blender/unity = rocket science? multiple beginner issues

[Duke-49th]

Hey.

After I found out that Infernal Robotics is missing one of my favorit parts - the VTOL, I thought why not using the time in lockdown and do it myself?

I am totally new to blender/modelling.

I just had a 5 hours horror trip to do something, what I assumed is one of the most basic functions in such a program. Alignment+snapping.

FYI I figured it now. I finally found a tutorial video that was able to help me. While all others did something, maybe even useful, but not such a "basic" thing. I was so frustrated after a couple of hours I even snapped () on my wife for disturbing me haha.

But I will ask now if I maybe just missed something and there maybe is an easier way to do it.

Hard to explain, so I show a picture of the now aligned objects. (the center of the faces of these two cylinders, one is the part that shall rotate, the motor)

 

This is the video and its technique that I used to align it:

 

So, is there an easier way?

 

Does someone has a good collection of beginner tutorials for newer blender versions? (some videos using mods, that aren't working etc)

 

Thank you.

 

Btw...of course I will upload the VTOL along maybe some other parts for robotics. I saw some comments missing some of these models too.

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Duke-49th
changed title of topic

[hemeac]

The Blender Guru series on rendering a doughnut is probably one of the more accessible series. There will be some elements that are not going to likely be directly relevant to KSP such as rendering in Blender, but it will expose you to some concepts like shaders which may help give you an idea of what that means (if you don't already know): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4.  I haven't gone through the process of importing into Unity, so don't have any useful advice.

TBH, in the modelling I do, trains and houses, I generally haven't spent much time with snapping, I generally prefer to line up parts together based on their edge lines when viewing them from orthographic perspectives.  As I don't use it for work, I generally find that my eyeball with a close zoom is good enough. 

In a related note, you are going to want to make sure that all of your faces are either quads or tris.  Your cylinder cap is an n-gon, this can create problems with shading, they would be better as a triangle fan (this is an option when creating the cylinder).  That also would help on locating the geometric center of the engine.  And depending on the scale of the objects you are going for, you may be using too many polygons.  In general, unless those are really large parts (ie. 5m+ parts), you can probably get away with having less vertices and use the shade smooth setting under the face menu combined with auto smooth.  This is what is used on the stock parts.  Look straight down on one of the stock fuel tanks and you should see that they use about a quarter of the vertices on their cylinders as you.  If you have noticed it before and it bothered you, then you should use more vertices, but if you have never noticed before, I would try and keep the number of vertices to a similar level as them.

Below is an example of a cylinder with 16 vertices that has smooth shading enabled with the normals set to auto smooth.  I think it generally makes for a good illusion and once everything is textured and in game where the rocket and/or camera is zoomed out and moving around, I don't think you will notice.  Good luck.  Once you get a hang of Blender, it is a lot of fun to work with.  In my experience, modelling is the fun part, but getting the textures working, is the real pain in posterior.

 

[Duke-49th]

Hi.

Thank you for your input. I will check on that with my next part.

Normally I wouldn't mind a minor offset. The problem with this part is that it is for infernal robotics. So it is a moving part. And therefore I want to have it exactly positioned, so that it won't look akward when it turns on the Y axis. That is basically the only reason why I want to have it exactly snapped to the center.

But to be honest I got everything so far now and understand a bit more now. But run into issues with Unity now.

No matter what I do, the damm KSP tools not loading correctly and therefore I miss the shaders.

ksp Unloading broken assembly Assets/Plugins/KSPAssets/KSPAssetCompiler.dll, this assembly can cause crashes in the runtime

ksp Unloading broken assembly Assets/Plugins/KSPAssets/KSPAssetCompiler.dll, this assembly can cause crashes in the runtime

I do it exactly like in all the available tutorials.

I open Unity, create new project for 3D, delete the MeshPro package, install the KSP tool package, then receiving this error. The Shaders are then under the unloaded shaders. (if I use them, it is all just pink).

I struggle with this since yesterday and am almost going to give up.

 

I followed these instructions and links for download:

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Duke-49th

[Duke-49th]

This is it in blender so far. I just try to make it work now in first place. (dont care the actual material/texture.) Because with the issues in unity the model is not showing up ingame. I had it working before, I think without importing it to unity, but then I had missing textures. I don't know what the problem was. I think I had two materials and someone mentioned that KSP don't like that. So one part of the VTOL was always not showing. Anyways. I am trying to figure out what the heck the problem is now with unity, as I followed the instructions, but there is this error all the time with the KSP tools.

