Tokamak Industries Refurbished Parts - Learning feedback thread

[cxg2827]

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

The amount of return on investment for IVAs is low

This

 

1 hour ago, tater said:

have heard a few parts modders say that IVAs are the hardest thing to do

and this (though I'd say more time-consuming than hard)

 

1 hour 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

and also this. One thing that helps is to make generic props that you know will be in various IVAs. That way you start to get an inventory of go-to greebles (hand rails, laptops, hatches,)

[tater]

I agree on the RoI... as just a user, I spend maybe seconds per hour looking at IVAs, particularly when they have few or small windows (which means of they are realistic, lol). Still, I do it occasionally to have a feel for the first person situation. I'd love to see IVAs for realistic toroidal habs, for example. It would certainly be more fun if we could walk around in them from an immersion standpoint---but the RoI would likely be worse because of the colliders, etc, lol.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Lookin' good!

[Tokamak]

Thanks guys.

 

Hrm. One thing I'm struggling with is with texturing, things can get a bit second-lifey. I.E, decent looking textures on simple meshes, giving kind of an uncanny "valley of objects" effect. I feel like I need to make things look a bit more cartoony and kerbally. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Randazzo]

3 hours ago, Tokamak said:

Thanks guys.

 

Hrm. One thing I'm struggling with is with texturing, things can get a bit second-lifey. I.E, decent looking textures on simple meshes, giving kind of an uncanny "valley of objects" effect. I feel like I need to make things look a bit more cartoony and kerbally. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Draw them instead of finding a "real" texture. It seems daunting at first, but as with everything you will improve over time.

I would also stress that it's more important to find your own style than it is to match something else, unless you're strictly going for stock-alike.

[Van Disaster]

Congrats, I'll join the "is this really your first attempt?" bandwagon also very glad to see those models dug up again, I used to use them a lot & always kept meaning to do something myself.

Yeah don't use photo texturing, just learn to paint 'em - use *lots* of layers ( I use one for every "effect" & often multiples ) and you might find using a vector drawing package initially more useful when you need to do things like shaped gradients. Also learn what texel size is, that's the secret to matching other textures.

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

Lookin' forward to a beta release!

[CobaltWolf]

14 hours ago, Tokamak said:

Hrm. One thing I'm struggling with is with texturing, things can get a bit second-lifey. I.E, decent looking textures on simple meshes, giving kind of an uncanny "valley of objects" effect. I feel like I need to make things look a bit more cartoony and kerbally. Does anyone have any suggestions?

You should paint them by hand. I avoid sourced textures altogether. What texturing package do you use? Hopefully one that can understand PSD files! Here are a bunch of my textures, as well as DAE files if you want to see how I UV unwrap.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4ow2b6drcjlceyz/AADKm_ha60IKnD1XZYh0hdRJa?dl=0

 

[Tokamak]

44 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Lookin' forward to a beta release!

 

2 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

Congrats, I'll join the "is this really your first attempt?" bandwagon also very glad to see those models dug up again, I used to use them a lot & always kept meaning to do something myself.

Yeah don't use photo texturing, just learn to paint 'em - use *lots* of layers ( I use one for every "effect" & often multiples ) and you might find using a vector drawing package initially more useful when you need to do things like shaped gradients. Also learn what texel size is, that's the secret to matching other textures.

Thanks!

Just paint them? That seems to be the consensus. Well... looks like I'm learning ANOTHER thing soon. XD

Do you have any vector drawing packages to recommend? I do traditional art too (graphite and charcoal) and am taking, so more tools in my digital toolbox would help with non-kerbal stuff too.

I've looked up what a texel is, but I'm not not 100% sure what aspect you mean when you say "learn what texel size is". Do you mean working to have a consistent relationship between pixels in my UV map, and distance in the 3d render space?

9 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

You should paint them by hand. I avoid sourced textures altogether. What texturing package do you use? Hopefully one that can understand PSD files! Here are a bunch of my textures, as well as DAE files if you want to see how I UV unwrap.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4ow2b6drcjlceyz/AADKm_ha60IKnD1XZYh0hdRJa?dl=0

 

"texturing package"? Remember, I'm new to this. I've just been using Photoshop CS, after exporting UV maps and baked AO images from Blender.

[CobaltWolf]

Just now, Tokamak said:

"texturing package"? Remember, I'm new to this. I've just been using Photoshop CS, after exporting UV maps and baked AO images from Blender.

I meant Photoshop There are uncompressed PSD files in that link, you should be able to see how I build my textures. I paint my AO by hand. I'm lazy like that.

