Making Jaina have 3 spell animations

[darwin]

I have a unit based on the Jaina model. They have three spells, each with a different color. I would like to make the Jaina.mdx model have 3 spell animations (they can look the same) but each use a different BlizParticle with different colors.

I don't know a lot about modelling, but I used the War3 Model Editor v1.07 to add a new BlizParticle emitter and color it appropriately. It now plays along side the original blue one when the spell animation is called.

I also made two new animations called Spell 2 and Spell 3 by copying the same values in the "spell" animation. The model editor plays these animations fine; but they use both the original blue emitter and the green emitter I made.

It looks like the emitters are assigned to only appear during one animation based on the sequence number. I don't know how to modify the sequences at all... is that something that can be done? I've attached the model here if that helps.

Darwin

 

[Cuore]

Hi Darwin I've just had a glance at your model. If you open up the Sequence Editor tab in the Model Editor (Magos), you'll see that Spell, Spell 2, and Spell 3 share the same exact animation frames. That's the reason for the problem you're experiencing.

For the way that models are set up in warcraft 3, you cannot re-use the frames of an existing animation to perform another (in your case to change the color of a particle).
Making two alternate Spell sequences is the right way to go, but by doing what you did you actually just renamed the same old Spell sequence.
You need to duplicate the same frames of Spell and put them at the end of the whole set of frames for all the animations in the model. At that point you can apply changes such as changes to the color of particles.

Also, although I'm not an expert, I'd suggest to use names such as "Spell Throw" and "Spell Slam" instead of "Spell 2" and "Spell 3". This way you can be sure that the three differently-colored animations can be used by the correct abilities.

 

[darwin]

I'm afraid I don't know how to "duplicate the same frames of Spell and put them at the end of the whole set of frames." I think I know what you mean... essentially make three animations that are all the same. Can this be done in the War Model Editor?

 

[Cuore]

Here you are.
Now she has a "Spell" which is blue like normal, a "Spell Slam" with a red hue, and a "Spell Throw" with a green hue.
You just set the appropriate animation name tag in the spell data inside of the object editor

Keep in mind that the three names that I suggested may not be optimal and that you can rename the sequences as "Spell One", "Spell Two", and "Spell Three" anytime you want.

 

[darwin]

Beautiful, thanks so much!