[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[Akira_R]

11 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Define 'supposed to'? (And I'm guessing you are talking about the Merlin line of engines?)

In a perfect world (where I have infinite time), yes, they should have emissives.  However it is already known that they don't.  A few others as well, LR-87 and Superdraco are also lacking emissives, and I think one more that I can't remember off the top of my head (one of the more recent engine additions).

RL-10 does have an emissive texture (all but the RL-10-A-5; it technically has as well, but is mostly on the lower portion of the bell that was cutoff).  If they are not working then something has broken on the config level.

Feel free to open up an issue ticket on the repo regarding this; likely the only way I'll remember about them, which is they only way they'll get done.

As in are they supposed to be working currently lol, and yeah the Merlins and the LR-87, I wasn't at my computer at the time of writing that post.

[blowfish]

1 hour ago, Pappystein said:

the LR-87 has it's pumps between the engine bells.  Often, like the RD-170 and RD-180, the LR-87 is said to be two (or 4 for the RD-170) engines.  This is not because it is two engines combined but rather the Engine bell is basically the same for the LR-91 engine (a single bell engine) on the Upper stage. This lead to a lot of reporters calling it two engines.

The LR-87 is a different case because each combustion chamber actually had its own pump and preburner, and they were just both situated in the space between the engines.  But yes, they were designed to operate as a pair.

12 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

A few others as well, LR-87 and Superdraco are also lacking emissives

That is supposed to be LR-81 right?

[Shadowmage]

21 minutes ago, blowfish said:

That is supposed to be LR-81 right?

Derp; yes   That is what I get for posting without the info in front of me.

[Shadowmage]

Interesting bit of trivia:

SSTU has over 25,000 lines in its source files (how many of those are 'lines of source' is open to debate).

Also...

Working on the emissive for the Merlin line of engines now, should probably have those wrapped up today / this evening.

 

And has anyone figured out how to add Imgur albums (again)?  They appear to be working again from some posts in the 'What did you do today' thread, but I haven't seen how to add them yet.

[Calvin_Maclure]

22 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Interesting bit of trivia:

SSTU has over 25,000 lines in its source files (how many of those are 'lines of source' is open to debate).

Also...

Working on the emissive for the Merlin line of engines now, should probably have those wrapped up today / this evening.

 

And has anyone figured out how to add Imgur albums (again)?  They appear to be working again from some posts in the 'What did you do today' thread, but I haven't seen how to add them yet.

That glow! I bask on the glowy glowing glowiness of the glowy glowing goodnesses.

[Pappystein]

3 hours ago, Calvin_Maclure said:

That glow! I bask on the glowy glowing glowiness of the glowy glowing goodnesses.

WAIT!  Engines are supposed to Glow?!?!

Awesome looking emissives Shadowmage!  

 

[Shadowmage]

Merlin engine emissives:

Also updated the LR-81s for a bit more natural color-scheme (as shown on the Merlins above)

 

[mechanicH]

Hey guys I know this is a bit off topic but I had a question about the interstate decouples with the mini assist SRB's. So I been building a Saturn V and as I'm about to stage the next section the decoupler kicks on and rips through the whole ship destroying it. Almost feels like they are OP. I understand that the SRBs are there to assist in separating the staging and push it away from debris but they are just pushing through the whole ship and destroying everything. They only thing I found that works is that I take the fuel out of the SRBs. Is there another way to do it besides disabling the SRBs separation. Oh and the SRBs are pointed down. Thanks for any advice. And amazing work Shadowmage  the engines look beautiful. 

[blowfish]

@mechanicH Are you playing with any other mods?  I remember seeing that when I was messing with SSTU and RO - basically they were auto-decoupling before they were supposed to and colliding with the ship.

Alternately, maybe you just turned the top decoupler on by accident?

[mechanicH]

@blowfish  I don't have RO   Just a lot of part mods. No mods that mess with the configuration of the game such as RO or FAR. I'll double check the top decoupler again. But as of now should my set up for the decoupler be. Top off bottom on. Auto decouple on and keeping all the ejection forces at 100%?

[blowfish]

5 minutes ago, mechanicH said:

@blowfish  I don't have RO   Just a lot of part mods. No mods that mess with the configuration of the game such as RO or FAR. I'll double check the top decoupler again. But as of now should my set up for the decoupler be. Top off bottom on. Auto decouple on and keeping all the ejection forces at 100%?

Yes, that should do it.

Alternately, you can have top on, bottom off, invert the engines, and disable auto-decouple to push the lower stage away from you.  But either should work.

