Lightsaber Crafting 101

Building your own Lightsaber Hilt for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

By Virtue

(www.thejediacademy.net)

Introduction


For new, and even experienced editors for JK3, building a custom hilt can be quite tricky. Not for the fact that the process of doing it is hard, but because finding tutorials that explain how to do it fully are very rare. Usually, one would have to scour the internet for many different tutorials that explain how to do it only in part and try to put all of this knowledge together - if you can even manage to find it all.

So I decided to make this tutorial that will take you step-by-step through the entire process of building your own custom hilt, skinning it and getting it into the game.

 
 
The Tools You Will Need
 
(Update - 11/03/2007: I have been getting alot of E-Mails saying that the MD3 Exporter is no longer available at the link I provided, so I have now hosted it myself. It comes with a README, so please refer to that for instructions on where to unzip the file)
 
GMAX - This is a freeware version of 3D Studio Max designed especially for game-based editing.
GMAX MD3 Importer Plugin - This plugin for GMAX will allow you to import MD3 files into your GMAX project. Simply unzip the file to your GMAX/scripts directory. Full credit goes to Mr. Chris Cookson for this.
GMAX MD3 Exporter Plugin - This plugin for GMAX will allow you to export your work as an MD3 file. Full credit goes to Pop N Fresh for this.

MD3 View - A tool that comes with the JK2 Editing Tools pack. This program will allow you to export your MD3 files to GLM files.

Image Editing Software - Such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro will do. Basically anything that allows you to edit an image and save it as a jpeg.
 
 
Index