Blender Modeling & Animation Help for a Newbie.

[Sgt.Shutesie]

Hello, KSP modding community, which I hope to join later this summer with the first release of my X-20 project. (I don't have a thread yet, nothing is in game).

I am having trouble finding tutorials online for animating things in Blender, specifically things like landing gear (not modeled yet), animated docking ports (I have the base part modeled, but I have to add the whole docking mechanism and animate it etc), and a cargo bay. I'm sure the tutorials are buried in topics that I'm too lazy to find, although they are probably on the first page of the forum labeled "SGT! EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS HERE!!!1!!1!!!," but the best way to find a book is to ask the librarian (that's probably a saying). I have an album that has the basic parts laid out, then I focus on the cargo bay. I'll explain everything with some text underneath the album.

1. All the parts so far, for now I'm focusing on the center module and or the cargo bay. Everything has to be remodeled, a certain CobaltWolf said I should base it off a 1.25-meter cube, when in reality to get the proper adaptation to 1.875 (BDB Transtage Size) I would need to base it off a 1 meter cube for the better-looking adaptation. However, before I remodel it would be nice to experiment on a canvas I've already assembled. 
2. Close up of the Cargo bay. Note: It is mirrored since I quickly made the 'inside' to show what I was looking at doing.
3. Cargo bay by itself.
4. What it should look like closed.
5. Opening...
6. Opens too far...
7. Bounds back to opened position.
8. Opened Cargo bay.

So if anyone would care to give a little point in the right direct, or just a plain tutorial that would be nice. 

Anyone interested in watching my progress can catch me showing off my stuff during CobaltWolf's streams for BDB.

As pretty much everyone I see says,

Cheers!

Edit: Apparently Tab doesn't create an indent, it posts the thread....

Edited June 22, 2016 by Sgt.Shutesie

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

HI, nice project.  I'm not going to offer advice on landing gear as it's all old and out of date and I'd advise waiting and seeing if the next (1.1.3) patch fixes some of the issues with wheels in general.

As for the cargo bay, with such a simple animation it'd probably be quicker to animate in unity (my opinion, but many can't get on with unity's curve animation system) than animate in blender import to unity and set up.  For the proposed range of actions it's a simple two transform rotation, center the door transforms(pivot) at the point you wish the hinge to be and that's it.  Cant remember the last animation i didn't do in unity, it was a long time ago.

I don't think you should include the opening too far and returning as this presupposes that there is some kind of spring in the actuation, and this would be an odd thing to have springing around, Real world the doors would weigh several hundred kilo's each and you wouldn't have them under anything but the strictest positional control

[martinezfg11]

In object mode press I (insert keyframe) and select rotation for your bay doors. Note, this will be your beginning keyframe, so your bay doors should be closed (in it's initial position).

Then in the timeline, move to the desired frame and rotate your bay doors to the desired angle. Then press "I" again and select rotation to insert a keyframe.

Now move your frames back to 0 and run your animation. (ALT A)

 

Here, have a blend file. See if this helps. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31166353/Bay Animation.blend

 

Edit: I also noticed you have a mirror modifier on your bay door, not sure if you need to apply the modifier before you actually make your animation or not. If it works fine in Unity then I guess there's no issue.

Edited June 22, 2016 by martinezfg11
More info.

[wasml]

Mod Development Links Compilation

Many of the links are old but I believe most are still relevant to the current KSP version.

[Sgt.Shutesie]

Thanks for the help @martinezfg11, I was able to animate the doors, one of the many times I will remodel X-20 before myself and my advisor are happy with the model and my poor ability to not murder my polygon/face/vertice/edge/everything count. Yes, I have to take it out of mirror mode and move the object center to the axis of rotation.

(Transtage belongs to @CobaltWolf , if I was able to model that well, I wouldn't need advice on how to animate)

@SpannerMonkey(smce) I'll probably not include the spring in my final version of the cargo bay, but I thought it was worth a good experiment. I'll probably figure out how to make some like, pistons or something that 'open' the door, but who knows... Definitely not me.

Thank you for all the help guys.

[martinezfg11]

Autosmooth/Mark Sharp is your friend.

 

Also, @RoverDude has some animated pistons that he sets up on one of his twitch modding streams.