Essential LightWave 3D- P16 pot

• Random Streaks are the fine, numerous “spiky streaks” that help give the impression of something being painfully bright. • The Reflections tab offers access to a multitude of settings to recreate the sun dogs that appear when light catches within the mul - tiple layers of camera optics. (I’d suggest using this set - ting sparingly, creating your own custom combinations of elements instead so this effect doesn’t look canned.) Let’s go back to the fake volumetric light scene we were working on in the previous section of this chapter, as shown in Figure 17-29. 1. Set the light’s Parent to your “shaft of light” object, and move it numerically to X=0, Y=0, Z=0. (I’ve changed my light from a distant light to a point light, but this doesn’t really matter.) 2. Activate Lens Flare for the light, and open the Lens Flare Options window. Deactivate Central Ring and Red Outer Glow. Activate Anamorphic Distor - tion and Anamorphic Streaks. (Leave everything else as is.) 3. An <F9> gives you something you might see hovering over a rural land - scape on The X-Files. (See Figure 17-29.) One of the best ways to use lens flares is to work them into your scene in such a way that the viewer isn’t even aware that a lens flare is being used. (Huh?) That’s right! When you have a flare that is just a Central Glow with a high Intensity and a fairly high Flare Dissolve, the flare serves more to add a bit of “light bloom” to the entire scene, giving the same feel that lights do when “catching” in a faint hint of haze. This faint hinting is indicative of the elusive quality of subtlety that runs through all I try to con - vey to an up-and-coming artist. Anyone can tell the difference when shown a render “with” and a render “without,” but on its own, it doesn’t jump out at the viewer because it just looks good. Chapter 17 ······················· 438 Figure 17-27: Random Streaks. Figure 17-28: The Reflections tab. Lens flares aren’t just for “realistic” works. The addition of two lens flares in the center of the work in Figure 17-30 makes the ver- sion on the right much more intense, all over! I had to use two flares because I wanted a soft, “all-over” glow and another, much more pinpoint focus for the “con- sciousness seed” at the center of the work. Flares render very quickly, so don’t be afraid to use as many flares as it takes to get the exact look you’re trying to create. ··················· Layout 4: Special FX 439 Figure 17-29 Figure 17-30: The Formation of Consciousness. Compositing LightWave lets you composite CG elements right into live-action plates without having to open up another piece of software. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it opens up a whole new world of possibilities to a filmmaker. Let’s take a look at an example. CG Elements onto a “Live-Action Plate” 1. Load Scenes\Chapter_17\Compos - iting_01_Setup.lws — the layout of the three ’droids — and we’re ready to go! Chapter 17 ······················· 440 Figure 17-31: A deserted country road — the perfect place for a trio of alien probe ’droids! (Insert maniacal laughter here.) Figure 17-32 2. The first step to getting these guys composited onto a live-action plate is to load that plate into Effects | Compos - iting | Background Image. (Either select the plate, if CountryRoad.png is already in the list, or choose (load image) and select Images\Chap - ter17\CountryRoad.PNG if it isn’t in the list.) You can get a really good feel for how this composite will look by choosing Background Image in the Display Options | Camera View Back - ground — your camera viewports will show your objects over your back - ground image. ··················· Layout 4: Special FX 441 Figure 17-33 Note The ’droids use the FI’s_PatchyR procedural texture. PC crowd: You’ll have to make sure you add the fisptxtrs.p plug-in. (More info on FI’s pro - cedural textures can be found in Appendix A.) Mac crowd: Using Surface Baker (see the LW manual for more information on this très cool shader that is currently hard-coded as a part of LightWave — it can’t be used over ScreamerNet just yet), I’ve created a Mac version of the probe ’droid for these next exer - cises. Be sure to work with the _Mac versions of the ’droid and his scenes. If you’re wondering how to “bake” a procedural bump channel when Surface Baker doesn’t have this as one of its options, see the LW manual to get up to speed on the “whos” and “whats” of Surface Baker. You copy the texture layer(s) you’re using for the bump channel to replace all layers of your color channel and with 100% Luminosity, 100% Dif - fuse, 0% Specular, 0% Transparency, and 0% Bump, render a frame with the Surface Baker shader active and set to create an appropriate UV texture map. The image the Surface Baker shader generates can be used as a bump map for machines that don’t have access to your procedural shaders! 3. Let’s change our light to an area light so it will cast realistic shadows. In its Motion Options window, set Target Item to ProbeDroid (1) (the middle ’droid in our scene), so when we move our light, we don’t have to worry about aiming it as well. Move it to where the sun would be relative to our ’droids , based on what we’re able to surmise from our live-action plate (I found X=1.63, Y=15.88, Z=–240 mm to work well). Set Light Intensity to 125%. (I always have a value of over 100% for sunlight; it gives harsher lights and darks — chiaroscuro — and feels more like outdoor lighting.) Make sure Shadow Type is set to Ray Trace, activate Trace Shadows under Rendering Options, and do an <F9>. Chapter 17 ······················· 442 Figure 17-34: Doing an <F9> shows us what we’ve got so far. It’s not bad and could probably pass as okay in some lower-end productions. But something is amiss: The lighting on the ’droids is coming from a completely different angle than where the sun obviously is in our plate! Figure 17-35 Note One of the first things you learn as a painter is that no matter how many visible or implied lights there are in an image, there is only one primary light source. Unless you have a darn good reason for breaking this conven - tion, all things in a scene should show the effect of the primary light source; all other light sources should be handled with such subtlety that they go almost unnoticed to the untrained observer. (When in doubt about complex lighting, or when you have a lim - ited time to ray-trace, shadows are cast only from the primary light source.) These conventions have worked for hun - dreds of years. But even so, you still don’t have to take it as “law,” just as an idea to help make your own work better, faster! 