Tokamak Industries Refurbished Parts - Learning feedback thread

[Tokamak]

Release thread is here: 

 

 

A couple of weeks ago I found myself saddened by all of the orphaned/abandoned mods that have really cool parts which are no longer usable in recent versions of KSP, and seeing post after post of "Will anyone update this? Please?", and I noticed that a lot of them were under permissive licenses or even in the public domain. I decided to start mucking about with .cfg files, seeing if I could give them new life. I wasn't going to do any modelling or anything, just a bit of config tweaking.

Well... one thing led to another, and I found myself learning Unity and Blender, which I had sworn I wasn't going to tackle. Whoops. XD

After getting a lot of excellent help in this thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/143324-need-a-tiny-bit-of-help-getting-started/ from some very helpful and patient folks, I'm making progress. I went from just trying to make a tweak here and there to doing some semi-original designing, mostly just to learn more. I've got a pile of old parts that I plan to "refurbish" and re-release, and I'm feeling more and more like I may be able to actually pull it off. Don't worry, I'm tracking licenses and authors carefully. I've gotten permission to use a few assets not in CC from the original authors, and even when they ARE CC or similar licensed, I've sought permission anyway, to be polite. Anything I release will be thoroughly documented in that respect.

Anyway, with all of that said, one of the parts mods I found was a REALLY old (last updates for KSP .20)  pack by @udk_lethal_d0se, that is simple but nicely modeled and textured. 

I'm making an original interior for it, planning to turn it into a habitat that will provide some much needed recreation space / hab multipliers @RoverDude's USI-LS, and any other life support mods that might need such a thing. Possibly Keepfit? That's a future stage. 

The thing looks like a fuel tank with a window, so I decided to make an interior that evokes a "wet workshop" look. If you're not familiar, that is basically turning an empty fuel tank into hab space, because lift capacity is expensive. I've been googling for images of the interior of Skylab for inspiration. By the way... what a dump! I mean, it was also a huge step forward in long-term space exploration and habitation, and an amazing feat of both engineering and the human imagination, but DAMN it makes the ISS look cushy and palatial. XD

Anyway, I'm hoping for feedback, not just pats on the head, because I really want to do this up right.

 

The basic outer hull / pressure vessel, by the aforementioned @udk_lethal_d0se

This is my inner hull, though seen from the outside. The circular ports will be windows that in IVA will connect to outside windows that I will make later.

A close up of the window frame. Getting a flat circle to connect with the mesh of the side of a cylinder was... a learning experience. I pity the engineers of old who had to do the math on all of that with paper and slide rules. I may redo the beveling later.

For the inside I have a main compartment that currently just has two consoles, with chairs shamelessly (and temporarily) lifted from ASET Props, so I can get my scaling right. I've put in structural bracing around the inside, and some decorative beveled panels that will end up being... something.

The hemispherical top and bottom have some greebles that I are CC licensed, and for which credit will be given if they make it into the final version. I have a bulkhead blocking off about a quarter of the space, with what will be storage bags and lights, to give what I assume will end up being a mess or sleeping area.

I'll probably need a ladder eventually... and it only occurred to me part way through that I'll need to make this seem reasonable in freefall AND on a planetary surface, so I shouldn't occupiable seating going every which way. Wheee...

The game won't do shadows like that in realtime, but I've figured out how to bake them on to the texture, for fake lighting goodness.

Taking away the grating and hatch tube, the greebling looks a lot less impressive, but it may end up being fine in situ. We'll see, I guess. Also, whoops.... I forgot to mirror the platform for one of the consoles.

Here are the internal partitions in their naked glory

 

And the bulkhead. I'm quite pleased with the hatch shape, which took some thinking to do properly. Also, if you see the wireframe, the actual faces of the nice smooth disk are... a mess. Funny how that works.

 

Obviously it needs a lot of work, and texturing will be a whole new ordeal once modelling is done. I'm currently going for pretty rather than low poly count, but once it's done there will probably be a lot of optimizing I can do without sacrificing appearance. Baking on the AO and directional shadows will go a long way. But that makes tweaking the model harder, so I will do that when the model itself is done.

I've played around enough to know that I can go from a blender model (albeit one originally by someone else) to a functioning in game part with IVA, so I know I'm not going down a dead end.

I'm still trying to figure out the balance between having it be detailed and pretty, and having it be reasonably performant. I guess that will be partly trial and error.

 

So yeah, there we are. Thoughts? Feedback?

