LightWave 3D 8 1001 Tips & Tricks phần 8 pps

Versions: 6-8 Editor Windows>Scene Editor 1025 Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Scene Editor | Beginner Scene Editor Use Scene Editor for faster item selection in large scenes.. Versions: 6

geometry in or around a gash or opening in the Balrog, for example, and makethat a particle emitter.

it passes?

It’s simple: Create an emitter Change the nozzle size to something large tocover the region we want to animate our ship through Determine how manyparticles are needed to fill the region we need and input that number into theBirth Rate field Now set Generate by to Frame This will make sure that the fullnumber of particles that are needed will be created instantly Also set the particlelimit to the same number entered in the Birth Rate field Now all we have to do

is load in our ship and make it a collision object or parent a collision object to it.This will act as the shields around the ship and push the particles away as theship travels through the “nebula.” In addition we can add wind generators and soforth behind and parented to the ship to swirl the particles

Versions: 6-8

1022 William “Proton” Vaughan | Simulation Examples | All Levels

Crowd Creation in a Snap

Using a particle emitter and FX_Linker you can create a crowd in no time.FX_Linker lets you turn each particle into an object If you change the collisionsize on the particle, the object will collide with itself This is great for creating aflock of birds, crowd of people, or school of fish

Versions: 6-8

Animating | 427Simulation Examples

1024 Larry Shultz | Simulation Examples | Intermediate to Advanced

You can get the basic particle stream to bend and twist with a couple of windgenerators Then as the smoke stream passes through this, it hits another windgenerator that scatters the particles somewhat

Let’s say that your animation is 300 frames and your smoke begins to scatter

at frame 150 You can use a gradient to affect the size of the HVs based on theage of the particles You then use the gradient to keep the size of the HVs smallwhen the particles are tightly packed in the stream but then grow as the particlesbegin to scatter This fills a larger volume You can copy and paste the gradient

to also affect the density As the particles scatter into a larger volume and theHVs also expand you want to drop their density The problem that you have now

is that you have smoke filling a larger area In reality, the smoke would be what turbulent in that volume with fingers of smoke that are more dense andareas with less smoke where it’s less dense You can break up the larger smokevolume using procedurals

some-You can also use the same gradient you used to affect the size and density toaffect the amplitude of your procedural so that it only begins to appear at theprecise moment the particles begin to scatter and the HVs begin to grow in size

Versions: 6-8

Editor Windows>Scene Editor

1025 Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Scene Editor | Beginner

Scene Editor

Use Scene Editor for faster item selection in large scenes

Versions: 6-8

1026 William “Proton” Vaughan, Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Scene Editor | Beginner

Parenting Inside Scene Editor

You can easily parent an object to another item in the Scene Editor by clicking on the object’s name in the list and dragging it to the right side of theitem you would like to parent it to

left-You can actually make any number of things children of the same parent thisway by selecting them all, using either Shift+click or Ctrl+click, and then drag-ging them

Versions: All

Editor Windows>Scene Editor

1027 Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Scene Editor | Beginner

in the Schematic view If Drag Descendants is activated in the Schematic Viewtab of the Display Options, moving a node in the Schematic view will drag both

it and all of its children around the Schematic view It’s easier to use the SceneEditor to sort out a hierarchy than it is to click on a node in the Schematic viewand guess

Version: 8

1030 Rob Powers | Editor Windows>Scene Editor | Intermediate

Scene Editor/Dope Sheet

Use the Selection Sets feature in the new Scene Editor/Dope Sheet to createcustom selection sets containing objects, bones, nulls, lights, or cameras found

in your complex rigs Selecting your custom sets will allow you to manipulatekeys across multiple item types in the Dope Sheet all at once

Version: 8

Animating | 429Editor Windows>Scene Editor

Editor Windows>Graph Editor

1031 William “Proton” Vaughan | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Intermediate

Speeding Up Refreshing

If you are working with a lot of curves and keys in the Graph Editor, you canturn off the Antialias Curves and Show Tangents options, which should speed updisplay refreshing

1033 Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Beginner

Track Item Selections

In Graph Editor Options, set Track Item Selections to On so you don’t have

to find the item you want to work on in the Channels Bin

Versions: 6-8

Editor Windows>Graph Editor

The new Scene Editor/Dope Sheet allows you to create custom selection sets.

ÜNote: Graph Editor Options may be in the More pull-down if the Graph Editor window is small.

1034 Todd Grimes | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Intermediate

Fit Values

In the Graph Editor, click on the Options button In the General tab, click onFit Values When Selected This will automatically place each curve you select inthe middle of the graph so you don’t have to move around to find it

Versions: 6-8

1035 Jonny Gorden | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Beginner

Always Show Modified

In Graph Editor Options, set Always Show Modified to On so you can seethe results of motion modifiers and expressions

Versions: 6-8

ÜNote: Graph Editor Options may be in the More pull-down if the Graph Editor window is small

1036 Todd Grimes | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Intermediate

You can bake motion data in the Graph Editor by selecting or multiselectingthe channels you wish to bake and then hitting the “b” (bake) key This worksfine on bones driven with expressions Again baking motion data is easier whenchannel sets are used

You can also use Motion Baker, which is built into LW to bake IK ontobones or the free one from DStorm If you search on the Internet, you might findothers

Versions: 6-8

Animating | 431Editor Windows>Graph Editor

1038 William “Proton” Vaughan | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Intermediate

Footprints

Footprints are overlooked by many, but once you use them they won’t be soeasily overlooked If you want to clean up your keyframes, here are the easysteps to do so

