Lux's Devlog

[potent aurora]

As a first cut I’m just trying to use TexTools to do some simple bakes but I think I need to watch a few more videos on that.

[tiny blaze]

well

you don tneed to bake anything

if you use substance

:D

tho i dont know much about blender baking

[quiet birch]

select your objects, hit single texture, set bake resolution, select bake type, and bake

i demonstrate it here

[potent aurora]

I actually have a screwed up UV map at the moment. It was OK, and now it’s all jacked up and I’m not sure how to get it back.

[quiet birch]

if you did this a while ago, you cant get it back

you have to reunwrap unfortunaytely

[potent aurora]

It was OK but not great earlier this evening. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I’ve been re unwrapping it all night and I just get weird crap

[quiet birch]

can i see what your unwrap looks like ?

[potent aurora]

There are islands on top of other islands

[quiet birch]

you may have accidentally cleared a seam somewhere

[quiet birch]

oh thats an easy fix

just go to UV at the top, then pack islands

(set a margin of .003 at the bottom left)

[potent aurora]

I’ve not made any seams, the objects are pretty simple. That might be part of it.

[quiet birch]

btw

[potent aurora]

One minute, I’ll get a pick here

[quiet birch]

if you unwrap while you have all your objects selected

it will pack itself nicely

[potent aurora]

That’s what I’ve been doing using UV smart project

Check out this insanity

[quiet birch]

one last thing

before unwrapping

on all your objects

[potent aurora]

So I've got everything selected, and the pane on the left shows the weird unwrap, and the pane on the bottom shows a zoom in on the part of the unwrap that isn't completely insane

[quiet birch]

press ctrl a

and aply scale

this will make sure each uv island is correctly sized

[quiet birch]

try the UV>Pack islands

[potent aurora]

Cntl a doesn't seem to do anything. I may be missing a step

[quiet birch]

hm

make sure youre in object mode

[potent aurora]

When you say press ctrl a, in which window, and should it be in edit mode or object mode, etc

[quiet birch]

object mode in the viewport

[potent aurora]

Ahhh, that would be the issue

It popped up a dialog but I don't know if it actually did anything

[quiet birch]

youre not gonna see any change visually

but it does make a huge difference

try unwrapping again

[potent aurora]

This looks better I think

[quiet birch]

yep

[potent aurora]

Except why can't I see the UV map in the left pane?

It and the bottom pane are basically the same window

[quiet birch]

looks like youre realy szoomed out

zoom in

[potent aurora]

Well, I'm back to BSDF nodes needed. The last time I was here some of my objects had somehow lost their materials.

[quiet birch]

hm weird

a material is only deleted when no object is using it

[potent aurora]

Yeah, that was it - zoomage

My ceramic parts don't have a Principled BSDF, they have Diffuse BSDF

Could that be in?

[quiet birch]

i dont think so

although something did that

blender creates principled bsdf by defualy

[potent aurora]

How can you tell if it's baking?

[quiet birch]

maybe you accidentally unchecked use nodes

[potent aurora]

I think it's baking now

[quiet birch]

no visual indicator

just wait for an image to show up

[potent aurora]

I told it to use Principled BSDF on the ceramic and that got it unstuck

Yeah, it's giving me a spinning wheel now, so it's doing something

These are my settings in TextTools. Not sure if these are OK, but it's still baking...

I'm gonna head for bed and check this in the morning. This may have me unstuck!

[tiny blaze]

@quiet birch would a profileable plume be of any interest?

basically you'd give him this and it would make a cylinder with that profile

i found that it looks good, but its not really animateable

maybe for eletric engines? since they dont have atmo/vac diffrence

[quiet birch]

hm

i dont think so

[tiny blaze]

heh fair, it was just something i was experimenting with yesterday

[quiet birch]

i think controls like waterfall’s would be easier

control the different types of expansion

bounded, square, linear i think they were called

that would allow for animation and easy control

if you dont have that setup already

[tiny blaze]

fair, yeah i have that :D

[quiet birch]

nice

[acoustic lava]

How would I get my textures ready for ksp 2. Would I just bake all of them and import it?

Also I don’t know what to do on the coding side to make it work

[tiny blaze]

if they can be imported on unity

then theyre ready

[acoustic lava]

Yeah I know that much. I guess I’m saying that idk jack shit about getting my part into the game

[tiny blaze]

this guides you from 0 to part in game #🔴tools-and-resources message

[acoustic lava]

Ok

[tiny blaze]

@lofty jacinth @quiet birch rate my kerolox plume

its shitty but the shader is pretty much done

[tiny blaze]

this is funny

lmao

res diffrence

60 seems like a great spot

[lofty jacinth]

Hm is this supposed to be in atmo?