4. Under Effects | Backdrop, choose Image World from the Add Environ - ment pop-up menu, and then choose our backdrop image, Country - Road.PNG, in the Light Probe Image box. Then, on the Global Illumination panel, select Enable Radiosity, select Backdrop Only as the radiosity type, and activate Shading Noise Reduc - tion. Change Intensity to 169%, and do an <F9> to see what we’ve got. What’s the big thing that stands out as being “wrong” when you look at Figure 17-38? The ’droids aren’t casting any shad - ows! Compositing shadows onto things seen in photographic plates is a bit of a multi-part process with the tools that are a part of LightWave’s basic toolset. (Other plug-ins exist that streamline shadow ··················· Layout 4: Special FX 443 Figure 17-36: Hmm… Well, the light is coming from the correct direction, but the scene is dark. We could spend a lot of time “hanging” other lights to mimic the light reflecting off the ground, pavement, sky, and all that, or we could use our live-action plate to light our scene! Figure 17-37 Figure 17-38: Hey! Not bad! Not bad at all! As a matter of fact, pretty darn passable! But something I’d like to see is to have the lens flare effect in the live-action plate carry onto our ’droids just a touch. 5. As shown in Figure 17-39, add a point light, naming it Flare. Set its Position to X=890 mm, Y=7.269 m, Z=–69 mm. Set Light Intensity to 0%, and activate Lens Flare. Set Flare Intensity to 200%, deacti- vate Fade Off Screen, set Flare Dissolve to 69%, and set it so that only Central Glow is active. Set Star Fil - ter to 4 Point and the star filter’s Rotation Angle to 45º. (You can do an <F9>if you like; I’ve already tested it and know the effect is what I’m looking for, but it is so subtle as to not really merit a figure of its own.) compositing — most notably Worley Labs’ G2, which does many other things for your rendering as well, including letting you see changes to your render in real time.) But here, we’re going to show you how to composite shadows using the basics of LightWave right out of the box, without having to own a separate compositing pro- gram or buy additional software or anything! First, we’ve got to have something that “catches” the shadows cast by the ’droids. This “shadow-catcher” is just a simple bit of geometry that mimics the general shape Chapter 17 ······················· 444 Figure 17-39 Figure 17-40 and position of the things seen in your plate. (You’d be surprised at how general this “shadow-catcher” can be and still look good.) 6. Load in Objects\Chapter17\Shadow - Catch_Raw.lwo. This object has been presized and positioned to simulate the curvature of the road where the ’droids may cast their shadows. Under its Object Properties | Lights tab, check to exclude Radiosity, Caustics, and the light named Flare from being calculated for that object; it’ll save lots of time when rendering. (The only light that needs to interact with our shadow-catcher is our primary light: Light. You may find it easier to match your shadow-catching objects to their respective landmarks on the plate when they’re viewed as wireframes and not as opaque, solid objects. This can be set through the Scene Editor.) When you first load ShadowCatch_Raw.lwo, it has a default surface on it, with its Trans - parency bumped up to 80%, so it will receive shadows and still show the back- ground image through it. This lets me fine- tune the positioning of both the shadow- catcher and the objects that are casting the shadows. When everything is as it should be (and everything should be fine in our scene with our prepositioned objects), move on to the next step where we’ll get everything ready for a final render. ··················· Layout 4: Special FX 445 Figure 17-41 Figure 17-42 7. As shown in Figure 17-42, set the ShadowCatch surface Color to 0, 0, 0 (black) and its Transparency to 0%.On the Advanced tab, set the Alpha Chan - nel to Shadow Density (which is what will let us composite the black of the object’s surface color onto our plate). As final preparation for generating an image that can be composited onto the plate, we need a completely black back - ground. (“Premultiplying” our fore - ground image with black helps the computer deal with the rather touchy process of seamlessly blending the edges of our foreground image into that of our background.) Replace your Effects | Compositing | Back- ground Image with Images\Black- Square.iff. 8. Figure 17-43 shows our completed foreground plate, ready for compositing onto our background plate. To work with a single frame, as we are here, once you have hit <F9>, under the Render Display’s File menu, choose Save RGBA | LW_PNG32 (.png). Portable Network Graphics files are the most compact file type that holds both the image channel (24 bits) and its alpha channel (another 8 bits), making a total of 32 bits per channel in a single file. If you wanted to save a series of frames, perhaps if you were doing this for a movie, you would set Save RGB to a 32-bit file format under Rendering Options (and possibly even save out the alpha separately, just in case your compositing application needs the alpha as a separate file). Looking at Figure 17-43, you may be won- dering where the shadows are. They’re there, but they’re 0, 0, 0 (black), the same Chapter 17 ······················· 446 Figure 17-43: The completed foreground plate, ready for compositing onto