[mechanicH]

@blowfish  I think I like that idea better. Pushing the used stage makes more sense to me then pushing me further forward because that would throw off my trajectory to AP for circularization. Thanks for the idea fish. . 

[Shadowmage]

@blowfish proposed an idea a couple of weeks back regarding expanding the functionality of the Modular parts texture set selection.  Essentially it was to add an in-editor color selection tool to the texture sets to allow for the player to recolor the parts sections as they desired.  This would mean needing to ship far fewer texture sets with the mod while simultaneously greatly expanding the range of texture colors available for tanks, mounts, etc.

I have spent some time over the past weeks deliberating with @blowfish on how to best implement the feature, how to handle the UI, how to persist the data, and how to implement it in a reusable manner so that it could be used across all of SSTU's 'Modular Parts'.  I am pleased to announce that I have a prototype implementation mostly working (all aside from data persistence).  Will likely spend the next week or so cleaning up the implementation and sorting through the last few unknowns.  Not sure when the feature will be merged into the main branch, but I would expect it to be available with the first SSTU-for-KSP-1.3+ releases (if it all works out well).

What this will do is add a new button to the stock App Launcher in the editor scenes (VAB or SPH) (alternatively a hotkey could be setup to open the GUI).  When the app-launcher button (or hotkey) is pressed it will open a 'Craft Recoloring' GUI that will show a list of all of the recolorable segments on all parts on the current vessel -- MFT/MSRB/MSC parts have three recolorable sections, an MEC engine has one section (mount), MUS tanks have up to 5 (dome, upper, intertank, lower, mount).  A button will be available next to each 'section' to allow for opening the 'Section Recoloring' GUI; this GUI will contain RGB color sliders as well as a selection of preset color selection buttons.

This will allow for removal of all plain colored texture sets, leaving just the 'white' set available for use with the recoloring function.  Most of the 'unique' texture sets will stay in place, such as the selection of orange foam, gold foil, silver, and striped textures;  some of them may also have recolorable sections depending on the specific texture (e.g. the white intertank on one of the orange foam textures).

Still quite a bit of work to do on the feature though.  Every single texture set will need a recoloring mask created for it.  The rest of the mount/nosecone/adapter textures and models will need to be reworked for the AO/specular shader setup.  A couple new shaders will need to be written (standard already written, new one for emissive, new one for transparency).  Lots of configs will need updated, and several new patches written.

Will likely share a few more details (and screenshots) this evening after I get a few more bits fully working.

[rasta013]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

*snip* This would mean needing to ship far fewer texture sets with the mod while simultaneously greatly expanding the range of texture colors available for tanks, mounts, etc.

AMAZING IDEA!  Good thinking on both your parts!

I'm sure a number of other mod/modders would be interested in this kind of capability and I know that users of the feature would love to see it propagate so, will there be any way for others to hook into this feature through the plugin and adaptation of their texture sets?

Edited March 27, 2017 by rasta013

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, rasta013 said:

I'm sure a number of other mod/modders would be interested in this kind of capability and I know that users of the feature would love to see it propagate so, will there be any way for others to hook into this feature through the plugin and adaptation of their texture sets?

The short answer:  Not really.

The long answer:  Sure.  Of course, they would just need to rework their parts to use the SSTU-ModularXXX modules, as all of the texture-set-recoloring functionality is being baked directly into those modules.  It might make an appearance in the other SSTU-texture-set enabled module(s), so there might also be easier ways to use it on parts.  It will also rely on custom shaders and a fairly custom texture setup, so they would pretty much need SSTU to be installed (along with its shaders and shader loading code).

The longer short answer:  Its all open source, anyone is free to implement any part(s) of the code that they want.

[rasta013]

2 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

The short answer:  Not really.

The long answer:  Sure.

The longer short answer:  Its all open source, anyone is free to implement any part(s) of the code that they want.

That was exactly the answer I was expecting to be honest.  The foregone conclusion being that SSTU was installed was part and parcel of my question too as I expected it would be needed for access to the plugin.  Mostly I was just curious to see if it was even going to be exposed to hook into and the answer is yes - albeit with a fair amount of work and difficulty.  Thanks man!

[Shadowmage]

Coming soon to an editor near you -- Rainbow Fuel Tanks! (or at least a wide assortment of single-color fuel tanks).

Just using a very basic mask for testing, which is why the fuel lines on the side are recolored as well.  GUI is also quite primitive at the moment.  Persistence works though, which was a big unknown earlier today.  Code is all prototype-ey and a bit fragile at the moment, but it does clean up and unify all of my shader/texture set code to use a single interface, while adapting it to be much easier to use with custom shaders in the future (without code-side changes).