1 In the Graph Editor choose a channel (or channels) with a lot of keyframes

2 Select Leave Foot Print from the Foot Prints drop-down menu

3 With the right mouse button, box-select all the keyframes for the selectedchannel and delete them

Note that although the keyframes are now gone, there is a faded line (that’sthe footprint) with the keyframes of the channel you just deleted

4 Select the Keyframe tool in the Graph Editor Hold down the Shift key andleft-click in the Graph Editor everywhere you want a keyframe

Versions: All

ÜNote: If you press Ctrl+B or choose Match Footprint Time Slice from the Keys menu, the keyframe willsnap to the footprint This is an easy way to clean up motion capture data or animations that have

keyframes of every frame and appear jerky or rough

1039 Timothy “Amadhi” Albee | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Intermediate

TCB Splines

TCB (Tension, Continuity, and Bias) splines may seem a bit arcane to folksnot used to them, but they are actually easier to work with (and get good anima-tion from) than the more common bezier splines If you need to have motion

“ease out” of one pose and then “ease into” another, set the Tension for the endkeyframe to 1 (the highest level LW’s Graph Editor will allow) Then, create akeyframe roughly halfway between the two and assign –1 as the Tension for thatnew, intermediate keyframe (The motion will blend more smoothly with thepositions at the end keyframes than before!)

Versions: All

1040 Larry Shultz | Editor Windows>Graph Editor | Advanced

Precision Control of Morphs with Cycler

You can tie the exact shape of the morph curve to the channel of a bone.Open up the Graph Editor and put the morph channel and the control chan-nel right above each other in the Channel Bin Rotate the bone to the desiredrotational value on frame 30 Sculpt the shape of the morph channel the way youwant it to appear over the same 30 frames

Now select the morph channel, open up the Modifier tab, and select Cycler.Select the rotational channel of the bone, and input the starting and ending anglefor the channel and the range of frames it’s to cover (0 to 30 in this case) Whatwill happen now is that the morph will occur in the shape that you laid out at thespeed that you rotate the bone The rotational channels are visible in the Cyclercontrol panel

Editor Windows>Graph Editor

You can also do multiple morphs the same way by copying and pasting theCycler settings onto those other morphs or by tying the morphs to a master chan-nel and then tying the master channel to the one bone channel Essentially thisgives more control You can set a morph to do its thing based on the rotationalangle of a controller You should be able to have more than one morph tied to aparticular channel of a controller This would allow you to blend morphs in par-ticular ways using a single controller.

You could have one morph activate at a certain angle of the controller anddeactivate the rest of the time This could be done with several morphs to shapethe joint at particular stages It’s easy to simply activate a morph based onanother channel’s behavior This allows you to have the morph do several thingsover the range of the controlling channel

Versions: 6-8

Motion Mixer

1041 Jonny Gorden | Motion Mixer | Beginner

Turn Off Actor

Having your Motion Mixer actor active can cause delays in the updateswhen you’re creating keyframes As a general rule, turn off the actor whileyou’re animating, only activating it when working with Motion Mixer or pre-viewing the animation

Versions: 6-8

1042 Jonny Gorden | Motion Mixer | Beginner

Motion Mixer Actor

If you have items using expressions or other motion modifiers linked toother items, include both in your Motion Mixer Actor and Motions, as motionmodifiers don’t see Motion Mixer motion

Versions: 6-8

1043 Jonny Gorden | Motion Mixer | Beginner

Motion Mixer Motion/Keyframed Animation

If you’re using a combination of Motion Mixer motions and keyframed mation, create a keyframe for all actor items at the first and last frame of eachMotion Mixer animation so your keyframed animation transitions nicely

ani-Versions: 6-8

Animating | 433Motion Mixer

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Chapter 9

Special Effects

Great special effects are equivalent to the supporting cast in a drama They’renot the “stars of the show,” but they enhance the entire scene and add productionvalue to your shots When special effects are done right they add to the overallbelievability of your virtual animated worlds It is often a subtle dust trail leftfrom stomping hooves or a beautiful diffuse glow added to magical objects thatreally push a shot from being good to being great! The real “art” is in that finalten percent of polish This is where the special effects features in LightWavereally shine

LightWave includes a very diverse toolset for special effects From surfaceglows to volumetrics, you will find pretty much any effect you can imagine atyour fingertips Unlike some other areas of 3D animation, special effects have aunique appeal because experimentation is a requirement Adding special effects

to your shots requires creative problem solving and forces you to think aboutyour shots in different ways The following tips not only reveal special effectstechniques from several professional LightWave artists but also demonstratehow LightWave’s tools are used in fresh and new ways to achieve the desiredartistic result With a little experimentation, you will soon be adding magic toyour own shots

— Rob Powers

General Tips

1044 William “Proton” Vaughan | General Tips | All Levels

Two-Point Polygons Make for Powerful FX Tools

Need a light saber? Try these settings on a two-point poly chain:

n Luminosity — 100%

n Glow Intensity — 120% (Glow Intensity is under the Advanced tab of theSurface Editor.)

n Enable Glow in the Processing tab of the Effects dialog (The Effects dialog

is under Window>Image Processing (Scene>Effects>Image Processing in7.x) or press Ctrl+F7.)

n Intensity — 100%

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re our only hope

435

Need some quick electricity? Use the same surface settings on a two-pointpoly chain with many segments but also apply a displacement map Using thedefault setting for displacement map will give you a nice render, but you canalso animate the displacement map for further detail.

