The Versatile Panels Pack

[Dungchunker]

Hello Kerbonauts!

I am currently working on a project for myself and thought I might make it a larger production for the community if ...that is, the community would like to have it. I am working on multiple panel types, sizes and varied textures for building anything from a wooden crate or house if you want all the way through to Sci-Fi ships and stations. I see allot of ships and projects using tons of panels and seeing those same stock textures repeated over and over gets old. These are New Models and not retextured stock models (obviously very easy to make....it's basically a box!) but will be wanting to go the way of possibly triangles and and varied other geometric shapes as well. I want some feed back!!! if you would be interested in a "Panels Pack" of this nature leave a post below and maybe even a suggestion or two on what kind of textures you would like to see in the pack. Here are some screen shots of a couple of panels i finished today.

Also, of the panels you see some have the same texture on BOTH sides as others have Both the Sci-Panel on one side and the Circuit like Texture (starwarsy) on the opposite side.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Dungchunker
Pics

[Neutrinovore]

Mmm, great idea! Which in turn gives me several ideas and suggestions:

First, regarding textures: Hell yeah! The ones you've shown in the pics, I mean. I've always felt the need for a more 'sci fi' option in the game, that's why I really like the B9 and LLL packs. But both are still a bit plain in certain ways when it comes to textures, so a mod like this could help make things look a bit more interesting. I think the easiest way to go would be to get with Snjo and implement Firespitter's texture switching capability. This way you can create ONE part for each panel shape (which I'll address in a moment), and so not using up more memory than necessary while still having the option for MANY different looks, like you said, anything from a wooden box to a 'Star Wars' hull panel. A corollary idea would be the TweakScale plugin, which I believe allows switching between multiple scales of, again, just one 'part' for each physical shape. Anyway, food for thought on that.

Now, sizes. Square is a given, duh, but I've also found myself sometimes wanting a ONE-HALF meter by one meter panel, so you might consider doing 'fractional size' versions (i.e. one-third, one-half, etc) of your 'base size' part. Other than squares (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, all the way up to whatever), I suggest things like 1x2, 1x3 and so on. Again, don't want to have an absurd number of options, but more than just squares will help reduce SHIP part count, IMO. While still discussing rectangles, I've always thought it would be nice to have panels sized to 'sheathe' the skeletal struts, both stock sizes and the various addon/mod packs. Just for looks, mainly. I know the THSS pack has panels for this purpose, but they're so tiny that paneling just one section of strut blows the parts count into the stratosphere. I envision one panel to cover the entire side of a strut, and maybe also a half- or third-length version as well. Again, perhaps the TweakScale option would help here, or maybe even go the full 'Procedural' route, I don't know. Pros and cons to each method, I guess, and ultimately your decision on how fancy you want to get.

Finally, shapes. The most 'modular' shapes will be squares and triangles, along with their variations, rectangles and hexagons. I suppose if people want to make true spherical shapes you'd have to have a pentagonal panel as well, for the 'soccerball' - err, that's 'football' to everyone but Americans like me, lol - aficionados out there, but I don't see that as being particularly useful when paneling a ship or structure. Once more, if a 'procedural' approach were possible, being able to grab any corner (number of corners user defined, natch) of a panel and stretch it into whatever shape one wants would be the ultimate in true modularity, but I don't know how possible or even desirable that would be. There would have to be a GUI so that one could define shape, size, texture, and probably several other variables I can't think of right now, which could get complicated kind of quick. So, leaving that out, the only other suggestions would be variations in length/width ratios. For instance, a hexagon that's 'stretched' to be twice as long as its width, with two short sides at the ends, and four long sides angling towards the middle. I hope that's clear. Anyway, that shape would definitely have as 'sci fi' look, but I don't know how useful it would be. So again, food for thought there. Mm, also, as a few other modders have done, I suggest making the edge lengths of the panels match. For instance, you can do a hexagon with the length of each side at 1 meter, to match the square panels, OR you can do a hexagon that's 1 meter across (flats or corners, makes no difference), but you can't have both. Eek, this post is already too long, I'm sure you get the gist.

