How do lightsabers work?

[samuel]

Ok, i want to mod lightsabers .ect, but first - how does the blade work?

 

In gmax you can see the hilt and two planes at right angles to each other making an X shape. This is obviously the blade, but how does the blade effect work? Is it just at texture applied to those planes?

 

Also, how does it 'ignite'. I know this all sounds fairly newb, but some questions just need to be answered. I have made saber mods before, but just never understood the system lol...plus i have been absent for a while

 

[oldflash]

Maybe I'm wrong with what I say but in this way I see lightsabers:

Ingame model have 3 planes but only 2 planes on ascii model. Beside those 2 planes which you see in gmax the game put another one on x axix and rotate first 2 with +/- 30 degree. This plane (which is put by game) have that "motion blur" animation and link first 2 to him in order to have "ignition" effect. That effect is actualy a scale size animation from 0% to 100% for growing up. Also, this plane is linked to hilt pivot and mapping coordonates are apply for first 2 no matter what you set for those. I was never succes to "touch" this plane.

Another thing. For original lightsabers (1 to 10 for regular and 1 to 9 for short and doublebladed) texture for this plane is set deep in engine core no matter what blade texture you set for that lightsaber (meaning: on red lightsaber you ALWAYS have one plane mapped with w_lsabrered01.tga - that plane which have this "motion blur" effect).

[cchargin]

Hello,

 

Oldflash got most of it. But there is a little more to add.

 

In a model the lightsaber blade consists of 4 planes. When you get a lightsaber into nwmax you only see 2 because 2 of the planes are a mesh type that nwmax does not support. So mdlops exports the unsupported meshes as "dummy" place holders. I don't know exactly how the unsupported mesh type works, it most likely is as oldflash suggests the the motion blur component of the blade.

 

The ignition of the blade is done with animations as oldflash covered. But nwmax, once again, does not support the non-uniform scale animation type that the blade uses.

 

The texture names in a model can be changed using the renamer function in mdlops, or using a hex editor. Be careful with the hex editor! Don't just do a "find and replace"! That might change more than you want.

 

So for now if you want to mod lightsabers you will have to use the replacer function in mdlops to workaround these problems.

 

I hope to have a better workaround in the next mdlops. If I can get it to work that is...

[samuel]

Thanx for the help guys, but i have one more question

 

I found the texture w_lsabrered01.tga, but how can that little circle possibly be mapped onto the planes to resemble a lightsaber?

[Darkkender]

Thanx for the help guys, but i have one more question

 

I found the texture w_lsabrered01.tga, but how can that little circle possibly be mapped onto the planes to resemble a lightsaber?

 

Effectively that little circle is applied horizontally across that plane and stretched from one end of the mesh to the other. Then it does the same for the other blade mesh planes. If you were to remove the txi file for a custom blade color you would have a lightsaber with a bunch of planes visibly on the screen and the textures stretched across the plane.