Essential LightWave 3D- P20 potx

Both SasLite and Sasquatch render littlestraight lines when they make fibers.. WithSasquatch, you don’t have to render them.And, of course, that again saves time.While we’re talking abou

Both SasLite and Sasquatch render little

straight lines when they make fibers These

look curved, but, like a polygon, really

aren’t In SasLite, the number of curves isfixed If there aren’t enough for the coarse-ness and frizziness you have chosen, youmight see the lines Much more commonly,there are many more than you need, espe-cially if you are making fairly straight fibers.But you are going to render them all any-way because you can’t change the number

In Sasquatch, you can edit the FiberDivisions number, so you aren’t renderingany more segments than you need to Onceagain, this can save quite a bit of time over

a long animation

In fact, Sasquatch can save you so muchtime that, if you have clients, and time ismoney, it will probably pay for itself in shortorder And that’s without all the extracapabilities!

However, let’s talk about those for a fewmoments

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Figure 20-78: The Preview window in Sasquatch is easy to set up, and a real time-saver.

Figure 20-79: The Rendering page of the

Sasquatch Pixel Filter panel.

Sasquatch’s Valuable Extra

Features

There are things that SasLite simply can’t

do that Sasquatch can

For instance, SasLite can’t cast shadows

on anything, in any way, for any reason

Sasquatch includes a surface shader,

“Shadow of Sasquatch,” that allows you to

selectively cast shadows on any surface in

the scene, in addition to controlling the

opacity, colored highlights, and softness,

among other things It uses shadow maps,

so it’s fast You can control the size of the

map in the Pixel Filter panel, so you can

use small maps for small or distant objects,

and high-resolution maps for close-ups and

detail work

The SasLite displacement, as you know, has

one panel of options Sasquatch has nine,

including dynamics; most of them can

accept surface textures and some can beanimated

Surface textures are called by clicking alittle “S” next to the name of the attribute.That opens a panel that allows you tochoose whether to apply a map (image orweight), noise, spots, effectors, slope, orsome variation of all of them to the attrib-ute Since you can also determine howmuch of each attribute will be applied inboth the black and white pixels, you have agreat deal of control

This allows you to tweak the color,growth pattern, density, coarseness — vir-tually any of the parameters — in minutedetail, and in very little time

For instance, remember the grassy plainthat we made in the beginning of this chap-ter? Those fibers were applied to the wholeobject, at the same length and density.There wasn’t any way to tweak it so thatthere was more detail near the camera than

on the distant hills

But with Sasquatch, there is Using aneffector (usually a null object, set up in Lay-out), it’s simple to put long, luxuriant grassnear the camera, with the grass getting notonly thinner but shorter (to increase theillusion of distance) farther away In the fardistance, where the fog takes over, youdon’t really need any fibers at all WithSasquatch, you don’t have to render them.And, of course, that again saves time.While we’re talking about grass, inSasLite, you have no control over the taper

of the fibers With Sasquatch, you do; youcan grow fibers that are the same widthfrom root to tip or fibers that taper to apoint So you can make blades that lookmore like an uncut field of grass in the firstplace

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Figure 20-80: Shadow of Sasquatch Shader panel.

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Figure 20-81: Sasquatch surface texture panels.

Figure 20-82: Using an Effector to control fibers in Sasquatch.

Perhaps the biggest thing that Sasquatch

can do but SasLite cannot is animation

With SasLite, the fibers are the fibers

They don’t respond to anything, and they

don’t change over time

With Sasquatch, not only can they

respond to wind, movement, and so on, but

length and density can be independently

animated You can, quite literally, make

fibers grow before your eyes

The differences in color are also mous In SasLite, as you know, the onlyvariation in color possible is a single con-trol, which randomly changes both thebrightness and hue within a percentagerange

enor-In Sasquatch, not only are those twothings separated into two different ranges(one for each), but you also pick a “Salt”and a “Pepper” fiber, each of which has a

different base and tip color(that’s two colors per fiber,for every fiber) You pickhow close to the tip thechange occurs and howsharp the division is Thenyou decide the percentage

of “Salt” fibers, and thepercentage of blendbetween “Salt” and “Pep-per.” (Is each fiber eitherblack or white, for instance,

or are there some that aregray?)

In addition, you candecide if the fibers inheritthe dominant color fromthe clump they are in, ifthey keep their own color,

or if they have some centage of both

per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· per-· S i m u l a t i o n s 3 : F u r a n d H a i r

Figure 20-83: SasLite grass vs Sasquatch grass.

