Black Core Saber

[Insomaniac]

Hello there TCSS,
I present to you my black core saber that I am currently working on. I am making great progress so far (in my eyes) and believe that I will be able to achieve a good black core that is the same visibly from all angles at once.

The video is here, and it may be hard to tell but I am rotating the blade all the way around. Currently the black core is not quite perfectly constructed and the poly-p wrap is dirty on the inside due to much testing involving this blade.


This is a comparison shot between a stock MR Vader ANH and the black core saber so far. Right now you can tell that the MR is much brighter currently and I intend to fix that with either a 10W white led or to have three P4's in a triangle formation. I will probably attempt both to compare results.

The blade I am currently using is the 1" thick-walled but I believe the thin-walled blade will offer even better results. I am also going to experiment with using more/less poly-p but so far the results have leaned towards using more wraps of poly-p.

Any comments/questions are welcome

[Sunrider]

Try turning a light on for the video. Mesa no see nothing.

[TimeRender]

J-Lo, is there any way you can lock a single person off of a thread? If so, PLEASE prevent me from ever posting here... For everyone's sake...

[Jedi-Loreen]

J-Lo, is there any way you can lock a single person off of a thread? If so, PLEASE prevent me from ever posting here... For everyone's sake...

Sorry, no, there isn't.


Not very impressive results, so far. It looks like you're getting some light at the edges of the blade from the base flare, but it's not traveling up the blade very far.

To me, it just looks like a blade with far too much poly-p inside it.

[Skottsaber]

Not again......

*sigh*

[Crystal Chambers]

Yeah we've all been down this road a few times. It's been thoroughly debated so any hope of achieving this would rely on something new and/or not thought of. That is quite a challenge considering the how many brilliant people have already racked their brains.

To put it simple...to the best of everyone's current knowledge this would require defying the laws of physics.

[IndustrialAction]

Right. By it's very nature, black does not emit and does not reflect light.

[TimeRender]

I'm going to post ONE comment here and that's it. Hopefully my willpower will hold out and I won't trigger another lengthy flame-war.

Your idea isn't new. It has been discussed before. Everything that was predicted (general dimness, base flare, light not reaching blade extents) seems to be present in your mockup. What you have created does NOT reproduce the effect satisfactorily, and no amount of tinkering with the idea will ever change that. Go post it on the FX forums and they will probably make you mayor for the day, but anyone who is serious about their lightsabers will not be impressed.

I suggest you take the time to get caught up on the argument. Here are a few threads to read.

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...de-development...
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...8-Black-blades

Finally, I'll submit this... There are exactly THREE possible ways that an effect like this MIGHT be possible. The first is to make the blade viewable only by a single angle. If you intend to hang your blade up on a wall this will be sufficient. This can be accomplished either by masking an ordinary ordinary blade or by making a blade shaped cutout and then back-lighting it. Once you take the blade off the wall the illusion will be destroyed, so this doesn't really satisfy the criteria most people are looking for.

The second is to make a flat blade and illuminate only the edges. This could be achieved with EL or with side-illuminated acrylic or a similar material. This will produce the effect from MOST angles, but the closer the viewer is to being in line with the edge of the blade, the narrower the black section will appear. Also, whichever illuminated edge is facing the opposite direction relative to the viewer will also appear narrower and could possibly become obscured completely, destroying the illusion. This method come closest to achieving the look of the black lightsaber as seen in the Clone Wars cartoon, if you're into that sort of thing...

The third method, which to my knowledge is still untested, relies on using a Makoto style string inside a dual-tube blade setup. The inner and outer blade tubes must be lined in polarized film which is oriented 45 degrees from the angle of the blade and 90 degrees from each other. Hypothetically if this was done correctly and if the materials used were of optical quality, this would create a black-cored blade that was visible from 360 degrees at all times. However, the cost of building such a blade would be staggering, the blade would be relatively dim, it would be incredibly difficult to build, and honestly it may not work at all.

I hope we can end the discussion here.

[Rafalema]

Timerender, I love reading your posts on this. I went through all the threads for them. Thanks for this.

[jin starkiller]

I have to agree that we have been down this road numerous times and their is no new technology on the sibject to make it work

check out ther threads in time renders post and you will see taht it has been discussed before and before...you get the point