The COMPLETE KSP Blender Tutorial! [Video Back!]

[Uburian]

Thanks for the tutorial. It has been really useful

I have had some funny scale problems, but I hope I will be able to fix them.

The corporate war has began!

[Technical Ben]

Lol. Ok, Looks like you made that 100 meters instead of 100 cm.

Not sure how to fix that, other than select all, and set scale to 0.01 or something.

[Uburian]

Problem solved

thanks a lot

[LaydeeDem]

UV mapping is being a massive pain for me, any reason why?

Um...

Whyyy

As you can see. I am trying to make a satellite dish, but only the bottom is showing. Any reason why? If you want, can someone try properly UV mapping this?

I also have it as a .blend

EDIT: I fixed it. A simple solidifying of the faces was all it needed.

[Technical Ben]

Looks like you either have a wafer thin satellite dish, or your normals are backwards.

First off, select the 'face' you want to be the 'dish'. Use the 'C' button to go into select mode. Then use 'e' to 'extend' the surface. You should now have a satalite dish with some depth/thickness to it. This will help a bit.

Then 'select all (A)' and go to 'recalculate normals' from the action list on the left. 'Normals' tell the computer and game which side of a polygon is the 'front' and the 'back'. The game does not draw the 'back' of polygons. So they need to face the correct side. If this does not work, I\'ll post up how to view and change normals.

[DYJ]

Saving a mesh as a file separate from the file it\'s in, how do I do that?

I\'m currently trying to cut my shuttle into parts for KSP, the cutting is easy saving the meshes as separate files is however not.

[Technical Ben]

Oh. Yep. It\'s a pain as Blender use a really special (I think it\'s advanced multi PC/user workflow thingy) file management system. You can delve into each .blend file and actually take out each object as a separate file.

So you have 2 options. Either delete all the parts you don\'t want, save it as a new file name 'shuttle part 1' etc, then return to your first file and do the same again.

Or start a new file, go to 'append' (Which is blenders stupid substitute for the word 'import') and select the .blend file with your shuttle. Blender will now list the parts/materials ect all contained in that file, and you can select the shuttle part/s you want.

[ForumHelper]

What should I do when node_collider is placed near the part, not in it as shown in the video? How can I make connection points?

[Technical Ben]

Do you mean that Blender created the node_collider in the wrong place? If that is the case, select the object in 'object' mode, and then type it\'s position in as something like 0,0,0 on X,Y and Z. Or move it by hand with 'G' for move.

If you have put it there yourself, you can still set up top and bottom nodes. But side mounting only ever connect to the actual node collider mesh as far as I know.

[ForumHelper]

Thanks!

How can I change the height of an object(z axis)? I know I can scale it, but that\'s not exactly what I\'d like to do. Also, when I make a complex thing, how should I put the node_collider in there?

[gabyalufix]

Trying to wean myself off milkshape and try this newfangled blender thing. It\'s clear that it has a lot more capabilities than poor milkshape. It does have a bit of a learning curve, though.

So in the tutorial video, at 0:34 you hit 'UVmapping-> unwrap-> cylendar projection', and you get this odd warped UV projection. Then you hit *something* at 0:35 and the UV map is suddenly on straight. But you don\'t say what you\'re hitting, and it\'s too fuzzy to read. I though it was 'align to object', but when I do that, my UV map is still a little uneven.

Here\'s the UV map I get, when i hit 'align to object':

What am I doing wrong?

Edit: fixed the image. whoops.

[LaydeeDem]

Does anybody know how parts are oriented rotation wise? I\'m trying to make a neat command pod and I want to make sure the cockpit isn\'t on the wrong side.

[I got BCed]

this might be in the wrong place, but:

I have successfully completed this tutorial (very helpful thanks)

I am now trying to make proper mod parts.

my problem is that when I go to open a KSP vanilla part .DAE file (for reference) I get an error. Have these been obtrusified or am I doing something wrong?

[Tiberion]

It is just that they weren\'t created in blender, so blender can\'t import them without a little work. I thought there was a section in the tutorial on that, but I guess not.

Open the DAE file in Notepad or another plaintext editor (NOT Wordpad or Word, etc..) and then search for the tag <diffuse>

A little further through the file is </diffuse>

erase everything between the tags, save it and it should import. It might be wise to copy the DAE file out of the KSP parts folder and work on the copy, so you dont mess it up.

