Stellar Plasma-Assisted Rocket Kinetics (SPARK)

[narrow gate]

Curiously, they're developing the IRL version (at 5N!) to get folks to Mars. not kidding!

[coral orbit]

No no an ESP32

[chilly minnow]

Fuck it, just a pcb with 1 chip

[coral orbit]

I mean almost

[narrow gate]

So, where are you gonna get the 250 kW you need to power the engine?

[chilly minnow]

What is that capable of?

[chilly minnow]

Gigantic solar panel

The solar panes will be 90% of the weight

[narrow gate]

What is it not capable of! That thing has more capability that the computers we landed on the moon with!

Shit it's got secure boot and crypto!

You can land there and encript all your telemetry too!

[coral orbit]

Enough to land on the moon

[narrow gate]

Hey question for you. Is there an easy way to make the anodes light up bright white? Or would that be silly? They're dark colored and down inside the annualr discharge chambers, where the walls of the chamers are white. If the anodes lit up that might create part of the effect. Basically make them work like anular lightbulbs down inside the channels. The real anodes don't light up, but the plasma they're creating right above them does, which is why the annular chanels light up.

There you can see the central cathode and the three white annular dicharge channels with the dark anodes down inside them. What if when they turn on the anodes lit up like a light?

Would that be easier or harder?

We'd still need a shader for the plume regardless but it might simplify part of the problem

[chilly minnow]

Color is controled by how white it is

[coral orbit]

Question: why not make use of all 3 channels and allow for 3 colors to be set?

[mint dew]

I think you could add an emissive map to add a glow to the back of the channels when the engine is on (see how it is done for the stock engines' bell red glow)

[chilly minnow]

am home

[chilly minnow]

color is controled by density (on the normal plume)

i could do that

for the profiled version

´but i dont see it being very useful? idk

[coral orbit]

Fair

[chilly minnow]

flames usually have 2 max 3 colors?

i might be wrong tho

[narrow gate]

The anodes don't have to be dark. They just need to be metal. I could make them some other color, or the light could be emitted by the white channel?

[narrow gate]

I thought the emissive map for the nozzle bel triggered on heat. If it doen't need to be controlled by heat then maybe that would work?

[chilly minnow]

this is the code for the color

                col *= lerp(_ColorB, _ColorA, saturate(pow(density, _ColorOffset)));

density being white (or not)

and goes from 0-1

ie

so basically

youre applying the color just to the darker spots

and _ColorOffset controls the threshold

[narrow gate]

Something like that could work

[mint dew]

Ah you're right it's based on a temperature curve, it would indeed be unrealistic for a HET to heat up but it might be a "hacky" way to use the stock engine emissive mechanic

[chilly minnow]

you can also change both colors and make them less of more transparent

[narrow gate]

What did you use to make this annular source? Could there be three of them stacked and a bighter central thing?

[mint dew]

(well technically the anode does apparently heat up when firing the engine, but only to a few hundred °C, you could use that for emissivity)

[chilly minnow]

here's a side to side comparison

of how they'd look on volumetric and meshbased

(w/o changing anything on both shaders)

you can see that, from below, the meshbased is... well, it isnt

[narrow gate]

I thought about adding emissivity like that to the exposed magnetic windings on the rim as they will certainly get warm or maybe even hot, but hopfully not hot enough to glow.

[narrow gate]

Yeah, I think the volumetric could work!

[mint dew]

Yeah realistically nothing would really glow, but if you just want to easily add emissivity to the discharge channels you could do an unrealistic but usable curve (we can just say that Kerbals don't know about black body radiation shhh)

[narrow gate]

Need to play with the color and some things, but the effect is really nice!

[chilly minnow]

tweaked a bit

and yeah, you can add as many as you'd like to make the effect that you want

[narrow gate]

Cool! this is exciting! How do I get this to play around? And once I've got something I like how can I attach it to the engine?

[chilly minnow]

well you can either use this, or use the profile

since ur plume will only dim/brighten, the profile would be easier and more controleable

but if you want to use this, i can send it!

[narrow gate]

I should go wtih the option that's easier and more controllable. For sure.

If in the end I think this looks better, I might want you to send this, but let's go with eiaser for now please!

[chilly minnow]

if you take a screenshot of a orthographic side view of your engine

you could just kinda trace it

[narrow gate]

Like this but orthographic?

[chilly minnow]

both the profile version and the normal and the mesh based version of the shader will be on the LFO's unity dev kit

[narrow gate]

Is there a way to get a cut through? Wireframe will be a bit of a mess

[chilly minnow]

easly, i dont think so

what oyu can do

ok so

enter edit mode

select the loops where the light will be coming from

let me open blender to illustrate

[narrow gate]

I have all of these measurements down to the mm. I could whip up a cut away image if you like. Wouldn't be all that hard to do

[chilly minnow]

not this

this

this way you have just the parts that should lightup

and you can just hide the rest

i pressed shift+d to duplicate

then you can press p > selection to make a new object with jsut the selection

thinking about it

you probably even can make the profile out of a render in blender

[serene abyss]

you dont have to duplicate you can just press p

wait what are you trying to do

[narrow gate]

You guys wanna join in voice? Maybe that's easier?

[chilly minnow]

keep the original shape

and just extract the rings that will emit light

[chilly minnow]

can't rn, its already 10pm here xD

Isa, how'd he go to make smth like this? #1141807690264367135 message

like

im sure you can render this in blender with emission no?

