The Open Part Mod - Week 3 Submission Thread! Winner Announced!!

[Ven]

The task:

Make an inline 1.25 meter 'boosted' decoupler.

The numbers~

Cpt. Kipard~ "Booster Decoupler"

Download

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Snjo~ "The fireworks decoupler"

Download

Project Files

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Darkside~ "DSPD-1 Powered Stack Decoupler"

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Download

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StarVision~ "The SBD-Debris Free Decoupler"

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Download

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Robotengineer~ "TBD Boosted Decoupler"

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Previous Threads:

Radial Triple Fuel Tank - Winner: StarVision

Radial Probe Body - Winner: Ven

boosted decoupler - Winner: Cpt. Kipard

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Edited May 24, 2014 by Ven
Changed the poll service... hopefully correcting the multiple votes per user problem

[CaptainKipard]

Voila

The ejection force is a little higher than in this picture.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Snjo]

The fireworks decoupler

Very unsafe, it actually thrust towards the spent stage, instead of away from it. It also doesn't fly very straight. But seriously, what do you expect with fireworks and duct tape?

Download

Project files

Edited May 16, 2014 by Snjo

[ahappydude]

Great details snjo! Esp the ducttape, it works with everthing!

[darkside]

My submission

It has way too many faces for such a simple shape (916 triangles) because initial idea was a bit different, then I changed everything but reused parts of geometry that initially were supposed to be much bigger. But I guess it is still within limits of sanity and will have to do for the purpose of the contest.

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Edited May 18, 2014 by darkside

[StarVision]

The SBD-Debris Free Decoupler

The "Stack Boosted Decoupler", when separated, blasts its engines to get you away from the spent stage, and then overheats and blows up. A cheap solution for reducing the amount of debris!

Download

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[Robotengineer]

here is my submission. Download

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How do I get the album to be embedded like the ones above?

Edited May 19, 2014 by Robotengineer
Album embed fix.

[blackheart612]

[imgur ]MNyjq[/imgur]

Try this instead of your code, embeds the album better.

Just remove the space.

[Robotengineer]

Uhmm, the poll allows you to vote multiple times. that may be a problem.

[Ven]

Uhmm, the poll allows you to vote multiple times. that may be a problem.

That is a problem... and there seems to be no way to fix it.

So I changed the service, hopefully It'll prevent the multi-vote problem.

[Justin Kerbice]

This poll service doesn't allow to see results (without voting I guess), too bad :/.

And his time I'll vote, it's quite tight as it just tiny things which will make real differences (I don't talk about the models themselves of course)

[CaptainKipard]

You can view the result by not checking anything.

[Justin Kerbice]

You can view the result by not checking anything.

OK thanks. found me grumpy but here we don't have number of votes. Not better than forum polls after all.

[CaptainKipard]

OK thanks. found me grumpy but here we don't have number of votes. Not better than forum polls after all.

Remember thinking in maths class, "I'll never use that in real life"? Well....here's the antithesis. Go for it!

[darkside]

While we're voting, if that's ok, any critiques? I'll go first.

Cpt.Kipard: I voted for this part, the only minor thing I could say that it doesn't look like there is a room for fuel inside of it.

Snjo: Was thinking about voting for this one, surprised there are so few votes (yet), fun part. It would be super cool if after depleting fuel it would actually explode in a firework.

StarVision: Pretty cool, the texture is just a little bit too stock-like for my taste. Innovative, I like the idea with exploding.

Robotengineer: Looks very similar to Cpt.Kipard's submission. Texture doesn't seem to be very defined.

And a little about my own submission, I should have given more detail to the inside of it, probably will still do that and post later, when the voting is over.

[Snjo]

Good idea with the feedback

I was torn between Cpt. Kipard's and and Darkside's submissions. The baking and internal structures looks real nice on Kip's, but I felt the thruster port used the low poly nature better with the square hole and painted round port on Darkside's part. Also the bright colour made it obvious that this part had a special and dangerous function

Starvision made a very nice looking part that fits right into stock, which is a plus for a lot of people. The only detractor is that it looks a bit like just an engine, instead of a a decoupler/separator.

