Open Source Park Week 2 - Learn to Mod! Or just have fun making a simple part!

[artwhaley]

Voting Now Open - Voting Closes January 5th at Midnight!

The two entrants are :

passinglurker

and

-ctn-

Vote in the poll, which I'll hopefully figure out how to attach here!

So, due to nli2work being a bit busy IRL, I'm hosting this week.

I wanted to pick a part that was pretty simple, would teach new modders several steps of the process, and might be something you'd actually want in your part inventory.

One of my little frustrations in KSP has been that it's hard to build functional landers that look like real landers - they either have to be super top-heavy in order to stack a capsule, fuel tank, and engine, or you have to put together crazy truss structures to sling the engines out the sides.

So the part challenge this week is to make a Lower Stage for a lander. At the most basic, you can make just a fuel tank with a clever spot to attach a stock engine, but in the reference part I'm building the engine into the fuel tank, so it becomes a one-piece solution. It's up to you how crazy you want to go - you could make a pair of parts that include a descent stage and an ascent stage, or you could integrate landing legs... or rcs jets, or... whatever else you' want in the piece. It can be as basic or as complicated as your experience allows. It's also your choice whether you size it to work with the 1.25 or 2.5m lander cans.

Here are pics of the reference part I made last night.

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The deadline for submission has been extended to Monday December 29th!

This is open to experienced modders (and they're encouraged to play!) but the real value of this is in that it's an easy way for new modders to get started - you don't have to come up with and idea, you don't have to build a whole parts pack, and there are other people working on the same thing at the same time, so if you get stuck, answers are plentiful. So, if you've ever considered getting into modding, this is a great time to try it out. We WILL vote to choose who has to, err, gets to, host next week, but the contest isn't the point here - building parts and sharing our process with each other is.

To help get people started, these first few days I'm going to post my process building the reference part!

SO.... I'm posting videos of how I built the reference part.

I'm certainly still new at all of this, and I did make a couple of mistakes along the way... so these won't be canon tutorials that everyone should take as scripture, but I DID end up with a working part for an hour's or so work, and you will too if you want to follow along and do what I show you. If you do, you'll understand how to build a part, how to set it up in Unity, how to make an engine work, how to add resources to your part, and how to add an engine fairing that jettisons when the engine decouples.

Here's the first video that shows how I built the model in Blender and did the UV Unwrapping. It's not a comprehensive Blender tutorial - it assumes that you've watched a couple of videos that cover the UI and the basic tools, but it DOES show every step and pretty much mention every click and keypress, so it should be very easy to follow along. I'm NOT AN EXPERT at texturing or UV unwrapping, so don't take this as a tutorial on how to do that the best possible way, take it for what it is - a tutorial on how to get a basic part built and unwrapped in 25 minutes!

The basic skills you need to do all of this are :

Delete the objects that come in the default scene. (right click and press x)

Set the scale to meters. ( in the scene tab of the bottom right window)

Create an object. (top left of the 3D window) Set that object's properties in the numerical panel (bottom left of the 3D window toolbox.)

Switch between object and edit modes (Tab)

Extrude a face or set of edges - (tap e) including extruding them on just one axis (tap x,y, or z after tapping e) and extruding without an offset so the new face stays in the same place as the old one (press e and then hit enter before moving mouse)

Scale an object (tap s) and scale an object in just one axis (tap s, then tap x, y or z)

move an object (tap g)

Unwrap an object using Unwrap, Smart Projection, and Follow Active Quads (Select faces, press U then select method from menu.

Duplicate edges or faces (shift -d)

move the selected bits to a new object (p and 'selection' from menu) (IN THE VIDEO I SAY ALT-P, but it's just P! That's what I get for narrating after the fact... after a while I stop remembering what the keystrokes are and just doing them!)

Join two objects (select them both and press Ctrl-J while in Object mode)

The second video : It shows how to texture the UV map we made in video 1. I'm using photoshop CS2 (which you can now download from adobe without a license) but anything that lets you cut, paste, move, resize, and recolor a little bit will get you by just fine!

And video 3 - with the Unity Setup:

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The links to the previous week, and the master thread -

Week 1

Master Thread

Art

Edited December 31, 2014 by artwhaley

[artwhaley]

On another note - it's HARD to pick a part for the challenge. I know some weren't thrilled about rover parts last week, and some may not be excited about lander parts this week either - you're trying to pick something that is simple enough, not already done a thousand times over, and is specific enough that you get everyone on the same page. If you have any suggestions for parts for next time, I'm certain whoever hosts would LOVE to hear them thrown out here!

