[wip] X-37B

[SamCom]

So I've been working on this the past couple of weeks:

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The X-37B! Most likely just a sub-scale test bed, but it sure looks cool!

I've currently done it to real world scale, I haven't kerbalized the dimensions, mainly since there doesn't seem to be a set standard. As you can see in the album, having it this scale makes the cargo bay marginally useful (and maybe there's space for a passenger module or two!)

The screenshots in orbit show the boilerplate version, with all the separate meshes still as one piece.

I'd never really modeled anything before, but helldiver's Mini Shuttle was crazy inspirational.

The model is done and textured (although I'll probably take another crack at the texture, add a normal map and some more detail), all parts are animated.

So it's almost done, right? HAHAHAHAHA.

I've started the process of getting the meshes into the game as individual parts, but it's been kind of a struggle.

Specifically, getting the correct orientation in Blender and Unity and getting it to show up facing the correct direction in the game has been a fight every step of the way. Does the rotation and facing in Blender matter? Does rotation and facing in Unity matter? I've tried parenting the meshes to an empty Game Object in Unity and rotating that, but it has inconsistent results. There are just seemingly dozens of places the rotation and position can be set, and it's been hard for me to pin down what I need to do. I feel like I'm making it harder than it should be. Does it matter if the position and rotation are applied? And every time I try and reposition the parts, apply their rotation, the animations break, so I get to fiddle with that. I've been using the a plugin for Blender that swaps the coords for Unity, but it also resets the position of everything, which makes my animation keyframes wrong, so I get to do those again, and it still doesn't work all the time.

But, progress is being made. Attachment nodes aren't bad, and and basic configs are set up. Currently the nose and fuselage are in, cargo bay animation is working, and landing gear are mostly working. I've been looking at the example images for landing gear floating around, but the default gear module is too finicky for my tastes, so I'm trying snjo's Firespitter plugin. I got the gear part working, as in the wheel collider and open/close animation works, but my gear mesh has decided it wants to rotate around the z axis instead of the x axis. That seems to maybe be because the wheel is parented to the landing leg. I know that's not how the example landing gear images are set up, but I need that parenting for the animation to work. I also found out that breaking the parenting of the meshes in Unity breaks the animations, so I've had to set up dummy objects in Blender to preserve the parenting relationship. Good times.

So I wanted to get a post up, at least, since the lack of progress recently has been kind of discouraging. But I'll keep working at it!

Edited April 11, 2014 by SamCom

[frizzank]

Im going to scale the parts down and put them in the cargo bay of the kerbin mini shuttle.

[15nelsoc]

That is some quality work that you have done there; the textures and model both look excellent. The standard for scale seems to be 64% of real world dimensions if that's any help. Keep up the great work, I look forward to trying this out some day!

[NoMrBond]

Im going to scale the parts down and put them in the cargo bay of the kerbin mini shuttle.

Then launch that in one of EJ's full size shuttles so you can shuttle a shuttling shuttle while you shuttle.

[Helix935]

looks great can i pack some experimental orbital weaponry into it?

[NathanKell]

Looks very snazzy! (And I obviously appreciate the 1:1ness of it...)

A request: can you check in with Ferram about the wings? FAR requires wings to be set up in a certain way when the model is built or Bad Things happen...

[blackheart612]

Deeeyum, awesome lookin.

[Tiberion]

mainly since there doesn't seem to be a set standard.

64% for Kerbalized recreations of real things will match you pretty close to what most of us have done. Not sure you'd want to do that with this one since it would leave the bay pretty small

Looks good.

[bazz]

*cough* Do a manned cockpit too *cough*

Looks awesome!

[Tommygun]

The size you have now seems a good choice.

The real one is about the size of a fighter plane and that looks about right to the Kerbals.

Maybe make a two maned cockpit pod to fit into the bay?

[SamCom]

frizzank, NoMrBond: Go for it, shuttle inception!

15nelsoc, Tiberion: I did see that 64% number around, I might try a version at that scale if I can get everything else working first. (The Kerbals decided to reverse engineer the full scale X-37B that came through a wormhole?)

