Why Doesn't SQUAD Release their Meshes?

[Sauron]

I understand that the Devs don't want people extracting models from .mu files, but I'd really like to hear a principled reason for why this is. Not having access to the stock parts (and not having immediate access to the stock textures without considerable fuss) makes stock-alike modding (Which there isn't nearly enough of) quite a bit more difficult. It'd be great to be able to take the hatches(for example) from the stock meshes and put them on other things or tweak the shape of pods.

Since the better part of KSP is not it's models, I really don't understand what the reason for this decision is. If there is a reason I'd love to hear it, but this is also a complaint of sorts--I think the policy is rather silly and I'd really like to see it changed so the community can do more to expand the pool of stock-alike parts.

[Captain Sierra]

When making a docking port meant to be styled as stock, I ran into this issue. The solution: Someone in the KSP community has created a .mu importer for Blender. Squad doesn't complain about that. If you really need to get at stock geometry, it's not that hard. That's how I did the docking port on my extendo-port. I took a stock one, modified the geometry (cut stuff off) so it would fit with what I had and slapped it on there. perfect stock matching docking port without having to recreate the intricacies of the part.

[Sauron]

Oh? I struggle like crazy with Blender but since it's free I can just add it into my workflow with 3ds for the input (and output?). Do you have a link?

[Captain Sierra]

Blender can easily import and export to .3ds. actually, that's the format I use as the go-between for sketchup to blender, since blender does not natively import .skp.

www.blender.org

Don't have a link on the .mu converter, but you should be able to find it with a forum search.