DarthParametric

The process is basically vertex painting. KOTORMax added a specific tool for it (at least I don't recall it being in NWMax), however as I recall it has a bug where it sets the minimum value to 1, whereas you want a value of 0 for static verts, necessitating manual editing of the ASCII.

It uses the default Bandon textures. As per the instructions earlier in the thread:

The face distortion is presumably the bone index issue which persists with MDLEdit. Use MDLOps instead for heads. Although the public release is still v1.0.0 I see, perhaps ndix UR can chime in to confirm if the issue was fixed in that version (I can't recall). You should also report MDLEdit bugs in the MDLEdit bug thread, so that bead-v gets an alert.

Yeah, looks to me like you killed of the transparency of the original. Did you delete the alpha channel?

Weren't they used in the E3 demo? And yes, I am aware of them, but no, I don't have any plans to use them. Aside from the fact that they only exist in TSL, their animations are more or less the same as the final game mining droids, so there's nothing to be gained from using them as a base.

I believe it was reported working on Max 2015 at least, so presumably newer versions are probably alright. You'll have to try it see I guess. As to your other questions, multiple head textures are out if you want to preserve dark side transitions, because of the way texture overrides work. You could, however, do a 2x1 texture layout (e.g. 2048x1024) if you needed more pixel density/UV space without going too crazy. Tangent space normal maps are possible, thanks to the new model compilers, although the engine's implementation of them is fairly poor. Don't expect results on the level of modern engines. Odyssey doesn't use spec maps in the traditional sense. The closest it comes is an alpha mask for an environment map (i.e. cube map), which is mostly for faking specular highlights and reflections on metals. You won't get much use out of it for characters, aside from maybe some shiny hair and eyeballs. Hair planes are fine, but alpha transparency will rule out the use of envmaps, not that you'd usually want them for characters anyway, as I said. You'd be better off asking non-KOTORMax specific questions in the general modding forum.

Nah, you can see there it is using the Luke/Vader concept saber I posted above. The one in JC's overview is a much more modern styled deal.

What's the source on that Stormtrooper saber? I thought the McQuarrie concept saber looked something more akin to this: The classic image of the Stormtrooper with the saber: doesn't appear to have anything much in the way of discernible hilt detail.

Try opening changes.ini in a text editor and replacing the entirety with the following:

Here are the hilts I made for Kex: It was so long ago that I forgot that I was the one that modelled them. Apparently I never got around to texturing the Redeemer hilt. I'm sure Kex can provide you with the reference sources for the Malak and Bastila hilts. I'm not sure if you also want the Redeemer hilt, since that is from TOR (used by Orgus Din, master to the Jedi Knight player).

https://torf.mmo-fashion.com/vile-primeval-ardent-blades-lightsaber/ https://torf.mmo-fashion.com/shadowbringers-lightsaber/ Etc. Plus a bunch of now unavailable drops from flashpoints and so forth.

It should be noted that the TOR saber is just a generic hilt that Revan uses in TOR, it's not specifically his.

Oh yeah, the Orgus Din saber. I have extremely vague memories of that, but I can't find any trace of it. I still have the source files for the Bastila and Malak hilts though. Not sure what happened to the PM. Maybe I deleted it when I hit the inbox limit. Maybe forward that to me to see if there is anything in there that jogs my memory. Well like I said, you are free to use the saber if you want. You can do whatever with it - it doesn't need to be Revan's.

I know Kexikus had both Malak and Bastila hilts, because apparently I textured them (poorly it would seem) back in February 2016. I can't see a public release, and the forum doesn't appear to support PMs that old, so maybe ask Kex what the story with those is. I have an untextured Revan hilt that I gather is derived from this (which is supposedly also the canon appearance of the standard KOTOR metal pipe). You are welcome to it if you want. Also, completely unrelated to anything canonical, but I have a model based on this physical fan hilt, made by a guy called EvilHenchman over on TheForce.Net forums circa 2006. I really like the design, and the version I did had probably the best hilt textures I ever made.

There's always the prospect of sub-contracting some of the work out, assuming you have specific designs you can point to. I might have a few bits and pieces buried in the archives if you are looking for canonical hilts.

They should be in the appropriate 80xDRO.mod file, depending on which specific module the character/s is/are in.

Yeah I can't help you there. Some light Googling suggests that even for MediaWiki all the cross-auth IPB plugin options have been dead for at least 5 years.

That was just the obvious example. I'm sure these days there must be a million alternatives. As long as the end result is more or less the same, I doubt anyone cares about the specifics of what's under the hood, so that would be up to you. To be honest I was hoping that IPB would have some sort of native option, seeing as all the big forum scripts seem keen to be a one-stop CMS these days, but I couldn't see anything wiki-like. Hey, you're the one that said in another thread to keep hassling you about it. That's not really the ideal choice. I could just roll my own if it came to that, but then you'd have to get people to create new accounts to use it, you'd have to spam links to it all over, etc. Having it directly wedded to the forum is the logical way to go.

However you define it, I would think "proper" would completely invalidate "nothing fancy" and "simple".

True, KOTOR cradles the barrel rather than using a chainsaw grip style like TOR, but it is two-handed at least.

I wouldn't say that. The heavy repeating blaster in Sithspecter's High Quality Blasters mod has a barrel rotation animation as I recall: K1 - http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/861-high-quality-blasters/ TSL - http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/915-high-quality-blasters/ Sithspecter also made a M134 A-2 Vulcan Minigun mod way back in the day (the date on the file I have here says Sept 2008). I don't think that was ever uploaded to Deadlystream. Perhaps he could be persuaded to update it and post it here.

I'd suggest the closest you are going to get is the Clone Wars Armor Pack for K1 and TSL.

I think that's one of the things you "grow out of" once you realise that no matter how many polys your model has, no matter how many pixels your textures have, your saber models all end up looking like a blurry silver (or insert other colour here) tube regardless. I'd say don't feel too bad about focusing on non-visual elements.

The Dragon Age Toolset wiki will give a rough idea of the sort of thing I am proposing. The original was nuked by EA, but this is a mirror: http://www.datoolset.net/wiki/Main_Page It has a mix of your usual wiki-style descriptive pages as well as tutorials.