Helix935: If they fit in the payload bay, go for it! I saw some crazy renders from an old white paper/off the wall proposal with it carrying nuclear warheads.

NathanKell: I'll give FAR a look, hopefully no crazy modifications are required at this point, I've already remodeled and remapped it to get the gear in there.

blackheart612: Thanks!

bazz: I don't know if I'm crazy enough to tackle an IVA at this point, but we'll see!

Tommygun: Maybe just strap some chairs in there?

Made a little more progress last night, got the nose gear wheel spinning the right way by making an empty object turned 90 degrees and parenting the wheel mesh to it, although the suspension is still off. While the gear is retracting, the ship stays in the same place, as if the gear is still on the ground, and then as soon as it's fully retracted, it drops down, and seems like the collision for the whole nose is removed/broken, since part of the nose clips through the runway? Not sure what's happening there.

[blackheart612]

Man, you've just motivated me to do some suborbital stuff

[Helix935]

Man, you've just motivated me to do some suborbital stuff

hmm you sure because this makes me want to do another resupply mission for my orbiting station

[Helix935]

hmm is this being worked on because i wonder if this is going to have the solar panels included, a docking port, or just an inline docking port to store in the cargo bay

[MainSailor]

I like the size it is now...it looks like a decent size recon satellite would fit snugly in the bay. It looks great!

[hieywiey]

Could you add the little solar panel?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&docid=jorSlz_CYEYCmM&tbnid=xOYggYLZOsVdeM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.davidicke.com%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D122272&ei=xZ1aU66mJYqpyAGJooGgDA&psig=AFQjCNF8Y-23TLFnkCNSjqpsx_Se5Tj80w&ust=1398533955176874

(Sorry, I'm on my phone)

[Helix935]

Whoa what happen to SamCom? must be RL stuff

[S.C.E to AUX]

Any news on this dev? Beta version? Will be willing to help ( Im good at breaking things btw)

[SamCom]

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates here. I got seriously burnt out after a few weeks straight of late nights trying to get the separate pieces aligned and working correctly in game. After all that, I'm still not sure I understand how the coordinates swap from Blender to KSP/Unity. I tried rotating the models in Blender, in Unity, setting them on the origin in both, applying and not applying transformations in Blender. I read a number of tutorials and found some mentions on the forum here, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. On top of this, every time I would apply transforms, or rotate the model to fix how it appeared in the game, I would break my landing gear animations, which required doing them again from scratch. Not terribly complex animations, but it got old quickly. I imagine I was doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. I got as far as getting the fuselage, nosecone, and tail pieces to align correctly without fiddling in the VAB, and the nose landing gear at least partially working using the Firespitter plugin, but not 100%, after a week or so of work trying to get the stock landing gear module working with my gear and failing. Just getting the wheels to rotate in the correct direction with the wheel collider was a couple nights of work, reverse engineering from screenshots scattered around the forums. It also seems I'd made a mistake in not making the landing gear separate parts, which would require chopping up the model again. Then I got to the wings and control surfaces, which again, did not align correctly, and the wings showed zero lift when aligned correctly. So, seeing the amount of work left, I've given up. It's obviously possible to get parts aligned correctly, landing gear and wings working, as a number of successful mods have shown, but it's no longer worth the frustration to me. Sorry for not delivering.

[Guest]

Could you release the models, then? Someone could take it up and rig it. Maybe PM Snjo, he's good with planes.

