Something I'm trying to fix is the player shadow being cast on the Plasma gun. This is the only gun that has this behavior, and also the only gun that will cast a shadow of itself onto objects like dead monsters. The pictures show the player shadow casting ugly shadows on the top of the plasma gun, the plasma gun casting a shadow on a dead pinky, and for comparison, the machine gun, which does not do this. What is going on?
Check the material if there is noShadows or noSelfShadow. Maybe plasma gun material doesn't have those?
...and that was it. The world mesh is missing noSelfShadow so I added it and it fixes both problems? Are the viewmesh and worldmesh separate? I figured the game handled them separately but apparently not if flags on one affect the other?
Viewmesh and worldmesh are separate models, guess that they use the same material for both of them?
No, if they shared a material then they'd be using the same textures as well.
There is a separate material for world and view models. Put noShadows on the plasmagun world material and noSelfShadow on the plasmagun view material.
All it took was noSelfShadow on the world model material. As weird as that is, it prevents player shadows from appearing on the view model material as well. This is why there's more than meets the eye with this I think.