Essential LightWave 3D- P14 doc

From here, you can continue to reshape the ear to your satisfaction. Figure 14-147 shows the completed ear. Zoom out and take a look at what you’ve got. The head model should be at least 93% complete or better. If you find that it’s not quite right, I encourage you to continue working with it. Being willing to push past the point of mediocrity is often what turns a good model into a great one. Chapter 14 ······················· 378 Figure 14-147: The finished ear. Figure 14-148: The finished head. Closing Thoughts We’ve covered a tremendous amount of ground in this chapter, from the proper techniques of building a spline cage to refin - ing the mesh and adding in complex details. In the process, you’ve constructed a world-class head model. From here, I encourage you to continue on. Begin constructing morph targets for facial anima - tion. Build the rest of the body and use the information in Chapters 15 and 16 to get started in character animation. Let the work you’ve done in this chapter be the start of great things as you continue to real - ize your dreams in 3D. ···· Spline Modeling Exercise 2: Modeling a Human Head 379 Chapter 15 Layout 2: Animation Basics This chapter explores the basic tools that LightWave uses to control the movements of items within an animation. While these are the tools to control animation, they are not the skills to create great works of ani - mation. There’s an entire book (LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation) devoted to understanding these skills — inverse kine- matics, bones, weight mappings, and the skills common to good animation, whether hand-drawn on paper or created in LightWave. Note As we go through this chapter, you’ll see that the tools LightWave offers to manipu - late animations are rather complex. We’ve already touched on some of them in Chap - ter 2 while “dissecting” Layout. Throughout this chapter, I’ll be referring to things we covered there. Here, I’ll give you a taste of some of the things that are in store for you in the world of animation. These are things that are inte- gral to animation, but they are no more animation itself than a cinema is the movies it shows. Ke yframes (Ke ys) The concept of keyframes comes from tradi - tional animation (animation drawn on paper). The animator draws the primary poses — the ones that define the action — assigning the drawings positions on a dope sheet (a spreadsheet that shows the position in time of every drawing within a scene). After the animator is happy with the defini - tion of the action, the scene goes on to other artists who fill in the drawings that come in between the key drawings (cre - atively called inbetweens). A keyframe in LightWave is a record of the position, rotation, and/or scale of an item, whether it be an object, bone, light, camera, etc. A keyframe is recorded in LightWave when you change an item’s scaling, rotation, or position (if you have Auto Key Create active) or by using Create Key to manually create a keyframe. How do animators know how much time (how many frames) to put between their keyframes? We use a stopwatch to time either how long it takes for us to do an action physically or how long the action takes to play out in our imaginations. The thing I never liked about stop - watches is that I could never find one that would give me the timings in frames (work - ing in 30 FPS for NTSC or 24 FPS for film), feet/frames, SMPTE, or whatever. (I had to do all that “translation” in my head or on 380 paper.) So, I wrote a little utility in Flash that serves as an animation timer and unit-conversion utility. The Itty-Bitty Animation Timer looks simple but packs a lot of power. Click on the icon at the center to time how long you hold the mouse button down. Click Frames, Feet/Frames , SMPTE,orSeconds to see your time displayed in that format. You can manually enter any value for any field, and press <Return> to update the calculations (this is how you change your FPS or add a frame offset if you’re timing part of an action that doesn’t start on frame 0). Note You can find more information on The Itty-Bitty Animation Timer, along with a whole slew of other plug-ins, programs, and utilities, in Appendix A. 1. Load Objects\Chapter15\Anima- tion.lwo. We’ll be doing a little “flying logo” work with this bit of text. ················ Layout 2: Animation Basics 381 Figure 15-1: The Itty-Bitty Animation Timer. Figure 15-2 Note The worlds of broadcasting and advertising are cyclical. At the time of publication, pref - erences have leaned toward 3D that doesn’t look “3D” (i.e., no hugely thick block letters). Keep this in mind if you’re putting together a reel to get hired doing this kind of work. Generally, it isn’t a good idea to have things that look outdated on your reel — keep up with what’s current. 