I think the air pressure should make the combined plume much more compressed

And then when much higher up in the atmosphere, it turns into this

[tiny blaze]

fair

[tiny blaze]

im sorry sir i'll do better i promise

the edge is still too aparent

i need to change that on the shader

@lofty jacinth rate it

[lofty jacinth]

Oh wow that's such a huge difference

This looks so fucking good

[tiny blaze]

🙏

im sure that an actual artist can do so much better

but im happy with how this is turning out

[lofty jacinth]

The only thing I would change is just make the color slightly more orange, but the shape and animation looks amazing

[potent aurora]

I agree, a bit more orange, but otherwise looks great. Nice work!

[potent aurora]

Hey, questions for you on setting up engines in Unity. Should I orient them thrust pointing down in? I've been building them flipped from that, but of course it's a breeze to flip them over when I pull them in.

I assume the top node belongs on the part that would face "up" in a stack and so is furthest from the nozzle. I also assume that for engines like my the surface attach is in the same place as the top node.

But what I'm really curious about is how do you make the background black like you've got it in this video? I'll need to do that when I try to model the plume!

[tiny blaze]

every part should be oriented as if it was on the OAB (Rocket mode)

[tiny blaze]

and yes

[tiny blaze]

this little box at the top

[potent aurora]

Yeah, I saw you useing that in the video, but when I try it I get this:

Just gray. Not night time where the plume would be more visible

[tiny blaze]

oh i see

well

Edit>Preferences...>Colors>Background Color

also, for your plume i really recommends volumetrics as else it will look very bad

mesh based rings alwayss look ew

[potent aurora]

OK, so sene background to black. That was easy!

[tiny blaze]

im pretty much done with volumetrics btw :D

just polishing things rn

[potent aurora]

OK, I've got some work to do just making the dang part. I expect I'll run into the same issue I did before where the game doesn't see it as an engine once you're on thje pad, and doesn't give you Delta V for it anywhare. I need to solve that before I should worry about the plume.

But I am excited to see this thing in the game!

[tiny blaze]

huh

[potent aurora]

I think this much bigger version is going to look a lot better.

[tiny blaze]

do you still have the old part

can you show me all the components you have on them?

[potent aurora]

I do. It's in the same pack

Sure.

So, the components are Core Part Data, Moduel_Engine, Moduel_Drag, and Moduel_Color. I was getting the issue with just those and diffing on the JSON I've got vs. that of the Dawn. I noticed that the Dawn had a Fairing comonent, so I added that (not expecting it to fix the problem buit thinking it would be good to have). I've still got the problem last I checked, plus the fairing doesn't work.

[tiny blaze]

i think i know ur problem

[potent aurora]

Hang on and I'll send the JSON

Oh?

[tiny blaze]

shouldve asked this long ago xD

add a Throttle VFX Manager

and a Flameout VFX smth?

then on the Module_Engine, on the bottom, you'll see a place for the Flameout VFX manager

those dont appear on the JSON

but seems to be required? i thought they were optional

[potent aurora]

Flameout VFX Data (Script)?

[tiny blaze]

yes! (i think)

check on the Module_Engine

if you can attach that to the right place

[tiny blaze]

yup!

no need to add things

open module_engine, and go to the bottom of it

[potent aurora]

OK, I'm there

[tiny blaze]

send a ss pls

[tiny blaze]

i dont have a unity proj with the game so i can see xD

drag the flameout vfx data

onto the right spot

[potent aurora]

Done

[tiny blaze]

this should be all

[potent aurora]

What about the throttle VFX?

[tiny blaze]

if not, you might also need to add a generator and/or a gimbal

it doesnt need to be set 🙏

[potent aurora]

Not all engines have gimbals and generators, so maybe those are optional? But if not then I'll know pretty soon

[tiny blaze]

i know that gimbals are

generators im not sure

[potent aurora]

Well, having a gimballing ION engine isn't completely insane. They can vary the power to different parts of the anode to effect thrust vectoring. I don't think I'd give them much vector, but it's conceivable that they could have that.

[tiny blaze]

just add anodes to the sides

[potent aurora]

haha, something like that. They actually use a split anode and just crank up the power for the quadrant you want to have push harder.

Do I need anything in the Throttle VFX slots?

[tiny blaze]

nop dw

also

ur changes

ar enot applied

you need to override them

thats what that + sign means next to the component icon

[potent aurora]

Oh! Did not know that. How do I "apply" them?

[tiny blaze]

there

also

that blue line there means "this value is not the same as the prefab"

[potent aurora]

Is it the three dots and then > Added Component > Apply?

[tiny blaze]

that works too!

if you do that you only apply that component

there, on the Overrides, you can apply all

and also check what changed

think of it as a github commit to the prefab!

if you click on each change you see the comparison

btw if you're ever to collaborate with someone on unity, they have a collaborate feature

which makes unity work pretty much like a repo

[potent aurora]

Good to know!

