[1.8.1-1.12.x] Modular Launch Pads v2.8.0: Launch clamps evolved: Real-style launch bases and towers [24 December 2024]

[AlphaMensae]

4 hours ago, kspbutitscursed said:

this is for 2.8? and SLS fro 2.9?

This is the last major addition for 2.8.  Then I'll (eventually) start work on v3.0, which will be a huge remake of most of the parts.

SLS might show up by the time Artemis 3 launches  

[AlphaMensae]

First arm done, the simplest, not sure what it was for, but seems to hook to some kind of vent on the bottom of the interstage (1.875m cylinder shown as a stand-in for the Atlas I/II). Also not at the proper place on the tower. The arm folds downward as the "retraction". All three arms on this tower retract in different directions; of the other two main arms, one swings left and the other swings right.

[KeaKaka]

1 hour ago, AlphaMensae said:

First arm done, the simplest, not sure what it was for, but seems to hook to some kind of vent on the bottom of the interstage (1.875m cylinder shown as a stand-in for the Atlas I/II). Also not at the proper place on the tower. The arm folds downward as the "retraction". All three arms on this tower retract in different directions; of the other two main arms, one swings left and the other swings right.

<snip>

Just a quick question, will the arms extend straight out 90° from the tower or will they be at 45°? (as they were irl as far as I can tell)

Thought I'd jump in on this while the tower's still in its early stages

[svcino]

3 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

Just a quick question, will the arms extend straight out 90° from the tower or will they be at 45°? (as they were irl as far as I can tell)

Thought I'd jump in on this while the tower's still in its early stages

these are the wind damper also seen on 36A tower Pre-Atlas II era

[AlphaMensae]

14 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

Just a quick question, will the arms extend straight out 90° from the tower or will they be at 45°? (as they were irl as far as I can tell)

Thought I'd jump in on this while the tower's still in its early stages

Not sure if they were angled that much, they don't look that angled from straight-on side views. Maybe a little angle depending on what I find.

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, the arms are definitely angled, but I can't figure out how much without knowing where the tower is located  in relation to the launch mount. Haven't found a direct front or rear image showing them, it's all side views or angled views. Until then I'll make a judgement call pick an angle that's not too severe.

[Jebs Piloting Skills]

2 hours ago, AlphaMensae said:

Ok, the arms are definitely angled, but I can't figure out how much without knowing where the tower is located  in relation to the launch mount. Haven't found a direct front or rear image showing them, it's all side views or angled views. Until then I'll make a judgement call pick an angle that's not too severe.

wait is there a new tower?

[AlphaMensae]

5 minutes ago, Jebs Piloting Skills said:

wait is there a new tower?

I'm making the Atlas I/II (and I think the Atlas III as well) umbilical tower and the custom arms for it.  It's the companion to the earlier Atlas-Centaur SLV-3 tower.

[Jebs Piloting Skills]

1 minute ago, AlphaMensae said:

I'm making the Atlas I/II (and I think the Atlas III as well) umbilical tower and the custom arms for it.  It's the companion to the earlier Atlas-Centaur SLV-3 tower.

i dont think i ever got that one, lemme go check my version

i think i had something like 1.5

[AlphaMensae]

18 minutes ago, Jebs Piloting Skills said:

i dont think i ever got that one, lemme go check my version

i think i had something like 1.5

Both of these Atlas-Centaur towers are for the upcoming v2.8 of MLP, though everything that has been completed is available on the GitHub master branch.

[Iapetus7342]

13 hours ago, AlphaMensae said:

Both of these Atlas-Centaur towers are for the upcoming v2.8 of MLP, though everything that has been completed is available on the GitHub master branch.

Noice

[AlphaMensae]

I've been busy, on and off, for the past 10 days making what has to be the most complex swing arm yet for Modular Launch Pads, what I'm calling the Atlas I/II Swing Arm 2. This was mostly due to making the piping more natural looking by using curved elbows to bend the pipes, rather than just clipping pipes together at right angles. I have a ready-made mesh for just that, a quarter-section of a 12-segment torus, which allows for 90°, 60° and 30° bends. As long as I keep track of how much I rotate things, I can align the pipes together perfectly.

This arm has a lot of complicated piping, most of which I didn't fully understand so I simplified things for the sake of my sanity  That and just taking some guesses while trying to keep the overall layout true. I've also settled on a 24° angle for the wind damper arm (which is complete and already in Unity), and 10° for Arm 2.

Anyways, some very WIP screenshots from Wings3D, showing a partial arm in its placement position (ther missing parts will be just duplicates of the existing ones). The vertical height will most likely end up being different one I get the arm in game and see where it goes on the BDB Atlas II. The I-beams and pipes are already UV-mapped and textured, I just have to UV map the other structural bits, which won't be hard at all as they are just simple blocks. Wings3D can auto-UV the whole mess and I'll just dump the lot into an area of the texture.

