[PLUGIN+PARTS][0.23] SCANsat terrain mapping

[OrtwinS]

Simple reason...

Many satellites, esp older ones, mounted sensor equipment on booms n such. This was mainly done because said sensor needed to be isolated from the craft in order to work properly.

Like the Voyager17....

Personaly I love these old sat, with lots of stuff hanging way off em =)

The voyager probes? That one long thing is the low-field magnetometer, physically large sensor. The other sensors were mounted on a boom so they wouldn't be half blind behind the HUGE radio dish (which was required because voyager was going pretty far away and NASA still wanted to be able to chat with it)

These booms were not required for the sensors themselves, besides getting around the dish. So fitting our sensors on fiddly-wiggly long extruding or flexible arms is still weird to me.

(17...? I hope that was a typo There were only 2)

The poly count for both the antennas I've done so far has been between 1700-1800 tris, which as pointed out above is okay - the colliders I'm using are very simple boxes so there should be no problems. All of the surface detail in the SAR is from the normal map.

That is some great mapping then .

Edited November 8, 2013 by OrtwinS
formatting

[skbernard]

Well..not to happy with the textures still...but if yall want to play around...I got 2 part done....ish=P

http://www./download/7c6nrgngsjmypss/SCANsatALTv0.11.zip

These replace the SAR and MapTraq parts. Just drop the unziped folder into your ksp GameData.

If you want Damny PM me your email ot something and I can send ya the .blends and image files.

hey khaos, can you include some quick ingame screencaps of em? (i'm at work, want to see!) thanks!

[KhaosCorp]

hey khaos, can you include some quick ingame screencaps of em? (i'm at work, want to see!) thanks!

Sure =)

SARscan ready for launch:

SARscan deployed for scanning:

Bill showing us MapTraqII stowed for travel:

MapTraqII, screen up and antenna deployed:

I should mention I play with render speed on Fast and texture quality set to Half Res...have no clue what these look like on full graphic settings....still not happy with the textures though..

btw for size ref thats a Mk2 lander can in last 2 pics

[skbernard]

thanks, gonna give this a whirl in a few

[OrtwinS]

You animated the MAPTRAQ? BWAhaha! You get a bonus point for that

[DMagic]

I like having nifty looking sensors too, but a lot of real life probes have pretty compact systems. Cassini packs most of its telescopes onto a small part of the craft; the remote sensing pallet in the picture below.

Juno packs in a bunch of tiny sensors too (it also comes with Gigantor solar panels).

On the other hand, if you want a good model for a high resolution imager, I think the HiRISE camera is good. It's basically just a big telescope, but I think it looks pretty cool.

MapTraqII, screen up and antenna deployed

I like this model. Is that an actual texture from the map? That would be awesome if it's possible.

[KhaosCorp]

I like this model. Is that an actual texture from the map? That would be awesome if it's possible.

Its not, just a random .png I figured would look good for a screen. When I get the other parts done I am gonna redo the textures...was planing on using a map from ingame, and then overlaying the existing screen ontop of it with like 15% opacity.

Of course it will be a texture pulled from the map..not the actual mapping texture...it will be static.

Also I was not saying every sat sensor is like that...in fact very few are...but the fact remains, certain sensors are typicaly mounted on booms. Cassini in newer tech (certainly newer than most the satellite pics I use for reference) and it still uses a boom, granted for only one sensor, but its there.

also Also, the MapTraqII is kinda a kerbal version of the Raytheon ASDU that field scouts use.

Edited November 9, 2013 by KhaosCorp

[blackfire83]

Sorry I'm late to reply. Thanks for the ideas concerning my GUI not showing up. Unfortunately, this problem is even occurring on a Vanilla installation. However, the debug menu gives a hint as to what may be going on:

[Exception]: TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'CBAttributeMap' from assembly 'Assembly-CSharp, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'.

This is repeated over and over. Not sure what the problem is, but I'm assuming I don't have some critical files. Thanks again for your help.

[therealcrow999]

Tje SARscan model looks really good. Will be nice when you get the textures for it. The tri-head sensor could have the SARscan texture from the old one from here.

The model would be cool if the head swiveled, like up and down axis, and could follow target planet. I don't really know, its an idea to throwout there.

anyways good work!

http://i.imgur.com/DzYoc1h.png

Its not, just a random .png I figured would look good for a screen. When I get the other parts done I am gonna redo the textures...was planing on using a map from ingame, and then overlaying the existing screen ontop of it with like 15% opacity.

Of course it will be a texture pulled from the map..not the actual mapping texture...it will be static.

Also I was not saying every sat sensor is like that...in fact very few are...but the fact remains, certain sensors are typicaly mounted on booms. Cassini in newer tech (certainly newer than most the satellite pics I use for reference) and it still uses a boom, granted for only one sensor, but its there.

also Also, the MapTraqII is kinda a kerbal version of the Raytheon ASDU that field scouts use.