 

Special thanks to the helpful and patient @Randazzo, @NecroBones, @Stone Blue, @Van Disaster, and @TiktaalikDreaming for getting me past MANY blocks and stone walls. I still have a long way to go, but I'm at least on my way now.

 

Edited August 28, 2016 by Tokamak

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I gotta say the spare and especially the insides are looking pretty darn fine.

Also, it reminds me I should do something about some equivalent parts for Nexus second stage fuel tanks, as that was one of their intended uses.  There'll be some more elbow room there though.

[Randazzo]

Wow, that looks outstanding! It's really impressive how far you've come already.

[CobaltWolf]

that's awesome! You should do my IVAs.

[Stone Blue]

WoW!.... I wish I could learn Blender that fast, and pull off stuff like this IVA in so short a time...

Even tho I had ideas on these parts, if you can pull off an IVA like that, that quick, I think its best that you are redoing the pack...

[cxg2827]

Beautiful work!

[NecroBones]

2 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

that's awesome! You should do my IVAs.

 

Wow, yes indeed! We could all use some nice IVA work, I'm sure.

 

[Tokamak]

Wow, thanks guys. It's good to know I'm on the right track. That does mean a lot. I've been working hard.  

 

One creative decision I have to make is whether I want the insides to look nice and slick and shiny, like NASA wet workshop concept art, or if I should go for a more run down "oh god, they sent us up in a fuel tank. Why do we have no budget?" sort of look. Thoughts?

 

I also have a technical question. How bad is it when modelling to just jam meshes and faces through each other instead of making everything join up? For example...

The easy way to model something like this would be to make the ring shaped ribs, and then just make some long thin cylinders for those pipes in the bottom center, and position them so they stick through the ribs. That would be quicker and easier than mucking about with knife-project and whatnot to make the whole thing into one solid, connected mesh. Is there a reason NOT to take the easy route? It seems intuitively like there must be. 

 

[cxg2827]

regarding the ribs and pipes, you can just show individual pipe sections between the ribs, no need to make cutouts in the rib meshes for continuous pies running through them.

[Tokamak]

2 minutes ago, cxg2827 said:

regarding the ribs and pipes, you can just show individual pipe sections between the ribs, no need to make cutouts in the rib meshes for continuous pies running through them.

Oh, sure. I just meant that you can actually make the meshes connect, or you can just stick the models up against each other and say "good enough", and I'm trying to figure out which is pest. Perhaps I should ask with a picture of what I mean

[Stone Blue]

Considering the basic "cartoony", "Kerbal" look of the outside of the parts, i would keep the IVAs basic, and not worry about going for "realism", at least in the details... Maybe shoparound many of the other mods that have station or module IVAs to get example & a "feel" for what would fit THESE specific parts...

[CobaltWolf]

19 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Considering the basic "cartoony", "Kerbal" look of the outside of the parts, i would keep the IVAs basic, and not worry about going for "realism", at least in the details... Maybe shoparound many of the other mods that have station or module IVAs to get example & a "feel" for what would fit THESE specific parts...

 

27 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Oh, sure. I just meant that you can actually make the meshes connect, or you can just stick the models up against each other and say "good enough", and I'm trying to figure out which is pest. Perhaps I should ask with a picture of what I mean

No, you don't have to, and often you can save polys.

what I'd do is just have the whole length of pipe one cylinder, with edge loops at each of the places the rib covers it. Same number of polygons, but easier to move. Either way, you can basically reuse the texture for one segment over and over - no need to unwrap the whole thing.

[Tokamak]

So basically it's okay to do the one on the left, instead of the cleaner but more fiddly and higher poly one on the right?

[Randazzo]

34 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Oh, sure. I just meant that you can actually make the meshes connect, or you can just stick the models up against each other and say "good enough", and I'm trying to figure out which is pest. Perhaps I should ask with a picture of what I mean

I get what you mean and each have their challenges. If you just run stuff together, it can be tough to create the texture in such a way that makes them look joined properly (assuming you want to do that... simple way around it is just make the base colors the same and don't do detail work around the intersecting areas but that can turn out ugly sometimes.)

If you join everything with Boolean modifiers or manual bridging, then it can sometimes cause a lot of light distortion in the geometry and make UV mapping more difficult. Generally I go with the latter since I'm not that great at creating textures. I would say it really comes down to your model and which method creates the least problems for you.

Naturally this all based on my own experience, so your mileage may vary.