[AlphaMensae]

And this is what it looks like in Unity:

[NortherlyRose]

I don't know if it's intentional, or a conflict, or something, but for some reason many of the parts won't show up in any game mode except sandbox, like the N1 Tower, a few of the Modular series and the old static Saturn/Shuttle Pads

[AlphaMensae]

6 hours ago, NortherlyRose said:

I don't know if it's intentional, or a conflict, or something, but for some reason many of the parts won't show up in any game mode except sandbox, like the N1 Tower, a few of the Modular series and the old static Saturn/Shuttle Pads

In Science or Career mode, most of them will need to be unlocked first. There is a column of custom tree nodes on the left side of the stock tree, CTT and UnKerballed Start. I do not know what other tech tree mods that radically change the stock/CTT layout or alter the start node do with the MLP parts. I do know that RP-1 puts them all in the starting node.

[NortherlyRose]

15 hours ago, AlphaMensae said:

In Science or Career mode, most of them will need to be unlocked first. There is a column of custom tree nodes on the left side of the stock tree, CTT and UnKerballed Start. I do not know what other tech tree mods that radically change the stock/CTT layout or alter the start node do with the MLP parts. I do know that RP-1 puts them all in the starting node.

It seems like LRTR (Less Real Than Realism) Doesn't have them and many parts are scattered in the tree, ig I would have to wait for LRTR to update or summin

[AlphaMensae]

10 hours ago, NortherlyRose said:

It seems like LRTR (Less Real Than Realism) Doesn't have them and many parts are scattered in the tree, ig I would have to wait for LRTR to update or summin

Ok, yeah, LRTR uses the RP-1 tree, and the the RP-1 for RO puts all the MLP parts into the starting node. The LRTR version (could be using an older RP-1) may change that.

If LRTR doesn't remove the MLP custom nodes, then they may still be present, just buried somewhere in the LRTR tree. UnKerballedStart shifted the whole tree to the left by a large amount, and the MLP nodes were still there but largely covered up by a bunch of tree icons and lines. I had to shift the MLP node icon column way to the left to compensate..

Otherwise this is an LRTR issue.

[AlphaMensae]

Final arm (Arm 1) for the Atlas I/II Tower  has been modeled in standard form in Wings3D. The umbilicals attached to the flared base section of the 4m Atlas V fairing that was also used with the Atlas I and II, so that's the standard form, but I'll also add an option for a straight type fairing or a tank. Just need to make the umbilical end connectors horizontal (they are already separate meshes) and at the same distance.

This was more complicated than Arm 2, as it has all kinds of curvy pipes and I couldn't really tells what was going on in the images I have, so I kinda gave up and made something that fit my model while sort of resembling the actual arm.  

[AlphaMensae]

Got Arm 1 assembled in Unity. Now to animate it.

[AlphaMensae]

Got it animated...that was fun  

 

 

[AlphaMensae]

Got the WIP tower and Arm 1 into the game. Had to make some tweaks to the arm so the umbilical connectors were better positioned on the fairing. Didn't touch the umbilicals themselves (that would have meant altering the animations), I just moved the attachment points in the arm. Probably should have learned what that part actually was before placing meshes.  

[AlphaMensae]

In a case of going a little too obsessive over fine details, I'm modifying the Arm 2 umbilicals. After seeing what I did with Arm1, and looking again at images and the actual parts on the BDB Atlas II, I found the arm lacking.  One thing I noticed that Zorg included on the Centaur 2 tank's texture two small black holes that looked like umbilical connection points (like the ones he added to the Delta IV), and they did match one of the images I've studied. So after a tedious series of modify-write-copy-reload cycles, I got two of the umbilicals repositioned.  It did involved rotating the Centaur tank and interstage by a few standard small increments (shift key with the rotate gizmo and with angle snap on) to match how they appear in IRL images.

Close-up of the partially modified arm (ignore the  missing or misplaced meshes); those small raised rectangles on the tank are where the connection points are:

And a wider view with both arms in place:

[AlphaMensae]

After several days of endless modifying, tweaking and reloading, the revised Atlas I/II Tower Arm 2 is done, along with a revised animation and pipe connections to the tower pipes (still a WIP).

This default tower pipe arrangement obviously requires a lot of precise arrangement and positioning of the launch stand, rocket, tower and arms, so there will also be an alternate version which won't require such precise vertical positioning, and which will be useful for more general uses. Basically the pipes xoming from the arm will clip into vertical ones on the tower, which actually is how a lot of the other pipes are like anyway.

[AlphaMensae]

Still a lot of detailing to be done with the tower, but got the wind damper arm 3 in game, fixed up the connecting pipes beween the two upper arms and the tower, added an Atlas I/II tower node to the Atlas Launch Stand, and adjusted the arm attach nodes on the tower and the Atlas I/II node on the stand to precisely put the tower and arms in the right spots. All that the player needs to do is lower the whole Atlas stack so that the tower sits on the floor of the VAB; it doesn't need to be exact as the tower's collider doesn't start until 0.1m above the bottom.

The tower was actually on the side of the launch stand opposite the side with the pipes leading up to the Atlas, but I will add another node for the tower so you don't have to be so exact.  

Yeah, Atlas II launched from LC-36, but I moved the tower in enough so it could be used with the TLC LC-14 pad.

[AlphaMensae]

Progress!

The blasted piping to the arms is finally done. The tower pipes have  two variants: the default one for the exact placement of the arms as shown here, and an alternate one that allows te arms to be moved up and down and still be connected to something. The connector pipes on the arms themselves can also be turned off.

Now for the rest of the tower details....