Bond Aerotech and Sundries [v0.4.3.1 31st March 2014]

[NoMrBond]

Take 2 on the hex cored 0.625m structural stub

still needs tidying up and texture etc but rough layout done at least

[boberts314]

still needs tidying up and texture etc but rough layout done at least

It looks good. Probably a lot easier to mount stuff on it as well, compared to your previous version.

[NoMrBond]

Thanks, I hope it's easier to assemble on, I wanted discrete surfaces to match what seems to be the preferred symmetry options (the hex should also work for 3x)

Cleaned up the vertexes and edges on the inside, needs texturing now.

[Edit] Basic texture + ingame

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Edited February 12, 2014 by NoMrBond
Added in-game shot

[Shad0wCatcher]

Looks pretty solid NMB.

[NoMrBond]

Square core 0.625m part (right) to go with the hex core part (left)

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Shared texture for reduced footprint

[Edit] The diagonal cross beams on the hex core one are bothering me now /headdesk

Edited February 12, 2014 by NoMrBond

[boberts314]

[Edit] The diagonal cross beams on the hex core one are bothering me now /headdesk

Eh? What's wrong with them?

[NoMrBond]

Eh? What's wrong with them?

They're a lot thicker than they should be, I think it's only bugging me because I fixed it on the square one

[NoMrBond]

I was thinking of an RCS tank with built in 4-point thrusters

I have no idea if this will even work

[Kenobi McCormick]

I see no reason why it wouldn't. Ever since we got the updated module system you can put as many subsystems on a single part as you please. I've seen modders showing off a semi-lifting-body shuttle-like thing that's one part and has fuel, monoprop, electricity storage, engines, full suite of RCS, landing gear, AND cockpit with full IVA. On one part.

'long as you set up the part.cfg and the thrust transforms correctly that tank should work quite nicely as a completely self contained RCS unit.

[NoMrBond]

That does sound promising

It's a bit more finished, although the texture is distorting near the RCS outlets which I'm not entirely sure about since those sides are flat

Just need to get it into Unity and set up all the RCS transforms, nearly midnight though so that's going to have to be tomorrow

[Kenobi McCormick]

Indeed. You can see it in the stock parts, too. The monopropellant tanks in the stock command pods, for example. And the batteries. And the reaction wheels. All of those would have been seperate parts in 0.17. But the new module system means the command pod holds all of those things.

[Gaius]

I have no idea if this will even work

IIRC, there used to be a problem with a part like that where it would work fine for everything except rotating around its roll axis. It wouldn't roll because KSP couldn't figure out that it needed the same part to be firing in opposite directions along the same axis with only some of its RCS thrusters at the same time. (It has no problems firing multiple jets orthogonally at the same time, but opposite directions on the same axis on the same part, it could not do.) I don't know if that's still true in the latest versions...

[NoMrBond]

IIRC, there used to be a problem with a part like that where it would work fine for everything except rotating around its roll axis. It wouldn't roll because KSP couldn't figure out that it needed the same part to be firing in opposite directions along the same axis with only some of its RCS thrusters at the same time. (It has no problems firing multiple jets orthogonally at the same time, but opposite directions on the same axis on the same part, it could not do.) I don't know if that's still true in the latest versions...

If having all 16 RCSthrust transforms didn't work (I was expecting probably oddities, nope and/or summon Krakken), I was going to split each cluster up so there would be N/W/E/S RCS groups and four RCS modules, each module controlling a side group of 4 thrusters which shouldn't be too much different (from the games point of view, hopefully) than an RCS tank with 4 RCS thrusters on it, but we'll see how that works out when I get some free time tonight.

I was going to try having each thruster (transform) parallel to the stack direction, since the exhaust/vectors are all so close to the body I'm not sure how much torque this thing will actually make, I guess it's intended for 0.625m format probes and stuff though.

If the part works out I might make some bigger ones for 1.25 and 2.5 since it'd be a good way of going from 5 parts to 1, with everything together

[NoMrBond]

Some terrible animation

Burn your eyeeessss

But hey, animation into the game via Unity 4.3.3, some kind of miracle

[NoMrBond]

Maybe a 1.25m shock-cone intake while thinking about antenna animations and normals

Not sure about the inlet detailing

[Edit] Slightly happier

Not sure about animating the cone position and bypass doors, hrm

Edited February 15, 2014 by NoMrBond

[NoMrBond]

Throttle goes up, throttle goes down

Animation throttle linked, no plugin required (not exactly accurate I know).

I've added the bypass doors since too, just needs texturing

[NoMrBond]

What goes with a throttle animating intake?

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A throttle animating engine! (Nazari's HotRockets! on the air breathing mode, stock on the rocket mode)

The petals don't move a whole lot, only 8 degrees, not sure if I should accentuate their travel more, it's pretty subtle

Exhaust animation doesn't start till ~70% throttle for jet mode though so something needs tweaking

[Edit] Tweaked effects thresholds

[Edit2] I should totally make a 1.25m or 2.5m version, after cleaning up, lots of stuff with placeholder textures etc

Edited February 16, 2014 by NoMrBond

[Shad0wCatcher]

Agreed at least with a 1.25 meter. Not sure what all is involved with getting the 0.625 ready for resizing but I think it'd be worth it. Looks pretty sick.

[NoMrBond]

Managed to break the UV map (failure to release vertices before moving to next group) on the engine while trying to get some work done on the MACEv2 over lunch, and didn't realise until I checked the textured object mode at the end of the session

/headdesk

Oh well, only the petal unwraps are destroyed, hopefully that shouldn't take too long to fix

Going to leave this as 0.625 rather than resize it upwards to 1.25, I don't think the 24 face cylinder base would look decent that large and the bigger format should allow for better details, starting from scratch will also let me plan in better part articulation

[NoMrBond]

Fixed UV, almost fixed texture (maybe should have waited for daytime as these are a bit dark).

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Fiddling with alpha-specular even

Really need to figure out how to generate normal maps

[Edit] Basically happy with it

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Now to take stock and get other hanging stuff up to snuff and roll up a new release

Edited February 17, 2014 by NoMrBond

[boberts314]

That throttle-linked animation is the coolest damn thing! Does it have any effect on drag though?

[NoMrBond]

That throttle-linked animation is the coolest damn thing! Does it have any effect on drag though?

Thanks, and, uhh I honestly don't know

Maybe not since the drag is just a argument in the .cfg, and/or partially based of the NODE/NODE (size) to what it's attached to for FAR?

The petals don't actually have colliders if that figures into it, I have no idea what moving colliders would do to KSP and or the drag model, at full extension the petals fit exactly inside the 0.625m profile though

I'm trying to get a framework set up to handle a 1.25m engine without going triangle-crazy (or myself crazy setting up the animation)

[NoMrBond]

Who wants a bigger one (hur hur)

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Functional, need to finish the detailing and texture.

[NoMrBond]

Mostly kinda almost finished

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Will tidy up and roll up a new alpha release

[Edit] New alpha release now available

The MACE engines use Nazari's HotRockets! jet effects, please let me know if this is an issue (i.e. it calls them from HotRockets! using the new FX system, it does not include any part of HotRockets itself)

Edited February 21, 2014 by NoMrBond

[NoMrBond]

Finally fixed the silly shading that was happening

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Still need to rebuild the texture though /headdesk

[Edit] Go baby go

[Edit2] Fixed thrust petal seams at the base

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Still trying to figure out how they should mate and recess with the base though (currently they just impinge straight on)

Edited February 22, 2014 by NoMrBond