HexCans Standardized Resource Canisters, .20 Ready

[Greys]

It certainly wouldn't be hard to add KASGrab to any size of tank, and I think it's more than reasonable for the small ones to be held; I'll look into adding that but it'll be way more useful once I get into the generation 3 parts.

speaking of generation 3, generation2~

Did the initial concept work for the Hexion thruster today

[tacodrake95]

Is this project still being worked on? If so, where would I find more info on it?

[Greys]

it is, though not quickly

Most of the recent information has been posted in the release thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33754-0-21-x-HexCans-Standardized-Resource-Canisters-0-5-0-Now-with-aircraft-stuff

Was there something in particular you were looking to know?

[Greys]

Things!

Excavator thing!

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Laser thing!

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Rocket Thing with a nosecone*

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BTW, the thing at the top of this thread, I deleted that. I just didn't like how it turned out, I'll have to come up with a new design for the HexIon

*PS, have a nose cone~ https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/tree/RocketParts/Unfinished%20Parts/Nosecone

[MaverickSawyer]

Very slick. Can't wait to see what else you come up with.

I assume that the soil scoop/drill is for taking soil samples for science, and that the laser is some sort of experiment as well.

[Greys]

the excavator thing is intended for use with Extraplanetary Launchpads and the laser was originally envisioned as a ranged laser spectroscopy unit for detecting resources for TACLS, therefore both will be used with Kethane

[Mołot]

Hello. Thanks for great add-on. I have little feature request / bugreport - can the decouple power be lowered? Few days ago I needed to decouple some cans, not in the order of my stages. So there was no symmetry, when I decoupled them manually one by one... and my rocket got broken like a dry stick. Your decoupler appear to be way more powerful than official ones, and it's pretty dangerous to some crafts. ejectionForce = 600 for medium size? Bigger TT-38K Radial Decoupler has only 120, and Structural Pylon (closest by size and apparent purpose) mere 30 - twenty times less.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Mołot

[Greys]

The stock radial decouplers are grossly underpowered for their normal purpose which is separating stages during flight; which creates most of the situations of radial stage collapse. For the way hexcans are used it's critical that they get clear of the craft because they are very hard and prone to breaking everything.

Now, I was under the belief that 0.23 had added the ability to tweak the ejection force of a decoupler; turns out it didn't. I don't understand why that was left off.

There is however a mod that adds this, TweakableEverything

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64711-0-23-TweakableEverything-For-all-your-part-tweaking-needs

This will allow you to tweak the ejection force to match your needs at that very moment.

[jpinard]

Could you do a video of the excavator, laser, and jet engine thing looks awesome. The still images look amazing!

[Greys]

Sorry for the late reply; single posts continue to slip through my gaze on this thread, not sure why.

I'm not really doing much video lately; and animating things in CATIA gets complicated fast; Not sure when I'm going to get them into Blender, but once I get that animation done it'll be a lot easier to show; and I have to do that anyways.

In other news, more new parts! I've become more and more annoyed over time that I didn't have a hexform truss section and being forced to use HexCans full of resource where I just wanted something of that shape and size, therefore:

^CATIA Finished, will be moving to Blender soon

^Still need to add the minor strutting and generally fiddle around with stuff

Both of these will end up as parts in all three sizes, the second one is intended for use with the rack/decoupler system and the first is either for hexstacks or straight surface attach. Both will also be valid root parts and I find that truss sections make excellent rover roots. Work's been pretty hard to get through lately, not sure when I'll be able to push these along but I hope to soon... maybe I should take my vacation...

[Greys]

Major Progress!

I spent a lot of time today doing things that don't matter with simulations and stuff, and then finished up the strutting of the B type, and moved the A type into Blender and got it UVed plus an early version of the texture

Needs the collider, that'll take like two minutes; then from there it's just processing, not sure if I'll have time to work on it before Friday, but it should be in unfinished part stage then regardless; the type B is going to take longer because it's weird; and I need to start work on the type C; then I'm going to redo the rack mesh in this style instead of the alpha texture I'm using currently because... problems...

[Greys]

So I've started work on yet another part, please welcome the Trilobular Hex Truss

*waits for the inevitable response*

[Railgunner2160]

If it means a re-imagining of the Tri-Hex strut mod then I'm all for it!!!!!

[Greys]

goin's pretty well, using NODE{} for the first time and it's full of quirks, but also this thing's pretty tightly packed so I'm gonna need to make a plugin so that it's more functional

Definitely gonna make the texture darker

edit:

Bit of a hold up resolving the plugin problem, and NODE{} isn't making much sense, so I modeled up the Medium TLHT to 1.25m adapter. An unfortunate side effect of the geometric form factor and incongruent size vs the stock stack parts is that for every combination there must be a unique adapter mesh. I may be able to derive other sizes from this, but the design is pretty easy to replicate and I like the idea of having them vary in significant appearing ways.

Edited June 8, 2014 by Greys

[Greys]

Update!~

I've given up on fixing the problems with NODE{}, though I have contacted Squad and they responded, Mu tells me and I believe him that the problem, and the problem that prevented me from fixing the problem, will be fixed in 0.24, so until then we'll just have to deal with these parts being floppy for their size.