Versions: All

Volumetrics

1046 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Quicker Volumetric Rendering

This tip is also mentioned in the rendering section of this book If you do notneed to apply motion blur or depth-of-field effects to your volumetrics, deacti-vating the Volumetric Antialiasing option can greatly improve your renderingtime

Versions: 6-7.5c

1047 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Particle Size Envelope vs Particle Size Texture

The Particle Size parameter, found under the Geometry tab of the

HyperVoxels panel, sets the base size for every HyperVoxel in the currentlyactive item You can control this parameter using either an envelope or a texture

The differences are that an envelope alters the parameter value directly, while a texture scales the parameter value without actually altering it.

Versions: 6-7.5c

1048 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Randomizing HyperVoxel Sizes

One way to get some randomization into HyperVoxels is through the SizeVariation option in the Geometry tab of the HyperVoxels panel This sets themaximum size a HyperVoxel may become For instance, 100% means that aHyperVoxel may increase up to 100% again (i.e., become twice as large).Another way to get a much more random effect, ideal for things such asboulders on a beach and more, is to instead apply a procedural texture to the Par-ticle Size HyperVoxels will then be randomly scaled based on the proceduraltexture value at that point in the 3D space (or world space if selected in the Tex-ture Editor)

Volumetrics

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from using both of these settingstogether as well!

Stretching the HyperVoxels about 125 to 150% in the Y direction can helpget rid of the “round” look of all your asteroids Once done, texture them (proce-dural bump maps can also assist in that rocky look) and render

Versions: 6-7.5c

Special Effects | 437Volumetrics

1053 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Random Forestation

Need a forest in a hurry from a series of tree image maps? If you are usingHyperVoxels to generate a series of random trees for fast forests from a collec-tion of image sprites, make sure you create them all as square images (addingblack borders if necessary) to maintain correct tree proportions and shape (pre-venting weird squashed-looking trees)

Load all your tree sprite images first in the Image Editor, then apply them assprite mode HyperVoxels by adding them to the clips list under the Shading tab.Remove any hypertextures from the Hypertexture tab to prevent your imagesfrom becoming tarnished with procedural noise and utilize the Clips options ofUse Color and Solid options to ensure that the trees do not “blend” togetherwhen they are drawn

Planting the forest can be done in Modeler by generating a point cloud onyour landscape model so that trees appear to be physically attached to the earth(you may need to move the point cloud down in Layout if the trees appear tofloat) You should use some Size Variation setting to vary the trees a little butnot too randomly as to look odd Activate ray-traced shadows to have the spritescast shadows on your landscape as well

Versions: 6-7.5c

1054 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Think Simple — Think Controlled Effects

You can create and animate effects such as bubbling mud, oozing slime, andmore by using Modeler to build your base shapes and then applying Hyper-Voxels to them Controlled animation can be done easily and quickly throughstandard animation tools, displacement maps, and morph targets

Often once rendered with HyperVoxels, the effect will be quite impressiveand a lot less headache than attempting to generate the same effects throughFX_Emitters or Motion Designer

2 Load an image into the Image Editor

3 Go to the Volumetrics panel Activate the HV emitter and make it spritemode

4 Go to the Shading tab and add the image as a clip

5 Go back to the Geometry tab and activate Show Particles

The image should appear in the OpenGL viewport What’s so curious? ing yet…

Volumetrics

6 Go back to the Shading tab Next to the image clip, uncheck the image(don’t delete it, just deactivate it).

All the particles in OpenGL suddenly change to a new image! This only

works in Camera view, however

I thought that might make a change from all the useful tips to have at leastone odd and useless one Trying to render this emitter will just give the usualmisty HV look you’d expect

Versions: 7.5-8

1056 Kevin Phillips | Volumetrics | Beginner

Surface Refraction and Reflections

HyperVoxels are great for simulating liquids, and look even better if you usesome refraction to bend the background showing through them Molten metalslook cool with reflection Both of these effects are easy to set up with a few sur-face parameters in the HyperVoxels Shading tab

Because HyperVoxels are generated using ray tracing technology, you do not

need to activate the Render Options for either Raytrace Reflection or RaytraceRefraction for these effects to work for your HyperVoxels You only need toactivate those options for polygon rendering

Note that refraction will occur if the HyperVoxel refraction value is set in theShading tab and there is some transparency The refraction effect will be calcu-lated on the surfaces that are directly visible to the camera, which in most caseswill look just fine and render quite quickly If you require a more accuraterefraction through several layers of particles, say in the case of a heap of HVglass marbles, then activate the Full Refraction option, which will calculate therefraction through any internal surfaces as well

Note that Full Refraction will make render time increase So do some test

renders first to see if you can get away without this option if render time is ofthe essence

Versions: 6-7.5c

Fog

1057 Geoffrey Kater | Fog | Beginner

Using Fog

Using fog to make items fade into the distance will add a more

dynamic/realistic effect to your scenes Open the Volumetrics panel by clickingVolumetrics or pressing F6 For Fog Type, choose Non-linear and choose a fogcolor best for your shot Depending on your object distance from camera, dial in

a fog amount and fog distance until it gives you the desired effect

Versions: 5-8

Special Effects | 439Fog

1058 Geoffrey Kater, Kevin Phillips | Fog | Beginner

OpenGL to Preview Fog

Use OpenGL fog to help preview your fog for proper distance and amountbefore rendering Open the Display Options panel (Layout>Options>DisplayOptions or shortcut “d”) Click the OpenGL fog button near the bottom of thedisplay panel

1060 Larry Shultz | Fog | Beginner

Ground Fog Using HV Sprites

A quick ground fog can be created by generating HyperVoxel sprites directlyoff the ground geometry itself Textures, gradients, and weight maps can be used

to determine where the HV sprites are generated

Versions: 5-8

1061 Larry Shultz | Fog | Advanced

Ground Fog Using Stacked Polys

Another way to create ground fog is to create a stack of polygons closelygrouped together Give them all the same surface name and make them 100%transparent Apply a fractal noise to the surface in the transparency channelusing world coordinates Now animate the stack of polys up and down very,very quickly and turn on motion blur