2. We’ll be working in 24 frames per sec - ond, so make sure that you’ve got this set under General Options | Frames Per Second. Our animation will be 1.75 seconds, so (using The Itty-Bitty Animation Timer to convert 1.75 sec - onds into frames) enter 42 as your End Frame in both the Frame Slider and the Render Options fields. Take a moment to make sure you have both parts of Auto Key Create active! (You’ll have to develop your own preferences as to whether your moving an item will cre- ate keys on only the channels in which it is moved or on all channels at once.) Note Don’t hesitate to flip back through Chapter 2’s section on Layout if you need to. There’s a lot to remember here! Know your own cur - rent limits as to how much you can retain, and don’t kick yourself for being within those limits. Learning is a skill that is devel - oped through practice! 3. Making sure you’re still on frame 0, move the text along the negative Z axis until it is just a tiny bit “behind” the camera (as shown in Figure 15-3, the camera “sees” from an invisible point in the center of its icon). You will also want to move the text a little bit in the negative X axis so the camera is between the “m” and “a” in the word “Animation.” Chapter 15 ······················· 382 Figure 15-3 Note Clicking and dragging on an item’s handles will restrict movement, rotation, or scaling to one axis. It makes precise positioning much easier, especially when working in a Per - spective viewport. (Make sure you have Display Options | Show Handles active.) 4. Now, we’re going to get into some actual animation. Moving the Frame Slider to frame 6, move your text toward the positive Z axis so it just barely fills the “title safe” area (see Chapter 2 if necessary) in a Camera viewport. You’ll also want to move the text to X=0 so it’s centered again. (Now you can move the Frame Slider back and forth between 0 and 6 and watch the text come zooming in from behind the camera.) 5. Press <f> to bring up the Go to Frame dialog and enter 36, as shown in Figure 15-5. Move the text toward the positive Z axis by about another meter at frame 36. (This will keep the text “alive” while the viewers are reading what it says.) ················ Layout 2: Animation Basics 383 Figure 15-4 6. Now go to frame 42 (the end of our scene), and enter the value of 200 m for that frame’s Z position. (This will make the text “zoom off” into the distance.) Hey! You’re animating! (Well, you’re start - ing to at least.) When you “scrub” the Frame Slider back and forth, you’ll see that the text “bounces” backward, going “behind” the camera again between frames 6 and 36. It didn’t do this before when we scrubbed through our frames in Figure 15-4. This is not what we want our text to do. LightWave will interpolate (inbetween) from keyframe to keyframe smoothly with mathematical perfection. Its default mode of interpolation is a kind of spline (spatial line) known as a TCB spline (which stands for tension, continuity, and bias). This kind of spline is affected heavily by large, quick motions that come immediately before or after a keyframe (just like we’ve got between frames 0 and 6). The solution to our bouncing text is to either add more keyframes or manually adjust the interpola - tion to make the “inbetweening” exactly what we want for our motion. LightWave’s Graph Editor will let us “sculpt” the func - tion curves that control every aspect of an item’s motion — and more! Chapter 15 ······················· 384 Figure 15-5 Figure 15-6 “Motion” Graph Editor Below the File pop-up menu on the upper- left side of the Layout interface is the Graph Editor button. Clicking on it will open the “Motion” Graph Editor for your selected item. (The Graph Editor controls a lot more than just motions now, though at one time that’s all it did, and so us “old-tim - ers” still sometimes call it by its original name: “Motion Graph.”) Every aspect of an item’s motion and every “envelopable” attribute is controlled through this interface. Press <a> to Zoom All and <A> to Zoom Selected. (There’s so much here that I’m going to just hit the high points and leave the details to the LW manual.) • On the left side, the Channels list shows all the aspects that LW is tracking for the currently selected item. Click on one channel to view and edit it in the Graph area, or Shift-click or Ctrl-click to select more than one channel to view and modify at once. • Double-click on an item under the Channels tab (just under the Channels list) to change what item’s curves you are view - ing (without having to close the window, select the new item, and reopen the Graph Editor). Shift-double-click to add an item’s channels to the list you are currently viewing. • The Graph area itself is where you right-click and drag to create a bounding box for selecting multiple keyframes or left-click and drag to modify them. (The same hot key and mouse