Editing the actual magic/skill animations in FF7

[SeviStatic]

I see a lot about swapping the magic animations for different spells, but I can't seem to find anything about artistically editing the spells themselves. 
For instance the grunt's beam gun looks pretty clunky to me and i'd like to make it "prettier".  What is known about doing this?

[nfitc1]

A bit is known although it's pretty complicated. Those beam particles are just one model that an animation file tells to shoot out multiple times. I don't know the mapping of animation index to actual animation file so I couldn't tell you exactly how it's done, but here are the basics.

Attack's animation index determines which animation script to access (not sure how this happens).
The animation script will have details about which models to use and where to place them in a given frame. It also handles actor/target information too so it's smart enough to know to use the "multi target" info in applicable situations.
Models and sounds are retrieved.
Animation is played.

So if you want it to look the same (with the blue beams lancing out) but with better looking beams you'll have to find the model(s) it uses and make better looking ones. Model data is pretty well documented on the wiki so look there for model editing help.

[SeviStatic]

i went fishing around in magic.lgp and found bimu1.tex (beam) which i suppose is one of the files it uses.  there is also a bimu2.tex, so i figure it probably swaps between them.  not sure what the other files are for.  the funny thing is it was probably much easier to do all this the first time around when they made the game than to go back, reverse-engineer it all, and try to tweak it.

thanks for the help

[Aali]

Models, textures and 2D animations are stored externally but everything else is hardcoded. Where those models/animations are placed, how they move etc cannot be edited directly, its all hardcoded.