Essential LightWave 3D- P8 pptx

By default, LightWave viewports show a sub-patch’s: • Cage — The “ghosted” representation of the poly that is defining the sub-patch. • Surface — What will actually be ren - dered in Layout. • Guide — A ghosted line drawn from the surface to the point on the original poly that “controls” (influences) it. Not quite sure what all the fuss is about? Each of the points of the original poly exerts influence over how the subdivision surfacing algorithm creates the smooth surface of the sub-patch. The sub-patch surface behaves a lot like stretchy, digital clay. Even so, you still may be inclined to think, “It’s a neat gimmick, but what can it really do for me?” The upshot of this real- time application of Multiply | Subdivide | More | Metaform Plus is that you can model extremely dense meshes using a very light polygon “cage,” and you can do it with the tools with which you’re already familiar! Sub-patch surface models can have their resolution dialed up or dialed down, not just while you’re modeling but while you’re Chapter 7 ························ 198 Figure 7-3 Figure 7-2 animating as well! Under Layout’s Object Properties window, you set the resolution at which your sub-patch model will be dis - played and the resolution at which it will be rendered. (In Figure 7-3, that’s a difference of 24,064 polygons!) You can animate with a very speedy, low-poly mesh and render with the ultra-polished 27,072 poly mesh with - out having to change a single setting when it’s time to render! Now that I’ve got your attention, how do you turn that sub-patch “blob” in Figure 7-2 into the character in Figure 7-3? You use the Smooth Shift, Bevel, Drag, Move, and Rotate tools. That’s it? Yep. That’s basically it. There are a couple of other tools I use to make things a little easier or to fix things when my work shows me I’m lacking in the fore - sight department, but for the vast majority of my character modeling, those five tools (always with a healthy helping of the Sym - metry mode) are the main tools I use when modeling organic models. Note You can also use what you have sub- patched as a kind of quick, temporary “grouping” as you work. Leaving part of your model as sub-patches and part as faces as you work, you can quickly select what you want to work on through the SubPatches and Faces headings in the Polygon Statistics window. Smooth Shift Smooth Shift works with sub-patches just the same as it does with polys. (In truth, you’re better off thinking of your sub-patch not as some arcane, spline-based “mysti- cism” but as polys that just happen to be nice, soft, and “roundy” and are never con - sidered “non-planar,” no matter how you push their points.) However, as nice as the real-time work - ings of Smooth Shift are with planar, polygonal faces, it often “splits” the mesh apart at its points with sub-patches (similar to what happened with the window mold- ings when we rail beveled them in the last chapter). There is a quick and easy fix to this, though: Let Smooth Shift handle mak- ing the new geometry, and you handle shaping and sizing it. Smooth Shift with an Offset of 0 and a Max Smoothing Angle of 0º is the best way to work with sub-patches. A simple way to do this is to activate the Smooth Shift tool (<F>) and then click without moving your mouse. (You can also achieve the same ·········· Modeling 3: Sub-Patch Organic Modeling 199 Figure 7-4 effect by using the Super Shift tool men - tioned in Chapter 3.) After smooth shifting, position and shape the new geometry by hand. (It’s good to get in the habit of smooth shifting your sub-patches with these settings. The tiny bit of extra time it takes more than makes up for the headache of finding a half-buried, “dismembered” set of points much later on in your work, the results of an erroneous Smooth Shift opera - tion you didn’t catch.) BandSaw The best characters are made up of loops (or bands) of four-point polygons. The BandSaw tool can be used to subdivide these loops into smaller bands. You can think of it as knifing along the path created by the band of the polygons. When you have Enable Divide active in the BandSaw window, the tool not only selects the band of polys (along the U or V), it also creates more segments in that selected band with respect to the band markers. You create and position these Chapter 7 ························ 200 Figure 7-5 Figure 7-6 markers in the white area of the interface, which represents the top and bottom of the band of polys that will be selected/cut. Note A good way to determine the path that BandSaw will take as it cuts through your polys is to use the Select Loop tool (dis - cussed in Chapter 3) first. • Add puts more of these band markers wherever you click your mouse in the white area. • Edit lets you click and drag the band markers. • Delete removes any band marker you click on. • Value lets you enter a specific position (0 to 1) along the white area for the selected band marker. • Uniform repositions the band markers you have, spreading them all out evenly. • Mirror creates a new band marker that mirrors your currently selected one. • Reverse flip-flops the band markers. • Clear removes all but one of the band markers, placed exactly in the center. Multiply | Subdivide | More | Band - Saw Pro does the same thing as BandSaw but with a real-time Numeric window inter - face that lets you still interact with your viewports while open. The cool upshot of this, other than being able to orbit your model to see if the segmenting is working as you’d like, is that it doesn’t require you to use its interface window. It “remembers” the last settings you used with it and applies them