Ohfive30

Thank you all for the info, I used a combination of all your suggestions to get the hatches working on both my currently textured models. Screenshots and explanation of what i did to fix it are in the original post. Thanks again all, at least i know how to go about troubleshooting and fixing the hatches better now.

Thanks. I think the ranger will work best as a rover or lander cockpit.

Could it be the thrustTransform being in the wrong place in the unity heirachy? without seeing the unity setup and heirachy it's a bit hard to diagnose.

Nice tutorials, good work. Any chance that you'll be doing one on adding hatches and ladders to parts? I've had horrible trouble trying to get my hatches and boarding ladders to work.

I think most of these tips have been covered already but I'll list mine anyways. - Make extensive use of the layer system. - get to know your layer effects, inner and outer glows along with drop shadows can help add depth to mechanical parts if used with some subtlety. - Build up a texture on a part as it would have built up in life. for example, start with a base colour / texture then add markings, then add shading and weathering. - build up paint slowly with a low opacity and / or flow. never go 100% unless it's a base layer or some sort of markings painted on the part (eg. serial number, lines text etc.) - look at reference for the type of surface you're trying to simulate, if it's weathered metal, find some images of weathered metal to look at. if it's shiny paint, check out some pictures of shiny paint. - make use of the brushes in photoshop, photoshops customisable brush system is very powerful.

//----------------------Solved - 9th September-------------------// My hatch issues now seem to be solved, it was a simple matter of having to have the Origin of the unity object (0,0,0) within the models collider. a small but vital issue it seems. by offsetting my models node_colliders by -.001 on the y (green/up axis) i was able to get all my parts hatches to work. I still get the occasional catapulted kerbal, but at least they're not trapped inside. some other snippets below also still apply, like the size of the airlock collider, although I've read that .5 x and .5 z will still work I haven't tried it. Thanks to Touhou Torpedos information on his IVA tutorial for enabling me to fix my hatches. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/45070 //----------------------Some progress - 7th September-------------------// I discovered a couple of issues with my horrible hatches after spending a few hours working on them this afternoon. 1) My hatch colliders were too small, I had a cube 0.5m on each side. I've found that an object 1m tall (Y axis) .65m wide (x axis) and .60m deep (z axis) is good for spawning a kerbal without any issues. At least this is one problem elimintated. 2) there's some sort of problem with some of my objects colliders, I use 4 convex mesh colliders , with 2 of them in, the hatch still works without a problem, when I try to add in either of the other 2, I get a "hatch obstructed" message. It doesn't seem to be a positioning issue, will try some different shaped colliders but i've run out of patience with it for the moment. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------// Still not working for me in all cases, I've now got about 6 command pod models, all modelled and textured and in-game. So far, I've only been able to get my hatches working on 2 of the models, a 3rd one works after frantic clicking on the EVA and the others just refuse to work. I've checked and double checked everything for them but I'm still not having any luck. The steps in the solution I wrote below are not working for me any more. //----------------------------A Possible Solution--------------------------// Thanks to the replies I got below i was able to fix my hatches on 2 models and get them working consistently on my test launch vehicles. here's a few steps in case anyone searches out this thread with similar problems. 1 - I created a 1m x 1m x 1m box in my modelling program of choice (Maya) and exported as an .OBJ file. 2 - I created an empty game object for my airlock. 3 - I added a mesh collider to the gameobject and linked in the box mesh I exported earlier. 4 - I made sure that is trigger and convex were both ticked in the mesh collider component. 5 - I made sure that the gameobject was on the correct layer (Part Triggers), and had the correct tag (Airlock) 6 - I positioned the airlock object making sure that A) all sides were a minimum of 0.5m long (i.e. scale of my transform component was not less than 0.5) the Z (blue) axis faced in towards my node_collider and y (green) was in the right direction for the "up" I wanted. C) the origin (transform) of the gameobject was positioned at least 0.2m away from the surface of my node_collider. d) my mesh collider for the airlock intersected my node_collider by a small amount (perhaps about 0.04m into it, this amount seems a little arbitrary) 7 - I then duplicated the whole airlock object and renamed it to ladder, I also changed the tag to Ladder. 8 - I resized the ladder by scaling, but keeping the origin of the object the same as the airlock. I made sure that the mesh collider for the ladder did not intersect my node_collider, but was just above the surface of it. I still had to fiddle with positions and sizes for the airlock and ladder on my Ranger 25 model to get it working, it took a few tries but it now seems to pop a kerbal out fairly consistently on the launchpad. //----------------------------The Problem--------------------------// I've been trying to get the hatch and ladder on the part pictured below to work and it just doesn't want to work consistently. I've looked at and followed the wiki tutorial and also gone through a couple of threads here on the forums that were related to correct placement of hatch colliders and have had no luck getting this hatch to work. I've made quite a few adjustments to the hatch objects and a few times I've had it working, but even then it only pops out a kerbal after clicking on the EVA button 10 - 20 times, otherwise all I get is the "can't exit, Hatch obstructed" message. I'm sure i've got the basics right, but there must be something I'm doing wrong. - the hatch and ladder have the same origin point. - the hatch and ladder colliders do not intersect the node_collider (I've also tried it where they do, It's made no difference so far). - the Z (blue) axis is facing into the node_collider with the Y (green) axis facing the way I want "up" to be. - the hatch is a trigger, as is the ladder. Is there something really simple I've missed? Do the hatch and ladder colliders need to be a certain size to spawn a kerbal correctly? Should the hatch and ladder colliders intersect the node_collider or not? (I've seen conflicting answers to this already) Screenshots below, I would really appreciate it if someone with a bit of know how on this could have a look and see if i've done something wrong.

