General Question Questions from a new developer: Blueprints, Textures, and Spacecraft3

[OrtSurfer]

Hey Guys (and Gals?)!
Just had a few starting questions.

First off. Blue Prints;

Are there any good blue print making programs that any of you have used for making vessels? Iv'e been fighting between making an inaccurate blueprint in Paint, or drawing one by hand. Is there a better way?

Textures;

The tutorial by ar81 says to seperate the each differently to-be txtured part from the whole, texture it, and then reassemble it. What is your technique?

Vinka's DLL coding

I haven't experimented with this yet, but before I do, I'd like to know, for a future project, if 1) it's possible to have a child moving part that is moved completely seperate from the parent moving part (I press 1, part A deploys. I press 2 Part A1 Deploys from Part A)

2) Can moving parts be moved auto-incrementally: I press 1, part rotates to 10*, again, rotates to 20*.

I assume that Stock atlantis's Robotic Arm is coded in a similiar way, but not sure if it was supported under Vinka's spacecraft.

I hope my questions arent too tedious and obvious.
Thank you!

 

[Loru]

1. Blueprints: I personally use Corel Draw but any vector drawing tool will do IMO (I prefer vector graphics in blueprints since you can work on blueprint without loosing quality by scaling and rotating objects).

2. From performance POV it's better to use as little number of textures as possible eg it's better to use one 1024x1024px texture than 4 512x512 ones

3. Rotations. Parent-Child are possible in sc3 modules and it works quite well.
As for incremental changes in sc3 you'd need to asign each increment separate animation so for example 1 - rotates 10deg, 2 - rotates another 10deg etc.

 

[OrtSurfer]

2. Okay, So you're suggesting I try to make a texture for the entire vessel rather than making texture for the body, wing, window, and so on?

3. So I would need to assign a button for each increment? Is it not possible to code it like trim with larger increments and range of motion?

 

[Donamy]

2. Okay, So you're suggesting I try to make a texture for the entire vessel rather than making texture for the body, wing, window, and so on?

3. So I would need to assign a button for each increment? Is it not possible to code it like trim with larger increments and range of motion?

You can use the Robotic animations to set increments, that change when you advance to the next step.

"leftshift + numpad6/4" switch between animations, while "leftshift + numpad4/6" perform the animation.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

2. Okay, So you're suggesting I try to make a texture for the entire vessel rather than making texture for the body, wing, window, and so on?

It probably wouldnt be possible to cover a entire good vessel mesh with one texture, its just important that you use as few different textures as possible with the whole thing. A good method I used when creating the Shuttle-D was to create a group of say 3,4,5 small-medium textures to use anywhere a metal texture was required. That way you can reuse the same texture for say, a fuel tank, a switch, and a RCS thruster without needing an individual one for each. Its faster that way :thumbup:.

 

[OrtSurfer]

Is Vinka's SC3 used for coding moving parts? or is that another program? It was my understanding that VSC3 was used, but I can't find anything in ar81's tutorial about that. :shrug:

 

[Izack]

Is Vinka's SC3 used for coding moving parts? or is that another program? It was my understanding that VSC3 was used, but I can't find anything in ar81's tutorial about that. :shrug:

It is - there are many addons out there with animations through SC3 - the code for such things is located in Config\Spacecraft. Off the top of my head, try Donamy's addons - they should contain good examples of many types of SC3 animation.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

As to blueprints, I don't use them at all, I sketch in 3D after thinking up the basic idea/concept. Then go through a process of refinement to get to what I want to the required tolerances. But I should probably caveat that with the fact most of my orbiter 3D work has been ground-based architecture so far.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Is Vinka's SC3 used for coding moving parts? or is that another program? It was my understanding that VSC3 was used, but I can't find anything in ar81's tutorial about that. :shrug:

Spacecraft3 is a package that allows developers to create addon vessels with a configuration file instead of using more complex C++ code. I would suggest it as a first step, testing the mesh & concept idea, but Its much better to learn how to code your vessel in C++. That allows for more complex features, UMMU & UCGO support, better stability, & not needing to rely on a rather old (~6 years now :shifty package for your addon to work.

 

[OrtSurfer]

Spacecraft3 is a package that allows developers to create addon vessels with a configuration file instead of using more complex C++ code. I would suggest it as a first step, testing the mesh & concept idea, but Its much better to learn how to code your vessel in C++. That allows for more complex features, UMMU & UCGO support, better stability, & not needing to rely on a rather old (~6 years now :shifty package for your addon to work.

That was one of my initial concerns, using the more aged VSP3 and it's compatibility with 2010p1.

I am unfamiliar with C++, What would be a good program to operate it and where might I find a good tutorial on useing it?


Thanks again for all your guy's help. It's very helpful and enlightening, to know the struggle of getting things looking smooth, working smooth, and producing a quality addon, and I'm just getting getting started!:lol:

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

That was one of my initial concerns, using the more aged VSP3 and it's compatibility with 2010p1.

I am unfamiliar with C++, What would be a good program to operate it and where might I find a good tutorial on useing it?


Thanks again for all your guy's help. It's very helpful and enlightening, to know the struggle of getting things looking smooth, working smooth, and producing a quality addon, and I'm just getting getting started!:lol:

I believe youre going to need Visual C++ off of this page

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2010-express

and, then load this solution in VC++ 2010

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5251"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5251[/ame]

VC++ 2010 will take quite a while to download & install, so make sure youve got time on your hands before you try. Once youve done that let me know & I can walk you through the next steps

 

[Izack]

C++ is not the most beginner-friendly language in the world. It assumes at least some prior knowledge of OOP and computerspeak from the user. There is however some good documentation and tutorials here: www.cplusplus.com/

Orbiterwiki has a category for addon development tutorials, including C++ development tutorials aimed speicifically at Orbiter addon development.

 

[Urwumpe]

C++ is not the most beginner-friendly language in the world. It assumes at least some prior knowledge of OOP and computerspeak from the user. There is however some good documentation and tutorials here: www.cplusplus.com/

I would like to disagree. It took me only 4 weeks to learn to professional level (assist C++ development in a large CAE project) with basic OOP knowledge from TurboPascal.

It is not beginner-friendly as in "You can speak English to me". But it has a simple clear grammar, not many keywords you need to learn and can be used even without needing to know all of it, like you have for some other languages.

The hardest part is learning the concepts of OOP, not C++. If you have no clue about "Object-oriented programming", no language that is based on OOP will be easy.

 

[Izack]

I would like to disagree. It took me only 4 weeks to learn to professional level (assist C++ development in a large CAE project) with basic OOP knowledge from TurboPascal.

It is not beginner-friendly as in "You can speak English to me". But it has a simple clear grammar, not many keywords you need to learn and can be used even without needing to know all of it, like you have for some other languages.

The hardest part is learning the concepts of OOP, not C++. If you have no clue about "Object-oriented programming", no language that is based on OOP will be easy.

I agree here, and C++ compares favourably to other languages I've experienced; my only point is if someone asked me "what is programming like?" I would not respond "Here, this is C++, have fun." I would rather show them amusing manipulations of Python or some such language, and then introduce them to algorithms, object-orientation, etc.

I may be wrong, but it seems like the OP here does not have basic OOP knowledge.