LightWave 3D Getting Started. v 1.0

Transcription

1 LightWave 3D Getting Started v 1.0

2 Contents Contents Introduction Welcome to LightWave 3D... 1 Conventions Terms and Conventions... 2 Key LightWave Vocabulary and Concepts... 2 Working With The Interface... 4 LightWave Panels and Dialogs Color Selection... 7 Standard List Windows Tips for Successful LightWave Use... 9 Modeler Introduction to Modeling...11 Components of a 3D Object Modeling in 3D The Modeler Interface...13 Selecting Points, Edges and Polygons The Origin and Pivot Points...20 Tips for Successful Modeling...24 Running tutorial - Truck...25 Layout Introduction...35 LightWave s Virtual World...35 World, Parent and Local Axes The Layout Interface...37 Your Point of View...43 Taking Aim...46 Selecting an Item in Layout...47 The Grid...48 Schematic View Close/Save Window Tips for Successful Layout Use...52 Running Tutorial - Truck Surfacing Surface Editor...62 To assign surface names to polygons...63 Surface Management...64 Surface Editor Panel...65 Surface Edit Modes...66 Surface List...67

3 Mass Surface Changes...69 Preview Window Basic Surface Parameters Envelopes and Textures...78 Surface Smoothing...79 Vertex Normal Map...80 Exclude from VStack...80 Comment...80 Tips for Successful Surfacing...81 Running Tutorial - Truck Animating Introduction...92 Example: First Animation Example: Dimming the Light...97 Other types of animation Tips for Successful Animating Running Tutorial - Truck Rendering Render Globals Render Globals - General Tab Render Globals - Render Tab Render Globals - Global Illumination Tab Render Globals - Camera Tab Render Globals - Lights Tab Render Globals - Output Tab Save Animation Special Animation Types Saving Individual Images Render Frame Render Scene Render Selected Object Mac-specific Rendering Rendering for Print Rendering a Limited Region Tips for Successful Rendering Running Tutorial - Truck Information For More Information and Updates...151

4 Introduction Welcome to LightWave 3D Whether LightWave is your first dip of a toe into the world of professional 3D applications or you are an old salt with other packages, this Getting Started guide should comfortably introduce you to the world of LightWave 3D. This PDF will not attempt to give you the ins and outs of every part of LightWave. There is a complete reference guide for LightWave version 10 included with the installation and much of the smaller detail for the software can be found therein. Equally, there is an addendum for elements new to LightWave 11 included in your account and LightWave version 12 will see a new, revamped system that marries the two sets of documentation in a new interactive fashion After the guide to LightWave conventions, this document is split into five sections. The first is a guide to how Modeler works and how to build your first objects. Next is a guide to Layout and how to get around its interface. Our third section is devoted to surfacing our objects and the fourth to animating them. Our fifth and last section is for using LightWave s Render Globals window and outputting your animation or still image. Each section has a page of tips for good workflow and a running tutorial that will lead you through a simple project from start to finish. Come on, dive in. The water s fine. Page 1

5 Conventions Terms and Conventions Before we start with the individual sections it s good to know how LightWave works. Here are some of the main conventions used. Mouse Operations LMB - Left mouse button MMB - Middle mouse button RMB - Right mouse button Selecting - Single-clicking an element with the LMB so that it becomes active or selected. Deselecting - Single-clicking an element with the LMB so that it becomes inactive or unselected. Clicking - Placing your mouse pointer over something and then pressing a mouse button. This nearly always means the LMB. Right-clicking - Clicking an element with your RMB. Double-clicking - Rapidly clicking an element twice. Dragging - Selecting an element with your mouse pointer and continuing to hold the mouse button down as you move your mouse. This nearly always means with the LMB. Symbols NOTE: The note symbol and paragraph style will highlight a discussion that is particularly noteworthy or a tip for better workflow. WARNING: The warning symbol and paragraph style will highlight a discussion that warns you about something. You should pay special attention to text marked with this symbol. Key LightWave Vocabulary and Concepts The following is a brief selection of some common terms and concepts used with LightWave that will help you to get started. Animation Channel - Animation Channel refers to the different Position, Rotation, and Scaling settings an item can have in Layout. It can also refer to other envelopeable elements like light intensity. See also Motion Channel and Envelope. Axis - Axis refers to the coordinates used as the basis for positioning and rotating elements in LightWave s 3D space. It is somewhat like the concept of left/right (X), up/down (Y), and near/far (Z) in position and Heading (H) - turning left/right, Pitch (P) - pointing up/down, and Bank (B) - tipping sideways for rotation. Page 2

6 Conventions Bone - For any object, you can define a skeletal system composed of bones. By moving bones around, you can deform the shape of an object. LightWave also supports Joints. Bounding Box - A Bounding Box is a shape conforming to the outer dimensions of an object. It is commonly used as a quickly-drawn stand-in for a more complex object. Camera - As in real life, a camera records events. Looking through LightWave s camera shows you the view that will be rendered. Dynamics - the simulation of physical properties on objects. LightWave has Bullet, a widelyused dynamics engine to simulate rigid and soft body interaction, in addition to the ParticleFX particle engine. Envelope - An envelope is a way of setting a particular value that changes over time using a graph. See also Animation Channel and Motion Channel. Frames - LightWave works with frames. A frame is one image out of many that define an animation. Standard frame rates are 25 frames per second (fps) in Europe, 30 fps in the US, and 24 fps in film. Item - An item in Layout refers to an object, bone, light, or camera. Keyframe (also known as just a key) - A keyframe is a frame for which you define a value for an animation channel(s) (e.g., position or rotation) for an item in Layout. Animations are composed of a beginning keyframe, an ending keyframe and usually some number of keyframes in between. Scripting- LScript and Python are LightWave s built-in scripting languages. LScripts or Python scripts can be installed and used just like plugins and many third party examples are available. Motion Channel - Motion Channel is generally the same as Animation Channel, but refers only to position, rotation, and scale (i.e., not light intensity). See also Envelope. Normal - A polygon normal is the imaginary line projecting out perpendicular to a surface at any point indicating the direction of the polygon. A polygon surface normal is represented as dashed lines on selected polygons in Modeler. LightWave sees polygons or faces of an object only from the surface normal side. A single-sided polygon with its normal facing away from the camera will be invisible to the camera from that viewpoint (unless the surface is using the Double Sided option). A vertex normal s direction is the average of the polygon normals it is connected to. Null Object - A null object is an object that contains no geometry and will not show up in a rendered image. Nulls are vital for tracking; grouping (parenting); and for inverse kinematics functions. Object - An object is composed of points and faces. Points connected together to form a polygon define a face. Faces joined together form an object. Parenting - Parenting refers to LightWave s ability to set hierarchical associations between items in a Scene. Generally, the parent item will have some level of influence on its child, whether it is position, rotation, size, etc. The child can also be a parent to another item. Particles - Usually refers to animated points used for sparks, fire, etc. LightWave s particle engine is called ParticleFX. Page 3

7 Conventions Pivot Point - The position in an object that acts as the center of rotation and position reference. Pixel - A pixel is the smallest unit of measurement in an image and is used to describe the image s width and height. Plug-in - A plug-in is a program that works with and extends the functionality of LightWave. Render - Rendering is the computer s process of calculating and generating an image based on the values you have selected for the different options in LightWave. Scene - A Scene is a LightWave project defining the objects loaded and their motions, the number of lights and their values/motions, the resolution of the final image, special effects, Camera settings, and so on. It doesn t not contain surfacing information for objects. This ASCII text file is saved from Layout. SubPatch - SubPatch is a modeling mode where polygons become a cage that controls an underlying mesh. This is most often used for organic models. Surface - Essentially, the surface is the skin of an object. A single object can have multiple surface names, each with its own independent attributes (e.g., color), and multiple objects can share the same surface name(s). Texture - A texture is an attribute of a surface, or an entire object, in the case of displacement and clip maps. Vertex - A vertex is the point at which the edges of a polygon intersect. Working With The Interface In no time, you ll find yourself mastering LightWave s intuitive interface. LightWave uses very few graphical icons. Instead, most functions are listed on the interface panels in plain text. Listed below are a few other conventions involved with the LightWave interface: Button - Generally, only a single click is required to activate a button. There are special types of buttons, like toggle, Activate and dropdown menu. Some buttons become highlighted, indicating a chosen or active status. Envelope Button - Selecting this button will display the Graph Editor where you can create an envelope for the setting. A highlighted envelope button indicates a value has an envelope applied. To turn off (i.e., remove) an envelope, hold the Shift key and click on the E button. Mini-Slider - Clicking on the arrows and dragging to the right or left will raise or lower the value of the parameter next to it. In many cases, however, the slider does not encompass the Page 4

8 Conventions entire spectrum of possible values but is restricted to standard values, for instance Panels - Panels are any one of the windows that open when you click on a button in LightWave. Many panels have additional tabbed sections that are selected when you click on a tab. Panels may be Modal or Non-modal. A modal panel must be closed before you can continue working with the rest of the application. A non-modal panel lets you shift the focus between it and another part of the application without having to close the panel - you can continue to work elsewhere in the current application while the panel is displayed. Modeler s Numeric Panel is non-modal because you can do other things while it is open. In contrast, Modeler s Display Options Panel is modal because you must close it before you can continue working. Dropdown menu - Dropdown menu buttons have a downward facing arrow on their right edge. Certain pop-up menus contain lists of objects, images, and lights, which are normally listed in the order they were loaded or created. Requester - A requester is also known as a dialog box. These appear on the screen for operations like file loading and saving. This also refers to smaller windows that appear requesting you to input data into various fields. Texture Button - A Texture button is a small button marked with a T. Selecting this button will present a texture panel allowing you to define a texture for the chosen parameter. A highlighted texture button indicates a texture in use for the given parameter. To turn off (i.e., remove) a texture, hold the Shift key and click on the Texture button. Keyboard Shortcuts - Keyboard shortcuts are shown at the right of buttons and in menus. The ^ symbol indicates the keyboard character Ctrl; the * represents Alt and a + indicates Shift. Keyboard shortcuts are case-sensitive, so while s will save a scene in Layout, Shift-s will save an increment of that scene. Using keyboard shortcuts dramatically increases productivity. X-Button - Found in the Motion Options window this button allows you to quickly un-parent, Page 5

9 Conventions un-target, etc. rather than having to go through the dropdown menu to find the (none) entry. LightWave Panels and Dialogs LightWave s panels and requesters are generally non-modal and can be left open while you interact, say, with the Layout window and its controls. You can spot a modal panel because it will present OK and Cancel buttons. LightWave Units LightWave is based on real-world unit measurement. Internally everything is based on a meter scale, but as a user you can choose the units you d like in the Options window (o). Math in Input Fields Numeric input fields support basic maths operations (+, -, *, /, and ^) and algebraic equations. You can even mix units. Here is an example: (12ft+14m)^2+(3/5). The result, m, would appear after you press the Enter or Tab key. Note that the result is shown using the default unit; here it is meters and since we didn t specify the unit of measure for the 3 and 5, that default unit is also used. Enter/Tab Keys with Input Fields When you enter values into dialogs that have multiple input fields, the Tab and Enter keys have special functions to save you time. Pressing the Tab key stores the entered/current value and automatically advances you to the next input field. Shift-Tab moves to the previous field. The Enter key also stores values and dismisses the dialog, if appropriate. Yes and No Whenever a requester asks you a Yes or No question, pressing the Enter key is the same as selecting Yes, while pressing the Esc key is the same as selecting No. Likewise, an Error, Warning or Reminder requester with a choice of Continue or Cancel can use Esc for Cancel and Enter for Continue. For those requesters with only a Continue, pressing either Esc or Enter will close the panel. Page 6

10 Conventions Color Selection Where you must select a certain color (e.g., surface color), there will be a three-number color component display and a color swatch box. You can also drag your mouse on each color component to change its value. By default, the standard RGB color space is displayed; however, if you right-click on the display, you can also use the Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) color space, if that is more familiar to you. HSV is based on the artist s concepts of tint, shade, and tone. Leftclicking on the swatch to the right of the colors will open the LightWave Color Picker and rightclicking on the swatch and sliding left and right will change the Value component when in HSV mode and the brightness in RGB. Right-clicking and releasing will copy the color swatch so that it can be pasted to a different color swatch using Ctrl-RMB. Color Pickers Clicking the color swatch box will open the LightWave Color Picker. In Options (keyboard shortcut o), you can choose to use the system color requester instead (Windows and Mac shown). Page 7

11 Conventions Standard List Windows Windows that contain lists of items (surfaces, scene items, menu items, etc.) all have a slider bar to scroll through the list. If the list is hierarchical in nature, there will be arrowheads to the left of item names. If the arrowhead is facing to the right, then they are subordinate items to this parent item. Clicking the arrowhead will make it point downwards and also reveal the subordinate items. Holding the Alt key down when clicking the arrowhead will recursively expand and contract the hierarchy as shown below. If selection is appropriate, you can click on an item to select it. Ctrl-click will select non-contiguous items and Shift-click will select a range of items. List windows that are hierarchical in nature can be reorganized by dragging items around in the list. Where appropriate, multiple selection is supported. Reorganizing Lists In some list windows (e.g., menu configuration), you can reorganize entries by just dragging them in the window. Place your pointer over the entry and drag it up or down. You will see a thin line appear as you drag. This is the insert point. Releasing the mouse button will drop the entry here. If your pointer is at a position where the dropped item could be a sub-item of an entry, the same level as the entry, or even the same level as the next entry, the length of the line would change as you drag. The position of the left end of the line determines the level of the drop. Context Pop-up Menus Both Layout and Modeler have context pop-up menus that you display by holding Ctrl-Shift and clicking your LMB, MMB, or RMB with your mouse pointer over a viewport - there are different menus for each mouse button. Page 8

12 Conventions Tips for Successful LightWave Use Always remember Y is up, not Z. LightWave s rotations are done in the H, P and B axes. Heading is a bit like shaking your head no, Pitch is like nodding and Bank is a little like tilting your head side to side to say maybe. Get a mouse with extra, programmable buttons. It speeds up workflow no end to associate a mouse button to VPR in Layout and Drop Selection in Modeler. Always remember that surfacing is saved with the object, not the scene. If you update your surfacing you need to save your objects. If you don t use a QWERTY keyboard, remap your keyboard shortcuts! There are enough spare available in the Shortcuts Editor (Alt-F9) that no-one should have to contort themselves to reach a keyboard shortcut. Always model to scale, it makes reusing your assets so much easier. If you run into configuration problems go to your user\.newtek\lightwave folder and delete files ending in.cfg in the folder therein that corresponds to the version of LightWave you are running. A reinstall won t help if it still uses the same configs. On the Mac, the folder to look for is ~/Library/Application Support/NewTek/LightWave and the files to delete are Layout 11, Modeler 11, Extensions 11, Extension Cache, Hub 11 If you use LightWave with a tablet, change the Input Device from Mouse to Tablet in the Preferences. Above all, don t be put off by the fact that your model/animation/render looks bad it is hard to get the results you re after (compared to 2D programs) but persevere and you WILL improve. Page 9

