Beginners Part Modding Tutorial

[Stas_lol]

How can I to config plume of engine, such as length and thickness? I changed some parametrs like "fx_exhaustLight_blue", etc. But it doesn't have any visual changes in game..

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

3 hours ago, Stas_lol said:

How can I to config plume of engine, such as length and thickness? I changed some parametrs like "fx_exhaustLight_blue", etc. But it doesn't have any visual changes in game..

Unless you use a plugin, i'm fairly certain all you can alter in the cfg is as you've tried,  a different FX model, and the emission strength, that being how much comes out and when.  By default altering emission strength gives the appearance of making the plume more or less dense,   If you really want to change everything about a plume you 'll need either a mod or your own custom made (in unity) plume.

It''s worth noting that if you have module manager installed, or if  you change a cfg and load the part, if that part is already fitted to a saved  craft,   that part will not reflect the changes you have made. In order to see the changes you will need to replace the part with one from the  part menu, and or delete all the ModuleManager  cache files (four of them)

[nascarlaser1]

What would the dimensions be for a similar engine but for mk2 width?

[CobaltWolf]

On 7/3/2017 at 0:00 PM, nascarlaser1 said:

What would the dimensions be for a similar engine but for mk2 width?

2.5m in diameter.

[NISSKEPCSIM]

Hi, I followed the tutorial, and I seem to be getting a problem (In game) that after I've placed my engine, I can't select it again to move it. Could anyone give me any advice?

EDIT:

I found the problem. It's because the engine doesn't have a collider... even though I gave it one in Unity. Can anyone tell me how to make a child part in Unity?

EDIT EDIT:

Never mind, I figured it out. It was a bit confusing at first - I didn't realise that you had to select the part itself before you created the child part.

Edited July 10, 2017 by NISSKEPCSIM

[nascarlaser1]

can someone help explain to me what's going on with my model? I am trying to turn it into a UV map, but after I put the first few parts in the center of the screen and move them to a clean part of the box, they refuse to unselect and end up being stuck together to all my other parts. download link in last post of this thread:

 

[Omega482]

Success story: Hadn't modeled or used wings3d/unity before wednesday. But thanks to this guide I made these cool assets! (models are from scratch based of the stock buildings)

Thank you @Beale!

[Beale]

11 hours ago, Omega482 said:

Success story: Hadn't modeled or used wings3d/unity before wednesday. But thanks to this guide I made these cool assets! (models are from scratch based of the stock buildings)

Thank you @Beale!

Nice job dude, they are super nice!

[Aerospike]

Hello, first let me thank you for this great and detailed tutorial!

 

However I seem to have some fundamental problems with Wings 3D, specifically version 2.1.5 (latest) Windows 64b (I'm running latest version of Win 10). That thing seems to be incredibly buggy for me. It is not like it is crashing, but it is like every other time it looses and regains focus (like when looking at the tutorial ), it stops responding to any keyboard input, and sometimes the geometry view also stops responding to any mouse events.

This is so frustrating, that I'm about to give up and learn Blender or do the modelling part in freecad...

Anyone else encountered this problem? Should I try an older version or the 32b version?

 

Edit: Tried the 32 bit version and got mostly the same behavior. Got the modelling part of the tutorial done, but not being able to use tab to insert absolute values is really annoying. I guess I'll use something else for any future models I want to create.

Edited August 24, 2017 by Aerospike

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

On 8/24/2017 at 1:13 PM, Aerospike said:

-snip-

@Aerospike Try using Blender instead, as there are many tutorials on the internet and many modders use it for their mods.

[Krakatoa]

This may be one of the dumber questions, but how do you turn off the background image in Wings 2.1.5 when you get to the UV mapping stage? Been following the tutorial to the point where you start to stack up similar faces and this is the first time I can't find the current equivalent of a step. It's gotta be right in front of me, but I just can't track it down.

[Krakatoa]

49 minutes ago, Krakatoa said:

This may be one of the dumber questions, but how do you turn off the background image in Wings 2.1.5 when you get to the UV mapping stage? Been following the tutorial to the point where you start to stack up similar faces and this is the first time I can't find the current equivalent of a step. It's gotta be right in front of me, but I just can't track it down.

