This is a thought I had after reading about "item level-up" in Epoch's Mythos mod thread.

If you type thor_hammer in the console it will drop mjolnir for you to see how it operates. The amounts required to lvl it up are set very low right now so ppl can give it a look. All the triggers are in the trigger folder under new_items i think.

I have not tried it yet (this weekend though) but I have a question about item meshes and whether they can be changed by triggers or counters.

I recall some discussions about changing your char's mesh this way, but I think no one's really gotten that to work yet.

Then there's the pet transform feature which obviously changes up your pet's mesh, so that's doable for sure.

My question is could you do this for an item, specifically for a weapon item?

Epoch's item leveling feature got me thinking - wouldn't it be cool if part of your weapon's leveling up included a mesh-change?  Complete with particles and all?!

  so anyway, just polling for ideas of where to look first to get started on an idea like this.  Any input welcome!

I've unknowingly stumbled into this before~

Before I was able to work with models I was looking for an 'easier way' to accomplish what I was after. I used 'view mesh' in GUTs after selecting the model for the item and it would open the model as a .layout in the viewer main window. I was able to make the weapon mesh itself invisible after that [You do this by setting the model to media/models, invisible is in the drop bar] and then setting the layout to the model.layout you opened with 'view mesh'.

This will give you an invisible weapon that uses your layout as an active image. However, there is a 'drag' when you run, much like the particles are being hit by physics, which cause them to drag behind you until you stop. If you can eliminate that drag, this would work perfectly. Also, it's very easy to edit the model this way with particles because you can make sure it looks the way you want~ You would just add the particles directly the the model.layout you're wanting to use and save it as one big happy weapon.layout.

That being said, you could probably attach the layout to an affix via unittheme so that you can change the model when you want~ This should work. You just need to address the 'drag' from running that makes it looks funky.

I hope this helps you in some way~ Let me know if you figure anything out