noonespecial

Sorry about the lack of updates. Progress is being made. I'm working on IVAs for the pod and for a modular rover system I'm making. I've found someone here on KSP who has got Blendshapes/Shape Key animations working in KSP and I've been experimenting trying to get them to work myself. Also, I've been working on the lander for the ChakaMonkey mod. I also noticed that 0.25 kinda completely broke this mod. I'll be updating it within the next few days to fix it.

Does the part have a collider?

To show reflection, the part.cfg file needs editing, and the texture file should have an alpha channel. Some mods may already support this plug in by having appropriate texture and part.cfg, such as FASA.

Here are the links for setting up the hatch in Unity. Airlock (Actually a hatch, but it's called an airlock in KSP) Adding airlocks and ladders to parts - Airlock collider must extend beyond the ladder collider to allow the click menu. Airlock positioning 1 Airlock positioning 2 Airlock positioning 3. These and other useful links (such as how to make an IVA) can be found Development Links Compilation thread here

I don't mind at all. Especially if I stand to learn something from it . What is your preferred format?

Now I'm the confused one. Yes, I did. I did mention that, immediately before the AO baked photo in the tutorial. "It is also recommended that at this point you bake any required textures before duplicating any parts. " I believe that is exactly what I did and said to do in the tutorial. "It is also recommended that at this point you bake any required textures before duplicating any parts." For the purpose of this tutorial, I found only one tank was need to illustrate the point of the tutorial. In application, such as the part being used by ChakaMonkey, I used two unique tanks. I don't see why a third would be needed unless you are overly relying on AO to provide shading. I mentioned that myself. From the original post, "Note: As planning a model before building is a very important step before building, it is worthy to note that it was at this step I started the original model. I knew what needed to built, so I made the components then constructed the craft after unwrapping. Unlike what I did for this tutorial, I didn't start with a completed craft and deconstruct it" So that is the source of my confusion, as all these issues were addressed.

You mean this? If so, yes I will be working on that over the next few days. Hopefully get a model that YANFRET is happy with

1. Just rendered in cycles with Diffuse and material color. 2. Yes, I baked the AO with only the unique meshes in the scene. If you duplicate before baking, the render results are strange.

For the second tutorial, I'll be using a more complex model. This is a rather complex model. Let's take a look at the UVMap of it unwrapped. Quite a mess, though it could be worse. A "Smart Unwrap" would generate this result: If we take a closer look at the model, we can see there are many "duplicate" components: The fuel tanks (16) Support Beams (more than 100) Joints (x96) Storage Boxes (x4) Multiple Sections of the top plate Mounting Plates (4) So that means there are roughly 234 unique islands in the UVMap. Theoretically, we should be able to reduce this to less than 10 unique islands. As in the first tutorial, now that we know which components are duplicates, let's remove all but one of each. I ended up with 6 components. Lets unwrap it and take a look, I ended up with 19 unique islands. It is much better than the total unwrap, but I think it could be better. I want to change the sizes of the islands to allow for greater detail in some areas and less detail in areas that don't really need it. It is also recommended that at this point you bake any required textures before duplicating any parts. That will prevent duplicates rendering more than once per island can causing undesirable artifacts. Note: As planning a model before building is a very important step before building, it is worthy to note that it was at this step I started the original model. I knew what needed to built, so I made the components then constructed the craft after unwrapping. Unlike what I did for this tutorial, I didn't start with a completed craft and deconstruct it The next part is much more involved. In the previous tutorial, it was a simple matter of rotating the parts around the center. Not so with this one. Most of the parts will be duplicated and manually moved to the desired location. For simplicity, I will only build 1/4th of the lander. At this point, it's a simple matter of duplicating and rotating the duplicates to complete the model. Now the model and the UVmap are complete. Texture your model as you desire and...

That looks a little similiar to this: I used a different technique while unwrapping this one. I'll improve this tutorial, then do I tutorial on how I did this one. Although I agree with nli2work. The UVMap on that model is pretty good to begin with.

OH! I see what you're saying. Extend the UV island outside the bounds of the UVMap (I probably have my terminology wrong).

This was meant to be a newbie introduction to the concept. Arrays and what-have-you are a little more advanced than I intended this tutorial to be. Sounds more like you're talking about texturing as opposed to uv unwrapping. But, what do you mean by extending the UV beyond the texture? It was my understanding that, generally speaking, the textures should extend beyond the UV. Additionally, multiples of texture width/height. I understand what you mean there. If you're using a seamless texture, the UV should be a multiple of base texture size so the seams line up. But you lost me on the extend the UV beyond the texture part. Indeed. I also think experience, as well as artistic judgement and design necessity, is an important factor. This technique isn't applicable to all situations. To all: Thanks for the suggestions, recommendations, and what-not. I'm still very much a newbie to this

I'll be expanding it with a more complex model in the next few days. But, as it's a completed model I'm going to be using, I basically have to recreate it. I'll be using the model for this, which I also used this technique on:

