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Problem with dark lightsabers


Crowley

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I've been trying to make a black lightsaber blade, which has been greatly helped by the information here and svösh's mod for black-cored lightsabers. However, I keep getting a graphical glitch where parts of the blade are transparent when viewed from the front or the back, though it looks fine from the sides. Here's a screenshot with svösh's mod to illustrate my problem:

 

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z285/Crowley9/Blacksaber.png

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I'm getting this even with svösh's black sabers mod, which I have not modified in any way and using as instructed in the readme. That simply consists of the .txi files for the lightsabers that have the line "decal 1" and in case of the purple saber, this .tga:

 

w_Lsabrepurp01.png

 

I have tried making my own black lightsabers which always have the same graphical problem. I found 90SK's Bleach mod which also has a black lightsaber, and the problem persists there as well.

 

edit: This is interesting. I've been trying to replace different lightsaber blades with my black .tga, and it changes how the glitch shows up. Replacing purple shows the transparent streaks at front and back, while for example replacing blue shows it from the side.

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That simply consists of the .txi files for the lightsabers that have the line "decal 1"
Is it just that or the following?

 

blending additive

decal 1

 

Replacing purple shows the transparent streaks at front and back, while for example replacing blue shows it from the side.
The blade planes are probably oriented differently.
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Is it just that or the following?

 

blending additive

decal 1

Only "decal 1". I tried adding the other line just now, which caused the blade to be invisible.

The blade planes are probably oriented differently.

Guess so, though I didn't know the technical term for that until now. Hmm, I'll have to try out how the Heart and Mantle reach to this treatment.

 

edit: Heart and Mantle both have the same effect. There's a wide transparent streak in the middle of the blade when you view it roughly at a 45 degree angle going back right to forward left of the character wielding the saber.

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The alpha channel is white after I make it non-transparent. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I set it to another color...

 

I'm starting to think this problem is an intrinsic part of how the blade planes are handled in KOTOR. If you look at 90SK's own picture of the black blade in his mod, you can see the same thing occurring a bit on the left side of the left blade here: http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/screenshots/File/89024/1

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The reason the alpha channel is white is because it is meant to use the black of the RGB channels to act as an alpha instead, as I said before.

 

You could try deleting the TXI and using a proper alpha, but I don't know how overlapping alphas on multiple blade planes would go. Only one way to find out I guess. You could try these in the colour and alpha channels respectively:

 

th_BladeGlow.jpg th_BladeAlpha.jpg

 

Click on the thumbnails for 512x512 images (you could shrink them, but I'd use at least 256x256).

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This alpha channel business is new to me, but I tried the best I could, yet it ended up with a transparent core. Here's how the .tga shows on GIMP.

 

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z285/Crowley9/GIMPsaber.png

 

Please disregard the actual file name. I just renamed it to directly affect the color of the lightsaber I happened to have equipped in my save file to save the time of running back to the workbench.

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This alpha channel business is new to me, but I tried the best I could, yet it ended up with a transparent core. Here's how the .tga shows on GIMP.

 

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z285/Crowley9/GIMPsaber.png

 

Please disregard the actual file name. I just renamed it to directly affect the color of the lightsaber I happened to have equipped in my save file to save the time of running back to the workbench.

 

Hmm... the only thing I can think of is have the core of the saber (the black part in the middle) be pure white in the alpha channel, because right now it looks like the saber starts getting transparent right after the center of the blade.

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I just did a test of that myself (refined alpha below), but it makes no difference. Even with a blank TXI, it still seems to want to use the RGB channels of the image as an alpha even when also using a proper alpha channel (and not being specified to use decal/blend). I wonder if it is hardcoded?

 

th_BladeAlpha2.jpg

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