LightWave 3D 8 1001 Tips & Tricks phần 7 pdf

832 Kevin Phillips | Character Animation | Beginner Swing Your Head Turns Next time you animate a head turning from one side to another by simply rotating it left or right, consider doing this to make the head turn a little more natural and interesting: Scrub the frame slider to halfway between the head turn keyframes. Rotate the head down on its pitch slightly and create a key. The extra key where the head dips slightly downward will add a subtle amount of swing to the head as it turns, giving it a more natural feel. Versions: All Ü Note: Unless your character is cautiously turning its head in fear, don’t turn a character’s head too slowly. Consider using between four (fast) to ten (slow) frames as a good basis for a turn of the head. Ü Note: Don’t forget that when we turn our heads, we often subconsciously blink. 833 Kevin Phillips | Character Animation | Beginner Body First, Lip Sync Last Lip sync is regarded almost as a secondary motion to character animation. You should strive to animate the character’s body language to match your dialog before adding your lip sync. If your character animation doesn’t feel like it works without seeing the mouth movement, you should review your animation. Versions: All 834 Larry Shultz | Character Animation | Intermediate to Advanced Speeding Up Lip Sync Sometimes when doing lip sync things can appear to slow down or the audio becomes choppy. Here are a few tips I use to help things along: n Have Play at Exact Rate checked. n Resample the audio down to the lowest rate possible that is still intelligible. n Lower the SubPatch level on the characters. n Do the lip sync for each character in its own scenes and load them into the main scene later. n Cut off the head, animate the lip sync, and then paste the head back onto the body later. n Render out preview anims that include the audio in the finished movie file. Versions: All Ü Note: For more information on lip sync, see the section on morphing and endomorphs later in this chapter. 362 | Chapter 8 Character Animation 835 Larry Shultz, Jennifer Hachigian | Character Animation | Intermediate to Advanced Crowd Scenes When animating scenes with multiple characters, things inevitably begin to slow down. This happens for a variety of reasons, mostly due to LightWave hav - ing to calculate so many bone displacements, IK, expressions, and so forth. A handy thing to do is to animate the first character and run MD_Scan (Object Properties>Deform>Add Displacement>MD_Scan) on it. This “bakes” the motions onto each vertex as displacements. MD_Plug is used to replay the displacements. Once this is done the bones can be turned off and left in place. Why? The bones can still be used to parent things to or as reference for other expressions. Once this is done the next character can be animated and baked. This allows for a large number of characters to be in scene with a lot less slow - down and allows the animation to be viewed in real time. Versions: All 836 Jonny Gorden | Character Animation | Beginner Animating Fingers When animating fingers, a quick way to copy poses from one frame to another is to: 1. Select the hand bone. 2. Go to the frame you wish to copy from. 3. Hit Enter to create a keyframe, specify the frame you wish to copy to, and select Current Item and Descendants. Once you have a couple of poses created, this is a very fast way to block out the finger animation. You can then go through a second pass to refine the finger poses. Versions: 6-8 837 Larry Shultz | Character Animation | Beginner Picking Up Objects Here’s a quick ’n dirty method (and did I mention easy?) for a character to pick up an object without resorting to setting up dynamic parenting: Create two versions of the object that will be picked up. Parent one version to a bone in the character’s hand and apply Object Dissolve to it set at 100% dis - solved. The second version of the object will be sitting out where the character can pick it up. When the character reaches for the second version of the object, dissolve in the version in his hand and dissolve out the version sitting out. Do this over a single frame and you’ll never see our digital sleight of hand. Versions: 5-8 Animating | 363 Character Animation 838 Timothy “Amadhi” Albee | Character Animation | All Levels Reparenting Say you want to reparent a character’s hand to her hip for an animation of Mae West. Go to your character’s setup pose frame (I like to keyframe my setup pose at –200) and with Parent In Place active, reparent that bone. (You’ll see your mesh instantly and incorrectly deform as it compensates for the “move - ment” affected by the Parent in Place calculations.) Just press “r” to rerecord the rest position for that bone after it has been reparented and your model will again reflect its setup pose. Go back to frame 0 and start your animation. Versions: All Deformations 839 Rob Powers | Deformations | Intermediate Display SubPatch Level When working with SubD objects in Layout a Display SubPatch Level of 0 will dramatically speed up interaction by preventing LightWave from constantly updating the mesh no matter what the object subdivision order setting is. The downside is that many SubD objects look very poor with a SubPatch level of 0. Versions: 7-8 840 Rob Powers | Deformations | Intermediate Subdivision Order Change your SubD