landeTLS

here is an rcs module model i made today, highpoly and lowpoly side by side this time Lowpoly is 608 polygons, highpoly is 55k polys im glad you guys like the models! EDIT: updated the renders to show the more detailed hipoly version(225k poly) im concidering reducing the size of the nozzles, they look a bit too big Edit 2: for scale this is almost as big as a kerbal. I am thinking ill include alexustas kerbal model for scale reference in later renders

Re plugin crashing the game:. Im going to stay inside the partmodule {} class rather than use Part {} like nyraths plugin does. That should(?) help lower the chance of crashing the game. But do expect bugs during the initial testing phase. As i am a lousy coder:P. Re part wobble: I was a bit worried at start but after some testing i did with placeholder models ingame it appears that the new 23.5 joints hold up well. Even at 12.5m+ (if they are set up properly in the part.cfg)

Introduction: This has been a pet project of mine for since a while back, i recently decided to pick it up again as a modeling exercise. Scrapped all my old models and started from the ground up. i had originally intended to first release the package in a phase 1 containing a multipurpose heavy nuclear lifting vehicle(Nexus derived) + nuclear tug and a supersized cargo pod system(similar to universal storage) to match. But i got a bit creatively stuck on it and decided to start on a Nuclear Pulse propulsion vehicle first instead(think project Orion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29) , i know nyranth has made an excellent Project Orion mod already but mine is intended to be more simple and (somewhat)stockalike in function and art style. its been a week now and i finally have something to show. the attaced album contains 3 highpoly reference models that im still working on adding(hopefully not too much) detail to. lowpoly models are also about half done, but im still deciding how much real geometry to put on them im posting here to maybe get some feedback on the art style, ideas, critisizm etc. i am a new modeler as i only started with blender about 6 months ago, so i have much to learn. Orion Animation rig test Scope: build a somewhat modular set of super large class parts, parts will range from 7.5m all the way up to 12.5m. Will be made mainly for stock kerbin. will at release include a (poorly:P) coded plugin made by me for the orion engine module, it willl basically function like a regular rocket engineexcept that the throttle will be directly linked to how much time passes between each animation cycle for the bomb launch, blast and pusher plate recoil. yes it will be purely oneshot animation+particle based unlike nyranths that is dynamic based on payload size. there will only be one payload size. for the regular nuclear rocket engines(mostly gcnr's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb) that will be included, im debating with myself if i should do a linked to engine thermal reactor output + radiator type setup or just use stock modules with LF+Blutonium etc. Nertea has Graciously allowed me to reference or use some code from his nearfuture plugin for this. The Name: HLLV stands for Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, its a lousy name for a parts pack i know but its been the working name for the project since the start and i havent come up with a better one yet. im open to suggestions! Inspiration: my work is heavily based on concepts by William Black on Deviantart, check him out, this guy is really a true hard-scifi artist. iwe also been greatly inspired by the art made by forum users Nertea, Daemoria, Daishi and Helldiver. The art style/direction All textures will be all hand painted or procedural(maybe also some textures adapted from stock parts). No photos will be used. Im aiming for a reasonably stockalike result. All normalmaps will eather be baked from highpoly reference models and/or combined with procedural/tiled surfaces. Ambient occlusion baking will be done the same way so that everything lines up. Im working on learning how to make emissive and specular maps in a semi procedural way via eather blender internal or cycles(tho material nodes still are very complex for me). The parts will be a bit more detailed than stock parts but should blend fairly well. Ill be using NO traditional greebling . Ie all detailing will be somewhat decernible as something that belongs on a real spacecraft. Like trusses/support structures, exterior tanks, Wires, Instruments, hatches, fuel lines ++. No starcitizen-like coveringofeverydamnsurfacewithsomedetail:D (starcitizen is still a great game with lots of nice models) Gallery: the first batch of models are a payload containement module(will be dockable and is intended to be stacked to increase available dv), an inline radiator(still not started final detailing pass) and the propulsion module. i intend to suppliment these with a manned lander assembly to go ontop(containing 6 modular parts: service module, rotating habitat, cargo/lifesupport pods, manned commmand pod, landing gear and radial landing engines) NB. these are High Poly Reference models so the finished lowpoly models going into the game will be much more optimized. Extra Wip: this section features extra wip models, they are mostly still in the basic geometry phase, so these are closer to how the lowpoly models will look, here is a 7.5m SSTO Shuttle Intended for Low gravity operations, made this one last weekend but i thought id show it here too Current Payload module detailing I got boored with producing many iterations of detailing for the payload module so im putting it aside for the moment and continuing on the other parts until i can decide which concept to go forward with. In the mean time here are a bunch of different configurations. Help me decide which concept to go forward with:P Im sorry for any misspellings etc. english is not my primary Language

You know you cant actually herd cats right?