[quiet birch]

proof

i dont have module gimbal on my ntr

[tiny blaze]

WE COOKING

SO FUCKING MUCH

CALL ME FUCKING GORDON RAMSAY

CUZ I JUST MADE FIRE

[quiet birch]

niceee

[tiny blaze]

i think they are ready for testing at least

[quiet birch]

hm i just realized something,,,

volumetric shaders in ksp2

more of them

thats gonna be a huge performance impact

[tiny blaze]

oh i see what ur saying

well

depends

the idea is that, the not so important effects

should all be rendered in screen space

so basically, 1 render pass for all

but that'll depend on modders

also i don think many people will be creating volumetrics

i only plan on 2, tank frost and plumes

[quiet birch]

@median canopy is doing volumetric stuff too i think

[tiny blaze]

maybe smoke (for ISRUs and others)

[quiet birch]

Next u should simulate a high res smoke for landings

and then simulate the weather in higher res than any weather model out there today

[tiny blaze]

thats already done

[quiet birch]

I think itll be a piece of cake for u

[tiny blaze]

i contracted NASA

i've been planning on making a somewhat realistic weather sim

not for ksp2, but could be applied

[quiet birch]

next we need to add open vdb rendering for ksp2

i wanna import a 2gb cloud vdb

we need blender cycles but realtime

blender shader nodes support wen

[tiny blaze]

theres kinda already

shader graph

is pretty much blender shader nodes

i was gonna tell you

[quiet birch]

im gonna port my plume

[tiny blaze]

that if you want to design shaders for KSP2

you can

but in 2020 its kinda shitty

BUt

you can get amplify

which is the better version of shader graph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Yc2vbC0nI&list=PL_LqqhAPB2MjttBd17fHNYbKvoaUIUSWh

[keen prawn]

Amplify is what KSP2 uses IIRC?

[tiny blaze]

probably?

they seem to use a sort of shader editor

the thing is, amplify is paid

very good, but paid

unit yhas a lot of tools

most of them piad tho

[keen prawn]

Hmmm ... itd be more work on the modder but should there be the ability to switch between volumetric and mesh based plumes at runtime?

For performance

[tiny blaze]

i was thinking about that

yeah the modder would have to do 2x the plume

but sure why not

something like "prefer: [Volumetric|Mesh Based]"

and if available would use the prefered version

[keen prawn]

I mean just have an enum in config like such
Mesh,Volumetric Low, Volumetric High or something

[tiny blaze]

i mean yeah that works too

[keen prawn]

Or it can be 2 different enums

Preferred Plume Type: (something about performance in the description)
Mesh, Volumetric
Volumetric Quality:
Low, Medium, High

[tiny blaze]

oh yeah that works wonders

[acoustic lava]

FUCKING FIRE

[tiny blaze]

we're achieving mach speed

[quiet birch]

awesome

[tiny blaze]

let me pack a devkit

so that ya'll can play with this

[tiny blaze]

messing with shader can be fun

[tiny blaze]

did some adjustments so that the shader stays the same independent of size

[tiny blaze]

@potent aurora @quiet birch

if you want schlosrat, show u how to replicate the plume!

[potent aurora]

Defintitely

It's pretty late for you? Now or tomorrow?

[tiny blaze]

naah now its good

tho i cant go voice xD

ok so, just download that, and put inside your unity project! anywhere

[potent aurora]

OK, gimme a sec to refresh my contacts so I can see what I'm doing!

[tiny blaze]

xD i know that struggle

also, Isa, i included the ion profile on the Dev Kit (just as an example)

[potent aurora]

OK, I'm ready. Lemme unzip that thing and drip it in my project.

Drop the whole LFO folder into the Unity proj?

[tiny blaze]

yup!

i'll later turn it into a unity package, will just be a double click and its done :D

after droping it

add a cube!

and create a material for that cube

[potent aurora]

I must be dumb, it's giving me a red sircle with slash

[tiny blaze]

something like [Engine Name] plume

[tiny blaze]

i dont think you can drop straight from a zip?

rightclick

show in explorer

[potent aurora]

Oh wait, I may tryuing from isnisd eht zip

OK, LFO folder dropped in proj

[tiny blaze]

amazing

add a cube!

[potent aurora]

Cube added

[tiny blaze]

now!

create a new material for it!

and change the shader to LFO>Volumetric (Profiled)

[potent aurora]

OK!

[tiny blaze]

and now, on the profiled texture, add your profile :D

[potent aurora]

Material applied I think

[tiny blaze]

yeah it wont show anything

yet

[potent aurora]

Hold on, what does this mean?

[tiny blaze]

means this

[potent aurora]

Profiled texture = new material, rihgt?

[tiny blaze]

adding the plume profile there

it is already on the zip

under LFO>Profiles

[potent aurora]

I'm still confused. Lets back up a step

[tiny blaze]

sure

[potent aurora]

Which object do I select?

The material or the cube?

[tiny blaze]

either!, if you select the cube, and scroll to the bottom

the material will be there

[potent aurora]

Oh I see it there. Do I need to click Edit?

[tiny blaze]

nop

can you send me a screenshot

of what ur seeing?

[tiny blaze]

just expand!

theres an arrow there

[potent aurora]

Ahh!

[tiny blaze]

you can also retract all other components

keep only the transfomr and the material open, as those are the ones we'll be using

add a component called Plume Controller

[potent aurora]

Slow down. I'm still a litlte stuck

[tiny blaze]

sure thing!