13 Introduction to Modeler MAIN TITLE SUB-TITLE

14 Modeler Introduction to Modeling LightWave Modeler lets you create objects from scratch or edit existing objects. Object modeling is the design and creation of wireframe objects from a simple shape like an apple, to a complex shape, like a finely-detailed sports car. In Layout, you are the interior designer moving furniture and putting up pictures. In Modeler, you are the furniture maker and the builder of the house. Components of a 3D Object What makes up a 3D object? It has two traits: its physical shape and its visual appearance. The physical shape of an object comprises points joined by lines to form faces called polygons. The form that the polygons present to us makes up an object s shape. Page 11

15 Modeler The visual appearance of an object consists of color and texture qualities that connote realism to the eye, which are called surface attributes or material properties. When you enter a room and look at your chair you see a certain shape (that of a chair) and a certain surface (maybe wood or metal), so you think, chair. In LightWave 3D you have the tools to create simple or complex objects and define their surface qualities with great precision and detail. Modeling in 3D Generally, 3D modeling is based on two simple elements: the point (or vertex) and the polygon. A point is a location in space, just as a point in a dot-to-dot coloring book represents a location on the page - of course, with 3D modeling, the dots can also be placed in a third dimension (i.e., depth). Points are used as anchors to create polygons. Since points alone do not have height, width, or depth, they cannot be seen or rendered. Once placed, the dots can be connected with lines (edges) to form polygons. That collection of polygons, also referred to as an object, forms a recognizable shape that the computer can draw and animate. Polygons are usually three-sided triangles or four-sided quadrangles (although they can consist of many more sides). You create or edit all objects using the same XYZ coordinate system used in Layout. The difference is that in Layout you are usually positioning an entire object, whereas in Modeler you are positioning the individual points, edges and polygons that make up an object. Modeler also uses the XYZ coordinates 0, 0, 0 as the Origin. Left: Points that make up a head, Right: Polygons that make up the same head LightWave s Modeler interface is based by default on a quad view. There are three orthogonal viewports and a Perspective viewport wherein you have freedom to rotate around your model. Page 12

16 Modeler Having those three orthogonal viewports means that gizmos are not required to move things in a straight line and indeed Modeler is very fluid in that you can often have your mouse pointer wherever you want and still manipulate geometry as needed. By default, the Action Center for your operations is based on the mouse pointer, so while moving an element can be done from anywhere, rotations happen around the mouse pointer, which isn t always useful. Action Centers can be switched between at the bottom of the Modeler interface. In addition to strict polygonal modeling, LightWave offers subpatches. These are available in two flavors - LightWave s own SubDs, which can only be triangles or quads; and Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. The Modeler Interface Modeler s screen is divided into several areas. By default, the workspace of the screen consists of four viewports. Modeler displays four simultaneous points of view (Top, Back, Right, and a forcedperspective view), each looking at the same portion of the workspace from a different angle. These are not unlike Layout s viewports. Changes made in one view are immediately updated in the others Top Group Toolbar; 2 Main Toolbar; 3 Modeler Menu Tabs; 4 Current Object; 5 Layer Banks; 6 Layers; 7 Layout Access; 8 WorkSpace; 9 Info Display; 10 Grid Display; 11 Selection Info; 12 Progress Bar; 13 Tool Tips; 14 Action Centers; 15 Symmetry; 16 Sub-D Types; 17 Numeric Window; 18 Change Surface; 19 Drop Selection; 20 Vertex Maps 1 and 2. ToolBar The toolbar sits at the side of the screen. The buttons presented will vary depending on which menu tab you select along the top. The Top Group Toolbar (1) buttons will appear no matter which Page 13

17 Modeler Tab is selected. You can completely hide (or reveal) the toolbar by pressing Alt-F2 (or choosing Edit > Display Options > Hide Toolbar On/Off). Near the bottom of the Top Menu group we find our Points, Edges and Polygons Selection Mode buttons. These are mutually exclusive, so only one can be active at any one time and they can be switched between with the shortcuts shown, or just by hitting Space. Selections made in one mode are remembered if you change modes. There is a fourth button Volume that needs the Statistics window open (w) to function correctly. It is not part of the spacebar cycle that switches between Points, Edges and Polygons. The last button in the Top menu group is a dropdown menu of useful Select tools. 3. Modeler Menu Tabs The Menu Tabs located at the top of the interface will determine which tools appear in the Tool Bar. Each Toolbar is divided into menu groups. Generally, menu group names that are verbs contain commands based on the type of action they perform. Menu group names that are nouns contain commands based on the type of object they affect. Create - Primitives, Points, Polygons, Curves and more. All the basic building blocks can be found here - see Chapter 3 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Modify - Move, Rotate, Scale, and more. In short anything that deals with existing geometry and doesn t add more - see Chapter 4 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Multiply - Creates new geometry based on what you already have - see Chapter 5 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Construct - Reduce and combine points and polygons and much more - see Chapter 6 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Detail - Tools to detail your object - see Chapter 7 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Map - All the tools you need to create and manage Vertex Maps - see Chapter 8 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Setup - Skelegons and other tools that can be used inside Layout - see Chapter 9 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. View - Display options and selection tools can be found here - see Chapter 12 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. I/O - Import and export facilities are here. This tab is new to LightWave 11 and so covered in the 11 addendum. Utilities - LScript and Plugin access - see Chapter 10 of the LightWave 10 Modeler PDF. Page 14

18 Modeler 4. Current Object Like files in your word processing software, multiple object files can be loaded simultaneously. The Current Object pop-up button to the left of the layer buttons switches from object to object. Object names listed with an asterisk (*) have been changed and may need to be saved. Attempting to close the application triggers a request to save all changed objects. Ghosted objects are ones that have been loaded into Layout, but not into Modeler. Choosing a ghosted object from the popup menu will load it. 5. Layer Banks You can use the layer buttons in the top-right corner of the main interface to work with layers in banks of ten. LightWave gives you unlimited banks of ten which can be accessed here. Layer Bank Selection Foreground Current Object Background Contains data 6. Layers Every object can be a MultiMesh, that is, consist of an unlimited number of layers, similar to layers in many paint programs. The MultiMesh lets you work independently on specific parts of an object. During modeling operations, you can set layers independently to be in the foreground or background, so you can work on a combination of layers as if they were in the same layer. Background layers can be used as a reference, but are often required when using certain modeling tools. Rather than clicking in this panel, the Layers window is useful (keyboard shortcut: F7). 7. Layout Access This drop down menu gives you the following options: Switch to Layout - switches to your Layout window if it is open or opens up Layout if you do not already have it open (Keyboard shortcut F12). Synchronize Layout - Changes to objects in Modeler should be reflected automatically in Layout when you select the Layout interface. This option forces that synchronization. Send Object to Layout - sends the current object to Layout. Actually, it sends a pointer to the current object s file. As such, the object must be saved to your hard drive first. These options assume that you have the Hub running. Without the Hub, there s no link. Page 15

19 Modeler 8. Workspace By default, the workspace of the screen consists of four viewports. Modeler displays four simultaneous points of view (Top, Back, Right, and a forced-perspective view), each looking at the same portion of the workspace from a different angle. These are not unlike Layout s viewports. Changes made in one view are immediately updated in the others. You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display Options window by using the pop-up menus on the left side of each viewport titlebar. The buttons on the right side affect panning, rotating, zooming, and minimizing/maximizing the viewport. 9. Info Display Just above the grid display is an information display. Most of the time this gives you feedback on the position of your mouse. However, depending on what you are doing, it can also display a variety of other information. 10. Grid Display In the bottom-left corner of the screen you can see the grid size information display. As in Layout, this tells you how big each square is in the Modeler workspace. 11. Selection Info The selection info display tells you how many points/polygons/edges you have selected and is a place to click to deselect all selected elements. Page 16

20 Modeler 12. Progress Bar Displays tools processing. 13. Tool Tips Displays helpful information for current tool. 14. Action Centers The Action Center is the point of origin from which the tool s action is applied to modify the geometry. By default it is centred on your Mouse pointer, but here you can switch to Selection, Pivot or Origin. 15. Symmetry The Symmetry mode (Symmetry button, on the bottom edge of the Modeler window) not only works on selection, but also on editing. Operations on the positive side of the X axis also inversely affect the negative side of the X axis. When this mode is active, your object is theoretically split in half at X= SubD-Type Allows you to switch between two polygon subdivision modes, LightWave s original Subpatch and Catmull-Clark. 17. Numeric Window You can enter numeric values for every tool in Modeler. Some tools rely on the Numeric Window to present more options than can be shown in a viewport. A good window to always keep open. The keyboard shortcut is n. 18. Change Surface Opens the Change Surface window to set the surface name and basic attributes for the selected polygons. See the Surfacing section, starting page 62, for more information. The keyboard shortcut is q. Page 17

21 Modeler 19. Drop Selection To drop a selection of points, edges or polygons made in Modeler there are several choices. The image above shows all the areas you can click to deselect highlighted in green. You can also use the keyboard shortcut /. 20. Vertex Maps VMaps can be created using the buttons in the lower-right corner of Modeler. In a way you can think of VMaps as surfaces for points. It is a way of tagging some information onto points that allows more control of various Lightwave functions at a point level. The VMap types are: W - Weight T - UV Texture M - Morph C - Color S - Selection Set Selecting Points, Edges and Polygons The process of object editing involves manipulating points, edges and polygons. It will include selecting some portion of an existing object, choosing the operation to perform, adjusting any parameters for that operation, then carrying out the operation. Page 18

22 Modeler The concept of selecting is very important to Modeler. Selection is the act of specifying either the object itself, or a portion of it, that you intend to edit next. The most basic elements that you can modify include points, edges and polygons - the dots, lines and multi-sided shapes that make up all objects. Any number of points, edges, polygons, or objects, in any combination, may be selected for a specific operation. When selecting and deselecting, make sure that no Modeling tool is currently active. You can usually tell if a tool is active based on the mouse pointer. You can quickly deactivate any tool by pressing the Spacebar (or RETURN); however, if no tool was active, you will change the edit mode. Everything in a layer is considered selected when nothing is selected. The method for selecting these three Modeler elements is the same. Selected points are highlighted in orange, while unselected points remain small gray dots. Edges appear in light green when selected and the Sketch color when unselected and polygons are highlighted in light yellow when selected. 1) Use the Selection mode of your choice. The Mode Selection buttons are located in the menu on the left of the Modeler window. 2) Drag your LMB over points, edges or polygons in an object and then release the mouse button to select those elements. Alternatively, you can use your RMB to lasso a selection. Page 19

23 Modeler 3) Once you have let go of the LMB or finished your lasso with the RMB. to add more Points, Edges or Polygons to a selection hold the Shift key while you select with your LMB or lasso with your RMB to add to the existing selection or use your MMB, which has the same effect as Shift-LMB. 4) To deselect: If selected elements exist (and you have released the mouse button), dragging over them again with your LMB will deselect them. You can also use the lasso by dragging with your RMB. To deselect all elements: Click in any non-active (i.e., not a button) area on the toolbar to deselect all points; you can use the Drop Current Tool command (/); also, clicking on the number of selected elements in the Selection Counter information display above the Action Center buttons will deselect all selected elements. The Origin and Pivot Points Modeling on the origin is sensible because where you model in Modeler determines where your object s pivot point will be in Layout. The origin at 0, 0, 0 where the darker grid lines cross is also where the pivot point for your object will be. For a door opening, you will probably not want the pivot to be in the middle of the door - it makes more sense for it to be on the hinge. Likewise, for a standard lamp, it makes more sense for the pivot point to be at the base of the lamp, where it hits the floor, since that is how you will place it in the scene. (For a ceiling light you d want the opposite). There are several ways of achieving this, as usual with LightWave. Let s step through a few examples. Page 20

24 Modeler Everything on one Layer We want to animate the door opening on this room, but we can t, because everything has been built on the same layer and thus only has one pivot point. If we want multiple pivots we need multiple layers, so we need to split our door off. Two Layers, but Pivot in the Same Place As you can see by the layer bank at the top of the screen, our room is now on two layers. The walls are on layer 1 and the door is on layer 2, so now has its own pivot point. Page 21

25 Modeler Sending the object to Layout does give us a separate animatable door, but not in a useful way. The door needs to rotate about its hinge, not a point in the center of the room. Positioning the Door Correctly Normally we say to Center objects, or apply Rest on Ground, but this case is slightly different. We want our pivot, our center of rotation, to be down one side of the door. First we apply Rest on Ground, which will center our door but put it so that the bottom edge is on the Y=0 plane. Next we need to move it. Hit t, hold down Ctrl and move the door in the Right viewport so that the edge away from the door handle is on the XZ=0 line. Page 22

26 Modeler Layout Move Pivot You can also move a pivot in Layout using Modify > Move Pivot. Here our door is Rested on Ground in Modeler so it s in the middle of the room. In Layout, we re using Move Pivot to just reposition the pivot in the corner of the door opposite the door handle. Page 23

27 Modeler Tips for Successful Modeling Just a very small selection of some of the more frequent gotchas encountered by new users: When nothing is selected, everything is selected. To activate Modeler s subpatches, just hit the Tab key. You can switch back and forth between subpatches and polygons as necessary. Two commands to learn are F2 to Center and F3 to Rest on Ground. You should always try to model on the Origin and this will move items modeled off it to the center. Avoid accented or special characters in object or surface names. They may well work at first, but they ll almost certainly fail when you need them to work. Keep Modeler s Numeric (n), Statistics (w) and Layers (F7) windows open at the side of a slightly reduced Modeler window. These are essential, so best keep them to hand. Double-clicking on a Layer name in the Layers window will allow you to name the layer, making it easier to identify in Layout rather than just ObjectX:Layer1, etc. You need to save an object before you can send it to Layout. Get used to using both hands. Use the keyboard shortcuts (Alt; Alt-Shift; Ctrl-Alt and LMB/ RMB) to navigate around the viewports rather the icons at the top right. Page 24

