Starkillers Lightsaber a idea

[svösh]

@DarthParametric yes link all 4 blades = the 2 planes and 2 helpers named plane

 

I see the dilemma now from the pics of your rig, basically I would treat this saber like you would any other except unlink the 4 blades from the old hilt and move them down in to position until they are seated where the exposed crystal is. Then link them all up to your new hilt, the only oddness I can foresee is when the blades fan out from some of the anim attacks it will bisect your hilt from the center where your blade truly begins.

 

your hilt should still be the same hight as malaks in the scene and share the same pivot alignment

 

Now link your blades to your hilt and the hilt to the anim dummy add tri mesh and export away.

 

Give that a go

 

svösh

[DarthParametric]

Ahah! Thanks svösh, that seems to have cracked it. The hand positioning still needs some fine tuning, but it's more or less where it needs to be:

 

 

I had actually thought when originally playing with it that moving the blades would be the easiest solution, but I didn't think you could do that as I didn't know the replacing process would change their position. I was under the impression that all it did was swap the hilts. Speaking of which, when doing the replacing I also replaced the blades as I wasn't sure whether this was required or not. Doesn't seem to have hurt at any rate.

 

By the way, concerning the blade helpers; should I position them at the emitter like in a normal hilt? I left them in their original position in relation to the blade planes (i.e. moved all four together as a group) which meant they sit about a quarter of the way down the hilt. What exactly is their function in the game? My guess was that they designated where the fanning out started during swing animations.

[svösh]

Ha good job!!! I knew something would give in eventually and force the rig to do your will

 

Np mate happy to help.

 

If I recall when cchargin was cracking the sabers he came across some funky animated mesh he didn't know how to process. So I believe he had mdlops replace those 2 planes with helpers. If you edit a custom named blade texture and leave out the txi you will see there are 4 planes that make each blade. Or the helpers are there to control the animations of the on and off states I'm not sure.

 

So what you did was right keep the plane helpers and planes together i'm not sure if you had to replace the blades as well , basically the positioning of all the linked elements in the rig are saved and transfered over to the new hilt. you could try it again in a fast test

no need to export. Just rename the one in override now to back it up then just use the new ascii and replacer it. but just switch the hilt see if the blades are in the same position. Then we all know for the future.

 

later if you feel like it you just have to move the pivot up a touch if you want to. But it's looking good did you lose count of how many times it was compiled ?

 

svösh

[Mono_Giganto]

That lightsaber looks pretty cool. As a suggestion from someone used to working low-poly, you could probably get away with removing those six side-screws and just texturing them onto the handle itself. Once you get the hand placement down, they probably won't be too visible, and as small as they come out in game, it would be tough to notice anyway.

 

Just a suggestion if you're looking to save some polys.

[DarthParametric]

Thanks, but I'm pretty happy with it at 773 polys. Dropping the spheres would only lose about 50 polys, so it's not worth the hassle to bother with.

 

I'm pretty much done with it - just need to do some testing and then I'll release it.

 

did you lose count of how many times it was compiled ?

I think the exact amount was too many.

[Mono_Giganto]

Oh, my mistake, I thought you had said somewhere that it was in the 1200 range. 773 is very good, forget I said anything.

[DarthParametric]

Yeah the original mesh was around 1100, but if you look at the edit I made to that post you'll see that I revised the mesh and dropped the poly count down significantly. It's actually one of the lower poly count sabers I've done.