combinations you’re used to in Modeler will work here as well to zoom and scroll the view.) • Just below the Graph area are the Graph Editor’s tool buttons. From the left are Move Keys, A dd Keys, Stretch Keys, Roll Keys, and Zoom. (Left-click and drag affects the selected keys’ value, while Ctrl-left-click and drag affects the selected keys’ frames.) • Frame is an input field that shows the frame on which your currently selected keyframe is located. • Value tells you the selected key on the selected channel’s precise location. (In Fig- ure 15-7, we are looking only at the “curve” for the Z position for the item named Ani - mation. On the selected frame, 6, it is at precisely –2.3195 m along the Z axis.) ················ Layout 2: Animation Basics 385 Figure 15-7: The Graph Editor. • Pre Behavior and Post Behavior tell LightWave what to do before it reaches the item’s first keyframe and after it reaches its last keyframe (respectively). • Constant (as shown in the figure) holds the value of the first key for “infinity” before the first keyframe begins and/or the value of the last key for “infinity” after the last keyframe. • Reset sets the value of the graph to 0 when it has no more keys with which to work. • Repeat plays the series of keys over and over again, ad infinitum. • Oscillate “ping-pongs” the anima - tion set by the keys, reversing it when it reaches the end and playing it for- ward once again when it returns to the beginning. • Offset Repeat repeats the motion but with everything shifted by the dif- ference between the first and last keys (this would make our curve here into an infinite set of “stairs”). • Linear continues the curve infinitely, projecting it at an angle established by the last two keys (or first two keys, if we’re talking about Pre Behavior). • Incoming Curve tells LightWave how to handle the curve segment that is directly to the left of the selected key. • TCB Spline is LightWave’s de - fault setting, and it gives good results most of the time, without having to worry about tweaking the curves much. (Tension, Continuity, and Bias all affect the shape of the curve, based on values from –1 to +1. Of these, I have only ever found myself needing to use Tension, and then only to put in a value of +1 to get an item to ease into or out of its keyed position.) • Hermite Spline gives you little “handles” that extend from the key, allowing you to visually control the shape of the curve. (It isn’t quite as controllable as a bezier spline.) Alt- dragging on one of these handles will let you split it from its partner, so it is not a mirror of the handle on the other side of the key. Double-clicking on a handle that has been split will get it to once again mirror the angle of the han - dle on the other side of the key. • Bezier Spline also gives you han - dles, but you can move the position of these handles a great distance relative to their respective keys, giving you a lot more control. (Alt-dragging and double-clicking on these handles splits and reunites the handles with their partners, just as with Hermite Spline handles.) • Linear gives you a straight line inbetween from the previous keyframe. • Stepped holds the value of the previous key until the moment before the stepped key, so it goes right from one value to the next without any kind of inbetweening (like what a traditional animation “pencil test” looks like before it goes to the assistant anima - tors who put in the “missing” frames). • The Footprints drop-down (located along the top row of pop-up menus) lets you choose among several options: Leave Foot - print, Backtrack Footprint, and Pickup Footprint. Leave Footprint places a bit of a “ghosted” image of how your curve looked when you left the footprint. You can use this as a visual reference to help you as you tweak. If you totally mangle things, you can use Backtrack Footprint to get back to the Chapter 15 ······················· 386 way things were. If you like how things are, you can choose Pickup Footprint. (Foot - prints only last until you close the Graph Editor window, use Pickup Footprint, or select a different item’s curves.) 1. Let’s go back to where we were at the end of the last section. With the text object selected, open the Graph Editor and select its Position Z channel. Right-drag a rectangle around all the keys, and set Incoming Curve to Bezier Spline. Double-click on the handles shown to get them to mirror their shorter partners. Note All these controls, buttons, and gizmos in the Graph Editor may seem like overkill, but believe me, everything here has a purpose, and though you may not need one of these bits of functionality much, when you do need it, you’ll be thankful it’s there. Bear in mind that this is only scratching the surface. The Graph Editor is the animator’s most trusted and versatile tool. Its spline types, handles, footprints, you name it — all of it lets you have the minimum number of keys to hold your animation in place. ················ Layout 2: Animation Basics 387 Figure 15-8 Figure 15-9 [...]