RobotEngineer obviously didn't have time for the texture, but good on you for submitting anyways. Remember to apply smoothing (and then edge split) to get rid of the hard edges per surface when finishing it.

As for myself, I wish I had time to make awesome fireworks sound effects and exploding rockets, but the 17th of may is our Constitution day, so BBQ and family time won out in the end

Also I never expect to win a lot of votes*, I just want to create something silly, and possibly then making the other submissions seem sane.

*except for the brain slug, that was obviously the best ever. Not enough Futurama fans here obviously

[darkside]

I felt the thruster port used the low poly nature better with the square hole and painted round port on Darkside's part.

It is not painted on, sorry . It is actually pretty high poly as I said in the initial thread this thread earlier. But I think we can afford it these days, doesn't really affect performance when ran on any semi-decent machine.

Edited May 19, 2014 by darkside

[Justin Kerbice]

Here is my rating:

computer style with these criteria: rules respect (the most important one, see below), model, texture, overall look, function, config file, packaging

+1 when rated item is good, -1 otherwise

Cpt. Kipard: 3

darkside: 0

StarVision: 0

Robotengineer: 3

Snjo: blackflagged (for those who are familiar with motorsports ) 3 parameters are rules's infringement

Special bonus to Robotengineer as a beginner who still achieve a very descent job, despite a poor model and tex, and some missing sounds, but also poor packaging (lot's of "hidden" macos files remain in the archive, the ._ds_store things), choice of targa for tex is wise and there is a readme + config file is stripped for all useless comments common on stock parts.

StarVision: the debris-free idea give you a bonus too, but config file which could have been better, the booster stage icon, choice of weird MBM tex cost you valuable points (it make sense if you make "I don't mind about space pollution design" rockets , but if lower stage are supposed to be kept in a way or another, burning it might not be appreciated that's much by engineers because extra-work needed on repairs).

darkside: the bottom node is inside the model (too high), part description quite short, config file and packaging are where you loose points.

The UV mapping on the other side is very good, very few surface unused.

Cpt. Kipard: the tex is, as usual, very good, I like it a lot, perhaps UV may have been a bit better but I know how hard it could be, the short readme also is good, as short as it is. config file + the correct side to use is not very obvious, doing some trials is needed first to use your decoupler well cost you the points.

Snjo: the usual "crazy modder" , the stage icon is booster, and quite mere packaging, config file which could have been a bit better and use of PNG which is not really the unity cup of tea cost you some points, anyway, not strictly following rules cost you all.

In the other hand, the shape and idea, how your decoupler work, the fun inside, as well as model and quite the texture would have give you a bunch of points.

More human style rating now (taking care only of the "player awareness" elements of parts):

Cpt. Kipard: 2

darkside: 1

StarVision: 2

robotengineer: 1

Snjo: 2

As you can see, it's very close, which is a good sign for this friendly competition, and my final vote go to StarVision for his decoupler's efficiency.

Robotengineer: keep going, learning path is tricky and full of ambushes, despair and disappointment can be on your way but we are all on the same vessel, and only the ones who stay in the fight may succeed. All others failed.

[Robotengineer]

Whilst on the theme of critique, I figure I should give my 2 cents.

Cpt. Kipard: I voted for this one because it achieves the basic goals without being to outlandish, or ugly.

Darkside: yours is nice, and I would probably give you 2nd place as yours achieves the goals as well.

Snjo: I like the Mythbusters look, but its not very functional.

Starvision: Good idea about the 'Debris-free' decoupler, though the texture is a bit off and the model is a bit thin in the Z-Axis.

Me: Looks like a noob threw together a quick texture, and model. Which happens to be what I did.

This has been sort of fun, but also hard in a challenging puzzle sort of way.

[CaptainKipard]

MRW I spend over an hour reviewing the submissions an accidentally refresh the page with my reply.

I hope I remember everything.

