Behavior of model animations in-game

Greetings.

I know this is off the beaten path of model editing discussion, but I think the people who frequent this forum are more likely to be aware of the intricacies of model behaviors in-game than the Trigger Forum folks.

Allow me to explain my intent, and then my problem.

I want to use the Skeleton models that exist in Warcraft 3 as standard units for a team. They are ordered around, fight, and die. This they do well. However, they may also be resurrected or raised from the dead. Since the skeleton models are all for summoned creatures, none of them possess a lengthy decay animation. In short, once they die, they fade out almost immediately, and while they still technically exist and can be raised, they can't be seen.

I foiled this problem by carefully timing the point (3.10 seconds) during their death (5.033 seconds) that they have fully fallen to the ground and freezing their animation speed at that point. I will post the trigger:

Jass JASS: //=============================== // Functions //=============================== function Trig_Skeleton_dies_pause_Actions takes nothing returns nothing //== Locals ===================== local unit unitDying = GetDyingUnit() local integer intDying = GetUnitTypeId(unitDying) //== Actions ==================== if ((intDying == 'ugho') or (intDying == 'hspt') or (intDying == 'hdhw') or (intDying == 'hmil') or (intDying == 'hwt3')) then call SetUnitAnimation(unitDying, "death") call Pwait(3.10) call SetUnitTimeScalePercent(unitDying, 0.00 ) endif //== Cleanup ==================== set unitDying = null endfunction //=============================== // Events //=============================== function InitTrig_Skeleton_dies_pause takes nothing returns nothing set gg_trg_Skeleton_dies_pause = CreateTrigger() call TriggerRegisterAnyUnitEventBJ(gg_trg_Skeleton_dies_pause, EVENT_PLAYER_UNIT_DEATH) call TriggerAddAction(gg_trg_Skeleton_dies_pause, function Trig_Skeleton_dies_pause_Actions) endfunction

At first glance, this solves the problem marvelously. There's another trigger to resume animation speed if they are restored to life.

However, when a player can no longer see the unit, they appear to forget at which point during the animation they were frozen. When you come back to the corpse later, it's frozen at the very moment of the beginning of the "death" animation, instead of 3.10 seconds into it.

I guess I'm hoping for some input about this phenomenon, and if there's any way to thwart it. Apart from this silly issue, the fix is an efficient one and I'm happy with it, but I can't have skeletons standing around looking constipated instead of lying on the floor dead.

Any help you can offer is appreciated.

Could be the death animation is repeating itself for whatever reason. Try setting it to 3.9 or a little less, perhaps.

I don't understand what you're saying. I could change the point that it freezes at, but it would still reset to the beginning of the animation at some later point.

I have had instances where at the final point of the death sequence, it plays again. So freezing it at that last moment may indeed be freezing it at the first moment instead.

I may have mis-read your initial post.

Looks like there's nothing you can do, short of a proper model edit to add in a decay sequence.

Well, of course I don't want to add the models into the map if there's a reasonable alternative, especially since virtually the same models already exist.

The lack of a response, however, makes me sadly more certain that there isn't a more reasonable alternative.

What would I need to do to these three skeleton models to divide their death animations into death animations, and then decay animations after 3.10 seconds?

Work out the point at which you want the death to end, stop the death sequence there, add in a decay sequence of length 60000, and mess with any keyframes that need to be messed with. That is assuming that the death sequence in the chronological final sequence. If it's not, eugh, it'll be really long and complex. You'd have to wrangle something with animation transferring and then start messing with the keyframes. I'm not entirely sure; I'm at school and don't have the model to look at.

Couldn't you switch it for another model after death, to use a corpse. Or make them spawn a corpse upon death.

I used that solution originally, but found that there were a lot of special circumstances to account for, the most obvious of which is Raise Dead, which is hellishly difficult to accurately duplicate for certain units.