Conjuration and Casting Visual Effects (vco and vca)

These are conjuration visual effect models, used generally for ConjHeadVisual, ConjHandVisual, ConjGrndVisual, CastHeadVisual, CastHandVisual and CastGrndVisual in spells.2da although they could be modified into visualeffects.2da lines.

The 3 different columns can be combined in one spell - they apply the VFX to different locations (the hands, the head and the ground respectively). Conjuration comes before the "firing" of the spell and cast comes after the conjuration is over.

When items are used the Conjuration VFX are ignored and only the Cast ones are used.

Naming Convention

Bioware used these prefixes for these VFX:

• vco_ (Visual effect Conjuration) and vca_ (Visual effect Cast) as their prefix for these. In one instace (Gazes) they use "vco" files in the Cast columns. The tables below state if they're used for the different Head, Hand or Grnd type, or if none of those they'll be unused.
• var_ (Visual effect Area) is used for some cones
• vca_ (Visual effect Cast) is used for cast effects like Dragon Breaths, some cones,
• vpr_ (Visual effect Projectile) not in this list but used for the ProjModel column (eg fireballs etc.)

The naming convention of the files after vco_/vca_ tends to be abbreviations of their use (eg; "lgspr" is "Large, Ground, Spiral" - although I've made some assumptions here and there is no reason one "type" should not work in another "location" it'd just be centred on a different body part/be on the ground spot), along with the type of VFX it is intended for - eg; Fire for fire damage spells. These are generally recolours but not always. The Bioware "standard" ones are:

Sound Effect Notes

There are usually sco_ (Sound effect Conjuration) or sca_ (Sound effect Cast) prefixed sound effects used for these. Sometimes Bioware references ones that simply don't exist in the game files which will be noted.

Spells.2da Entries

To ease testing to see these VFX simply use a small script to run the conjuration effect with a "fake cast" in the nwscript debug window selecting the creature to run it on, for instance for Greater Magic Weapon line 545:

ActionCastFakeSpellAtObject(545, OBJECT_SELF);

You can also use the cheat-cast to fire any spell effects (to get a gist of how it looks in tandem with EffectVisualEffect applied things):

ActionCastSpellAtObject(545, OBJECT_SELF, METAMAGIC_ANY, TRUE);

VCO Models List

Unused lines are marked in blue. These need some further testing and screenshots.

VCA Models List

To follow.