Essential LightWave 3D- P3 pdf

LightWav e ScreamerNet LightWave ScreamerNet is a stand-alone program that does nothing but render. Through discipline, focus, and binary-level programmatic optimization, the coders at NewTek have managed to condense LightWave’s awesome might at creating the incredible; they have distilled all that awe - some rendering power until it fits into the 528 KB space of a little command-line pro - gram that would leave room to spare on a floppy disk. Using LWSN and a local area network, you can expand your rendering capabilities to almost any machine on your LAN. (Don’t throw out that old 366 laptop! Hook it up and use it as part of your render-farm!) Note Because of the way networks generally han - dle filenames, never have spaces in the names for your objects or scenes if you plan on rendering over a network. Even if you don’t immediately think you’ll be rendering across multiple machines, not using spaces in your LightWave names is just a good habit to get into. (That’s why you see all of the names in this book divided with under - scores (_) instead of spaces.) ··· All of this is LightWave … and we have just barely scratched its surface. Chapter 2 ························ 48 Figure 2-106: As simple as it may look, this little thing has all the power of LightWave’s renderer at its command. Note LightWave was first built on the Amiga plat - form, back when its 1 MB of internal memory was seen as ludicrously large by the PC and Apple crowds. Back then, memory was pre - cious (even as late as 1994, an 8 MB SIMM could cost almost $1,000). Even though memory and hard disk space prices have fallen below where any of us “old-guard geeks” could ever have hoped, and a simple word processor can require up to 500 MB of space to run, the programmers at NewTek seem to remember the old days when space was limited. Why is this impor - tant? Optimization means speed! (Take a look at how much our old video game favorites were able to do in the space and with the hardware that an electric tooth - brush of today would find constrictive. Most of them, like Ms. Pac Man, Defender, Star - gate, and Star Wars, are less than 40 KB worth of information!) The larger a program is, the longer it takes to get a memo from one end of it to the other (just like in any other bureaucracy or corpo - ration). LightWave has not expanded to fill the gaps left by cavernous memory and blis - tering processor speed but remains stream - lined, leaving you more space for complex objects, surfaces, and FX and resulting in one of the fastest, most reliable renderers, period! Chapter 3 Modeling 1: Foundation Material “You gotta learn to walk before you can fly,” the old saying goes. This is the chapter where you will learn the foundation material of modeling from which all your other modeling skills will grow. In this, as well as every aspect of all forms of art, the foundation materials give you the rules to follow to get something done quickly, easily, and reliably. After you know the “rules” like the back of your hand, you cast them to the wind and ex- plore as far and as wide as you can. Re- member the paths explored by the great artist/scientists before you: Nikola Tesla, Max Plank, Copernicus, Albert Einstein. They could have explored the same well-traveled trails everyone else at their level had hashed and rehashed. Instead, armed with granite understandings of their respective foundation materials, they in essence said, “I’ve already been down that road. I know where it leads. Aaah now, this path over here … this looks like fun.” Points (Vertices) point n. 1. A mark formed by or as if by the sharp end of something. 2. Mathematics. A dimensionless geometric object having no property but location. (The American Heritage Dictionary) ver·tex n. The point at which the sides of an angle intersect. (The American Heritage Dictionary) Hot Key Block Create Points and Polys <+> activates the Create Points tool. <p> creates a polygon from the points you have selected. Points exist within three-dimensional space, having X, Y, and Z position informa - tion. They take up no “space,” and until being assigned as a part of a polygon they do not, themselves, render (show up) in Layout’s finished drawings or movies (see Figure 3-1). 49 “Some rules may be bent… others may be broken.” — Morpheus, The Matrix When you left-click in the viewport with the Create Points tool active, you get a point that you can drag around until it is in the place you want it. Chapter 3 ························ 50 Figure 3-1: The point is your most basic tool for creating geometry. Points are created using Create | Points | Points. Figure 3-2: Right-clicking accepts the position of the point you were working with, giving you a new point to position and leaving the other points you have created selected in the order in which they were created. Note Points, in 3D lingo, are also referred to as vertices or vertexes. ············· Modeling 1: Foundation Material 51 Note The order in which points are created is very important. LightWave “connects the dots” when you make a