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[WIP] RestockPBR - A PBR and recolorable conversion for Restock/Restock+

Nertea

By Nertea
in KSP1 Mod Development

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Lonelykermit

Lonelykermit

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Nertea said:

A considerable amount of work is being done on the plane parts right now. A few in-progress images...

szxZZMR.png

 

MtMs0Lp.png

HrGyUDC.png

4vYthP8.png

Wow... Insane work you guys are doing. Seeing heatshield tiles on the plane parts makes me happy :)

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UncleMateo

UncleMateo

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On 2/20/2025 at 10:50 AM, Nertea said:

One thing that's currently missing from KSP1 is a unified, coherent part recolor system that has a passable UX.

I'm afraid that is simply not true, barring some error of opinion as to what qualifies as 'passable UX'.  For many years, there has been a serious effort to make ALL of KSP recolorable through the magic of TURD, mod-by-mod, part-by-part.  Restock itself has long been the biggest hurdle in achieving this goal, though many have tried to fix that over time.  Here's a list of mods recolorable by TU:

Nertea, the things you have created in KSP have brought me so much joy over the years... you have added so much to this game, and I truly respect your creative abilities and how you've embraced them for the good of the KSP community.  That being said, I cannot help but feel that you are, in truth, unaware of the history of TexturesUnlimited.   PBR was added long ago by TexturesUnlimited, made by @Shadowmage, long before KSP2's announcement or Deferred's release.  A huge ecosystem of recolor mods relies on it, built by at least a dozen modders, including myself.  A utility mod exists for it that even allows recoloring in-flight, called LazyPainter, created by @Halban.  Over these long years since the release of TU and the first TURD configs, many mods have been made compatible through the diligent work of modders, notably @Manwith Noname, @ZZetho, @OnlyLightMatters, and @UltraJohn.  During this time, people have had to decide between your ReStock mod and the TU recolor configs, called TURDs, simply because ReStock was not compatible with TURD and Stock was.  What Restock did to stock parts meant that the vast majority of the configs made for Stock TURD did not work for ReStock .  All it took to fix that was someone going through and making configs part by part, but ReStock has about 400 parts when you include the ReStock+, and many of those parts have multiple variants, in essence that means a lot of work.  There were no less than a half-dozen attempts to achieve this for ReStock, but none of them made it very far.  Until this most recent attempt.  Myself, @MrShelter, @Spartwo and @PicoSpace have all been working together to make this dream a reality over the last ~9 months.  At this point I've lost contact with MrShelter, and Spartwo and Picospace made their contributions and moved on to other mods.  At present only I am working on this herculean project and work has largely stalled out at ~70% part completion, after Spartwo made their last contribution and I saw this thread.  Well, it kind of broke me.  I had to step away so I could respond tactfully and respectfully rather than with animus and anger.  Let me just say: I would have LOVED for you to join us in that effort at any point.  It was open development, and given that you were the creator of ReStock, we would have happily ceded creative control of the project to you and done your bidding.   If you wanted a more restrictive license, that wouldn't have been a big problem.  Hell, I would have given you the lion's share of the credit and not complained if you gobbled up the limelight.  Sadly, I never got the slightest indication that you even noticed our project, which we've been working on since at least the start of last summer.  Truth is, this thread and this mod has put me in a position where I feel I have little choice but to put RestockRecolour on hiatus for the time being, maybe forever.. and that's a shame considering how much work went into and how close we were.  Without knowing for certain where you're going with this and how the community will react to it, it seems imprudent to pour any more time or resources on its continuation.