Found out what to do, for anyone using Wings3D. Once you get to the unwrapped state, use the right click menu to set a texture, then you can set the background to just white or whatever you want.

[mindseyemodels]

my engine and cfg files have a thrust transform but it doesn't work...any ideas on how to fix it?

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

11 hours ago, mindseyemodels said:

my engine and cfg files have a thrust transform but it doesn't work...any ideas on how to fix it?

SO my advice didn't help any?

Regardless, if you want to send me the mod file,  with .mu engine cfg textures I shall investigate,  it'll be something simple though, always is

 

[mindseyemodels]

7 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

SO my advice didn't help any?

Regardless, if you want to send me the mod file,  with .mu engine cfg textures I shall investigate,  it'll be something simple though, always is

 

your "help" wasn't really helpful and like I said discord would be the best way to talk as we could speak in realtime instead of waiting for hours or days to get a reply that and the other guy helping me is offline and you obviously know how to make engines so what do you say? I get your discord name(provided you have the program) and I add you as a friend so I can talk to you when we both feel like it

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

4 minutes ago, mindseyemodels said:

your "help" wasn't really helpful

Being able to chat will not solve anything, as I'll still not be able to see what you've done, or not. Did you do a suggested in the other thread and remove the gap in the name thrust Transform, unless of course your thrust transform is actually called "thrust Transform"   the game will treat thrust Transform and thrustTransform  as different objects, check the KSP.log for your part and check that there is no transform not found error or missing transforms.

If you could stay on line for half an hour it'd be fixed be now as i'm around a lot (sad i know)

 

[mindseyemodels]

you CAN see what I am doing in discord as I can post screenshots. the thrust transform is actually called thrust Transform and I just don't know what went wrong and faster communication means we could solve problems faster and get the mod done faster

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

56 minutes ago, mindseyemodels said:

as I can post screenshots

The forum accepts screenshots too of course, and what works on discord works here i recall, so .........

btw if you don't communicate directly , quote or ping me, i have no idea if you have replied or not , i'm in the middle of updating over 1000 parts so will not be watching for replies,  who does?? 

Edited October 10, 2017 by SpannerMonkey(smce)

[mindseyemodels]

1 hour ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

The forum accepts screenshots too of course, and what works on discord works here i recall, so .........

btw if you don't communicate directly , quote or ping me, i have no idea if you have replied or not , i'm in the middle of updating over 1000 parts so will not be watching for replies,  who does?? 

I tried pasting a screenshotfom unity via print screen and ctrl+v but it didn't work

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Just now, mindseyemodels said:

I tried pasting a screenshotfom unity via print screen and ctrl+v but it didn't work

AS mentioned elsewhere and described, you need to upload to a file sharing site first then paste the link , see your thread for info

[mindseyemodels]

16 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

AS mentioned elsewhere and described, you need to upload to a file sharing site first then paste the link , see your thread for info

I looked at the console and this messqage kept showing up when my engine was active 

exception:null reference exception: object reference not set to an instance of an object 

does that help? 

also another error that popped up was 

error:particle model fx: cannot find transform of name "thrust Transform"

and 

error: prefab particle fx: cannot find transform of name "smoke point" 

also small problem...I cant seem to upload screenshots to imgur but I hope the error messages helped

 

 

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

42 minutes ago, mindseyemodels said:

looked at the console and this messqage kept showing up when my engine was active 

Quite simplythat means the cfg and the game cannot find those items.   Each o the named items has to have a similarly named transform GameObject in the unity part hierarchy

Can I make a suggestion. Go simple stupid. 

save your existing engine ,

In unity make a cylinder 1.25 in diameter and a couple of meters tall. 

Create an empty GameObject and align it at zero zero zero

. now drag your cylinder onto that object, and make sure your cylinder is centralised to the GameObject ( the Parent |)   SO in text it looks like. GameObject/Cylinder .    

