Effects/Buffs/Abilities as units. Portraits and Spell effects.

Well I'm still working hard on my familiar system... Still have a few things to do, but this one here is beyond my knowledge entirly...

All of my familiars pretty much use the model of an effect or ability, but I've had two problems with this.

1.) Portraits... I just want it to display the picture of the unit in the portrait, rather then blackness or a flashing background... Whats extremely odd is that on the rare occasion it DOES show the unit itself in the portrait box, as you'll see in the screen shot below... This happens randomly and rarely but when it does happen, ALL the familiars display their unit model inside their portrait box, which is EXACTLY how I want it... But as I said it happens randomly, and I more often get a black or flashing background in their display pic. How can I ensure that it will always display the unit model in the portrait box?

Look at the portrait box for the selected unit and you will clearly see it displaying the unit model in the portrait and I want this to occur all the time, not just randomly!

2.) Spell effects, I noticed when you cast spells like duration based buff "Lightning Shield, Roar, Bloodlust, Curse, etc etc" that it has absolutly no graphical effect on the unit... The spell takes hold but you can't see em on anyone of my familiars and I very much would like to correct this...

Can't help with the first one, but the second I believe does not work because the models do not have the appropriate attachment points.

First one, you need to put on a target camera in the model. Quite a simple task, took me about 20 minutes to download all the stuff and learn how to do it, and now I can do simply model editing, etc. Actually could have taken only 5 minutes if I'd gone the short way of just editing the .mdl in a text editor.

Yes. And the reason you "randomly" see the correct portrait for units without cameras is because when you click another unit, that other unit's camera will still be used when you select your unit without a camera. Sometimes it will happen that the camera for the other unit works for your effect unit.

Using the same method of model editing, can I easily add attatchment points tfor spell effects as well?

BTW, you should remove the shadows from the spirits.

Adding attachment points is harder than adding cameras, if you use Magos's model editor you should be able to add them easily enough however.

Is that also the program I'll need to add the camera for the portrait? If not could you let me know what programs I'll need or what your recommendation is to deal with adding camera's and attachment points?

Yah I downloaded Magnos Model Editor and I was able to add camera's for the portrait easily for all my familiars... I am encountering difficulties when it comes to adding attatchment points though... Not sure how to do it correctly...

I know its through Node Manager: Create Attatchment...

For one of my familiars I tried adding an attachment under one of the two "Planes" But I'm not sure what else to do... I tried to test it and when he had Lightning Shield cast on him, the effect DID work but it appeared way above his head, and I'm not sure what to do about it...

1.) How do I determine the values I need insert for my attatchments?

2.) Do I only put one attachment per plane?

3.) How do I determine whether or not its "origin" or "head" or "overhead" etc etc.

Ok, I figured it out mostly. I got most of my attatchment points setup where the need to be for my familiars... But scaling size is a problem for the effect, since some of my familiars are scaled quite differently, anywhere from .80 - 2.50 the special effect that appears on them, or their auras have a huge range in size... This is despite the fact I checked the "Don't inherhit scaling" box on all of my attatchment nodes, for origin, chest, head and overhead.

For example my sword familiar scales at .80 so any effect that appears on him is quite small... My Ice familiar is 2.50 so any effect that appears on it is HUGE... If checking the "don't inherit scaling" box for my attatchment doesn't work then what do I do to fix this?

I suggest you merege those posts :P

Well I've almost finished it all, I did get the camera and attatchment points going, but like I said I just need to find a way to disable the scaling issue of abiities/effects... Then I'll be done... One would assume toggling a flag that says "don't inhert scaling" on my attatchment points would do exactly that! Unfortunatly that doesn't seem to have any effect at all.

I still need help with this final issue in terms of the scaling size for spell effects, its the last thing I need for my familiar system... I am currently implementing the system into my maps but before I do a public release of the demo I'd really lake to fix this issue.

Ok, can someone please answer this question? Because I've tried and I have no idea how to fix this... If I can't I'll be forced to remove the attatchment points of all my familiars because it sucks having a gigantic aura or spell effect appear around such a small unit... I just need a way to disable the scaling size of spell effects on certain units so they don't scale with the Object Editor's scale setting... It can't be that hard but I have no idea how to do it.

Or actually, how about a different solution so I don't have to use unit scaling in the object editor... If no one knows how to make spell effects not scale... Is it possible to use magos editor to simply increase the size of the entire model?