A new Sword for Ajunta Pall based on the "Book of Sith" Legends Reference book

[jonpolkenobi]

More than a request, I want some guide and advice for making this mod by myself, I have made my own items' mods before and change some items' descriptions to make them more lore-friendly or work over already existing mods. I'm still a beginner, so If you could guide me with this I would be grateful.

This mod would consist on changing the Sword of Ajunta Pall (which is a double-bladed sword) into a single-bladed sword inspired in this Sith Sword from the "Book of Sith" (written by Daniel Wallace, who describe that this Sith Sword was improved by immersing it in a bath of "blood spilled in wrath), just 'cause it looks and sound cool as hell, and I would love to use it with the Spectral Ajunta Pall mod:

I have some experience on 3D modeling oriented to enginering (like Inventor, SolidWorks & Freecad) 'cause of college, but not in videogames 3d modelling. Fortunately there's a user called Jonatan Santana that already 3D modeled this Sith Sword using Substance Painter and upload it on Sketchfab on many formats (dae, .gltf, .usdz, .glb).

I already asked for Jonatan's permision (the model has the CC Atribution License) and I'm awaiting his approval. But I want to know if the files format (dae, .gltf, .usdz, .glb), number of poligons, or scale of the model allows me to make the mod. If it works, what programs do I need to make the mod (like Kotor Tool, or Holocron Toolset), how can I scale the model (in case it's dimensions are not the right ones), how do I assign this the single-bladed sword (and character) the correct movements (instead of the double-bladed ones). I would be really grateful if you can help me with those questions and give me some of your guide. May the force be with you!

 

Edited December 28, 2025 by jonpolkenobi

[JCarter426]

Broadly, you would need to:

1. Convert the model from one of its currently supported formats to the MDL/MDX format supported by the game. This can be done in a 3D modeling program by importing the model together with one of the existing game models and making some adjustments.
2. Change the item's item type to something else (e.g. Long Sword) by modifying the BaseItem field in the item UTI file.

Here is a list of common modding tools. It isn't complete, but it's a good start. Additionally, you would need Blender, 3ds Max, or Gmax for the first part.

[DarthParametric]

Blender has built-in GLTF support, so the GLB would be your best bet.

Note that the model was textured for a modern PBR rendering pipeline. KOTOR uses an extremely basic Blinn-Phong based renderer, so you'll need to convert the textures to work with that. Fortunately it's an extremely simplistic set of metals for the most part. Unfortunately, KOTOR doesn't support specular, but instead tries to fake it with cubemaps. Getting metal to look good is challenging. One other thing of note is that while KOTOR does support normal maps, its implementation is poor, so detail relying on normal maps won't show up as well.

As to the use, you don't need to request permission. It's already licensed for use with attribution. That's the entire point of the license.

[jonpolkenobi]

Hey there, I've finally had had the time to start making the mod, and I would like to know if someone could give some help. With Blender and KotorBlender I could import the .glb model, used an .mdl short-sword file extracted with HolocronTool to match the correct size and position of this new sword model, and changed the texture/color of every single component with some simple colors instead, and I obtain something like this:

Then I create the "square" .tga for the texture (both raw .tga and normal .tga) on 1024x1024, and with tga2tpc transform it to .tpc. The final texture looks like this:

And like this without those lines (I know it doesn't look really good, but it works)

Then I created an .uti file with with HolocronTool that looks like this:

So I have all of this files on the Overide folder (hadn't done the little icon, nor establish the "power"/"stats" of the sword/items, cause don't know how to do it yet)

 

And with Kotor Save Editor I add this sword to an saved game, although while doing it, seems there's a problem with the textures (.tpc), as you can see here:

But still I could add the sword item on save. Then played the game and used it on my character, it's the white square you can see over there with no name:

And I can use it during gameplay with the short sword movements (I think), but for some reason it has no texture (which I think is related with the TPC warning I mentioned before). So I would like to know if someone could help me with this, to see were's the moment that the texture doesn't load or give me any advice of how to make this new item work on the game.

If anyone could help me with this, I would be reallly grateful!

[DarthParametric]

You're assigning a material in Blender. Odyssey doesn't use materials (except for walkmeshes), it uses direct texture assignment. Select the mesh, go to the Object tab, and in the KOTOR sub-panel look for the "Main Texture" field. Put the texture name in there, like so (vanilla example):

You don't appear to have an icon, which is why KSE is freaking out and it's blank in-game. Icons have to follow a strict naming pattern defined by the item type and referencing the variation number. In this case, your icon needs to be named iw_shortswrd_004. I would suggest using TGA for icons just to stop KSE's errors. Also don't make your icon bigger than 256x256, because KSE doesn't scale them.

Speaking of variation numbers, you're best to use a higher random number beyond the vanilla range. Less chance of a clash with other mods that way. The available range goes up to 256, so I'd use something like, I dunno, 139.

[jonpolkenobi]

3 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

You're assigning a material in Blender. Odyssey doesn't use materials (except for walkmeshes), it uses direct texture assignment. Select the mesh, go to the Object tab, and in the KOTOR sub-panel look for the "Main Texture" field. Put the texture name in there, like so (vanilla example):

You don't appear to have an icon, which is why KSE is freaking out and it's blank in-game. Icons have to follow a strict naming pattern defined by the item type and referencing the variation number. In this case, your icon needs to be named iw_shortswrd_004. I would suggest using TGA for icons just to stop KSE's errors. Also don't make your icon bigger than 256x256, because KSE doesn't scale them.

Speaking of variation numbers, you're best to use a higher random number beyond the vanilla range. Less chance of a clash with other mods that way. The available range goes up to 256, so I'd use something like, I dunno, 139.

Thank you SO MUCH!

Just made that Blender's Mesh/Material change and it finally works! Sword texture is right there

And just made this improvised/provisional Icon with a PrintScreen on Blender, I'll fix it later:

I'll be improving it on this days, and looking for to make this item to be "scripted" to be Ajunta Pall sword, which is my final goal.

Thank you so much for your help and advices. Love this community!

[DarthParametric]

You should look at how vanilla faked metal works using envmaps (i.e. cubemaps). Basically you create a mask in the diffuse texture's alpha channel, and then create text file with the same name as the texture and the TXI extension. In that you can add various instructions that tell the engine how to render the associated texture/s. In this case, you'd want something like 

envmaptexture CM_Baremetal

If you are converting your diffuse to a TPC, you'd need to convert it again and make sure you tell TGA2TPC to use the TXI. It will then embed the TXI data into the TPC (TGAs use a loose TXI file).