I feel the inevitable result of you using ReSurface rather than TexturesUnlimited is to make people once again have to choose between having ReStock and being able to truly customize their paintjobs.   Because, I'm sorry, but TexturesUnlimited does everything you're doing but also has far more flexibility on color choice.  At least without the addition of RGB selection.  The only real advantage with your system is you can recolor more swaths/chunks of the individual models different colors, but that comes at great cost and is itself an issue when considering vehicles with high part-counts.   With TU it is more rigid as to what part of a model you can paint, but you can recolor something anywhere from chrome to a glossy, specular pink, to a dull blackish green, basically any color you can imagine, with the specularity/metallic/RGB sliders.   It's a shame for the community's sake that you didn't try to realize this dream  through TU, which has a lot more existing infrastructure.. especially LazyPainter, which allows you to paint a 500-part ship all at once, rather than having to individually click 255,000 times and spend 15 minutes doing it, and also allows recoloring in-flight.  I personally spent a lot of time and effort trying to make it so that people didn't have to choose between Restock and TURD.  It's a shame that things have gone this way, but I hope that you'll at least keep 'RestockPBR' as a separate mod and not roll it into the ReStock release for the sake of all Bob Ross enthusiasts.  And please, please, consider how valuable having truly customizable color values is.  The fact that you lack that feature is without a doubt the biggest weakness in what you have presented here.

  In a more perfect world, we could have joined forces.

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Nertea

Nertea

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Posted

Yeah, fair. I can't really disagree with you feeling frustrated, you feel that work you've done is wasted. Can't change that I'm afraid.

I will say that I am incredibly familiar with TU as a concept, I have been around this community for a long time and watched TUs inception, and sat through several attempts to apply recoloring to my mods that frankly ticked me off as an artist. At at least 3 different times, I did evaluations, one of them with shadowmage in the loop, of how I might utilize TU for its various capabilities. In every case it has fallen flat for a scattering of different reasons, and it's only recently that I would say the mod ecosystem has become capable of delivering a unified product for visuals that matches what I want. Maybe if I were to qualify the original statement I'd say there is no coherent tech art approach to delivering recoloring that involves the original artists

Like I mentioned to another poster, I did a strong evaluation of the available options for this conversion both in UI and tech art terms and I found that they did not align with my goals and the user needs that I saw when I evaluated actual player use of the tools. Features like swatch editing and authoring are just not MVP as part of this project. Looking at how people used things, I didn't see a desire to choose rgb=254,124,126 with metalness 0.2 vs 'shiny metal'. If you feel like it is less flexible, you're right. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm ok to be wrong, we'll just roll and adapt.

However saying that I think you should modify your perspective a bit. This piece of work is a PBR conversion with recoloring as an additional feature. I want to use modern shader features to improve the look of parts and learn new art skills. Recoloring is separate and additional - my perspective has always been that I won't do recoloring until I do PBR, as I'm not reauthoring things twice. In the restock context, I am acting as an artist and taking it on in this way lets me develop the approaches and tools that let me realize the artistic vision that I have for this. The TU mask work for Restock you have done wouldn't have delivered a Restock PBR conversion, because that's not what you're doing.

In that context, I feel that the various approaches to applying recoloring to my work fall short because they don't match my vision (yes, I have been aware of its existence). That's not to say they're bad, they just aren't what I would do. If I'd joined your project I'd have made a mess of your own vision and compromised my own, to the detriment of all.

So, my apologies.

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UncleMateo

UncleMateo

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Posted (edited)

I appreciate your thoughtful reply.  Thanks for taking the time to write back.

You aren't wrong about TU, it can be pernicious and troublesome to work with at times.  Trust me, it has given me its share of frustrations, so I can certainly relate.  It's imperfect.   And indeed, I do understand where you're coming from, both from a design perspective and a technical perspective, even if I don't entirely agree on your choices, I can see the logic in them.  I may be disappointed at the way everything played out, but I appreciate you trying to actually share your reasoning and explain your point of view.   In fact, I really appreciate that about the KSP community in general, that we can find common ground, tact, and manners a bit more than not only the rest of the internet, but the world at large, I think that is really something special and rare.  Perhaps its the cosmic perspective, having just the slightest inkling of the scale of things, humbling us.  Whatever it may be, I'll miss it if (or when) it ever goes away.  That's kind of why I first got into modding, out of a desperate fear that the KSP forums, and the entire KSP community was running out of time.. I wanted to do something while there was still time to do it.  Now that there's a new owner, in some ways that fear is less desperate, in others more.  It leaves me in a place of uncertainty regarding the future of KSP.  I suppose it's ultimately contingent on the survival of the forums.  

