Fullmetals Lightsaber

Description
I\'m going to start out this review by saying this is a nicely-built first model that deserves a look from all of you. That way when I point out everything I would fix, y\'all might see it as friendly advice to the author rather than a crucification of his work, which it isn\'t.

So let me get right down to that. Most people here know I dislike sabers that get all their looks from a shader (in terms of texture). This is one of those models. It consists of three small images, two of which are basically flat colors with no shape to them. Then a glassy/shiny shader is put over the top to make it look good. That\'s all good and fine, but it doesn\'t really speak to the author\'s talents -- more credit goes to the game in making the hilt look good than to the author, and I like to think/hope that\'s not what mod authors are looking for.

So here\'s what I would change to make this an all-around better hilt. Firstly, I\'d take more than 5 minutes texturing it. In fact when I model, I spend about an hour on the model and 2-3 hours on the texture (as an example). Way more effort should go into the texture, on average, because that\'s really what makes the model. Especially for this engine, because when it comes to models, less is more.

That brings me to my next point. Here\'s a little question for all of you to think about: if you have a cylinder, and it\'s not going to pinch in at the top or bottom, why add extra edges in the middle? There\'s no reason to, other than to stress the engine. When you have a button, or any cylindrical section that is just a plain ol\' cylinder with no rounding at the top or bottom, you don\'t need any segments! Take \'em out! They\'re wasting space, and will only serve to stress out lower-end computers. We could be practical and admit that it probably won\'t make much of a difference, but one of the steps to becoming a good modeler is learning to be efficient. When you can only use what you need, you\'ll know you\'re becoming very skilled.

To summarize, I\'d say it\'s a far better first hilt than a lot I\'ve seen, with plenty of potential for improvement. As a first dive into modeling software, many of the errors seen are very much expected, easily fixed, and if they [i]are[/i] fixed the next time this author submits a model, I will feel all warm and fuzzy inside because that means I get to welcome a new serious modeler to the community. ;)

~Inyri

[b]Note[/b]: 8-sided cylinders are plenty adequate for Jedi Academy. Just make sure you have your smoothing groups set!