First thing I want to announce, so that you don't immediately run away, I zoned out for a while and ended up with a design spec document for the TLHT. Hosting it actually turned out to be a problem, I have an SVG and a CATdrawing, but the PDF is most easily viewed, but not on github

In Meters with 2 decimal values

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B43-gimT0-jZOFJSWjRmNVlXS0k/edit

In Millimeters with 4 decimal values

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B43-gimT0-jZb2dDOWhlNGxqbWc/edit

For absolute dimensions see the Blend file

https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/blob/RocketParts/Model%20Basefiles/CATIA/TLHT%20Standard.pdf ||| Github is hands off with PDFs, you'll have to download it to open

Other formats:

https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/blob/RocketParts/Model%20Basefiles/CATIA/TLHT%20Standard.svg ||| Github doesn't begin to understand what an SVG is supposed to be, you'll have to download it and open the download in your browser or preferred editor

This should provide all dimensions necessary for making parts that are compatible with the standard, if you can't find or derive a measure you need tell me ASAP.

https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/blob/RocketParts/Model%20Basefiles/CATIA/TLHT%20Standard.CATDrawing

Openable in CATIA, probably SolidWorks, and a quick google showed several third party viewers, I haven't tried and don't endorse any of those so try at your own risk.

Second news! third news? Third news!

I've committed the Unfinished Parts phase of the 2x6 linear TLHT, and I'll be importing the medium-to-1.25m adapter next week, and hopefully I'll also finish the medium-2.5m adapter in CATIA. I keep confusing myself while thinking about this but I think that the proportions hold out such that the medium-to-1.25m can be double scaled to become a large-to-2.5m, but I'll still have to custom model the large-to-3.75m. The medium will adapt to 2.5m, 1.25m, and maybe 0.625m, not sure if it's worthwhile to have a probesize adapter. The large will adapt to 3.75m, 2.5m, and 1.25m, but definitely not probe size. I don't currently intend to have Small TLHT, the regular hextruss system will fill that role. Speaking of, the smooth sided hextruss is in pretty good shape, it's surface attach node is weird and I have to figure out what I want to do with that; though one of the coding projects I've been tinkering will hopefully allow me to set any node as the surface attach node in game so that will make the whole thing a lot nicer. The rackmountable hextruss is still sitting in CATIA, we'll get to that in time.

THLT part

https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/tree/RocketParts/Unfinished%20Parts/TLHT

Hextruss Type A

https://github.com/Greys0/HexCans/tree/RocketParts/Unfinished%20Parts/HexTruss

Edit: After mindlessly staring into the void for several minutes I decided to make a version of the PDF with deeper measurement resolutions; edited in above.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Greys

[NoMrBond]

Doubly excited.

Trusses and fixed NODE{} calls in 0.24, hnnnngggggg etc

[Greys]

So I spent the last eight hours or so working on the HexRB, it's working out pretty well but then I hit a wall with the nodes. Unfortunately HexCans nodes are a pretty big mess and that needs to be fixed but fixing it will break everything. I've been working on a handful of revisions that will break everything. So I'm officially announcing HexCan's first intentionally save-breaking update.

#1, All of the attach nodes are being redone using the now functional transform system; I've finished about half of this so far. This will break vessels, they should still load but they'll be assembled incorrectly

#2, I'm going to redo the internal and external naming schemes so that they actually make sense and are congruent. This will break saves as the parts the vessels want won't be called that anymore.

#3, Several of the mesh and most of the .MU will be revised to correct poor modelling, poor texture styling, and weird orientation conflicts throughout the set, this will break any mods that don't update their textures to match the new UV maps

#4, Depricated parts will be eliminated, namely the SAS and ASAS parts will be replaced with Reaction Wheel parts.

#5, new parts, but that won't break anything

#6, still no career mode, and it doesn't make sense to me for manufacturers to be offering contracts to KSC.

This will unfortunately break the alternate texture pack, and science patches as well. No timeline at this point, the HSR-100 is basically good except that it can't attach properly to anything because everything else is broke, and it's not balanced yet.

[Greys]

Brief update on the overhaul project, Good News, Bad News, Good News, Bad News

Good news, I'm nearly done converting all the standard hexcans to NODE{}

Bad news, NODE{} has bugs!

Good news, I fixed the bugs!

Bad news, THERE ARE MORE BUGS!

The first bug is that NODE{} is handled by separate code from node_, and that code is incapable of declaring a node to be the surface attach node of a part. I fixed that, here's the fix for anybody else who wants it

DLL: https://github.com/Greys0/Virgin-Kalactic/blob/master/Build/srFix.dll

Source: https://github.com/Greys0/Virgin-Kalactic/blob/master/Source/Virgin_Kalactic/srFix/FixSurfaceNodes.cs

License: MIT

The second bug is that it seems PartTools 0.18 is no longer producing valid mus, so I'm going to have to update and hope that fixes it, and if not speak to taniwha about inspecting mu files to see if there's actually something wrong with it, and if not inspect the code to see if there's something wrong with that, and this might just take a while.

On the progress front I've reunwrapped the hexcan, so that's good; but I'm changing away from the current design of the label plate, and will instead be appending a secondary mesh onto the parts which will be the label plate, this will look better, have nice lighting effects, and allow me to make use of smaller texture sheets for the hexcan, while simultaneously increasing texel size; which is just good. I hope this will also encourage other modders to make their own appended mesh to increase visual diversity; and maybe add other stuff. There's a big list of things that need to be redone, and I've finished two of them so far, as long as I fix the orientations and the nodes, textures and visual mesh can be changed at any time with minimal impact so this may become an on going project.