Talisar

Aha, I may have spotted something... In your config you have node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.75, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2 node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.0, 0.75, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 Try changing it to: node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.75, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2 node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.75, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1

Hmm, I'm by no means an expert at this. The only thing that springs to mind is did you maybe accidentally uncheck the "Mesh Render" box in unity for that particular mesh when you were adding the thrust transforms? And are those visible gray parts a separate mesh from that part this is invisible?

For that matter, so is stupid_chris's avatar

Weird how?

I notice that in the first config you have "mesh = DrakePod.mu" and in the second you have "mesh = model.mu". Did you change the name when you exported it?

I just dropped it in my GameData directory. Now the parts that were exhibiting that behavior have the flavor text added when I right click them, and they stay neatly in their assigned spots.

Yay! I've been playing with the old one and eagerly awaiting your updated one Thanks Ackander!

I also get that quite often when I use docking ports in my build

That's an issue due to the way the configs are set up. I'm waiting for NathanKell to finalize his update, then I'll be updating the configs on my tanks to keep that from happening. In the meantime, if you open the actiongroup menu, remove all resources, then add the ones you want, it should get rid of those. They'll show up again when you save and reload too, unfortunately. I'm not completely certain, but you may be able to do a temporary fix by pasting this into a cfg and dropping it into your gamedata folder. It may be worth a try... @PART[TAL*] { !RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} !RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} !RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} !RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} }

From what I understand if you use the FSAnimateGeneric module from the FireSpitter plugin instead of the stock module you can have multiple animations. Wow, it feels weird offering suggestions to you instead of asking you for help

I'm thinking of the bottom piece being attached to the tank permanantly, and possibly having options for different parts that would be available to attach for utility. Such as a framework like you describe for land bases, or adapter plates with mounting points for multiple cylindrical attachments, or a cargo bay. That way I'd only need one tank model, and you could add the part that you need for any particular mission profile.

Actually, spheres have quite a lot larger volume than you would expect when compared to cylinders of a similar length. There was a lot of math done in order to get the masses and volumes balanced against stock parts earlier in the thread. You can see the summary HERE Conversely, the volumes of tori are actually much lower than you would expect, and their masses would be far greater than you would expect. Again, math was done HERE (not as comprehensive as the spherical ones, as I fudged it for the other sizes a bit) The fuel densities being used were figured to be as close to those used by stock parts as possible (stock parts are inconsistent between themselves, so there is a bit of variation, but it's as close as can be expected.). Math is HERE for LFO and a summary for other fuels is HERE. All of the above is just to demonstrate that a lot of work has gone into ensuring that these parts are as balanced as possible and not cheaty. That being said, if you are using ModuleManager to allow you to change the fuel types in the tanks, make up a cfg with the following and place it in your gamedata folder. That should allow the MFT plugin to figure the masses for the tanks while using stock fuels in the same way that does using real fuels, and as it is assuming cylindrical tanks you end up with far smaller masses. (I think.... I'm not a pro at making MM configs) @PART[TAL*] { @MODULE[ModuleFuelTanks] { !basemass } }

Lol, well I intend on making these with multiple textures to choose from, in the same way that you can change the color of the bands on the current set. I'll try to include a concrete texture for you when I start making them

Here's kind of what I'm thinking for a base for the half tanks:

Ahh, I see what you mean. I never got as far as figuring that much out, I was mostly just figuring out the technical bits of the modelling. I do try to balance my parts against stock as much as possible though, so it would likely fall somewhere between the hitchhiker and a command pod as far as the mass ratios are concerned. Once I get that far, I'll probably be posting here asking for input (as well as asking taniwha for help keeping me honest with the math ) I appreciate the offer! I was able to get them to work in-game (somewhat), my main issue is getting them made. I model in 3ds max, and I can burn the normal map from the high poly model just fine (and when I did a render using them in 3ds max they looked great), but when I tried to use the nvidia plugin in photoshop to convert them to be useable by unity they got kind of washed out. So I'm pretty sure that my problem is in the conversion settings rather than making the map in the first place. I'm certain it's just a matter of buckling down and learning how to do it correctly. I'll definitely give you a PM once I get to that point again and have some examples to show you though, maybe you can spot what I'm doing wrong.