object’s subdivision order to a setting other than First when deforming objects with bones or endomorphs. You can find this setting on the Geometry tab of the Object Properties panel. When deforming your object with endomorphs you can choose After Morphing, and when using bones to deform you can choose After Bones. Many times I simply change the Subdivi - sion order to Last after loading an object into Layout. This will prevent any weird deformations from the wrong setting and will allow you to freely use endomorphs, bones, or other displacements on your object without problems. However, with objects that are extremely complex with high polygon counts or SubD objects with a high SubPatch level, this could slow down interaction in Layout. To speed this up you can reduce the Display SubPatch Level setting to lower the overhead on SubD objects. As you lower the Display SubPatch Level, the object will look closer to the base polygon cage, which is not as smooth but similar to the way SubD objects look in Modeler when you toggle from SubPatch mode to polygon mode with the Tab key. As long as you keep the Render SubPatch Level set to a higher number, the object will still render smooth. Versions: 7-8 364 | Chapter 8 Deformations 841 Rob Powers | Deformations | Intermediate Use MD_Scan and MD_Plug The MD_Scan and MD_Plug displacement plug-ins are hidden gems in the LightWave toolkit that most people overlook. They can be used in many differ - ent ways, but two of their best uses are for scenes with groups of characters or crowds and for speeding up the render process on complex rigs once the final animation is completed. The MD_Scan displacement plug-in essentially scans the object on a point level and records the location of each point over time into a displacement .mdd file. The payoff is that you can be deforming your object with bones, endomorphs, or a complex rig, and the MD_Scan plug-in will “bake” everything down to one .mdd file. You then use the MD_Plug displacement plug-in to apply this recorded .mdd motion file to the object. With MD_Plug you can control the action start point, the replay speed, the end behavior, and more. You can also apply multiple instances of MD_Plug if you apply the Composite setting in the End Behavior drop-down. You can even transform, scale, and rotate the object with the MD_ Plug applied if you set the Key-Move mode to ON. If the .mdd file that you apply is fairly large, there will be a pause as the scene loads into Layout or on a render farm network; however, after it loads, rendering will be much faster than if the object was being deformed by bones or a complex character rig. To try this out, simply select your object and choose MD_Scan from the Properties> Deform>Add Displacement menu. Double-click on MD_Scan to open the Set- tings panel, and set the location to save your .mdd file. Then click the OK button. You’ll see an “MD_Scan Start” pop-up; select OK again, and MD_Scan will scan your object’s points and generate the .mdd file. Double-click on MD_Scan again to open the Settings panel. You’ll now see just a save path for your new .mdd file. Click the OK button again, and the .mdd file will be saved to your hard drive. Now you can load that object into any scene and select MD_Plug from Properties>Deform>Add Displacement. Lastly, load the .mdd file that was just created to apply the motion to your object. If the object looks strange and it’s a SubD object, be sure to check the subdivision order. Versions: 6-8 Deformations>Bones 842 William “Proton” Vaughan | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Bone Colors Layout gives you the option to color-code your items in a scene. Although many people use the same color for all bones in a character, sometimes I find it easier if I color the left half of the character one color and the right half of the character’s bones a different color. This makes it that much easier to choose the correct bone. Versions: All Animating | 365 Deformations>Bones Ü Note: Not only does it make it easier to “read” your bones in the viewport, it also helps in the Scene Editor as well. 843 William “Proton” Vaughan | Deformations>Bones | All Levels Bones Aren’t Just for Characters Ever try to animate a page in a book turning? I created an animation once using morph targets (lots of them) to turn a page in a book. Later I learned that it was much easier (100 times easier) to just throw in a chain of bones. The next time you have to animate something, give bones a try. Versions: All 844 Steve Warner | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Use Weight Maps to Organize Objects People often think that in order to animate a mechanical object, they must place the parts that will move on separate layers. This can be frustrating, how - ever, as some mechanical objects contain hundreds of separate parts, making their management in Modeler rather cumbersome. If you want to keep all of your parts on the same layer, simply create a new weight map in Modeler for each part you wish to animate. Name each weight map for the part it’s assigned to and give it an initial value of 100% (Step 1 below). Now create a skelegon for each part. The base of the skelegon will act as the pivot point for the part it’s associated with, so position it accordingly (Steps 2 and 2a). Before leaving Mod- eler, bring up the Skelegon Tree (found in the Setup