Also created a simpler to use set of tools for building the shader asset bundles in the Unity editor.  Now its a simple 'select shader files', 'hit export button for chosen platform', and finally 'input final name of compiled bundle into file save dialog window, and optionally choose a path to save to'.  Much simpler than it was before, which required manual renaming and copying around of files, as well as a bit of in-editor setup work to get them assigned to bundles in the first place.

As can be seen from the screenshots this method allows for recoloring only specific portions of a texture through the use of a secondary grayscale mask texture.  This allows for non-recolorable bits to be present in the model, such as the fuel lines on the side of the tank or the stripes, to stay the original color used in the texture.  It also allows for partial masking in the texture... which is a feature that I haven't explored much yet but might have interesting uses.

[The-Bean]

Oh man, that looks fantastic. Cannot wait.

 

Edited March 28, 2017 by The-Bean

[tater]

Wow, that's really impressive. I don't use many other part mods, but this will clearly allow the user to get colors very close to other parts, I imagine.

[Shadowmage]

On the subject of recolorable textures/parts, there is a bit of a feature that I would like some feedback on to see if it would be desireable / used.

Currently the recolorable part system uses a single mask and user-selectable color for the entire part.  That means, using the above screenshot examples, that you can recolor the 'white' portion of the tank, but cannot recolor the 'stripes'.

What I would like to propose would be to use (up to) three recolorable sections per mask texture.  This would mean that the above examples could have a separate customizable color for the main 'white' portions of the tank, one for the 'stripes', and potentially a third for the 'intertank' area.  Not all masks would need or have more than one recolorable section.  Different mask setups could be used for various stripe patterns. 

Essentially this would mean I would only need to ship a single 'standard' white texture for the tanks and many other parts (though I would still include the non-standard textures such as orange foam, gold foil, etc), along with a few different masks to allow for the various stripes and pattern setups.  It would only require adding a few more persistence fields to each of the modules, adding two more buttons to the recolorable-part-selection GUI for each section, and a few other quite minor code and shader changes.

Any interest in this 'advanced' version of the part-recoloring?  How much interest is there in the basic part-recoloring in general?  (Will likely do the basic version either way, as it will allow me to eliminate quite a few extra textures)

[rasta013]

16 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Any interest in this 'advanced' version of the part-recoloring?  How much interest is there in the basic part-recoloring in general?

Personally I love the idea.  I'll take as much control over coloring as you're willing to code.  If it's basic and a single section/mask - so be it - if I get to do more, even better.  I like having as much control over the appearance, assembly and performance of my rockets.  You've given me as much control as I can get for two of those three and this would go a long ways towards giving me full appearance control.  Gimme gimme gimme...  

[Reblobic]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Any interest in this 'advanced' version of the part-recoloring?  How much interest is there in the basic part-recoloring in general?  (Will likely do the basic version either way, as it will allow me to eliminate quite a few extra textures)

This would definitely benefit KSP and SSTU. A really cool idea that, if executed well, would add to the experience of making your rockets truly your own.
SSTU is the one mod that I would recommend to any player because of its great parts and functionality, I think this would be a great addition.

Love what you're doing, please keep it up!

[Calvin_Maclure]

2 minutes ago, Reblobic said:

This would definitely benefit KSP and SSTU. A really cool idea that, if executed well, would add to the experience of making your rockets truly your own.
SSTU is the one mod that I would recommend to any player because of its great parts and functionality, I think this would be a great addition.

Love what you're doing, please keep it up!

@Shadowmage, I second this! 

[Shadowmage]

A couple more... realistic... examples of what can be done with the 'advanced' masking setup (and the recoloring in general).  The below images were all generated using a single diffuse and mask texture for the tank and mount (each).  With a couple more masks, the recoloring possibilities are astounding.  Note, especially, the recolorable 'banding' on the mount section, exampling how one of the recolor channels can be dedicated to 'detail' recoloring (banding, hoses, fuel spheres).  The GUI really didn't become any more complex, merely had a couple extra buttons added per-section to control the extra mask areas.

Overall I think I'm quite pleased with the prospects for the 'advanced' recoloring setup.  Where one choice was good, three is definitely better.  I was hesitant at first because of the added complexity, but after playing with it for a few hours... I'm sold.

Standard Saturn texture, with red detail band on mount

Inverted stripes, with blue detail band on mount

Random browns/greens/almost camo colors, with green'ish banding on the mount

Full Black

Orange/Gray

Stock Colors w/stripes

Full Stock White(ish) with red banding on the mount

Good stuff....

[StickyScissors]

This is a fantastic idea! It's like KerbPaint but 1000x better.