Looks very sweet. How about atm density? Is that factored in? I would suggest a default gas composition and cfg configurable system since there will be a lot of new planet packs because of kopernicus. Hope i didnt miss something. I read through the post a bit fast

As far as i know each object (not unity game object but as in blender object containing meshes) creates by default 3 drawcalls, one for rendering the object mesh/meshes itself + one for textures + one for ambient light( + 2 for normals + 1 for specular map + 1 for alpha transparancy etc. if applicable) drawcalls are very cpu/gpu intensive. Much more so than polycount and texture size. So it pays to reduce each freestanding structure to as few objects as possible (each object can contain several individual meshes) For example: create a model containing 6 seperate objects in blender/maya etc. Import into ksp with the ksp/diffuse shader in the material setup = 18 drawcalls(3 x 6) Now join those 6 objects so they form a single object in blender etc. import into ksp the model into ksp the same way = 3 drawcalls(3 x 1) Im not sure how this is calculated if every object uses the same material slot. Worst case is that they are multiplied as if they use different material slots. Best case is that each object ads 2 extra drawcalls on top of the 3 for the first(mesh rendering+ambient light) A good rule of thumb seems to be to only use seperate objects is they need different texture maps/materials etc. Or if you need to animate without armature+mesh skinning For a bit of info read bac9s blog about modeling the new ksc. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entries/747-The-Making-Of-New Where he talks about the impact of drawcalls. There are also a lot of info available online Edit: fixed some info i remember wrong after re reading bac9s blog

Animating the objects in blender is probably the best way to go.it works the same way. I tried once to do animation stuff in unity and it was very frustrating Tip: use the nla menu to strip together your animation actions. This allows for more control and even multiple animations per object.

Iwe been doing some experimentation on the Subject since i usually use the modular approach with my models and export in fbx.. gonna assume your asking if the exported fbx rig can be used in unity. The answer i came up with is both yes and no. Yes vertex group parented meshes to armature works as is (mesh skinning), if a collider is needed this needs to be parented to the bone and not the mesh as the mesh object origin wont be moving.(needs to be a unity primitive collider as mesh colliders cant be skinned and i couldnt get bone parented mesh colliders moving properly at all. Better just stick with primitives) Yes bone relative parenting works but after importing to unity the mesh(plus an optional primitive! collider) has to actually be parented to the animated bone object. However bone constraints(inverse kinematics etc.) As far as i can see dont seem to be usable in unity so all armature animations should be done in blender prior to export. Or alternativly a poselibrary with each intended keyframe pose for the rig should be created in blender and the animation made in unity with the poses (unsure how to do this but i just observed that the poses got exported with the rig as an animation) Hope this helps

Did you guys figure out how to solve the max planetary subdivisions minor issue or is that hardcoded into unity?

In this image: •0.625m tanks: Perfect •1m tanks: Floats on some, clips in others •2.5m tanks: Clips on every single one •3.75m tanks: Same as 2.5m, it even looks the same. Glad to see you back wolf. These perfectrons are very usefull and now i dont need to turn them around when mounting:P I agree many of the stock parts have inconcistent colliders. Dont think squad will fix them up anytime soon tho:( one very basic fix for floating models is to extrude the back part of the mesh so it clips into the tank and leave the collider the way it is. Maybe also lower the surface attach point a bit so the parts dont sink into the bigger tanks too much. I agree its not optimal but as you see some of the stock parts are modeled this way too.(example: the small radial battery)

I use one of two ways. Both require a plugin for blender. And both technically involes temporarily merging objects into one. But allows you to keep modifiers etc. First one is the relatively new multiedit plugin.http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?339369-MultiEdit-%28alpha-1%29-Multiple-Objects-Editing! It merges objects temporarily then seperates and restores any modifiers. Also usually works well on the curve modifier etc. The other is the texture atlas plugin(bundled with blender). But iwe found it less able of restoring especcially object offset arrays and curve modifiers after releasing the objects.

