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

[New Horizons]

How does this mod compare to Real Fuels Stock? As I read on prior pages one should not install both. But what is the unique selling point of this here and Real Fuels Stock over there - maybe performance wise?

[Slaughtermelon]

I would like to ask a question. What is the difference between mesh driven effects vs regular effects or particle effects? I tried looking up mesh driven effects and could not really find anything. I am genuinely curious.

[Davi SDF]

36 minutes ago, Slaughtermelon said:

I would like to ask a question. What is the difference between mesh driven effects vs regular effects or particle effects? I tried looking up mesh driven effects and could not really find anything. I am genuinely curious.

Basically, waterfall doesn't use particles at all, it uses a mesh of textures ,i believe, that keeps "flowing" to simulate the rocket exaust. If you take a look at the images of the waterfall album you might notice that there's almost none to none particles in the exaust at all.

[hugoraider]

Hey there! I'm having a bug with Waterfall. It's the weird blue reflections on the boosters. I've been experimenting to try and figure it out, and it seems to happen only with RD-170 from Tantares and if there are at least 3 of them (maybe it happens with less, but then it's harder to notice). It seems to be caused by the EngineLight effect, cause it disappears when I disable it. I've been using Tantares and Waterfall before and I don't recall having this. Any ideas?

Edited January 31, 2023 by hugoraider

[Bulltoad]

When used with Parralax and astronomers visual pack (plus eve and scatterer), I get huge frame drops on some planets - but ONLY when a waterfall effect, whether that be rcs or engine, is playing. Does anyone have a potential solution or fix for this? Any waterfall effect to disable?

[hugoraider]

On 1/31/2023 at 12:41 PM, hugoraider said:

Hey there! I'm having a bug with Waterfall. It's the weird blue reflections on the boosters. I've been experimenting to try and figure it out, and it seems to happen only with RD-170 from Tantares and if there are at least 3 of them (maybe it happens with less, but then it's harder to notice). It seems to be caused by the EngineLight effect, cause it disappears when I disable it. I've been using Tantares and Waterfall before and I don't recall having this. Any ideas?

So... anyone?

[Davi SDF]

On 1/31/2023 at 8:41 AM, hugoraider said:

Hey there! I'm having a bug with Waterfall. It's the weird blue reflections on the boosters. I've been experimenting to try and figure it out, and it seems to happen only with RD-170 from Tantares and if there are at least 3 of them (maybe it happens with less, but then it's harder to notice). It seems to be caused by the EngineLight effect, cause it disappears when I disable it. I've been using Tantares and Waterfall before and I don't recall having this. Any ideas?

Are you sure those lighting effects aren't comming from the RD-0120s?

[hugoraider]

7 hours ago, Davi SDF said:

Are you sure those lighting effects aren't comming from the RD-0120s?

The thing is I don't recall having them before, I think I'd have noticed. And it doesn't happen without Waterfall

[KeaKaka]

On 2/6/2023 at 1:08 AM, hugoraider said:

The thing is I don't recall having them before, I think I'd have noticed. And it doesn't happen without Waterfall

I'm pretty sure it's a lighting bug with KSP itself, trying to process 4x lighting effects for each engine, and then 4x engines (so 8 lighting effects), plus the lighting from the engines on the core stage (making it 12 lighting effects) which are all very bright and flickering, could definitely cause some issues with KSP's lighting engine.

This is just my theory though, don't take my word on it.

[hugoraider]

15 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

I'm pretty sure it's a lighting bug with KSP itself, trying to process 4x lighting effects for each engine, and then 4x engines (so 8 lighting effects), plus the lighting from the engines on the core stage (making it 12 lighting effects) which are all very bright and flickering, could definitely cause some issues with KSP's lighting engine.

This is just my theory though, don't take my word on it.

Yeah, maybe that's it, but again I've been using Energia before and I don't recall seeing this. Could be wrong though, haven't played KSP in a while before noticing it

[Cheesecake]

I have some weird artifacts. The Plume inside the nozzle is flickering very fast (difficult to capture with pictures). Here are some pics:

https://ibb.co/1myd1jC
https://ibb.co/KVhhkkL
https://ibb.co/RPmvWz2
https://ibb.co/hVzJ8cT
https://ibb.co/5sbPT12

And heres my log.

It occurs with all engines (Stock, Restock, Mods). I use Waterfall 0.9.0, StockWaterfall Effects 0.7.0 and Waterfall restock 0.2.3.
I made a break with KSP for months. Used Waterfall before but didn`t had this artifacts.

 

 

[AtomicTech]

53 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

I have some weird artifacts. The Plume inside the nozzle is flickering very fast (difficult to capture with pictures). Here are some pics:

https://ibb.co/1myd1jC
https://ibb.co/KVhhkkL
https://ibb.co/RPmvWz2
https://ibb.co/hVzJ8cT
https://ibb.co/5sbPT12

And heres my log.

It occurs with all engines (Stock, Restock, Mods). I use Waterfall 0.9.0, StockWaterfall Effects 0.7.0 and Waterfall restock 0.2.3.
I made a break with KSP for months. Used Waterfall before but didn`t had this artifacts.

 

 

Looks like the plume needs some tweaking. 

Try opening the in-flight editor and moving the z value of the plume core.

[Cheesecake]

11 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Looks like the plume needs some tweaking. 

Try opening the in-flight editor and moving the z value of the plume core.

