The Good, The Bad, and the Questions

[Angelo Kerman]

The Bad: I had a chance to play with the KSO system last week and loved it. Unfortunately, memory constraints prevents me from using the mod along with the other mods I want to use.

The Good: After looking around for other shuttle alternatives I decided to build my own lightweight system and tonight I finally got animations working. This is my first animated part in KSP, and now that I have a general idea how to do it, I can animate my liquid droplet radator.

The Questions: I've not made a part with hollow spaces before, and selecting Convex collisions gives me some wonky results:

When I imported the model, I told Unity to generate mesh collisions (Generate Colliders checkbox on the Model tab of the inspector). If I don't select the convex option and tell the object's Mesh collider to use the model itself, objects will collide with the mesh, but they do so with odd angles like this:

(and yes that's a Rockomax-16. I'll have a docking port and engine block and a custom command pod eventually, but for now I have a mk3 adapter. I have to finish Nuclear Engines first though.)

What I want is to have the mesh collider set up such that the wing will be nice and straight when it attaches to the model. I have nice vertical sides that I'm hoping will help:

Anyway, I've heard that you can create multiple colliders for the mesh, such as multiple box colliders, but how do you go about that? Say I want to select the bay itself and add a box collider for the floor and two others for each side. If that's doable, how would I resize the box collider in unity? Would I have to build my own collider in 3DS Max?

Thanks for the help!

Edited August 28, 2014 by Angel-125

[Porkjet]

The Mk3 shape is very likely to be reworked in the next update, maybe wait with this project till we know what it will be like, or you'll have to do it twice.

Regarding the colliders, yes you can manipulate a bunch of box colliders until it fits using its size parameters and manual positioning, but I guess doing them in 3Dmax is going to be easier.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Porkjet

[NathanKell]

Yeah, what Porkjet said.

For colliders, I think for prefabs you might have to do it in Unity; if you export the collider from max it may be taken as a mesh collider instead. But I don't really know Unity, so get a second opinion (Porkjet's, who does )

[AlphaAsh]

I tend to use dummy cubes in Unity if I want precision placement of colliders 'off' a mesh. Place a cube, put it where you need it, change its position, size and rotation. Leave the box collider on. Take out the cube's mesh renderer. Ta da, precision collider. It's fiddly but it's actually very useful.

Edited August 28, 2014 by AlphaAsh

[nli2work]

mesh colliders will work fine. but for this you need multiple colliders for the walls; and doors. If you create collision mesh in 3d app, make sure it's 255 triangles or less.

for multiple colliders; create empty game object, put it in the model heirarchy and reset it's transform so it's aligned and positioned at the model's root pivot. then follow the steps of AlphaAsh, or simply add a collider component to the new game object and resize it afterwards.

to resize a collider in Unity you can use the transform scale; or you can hold down SHIFT key while the collider selected. you will see little green squares that you can drag to resize the box. most useful on a box collider since you can shift it in different ways. on capsule or sphere all you can adjust is radius and length. This allows you to keep the game object transform unchanged while getting a collider positioned where you need it.

Edited August 28, 2014 by nli2work

[Angelo Kerman]

Ahhh ok, thanks all, that makes sense. I had a feeling it would take creating a bunch of boxes. I appreciate the advice, thanks.

@nil2work: holding down the Shift key... that's the critical piece of info I needed, thank you.

@all: I built the fuselage shape based on the X-37B, so it already doesn't conform to the Mk3 shape:

The idea is to just make the fuselage sections and use stock/Porkjet's fabulous wings so that I keep the part count down and more importantly for me, keep memory requirements low (again, love KSO, but it eats too much memory even with ATM to work with the other mods I have installed, like nil's new station parts and RoverDude's array of mods).

I do realize that the Mk3 is being reworked/discontinued. That's why I built the meshes such that only the adapter will be obsolete. I plan to make a command module as well, but I'm even less clueless about how to make an IVA at present. So for now, I have an adapter so I can use the existing Mk3, and I'll have a probe core nose cone shaped like the X-37's nose, and that'll do for my game until I can figure out the whole IVA business.

Thanks again, I'll give your suggestions a try.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Angel-125

[Angelo Kerman]

OK, that definitely worked. I ended up creating a simple 3D mesh in 3DS Max to serve as the collider for the payload bay. I then exported my model to Unity, turned off the Mesh Renderer on the collider, and removed the Mesh Collider on the payload bay itself. After exporting from Unity, I brought it into KSP. One thing I had to do is turn off the angle snap, which was causing the parts I surface attached to stick to my part in odd angles.

End result:

It works, thanks again.