Yesterday I noticed that the heavy trooper has a sholder pad and I thought, 'a sholder pad would make my new texture just that little bit better'. So i was wondering, how do you get those onto a model?

you create the piece in XSI and then hex edit it on. searching would be of help here as there are probably over 50+ topics on this.

No need to create it. There are pauldrons released. And Dev's hexed a lot of them onto stock models. And someone, not sure who, was working on a MODL chunk extractor/inserter tool a while ago, although that project seems to have died.

What format does XSI export to? And which one do I need?

He said shoulder pad, not pauldron addon.

Make sure you check this out.

http://www.gametoast.com/forums/viewtop ... 36&t=14465

Does anyone think it's possible to do the same thing to this as the cape from the tut?

Eh, shoulder pad, pauldron, more or less the same.
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Yes, you hex them on like that.

So just like capes?