I don`t know how to do that. I opened the Waterfall-Editor in Flight but where can I move z?
I never changed anything there and it worked otherwise.Also I didn`t change anything there yet

Edited February 23, 2023 by Cheesecake

[EnderiumSmith]

On 2/23/2023 at 3:23 PM, Cheesecake said:

I have some weird artifacts. The Plume inside the nozzle is flickering very fast (difficult to capture with pictures). Here are some pics:

https://ibb.co/1myd1jC
https://ibb.co/KVhhkkL
https://ibb.co/RPmvWz2
https://ibb.co/hVzJ8cT
https://ibb.co/5sbPT12

And heres my log.

It occurs with all engines (Stock, Restock, Mods). I use Waterfall 0.9.0, StockWaterfall Effects 0.7.0 and Waterfall restock 0.2.3.
I made a break with KSP for months. Used Waterfall before but didn`t had this artifacts.

 

 

if you have scatterer disable temporal antialiasing

Anyone have a good plume for gas core engines? the default ones are dull and the SWE works better for solid core but is kinda underwhelming on gas cores

Edited February 26, 2023 by EnderiumSmith

[Jebby Boi]

On 8/14/2020 at 4:04 PM, Nertea said:

KSP 1.12.x   Waterfall [0.9.0]  Last Updated Aug 2, 2022

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 )

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.

 

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. 

• WaterfallRestock: Provides patches for most Restock and Restock+ engines. This requires Restock. 
• Near Future Technologies: Near Future Propulsion, Spacecraft and Launch Vehicles provide Waterfall configs
• Kerbal Atomics: Full support
• CryoEngines: Full support
• Far Future Technologies: Full support
• Stock Waterfall Effects: Provides support for stock 

 

I love this mod, but the tutorial on how to use it is probably the most useless crap I've ever seen. I'd just watch a youtube tutorial, but here's the thing-THERE ARE NONE. This mod has no tutorials aside from the one the creator made, and it was rather useless. All I wanted to do was edit the restock terrier's plume. It's a great mod, it's awesome, and it makes the game beautiful, but it has horrible documentation on how to simply change an already active plume (Such as the waterfall restock's terrier plume, the source of my problem) and get it to save. I just the tutorial was better, or someone made a tutorial.

[Fossilized]

Hello, I'm experiencing a mod-breaking issue for developing plumes.  My plume development was going normally until I suddenly started experiencing this. Whenever I add a new effect, save the template, then reload my game, the effect isn't visible. It's there in the editor, but has no "Edit Material" button and adding modifiers opens a bugged version of the modifier panel. I've tried reinstalling but this didn't help. Has this been heard of before and is there a solution?

[Toaster355]

Spoiler

Really weird bug. The RCS and engine plumes appear to be behind the mun. I've posted a before + after of both, and I have docking mode open to show you I'm not lying. Running on 1.12.5 and the latest waterfall version.
How to fix?

[Fossilized]

I'm having an issue with what I believe might be the ray marching of volumetrics in this mod? When far from my plume, like low FOV or cameratools, it becomes very stringy. In the first image, you can see how the nozzle glow effect becomes ruined. In the second, you can see a bit of noise down in the plume that just turns into speckles. From even further, the entire plume becomes a stretched, stringy mess. Is there a solution?

[Alpha_Gametauri]

My issue is and idk how to fix it. But the skipper engine has no plume or sound, dead silence with no plume. All that happens is the inside of the engine bell lights up, and i have thrust... just not the above issue. And the mainsail engine has thrust and sound, but not a plume like the other engines, just a pillar of smoke.

If that's what the mainsail (bottom pic) is supposed to be like, my bad.

[Davi SDF]

9 hours ago, Alpha_Gametauri said:

My issue is and idk how to fix it. But the skipper engine has no plume or sound, dead silence with no plume. All that happens is the inside of the engine bell lights up, and i have thrust... just not the above issue. And the mainsail engine has thrust and sound, but not a plume like the other engines, just a pillar of smoke.

If that's what the mainsail (bottom pic) is supposed to be like, my bad.

Have you updated Waterfall? If so, try re-downloading and re-installing the latest version of Waterfall restock.

Otherwise, try doing the same for both, that's my only guess.

[Alpha_Gametauri]

4 hours ago, Davi SDF said:

Have you updated Waterfall? If so, try re-downloading and re-installing the latest version of Waterfall restock.

Otherwise, try doing the same for both, that's my only guess.

I have, latest version of both.

[Davi SDF]

29 minutes ago, Alpha_Gametauri said:

I have, latest version of both.

Hmm, do you have any mod wich could be incompatible with those?

[Alpha_Gametauri]

2 hours ago, Davi SDF said:

Hmm, do you have any mod wich could be incompatible with those?

Not sure tbh, all the other engines work, it's just those two. I have realplume for the non-waterfall engines such as KWRocketry, and restock/restock+

[Davi SDF]

2 hours ago, Alpha_Gametauri said:

Not sure tbh, all the other engines work, it's just those two. I have realplume for the non-waterfall engines such as KWRocketry, and restock/restock+

well then, sorry, but my knowledge of waterfall problem solving ends here, someone that understands more than me might need to take a look in your log to get a good awnser

[Kerballlistic07]

Hey! Love this mod, but am wondering if there is a similar mod for solid rocket boosters. I like to use both liquid and solid and my vehicles, and the stock effects just don't look good with waterfall. Thanks!