polygon. Changing the point order can drastically change the shape of the polygon. If, for whatever reason, you realize that the order in which you’re creating the points isn’t quite right, you can press <Return> to keep the position of your most recently cre - ated point (or press </> to remove your most recently created point) and deselect the points you’ve created. Then, you can reselect the points in the order you want them to “outline” the polygon to be created (just like a connect-the-dots puzzle)! Note The Pen tool in Modeler (under Create | Polygons | Pen) combines the acts of mak- ing points and connecting the dots to make a polygon into one easy tool. Figure 3-3: Clicking on Create | Polygons | Make P olygon creates a polygon from the points you have just created by deselecting the points and adding the polygon that was just created to the current polygon selection. Chapter 3 ························ 52 Polygons pol·y·gon n. A closed plane figure bounded by three or more line segments. (The Amer - ican Heritage Dictionary) Polygons are the second-most- basic building block for creating objects in LightWave (second only to the point). The most common polys you’ll be working with will have three or four vertices and three or four sides (tris and quads). But in LightWave, you aren’t limited to tris and quads. You can make polygons with up to 1,023 points, while single-point polygons are often used in creating the stars in space scenes. Note The key to doing anything in 3D is to find the most elegant way of doing something. By “elegance,” I mean to use the absolute minimum to get the job done. When you’re building a polygon, use the smallest number of points you need to hold that shape in place. Sure, you can see flat spots on the back of the dog’s ear at this distance in Figure 3-4, but if he were intended to only be viewed at half that size (or from twice that distance), the viewer wouldn’t notice those flat spots. It is only when the object is going to be brought close to the camera that you nail in a lot of detail and then only in the areas on which the camera will be focusing. Polygons are the most elemental piece of geometry that shows up in LightWave’s renderer because polygons have surfaces. (More on surfaces, how to assign them, and how to change them later on in this chap- ter.) When you make a polygon, LightWave assigns it a default surface (initially a light gray). Once LightWave has a surface from which to scatter its light, its camera can “see” it. But in order for LightWave’s camera to see a surface, it has to know which direc - tion the surface is pointing. In LightWave, that direction is defined by a surface normal. Figure 3-4: Polygons in LightWave can be made up of as many as 1,023 points or as few as a single point. Normals nor·mal adj. 4. Mathematics a. Being at right angles; perpendicular. (The American Heritage Dictionary) Surface normals tell LightWave which direction a polygon is facing. If a polygon is facing away from its viewer, it is treated as “invisible,” like the polygon on the right in the shaded Perspective window in Figure 3-5. You can tell the specific surface on a polygon to be visible from either side by setting its Double Sided surface attribute (Surface Editor | Double Sided). The reason this attribute isn’t active by default is that most objects are really only seen from one side, the outside — like a basket - ball or a jet fighter. So LightWave culls the back side of its surfaces by default to speed its displays and its rendering. (Elegance — If you aren’t going to see something, don’t bust your chops on it!) Note You can use the fact that unless you specifi - cally tell a surface to be treated as double sided, it is “invisible” from its back side when rendering interior sets. You won’t be limited to placing your camera inside the set. You can have your camera positioned outside your set, facing in, and if the walls of your set aren’t double-sided, you’ll be able to see right through them! ············· Modeling 1: Foundation Material 53 Figure 3-5: The direction a polygon is facing is indicated by the dashed line rising perpendicular from its surface. This dashed line is known as the surface normal. “Abby someone ” “Abby who?” “Abby Normal.” — Igor and Dr. Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein Planar vs. Non-Planar pla·nar adj. 1. Of, relating to, or situated in a plane. 