It's far bigger than it looks in that picture. That's one of the largest spheres (7.5m diameter), so you could easily fit 4-5 of the hitchhiker modules inside it and probably have space to spare. To give you a sense of scale, that hatch on the front is about the same height as a kerbal. My design was for it to actually be 2 levels inside with the top being CCC and the bottom level being crew and storage space. It could easily hold a dozen Kerbals comfortably, I'd think. That was just a very rough first shot at it, and I felt it was far too unpolished. It was mostly an exercise for me to figure out how to handle airlocks, ladders, animations, and lighting. At the time I had those mostly figured out is when I started the revamp of the spherical and toroidal tanks in order to share textures and reduce the part counts, so it kind of got put on the back burner. I also needed to take some time and improve my texturing skills a bit (that particular texture looked like concrete). It's something I can definitely go back to though, and I think that this design scheme that is developing for new tanks would carry over well to hab/command modules too.

Hmm, I have been focusing on the face normals, but I never played with the vertex normals (even though I should have thought of it). Thanks for the explanation on that. I will experiment and see if I can make an improvement there. I'm by no means a pro, but I'm learning

I worked on something like that earlier, but never got it to release quality. It's definitely an option for the future though. Here's a pic (It's from about 35 pages back, so I'm not surprised you didn't see it . The top half-sphere is a command pod and the bottom is a half-spherical LFO tank. Something along the lines of these?

That's the plan. I'm going to work on much better texturing that I have in the past, and I also plan to include normal maps this time (if I can get them to work correctly. I had issues before ). But my texturing skills have improved quite a bit since v1 (I hope) so I expect I can do better this time around. My goal is to aim for a very stockalike look to these. This is due to the part you are attaching orienting itself to the normals of the faces of the collision mesh. The collision mesh is not nearly as smooth as the rendered mesh, in order to keep the tanks from crashing peoples computers. Even with the simplified mesh, there are a LOT of polys involved in making a spherical tank compared to a cylindrical one. For example, the maximum number of faces Unity will allow in a single collision mesh is 255, so the current large spherical tank actually uses 5 separate meshes to make it work. I could smooth it out by adding more faces to allow a smoother progression over the surface, but I'm afraid it would negatively affect performance. Funny story here too, it took me forever to figure out that I had to rotate the final model by 5.625 degrees in order to present a flat face in the 4 cardinal directions so radially attached parts would sit flat there

Ok, now I'm pretty sure you're stalking me I feel special. This is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking of. A "structural" piece that would have good geometry upon which to add other parts (such as legs, storage container, KAS equipment, etc...). If designed right, it could also act as a mount for large constructions, such as if you want to mount a small half-tank (base size of 2.5m) on top of a 2.5m cylindrical tank. Interesting concept there. That's pretty much the same procedure that I used made the struts for my toroidal tanks work (in a more Euclidian fashion ) I like having the structural ring for their base, but if I made it part of the tank instead of the mount I could possibly ensure an intersection on any sized tank if I used the right strut curvature. I'll play with it and see how it works. Thanks for the feedback guys, keep it coming!

I tend to agree, an actual bundled mod pack would not really be feasible. However, I think a database such as the one StoneBlue has set up HERE wouldn't be an unreasonable idea, so there is a centralized place where someone can go to find out what the most current version of mods and get links directly to the respective threads. I know I spend a lot of time checking through the threads to ensure I'm up to date, then rechecking to make sure I didn't miss one, then rechecking again...

Just wanted to pop in and say that the current version of this pack appears to be working just fine with the most recent experimental version of MFT (v4_pre8, which you can get from the MFT thread HERE). The only major issue is that if you build a ship and change the fuel types using the actiongroup menu, then save it. When you next load the ship, the original fuels will show up on the Tweakables menu with values of NaN/0.00. You can get rid of this by opening the actiongroup menu and removing all/readding the desired fuel types to the tank. After I get home from work today I'll put together updated configs and push out my update, and the combination of those and a MM patch should fix that issue. Big thanks to NathanKell and taniwha for the hard work getting this up and running again!

Oh, I intend for you to be able to choose the connection mounts for the half-spheres. The part I was talking about being built in was the "bottom" of the tank, where it is widest. Just thinking of making some kind of visual structure for that point. If I just chop the sphere in half and leave it like that, it won't look very convincing.

That's an issue with all the hubs, as far as I know. The stock hubs act in the same manner. I think it has something to do with the fact that you are using actual stack nodes to attach there rather than just surface attaching.

This is absolutely something I'll shoot for. It seems to be in demand I'll find some way to make them work. Probably a separate tank model that has an attached base so it doesn't just look like the bottom half is simply chopped off.