Spell Breaker

Hi all,

I was just wondering if it was possible to fix the animation of the Spell Breakers attack so that he will not release his weapon. If so, how do I go about it? Do I just delete some bone rotations from the .mdl???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

~Cheers

If you set his range to 100 that will make him melee, other than that, im not sure what you are talking about.

No, reseting the attack range wasn't what i had in mind. Thanks for trying.

I was talking specifically about the attack animation. In the attack animation, the spell breaker lunges forward hurling his weapon. At a certain point, the spellbreaker releases his weapon. The weapon is not visible as the spell breaker begins to stand back up. I want to edit the animation so that the spell breaker will not release his weapon on the forward thrust and still hold the weapon as he is reeling back.

Hope I was more clear this time.

Thanks again for trying.

I made a similar change for my ninja model. What you need to do is to find what geoset the weapon is in. This can be done by importing the model into 3dsmax, or by experimentation in the MDL. When you have found the correct geoset, you must change the GeosetAnims section of MDL. The start and stop times of the attack animation can be seen at the top of the MDL in the sequences section. You should see
Anim "Attack" {
Interval { X, Y },
...
X would be the start, and Y would be the end of that animation. Look for the GeosetAnims block that has GeosetID <the geoset of the weapon>. In this GeosetAnim, find a time between X and Y which has 0 after it, like this
...
<number between X and Y>: 0,
...
The 0 tells Warcraft to hide the geoset at that time. Changing this to 1 will prevent the geoset from disappearing during the attack animation.
This may not completely solve your problem, however. In the Headhunter model, for example, when the spear is thrown, it not only vanishes, but it leaves the thrower's hand momentarily. This was another difficulty of mine in converting it into a ninja with a sword. This is more difficult to solve. In the MDL, look for a name in the bones or helpers that might indicate it controlling the weapon. It might look like this
Bone "Blade" {
...
In the translation section of this bone or helper, try removing all entries that come between the start and stops of the animation. For example, if the translation section looked like this
...
Translation 12 {
...
X: { 0, 0, 0 },
>X: { 0, 0, 20 },
Y: { 0, 0, 0 },
...
then you would change it to look like this
...
Translation 12 {
...
X: { 0, 0, 0 },
Y: { 0, 0, 0 },
...
Keep in mind that there might be more than one bone or helper controlling the weapon. If you do not find any such translational keys in a bone that is named in a way to suggest it is controlling the weapon, then look in the helpers for it.
If you have no clue what I was just saying, then try to learn more about MDL editting from the other threads on this forum or on IRC (irc://irc.irchighway.net/wc3campaigns). MDL editting is much too complicated for me to explain to you easily here, but if/when you do understand it, then these techniques should allow you to do what you want with the Spell Breaker.

Hey, thanks a bunch republicola.

After editing the mdl, I guess the model is a mild success. I'll post it up just incase someon wants to use it as well.

Hope some of you find this useful.