This will blur the rapidly vibrating stack of polys, but the world coordinates

of the fractal noise will cause the texture not to streak or blur out The position

of the fractal noise can be animated to make the fog appear to “roll” slightly

Versions: 5-8

1062 Kevin Phillips | Fog | Beginner

Enlarge Your Environments or Fake DOF with Fog

If you want to blend a ground plane into your background image (either anenvironment or composited image), use the fog option Use Background Color

on the Volumetrics tab of the Effects panel, set the fog distance to near the edges

of the ground plane, and adjust until it looks right This will create the ance of your backdrop and ground plane being seamless

Fog

You can use this same effect to fake depth of field by fading your ment into a blurred background image The effect is not accurate, but it’s fastand cheap!

Versions: All

HyperVoxels

1064 Larry Shultz | HyperVoxels | Beginner

Creating Water Drops on a Surface Using HVs without Particles

When using HyperVoxels to simulate water on a surface, it isn’t necessary touse particles

HyperVoxels only need to see vertices, not polygons HyperVoxels can fore be generated on any object at every vertex If the object is SubPatched, thenumber of HyperVoxels generated will be based on the SubPatch level TheHyperVoxels can be turned on and off by applying a texture map in the

there-HyperVoxels panel under the Geometry tab in the Size channel by clicking onthe “T” button to open the Texture Editor

The grayscale value of the texture map will determine the size of the

HyperVoxels Drops, fluids, and other effects can be easily generated this way

This is done by increasing the Birth Rate, setting the Lifetime to the length

of the full animation, and setting Parent Motion to 0

Apply HyperVoxel sprites to the emitter You can use the default sprite orapply an image to the sprite as a clip Keep the size of the sprites small enough

so that the emitter appears to be drawing a line The emitter can be parented tothe tip of a pencil or pen

Versions: 5-8

Special Effects | 441HyperVoxels

1066 Arne Kaupang | HyperVoxels | Beginner

Bubbly Text

To make bubbly text, in Modeler type in and make a text object of what youwant to animate or import an Illustrator EPS file of your text/logo/object Killthe polygons so you are only left with the points of the object(s)

Make a morph target of your object in Modeler, and use Drag, Scale, and theMagnet tools to pull the points down to the bottom and out of frame Add a littlejitter to the points in your morph to make them a little more random

Import the object into Layout, assign the MorphMixer plug-in to it, andblend the two morphs You’ll see the points rise up from the bottom to shapeyour original object Animate your morph to the timing of your liking, and useHyperVoxels on the points for a bubbly shape

Add a little procedural Ripple to the displacement channel of the object tomake it wavy and resemble an underwater feeling Voilá! Render!

Versions: All

1067 Larry Shultz | HyperVoxels | Intermediate to Advanced

Water Drops without Particles

It’s often desirable to achieve a particular effect as quickly as possible Manytimes people will resort to using particles to create water drops Here’s a couple

of quick ways to get the effect without using particles:

1 Use textures to displace your geometry to form a bump The same texturecan also act as an alpha so the displaced geometry can have different surfaceattributes (like looking like mercury)

2 Apply HVs to your surface and give them mercury-like surface attributes.Use textures to turn the HVs on or off in the size channel

Versions: 6-8

SasLite

1068 Larry Shultz | SasLite | Beginner

Faking Dynamics in SasLite

You can fake dynamics in SasLite pretty easily Let’s say you want to put fur

on something and have the fur move around a bit in the wind Maybe you want

to have wind blow through some grass All you have to do is apply an animateddisplacement map to the object that has SasLite applied to it As the object isdeformed, the fur will displace with it If you don’t want to see the surface dis-placing, simply copy and paste your object into a new layer in Modeler Give thecopy a surface name of fur In Layout make the fur object 100% dissolved in theObject Properties panel SasLite doesn’t care if the base object it’s attached to isvisible or not If you’re animating the original object using bones, make sure thefur object is set to use its bones as well Now you can apply displacement maps

to the fur object and see the fur move

Versions: 5-8

SasLite

1069 Jennifer Hachigian, Larry Shultz | SasLite | Advanced

Motion Designer and SasLite Hair Guides

SasLite hair guides are chains of two-point polygons, and neither one-pointnor two-point polygons can act as collision or self-collision objects If you useMotion Designer on SasLite hair guides directly, the hair guides will ignore andintersect each other It’s better to animate a curtain stand-in that matches thegeneral shape of the hair to calculate an mdd file for the hair Then, play backthe mdd file on the real hair guides with MD_MetaPlug, using the curtainstand-in as the cage object The curtain stand-in will be able to detect self-collision situations, and if you turn on Fiber Structure for the stand-in, it willbehave even more like real hair

For a similar setup in LightWave 8, calculate ClothFX on the curtain

stand-in and make the SasLite wig object the child of the curtastand-in stand-stand-in object Forthe stand-in object, set the Fiber Effect to Y axis in the Advanced tab of

ClothFX Apply FX_MetaLink to the SasLite hair guides so that each point ofthe hair guide object tracks its closest point equivalent on its parent

