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[1.12.x] Waterfall - a framework for continuous, mesh-driven engine effects (October 9)

Nertea

By Nertea
in KSP1 Mod Development

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wisdomsavingthrow

wisdomsavingthrow

Posted
Posted
  On 3/30/2021 at 7:06 PM, Nertea said:

I can't actually reproduce this RCS thing (the poodle thing is known). What versions of these mods are you using, with what KSP?

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KSP version 1.11.2.3077,  and version 0.2.1 of WaterfallRestock. The 3-horn version had it the worst - but honestly, I've got a plethora of other visual mods that could be fiddling with it somehow, and I've got my hotfix, so if it's fine from the dev end I think we're settled there.

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pp3d

pp3d

Posted
Posted

Can I just modify the provided templates in the waterfall folder instead of creating new ones for each engine part?  The only change I want is for Scale X in some engines ... I am not sure how to go about doing that...

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Nertea

Nertea

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Posted
  On 3/31/2021 at 8:17 PM, pp3d said:

Can I just modify the provided templates in the waterfall folder instead of creating new ones for each engine part?  The only change I want is for Scale X in some engines ... I am not sure how to go about doing that...

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Just use the templates and scale them appropriately. Absolutely no need to make a new one. 

https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Templates

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pp3d

pp3d

Posted
Posted (edited)
  On 3/31/2021 at 9:11 PM, Nertea said:

Just use the templates and scale them appropriately. Absolutely no need to make a new one. 

https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Templates

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  On 3/31/2021 at 9:11 PM, Nertea said:

Just use the templates and scale them appropriately. Absolutely no need to make a new one. 

https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Templates

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thanks -- still confused so let me give you a specific example that will help me. understand ... The specific engine is one of yours in NearFuturePropulsion which has it's own WaterFall folder in Patches:NearFuturePropulsion/Patches/Waterfall/template-nfp-ion-gridded-xenon-1.cfg 

When the ship is loaded, the waterfall editor gives me values for the offsets shown in the inlined image below under templates. I want to edit those for the scale but I can't match them to anything in the template file above. What I see, are the values shown below (just an excerpt) -- which. don't match the values in the editor. I am certainly  missing something...  waterfall mod is the newest release... the. NFT maybe one subversion behind current... 

   MODEL

    {

      path = Waterfall/FX/fx-cylinder

      positionOffset = 0,0,-0.119999997

      rotationOffset = -90,0,0

      scaleOffset = 0.159999996,2,0.159999996

hGut4XN.png

 

 

Edited by pp3d
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EnderKid2

EnderKid2

Posted
Posted (edited)

Those values correspond to the ones seen in the waterfall module in the config file of the engine. You should see something like

TEMPLATE
    {
      // This is the name of the template to use
      templateName = waterfall-hydrolox-lower-2
      // This field allows you to override the parentTransform name in the EFFECTS contained in the template
      overrideParentTransform = thrustTransform
      position = 0,0,0
      rotation = 0, 0, 0
      scale = 0.73, 0.73, 0.8
    }

(this is from the WaterfallRestock Skipper)

  On 3/31/2021 at 10:23 PM, pp3d said:

The specific engine is one of yours in NearFuturePropulsion which has it's own WaterFall folder in Patches:NearFuturePropulsion/Patches/Waterfall/template-nfp-ion-gridded-xenon-1.cfg 

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ah, there's your problem, that's not the engine, thats the template

From what I can tell of the file structure and what is selected in that pic, what you are looking for is the second engine in this file: NearFuturePropulsionWaterfallXenon.cfg

although you should look through the configs to find out what the internal name of the engine you want is

Edited by EnderKid2
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pp3d

pp3d

Posted
Posted
  On 3/31/2021 at 10:30 PM, EnderKid2 said:

Those values correspond to the ones seen in the waterfall module in the config file of the engine. You should see something like

TEMPLATE
    {
      // This is the name of the template to use
      templateName = waterfall-hydrolox-lower-2
      // This field allows you to override the parentTransform name in the EFFECTS contained in the template
      overrideParentTransform = thrustTransform
      position = 0,0,0
      rotation = 0, 0, 0
      scale = 0.73, 0.73, 0.8
    }

(this is from the WaterfallRestock Skipper)

ah, there's your problem, that's not the engine, thats the template

From what I can tell of the file structure and what is selected in that pic, what you are looking for is the second engine in this file: NearFuturePropulsionWaterfallXenon.cfg

although you should look through the configs to find out what the internal name of the engine you want is

Expand  

@EnderKid2 you have ided the issue accurately. It is the second engine there.  The take away is that the template-nfp-ion-gridded-xenon-1.cfg is called inside NearFuturePropulsionWaterfallXenon.cfg  which sets properties of each of the engine that uses that template. Thanks again. 

