How do I created a special effect facing a direction?

Trying to create a sideways fire gust trap facing southward, I can easily edit and do it manually but when creating it as a special effect I can't seem to make it appear facing a certain direction.

I've tried create special effect at center of region offset by 0,0 towards 180 degree. But no matter what I change the degree too, the trap is ALWAYS facing north. I've tried 90, 180, 360 and none of the values have any effect on the direction the fire effect faces.

Make it a unit, give it locust, and then do a SetUnitFacing()

If you make a firetrap into a unit or a destructable it becomes unselectable in the editor, you cannot click on it at all or select it through a trigger.

Then keep it as something else and then change it before you save...?

Yea, make a dummy unit, no model etc, then attach the effect to the "origin" and set the facing of the angle.

I did this is my projectile function.

You can do it it GUI like this:


I atatched the dummy model, credit goes to Vexorian for it.

BTW: I realised you cant upload models, odd, veeery odd. I just put it in a Zip file instead.
Import it into your map, then create/edit a unit and set the model to the dummy model, you can then use it for stuff like effects.

The dummy model does:
Nothing its a dummy!
Joke lol, it has bone names, no model (well a 1x1 pixle from what i know) and works great in this situation

That's interesting.
So you're saying that model does nothing but has an origin attachment that you can attach SFX to so you can set their facing and such?

Yes. That is the whole point of it really. I think you can also attach sfx to a dummy unit with a non-existant model (".mdl"), by attaching to origin, but I'm not sure if they rotate with the unit. The main reason I think Vex made that dummy model, is so you can set the chest bone to face a specific direction, allowing you to change the angle (not rotation, Z angle) of the sfx.

No you cant unfortunatly, a blank model dosent posses any bones names whatsoever, including origin.
I tried this when making my projectile function, i used the 'Zone Indicated - Custom Campaign' which is a blank model, it did nothing, the effect dident appear and nothing happened

I opened the dummy with notepad, the english things i found in it were:

"MDLXVERS"
"CasterSystem"
"OverHead Ref"
"Stand"
"Chest Ref"
"Bone_Root"
"Bone_Chest"
"Origin Ref"

Its quite obvious what they mean, it was somehow converted from MDL, or still posses so infomation about it.

Created for CasterSystem, or Vex made it say that to mark his work, or it was Exported from Caster System, which i doubt it would store info about that.

"OverHead" - Overhead bone name
"Stand" - Only animation it posses
"Chest" - Chest bone name
"Bone_Root" - Im no expert, i'v heard of the Root, but not quite sure what they do.
"Bone_Chest" - Most probally the 1 pixle's name.
"Origin" - Origin bone name

Although, im no expert, if you want to learn more about the Dummy model, search Wc3c, if you cant find anything (you should find something though) PM Vex, he is the creator and knows it inside out

EDIT: I doubleposted, im extremly sorry, i meant to press the Edit bottom

That's very intriguing.
The only real advantage I can see this having is that you can have a single unit type for a dummy projectile and then just attach whatever you want to it, all rather than just creating new units with new models.

Very clever.