Stellar Plasma-Assisted Rocket Kinetics (SPARK)

[narrow gate]

The earlier one we put in looks like this

I renamed the new one to be "thrustTransform" and kept it.

Figured out the eye!

Needed to click the icon in the scene too!

Colider looks ok now

[narrow gate]

The X2 is coming along nicely thanks to some quick diagnostic work by Dr. Isa. I know think I really do understand how to use his awesome KSP2_IconGenerator blend the way it's intended to be used, and not the goofy way my previous process was using it.

[narrow gate]

Doing some visual part comparisons between my engines and the stock Dawn, I think mine are coming up short. Not really a surprise at this point, but it does give me motivation to improve.

The X2's paint really need to be redone - it looks sort of tan in the VAB

Both the X2 and the X3 look like there's kinda clipping into the tank below them, so the attach nodes may need a tweak, and their super simple base is really boring compared to the nice rivited base on the Dawn. I could borrow the Dawn's base approach which would actually make some of the modeling for the power and propellant feed lines easier.

Also, for stock-alike I should tweak the red power line color and ditch the black for a dusty blue. That said, the Dawn's power lines are a joke! That thing consumes a metric buttload of juice. Those lines just look like a joke for something that would need kWs of power, particularly since they've got it putting out 0.2 kN of thrust (a factor of 50 to 100x verses the theoretical top for an X3 (3 - 5N!), and that would need about 250kW of real power.

[coral orbit]

Hmm putting some octagonal bolts on the bottom part of the truss may also look nice

[narrow gate]

Yeah! That would be nice to show iot bolted on!

My base part colors really need work...

LOL the VAB's dynamic lighting changes can really show some part color differences.

Oops, I forgot the localization for the X2...

LOL, there are some fixes needed on the SPT-100... I think the size should be XXS if that's allowed, and it will need a thrustTransform and a few other things...

Also, I need to lower the thrust on the X3. If it's got three nested HETs and the Dawn is just one smaller diameter one (roughly same diameter as the middle thruster on the X3, then X3 ought to be more like 0.5 or 0.6 kN I'd guess. The X2 should put out more thrust than a Dawn, and it does, but double might be a tad high. Certainly 0.3kN would not seem unreasonable given the slightly larger outer channel plus the smaller inner chanel.

[narrow gate]

Nope, there's no such thing as a size XXS... Too bad.

[chilly minnow]

There is

With LOABE

😉

Check how sorry does it

[narrow gate]

Oh!

I may need another hard dependency...

Also, something has gone wonky on my spt-100... It may not matter as I do plan to re-model that one

But I'd like to know how to fix this...

[chilly minnow]

Just replace the material

[mellow patrol]

You don't, it's just a simple JSON config file that gets loaded if the user has LOABE installed, and it doesn't if they don't

So it's by default a "soft" dependency

[chilly minnow]

^

[narrow gate]

So, how does that work for my part? I mean, in my unity project I can only pick XS as the size. What would I need to do to make it so that if the user has LOABE then the part shows up as XXS? Is it just a matter of setting the Core Data > Part Size Diameter to 0.3125?

[mellow patrol]

You pick the nearest stock size, and then you create a config with the LOABE-specific size

If LOABE is loaded, it will use the size from the config

If not, the core part data size will be used

[narrow gate]

It's that second step I'll need to understand then

[mellow patrol]

Just look at the code for SORRY, it has the config

[narrow gate]

Where do I create the LOABE config?

[mellow patrol]

https://github.com/LuxStice/SORRY/blob/main/plugin_template/LOABE.cfg

In your plugin folder

[narrow gate]

Hmmm... This is currently a codeless mod. Perhaps I'll have to make it a code-based parts mod?

[mellow patrol]

No, not at all

It's just a .cfg file that you need to put into your plugin folder

[chilly minnow]

The sizes are already created btw

[mellow patrol]

The one where you have an "assets" or "addressables" folder

[chilly minnow]

You can see them on loabe folder

[narrow gate]

Somethying like this that ships with my mod then

[mellow patrol]

Yes

[narrow gate]

Thanks!

This will be so easy!

Like this perhaps?
{ "mod": "SPARK", "LOABEPartData": [ { "LOABESizeID": "[XS+]", "partNames": [ "spark_spt100" ] }, { "LOABESizeID": "[SM]", "partNames": [ "spark_x2", "spark_x3" ] } ] }

Or is there an XXS I should use? Does XS+ mean bigger than XS?

[chilly minnow]

yup

and indeed

check note that

this is not working on 1.4

but i alredy fixed it

[mellow patrol]

https://tenor.com/view/release-me-independence-day-okun-gif-10533470

[chilly minnow]

i cant

cuz yet again i wont be at home the whole dayt

[narrow gate]

OK, this then.
{ "mod": "SPARK", "LOABEPartData": [ { "LOABESizeID": "[XXS]", "partNames": [ "spark_spt100" ] }, { "LOABESizeID": "[XS]", "partNames": [ "spark_x2" ] }, { "LOABESizeID": "[SM]", "partNames": [ "spark_x3" ] } ] }

[chilly minnow]

xm?

yeah that works!

[narrow gate]

lol, typo...

[narrow gate]

Hey @chilly minnow, I thought now might be a good time to rename my SPT100 to spark_spt100. I thought I'd done that correctly, but when I went to build in Unity I get this and it freezes

[chilly minnow]

did u apply to the prefab?

also

[narrow gate]

The console message at the bottom says this

[chilly minnow]

did you change on the json?

well thats

something xD

[chilly minnow]

by this i mean change on the part data

[narrow gate]

I created a whole new prefab with the name. I thought I got them all

I'll have to restart unity as it's totally frozen

Hmmm... it's taking a really long time to relaunch the project. Seems to be stuck on importing.

Is there any way to rescue a unity project? This would be a bit of a bummer to have to recreate

It's now over three minutes in the busy for importing. I'll probably have to kill it from the task manager

[chilly minnow]

its probably not broken

try clearing the cache

[narrow gate]

I don't know if it was related, but Unity hub was telling me there's a new version, so I said yes and let it install. It loaded now

Console says this - I've just looked at it, so not yet given it any real thought. That's next.