[serene abyss]

oh thats for a plume

[narrow gate]

Here's the discharge chambers it's coming from with the anodes in them

[serene abyss]

first of all id add a cube and make it volumetric

[serene abyss]

but uh

mesh based

[chilly minnow]

thats the goal xD

i mean it works

[serene abyss]

thats not too dissimilar from what i did

let me show

[chilly minnow]

all he needs is a profile from it

so a sideways screenshot of the volumetric would work

[serene abyss]

oh

[chilly minnow]

since its perfectly circular

[serene abyss]

im confused

what would he do with a side profile

[narrow gate]

Rotate it 180

Or if it's a half profile from center to rim then rotate 360

[serene abyss]

oh

i see now

[narrow gate]

That's the ting with Ion engines, should be all nice and steady...

[serene abyss]

i mean ive already done something like this but theres a lot of alpha issues

not in cycles but in eevee

[chilly minnow]

that then turns into a vol plume?

[serene abyss]

nope thats mesh based

i should do a volumetric ion plume

i can make that in few minds

mins

got this so far

how many ring sections are needed?

[chilly minnow]

i hate that

blender can have way better voluemtrics

[serene abyss]

according to this imma say 6 + a middle spike

[chilly minnow]

i need to look at their code

[serene abyss]

if ur wondering im using emission shader

you can look at that

emissive volumes are like the fastest volume blender renders

[narrow gate]

There are three rings and a central spike

[serene abyss]

ah ok

[serene abyss]

ah i see

[narrow gate]

The blender image above is as seen from below. From above (or in front - like the RL engine) it's like this

[serene abyss]

imma import ur model

[narrow gate]

Yep, you've got the idea. Greenish is for Krypton. For Xenon it would be blueish-white

[narrow gate]

That's right! You've basically got it already don't you!

In that model there are parts called Discharge Chambers that have Anodes down inside them. I think you can look at either of those parts for the plume rings

The central thing is the cathode and it produces a brighter spike of light.

The plume would realstically diverge at about 3 degrees or so, but may actually look like it's converging since most of the light is from the annular plasma plumes interacting with the spray of electrons coming out of the cathode.

[serene abyss]

alignes

aligjhned

aligned

[narrow gate]

Oh that's amazing!

That's truely amazing!

Hell yes like that!

[chilly minnow]

now just

render it black and white

with a black blackground

actually

[narrow gate]

Is that so it's easy to tune the color?

[chilly minnow]

from the side

[serene abyss]

yeah

im just showing it off

🌝

[chilly minnow]

sould be, but depending on how hard it is, i might just make it so it takes the color

[chilly minnow]

xD it looks amazing asf

[serene abyss]

still need to tweak

B&W

[narrow gate]

Can the central one be brighter?

The others look perfect

[serene abyss]

its actually an incredibly simple setup

[serene abyss]

perfect reference

[narrow gate]

That one shows the engine firing with only the outer ring. They did that to tweak the Isp, but for this engine I'll just always show all three rings firing

This is a similar shot from a one ring engine running on Xenon

The greenish one is running on Krypton. You could actually use almost any fuel like Argon or even pure O2

There's one with two rings running

[serene abyss]

would you like me to go full on realism mode

and recreate the flow and stuff

[serene abyss]

imma recreate this as good as i can

also

make the areas in the engine that are firing glow

with emission map

[narrow gate]

It won't get hot. It might get warm, but never hot enough to glow

[chilly minnow]

you can still make them white!

[narrow gate]

The plasma is crazy hot in a sense, but the magnetic fields keep it from affecting the discharge chamber walls

[chilly minnow]

basically, what he's saying is for you to make the emission map white

where the rings are

so that, when the engine turns on, that area of the engine turns white

[narrow gate]

They've gotten burn times measured in the 20- 50 K hours range on these things, but there are also older designs that would crap out at 3- 5K hours

[narrow gate]

Yes! Exactly! It will make a really good nightlight, but won't actually get hot and glow like a nozzel bell would.

[serene abyss]

if you make them emissive where the exhaust comes out, it will help sell the illusion

@narrow gate thoughts?

[narrow gate]

That is amazing! I love it!

Can it be brighter and also with blue instead of green?

I'd like the brightness to vary with throttle of course.

But the look is perfect!

Is it possible to vary brightness with throttle? If not, then I guess full power all the time would be good as it seems less likely that such a low thrust engine would be throttled down much.

[serene abyss]

im gonna render as b&w so you can set it as whatever color you want

[serene abyss]

you can adjust that in unity

[serene abyss]

im not sure but i think there probably is a way

[narrow gate]

Perfect! If we ever introduce Krypton or Argon for fuels I'd be able to set that up.

This is already soooooo much better than the stock game's Dawn plume

[chilly minnow]

yes

[narrow gate]

I mean it's just not even a fair comparison. Theirs does not even compete.

[serene abyss]

what res should i render?

[narrow gate]

I have no clue. What would you recommend? Are there performance tradeoffs for having a higher res plume in the game? But for this would it even be needed?

[chilly minnow]

well

can be low

do smth like 512

it will only act as a mask

[serene abyss]

yeah

[serene abyss]

would a square resolution be best

[chilly minnow]

yes

tho it kinda doesnt really matter

it uses uvspace

so, 0-1

so its more about you setting the volume size to the same as your image

so if you have a 256x512, you'd set your volume to 1,2,1

2 being the height

[serene abyss]

holdo n

supposed to look like this

wait what shader r u gonna use

would you prefer i have the alpha channel or just b&w image controlling emission

[chilly minnow]

not the same that u have

well doesnt really matter tbh, it looks at the color

black and alpha0 have the same color

tho, b&w its easier to see (for a human)

also, you can render it in non-color

now that i think about it, makes sense

[serene abyss]

im gonna render no alpha channel with just b&w channel

is that fine for you

[chilly minnow]

perfect

makes the file smaller

[serene abyss]

i mean it was 158 kb before anyways

now its 138

[chilly minnow]

perfecto

just gotta make the shader work now 😭

[serene abyss]

gl

[chilly minnow]

done

lets test it

[narrow gate]

Heck yeah! What do I need to do?