[potent aurora]

What do I do with the profile? Click select or smth?

[tiny blaze]

before we do that, add the plume controller

[potent aurora]

Is that a component?

[tiny blaze]

i skipped that step xD

yup!

[potent aurora]

OK I clicked Add Component, but I'm not seeing it there, what should I be searching for?

[tiny blaze]

Plume Controller

hmm

check under LFO>Scripts if you have it there

also check if you have any errors on the console

[keen prawn]

Why are you using a .zip instead of a .unitypackage?

[tiny blaze]

its still not done, its just so i can get some user feedback

i still need to make the LFO Throttle data thingie

[keen prawn]

Even then, exporting as a package makes it much easier to import

[tiny blaze]

yeah thats true lmao

i'll do it in a bit!

[tiny blaze]

hmm ok

and you have the file under Scripts?

[lofty jacinth]

Even better, just put the package on GH when it's ready for release, so that it can be added from the Package Manager

[potent aurora]

I see plume controller under LFO scripts

[lofty jacinth]

Instead of downloading a file

[tiny blaze]

smart, yeah i'll put all of this on the LFO GH

[tiny blaze]

amazing

then

your unity is crazy!

hmm

no red errors on the console?

[potent aurora]

Is it? Is it the operator?

[tiny blaze]

just those4?

[potent aurora]

There were two from earlier that were hiding

[tiny blaze]

thats wierd

click on the Plue Controller under LFO

[potent aurora]

Did

[tiny blaze]

does your inspector look like this?

[tiny blaze]

wtf

Drag and drop that script onto the cube

[tiny blaze]

unity is crazy, if you drag and drop it should work

[potent aurora]

Can't add it missing a class

[tiny blaze]

unity is always fun

[potent aurora]

I can save, close, and restart. I'll need to reimport KSP but that doesn't take long

shall i?

[tiny blaze]

a sec

[potent aurora]

np

[tiny blaze]

right click on the script

show in explorer

and delete the .meta file next to it

[potent aurora]

ok done

[tiny blaze]

and now go back to unity

it should reimport the file

and try again

if it doesnt work, clear your console and see if any new errors appear

[potent aurora]

Nope, still unable to drag onto cube, still not in Add Component list

[tiny blaze]

clear the console then!

[potent aurora]

Cleared

[tiny blaze]

it will keep only the compile time errors

is it totally clean

or did it keep anything?

[potent aurora]

totally clean, nothing in the console now

[tiny blaze]

hmm

[potent aurora]

Still cant drag, and cant find in Add Comp

[tiny blaze]

try an close and re-open pls

🙃

[potent aurora]

OK doing now

[tiny blaze]

i might have to make it into a DLL

[potent aurora]

That got it!

[tiny blaze]

AMAZING!

now you see volumes!

[potent aurora]

I have an upside down Plume!

Yay!

[tiny blaze]

now

set your profile

in the profile slot

on the material

[potent aurora]

What does that mean?

I click Slect, and then...

What do I need to pick?

[tiny blaze]

i think

the name is ion-texture

or ion-engine

search for ion

[potent aurora]

It was Ion Thruster!

[tiny blaze]

there!

also

click on the ion-thruster texture

under

LFO>Profiles

[potent aurora]

Oh no, I put it upside down!

[tiny blaze]

you'll encounter a bug

[potent aurora]

I'll fix that later...

[tiny blaze]

that i forgot

to fix

you cant rotate them (yet)

[potent aurora]

OK I've clicked ino-thruster

[tiny blaze]

tunr Color Texture off

and apply

it should make the plume brighter

[potent aurora]

What color texture?

[tiny blaze]

oh it already is!

disregard

oh yeah

so

as you can see

that texture

is not a perfect square

to keep the aspect ratio on the plume

you have to make the cube the same aspect ratio as the image

so ie, your imagine is 1:2 (width:height)

do the same on the cube

1:2:1

[potent aurora]

Done

Also got it positioned sorts Okish

Still not quite right... Scale may be off on width

[tiny blaze]

you should put it as a child of your thrust transform btw

and you can rescale it if you want!

just keep the 1:2:1 ratio

[potent aurora]

About the transform... Mine is a child of the part and not of the engine itself. Is this a problem

Should I unpack it and move?

[tiny blaze]

well

forget

just scale it

cuz the plume

shouldnt be on the prefab either way

if it is, it will drive ur addressable build time sup uncessarely

since they are created at runtime by LFO

[potent aurora]

OK, not sure if I understand, but I understand.

So keep it where it is, right?

[tiny blaze]

yup!

just sclae it so it fits

[potent aurora]

Which axis is Red?

[tiny blaze]

X

[potent aurora]

Looks OK, but needs a color change

[tiny blaze]

dont use isometric view! xD

wait

WTF

[tiny blaze]

why tf

does your

isometric look ok

this is mine

[potent aurora]

That's just how I roll?