[chilly minnow]

its ok to install unity HUB version

not other unity versions

[chilly minnow]

dw about those

were u able to build?

[narrow gate]

Just reimported and was about to. LETS GO!

hmmm... not looking good. It got stuck in the same place and even the "busy for" counter has stopped advancing.

Is this nbd?

[chilly minnow]

dont worry about those

[narrow gate]

OK, I see it was in the other list too where you said dw

So, I've borked my untiy project and it won't build. It will freeze if I try, but I can force it to shut down and relaunch it.

[chilly minnow]

tahts a common issue dw

its not borked

have you cleaned the cache?

the unity project

not the addressables

[narrow gate]

Maybe not. Where is that done?

Is it Assets > Cache Server > Unload All Assets?

Ahh! Preferences > Gi Cache > Clean Cache!

OK I did that. I'll try to build again.

Also, and presumably unrelated there's this

Is my world origin just different in odd ways between these parts?

Oh, and stuck again at the same point in the build, sadly...

[chilly minnow]

Im not home rn

But check “how to clean unity cache” on google

[narrow gate]

I'll do that. Maybe I found the wrong way. That's how I found the Preferences > Gi Cache > Clean Cache approach I tried above.

Same results actually as the other search I did. I'll dig a little deeper online to see if I can find more I might need to do with that.

[narrow gate]

After much work I can say I have only one itty bitty clue. Really, in all honestly I'm pretty much clueless. There's something in my spark_spt100 part that is truly, deeply, and horribly goofed up. There is only one way to make this project build in its current state that I know of, and that's to Toggle Active State on the spark_spt100 to OFF. If it's on, the build will hang very early in the process in a way that locks unity up.

Another thing I've learned, not really related AFAIK, is that there's something missing in my Parts Pack Production Procedure doc. I'm not sure what it is, but if you use that guide to start a brand new fresh unity parts project you'll be doomed to having a goofed up LocalLoadPath in your addressables Default Local Group. The guide says (and trust me, it's lying when it says this) "6. Configure Unity Project: This should have been configured when you installed ThunderKit, but you can check it here."

Well, first of all, meticulously following the ThuderKit installation guide will leave this unconfigured, or rather, configured to some erronious default.

Secondly, the only way to set it to the right value is to switch the Load Path setting to <custom>. There is no other way I've found to change it - most certainly not in any aspect of ThunderKit settings. You can make it be the right thing, but only if you pick <custom>

What's a mystery to me is how I somehow managed to get this set the way I think it should be in the SPARK project. I mean, clearly it must be possible. I'd love to know what the heck is wrong with my process...

That the Load Path set the way it should be

And that's how my process ends up with it. From that point, in a nice clean fresh project, the only path forward I know if now is to switch Load Path to <custom>, which may be fine but it leaves me feeling like I've done it wrong somehow.

[chilly minnow]

just got home

i see that you have made a new projecT?

[narrow gate]

I did as a test of the build tools, but I'm back in the old project now. I'm attempting to bring in a whole new spt-100, not quite from scratch but close. I went back to the blend and re did a couple things and am now fighting with Blender I think. When I'm in blender I see this for the UV

When I get that into substance I see this hot mess

I've tried a couple times, but I keep getting weird overlapping results

The plan here is to be able to ditch the broken part in the unity proj and make a nice fresh new one the right way.

But I'll need to be able to paint the thing first.

[chilly minnow]

thats the same uv unwrap you have on blender

so if its like that there it also is on blender

it seems like youre exporting an extra cylinder

[narrow gate]

There was an extra cylindar, a big one, but I deleted it when I branched to a cleaned up version for SP

Though I see I am missing a thrustTransfor single arrow...

I'll toss that in there now

Only exporting selected

UV map should look like this

Still looks like this

[chilly minnow]

here

click a to select everything

if it still doesnt show

it might be hidden

if so

click alt+h to reveal all hidden vertexes

the UV window only shows selected faces

[narrow gate]

Do you mean alt+h in the UV editor or in the 3D Viewport?

It gives me this in viewport

but it doesn't show me anything other than that

Is it possible that there might be more than one UV Map? I ran into that problem once...

Nope they all have just one, and it's the same one UVMap

When doing Pack Islands, it should be Convex, right? To fill inside some of the circular parts?

It's weird, 'cause it doens't pack. The UV map looks the same before and after PAck Islands with either concave of convex selected

I've done some fiddling with my model to reduce the number of surfaces since there were so many that can't be seen. It now looks like this\

boo

Man, that UV map is so fucked up

Like an idiot, I decided to see what I'd get if I just used it. I got what I should have expected - crap

In this case I attempted to paint on the object (mesh) for the dichsrge chamber. Apparently in the ever so stupi9d UV map that covers half the page overlapping with a lot of stuff

The issues is obviously in blender. I'm thinking maybe I've not done an apply rotation and scale enough or to the right things. Something like this is making stuff goofed up.

Could be I need to do a merge by distance on vertices perhaps?

[chilly minnow]

Try it, but probably not that

Also check if you have multiple uv maps

[narrow gate]

Yeah, I checked for multiple maps, but that wasn't it.

I gave up and went on to working on the X4 in the hopes that since it's based on successful X2 and X3 models it would be a better use of my time

[chilly minnow]

Could you send the blend file?

I aint home but once i am ill check

[narrow gate]

If I really want an SPT-100, and I'm not even sure I do, it would be quicker to just draw the damn thing from scratch

[chilly minnow]

xD

No need probably

[narrow gate]

That was the last one I worked on

I've done some simplifying in it so there are fewer verticies and the shapes are a little bit simpler

None of that helped the problem I was having, but is probably a good thing in the long run.

There are a couple of procedural bolts in there that I don't really need. They might be a source of the problem, but they are not new.

I think it's possible to paint things like those on in SP so that I wouldn't really even need them.