[chilly minnow]

nothing

for now

:D

[narrow gate]

LOL!

[chilly minnow]

i'll do it in ps, but, it should be just half the plume

but i'll cut it

[narrow gate]

Well, one day I hope I can learn to do some of this... 😛

[chilly minnow]

im just testing for now xD

[serene abyss]

ah ok

[chilly minnow]

to make the image that isa made, he just used a shader in blender, im sure that he can provide u with the shader

and the plume, well, its pretty much a drag and drop, but i'll show u once i have it working properly

[narrow gate]

This is so exciting! Plumes are awesome!

[chilly minnow]

you can also just copy this #1141807690264367135 message

[serene abyss]

it loks liike this now

thats all it is

[narrow gate]

Ahh, so that's the shader?

[serene abyss]

just aplied to a cube

yeah

[narrow gate]

Really? Just applied to a cube?

[serene abyss]

yeah

[narrow gate]

Amazing!

[serene abyss]

well squished cube

[narrow gate]

I'm gonna give that a shot. So I create a big cube in the right place, and apply the shader?

[serene abyss]

its actually nt a huige cube

any size cube will work

[narrow gate]

It doesn't need to be as big as the nozzle?

[serene abyss]

scale it to make it as big as the nozzle

[narrow gate]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That it need to be big enough to hold the plume.

[serene abyss]

it works on any scale

hm i just realized something @chilly minnow

youre gonna rotate that texture around

but the real thing has nothing firing in between

[chilly minnow]

let me show you

how it look rn

but yeah

@narrow gate

[serene abyss]

i can give you something like this instead

[chilly minnow]

yeah that seems mre like it

[chilly minnow]

also 😭 mirrored

well

sorry should've told you

[chilly minnow]

<3

[serene abyss]

you want it a square still

[chilly minnow]

naah thats ok

[serene abyss]

please dont use that as teh image

256x512?

[chilly minnow]

oh i was

using that

lmao

yes!

[chilly minnow]

^ to this

[narrow gate]

That's fantastic Lux! Really amazing!

[serene abyss]

use this

took so long to render

1.22 seconds

behind the scenes

[chilly minnow]

hope ur happy with what u've done isa 😒

[serene abyss]

nice

[chilly minnow]

i'd maybe

but idk if you can

naah

forget

[serene abyss]

tell me

[chilly minnow]

that comes with the engine

[serene abyss]

i can do it

ah

[chilly minnow]

the rings, on the base brigther

but theres no need

since the engine will already be bright

and that would also

mess with the plume

i think

yeah keep it like this its perfect

[narrow gate]

You guys are amazing! In this amount of time I've managed to get about this far on my copy of Isa's shader...

WTF do I find a Multiply node?

And how do I get the map nodes to havbe the same setup as Isa had?

Other than that, its a piece of cake... LOL

[serene abyss]

math node set to multiply

[narrow gate]

Meanwhile, my plumeless engine has gotten here

[serene abyss]

• button on color ramp

[narrow gate]

Doh!

[narrow gate]

I noticed the plus button, but I suspect total number and placement of the thingys matter. Can we call those thingies nodes without completely confusing this subject?

[serene abyss]

heres the blend

[narrow gate]

Thank you!

That will save me a bunch of work!

You guys are amazing!

[narrow gate]

@serene abyss, Is there an easy way to import or transfer a shader from one blend to another? I've done it manually, and I think I've done it correctly, but I'm not getting the same results yet. What I did was to meticulously (I hope) set each of the points on the B-Spline curves in the color ramps to have the same position and value (copy/paste from yours to mine, so as good as the decimal places show when you click into the values). I've also set (I think) the other connections and settings for the nodes correctly, although my model is in mm and yours is in m, which may make a difference. Here's what I've got for this shader in my actual SPARK X3 blend.

I'd also like to try to understand better what these nodes are doing and why they give the result they do. I think the Color Ramp nodes are a key to this, and what I think you're doing is creating a B-Spline with points to make a curve with "humps" that occur where the annular channels and central cathode are, and the humps have peaks that correspond to the "strength" of the output from that channel, where the points seem to go from a position at the outside rim (smallest position value) to a position near the center. Am I understanding that in the top two color ramps?

I noticed that in the top two ramps they have the same number of total points, but that the positions of some points on the right side are not the same. The upper most seems to be taking care of the plume from the annular discharge rings, and the one below that is providing the plume from the central cathode.

I'm unclear on what the pair of color ramps are doing in the lower track, but I assume the two multiplies to the right feeding into the add are how the lower track of nodes combines with the upper track at the Add node.

What is the final Multiply node for? Is it just to scale the whole effect? I'm wondering if I may need a different value there since I'm working in mm and you've worked in m.

Ultimately I'd like to not only understand this better, but also make a 2-channel and 4-channel variant as I plan to make X2 and X4 nested hall thrusters to go with the X3 and help fill out size options for players.

After that I'll work on a Gridded Ion thruster to really replace the stock Dawn. The IRL Dawn thruster is a gridded ion thruster, but the in game one is modeled like a single channel hall effect thruster with a gridded ion plume - so it's an abomination right there...

I might also want to make a single channel version just in case. I suspect this will mainly be about changing the number of points and their values in the upper pair of color ramps, and in particular in the very top one assuming that all HET get a central spike.

[chilly minnow]

yes there is

you can import blends

i cant believe

you copied everything

before

asking that

xD

[narrow gate]

WTH are you doing awake rn? Do you ever sleep?

[chilly minnow]

File>Append

[narrow gate]

I tried to import it, but all I found were imports for FBX and such...

