The rotors shader can be used for creating blimp, helicopter, and plane propeller vehicle sub-meshes.
This article assumes you are familiar with rotors shader prop/building asset creation and regular vehicle asset creation.
LZ-120 Bodensee by GiometryE using custom propellers.
The textures work just like they would for any rotors shader prop .
The mesh is modeled and UV mapped as usual.
Use a format which supports vertex colors, such as FBX (2015 or older) or DAE.
The vertex colors control various aspects of the rotors propellers.
The red channel controls the visibility of the rotors.
For blimps 0 means the rotors will be fully visible when spinning and 255 means the rotors will be fully visible when stopped.
Values between 0 and 255 can also be used to always have partial visibility.
The green channel determines which of the tire parameters (as they will be defined in the script) the rotor will use. 0 means it will use tire parameter 0, 8 means it will use tire parameter 1, 16 means it will use tire parameter 2 and so on.
The blue channel defines around which axis the rotor will spin.
0 means it will spin around the Y-axis, like a helicopter rotor.
255 means it will spin around the X-axis, like a vehicle wheel, or the Z-axis, like a plane propeller.
To make the rotor spin around the Z-axis, the blue channel needs to be 255 and also the FlipXZ variable in the script must be set to true, which means the final asset will require the Rotors FlipXZ mod .
The LOD is not animated, so it doesn't need to be vertex painted.
Because the game recalculates vertex colors when importing vehicle meshes or sub-meshes, it's necessary to import your rotors sub-mesh as a prop first. To make it easier, save it using a simple name, use the same name for the file name and the asset name. Once it's saved, reload the game.
Once the game is reloaded, import or load your vehicle, and import the rotors vehicle sub-mesh.
There are 2 scripts, which you will need to run - one to copy the vertex colors from the prop to the vehicle sub-mesh, and another to apply the rotors shader and tyre parameters.
The ID of the sub-mesh you want to copy the vertex colors to.
The name of the prop you imported before. Formatted as "filename.Asset Name_Data".
The ID of the sub-mesh you want to apply the rotors shader to.
FlipXZ variable if necessary, as described in the blue vertex paint section.
Set the amount of "tires" - how many different rotors there are.
Each vector describes the pivot coordinates of the rotor, the point around which that rotor will spin.
Which of the tire parameter vectors a rotor uses depends on the vertex paint of it, as described in the green vertex paint section.
Keep in mind that ingame the Y-axis represents height, so the Y and Z-axis are swapped compared to what 3D software usually uses. It's likely that you will need to invert positive values to negative and vice versa for X and Z coordinates, depending on what 3D software you use.