Figure 20-84: Animating properties panel in Sasquatch.

Then you can put all of that on a map,

too (The colors blend much like Multiply in

Photoshop They can be darker than the

map, but never lighter.)

Remember the rug we did? In

Sasquatch, if you want a complex pattern in

the rug all you have to do is choose pure

white for the Salt and Pepper, root and tip,

and use the map of the rug for the image

under the Mapping button Presto! A

per-fect, colorful rug

While we’re talking about re-rendering

using Sasquatch, remember the head? Well,

in Sasquatch, you don’t have to make

sepa-rate parts for the mustache Just choose a

poly in the philtrum, and use Smart

Combing, starting from that poly The beard

and mustache are automatically combed,

just the way they would grow (You can

tweak this, if you like, but I didn’t have to

here.) This, again, saves both time and

frustration!

If you want to match colors but not

length, density, clumping, etc., in two

instances of SasLite, you have to either

make a note of the colors you used and

re-enter them in the second instance, orsave the entire thing, load it into the secondinstance, and then tweak the non-colorparameters

In Sasquatch, you can copy each page ofparameters separately So moving just thecolor or just the shading or just the anima-tion from one instance to another is a snap!(Sasquatch can also load saved SasLite files

So, if you have a wig you like in SasLite,you can use the same parameters inSasquatch There will be lots of thing miss-ing, of course, that will simply have thedefault values, but it’s a start.)

In fact, there’s so much that Sasquatchcan do that I’m not going to try to tell youall of it Instead, I suggest that you go to theWorley Labs site at http://www.worley.comand download the plug-in from the Down-load page You won’t be able to open theinterface or change the parameters if youdon’t buy it, but you can render things thatuse it

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Figure 20-85: Mapping in Sasquatch, and the rug

you can make with it.

Figure 20-86: The head, redone with Sasquatch!

Download the demo files as well, and

render some of them, and the Sasquatch

version of the files that I’ve included on the

CD Notice how much faster they render,

and how much more information they

contain Then make up your own mind ifSasLite will fill your needs or not

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and Iencourage you to jump into Sasquatch orSasLite and have a ball

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It has been a pleasure sharing with you

these essential techniques of using

LightWave as a tool for bringing the things

you’ve got tucked away in your mind into a

form that others can see as well You’ve

come a very long way in a very short

amount of time I hope the “ominous

mys-tique” that may have prevailed before

opening these pages has been replaced with

an overwhelming sense of possibility and

excitement There is so much you can do

with what you know right now! This is only

the beginning of your path!

The things in these pages are the things

that “the best of the best” have as part of

their “toolboxes” that they use on a daily

basis (You’d eventually learn them in X

number of years, but why wait?) All we’ve

done is take some choice things from our

own toolboxs and lay them out for you to

play with, to test their “heft” and “feel.”

(These are things we couldn’t work

with-out, no one should have to try to work

without them, unless they consciously

decide they don’t want to.)

There may be some other “hotshots”

out there who may wonder why the heck

we’re doing this Doesn’t this threaten our

positions as authorities? Let us make this

perfectly clear: Beyond all shadows of doubt,

absolutely not!

Consider the kind of growth in the field

of 3D that has the possibility of happening

when what was once considered the

pinna-cle of the exploration phase of LightWave is

now merely the beginning The things that

you will discover should be far beyond what

any of us already well along on our ownjourneys can imagine All we ask is that youshare what you learn, what you find out,with others What you will be doing is rais-

ing the level that everyone will be able to achieve and what we expect of our

achievements

Just as every seventh-grader todayunderstands, without even thinking about

it, the theories that took Pythagoras almost

a lifetime to develop, it is our hope thattomorrow we will all be able to work mira-cles with 3D, the likes of which arecontemplated only by the wishful dreamers

of today

Where you go from here is limited only

by what you choose to do You now have the

skill set that it takes most LightWaversmany years to develop You could explorecharacter animation and the creation ofyour own short films You could delve intospecial effects, even learning LScripting tocreate with mathematics things that can beneither modeled nor animated You couldfind yourself working with other extremelydedicated and talented artists to create

something even bigger than Lord of the

Rings Or you could find yourself living a

pastoral life, as if on some remote ony-planet, making the films you havealways wanted to see and helping others toachieve their dreams and goals as well.Beginnings are wonderful things Possi-bilities lay out before you like a never-end-ing webwork that connects where you areright now to everywhere you dream to be

col-Where will you choose to let your path take

you now that it has begun?

