Modelling frustrations and resizing in Blender

[xtoro]

So despite all the outdated tutorials I've found, I managed to actually load a model into the game, but, issues...

Model in Blender:

Model in Unity:

And in KSP:

All good thus far!

So now, I ended up with this size by following a really really old tutorial and now I'm stuck with an odd-sized 2m part. What I need to do is resize this entire model from 2m to 1.75m.

Other than tweaking the scale values, how can I actually resize everything to a specific size? There are several objects in my model so I need to resize ALL of them...

And lastly, is there a more streamlined way to model other than Blender>Unity>KSP? Mainly texturing? I hate the UV mapping in Blender. It's not exactly intuitive to use.

Any tips are appreciated!

XT

[Randazzo]

Short of going back into Blender and setting the dimensions on the models, you have two config options.

You could resize the entire thing, width, depth, and height with rescaleFactor. To get 1.75m out of a 2m part you would use:

rescaleFactor = 0.875

If you wanted the height to remain the same, use a MODEL node

MODEL
{
    model = YourDirectory/YourModel           // Don't put .mu on the end of this
    scale = 0.875, 1, 0.875
}

This would resize the depth and width but leave the height the same.

If there is a better method than Blender/Unity/KSP, I don't know it, but I'm no pro at it myself. I typically stick to sphere or cylinder projections and I'm plagued by shading seams that only show up when using specular shaders.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Randazzo

[Fengist]

First, I would recommend getting the scales and sizes right in your 3D modeler rather than changing it in the .cfg. While KSP recognizes the scale sizes just fine, one of the problems I had when uploading a ship to Sketchfab was that it didn't recognize the scale settings. Now if you're creating parts just for yourself, that's no issue. If you plan to release parts and it becomes popular, at some point someone is probably going to try to upload to Sketchfab and the parts that aren't scale=1 will be the wrong size. I learned this the hard way.

As for UV... Blender drove me nuts. I went with Wings3D so I can't help much there.

[xtoro]

I don't want to use the scale option, I want to actually resize them so I can keep scale at 1. But when I resize in blender it uses the mouse. How can I resize parts by typing in a size in metric, or in percentage? I don't want to just eyeball it...

[cxg2827]

any time you do some type of transformation you dont have to eyeball and use the mouse. so for scaling, moving, extruding etc. you can type in the specific distance, and lock it into a plane or a single axis.

for instance. scale the whole object by selecting all, hit , then type in 0.875 [ENTER]. This will scale to the active median, origin, or whatever you have it set to.

you can also lock the scaling by axis or plane by hitting [x],[y], or [z] for axis locking, and [sHIFT][x], [sHIFT][y], or [sHIFT][z] for plane locking.

[Randazzo]

I'm not sure I understand what scale you are referring to. "Scale = 1" has absolutely no bearing on your part, and only affects the attachment node definitions. It's a separate thing from the rescaleFactor. I didn't suggest altering it.

For example

scale = 1
node_attach = 0,1,0,0,1,0

Results in an attachment node at 1m on the Y+ axis.

scale = 0.5
node_attach = 0,1,0,0,1,0

Results in an attachment node at 0.5m on the Y+ axis.

rescaleFactor is, by default, 1.25m. You have to tell it not to do that.

Basically, if your part is the proper size in Blender/Unity, you need to manually set your rescaleFactor to 1.

Blender is already on a scale of 1m by default, and changing the part dimensions won't affect that.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Randazzo

[NecroBones]

any time you do some type of transformation you dont have to eyeball and use the mouse. so for scaling, moving, extruding etc. you can type in the specific distance, and lock it into a plane or a single axis.

for instance. scale the whole object by selecting all, hit , then type in 0.875 [ENTER]. This will scale to the active median, origin, or whatever you have it set to.

you can also lock the scaling by axis or plane by hitting [x],[y], or [z] for axis locking, and [sHIFT][x], [sHIFT][y], or [sHIFT][z] for plane locking.

Yes, this is the way to do it. (though I didn't know about plane locking with SHIFT! Thanks!)

One additional piece of advice-- Make sure all of your transforms stay scaled to 1,1,1. Do all of the scaling while in EDIT mode, and not OBJECT mode, since the latter will scale the transform instead of the vertex positions.

This will save you a lot of confusion, since the transform scaling will carry over to Unity, first of all, but secondly it'll affect other things you do in Blender, such as UV unwraps. Generally there's no harm in having transforms in different scaling, but it took me a while to figure out that distorted unwraps were being caused by some scaling in Object mode that I had done. It's easier to just work in 1,1,1 scale transforms.