SC2Mapster

For some reason scaling beam actors doesn't work for me. It seems other people had no problems unless using the laser drill beam, but I've tried the Diamondback, Colossus and Void Ray beams and the standard scale fields simply aren't working to increase beam width. The scale only seems to apply to the launch-end model of the beam, rather than the actual connector, which looks patently ridiculous with a Void Ray beam at scale 10...

Is there some other setting I have to enable, or other inputs like aiming a SetScale event action at a specific target (there's no Alias "_Beam" though)?

The Narud duel beams are out because I want a smooth column as wide as standard units, think Lux's ultimate from League of Legends.

yes you pretty much described everything about scaling beams. It cannot be done, scale applies only to launch and end models (if particular beam has those). The narud duel beam doesnt seems to respond anyhow to changing scale, maybe it's broken dunno.

I've encountered these issues when tried to scale down everything to make map look bigger, but then i realised that cuz of this kinda shit it wouldn't work out.

How are the beams being created? I just scaled multiple beam models, when using it in the context of the Archon attacking.

@ArcaneDurandel: Go

Short version: by a "far-edge" Model actor, and hosted on the caster via Actor Find.

Long version: Multiple subsequent Persistent effects due to the offset limit, the first one initiates the far-edge model as part of a "charge up" animation, and after a short delay the rest fire instantaneously to provide the line AoE.

The edge model is a self-contained actor which just sits at its point and handles its own runtime, but in addition creates the beam actor when the line AoE portion starts. The beam has Host+ set to Actor Find - Caster - Alias "_Selectable", Host Impact+ Actor Find - "Edge Model" and Host Launch+ same as Host+. The Host+ setting appears to be unnecessary for now, but I'll probably want it for UnitMovement events later. There's also a couple of standard-fare SOps involved, such as attach, offset etc., but nothing fancy.

Unless the length axis somehow messes up orthogonal scaling something else is going wrong in my case (I also tried leaving the scaling factor for Y at 1, assuming that to be the length axis)

I tried the Colossus beam with a scale of 10, now the launch model is larger than Maar, the two lightning strands at the launch side also extend, but the beam stays thin. Does scaling only work if the beam is hosted by an Action actor? I deliberately avoided that because the beam itself won't be targeting any units, and actor-only impact points are always a pain to get right, at least for me...

Edit: added a minimal demo map using the Void Ray beam with my actor setup. Try it even if you can't help, should be good for a laugh at the preset 5x scale.

Update: did some testing with the stock Archon attack, and it is very wonky for me. Uniform upscaling doesn't work, scaling X+Z doesn't work (and Y definitely is the length axis), and I've tried both actor and model scale. XZ-scale also breaks the "flow" of the beam somewhat, verify by scaling X, Z=5 on only one of the two Colossus beam actors.

What does work is scaling X and Z unequally. Increasing just one of them produces a flat shape scaled in that dimension as it should be. Increasing both to large, but unequal values (X=5.1, Z=5.0, Colossus attack beam swapped onto Archon attack actor) produces a very glitchy-looking behavior where the beam dynamically adjusts its transverse scale during its animation! The exact scale also depends on the orientation of the beam, but getting the full scaled width is pretty rare.

Just what is going on here? The game seems to auto-compensate the global scale of the beam, and anisotropic scaling seems to break it somehow. Or maybe the texture is getting scaled, but then the game tries to squeeze it into a constant-size "tube"?

open the beams that do and do not scale in cse, and check what bones do they have

maybe there's an obvious difference, that will give me the idea of how to make a scalable beam model wise

@Zolden: Go

I haven't found any that scale properly. Archon beam gets somewhat larger but also distorted, Colossus/Void Ray/Diamondback beams just scale launch and impact models (+ the weirdness described above, but none of that qualifies as proper scaling in my book)

I can't be bothered to test all of them for all possible variations in relative scale, but I can confirm that an isotropic scale doesn't work consistently for the standard attack beams.

I would like to see Durandel's results and which scales they involve, as my most recent test literally changed nothing but the scale and model on the Archon attack setup, and failed miserably.

Maybe the way how editor interprets beam models doesn't connect model scale to beam's size as it does to the particles or the closest beam's relative - ribbons. I'd call it a bug, becasue why would something that works for everything else not work for something one. So, most probably, the only way to scale beams is to create a model with multiple animations, each of which would have different width of the beam. So, actor would switch between those instead of changing scale.

Primarily on the beam actor itself, but also tested the beam model. Even tried SetScale events once, to no avail.

ok this may be little too late but as i reworking some of my old data props i found that you could try using "Billboard" actor for Beam's launch and impact sites. U see a lot of beams could be scaled but when you viewing it from different angles it appears as it loosing it's width, cuz the beam body is basicaly a flat model. So i can recommend you to use billboard actors as i suggested above, i used it for some protoss ribbon missiles (phoenix splash missile model) that are orbiting around caster and losing their visibility from different angles. It worked out well for me so maybe you will have luck with beams.

I looked at your example map.

I've noticed not all components of models respond to changes in the data editor. For example some models have effects that will never respond to the model's animation speed being changed to faster or slower. I think Zolden is right about the bones. You'll probably need to edit the model, manually correct the scale for that graphics piece and re-import.

P.S. You'll notice there are several Attack animations for the voidray beam, and they alter the scale for that one component. If you're scaling UP, you could play the beam's Attack from a higher value so the scale looks better with your map.