@Yaos01 - It appears that your left side Spine Crawlers are pulling information from the Ultralisk for their scale and location. When I turn off certain property transfers they move around and change sizes. I haven't figured out what exactly will fix them, but it's a start. Also, when did you start having this problem, or have you always had it?
@Xenrathe - If by Pre-Existing you mean stock, then sort've. Blizzard has done something that makes editing stock ANYTHING very frustrating. If you edit something it will undo it, other fields are simply locked and will be removed entirely if you try to edit another field. It's frustrating and insulting to us mappers :( So until Blizzard fixes the error of their ways, I'd suggest that you make everything from scratch to avoid this issue.
If this isn't what you mean, then are you making sure you don't have the entire field highlighted when you edit something? I have accidentally erased fields in Raw Data View by forgetting to clear the auto-highlight.
@Eltonbrand - I have no idea what the WC3 editor was like, so I'm not sure what you mean by the sphere ability. As for revolving actors, are you wanting the actor to orbit another object or rotate in place?
Ideally both, I want an actor be rotating in place while orbiting another actor. I believe getting the actor to rotate is done through turrets, but it looks like they can only be added to units, not actors
They changed Head Attack to Ram. Not sure if you want to change it but it may confuse readers. Also, under Attachment Query+ you may want to further elaborate on how to set the index.
In Wc3 the movement was not caused by the ability - the model of the bloodmage has moving attachment-points. I´m pretty sure that this will work in ScII too, if the the model has moving attachment points. (Or ProzaicMuze finds an other way :P)
@Eltonbrand - I believe I have what you want using custom movers and a few Site Operation actors, but until I get my Retail SC2 patcher working I can't make a test map to confirm. When I work out my issue, I'll throw up a map so you can see if it's what you had in mind :)
First of all, let me say, great tutorial ProzaicMuze! I've just started playing around with the editor and I must admit the data editor was quite a daunting thing at first. Now I think I'm starting to get a feel for how these different data types work together to produce the desired effects.
Using your tutorial, I was able to make a great Uberlisk. :)
However, I decided to try something similar using site operations to attach two spine tentacles to an overseer, underneath the belly where the other tentacles hang down.
I've gotten the two tentacles to appear, but unfortunately I'm having a lot of difficulty getting them to stay in the right spot. I figured that I should use the Variance Rotation to achieve the effect. So I first made two site operation actors, SOpAdjustSpineL4 and SOpAdjustSpineR4 (I already have L1-3 and R1-3 set for the Uberlisk), with Up Angle set to 315 and 45, respectively. I also made a site operation actor, SOpAttachSpineC, which has its Attachment Query + set to Target 4 (which I believe is the central underside of the overseer).
Unfortunately this put the spine tentacles on the top of the overseer, and in seemingly unrelated positions.
I thought that perhaps Target 4 was upside-down, so I switched the angles and it almost seemed to work, but as I experimented further, it seemed like the tentacles appeared in random positions, even when the same Up Angles were used. I noticed that changing the scale of one of the tentacles also produced strange effects.
In addition, when rotating the overseer, one tentacle seems to oscillate widely back and forth, while the other either remains in place, or oscillates just a little.
I am at a complete loss as to what is causing this to happen. Certainly, I don't fully understand the different Site Operations, so I could be making a mistake that is causing the problem.
I have both spines using SOpAttachSpineC as an anchor. Could using the same object or target be causing these problems? Should I try something other than Variance Rotation? Any insight anyone can provide would be a great help.
That sounds like the normal buggy-ness that Variance Rotation has with multiple attachments :(
Try using Explicit Rotation with Local enabled. I actually changed the tutorial to reflect this discovery (someone brought it up), but it seems that the update either didn't hold or was rolled back. I'll go through and update the tutorial to include this once again when I have the chance.
Honestly, it reminds me of the same problems I had in WC3 with unit facings at different angles.
Well, I put them on Explicit Rotation with IsLocal enabled and having the tentacles simply upside-down. Seems to keep the tentacles' positions nicely, but their facing is off. It seems when rotating the overseer 360 degrees, the tentacles actually rotate twice.
Could they be getting facing information from two different sources somehow?
When IsLocal is turned off, the tentacles face in the same direction as the overseer, even though they are using Explicit Rotation.
I have trouble thinking in spatial coordinates, but it seems to me that changing any value in the Up vector other than Z will cause adverse effects when rotating the unit.