28 Modeler Running tutorial - Truck Here is a tutorial that runs through this Getting Started guide. Feel free to skip it if you know what you are doing, but even though it s basic it might give you a surprise on some of the things you can achieve. Things you ll see in this part of the tutorial: Box tool Layers Move Bevel Disc tool Center Mirror Rest on Ground Send to Layout It would make boring reading to go every detail so some steps get skipped when repeated. Pay careful attention to the screenshots as well as the text. 1) To start with, it makes sense to build to scale in LightWave. That way, this beautiful truck model you handcraft can appear in the blockbuster you ll no doubt get as your first job as soon as you have mastered LightWave. To do this, we need some rough idea of how big a delivery truck is. Straight away, we can see the importance of reference to creating accurate models. From the web we find that a delivery truck is usually about feet (7-12 metres) long. Finding the width isn t so easy, but we ll go with a mean of about 8 feet (2.5 m) and a height of about 13 feet (3.9 m). Page 25

29 Modeler 2) The first thing we ll do in Modeler is make a box. In the Create tab click the Box tool, or use the keyboard shortcut Shift-x. Click in any of the viewports, then use the Numeric window (n) and enter our numbers - Width 2.5, Height 3.9, Depth 7.5 gives pleasing proportions. Once done, hit Return twice. This will enter those details and leave the Box tool. Finally, hit F3 to center and rest our box on the ground. 3) Now we have our template, we ll start building our truck. With nothing selected in the Page 26

30 Modeler viewport hit Ctrl-x to cut your box and go to layer 2, either by clicking its icon at the top right of the Modeler window, using the keyboard 2 (not on the numeric keypad) or clicking in the Layers window (F7) on the right layer. Paste our box on that layer with Ctrl-v. You want to model on Layer 1, but see Layer 2. You can switch between layers easily enough by pressing the number keys, but you can also show layer 2 as a background in several ways. Go to layer 1 and hit Alt-2, or click on the lower half of the icon in the layers area, or click in the B column of the Layers window to show Layer 2 in the background. Background layers always show as black wireframes and cannot be selected. Once you have a Background layer, you can switch Foreground and Background using. 4) Let s start with the cab and draw a box that s roughly 2 m across, 1.2 m tall and about 1.5 m deep at the front (-Z side) of our background template. Hit Return twice to quit the tool and make your box. Next, we ll make another box with the box tool, this time only about.5 m high and slightly wider and longer than your cab. This is the fender and it should be placed under the cab. Now we ll make the chassis/drive and again, this will be a box that sits under the cab and extends to near the back of the truck. This is to support the whole truck so I made it about.5 m square and 7 m long. Two more boxes Rear fender? Pretty much the same as the front, but much less deep and the cargo container? I made it 2.5 m x 2.9 m x 5.6 m. Page 27

31 Modeler 5) Normally cabover-type trucks have their windscreen on top of the cab housing, so we ll extend our cab box. In Polygon mode (your pointer should be an X shape, if not, hit Space until it is) select the top polygon of the cab in the Perspective viewport. In the Multiply tab, select the Bevel tool (or just hit b) and as you click and drag in either the Back, Right or Perspective viewports you will see the roof of the cab rise up. Hold down Ctrl to restrict the movement to purely vertical and once at the right height, let go of Ctrl and bring the sides in a little by moving the mouse left. Press Space to drop the Bevel tool and t to Move the cab roof a little back to give it a raked appearance (but square on the back of the cab). Page 28

32 Modeler 6) Our truck is not going anywhere without wheels, and wheels don t turn without axles. In the Right viewport use Create > Disc to draw out a small circle, using Ctrl constrains your drawing to circular, but you need to have held down Ctrl before you draw out the circle. My axle is sized to about 100 mm. Once you ve drawn the circular portion in the Right viewport, you want to draw out the length of the axle in the Back viewport - let go of Ctrl before you do this otherwise your shape will be constrained in another dimension. Make the axle the width of the truck. Page 29

33 Modeler 7) Now we need to make a wheel to go on the axle. Do the same operation again, starting in the Right viewport, holding down Ctrl to constrain to circular, then Back viewport without Ctrl to set the width of the wheel. For positioning the wheel exactly on the center of the axle, the easiest way is probably to select both the axle and wheel (select at least one polygon from each, hit ] to Select Connected), cut them to a second layer and hit F2 - or Center (Modify > Translate > Center > Center All). Then cut them from this scratch layer back into your layer 1 and move them back to the right place, under your cab. Page 30

34 Modeler 8) That s one wheel on the cab. Copy and paste this wheel/axle assembly on this layer to make a second assembly that will be positioned at the back of the truck and again to make a third axle. Use Move with Ctrl to constrain the movements to the Z-axis or perform the Move in the Top View. Page 31

35 Modeler 9) To duplicate the wheels to the other side, select the three wheels (by hitting / to deselect everything, then drawing over the three wheels in the Back viewport to select them and hitting ] to select connected. Make sure you don t have the axles selected as well. Position your mouse pointer over the X=0 line and hit Shift-v or Multiply > Duplicate > Mirror. Click on the center line to mirror your wheels across (making sure Center X is 0 in the Numeric panel). To go faster, you can just hit the Mirror X tool just under the Mirror tool on the same tab. Page 32

36 Modeler 10) We need to make sure our truck is positioned correctly for animating in Layout. To do this, make sure nothing is selected (because remember, in Modeler if nothing is selected it means everything is) and hit F3 (or Modify > Translate > Align > Rest on Ground). Save your object as Truck_untextured, and at the top right of the Modeler window, select Send to Layout. We shall pick up with placement and preparation for animation at the end of the Layout section. Going Further SubDs for wheels Adding detail like rear view mirrors and hubcaps Actually making a fully articulated truck to scale Page 33

37 Introduction to Layout MAIN TITLE SUB-TITLE

38 Layout Introduction LightWave s Layout has been designed to provide an efficient interface for your 3D animation work. By default, there is a single large viewport but you can display multiple viewports if you like. A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world you are creating. How well this corresponds to what the final output will look like is completely configurable by you. This can range from bounding box stand-ins to wireframe representations, all the way to textured and solidshaded displays or a VPR viewport render. How you view your creations will vary depending on their complexity, your machine s capabilities, and other factors. LightWave s Virtual World LightWave s world is defined using three axes for postion: X, Y, and Z and three for rotation: H (Heading), P (Pitch), and B (Bank). Here we ve loaded the Alien Emissary scene included with the LightWave content. At its default position, from front to back, the alien s body is aligned along the Z axis and is facing the positive Z direction. The X axis runs right to left, with left as the positive side. The Y axis runs up and down, with up as the positive side. It is common to see objects that have a front and back (e.g., vehicles, spaceships and animals) facing in the positive Z direction. As you will understand later, this orientation works best with LightWave s motion features. The center of the world is called the Origin. It is defined by the XYZ coordinates 0, 0, 0 and represents the intersection of all three axes. Any position in LightWave s virtual world can be Page 35

39 Layout defined by positive and negative XYZ values. The alien is standing right over the Origin. (The Size and Stretch tools also use XYZ values along those axes; note that these are applied relative to the object s Pivot Point also known as the Local Origin, discussed in the next section, rather than the World Origin.) World, Parent and Local Axes Objects in a scene also have axes and thus an Origin, called the local Origin. When an object is first loaded, its local Origin is lined up with the world Origin. Moreover, its local axes are lined up with the world axes. However, once you move or rotate the object, this is no longer the case. LightWave provides functions that let you move and rotate items using world or local axes. Now, most of the time you ll use World, but sometimes using Local will be invaluable. To illustrate the difference, let s say you are standing in the middle of a one-room house facing the front door. If you held your right arm straight out, it would point to the right side of the house, and your left arm would point to the left side of the house. Now, let s say you turned 90 degrees clockwise. (You d be facing the right side of the house.) If I told you to point your right arm towards the house s right side (world axes), you d move it straight out in front of you. However, if I told you to point your right arm to your right (local axes), you would point to the back of the house. To switch between axis choices, go to the Modify tab in Layout and choose the General > Coord System dropdown. By default, it is set to Parent since objects that are not in a hierarchy have the world as their parent and so switching between the two won t make any difference. When an object is in a hierarchy it makes sense to use the parent item s coordinate system most of the time. Page 36

40 Layout The Layout Interface Top Group Toolbar; 2 Main Toolbar; 3 Layout Menu Tabs; 4 Modeler Access; 5 Viewport Titlebar; 6 Workspace; 7 Numeric Adjustment Controls; 8 Grid Display; 9 Selection Info; 10 Current Item and Item Properties; 11 Tool Tips; 12 List Manager; 13 Timeline and Dope Track; 14 Keyframe Options; 15 Undo/Redo; 16 Preview Controls 1. and 2. ToolBar The toolbar sits at the side of the screen. The buttons presented will vary depending on which menu tab you select along the top. The Top Group (1) buttons will appear no matter which Tab is selected. You can completely hide (or unhide) the toolbar by pressing Alt-F2 (or choosing Edit > Display Options > Hide Toolbar On/Off). Page 37

41 Layout 3. Layout Menu Tabs The Menu Tabs located at the top of the interface will determine which tools appear in Tool Bar (2). Items - Add objects, lights, and other items to your scene here Modify - Move, Rotate, Scale, and more Setup - Bone tools, Genoma and other rigging tools FX Tools - Tools relating to dynamics, Flocking and FiberFX Render - Render Options, VIPER access and more View - Display options and selection tools can be found here. Modeler Tools - Tools for creating or modifying geometry directly in Layout I/O - Tools for import and export in Layout Utilities - LScript, Python and Plugin Access 4. Modeler Access This command will switch to your Modeler window if it is open or opens Modeler if you do not already have it open (keyboard shortcut F12). 5. Viewport Titlebar You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display Options Panel by using the dropdown menus on the left side of each viewport titlebar. There are further options in the untitled Viewport Options dropdown. Page 38

42 Layout The first two buttons on the right side are concerned with VPR. The first is VPR options and the next one saves a VPR image to disk without any requesters. Image naming and path are set in the VPR options. The next five buttons affect centering the view on the currently selected item or items, panning, rotating, zooming, and minimizing/maximizing your view. 6. Workspace The Workspace consists of Viewports of various types - Orthogonal, Perspective, Light, Camera, Schematic and a VPR version of all (bar Schematic). By default, there is a single large viewport, but you can display multiple viewports by hitting F3 or F4 or go to Edit > Display Options, keyboard shortcut d. A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world you are creating. 7. Numeric Adjustment Controls You can change Position, Rotation and Scale settings numerically by entering the desired values in the XYZ or HPB fields, located in the lower left corner. The function of these fields changes Page 39

43 Layout depending on the editing being done. Protecting from Changes Here the X channel cannot be changed in the viewport. Whether you are moving, rotating, or scaling an item, or moving its pivot point, Layout lets you independently deactivate any of the three components used for those settings. You deactivate the components by clicking on them on the information display in the lower-left corner of the screen. This protects the deactivated component(s) from changing as you move your mouse. Locked channels don t appear in gizmos. You can also confine changes by using any of the orthogonal views (i.e., Front, Top, and Side). In these views, you can generally make changes only along the display s horizontal and vertical axes using your mouse, or by using the gizmos to restrict movement to single axis. 8. Grid Display The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around, but it will never render in a final image (no matter how much you would like it to). The grid is very important to the way you interact with LightWave and is detailed starting on page Selection Info The Selection Info displays how many items are selected. Page 40

44 Layout 10. Current Item and Item Properties Layout items are grouped into four different types: Objects, Bones, Lights, and Cameras. When you work on any item, the Edit Mode buttons along the bottom (i.e., Objects, Bones, Lights or Cameras) are set to the current item s type. You cannot select multiple types of item - a light and an object, for instance. Once you select the Current Item, click the Properties (p) button to view the items properties based on the Edit Mode. 11. Tool Tips Displays helpful information for current tool or VPR render time if in a VPR viewport. 12. List Manager Located directly to the right of the Current Item dropdown menu, the List Manager allows for quick and easy management of the items in your scene. Page 41

45 Layout 13. Timeline and Dope Track The Timeline, located beneath the viewport area uses the Frame Slider that can be dragged to change the current frame or shuttle through your scene. The input field to the left of the timeline is the first frame in your scene and the input field to the right is the last frame. You can change these settings by simply changing the values in either field. The DopeTrack allows you to modify keys. You can adjust not only their position in time and the scene, but also alter their properties. You can set up markers here to tell you when things should happen in the scene and bake ranges of keys to make your animation concrete. You can open or close the DopeTrack by clicking on the thick bar above the time line. Shown is the icon for closing the open Dopetrack. 14. Keyframe options To automatically create or modify keys you must activate the Auto Key option on the main interface. This is the global on/off switch for automatically creating keyframes. It works in conjunction with the Auto Key Create setting (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel) and is fully detailed on page 318 of the 11.6 Addendum. Use the Create Key (Return) and Delete Key (Del) commands to add and remove keyframes manually. If you are not using the Auto Key feature, you can quickly reset all aspects of a frame (i.e., position, rotation, etc.) if you haven t created the key yet. Just press the Right cursor key and then the Left cursor key. This advances the current frame and then goes back to the original frame. The frame will return to the last keyframed state, or if the frame is not a keyframe, to its in-between state. 15. Undo/Redo Page 42

46 Layout The Undo function will reverse motion changes (Move, Rotate, Size, or Scale tool) that you have made. The Redo function will re-execute a sequence of actions that have been undone, beginning with the action most recently undone. 16. Preview Controls Besides dragging the frame slider to navigate through your scene, you can also use the transport controls. In addition to playing a scene using the transport controls, you can also jump between keyframes or skip to the end and create preview animations. In most cases, these will give you a more accurate preview of your final animation. Step Keyframe Step Frame End Frame Play Rate/Step Keyboard shortcuts are Left/Right Arrow for frame step; Shift-Left/Right Arrow for Keyframe step; Pg Up to Play Forwards, Pg Dn to Play Backwards; Ins to Pause; Home to set first frame; End to set end frame. Rate/Step changes depending on whether you have Play at Exact Rate checked in Options (o). Rate determines what percentage of the exact rate you wish to play at and Step says how many frames to play (1 - every frame, 2 - every other frame, 3 - every third frame, etc.) Your Point of View You can choose between several different points of view (POV) for each viewport using the View Type dropdown menu at each viewport s top-left corner. Manipulating items in virtual 3D space on a 2D display (i.e., your monitor) can be difficult at times, so you will switch between nearly all of these as you edit your scene. It is sometimes easier to work in just two dimensions at a time. The options with the axis notations (e.g., Top (XZ)) are the orthogonal, or right angle, views that let you move items in only two dimensions (horizontally or vertically), along the XY, XZ, or ZY axes. The (none) setting blanks out the viewport in case you want to use that screen space for another window without hiding anything. There are two options for each axis set. This allows you to look in either direction along the perpendicular axis (e.g., Top (XZ) and Bottom (XZ) - for these, Y is the perpendicular axis). Page 43