[chilly minnow]

i did sleep, from 4h30-11h30 xD

[chilly minnow]

Import is for wild files (not blender) Append is for blender files

[narrow gate]

Ahh! So that's how it's done!

[chilly minnow]

theres also a way to make blends auto import

like, "Adding them to your global library"

i just dont know how to xD

[narrow gate]

This makes me wonder if importing it as a blend would handle the different model scaling from m to mm correctly.

[chilly minnow]

it doesnt matter

shaders are independent of size

well dependently

what problem are u having with mm to m scaling?

might be on the shader's math

[narrow gate]

I did it like that

And I see this in Isa's blend

vs. this in mine

Some of that (maybe most of it) could be differences in the settings for the 3D viewport window

I was thinking I'd be able to sort of see the plume on the engine model this way - which would aid me when I snap off copies to make the other thrusters (X1, X2, X4)

[chilly minnow]

inst 0.6m and 600mm the same?

[narrow gate]

Yep

1000 mm = 1 m

[chilly minnow]

then theres no diffrence in yours to isa's?

or you had ot change it to 600 for it to be correct?

[narrow gate]

Not unless the units in those don't matter, in which case I've got a huge (x1000) difference

[chilly minnow]

it doesnt really matter since you're not exporting that

ur just taking a render of that (the side profile)

[narrow gate]

Here's what I get with -0.6mm instead of -600mm (assuming only the value matters and not the units)

Also, I switched off the render of the engine, switched to Eevee, and made the viewport show the rendered image like in Isa's

There are probably other differences between these blends that I've not yet discovered and may account for why the plume is visible in his but not in mine

I see his cube is different in dimensions from mine. His is 2m on a side where mine is 800mm (0.8m) on a side. I sized mine for the engine it's on, but that may have made things wonky for the shader?

[narrow gate]

I'm gonna head in to work, but I'll be back this evening. Are we near a point where I can get the plume we've got into the game for this engine? I'd like to get that done, and then there's just the sound for an engine - though I'd imagine that an Ion engine is insanely quiet. Possibly a slight hum from the power conditioning units like you'd get from any large power supply able to handle kW. Could just skip that for the initial release of the mod as the difference between sound and no sound would be lost in the games music anyway.

[mint dew]

Maybe also a quiet hiss from the gas injection?

[chilly minnow]

sound is a whole new beast

i have my solution fo rthat

[chilly minnow]

for this, i would recommend adding a new variable to the shader, a multiplier to the size

basically, you'd just set that multiplier to 1000

instead of changing everything manually

you'd just change that 1 value

[narrow gate]

At a flow rate of mg/s it’s not gonna make much noise, but there could be some. I think for the first release I’ll go with noiseless, but it would be interesting to consider. I wonder if the stock ion engine even makes noise! @chilly minnow is there a way to see in the game if a stock engine is making sound at all?

[chilly minnow]

stock, no

i mean you can just run the engine and check if its sounding

i shouldnt use sounding to describe something that makes sound........

[narrow gate]

Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll give it a shot when I get home just to see if there’s any sound component to the stock ion engine

[chilly minnow]

well everything in ksp has a sound component

so i dont think u'll have much luck with that

you'd need to check if it has an AKEvent attached, which you cant w/o some black magic

[mint dew]

The stock ion engine does make sound, could be described as a low "woosh" with a bit of humming?

[chilly minnow]

i can get the event name for you

and you just use the stock sound

if you want

actually

i'll make a sound manager

for that

so that you can add your engine sound via Patch Manage

[serene abyss]

file > append

[serene abyss]

could be eevee, in my blend i maxed eevees volume rendering settings

2px instead of 8px for volumes

[serene abyss]

bottom color ramps are to control brightness falloff, theres 2 because i want the rings to have a different falloff than the center jet

[serene abyss]

control intensity/brightness of effect

size of the effect does not matter, all is controlled by generated mapping coordinates

automatically

use cycles render engine for best volume rendering

[narrow gate]

Ahhh! So the top channel feeding into the add is about horizontal postion from outer edge to the center (in terms of the B-Spine position locations), and the bottom channel is similarly about the vertical from top (most fall off to bottom)? Like this?

[narrow gate]

Awesome! I'd be happy triggering the stock sound. Tbh, one of the things KSP2 gets done really well is the sounds scape. There's room for improvement on parts and plumes and other things, but I've no issue with their sound.

How hard would it be at this point to get the plume working on my test mod? What's the next step now that the shader is in my unity project?

[chilly minnow]

as of now

the hardest its ever been

aka

still as hard as before xD

i just finished adding the last feature to the plume

now it supports 3 colors per plume

and you can select where you want the color to be

[narrow gate]

LOL, Ok! I've downloaded the latest LFO that you posted earlier today. Can I just install it and it overwrites the old one?

What do I need to do next to get my plume on?

[chilly minnow]

i just sent a new one!

#1085910413239140416 message

dw, once i get the LFO Throttle Data somewhat decent you'll just have to press a button!

[narrow gate]

@serene abyss I'm googling how to make things glow in Blender, and so far it seems like I can either have the texture I want when it's not running or I can make something glow all the time. Some of the guides are simple, like select object in object mode, tab to edit mode, select faces, add new material, assign. But then the old material is not used on those faces. What am I doing wrong there?

Hang on, I think I have it working in Eevee!

Nahhh, that just makes it glow all the time...

Is this relevant? https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/135428-how-to-make-emissive-animations-in-ksp-with-the-color-animation-editor/

[chilly minnow]

not rlly

[serene abyss]

just make a texture that depicts running state only

animation is done by engine module automatically

you only have to worry about running state

[narrow gate]

OK, is make a texture like make a material, or are these different?

