Hilt Models and more

[Farrok]

I'm wondering if theres a way to use different hilt models for the standard lightsaber. The guides on this forum have been WONDERFUL and i've made several lightsabers and made some modifications to certain force powers. I really like the short saber hilt model, and i was wondering if theres a way to associate that with the normal length lightsaber, so that i have a long saber with the hilt of a short one, or if the model and saber length are inextricably entwined. also i'm curious as to what exactly each of the four color references in the hex for w_lghtsbr_0xx.mdl file affects. how exactly does the first reference to the w_lsabre<color>01 change the saber different than the fourth reference?

[Achilles]

Originally posted by Farrok
I'm wondering if theres a way to use different hilt models for the standard lightsaber. The guides on this forum have been WONDERFUL and i've made several lightsabers and made some modifications to certain force powers. I really like the short saber hilt model, and i was wondering if theres a way to associate that with the normal length lightsaber, so that i have a long saber with the hilt of a short one, or if the model and saber length are inextricably entwined. also i'm curious as to what exactly each of the four color references in the hex for w_lghtsbr_0xx.mdl file affects. how exactly does the first reference to the w_lsabre<color>01 change the saber different than the fourth reference?

I'm winging it here:

The model for the saber blade is broken out into 4 parts, I assume so that the game can accurately show the blade passing through enemies and objects, as well as saber activation. Usually, we change these four model references so that the blade is all one color, however you can change some but not others to create a multi-colored lightsaber (like T7nowhere's cool set).

As far as your other question, that is a little beyond my understanding of models.

I hope that this helps.

[Farrok]

alright i'll just mess around with it and see what i can come up with, then one other thing though. whenever i try to alter the texture on a saber hilt with photoshop, all i get is the very faint lines of the texture on the checkered background, which is not useful at all since i cant tell what part of the hilt i'm changing. if i open the .tga in say quicktime, however, i get the clearly defined hilt model, and i can actually see where its slightly colored. its basically transparent in photoshop! how can remove that channel and see the coloring of the hilt so i can edit the texture without as much guesswork?

[cchargin]

Hello all,

I really like the short saber hilt model, and i was wondering if theres a way to associate that with the normal length lightsaber

Nope (for now). For a light saber model the blade and the hilt are considered 1 complete model.

also i'm curious as to what exactly each of the four color references in the hex for w_lghtsbr_0xx.mdl file affects. how exactly does the first reference to the w_lsabre<color>01 change the saber different than the fourth reference?

Achillies is on the right track.

A single blade light saber model (long or short) has 5 meshes. 4 for the blades, and 1 for the hilt.

A double blade light saber has 9 meshes. 4 for each blade, and 1 for the hilt.

Each of these meshes has a texture map associated with it. So, when you hex edit a single blade light saber you will see texture map names 4 times for the blade meshes, and 1 time for the hilt mesh.

Interesting trivia: Each mesh for a saber blade is 12 polygons.

I imagine you could get some pretty weird effects by having a different texture map for each blade mesh.

[Mav]

If say you 1 green 1 blue 1 red and 1 yellow texture map for each of the 4 meshes what ends up happening is the blade color sort of rotates and switches between all four of the colors it looks sort of weird so I didn't keep it...lol