Okay, that's my 2 cents for now. Lol, more like 2 DOLLARS, sorry about the 'wall of text' post. But, you did ask us for ideas, Dungchunker. Hmm, I think I'll just call you 'Dc' from now on, unless you don't want me to.

Later!

[Dungchunker]

Nope DC is fine...Actually a pretty dull story behind that Handle..LOL! However i'm known by that name throughout most every game, steam, forum and even consoles that I participate in....so, it's easier just to keep it. Thanks for the input...that's the kind of stuff I want to hear. As for Firespitter textures swapping...I need to look into that. I was wondering to myself how that could be accomplished. These two panels were just a drop in the bucket...testers if you will... I've done some modeling work for other modders and a couple of single releases (Bullet pod, and control from here)..but I want to start something I can build on...and various panels and such seems to be one thing that there isn't very much of....if any. so thank you...and to anyone else reading this...leave your 2 cents (or dollars) worth for me to read.

[Garibaldi2257]

I really like the textures you've done so far. I agree with neutrinovore, VAB part bloat is preferable to ship part count bloat, so having .5x1 and 1x2, 1x3 etc panels would be good. I'm not trying to plug my really crappily textured mod, but the structural trusses I've made are 65cm x 65cm x whatever meter length, the x and y dimensions are almost perfectly matched to the stock trusses, so panels that size wouldn't be a bad idea, stick them in the middle of a truss for looks or whatever people want.

[Neutrinovore]

Lol, kewl, 'DC' it is. It's the same with me, btw, if you or anyone else reading this ever encounter 'Neutrinovore' anywhere else on 'teh interwebs', it's me. At least as far as I know no one has ever used that name before.

Anyway, to the topic at hand: Yeah, I've thought about this off and on for the last few hours, and I really think that FS's texture switching is going to be the only way to go. I mean, let's say you introduce 10 different panel shapes in your first release, each in 3 different sizes (small, medium, large), and 5 different texture options for each part as well. Blammo, that's 150 parts added to the SPH/VAB catalogs! Yes, I know, if you use model scale and texture callouts it's still only 10 parts and 5 textures in MEMORY, but now I've just doubled or tripled the number of editor pages I have to wade through in the 'structural' category alone! I think it would be much better to just pick, say, the single 'Hex Panel' part, then scale it with TweakScale and pick the texture I want, and done. But if you don't want to do the TweakScale thing, it's still 'only' 30 parts, not 150. Much more manageable.

So, again, another $0.02.

[Justin Kerbice]

Good idea, but I'm not a fan of panels myself and I always found both ugly and ridiculous using tons of them to try to make shape which look like something else (like fairing).

The best might be to put tex on one side and flat/low-res on the one which stand for interior/invisible side.

Also, take a look at "sci-fi texture" (an also sci-fi box/crate and warhammer 40k) results on a search engine, you'll find plenty of great idea for your panels.

some links as inspiration:

link1

link2

Edited May 16, 2014 by Justin Kerbice
add some links

[cantab]

Looks pretty neat. I find myself right now wanting some nice wooden panels to make the decking of a swanky yacht, vertical propulsion emporium has one but it's tiny (smaller than the regular 1x1 panel).

[Darren9]

Looks pretty neat. I find myself right now wanting some nice wooden panels to make the decking of a swanky yacht, vertical propulsion emporium has one but it's tiny (smaller than the regular 1x1 panel).

Possibly off topic but add the Tweakscale module/plugin to it, you'll be able to scale it at 2x, 3x or more?

[Thesonicgalaxy]

I would download this if it had all different kinds of sizes, instead of just 1x1 and 2x2. 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, 7x7, 8x8, so on so forth. I've always wanted a mod like that. Alternate textures would be nice too.

[Dungchunker]

I am looking into using the tweak scale and also a texture selector UI like Firespitter uses to make my vision more viable. It's really going to be the best way to go due to having so many optional textures and sizes, keeping the memory usage as low as possible is a priority on a mod like this. I have had allot of other things on my plate lately but i am still doing this.