I've got a thousand and one hilt design ideas.
I'd love to come up with some more to show you guys. Here is just one:
Those are really rough... but can be cleaned up and refined.
For a variation on the Qui Gon lightsaber, I've had the idea for a few years now to do the scalloped grip parts in stacked Acrylic parts... in various colors but transparent... where LEDs (or pixels) can be placed that will illuminate the entire grip area:
I know the images are super rough. You'll have to use a bit of imagination!
Cutouts can be in the acrylic like you do for chassis discs and parts to make an 18650 battery space, space for a soundboard, and wires. If the soundboard has on board SMD LEDs, you'll see the glowy sparkle through the colored scalloped discs. Also there can be spaces for 3mm LEDs to flash all around like a full hilt bar graph.
The shroud will still be polished metal to hold the entire thing together. The pommel and emitter will also be metal and screw into the metal shroud part.