[tiny blaze]

ok so

a couple things

[potent aurora]

That's Perp

[tiny blaze]

lets think

plumes

are bright

right?

so, up the brightness

[potent aurora]

Can be

[tiny blaze]

i think that 2-3 works good with your plume

[potent aurora]

I went with Pi

3.14 looks good!

[tiny blaze]

great

you can use the Falloff End to emulate thrust percentage

[potent aurora]

Nice! Even at the low end it looks good.

I mean good for low end, of course

[tiny blaze]

you could also use the Density Lower Threshold for that

tho i dont think it works well with Ion plumes

it works wonders for other plumes tho

and density upper threshold does the oposite, as expected

then

Do you have anything on the Noise field?

mine looks like this

[potent aurora]

Nope

same same

[tiny blaze]

so you dont have that cube there?

if not, just set it

should be the only selectable asset

[potent aurora]

I do have that cube, sorry

[tiny blaze]

oh ok! xD

[potent aurora]

Looks just like yours

[tiny blaze]

if you up the Contrast

it should show more noise

and if you lower, shows less

ion plumes usually dont have much noise

but what i think would look good, is to mae the noise dependent on the thrust and asl

but that's for another day as i dont have that public ready yet

[potent aurora]

Is the noise the flickering when it animates?

[tiny blaze]

this

i wouldnt call it flickering but

in a sense, yeah xD

[potent aurora]

OK, yeah I get it.

[tiny blaze]

other than that, theres not much to be playing with

[potent aurora]

Could be good at high power. Might not be comepletely realistic, but it's a game and it would give the impression of being more dynamic

[tiny blaze]

thats is true!

[potent aurora]

OK, so this cube with the shader is hanging out as not really being part of the engine. How do we get it connected?

[tiny blaze]

but yeah, i'm planning on making the diffrent settings something like

• minimal 32
• low 64
• medium 128
• High 256
• Extreme 512

you can change those on the Plume Controller, to see how it looks

i think it will look meeh under 64

[tiny blaze]

how so?

[tiny blaze]

oh!

[potent aurora]

There are three parts in the pack, only two of which are fleshed out, and the cube is below all three.

[tiny blaze]

so, plumes are not suposed to be packed with the part

tomorow i'll make the other part

which will export a configuration based on the plume you just configured

[potent aurora]

Ah! I did not know that.

[tiny blaze]

and LFO will load it in game for you

[potent aurora]

I already made LFO a dependency for this mod - fully expected to need it!

[tiny blaze]

:D 1 step closer to world domination then

xD

btw, check how it looks during day time

just enable the skybox

and put the sky behind the plume

[potent aurora]

Well... KSP modding domination at any rate. We're gonna need higher player counts to take over the world!

[tiny blaze]

https://tenor.com/view/rubbing-hands-evil-smile-evil-smirk-patrick-star-gif-17745265

[potent aurora]

I think I did, but it didn't do it...

I thought I turned on Skybox... but it looks the same

All black background

[tiny blaze]

oh

you probably

wait

are you inside a prefab?

[potent aurora]

I got it now

Not bad!

It's getting pretty late (or early). How about we pick this up tomorrow? I'm so jazzed to get this in the game and try it out!

[tiny blaze]

sure!

[potent aurora]

This is just freaking awesome!

I totally love this!

[tiny blaze]

your gpu will hate it xD

at high resolutions at least

[tiny blaze]

just added this

so that you can control the resolution

and also, if you, for some reason, need that that plume have higher resolution than other

you can set it as 1/10 or 5x more resolution than the current setting

this is for cases like this,

i dont see many eople using a plume like this

but you never know

maybe i should actually implement a minimum instead of this

some more settings for you pesky modders

can do some nice things with this

[tiny blaze]

last thing imma do

is add a middle color

and allow you to offset it

then

compared to the stock ksp2 plume shader

it will have more features

and will only miss the distortion

which kinda comes with the volumetric side of things

so i wont add it

[median canopy]

yes. but the shader will work differently than the plume. but im definitely using the plume shaders as a guide.

[median canopy]

nice. i wanted to make a tank frost after getting the vent vapor shader working

[tiny blaze]

@quiet birch

[quiet birch]

👍

On my way! to test

[tiny blaze]

All you need is a Plume Controller component on the same game object

Also, note that the Positions (Color High, Medium Low) and the Threshold/Clip go up to 10, but the density not always goes to 10

you'll probably notice that when you test

theres almost no way for me to know what the max density is

well now that i think about it i can just saturate it but its not a good solution

also, the 3D noise has diffrent noises on the RGBA channels thus the RGBA Weights

set one to 1 and the others to 0 to see how it looks

also, usually i use a radius of .15-.2 for plumes

gotta remember that we're working on a cube, and if you want expansion you cant have a radius of 1

[potent aurora]

Oh I had that one! Save, close, and reopen solved it

[tiny blaze]

i'll fix that one on the next version

it has to be in a assembly definition

[quiet birch]

ignore or safe mode?

[tiny blaze]

ignore

btw it also works on a empty project

but obv its better to work on a ksp2 one

[quiet birch]

still same issue

[potent aurora]

Hey, how do I install this thing? I'm in package manager and trying to find on the disk (I've downloaded it twice!), PM wants a .json...