Additional topic from Larry Shultz

Dynamics can be applied to SasLite hair guides Let’s say we want to mate hair guides that are part of a head Create a low-resolution proxy objectthat is about the same volume as the hair guides Attach the proxy object to thehead and tell it to use the bones in the character or head Apply Motion Designer

ani-to the proxy object and let the simulation run

You can save out the MDScanned data for the proxy object and reapply it tothe hair guides object using MDMetaPlug.p What this does is allow the

low-resolution hair proxy to act as a deformer for the hair guides MotionDesigner needs edges to work properly and hair guides don’t have enough edges

to work properly

Versions: 6.5-8

1070 Lee Stranahan | SasLite | Beginner

SasLite Hint Roundup

Here’s a general hint free-for-all on using LightWave’s built-in hair, fur, andgrass rendering system, in no particular order

n A lot of the settings in SasLite will go above 100% and below 0% if youmanually enter the number instead of using the sliders Test this by enteringextreme numbers into the numeric panels and see what the permissible val-ues are

n With controls like Density and Length, a little change goes a long way

n Use multiple instances of SasLite — you’re limited to eight per scene, buteight is a lot so use ’em!

n The quickest way to get multiple instances going is to use the plug-in panel’scopy/paste functions

n If you are using multiple instances in the same area — for example, to create

a “salt and pepper” beard look with one instance of white hair and oneinstance of dark — you need to vary the settings for Frizz, Drooping,

Special Effects | 443SasLite

Clumping, or the Comb setting Those settings all move the hairs around;otherwise, your instances will be on top of each other.

n Turn up antialiasing to its highest level

n If you are doing an animation, you might want to set Render Backside Fibers

to 100 in the Pixel Filter version of the SasLite plug-in This will slow der times but avoid embarrassing “pop-up” hairs from suddenly appearing

ren-n If you are doiren-ng a heavy-duty hair project — yes, the full versioren-n of

Sasquatch is worth it

Versions: All

1071 Lee Stranahan | SasLite | Beginner

Don’t Hold Your Breath

No, plug-in genius Steve Worley never does holiday specials or sudden motions He does offer substantial discounts when products first come out andvolume discounts, though When you buy something from Steve, you won’t see

pro-it priced lower later and get mad So, don’t hold your breath; buy wpro-ith dence — and if it’s Worley, buy it early!

confi-Versions: All

Environments

1072 Kevin Phillips | Environments | Beginner

The Difference between Backdrop and Background

There’s two ways to place images or effects into the background of a Layoutrender — Backdrop/Environment or Background Image Each of these optionscan be found under the Scene tab in the Effects section of the menu bar, but eachworks in a completely different way!

A backdrop/environment is a color, gradient, or plug-in that paints itself onto

a giant infinite sphere that surrounds your 3D scene Because of this, Layout cansee it in the 3D world and therefore use it in various ways such as in reflections,refraction, radiosity, and more

A background image is placed into the background as part of the

compositing options in Layout That is, it’s “painted” into your rendered image(and not part of the 3D scene), filling pixels where no 3D models were rendered.Technically, it doesn’t exist in the 3D world at all — it’s just painted in to fill inholes or, to be more exact, it’s a postprocess effect that happens after all the 3Dcalculations are finished That means that Layout cannot see it or use it forreflections, etc

Note that in LW 8, these settings can be found under the Windows menu or

by pressing Ctrl+F5

Versions: 6-8

Environments

1073 Lee Stranahan | SkyTracer | All Levels

Use Sky Baker When Using SkyTracer

SkyTracer makes neat clouds and skies, but your scene will take a real der hit if you have it turned on In 99% of the cases where you use SkyTracer,it’s much better to use Sky Baker, which is built right into SkyTracer The bakerreally just renders out an image map at the resolution you choose; about 1500pixels or so will give you a nice enough image, although you get surprisinglygood results even at a resolution of 600 or so I personally like the SphericalWrap setting, but these are just suggestions

ren-Then, assuming you used Spherical, you just make a sphere big enough tocover your scene, flip the polys, and texture the big sphere — or skydome —with the image that Baker created

Versions: All

1074 Kevin Phillips | SkyTracer | Beginner

Sun Positioning in SkyTracer2

By default, SkyTracer2 adds its own “sun” light called SKT_Sun and ches a motion modifier called Sun_Spot, which controls the position of the sunbased on country, city, and date/time You can adjust this modifier directly fromthe Suns tab in the SkyTracer options panel (the Sun Position button will acti-vate the SunSpot settings panel for SKT_Sun)

atta-This is not the easiest way to set up the location of a sun in my humble ion, so I often remove the motion modifier from SKT_Sun in the Motion optionspanel, or use a different light as a sun source altogether (for example, the keylight)

opin-In SkyTracer2, rotation controls the position of the sun (unlike Skytracer1,which would generate the sun at the location relative to the camera — which insome ways made the positioning a lot simpler for people like me!)

Heading controls the direction of where the sun is positioned around thecamera, and the pitch controls the elevation of the sun in the sky Moving thelight source has no effect on the direction and position The easiest way to think

of the sun is as a distant light, which doesn’t have a particular point of lightemission, just a direction

Versions: 7-7.5c

1075 Kevin Phillips | SkyTracer | Beginner

Instantaneous Cumulus Clouds

Anyone who’s used SkyTracer2 and activated the clouds will know that thedefault clouds really don’t look much like clouds at all, more like blobby shapes.While you can tweak the texture, not everybody wants to spend a lot of timeediting procedurals to get a decent set of clouds

Special Effects | 445SkyTracer

To get nice big clouds quickly in SkyTracer2:

1 Select the Clouds tab and activate Low Altitude clouds

2 Click the Texture button to open the Texture Editor

3 Change the procedural to STClouds

4 Make sure that Cloud type is Cumulus for nice big puffy clouds

5 Change Texture Axis to Y

6 Change Big Scale to 1.0 (You can leave the other settings at their defaults.)Ta-da! Instant improvement on the default clouds, I’m sure you’ll agree!And with very little tweaking required whatsoever

