Tools you will need:
It's a bummer when an author puts out a hilt for KotOR2, but then you prefer playing KotOR1! Sometimes it's the opposite. Worry not! Any average Joe with the right tools can convert a hilt for one game to work for the other! This tutorial will cover converting a K2 hilt to work for K1, but you should be able to easily reverse it if you need to.
- First, since we are converting to K1, we want to go into KotOR Tool and extract a base K1 lightsaber hilt. I will use w_lghtsbr_001 in this example, although you may want to choose the lightsaber that has the color blade you want (if you know which it is) to save some time later. The models for the hilts for K1 are located in BIFs / items. In K2 they are located in BIFs / models. Make sure to extract both the MDL and MDX of the model you will be using. For this example, I have extracted w_lghtsbr_001.mdl and w_lghtsbr_001.mdx to my desktop, for easy access.
- The next step will be to find the hilt you want to convert to K1 (or K2). For this example I will use one of my own hilts. Currently I have it labeled at w_lghtsbr_080. What you will want to do is use MDLOps to compile the custom hilt that you are converting to its ASCII form. To do this, open MDLOps and click "Select file", then find the MDL of your custom hilt. Make sure you have the MDL and the MDX of this hilt in the same directory! Click "read and write model" and the ascii model should be created. This is what we need, so if you want move it to your desktop (or wherever you put the extracted models) so you don't accidentally choose the wrong one in the next step.
- Now with MDLOps we want to click the "replacer" button. In the screen that pops up, click "Binary model" and choose w_lghtsbr_001.mdl. Then click "ASCII model" and choose the model you just compiled. Click "Read models".
- A new window will pop up when MDLOps is finished reading the model. It will contain three entries - lshandle01, which is the model for the actual hilt, and two plane entries, which create the blade. We don't want to mess with these planes -- blade problems is the entire reason we have to use the replacer to make hilts! Click on lshandle01, then choose "Set replace target". A second window will pop up. For my example, I need to choose lshandle06. What your handle will be will vary, but it should always start with lshandle, because of the way hilts are made. Select the hilt and click "Select target". Since my hilt is number 080, I will change the "Base model name" to reflect that. When you're ready, click "Do it!" You will get a message that your file is done converting. On your desktop (or wherever you extracted your hilt to) you should find two new files: in our case, w_lghtsbr_080-k1-r-bin.mdl and w_lghtsbr_080-k1-r-bin.mdx. Rename this to w_lghtsbr_080.mdl and w_lghtsbr_080.mdx and put them in your override folder. All GFF files (in this case, uti files) should work fine in both games, so simply take the rest of the assets from the custom hilt and put them in your override folder as well. Now boot up the game and see if your conversion worked!
 
- If your hilt works in-game, but has the wrong blade color, there is one more thing we must do to acheive the appropriate blade color. In MDLOps click "Select file" and choose the binary MDL of the converted hilt we just made. Click "Read model". When it's finished, click "Renamer". You should see four plane entries - now we want to edit them. For the hilt we just made, we see that the planes are set to be blue. You can choose from the following blade colors for K1: w_lsabreblue01 (blue), w_lsabregold01 (orange), w_lsabregren01 (green), w_lsabrepurp01 (purple), w_lsabrered01 (red), w_lsabreturq01 (turqoise), and w_lsabreyelo01 (yellow). K2 has two additional colors: w_lsabreDgrn01 (viridian), and w_lsabreSilv01 (silver). Click the first plane, then where it says "New name:" input the name of one of the textures listed. You should not include the file extension. Click "Change name" to change the color. Repeat for the other three blades. When you have finished, click "Write model" and MDLOps will write a new MDL and MDX with the appropriate blade color, which you can now put in your override folder. If you test them in-game and they are flat white, go back and check to make sure you did not make a typo when writing out the name!
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