[Parts] Going Nuclear -Update-

[LostElement]

I have been working on this through Autodesk: Inventor Professional 2014. It is a Nuclear engine and someday, I wish this to be more than one engine. Here are some images.

Name: NM-30V Nuclear Engine

Size: 1.25m

ISP in Vacuum: 890

ISP in Atmosphere: 240

Weight: 4.5

Thrust: 100

Fuel Requirement: Liquid Fuel

Vectoring: .5

Impact Tolerance: 8

Cost: Unknown

Name: NM-45V Nuclear Motor

Size: 2.5m

ISP in Vacuum: 920

ISP in Atmosphere: 225

Weight: 7

Thrust: 200

Fuel Requirement: Liquid Fuel and Liquid Hydrogen

Vectoring: .2

Impact Tolerance: 4

Cost: Unknown

Stats out! Tell me what you think! If they are balanced out correctly. Will continue to improve current models and make new ones!

Edited November 16, 2013 by LostElement

[Helix935]

wow that is actually pretty cool

[LostElement]

Thanks! Its intended as a nuclear engine. Considering there isn't alot of those.

[sojourner]

Is it based on any real world nuclear based engine? It doesn't look like any I've seen.

[LostElement]

No, i have made this up.

[BigFatStupidHead]

I agree, that is a very interesting looking engine. Somewhat frightening, too. It would be fantastic if you could animate the little gauge on the side. The smaller engine is nice, but looks far too delicate when compared to the other.

[pizzaoverhead]

Very nice modelling! You may have to reduce the poly count for KSP however. I like the long nozzle on the second engine; very few engines in KSP have nozzles whose length and width are tuned like that to be very efficient in the vacuum of space.

[DerekL1963]

Very nice modelling! You may have to reduce the poly count for KSP however. I like the long nozzle on the second engine; very few engines in KSP have nozzles whose length and width are tuned like that to be very efficient in the vacuum of space.

Quite the opposite in fact - all the stock engines and most of the serious mod engines are very realistic when it comes to their nozzles. It's these engines which are entirely unrealistic.

[LostElement]

Not going for Real-Life parts. Going for cool looking parts.

[Gaius]

Rule of Cool trumps all other concerns.

[LostElement]

I will need help on texturing however, I am not certain Autodesk: Inventor Professional can manage how many polygons there can be.

[Greys]

I can appreciate rule of cool, and these do look cool, but if you're going to call it a nuclear engine it should have design features that make sense, instead of calling it a nuclear engine you should invent some fictional thing for it to be. There are loads of fictional systems out there to draw from, or you can just string sounds together and make up your own explanation.

Also, as you can see already happening in the fourth picture down, threading just doesn't work out well at low resolution or high distance, if you really want to have threading it should be really exaggerated. long wavelength helixes but you should probably avoid it all together (rings also don't work http://i.imgur.com/3IMXoYX.jpg )

They're cool looking engines, don't try to shoehorn the style into an engine concept that it doesn't fit with.

[LostElement]

The threading is there for me to know that those are pipes/tubes. But I may not include them into the final design.If I do it will be larger threading.

[DerekL1963]

Not going for Real-Life parts. Going for cool looking parts.

Then don't give it a Real-Life name.

[tom1499]

Lovin' it! But how are you gonna get the models out of Inventor and into Unity? I know there are... methods. If so i may just give up on messing around in Blender and make some KSP mods in Inventor!

Also if you make a Gas-Core open cycle rocket then.... it would be PRETTY awesome. But very OP.

Edited November 16, 2013 by tom1499

[LostElement]

I am pretty sure I have stated above that they will NOT keep their names. If I have not then I am sorry. But they will not keep their names.

[LostElement]

Lovin' it! But how are you gonna get the models out of Inventor and into Unity? I know there are... methods. If so i may just give up on messing around in Blender and make some KSP mods in Inventor!

Also if you make a Gas-Core open cycle rocket then.... it would be PRETTY awesome. But very OP.

I don't know. I am using inventor because it is the only one that I know how to use.

[Greys]

Unless you intend to recreate it in poly modelling program, you'll need to learn some blender. It's not so hard if you take it one thing at a time. You'll also need to get Unity (the editor) as Unity is used to prepare the assets created in other programs for use in KSP.

First thing you should do is open up Blender and go to File > Import, and know every format you have available to work with. Then go into Inventor and figure out what formats you can export/save as, and hope that there's a shared item between those lists because that is how you'll be getting the model out of Inventor. Once you have it in Blender you Will need to learn how to unwrap the UV map and you should learn how to redo the faces as they're probably going to be non-optimal, but the first and most difficult part of Blender is learning the UI design concept, and how to control the camera; there are numerous tutorials both on these forums and the internet abroad to help you with these, if you get lost youtube is a great resource (when it's not stabbing itself in the foot)

Once you're happy with it in Blender there are a couple ways to move it into an instance of the Unity editor, I prefer the outdated method of exporting a .dae simply because I like a manual step between my changes in Blender and my Unity setup, but you can also just copy/paste the .blend file into Unity directly, and then you switch to the Unity tutorials; pretty simple stuff, drag and drop, set up the material, set up the colliders, and add the thrustTransform, then PartTools 0.18 or 0.20 will export the .mu and texture.

Final step is writing a cfg file for it and putting it in GameData, I suggest you duplicate a cfg file for a similar part and edit it to your needs.

I use CATIA for the majority of my primary modelling stage, export from CATIA as .stl, load it into blender, optimize the meshes and unwrap, texture it in GIMP, assemble it in Unity, and do the cfg file in NP++, works fine.

[wasmic]

Wow, the first engine looks really cool. The second one isn't really my style, though, but good job anyway.

[longbyte1]

Unless you intend to recreate it in poly modelling program, you'll need to learn some blender. It's not so hard if you take it one thing at a time. You'll also need to get Unity (the editor) as Unity is used to prepare the assets created in other programs for use in KSP.

I'm pretty sure he can import it directly to Unity as long as he exports his models to a compatible 3D format (FBX, COLLADA, 3DS, DXF and OBJ). But if he wants to import complete with textures and all, he'll have to use COLLADA or Autodesk's own FBX.

[Greys]

he can, and then he won't be able to texture it and the mesh will be massively non-optimal.

[tom1499]

I don't know. I am using inventor because it is the only one that I know how to use.

I think you can get a plugin that does .3ds export. That is 3ds max's format, and readable by unity (I think). Else, if you could get your hands on 3ds max you could open in 3ds max then export to obj or fbx or something.

[CvVtjRtb]

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Edited August 2, 2019 by CvVtjRtb

[wasmic]

I just realized what the engines could run off: Phlebotinum! or Handwavium, you decide.