[serene abyss]

make an emissive texture

[narrow gate]

I seem to be able to only have one material on a given face at a time

[serene abyss]

just set emission color to white or whatever color on the parts that glow

and rhe rest give black emission color

and bake emission map

[narrow gate]

when I google "blender 3.6 make emissive texture" I get links telling me how to make an emissive material. I think maybe these are kinda the same, but I'm not sure

[serene abyss]

its as simple as setting the emission color on the principled bsdf

to white

or whatever color

on the parts rhat glow

and baking emission with textools

just like any other map

[narrow gate]

So, set emission color on parts that glow, bake emission map, unset emission when I want it back the way it was?

[serene abyss]

yeah

and then in unity

just put emission texture in emission map slot

and give the material name to the module engine

and itll work

you may need to adjust falloff times

[chilly minnow]

he will have to

[narrow gate]

In unity do I make a separate material? So there's one that has the regular emission map (no emission) and I use it everywhere, then there's another with the emission for the glow and I give that material to the engine?

[chilly minnow]

same material

[serene abyss]

nope not needed

same material

remember emission map is like any other map, applies the effect to a certain portion of the model as specified by the emission map

[narrow gate]

OK. This doesn't sound terribly hard at all

[narrow gate]

Yep, I just didn't want it emitting when the engine is off or has cooled down.

I'm guessing that's specified in fall off and what not

[serene abyss]

module engine will deal with it

[serene abyss]

yeah

[narrow gate]

Cool! I'm gonna go do that while you guys get back to your regularly scheduled plume work. Sorry for interupting!

[chilly minnow]

btw @narrow gate the new version of the profiled shader

has a Lenghtwise Brightness

that gets darker with y position

it works better for you plume i think

try it!

[narrow gate]

I will do that!

[chilly minnow]

check this out!

this is the crude version of how to make plumes

i'll make a proper window later

but i might just pack this for now

i'll also explain a bit once i have this ready

@serene abyss this is how it will be animated (for now)

[narrow gate]

This looks awesome!

[chilly minnow]

schlosrat!

tell me tell me!

can you send me a screenshot of your material for the plume

i'll generate a test config

and a dev version of LFO

for you to test the plume in game!

[narrow gate]

Sure!

What do you need? A SS from unity?

[chilly minnow]

indeed!

[narrow gate]

This info?

[chilly minnow]

yup!

and!

the Transform info

at the top of everything

pls

[chilly minnow]

amazing!

[narrow gate]

haha! My part is easy! SS are a dime a dozzen for me

[chilly minnow]

btw

have younoticed that its not really centered?

its .014 in the x and .13 on the z

is it intended?

[narrow gate]

That is. Here's it looking down into it

It might be a smidge off in X

Here it is with X zeroed

[chilly minnow]

well

[narrow gate]

I think -0.012 looks a bit better...

[chilly minnow]

you should look into it

[narrow gate]

I suppose you're gonna tell me my whole model is off?

[chilly minnow]

yeah xD

which is nothing too bad

dont worry

you can just export the model with a vector where the middle of the engine is

[narrow gate]

LOL! It is!

[chilly minnow]

that explains xD

[chilly minnow]

can you send me the rgbs on the 2nd color pls?

[narrow gate]

Fixed!

Nuts. I may need to rebake everything... The UV map is hosed, or somthing...

@serene abyss Last time I saw something like this I had to delete the offending faces (which looked fine, but Blender is insane now), and the remake them. I tried that again and I still get this. Is there any solution other than remaking the UV map? I don't want to do that and mess up every other bake I've done for this thing

And even with those offending faced deleted I get this

Why is it barfing about op bake when I'm doing an emission bake?

[chilly minnow]

thats usually the addons errors

i'll ask you 2 things

add a empty gameobject named "Plume" under your thrustTransform

and

send me the mod version with those addressables!

also its partName!

[narrow gate]

I need to reimport KSP2...

Object added. Did an apply all and saved the JSON

[narrow gate]

What does this step mean? Do I need to do a build or something?

[chilly minnow]

yes!

cuz you changed the prefab

[narrow gate]

Building now

Does this error mean anything? I just noticed it

[chilly minnow]

nop

[narrow gate]

Good!

It seems to be stuck... I've never seen it take this long on a build

The progress bar is still where it was in the ss above

In fact it still says busy for 10s...

[chilly minnow]

welcome to my life

its probably the shaders

thus me saying to keep the plumes outside the prefab

yours is not ot the prefab tho

[narrow gate]

It seems to be pretty stuck.

No changes on progress bar

LOL, I left KSP2 running for about a day or more IRL with the ion engine test!

[chilly minnow]

try to cancel it

[narrow gate]

Still not out of fuel, but I've spent the fuel really poorly and am only in a slightly bigger orbit, 324 x 174, was about 100x100

Unity is not responding at all.

Task manager says unity is taking 0% CPU and 2 GB, with my overall memory at 61%

[chilly minnow]

close via task manager

that happened to me sometimes

trynna remember why

[narrow gate]

Its dead Jim

[chilly minnow]

maybe clear the cache

once its open tell me so i can tell you how to

[narrow gate]

Google Chrome is now the principle memory hog.

Reimporting KSP now

Ah shit. I started another build. I'm an idiot

I'll kill it again and get it back

Reimporting...

[chilly minnow]

idk what i did

but i dont need to reimport my game anymore

ints been like a full month or so

that i havent do that

[narrow gate]

OK it's back and I've not instinctively started another doomed build

[narrow gate]

Ready!

[chilly minnow]

ok

Build>Clean Build>All

[narrow gate]

OK that was quick

Now build again?

[chilly minnow]

before that

check if you have any plume inside the prefab

[narrow gate]

Seems so!