tab of Modeler 8 or the Detail tab of 7.5). Double-click on the Weight section for each skelegon and 366 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Bones select its associated weight map (Step 3). Save your object and bring it into Lay - out. The last step is to create bones from your skelegons by using the Convert Skelegons tool. You can now move, rotate, stretch, and scale individual parts of your object by simply affecting the appropriate bones (Step 4). This technique requires more setup work in Modeler, but will yield more flexibility to you in the final animation process. Versions: 6-8 845 Larry Shultz | Deformations>Bones | Intermediate Mixing Bones and Multiple Objects When applying bones to an object we normally think of multiple bones asso - ciated with a single object. We can also have multiple objects that share a single set of bones. It’s also possible to construct a segmented character like a robot that is composed of many parts parented together in a hierarchy. What is some - times useful is to allow each part to have its own set of bones. This allows for greater flexibility, especially with characters that may have to have rigid parts mixed with bendy parts. This also allows the use of additional objects that are only affected by particular bones without resorting to weight maps. Versions: 6-8 846 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Joint Compensation Use Bone Properties>Joint Compensation where the pitch of the bone is the major rotation. Joint Compensation helps the deformation, especially in areas like knees, elbows, and finger joints. Versions: 6-8 847 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Test Falloff Test different falloff types (Bone Properties>Falloff Types) to find the best default value for your object or character. Versions: 6-8 Ü Note: Falloff Type only comes into use when bones are sharing weight maps or there are no weight maps being used. 848 Todd Grimes | Deformations>Bones | Intermediate Adjust the Skeleton’s Influence As Needed Open the Bones Properties panel in Layout. Each skeletal hierarchy has a falloff set for its individual bone’s influence. You can find this in the Bone Prop - erties panel in the drop-down button next to Falloff Type. The higher the falloff’s inverse distance, the more localized each bone’s influence will be. For more flowing boned objects such as curtains you can try a falloff of Inverse Animating | 367 Deformations>Bones Distance ^2, while more intricately boned objects such as characters will use a high value of Inverse Distance ^64 or Inverse Distance ^128. Versions: 6-8 849 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Adjust Bone Strength You can adjust the strength of a bone by adjusting its Rest Length if Bone Properties>Multiply by Rest Length is active. This is useful for tweaking defor - mations quickly. Versions: 6-8 850 Peter Thomas | Deformations>Bones | Beginner Setting Up Bone Influence Use Spreadsheet to set up bone influence on weight maps. Open Spread - sheet, change the left upper tab to Bone Properties: Influence, and select the bone weight maps. Select the weight map you want the bone to influence. Versions: 5-7.5 851 Kevin Phillips | Deformations>Bones | Beginner The Problem with Partial Weight Mapping Ever had one of those bones that was affecting parts of the model you didn’t expect, so you decided to add a weight map to it to control that one bone? Then when you moved some of the other bones, sometimes your model would appear to deform really strangely? The problem is associated with the way that bones work and how weight maps are used. Bones are like small magnets or force fields. That is, they drag all the points in the model about, with the strongest influence on points that are close and less influence on points that get farther and farther away. The distance at which the influence weakens on points is controlled by the bone property called Falloff. A setting of Inverse Distance makes the bone influence slowly fall off, and Inverse Distance ^128 makes the bone influence quickly fall off. When you stick multiple bones into a model, such as the skeleton inside a character, the bones work together, each preventing the others from taking too much control of the points that are close to them. Now, a weight map is essentially the equivalent of an alpha channel for a bone’s influence. When a single bone has a weight map applied to it, the influ - ence of the bone on the points surrounding it gets masked out by the weight map, and it’s possible that points that the bone was originally holding in place will suddenly be open prey for the other bones to influence instead. When the other bones are twisted or contorted, the influence of the bone is no longer there, and the points in question can get deformed in some unfavorable ways! 368 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Bones The solution: Don’t weight map individual bones unless there’s a good rea - son to. If you must weight map one bone, consider creating a weight map for all the others, even if it’s just a single weight map that influences all the other points in the model. Versions: 6-7.5c Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs 852 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Beginner Setting Paths to Linear Once you’ve done your first morph animation pass, open Graph Editor