And on that same note, I feel one could argue that really it was that extended outage of the forums that killed RestockRecolour.. it negatively impacted the rate of contributions from everyone, me especially, and it kind of seemed to scare off the other contributors.  We were somewhere in the mid 40% range at that point.  Things might have been different if not for that, though we carried on for a bit, it seemed to alter everyone's outlook.  Maybe it's more of a 'Drowing Mona' situation than I'd care to admit.  You just delivered the coup de grace. 

And.. in some ways you freed me.  I simultaneously didn't really have my heart in the project anymore and yet stubbornly intended to see it through to the bitter end, contradictory though that may be.

So, I don't hold any ill will towards you for this, and I accept your apology. 

Edited by UncleMateo
I spelled a word wrong
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RileyHef

RileyHef

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Posted

Wow, really impressive work!

Maybe I missed it, but with this mod expanding the scope of parts can we expect all stock parts to be replaced?

Any plans to expand to DLC parts?

Any plans for a similar PBR conversion treatment for other Nertea part mods such a s the Near Future suite?

Asking because I play with restock, restock+, near future, and SSPR for context. This is the gold standard of parts, imo, but this mod introduces some concern about visual differences between parts on crafts and functional differences with recolor abilities. Currently TURD configs cover many of these mods to create a somewhat cohesive experience (shout out to all the progress that was made in this over the past year by many modders). In short, I worry that this mod will further worsen the issue of of KSP parts having various visual inconsistencies - specifically for popular Nertea part mods.

I'm excited for this mod and recognize the immense amount of work this requires, but I wanted to call out the possibility of this mod discouraging the utilization of other amazing Nertea mods due to visual/functional differences.

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Nertea

Nertea

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21 hours ago, RileyHef said:

Wow, really impressive work!

Maybe I missed it, but with this mod expanding the scope of parts can we expect all stock parts to be replaced?

Any plans to expand to DLC parts?

Any plans for a similar PBR conversion treatment for other Nertea part mods such a s the Near Future suite?

Asking because I play with restock, restock+, near future, and SSPR for context. This is the gold standard of parts, imo, but this mod introduces some concern about visual differences between parts on crafts and functional differences with recolor abilities. Currently TURD configs cover many of these mods to create a somewhat cohesive experience (shout out to all the progress that was made in this over the past year by many modders). In short, I worry that this mod will further worsen the issue of of KSP parts having various visual inconsistencies - specifically for popular Nertea part mods.

I'm excited for this mod and recognize the immense amount of work this requires, but I wanted to call out the possibility of this mod discouraging the utilization of other amazing Nertea mods due to visual/functional differences.

Restock already replaces most of the MH parts, with the exception of the parts we don't consider to 'work' gameplay-wise (service modules, the MEM). There are some discussions about doing the BG parts, but it's low value. RestockPBR is currently scoped to also replace the mk1/mk2 plane parts (mk3 is probable but honestly this has been a ton more work than anticipated).  We're at about 345 done and about 60 in progress with the mk3 set parts being another 30 on top of that.

And yeah, will convert all my mods in due time and this will be the new visual 'baseline'. It'll take a while though, literally a thousand parts. I have made sure that the base look of parts is quite similar to the Deferred baseline though, see this post in the NFT thread: 

 

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RileyHef

RileyHef

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First, thanks for the reply!

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

And yeah, will convert all my mods in due time and this will be the new visual 'baseline'.

While I am definitely mindful of the massive amount of time and work required to get this done, this is fantastic news for the longevity of the game! I think that expanding the baseline look and recolor abilities to all Nertea part mods will not only reinforce a future-proof standard for other part mods that better align with recent visual upgrades provided by Deferred (and others like Parallax Continued, Firefly, etc), but it will also further promote buy-in for the new recolor system and the departure from TURD recolors. To use less words, I'm really excited for PBR being the new gold standard of your part mods for KSP and hope it inspires others too!