[quiet birch]

double click on the file in ur downloads

in file explorer

[tiny blaze]

a sec

[potent aurora]

Well that was stupidly easy...

[tiny blaze]

do you have any errors on the console?

[tiny blaze]

thats my bad

i sent a not working version of the script lmao

[quiet birch]

wow

[potent aurora]

lol!

Beta testing FTW!

[tiny blaze]

its called LFO Volume now

[potent aurora]

Should I get rid of my old LFO folder before I do the import?

[tiny blaze]

it should override

so no need

Oh wait

that one

yeah

you'll loose the references tho, but you can just readd them

[potent aurora]

Yep references lost.

I'll go back to the other thread and review what we did to get them set back up again

[tiny blaze]

oh no

dont worry

here's what you have to do

go to the plume

you'll have 1 saying "Missing script"

click on the box there, and select LFO Volume

and then, go to the material, its probably the purple error color

just change the shader to the right one

everything else should be in place

[potent aurora]

Actually, setting the LFO volume was all it needed apparently

[quiet birch]

i was gonna say i got the same issue but i imported the old one 💀

[tiny blaze]

dont forget to make your emissive texture!

[potent aurora]

Fucking amazing plume!

[tiny blaze]

i love seeing how it looks like godrays

[potent aurora]

I don't know how to make the emissive. I'll go google that.

[tiny blaze]

depending on how you look at it

well, in blender i dont know either

[quiet birch]

what mesh do i use for volumes?

[tiny blaze]

a cube!

[potent aurora]

I assume once I do that all I need to do is rebake the emissive bake

[tiny blaze]

just create a new cube

the meses are meant for the meshbased shader, aka additive

[quiet birch]

not seeing anything

[tiny blaze]

show me how your material looks pls

[tiny blaze]

do u have lightining on?

this

[quiet birch]

even with

[tiny blaze]

for some wierd reason it doesnt show when its off

thats wierd

You have LFO Volume right?

try the other shader too

[quiet birch]

i did

default settings

still noithing

[tiny blaze]

out of curiosity

@potent aurora is your GPU AMD or NVIDIA?

same for you isa?

[quiet birch]

rtx 3060

[tiny blaze]

why the fuck

any errors or warnings on the console?

[quiet birch]

im gonna reload the project

[tiny blaze]

thats ok

its just a warning

[quiet birch]

nothing still

[potent aurora]

AMD

[tiny blaze]

bro if it is cuz of AMD GPU

@lofty jacinth srry to ping u again

whats ur gpu

[lofty jacinth]

GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

[tiny blaze]

could you try pls?

in any unity project

[lofty jacinth]

what do I do?

[tiny blaze]

just install the package

add a cube to the scene

add a LFO Volume component to it

[tiny blaze]

and then add a material with the LFO/Volumetric (profiled) shader

What did oyu do?

[quiet birch]

empty project

let me try the other one

[tiny blaze]

thats wierd

i dont think its needed anymore munix :D

[potent aurora]

Kraken be praised! It's not the GPU...

[quiet birch]

still nothing in the main project

gonna try a reimport

[lofty jacinth]

btw I'm getting an error

oh nevermind, just saw Isa posted the same thing

lmao

[tiny blaze]

yeah lmao

idek why you get that

and it still works

[tiny blaze]

im guessing something on the project's settings

imported from KSP2? maybe?

[quiet birch]

maygbe

[tiny blaze]

tho works for schlos

[quiet birch]

idk what could be going wrong

[lofty jacinth]

but yeah, works nicely in an empty project

[tiny blaze]

heh

thats wierd

really wierd

[potent aurora]

It's how crop circles are made

I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens...

[tiny blaze]

i'll take a look at the ksp2 imported settings

lmao

[lofty jacinth]

want me to try again in a TK project?

[tiny blaze]

those damn alien messing with our unity projs

if you could pls

[lofty jacinth]

sure thing

[tiny blaze]

also doesnt work on mine huh

it was wokring before

im actually just dumb

[potent aurora]

I'm pretty sure you're not dumb.

[lofty jacinth]

also works fine in the TK project

[tiny blaze]

lmao

deffinetly the ksp2 configs then

[lofty jacinth]

that's with KSP2 imported though

[tiny blaze]

what??

oh wait

you can import just ksp2

or ksp2 and the game's unity project settings

do you have ksp2 tags and layers?

[lofty jacinth]

I have Everything imported

[tiny blaze]

then im lost

let me try an empty scene

works on an empty scene

seems to be smth about the scene?

[tiny blaze]

its the custom ztest

[quiet birch]

how would i reset this?