47 Layout The Perspective view is a forced-perspective view. It gives you a three-dimensional look at your scene. This is not the view rendered with F9 (the Camera view is), but can be rendered with VPR. The orthogonal and the Perspective views are dependent on each other. Changing the position of one will affect the other. There are also pseudo-physical POVs. When setting up a light, you ll often want to look through it to see exactly what it points at. In such a case, you ll use the Light view to look through the current light. You ll always want to see your scene from the Camera view at some point since that is the perspective used in your rendered images. Changing Your Point of View With the View Control drag buttons located on the upper-right edge of a viewport, you can interactively alter the orthogonal and perspective Points of View (POV). The three center buttons of the five Move, Rotate and Zoom the viewport. The outer two are Center Continuously on the left and Fullscreen on the right, dimmed here because the viewport is already fullscreen. When you use the Light or Camera views, the View Control buttons are dimmed to indicate that they are not available since those views are based on their respective item s POV in the scene itself. Center Continuously centers the viewport on the selected item. You may also activate the Center Current Item option on the dropdown menu next to the view selector. An object s centering is based on its pivot point (see page 20 for more explanation of pivot points). This is not always at the geometrical center of an object. If you deactivate this mode, the existing POV position will remain until changed. As such, you can use this feature to establish a starting point if the need arises. Since you are changing your POV, the scene items will appear to move in the opposite direction of your mouse movements. Page 44

48 Layout View Control - Move When in Perspective view this control moves your POV horizontally when you drag left or right and farther/closer when you drag up or down with the LMB. Moves your POV vertically when you drag up or down with the RMB. In orthographic modes, only LMB is needed and this control is not available in Light or Camera views.. Keyboard shortcut: Shift-Alt and mouse button You can use the keyboard shortcut g to center the area under the cursor. View Control - Rotate This control is not applicable in Orthographic, Light or Camera viewports. In the Perspective view, this control rotates your POV s heading when you drag left or right and its pitch when you drag up or down with the LMB. When you drag left or right with the RMB it rotates your POV s bank. Keyboard shortcut: Alt and mouse button View Control - Zoom Zooms in and out when you drag the control left and right (You can also use the < and > keys). Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Alt and mouse button. Not available in Light or Camera View. Page 45

49 Layout Use the keyboard shortcut a to zoom the view out to where all items in the scene are visible, or Shift-a to only focus on the selected item. Taking Aim Each orthogonal and perspective view is based on a single aimpoint. In other words, you are always looking at the same point in 3D space, no matter which view type you use in that viewport (except Light and Camera view, of course.) That point is also the center of the view rotation. That s why, if you move around in the Back view and then change the View Type to Perspective, you ll find the view has moved in that view type as well. The position, rotation (affects only Perspective view), and zoom of each viewport can be specified numerically using the Set View menu items in the viewport options dropdown. If you are using multiple viewports, each has its own independent aimpoint and set of position, rotation, and zoom values. Page 46

50 Layout Viewport Display Mode You can set the mode used by the viewport using the Viewport Display dropdown menu next to the View Type selector. VPR can be chosen with this menu or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F9. Selecting an Item in Layout Usually, you work on one item at a time, the current item, and you need to tell LightWave which item it is. You need to know that Layout items are grouped into four different types: objects, bones, lights, and cameras and you can only select items of the same type (no camera, light mix for example). When you work on any item, the edit mode buttons along the bottom (i.e., Objects, Bones, Lights or Cameras) are set to the current item s type. There are several ways to select an item in Layout: Click on the item in a viewport Draw a bounding box around the item with MMB Click on the item s name in the Scene Editor Choose the item from the Properties window Manually select the edit mode and then select the item from the Current Item dropdown menu. Note that you cannot select a locked item (a little lock icon appears next to name) Choose the item from the List Manager window You can select items in a viewport by clicking on any polygon edge rather than just on a pivot point. You can use your Up/Down cursor keys to cycle through the Current Item list. All items, except objects, are highlighted in yellow when selected. When an object is selected, a dotted-yellow bounding box will appear around it. If an item is locked in the Scene Editor it will not be selected using this method. Selecting by Name Pressing the apostrophe ( ) key launches a special selector dialog. Simply type-in a few characters that uniquely identify the desired item and click OK. You can select any type of item. Deselecting Items In Layout, one item is always selected. It becomes deselected when you select a different Object, Bone, Light or Camera. Page 47

51 Layout The Grid A grid of squares, made up of an planar axis at 0,0,0, is visible in any of the orthogonal views, as well as the Perspective view. The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around, but it will never render in a final image. The grid lines are darker every tenth square for visual reference. The Origin is located at the center of the grid. You can find the current size of the grid squares in the field at the very lower-left corner of the screen. The size of each grid square is adjustable as is its overall size on the Display Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options or keyboard shortcut d), or by using [ and ]. The Grid and Relative Camera/Light Sizes The size of lights and cameras (that is, how they appear in the viewport) is relative to the size of the grid squares, with the exception of Area Lights and Linear Lights, which are independent of the grid square size. If you have very large grid squares, you will also have very large lights/camera compared to objects, and vice versa. The size of light/camera icons does not affect their functionality. The Grid Square Size Effect on Positioning The Grid Square Size (Options > Display Options) also determines the incremental change as you Page 48

52 Layout drag your mouse. Thus, a smaller size lets you edit your object s position with greater accuracy than using a larger one. If you find that you can t edit an object with the accuracy required, try lowering the Grid Square Size. This will also affect the Orthogonal and Perspective view modes. Grid Square Size Auto-Adjustment When you start creating a new scene, your Grid Square Size will automatically adjust itself upwards only, if necessary. This can be problematic when you use objects that differ significantly in relative size, like planets and spaceships. Objects may seem to disappear, when in reality they are just too small or too big to be seen in the viewport. Once you manually set the Grid Square Size or save and reload a scene, the automatic sizing adjustment is deactivated. As such, you may want to load the smaller objects first and then manually change the Grid Square Size to the same value. Then, load the larger objects. Schematic View The Schematic viewport type is a two-dimensional view (on the right in the screenshot below where we have split Layout into two viewports) showing all items in the scene as rectangles that can be selected and moved into any arrangement. You access this mode by selecting Schematic from the Viewport Type dropdown menu on a viewport s titlebar or hitting Numpad 7. Each rectangle appears in the associated item s wireframe color, and hidden items are shown as outlined instead of filled rectangles. Solid lines link children to their parents and end effectors are connected to their goals with dashed lines. See also Display Options > Schematic View options. Page 49

53 Layout Navigation is consistent with other 2D viewports (e.g., Alt/Alt-Shift =move, Ctrl-Alt=zoom, Center Current Item, etc.). Press the a key to fill all items into view or g key to center on the mouse cursor. Parenting in Schematic View Parent items can be assigned by holding your Ctrl key down and clicking on the desired parent for the current item. Ctrl-clicking in a blank area unparents the item. Other Schematic View Options When you right-click an item, it displays a dropdown menu. This menu can clear, clone, rename, open the Properties Panel for the item, and set the item s wireframe color. Close/Save Window Show Changes Only - shows only items that have had changes applied in the work session. Scene File Version - will save the file in the version selected. Version 6.0 covers versions 6.0 through 9.0. Save All Changes - will save all changes made in a session. Items - shows the items in a scene. Clicking on the arrow will expand or collapse the menu tree. Mod - shows which items have been changed. Save State - has different save options, which are available by right-clicking on the Save State section. Page 50

54 Layout Scene files: Do not save, Save, Save As Object files: Do not save, Save, Save As, Incremental Files - the file path where the items will be saved. Double clicking there will open a save options window. Save - will save based on the options chosen above. Save and Exit - will both save based on the options above and also exit Layout. Exit - will exit without saving. Cancel - will close this window without performing any of the above operations. Page 51

55 Layout Tips for Successful Layout Use Just a very small selection of some of the more frequent gotchas encountered by new users: Set your Options. Turn on Play at Exact Rate and you might want to turn on Auto Save on the General tab while you are getting used to LightWave; make sure that the Shading Method is set to GLSL in the GL tab; for proper linear workflow, set the Quick Preset to srgb on the CS tab (but turn off Convert 8-bit to Float unless you have plenty of memory). Always turn off Ambient Intensity in a scene, unless your scene is outside at night where a level of 20 % tinted blue will give you that flat, moonlit feeling (as shown in our tutorial), or if you are going for a flat or anime look where you will to put it at 100%. Rolling your mouse scrollwheel will switch between Move, Rotate, Scale and Stretch (where appropriate, you can t scale or stretch a camera). Get used to using both hands. Use the keyboard shortcuts (Alt; Alt-Shift; Ctrl-Alt and LMB/ RMB) to navigate around the viewports rather the icons at the top right. Layout is different to Modeler in that everything is about the center of the viewport rather than the mouse pointer, but it s still better than using the icons. File > Package Scene is the tool to use if you want to give someone your content. Package Scene will ensure that all images, objects and scene files are in the right place. Shift-clicking on an object when in VPR mode will open the Surface Editor to the right surface. The numeric keypad can be used for different views (the viewport changed is the one the mouse is over): numpad 1 - Back numpad 2 - Top numpad 3 - Right numpad 4 - Perspective numpad 5 - Light numpad 6 - Camera numpad 7 - Schematic The keyboard shortcut Alt-s will save your scene and all objects used in it so that you don t forget to save your beautifully-surfaced models. Distant and Dome lights only care about rotation, where you place them doesn t matter. Conversely, Point and Spherical lights only care about Position, how they are rotated doesn t matter. Always set falloffs to lights in a scene for more realism. Page 52

56 Layout Running Tutorial - Truck We re going to do a tutorial that runs through this Getting Started guide. Feel free to skip it if you know what you are doing, but even though it s basic it might give you a surprise on some of the things you can achieve. Things you ll see in this part of the tutorial: Clear Selected Different viewports Content Directory Light Properties Cloning Modeler Tools 1) When you hit Send to Layout at the end of the Modeler section of the tutorial, Layout will have opened showing a long box with a pink light and a green camera. Now, all scenes in LightWave have to have at least one camera and light. But what about the box? Where s our model? What you may remember is that we built our template box that we had in the background in Modeler to make sure our proportions were about right. It has come into Layout, but is no longer needed, so we can ditch it. Do so by hitting - or Items > Delete > Clear Selected. Page 53

57 Layout 2) Once deleted, our truck will be revealed head-on in all its grayness. Let s start by better positioning our Camera. Hit 6 on the numeric keypad (numpad 6) to switch to your Camera s view or use the View Type dropdown at the top left of the Viewport to choose Camera View. Let s move the camera so we don t just have a boring face-on view of the truck. Switch to Cameras mode (Shift-c) and hold the LMB down. As you move the mouse the camera s position in relation to the truck changes. If you use RMB, the Camera s height in relation to the truck changes. Hitting the Space key switches between actions with an item, cycling between Position, Rotation, Scale and Stretch. You can also roll the mouse wheel. With a camera, only position and rotation make sense so only those are available. In rotation, LMB controls Heading and Pitch and RMB is for Bank. Position (and rotate) your camera so that your Camera View looks a little like the screenshot. Page 54

58 Layout 3) Where did you save your truck object? Obviously, it s in Layout now, but we need to organize our files into what LightWave calls a Content Directory. This is a folder with a specific set of subdirectories that will allow LightWave to find what it s looking for, no matter where you put the base folder. We ll step out of LightWave for a moment to create such a thing for our tutorial. To start with, create a folder on your desktop called truck. In that folder, create three new directories called Images, Objects and Scenes. We need to make sure that our truck_ untextured.lwo object is in the Objects folder in the truck directory. In fact, it s probably a good idea at this point to save your scene as truckscene.lws into the scenes folder you have just created and then hit Ctrl-o to load a new scene. Load in your truck scene from the content directory you made and one of two things will happen. Either Layout will load your truck without complaint or it will ask where it is. If the latter, point it at the object truck_ untextured.lwo in your content directory s Objects folder. If it loads a truck, it probably isn t the right one. Your truck should be selected in Layout (it will have a dotted bounding box around it and will be the Current Item), and if not, make it so. Then choose Items > Replace > Replace > With Object and choose the truck object from your content directory. In either case, your scene should look just the same as it did before we reloaded, but now we know all is safe for the future. It now doesn t matter where you put the truck folder. Wherever it is, as long as the contents are in the same order, you will be able to load your scene. Page 55

59 Layout 4) Let s make some lights to light our highway. The default light in our scene can stay where it is. It s a Distant light, so moving it would make no difference anyway, only rotating it. It can be the moonlight for our scene. Go to Items > Add > Lights > Spherical and name it streetlight. It will be put at 0, 0, 0, which is under our truck. We want to make streetlights at regular intervals along our road, so move it to X: -5, Y: 4.5, Z: 0. It should still be visible in your viewport, up at the top left of the screen. Page 56

60 Layout 5) Before we make a nice row of these lights, we really want to set the properties of this first one. To do so, we have the light selected and hit p, or the Properties button on the toolbar under the viewport. We re going to change three things now. The first is the global light for the scene, the Ambient Intensity. Normally, you should reduce this to 0 % for a more realistic scene, however here we are going for a moonlit effect. Change it to 20 % and set it to a light blue. This will give our scene a blue cast and make shadows weaker. Next we ll set our spherical streetlight. We re going to have ten of these in our scene, so set the Light Intensity to 30 % and we ll set the falloff too - without falloff, lights would shine to the end of the universe and we don t want that. Set the Intensity Falloff to Inverse Distance ^2 and the Range/Nominal Distance to 8 m. You will see a circle surrounding the light and this is the nominal distance you are setting, the point at which the light is at its best. Last is the default Distant light, it s too light. Drop it to 5 % and change its color to a light blue as well. Lastly, get it out of the way by moving it up on the Y to about 12 m so it s out of sight. Moving a Distant Light has no impact on how it s lighting the scene, only its rotation does that. Page 57