immediately when activating the tool. (I’ve mapped this tool to a hot key and assigned it to my Quick-Tools menu tab, so when I want to select a band of my mesh, I just tap its hot key and keep right on working!) Note The Preset pop-up menu in the BandSaw Pro Numeric window will remember the settings in ten different presets. Just choose one, do your thing, and the next time you choose that preset, your previous settings will be ready and waiting for you! ·········· Modeling 3: Sub-Patch Organic Modeling 201 Figure 7-7 Figure 7-8 What if you want to remove segments from your mesh? LightWave has Construct | Reduce | More | BandGlue, which “stitches” bands of polys together in much the same way BandSaw cuts them apart. The tool has no interface (just click its button, and away it goes). The one big dif - ference between it and its counterparts is the direction in which you select the polys to be glued. Just remember that you’re selecting the polys that will become one band around your model. Note “Elegance” in Modeling Something that takes most folks a while to pick up on is an overriding concept of elegance in whatever it is you’re doing in 3D. This applies to modeling, animating, texturing, lighting — all aspects of working in 3D. Your best work will come from using the absolute minimum number of “whatsits” needed to hold your “schiznit” in place — no more and no less. Tools like BandSaw can let you really load up your mesh with lots and lots of segments, and it’s very tempting to do so. But the best modelers build their meshes with the barest minimum number of these isoparms necessary to keep the exact shape they’re going for. Sometimes a good modeler will spend half the time it took to create the mesh just going through it again and again, looking for places he can optimize it and removing anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to hold its shape. This optimization not only makes for a model that’s quicker to refresh when working in both Modeler and Layout, but when working with characters, it means that it is a lot easier to rig (set up for character animation). It also means that the bones that drive its deforma - tion will create shapes that look a whole lot better than on a mesh that has a lot of seg - ments. (See LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation for complete information on charac - ter rigging.) To help us use as few segments as possible in making our mesh do what we need it to, we can adjust the weight by which the sub-patch is controlled by its cage. This information is stored on each individual vertex as the Sub - Patch Weight. Positive values increase the pull of the control vertex on the sub-patch surface, where 100% makes it touch its control vertex. Negative values relax the sub-patch’s pull toward its control vertex. Map | General | Air- brush is a tool that lets you modify the values of your currently selected weight map in real time. It’s important to note that the vertices in your object are not inherently assigned to any given weight map, including SubPatch Weight. While Weight Shade will show your vertices as having a value of zero, until you actually assign a map value to them, they have no value whatsoever. You can directly enter values for selected points under the Information win - dow for your selected points, or you can use Map | General | Set Map Value. While this information may not be of immediate use as you’re learning the software, higher-end functions such as Dynamics do utilize vertex map assignments, so keep this bit of informa - tion in the back of your head. Chapter 7 ························ 202 Figure 7-9 Magnet Modify | Translate | Magnet is a great tool for working with your sub-patch sur - face model as if it were a lump of digital clay. It’s a tool I use extensively to rough in my basic forms when sculpting anything organic (characters, heads, artifacts, whatever). With the Magnet tool active, you right- click and drag in a viewport to set its “sphere of influence” and then left-click and drag to move your mesh around. Points closer to the center of the sphere of influ - ence will be affected more than those at its outer edge in accordance with the falloff. This is very similar to what we’ve seen already with the Bend, Taper, and Twist tools. If you establish (and continue to manipu - late) the Magnet tool’s sphere of influence in a single viewport, the sphere will be more like a cylinder, extending infinitely through space. ·········· Modeling 3: Sub-Patch Organic Modeling 203 Figure 7-10 Figure 7-11 When you manipulate the Magnet tool’s sphere of influence in multiple viewports,it becomes a true ovoid that can be used like a traditional sculptor’s tool, pressing and pulling at a mass of Super Sculpey. (The Perspective viewport in Figure 7-11 shows how I usually like to work with my sub- patch models, with Independent Visibility active and choosing not to show cages, guides, or the grid.) Pole Modify | Transform | More | Pole takes Size (Pole Evenly tool) and Stretch (Pole tool), and blends them with the sphere of influence of the Magnet tool. This is an underrated tool that is very helpful for organic modeling — especially “futuristic” design. Vortex Modify | Rotate | More | Vortex Tool takes the Rotate tool and blends it with the sphere of influence of the Magnet tool. This also is an underrated tool that is very help - ful for quickly creating graceful, fluid curves. Chapter 7 ························ 204 Figure 7-12 Figure 7-13 Subdivision Order Does the order in which your sub-patch surface model is diced up into its tinier pieces matter? It matters a whole lot — and one of the best ways to show this is by using a variant on the old “single-poly mountain” trick. 