[tiny blaze]

i'll make anew shader where this is optional

its not really that relevant

its just so that you shader is occluded if behind a mesh

this will be the diffrence btw

but for now, while i cant figure out why

you can also just create a new scene and it works fine on the new scene

for some fucking reason

[quiet birch]

🔥

[quiet birch]

🎊

[tiny blaze]

LESGOOOOOO

resize acordingly

[quiet birch]

yeah

[tiny blaze]

everything is scaled with it to, so ie, Velocity 1 will feel the same independent of the tiling

[quiet birch]

experimenting

[tiny blaze]

LESGOOOOOOOOO

you can use the same shader for machcones

but i'll make one specialized on them later

[potent aurora]

That is so beautiful!

[tiny blaze]

btw, you can set the minimum resolution, when working with plumes like that, usually they look a bit bad

so just up the Minimum resolution

[quiet birch]

nice

[tiny blaze]

until they look what you would consider a Minimum

[tiny blaze]

you can also do kinda the same with the multiplier

but the multiplier will apply for every level

so ie, Extreme (512 samples) with a 2x multiplier is 1024 samples

[potent aurora]

What would be really cool is if you could tie this to atmospheric pressure so that as the pressure drops the plume spreads. That's the plan, right?

For a vacume rated engine you wouldn't need it, but if you use a booster engine in vac or if the bell just wasn't long enough, then there would be some crazy expansion like this

[tiny blaze]

i mean i already do that for my engines xD

the LFO Throttle data works with ANY shader

you could even animate the KSP2 paintable shader if you'd like

[tiny blaze]

i have a bit of a problem, that i should've saw in the beggining

my ray detection algorithm only works for axis aligned cubes

but this is easy to fix

ill just rotate the whole world so the cube is still aligned!

[potent aurora]

Reminds me of a joke. Q:How many narcissists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: only one! They hold the bulb and the world revolves around them

Sorry. Dad joke. Can’t help it…

Q: how can you tell if it’s a dad joke?

[tiny blaze]

lmao ashusahusa

[potent aurora]

A: the punchline is a parent

[keen prawn]

Oh no ive heard this one before

[tiny blaze]

😭

[keen prawn]

From my mom

[potent aurora]

It’s a curse, really. I think we get it from our children…

[tiny blaze]

LETS FUCKIGN GO A ROTATED CUBEEE!!!

i never thought i'd be able to

i wanna thank the academy

fixed

normalized by the scale and rotated by the matrix

https://tenor.com/view/the-matrix-reloaded-matrix-reloaded-neo-keanu-reeves-gif-4011236

[potent aurora]

When they ask if you’d like to take the red pill or the blue pill, the safe money is to just say fuck it and take them both…

[pastel edge]

https://tenor.com/view/convulsión-los-simpsons-epilepsia-gif-14028256

[tiny blaze]

if i knew what i was doing

this would've been much faster

but i dont

so it took me the whole day

to make this rotate, scale, and position consistently and correctly

this isnt in github yet

but if it was, the change wouldve been a couple of +/- and - position added or removed....

i mean its more a matter of me going with test/fail until it was correct

instead of actually putting things in paper and thinking

well

not 100% working

but i do have a perfect visualization of the floating point

the plume basically tells you when the floating point is reset

and then drifts away

[pastel edge]

I think right now, plumes in stock ksp2 also have a problem of resetting sometimes

Maybe not the same thing you talk about

[tiny blaze]

no, they actuall just drift away from the craft

but that fixed

i think

now i just gotta fix some ZTest problems

aka, the plume is appearing behind objects

[tiny blaze]

LETS FUCKING GO

@potent aurora @quiet birch

you can have the complex shape you want

the plume will interact correctly with it now

[quiet birch]

oh cool

I didnt say anything

[tiny blaze]

LMAO

i didnt see anything

[quiet birch]

🫡

[tiny blaze]

@cobalt silo

[cobalt silo]

😲

[tiny blaze]

to use volumetric plumes
On a unity project

• Add a cube
• Add a LFOVolume component to it
• Create a new Material
• Change the shader to LFO/Volumetric or LFO/Volumetric (Profiled)
  and have fun!

If you dont see the plume check the CustomZTest? toggle off

[cobalt silo]

well now I'll have to continue working on making engines 😅
Thanks Obama

[tiny blaze]

ahhh, no problem - in obama's voice

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1085910413239140416/1145535842325123133/Unity_hX7SWzPyij.gif

putin this here so i can share on the forum

not this...

[potent aurora]

That’s fucking awesome! How much power are you feeding it? I think we may burnout the power conditioning units this way and there’s a real danger of melting the windings, but Damn! 1.21 gigawatts it is!

[potent aurora]

That is just fucking beautiful!

[lofty jacinth]

seems like LOABE was also hit by the patch @tiny blaze

don't think this is related to the patch but it's pretty funny, a single Kheap engine

https://tenor.com/view/wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-cat-cat-wiggle-gif-23209189

[tiny blaze]

lmao i cant find why they do that, istg, all my engines do it

[lofty jacinth]

it's their stupid SAS implementation, I absolutely hate it lmao

we badly need a port of MechJeb Smart A.S.S.