This is something that probably common knowledge among the more experienced modders out there, but for newbies like me, it was an revelation. I had seen textures done with this technique before, but wasn't aware on how to accomplish it. Then someone let me in on the secret in the kspmodders IRC channel. I haven't seen this particular topic covered in any tutorials, so I thought I'd write one myself. Suppose you have a relatively complex symmetrical model. For example: If you take the time to go through, mark the appropriate seams, and unwrap it, your results will look like this: If you are lazy and just use Blender's "Smart Unwrap" function, you'll get an even bigger mess. Either will result in many islands without much area to do a texture in, resulting in rather low quality textures unless you ridiculous sizes such as 2048 or 4096. Even at those sizes, the texture will never be good. Here is an alternate method that will result in much higher texture quality by drastically minimizing the number of islands and allowing more space on the UV maps for the remaining islands. First, go through your model and remove any components that repeat through out the model. In this case, let's start with the spheres. Even reducing to only this level offers a great deal of improvement in the UV Map: However, we can go even further by reducing repeated faced within the primitives themselves. In this next screen shot, I've deleted all but three faces in both the cylinder and sphere. Unwrapping this, though, results in an unusual UV map with a lot of wasted space because of the length of cylinder. There are two possible fixes for this. Either resize the island or edit the model. Resize the island is easier, but would result in distortion in the texture, so not desirable. So I cut the faces of the cylinder in half and unwrapped it again. This results in a much better UV map with minimal wasted space. Now, lets give the model a simple texture: Once you are happy with the texture, it's time to start rebuilding the model which is remarkably easy. First, lets duplicate and rotate the faces of the cylinder until we have rebuilt it. For this, I duplicated the entire cylinder, then rotated it 180 on the x axis. Next, I selected the side faces then duplicated and rotated them 45 on the z axis until it is rebuilt. You'll notice at this point that you have some odd seams appearing in the model. To fix this, select the entire model and "Remove Duplicates" from the Mesh Tools menu. After that, repeat with the sphere. Then duplicate the whole sphere until it circles the cylinder. Then duplicate the row of spheres until the entire original model is rebuilt. The resulting model is identical to the original, but the UVmap allows for much higher quality textures (and easier to create textures). There are other methods to achieves these same results, this is one way. Side by Side comparison of the original UVmap vs the Second UVmap.

You're a little late. I sent him the file about 12 hours ago. However, the problem with that site isn't KOSMOS, as it's license does allow distribution. There are MANY mods on that site that are being redistributed without the author's knowledge or consent. It is the reason why that site is blocked. So yes, I and many others have a problem with that. In fact, I was the one who (as far as I know), first posted a link from that site on KSP's forums which lead to the discovery by moderators and the blocking of that site. You can reference that discussion here. As the site has been blocked by moderators, I really don't think there is a need to contact an moderator to show you that is not okay to post that link. Please delete it.

Of course, that is a blocked site. Someone is breaking licenses by redistributing mods without the authors position. Please delete that link.

From what I remember, in KOSMOS, they actually treated it like two solar panels with two "deploy" buttons. One that extended the panels and allowed them to rotate, then a second that activated and rotated the base. So it should be two pivot transforms linked to two different modules in the part.cfg. Let me check some of my older back ups, I might have a copy of KOSMOS laying around.

That is a pretty cool concept. If you need help figuring out the transforms for it, take a look at the old KOSMOS pack. They had a large solar panel with two rotating axis as well.

You don't need an animation. In Unity, after you add the emissive shader and texture, just adjust the alpha until you are happy with the result. Write with part tools, and done.

Of course you are working together. Just as SpeedyB and I worked along side each other to bring Senmi's THSS mod back from the dead. Just as SpeedyB contributed to the Karbonite. Just as a dozen modders are contributing to ChakaMonkey. Nearly every big and successful mod in KSP has been either a collaborative effort or been continue by someone who wasn't the original author. I wasn't suggesting that you break of collaboration and works alone on your own mod. My point was organization and version control. The vast majority of the people who download mods don't go diving through every page on the forum. If they go the forum at all, they usually only scan the OP for the download link. Which means, most of the over 5,000 people who have downloaded this Mod are completely unaware of the additions you have made. As you are unable to edit SpeedyB's OP in this thread, the best alternative would be to create a new thread and a new download that users can easily track either by date or version number. Or, instead of posting your models, each with separate download links, scattered all over the forum, you can email the files to SpeedyB and wait for him to roll them into the next official update.

Here's a model I made for someone who requested a project, then they disappeared/lost interest before they finished their project. Fusion Engine Here's another one I made for my NT-SSX mod to be a small radial engine. But I made it too high poly and couldn't get it to decimate to my liking and I was too lazy to retopo it. Engine

Apollo13, Why don't you start your own mod? You can call it "Hex Pluss: An Addon Pack for Hex Truss". That way, instead of releasing all your additions here, where they are scattered all over the forum, there will be a single place to download your additions that players could easily track via version numbers and so on. I think creating your own mod and thread would be more organized and advantageous for you, the people who download the mod, and for SpeedyB.

It appears that KSP does not support BlendShape animations, even though Unity does. Would it be possible to write a plugin to add that support to KSP?

Disappointing Update Oct 4 2014 I spent the last several hours creating, texturing, and animating this: Only to discover.... that Unity doesn't support Shape Key animations. Back to the drawing board. On a side note... discovered some rather creepy loading screens when starting up KSP today.