How to be fast & efficient (The RoverDude Method)

[Guest]

I'm calling this The RoverDude Method, because @RoverDude has developed a very good system for part creation, running through Unity, and testing in game.  Don't expect this to take it from several hours to just a few minutes, but it is very good at relieving some of the stress associated with making parts.

 

Setting it up at first can be a bit confusing, but once you get it all up and running, it's much easier.  So, here are the things to do.  (I am assuming that you already know how to run  stuff through Unity.  I also assume that you use Blender.)

1. Keep your .blend files right in your assets folder.  There is absolutely no need to export the meshes.  Unity has a built in .blend importer.  Don't even create it in another folder, and then save a copy into it.  It is much easier to just click ctrl (or command) + S.
2. Texturing should be the last thing to do.  You can still texture first, but it's best to get the meshes running in game with everything that is needed so you can UV map, and wrap it up.
3. Export the .mu files directly into where they're needed.  Change the file url to where it's going to be, and keep it there.
4. You don't need a lot of folders.  There is no need to have a separate folder for each part.  Just remember to use the MODEL module as opposed to using mesh =  Note: make sure that you do not include the file extension in the MODEL module.
5. Use as few textures as possible.  The smaller the mod files-wise, the better.  This will create a better overall user experience, and will make load times much faster.
6. Bundle the dependencies.  It's not always nice to tell someone that they need to go install three other mods to get this one to work.  Just make sure to follow the licenses of the developers and update regularly with any new versions.  It's also a good idea to tell the user that if they have it already installed, they should remove it before installing your mod.
7. Also, 

   artwhaley said:

   Unwrap early and often.  As soon as you have the basic shape of the part, unwrap it.  Then add the details, unwrapping each of them as you go.  Before you duplicate anything, unwrap it.  When you're done, you just have to drag the UV's around to make the layout, but you just saved yourself a lot of time spent selecting chunks to unwrap and you just made sure that every duplicate of something has their UV's perfectly aligned, in case you want to leave them stacked and texture them identically.

    

8. @Skalou also mentioned that you can go into the KSC scene, hi alt-f12 and go into database and click reload all.  You can also go into alt-f11 with ModuleManager and do it that way.  Be careful with it, as it sometimes doesn't load everything, and may disable plugins.

I'm going to add a bit more soon^TM, but I need to go to bed.  Feel free to correct anything, or offer input.  Also note, this isn't exactly how RoverDude does it. I have made some tweaks for my own purposes, so you don't need to go by all, or any, of these tips.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Guest

[NecroBones]

I never got direct import of .blend files to work in Unity. It's always thrown errors when I've tried that. Is there an additional step to setting that up?

 

As an aside, DAE and FBX always work great, with some caveats. DAE files import with missing materials if mesh objects have any vertices that aren't part of an actual poly (I've left some dangling accidentally on occasion). And FBX defaults to importing with a scale of 0.01.

[RoverDude]

I've never had an issue importing my blend files - just make sure you're not still in edit mode in Blender

[Jovzin]

thx for tips. But I still have problems with unity importing. So I would be glad for some up to date tutorial for wheels and engines and moving parts how to assign the collider to them that will follow the part during animation.

[artwhaley]

2 hours ago, Jovzin said:

thx for tips. But I still have problems with unity importing. So I would be glad for some up to date tutorial for wheels and engines and moving parts how to assign the collider to them that will follow the part during animation.

You assign the collider so the part that moves is it's parent and the rest should take care of itself.  Engines are pretty well documented and lots of folks have made them, wheels are less so and less so, but either way... if you're having problems, starting a thread to ask a specific question, along with screenshots of your unity hierarchy and info about what you've got done on it and where you're running into the snag.  Very few of the tutorials are truly 'out of date' in that they don't work anymore...  there may be newer ways developed or they may not take advantage of every new option, but the existing tutorials, coupled with reading squad's .cfg files and asking a few questions when they ran into issues is how everyone currently modding got started, so it does work.  I talked a year ago about starting a 'modder's wiki' where the community could keep one complete set of tutorials up to date, all the time... but it didn't seem to get a lot of interest, so I didn't keep running with it.  

 

One thing I'm currently working on, but with the holidays, at least a couple of weeks (probably more) away from finishing...  is an 'open source unity demo file.'  (I should also come up with a name for it.)  The idea is that I'll release a single unity file that has an example of every part type in the game, setup and ready to go... so if you're making a part and want to see how the components, colliders, and empty game objects get set up, you can just open the file and see.  It'll come with a set of .cfg files and compiled .mu's too.. so you can see ingame how it works, then jump to Unity and see how it was done.  So...  eventually I'll be adding that to the volume of stuff that's out there to help people learn...  but really the info is there already.  