When you think about just how far 3D

has come in the few short years it has been

actually possible, this beginning you are

now a part of is itself a part of one of the

more exciting things to touch this little

planet in a long, long time

Just remember, in all that you do, find the

ways of making it fun Find ways of letting

what you do be more play than work When

you do that, the work that will come through

you will look more and more like the work

that inspired you to take this journey

yourself!

Be well, and enjoy the journey!

Timothyhttp://Timothy.ArtistNation.comSteve

http://www.stevewarner.com

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Appendix A

Plug-ins and

Programs

Something that has always struck me about

the community that has gravitated to

Light-Wave is the amazing sense of, well,

“com-munity.” I’ve used all the major software

packages and only found this sense of

open-ness, sharing, camaraderie, and support

among the users of LightWave These

feel-ings of connection exist with LightWave

artists from all areas of the globe,

regard-less of language, belief, or computer

platform

I’m not quite sure why this is so with

LightWave — maybe it has something to do

with the initial intent of Video Toaster as a

“paradigm shift” or something The point is

that there are incredibly talented artists,

programmers, and programmer/artists

working with LightWave who have done

some amazing things, and out of their own

feelings of connection with this community

have chosen to share what they’ve created

with the rest of us These are plug-ins,

LScripts, and external programs that save

hours of time or make you sit up and say,

“Dude! That’s cool! I never would have

thought of that!”

As a firm believer in giving back, and

someone who uses these additions to

LightWave on a constant basis, I am very

thankful and deeply indebted to the works

of these honorable people What they have

created are things that would sell for

hun-dreds, if not thousands, of dollars were we

using Maya, XSI, or 3ds max These are

incredibly helpful tools Once you start using

them, you won’t want to work withoutthem

I am equally thankful to each of the ist/programmers who have let me includethe plug-ins that I use most frequently onthe companion CD I encourage you, if youhave a leaning toward programming, tomake note of the things you’ve alwayswished existed in LightWave and codethem, adding to the wealth of things thatmake the LightWave community the awe-some “concept in action” it is

art-This chapter outlines brief descriptions

of the plug-ins and programs that are onthe companion CD These descriptionsdescribe the basics of what they do, givingyou an idea of whether or not they’re some-thing you want to add to your own toolbox

(Most of these are free, full versions of the

software, while some are demos of mercial products All are included with thepermission of their authors.)

com-The directory structure for the plug-ins

is Plugs_n_Programs\Creator\Program

Name\Computer Platform\.

Each included plug-in (or program) has

its own README file in either its Program

Name or Computer Platform directories.

The README files will get into muchmore depth about how to use and set up theplug-ins (or programs)

A snippet of the creator’s web site is

included under the Creator directory, as is a

link to the web site itself You’ll be able toget the most recent versions of the files

directly from there and see what new things

those artist/programmers have created

Note

You will need to know how to add plug-ins

in order to implement their functionality into

LightWave If you do not know how to do

this, please see the LW manuals.

Note

Most of these utilities are for both Intel and Macintosh Some, however, have not yet been compiled for Macintosh (at the time of publication) I apologize for the frustration this may present to Mac users of LightWave With the aim of strengthening the ties of the LightWave community, if you are a Mac programmer and can offer your time to compile a plug-in for Intel-only LightWave coders, I’m sure they, as well as Macintosh LightWave users, would be grateful for your help.

3D Cybercorp

http://www.3dcybercorp.com/

Plug-in by Antony Scerri

UV Imaginator

(Intel, Mac OS9, Mac OSX) Full Version

What it is: Modeler => Utilities |

Addi-tional | UV Imaginator generates a bitmap

image of any UV map that you have

assigned to a model, which you can use as a

guide for when you are painting UV texturemaps

What makes this cool: Without this

plug-in, you typically take a screen capture

of your UV Map viewport and paste it intoyour paint program Your resolution, then,

is limited to that of your screen UVImaginator lets you create any resolutionimage of a UV map layout, even letting yougenerate the bitmap based on a currentselection or surface!

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Figure A-1: UV Imaginator.

Notes: Once you have set the

tar-get image with Save As, be sure to

click Generate (No bitmap is created

unless you click Generate.)

Figure A-2: The bitmap generated by the

settings shown in Figure A-1, ready to be

used as a template for your painted texture in

your paint program.

ASA

http://www.lw-fin.org/plugins/

Plug-ins by Juha Pinola

ASA BufferSaver

(Intel, Mac OS9) Full Version

What it is: Layout => Effects |

Pro-cessing | Image Filter | ASA_BufferSaver

is a plug-in for advanced users that savesimages containing the internal buffers thatLightWave uses to create its images(Specularity, Shading, Raw RGB, etc.)