[lo-fi]

This is a great challenge! I'm struggling for time, as ever, but I'll try and get involved in this one Really cool idea doing the videos too, that's going to be fantastic. Bung a link in your sig to spread the word a little, I'll do the same.

[CaptainKipard]

lo-fi don't you have other commitments?

[lo-fi]

Hehe. Many, many other commitments. Happily, I can work some of them into this

[CaptainKipard]

Oh, that didn't occur to me. Maybe I can use this for the tutorial. I'm still waiting for an answer from you in that thread about how to proceed. Are you still in?

[lo-fi]

Ah, sorry, losing track of what I need to keep an eye on. Yep, absolutely. This seems like a great opportunity to produce a tutorial, so let's go for it. Maybe set up a Google doc or something to get the written version going, then I've got something to work into a video tutorial that mirrors it?

[artwhaley]

And, here's the first day's tutorial!

This is by far the longest. It starts with a brand new file in Blender and covers getting the file setup for modelling, making the part, UV unwrapping it, making a mesh collider and setting up empty game objects for attachment nodes.

It assumes you've watched another tutorial on the Blender UI and one on the basic tools, but it really covers everything a complete beginner needs to know how to do -

The basic skills you might need to look up as you go:

Delete the objects that come in the default scene. (right click and press x)

Set the scale to meters. ( in the scene tab of the bottom right window)

Create an object. (top left of the 3D window) Set that object's properties in the numerical panel (bottom left of the 3D window toolbox.)

Switch between object and edit modes (Tab)

Extrude a face or set of edges - (tap e) including extruding them on just one axis (tap x,y, or z after tapping e) and extruding without an offset so the new face stays in the same place as the old one (press e and then hit enter before moving mouse)

Scale an object (tap s) and scale an object in just one axis (tap s, then tap x, y or z)

move an object (tap g)

Unwrap an object using Unwrap, Smart Projection, and Follow Active Quads (Select faces, press U then select method from menu.

Duplicate edges or faces (shift -d)

move the selected bits to a new object (alt-p and 'selection' from menu)

Join two objects (select them both and press Ctrl-J while in Object mode)

I think that's it.

I'm not all that skilled of a modeler yet, so there ARE things I could do better here, I'm sure. (In fact, I'm sort of hoping that in posting this I'll get hints, suggestions and the occasional 'jesus, man. Why do you do it that way!' to improve my process. But if you follow along and look up those basic skills I listed above, you'll have a part ready to texture tomorrow. Grand total, it took less than 30 minutes to do all of this.

Art

[passinglurker]

Welp here's my first days results from working on this

My plan to meet the challange is a 1.25 diameter landing engine with an over sized turbo pump for sucking LFO from all corners of the lander giving the engine All_Vessel fuel flow capability perfect for using radial LFO tanks from KSPX MRS and the original openpartmod thread to keep the height down without needing fuel lines or plugins(technically this can be done with any engine just by editing the config but who ever heard of winning one of these with a MM script?)

so basically poor twr, decent isp, convenient to build with, very nice gimbal, best alternator efficiency, it'll treat LFO like it was an All_Vessel resource, and there will be many many bad cow and milking puns.

All that being said I kind of had a snag. I can't figure out how to make decent looking bent pipes in blender ;n_n

Anyone got any pointers?

[CaptainKipard]

Hey Art.

Might it be a good idea to postpone this until after the new year?

[passinglurker]

Hey Art.

Might it be a good idea to postpone this until after the new year?

I don't think so a false start would do nothing to help this. If you are concerned about turn out then get out and advertise :/

[CaptainKipard]

No amount of advertising is going to help when people are busy with Christmas stuff.

[lo-fi]

Lots of people busy dealing with .90 updates too (myself included). Maybe do an extended deadline on this one? Looking forward to getting a few minutes to look at that video too

[passinglurker]

No amount of advertising is going to help when people are busy with Christmas stuff.

This is also a perfect time with kerbal just recently updating to .90 cause many will want to do something kerbal but will hold off on playing until their mods update we need to aim for them.

[Robotengineer]

Lots of people busy dealing with .90 updates too (myself included). Maybe do an extended deadline on this one? Looking forward to getting a few minutes to look at that video too

I would do an extended deadline, instead of part week, part week(s)?