[I got BCed]

Many thanks

I can make my mod now 8)

edit: works great

[StelarCF]

I have a problem with this when loading:

'

>> Mk1FT3t >>

loading model at 'pathishereandiscorrect'

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array Index is out of range

' (from console)

Here\'s my part.cfg:

// Kerbal Space Program - Part Config

// Mark 1 Fuel Tank

//

// --- general parameters ---

name = Mk1FT3t

module = FuelTankTypeI

author = StelarCF

// --- asset parameters ---

mesh = PEIS_FT1.dae

scale = 0.1

texture = PEIS_FT1.png

specPower = 0.1

rimFalloff = 3

alphaCutoff = 0

// --- node definitions ---

node_stack_top = 0.0, 7.72552, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0

node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -7.43024, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0

node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, -5.01, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1

// --- editor parameters ---

cost = 600

category = 0

subcategory = 0

title = Mark 1 Fuel Tank 3 Ton Model

manufacturer = PEIS Industries

description = The Mark 1 Fuel Tank comes in many varieties, including this 3 ton model containing 700 liters of fuel.

// attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision

attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0

// --- standard part parameters ---

mass = 3

dragModelType = default

maximum_drag = 0.2

minimum_drag = 0.3

angularDrag = 2

crashTolerance = 6

maxTemp = 2900

// --- fuel tank parameters ---

fuel = 700.0

I\'ve also attached my .dae file

[Caleb1]

Updated the image of Blender with some descriptions and names of the icons. See Tutorial 1.

Can this be don with the free version? :

[Sordid]

While this video tutorial may or may not have useful information, I find the auto-pausing thing infuriating, to the point where the tutorial is utterly useless for me. Seriously, there are no words to express my rage right now. The video doesn\'t pause itself long enough for me to even read the information, let alone perform the actions in Blender, and when I try to pause it manually the damn speech bubble goes away! And when I try to jump to an earlier point to have the information repeated, the speech bubble doesn\'t appear at all. This is ridiculous. Get rid of that nonsense, please. Just let me pause the damn thing myself when I want to.

[Evolution]

All this time I was worried I messed up with modelling, turns out I typed F22_wing.DAE instead of F-22_Wing.DAE in my cfg.

3 Days and I just figured that out.

Now to finish the model and get the rest ingame:

[Animal Mother]

The collision mesh sets the shape the game uses to calculate collisions, and where parts are allowed to be connected. The game only uses one collision mesh per part, so only use one object in your model. Add a new object via 'Add:Mesh:' then selecting the shape of your choice (usually a cube or cylinder). Select the object (right mouse button by default) and then go to 'object' then rename it 'node_collider'. Remember to add a material and UV co-ordinates to this object also!

The right button doesn\'t seem to work, am I missing a step. I am still in edit mode, am I suppose to come out of that?

[Tiberion]

Yea you hit Tab to swap to object mode, then right clicking will choose a different object.

In Edit mode, right click selects either a vertex, edge, or face, depending on which selection mode you\'re in (on the edit mode bar, to the right of of where it says Global - are the three mode selection buttons)

Using Shift+click on all of these modes adds to your current selection, if you need to select more than one object, edge, etc.

Related: Circle select tool in edit mode; Hit C and use the scroll wheel to resize the circle, then left click/drag on the mesh to select things in an area. Using middle-click with the circle select allows you to UNselect in the same way. Right click cancels circle-select mode (all other tools besides camera movement are disabled during circle select)

[Animal Mother]

This has got to be the most complicated UI I have ever used.

[Tiberion]

Yes it is extremely dense, with some of the cool things not too obvious. It actually does work pretty well when you get a handle on it, so press on

[Animal Mother]

I have managed to get the hang of the basic stuff to the point I have a really basic version of a fuel tank and an SRB and applied a texture to them but really aweful as its not aligning to the UV map.

Are there any tips on working with UV maps, is there a way I can export it from blender so I can produce a PNG to match it?

[Tiberion]

Sure thats how you do it; You unwrap it in the 2d pane in blender, and then with all of the mesh selected in Edit mode (so all of the unwrapped parts show up in 2d) you go to UVs -> Export Map; That is the PNG version that you can load into Photoshop or whatever. Its in RGBA format (with alpha channel transparency)