If you sneaked a peak at the BrutalFront WIP I posted, you'd have seen a pic of the Clone Scout Spawner. Now, while thinking about it, I noticed something....

I remember looking at this post where everyone was arguing over whether or not anyone managed to make a unit into a prop (without making a new model via XSI). The problem, they uniformly agreed, was "freezing" the animation.

But with the Clone Scout Spawner, when the controller is killed, the scout just stops there, and dies a few seconds later. My question to the advanced modders: would it be possible to:

1. Change the amount of time that passes before the scout dies to something incredibly high.

2. Then, change the health likewise.

3. Add him as a weapon of a local team, which you force-spawn where you want the prop.

4. Add a hint node telling them to use the scout weapon.

5. Do some fancy LUA code that will kill them when they use the weapon? Then stop them from re-spawning?

The way I see it, this ought to make a player-prop. That's a little workaround the "freezing" problem, is it possible?

I'm not sure, but couldn't you simply make a new "prop" class odf with the unit .msh? I didn't really understand what you were looking for, but this may answer the first part of your post.

That results in a distorted MSH due to the animations. It is similar to that Free Cam bug. That was what the old post was about - "freezing" the anims.

Isn't it possible to keep the skeleton for the model when its made into a prop? Also, you can make animated props, such as the rancor, and with anims, place troopers in, however they would repeat this anim over and over. I believe caleb was using this in his dantooine map, and maveritchell has used something similar for his units in both Aquarilis and Spira.

D'oh!

Now I remember Aquilaris....

Well, then, let's rewire this thread. How would I go about keeping the skeleton?

I'd look at the rancor prop files, possibly jabba, maybe (and I'm stretching it here) look at the ammo droid files.

The workers in Aquilaris were actually units (which is why they turned around at all) that were temporarily reduced to zero movement speed. The townspeople in Spira were animated props, and if you're looking for how to do them, I would suggest, as always, to look at the "Everything you need" thread:
Animatedprops tutorial