Versions: 7-7.5c

1076 Lee Stranahan | SkyTracer | All Levels

Bored? Rainy Day? Make Some Skies

If you have a couple of free hours, prebake a whole bunch of sky images.You’ll be glad you did later on

Versions: 6-8

1078 Emanuele Salvucci | Textured Environment | Advanced

HDR Images Out of Normal Ones

HDR (High Dynamic Range) image backgrounds are mainly used for globalillumination purposes

There are some excellent HDR image collections around, but you may want

to create your own at some point

Use the following steps to add extra luminosity to any image:

1 Load an image into an empty scene

2 In the Backdrop tab of the Effects panel, add the Textured Environmentplug-in

3 Set the Axis option of the Textured Environment plug-in to Z

4 Enter the Texture option, and set the loaded image to be the first layer

Textured Environment

5 Set Blending Mode for this layer to Additive, set Projection to Planar and setTexture Axis to Z.

6 Create a new layer of type Gradient; we’ll be setting keys for the layer lateron

7 Set Input Parameter to Previous Layer and Blending Mode to Alpha

8 Copy the image map layer and paste it using Add to Layers

From top to bottom, the first layer adds the image to the black backgroundcolor, the third layer adds the extra luminosity needed, and the second layerdecides where the image is going to be “overbrightened.”

You can boost the amount of added luminosity by setting Layer Opacity tomore than 100% for the third layer

Before setting the gradient’s keys, we should analyze the image by turningoff the last two layers in the Textured Environment plug-in, turning on theImage Viewer FP in the Rendering Options panel, and making a test render.Sample some values from the rendered image for the areas you want tooverbrighten (the sun or the sky would be perfect areas for this purpose), hold-ing the right mouse button on the image in the Image Viewer FP

Now back in the Textured Environment plug-in, set keys for the gradientlayer If the sampled values, for the sun for instance, were around 99%, set awhite (255,255,255) gradient key at parameter 0.99 and set a black one rightbefore that value (i.e., at parameter 0.9)

To test where on the original image you’re actually adding brightness, do thefollowing in the Texture options of the Textured Environment plug-in:

1 Deactivate the first image map layer

2 Activate the second and third layer

3 Make a test render

Once you’re happy with the result, activate all three layers, set the camera’swidth and height to the size of the original image, make a render, and save theresult using the Radiance (.hdr) format

If gradients aren’t enough to locate the areas to overbrighten, you can tute the gradient layer with a proper alpha map Since we have already

substi-approximately defined an alpha map using the gradient, we can render and ify it in a paint program:

mod-1 In the Textured Environment plug-in, turn off the first layer

2 Set the Blending Mode to Additive for the gradient layer

3 Set the Blending Mode to Alpha for the third (last) layer

4 Render and save the image

You can now retouch the generated alpha map and replace the gradient layerwith it

Versions: 7-8

Special Effects | 447Textured Environment

1079 Dave Jerrard | Textured Environment | Beginner

Save Presets

If you make a textured environment that you like and want to use it inanother scene, open the scene that uses this environment Open VIPER so youcan see the plug-in’s effects previewed there, then double-click the image inVIPER This will save a preset for that environment Now you can load this tex-ture into any other scene easily by adding the Textured Environment plug-in,opening the Preset Shelf, and double-clicking the preset The texture will auto-matically load into the plug-in for you

it a 50% contrast Set the texture size to 150m, 150m, 150m This layer willform a nebula for our space environment, so it needs to be huge Also, set itslayer opacity level to 50% to fade it from being too intense

Next, add another procedural texture layer Make this layer a Crust dural The color should be white Set Coverage to 0.05 and both the Ledge Leveland Width to 0.2 You can leave the texture size at its default 1m This proce-dural creates a series of random spots, hence using a small scale will allow Crust

proce-to generate thousands of stars for us

Click the Use Texture button to close the Texture Editor window, and thenset the Texture Environment scale to 10mm to scale the space to fit nicely Thisscale option can be tweaked — The larger this value, the larger the environment

Textured Environment

will appear (as though through a magnifying glass) which can look quite strangeshould the stars suddenly become huge circles!

Make sure that the backdrop color is black, and render!

Versions: 6-8

Image World

1082 Leigh van der Byl | Image World | Beginner

The Importance of Creating Environments

When you are creating any kind of scene in CG, it is extremely importantthat you give that scene some kind of surrounding environment, whether mod-eled or simulated This is because when you create a scene that has no environ-ment, you are basically creating something existing in a total void, which is veryunrealistic A void also does absolutely nothing to enhance your scene whatso-ever Environments add to your scene by providing something for your objects

to reflect, as well as by providing lighting, when using images with a highdynamic range

LightWave’s Image World allows you to take an image and wrap it aroundthe scene, thus forming a total environment surrounding the entire scene

Image World works with High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, which areimages that have luminance capabilities, since they contain pixel values thatextend the usual range of images Essentially these images can actually lightyour scene realistically, especially when used with radiosity You simply load anHDR image (you can download free ones off the web, and there are also a num-ber of commercial packs of HDR images available for purchase) into Image

Special Effects | 449Image World

World, adjust its Heading and Pitch values (to rotate it into a desirable position),and adjust the Brightness, which basically controls how brightly the image willlight the scene.