Here's a full screenshot of the first part finally textured and pretty much completed. Still having all sorts of trouble with the hatch and ladder, it takes a bunch of frantic clicking on the EVA to get a kerbal to pop out. -EDIT- see first post for screenshots -EDIT-

I've added the 2.5m pod and the triangular command pod to the mod, I've got the model of the 2.5m pod done and into the game, i should be getting on to texturing these models soon. apart from the VTOl engines almost every thing is modelled. I think there's a mod or 2 out there that allow you to have other towns etc. in the game.

I had a look at the sketches, they look pretty good, the 2.5m pod would fit in well with KSP. The triangular pod is pretty cool, It reminds me a bit of the VF-22 from the Anime Macross Plus. Want me to add those to the mod? I've managed to do a couple more models now, I started the engines, but did't get them in-game yet. I hope to have a bit more time in the coming weeks to work on the mod.

I'm glad you like it so far. I thought what I'd do for the squarer parts like the flightline mk 2 is make a small adapter piece that could have some electric charge in it and maybe some monopropellant so it's useful as well as making it look like the part blends into the rest of the fuselage. I've UV Mapped the models already and I'll be using a program called Mudbox to make the textures. It's an autodesk product that I've got a student version of.

I can easily build the model for the KUR bot, it's sorting out the animations in-game and getting it working as intended that might be tough. I will give it a try, but only after I've done the parts listed above. and thanks for the support folks, I'll make a test release once all these models are in-game, even if they're untextured.

I've started a thread for the cockpit and engine mod, here's the link to it in the Add-ons forum. I didn't have a name for the mod overall, so I've just called it the Random Parts Mod for now. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/41700-WIP-PARTS-Random-Parts-Mod

CURRENT RELEASE CAN BE FOUND HERE I've started a small mod to build a few parts for KSP, based on some sketches i liked done by Wanner364. I don't really have a name for the mod, so for the moment it's called the random part mod. I'm open to suggestions. images of progress are below. UPDATE: 07-NOV-2013: Been a bit busy with other stuff since the last update, but hope to get a little bit more done soon. I'm looking at reducing the texture sizes, as Mekan1k pointed out, they're rediculous at the moment. might try PNG instead of compressed TGA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE: 26-OCT-2013: Made a small conformal fuel tank , see pics below in the WIP album. I hope to start on another IVA this week, probably one of the flightlines. It should be a little quicker as I'll use the same seat that I've made. And I'll make the texture better too, it was a little low res on parts of the Ranger 25. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Progress and info on the parts. Sketch Fab Models: Sketchfabs of the rest of the mod can be found here In-Game Screen Shots

I've come up with some names for each of the cockpits so I can get them in game, I'll post a WIP thread in the add-on forums shortly and let you know when it's there. it's easy enough to change the names if you really don't like them, I just needed something to start with.

Have you got names for any of the cockpit concepts at all?

yep, it's possible to animate the swivelling, I just have to have a look around at how it's done. There's VTOL engines in the B9 Aerospace pack, so I know it's possible.

that's true, but there's no info out there on getting new characters into the game if that's how it was to work. I'd imagine you could turn the robot into a small self contained ship in itself though with a few animations. worth a try, but I'll go for the easier stuff first.

I really like the style of the cockpits and the exhaust vents, would you mind if I made a mod out of them? I've been looking for something to turn into a mod and I'm not much of a concept artist myself.

Thanks, I'll have a look at those two plugins, I think I'll try and start with a small payload first, maybe a little satellite.

You'd have to edit the .cfg file for the part, if you do a search, probably on the KSP Wiki about modding, there'll be information on which part of the .cfg file you'll need to edit to make it consume resources.

Your rocket looks quite cool, but one thing i would say is that looks like a big rocket for a small payload, particularly if you're only going into kerbin orbit. For getting your orbit sorted out, as soon as you cut your engines to coast to the Apoapsis, go to the map mode and add a maneuver node, then you can have plenty of time to turn the ship and point in the right direction prior to the orbital burn.

I usually hang my rovers underneath and stick engines on the side, then I do a bunch of testing to get the legs mounted at just the right length to allow the rover to re-dock with the lander.

I just got my first SSTO of my own design into orbit and back again, I was fairly pleased with myself. Now, I want to put a decent payload in Orbit, preferably about 40 tons (the giant orange fuel tank with a Clamp-o-tron Sr. at each end) which has got to be able to dock with my space station Has anyone got tips and advice? I've seen a couple of videos of some massive SSTO spaceplanes on youtube that look very impressive, but I believe are from older versions of KSP, has or is anyone doing this in the current version? I'm trying to avoid using too many addons, although I do have mechjeb, kethane, mapsat and Kerbal Attachment system.