A few questions about mods and models

[Torminator]

I've found *answers* to these things, but I'm not sure if they're up to date.

After all, the wiki mentions that Normal maps are a planned future feature.

1) the .2 part tools script comes with a KSP particle emitter. Does this work? I've tried it a few times to no avail, but maybe I'm just doing it wrong. If not, is there a way to get custom particles? I know I've seen some mods that have them (Like Lack's Nuke engines).

2) Do Emissive textures illuminate surrounding objects at all? If not, is there a way to do this with one part? Can I tell KSP that my rocket is also a spotlight?

3) Smooth Shading: Does Unity/KSP just not like this? I see a lot of meshes by mod makers who really should know better that are way over-smoothed. My first in-game model was very faceted, so I can't really say, but the engine I'm working on now looks a bit over-smooth in Unity. Thoughts?

4) Actual polygon budget: Okay, put down the pitchforks. I see a lot of games that, like KSP, are very physics intensive, and people don't realize that the lag they get is not due to the graphics, but the physics. (That's why one core of your CPU is maxed, but your GPU is at 10%)THAT SAID, I don't know how it is for KSP. Has anyone done any definitive experiments to see how much model complexity affects the framerate? Probably more importantly, does polygon count make a sizable impact on memory usage? The intuitive answer is "Duh, yes," but again, I don't know.

5) Animations: I've heard it mentioned that Animations can slow things down a bit, especially with a lot of keyframes. This makes sense to me, but I'm curious if a very, very fast animation, but with simple keyframing, causes a big hit. For example, a Turbine spinning at very high speed, but with only two keyframes. On that topic, is there an easy way to adjust rotational speed? I can make a looped animation of a spinning turbine, but if I want to vary it with altitude, or airspeed, or thrust, or what have you, I'm not sure how that would work. For the heat animation, as an example, KSP seems to move along the animation depending on the heat. This would just cause the turbine to quickly spin to a certain rotational offset, rather than vary its speed in continuous rotation.

I'm sorry if these have been covered already, but like I said, it's hard to know what information is still valid.

[Dispatcher]

I'll start. 3) I don't know about other 3D programs, but with Blender, the obvious controls for smooth vs. hard edged are the buttons ... Smooth and Flat. I've not yet encountered where these might be fine tuned (probably a box I've missed over on the right side in one of the object or object data menus; even one or more modifiers might deal with that). 4) No clue about the KSP/ Unity poly budget, but its not a bad idea to optimize. Most KSP parts aren't really all that complex (stock, anyway). I've also found out the hard way that if I join meshes in Blender and export as .dae, Unity doesn't consider the object to be a mesh, even though a .blend is fine for Unity (but of course not for KSP). But Unity has no problem with multiple unjoined meshes. Fewer meshes and the fewer polygons (then tri's) is generally best. I'm sure experts will join the thread and cover all your questions.

[hoojiwana]

1) the .2 part tools script comes with a KSP particle emitter. Does this work? I've tried it a few times to no avail, but maybe I'm just doing it wrong. If not, is there a way to get custom particles? I know I've seen some mods that have them (Like Lack's Nuke engines).

If it does work I don't know of any mod that currently uses it. Either no one has figured out how to get the effect working in game, or it simply isn't possible right now. If you want custom engine particles, you would have to use a plugin for it. The nuclear engines in LLL are just using a fancy combination of existing stock effects, if I remember right.

2) Do Emissive textures illuminate surrounding objects at all? If not, is there a way to do this with one part? Can I tell KSP that my rocket is also a spotlight?

Emissives don't illuminate anything around them, you need to add a light in Unity and the animation to control that light. Any part could have a light, assuming you don't hit some animation limit or similar.

3) Smooth Shading: Does Unity/KSP just not like this? I see a lot of meshes by mod makers who really should know better that are way over-smoothed. My first in-game model was very faceted, so I can't really say, but the engine I'm working on now looks a bit over-smooth in Unity. Thoughts?

What do you mean by this? People using smooth shading but not using edge-splits or smoothing groups, or something else?

4) Actual polygon budget: Okay, put down the pitchforks. I see a lot of games that, like KSP, are very physics intensive, and people don't realize that the lag they get is not due to the graphics, but the physics. (That's why one core of your CPU is maxed, but your GPU is at 10%)THAT SAID, I don't know how it is for KSP. Has anyone done any definitive experiments to see how much model complexity affects the framerate? Probably more importantly, does polygon count make a sizable impact on memory usage? The intuitive answer is "Duh, yes," but again, I don't know.

I'm not sure about memory usage, but high poly parts don't cause much of a performance hit. The biggest problem comes from having complex physics colliders, something fairly easily solved by making a basic shape to use as your collider, or even using a box collider.

[Torminator]

Yes, I should have been more specific. It seems like there are quite a few meshes that have smooth shading, but aren't using Edge Split, smoothing groups, or some other means of limiting the effect.

But thank you for the other information! Now I just need to figure out how to make a good emissive texture. The ones I've made so far haven't quite looked "right."

[Cheebsta]

Afaik the particle exporter is just broken in Part Tools, or at least, that's what I have been told by someone I trust to know the answer (Razchek).

Unity automatically applies your modifiers coming out of Blender, so you can always keep your modifier stack un-applied for future tweaking. I dunno about other programs though. Another way to get around over smoothing is to break the mesh up into pieces. Separated edges will render sharp, and then you can use a different edge split angle for each "group" that way.