and set the curves that pass under 0% or over 100% to Linear. Versions: 6-8 853 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Beginner Bones in Larger Scenes In larger scenes, make sure the object you’re performing morph animation on is selected. The selected object will update much faster than the other objects in the scene, allowing for more responsive feedback as you’re scrubbing the timeline. Versions: 6-8 854 Larry Shultz | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Intermediate to Advanced Jiggly Motions Jiggly motions can be created by using a morph target and applying Oscilla - tor to the morph channel. The jiggle effect can quickly fall off with time by adjusting the Dampen parameter in the Oscillator control panel. The effect can also be baked onto the morph channel by hitting the “b” key. From there, the resulting waveform can be copied and pasted when it’s needed. A similar effect can be achieved by using a bone where the jiggling is needed and applying Oscillator to the proper channels in the bone to create the jiggling effect. Versions: 6-8 855 Kevin Phillips | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Beginner When MorphMixer Doesn’t Work Take care when you create endomorphs on multiple layered objects. If a layer doesn’t need to be associated with the morph, don’t select it as a fore - ground layer. Any new morphs get associated with all the vertices that are in the foreground selected layer(s). This is a common case, and can create some mild confusion when using MorphMixer. Animating | 369 Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs When MorphMixer doesn’t appear to work, make sure that you have applied MorphMixer to the correct layer in your object. Most often, users will not real - ize this and wonder why their morphs do not appear to be updating on-screen. Versions: 6-7.5c 856 Larry Shultz | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Intermediate to Advanced Advanced Endomorph Controls Typically when you think of controlling endomorphs you immediately think of using MorphMixer (assuming you know what endomorphs and MorphMixer are). Basically MorphMixer allows you to linearly control a variety of morphs with a slider panel. Another way to control endomorphs is to do it via the Normal Displacement plug-in. This allows you to control morphs in a more sophisticated fashion using textures. In the normal displacement panel set Direction to Morphmap. Next to Morphmap, select which morph map you want to affect and click on the Texture button. With a gradient you can make the morph occur based on the distance to a null. You can also do the same by applying a texture to drive the morph but acti- vate it in specific areas by using texture falloff. An almost endless variety of effects can be done this way. Versions: 6-8 857 Todd Grimes | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Intermediate Creating Keyframes for Sliders When using the MorphMixer to animate endomorphs in Layout, hold down Ctrl+Shift while dragging a slider. This will automatically create a keyframe for every slider in that group. Versions: 6-7.5 858 Jonny Gorden | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Intermediate Morph Sliders If you’re using MorphMixer on a character, instead of using sliders, add a fake morph and use MorphMixer sliders instead. To create a fake morph, in Modeler, add a point in the middle of an object and create a new morph and move the point a little. For any other fake morphs you can just copy the first fake morph. This will give you morph sliders that don’t affect the character geometry for use in other areas. Versions: 6-8 370 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs 859 Patrik Beck | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | All Levels Morph Levels Over 100% Morph levels greater than 100% will exaggerate the difference between the base form and the target form. Versions: All 860 Patrik Beck | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | All Levels Morph Levels with Negative Values Morph levels with negative values will affect the exact opposite of the dif - ference between the base form and the target form. This works very well when you use morph targets to simulate mechanical motions. Versions: All 861 Patrik Beck | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | All Levels Morphing Logos Morphing works well in animating simple logo and text treatments. After the logo is built, create a morph target of it that has separate sections of the logo spread apart, and a second morph target that gives the elements a little twist. When the morph is set up in Layout, fly in the basic object with a few basic keyframes and envelope the morph that brings the parts together. Versions: All 862 Patrik Beck | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | All Levels Flying Logo Letters The popular effect of having the letters of a word spread apart then come together as it flies in can be done much more quickly using morphing instead of breaking the word down into separate letters. Once the word object is created, create a morph target by moving the letters out from the center one at a time. Each letter should be moved twice as much as the one before it. By enveloping the morph from its maximum level down to 0, the letters will move together. Versions: All 863 Todd Grimes | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Intermediate Combine Bone Deformation with Endomorphs If a character has a collar that is passing through the geometry of his neck in certain poses, you can create an endomorph on the model with the collar altered a bit wider. Then access the endomorph in Layout with the MorphMixer and adjust the collar on the frames where it’s impeding the neck geometry. This pro - cess can sometimes be easier than adjusting the rig after animation has already been done. Versions: 6-8 Animating | 371 Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs [...]