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EnderKid2

EnderKid2

Posted
Posted
  On 3/31/2021 at 11:33 PM, pp3d said:

@EnderKid2 you have ided the issue accurately. It is the second engine there.  The take away is that the template-nfp-ion-gridded-xenon-1.cfg is called inside NearFuturePropulsionWaterfallXenon.cfg  which sets properties of each of the engine that uses that template. Thanks again. 

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yes, and you don't necessarily have to put all the engines that use that template in the same file. For the most part, each engine gets its own config patch file.

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andrepan

andrepan

Posted
Posted
  On 8/14/2020 at 11:04 PM, Nertea said:

 

KSP 1.11.x  

Waterfall [0.6.3] 
Last Updated March 26, 2021

screenshot42.png?width=2380&height=1339

I make a lot of engine effects, particularly for vacuum engines, which are really poorly handled by a traditional particle system, much less the gnarly butchered version of that system that KSP provides. Smokescreen helps, but when we're talking about really large, fast moving plumes, the number of particles you need to create high fidelity effects is really high. Performance gets low. To that end, I and some others (primarily @Nessus_ and some porcine aviator dude who shall not be named) have created a cool new way to create and drive engine effects. 

Project Goals

  • Design a framework to create mesh-driven engine effects for smooth rocket plumes
  • Support for atmospheric expansion and all kinds of dynamic effects
  • Cross-compatible with SmokeScreen for adding smoke effects
  • Ingame editor to create and drive effects. 
  • Provide a set of template effects for modders to use on their engines. 

Please note that this mod is a framework  it doesn't change anything or provide anything by itself, but provides the ability for you to do things.

Screenshots/Videos

Here's a few screenshots and videos from development over the last few months (credits to @Nessus_ and @DylanSemrau )

DmqTh5W.png

bmVHvwb.png

gr1THyD.png

For more, check out this Imgur album or look through the thread

 

Templates

A lot of preconfigured templates are available for anyone to use. These should cover most chemical engines in most mods. 

How to Use

Documentation

I wrote documentation. Read it! This is a work in progress and I have a bit of trouble keeping it up to date with new features that are added weekly. If you're having issues please review the thread and ask here.

Ingame Editor

To design plumes, you'll have a pretty fully featured editor to work with. Here are a few screenshots of it.

screenshot15.png

screenshot246.png

 

Downloads

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I installed this and nothing happened, what gives?
A: Make sure you have mods installed that actually use the plugin.

Dependencies (Required and Bundled)

  • Module Manager 

Licensing

  • All content is distributed under a CC-BY-SA-NC-4 License.
  • All bundled mods are distributed under their own licenses.

Download
Mirrors


Tertiary (GitHub)

Issue Tracking and Source

 

Supported Mods

You need configuration packs for this to do anything. Currently there are only one; other mods will likely ship configs for this. If you release a mod that supports Waterfall you can let me know and I'll add it here. 

 

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Incredible, but is it compatible with restock?

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Ozzy.R

Ozzy.R

Posted
Posted

Hi there, I have a problem with Waterfall.

The editor window for the mod isn't working for me.

It looks like this: https://imgur.com/kTrg808

On the left is what happens when I click the Waterfall icon in the toolbar and on the right is cheat menu console, which is showing a lot of errors.

Pleas let me know if this is not enough information.

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Knight of St John

Knight of St John

Posted
Posted
  On 4/3/2021 at 12:51 AM, Ozzy.R said:

The editor window for the mod isn't working for me.

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go read the full documentation. Then come back if you still can't figure it out.
TL;DR: you need to create engine configuration files (and maybe templates) for your engine manually, before the editor will recognize it.