I gave up on Variance Rotation, so I also applied a few local offsets in addition to the Explicit Rotation positions on the underside. Interestingly, when I changed the facing vector, the explicitly rotated tentacles were held in that facing. Using IsLocal corrected that issue.
When you begin attaching models to other models, only one of these models can be designed as the "unit" with everything being an extension of that unit. The only exception that I have seen is if you use triggers to make units appear on top of each other and chained together. So in your case, the Thor is the unit and the Missile Tower is just an extension of the Thor. The problem with this is that you can't simply tell the effect to launch from a point on the Missile Tower because it only uses the unit as a reference for launching projectiles. Everything on the Missile Tower doesn't exist.
Site Actors allow you to create a new point for your missile to launch from that isn't on your unit. Right now your missile is probably shooting from the ground beneath the Thor, right? To work properly you need to make sure the Site Actor has the events to create it when the Missile Tower attachment is made. It also needs to have its Host + field set to the specific Missile Tower you made (so it knows this is the model to attach to) and then the part of the Missile Turret its attached to specified with Host Site Operations +. You'd then complete the process by putting this Site Actor in the Launch Site + field under your missile's attack actor. An Example:
Missile Turret's Actor: ThorMissilePod
Site Actor: ThorMissilePodSite
set Host + to ThorMissilePod (Actor)
set Host Site Operations + to SOpAttachWeapon01, SOpAttachWeapon02, SOpAttachWeapon03 or SOpAttachWeapon04
open Events + and created the following events:
ActorCreation.ThorMissilePod
Create
ActorDestruction.ThorMissilePod
Destroy
Missile Attack Actor: MissilePodAttack
set Launch Site to ThorMissilePodSite
This tells the Site to create itself at one of the Missile Towers weapons and tells the missile to fire from the site that is now attached to the Missile Tower. Does this make more sense? Also, does it help fix your problem?
I followed these steps exactly, although with a Marauder instead of a Thor as a base unit, and although the turret appears properly, the rockets still shoot out of the origin. Where might I be going wrong? I have the Marauder's attack launch site set to my custom launch site, which is created when the "missile turret" is created.
Hey Prozaic,
I'm working on a hero character called a Panther that it basically just a Predator with a marine riding him. I'm having trouble getting the marine model to show up at all.... I followed the steps in your Uberlisk tutorial as well as I could... if you get a few minutes could you troubleshoot for me? No hurry at all. Thanks!
I didn't get anything. Hope you can help me. How to do the following : put a ball (the shield of an mmortal) on top of a point defence drone? I want to create many drones for my engineer hero. Please help.
@TimeForPlanB - So I'm assuming from the picture you managed to get it working as desired? Or are you still in need of assistance?
@Lisk89 - Missiles shooting from a unit's origin is the most common problem I see with missiles. I, personally, get this issue all the time as well. Typically it means that one or more of your fields is bugged OR incorrectly filled. Start by checking the events on the Missile Actor and the Missile Attack (Action) Actor. If those are correct, look at the Launch Attachment Query, Launch Site, Launch Site Operations, Host and Host Site Operations fields.
If none of these fields yield and better results, post your map and I can take a look.
@cartmenbeck - I didn't check your map, but that's mainly because it only takes a few short steps to attach a unit to another unit:
Make a Marine Model
Make a Model Actor using the Marine Model
Set Host to the Predator Actor
Set Host Site Operations to SOpAttach[location]
Add any additional Site Operations for adjusting
Create Site Operation Actors as needed
Set Events to:
Actor Creation > Animation Play ([Name], Animation Properties: Stand, Flags: Play Forever)
UnitBirth.[Host] > Create
UnitDeath.[Host] > Destroy
At this point, your Marine should be attached to your predator. If you want your Marine to shoot, create a ranged weapon for the Predator and tie the Marine's animations to that weapon with events:
The actual event names might be slightly off (recalling from memory), but that will make the marine fire whenever the Predator uses its ranged weapon and prevent animation freezing by clearing the animation when moving.
@Paranoiks - Can you be a little more descriptive? Are you wanting the same ability on the drone, or the model for the shield around the drone at all times?
I just couldn't find a way to change the X and Y values of the Up Vector without having the tentacles move around. If you ever figure out a way, I'd love to hear it.