61 Layout 6) Switch to the Top view of your scene (numpad 2). Select that streetlight again and let s clone it. Hit Ctrl-c and in the requester type 9. This gives us ten streetlights all in the same spot (switch to Camera view - numpad 6 - to see how bright the side of the truck is now and switch back to Top when you have). What we want is one of those lights, right now we have all of the clones, selected. Hit Up arrow, then Down, now you should just hit Streetlight (10) selected. Make sure you are in Move mode and move it about 200 m in the Z axis using the blue gizmo, you don t need to see the light, just watch the Info box in the lower left corner to see how far it has gone (or just type the value in there). Now, using the MMB and holding down the Shift key, draw a box around the original lights to add them to the selection. Now choose Modify > Distribute > Along Z Axis and all your lights should spread out along the Z Axis between the bunch and the single light you positioned so far away, with the intensity falloffs about 5 m apart. Page 58

62 Layout 7) Right now, our truck is hovering in space. We need to do more modeling to create a ground and a road, but we re going to cheat and use Layout s Modeler Tools for a quick result. Modeler Tools > Create > Geometry > Ground Plane is the tool we are going to use, but change the Width to 6 m, the Depth to 200 m, the Surface to Road and check the Save Object item. Give the saved object a new name too. Page 59

63 Layout 8) Let s make another Ground Plane. Set the Width to 100 m, Depth to 200 m, Surface to Ground and Save Object. It s at exactly the same Y as the road, so change the Center Y to to make sure there s no interference between the surfaces. I reckon we re about ready to surface, animate and render our scene. Going Further Rather than using Spherical lights, have a hunt to see if you can find the actual lights used on highways. You ll need to find that light type s IES file, then you can replace the spherical lights with Photometric ones to make the lighting more accurate. The streetlights are hovering in mid-air and invisible, go back to Modeler and create an actual streetlight model and bring it into Layout and Clone it like you did the lights. Rather than a night-time scene, make the sun brighter and remove the spherical lights to have a daytime version of the truck. Page 60

64 Introduction to Surfacing MAIN TITLE SUB-TITLE

65 Surfacing Surface Editor Introduction Generally, LightWave objects are composed of one or more polygons. What each polygon looks like is defined by its surface attributes, or surface for short. Groups of polygons can share the same surface and the polygons need not be contiguous. Polygons sharing a surface name can be in different objects. Surfacing Objects Let s take a simple cube. It has six sides and, therefore, at least six polygons. Each side could have its own individual surface, all six sides could use the same surface, or any combination in-between. The polygons that make up a surface are given a name in Modeler. This name can be changed in the Surface Editor, whether run in Modeler or Layout. The surfacing information associated with the surface name is stored in the object file. When an object is later loaded, the surfaces used in it are also loaded, including any image files referenced in the surface attributes. Surface settings are saved as part of the associated object file(s), not in the Scene file. To save Surface settings, save the object. Page 62

66 Surfacing To assign surface names to polygons 1) In Modeler, select the polygons that you would like to surface. 2) Choose Change Surface located at the bottom of the interface or press q to open the Change Surface dialog. Enter the surface name for the selected polygons and click OK. You can also select an existing surface name from the pop-up menu (you can t change the color or other settings if you do. You need to use the Surface Editor (F5) for that). To set some basic Surface settings, name your surface, activate Set Initial Color and adjust the available settings as desired. You can perform more advanced surface editing using the Surface Editor once you have clicked OK here. The Make Default option controls the default surface name used when you create new geometry. 3) Click OK to confirm. Page 63

67 Surfacing It is a good idea to avoid spaces and accented or special characters in your surface, object and scene names to be sure your scene will continue to work on a different computer. Surface Management Use the Load and Save buttons to save surface attributes in a surface file for later re-use. Use the Rename button to rename the surface. When you load a surface file, remember that the surface texture Scale, Position, and so on are also loaded. Thus, if the object you apply the surface to is at a different scale, you may need to tweak texture positioning data. Page 64

68 Surfacing Surface Editor Panel The Surface Editor Panel will list the characteristics of your named surfaces; you can access this panel from both Layout and Modeler. Its default keyboard shortcut is F5. Collapse/Reveal File Management Edit Mode Filter Options Surface List Preview Window Node Editor Surface Attributes You can collapse/reveal the surface list by clicking the arrow button. When collapsed, a pop-up menu is added near the top to allow you to display and change the current surface. Page 65

69 Surfacing Surface Edit Modes Left: Object Mode, Right: Scene Mode LightWave offers two Edit Modes when you work in the Surface Editor: Object and Scene, which are discrete and global Edit Modes, respectively. These are selected using the Edit by pop-up menu. While surfaces are always saved within the object file itself, there are times when many objects share the same surface name. In Object mode, each object s surfaces are protected from changes made on other objects with the same name. When in Scene mode, all surfaces are flattened, so that any item in the scene that uses the current surface name receives the same changes to the surface attributes. The Edit Mode is saved from session to session and affects how LightWave handles objects loaded with identical surface names. If the Scene Edit Mode is active, the last loaded object s surfaces will control. When working in Scene Mode, you will notice that the Surface list shows only a raw list of surface names. While working in Object Edit Mode, you will see a complete list of the loaded objects with their surfaces listed beneath the object names. Object Edit Mode The default mode, Object, gives you many items in a scene with discrete Surface settings. For example, you may have two goblins, HobGoblin and BobGoblin loaded into a scene and each may have a surface called Skin. In Object mode, LightWave internally holds an object composite library for each item. So, while they both have a surface called Skin, LightWave sees them as HobGoblin/Skin and BobGoblin/Skin so that you can make changes to either one without any risk of interfering with the other. When you change from Object to Scene mode, the last-loaded item determines the attributes for shared surface names. Page 66

70 Surfacing Scene Edit Mode The Scene mode is very handy if you want many objects to share a surface. With this mode enabled, you can quickly make changes to a group of objects by changing their common surfaces. Internally, LightWave just drops the object composite library mentioned above, so that surfaces are referenced by their raw surface name, without object listing. For example, you may have a troop of soldiers that all share a common uniform surface Jungle_ Camo_Jacket. Internally, LightWave simply manages the surface name Jungle_Camo_Jacket rather than Soldier.01/Jungle_Camo_Jacket, Soldier.02/Jungle_Camo_Jacket, etc. If you want to change the base color of all soldier jackets, you can work in Scene mode and make a single change that propagates throughout all items with a surface named Jungle_Camo_Jacket. Surface List The list on the left gives the surfaces available for edit. The Filter by pop-up menu lets you filter elements shown in the surface list window. Objects shows all objects and their related surfaces. Name shows all surface names. Texture shows all surfaces that use procedural textures. Shader shows all surfaces that use surface shaders. Preview lists all surfaces that are visible in the image currently in the render buffer (you need to render a frame first). This is determined on a pixel-bypixel basis. (Note that the Preview setting is only available if the Surface Editor is accessed from Layout.) Filter by works in conjunction with the Pattern input field, which is a simple include filter. Any item that includes any of the text you enter will appear in the list window. You don t need to specify wildcards, just the text you want to include; when you leave the input field blank, you include all surfaces in the Filter by category. Once you have entered or cleared the text in the filter field, hit Tab to activate the filter. Select a surface to edit by clicking on its name in the list. If the object name is listed, you can expand or collapse the displayed surfaces by clicking on the arrow to the left of the object name. Page 67

71 Surfacing When you right-click over the surface list window, a pop-up menu appears. You can Copy the selected surface, or a specific section of a surface, to a memory buffer. Then, select a different surface and Paste the contents of the buffer over the settings of the selected surface. Page 68

72 Surfacing Mass Surface Changes You can select multiple surfaces in the Surface Name list and make mass surface changes. Hold the Shift key to select a range of surfaces or hold the Ctrl key to select/deselect surfaces independently. Parameters with input fields that have different settings for the selected surfaces will show (mixed) in the field. If textures are different, the T button will appear in an intermediate state. Changing a surface attribute changes it for all selected surfaces, including mixed states. Shift-clicking on the T or E button removes the texture or envelope for all selected surfaces. Some examples can be seen above. Page 69

73 Surfacing Preview Window The preview window shows you surface samples for the active surface. You can access several Preview options by clicking the Options button. Sample Size is the diameter of the sampled area on the surface. To obtain the most accurate preview, set this option to the approximate surface size to which you are applying the current attributes. Preview Type sets the shape of your sample surface. Sphere, Layout; Cube, Layout; Sphere, Black; Sphere, Checkerboard You have several options for the preview Background. Checkerboard is a good option for surfaces with some level of transparency. If you select Layout, it uses Layout s Backdrop settings. You can reduce jaggies in the preview by using the Antialiasing option. If Use Scene Lights is active, the lights from your scene will be used instead of the default preview light. This option is applied as if the preview object was at the Origin. Obviously, this is only Page 70

74 Surfacing available if the Surface Editor is open from Layout. The Refresh Rate setting determines how the preview is refreshed when you make changes to Surface settings. If you set the rate to Realtime, the preview updates as you change interactive controls; for example, if you adjusted a mini-slider. When it is set to Automatic, the preview updates when you release the control. Manual requires you to click on the preview window to update. You can further tailor the preview to reflect only certain internal channels (buffers) instead of the normal Rendered Output with the Display Mode pop-up menu. This is very useful when you want to determine the effects on a specific channel. For example, if you apply a diffuse texture, you may want to see the effects of your settings on the actual diffuse channel. You can quickly set options by using the pop-up menu that appears when you hold the RMB over the preview window. Using the Display pop-up menu gives you the added ability to view individual channels. Page 71

75 Surfacing Basic Surface Parameters The surface attributes on the Basic tab are fundamental for virtually all objects. Each represents a certain characteristic of a surface s appearance. You may never have thought about it before, but if you look at the surface of objects around you, they differ by much more than their color. Are they shiny? Dull? Do they reflect other items in the room? Can you see through the material? These characteristics help you determine what materials objects are made of. LightWave divides the different surface characteristics into controllable parameters. Edit Nodes Activates the Node Editor. See the LightWave 10-Surface and Rendering.pdf documentation in your user account under LightWave 10.1 Manuals for a complete guide to using nodes. This Getting Started guide will solely introduce the Basic tab of the layer-based Surface Editor, which can be used in conjunction with nodes. The other tabs on the Surface Editor (Advanced, Environment and Shaders) will also be detailed in the same manual. Page 72

76 Surfacing Numerical Settings All of the Numerical settings have mini-sliders. You can enter a numerical value into the input field or use the slider. The range of the slider is limited to values 0-100; however, the input field will accept values beyond the maximum and minimum possible with the slider, including positive and negative values. Keep in mind that, except for maybe Luminosity, values outside the normal range of 0 to 100 percent will be unnecessary. Color Color is probably the most obvious surface parameter. It doesn t take much experience to know that if we want something to look like a banana, we need to make it yellow, right? However, since you are dealing with a 24-bit color palette and, thus over 16 million colors, there are probably thousands of shades of yellow. Moreover, other settings, such as Diffuse, can have a dramatic effect on the final rendered color. Color is the only channel on the Basic tab that needs to be in Color. All the other channels work with grayscale values. A reminder here, clicking and dragging on the individual RGB values will change them. Clicking on the swatch will open a color picker and the E and T buttons are for setting an Envelope that changes over time and applying a Texture to the channel respectively. Removing an Envelope or Texture is done by holding the Shift key and clicking the E or T button. There is no undo for this action. Luminosity Luminosity refers to how much a surface appears to glow with its own light. However, unless you use Radiosity, Luminosity does not have any actual light emitting properties - you need to add an actual light for that. A value of 0% is most common for this setting, unless a special need arises such as the surface of a modelled light bulb. This surface property is not the same as Glow on the Advanced Tab. Left: Luminosity 0 %, Center: Luminosity 300 % Right: Luminosity 300 %, radiosity on Page 73

77 Surfacing Diffuse Diffuse is the amount of light scattered by a surface. A high level scatters a lot of light and therefore the surface appears bright. A low level absorbs most of the light and therefore the surface appears dark and dull. Metal and dirt surfaces are good candidates for a low Diffuse level. Common values are 40% to 80%. Surfaces must have some diffusion for shadows cast on them to be visible. Left: Diffuse 100%, Right: Diffuse 30% Specularity Specularity is a kind of reflection or highlight that occurs on the surface of smooth or shiny objects. This highlight is only the reflection of lights in a scene. High Specular levels are commonly used on water, glass, chrome, and so on. How the surface reflects this highlight tells the observer if the surface is dull, smooth, shiny, hard, or even metallic. Generally, the highlight assumes the color of the light source that causes it, but you may change this with the Color Highlights settings in the Advanced Tab. Specularity only reflects lights and not objects. Left: Specularity 30%, Right: Specularity 100% Glossiness When some level of Specularity exists, Glossiness determines how a highlight spreads out. A low setting creates a large highlight, whereas a higher setting creates a tighter highlight. Specularity still at 100 % Left: Glossiness 30%, Right: Glossiness 90% Page 74

78 Surfacing Reflection Reflection determines how much a surface shows a reflection of its surroundings. A mirror is an example of a highly reflective surface. Reflection only reflects objects and not lights. Reflection 25%; Reflection 100% Transparency Transparency makes a surface see-through; it is the opposite of Opacity. Whenever light passes through a transparent object, the light will bend. An example of this can be seen when you look through a glass of water or down through a clear pool of water. The amount of this light bending is controlled by the Refraction Index. Image by Christophe Desse For photorealistic results, don t exceed a combination of % with the Diffuse, Transparency and Reflection settings - a surface that s mostly transparent isn t very diffuse and vice versa Page 75

79 Surfacing Translucency Translucency allows back lighting. The effect can be seen when someone stands behind a curtain and you see their silhouette through the material. Other examples include seeing bones in your hand with a flashlight in your palm, or bugs crawling on the underside of leaves. Translucency is similar to Transparency in that all lighting properties, like color and luminosity, will show through. The obvious difference is that translucency doesn t add a see-through effect. If you want to make a silhouette visible, something must cast a shadow on the back side. Note that you do not need rear-facing polygons for the back side, nor must you use a double-sided surface to catch the shadow. Page 76

80 Surfacing Bump Map No Bump Nearly all real world surfaces have some amount of texture or bumpiness. Such bumps are apparent due to the way light falls across the surface. A Bump Map is applied to a surface to give the appearance of a texture. However, no real geometry is added and if you looked across the surface from the side, the illusion could be ruined. Shadows and edges can also reveal this lack of geometry. The default setting is 100 % and really is only there to provide a contrast with whatever you set in the Texture Editor - when there is no texture it would make no difference if the default was 0 %. Bump (and Specukar) Map Page 77

