[WIP] Ursa Shuttle

[Weebo]

The Ursa Shuttle development thread

I'm starting this thread as a learning tool for myself as well

as a public info mine for learning how to mod with KSP.

This is my first mod ever and first time messing with Blender.

This Mod will include:

1 Small 2m scale shuttle with cargo bay, Mainly for moving Kerbals between orbits and from/to surface of planets.

1 Carrier to House and dock the shuttle(s).

8 Descent pods for returning Kerbalnauts.

Ability to move and run around inside carrier to move to other ships/descent pods.

Docking Bays, "Think star trek shuttlebays or even better, Battlestar Galactica."

1 Exploded planet to land on.

Goal of the mod:

I want to increase the scale of which we play KSP with. This mod wont be for the people who like to recreate space missions or

who play for realism.

All this mod back is going to be is a Sci-Fi play toy for others fun and for my learning curve to stepping into the mod world.

This will also be a public generated mod.

Any help will be welcome, any suggestions that are off the wall or interesting will be quoted in the thread development and added if possible.

anyway, to what I've got so far!

Ursa Shuttle

Explody Planet

Giant Space Bagel

Potholes in the road so far:

Being new to blender, I haven't yet figured out how to smooth certain edges while keeping other ones sharp.

As well as animating a cargo hold or door. Need help on this matter. Thanks all

The planet picture is a real 3d model I've created by the way in Blender through a learning tutorial, and thought it'd be awesome to implement into KSP.

Edited February 16, 2014 by Weebo

[SkyHook]

GRR! MY shuttle is named Ursa Shuttle!

[Piwa]

My Space Shuttle, the first work on modding

[Piwa]

[

Being new to blender, I haven't yet figured out how to smooth certain edges while keeping other ones sharp.

As well as animating a cargo hold or door. Need help on this matter. Thanks all

The planet picture is a real 3d model I've created by the way in Blender through a learning tutorial, and thought it'd be awesome to implement into KSP.

Do you have Unity??? Unity will smooth the edges.

[Weebo]

Do you have Unity??? Unity will smooth the edges.

Yes I do, I haven't even gotten to the unity part yet, I'm not even ready to export my model yet lol.

[Mekan1k]

That's a cute shuttle...

Seems like it should only be a personnel shuttle.

[Weebo]

That's a really good first work Piwa.

How'd you do the cargo bay? I'd like to make a drop down door for mine on the butt part of the ship.

@Mekan1k

Yea lol I think you're right on that, it should be a small shuttle for maybe moving between ships or bodies. in a local system.

[aeTIos]

Unity will auto-smooth your edges. To make edges sharp, select them in Edit mode, hit Space and type "Set Sharp". Then go to Object mode, add an Edge Split modifier and uncheck "Angle", leaving only "Sharp" checked. Be careful, only do this after you've completed your model including UV unwrapping and stuff, because it will mess with your mesh.

Hope this helps, cheers from another rookie modeler

PS: Also, Taniwha has created a blender plugin that allows you to directly export to KSP from blender. Only works for static models though, but I thought I'd share anyway. Its also a little complicated to use. Drop into #kspmodders if you need help!

[Weebo]

Unity will auto-smooth your edges. To make edges sharp, select them in Edit mode, hit Space and type "Set Sharp". Then go to Object mode, add an Edge Split modifier and uncheck "Angle", leaving only "Sharp" checked. Be careful, only do this after you've completed your model including UV unwrapping and stuff, because it will mess with your mesh.

Hope this helps, cheers from another rookie modeler

PS: Also, Taniwha has created a blender plugin that allows you to directly export to KSP from blender. Only works for static models though, but I thought I'd share anyway. Its also a little complicated to use. Drop into #kspmodders if you need help!

Omg Thank you! I've been googling everywhere trying to figure out how to do that.

thanks friend and will do!

[aeTIos]

No problem, glad I could help! I will create a tutorial on how to use Taniwha's blender plugin later on.

[kiwiak]

Will it be launched on top of rocket like dream chaser/dyna soar?

Interesting shape.

[Piwa]

That's a really good first work Piwa.

How'd you do the cargo bay? I'd like to make a drop down door for mine on the butt part of the ship.

If you need help, send me a PM, I'll try to help you.

[One-Way Films]

Do you know how to make a collision mesh? I've begun modelling parts for KSP but they're like ghost parts. "Some kerbals have seen them. That's believable. But when I hear that someone's touched them, I call bulls:Dt. These parts are the lost souls of past fuel-tanks, that collided into the ground before making it to space. They have unfinished buisness with the living kerbal world. They make they're way into the VAB and attach themselfs to ships. Kerbals on said ships report no reenty effects on the tanks, and when they go to inspect the tank in orbit, they phase through it!" - One Way Gaming, a summary of my parts. They have 0% collision mesh!

[Justin Kerbice]

If you need help, send me a PM, I'll try to help you.

It might be interesting to let all people know how to do it IMHO. Sharing the modding knowledge is great. Don't you think so ?

@One-Way Gaming: in unity, in the last child item of a GameObject (probably named <object>-pivot, add component->physics->mesh collider, then select convex.

For regular shapes it works great, for more complex ones, especially if they have holes/empty area, it might not be good enough, depending on your expectations and needs.

[KhaosCorp]

Ok, stop first off your not gonna be able to see all the edges in Blender how they will come out ingame. Other than smooth shading you can use the 'Edge Split' modifier in blender as well. What it does is keep any angle over a certain degrees sharp, while aloowing the smoothing to work on all others. Sometimes it takes a bit of fiddling to get looking right, but in no time youl be able to guess a degree cutoff that will work.

Also DO NOT...I repeat DO NOT EVER apply modifiers in Blender.....one a modifier is applied it can not be changed or adjusted, but Unity will automaticaly apply any modifiers when the model is imported. This allows you to go back into Blender and tweek your modifiers as needed.

If your totaly new to Blender you should give a visit to CGCookie.com, a great website with many great Blender tutorials (video tutorials).....granted its not KSP oriented, but will teach you alot about the program in general.

As for making mesh colliders thats simple...its just a simple version of the visable mesh...

For example......

lets say your making a fuel tank....most people make tanks out of cylinders with 28-34 faces, so it comes out nice n smooth.....

now, if you were to import that into unity and put a convex collider your poly count will shoot WAY up!!! because Unity bases the collider off the overall geometry of the mesh.....and honestly its VERY ineffective.

The better option would be...

once your fuel tank is done you make another mesh cylinder, but this one you use less faces, 10-14, and impose this over the other mesh. Now once its imported into Unity you can disable 'Mesh Rendering' on the lower face cylinder and put convex collider in there...this way will be ALOT less overall polygons once ingame.

Now this is easy-peasy with a simple fuel tank, thinks with more complex geometrys may require several collider mesh for a single model mesh.....docking bays and anything with a gap is good example of this...

If your familiar with the TT Mk4 cargo pack the middle cargo bit (the part with no animations) actually has 4 or 5 colliders (i think its 4).

[randomness5555]

Dude...THAT PLANET AND SPACE DONUT IS AWSOME! I mean, yeah, the shuttle's good but the amount of fun you could have flying around that planet debris or (even better) flying/throwing things through that donut would be huge. Keep up the good work. (BTW, if that donut's already set up you could stick it on/above one of the planets with the kerbtown plugin. Just an idea )

[problemecium]

^ Just sayin', the donut I know wasn't made by OP, it's from a Blender tutorial on YouTube, and I presume the planet probably is too.

[randomness5555]

Oh poop. Well if anyone's stuck for ideas it's still a pretty good one.