How to Create Spell/Ability Visuals

I was wondering how one would go about the creation of their own effects like... fan of knives, fire storm, blizzard, et cetera. I have searched for this, but I haven't found anything of substance yet.

You want to physically create a new model? Or you want to add an existing sfx model as an effect art of a spell?

I want to create my own custom models. I have 3DS Max 6 and 4.2 (with the WC3 tools plugin thing), and I have made very basic custom WC3 models before, but I do not know where to start for effects.

well you make SFX basically the same as any other model, although SFX's are ususally made from semi-transparent textures and heaps of particle emitors.

Ya basically all fan of knives is a bunch of planes that move outward, that have an alpha channel.

Do I need any special bones, or do I have to follow any certain strict limitations? I will give it a whirl, thanks you people ^_^

EDIT: Alright, I am not sure what to do right now. What is the default "call" animation for a spell/effect? I have to name the note track something, right? For a model I would use things like:

Walk
MoveSpeed 300

Ok here is what I would do I would get all the planes together how you want, then make one bone in between them if they make a circle then connect the meshes to that bone and use that for rotating all the meshes, then I would animate each mesh seperately. Also for the name I might make spell slam, something that is not looping

Many (though not all) effects have birth, stand, and death animations. If they don't exist, particularly death, sometimes odd things can happen (like an effect model lingering far longer than it should). Some models seem just fine with stand animations. If you take a look through the object editor's model browser, you'll see what I'm talking about.

As far as I know, there's no other strict requirements for an effect. Perhaps a few have special animations that I'm not aware of, but I've done a fair number of effects successfully, and had no trouble.

PS - some effects, usually buffs, have different sized versions so that they look ok on differently sized units. Take a look at the anti magic shell model to see what I mean. That's completely optional, though.


edit: looking at this post, I'm assuming that you're talking about the effect model itself. If you're modeling the casting animation of the *caster* of the spell, than you'd want something like "spell" or "spell attack" or "spell slam" etc. You can always change that in the object editor, though, to be almost anything you'd like.

Thanks for all of your help so far. If I use the model as a character, it works out. But right now, I simply have a Stand animation, and when I set it up with a spell, I do not get to see anything.

I didn't understand the "Also for the name I might make spell slam, something that is not looping." Is there a certain spell-type list of animations that I need to know about?

I'd reverse-engineer your model from one that is similar and already exists. If you're making something similar to fan-of-knives, than base your animations off of that. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure fan-of-knives has multiple models, one for the caster, one for the target. You might want to double check that to make sure the ability is using the right model at the right time - perhaps that's why you're having trouble seeing it, if everything else seems ok.


Incidentally, I'd be curious as to what effects you're making, and how you're progressing on them, since the number of people making effect models on this entire site can probably be counted on a hand (me being one). The more the merrier :)

Well, what I am working on right now is just so that I can get used to working with the effects. I am going for a big obelisk-thingie falling for the sky, landing into the ground, charging, and then electrocuting a radius. I will try to find out what I am doing wrong right now.

Which program is it that you can browse the models within the MPQ? I lost a lot on a reformat a while ago.

I use War3Viewer. It doth rule.

Arigato, Panto!