I had mixed feelings about this at first, but knowing your plans go beyond Restock gives me much more confidence in continuing to use your part mods for long-term career saves. Thanks for all your hard work - looking forward to your updates and releases!

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Squirrel Slapper

Squirrel Slapper

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On 3/20/2025 at 2:37 PM, Nertea said:

Restock already replaces most of the MH parts, with the exception of the parts we don't consider to 'work' gameplay-wise (service modules, the MEM). There are some discussions about doing the BG parts, but it's low value. RestockPBR is currently scoped to also replace the mk1/mk2 plane parts (mk3 is probable but honestly this has been a ton more work than anticipated).  We're at about 345 done and about 60 in progress with the mk3 set parts being another 30 on top of that.

And yeah, will convert all my mods in due time and this will be the new visual 'baseline'. It'll take a while though, literally a thousand parts. I have made sure that the base look of parts is quite similar to the Deferred baseline though, see this post in the NFT thread: 

 

Any chance of the fabulous SXT mod getting the Restock treatment? A very popular mod with very outdated models that doesn't even play nice with Restock by default, if you have both Restock and SXT installed you have to run a program (that SXT comes with) that un-blacklists all the stock textures SXT relies on.

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RileyHef

RileyHef

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, Squirrel Slapper said:

Any chance of the fabulous SXT mod getting the Restock treatment? A very popular mod with very outdated models that doesn't even play nice with Restock by default, if you have both Restock and SXT installed you have to run a program (that SXT comes with) that un-blacklists all the stock textures SXT relies on.

Probably a better question for the SXT mod author/thread.  I don't think it's fair to ask one modder to recreate/update someone else's part list, especially given the already massive scope of this current restock project.

Deferred and Resurfaced should provide the tools for other part modders to make their mods PBR-friendly. I'm hopeful that the color editor mentioned in this thread will be made available for wider use in the future too.

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UncleMateo

UncleMateo

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On 3/24/2025 at 7:55 AM, Squirrel Slapper said:

Any chance of the fabulous SXT mod getting the Restock treatment? A very popular mod with very outdated models that doesn't even play nice with Restock by default, if you have both Restock and SXT installed you have to run a program (that SXT comes with) that un-blacklists all the stock textures SXT relies on.

Funny you should mention that.  I am working on a TexturesUnlimited Recolor for SXT under my Felota Project. However it will be incompatible with the mod in this thread, RestockPBR, which uses Resurfaced.  Resurfaced and TexturesUnlimited are completely incompatible because they do basically the same thing under the hood, but with different code.   For TU configs of this sort, called TURDs,  the original texture is not as dramatically overhauled as you see here, but instead (if things are done right) it gains some minor measure of reflectivity and specularity on certain portions of the textures like windows, structural metal and greebling.  It is not a complete texture overhaul as this mod is.  Rather, the really amazing part is the ability to define your own custom colors to paint parts with.  You don't select from a list (but you can, there are presets if you don't want to go all out) but instead use a little slider to vary the levels of red, blue, green, metallicity, and shininess to make a color completely of your own design.  Glossy pink bubblegum? No problem.  Neon celadon? You got it.  (you get the idea).  It also has a utility called LazyPainter that allows you to recolor multiple parts at the same time, and can even recolor parts in-flight.

TURD is pretty great because over the past ~5 years a lot of random mods have gotten configs, so there's a pretty wide selection of fully paintable parts (see the link below)..