1. Start with a 5x5 sub-patch grid. 2. Bring the 5x5 sub-patch into Layout, and set its Display SubPatch Level to 42. Then under its Deform tab, click on the T button next to Displacement Map to enter the Texture Editor, and set up the dented texture shown in Figure 7-16. We get a very cool “insta-moun - tain,” strongly reminiscent of the artwork of Roger Dean, the artist for the Yes album covers. ·········· Modeling 3: Sub-Patch Organic Modeling 205 Figure 7-14 Figure 7-15 Figure 7-16: A displacement map actually moves the points of the mesh, whereas a bump map just “fakes” it by working with how the light plays across the surface. These are the settings used to create the mountain in Figure 7-15. (Do you want to see something neat? Activate World Coordinates for your dis - placement map, remove your falloff values, and then move your object about. You’ll see your object flow through the texture! It’s a neat way to understand more about the workings of textures in general. Be sure to try this in all three axes.) The two inactive textures in Figure 7-16 are other examples of different kinds of terrain. Mac-Specific Info Because of the current weirdness with the Mac version of Dented, Mac users will have to use a Texture Value of 20.2, instead of the 4.2 shown in Figure 7-16, and play with the texture’s position in order to get decent mountains. (But it’s worth it — no other procedural does mountains like Dented.) (Special thanks to Robin Wood!) Load Scenes\Chapter_07\Subdiv_ Order.lws, activating each layer in turn, so only one is active at a time, to see other nifty settings. Subdivision Order tells LightWave when to apply its subdivision surfacing algorithm to the polygonal cage. If you tell it to apply its smoothing last, the displacement map is only displacing the 36 points of our 5x5 cage. If the smoothing is applied before the displacement map, the displacement map has all 44,557 points to push about. Subdivision Order can really come into play when you’re working with animating a character. The quickest, most reliable ani - mation comes from subdividing your character using the After Motion or Last options. This way, the bones are only hav- ing to calculate their influence on, say, 7,000 points instead of the sometimes astronomi- cally high number of points in even a Display SubPatch Level setting (“animation resolution”) character’s mesh. Chapter 7 ························ 206 Figure 7-17: Modifying the Subdivision Order setting. Note If you want to freeze your mountain’s defor - mations in place for use as a prefab object, File | Save | Save Trans Object will save your object as it exists on its current frame of LW’s world-space — transformations, displace - ments, bone movements, and all. (Be sure to choose a name different from your original object; otherwise, you’ll replace the original with the object as you’re seeing it right now in Layout’s viewports!) Save Transformed Object also respects the Display SubPatch Level setting. “Exporting” our mountain as it exists in Figure 7-15 will give us a mesh with 88,200 polys! If you want to save your transformed object as an object you can still use as a sub-patch model, set Display SubPatch Level to 0 before using Save Trans - formed Object. Sub-patches open up a whole new level for both modeling and animating. Modeling complex meshes can now be done in a frac - tion of the time it would take to noodle all those minute polys. Animating with a cast of sub-patch characters means once we choose our Display SubPatch Level and Render SubPatch Level settings, we can enjoy the speed of low-resolution animation meshes and the beauty of high-res render meshes without having to think about or do anything more than just press <F9>. Just remember the credo of good 3D modelers and animators everywhere: Your best work will come from using the absolute minimum number of “whatsits” needed to hold your “schiznit” in place. ·········· Modeling 3: Sub-Patch Organic Modeling 207 Note I can’t stress enough how cool it is to have a crowd of SubPatch Level 0 characters all on screen at once and still have screen-refresh rates that are actually conducive to animat- ing. (In 1996, by contrast, three low-res characters in Softimage slowed an R10K down to a mind-mangling crawl!) [...]... you can rough in a shape that you can work back into, using BandSaw, Smooth Shift, and Bevel to continue to layer in detail — honing… refining…perfecting A suggestion from my own experience is to use LightWave 8’s Save Incremental to save multiple revisions of your work as you go For example, if I’ve got my “whatsit” to a point where I’m pretty happy with the “doohickey” section of it, before starting... activate Symmetry mode again, the geometry of the legs will still respond symmetrically.) the value you used for the first leg (You can enter mathematical expressions in the numeric input fields, and LightWave will calculate the answer for its input.) Figure 9-35 Figure 9-33 10 Repeat what you did in Figure 9-33 for the polys of the other leg, making sure that when you move these polys numerically, . By default, LightWave viewports show a sub-patch’s: • Cage — The “ghosted” representation of the poly that is. Organic Modeling 201 Figure 7-7 Figure 7-8 What if you want to remove segments from your mesh? LightWave has Construct | Reduce | More | BandGlue, which “stitches” bands of polys together in. will create shapes that look a whole lot better than on a mesh that has a lot of seg - ments. (See LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation for complete information on charac - ter rigging.) To help us