I can fly the rocket perfectly fine and it's absolutely stable with just some fine manual adjustments when I use no SAS

also why is the surface velocity on the launchpad 1.2 m/s

[tiny blaze]

the plume

looks

good

in

game

a bit too bright

but nothing i cant fix

[lofty jacinth]

lemme see 👀

[tiny blaze]

need to fix the zfighting

and saturate the color

[lofty jacinth]

looks amazing

[tiny blaze]

when you look at it form below its like looking directly into the sun lmao

[lofty jacinth]

as it should be

[pastel edge]

The video compression is not great

How does it looks at night?

[tiny blaze]

thats what im gonna test

[tiny blaze]

yeah, my game window is set to 1600x900 cuz of mod dev reasons

let me put at 1920

you can see the flare on the 2dn video lmao, i know whats causing it tho

its still too bright

for

[pastel edge]

yeah the plume is bright

It's on par with metalox plumes a bit

[tiny blaze]

oh

it looks

very good

at night

still bright, but looks very good

[lofty jacinth]

very nice

[scenic hull]

The green tint of the bloom is expected?

[tiny blaze]

not at all

its cuz i dont saturate the density

i'll do that

[pastel edge]

Nice, with the sound and all

[tiny blaze]

also the mirrored effect it has when too close isnt also expected

but i think i know why it happens

[tiny blaze]

issue 1 fixed (the mirroring)

i was just missing a check if it was negative

[tiny blaze]

both issues fixed

they still need a bit of touchups

[tiny blaze]

@lofty jacinth thoughts? i'll record it during night too

they seem too "conformal" they need more noise

probably another layer should work

[lofty jacinth]

oh wow that looks awesome though

do you have it configured for vacuum yet?

[tiny blaze]

not yet, im mostly just getting it to look right in game first

since there's a bit of diffrence from the unity Editor

but tahts somwhat easy

they really shine when looked from up close

i can see people taking great screenshots like the last few seconds of the recording

[lofty jacinth]

yeah the closeups are absolutely gorgeous

feels like we're getting really so much closer to the reality with those

[tiny blaze]

those are just a matter of experimenting with the shader now

that and me adding a opaque variant

so that you can simulate the soot

[lofty jacinth]

btw just randomly came upon this pretty cool thread about engine plumes https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1112096286906421249

[tiny blaze]

wtf the plume comes out at a lower pressure than the air?

lmao

[lofty jacinth]

apparently

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond the whole article is pretty interesting

never knew that the appearance of the actual "diamonds" in the flow is because of an increase in temperature which means that unburnt fuel ignites and glows in that spot

[tiny blaze]

so basically

raptor

reingites the fuel like

4 times?

lmao

but im guessing that that ignited fuel doesnt increase thrust

since its nowhere near the nozzle

[potent aurora]

I'll take a look at that to see if it might be in scope for FP

[lofty jacinth]

I think thematically it fits in more with K2D2

but I'll be happy either way

[potent aurora]

I agree, it does! @boreal oak have you got the time or interest in taking that on?

[tiny blaze]

@lofty jacinth

too white when it is with other engines

and the normal one needs less blue on the start i think

[lofty jacinth]

but honestly not too bad, maybe just slighly less

[lofty jacinth]

depends on what sort of plume

if it's RP-1, it shouldn't really be blue at all

but then again, all lfo engines in this game are methalox

so it's up to you

[tiny blaze]

the idea is to get that blue tint at the end of the Kerolox plumes

i need better noises

thats the real problem

[quiet birch]

you rn

[tiny blaze]

@quiet birch the issue of the plumes not appearing

its so dumb

go to your directional light

and set the shadows to soft shadows

thats literally it

[quiet birch]

wow

[tiny blaze]

@lofty jacinth thoughts?

not the color, just the soot

[lofty jacinth]

I'd make the soot a bit more transparent but other than that looks great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtRpQKzVLaM

[lofty jacinth]

actually I'm not sure

lmao

depends on the engine though

[tiny blaze]

i gess it depends

on engine and fuel richness

[lofty jacinth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHp0YMdfa0 here's a Merlin 1A

[tiny blaze]

@lofty jacinth is this rp-1 like?

[lofty jacinth]

ooh yeah

that's so good

[tiny blaze]

i need to fix the soot shader has its not ordering correctly

but i'll add soot too :D

[lofty jacinth]

truly the hero we need, but don't deserve

[keen prawn]

When is this version of LFO gonna be out?

[tiny blaze]

well i wanted to have a semi-definite version of the shader out

which seems like this one is pretty fucking good

i'd also like to have the opaque shader (used for soot and proper smoke) ready

but no one answered me yet on how to write to the depth buffer

so i might release it with just this

[tiny blaze]

need to lower some of the resolutions cuz it gets laggy on medium when you look from below

i bet that they look good even at .5 resolution

[keen prawn]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/writing-to-depth-buffer-with-custom-shader.217814/

[tiny blaze]

i looked at pretty much all of those

munix you'll like this one i think

compression kinda fucking the quality tho

and i need ot add smoke particles as a trail so that it doesnt just end there

[lofty jacinth]

heh yeah the gifs are not the greatest for quality

but it looks good either way