... to make a preview first can tell LightWave to make a preview of part of your scene When you press OK to accept the default values, LightWave “zings” through the animation, storing the image of each frame in memory and numbering it for easy referencing Note Previews are built from whatever window is in the upper-left corner of the interface That window can be any view LightWave has to offer (even Schematic... dependably In this, LightWave s floating-point mathematics engine (which keeps its calculations accurate to many, many places to the right of the decimal point) makes it one of the best packages available for character animation Don’t be fooled Other software may have great salesmen, but LightWave has got it where it counts It is dependable and predictable in every situation Thanks to LightWave s robust... you need to tell LightWave whether you want keys created for all channels (scaling, rotation, and translation), even when you only have modified only one of those channels, or if you want LightWave to remember changes specifically for the channel type that has been modified You make this choice under Edit | General Options | Auto Key Create Both settings need to be active in order for LightWave s Auto... well.) 396 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Layout 2: Animation Basics These are the basics of what LightWave uses to control animation (Remember, these are the “hows,” not the “whys.”) At its core, animation is simply manipulating an item’s changes in position, rotation, and/or scale over time All LightWave animations consist of moving, rotating, and/or scaling an object, bone, light, camera, or special... Compensation, Muscle Flexing, and LightWave 8’s powerful new IK Booster tool A Brief Introduction to Character Animation Computer animation has come a long way over the past 20 years Those who’ve been working in this field from the start will tell you how difficult it was in those days to get a simple character built, let alone animated But today, 3D programs such as LightWave offer a number of highly... remainder of the frames, letting LightWave compile the rendered frames into an animation after everything’s done (See Figure 15-18.) Note Computer crashes during or immediately after renders are good reasons for saving your scene before you render! (“Hey! That finally looks the way I want it! Hey! What happened to the electricity?!!”) Under the Image Editor, you can tell LightWave to load in the first... animating in LightWave, here’s a hint to make your life a lot easier Have Layout automatically create keyframes for you whenever you move, scale, or rotate an item (as opposed to having to press Enter or click Create Key every time you want Layout to remember an item’s scaling, rotation, or translation on a particular frame — keyframe) Figure 16-10 You activate Auto Key Create by first telling LightWave. .. electricity?!!”) Under the Image Editor, you can tell LightWave to load in the first frame of a series of rendered frames; then under the Image Type pop-up menu, you can tell LightWave that it isn’t a still frame but a sequence LightWave will scan the directory, analyzing the sequence of frames, and fill in the rest of the information shown in Figure 15-18 You can then set the end frame of your movie... Kinematics for its Pitch Controller The moment you do this, LightWave begins using IK to solve for the pitch axis for that item, and the bone swings upward, bringing the base of the puller item as close as it can get to the goal item Figure 16-12 Note Figure 16-13 If you recall our discussion of rotation in Chapter 1, the best way to remember LightWave s conventions for its axes of rotation is to think... automatically figure the perfect set of rotations that will keep the puller’s base at the exact location as the goal’s base 400 Let’s take a look at the basics of “standard” IK I’m saying “standard” here because LightWave 8’s new IK Booster tool (which we’ll discuss shortly) provides a system that is as much of an advancement on IK as IK itself was on character animation back in the early ’90s I’ve found that . can tell LightWave to load in the first frame of a series of rendered frames; then under the Image Type pop-up menu, you can tell LightWave that it isn’t a still frame but a sequence. LightWave. inbetweens). A keyframe in LightWave is a record of the position, rotation, and/or scale of an item, whether it be an object, bone, light, camera, etc. A keyframe is recorded in LightWave when you change. about Pre Behavior). • Incoming Curve tells LightWave how to handle the curve segment that is directly to the left of the selected key. • TCB Spline is LightWave s de - fault setting, and it gives