[BananaDealer]

Well, guess it's my turn to share...

Today the deployment of the Kerbin-wide Navigational Satellite Network by Cabana Corp. has been started.

Introducing SAT-Nav I. Brought up to a 25 degree, roughly circular 430 km orbit by the Cabana Corp. Orbital Service & Supply Shuttle (ID K-3669). It's the first Cabana Corp. dedicated Satellite (previous topography information was supplied by the Orbital Laboratory, now decommissioned) as well as the first successful mission involving the K-3669.

Release from K-3669 cargo hold.

Deployment of solar panels and extension of Kethane sensor boom, along with Satellite Up-Link antennae.

The K-3669 leaves SAT-Nav I after successful deployment and system test.

[Savage117]

Anyone know where I can find pictures of the real life part equivalents to these sensors? Just want to see what they really look like and possibly try my hand at modeling.

[drtedastro]

if you google shuttle srtm image, you will get several images of the synthetic aperture radar that was used for some of the work.

[Savage117]

if you google shuttle srtm image, you will get several images of the synthetic aperture radar that was used for some of the work.

Thank you, thats exactly what I was looking for, I was googling SAR, Synthetic Apeture Radar, mapping sensors and all that and finding a clear picture just wasnt happening. I didnt know it was that big, I thought it wasnt going to be much bigger than a small sat dish, boy was I wrong. Thats the size of one of my small mapping probes by itself.

[damny]

Those images of the shuttle with the mast extended are maybe a bit misleading - the SRTM setup used two receiving antennas, one in the cargo bay and one on the mast. To make a terrain elevation model with SAR, you need two images of the same area taken from different locations. They don't have to be taken at the same time, though.

I found this photo on wikipedia of a model of the ERS 2 satellite:

The SAR antenna is the large white bar near the top (the one that's almost as wide as the solar panel). The larger dish is an ordinary RADAR altimeter. The angled thingy at the top is another RADAR sensor that measures wind speed. The other small bits are different sensors. To acquire elevation data, ERS 1 and ERS 2 were used in a tandem configuration with one satellite following the other a short time later.

So as you can see this is quite possible with more "fun sized" sensors.

[BFGfreak]

what about something that deploys like a solar panel and possibly set up so that it automatically orients itself with the celestial body it's currently in it's SOI for?

[damny]

Well..not to happy with the textures still...but if yall want to play around...I got 2 part done....ish=P

Well, I like the way the MapTraq looks on your screenshots, but to be honest, if you just re-use some pictures you found on the internet then I don't really want to re-distribute it...

[KhaosCorp]

Actually I downloaded both from CGT...a website used commonly by 3d artists for building asset library.....you can find several other mentions of the same site on these forums, esp in modeling&texturing subforum...but whatever...

[phuzz]

You could just pick a good looking part of a SCANsat map and use that as the texture. No licensing issues there surely?

[KhaosCorp]

No licensing issues with those...they came from a website intended for just this thing...

But since people have such an issue with something that is common practice in the 3d asset creation world I have removed the DL link for my parts.

[drtedastro]

I liked them and am using them... Thanks Khaos....

[damny]

Actually I downloaded both from CGT...a website used commonly by 3d artists for building asset library.....you can find several other mentions of the same site on these forums, esp in modeling&texturing subforum...but whatever...

It's okay if you want to do that, but *I* don't want to take the risk.

If CGT means CG Textures, note that their license explicitly doesn't allow users to "Release the Textures or derivative products under Open Source Licences". Legitimacy aside, this means I can't include models that use their textures. Apart from that, they also require attribution when you distribute 3D models bundled with textures made with their images.

Not sure how that flight simulator screenshot would have ended up there though.

[sidfu]

No licensing issues with those...they came from a website intended for just this thing...

But since people have such an issue with something that is common practice in the 3d asset creation world I have removed the DL link for my parts.

make what u want be hell to the people who cry. u are the one making them. if they not breaking any rules using assets from a asset site then its fine.

the current parts are annoyng to big. would be good if they atleast folded out or something

[kahlzun]

It's good that people are working on models for this.

I would personally like to state I would prefer to avoid the 'boom' sensors, it would look somewhat odd on smaller sats.

[BananaDealer]

It's good that people are working on models for this.

I would personally like to state I would prefer to avoid the 'boom' sensors, it would look somewhat odd on smaller sats.

Not really... I like booms...

[4KbShort]

This is a great mod. I modded it by sticking all the modules into the part model for the Kethane eye scanner. All three scanners work fine when activated. Wicked sweet. I'll be using this a lot in the future and I'll be sure to toss out any bugs/glitches I find (though some may be my forcing a combo into one part, but it works so far)