The plume is applied to the Cube that's not in the prefab, but there is an empty object called Plume that's in the prefab

[chilly minnow]

ok

try to build

[narrow gate]

Might be stuck again...

[chilly minnow]

hmm

let me think let me think

[narrow gate]

Dialog says the same as before

Minus the lie about 10s and all

[chilly minnow]

you only have 2 prefabs right?

[narrow gate]

Yep, just two

[chilly minnow]

try to re-refrence them

so just

remove them from the addressables

and add them back

actually

just add the one we're trying to do

[narrow gate]

OK restarting Unity editor now

Reimporting...

[chilly minnow]

actually

to be sure

remove the new gameobject

and apply

and

just to be sure

remove the cube with the voluemtrics

[narrow gate]

OK, so remove Plume and Cube, right?

[chilly minnow]

yup!

[narrow gate]

Done.

What is the "remove them from the addressables" step?

[chilly minnow]

you can click on the entry

and press delete

do remove it

[narrow gate]

These yes?

[chilly minnow]

yes!

youre deleting the entries

btw

you dont need to add the materials

delete them too!

[narrow gate]

I had those materials for the SPT100

They're not used on the X3, and I really ought to redo the SPT100 with a proper set of bakes.

[chilly minnow]

btw, why not try Substance PAinter?

or quixel mixer?

[narrow gate]

I have quixel mixer but haven't done much with it yet. I don't have SP cause I don't want to rent it from Adobe.

I already pay them $10/mo for Lightroom and PS.

[chilly minnow]

fair yeah

im saying cuz on those apps its way easier to do textures

[narrow gate]

I messed with quizel briefly and had some difficulty, but I'm sure if I stuck with it it would get easier

[serene abyss]

substance is really useful

way better than quixe

[narrow gate]

I know it is, and I hate that fact

[serene abyss]

many useful tools

[chilly minnow]

yeah

i also hate the subscription based adobe products

[serene abyss]

especially since it automatically exports the textures ready to use for ksp2 using benjees preset

[chilly minnow]

i'd haply buy a lifetime version

[serene abyss]

substance is 150 dollars on steam

lifetime

[narrow gate]

what?

[serene abyss]

you wont get updates but its a good option

or you can pirate

[narrow gate]

I didn't think Adobe did any non-subscription SW anymore

[serene abyss]

substance is the only one i think

[narrow gate]

Aaaarrhrrrrr!

[serene abyss]

a lot of principles from photoshop/image editors apply

layer based texturing

[chilly minnow]

think of substance as a photoshop but in 3d

[narrow gate]

At $150 I might just treat myself...

[chilly minnow]

well i think that between $150 and 15$/mo

i rather go with the montly

[narrow gate]

In 10m it's paid for

[chilly minnow]

mostly because you'll only get updates til jan 2024 with the 150$ version

[narrow gate]

Yeah, that's usually the way it is, but maybe I'll not need updates so often?

[chilly minnow]

heh depends

last update added a path tool

depends on what they add

[narrow gate]

If you can re-buy every 2 - 3 years you're still saving $$

[chilly minnow]

fair

depends on how much you'll use it also

[serene abyss]

you can continue using older versions

[chilly minnow]

150$ is for a lifetime product obvioulsy

[serene abyss]

even without the newer features substance is miles better than quixel and blender

[narrow gate]

Huh, every app on my system except for Discord is forzen

[chilly minnow]

^

oh damn lmao

did you try to build?

[narrow gate]

I did not try to build...

[chilly minnow]

well thats.. funny

[narrow gate]

My last action was deleting some materials...

yeah, hysterical!

[chilly minnow]

those damn aliens

[narrow gate]

Everything on the right monitor is frozen. Nothing on the left is frozen.

LOL

Task manager starts on the rioght monitor

Guess what?

It's frozen!

[serene abyss]

woww

but yeah

substance lifetime is a great option

[narrow gate]

Guys, I have to reboot.

[serene abyss]

lmao

[narrow gate]

No, I take that back.

The task bar on the left monitor also doesn't respond

I need to power my system off at the switch!

[chilly minnow]

DAMN

why

does only

discord

work?

xD

[narrow gate]

LOL I'm back!

I was able to log out using ctrl-alt-del

Didn't need to power cycle

And I'm looking at Substance 3D Painter 2023 on Steam for 149.95

[narrow gate]

I had discord on the left monitor, so it was working, naturally. Don't you roll that way too?

Everyone should keep their discord on a functioning monitor IMO

Reimporting...

OK, I'm back and ready! I guess...

It looks like The Borg Cube is still here though

[chilly minnow]

delete it!

[narrow gate]

Or the cube with the plume on it at any rate

[chilly minnow]

hoping for the best!

[narrow gate]

OK Cube is gone.

As is Plume

The materials are still here, I'll delete them too

The only material I kept was from the x3 bakes

[chilly minnow]

that seems perfect

lets see

[serene abyss]

bro

lux im gonna sleep now

and u still awake 5 hours ahead of me

[narrow gate]

Yeah, me too

[chilly minnow]

that should explain

xD

[serene abyss]

wait makijg sure

what time zone are u?

@chilly minnow

[narrow gate]

Lux? I think he's in Portugal

Whereas I'm in FL

[chilly minnow]

GMT 00:00

its 3h28 here rn

[narrow gate]

Sounds about right...

Lux did you want me to do one more thing or are you calling it an night. I should hit the sack soon, but if you're up for it we can try another build or whatever

[chilly minnow]

yeah try another build

im testing the plume on the Merlin engine rn xD

[narrow gate]

It's working!

It finished!

Wnat me to send you somthing?

What do you need?

