Camera question

[nistur]

First of all, greetings! I've been playing KSP off and on for quite a while now, and I've been lurking around here for a little while. I figured a while back that I'd try my hand at some plugin dev stuff. My plugin(s) will address little itches I have about the game, so whether or not they're useful or interesting to other people will remain to be seen.

For my first trick, I thought I'd make a docking cam system. I quickly found a 3D model I could use¹ and started poking at the code. Making a RenderTexture and displaying it was the easy part. Took a little while to figure out the positioning and direction from the model. The issue now is that I don't seem to be able to render the scene properly. Initially I could just see the components of the rocket, the launchpad and everything else was Unity's lovely shade of blue default clear colour. I figured I'd be clever and copy near/far clipping planes, culling mask and clear flags from the main camera, but then what I get is this:

And for reference, it's mounted thusly with nothing above it²

Does anyone have any experience with creating cameras for KSP that I could look at your code for how you set them up?

The camera renders to a 128x128 RenderTexture currently. I was playing with the idea of sticking a post processor on there and making it fuzzy and/or black and white. Maybe for a different camera model. I have 4 different cameras planned right now: standard cheap-o CCTV box (the current model) webcam (surface mount like linear RCS thrusters) HD cam (more round model CCTV with 256x256 RenderTexture) and one with limited movement. Also going to (when I figure out how this all works) plug it in so the cams only display when they are enabled. As well as help with why my cameras are playing up, I'd love to hear feedback.

¹ although in hindsight, I may have to resize it a little, as it looks very out of place next to larger, clunkier parts.

² I am, at best, a poor 3D modeller, but I'm a terrible texturer, right now it has some default material on it that makes it go black. I will try and texture it at some point, when I'm done arguing with the code perhaps.

Edit: After taking a little while away from this and coming back, the answer is relatively obvious, KSP is rendered with (at least) 2 cameras normally. One for a custom "skybox" and one for the player. I haven't been able to tell if there are more cameras yet. That does, however explain why the camera was going crazy.

Edit: I just checked the number of cameras present in the game scene on launch. 10. Eek. Well, I'm going to do some digging. With any luck I can pick a couple that I will need to use. I think adding 10 more game cameras per docking cam is more than a little unrealistic

Edited April 24, 2013 by nistur

[macbernick]

You can have a look at Lazor code, it has a docking cam.

[nistur]

Thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for. I feel a bit silly replicating an existing mod, but as I said in my other thread, I sort of want my stuff to be complete and standalone. Knowing that this exists, I'll make sure the two can be used together without conflicts though.

Thanks again

[macbernick]

There is also a standalone version of Lazor Docking Cam ^^'

But anyway, there's no problem having several mods doing the same thing, choice is always good. Good luck.