our background plate. Figure 17-44: The alpha channel for our plate. color as our background image. When we take a look at our alpha channel, which is what is used to “cut out” our foreground elements, we see that the shadows are there — but they’re white! (See Figure 17-44.) In a LightWave alpha channel, what is white is opaque and what is black is trans - parent (some programs have this reversed). So, the white shadows on the alpha channel will make the black of the foreground plate’s image channel opaque where the shadows are! 9. Now, to piece the background and fore - ground together, save your scene, and then clear your scene (or start another process of LightWave), so we can have a completely “virgin” space in which to work our “magic.” In that empty scene’s Image Editor, load Images\ Chapter17\CountryRoad.PNG. Also, load the render of the foreground ele - ments that you saved in Figure 17-43 (you can use mine, if you wish: Ren - ders\Chapter17\CompRaw_F.png). With your foreground “plate” selected, choose Clone | Instance to create a “referential copy” of the image. (See Figure 17-45.) 10. Then, with the instance selected, choose Alpha Only for Alpha Channel. (This “splits” the 32-bit image into one ··················· Layout 4: Special FX 447 Figure 17-45 Figure 17-46 [...]... is a matter of taste that develops over time as you begin to learn animation As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t a book on animation; it’s a book on the basic essentials of driving LightWave (It’s just that what I consider to be the “basic essentials” needed for you to get up and start making your dreams may be a bit less “basic” than what someone else might have in mind.) But still, I don’t want... techniques, and photographic papers would record the image that LightWave renders I’ve found that because Virtual Darkroom offers such a plethora of presets, it’s best to use this filter on a prerendered series of frames (saved using an image format like Flexible Format, Radiance, SGI 64-bit RGBA, SGI 48-bit GRB, or Cineon formats that support LightWave s ability to create images in IEEE floating-point... in LW 7.5 is the ability to “bake” your volumetric “cloud(s).” This means that LightWave takes all the time it needs to figure out how the cloud looks in its entirety only once during “baking,” not on every single frame! The result of this is a “frozen cloud” that renders in a mere fraction of the time it would take for LightWave to figure out all its details normally When you use a baked volumetric,... visible (0% dissolved) until that frame, whereupon it “bipps” out of existence · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Layout 4: Special FX Figure 17-59 11 Lastly, so we don’t slow down our render by asking LightWave to draw our explosion poly while it is transparent before the sequence starts (and after the sequence ends and its image is all black once again), set this stepped envelope for the Object Dissolve... may seem, using these terms correctly shows other industry folks that you know what you’re talking about Besides, it’s always best to mean what you say, and to say what you mean, right? However, with LightWave, you can make a simple explosion in a matter of minutes (You don’t believe me? Just take a peek through the first bit of the next chapter — the explosion we’ll be using is the result of the HyperVoxel... 24 FPS for a viewer to register something Something that is on screen for three frames is seen by most viewers.) What this is doing is playing with modified timings (which is covered in some depth in LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation) The effect the viewer feels from watching an explosion handled this way has a lot more punch than an explosion that just ramps up in a linear fashion, with the explosion... techniques can open up for you (I know I’d be!) Honestly, I think you’re absolutely right to be excited! You’re now standing on a knowledge base where you can see that all you’d hoped to accomplish with LightWave is indeed within your range of ability The really awesomely cool thing about this is knowing just how much more is still out there, just waiting to be discovered by you — and shared with others!... gig! “Learning to learn” means that everything out there that you don’t know is an adventure just waiting to be explored! That’s exciting as heck! You’re never going to know all there is to know about LightWave (not anymore — it’s just too big) There will always be new things to explore and learn and help you create visions of things you’ve always wanted to see and no longer will wait for someone else... its Color channel For the Layer Type, choose Image Map Set Projection to Planar, Image to the HV_Explosion_(sequence) we just loaded, and Texture Axis to Z Click on the Automatic Sizing button to have LightWave calculate the correct scale and position for the image to perfectly fill the poly Close the Texture Editor window In the Surface Editor’s Advanced tab, set the Additive Transparency for the surface... from its “core” to where its texture is at 100% of its effect Figure 18-9 8 By the way, if you did the for Figure 18-8, did you notice that it took an awfully long time to render? That’s because LightWave is actually calculating the paths of the rays, “marching” them through the area defined by the volume (So, ray tracing through a volume is thought of as ray marching.) This is where volumetrics . this isn’t a book on animation; it’s a book on the basic essentials of driving LightWave. (It’s just that what I consider to be the “basic essentials” needed for you to get up and start making your. manual for more information on this très cool shader that is currently hard-coded as a part of LightWave — it can’t be used over ScreamerNet just yet), I’ve created a Mac version of the probe. things seen in photographic plates is a bit of a multi-part process with the tools that are a part of LightWave s basic toolset. (Other plug-ins exist that streamline shadow ··················· Layout