..but unfortunately it and Restock have always been like oil and water.  Restock is a big parts pack and the logistical hurdles involved meant that anyone who attempted to make TURD configs was eventually crushed under the weight of the task..   I was in the process of trying to change that with several other contributors (who have since dropped off the project) but I eventually decided to put it on hold around the 60% mark because of this mod, RestockPBR.  It's unfortunate that this long standing issue has effectively created a situation where one must choose between TURD and Restock, but that's the way things are, and RestockPBR is only going to widen the schism.  But honestly, no offense to @Nertea, as beautiful as Restock is, once you play with it for awhile, you don't really see that much difference with or without it, aside from a handful of niche-but-useful Restock+ parts.  So, without custom, user defined colors, it seems kind of like reinventing the wheel all over again.  Restock was a rehash of stock textures along the lines of Squad's planned retexturing that never happened.  But why rehash the rehash if you're not going to include something new?  It's my hope that Nertea changes his mind on custom color.  Until that distant date, there will be an alternative out there so that the community can have the choice it deserves.  And that alternative will be focused on the well-loved mods of yesterday, mods that fill out the community tech tree, and the forgotten and obscure mods that deserve attention.  

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coyotesfrontier

coyotesfrontier

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Kavaeric said:

HEY. Y'all like PBR engines?

sI470y9.jpeg

5gWOlOd.jpeg

Oh, and for those who like Waterfall (which should be all of you), stuff's been happening on that front too :>

LbXJtGm.png

 

Amazing! Is there any hope of the turbine segments that Porkjet previewed before the engines were officially released making a return? I know he decided against including them to avoid harming VTOL designs (this was before part variants were a thing, so they couldn't just be hidden with a variant).

JXBbVK6.gif

Edited by coyotesfrontier
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Svm420

Svm420

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Amazing! Is there any hope of the turbine segments that Porkjet previewed before the engines were officially released making a return? I know he decided against including them to avoid harming VTOL designs (this was before part variants were a thing, so they couldn't just be hidden with a variant).

 

You can already do that yourself.

Spoiler 
@PART[miniJetEngine]:FIRST
{	
	MODEL
	{
		model = Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside
		//position = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
		scale = 0.5, 0.5, 0.5
		//rotation = 0, 0, 0
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModulePartVariants
		useMultipleDragCubes = false
		baseVariant = Shown
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Hidden
			displayName = Hide Turbine
			themeName = White
			primaryColor = #ffffff
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = false
			}
		}
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Shown
			displayName = Show Turbine
			themeName = Black
			primaryColor = #000000
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = true
			}
		}
	}
}
@PART[turboFanEngine]:FIRST
{	
	MODEL
	{
		model = Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside
		position = 0.0, 1.4, 0.0
		scale = 0.95, 1.0, 0.95
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModulePartVariants
		useMultipleDragCubes = false
		baseVariant = Shown
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Hidden
			displayName = Hide Turbine
			themeName = White
			primaryColor = #ffffff
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = false
			}
		}
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Shown
			displayName = Show Turbine
			themeName = Black
			primaryColor = #000000
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = true
			}
		}
	}
}
@PART[turboJet]:FIRST
{	
	MODEL
	{
		model = Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside
		scale = 0.95, 1.0, 0.95
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModulePartVariants
		useMultipleDragCubes = false
		baseVariant = Shown
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Hidden
			displayName = Hide Turbine
			themeName = White
			primaryColor = #ffffff
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = false
			}
		}
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Shown
			displayName = Show Turbine
			themeName = Black
			primaryColor = #000000
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = true
			}
		}
	}
}
@PART[JetEngine]:FIRST
{		
	MODEL
	{
		model = Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside
		position = 0.0, 0.972875, 0.0
		scale = 0.8, 0.6, 0.8
		//rotation = 0, 0, 0
	}
	MODULE
	{
		name = ModulePartVariants
		useMultipleDragCubes = false
		baseVariant = Shown
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Hidden
			displayName = Hide Turbine
			themeName = White
			primaryColor = #ffffff
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = false
			}
		}
		VARIANT
		{
			name = Shown
			displayName = Show Turbine
			themeName = Black
			primaryColor = #000000
			GAMEOBJECTS
			{
				Squad/Parts/Engine/jetEngines/turbineInside(Clone) = true
			}
		}
	}
}

 

 

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