81 Surfacing Envelopes and Textures Very few things in the real world have constant surface properties. Color patterns, discoloration, nicks, scratches can all subtly contribute to an object s appearance. The real world is anything but consistent, but that is what makes things look real. The E and T buttons let you use envelopes and textures, respectively, instead of a static numerical value. The proper use of these features often results in a much more realistic surface. Envelopes let you vary a value over time. For example, instead of Luminosity having the same value throughout your animation, it can differ on each frame. However, in any particular frame, it will have that value over the entire surface. To vary the value over the surface area, you must use a Texture. Envelopes use the Graph Editor, which is discussed in depth starting on page 75 of the LightWave 10 Layout PDF. The Texture Editor documentation starts on page 14 of the same manual. Envelopes are not limited to surface values, so you will find Envelope E buttons throughout LightWave. Page 78

82 Surfacing Surface Smoothing Smoothing causes objects to appear to have smoothly rounded surfaces even though the object is composed of flat-faced polygons. To do this, LightWave uses a technique known as phong shading. If the edges of two smooth-shaded polygons share vertices (points), they appear as one continuous, curved surface. The shared edge between them is no longer visible. All three spheres are identically surfaced. On the left, no smoothing. On the right, smoothing but we can see from the silhouette there isn t enough geometry. The sphere in front has more geometry and smoothing applied. Each ball has Specularity and Reflection. Specularity is how we see the highlight from the light and Reflection is how we see the other balls and the floor reflected. Smooth Threshold By default, LightWave will not smooth across two polygons if the angle between them is 90 degrees or sharper, unless you adjust the Smooth Threshold. This value adjusts the range of the smoothing function; it defines the angle beyond which LightWave will not smooth over the seam between adjoining polygons. The angle is measured using the surface normals of the adjoining polygons. If this angle is less than the Smooth Threshold, the surfaces are rendered smoothly. The default of 89.5 assures that any surfaces at right angles (90 ) or greater to each other are not smoothed. You usually should reduce Smoothing down to the lowest value where it still smooths. If it won t go down as far as 40 you probably don t have enough geometry for a foreground model. Stuff in the background of a scene is less important. As with Bump Mapping, Smoothing does not actually change the surface s geometry. As such, the edges of a ball can still expose the straight polygon nature of the object. If this becomes a problem, you need more geometry. Page 79

83 Surfacing Vertex Normal Map When dealing with objects imported from other software that can have vertex normal maps for smoothing, this dropdown menu allows the user to choose the vertex normal map to use. Exclude from VStack Volume stacking is LightWave s way of dealing with differing refractive indices in nested objects - a crystal tumbler containing whisky for instance. If you have an object created with an older version of LightWave that doesn t have VStacking you might need to turn this on, otherwise leave it unchecked. Double Sided Sometimes it s necessary to see both sides of a polygon, such as when you want to go inside a model (and wall thickness is not a concern). Also, if you import objects from other 3D modeling programs, either directly or through a conversion utility, some polygons may end up facing the wrong direction, which causes the object to render improperly. Click Double Sided to treat all polygons on the selected surface as two-sided. Left: Single-Sided Polygons, Right: Double-Sided Polygons As a consequence of using Double Sided, rendering time will increase because LightWave must calculate more polygons. Note also that Double Sided is only a surface attribute. The object, when loaded into Modeler, will show the true single-sided polygons. Comment You can add a comment to the surface in the Comment field. Page 80

84 Surfacing Tips for Successful Surfacing Remember that RMB on a color swatch copies the color and then Ctrl-RMB pastes it to another swatch. If you want your texture at half the size it is now, just add a /2 to the end of the numeric entries for X, Y and Z. LightWave will divide the values by two. Although nodes are color-coded, often you can drag one color into another - for instance a red color output into a green scalar input. For more realistic surfacing, try to ensure that your Diffuse, Reflection and Transparency values combined do not exceed 100 % and preferably 90 %. Surfacing is dependant on lighting conditions in your scene. If a surface is too dark, don t brighten it with Luminosity, shine some more light. When using the layered Surface Editor, don t stop at changing just the color. Use more channels (Diffuse, Reflections, Bump, etc.) to make your surface more realistic. Page 81

85 Surfacing Running Tutorial - Truck We re going to do a tutorial that runs through this Getting Started guide. Feel free to skip it if you know what you are doing, but even though it s basic it might give you a surprise on some of the things you can achieve. Things you ll see in this part of the tutorial: VPR Surface Editor Assigning Surfaces in Modeler Texture Editor Reversing images 1) We left it last time with everything gray. Now we ll do something about it. VPR is a real boon for surfacing in LightWave, so change the Display type for your viewport to VPR or hit Ctrl-F9 (if you have a mouse with more than the normal three buttons it s really worth your while to assign Ctrl-F9 to one of the additional buttons when in Layout). While in VPR, you can Shiftclick on an polygon and the Surface Editor will open on that Surface. So Shift-click somewhere on the ground away from the truck. That should open the Surface Editor on the object Ground, with the Surface Ground. Click on the color swatch to choose a new color for this surface. Page 82

86 Surfacing 2) We ll do the same for the road. Shift-click somewhere in front of the truck to get the Road object and Surface. This time, rather than LMB clicking on the swatch, use the RMB on it and drag left. That should darken the default color of 200, 200, 200. Make it somewhere around 50, 50, 50. 3) Next up, the truck, but when we Shift-click on it we are presented with a single Surface - Default. We want to color the wheels different to the side panels to the fenders and so on. To Page 83

87 Surfacing do so, we need to return to Modeler. Hit F12 to switch to Modeler. When Modeler opens it should already have the truck loaded. If not it will be in the list of objects. Even if the truck is loaded it will be showing both Layers 1 and 2 with the template. Press 1 on the main keyboard to only show layer 1, or choose it from the layers window (F7) or the Layers buttons up at the top of the Modeler interface. 4) We re going to surface our truck. You don t need to use UVs and you can have as many surfaces as you have polygons. Switch to Polygon mode if you are not already in it and select polygons, hit q, name your surface (and set an initial color if you d like to show which polys you ve already worked on), deselect polys, select the next lot and so on, until your truck looks like the next screenshot. Page 84

88 Surfacing 5) If you switch back to Layout, you should see your multicolored truck. If you Shift-click on a section of the truck now, the Surface Editor will show you what surface name you clicked on, and the fact that truck has more than one surface now. In total, you should have ten surfaces. The ones you named, plus Default on a single polygon. 6) Ideally you don t want any polygons that have the surface Default at all. Since the Default- Page 85

89 Surfacing surfaced polygon on this truck is the bottom of the cab cube and won t be seen, you can either just delete the polygon, or give it the cab surface. 7) Into the Surface Editor. This is a complex window with lots of power, made even more complex and powerful when you add in nodes. It takes a lot of exploration, which you should do in the LightWave forums, by reading the LightWave 10 Surface and Render manual and above all by practising. We are going to map an image onto the back, left and right of the truck, use a material node for the fenders and wheels and use a procedural texture for dotting the cab. Page 86

90 Surfacing 8) Image mapping. We ve switched to the Perspective view (numpad 4) and turned the view around to see the back of the truck. Click the T for the Color channel. Now click the Image dropdown and go to (load image). LightWave will immediately go to your content directory image folder, which is where you should have your images for the scene. I created a How s my driving? message that you often see on trucks these days. It s repeated across the back of the truck, but just hit Automatic Size to make it fill the back of the truck. The main problem is that the writing is reversed. To turn it around add a minus to the front of the X axis measurement (in this case, since we re projecting down Z), so X: 2.5 m becomes X: -2.5 m. Page 87

91 Surfacing 9) Now we ll repeat for the left and right surfaces. Doing the same thing with the left surface gives me a strange-looking image. The reason is that the Texture Axis is still Z! Change it to X and the picture should be evident. Again, it will probably be repeated several times on the side of truck, so hit Automatic Sizing to stretch the picture out. On the right surface, use a different picture and you ll notice the same problem as with the back image, so put a minus in front of the Z axis value since that s the axis we wish to reverse. Page 88

92 Surfacing 10) Now Shift-click the fender surface in the VPR viewport. Check the button next to the Edit Nodes button, then click Edit Nodes. This opens the Node Editor. In the left-hand menu double-click on the Material > Conductor node. Click on its Material output and drag it into the Surface node s Material Input. 11) Your fender may have become a little lighter, but we haven t got the Conductor node working yet. Double-click it and its window appears. Set the Specularity to 70 % and the Page 89

93 Surfacing Roughness to 5 %, then go into the Advanced tab and turn on Reflection Blur. Your fenders should now be reflective but dull. 12) We re going to make the cab of our truck dotty. Select the cab surface, either in the Surface Editor directly or by Shift-clicking on that part of the truck in the VPR viewport. Dots isn t a very useful procedural generally but it s a good example here to show that most procedurals are actually three-dimensional rather than just mathematically-generated images. Rather than clicking on the T for the Color Channel, click on that for the Diffuse channel. Without changing anything, gray dots show up on your cab s right side, but nowhere else. You can see the spacing of the dots on that polygon, what has happened on the cab top and front is that they are in-between dots. At the bottom of the Texture Editor are four tabs - Scale, Position, Rotation and Falloff. Click on the Position tab and use the mini-sliders on the Y and Z values until you have dots in all three axes. Values of 30 mm and 65 mm work well. If you were to use the Dots texture in the Color channel you would be asked what color you wanted rather than just the percentage diffuse value. Going Further There are more surfaces to work on, and remember that convincing surfaces use elements of several channels to convince, so just adding a color texture doesn t suffice - does the color make the area of the surface more reflective? Less? Is it a little bumpy? Try mapping images with the Node Editor. The ability to use outputs from a single image to a variety of inputs is very powerful. Nodal surfacing can be done in conjunction with the layered kind, so mix and match as suits your needs. Page 90

94 Introduction to Animating MAIN TITLE SUB-TITLE

95 Animating Introduction So you ve modeled, surfaced and positioned your items in Layout. Now you need to breathe life into them with animation. Animation can be as simple as an object moving across Layout s stage, or a light gradually brightening. The key to animation is just that - keys. A key defines the position, rotation or any other property of an item that can be changed at a specific time. The next key might change those values and LightWave will interpolate between the two to create the movement. An item might refer to a model, the camera or a light (or many other things). Sometimes, when an element has no obvious visual component, like the light brightening, you still use keys, but this time in an Envelope accessed through the E buttons liberally scattered throughout Layout. Example: First Animation As a simple experiment, we will take the most basic object in LightWave - a null - and animate it. Nulls don t render, so this will purely be a visual experiment inside Layout s OpenGL view. 1) Open Layout, or clear to a new scene if you already have Layout open. Hit Ctrl-n or on the Items tab, select Add > Null. Accept the defaults and hit OK. Page 92

96 Animating 2) With your mouse anywhere in the viewport, hold down the LMB and drag your mouse to the left, the null should move over. Position it on the left-hand side of the Layout window. Page 93

97 Animating 3) Move the timeline slider to the end of the scene. By default, a LightWave scene lasts 120 frames, which equates to 4 seconds at 30 fps. Now move the null to the right side of the screen. You should see a blue line extending to the left from your null. This is the motion path. Page 94

98 Animating 4) Move the timeline slider to the middle of the scene. Now use the RMB anywhere in the Layout viewport and drag upwards so that your null is at the top of the screen. You should see the motion path bend upwards at that frame to perform a graceful curve between the start and end keyframes. Page 95

99 Animating 5) If you slide the timeline slider back and forth you can see how your null moves, or you can hit the Play button at the lower right corner of the Layout viewport. The ticks visible along the motion path indicate frames, and the crosses indicate keyframes. Page 96

100 Animating Example: Dimming the Light Clear the scene and we ll go further. 1) In Layout s Modeler Tools tab choose Create > Geometry > Ground Plane and Create > Geometry > Cube. Accept the defaults for both. Page 97

101 Animating 2) Repeat the instructions from the previous example with the cube so that it animates flying across the ground plane. Page 98

102 Animating 3) At the top of the viewport where it says Textured Shaded Solid, click and change to VPR (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F9). If you play now you should see your scene animating, but rendered, rather than OpenGL. Depending on the speed of your processor your view might be blocky but it should still play in four seconds. If it is going too fast or slow, make sure that Play at Exact Rate is checked in Options (keyboard shortcut o). Page 99

103 Animating 4) Now we will change the light. LightWave always has a light and a camera in a scene, you can never have a scene without at least one of each. Switch to Light mode at the bottom of the screen and hit the Properties button or press the keyboard shortcut p. Page 100

104 Animating 5) By default, LightWave puts a Distant light in a scene, this is a sun-type light and only its rotation has any effect - moving it makes no difference. What we are interested in here is the Light Intensity. It will say 100 % in the value, but that s a fixed value. If we want it to change over time, we need an Envelope so hit the E button. A new window will appear. Page 101

105 Animating 6) This window is the Graph Editor. It contains a single key at frame 0 for 100 %. Under the graph you will see two fields that confirm this. To change the Value you can either type in the fields, use the mini-sliders to the right or drag LMB directly on the key in the graph. Doing so will change the value and if you wish to change the timing for a key you use Ctrl-LMB. Page 102

106 Animating 7) Change the value at Frame 0 to 0 %. Now click on the icon of a key with a plus symbol just under the graph (or use the keyboard shortcut +) to add a new key by clicking in the graph with LMB. Again, we want to position our second key at the end of the scene. When you click you immediately set the timing of the key but you can adjust the value before you let go of LMB, make it roughly 100 %. You will note that you can go lower than 0 % and higher than 100 %. If you wish to set multiple keys, like you did for animating the cube go ahead and you will see the same curve. If you now play the animation you will see the light brightening over the course of the four seconds. You will note that once there is an envelope on an item, like the Intensity in this example, the field becomes ghosted and unavailable. If you wish to kill the envelope so you can access the fixed value again, hold the Shift key and click on the E button. Going further With both examples, add more keys in and note that rolling your mousewheel changes between moving, rotating, scaling proportionally and scaling. Try changing the light type, a Dome light is similar to a Distant light, but with soft shadows and there are others to experiment with. Page 103

107 Animating Other types of animation What we ve shown here is the simplest kind of keyframe animation and there are many other sorts: Forward and Inverse Kinematics - refer to the Genoma section in the 11.x addendum for a guide to rigging using a system new to LightWave 11 and to Chapter 20, starting on page 253 of the LightWave 10 Layout manual. Dynamics - Bullet dynamics are new to LightWave 11, consult the Bullet section in the 11.x addendum. For particles, other dynamics and LightWave s system of volumetrics HyperVoxels, refer to Chapter 21 of the LightWave 10 Layout manual, starting page 303. SplineControl - new to LightWave 11, consult the addendum. Flocking - new to LightWave 11, consult the addendum. Page 104

