Before we actually start making a part it’s a good idea to make sure you grasp what it is you’re trying to make. You might be tempted to dive right into smashing shapes together in Blender, but you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you at least check to make sure you have a firm grasp of your goal.

Balancing

To put it in business-y terms, what’s the value proposition of your mod? Why would people want to use it, and why do you want to make it? There’s no right or wrong answer to these questions, but things can change unexpectedly in your process and stuff is fluid; ensuring you know the why will help ground your decision-making.

In the case of engines, here’s some questions to mull over:

• Is this meant to synergise with an existing mod? What do you have to do to make sure it feels congruent with the set?
• Are you making this to address a gap in mods? Do existing mods exist? What’s lacking about them that you think you can do better?
• Is this a very functional part, or do you want to focus on aesthetic quality? What kind of aesthetic are you going for? Are you trying for something stockalike, or something to look like an expansion of another, existing mod?
• How will this balance? Do you even care about balance at all? What stats should it have? How will that affect the visual and physical design of the part?

Ideate and sketch ideas

Again, it’s tempting to just jump into Blender and start making stuff, but gathering visual inspiration, references, and sketches goes a long way to preventing creative block. Even spending half an hour doodling on a napkin or poking around Wikipedia can go a long way. Below are some sketches I did, along with some notes for the Swallow methalox engine. Some of these concepts I’ll probably even re-use for other engines.

Another method I found quite useful is to “kitbash” in the game for inspiration: take some existing engines, structural parts, engine plates, multi-couplers, whatever, and begin combining them in different ways to generate ideas.

Remember, asset creation is more of an art than a science at this point—be creative and let loose.