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[1.8.x-1.10.x] SmokeScreen 2.8.14 - Extended FX plugin (18 April 2020)

sarbian

By sarbian
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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Camacha

Camacha

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This starts looking better and better. Maybe that the speed at which it appears to exit the thrusters/engines needs to be a little higher - as it looks quite calm now - but it is definitely going the right way.

And look at those shuttle pictures. That is what rocket launches are like - chaos unleashed and barely contained.

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erona

erona

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Well after all that work Unity somehow managed not to save those smoke files so I can't edit them more.... Grrrrr. I might rebuild them but it took a while and I'm swamped at the moment. I'll wait and see what Nothke shares with us first.

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Beetlecat

Beetlecat

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This starts looking better and better. Maybe that the speed at which it appears to exit the thrusters/engines needs to be a little higher - as it looks quite calm now - but it is definitely going the right way.

And look at those shuttle pictures. That is what rocket launches are like - chaos unleashed and barely contained.

Indeed! :D --Though much of the billowy white stuff at the pad is steam from the massive amounts of water (and boiling frogs) used to muffle the sonic effects of the launch on the vehicle.

A more general observation: the smoke in the game tends to start immediately at the nozzle--it should appear at or near the end of the flame cone, yeah? Or maybe it could start white-hot and then transition back to brownish-gray?

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erona

erona

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I don't know how but the particles seem only to exist in a rectangular pyramid. Shouldn't it be a cone?

I noticed that too Aqua and I am not sure why that is. I used an ellipse as my emitter and the random spread was distributed evenly in the XYZ direction which should create something circular. It looked like a cone in Unity. Could be a limitation of mod or particle system in KSP. Since the Unity file didn't save my effect I'm not sure if I should give it another go or wait and see what Nothke shares with us. I'm not very experienced with this stuff.

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skykooler

skykooler

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I noticed that too Aqua and I am not sure why that is. I used an ellipse as my emitter and the random spread was distributed evenly in the XYZ direction which should create something circular. It looked like a cone in Unity. Could be a limitation of mod or particle system in KSP. Since the Unity file didn't save my effect I'm not sure if I should give it another go or wait and see what Nothke shares with us. I'm not very experienced with this stuff.

By "distributed evenly in the XYZ direction" do you mean that there was an even distribution on each axis independent of the others? If so, that would give you a rectangular shape due to it being able to spread into the "corners". What you should probably be using instead of an even distribution is a Gaussian distribution.

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eggrobin

eggrobin

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What you should probably be using instead of an even distribution is a Gaussian distribution.

An alternative would be to use a uniform distribution on a disk: pick Æ uniformly at random in [0, 2À], r u.a.r. in [0, (λz)²], the position is (√r cos Æ, √r sin Æ, z)---assuming z is the exhaust direction and z=0 is the apex of the cone, where λ is the slope of the cone. This might look better than a Gaussian (and it is slightly less computationally intensive).

Edited by eggrobin
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rhennigan

rhennigan

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An alternative would be to use a uniform distribution on a disk: pick Æ uniformly at random in [0, 2À], r u.a.r. in [0, λz], the position is (r cos Æ, r sin Æ, z)---assuming z is the exhaust direction and z=0 is the apex of the cone, where λ is the slope of the cone. This might look better than a Gaussian (and it is slightly less computationally intensive).

That's actually not uniformly distributed when mapped to Cartesian coordinates. What you need is (√r cos Æ, √r sin Æ, z), where r is sampled from a uniform distribution on [0, (λz)²].

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BLUAV8R

BLUAV8R

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That's actually not uniformly distributed when mapped to Cartesian coordinates. What you need is (√r cos Æ, √r sin Æ, z), where r is sampled from a uniform distribution on [0, (λz)²].

MATH... SPRING BREAK.... NOOOOOO.... THE TWO SHOULD NEVER BE COMBINED lol :sticktongue: jk

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Camacha

Camacha

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MATH... SPRING BREAK.... NOOOOOO.... THE TWO SHOULD NEVER BE COMBINED lol :sticktongue: jk

On the contrary. Springbreak all the math! Math all the springbreak. Once you get the hang of it you will want to use it everywhere.

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eggrobin

eggrobin

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Posted (edited)
That's actually not uniformly distributed when mapped to Cartesian coordinates. What you need is (√r cos Æ, √r sin Æ, z), where r is sampled from a uniform distribution on [0, (λz)²].

You're right of course. Edited my post so as not to confuse people.

On the contrary. Springbreak all the math! Math all the springbreak. Once you get the hang of it you will want to use it everywhere.

QFT, which stands neither for Quantum Fourier Transform nor for Quadratic Frobenius Test in this context.

Edited by eggrobin
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NoMrBond

NoMrBond

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With an added request to please extend the extended effects to cover part explosions also, because when stuff goes wrong and hundreds of tons of combustibles accidentally have a bad day, it shouldn't make a sad little grey puff.

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Camacha

Camacha

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That makes me think - each part should probably destruct in its own way, with some default fallback method. Tanks explode in a fiery fashion, while I image boosters being a little more volatile and other parts not being explosive at all. I am not sure this is doable, but I think it could improve the feel of crashes towards something more realistic.

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nothke

nothke

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Posted (edited)

This effect uses displacement maps shaders. I don't know that anyone managed to port displacement (or better yet, geometry) shaders to KSP yet and I think Razchek is the only person who managed to port a new shader to KSP so far.

If Sarbian menages to port new shaders, (which he was trying, but unsuccessful so far) such as lit bumped particles, everything would look much better. There are some other tricks like ray marching, which could potentially change the look of particles completely, for the better. Not to mention possibility of using the Unity mesh class to "design" plumes as 3d models and change them in real time, which I tried, and look pretty decent, but which again require better shaders to look good). It's something just further along the road.

Edited by nothke
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sarbian

sarbian

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The reflection plugin does not use a geometry shader afaik. And it's not the first plugin to import a shader. Kethane does it, I did it for MJ and I'm sure other did too.

But there are limits to what we can do from inside KSP and importing a geometry shader is one of those limits AFAIK. I'll have a look at the Reflection plugin code but I doubt it uses anything different from what I use now.

And I don't think that this effect, while quite nice, is what we need for exhaust or smoke.

If one of you as a better experience with smoke related shaders than I do and can/want to share their knoweldge please do. For now I'd rather work on adding new features.

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