Essential LightWave 3D- P2 ppt

Modeler Display Options The Display Options window is accessible through Edit | Display Options.. Figure 2-46: Modeler’s Display Options window... One important thing to make note of is

The Symmetry action mode is one of the

handiest things to come along in LightWave

since its integration of OpenGL With

Sym-metry active, what you do to the right side

of your model is automatically mirrored to

its left side!

Note

Symmetry is a great tool, but to use it, you

must be immaculate in your modeling skills.

Symmetry only works when what is to the

left of X=0 is an exact mirror of what is on

the right of X=0 — just being close won’t do

a darn bit of good (You can always mirror

your model if things get really out of whack.

There are also free “symmetry fixers,” but

they still require a fair amount of attention

to get things back on track.)

If you are planning to make something

that is symmetrical, start out with your base

form perfectly centered along the X axis, and

always make sure you have Symmetry active

when you are sculpting.

An odd thing about the Symmetry function

is that with it active, if you move something

with your mouse’s focus to the left of X=0,

its effect along the X axis will be

“backward.”

Action Centers

It’s easiest to understand action centerswhen thinking about rotating somethingthat you have selected

• Action Center: Mouse — Wherever

your mouse is positioned becomes the pivotaround which your selection is rotated

• Action Center: Origin — When you

rotate your selection, the rotation will becentered around X=0, Y=0, Z=0

• Action Center: Pivot — Your

selec-tion will be rotated around where you haveset that layer’s pivot point to be

• Action Center: Selection — The

rotation will be centered right in the middle

of your selection

Figure 2-34: Under the Modes pop-up menu are selections to tell Modeler where you want your actions to be centered.

Figure 2-33: With the Symmetry action mode

active, selecting the polygons on the right side of

the model’s nose automatically selects their

counterparts on the left side Any tweaking of the

polygons on the right will automatically be

mirrored on the left.

Quick-Info Display

In the lower-left corner of Modeler is a

readout that quickly lets you know the

exact position of your mouse, how many

elements you have selected, and how much

area each grid square represents

Modeler Toolsets

On the left-hand side of Modeler are the

toolsets These toolsets are directly linked

to the tabs at the top of Modeler’s window

When the Create tab is active at the top

of the screen, the toolset shown is

Light-Wave’s primary set of tools geared for the

creation of geometry

Note

Anytime you see a pop-up menu with

“More” on it, that means there are

addi-tional tools that aren’t being displayed

because of the screen size; you can access

these tools through the pop-up menu.

It’s a pretty simple way to think about it,

but you create “stuff” with the tools under

the Create tab (Figure 2-36) and you modify

that “stuff” with the tools under the Modify

tab With these tools, you can move, rotate,

drag, bend, twist, size, and stretch elements

and generally “push points.”

Note

I imagine that it’s because of the vast array

of tools LightWave has in its arsenal that it refrains from showing you pictures of spheres, capsules, boxes, and metaballs Clicking on any one of these tools and then click-dragging in the viewports will create the geometry associated with that tool Remember that even though we’ll be get- ting into more detail with some of these tools in later chapters and exercises, the best way to get to know these (and all of LightWave’s tools) is to play around with them If you’re wondering what a metaball

is, try it out; you’re not going to break thing by having a few metaballs floating around on your screen.

any-The key is to have fun building “riffs” that you can call on later when the need arises.

It may be years before you find a need for a specific, rather arcane tool, but when that need comes around, you can remember,

“Oh yeah, I think I saw something like that…” and be able to zero in on it much more quickly than paging through a manual (or decrypting strange, iconic representa- tions of abstract concepts).

The Modify tab (Figure 2-37) contains a

col-lection of tools that modify existing

geometry

The Multiply tab (Figure 2-38) holds thetools that take existing geometry and makemore of it (cloning or extruding, forexample)

The Construct tab (Figure 2-39) housestools that are useful as you continue torefine and construct your geometry (such

as Booleans and point/polygon reduction).The Detail tab (Figure 2-40) holds thetools that focus on the more detail-orientedbits of modeling You can assign a sketchcolor, fuse (weld) two vertices into one, andadd, remove, and reduce the edges of yourobject

Figure 2-35: Modeler’s Quick-Info display.

The Map tab (Figure 2-41) houses most

of the tools that you use to modify and

refine your VMaps Using the tools in this

tab, you can create textures, morph targets,

and weight (influence) maps that will give

you tremendous control over your

charac-ter animation

The Setup tab (Figure 2-42) contains the

tools you’ll need to set up and modify a

character’s skeleton (used for character

ani-mation) as well as adding gons (polygons

that can be converted to various objects

such as lights in Layout)

The Utilities tab (Figure 2-43) allows

you to add plug-ins and launch custom

scripts (known as LScript commands) The

Utilities tab also features a “catch-all”

pop-up menu called “Additional.” The

third-party plug-ins you bring into Modelerwill appear under this menu item

Figure 2-37: The Modify tab.