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Figure A-3: ASA BufferSaver.

What makes this cool: By saving the

internal buffers and then using a program

like CinePaint or After FX to combine them

after rendering, you can have amazing

con-trol over how the final image looks You can

adjust the darkness and tonality of base

col-ors, shadows, and highlights You can blur

the Specular shading buffer, using Screen to

create soft “bloom-like” effects (The list of

things you can do to control every aspect of

the final image without re-rendering is

nearly endless.) This is what the pros do

Notes: Working in this manner is highly

advanced, but it is something that you will

want to get into when you want your

ren-ders to start taking on even more of a

professional feel The code-like information

in the Buffers fields refers to which

individ-ual buffer channels (shown under the Help

button) will be used to make up the R, G, B,

and alpha channels of the output image.

(The first entry in the Buffers field stands

for the red channel, then the green channel,

the blue channel, and finally the alpha

channel.)

Side Note: If you’re into random-dot

stereograms, you can use this plug-in tosave the depth buffer to the black-and-white image an RDS-generating programneeds to work its “magic.” (You can findRDS programs through TUCOWS.com,explored in Appendix B.)

ASA ColorPicker

(Intel) Full Version

What it is: Layout => General Options |

Color Picker | ASA_ColorPicker changesthe tool you use to select colors inLightWave’s interface

What makes this cool: This opens up a

whole new level of precision and ease forchoosing your colors in LightWave You cancompare your original color with the coloryou are selecting in the upper part of itswindow and use the “ratchet-ring” aroundthe color wheel to micro-adjust your colorselection

Notes: Using this plug-in makes

select-ing colors in other programs seem like adrag

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Figure A-4: ASA ColorPicker.

Fake Irradiance Illumination

(Intel) Full Version

What it is: Surface Editor | Shaders |

ASA_FakeIrradianceIllumination allows you

to use a prerendered image to precalculate

a very convincing “fake” radiosity

What makes this cool: If you want to

get the look of radiosity but don’t have the

time for even Backdrop Only radiosity, youneed this plug-in

Notes: See the README file for

instructions on how to set up this plug-inand generate the image the plug-in needs to

do its magic

Light Absorption in See-Through Items

(Intel, Mac OS9) Full Version

What it is: Surface Editor |

Shaders | ASA_LASI is a

shader that calculates the

com-plex mathematics for the way

light behaves when passing

through transparent objects

What makes this cool:

This lets you have “glass”

objects that more or less

accu-rately recreate their real-world

counterparts While ray-tracing

with this plug-in will very

accu-rately recreate real life, you can

render without ray-tracing and

still have your surfaces show

the coolness of light being

absorbed as it passes through

“see-through” items

Notes: I’ve found this

plug-in to be a little bit of a

chal-lenge to pick up at first, but

when you do get the hang of its

settings, it is well worth the

time spent learning it

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Figure A-5 (Image by Juha Pinola — used with permission)

Figure A-6 (Image by Juha Pinola — used with permission)

things, but what I

imagine you might

find most helpful is

its ability to render

what any camera in

your scene is

“look-ing at” onto a

surface (In this

case, it is applied as

a shader.) You’ll

probably find this

extremely useful if you’re doing

“vid-screens” that monitor an area from

several angles at once (or monitor the

dif-ferent parts of a spaceship’s exterior)

What makes this cool: Using Surface

Editor | Shaders | ASA_RenderTarget lets

you do “in camera” things that would

nor-mally require you to prerender and then

map the prerendered image sequences onto

surfaces in your scene

Blochi

http://www.blochi.com/

Plug-in by Blochi

Thickener

(LScript) Full Version

What it is: Modeler => Utilities | Utility

| Additional | Thickener will add real

thick-ness to a flat object, even sub-patch objects.

(As an LScript, it will work on both Intel

and Macintosh — regardless of Mac OS.)

What makes this cool: Try making a

couple of complex flat objects “thick” in thesame way by hand and get back to me

Notes: Thickener is more than Extrude,

more than Smooth Scale It thickens objects

along each poly’s normal Try it I thinkyou’ll like it!

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Figure A-7

Notes: In the ASA RenderTarget shader

interface, RTC (Render Target Camera) letsyou choose which camera’s view (already inyour scene) will be shown on the surface

IMO (Isometric Object) lets an object be

your “camera” if Isometric is checked at thetop of the window This plug-in only doesplanar mapping at the moment, so be sureyour (Planar Mapping) axis is set correctly