in the reaction section to increase the size of the flame. Increasing the smoke value also impacts the fire/smoke amounts Key emitter object physics values: The initial velocity checkbox along with the values below it can be tweaked to give your flames some initial oomph. So after all that you just need to select the smoke domain, then head into the material node editor. Like in the video above you should see all the smoke stuff setup and read to go. You just need to add the actual emission and colors of the flame. This part shows you how. http://youtu.be/u-zK7Bu8cAI?t=5m45s Seems like a lot but it goes quick!! Best part is once you setup those nodes once, you never have to do it again. You can just append settings into your new projects from the sim you took the time to get tweaked. Or like Starwhip's awesome renders you can draw it in Gimp! But that requires actual skill drawing that I utterly lack.

The mighty Maelstrom Alpha fires its missile while another Maelstrom tank makes its beachhead. Designed by Zamovinar of Kraken Technologies and rendered by me (Rendered at 1366x768 by request)

Here is a pretty straight forward video that shows you how to use a HDR background. http://youtu.be/qgfw2QwXtA4 To use an image texture just click the image texture option instead of environment as shown in the very beginning of the video. Then you'll have to dive into a bit of the node editor to add those nodes I mentioned above. I'm trying to find a good example video somewhere of that process. If you feel bored you can go to youtube and just search Blender cycles nodes Yet another method to throwing a background into a scene can be found below. Enable "Import Images as Planes" addon in your user preferences and then follow along. http://youtu.be/zhYtJ_VmvXE?t=26m52s Yet another method entirely of doing all this is using the compositor. http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/01/11/tip-rendering-with-a-background-image/ Using that method might work for you as well. And lastly, not background specific but great information on using the material node editor and properly doing textures http://youtu.be/W07H7xeUnGE Cgcookie.com and Blenderguru.com are just a few places I've found with awesome information. - - - Updated - - - I just use a basic fire sim in Blender. Great fire sim tutorial here: http://youtu.be/u-zK7Bu8cAI He makes a campfire in the tutorial but in the setup he goes into detail on most of the sim settings. The sim detail is independent of the render detail so no matter what quality you use for the actual render, using a very highly detailed simulation will extend the render times a LOT!!! Then actually increasing your image sample size will start to increase render times into sometimes hours. Getting that setup right for efficient render times is when you get into render layers, different scenes, compositing... all sorts of fun compositing! It can get nutty. I'm just trying to keep it more simple and not crush my processor too awful much here On that note.... the old techie in me would be remiss if I didn't point out your pegging your processors at near 100% for extended periods of time so you have remembered to keep those heat sinks clean right??

The Aegis Air Defense Destroyer prowling the seas of Kerbal looking for another target.

Welcome!!!! Now lets see some renders!

oh that is one great picture for a background. Have you tried using that image an either an environment texture or image texture for the background? Then you'll have to play around with positioning the image from your camera view using a mapping node. So, if you go to your node editor. Select the background at the bottom (looks like a little planet). So if you picked an image texture you should see something like Image texture --> Background ---> World Output. You just need to add two more nodes to make it work. Try: Texture Coordinate ----> Mapping ----> Image Texture -----> Background -----> World output (Generated) Then play with the mapping node to change the position of the image in the background. You have scale values, Position, and Roation to get everything just so. Hope this helps.

Have not tried the specific hdri but you can find one here http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html Look for the Milkyway edit, I just looked at it and it should do what your looking for

Oh nice! I love the blurred background. Awesome touch! Gonna have to try that myself sometime.

Nothing can withstand the awesome power that is the P1000 Ratte Super Heavy Tank designed by Zekes of the Zokesia Skunkworks. *fixed Image

Hmmm. I've not tried it doing what your attempting but you might try going to the file menu, external data, and check Automatically pack into Blend. This *might* work. Not sure if that moves pointers for the textures though.

Ahh, now you get to play around with how the background is displayed. If you go into the node setup for the background (In cycles render engine) you should see a simple image texture going into the background node, then into the World output. If you add a Texture Coordinate and a mapping node in front of the image texture you will now be able to control where and how that picture shows up. So it will go Texture Coordinate --> Mapping --> Image Texture --> Background --> World Output Connect either the Generated, Window, or Camera option in the Texture Coordinate to the mapping node. Then play with the location, rotation, and scale values to move your image around. Or, an easy quick virtually full proof method to add a "background" behind your scene. Go to user preferences and then addons. Enable the Import Images as Planes addon and save your preferences. Now when you go to the import menu you will see the option to import an image as a plane. So, import a background type image and it should magically appear on a plane with the node setup already to go on a nice flat plane. Next move that plane to the back of the scene facing the camera. Boom, one easy and quick background. A very easy way to fake a background. The only problem with this method is it does not provide any global lighting to the scene. You'll have to adjust your lamps match the look of the background. A great tutorial on using HDR backgrounds here Lots of good tutorials on that channel.

For all your Blender planetary fun.... http://planetpixelemporium.com/earth8081.html Enjoy! Also Blenderguru has a great tutorial on making a planet Earth in Blender. It is somewhat dated as it still uses the Blender internal render engine but he has free textures for the project. http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/create-a-realistic-earth/

Yeah, it needs to be a lot longer. I had tried to add in some shots of a cool barrel roll from both inside and outside the cockpit. I just couldn't make it look right. Even using the camera mod to manage the roll, it just looked kind of weird. The whole project kind of stalled when I discovered that Blender craft file importer script (now addon). It is my new obsession Maybe sometime soon I can do a major rework using Blender to animate extra scenes into it.

This just keeps getting better and better..... I mean seriously! I'm having waaaay to much fun with your Blender addon. Thanks a metric ton for your work on this one! If anything this is spurring me to learn more about Blender. Next comes digging out that animation information I see in the animated objects so I'm not having to manually key frame everything. Also a big thanks to you all who are getting those mods added to this addon.

Hellblazer gave a good place to start. Youtube is just bursting with all kinds of tutorials for Blender. Feel free to message me directly and I can send you a list of channels I've found helpful in one way or another. Check sites like cgtextures.com for all sorts of free pictures you can use as backgrounds/textures. Or like the Moon and Earth pic with the probe above you can just draw the planets yourself and ad a star field behind it.

All Kerbin held their breath as the newly developed MK 2A Shuttle from the Zokesia Skunkworks began the long climb into orbit.

I'm just doing it all in Blender here.