Figure 2-39: The Construct tab.

The View tab (Figure 2-44) controls

zooming and panning It lets you hide and

unhide selected elements and group

poly-gons and points to quickly zero in on tight

areas of complex models The View tab alsofeatures several Layer tools to add, delete,and merge the layers of your object

Figure 2-41: The Map tab.

Figure 2-43: The Utilities tab.

Figure 2-42: The Setup tab.

Figure 2-44: The View tab.

Modeler General Options

LightWave’s Modeler keeps its options in

two separate locations It has display

options (which we’ll get to in just a

moment) and general options The General

Options window can be found under Edit |

• Content Directory — This tells

LightWave the default root path to where

its models and scenes are kept

• Polygons — This tells LightWave

what base shape to use in geometry

cre-ation whenever possible Quadrangles work

best when creating sub-patch surfaces for

high-resolution models, while triangles

work best for many game engines

• Flatness Limit — This is a setting

you will probably never need to change

(I’ve never touched it in all my years of

using LightWave) It tells Modeler how

much deviation is acceptable among the

points that define a flat, planar polygon

before it is considered non-planar (See

Figure 3-6.)

• Patch Divisions — This tells

Light-Wave how much of its geometric smoothingalgorithm to use when displaying sub-patches Higher numbers yield smoothersurfaces but are much slower to work with

• Undo Levels — This tells LightWave

how many levels of “Undo” to keep inmemory (The default is 8 But I like a highlevel so I can feel free to explore whatmight turn out to be a blind alley and still beable to get back to where I was when Istarted that particular exploration withouthaving to revert to a saved version of myobject.)

The other options are fairly tory, so I’ll let the LightWave manual coverthem — these are just the ones I’ve found

self-explana-to be not really intuitive

Modeler Display Options

The Display Options window is accessible

through Edit | Display Options.

Hot Key Block

Display Options

<d> opens Modeler’s Display Options

window.

Figure 2-45: Modeler’s General Options window.

Figure 2-46: Modeler’s Display Options window.

Modeler offers a lot of customization for

tai-loring itself to how you want your work

presented to you When the Display

Options window is first opened, the Layout

tab is shown With this tab, you set the

gen-eral display options for all windows, unless

a window is specifically freed from these

generalizations under the Viewports tab

One important thing to make note of is

that LightWave Modeler’s familiar

“quad”-style layout can be changed here by

select-ing another style from the Layout pop-up

menu Don’t get locked in to just using the

Quad layout out of habit The other layouts

can be quite helpful

Note

LightWave’s Viewport layout can be further

tweaked by clicking and dragging on the

bars that separate the viewports, resizing

them to your exact needs.

Figure 2-47 shows my personal preferences

for the Perspective viewport (located at the

top right by default)

• Independent Center and ent Zoom let me pan and zoom around my

Independ-Perspective viewport without disturbingthe other viewports that I might have cen-tered in on some important details

• Independent BG Color has been

changed from LightWave’s hallmark gray todull blue I almost never use that particularshade of blue in my work, so my modelsstand out against it

• Independent Rotation means that

any other Perspective viewports aren’tlinked to this one’s rotation (This kind oflinkage can be helpful when you’ve got onePerspective viewport showing the model inWireframe and the other in Smooth orWeight Shade.)

• Independent Visibility lets me see

what I want, when I want Cages (the onal base of sub-patches) get in my waywhen working in shaded views, as do their

polyg-“guides.” Polygon normals also tend to get

in my way, so I’ve turned them off for thisview as well I intermittently turn on and offShow Point Selection and Show PolygonSelection when it suits the detail work I’mdoing on a model

The Backdrop tab (Figure 2-48) lets you put

a loaded image into the background of anyorthogonal viewport This is helpful whenyou’re building a model that references aphotograph or drawing (We go through thesteps to do this in Chapter 10.)

The Interface tab (Figure 2-49) lets youmake some customizations to how Mod-eler’s interface looks (I touch on how youcan really rework LW’s interface in just amoment.)

Figure 2-47: Changing display options for

individual viewports.

To be honest, the only changes I’ve ever made to the Interface tab are to set Input Device to Tablet and to change the Alert Level The Alert Level lets you set how urgent an alert must be in order for it to ask you to press OK to continue (We get into how Alert Level affects workflow later on in the chapters on modeling.)

If you haven’t tried modeling with a tablet device (Wacom is my personal favorite for durability and precision), I highly recom- mend it When you’re dragging points around, your motions are a lot like drawing You simply touch the stylus tip down on a point and drag and bring the stylus up off the pad when the point is where you want it

to be I find it to be so much faster than

clicking a mouse and a lot less painful (And because holding a “pencil” is more of a natural position than holding a mouse, I imagine that a tablet could be a help to people worried about carpal tunnel syn- drome — though this is only a guess.)