Edit: Actually for that example I wouldn't bother joining them. It's easy enough to make a dark circle in the middle of the panel to give the appearance of a hole or connection or something like that.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Randazzo

[CobaltWolf]

18 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

So basically it's okay to do the one on the left, instead of the cleaner but more fiddly and higher poly one on the right?

yes. As Randazzo said, that can create issues with the textures but its up to you how to handle it. I just paint AO/edge wear on and it usually works.

[Tokamak]

Well, you know what they say: Make one first to throw away. I learned a lot... enough to know that what I had made was an unmaintainable mess. So I started again from scratch, and I'm tentatively pleased with the outcome. The texturing still needs work to make it look more kerbally, and I might need to get the poly count down, but it's complete enough that I'd love feedback and criticism.

It does look kind of dingy, which is intentional. While I'm not trying to copy Skylab directly, I've looked at a LOT of pictures, and it LOOKS like you are living inside a retrofitted fuel tank XD

http://imgur.com/a/73rS4

So, thoughts? Tips? I'm improving, but obviously I want to do better.

 

Edit: Err... how on earth do I embed an imgur album? I've tried [imgur]http://imgur.com/a/73rS4[/imgur] which is what I thought was meant to work, but it does not; it just displays the tags as text.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Tokamak

[Tokamak]

Oh, if anyone is interested, here is a pile of reference photos that I've gathered: http://imgur.com/a/hOune

[Randazzo]

I'm having a hard time accepting this is your first foray into modeling.

Literally the only thing that I see that needs a touch-up is the white table-ish thing in this shot:

I know you've heard it before, but that's really impressive. Don't know what else to say. It's better than my stuff.

[Tokamak]

1 minute ago, Randazzo said:

I'm having a hard time accepting this is your first foray into modeling.

Literally the only thing that I see that needs a touch-up is the white table-ish thing in this shot:

I know you've heard it before, but that's really impressive. Don't know what else to say. It's better than my stuff.

Oh piffle. Glad I'm doing okay, though. Thanks for the compliment! To be fair, not ALL of it is from scratch. As I will credit in the final release, I lifted the chairs from another model, and the texture of the equipment on the "tv screen" is based on something old from ZZZ.

 

Oh right! That thing was meant to be the start of some pipey-tanky greeble thing, and I totally forgot about it. XD

I'm beginning to wonder if I should take things I'm using multiple times, like chairs and greebles, and make them into props instead

[Stone Blue]

17 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

I'm beginning to wonder if I should take things I'm using multiple times, like chairs and greebles, and make them into props instead

Yes, you should.... I'm sure other IVA makers would appreciate a "Furnishings Prop Pack"...

I know I would, since I know what I want to do for my first attempt at an IVA, even tho I'm skeered to start it...lol

[Tokamak]

Just now, Stone Blue said:

Yes, you should.... I'm sure other IVA makers would appreciate a "Furnishings Prop Pack"...

I know I would, since I know what I want to do for my first attempt at an IVA, even tho I'm skeered to start it...lol

What are you planning?

[Randazzo]

20 minutes ago, Tokamak said:

Oh piffle. Glad I'm doing okay, though. Thanks for the compliment! To be fair, not ALL of it is from scratch. As I will credit in the final release, I lifted the chairs from another model, and the texture of the equipment on the "tv screen" is based on something old from ZZZ.

 

Oh right! That thing was meant to be the start of some pipey-tanky greeble thing, and I totally forgot about it. XD

I'm beginning to wonder if I should take things I'm using multiple times, like chairs and greebles, and make them into props instead

Still looks better than my first go. Behold, the Whiskey Bottle Mk. I:

Also, paging @Angel-125

He might have some useful advice for your IVA endeavors.

[Angelo Kerman]

14 minutes ago, Randazzo said:

Still looks better than my first go. Behold, the Whiskey Bottle Mk. I:

Also, paging @Angel-125

He might have some useful advice for your IVA endeavors.

All I can say is that IVAs take a long time to make. For me, I find making parts without IVAs more rewarding. The amount of return on investment for IVAs is low, but parts definitely look nicer once you've finished them.

[Tokamak]

4 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

All I can say is that IVAs take a long time to make. For me, I find making parts without IVAs more rewarding. The amount of return on investment for IVAs is low, but parts definitely look nicer once you've finished them.

For my part, I'm actually REALLY enjoying IVA creation, and don't have too many ideas for parts themselves that don't already exist

[tater]

I have heard a few parts modders say that IVAs are the hardest thing to do. Your work is really impressive. There are quite a few mods out there with partial or no IVAs on otherwise stunning parts, and a few have solicited skilled IVA modders. 

Nice work!