I also still dont understand the concept and difference between material and texture. I see some mods come with textures and some with a plain tga file, where I assume it is just a material. But no matter how I did it so far, it won't show correct ingame or it won't show up at all (cannot even find the part)

 

 

 

To ease my testing now, I made a second clean install. Maybe this will even somehow fix some errors, as I could see a lot of errors in the log, coming from addons.

Didn't know that 2nd install works with steam version. I switched to steam because the original servers for download are too slow.

[Duke-49th]

Ok.

I now could fix the unity issue with the errors so far.

I knew it, sleep over and start fresh helped haha.

No one mentioned that you have to delete the original TMP package every single time you start a new project. And the order of importing the KSP tools and TMP was also written wrong. First delete original TMP, then import the modified TMP, then the tools.
This way it works. I wish that would've been mentioned and corrected in the tutorials and instructions that I followed.

Will follow up with progress/issues.

 

Edit: Ok, the shaders still under "failed to compile". I don't get it. I freaking don't get it. There is no error in the log so far.

Edited September 6, 2020 by Duke-49th

[wasml]

@Duke-49thThere seems to be a problem with the 1.10 parttools - see this thread. When I use the 1.10 parttools I only have 3 particle shaders, all the others fail to compile, so I'm using the 1.9 parttools. I also don't bother replacing TMP as I'm only making parts (I actually delete the default install TMP) and nothings blown-up yet.

Edited September 6, 2020 by wasml

[Duke-49th]

1 hour ago, wasml said:

@Duke-49thThere seems to be a problem with the 1.10 parttools - see this thread. When I use the 1.10 parttools I only have 3 particle shaders, all the others fail to compile, so I'm using the 1.9 parttools. I also don't bother replacing TMP as I'm only making parts (I actually delete the default install TMP) and nothings blown-up yet.

Yes yes, only three particle shaders. All the time. My goodness I am trying it over and over again and thought it is my fault, doing something wrong in Blender or while setting up Unity etc.

Thank you for the hint. I thought I am going nuts.

 

Which one is for 1.9? the 2.20 tools? I don't want to mess it up again. I am not sure.  @wasml

 

Edit: I used that now (their "previous version" package) and it works.

 

I can't believe it. After wasting 2 days now, I have a part that works lol. (that is just for testing purpose only, simple tank+texture)

 

Now let's see if I can make the VTOL working now. Gosh. What a hassle.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Duke-49th

[Duke-49th]

Ok. So far so bad.

I still have one big issue, that is driving me nuts.

 

The game ignores the nodes in the cfg.

It always takes the origin of the base mesh. No matter what I do. Shouldn't it use the nodes that I define in the cfg? Regardless of the position of the origin of the mesh? I can set nodes at other models and it is accepting these changed.

If I use the attach node, then the infernal robotic motor is turning the whole model, instead of the "Joint".

I first thought that the colliding mesh will be at least being used for that. But nope.

Ok, my workaround now will be that I simply change the point of origin to where it should be attached. But it does not make much sense to me, how the game handles (=ignores) the attach nodes.

It works perfectly fine for my test tank btw. (nodes works, can be adjusted etc) Just this VTOL and its weirdo behavior is driving me nuts.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Duke-49th

[Duke-49th]

Ok I gave up now. I'm done.

I might try to do the model all over again and see if it changes its behavior or not. But this is really nonsense. Not even changing the origin changes anything. It still attaches at the very same point. Adding arrows and naming them (attach_node_bottom etc.) , does not change anything either.

If I change the attach rules, I can use the nodes, but then the motor of infernal robotics lets it rotate around y axis and the collision mesh around y axis at the same time and such weird things. This behavior makes no sense to me. I don't see the logic behind these kind of errors.

Also Bottom and top node are mirrored, same with the base+joint mesh for the motor/rotation control. I don't know what happened here too, but I cannot fix it.

 

 

Edited September 7, 2020 by Duke-49th

[wasml]

I've never built an Infernal Robotics part so probably can't be of any help but how are you defining your nodes? Are you using the "node_stack_top = " or the NODE { name = top transform = ...".

[Duke-49th]

2 hours ago, wasml said:

I've never built an Infernal Robotics part so probably can't be of any help but how are you defining your nodes? Are you using the "node_stack_top = " or the NODE { name = top transform = ...".

Actually I have rebuilt the whole part again. It was so messed up somehow.
I was going to give up. But cannot giver up hehe.
Check this thread/post, I have posted it there (cfg/video/screenshot):
 

post

Edited September 8, 2020 by Duke-49th