The Units tab (Figure 2-50) is the tab I usemost frequently in the Display Options win-dow in Modeler In this tab, you can tellLightWave whether you want to work inmetric units or English units More impor-tantly, this tab is where you activate andadjust Grid Snap

LightWave’s quick and variable GridSnap is another one of those things thatyou’ll wish every 3D program had Its set-tings are as follows:

• Standard lets you quickly position

objects with respect to decent-sized tenth) segments of Modeler’s visible grid

(one-• Fine breaks Modeler’s Standard snap

into even smaller units for precise ing, still respecting units of its visible grid

position-• Fixed lets you specify exactly what

interval to which you wish to adhere yourmovements, regardless of the visible grid

• None lets you move objects in utter,

minute detail

Figure 2-49: The Interface tab.

Figure 2-48: The Backdrop tab.

Figure 2-50: The Units tab.

I usually find myself flipping between None

and Standard Grid Snap quite often while I

work.

Even though it might seem

counter-intuitive, Grid Units actually has nothing to

do with Grid Snap Grid Units controls the

zoom amount when you zoom by pressing

<,> and <.>.

The File Menu

In the upper-left corner of Modeler is the

File pop-up menu Here, you will find the

Load, Save, Import, and Export commands

The Edit Menu

The Edit pop-up menu, located just below

the File pop-up menu, provides traditional

edit functions (cut, copy, paste, etc.) as well

as access to the commands through which

you can customize almost every aspect of

Modeler With the saving and loading of

preferences, keyboard shortcuts, and menu

layouts, you can take your personal

customizations with you wherever you go

The Window Menu

Just below the Edit menu is the Windowpop-up menu Here you’ll find access tothree additional panels that let you adjustlayers, modify VMaps, and manage surfacepresets You can also use this menu to hideany floating windows and turn on and offthe toolbar

Figure 2-51: The File pop-up menu.

Figure 2-52: The Edit pop-up menu.

Figure 2-53: The Window and Help pop-up menus.

If you turn off the menu toolbar and find

later that you don’t know how to turn it on

again, don’t panic! You can restore the

toolbar by using the <Alt> + <F2>

key-board shortcut or by unchecking the Hide

Toolbar button on the Interface tab of the

Display Options panel (shortcut <d>).

The Help Menu

When you run into trouble or have

ques-tions about a particular aspect of the

software, the Help menu (Figure 2-53) is

the first place to turn The Help menu links

you to the online and web-based

documen-tation Completely rewritten for LightWave

8, these files contain a wealth of useful

information to aid in your understanding of

the software

Modeler Quick Menus

The LW manual calls these “contextual

pop-ups.” I prefer the term “quick menu”

because that’s exactly what they are You

hold <Shift> + <Ctrl> while left-, right-,

or middle-clicking in your workspace, and

these menus appear (See Figures 2-54 to

2-56.) They let you do all sorts of things

you would normally have to sift through a

few layers of pop-up menus to get at

(These menus are fully customizable, as are

all the other menus in LightWave —

point-ers on how to customize menus follow in a

click brings up a quick

menu that covers just about everything else Modeler has a command for.

Hot Key Customization

What if you come to LightWave already

accustomed to certain hot keys doing

cer-tain things? No problem You can assign and

reassign every command, script, macro,

etc., to a hot key!

If I wanted to assign Close All Objects to

the hot key <Ctrl> + <F12> (as in

Fig-ure 2-57), I would do this:

1 Choose Edit | Edit Keyboard

Short-cuts to bring up the Configure Keys

window, as shown in Figure 2-57

2 Search through the commands in the

left-hand column (or use the Search

button on the right side of the window),

expanding the drop-down lists

3 When you’ve found the command you

want to assign to the hot key, click on

it, highlighting it

4 Scroll through the hot key list until

you’ve found the key you want to

assign

5 Click on the desired hot key,

highlight-ing it

6 Click on Assign to assign the

com-mand to the hot key (Clicking on

Unassign removes the command from

the key.)

7 Repeat as desired

8 Click on Save and back up your hot

keys for those “CYA” kind ofhappenings

9 When you’re finished, click Done.

Note

Under the Presets pop-up menu are the default hot key mappings, so you can go crazy with your assignments if you like and can always get back to the defaults should you need to.

However, as nifty as interface ation is (hot keys or menu layouts), it makes

customiz-it really hard to use someone else’s version

if you ever get together with friends and work on a film together I found this out the hard way starting my own studio From being an independent contractor, I had my own license of LW so “tricked out” that the first time I sat down at a new hire’s version, I was almost completely lost with the default hot keys and menu layouts.

