SaberBeam

Description

SaberBeam is an OpenMW framework and Blender toolkit for creating animated energy-blade weapons for Morrowind.

Compatible weapons can receive:

• A bright physical core and smooth colored glow.

• Animated ignition and retraction.

• Optional ignition, hum, retraction, and swing audio.

• Automatic runtime behavior.

• Runtime-selectable preset colors.

• Single- or double-bladed configurations.

Blades ignite after the weapon finishes drawing and retract completely before OpenMW begins its normal holster animation.

Weapon authors can build reusable blade libraries containing any number of colors. Compatible hilts bind to a library once, after which Lua can select any included color without requiring duplicate blade assets.

SaberBeam does not add gameplay weapons by itself. Install a SaberBeam-compatible weapon mod or use the optional Blender toolkit to create one.

BeamFX and post-processing are not required.

Installation Instructions

Players

1. Download SaberBeam-0. 3. 1.zip.

2. Extract it as its own OpenMW data directory.

3. Add that directory in the OpenMW Launcher.

4. Under Data Files, enable saberbeam.omwscripts.

5. Install and enable a SaberBeam-compatible weapon mod.

6. Launch OpenMW normally.

The installed data directory should directly contain:

saberbeam.omwscripts

SOUND_CREDITS.md

When upgrading, replace the previous SaberBeam runtime instead of combining multiple runtime versions in the same data directory.

The former test weapons are development assets and are not included in the main 0. 3. 1 runtime archive.

Weapon Authors

Players do not need the Blender toolkit for your finished weapons to work.

1. Download SaberBeam-Toolkit-0. 3. 1.zip and the Examples zip from the optional files tab

2. Install Blender 5. 1 or newer.

3. Install and enable the Morrowind NIF add-on io_scene_mw 0. 8. 118 or newer.

4. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions/Add-ons > Install from Disk.

5. Select SaberBeam-Toolkit-0. 3. 1.zip directly. Do not unpack it first.

6. Open the SaberBeam tab in the 3D View sidebar.

7. Follow AUTHOR_GUIDE.md and, optionally, the included Your First Blade tutorial.

The toolkit archive includes a clean sample hilt under examples/.

Authors can choose between:

• Custom Blade for a unique hilt and color.

• Preset Library to generate reusable single- or double-blade colors.

• Bind Hilt to Preset to bind a compatible hilt once to every col