Custom struts

[NecroBones]

Has anyone here tried making struts or fuel lines from scratch? Now that KSP has part modules for them, it should be doable.

I started working on one yesterday, by first importing the stock strut and fuel line into Blender to see how they were put together. I built my own strut using the same transform orientations, and found that everything was 100% backward. I flipped my models around and got it mostly working, but now the strut line doesn't extend into the target anchor, despite the model terminating right at the target's origin in the modeller.

I've compared back and forth to the stock parts and can't figure out why it behaves this way. It would make sense if I didn't extend the mesh to the target anchor's origin, but I did.

[Randazzo]

Has anyone here tried making struts or fuel lines from scratch? Now that KSP has part modules for them, it should be doable.

I started working on one yesterday, by first importing the stock strut and fuel line into Blender to see how they were put together. I built my own strut using the same transform orientations, and found that everything was 100% backward. I flipped my models around and got it mostly working, but now the strut line doesn't extend into the target anchor, despite the model terminating right at the target's origin in the modeller.

I've compared back and forth to the stock parts and can't figure out why it behaves this way. It would make sense if I didn't extend the mesh to the target anchor's origin, but I did.

http://ksp.necrobones.com/screenshots/2015-08/KSP%202015-08-07%2009-32-06-06.jpg

I tried the same thing with fuel lines in an attempt to make heat pipes and failed miserably. No matter what I did the rotation was wrong.

Nertea has working heat pipes, though I'm not sure if they use the same compound part module as stock or he wrote his own plugin. ASFAIK fuel lines and struts use the same mechanic for placing the visual parts, so it might be helpful.

Edit: I don't think they are entirely from scratch though, which sort of invalidates my post.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Randazzo

[Ven]

I think that you need to just scale up the line object a bit, extending it past your target transform may just work.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Ven

[NecroBones]

Yeah, I was going to try extending past as the next test. As long as it lines up correctly at all possible deployment lengths, I won't complain, but it may not look right in the menu icon. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something, since the stock ones show two different behaviors. The stock strut meets up with the target transform's origin. The stock fuel line falls short of it, touching the target "cap" transform's mesh, but not the origin. I tried similar setups with mine without things lining up right.

I'll experiment with it some more next week. I won't have time before then.