[Overland]

Greetings good presumed to be sir. or madam if is the case..

you are a wonderful modeler of IVA views, I really admire your tallent.. 

vs learning myself blender which. coming from a 3d max background is like the... well.. its not nice to un-learn

would you be interested in modeling Mk1 cockpit for me (Possibly mark 1 and a bit)

not without its compensation.. say a nice expensive steam game or some DLC gifted?

ive been looking for months of someone likewise skilled as yourself.. and although this sounds like the typical african scam of some sort, I assure you its 100% legit

 

What am I after? well.. 

A cab (standalone) box shaped etc

for this.. or something like it

 

[Van Disaster]

5 hours ago, Tokamak said:

Just paint them? That seems to be the consensus. Well... looks like I'm learning ANOTHER thing soon. XD

Do you have any vector drawing packages to recommend? I do traditional art too (graphite and charcoal) and am taking, so more tools in my digital toolbox would help with non-kerbal stuff too.

I've looked up what a texel is, but I'm not not 100% sure what aspect you mean when you say "learn what texel size is". Do you mean working to have a consistent relationship between pixels in my UV map, and distance in the 3d render space?

"texturing package"? Remember, I'm new to this. I've just been using Photoshop CS, after exporting UV maps and baked AO images from Blender.

Vector stuff I usually just do in Photoshop, but occasionally have to bust out Illustrator ( which I detest, but it's there to use ). If someone's got a slightly more art oriented 2d vector package to recommend I'd love to try it. You'll find your graphite skills will be *very* handy for hand-shading, you just might find it a bit awkward doing that stuff with a mouse. I used to use a tablet but I can't hold a pen anymore, sadly.

Texel size is basically "how many texture pixels per unit of model" ; unless you need a higher resolution in a specific area it's a good idea to keep that number consistent because it'll give a consistent look. The eye really notices mixed resolution textures. I vaguely remember 250-300px/m being bandied about for (external) KSP stuff, but it'd be better just to see what looks best tbh.

[Tokamak]

Okay, I see, to have broken everything, and I'm not sure how. I shuffled some things around, putting my interior and exterior into separate .blend files so I can just use the prefabs that Unity makes of them, since it seems to really want to do that. But now I am getting really weird behavior.

Basically, the part has no texture and/or mesh. It is invisible in the VAB, and in flight. Not so much as a preview icon. The connection nodes are still there. The collision mesh works; I can pick it up and move it about in the VAB, and I can even launch it and make it topple over on the launch pad. 

I can even launch it. If anything causes the VAB scene to load with the part already in place, like reverting to VAB, or using the quickstart mod, KSP crashes. In a way I've never seen before.

But I CAN launch it. And I get an invisible part... but the IVA works. O.o

 

I've triple checked the export settings in Unity. I've re-exported a zillion times. I've removed and re-applied part tools to the exterior. I have NO idea what is going on. There are no useful errors in the log either... KSP says it's loading the model and texture just fine.

Does anyone know what the heck is going on here?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q67g8xe4j0d73du/TokamakLabs.zip?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pmp4dz1elnt7klu/output_log.txt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xpwv7ikkisgke48/dryworkshop-external.blend?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqgexze6w58l3ut/dryworkshop-internals.blend?dl=0

 

My unity setup:

 

Edited August 17, 2016 by Tokamak

[Randazzo]

Off the top of my head, try checking the model scale and see if Unity set it to 0.0001 or some miniscule thing.

Right (uh..or maybe left) click your model in the project tab so that it opens the "Model | Rig | Animation" thingy in the inspector tab. Click on model, make sure the scale is set to 1.

If that's not it and it hasn't been solved by the time I get home from work, I'll take a more thorough look at it.

Edit: And this is not the same as the Scale in the transform options, just to be clear.

Edited August 17, 2016 by Randazzo

[Stone Blue]

Yup... If the connection nodes are showing, but nothing else is, its a scaling issue with the Blender import into Unity...

You can try to determine if it is indeed this, by launching the part, and in the flight scene, keep zooming in..... Depending on how "bad" the scale is off, eventually, you may see a super tiny, working, rendering of your part.... Also, look at the Scale(s) of your main object... If its indeed this scaling issue, you should have at least, ".00", if not more zeros, in the X/Y/Z defs... You can try removing the first two or three zeros after the decimal...

Make sure you have a clean (empty) Scene... Then create an empty GameObject, THEN drag your model under that... (So the empty GameObject is the parent)... You shouldnt have to do ANYTHING with this empty GameObject, OTHER than, this is what you assign the PartTools component to... (Where you "write" the finished model)

Usually, Unity ends up rescaling my Blender imports by 100x, but I've seen it do it at 1000x as well...