[sirkut]

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates here. I got seriously burnt out after a few weeks straight of late nights trying to get the separate pieces aligned and working correctly in game. After all that, I'm still not sure I understand how the coordinates swap from Blender to KSP/Unity. I tried rotating the models in Blender, in Unity, setting them on the origin in both, applying and not applying transformations in Blender. I read a number of tutorials and found some mentions on the forum here, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. On top of this, every time I would apply transforms, or rotate the model to fix how it appeared in the game, I would break my landing gear animations, which required doing them again from scratch. Not terribly complex animations, but it got old quickly. I imagine I was doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. I got as far as getting the fuselage, nosecone, and tail pieces to align correctly without fiddling in the VAB, and the nose landing gear at least partially working using the Firespitter plugin, but not 100%, after a week or so of work trying to get the stock landing gear module working with my gear and failing. Just getting the wheels to rotate in the correct direction with the wheel collider was a couple nights of work, reverse engineering from screenshots scattered around the forums. It also seems I'd made a mistake in not making the landing gear separate parts, which would require chopping up the model again. Then I got to the wings and control surfaces, which again, did not align correctly, and the wings showed zero lift when aligned correctly. So, seeing the amount of work left, I've given up. It's obviously possible to get parts aligned correctly, landing gear and wings working, as a number of successful mods have shown, but it's no longer worth the frustration to me. Sorry for not delivering.

I'm sure someone could help you get it going again and help you out with the importing details.

[Helix935]

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates here. I got seriously burnt out after a few weeks straight of late nights trying to get the separate pieces aligned and working correctly in game. After all that, I'm still not sure I understand how the coordinates swap from Blender to KSP/Unity. I tried rotating the models in Blender, in Unity, setting them on the origin in both, applying and not applying transformations in Blender. I read a number of tutorials and found some mentions on the forum here, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. On top of this, every time I would apply transforms, or rotate the model to fix how it appeared in the game, I would break my landing gear animations, which required doing them again from scratch. Not terribly complex animations, but it got old quickly. I imagine I was doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. I got as far as getting the fuselage, nosecone, and tail pieces to align correctly without fiddling in the VAB, and the nose landing gear at least partially working using the Firespitter plugin, but not 100%, after a week or so of work trying to get the stock landing gear module working with my gear and failing. Just getting the wheels to rotate in the correct direction with the wheel collider was a couple nights of work, reverse engineering from screenshots scattered around the forums. It also seems I'd made a mistake in not making the landing gear separate parts, which would require chopping up the model again. Then I got to the wings and control surfaces, which again, did not align correctly, and the wings showed zero lift when aligned correctly. So, seeing the amount of work left, I've given up. It's obviously possible to get parts aligned correctly, landing gear and wings working, as a number of successful mods have shown, but it's no longer worth the frustration to me. Sorry for not delivering.

so are you still burnt out or have you lost interest?

[Helix935]

Hey, sorry for the lack of updates here. I got seriously burnt out after a few weeks straight of late nights trying to get the separate pieces aligned and working correctly in game. After all that, I'm still not sure I understand how the coordinates swap from Blender to KSP/Unity. I tried rotating the models in Blender, in Unity, setting them on the origin in both, applying and not applying transformations in Blender. I read a number of tutorials and found some mentions on the forum here, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. On top of this, every time I would apply transforms, or rotate the model to fix how it appeared in the game, I would break my landing gear animations, which required doing them again from scratch. Not terribly complex animations, but it got old quickly. I imagine I was doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. I got as far as getting the fuselage, nosecone, and tail pieces to align correctly without fiddling in the VAB, and the nose landing gear at least partially working using the Firespitter plugin, but not 100%, after a week or so of work trying to get the stock landing gear module working with my gear and failing. Just getting the wheels to rotate in the correct direction with the wheel collider was a couple nights of work, reverse engineering from screenshots scattered around the forums. It also seems I'd made a mistake in not making the landing gear separate parts, which would require chopping up the model again. Then I got to the wings and control surfaces, which again, did not align correctly, and the wings showed zero lift when aligned correctly. So, seeing the amount of work left, I've given up. It's obviously possible to get parts aligned correctly, landing gear and wings working, as a number of successful mods have shown, but it's no longer worth the frustration to me. Sorry for not delivering.

hmm so its been two months so i aplogize for the necro people but i think its best to agree that this is dead

[TronX33]

sigh* This was looking promising.

[Tristonwilson12]

sigh* This was looking promising.

Theres my X-37b/c