Snjo

Nice model. It looks realistic in the sense that that's how it would look if you tied a bunch of fireworks with tape.

Good texture. The firework label is nice. The tape texture looks out of place. Attention to detail is great but tape deformation looks best when done with a normal map. It looks too much like a simple photo of some tape. Differences in specularity between the tape, and the fireworks would make a big difference. You get credit for painting it yourself, although personally I don't like the stock-alike approach.

Darkside

Very good texture. Nice damage, although maybe a little too much of it. Sensible thruster placement. Points for including a specular and normal map, and ambient occlusion.

The top and bottom is bland. A lot of hidden useless geometry. The exported collider is either not convex or the visible mesh is duplicated.

StarVision

Direction indicator is useful. Inventive function.

Looks too much like the stock decoupler. Texture is a little flat. The thrust is angled for some reason I don't understand. Collider is not convex. UVs are highly disproportional (which doesn't matter with the current texture, but it would with something more complex)

Robotengineer

You get credit for finishing and for the humble readme Procrastination is ok but only if you spend the time coming up with ideas. Technically speaking all the submissions here could have been done in about an hour, it's just that a lot of time (at least for me) is wasted coming up with ideas, and redoing the meshes and textures.

Be careful when you extrude because your thruster has a lot of wasted polygons. Also the thruster has a hole in it. You can safely delete faces which are inside the geometry and not visible.

Some general advice.

More people should add AO more often. It's simple and it makes a big difference.

Even if you don't want realistic textures you should at least use a background texture for whatever material you're doing just to make it it look less flat.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[CaptainKipard]

...perhaps UV may have been a bit better but I know how hard it could be..

Could you explain this a bit more?

[Robotengineer]

I spent most of the time coming up with ideas, I wen through about 5-6 variations before deciding on the last one, because I had no choice and ran out of time. I still need to learn how to texture, do I make the texture and then map the UV over it? or map the UV and make the texture over that? Next week I should do better, depending on what it is.

[darkside]

Darkside

The top and bottom is bland. A lot of hidden useless geometry. The exported collider is either not convex or the visible mesh is duplicated.

Yes, I 100% accept that. I should have fixed those things instead of hoping that nobody will notice, lesson learned.

By the way, I did use the visible mesh for a collider but after enabling convex it lost most of it's polys because they were inside of convex shell, is that still a bad thing to do?

[CaptainKipard]

...map the UV and make the texture over that?

This

Yes, I 100% accept that. I should have fixed those things instead of hoping that nobody will notice, lesson learned.

By the way, I did use the visible mesh for a collider but after enabling convex it lost most of it's polys because they were inside of convex shell, is that still a bad thing to do?

Ah. You and Starvision should ignore what I said then. I just double checked my own parts and it looks like mu files don't actually store the simlpified collider but duplicate the mesh and then the collider is calculated at run time. At least now I know.

This makes me think it's better to create my own custom colliders for everything. Then you have more control over it.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[StarVision]

MRW I spend over an hour reviewing the submissions an accidentally refresh the page with my reply.

I hope I remember everything.

Same thing happened to me, except it was for the entire OP last week.

Cpt. Kipard: I Like the "almost stock" feel, kind of like some of the big rocket packs (Novapunch, KWRocketry). It's also fairly obvious how to position it with the engines sticking out.

Snjo: I like the thrown-together look of it, another fun entry. The only real problem I see is that it's basically a cool radially attached part stuck to a non-descriptive cylinder. It's still a cool idea though.

Darkside: I voted for this one. Everything is nice and tucked away and the texture is interesting. The top is a bit plain but that's usually covered up anyways.

Robotengineer: I'm glad you got it submitted, even though you may have not been done. It shows that you tried, rather than if you didn't submit it no one would have known. The design looks good, just remember to use edgesplit and smooth the model like previously mentioned, it makes it look so much better.

Regarding Mine

I thought I had fixed the thrust Transforms, but I guess the changes were never saved. I think next time I'm going to focus more on the texturing aspect, just to develop my skills in that area a bit more (because they're needed.)