EDIT: You would most likely only see the modified Scales in the transform of the ">Dry Workshop container" object... Unity applies the rescaling to ONLY the parent model object, NOT to any children, which you have highlighted in your above screenshots

 

Edited August 17, 2016 by Stone Blue

[Tokamak]

Thanks guys! That seems to have done the trick. I couldn't find anything wrong with the scale in the inspector. Thanks for making it clear you didn't mean the transform scale. by the way. But in the import settings, it was still set as 1. However, making a new scene and redoing things there seems to have resolved it. What an odd thing...

[Tokamak]

Progress progress. My last stage with 3d stuff is setting up props in Unity. Then I need to work on the .cfg to set up modules and stats.

However, I think I'm navigating the cluterblug of axis trasforms wrong. (Why DOES KSP not just use the same set of axes for everything?)

So, I've made my IVA model, used a container with a rotational transform like the tutorials say, so I can edit it in Unity at a reasonable orientation, but it will also come out in the game oriented properly. Yay!

But props...

I've exported my model, defined an interior, and then spawned that interior with prop tools. I set up props aligned with the model that prop tools itself is spawning for me. And then in KSP, everything is rotated 90 degrees on the (in Unity) z axis. O.o

 

 

So clearly I have done something wrong with transforms somewhere, but given that my props align with the model prop tools gives me, I'm kind of at a loss.

Here are my notes that I've been using so far, otherwise sucessfully:

Quote

For IVA models

 

Craft forward, I.E. the direction that is UP on the launchpad pad with a normal capsule on it

In blender: -Z, or what looks like UP on your screen in the regular view, which is in the opposite direction from the blue arrow

In Unity: -Z, which will be on the axis that has the blue cone on the direction widget in the upper right corner, in the direction facing AWAY from the side with the blue cone

 

Craft up, I.E. the direction the top of a kerbal’s head is pointing when in a normal capsule on the launchpad. This will be due west in a regular capsule on the launchpad

In blender: -X, which is the opposite direction from the red arrow

In Unity: +X, which will be on the axis that has the red cone on the direction widget in the upper right corner, in the direction facing TOWARDS the side with the red cone

 

So in Unity, making sure your actual internal “part” object has rotation of 0, 0, 0, you can put it in a container object and give THAT object a rotation of X = 90, Y = 0, Z = 180

 

 

For part models

 

+Y is up, which is the “up” direction in the Unity view, and also the direction of the green cone

+X (the red cone) will, in an unrotated part, face towards the ocean. In a standard unrotated capsule, this is the direction the kerbal’s feet will be pointed.

 

(Oh, and the teal kerbals in the Unity window are just a super clunky kerbonaut model I made for positioning seat cameras. I fiddled around so that if you put the model's carefully set origin point where an internal camera transform will be, the kerbal in game will be at pretty much the same location as my model. It's useful as heck, especially because how kerbals are positioned is so weird. I ought to release it somewhere)

[Van Disaster]

A few points about practicality in the IVA - if we're assuming the part is attached to a rotating station component to give some centrifugal force then depending on where the axis of rotation is, "Up" will either be towards the centreline of the part, or towards the *bottom*. I can't help with your IVA quirk, unfortunately :S

[Tokamak]

1 hour ago, Van Disaster said:

A few points about practicality in the IVA - if we're assuming the part is attached to a rotating station component to give some centrifugal force then depending on where the axis of rotation is, "Up" will either be towards the centreline of the part, or towards the *bottom*. I can't help with your IVA quirk, unfortunately :S

Yeah, I have been unsure how to orient things. Your point is valid. I ended up going with the default "up" from launch position so that it would make sense if it was landed on a planetary surface, but also would make some sense in freefall. Kind of how like Skylab was oriented internally with a single "up", more or less like that.

[Tokamak]

I feel like there is something I am missing about how Unity deals with transforms when importing form blender. I keep having the same experience: I have my blender file inside my Unity assets folder, so when I save in blender, unity automatically detects and loads the changes. I put those prefabs into container gameobjects so make rotation and whatnot correct. Everything is set up perfectly. Then I go to blender, make a small change, and save... and when I go back to Unity, everything is rotated seemingly randomly. Obviously there IS some rhyme and reason to what is going on, but I can't find it. Googling hasn't been much help. Does anyone have a suggestion of where to look?