Versions: 6-8

1084 Leigh van der Byl | Image World | Beginner

Dealing with Artifacts from HDR Images

When you are using HDR images in Image World for lighting your scene inconjunction with radiosity, you often encounter an abundance of unsightly whitespeckles in your render This is because of the image that you are using, and is acommon problem

One way to minimize or even totally annihilate these artifacts is to use theFull Precision Blur filter on the HDR image in the Image Editor This filter isfound under the Processing tab

Image World

This generally does the trick Sometimes you’ll still occasionally encounter afew speckles in your renders, but increasing the blur on the image further canhelp to eradicate them completely.

informa-Versions: All

1086 Policarpo | Image World | Beginner

Low-Res Image Illumination

Experiment with low-res image files to illuminate your scene As an ment, load up a tried-and-true hdr image file, save out another 32-bit version of

experi-it from the Image Edexperi-itor, and compare the times and results Also mess wexperi-ith thesize of the image that is driving your renders A lot can be done with a littleexperimentation

1088 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Getting the Corona Input Threshold

Have you ever wanted to use the Corona tool on the specular highlights inyour render, but have no idea how to determine the correct Input Threshold totrigger the Corona effect? The answer to this question and other buffer values issimple!

1 Temporarily deactivate the Corona filter (if it’s active)

2 Add the Render Buffer View image filter, double-click, and choose thebuffer(s)

3 Make sure that the Image Viewer is active (Rendering Options panel>RenderDisplay)

4 Press F9 to render the image

5 Select the buffer from the Image Viewer’s Layer menu

If you move the mouse pointer over the “darkest” pixel in this buffer whereyou want Corona to be applied and then click the left mouse button, the value

Special Effects | 451Filters

for the pixel will appear in the Image Viewer’s title bar Use this value as yourInput Threshold for Corona Any pixel that is this value or higher will haveCorona applied.

Don’t forget to deactivate or remove the Render Buffer View filter

Versions: 6-7.5c

1089 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Using Texture Brushes in Corona

You can apply image maps to Corona These affect the color of the coronathat is generated, not the overall intensity (though some colors will create a moreintense effect than others) If you plan on doing so, the best results will be if youapply them as planar, on the z-axis with a center of 0,0,0 Any rotation to spinthem in Corona should be on the bank axis

Also note that the Size parameter in Corona dictates the pixel size of heightand width (square) at a 640 x 480 resolution Always test your Corona settings

at 640 x 480 to get the look right before doing any rendering at other resolutions.There is also a Texture Editor button associated with the Size parameter, but itdoesn’t actually do anything

Versions: 6-7.5c

1090 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Corona Selective Pixel Processing

If you only want to apply the Corona effect to certain surfaces or pixels, use

a threshold mask This mask works like an alpha channel for the input threshold.This allows cleaning up unwanted pixels before Corona applies its effect.For selective surfaces (i.e., applying sparkles to only the ocean polygons inyour render, just for the sake of an example), simply set a Special Buffer value

of 1.0 into the first special buffer slot of the ocean surface Once done, set theThreshold Mask to use the special buffer and render

1092 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Corona Speed Bumps

Corona can create nice effects, but it can also add substantial time to ing as well A basic understanding of the parts of Corona that cause slowerrendering can assist you in planning ahead for optimal performance of this greattool

Filters

In general, Corona renders slower when there are more pixels in the imagethat match the input threshold criteria The size of the effect also plays a role inslow render speeds (as in the larger, the slower) as does the Effect setting BothAdditive and Maximum values render a lot faster than Normal.

The Falloff setting of Box is also slower to render than all other types

Versions: 6-7.5c

1093 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Corona Gradient Inputs Explained

One area that is poorly explained, if at all, in any documentation for

Light-Wave is exactly what the Corona input parameters do in the Texture Editor when

using gradients with Corona The following explains the parameters and howthey are used

The Depth parameter should render colors based on the depth of the pixels from the camera This appears to not work unless you add something that forces

LightWave to generate a depth buffer — like adding the Render Buffer View to

the image filters and select Depth to force the depth buffer to be generated, after

which it then appears to work fine (until you remove that extra plug-in; then itstops working again) So it’s there, it’s just not working quite right, but if it’s oneyou need, just add that extra plug-in for now as a workaround

Distance to Center works from the center of the render out to its edges This

is a great way to make Corona fade at the edges of the render or be extra hot inthe center of the render By generating a rainbow gradient, you can get interest-ing optical effects in the rendered image

LW_Corona Input Channel uses the input buffer values to control the ent Fairly simple and straightforward

Versions: 6-7.5c

1095 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Textured Filter Gradient Inputs Explained

The Textured Filter image filter offers a series of new gradient input optionsrelated to images You can use these to apply effects in a range of ways Most ofthese inputs relate directly to LightWave’s own internal render buffers and theiruse is quite obvious, but the way that a few of these inputs work is not as clear

as you might expect The less obvious ones are explained briefly here

Special Effects | 453Filters

Image X allows you to apply a gradient that reaches from one side of theimage to another This starts at –0.5 (the far left) and ends at 0.5 (the far right).

Image Y is essentially the same as Image X, with –0.5 starting at the bottom

of the screen (not the top), however! You could use this setting with a white gradient as an alpha control for applying other effects to the picture (such

black-as ground mist, etc.)

Brightness is the brightness of the pixel You can make use of LightWave’sown internal floating-point values here to paint actual brightness values of pixelsthemselves If you plan on simply processing standard 24-bit images instead, thebrightness works based on the grayscale shades in the image, with 0% as black,and 100% as white

Versions: 6-7.5c

1096 Kevin Phillips | Filters | Beginner

Rough Line Art Effect

If you are rendering white objects with black edges on a white background

to generate the effect of simple 2D line drawings, but think how much cooler it

might look if you could break up those lines to look more hand drawn, you can!