If you want to post your map I can look into it. If you've ever taken a look at some of the test maps of mine that get put the in the news (Like the Psyborg) you'll notice that my offsets and vectors have seemingly random number values. This is because often times certain anchor points have a strange axis of rotation to begin with and require a LOT of tweaking to get right. Might help you :)
What I want is thefollowing:
I don't wont the drone to have the ability Hardened Shield
I just want a ball on top of the drone (like it is levitating). And I think the model of the shield will look great.
Actor Creation > Animation Play ([Name], Animation Properties: Stand, Flags: Play Forever)
UnitBirth.[Drone] > Create
UnitDeath.[Drone] > Destroy
Pretty much the same setup as cartmen's Marine rider. One thing you "might" need to play with is freeze the shield animation so that it doesn't pulse endlessly. The model's stock animation isn't static and is setup to only be an impact shield as opposed to a continuous shield. I believe the event is called Animation Set Pause or something very similar to that.
@Yaos01 - It appears that your left side Spine Crawlers are pulling information from the Ultralisk for their scale and location. When I turn off certain property transfers they move around and change sizes. I haven't figured out what exactly will fix them, but it's a start. Also, when did you start having this problem, or have you always had it?
@Xenrathe - If by Pre-Existing you mean stock, then sort've. Blizzard has done something that makes editing stock ANYTHING very frustrating. If you edit something it will undo it, other fields are simply locked and will be removed entirely if you try to edit another field. It's frustrating and insulting to us mappers :( So until Blizzard fixes the error of their ways, I'd suggest that you make everything from scratch to avoid this issue.
If this isn't what you mean, then are you making sure you don't have the entire field highlighted when you edit something? I have accidentally erased fields in Raw Data View by forgetting to clear the auto-highlight.
@Eltonbrand - I have no idea what the WC3 editor was like, so I'm not sure what you mean by the sphere ability. As for revolving actors, are you wanting the actor to orbit another object or rotate in place?
Ideally both, I want an actor be rotating in place while orbiting another actor. I believe getting the actor to rotate is done through turrets, but it looks like they can only be added to units, not actors
They changed Head Attack to Ram. Not sure if you want to change it but it may confuse readers. Also, under Attachment Query+ you may want to further elaborate on how to set the index.
@Eltonbrand: Go
In Wc3 the movement was not caused by the ability - the model of the bloodmage has moving attachment-points. I´m pretty sure that this will work in ScII too, if the the model has moving attachment points. (Or ProzaicMuze finds an other way :P)
@ProzaicMule : I always had it. Thanks for your answer, I'll look into it.
@D1000: I know, I was just referring to what the stock ability did :P
@Eltonbrand - I believe I have what you want using custom movers and a few Site Operation actors, but until I get my Retail SC2 patcher working I can't make a test map to confirm. When I work out my issue, I'll throw up a map so you can see if it's what you had in mind :)
First of all, let me say, great tutorial ProzaicMuze! I've just started playing around with the editor and I must admit the data editor was quite a daunting thing at first. Now I think I'm starting to get a feel for how these different data types work together to produce the desired effects.
Using your tutorial, I was able to make a great Uberlisk. :)
However, I decided to try something similar using site operations to attach two spine tentacles to an overseer, underneath the belly where the other tentacles hang down.
I've gotten the two tentacles to appear, but unfortunately I'm having a lot of difficulty getting them to stay in the right spot. I figured that I should use the Variance Rotation to achieve the effect. So I first made two site operation actors, SOpAdjustSpineL4 and SOpAdjustSpineR4 (I already have L1-3 and R1-3 set for the Uberlisk), with Up Angle set to 315 and 45, respectively. I also made a site operation actor, SOpAttachSpineC, which has its Attachment Query + set to Target 4 (which I believe is the central underside of the overseer).
Unfortunately this put the spine tentacles on the top of the overseer, and in seemingly unrelated positions.
I thought that perhaps Target 4 was upside-down, so I switched the angles and it almost seemed to work, but as I experimented further, it seemed like the tentacles appeared in random positions, even when the same Up Angles were used. I noticed that changing the scale of one of the tentacles also produced strange effects.
In addition, when rotating the overseer, one tentacle seems to oscillate widely back and forth, while the other either remains in place, or oscillates just a little.
I am at a complete loss as to what is causing this to happen. Certainly, I don't fully understand the different Site Operations, so I could be making a mistake that is causing the problem.
I have both spines using SOpAttachSpineC as an anchor. Could using the same object or target be causing these problems? Should I try something other than Variance Rotation? Any insight anyone can provide would be a great help.
