Weird models

Yesterday I spent several hours trying to make a rubber life boat model in gmax. I'm not a 3D-modeller but I'm an able learner so I thought it would be an easy match. You can't believe how wrong I was. It took me 3 hours to make the mesh fort the boat and then 2 more to texture it with something that looked like a crazy circus tent. Well it looked kind of ok in the game - as a placeable.
But my thought was to make a visual effect using the boat as a attached model and then use it on an invisible creature to make it cruise around the lake at my will.

It's now everything is going magic and weird. The effect works and it attaches fine to my creature BUT it can only be seen in certain angles and lights. Any other angles or at nighttime it i invisible. Crazy indeed. I'll have to dig deeper into creating custom placeables because I need some more special placeables in this game.

Something else: I've decided to use Unique Power to make the most "action"-items and the dialog for some items that need to present more information and recieve more complex instructions. It's more fun that way and my very small poll pointed in both directions. It can be changed without too much work if it don't work. I'll be back later tonight with a new screenshot (I hope it's of a bobbing, fully textured rubber boat).