How to add fairings to engines?

[GrumpyOldMan]

I'm still relatively new to the process of developing add-on parts so please be patient with my dumb questions. I recently modeled a new liquid engine and I've had considerable difficulty getting it to work properly. Initially it looked good, but produced no thrust. I poked around in the forum and found out about adding a thrust transform and boy does it work now. the only problem I have now is that when I add other parts to the bottom (decoupler etc,) it doesn't spawn a fairing. I found some info on how to kill the fairings on the stock parts, but nothing on what is necessary to get the fairing to spawn. I hope someone can help me with this.

Thanks in advance.

[xEvilReeperx]

The engine fairings are part of the engine's model and should be tagged Icon_Hidden in Unity. I can't tell you much more than that, having never modeled an engine myself. My assumption is that they'll be disabled by default unless explicitly enabled by a PartModule like ModuleDecouple. Should get you moving in the right direction at least

[blackheart612]

Yes, it's true what he said. The Icon_Hidden is so that you can't see the fairing while on the VAB (in its thumbnail)

You need to model the engine and the fairing. The fairing's position should be where you want it to be when the engine is covered already.

Now you just need to remember the name of your fairing in the model and put this in the config:

MODULE

{

name = ModuleJettison

jettisonName = fairing //here is the name of your fairing in the model hierarchy

bottomNodeName = bottom //the node where if an object is attached, the fairing will appear

isFairing = True

jettisonedObjectMass = 0.1

jettisonForce = 5

jettisonDirection = 0 0 1

}

I might be able to help you, just ask me and I'll answer what I can.

[GrumpyOldMan]

I thought it would be something like that, but couldn't figure it out for myself. I did exactly as you suggested and it worked perfectly the first try.

Specifically;

1) I modeled a fairing for my engine in blender.

2) I created a texture file for the fairing using Paint Shop Pro.

3) Added the fairing to the model in Unity.

4) Added the tag as you said.

5) Exported the model to KSP.

Again it worked perfectly the first time. That hardly ever happens when I'm trying something new.

I appreciate the help more than you know.

Thanks!

[blackheart612]

Well when I make engines, fairing and engines are in one blend file haha

[GrumpyOldMan]

I did say I'm new to this process, so I'll ask. Is there something wrong with the way I did it, or is it just another way to skin the cat?

I went back to the original blend file and added the fairing there. Of course that worked just fine for me too. Humm ... which method to use?

Edited June 14, 2014 by GrumpyOldMan

[blackheart612]

Not sure about your earlier way but in my subjective opinion, since I use a single blend file for both (and been working since), I'd say it would be better to use that.

[Tiberion]

It doesn't matter, you don't even have to export the fairing with the engine in the same MU file - you can have it be a separate MU file and then load it into the part config via a MODEL {} node.

For a lot of my engines, I have one fairing model, textured plain white, or with a vertical texture (that won't look stretchy if you scale the fairing vertically) and then I add it to each engine via the config, and scale it on the Y axis (vertical) in the MODEL{} node to be precisely long enough to cover that specific engine.

I typically use the object name 'fairing' which is the default, and the only thing the jettison module cares about is if an object named "fairing" exists, and it does once you import your fairing.mu at the top of the config (meanwhile the main engine .mu file is also loaded with a MODEL{} node and contains the thrustTransform and all your engine meshes.

But I have also done it in Unity, where I add the fairing object to the scene before import, so its contained in the same .mu file (but uses a different material and thus different textures, though they're typically small for a fairing)

And I have done it "All-in-One" in the .blend file as well, with the fairing using the same material and texture space.

It depends on preference, how you'll use the fairing, and whether you want to re-use it for other things.