[chilly minnow]

Those bolts could probably be on the normal map

Ill show you how in a bit

[chilly minnow]

@narrow gate found it

you did

indeed have 2 uv maps

on the magnet core and on the discarge chamber

fixed mesh

btw i'd recommend you not use bolts this detailed

at this level of detail, you can get away with 8 sides

even 6 maybe

they have bodies? 😭

[serene abyss]

tip

the smaller the object

the less detail it needs

if sometjing isnt visible (like the part of a screw that’s inside a model) dont have it in the model

[chilly minnow]

^^

im fixing this for you btw!

[serene abyss]

this also applies to like pipes

[chilly minnow]

im guessing that he's just using premade asset

[serene abyss]

you can delete end faces of a pipe if it ends in the model

[chilly minnow]

actually, i think they are procedural screws

[serene abyss]

also saves uv space

[chilly minnow]

^^

[serene abyss]

so higher texel density

[serene abyss]

they most definitely are

btw for screws a procedural generator isnt needed

just add a cylinder change its side count to like 6 keep it as shade flat and scale it down

[chilly minnow]

actually

now that i think about it

they better be on a normal map

than a mesh

i'll teach you how to! dw!

[narrow gate]

I really didn't know what I was dooing when I added those bolts...

[chilly minnow]

@narrow gate spt-100 is meant for what part size?

XXS it seems

[narrow gate]

Yes, XXS. It's for 0.3125m parts, but since you can surface attach it you might use a few of them on a larger body. It will have 1/2 the thrust of a Dawn.

[coral orbit]

Does XXS actually exist as a size?

[narrow gate]

Yes! It does! But you need a mod to get it.

With LOABE you can have it.

[chilly minnow]

does it look good?

[narrow gate]

It looks better than good, it looks amazing!

[chilly minnow]

2k triangles

let me send you the blend

actually, let me also set the nodes

there you go

wait

no

there

you might need to change the material

as the one thats currently on is the checkered board material to check textel density

there

w/o the material

[narrow gate]

Thanks! What is the purpose of the checkerboard pattern on the material?

[chilly minnow]

it tells you how much of the texture each face occupies

also

this one has a better textel density

so basically

the more black and white squares you see

the more detailed the texture on that area will be

so ie, on the new one i send you, the bottom of the part the squares are WAAAY bigger

bcuz u dont want that much detail on the bottom

and i increased the texel density (how much space the faces occupy) for the middle part of the thruster (the anodes)

so that you can have more detail on that area

you can ajust this by just rescaling the islands on the UV

so a bigger island = more textel density

a smaller island = less

im not sure about the exact numbers, but i think that each square is like 100x100px?

https://mrven.gumroad.com/l/CEIOR

i use this addon to check textel density

i set your part to about 25px/cm

[narrow gate]

Cool! Thanks for all this, it's really helping me!

[chilly minnow]

if you're already texturing

i can show you how to add bolts!

[narrow gate]

Thanks! I'm getting ready for a dive trip tomorrow and still fiddling with my gear, so I'll have to take you up on that another time. I know CUVSMO was saying it's poissible to add those in SP so that they're just part of the map and not actually needing polys. For parts as small as mine that may be the way to go. When I zoomed in on the Dawn earlier today I think it had a lot of rivits and other similar details. I would like to learn how to do that!

[chilly minnow]

ohhh fancyyy!!! Hope you have fun!

no worries! whenever you get back to modding just ping me and i'll show you how!

[chilly minnow]

loaded the version you sent me to check, and its a diffrence of 93k triangles xD

wireframe still looks pretty similar

[narrow gate]

@chilly minnow What am I doing wrong here? This seems to be missing toms faces?

I tried just doing an export on the blend you sent and got something that looks like what's on the left, sl O wen back to blender and redid the UV map to get what's on the right and re-exported. Bringing this into SP I get a model that's missing some faces on the discharge chamber and cathode at least.

[chilly minnow]

oh no

thats

maybe the old project?

the uv unwrap was ready for SB already!

le tme re-check it

[narrow gate]

It's this one #1141807690264367135 message

[chilly minnow]

suposedly yes but i'll double check a sec

i see whats happening

its my fault!

as you might know faces have normals

they were on the wrong side

this is how you check if faces have inverted normals

and how to fix it

here

also fixed a uv unwrap bug that i found

[narrow gate]

Thanks! I'll give this a shot rn

Are there two single direction arrows?

[chilly minnow]

thrust and bottom node!

you shoudnt use the same

[narrow gate]

Oh!

IC

[chilly minnow]

btw

you can auto generate nodes in unity

thx to Cheese

whenever ur configuring it in unity hmu!

[narrow gate]

I'm getting this in SP

Isn't that UV map kinda sparse?

[chilly minnow]

it shouldnt

hmm

[narrow gate]

And still missing faces.

[chilly minnow]

can you try this

looks like this to me

[narrow gate]

Yeah, I get the same now!

[chilly minnow]

thats wierd

[narrow gate]

What do you think might have happened?

[chilly minnow]

you shouldnt need to re-export it anyway

well

either your blender settings

or some other wizardry

[narrow gate]

Well, it's not wizardry as I have no powers, the took away my wand 😦

So I blame me and my not-so-clever blender settings!

Thanks for the help I'll take a shot at painting this now in SP

[chilly minnow]

xD

no problem!

a very simplified tutorial on how to paint screws and things like that! https://youtu.be/N9iBfmRUYGA?t=71

if you need help pls tell me, cuz the tutorial is not great

[chilly minnow]

im curious to see how you texture it!

[narrow gate]

Still working on icon sizes and other dumb stuff before I go into bolts and such, but here's four engines in the game with the stock XS monoprop and Dawn engines for scale. On thing that's totally weird is how my steel textures look tan. That's just not right, but at least I'm being consistent. The nice thing here is that all four engines are in the game now, though only the X3 has a correct plume.

I like how the SPT100 turned out scale wise. It's definitely an XXS engine. In fact I like them all for scale, but I'm sture I've got a bit of tweaking to do on thrust, mass, etc.

I also like how easy it is now to make the icons! Once I get the scale sorted out I think that will be about perfect, though as I repaint to solve the tan-colored steel I'll need to redo the icons, but that will be so simple now!

These are all done with transparent base and accent colors in the game, so clealy I need to make things more silvery that should be shiny silvery metal.

Looking more closely at the Dawn relative to my HETs, its almost like it's a hybrid annual gridded ion?

[mint dew]

What material did you use on the steel parts that are too tan? The base KSP2 smart material or another one?

[mint dew]

Looks like it, we can see some sort of accelerator grid on top of the channel
Are those hybrid engines a thing irl?

[narrow gate]

In the little guy I just did (SPT100) it was KSP2_Gray_Steel

In fact everything has a base od KSP2 Steel

[mint dew]

Try without any additional material on the currently tan parts? (Just the base smart material)

[mint dew]

This is what I did for this part, you can see the "bare" material on the bottom ring of the cylinder next to the paint

[narrow gate]

It's hard to tell if it's shiny or not when it's in shadow like that. Could you flip that thing over and show the "bottom" ring lit from above?

[mint dew]

I'll do that as soon as I'm home (in about an hour ><)

[narrow gate]

No hurry. I'll probably be fiddling with this most of the day, and it's all a learning process for me.

[mint dew]

I'm learning SP currently as well I empathize ^^ It's been pretty fun and powerful for now (before I imagined we'd have to paint our textures by hand haha)

[chilly minnow]

Might be the material

use the KSP2 Steel that i sent you!

thats the one i use

[narrow gate]

I thought that's what I am using. I imported those into my library so I've got these

[chilly minnow]

here it looks like ur using smth else

[narrow gate]

I use KSP2_Steel for the whole part, and then I use various other things for the anodes, but those don't seem to be the problem

[chilly minnow]

im pretty sure you're overriding the KSP2 steel

at least on that screenshot

[narrow gate]

Yes, I used a different one there, but that's not one of the things that looks tan - at least I think not. I'll double check

[chilly minnow]

oh i see

can i see a layerstack of the ones that look tanned?

[narrow gate]

I take that back. That part looks totally tan.

Could it be a weird overlay effect where KSP2 Steel is applied as a "base coat" to everything, and then other materials are on top of that?

[chilly minnow]

no its totally not

its something with ur material

also, that stack has no KSP2 Steel

i thnk

at least doesnt seem to have

[narrow gate]

The whole part has KSP2 steel applied to everything - no black mask

[mint dew]

Are the parts that have KSP_Steel but not Steel Bright also tan?

[chilly minnow]

the idea here is

KSP2 Steel applies to everythi9ng

then Sleep Bright applies to where theres mask

then Ceramic

then KSP Gray Steel

from what i see

theres no space left where KSP2 Steel applies

disable Steel Bright

and KSP Gray Steel

just to be sure

did it look diffrent on the viewport?

[narrow gate]

OK, I'm using KSP2 Dark for the anodes, KSP2 Gray for the magnetic circuit parts, and plain old KSP2 Steel for all the other stuff except the ceramic (white fill layer) and windings (copper fill layer).

I just re-exported the maps. I'll need to bring them back in to Unity I think. I know there's an easier way, but I don't think I've gotten that nailed down yet.

[chilly minnow]

can you send them here pls?

the exported textures

and the full material settings

pls

[narrow gate]

How do I send the material settings?

[chilly minnow]

just screenshot it 🙏

you'll probably need 2/3 screenshots to show everything tho

[narrow gate]

You mean this?

[serene abyss]

think they mean in unity

[chilly minnow]

no, the one on unity

[narrow gate]

OK, I got you. Comming up!

All maps have Alpha set for transparency except normal map of course

In Unity the scene looks like this

BTW, my lighting in unity sucks...

With camera lighting turned off and world lighting turned on it's much worse

[mint dew]

What happens if you remove your occlusion map?

[narrow gate]

Not sure how to remove it once it's set, but here it is with strength set to 0

[mint dew]

I think you can do Select -> None (or just delete the texture asset)

[narrow gate]

OK with Occlusion set to None

[mint dew]

Set occlusion strength to 1

[narrow gate]

Well that's something!

[mint dew]

I had the same issue yesterday with my part haha, Lux helped me with it

[narrow gate]

Need some repainting on the others now, but this is progress!

Better, but clearnly not there yet.

[chilly minnow]

can you send me the mod?

gotta check smth

wait

wait

wait

[chilly minnow]

metallic smothness map

should be 1

[narrow gate]

This is getting closer, but it looks like the X2 is messed up. The UV unwrap is wrong or it wouldn't be splotch like that.

The copper in both the X2 and X3 looks good, and that's a smart material.

Other than the copper, everything is either KSP2 Steel, KSP2 Gray Steel, KSP2 Dark Steel, or the red power line, black power line (should be blue for stock alike) and the ceramic.

Something is wacky with the X4, and I'm not sure what.

I thought I'd applied materials the exact same way, but it's looking odd here, and also in unity. I've rebacked, re-exported, and generally horsed around with it trying to make it the same as I've done for the X3. Not sure what I've messed up, but it's got an odd color and texture to it.

In Unity X3 looks like this

But X4 looks like this

The X4 materials have Metallic set to 1 and no occlusion map applied

[chilly minnow]

you have occlusion map

[narrow gate]

Alpha is set to transparency for all the materials

[chilly minnow]

remove the map

the texture

black textures

are not a good idea

they fuckup the shaders most of the times

[narrow gate]

Dang!

[chilly minnow]

its better to just not have them (they'll be default)

so in that case, occlusion map's default is white

[narrow gate]

I thought I got that right!

That probably fixes the X4. Now to fix the X2!

[chilly minnow]

material settings pls :D

and how it looks

[narrow gate]

Notice the hexagonal boxes and how fucked up they are. My theory is that the UV unwrap is goofed up

Loso, I managed to get SP into this mode where it doesn't show the "room" with the black curtains and lights in it

[chilly minnow]

they dont seem to have the material

[chilly minnow]

check if the material is applied to them

[narrow gate]

Yep, X2 is goofed up.

Doh! The eye on KSP2 Steel had been switched off... That could have something to do with it.

[chilly minnow]

that could be it too

[narrow gate]

But what's up with this? My KSP2 Steel material is now either flat white or flat gray. The one that had the eye switched off is flat gray, but a fresh cleen one is flat white?

[chilly minnow]

thats right

thats the color

of the metal

metals have really bright colors

ur seeing only the color channel

you should see a dropdown on the top of the viewport where ytou can change the channels

you can also see the paint map and those other channes there

[narrow gate]

OK, closing without saving and reopening X2 I get this with just turniong on the KSP@ steel layer and switching lighting to Materials

My guess is that maybe I messed with that layer previously.

If I put a fresh clean KSP2 Steel layer in I get this

[chilly minnow]

you changed the color of the ksp2 steel

the old one

thats why

[narrow gate]

Yep, I'm going with the fresh clean copy now.

[chilly minnow]

see?

[narrow gate]

BTW, for stock-alike power lines what colors should I use for red and blue?

I've got solid primary red and solid black, which is clearly not right

[chilly minnow]

hmmm

metalic 0
HSV - 0, .8, .8

try that for red

and solid black just put HSV - 0, .8, .05

that should work right

i hav eno clue what the real values are but those sound like the pattern thta they're going for

[narrow gate]

They're going for some shade of blue on the not-red power line.

I may just screen shot a stock part, take that into photoshop, and eyedropper it there to get an RGB or HSV that way

Orrr... Winging it I tried pure blue in RGB, which got me to Hugh 0.667. Combining that with 0.8 for S and V doesn't look too far off.

I think I'll go with that for now and fix the others too, then - if X2 and X4 are looking more like X3 - I'll be ready to try my hand and some bolts or what not.

[narrow gate]

I think the skirting on the SPT-100 is still a bit off paint-wise. I'll take another look at that one, but otherwise these are looking pretty good!

Icons look pretty good too I'd say

Except maybe the SPT-100 is to ridiculously tiny in that view. Otherwise these look like they're scaling OK. Maybe a tad small on the X3 and X4?

[chilly minnow]

they still feel too dark not sure why

[chilly minnow]

just zoom in when you're taking the picture

[narrow gate]

The X2 is too dark, isn't it?

[narrow gate]

What I was going for there was to geive them all a consistent scale, or at least consistent across a given size category.

That way if one XS part is actually loarger or smaller than another XS part it would be apparent in the icon.

Is that not what we're supposed to do?

[chilly minnow]

all of them

the metal seem way too dark

gotta check in flight tho

[chilly minnow]

i mean its up to you

you don have to follow stock's art guideline

[narrow gate]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go take a look at the paint on X2... It's definitely a bit too dark for some reason.

The ceramic looks off...

[narrow gate]

@chilly minnow, how do I add a plume in my unity project? I removed the one I had when I was having issues building and Now I need it again so I can scale things correctly in the LFO JSONs

I got this far:

[chilly minnow]

same process

just create a material

[narrow gate]

Made a ube and added LFO Volume (script)

[chilly minnow]

you probably already have it

LFO/Volumetric (Profiled)

and set the profile on the material settings

[narrow gate]

Oh I do still have that material!

Thanks! I should be set now for scaling things.

[narrow gate]

Or maybe not... What do I do to get the view sorted out? Iso si maybe not right?

I thiunk I've got it close, but it seems off a bit. I'm probably doing something dumb

[chilly minnow]

it doesnt work in isometric

[narrow gate]

What's the right view to use. It seems to just disappear in "Right"

[chilly minnow]

huh thats wierd

try to move everything to 0,0,0

i think its that

its a bug

that i've been working on for the past like 2 days xD

[narrow gate]

You mean move it in the Transform for the plume's cube?

What I've been doing is eyeballing the left and right edges and the top to get the cube situated in the right place, given the constraint that x = z = 1/2 y for scale

They're all using the same X3 Plume material, which will be wrong for the non-X3 parts as it's got the X3 plume profile, but rn I'm just trying to get position and scale right for the plume cubes

I don't need the box collider for these shapes, do I? They're only here to show me what the plume would be like and not for any other purpose.

[chilly minnow]

the collider

no

a sec

i'll send you a version of it fixed

i hope

wtf that should be right...

can you open the shader file

and show me whats around the line 220?

you can find the shader under LFO/Shaders

[narrow gate]

fixed4 frag(v2f i) : SV_Target {
    if(_Opacity == 0)
        return 0;

    float3 size = boundsMax - boundsMin;
    float3 boundsCentre = (boundsMin+boundsMax) * .5;
    //return float4(mul(unity_WorldToObject,i.worldPos));
    float3 rayPos = _WorldSpaceCameraPos;
    float viewLength = length(i.viewVector);
    float3 rayDir = normalize(i.worldPos - rayPos);

    float2 rayToContainerInfo = rayBoxDst(boundsMin, boundsMax, rayPos, 1/rayDir);
    float dstToBox = rayToContainerInfo.x;
    float dstInsideBox = rayToContainerInfo.y;

    // point of intersection with the cloud container
    float3 entryPoint = rayPos + rayDir * dstToBox;
    float3 exitPoint = rayPos + rayDir * dstInsideBox;

    float dstTravelled = 0;
    float dstLimit = dstInsideBox;
    float dist = distance(exitPoint, entryPoint);
    int stepCount = (1+_Resolution)*32;
    stepCount *= _ResolutionMultiplier;

    stepCount = max(_MinimumResolution, stepCount);
    float stepSize = dstInsideBox/(stepCount); //Create multiplier for step count to allow for modder customization
    int failSafeCount = stepCount;

    float density = 0;
    float2 screeSpaceUV = i.screenPos.xy / i.screenPos.w;
    float opaqueDepth = SAMPLE_DEPTH_TEXTURE(_CameraDepthTexture, screeSpaceUV);
    float depthSolid = LinearEyeDepth(opaqueDepth) * viewLength;

Line 220 is the last of these:

// point of intersection with the cloud container
                float3 entryPoint = rayPos + rayDir * dstToBox;
                float3 exitPoint = rayPos + rayDir * dstInsideBox;

I gotta go cook dinner. I'll be back later.

[chilly minnow]

theres the problem!

you have an outdated version

try this one!

[narrow gate]

I think I goofed up the transion. When I dragged that one in it had a different name so I change Volumetric (Profiled) to be Volumetric (profiled).old and then renamed this one to be Volumetric (Profiled).

When I deleted the Volumetric (profiled).old shader that gave me the purple pushup pop of doom, so I went in to see what shader it was using. I'm now here, where I can't find the new shader - so I've botched it's installation.

[narrow gate]

When I look for available shaders in LFR now, all I see are Additive and Volumetric

[chilly minnow]

a second

try this

[narrow gate]

That one shows up in the list, but I'm still not seeing it in the Scene.

It's curious, it no longer gives me the faces that are behind the face nearest the camera.

Before I had this (#1141807690264367135 message) to go by for the size of the cube, now I don't

The material seems to be pointed to the right thing.

[chilly minnow]

huh

can you show me the full material setings?

OH!

also

go to your scene light

and enable soft shadows

[narrow gate]

I can't seem to find that.

[chilly minnow]

do you have any lights on your hierarchy?

[narrow gate]

Yes, just one. Directional Light

It's already set to Soft Shadows

[chilly minnow]

can you send me a screenshot of its components?

[chilly minnow]

try to disable the custom Z Test on the plume material

to see if it shows

[narrow gate]

No effect

[chilly minnow]

everything seeems the same right?

OH

WAIT

thats the same material you were using before right?

[narrow gate]

Yes

[chilly minnow]

then thats why

[narrow gate]

I just applied the old material to a new cube, sized it, positioned, etc.

[chilly minnow]

you see, volumetric materials have properties like position, rotation and scale

and given that you have 2 cubes with the same material

that cube is using the properties of the old cube

if you either delete the old cube

or make a new instance of that material

it should work

you can ctrl+drag on the file explorer of unity do duplicate

[narrow gate]

I have 4 brand new cubes, all with the same material

The old cube is no more

[chilly minnow]

but they all share the same material

that is the problem

[narrow gate]

Should I make 4 materials, one for each?

[chilly minnow]

it should be 1 material per

exactly!

LFO Throtle data has a button for that

but its not quite ready yet

actually, for your plume it kinda is

let me give you a couple of files

a sec

that way you can test it

[narrow gate]

OK, so make three more matierals, and make each one "like" the first one - but they'll each be their own material

waiting.

[chilly minnow]

exactly, like if you were cloning them!

and as we all know from modern science, clones are exact copies that can be on their on time and space

but 1 person cannot be on various times and spaces

[narrow gate]

I'm not so sure about that, I've watched how you operate...

I'm wise to your ways mr. Two places at once!

OK, so seriously. Clone and then install, or the other way?

[chilly minnow]

install first

theres a monobehaviour in there that will create an exact copy for you

now! there's something that you should know about this! SAVE the configs

LFO's materials (the way that im going to present you rn) do no exist outside of your computers memory

so if you close unity

or change scene (ie: from scene>prefab editor or vice versa) the configs will be lost and the materials settings too

i could make it be saved but then you'd end up with like 500 materials on your unity proj

[narrow gate]

OK, project saved. Now for the install, unzip and drag onto project, right?

Drag this stuff (in windows explorer) to here (LFO folder in project)?

[chilly minnow]

yup!

[narrow gate]

It gave me a second Scripts folder...

Should I have deleted the first copy firs?

[narrow gate]

Should I move the LFO script from Scripts 1 to Scripts to replace the one that's there?

[chilly minnow]

oh thats wierd

well i dont think its needed

[narrow gate]

It doen't wnat to let me do that.

[chilly minnow]

go into the windows file explorer

and move whats inside scripts 1

[narrow gate]

Looks like maybe the same content as what was in the zip

[chilly minnow]

but newer!

[narrow gate]

Only bc my explorer is stupid and doesn't hold onto the date you last touched it - so it's got date/time from when I move it in

My bad, they are the same!

[chilly minnow]

ignore the noise

i think it stored the data when it was zipped

[narrow gate]

Should I just delete the old Scripts and rename Scripts 1 to be Scripts?

[chilly minnow]

sure that should work!

[narrow gate]

OK done

[chilly minnow]

great

if you go into unity

you probably have an LFO Throttle Data component

that you can add

[narrow gate]

I did the deletre and rename within unity.

Does this warning mean anything rn?

[chilly minnow]

yeah

you can just click on the circle next to missing

[narrow gate]

And, yeah, I do have an LFO Throttle Data component

[chilly minnow]

and choose LFO Volume again

basically it just lost the reference and you need to tell it what it was

[chilly minnow]

add that!

[narrow gate]

OK, I added that to each of the four plume objects

So now I can just click New MAterial Instance?

Clicking that button doesn't seem to do much... yet

[chilly minnow]

it does!

you just dont see it

thats wierd tho, none of the plumes showed to you?

actually

check the console

are there any errosr?

[narrow gate]

Yeah, I clicked that button on each one, on some of them more than once just for good measure. Clicky clicky!

[chilly minnow]

can you clear the console

and click again on the new material instance pls?

[narrow gate]

I clicked a couple times on the X3 plum's button. No errors or warnings in the console, no plume on the screen

[chilly minnow]

do you have LFO Volume on that?

[narrow gate]

wdym?

[chilly minnow]

thje component

on the cube that you have selected rn

[narrow gate]

The shader is LFO Volumetric (profiled)

Oh that fixed it!

[chilly minnow]

you need to add a component called LFO Volume

xD

all volumetric shaders have to have that

[narrow gate]

And here's a goofy 3-channel plume on a 4 channel thruster too

And a three channel plume on a two channel thruster!

[chilly minnow]

just create the plumes like how Isa showed!

[narrow gate]

Yay!

[chilly minnow]

xD

it all works

ok so

let me give you a quick rundown on how to animate your plumes

can i see how the hierarchy of your parts is?

[narrow gate]

But best of all, a three channel plume on an intty bitty single channel thruster!

[chilly minnow]

seems about right!

[narrow gate]

All are like this, but most have more parts

Ahhh-Nahhh-Maaaate!

(spoke like a zombie)

[chilly minnow]

ok, lets do it like this

drag the plume into the thrust transform

actually, better

on the thrustTransform create a empty child

named Plume

and on that Plume add the SPT-100 plume as a child

[narrow gate]

I'll need to unpack the prefab, right?

[chilly minnow]

DONT override to the prefab

no need! i'll show u a trick

[narrow gate]

So like this?

[chilly minnow]

yup!

on the Plume add a LFO Master Throttle group

or smth similar i dont remember the exact name

search for only LFO and you'll find it

[narrow gate]

That one?

done x4

[chilly minnow]

work only in 1 for now

ok so

some few things on that

Use new shader ignore, its for the mesh based plumes, and something that i was using for debug

Group Throttle and Group Atm Pressure are the controls you'll look for to check the animation of your plumes!

Active? shows (or hides) the plumes correctly

the right way to show or hide plumes is to disable the mesh renderer btw

[narrow gate]

confirmed

[chilly minnow]

thats just a quick way to enable or disable all plumes under that Throttle data master group

Collect children basically look for any missing LFO Throttle Data's that are not on the Masters group

Save config saves to LFO/config/partName.json

Reload is a bit useless

and Load config loads the config on the same path as the save

[narrow gate]

That one will be handy!

[chilly minnow]

Now

if you drag the prefab with the plumes into the file explorer

it will ask if you want to create a new prefab or a variant

create a variant and call it partName with Plume

or wtv you feel like calling it

[narrow gate]

Confused by this.

[chilly minnow]

the idea here is that, the game's prefab will not have the plumes

let me show u!

the idea here s that you dont mistakenly add your plumes to the prefab that will be exported to the game

[narrow gate]

I know about dragging into Assets to make a prefab, but this sounds different?

[chilly minnow]

yeah, i'll show u a sec!

prefab will always keep the prefab inside updated

but anything that you modify IN the variant will stay the same

think of it as like Falcon9 and F9 Heavy

F9 is the prefab, and F9 heavy the variant

if you modify something on F9, it will carry over to F9 heavy

[narrow gate]

OK, you created a cube, made it a prefab, created a sphere, made it a child of the cube and then moved it, then finally dragged the cube into the assets folder where you created a prefab variant, right?

[chilly minnow]

exactly

[narrow gate]

The thing above that had me previously confgused was when you said drag it into the file explorer.

[chilly minnow]

yeah, the Assets is the Unity's File explorer

[narrow gate]

Now I see you mean just drag it down into the Assets folder (which is a bit like a file explorer)

So, here, I should drag the newly updated spark_spt100 to Assets and make a variant, or is there more to do first?

[chilly minnow]

no, you can do that!

so now you have a version of spark_spt100 w/o the plume that gets exported to the game

and one with the plume!

[chilly minnow]

thats ok!

[narrow gate]

Yep, the old one is an addressable, and the new one is not

[chilly minnow]

as you can see, the plume is now purple

thats because, as i said, LFO materials are saved on the memory

you can hit Save Config n th eMaster

[narrow gate]

The ever dreaded purple pushup pop of doom

[chilly minnow]

and then check under LFO/Configs if a config was created

thy name shall not be said in vain

xD

also, send the config here just to check if everything is correct pls

[narrow gate]

This step means in the Plume object, right?

This one?

[chilly minnow]

on here!

yes1

[narrow gate]

Lo, and behold! So sayeth, so shall it be done

Translation: WTF! That wasn't there a minute ago!

[chilly minnow]

looks correct!

xD

ok so, how to animate it

its still a bit of a raw process

but not complicated

just has a couple of flaws in it

[narrow gate]

Some like it raw... Sushi!

Or sashimi...

Yum!

[chilly minnow]

xD it is pretty good indeed!

a sec smths fishy with mine

no pun intended

[narrow gate]

LOL!

You're a bad man!

That was a wicked pun!

You should totally take the credit for that one!

[chilly minnow]

i see the problem

do you see anything under this?

should be something like a foldout named Config

[narrow gate]

Maybe I missed a step... Did you say to turn around and load the config or smth?

I've got nada under there

[chilly minnow]

on the LFO Throttle Data!

not the master!

[chilly minnow]

also nada

ok then its my fault!

a sec

replace your LFO.dll under LFO/Scripts/ with this

then you should have smth like this

[narrow gate]

I did the drag-n-drop in Windows this time...

So maybe Unity hasn't realized it?

[chilly minnow]

probably not

[narrow gate]

What can I do to poke it?

[chilly minnow]

just right click the dll in unity

and reimport

[narrow gate]

doing now

Yay!

[chilly minnow]

great!

now

this should be pretty straight forward

add a new float param

so just add an item udner Float Params

the idea here is that Param Name will be modified based on these curves and values

if none of the Use Curve is toggled on, it will just take whats on Value

so take that as the default value

then each curve can be of this 3 types

• Base meaning that, it will use that as the base value
• Multiply will multiply the current Value (either from a curve marked as Base or from the Value field)
• Add will add to the current Value (same as above)

a good practice is to get the value that you're trying to modify, and put its current value on the Value field

this because, when we start animating the plume with the sliders, it will override the shader parameter

ok so lets do a simple Opacity curve

Param Name always starts with an _ so ie if you're trying to change the opacity, you put in the param name _Opacity

set the Value to 1

and we'll do it so that at 100% throttle it is 1 opacity and 0 at 0% throttle

so we'll use the throttle curve

so you can check that toggle

then, you can change the Throttle Curve Type to Multiply, as its the best fitting for what we're trying to do

and then comes Unity's animation curves

have u messed with them yet?

[narrow gate]

Never

[chilly minnow]

i think so right? for the ISPs

oh, its pretty simple tho

[narrow gate]

Oh, those

Then yeah I've messed with them

Set points and a few things, but I can't say I really know them

[chilly minnow]

its still pretty simple dw

basically, just make a curve from 0-1

with how you want to multiply Value

so ie, at 100% throttle you want to multiply Value by 1

and at 0% throttle you want to mulptiply Value by 0

[chilly minnow]

perfecto

now

on the LFO Throttle data you have the exact same controls that you have on the LFO Master Group

they both are synced

so, now, slide the throttle bakc and forth

and see your plume animate!

the idea here is that any value of the shader can be modified as you please

[narrow gate]

It works!

[chilly minnow]

(apart from colors and vectors, but i'll add them in a later date)

great!

and there you go, thats how you animate a plume

now if you click save config, it should save the FloatParam into the save!

[narrow gate]

This is awesome! I need to do the same for the others while this is still fresh in my mind.

[chilly minnow]

and you can just put that same config under modName/assets/plumes/ and lfo will load it!

it also already adds the partNAme, so its pretty much a "plug and play" experience

[narrow gate]

Did I do that save wrong?

[chilly minnow]

nop

here it is

thats how unity serializes the curves

if you get the purple cube, just hit load config, and it should go away

[narrow gate]

The first time it gave me spark_spt100.json. This time it gave me plume.json

[chilly minnow]

tho be careful, if you hit save config with a purple square, it will override your config

[chilly minnow]

i see, can you show me your hierarchy pls?

[chilly minnow]

thats wierd

well dw, your progress is still being saved

[narrow gate]

I did the save from Plume, but that's where the button it. I don't think the button is in SPT100 Plume

[chilly minnow]

probably some bug on my part

yeah theres not! it should automatically get the partName

but for some reason it didnt

[narrow gate]

debugging FTW!

And beta testing...

And Early Access to bleeding edge LFO features!

[chilly minnow]

its ok tho, you'll only have to add

  "partName": "spart_spt100",

on the top of the json after

just like this has #1141807690264367135 message

[chilly minnow]

yup! but no need to add it now

[narrow gate]

Should I ditch the other one then and rename this one? I think I should

[chilly minnow]

since it will be overwritten when you save again

nono! it will still save it with that name

just keep working and when ur done

or u want to test in game

do those steps

i'll look for whats going wrong

[narrow gate]

While you do that I'll do the other three then?

[chilly minnow]

yup!

also, experiment with other values too

what i did for you plume was smth like this

[narrow gate]

It looks like I need to reload KSP...

Or does that matter?

[chilly minnow]

well it doenst for creating the plumes

what i did was smth like this

[narrow gate]

It seemed to make a diff. It wasn't letting me make the prefab variants until I reimported the game

[chilly minnow]

oh yeah, you can create prefabs with monobehaviours missing!

reimport then!

from top to bottom

• _LengthwiseBrightness With throttle, i make the plume less bright, but never 0! basically it goes from a multiply of 1 to .5
• _Falloff, with throttle, i inversly increase the falloff, making the plume shorter, with the base value of 20 (so at 100% its 0 and at 0% throttile is 20)
• _Opacity, goes from 1-0 in a bit of a quadratic way (you have that curve on the unity's presets, on the bottom of the curve window)
• _Noise, i make it have more noise the more throttle it has, from 1-.5

[narrow gate]

As a baseline all four now animate and work like the first. I'll play around with the other params.

I need to go back to the ion thruster bleng Isa made and make an SPT-100, X2, and X4 variant at some point. Shouldn't be super hard I think. Mainly a matter of working out where and how many point I need on the B-Spline for the channels. No need to mess with the central cathode or the general falloff of either set.

Then these plumes will really be working!

And your nerw tools will help me quickly make the LFO JSONs!

[chilly minnow]

also

on the part prefab

so not the one with the plumes

there should be the Plume GameObject

no need to add any component to it!

so add it!

to the original prefab

not the variant

[narrow gate]

How do I make that happen since what's in my hierarchy is now the prefab variants?

I've still got the original prefabs in the Assets folder

But what's available to me in the hierarchy is the modified thing that should not go into the game, right?

Oh, it's just like this, isn't it?

[chilly minnow]

the original prefab still exists

[chilly minnow]

yup! this!

[narrow gate]

Done x4

But what about this?

In the past I'd always apply the overrides and re-save the JSON before doing a build.

Now I've got stuff in the overrides, but I'm not sure if I should apply it. Will this make a some sort of mess with the new prefab variant being put in the addressables for the game?

The confusing part for me is that this override is in the prefab variant.

[chilly minnow]

the best way to work with prefabs

is to work INSIDE the prefab

this little step does make it a bit more confusing, thats true

to make it easier, you could create a new scene where you only work on plumes

and leave that main scene just for the normals parts

on that other scene you'd have the variants

and on the main scene, just the parts

does this sound good for you?

[narrow gate]

I'm OK needing to double click into a prefab to work on that there, but I'm uncertain what the effect of applying the override in the prefab variant would be

So I think I can double click into the prefab and then do a save JSON from there

[chilly minnow]

it will only apply to the variant

you can click Open variant there

and then click on the prefab inside the variant, and click open prefab

to go to the original prefab!

notice how 1 says Variant : Open and the other says Prefab : Open

[narrow gate]

Do I need to do it that way? Wouldn't double clicking on the addresable prefab also take me straight to it?

[chilly minnow]

yeah! it will!

[narrow gate]

OK, I think I can keep this straight.

I think I'll be OK. We'll see!

[chilly minnow]

theres no problem in exporting your plume with the part btw

might just make addressables building time a tad longer

[narrow gate]

So, my variant has overrides that need to be applied because I've made various changes to it, and I should just go ahead and apply them

But applying them is only going to impact the variant, so nbd

And the addressable prefabs all now have the Plume child for thrustTransform, so those should be good to go.