More coffee? Done!

https://tenor.com/view/coffee-coffee-time-coffee-cup-morning-coffee-have-a-cup-of-coffee-gif-24577802

[chilly minnow]

yes pls!

send

the partname is spark_x3 right?

btw

you should prefix all your parts with your mod name

just like you've done

[narrow gate]

Yes, that's the part name. spark_x3

[chilly minnow]

to avoid conflicts

that way other modders can have the "same" partname

[narrow gate]

I know that now! I plan to re-do SPT100 and follow this scheme going forward

[chilly minnow]

ie: sorry_x3 if they need

[narrow gate]

Is there a file from the build you need?

[chilly minnow]

the whole addressables!

the whole mod actually

if you could

[narrow gate]

Something is amiss....

Where's my aa folder?

[chilly minnow]

thats interesting

you updated the build

[narrow gate]

Doh, found it!

[chilly minnow]

instead of building a new one

[narrow gate]

It's a zip of all that stuff above it

[chilly minnow]

well thats a problem

[narrow gate]

It's a cotton candy machine! I want some!

OK, I'm gonna call it a night here. I need to be able to get up for work tomorrow.

Thanks man! This is really exciting!

[chilly minnow]

good night!

i gotta figure out transformation amtrix

to rotate parts now

:D

[chilly minnow]

btw @narrow gate theres no need for you to put the com.github.schlosrat on the id

it was a convention that cheese and x606 had copied from bepinex but later dropped

[coral orbit]

If I could go back, I would have not used it

[chilly minnow]

can't we for 2.0?

[chilly minnow]

ah

yes

[narrow gate]

LOL A plume! That’s one heck of a gimbal on it though

[chilly minnow]

i never thought that graphics programming would need so much matrix multiplication

[narrow gate]

Graphics programming is the whole reason they invented matrix math, seriously!

[chilly minnow]

@narrow gate when youre available, can you send me the spark?

i need ot fix the ZTest

its acting wierd in game

[narrow gate]

Sure! What do you need? You mean like the plugin folder?

[chilly minnow]

the actual mesh pls

[narrow gate]

Will this do?

Or I can send you a zip of the blend if you want that

[chilly minnow]

thats great alreadY1

dw

[chilly minnow]

CLOSE!

the plume should be brighter in the bottom so that it appears better

[gritty pendant]

is there an electron gun to neutralise the exhaust plasma ?

[chilly minnow]

thats up to scholsrat to add! but sure, we could add that!

btw

[chilly minnow]

ah yes, almost forgot to send you!

the plume json should go under Spark/assets/plumes/

it might not look right on your mesh tho!

if so, just open the plume json, search for the position, and increase or descrease the Z value until it looks somwhat correct

no need to be 100% correct since i'll be giving yall the plume editor shortly

[narrow gate]

It’s already there! The cathode (electron gun) is the bright plume in the center.

[narrow gate]

Now all I need to do is sort out the emission from the discharge chambers and the anodes! It will look soooo freaking nice!

[narrow gate]

Here's what the model looks like in Blender

And here's the real life thruster I've based it on

It's basically three nested Hall Effect thrusters with three concentric discharge chambers (white boron nitride ceramic) each with an circular anode down inside them. The propellant gas (IRL can be Xenon, Krypton, Argon or other things) feeds up through the anode. There are concentric magnetic rings which in the side view shot had not yet been painted with boron nitride paint, and in the other two shots have been painted with that. The boron nitride paint on the magnetic circuit parts helps to prevent erosion and deposition of material that can cause the thruster to break down.

Seen from below you can see the propellant feed lines coming up from the fuel feed controller to pass through the baseplate on their way to the circular anodes. There are also three separate power conditioning units - one for each anode.

The base bottom is sized 1.25m to perfectly fit the KSP standard size S parts when stacked. There is a stack attach node there, and another one about 0.5 m past the end like this

I'm working on X2 and X4 variants now and have the upper part with concentric engine rings done. I need to do a bit more modeling on the base components, but that part is coming along nicely. With the new nested ion thruster volumetric plume capability that @chilly minnow has made these should look great atttached to smaller vessels or probes, but be forewarned! The X3 will gobble up 1000 EC per sec at full thrust! The X2, will be sized for an 0.625m base and will only need 500 EC, but the X4 will actually fit a 1.25m scale and will, of course need even more power.

[narrow gate]

Like this?

Or did you mean I need to stick the plume json into the Unity project?

Speaking of my unity project for this engine, I think we may have left it in a poor state. I assume I need to re-add the cube and apply the plume to it, right? My project looks like this rn

Is it still correct that the cube for the plume should be added outside of the of the prefab for the part?

[chilly minnow]

Yes!

[chilly minnow]

After the plume is created and configured you dont need to have it in yout project anymore if you dont want

But it does look good to see your engines with plumes on unity so you can keep it if you want

[narrow gate]

Ahh, Cool! What about when I want to make an X2 or X4 plume? Is that just a matter of rendering a plume cross section like Isa did and then making a change to the JSON?

[chilly minnow]

Yup!

[narrow gate]

Also, to get it back in the unity project (for visualization) I'm a bit stuck here.

[chilly minnow]

Well it will take a bit more than what isa did but that means just a copy paste!

[narrow gate]

I'm good a copy/paste! You should see what I've done with MechJeb...🤓

[chilly minnow]

Create a material with the lfo/volumetric profiled shader

Or put the old one in the cube

Thats all ur missing

[narrow gate]

Ahh! I was so close!

Like this?

[chilly minnow]

Yup!

[narrow gate]

I've done something weird with it and it's goofy now...

[chilly minnow]

The plume editor had a way to load plumes with all configuration

[chilly minnow]

Bit doest work on isometric view!

thats why it looks wierd

[narrow gate]

Huh, I thought it did b4...