2. Flat: a planar surface. (The American Heritage Dictionary) With power comes responsibility. And with LightWave allowing us to have as many as 1,023 points defining a polygon, we have to take it upon ourselves to make sure that all these points lay within a flat plane. Non-planar polygons are a big deal because, even though LightWave does a good job of “guessing” which way the poly is facing, it doesn’t know for sure. When rendering a non-planar polygon, it may appear to strobe, flash, or do other unac - ceptable things. In even a moderately complex model, trying to isolate an offending point or points and move them back into a plane described by the other points can be a real headache. (You can assign a specific X, Y, or Z value to a selection using Detail | Points | Set Value, which would make a non-planar pla - nar once again.) The easiest thing to do, other than try to make sure your polys remain planar, is to convert non-planars into three-sided polygons using Multiply | Subdivide | Triple. Hot Key Block Triple <T> triples the polys you have selected. (This is the capital letter “T.”) Chapter 3 ························ 54 Figure 3-6: One point on the quad on the right was moved upward, making it fall outside the plane defined by the quad’s other three points. This polygon is now non-planar. Note Triple turns all selected polys into tris, regardless of whether they are non-planar. When you’ve got a sizable model, how can you tell if there are polys that have gone non-planar? LightWave has a Statistics win- dow that is absolutely invaluable for modelers. Statistics Windows Can you tell if, let alone how many, non-pla - nar polys are in the sword in Figure 3-8? With the Polygon Statistics window, you can. The Statistics window is a heads-up dis - play that tells you pretty much anything you need to know about the selection type you have active (points, polygons, or volumes — more on this in just a moment). You access the Statistics window through the Statistics button found at the bottom of Modeler’s interface. Hot Key Block Statistics Window <w> opens the Statistics window for the specific Selection mode with which you are working. ············· Modeling 1: Foundation Material 55 Figure 3-7: The non-planar polygon on the right was tripled, turning it from a quad into a set of two tris, which are always planar. Note Tripling non-planars may be easy, but I find it’s far better to just be aware of my axes when I’m moving a single point of a poly- gon that has more than three points. Tripling can create a whole lot of geometry that can slow things down, especially if you triple a polygon that has a lot of points. Use tripling as a last resort. Here’s what the Polygon Statistics window tells me about the Katana object: • Total — There are 555 total poly items in the model. • Faces — Of these 555 total poly items, 555 of them are faces (standard polygons). • Curves — The object has no curves as part of its geometry. • SubPatches — There are no sub- patches in this object either. • Skelegons — There are none of Mod - eler’s bone-placement icons, known locally as skelegons. • Metaballs — There are no instances of metaballs, a type of digital clay. • 1 Vertex — There are no polygons that have only one vertex. • 2 Vertices — There are no polygons that are made up of only two vertices. • 3 Vertices — There are 62 tris in this model. • 4 Vertices — There are 393 quads in this model. • >4 Vertices — There are 100 polys with more than four vertices in this model. • Non-planar — Of all these polys, 10 of them are non-planar. • Surf: Katana Blade — 163 of these polys have the Katana Blade surface applied to them. (This and the remaining items in the Polygon Statistics window are pop-up menus that display lists of the surfaces, parts, or sketch colors you’ve created for your object.) • Part: (none) — All 555 of the poly items in this object belong to the part None (that is, no polys have been assigned to any part; this is just a way of grouping polys so you can easily sift through them later). • Col: (none) — None of the 555 poly - gon items have been assigned a sketch color (yet another way of keeping your polys separate). Chapter 3 ························ 56 Figure 3-8: The Polygon Statistics window. Figure 3-9: A detail of the Polygon Statistics window from Figure 3-8. ············· Modeling 1: Foundation Material 57 Changing the selection mode to Points makes the Statistics window display point statistics. The Point Statistics window for the Katana object tells us: • Total — There are 920 total points in this object. • 0 Polygons — There are no points that don’t belong to any polygons (usually leftovers or mistakes, though there are times when you will want to have a point without a poly). • 1 Polygons — There are 68 points that belong to only one polygon each. • 2 Polygons — There are 322 points that are shared between two polygons. • 3 Polygons — There are 86 points that are shared among three polys. • 4 Polygons — There are 444 points that are shared among four polys. • >4 Polygons — There are no points that are shared among more than four polys. • Tang — There are 123 points that belong to the point selection group Tang. (This is a pop-up menu that lists all the point selection sets you’ve created for the object.) The Volume Statistics window tells you how many points and polys fall inside and outside the (right-click-lassoed) selection area when the selection mode is set to Volume. Note The easiest way to understand the difference between Include and Exclude Volume selec- tion mode is to lasso only part of your model and, using the “+” and “–” buttons in the Volume Statistics window, add and remove polygons from your selection. • Exclude — A polygon that has some points inside and some points outside the Volume Selection Area is not considered part of the selection. • Include — A polygon that has some points inside and some points outside the Volume Selection Area is considered part of the selection. The Statistics window also shows informa - tion about the items you currently have selected. Figure 3-10: The Point Statistics window. Figure 3-11: The Volume Statistics window. [...]