... the textures with Textured Displacement after Inertia Versions: 6.5 -7. 5c Animating | 379 Character Rigging Using inertia for flags can be enhanced with displacement for a more realistic effect (please refer to Tips 87 8 and 87 9 on displacement) Character Rigging 88 1 Larry Shultz | Character Rigging | Intermediate to Advanced Rigging Tips Here are some things I see that people seem to miss: n Deformations... location When you’re finished, recheck the ProxyPick plug-in and you’ll be good to go Versions: 5 -8 Animating | 383 Character Rigging 88 7 Jonny Gorden | Character Rigging | All Levels Weight Map Only For character rigging you should never need to activate Bone Properties>Use Weight Map Only Versions: 6 -8 888 Jonny Gorden | Character Rigging | Beginner Record Pivot Rotation Try not to use Record Pivot... Unfortunately, if you use Lightwave s built-in Load from Scene on a rig you will find that the schematic view will be lost Versions: 7 -8 885 Jonny Gorden | Character Rigging | Beginner Layering Models Try to keep character models in a single layer This helps when using expressions and keeps the object count low for better organization and ease of navigation and selection in a scene Versions: 6 -8 886 Peter Thomas... the CD Versions: 5 -8 883 Timothy “Amadhi” Albee | Character Rigging | Intermediate Replace with Item You can make ultra-low-poly versions of your characters to help speed up feedback while animating if you have a slow system or if you plan on having many characters on-screen at once You can use Replace With Item to swap out your stand-in with your rendering model (See LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation.)... object Don’t forget that you are not limited to just one layer of procedural 3 78 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Displacement noise, and that you can animate the layers individually This can lead to some quite impressive effects with a little work Prevent the edge of a fabric from deforming by using a weight map Versions: 6.5 -7. 5c 88 0 Kevin Phillips | Deformations>Displacement | Beginner Using Inertia to Flap... the displacement maps over time in this panel Versions: 7 -8 871 Patrik Beck | Deformations>Displacement | All Levels Displacing in Three Dimensions Many of the displacement textures only displace on a single axis, either straight up and down or to the sides Fractal Noise and Ripples will displace objects in all three dimensions Versions: All 87 2 Kevin Phillips | Deformations>Displacement | Beginner... Buddha example on the CD Versions: 5 -8 900 William “Proton” Vaughan | Character Rigging | All Levels Joint Mover Use Joint Mover to offset the tips of bones to create joints that will help keep your geometry stable Version: 8 Animating | 3 87 Character Rigging 901 Timothy “Amadhi” Albee | Character Rigging | All Levels Avoiding Gimbal Lock Because of the order in which LightWave records rotations (heading... gimbal lock is to “nest” controls (using one control to (usually) only handle heading and bank and an immediate child control to (usually) only handle pitch and bank) See LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation or Essential LightWave 3D 8 for more in-depth information on gimbal lock and the technique of nesting controls (It sounds like more work, animating two controls, but it actually saves worlds of frustration... of the control object You don’t have to rename and redraw all those bones again Versions: 5 -8 Motion Designer LW 6 -7. 5 As LightWave has changed its dynamics system, many of the tips in this section can also be found in the “Motion Effects LW 8 section later in this chapter 921 Mike Pauza | Motion Designer LW 6 -7. 5 | All Levels What Is MD, and How Does It Work? MD is a soft-body motion dynamics simulator... This tool will eliminate much of the guesswork of the older skelegons work flow found in earlier versions of 384 | Chapter 8 Character Rigging LightWave It will allow you to interactively adjust the axis of your pitch, heading, and bank channels in Layout for every bone in your rig Version: 8 892 Larry Shultz | Character Rigging | Advanced Skelegons — Bank Handles Skelegons can be easy to draw but there . pho - nemes you need and where to place them. Versions: 6 -8 372 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs 86 8 Kevin Phillips | Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs | Beginner Decapitate. to get some ambient dust. Versions: 6 -8 Animating | 373 Deformations>Morphing and Endomorphs Deformations>Displacement 87 0 Rob Powers | Deformations>Displacement | Intermediate Preserve. after Inertia. Versions: 6.5 -7. 5c 3 78 | Chapter 8 Deformations>Displacement Prevent the edge of a fabric from deforming by using a weight map Character Rigging 88 1 Larry Shultz | Character