108 Animating Tips for Successful Animating Use standins if your models are too complex. LightWave is very good at replacing lowresolution meshes with finals when the time comes. This applies to dynamics as much as character animation. Pay attention to where your timeline marker is. It s too easy to make a keyframe at a time you don t want it. LightWave is fairly unique in that weight maps are not absolutely necessary for rigging, Bone falloffs can provide dynamic weighting. Page 105

109 Animating Running Tutorial - Truck We re going to do a tutorial that runs through this Getting Started guide. Feel free to skip it if you know what you are doing, but even though it s basic it might give you a surprise on some of the things you can achieve. Things you ll see in this part of the tutorial: Statistics window selection (Modeler) Make Pole (Modeler) Naming Layers (Modeler) Parenting Keyframes DopeTrack 1) Now we have our truck modeled, we ve set up our scene and now we want to animate our truck. Our story is a speed camera checking on a truck rolling too fast with no lights at night. We need to modify our truck to give it a license plate that the camera can focus on and we ll finish the animation with a look at the truck s back end. Page 106

110 Animating 2) Our first question is, do we want our wheels to rotate? It s not a bright night so we can get away with them not doing so, particularly as our wheels are so simple, but let s set them up to make it easier to do so later. Go into Modeler, make sure you are in Polygon mode (an X for your mouse pointer) and on Layer 1 use the Statistics window to select all polygons with >4 Vertices. This will select the two polygons making up the face of each wheel, but also the ends of the axles. In the right viewport just click on the small circle inside each wheel to deselect the axles and then hit ] (or Selection > Modify Selection > Connected) to select the rest of the polygons that make the wheels - you should have 156 polygons selected. Let s cut them from this layer with Ctrl-x. Go to Layer 2, which contains our template. I think it s outlived its usefulness so hit Del to get rid of it, then Ctrl-v to paste in the wheels. Page 107

111 Animating 3) We only need one set of wheels in Modeler because we ll duplicate them in Layout, so lasso select the back two pairs in the right viewport and hit Del. Our remaining pair of wheels is great, but since rotations happen about the origin, rotating them as is will perform great loops, not rotate them around themselves, like a rolling wheel. With the remaining pair of wheels, hit F2 to center them (or Modify > Translate > Center > Center All). 4) To make these wheels easier to place on our axles, we shall modify the axles slightly. Go back Page 108

112 Animating to Layer 1 and use the Statistics window to select >4 Vertices again. This should select the 6 polygons at the ends of the axles. Now choose Multiply > Subdivide > More > Make Pole. This will add a single point or vertex to the center of the discs at the end of each axle, with edges connecting to the points at the circumference. 5) Save your truck by hitting s. If you use Shift-s, you will save an increment of the truck to be able to revisit an earlier stage, or Ctrl-s to save the truck under a completely different name. If you go into Layout now, you will see one of two things. One, the wheels have disappeared and the truck is hovering above the road (roads? Where we re going we don t need roads!) or two, the three pairs of wheels have been replaced by a single pair in the middle of the truck. If the former happens to you, the easiest way to reclaim your wheels is to use Items > Load > Object Layer and pick your wheels layer. You probably just have Layer 1 and Layer 2 in your Load Object Layer requester. If so, in the Layers window in Modeler, double click on the layer names to name them and save your model again. Page 109

113 Animating 6) We need to parent these wheels to the truck. To do so, make sure the wheels are selected, hit the m button (or use Windows > Motion Options) and in the Parent Item dropdown choose your truck layer. The wheels will now move with the truck if you move it, but in the middle of the truck and we want them centred on the axle. 7) Switch Layout to the Right view (numpad 3) and click the Center on Current Object option at Page 110

114 Animating the top right of the viewport. Lastly, switch the render mode from Textured Shaded Solid to Wireframe so we can better see what we are doing. Now your wheels become circles and the axles smaller circles with spokes. You want to move the pivot point for your wheel over the center point of the first axle. You will want to zoom in so you can position more accurately. Now we ve done our first pair of wheels, hit Ctrl-c and ask for two copies. Use the blue gizmo to draw the other pairs of wheels down the truck s length to reach the second axle, then just select the third clone to drag it to the third axle. 8) Now we ve sorted out our wheels for future animation, let s select the truck on frame 0 of our scene and move it back to the start of the road. It s probably easiest to do in the Top view (numpad 2) and just dragging on the blue gizmo. Now move the timeline marker to the end of the scene at 120 and move the truck along Z to get to the end of the road. We can also see that our streetlights are not well-placed. They should span 200 m, so at frame 0 select them all and shift them 100 m in the Z so they light the whole road. If you move them on a frame other than 0 they ll move through the animation, not what we want. Page 111

115 Animating 9) Finally, we ll animate our Camera. Switch back to the Camera view (numpad 6). Because we moved our truck to the end of the road at frame 0 it is no longer in view. So with the Camera selected, change to Rotation mode and look at the truck better. You still want it at the upper left of the frame. Now move the time slider along and rotate the camera to keep the truck in view. You really want to have a jerky motion for your camera move so that it better mimics a real traffic camera. Have a look at some reference to give you inspiration. Page 112

116 Animating 10) You should be able to play your animation and see how the camera behaves. Make sure you have Play at Exact Rate checked in Options (o) to get an accurate idea of how your animation will look. If you want to retime some of the keys you have made for the camera, click on the gray bar above the timeline to reveal the Dopetrack. Your keys will be doubled there too but you can select them by dragging the LMB over the key, which highlight it (or them) and dragging them to a time you prefer. Going Further Remember how we separated out our wheels back in steps 2-7? You can actually rotate your wheels now over the course of the animation. Easier yet, if you use Relativity s Dr. Wheel Rotator (Motion Options > Add Modifier > Relativity), you can automate the rolling, whether the truck moves fast or slow (or changes speed). We didn t make our license plate, do so and map an appropriate image to it. Page 113

117 Introduction to Rendering MAIN TITLE SUB-TITLE

118 Rendering Render Globals Render Globals is a single window that contains the elements you ll need to create your final renders. You will refer to this panel every time you need to check Light or Camera properties but it s also the place to go to check your output settings, how to arrange the global illumination for your render and generally make your scene ready for final output. This window is split into six tabs that will be outlined here. Render Globals - General Tab This is the heart of how you render your creation. In this window there are buttons, drop down menus and tabs to control how long your render will take, what format your individual frames or animation will be in. It can be accessed through the LightWave Windows menu, on the Render tab or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-p. Page 115

119 Rendering Range Type LightWave 3D has three different ways of choosing which frames you wish to render when you press F10. You can choose Single - this allows you to set a first frame to render, a last frame to render and you can set a Frame Step. If you decide that you only want to render every other frame, set this to 2, every third frame? Set it to 3, and so on. Arbitrary parses the frames you choose to render. You can set a frame range, a disparate single frame or two and a range again. To mark non-contiguous frames, put the frame number followed by a comma. To mark a range put the first frame number, a dash and then the last frame number in your range. Here is an example: If you wish to render frames one and two to four of your sequence, jump to frame 10, and finish up by rendering frames 34 to 60 of your scene, this is what you would put in the Frames field: The Keyframe sequence is very useful for creating storyboards. You have access to any object, light or camera in your scene and you can use the channels for movement, rotation or sizing for the item in question (you can t choose channels that don t exist - for instance, there are no size options for the camera). Every time that a keyframe for the item and channel appears in the scene, LightWave will render the frame. The render range you choose is set independently from the scene frame range. If you use the Single range you will be asked to confirm if the range you ve selected does not match the number of frames in the scene. Auto Frame Advance The Auto Frame Advance button is checked by default. If you uncheck it, LightWave will only render one frame, even if you have set a range or sequence. To carry on with your render sequence you must press the Continue button in the render progress display each time a frame is complete. Page 116

120 Rendering If you are doing something else while rendering, make sure that Auto Frame Advance is checked before leaving your computer. Render Complete Notification By selecting Frame End Beep on the General tab of Render Globals, you can instruct LightWave to have your computer beep whenever a frame has been rendered or a preview has been generated. The status of Frame End Beep is saved as a default when you quit LightWave. Equally, if Frame End Beep produces too many notifications, because each frame only takes seconds or very few minutes to render, you can set Animation End Beep to only notify when rendering is complete. Monitoring Progress The frame progress is based upon a formula that gets more accurate the closer it gets to 100 % so don t be dismayed if you see that your frame is going to take five hours at the outset of rendering, that number will be more accurate once LightWave has finished the first pass of Adaptive antialiasing. Also worth noting is while Adaptive Sampling is underway you will often see the sections of Antialiasing split up as in the image below. The quantity of bars is strictly based on how many threads you are running the render on. In the image below you can see eight bars because the processor running the render has eight cores and Multithreading is set to Automatic in the Render tab of Render Globals (Ctrl+p). Page 117

121 Rendering The Render Status Panel is split into four zones. The first gives you feedback on the settings you have chosen to perform the render - Frame Range, Resolution, Antialiasing levels, etc. The second shows how far through the current frame (and sequence if you are rendering with F10) you are. The third only appears when you are rendering a sequence, rather than an image, and is a thumbnail of previous frames rendered with the time taken. The thumbnails can be turned off by unchecking Thumbnail Review in Options (keyboard shortcut o). Lastly, you can have a preview added at two different resolutions to give you some indication of what is going on. If you are rendering an image that is bigger than the maximum size of 640 x 480, LightWave will scale the render down to fit the preview window. At any time you can cancel a render by hitting the Abort button or the Escape key. It may take a while for LightWave to respond depending on the speed of your machine and the complexity of the scene being rendered. Page 118

122 Rendering Viewing the Finished Image Before you start rendering, make sure you have the viewing option you want for the end of the render enabled. For rendering a sequence of images using F10, it s certain that you will already have seen all your images and thus you can happily switch the Render Display to (none). Otherwise, you will want to see what you ve done. Be warned that if you have no render display set, you won t be able to change that once you start rendering. Image Viewer shows your rendered floating point image, which can be saved in formats including Cineon, Radiance, EXR or TIFF, and you can adjust the exposure using Image Controls in the Image Viewer to save an exposed 8-bit per channel version. You can also save the 8-bit per channel format in several formats including JPG, PNG, TIFF, TGA and BMP. Data Overlay The Data Overlay option lets you place a descriptive title (of up to 20 characters) along with a frame reference in the lower portion of the rendered image. This is useful when you generate large numbers of animations for others to review and approve before final rendering. It can serve to identify the scene being rendered, and the specific frames you may wish to change. The Data Overlay pop-up menu setting determines the format for the frame reference. Enter the text in the Label field. Page 119

123 Rendering Render Globals - Render Tab Although you may usually want to use Realistic mode to calculate your renders, don t forget Quickshade and Wireframe. Quickshade only uses the basic colors for your objects and ignores any Image Maps or other types of surface properties (including smoothing, textures, transparency settings or object dissolve levels). Wireframe goes one step further and doesn t even show you filled polygons. Both options respect the Subpatch levels in Object Properties. Therefore, if you want a very smooth surface, you can increase the Subpatch level and have it reflected in your render. Make sure you do not increase subpatch levels too much when rendering in Wireframe mode. The number of polygons may well increase so much that you end up rendering what looks like a silhouette. Wireframe mode uses the basic color properties of a surface to determine what color it should render the wireframes using that surface. Quickshade is very useful for blocking out animation where the detail of an object may become distracting, or for CPU-intensive features like Motion Blur and Depth of Field where its speed will Page 120

124 Rendering become apparent. To produce a solid wireframe animation, Use the Unshared Edges, Surface Borders, and Other Edges options on the Object Properties Panel s Edges Tab, and render in Quickshade Mode. The last option Realistic will be the one you use most often. You can use various raytracing options, by default they are turned on but you can turn them off to optimize your render times. You should also consider what options you wish to have active for each object, in Object Properties. For instance, objects that are in the background can probably have their shadows turned off completely. Page 121

125 Rendering Raytrace Shadows When you enable Raytrace Shadows, any lights that have ray-traced shadows enabled will now calculate ray-traced shadows. Raytrace Reflection Enabling this feature will cause LightWave to calculate ray trace reflections between objects and the background depending on the settings for the surfaces in the Environment Tab in the Surface Editor. Again, you can optimize your rendering times by using images as Reflection Maps instead of raytraced reflections or by turning off reflections altogether for objects with lower importance. Page 122

126 Rendering Raytrace Transparency This feature causes all transparent surfaces in your scene to be ray traced, not just ones with an refractive index different to 1.0. This allows volumetric effects like HyperVoxels to be seen behind transparent surfaces without having to make the surface refractive as well. The scene we are using has no HyperVoxels, all renders have been using Ray Trace Transparency at no additional time cost. Raytrace Refraction You can get LightWave to ray trace only transparent surfaces with refraction using this feature, allowing you to further optimize only those surfaces that have to undergo the lengthy ray tracing procedure. It works for surfaces that have some degree of transparency and a refractive index other than 1.0. Render Instances This is the last one we ll show in this Getting Started guide. Render Lines, Raytrace Occlusion and Depth Buffer AA are all special cases, unlike the ones we ve shown. Render Instances allows you to turn off all instanced geometry, which can save valuable render time if your scene is instance heavy. Page 123

127 Rendering Ray Recursion Limit Ray Recursion is the maximum number of times you want ray-traced reflections reflected off reflective surfaces. In the real world, things can be reflected a seemingly infinite number of times. For instance, if you stand between two mirrors facing each other you will see a seemingly countless number of reflections, repeating until the imperfect transmission of light due to the density of the glass and air causes them to fade into blackness. In the world of 3D animation, you must set a limit for the number of reflections. The default value is 6, but you can set this field from 0 to 64. Lower numbers will yield faster rendering times. Scene set with Recursion initally at default of 6, Max Antialiasing samples set to 32. Interesting to note how the speed doesn t change that much once you hit a ray recursion limit of 16+. Shading Samples and Light Samples on this tab are important to understand. They are covered in full starting page 44 of the 11.6 Addendum. Page 124

