New Release Animations

[Cora Synder]

Ihave an issue with loading GLTF files with animations allocating memory but not releasing it when disposed. I think this is technically not a memory leak, since the allocated memory does not increase upon multiple load/dispose operations, but I wonder what exactly is going on and wether it is a bug.

The lack of KSP fan art animations was bothering me.

I am a long time fan of KSP with hundreds of hours well spended in the game.

I'm convinced we can bring to the community some good kerbal stories and get a good laugh on the go.

A new, longer and better animation is in early steps of production, but animations are no easy feat; every supporter joining this endeavour means more time I can spend doing this kind of things.

I really hope you like this and, as always, I'm open to questions & recommendations.

Hello dear friends! This is the very first update of the AnimatedK channel. I'm working in a new, better and longer animation of KSP. Please, if you feel like it, consider subscribing and sharing this video with your fellow KSP fans. That would really help me.

I wish the restock poodle texture looked more like the one you made... Restocks engines look almost nothing like their stock equivalents. It's like "revamping ksp's art" was replaced with "replacing ksp's art!"

Actually, since the models are made in blender I bet they could be put into ksp. It would be really awesome of you let someone who knows how to make part mods have them because (in my opinion) you poodle and rcs block textures are a lot better than the restock ones. Also, I recommend you make the bells on the poodle smaller since it looks like your version of Duna has an atmosphere were they will have terrible thrust and isp (atmosphere is too thick.) Making the bells smaller would be more scientifically accurate. However, you may want to keep all the parts authentic or I'm to naive to understand how hard this would be.

Actually,some the models are made in blender I bet they could be put into ksp. It would be really awesome of you let someone who knows how to make part mods have them because (in my opinion) you poodle and eve block textures are a lot better than the restock ones. Also, I recommend you make the bells on the poodle smaller since it looks like your version of Duna has an atmosphere were they will have terrible thrust and isp (atmosphere is too thick.) Making the bells smaller would be more scientifically accurate. However, you may want to keep all the parts authentic or I'm to naive to understand how hard this would be.

Talking about the part mods, these Blender models I'm working with are very high poly for a game engine to handle. Of course we could cheat the system with baked textures but we must realise that details sell the product. All those pipes, lights, pistons and balls I added is what it really makes the engine look nice. That added geometry goes in decrement of the game performance... a game in which performance is not its greatest achievements. So unless the modder invents some kind of modding magickery, it's not gonna be possible for the parts I made to be ported into the game.

About the engine bells, I have reasons to leave them as they are. Although what you say about the Poodle not being suitable for atmospheric operation is true, we must recall that Duna's atmosphere is very thin and has 1/15th the pressure of Kerbin's atmosphere, practically vacuum. That combined with the reduced gravity of Duna, makes the poodle engine a considerable option. I've been using this model in the game for a while now and it works like a charm. Could it be more efficient? yes, sure... but what the hell... it gets the job done. I can get from the surface of Duna to Kerbin with it. Picture on the right.

e not being suitable for atmospheric operation is true, we must recall that Duna's atmosphere is very thin and has 1/15th the pressure of Kerbin's atmosphere, practically vacuum. That combined with the reduced gravity of Duna, makes the poodle engine a considerable option. I've been using this model in the game for a while now and it works like a charm. Could it be more efficient? yes, sure... but what the hell... it gets the job done. I can get from the surface of Duna to Kerbin with it. Picture on the right.

So while the poodle would be better than it is in Kerbin it would still have pretty bad isp. Also I don't know the nature of the story that involves the bell but if it is a Danny2462 style mass driver remember that engine bell size does not really say much about power e.g. Vector vs Wolfhound.

This is really cool. I wonder if there's any chance for collaberation? As Matt Lowne loves his homebrew stories in the KSP universe. This would be a natural fit for him to contribute to.

Loving the work so far, will keep an eye on your channel for updates!

As for getting Matt Lowne to join this endeavour... I think this project is still young and needs to grow up a little. So, if you want to help, make sure to share this thread or my youtube channel with your friends.

This note is to ask whether Blender 25x is stable and whether it offers additional features to consider switching. I have been on 2.46 for quite some time. Now I am trying to figure out how I can catch up and whether additional animation features are worth the effort of learning them.

Is anyone familiar with ManCady rig? Would learning it help me with complex joint deformations? How about Dorian rig? would it bring about any improvement to complex joints? Complex joints aside, how does one rig forearms? i guess those have to be done with shapekeys?

Second: It is obvious that Blender 2.5 has a lot of improvements, and it continues growing each day. Better tools, faster etc etc. I have been using 2.5 since the first version, from modeling to animation. Simply put, 5 stars.

Second: Despite my references to time and effort investments, you might notice that I was asking where I could find more information, tutorials on the additional animation capabilities of the newer version over older versions.

Fourth: I was calling up on people with experience modeling, animating real human like characters to comment on whether newer version has added new strenghts in shoulder, hip joint deformation areas.

Thanks for your input and encouragement. I have 2.49b on all my computer. Now. Even though 2.49b uses both of my processors, 2.46 could not. I could not get the performance hike I was hoping for. This could be yet another track to open.

See when I saw videos of what Joshua (creator of BlenRig, hopefully did not misspell his name) had managed to accomplish I immediately downloaded his rig. I searched for a documentation that would explain the design and constraints of his rig, all his 200+ bones. So, I could learn from his example, and I could use a downized version of his rig on my character. Nope, what I had found did not allow me to unravel the mystery of his work. Yes, he sets the bar really high, My question is how do we catch up? I realized he uses lots of stretch to constraints, meaning there has to be bones that define what areas of the mesh to stretch by how much. The placement of the anchor and target bones for the bone spaning them, and deciding how to control the movement of the target bone defines the stretch/contraction amount. Very intricate!

Well, reading, playing with different rigs. What surprises me the skinning makes the biggest difference at times. I managed to fix some of my deformation problems by changing vertex group to bone definitions. With the same rig, adjust weights, increase overlap between bones that affect the same region. Especially those areas where multiple bones meet is a big challenge. The possibilities to try are endless. So, rig documents that do not show vertex groups per bone is not well documented, IMHO.

I also use 2.49b as it is stable and I can make IF/FK changes because in the beta version there seems to be something missing (they are working on it maybe?) but for now I am sticking to 2.49b and will move up to 2.5 when it is a proper fixed release

First, the good news: I cleaned up a lot of the layout bugs, and (thanks to Carlos) got some form of touch screen keyboard input working. The end result is that I changed the appinfo file to indicate we supported all screen sizes and inputs, which means it should be available on all platforms.

Finally we show how many puzzles remain unsolved in the main screen. This should have been a simple feature to add, but the old code base made it surprisingly hard to implement. With the rewrite, this was only a few lines of code:

We held a virtual hackfest a few weekends ago! Four people showed up, and we focused on getting this release out the door. We got most of the last release blockers done during it. Davide added Italian puzzle sets and translations, and fixed the packit CI. Rosanna finished the GNOME Mini Crosswords set and started a new, alphabetically-themed one. Federico documented how to run crosswords out of podman and got the Arrowword SVG overlay themed and working. I landed the final fixes for the tagging, and landed a bunch of build fixes to the puzzle sets.

There is serious problem with these cosmetic items - they all change some time after release. It's truly disappointing and leads to reduced fun from observing these Warclaws, plus many wasted gems on something which I wouldn't buy - if I knew about these post-release bugs/changes ?

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