A solution to this is to have your ration files where you can access them from the Internet, or carry them around on one of those keychain USB drives But remember to save your host’s configurations before you load yours, and restore his configs when you’re done.

configu-Menu Layout Customization

If you want to completely rework Wave’s menus or make a new plug-in easilyaccessible as a button, you can do this just

Light-as eLight-asily Light-as Light-assigning hot keys You can add,delete, and reorder the menu tabs acrossthe top of Modeler, keeping all your favoritetools just a mouse-click away

In Figure 2-58, you can see that the BallTool command, located under the Createdrop-down list, has been given a menuposition just under Box (and renamed tojust Ball) under the Primitives group By

Figure 2-57: Edit | Edit Keyboard Shortcuts brings up

the Configure Keys window.

comparing the actual menu and the

Con-figure Menus window, you can see how

each tool, group, tab, and menu is

configured

This may be a bit confusing, so here’s

an exercise for you to get more of a

han-dle on menu customization Let’s add a

temporary menu and assign some tools

to it:

1 Activate the Configure Menus

win-dow (Edit | Edit Menu Layout).

2 Collapse all the drop-downs except

the one for Main Menu (You do this

by clicking on the little

downward-pointing triangles next to each main

group, circled in Figure 2-59.)

3 Select the View sub-group under

Main Menu, and click on New

Group See Figure 2-60.

Figure 2-59

Figure 2-60

Figure 2-61: A new group, labeled New Group, is created directly below the previously highlighted group.

Figure 2-58: Edit | Edit Menu Layout brings up

the Configure Menus window.

A new group, labeled New Group,

is created directly below the

previ-ously highlighted group

4 Select New Group, and click on

Rename Name this group

any-thing you like (Figure 2-61)

5 Find the Ball Tool under the

Cre-ate commands Highlight it and

the new group you’ve just created

and renamed, and click on Add.

A new instance of the Ball Tool

now appears under the Deleteme

tab, as shown in Figure 2-63 (It

doesn’t disappear from where it

was under the Create | Primitives

Tab/Group It just can now also be

found here, under this new tab

we’ve created.)

6 To organize your new menus, you

create groups and sub-groups

With Ball in your new menu tab

selected, click on New Group

(Figure 2-64)

Figure 2-62

Figure 2-63

Figure 2-64

7 Highlight New Group, which is

created directly below the item

previ-ously selected, and click on Rename

to change its name to whatever you’d

like (See Figure 2-65.)

8 You can then drag the new tool, Ball,

onto the new group (which I named

Kemu) to assign it to that group (See

Figure 2-66.)

Note

Notice that in Figure 2-66, there is a

blue line just below and slightly

shorter than Kemu This line means

that the dragged item will be attached

to the item directly above the line If

the blue line were to reach all the

way to the left side of the word

“Kemu,” that is LightWave’s indication

that the item being moved will simply

be shuffled below the item directly

above the line.

You have now created the Ball Tool under

the Kemu group in the new Deleteme

menu tab

Figure 2-65

Figure 2-66

Figure 2-67

Layout is where you bring everything

together to create those incredible

master-works you have in you Layout is where

you position your objects, hang your lights,

and set your objects moving (if you’re

animating) After LightWave takes amoment or so to render, out comes thisslick image for you to show off in e-mails toall your friends (or print and tape to yourrefrigerator, if that’s your kind of thing)

Figure 2-68: Layout has a lot in common with Modeler The tabs, menu styles, viewport controls, and Quick-Info display readout are all pretty much the same The differences between Layout and Modeler are

so intuitive, you’ll get the hang of them without even realizing it.

Viewport Styles

The biggest differences between Modeler

and Layout viewports are that in addition to

viewing orthogonal and perspective

projec-tions, you can also set the view to see what

any of your cameras or lights are seeing or

view the contents of your scene as

pre-sented in a Schematic layout Because

bones figure so heavily in character

anima-tion, Layout also adds two bone-specific

display types: Bone Weight Shade and Bone

X-Ray, which we touch on in just a moment

Figure 2-69: Layout’s viewport settings and display

type, called Maximum Render Level here, are

almost identical to Modeler’s.

Figure 2-70: Layout’s Bounding Box Maximum Render Level display does away

with all but the simplest geometry Objects are represented only by a bounding

box that encompasses the object’s volume (Bones, lights, cameras, and other

“iconic” items are shown normally.)

Figure 2-71: Layout’s Vertices Maximum Render Level shows only the points in the objects.

Figure 2-72: Layout’s Wireframe and Front Face Wireframe are similar to Modeler’s Wireframe and Hidden Line display types Front Face Wireframe speeds refresh rates (how quickly LightWave is able

to redraw the screen) and decreases clutter by not bothering to draw any polygon facing away from the viewport (knowing which way a poly is

“facing” is explored in Chapter 3 in the section on normals).