How does the lightsaber work?

[samuel]

Hi all,

 

Nope, I dont want to know how to build myself a lightsaber, although, if someone has made a real one, plz PM me

But I was wondering how the saber works in kotor. I have had a shot at modding it before and found what I beleive to be the blade texture, which is basically a black background, blue circle with a white shape in the middle (for the core?). From what I can gather, the blade of the lightsaber is just two planes. How is this used as the blade? Is that circle texture stretch across the length of the blade? How is the 'black' removed so that it is just the glow?

 

I just want to understand it so that I can modify the blade and fully understand what I'm doing, instead of trial and error

[Canderis]

If by modify the blade you mean re-texturing it, if not you are out of luck. From what I've gathered, the black is invisible due to the TXI file

blending additive

decal 1

It makes all the black invisible.

The center (white) is the core. It is unwraped due to a UWV map, and it is not particularly good. So you can't add extreme detail. I think all you can do is change the color, or make it a bunch of colors.

[samuel]

Thanks mate! That makes sense, but how do they give it the rounded tip then? This might be a tad unrelated, but I don't suppose you know how the motion blur effect is acheived also?

[Canderis]

The rounded tip may be also a result of the TXI, and the motion blur is something, i think, is handled in animations. Not quite sure though..

 

 

EDIT: Looks to me that the planes are rounded in the model file, could just be my screen though.

[samuel]

Ah right, interesting stuff. A better lightsaber effect than Jedi Outcast I think, and simpler than I expected!

[DarthParametric]

From what I can gather, the blade of the lightsaber is just two planes.

It's four planes. You only ever see a maximum of two planes in Gmax/Max (for a single hilt). It's a legacy of the way MDLOps makes the ASCII model.

 

Looks to me that the planes are rounded in the model file, could just be my screen though.

I think they start out with the tops of the planes angled, as seen in this pic -

 

 

However, after export, it seems like the top of at least two of the planes end up square, which explains why the blades of custom sabers never look quite as good as the defaults -

 

[samuel]

Sorry about the sizeable necro guys, but I've got a few further questions.

 

I've been mucking around with this in max a bit, but even with opacity on when you view the blade from certain angles you get the blue glow from one plane interfering with the white core of the next. How does it look so good in the game?