[chilly minnow]

Idk why it worked for you ngl lmao

Probably because ur plume was at 0,0,0

[narrow gate]

OK, so I've got the new debug LFO installed and the plume json in there as an asset. Is that all I need to get it to work in the game? There must be something more I need to do with Core Part Data or Module Engine, right?

[chilly minnow]

Nop

Tho

The plume might not be properly placed

Since i didnt have the updated version of the spark’s prefab

[narrow gate]

Right! That's where you were saying I might need to edit Z in the json

[chilly minnow]

Yup!

Also, you wont see the plume in atm

The value given for plume’s throttle is the real throttle

Aka, the value calculated with the isp

So ie, your engine provides 1/20 of the thrust

[narrow gate]

I see it! It is off, a fair bit I think.

[chilly minnow]

So the plume vfx script(stock) recieves those 1/20 to work w

[chilly minnow]

As i though!

Look where ur thrust transform is

Get that

And add .8 to the Z

Wait

[narrow gate]

It looks like it may be off center and scaled a bit small

[chilly minnow]

No wait, easier!

To get it perfectly

[chilly minnow]

Get these values

That plume is under the thrust transform right?

[narrow gate]

I'm not sure what that means

Do you mean in terms of the unity project?

[chilly minnow]

Your engine has a thrustTransform gameObject

Yup!

[narrow gate]

Yep, it does. Looks like its at 0,0,0

[chilly minnow]

Put the x3 plume under that

And see what values it shows

[narrow gate]

Like this?

[chilly minnow]

Yup! Whats the values?

[narrow gate]

These?

[chilly minnow]

Yup! Thats your Z

I’ll make it easier tho, ill change the cube’s mesh so its centered at the bottom

That way the Z will always be 0

Unless you want it to change obv

[narrow gate]

No, I like easier!

Easier is fine!

[chilly minnow]

xD

[narrow gate]

For now just change the z position to 1.13?

[chilly minnow]

Should be enough

[narrow gate]

Where it's currently 0.772

Ahh, rotation is wonky!

[chilly minnow]

[narrow gate]

It wasn't off center, it was only showing me part of the plume!

Just change x rotation to 180, right?

[chilly minnow]

Should be enough

[narrow gate]

Nope! LOL

[chilly minnow]

I see

[narrow gate]

I'm gonna sex Z back to 0.772 and try x rot 90

[chilly minnow]

Your thrust transform is diffrent from mine!

Nono. Z to 0

And to 0 rotation

Better to start with a blank canvas if changing it like that is giving problems

[narrow gate]

Maybe there's something wrong with my thrust transform and I need to re-build the project? Now the plume is not visible at all, but if I crank up the thrust I start pitching.

It could be that at 1/2 thrust the reaction wheels are compensating for a misaligned thrust.

Above 1/2 thrust it does this

[chilly minnow]

As i though

Your thrust transform

Seems to be sideways

Thrust transform is blue arrow downwards

I used the build you sent me a couple hours ago

[narrow gate]

I think the X rot here is wrong

[chilly minnow]

Urs is probably outdated?

[narrow gate]

Should probably be 180

[chilly minnow]

No i think

Ur installed build is nust outdated

[narrow gate]

Oh, that's possible. lemmy check

Got this in the game

[chilly minnow]

Let me. Check mine

[narrow gate]

And this in my build, which is newer...

I'll update the stuff in the game to be this, since this is what I sent you and you worked on. Game is out of date.

Will I need to rebuild the launch the craft or does a reinstall from this affect a deployed craft?

OK, fresh copy in game.

And now we have this!

Progress!

Increaing thrust nolonger applies pitch

[chilly minnow]

change rotation back to 270

or -90

and

[narrow gate]

Did, testing now

[chilly minnow]

set the z to 1.13

:D

[narrow gate]

Success!

Now all I need is to get the emission sorted, and link to the stock dawn's sound effect and I can release a part mod!

[chilly minnow]

do the emission first

as the sounds are not yet doable

at least not easly

[narrow gate]

That was exactly the order I wanted to do it.

I'll resume working on the emission tonight, but for now I need to scoot to work.

This is amazing Lux! This is truly amazing stuff! Your new LFO is outstanding!

[chilly minnow]

Btw i would maybe add expansion to the plume’s profile

Ill see if i can do it

[chilly minnow]

@narrow gate for emission map

its simple

have you looked at this tutorial? https://youtu.be/7qXwd2M3wzA

its prettymuch what he's saying

its a black texture with colored spots where the emission should be

[narrow gate]

I have not looked at this yet but I will. The problem I ran into was that I've got six objects that I want to have emission, but in each case I only want to have some faces produce emission. I tried to follow some online guides to specify a different material for those faces and it just didn't work. No idea why. I'm looking into if/how I could do it with SP now.

[chilly minnow]

oh! thats easy

you can apply materials per face

so you can ie, select the faces you want, and then apply the emissive material to them!

[chilly minnow]

i see that you totally didnt get substance

so i totally wont help you with how it works

[narrow gate]

Good.

[chilly minnow]

first off, totally dont import these

i'll tell you how to import them in a bit let me get all of them

[narrow gate]

Hang on. The grill just got to temp and I need to cook dinner. If you're free in a bit I'd totally like to know how SP is hypotetically setup.

[chilly minnow]

no problem!

these 3

so, the KSP2 PArt and the last one you can just New>Import Resources

and add them!

as for the othe rone, you go into Documents>Adobe>Substance Painter>Assets>templates and paste it there!

[narrow gate]

One thing I've read about Substence Painter is that when you're importing things you can import to, I think, the current session, library assets, or perhaps to a project. Are these the sorts of things you'd want to import to whatever library assests are, or would you want them imported to a project?

[chilly minnow]

library