... LightWave s surfaces can be layered and how each channel can, through the Gradient function, reference another, load in Rock_1, Rock_2, and/or Lava from the Rock library of the surface presets (Picking apart these surface presets will really start your mind rolling as to just what can be done — simply and elegantly — with the LightWave surfacing settings.) One of the surface preset libraries that LightWave. .. the transparent surfaces of an object (There is a chart in the LightWave 8 manual that lists materials from air to iodine crystal and their respective refraction indices.) Translucency is a measure of how much light passing through an object will be “seen” on its other side (think of leaves glowing when back-lit by the sun) Bump tells LightWave what percentage of the textures active on this channel... nothing selected, Modeler treats everything in the foreground as being selected 65 Chapter 3 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Text Making text in LightWave is a two-part process that isn’t immediately obvious To save memory space, LightWave s Modeler doesn’t load in all the fonts (typefaces) you have on your computer You have to specifically tell Modeler which fonts you wish to use You... to Modeler’s Font List through Create | Text | Manage Fonts (Figure 3-33) Here you can add either your operating system’s TrueType fonts or a PostScript Type-1 font (several of which are included with LightWave) Clicking on Add True-Type brings up an OS-specific font requester Highlighting a font and clicking OK returns you to the Edit Font List window, now with the selected font appearing in the Font... Text | Text and click in any viewport, typing the text you want to create and pressing to “make” your text Figure 3-33: Using Create | Text | Manage Fonts Figure 3-34 Figure 3-35 Note Because LightWave limits a polygon to having a maximum of 1,023 points, you may run into problems with extremely ornate fonts (Notice that in Figure 3-35, each letter’s contiguous shape is a single polygon.) The... this for the entire line of text you are creating or just certain letters that are heavily ornate · · · · · · · · · · · · · Modeling 1: Foundation Material Surfacing Of all the 3D packages I’ve used, LightWave has the quickest, most powerful, and most intuitive surfacing model In this section, we just scratch the surface of what it can do It’ll be enough to give you a piton for the more advanced techniques... window Figure 3-37: Shaded viewports show GL versions of the surfaces you’ve applied to each polygon (You can have an unlimited number of surfaces on your objects and in your scenes.) The real power of LightWave s surfacing is glimpsed through the Surface Editor, which is identical in Layout and Modeler Each surface is listed under the object to which it belongs Selecting that surface from the list (such... Primitives prim·i·tive adj 1 a Of or pertaining to an earliest or original stage or state b Archetypal 2 Math A form in geometry or algebra from which another form is derived (The American Heritage Dictionary) LightWave s Modeler gives you quick access to a slew of simple objects created from mathematical formulae Balls, boxes, discs, cones, capsules, donuts, even gemstones are among these quickly accessible... on the buttons just to see what they brought up and are now wondering how to deactivate the button), simply hold while clicking on the button Figure 3-48 Figure 3-50 Figure 3-46 Smoothing tells LightWave to look to the Smooth Threshold when shading the joining of two polygons In Figure 3-50, if two polys meet at an angle of 89.5º or less, those polys are shaded as if they were one smooth surface... pop-up menu, check Remove Points, and then click OK Selection “Tricks” This section lists Modeler tools for manipulating your selection that “hard-core” modelers couldn’t live without Modelers new to LightWave who aren’t used to these kinds of tools in their old programs may not at first notice these quiet, unassuming tools in their perusings of the LW manual But once they’ve been clued in to what . spaces in your LightWave names is just a good habit to get into. (That’s why you see all of the names in this book divided with under - scores (_) instead of spaces.) ··· All of this is LightWave. 2 ························ 48 Figure 2-106: As simple as it may look, this little thing has all the power of LightWave s renderer at its command. Note LightWave was first built on the Amiga plat - form, back when its 1 MB of internal. creating objects in LightWave (second only to the point). The most common polys you’ll be working with will have three or four vertices and three or four sides (tris and quads). But in LightWave, you