 

Edit: I think some of the problems I am having are to do with Unity sometimes taking transformation changes and applying them directly to children, and sometimes keeping the children untouched and only changing the parent.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Tokamak

[CobaltWolf]

Unity's Z and Y axis are switched relative to Blender. Is that the issue?

[Stone Blue]

What file format are you saving/exporting your Blender changes as?... I know if you export as .fbx, there is a section in the lower left where you can set/change scaling and axis orientation, to match Unity... HOWEVER, I have not been successful in getting it to work... lol

Also, Blender can be set to automatically save backups of your .blend file at periodic intervals... Granted, it gives the files a .blend1 extension, rather than .blend, but with the issues with the export/import from Blender to Unity, saving your Blender work directly in the Unity project folders, so Unity can get the chnages dynamically, may not seem like the best thing to do presently... But then, remember I am extremely new at this, so i may be talking out of my backend...

Edited August 18, 2016 by Stone Blue

[Tokamak]

6 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Unity's Z and Y axis are switched relative to Blender. Is that the issue?

 

6 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

What file format are you saving/exporting your Blender changes as?... I know if you export as .fbx, there is a section in the lower left where you can set/change scaling and axis orientation, to match Unity... HOWEVER, I have not been successful in getting it to work... lol

Also, Blender can be set to automatically save backups of your .blend file at periodic intervals... Granted, it gives the files a .blend1 extension, rather than .blend, but with the issues with the export/import from Blender to Unity, saving your Blender work directly in the Unity project folders, so Unity can get the chnages dynamically, may not seem like the best thing to do presently... But then, remember I am extremely new at this, so i may be talking out of my backend...

In this case I don't think that can be it, because like I said, I'm using a consistent orientation in Blender, and then using the same set of transforms in Unity. The issue is that I will have everything oriented how I want, re-save a file in blender without rotating it, and then I switch back into Unity and find that my part is now rotated at a weird angle, even though at no point did I actually change any rotation values in Blender OR Unity.

As for format, I've just been (as per the tutorials I've found) saving my Blender files as .blend, because Unity can read those. The axes are different, but they are meant to be CONSISTENTLY different.

 

 

It does occur to me that one thing may be important: When parttools is attached to a gameobject, and compiles a part, will it incorporate that object's rotation into the part, or will it consider that object to be the "zero point" for its children?

Or, to show it another way...

Container.GameObjectA@angleA
		|
		|------PARTTOOLS.GameObjectB@angleB
                      |
                      |------MeshAndStuff.GameobjectC@angleC

So obviously, on my Unity editor screen, the mesh and stuff will be displayed at angleA+angleB+AngleC. Just as obviously, when I have PartTools write the part, it will not involve angleA in that process. That's the whole point of using container objects to rotate your IVA on screen, like all of the tutorials say.

But, when PartTools does write the part, as far as KSP is concerned, will the mesh be at angleC, or at angleC+angleB?

[CobaltWolf]

The transform of the PartTools gameobject does not matter. I usually build my rockets fully in Unity, as in I assemble the stages and stuff to make sure everything works.

[Tokamak]

Here are the part configuration stats I'm contemplating. I'm winging it, so feedback in terms of realism OR balance is welcome.

 

 

Mass: 4 tonnes

 The mass of an empty Jumbo64, which seems to be of a similar volume. I figure taking out the hardware for dealing with actual fuel, and putting in furnishings could reasonably be about a wash. I want it to be kind of clunky and heavy for a hab, but also reasonable to actually launch in the early game. Maybe this should be higher?

 

Capacity: 8 crew

 Well, just look at the IVA.

 

Cost: 10,000

 For a back-of-the-envelope, I just added the cost of a Jumbo64 and a Hitchhiker Storage. The whole point of the thing is to be an early game way to cheaply get some long-term habitation in space.

 

TechRequired: fuelSystems

 Because it is a refitted fuel tank, duh.

 

Description: I’ll eventually need to write something clever here.

 

Drag related stats: ???

 Looks like I have MORE to learn. I have no idea about this, and welcome suggestions.

 

USI-LS habitation:

KerbalMonths = 0

HabMultiplier = 4

 Basically, this isn’t meant to actually provide more of the basic space Kerbals need to live, it’s just meant to make living in space more tolerable by having elbow room. As such it’s a part entirely dedicated to keeping kerbals sane and happy. @roverdude reccommends just using the tonnage as your multiplier.

 

MKS Kolonization Bonus:

workSpace = 0

livingSpace = 8

hasGenerators = false

 I THINK this is a correct interpretation of how this is meant to work