Use the Textured Filter to add a fractal-type procedural pattern to the overallrender Make the procedural color white and adjust the parameters to suit —smaller scales will give a more broken-looking effect, larger scales will create amore subtle effect

You can create the effect of different sketches on each frame by simply mating the movement of the procedural along the z-axis at a high speed toensure that the pattern is sufficiently different on each frame

ani-Versions: 6-7.5c

Filters

Poor knowledge of general rendering options and rules of your 3D softwaremay lead to catastrophic rendering times, even when changing values just a littlebit This is especially true when talking about global illumination, where compu-tations are very time-consuming.

For these reasons, previews are a fantastic way to have everything undercontrol before hitting the magic “render it all!” button and to have a good idea ofhow your software is reacting to your latest material, lighting, and settingschanges

If you decide you’re tired of compromises between quality and time, youmay someday go out and buy a few extra machines to build your own renderfarm But then you’ll need to know even more about your software and how toset up and run a network render

Hopefully you won’t have to learn this one the hard way like I did I lost anight of rendering when the power went off at 2 a.m

Versions: All

455

1098 William “Proton” Vaughan | General Tips | Intermediate

Rendering Images for Use with Flash

I’m a big fan of Flash and have created many projects using 3D elements inFlash, never resorting to using plug-ins Now many great tools are available torender SWF files out of LightWave, but I still use plain renders out of

LightWave, import them into Flash, and use Auto Trace

Here are a few steps to creating a perfect image to auto trace:

1 Apply the Super Cel Shader, and set all the zones to 0% except for Zone 1;leave it at the default settings

2 Set Luminosity to 100% and Diffusion to 0% This will give us a flat solidcolor

3 Turn off Antialiasing (this is set by default) Flash will automaticallyantialias the edges

These settings will give you a nice, clean auto trace and will also save you afew bucks in the process If you find yourself doing massive amounts of 3D inFlash, you might look into something like Electric Rain’s Swift 3D For the100+ projects I have created in Flash, I have gotten by without any extra tools

Versions: All

1099 Todd Grimes | General Tips | Intermediate

The Poor Man’s 3/2 Conversion

Oftentimes character animation is done at a frame rate of 24, but if the mation is to be put on video it needs to be converted to a frame rate of 30 Thisprocess is most often done in compositing software but can also be accom-plished within LightWave In Layout open the General Options panel and setFrame Rate to 24 In the Image Editor panel, click on the Load button and selectthe first image of a 24fps image sequence Under the Source tab select Sequencefrom the drop-down next to Image Type Just below, be sure the field next toFrame Rate reads 24 Next, place the image sequence in Layout’s backgroundunder the Compositing tab in the Effects panel Be sure the camera is set to thesame resolution that was used to render the 24fps sequence Then open the Gen-eral Options panel and change the scene’s frame rate to 30 LightWave will scalethe image sequence accordingly and interpolate the missing frames Lastly,re-render the image sequence, adjusting the end frame to fit the 30fps sequence

ani-Versions: All

ÜNote: Be sure to have antialiasing off when re-rendering

1100 Leigh van der Byl, Policarpo, Patrik Beck | General Tips | Beginner

Optimizing Ray Recursion in Renders

If you are rendering scenes that contain a lot of reflective objects, you mayfind that the rendering process slows down considerably while all the reflectionsare calculated To speed up the process, you can adjust the Ray Recursion Limitvalue in your Render Options window

General Tips

The Ray Recursion Limit valuebasically determines the number oftimes that light will be reflected offsurfaces, which in reality is infinite(if you place two mirrors oppositeone another, they will reflect oneanother infinitely) The default valuefor this limit is 16, which means thatlight will be reflected a maximum of

16 times between reflective objects.Depending on the nature of yourscene, you can bring this value down,which can decrease rendering timesconsiderably Values below 2 are notreally recommended unless you haveonly a few reflective objects in thescene A value of 0 means that noreflections will be calculated at all

To determine if the lowerrecursion is adequate for the project,

do a test render of a representativeframe of the animation Half resolution with no antialiasing is good enough toeyeball the bounces

Versions: 6.5-8

1101 Leigh van der Byl | General Tips | Beginner

Rendering Output Formats

When rendering out your work, the type of file that you output the renders to

is very important, especially if you need to do any post-production work onthem

While animation formats such as avi (Windows Media) or mov (QuickTimemovie) files are popular for rendering previews, they are not always advisablefor rendering final animations to This is because animation files are generallycompressed, which means that they have compromised quality It is also riskyrendering to avi because you can lose all your rendering if there is a problemduring the render process

Generally a safe bet for rendering is to render to Targa (.tga) files or filesequences, or another format that saves in a 32-bit format, which is especiallyuseful for rendering items that will be composited onto other footage, whetheranimated or live-action plates Choose the Save RGB option in your OutputFiles panel in LightWave to save your animation to an image sequence format

Rendering | 457General Tips

LightWave outputs imagesequences that are numbered sequen-tially, making them easy to manage in

a compositing or editing package.Keeping the original image sequences

on disk also means that you willalways retain a perfect, uncom-pressed rendered animation

It is also worth mentioning thatwhen rendering using ScreamerNet,you have no choice but to render toimage sequences, as the networknodes cannot render to animation fileformats

Versions: All

1102 Leigh van der Byl | General Tips | Beginner

Using Data Overlays When Rendering

The Data Overlay option in your

Render Options panel can be a really

useful item, especially when you are

working on a big production that has

hundreds of renders being pumped

out all the time, which can be

confus-ing This option adds a label in the

lower half of your renders, allowing

you to keep track of sequences easily

The label includes the scene name

(you can change this to any title up to

20 characters), and you can also

choose to display time code, frame

numbers, or time in seconds in the

overlay as well

General Tips