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Cosmonaut15

Cosmonaut15

Posted
Posted (edited)

@Nertea Always appreciate your mod and thanks for your masterpiece.  I think I found a bug related to Waterfall.

When an atomic engine was switched to LH2 + Ox augmented mode, the plume just disappeared.  There is only glowing light and final flame blip when fuel run-out. So far, I found this issue with NV-50 Stubber, NV-500 Poseidon, and NV-DC Scylla. Not sure if it is the issue for other engines or not.

Somehow I can't post the image. Here is the link.

image of the engine

This is the list of mods.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by Cosmonaut15
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EnderKid2

EnderKid2

Posted
Posted (edited)

had a similar issue with my rapier plume, The way mode-switching engines were implementyed was changed a bit ago, perhaps the atomic engine's waterfall patch is outdated

edit: if this is true, both plumes will show up in one of the modes, and in the plume GUI, both plumes will respond to the throttle when the engine is in one mode, and neither will if the engine is in the other mode

Edited by EnderKid2
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Nertea

Nertea

Posted
  • Author
Posted
  On 4/6/2021 at 4:19 AM, Cosmonaut15 said:

@Nertea Always appreciate your mod and thanks for your masterpiece.  I think I found a bug related to Waterfall.

When an atomic engine was switched to LH2 + Ox augmented mode, the plume just disappeared.  There is only glowing light and final flame blip when fuel run-out. So far, I found this issue with NV-50 Stubber, NV-500 Poseidon, and NV-DC Scylla. Not sure if it is the issue for other engines or not.

Somehow I can't post the image. Here is the link.

image of the engine

This is the list of mods.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Expand  

You should ensure you look in the mod's thread, not here - this thread is more for the plugin support. 

The KA thread indicates that this is a known issue that requires a KA update which I am procrastinating. 

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ben04

ben04

Posted
Posted
  On 4/8/2021 at 1:06 PM, alberro+ said:

Been using Realplume for a very long time, but I think that now Waterfall is starting to grow on me. When installing Waterfall, do I have to configure each engine in order to make it have a plume?

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There are separate mods (Stock Waterfall Effects for stock, WaterfallRestock for Restock) which you can install alongside Waterfall Core to give engine effects. Some other mods (Near Future and BDB) also support Waterfall now and if you have those installed then the engines from those mods should also have new plumes.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Al2Me6

Al2Me6

Posted
Posted

Is is possible to modify Waterfall templates using ModuleManager? I wrote a patch like the following:

  Reveal hidden contents

The changes do show up in ModuleManager, but they don't seem to get applied to the actual plume.

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Al2Me6

Al2Me6

Posted
Posted
  On 4/17/2021 at 4:08 AM, Nertea said:

It should be doable. Have you checked that the final config as shown in the MM cache has your change, and that the final config works fine outside of an MM patch?

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I have indeed verified that the patch shows up in ModuleManager.ConfigCache -- that's what I meant by "show up in ModuleManager," hence why I'm puzzled.

I tried copy-pasted the template out of the cache into its own file, and it does seem to work that way.

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UltraJohn

UltraJohn

Posted
Posted

Got this error: 

[ERR 20:51:57.379] Module ModuleWaterfallFX threw during OnLoad: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at FloatCurve.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x00021] in <06f13185617646e5bc801baeab53ab75>:0 
  at Waterfall.EffectLightColorModifier.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x00056] in <c5eba498661f4da59db6540c617ee9c7>:0 
  at Waterfall.EffectLightColorModifier..ctor (ConfigNode node) [0x00011] in <c5eba498661f4da59db6540c617ee9c7>:0 
  at Waterfall.WaterfallEffect.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x0025c] in <c5eba498661f4da59db6540c617ee9c7>:0 
  at Waterfall.WaterfallEffect..ctor (ConfigNode node) [0x00044] in <c5eba498661f4da59db6540c617ee9c7>:0 
  at Waterfall.ModuleWaterfallFX.OnLoad (ConfigNode node) [0x003b3] in <c5eba498661f4da59db6540c617ee9c7>:0 
  at PartModule.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x001ab] in <06f13185617646e5bc801baeab53ab75>:0

KSP.log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t0kmcb5gqugxlqp/KSP.log?dl=0

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