At least the tentacles work. :)
That sounds like the normal buggy-ness that Variance Rotation has with multiple attachments :(
Try using Explicit Rotation with Local enabled. I actually changed the tutorial to reflect this discovery (someone brought it up), but it seems that the update either didn't hold or was rolled back. I'll go through and update the tutorial to include this once again when I have the chance.
@ProzaicMuze: Go
Honestly, it reminds me of the same problems I had in WC3 with unit facings at different angles.
Well, I put them on Explicit Rotation with IsLocal enabled and having the tentacles simply upside-down. Seems to keep the tentacles' positions nicely, but their facing is off. It seems when rotating the overseer 360 degrees, the tentacles actually rotate twice.
Could they be getting facing information from two different sources somehow?
When IsLocal is turned off, the tentacles face in the same direction as the overseer, even though they are using Explicit Rotation.
I have trouble thinking in spatial coordinates, but it seems to me that changing any value in the Up vector other than Z will cause adverse effects when rotating the unit.
I gave up on Variance Rotation, so I also applied a few local offsets in addition to the Explicit Rotation positions on the underside. Interestingly, when I changed the facing vector, the explicitly rotated tentacles were held in that facing. Using IsLocal corrected that issue.
Great tutorial, but I'm having trouble getting it to work on my own.
I followed these steps exactly, although with a Marauder instead of a Thor as a base unit, and although the turret appears properly, the rockets still shoot out of the origin. Where might I be going wrong? I have the Marauder's attack launch site set to my custom launch site, which is created when the "missile turret" is created.
Thanks.
@ProzaicMuze: Go
Hey Prozaic, I'm working on a hero character called a Panther that it basically just a Predator with a marine riding him. I'm having trouble getting the marine model to show up at all.... I followed the steps in your Uberlisk tutorial as well as I could... if you get a few minutes could you troubleshoot for me? No hurry at all. Thanks!
I didn't get anything. Hope you can help me. How to do the following : put a ball (the shield of an mmortal) on top of a point defence drone? I want to create many drones for my engineer hero. Please help.
@TimeForPlanB - So I'm assuming from the picture you managed to get it working as desired? Or are you still in need of assistance?
@Lisk89 - Missiles shooting from a unit's origin is the most common problem I see with missiles. I, personally, get this issue all the time as well. Typically it means that one or more of your fields is bugged OR incorrectly filled. Start by checking the events on the Missile Actor and the Missile Attack (Action) Actor. If those are correct, look at the Launch Attachment Query, Launch Site, Launch Site Operations, Host and Host Site Operations fields.
If none of these fields yield and better results, post your map and I can take a look.
@cartmenbeck - I didn't check your map, but that's mainly because it only takes a few short steps to attach a unit to another unit:
At this point, your Marine should be attached to your predator. If you want your Marine to shoot, create a ranged weapon for the Predator and tie the Marine's animations to that weapon with events:
WeaponStart.[Name].AttackStart > Animation Play (Name: Attack; Animation Properties: Attack)
WeaponStop.[Name].AttackStop > Animation Clear (Attack)
UnitMovementUpdate.*.Walk > Animation Clear (Attack)
The actual event names might be slightly off (recalling from memory), but that will make the marine fire whenever the Predator uses its ranged weapon and prevent animation freezing by clearing the animation when moving.
@Paranoiks - Can you be a little more descriptive? Are you wanting the same ability on the drone, or the model for the shield around the drone at all times?
Well, I had to settle.
I just couldn't find a way to change the X and Y values of the Up Vector without having the tentacles move around. If you ever figure out a way, I'd love to hear it.
Thanks for the help.
If you want to post your map I can look into it. If you've ever taken a look at some of the test maps of mine that get put the in the news (Like the Psyborg) you'll notice that my offsets and vectors have seemingly random number values. This is because often times certain anchor points have a strange axis of rotation to begin with and require a LOT of tweaking to get right. Might help you :)
What I want is thefollowing: I don't wont the drone to have the ability Hardened Shield I just want a ball on top of the drone (like it is levitating). And I think the model of the shield will look great.
Pretty much the same setup as cartmen's Marine rider. One thing you "might" need to play with is freeze the shield animation so that it doesn't pulse endlessly. The model's stock animation isn't static and is setup to only be an impact shield as opposed to a continuous shield. I believe the event is called Animation Set Pause or something very similar to that.
@ProzaicMuze - That would be great if you could upload an example map :)
I've mentioned several different things. Could you be more specific about which example I'd be uploading?