Suggestion(for stage 2 or onwards, after cfg configurations): integrate kcreators deadly ocean and atmosphere stuff. Would be very cool to be able to create an old style moho with burning atmosphere(just less intense maybe:-) maybe integrate some additional effects like corrosion and pressure (simplest implimentation at first would just be some message saying "danger, corrosive environement" and a timer until the ship explodes), the cool thing could be using this for replacing the solid surface on jool/gas giants with pressure enduced explosion. And the suns with progressive heating. Dunno if this is concidered in the scope of the plugin but it would be cool nonetheless. It Will be very interesting to try the alpha build when it comes out.

Omg. This is the most excited iwe been about a ksp plugin since the time planetfactory was first released (i guess i missed all the drama that led up to the release). Sadly it was inherently broken and later broken more and more each ksp update and abandoned by krag. I havent been able to use it since 0.23 came out. Seems you guys have all the code stuff sorted out and taking no shortcuts:P I guess my only humble request would be that perhaps the (/one of the) example planet shipped with the first version be a kindof hybrid duna/kerbin/ planet (1200km radius. Some oceans, 25km atmosphere(thin with no oxygen maybe some mountains with their peaks outside the atmosphere). 1.7g gravity. Call it splat etc., because that will be the sound your lander will make when it "lands") perhaps also a really big rocky "superplanet" the size of jool with somewhat thick atmosphere no oceans and some rediculously high gravity. Call it kool etc. could have several moons orbiting it maybe some less challenging to land on. Would be nice as a first exoplanet around another star Thank you guys so much for making this.

They already tried... Thankfully what came out didnt live long:P

Geezus. You guys want some cheeze with that whine? Helldivers part only pack only uses plugins made by others so its not his fault your having troubles. In any case all the mod authors are doing this for free and ksp 64 bit is still buggy. Most crashes iwe had have been unity caused so nothing external assembly related even shows up on the log. It will take some time before all plugins work properly with it. So just butter yourselves with patience:cool:

heheh yes i agree it looks quite a bit like a cauldron without the fairing and command pod/probecore ontop.

today i wanted to do a scale test on an highly unfinished hipoly booster assembly model with a total of around 920000 polys:cool:(this is actually 3 seperate parts, some hipoly and some unfinished drafts). i decided to just put the hipoly model into ksp to do the scale check and also see if there was any noticable slowdown, unity splitted the object into atleast 15 objects and it took a few minutes to import to unity. the results where not bad at all, no slowdown during startup, very little extra ram use, no noticable framerate slowdown even on the launchpad. hope someone can find this useful. ksp is run at max settings and 3840 x 2160 res, i do wish i had a potato laptop to test this on tho pics:

structural docking rings? I dont believe iwe released any parts yet

Looking really nice

Looks like maya

Looking really nice

thanks, not yet, i do intend to post one when the first models are a bit closer to completion

its actually for a small test project im working on focused on nuclear engines, im still not sure if im gonna use some plugin stuff from near future or from kspi yet. still working on the first batch of models this is the compact radiator, im not so pleased with the folding doors mechanism. still need to do some more stuff on it but im finishing texturing on the other models first

Daishi im curious about the multiple keyframes thing. I usually use the transformation constraint in blender to time things(have something start moving delayed) it seems to work ok tho maybe a bit tedious to set up. But i only end up with 1 keyframe for the start and one for the end of each animation. Is there any other advantages than reduced rigging complexity to doing it with multiple keyframes im not seeing? I really like the look of those double bay doors. Im currently trying to make something a bit similar for an incased folding radiator.

I wouldnt be keen on "fixing" something for someone when its worded this way. Youre asking for someone to do free work for you and even tho you say "please" you dont display any interest to solve the problem yourself and it comes off as rude. And there is also the fact that the file that is a .mu file. I dunno why you would share a precompiled asset file as that would require "reverse engineering" to be able to edit it. I feel inclined to suspect that this is someone elses work perhaps? Even if you have the source .blend, fbx etc. You still need some licence. Edit: ok i saw the link to the original work now. So yes, not your own work. You also posted in the wrong forum. Also something thats generally frounded upon. This should be in the modelling and texturing subforum.