[Helix935]

I would do an extended deadline, instead of part week, part week(s)?

i agree on this besides due to the flexibility of the rules as long as you're host you can postpone this as long as you need until we get a submission....

[artwhaley]

I'm updating the OP to put the second video 'tutorial' there!

PassingLurker, that's looking great! I haven't played with AllVessel fuel flow before, and it's really cool that you're showing off a way to use the stock bits to create a new behavior without relying on a plugin!

As for deadlines and such. I definitely don't want to postpone, because I agree that false starts are bad for participation, but I don't mind extending the deadline.

We're not getting a ton of engagement in this, and what we're getting is from people who have some experience, which I think is still really useful because even if new folks don't build a part this week, having a place they can look to see our process and source files is very useful. Getting some reference source files scrounged together is something I'm going to work on for my other project, the (thus far, useless) modders wiki after the first of the year, because that would have helped me to no end when I first got started. (I STILL can't make the stock landing gear module work on my models, and I know it's a Unity Hierarchy problem, and yes I've seen the reference image, and yes I've read some of Cpt. Kipard's thread about the skylon gear, but I can get FS to work, so I just use that and stopped fiddling with the stock stuff.)

So, all that said I've been giving the format of this challenge some thought. What if, instead of a 'part week' we just made them open challenges. We could get a sticky(either here, or in the modelling and texturing subforum?) that acts as a table of contents to link out to the other threads, and we just make it permanently open - so if a new modder wanders in at anytime, they can pick one, build it, and post it back to the thread? Instead of a weekly challenge it becomes an opensource repository of parts? We can still vote after a week or two to determine who gets to set up the next one, but that wouldn't mean the challenge was 'over' and the new 'winner' wouldn't be under the time crunch to do it right away, just within a couple of weeks? That way there's still incentive to do it when it comes out, but there's no end to it? Sort of like the challenges in the player sections of the forum - do them whenever you see them, but you may be too late to make the 'leaderboard.' I, of course, recognize that we're not closing the threads, anyone could come along and do these challenges two months later, but if we set it up that way and get a sticky to encourage people to use the threads that way, it might set the right tone?

I know this has been a rough week for me to try to host too, because I'm trying to finish a kitchen renovation before family comes at Christmas, and I was trying to get an docking module for RPM pushed out before the .90 release so it could go out with the update (though squad got done a week before I thought they would, so blew that plan out of the water!!! Not that I'm complaining about having .90 out!) What do you guys think? Would taking the 'week' out of the Open Source Part Week make it better?

Art

Edited December 17, 2014 by artwhaley

[CaptainKipard]

I like that idea.

[rabidninjawombat]

Extending the deadlines a great idea =) thanks Art. Just saw this post and am gonna try my had at making a part myself

Thanks for all the awesome tutorials. Though.. Will need em, im very noobish at blender. Hopefully have some work up by tomorrow afternoon! Thanks for doing this guys.

[passinglurker]

I told myself I wan't going to bed till the part was urwrapped and the AO was baked... I shouldn't have told myself that...

I also figured out that pipe question I had before some what. I used a simple deform modifier to create a bend and then simply extruded off the ends. Any way I'll probably throw together a file for people to pick apart and criticize while I color this thing in after I've had some rest.

[CaptainKipard]

A much more powerful way of doing pipes is with curves.

[-ctn-]

This sounds like an interesting idea!

I'll try to come up with something to participate.

Side note - does anyone know how to get the mission flag to toggle on and off? I guess more specifically, where do I designate where the flag decal goes on the model?

[CaptainKipard]

To add a flag:

1. Create a new 3d object in your 3D editor. It should be just a rectangle. Give it the same proportions as a flag (8 by 5). Size can be anything.

2. Copy one of the flags into your assets folder.

3. Unwrap the rectangle to fit precisely over the flag image.

4. In Unity, import the object, name it something meaningful, drag the flag image on top of it, place it in your hierarchy.

5. Add this to your part:

MODULE
{
    name = FlagDecal
    textureQuadName = thenameofyourmeshinunity
}

6. The flag image will be exported as a texture when you create your part, so delete that texture when you're ready to upload or use the part. It only needs to be there for the exporting process.

[-ctn-]

Thank you! I'll try that out later tonight!

[CaptainKipard]

Oh and make sure to use the KSP/Alpha/Translucent shader on that object otherwise the flags with alpha wont appear correctly.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard