Recent content by Countdown84

Still working it all out, but right now: 1 general one with all sorts of futuristic addons, including high res outer planets 1 for historic / realistic addons like AMSO, SSU, Mercury, etc. 1 "Test" installation for addon development and testing addons before I put them in my main install 1 beta...

This addon is simple flag for use with UMMU astronauts. It now includes flags from a wide variety of countries as well as several space agencies and international bodies. Supports skinning and custom textures. Create your own flag and plant it all over the solar system! I'd really...

That's 'bout all I have ta say ta y'all 'bout that. :-) Cheers to a great state! I was born and raised in Houston and did my undergrad at UT Austin (obviously). I'm in North Carolina now for grad school and I have to say I don't miss the heat, but I definitely miss the BBQ and Tex-Mex! I...

This addon is intended as a more futuristic rendition of the Carina satellite included in the default Orbiter installation.  More than anything, I put this together to practice my 3D modeling skills. It features: -Full DGIV payload compatibility -Full XR-series payload compatibility -A...

Wow, this sounds GREAT, Face! Ever since PreludeII came out I've lamented that more bases haven't become UMMU - friendly, but I never dreamed there would be a way to make that happen without individual base .dlls WHAP, I think you've found your "clever coder." I'll put in a vote for a Dialog...

SOLVED! PROBLEM SOLVED! Let this be a warning to ther Blender users - if you rotate any meshgroups in OBJECT mode, the vertex normals are not updated appropriately - leading to the strange lighting issues that I've been wrestling with. The solution is to always make sure you are in EDIT mode...

This is indeed confusing. I think many of us tend to think of "complex" in the context of technology - implying high levels of organization and structure. That context can be misleading here. In the chemical sense, suppose you have a solution of pure water. This is very simple, also very...

Strictly speaking, I'm not sure that's correct. If you consider the whole system (the cup of hot water AND its surroundings), the heat (energy) does not decrease because of conservation of energy. Nevertheless, the entropy does increase. There is no conservation of entropy, so it's possible...

From a qualitative standpoint, I was taught to think of entropy as a measure of the "spread-outedness" of energy. For example, a cup of boiling hot water contains a lot of thermal energy, concentrated into the water molecules it contains. As the water cools, the thermal energy doesn't go away...

Thank you all VERY much for your helpful comments. I've re-done the high-poly surfaces and gotten the poly count much lower, but I still can't get it to export to Orbiter properly. I'm at a complete loss here. Let me explain what I've found: -When I first export my blender mesh to Orbiter...

What exactly do you mean by "spotting dolly?" As to the rover, here is a pre-alpha screen of a small UMMU rover I'm working on. I am using this project as a real first step in 3D modeling though, so the mesh is taking a long time to refine. I'm also a novice at programming, so I can't say...

That looks a LOT better, liber! Can you please explain what you did? Also, what is the advantage of turning this into a SC3 vessel?

Thank you, George, I had already found that fix for the export script. I was finally able to solve the vertex normal / inverted lighting problems by simply re-importing the orbiter mesh into Blender, then exporting it again. Apparently somewhere in this process the normals get recalculated...

Here are my 2 cents: I favor an equatorial location I dislike the idea of runways. It just doesn't seem realistic at all to me. I do, however, like the idea of a wide-open landing area (with larger pads) somewhat removed from the main area #1 feature on my list is one simple "active base"...

Good news! I got it working simply by repeating the steps above. I exported from blender, used Mesh Wizard to merge identical verts and generate normals, and voila! It worked this time. After that, I was able to re-import the mesh to Blender and mess with the smoothing groups without...