Now create another empty Game object align that to the bottom of the cylinder plus half a meter,  now drag that object onto the cylinder object , ( the child) rename this GameObject  thrustTransform .  

At this point the hierarchy should be GameObject/Cylinder/thrustTransform   

Now rotate thrustTransform so  that local Z points vertically down

 Add a convex mesh collider to the cylinder. 

Now rename the odd objects, change cylinder to engineBody.  and the parent game object to NewEngine

Your hierarchy will now look like    NewEngine/engineBody/thrustTransform .

Now add part tools to the NewEngine GameObject and fill in appropriate details

export to game

Now remove ALL of the ModuleEngines FX and effects entries from your cfg, at the basic level you dont' need them

and add this module instead , the basic KISS engine module no fancy stuff , it connects to the rocket and flames come out, thats it.

MODULE
	{
		name = ModuleEngines
		thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform
		exhaustDamage = True
		ignitionThreshold = 0.1
		minThrust = 0
		maxThrust = 240
		heatProduction = 192
		fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.8
		EngineType = LiquidFuel
		exhaustDamageDistanceOffset = 1.05
		PROPELLANT
		{
			name = LiquidFuel
			ratio = 0.9
			DrawGauge = True
		}
		PROPELLANT
		{
			name = Oxidizer
			ratio = 1.1
		}
		atmosphereCurve
		{
			key = 0 310
			key = 1 265
			key = 7 0.001

		}
	}

Add this just above the tech required line in the cfg

	fx_exhaustFlame_blue = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, running
	fx_exhaustLight_blue = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, running
	fx_smokeTrail_light = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, running
	fx_exhaustSparks_flameout = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, flameout
	sound_vent_medium = engage
	sound_rocket_hard = running
	sound_vent_soft = disengage
	sound_explosion_low = flameout

check you have the nodes right,  I explained that process in one of your many other posts/threads . give it a unique name of course . and MAKE SURE that thrustTransform in cfg is identical to the name/s in unity.

Now fire up the game, wait patiently , now if  you followed the instructions and checked the images i've already supplied for clarity then, even if you have the engine upside down, if you connect fuel and a pod it should run.

If it doesn't or runs continually you have made a mistake. 

And i'll tell you right now that 99.9999999% of first load mod failures or even subsequent ones are all on you, it's not the game,  it's unlikely to be unity ,  most are typo or path related,  minor cfg errors, and extra period or comma  a round bracket instead of a curly one.

AS much as it's easy to get it right first time it's just as easy with a touch of impatience or inattentiveness to not notice the extra.. when you paste a cfg line or change a module .   

come on buddy , engines are easy stuff , 1 step above tanks, you can do this

 

[mindseyemodels]

so to get half the error to go away I just need to delete the fx things? like I posted my config in the other thread tell me which things to delete and you do realize that this would be about 30x easier with discord right? as I could have a realtime tutorial on how to rectify my engine malfunction without having to create a new engine specifically for a tutorial I insist on using discord because it will make this about 30x faster and  we would be able to discuss things easier plus since I cant seem to upload any of my screenshots to the forums or imgur discord is the only option for you to see what I am doin thus allowing you to evaluate how I am doing

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

17 minutes ago, mindseyemodels said:

how I am doing

sent you a PM

[Comedem]

Hy! I wanted to recreat an already existing cockpit IVA with ASET props. I watched al the vids how to set up part tools correctly but when I want to "spawn" any of the IVAs the next message comes 

MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'UnityEngine.Transform.SetParent'.
KSPPartTools.PartUtils.SpawnSpace (.UrlConfig urlCfg, .ConfigNode cfg)
KSPPartTools.PartToolsWindow.DrawSpace (.UrlConfig urlCfg, .ConfigNode cfg)
KSPPartTools.PartToolsWindow.DrawSpaces ()
KSPPartTools.PartToolsWindow.OnGUI ()
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/c514da0c8183631c/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

For me these error messages does not mean anything since Im compleatly new in modding...

I have Unity 4.7.2  and ksp 1.3.0.1

Please anyone could help to solve this riddle?