the elf priest staff's sphere, how to do it ?

[Eagle XI]

when you look at gnoll's ball on the end of a chain,
or the orb at top end of priest's staff*,
it is actually an 2d texture but once the model is playing any animation it gets rendered the same no matter which direction you are viewing it from, emulating an 3d feel.

*this also applies to human emissary model, interestingly if you replace the texture with custom it breaks and shows up as 2d.

I need the knowledge on how blizzard did that at those models as want to fix an certain model using ball and chain like gnoll's.

 

[Hermit]

It's just a simple 2D plane with a ball texture, attached to a billboarded bone. Usually, if a model has any kind of glow that isn't a particle emitter, it's a billboarded plane. If you plan to use them, make sure the bone is positioned in the center of the plane.

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[Galendor an'Kreil]

Aren't you talking about bilboarded bones? A Geoset attached to this bone will always turned towards the camera, which creates a false 3D.

Awh, Hermit is faster