 

And back to the original topic of tips to make you more efficient - I'll add this:  Unwrap early and often.  As soon as you have the basic shape of the part, unwrap it.  Then add the details, unwrapping each of them as you go.  Before you duplicate anything, unwrap it.  When you're done, you just have to drag the UV's around to make the layout, but you just saved yourself a lot of time spent selecting chunks to unwrap and you just made sure that every duplicate of something has their UV's perfectly aligned, in case you want to leave them stacked and texture them identically.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, artwhaley said:

One thing I'm currently working on, but with the holidays, at least a couple of weeks (probably more) away from finishing...  is an 'open source unity demo file.'  (I should also come up with a name for it.)  The idea is that I'll release a single unity file that has an example of every part type in the game, setup and ready to go... so if you're making a part and want to see how the components, colliders, and empty game objects get set up, you can just open the file and see.  It'll come with a set of .cfg files and compiled .mu's too.. so you can see ingame how it works, then jump to Unity and see how it was done.  So...  eventually I'll be adding that to the volume of stuff that's out there to help people learn...  but really the info is there already.  

Tell me when you release it.  I'll link it.

[Jovzin]

19 hours ago, artwhaley said:

You assign the collider so the part that moves is it's parent and the rest should take care of itself.  Engines are pretty well documented and lots of folks have made them, wheels are less so and less so, but either way... if you're having problems, starting a thread to ask a specific question, along with screenshots of your unity hierarchy and info about what you've got done on it and where you're running into the snag.  Very few of the tutorials are truly 'out of date' in that they don't work anymore...  there may be newer ways developed or they may not take advantage of every new option, but the existing tutorials, coupled with reading squad's .cfg files and asking a few questions when they ran into issues is how everyone currently modding got started, so it does work.  I talked a year ago about starting a 'modder's wiki' where the community could keep one complete set of tutorials up to date, all the time... but it didn't seem to get a lot of interest, so I didn't keep running with it.  

 

One thing I'm currently working on, but with the holidays, at least a couple of weeks (probably more) away from finishing...  is an 'open source unity demo file.'  (I should also come up with a name for it.)  The idea is that I'll release a single unity file that has an example of every part type in the game, setup and ready to go... so if you're making a part and want to see how the components, colliders, and empty game objects get set up, you can just open the file and see.  It'll come with a set of .cfg files and compiled .mu's too.. so you can see ingame how it works, then jump to Unity and see how it was done.  So...  eventually I'll be adding that to the volume of stuff that's out there to help people learn...  but really the info is there already

Thanks a lot for the reply. 

Yes I was one of the few supporters for that wiki. Btw if you finish that unity demo I would be very very very thankful. 

Have a nice day and Merry X-mas guys and thank you for all the support you are giving us.

[Guest]

I'd personally be willing to start that wiki up.

[Skalou]

Nice topic,

yes using the .blend format direcly is really great, we can modify the model and try it in KSP in a few seconds.

What i remenber by reading things here and there is that the colliders are the big performance modifier, it's really better to do an other simplified mesh for the collider than reusing the one for the appearance to do the MeshCollider (that now must be convex remenber),

or even better: if possible use the unity premade collider (box collider, capsule collider, etc) to keep better performances.

for a fuel tank, there isn't premade unity cylinder collider, so we must use a cylinder mesh converted in collider, for size 0 or 1 the stock are 24 sided, (for other sizes i don't remenber, just use the .blend importer to catch them)

An other thing i do is creating a separate empty objet for the colliders, so i can displace them easily, if i want to try an other 3d model, etc... (i don't know if it use notiaciabily more ressource however)

And an other ,

Instead of exit and relaunch the game each time, go in the KSC > alt+f12 > reload the data base (or alt+f11 with module manager ), it's faster but sometime it breaks things (and have to restart properly).

Edited December 25, 2015 by Skalou

[Azimech]

Is it possible for a small expansion for people using Wings3D?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Azimech said:

Is it possible for a small expansion for people using Wings3D?

I honestly don't know much about Wings3D, but it's basically the same thing.  I don't know if you can just save those files into the assets folder, but I know that you can export then right there.  It isn't as fast as just saving, but it is faster than exporting in one place, and dragging it in.