128 Rendering Light Options Light, Flare Intensity - Determines the Global strength of all lights or flares in the scene. A setting of 100 uses the same setting, a setting of 50 would cut the strength in half, while a setting of 200 would increase the strength two-fold. Lens Flares, Shadow Maps, Noise Reduction, Volumetric Lights - Volumetric Lights will probably be the largest cause of slowdown in these options, but even then will have a minimal impact on modern systems. Unchecking them will not optimize render times much. 2 Sided Area Lights - By default, Area and NGon lights send light out from both sides of the planes that are their icons. Unchecking this setting will send light out only from one side. The arrow on the icon shows the direction of the light. Multithreading The Multithreading setting is used for systems with multiple cores or CPUs. By default, the Automatic setting for this dropdown will set to the number of cores you have available; however, there are reasons to set this at a greater or lower number. For scenes that are very simple and render in seconds, you may find that setting multiple processors to the task will actually slow down renders because of the overhead of the communication between the processors. For such scenes, it is better to set up batch rendering so that each processor can render its own frames. In the case of long frame renders, you will sometimes find that setting the multithreading to a number greater than the number of real or virtual processors in your computer can help. In either case, you should test a few frames before beginning your final render. Page 125

129 Rendering Render Globals - Global Illumination Tab This tab is where you will set Radiosity options for your scene. LightWave has two-and-a-half types of radiosity. Backdrop Only, Monte Carlo and Final Gather. Backdrop Only evaluates only the rays that hit the backdrop. It is faster than Monte Carlo for environmental illumination, however it does not account for diffuse inter-reflection, luminous surfaces, and so on. Backdrop Only mode is the same as an occlusion render (this is the half method). Radiosity Without using LightWave s radiosity option, all surfaces are lit directly, with lights or ambient light. Radiosity, the scattering (reflection) of light off diffuse surfaces, causes surfaces to become (indirect) light sources - like in the real world - generally resulting in far more realistic images. In LightWave, the scattered light includes surfaces that generate their own light through use of the Luminosity surface attribute. The images that result from a radiosity renderer are characterized by soft gradual shadows. Radiosity is typically used to render images of the interior of rooms, due to the high amount of bounced light, and can achieve extremely photo-realistic results for scenes that comprise diffuse reflecting surfaces. Page 126

130 Rendering Image by Andrew Bradbury - Copyright Andrew Bradbury LightWave can calculate secondary rays bouncing from surfaces or coming from the atmosphere. This adds a very subtle, but photo-realistic effect. When combined with the high dynamic range calculations, the renderings can become astoundingly realistic. Copyright Philip Meyer Page 127

131 Rendering How Radiosity Is Calculated LightWave approximates radiosity using projection hemispheres. These sit on surfaces, each projecting out multiple radiosity rays at various angles using the theoretical normals of each polygon in the hemisphere. This is called an irradiance evaluation. An Illustration of Projection Hemispheres showing differing quantities of samples. If a radiosity ray strikes a surface that scatters light, some amount of that light illuminates the surface where the ray originated - colors are determined in the usual (non-radiosity) way, which can include the effects of luminosity, mirror reflections, caustics, and so on. The light-scattering surfaces are essentially extra little light sources used instead of ambient lighting, that affect the diffuse shading of the current surface. Evaluated and non-evaluated areas are blended to compute the final effect. If you activate the Unseen by Rays option on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel, that object s luminous surface is not considered a source of light for radiosity purposes. Performing a full irradiance evaluation (tracing hundreds of rays) every time a point must be shaded is time-consuming. Fortunately, LightWave also has Interpolated modes for its Monte Carlo and Final Gather radiosity methods. Unlike direct lighting, with its concentrated sources that can cause sudden changes across a surface (e.g., shadow boundaries), the indirect lighting that radiosity is meant to handle tends to change gradually over a surface. LightWave can use Page 128

132 Rendering the results of each previous evaluation and smoothly interpolate between them. Only when no previous evaluations are close enough to the point being shaded, is it necessary to fire a new set of rays. What is close enough? Each time LightWave performs a full evaluation, it estimates the size of the area that can produce valid results. This depends on factors like how far the rays travelled. If all rays went a great distance before hitting anything, then the indirect light must be fairly constant and the calculated irradiance should be good for a large area. But if several rays hit nearby objects, then the indirect light might be varying more rapidly across the surface and the irradiance evaluations should be more closely spaced. The Rays per Evaluation, Secondary Bounce Rays, Angular Tolerance, Minimum Pixel Spacing and Maximum Pixel Spacing setting are interrelated scale factors on these valid area estimates. With a large Maximum Pixel Spacing, the renderer reuses previous irradiance values more often rather than computing new ones, and rendering time is reduced at the expense of accuracy (i.e., in some areas, small local changes in indirect lighting might be missed). With lower values, full hemispherical evaluations are performed more frequently - a zero value won t interpolate at all (always do a complete new evaluation). As such, these values act as a limit on the amount of error allowed in the radiosity calculations, although there will always be some errors due to the use of a finite number of rays. This is a complex topic. As a start, consider using a non-interpolated radiosity type. It will take longer to render, but you can optimize once you have built up knowledge of how LightWave works. Radiosity Settings Page 129

133 Rendering Activate Enable Radiosity for the controls on this panel to be available. In order of increasing complexity, the radiosity Type choices are: Backdrop Only, Monte Carlo, and Final Gather. Interpolated allows you to adjust settings related to the quantity of samples used for your scene. Most of the toggles (Blur Background, Use Transparency, Volumetric Radiosity, Ambient Occlusion, Directional Rays, Use Bumps) are available whether you turn on Interpolated or not, however not having Interpolated checked reduces the number of settings that need to be played with considerably at the expense of longer render times. We will cover those settings first. Intensity - determines the overall amount of radiosity, with a default of 100%. Changes to this value make no difference to render time but can brighten or darken a scene globally. Indirect Bounces - Once the first ray has been launched this setting adjusts how many further bounces the ray of light makes. Adding Indirect Bounces can slow down render times, but provides a more realistic render. Rays per Evaluation - As shown with the image of the four hemispheres two pages ago, this number directly relates to how detailed the irradiance hemisphere is. Raising this value will slow renders down but give more quality. Start with a very low setting like 6 and use antialiasing to clean your render. Adjust upwards as necessary. Once you check Interpolated, a new set of settings (and two additional toggles - Use Gradients and Use Behind Test) become active. Interpolated only works with the primary rays (surfaces seen directly from the camera). It can use either Monte Carlo or Final Gather rays to generate a radiosity illumination value at the point hit. It generates a hemisphere of these rays, which are evenly distributed but randomized to some extent. Blur Background - provides you with a way to use GI settings that provide a quicker render, but still have a smooth background in the image. If you are using an HDR image it also prevents tight hotspots developing that can cause blotches in your render. Use Transparency - disables transparency calculation when unchecked including clip maps. When Use Transparency is disabled for Monte Carlo or Final Gather, all transparent surfaces are ignored by the evaluation of radiosity. This acts the same as putting all the transparent surfaces into an object and setting it to be Unseen by Radiosity. Page 130

134 Rendering Volumetric Radiosity - Uses volumetrics (HyperVoxels, volumetric lights) as a source for radiosity evaluation. This will slow down render times dramatically so best to avoid unless truly necessary. Ambient Occlusion - When this option is selected, the ambient light is added to the background color when computing radiosity. This allows the ambient light to be occluded. The ambient color will not affect the background color in your rendered images. Directional Rays - When this option is enabled, the radiosity will include illumination from directional sources such as lights, reflections, and transparency. When the option is disabled, the only illumination will come from non-directional sources such as diffuse. Use Gradients - Deprecated in LightWave 11, this setting uses an interpolated gradient to determine the planarity of large flat surfaces in your scene. Use Behind Test - This is used for checking samples that are in the same plane. It s good for things like vinyl albums in a collection or the steps of a staircase but will slow down rendering when presented with many tests, like blades of grass or leaves on trees. Use Bumps - will use bump maps to generate ray samples. Again, this will dramatically slow rendering. Only use if absolutely necessary. Once Interpolated is checked, the following settings become available: Secondary Bounce Rays - A loose rule of thumb suggests that the SBR (Secondary Bounce Rays) value should be a quarter of the RPE (Rays per Evaluation) value. This setting creates additional rays for every primary ray launched. Angular Tolerance - set in degrees. Angular Tolerance is the amount +/- in degrees in which the rays are allowed to vary after hitting a surface. This should be easier for you to control and is more compatible with other rendering programs (such as KRay) that use degrees to control this value. When the Angular Tolerance is set to more than 45 degrees, the behind test will be disabled. For highly uneven surfaces (such as trees or asteroids) this will greatly cut down on the number of radiosity samples in the scene and improve rendering performance. The behind test is used to prevent samples on steps from blending with samples on other steps. Ray Hits corner Angular Tolerance Greater than 45 degrees Page 131

135 Rendering Ray Recursion is the upper limit on the number of Indirect Bounces you are allowed. For example, if you have Ray Recursion set to 1 and Indirect Bounces set to 8, only one radiosity bounce will be calculated. However, if you have Ray Recursion set to 8 and Indirect Bounces set to 4, you will still get 4 bounces of radiosity. Minimum Pixel Spacing - controls the minimum distance in pixels between interpolated radiosity samples. Depending on your scene this might even be low than a single pixel for this setting. Maximum Pixel Spacing - controls the maximum distance in pixels between interpolated radiosity samples. The value should be fairly large (100 pixels or more) to speed up rendering. Large values can also cut down on visible noise in large flat areas of the scene. Multiplier - This value affects final rendering time inasmuch as you can choose to record the radiosity solution for your scene at a factor of the overall rendered image size. For instance, if you are rendering for a large print project and you have your radiosity Multiplier set at its 100 % default, radiosity calculation could take a long time. Setting the multiplier to a lower value will remove detail, but the increase in speed might make that worthwhile, especially if the final image won t be seen close-up. Radiosity Caching Cache Radiosity - Saves radiosity data for subsequent render passes and frames, which can significantly reduce rendering time. The results can be inaccurate if objects or lights are animated, but this option works particularly well with scenes like a walk-through in which only the camera moves. Once Cache is checked, several Preprocess options are available. By default it is set to Automatic, which adds samples to the cache as and when necessary, but there are additional options in the dropdown: Always - will force the radiosity to be preprocessed even if the current frame already exists in the cache. Useful for when you have multiple cameras and you want to bake the cache for all of them. Never - Uses the cache on disk and doesn t add to it. Samples will still be generated for areas previously unseen and saved to the cache. Locked - This is the setting for use when distributed rendering over a network with LightWave. Samples are not written to disk in this mode although the render engine will check there are no holes in the cache. Once you have decided to use Radiosity Caching you will need to Bake the solution for the frames Page 132

136 Rendering of your scene. You can set a Frame Step to only bake every tenth frame, for instance, which will speed up baking considerably and always go in and Bake Radiosity Frame for specific frames that are just not sampled enough. To start a bake, hit the Bake Radiosity Scene button. You will see that a render seems to start however, it s only concerned with the radiosity element of the render and so will skip to the next frame sooner than if it also had to render surfacing, lighting and antialiasing. Cache Radiosity - Turns on the ability to cache radiosity. Cache File - Saves the cache to disk in the specified directory. The cache file name is based on the scene name. If your scene is Test.lws, the cache file will be named Test.lws.cache and placed in the folder you specify. When you click the Clear Radiosity Cache button, only the cache file associated with the open scene will get deleted now. This will allow you to use the same radiosity cache folder for multiple scenes. Reset Cache File Path - Set the cached directory back to the default, if the user changed it to something else. Clear Radiosity Cache - Deletes all files in the cache directory. Bake Radiosity Frame - Bakes a single frame. Bake Radiosity Scene - Bakes a scene file. Caustics Generally, a caustic occurs in the real world when light reflects off a curved surface or refracts through a transparent surface so that it is focused on a small area. Light through a wine glass is a good example. With a more complex surface, the caustic can create a random pattern like those seen on the floor and sides of a swimming pool. Bottle Image Courtesy Clive Biley, Tag Creative, Decanter and Glass Copyright Cheng Kai Page 133

137 Rendering Activate Enable Caustics to render this effect in your scene. Cache Caustics saves caustics data for subsequent render passes and frames, which can significantly reduce rendering time. The results can be inaccurate if objects or lights are animated, but this option works particularly well with scenes like a walk-through in which only the camera moves. Intensity is a scaling factor on the brightness of the caustics. If a light shines on a disco ball, casting dots of light around a room, and you want to halve the intensity of the light source without affecting the brightness of the dots, you can just double the caustic Intensity to compensate. This parameter does not affect rendering time nor interact with the other two caustics settings. Accuracy ( ) determines how many caustic rays are fired to compute the caustics. The time needed for the initial rendering pass is directly proportional to the Accuracy setting, so you can reduce the setting to speed up rendering. However, if you need to accurately render sharp-edged or intricate caustic patterns, you may need to increase the value. You may also need to increase it if the reflecting or refracting objects in the scene are small compared to their distances from the light source - they are a harder target for the rays to hit. Softness (1 to 100) determines how many nearby caustic rays to take into account when rendering. It affects the speed of the polygon rendering pass (as opposed to the caustics preprocessing). The more rays are averaged together, the more blurry the effect. If the caustics are too noisy, this setting can be increased. Reducing it will produce sharper caustics, which may require a higher Accuracy setting. The default values for Accuracy and Softness should be fine in most cases. Copyright Evgeny Terentyev If you do not want specific lights to contribute to the caustics effect, deactivate the Affect Caustics option in the Light Properties window. Page 134

138 Rendering Render Globals - Camera Tab This tab is where you ll set all the properties for the camera used for your scene. There is always at least one camera in a LightWave scene, but you can have as many as you like, all with their own settings. There are a lot of elements in this window and you should consult the LightWave 10 Surface and Render PDF for further information on different camera types, Focal Lengths and Field Rendering, etc. The most important things to bear in mind are the Resolution you wish to render at, the Antialiasing for your render and the additional effects you wish to use. Page 135

139 Rendering Resolution The Resolution dropdown contains a list of many different preset resolutions that cover many different needs. The Multiplier dropdown allows you to set the chosen resolution with a multiplier of % while keeping all your various settings correct for the multiplier chosen (as opposed to simply doubling the Width and Height numbers, which requires a manual rescaling of sizesensitive elements. Setting the Constrain button will scale the resolution chosen proportionally. Antialiasing LightWave uses a system of Unified Sampling, fully described in the LightWave 11 Addendum, starting page 41. The Getting Started version is the you set the Maximum Samples to the amount you deem necessary for your image and most everything else can be left alone. When rendering, there will be stages where the image seems to be temporarily overwritten with white. This is LightWave looking for places it considers not antialiased enough. If your render ends and most of the image still gets covered in white, even in the latter stages of a render, it s possible that you haven t set the Maximum Samples high enough. Effects This area of the Camera Properties panel consists of three tabs - Motion Effects, Stereography and Page 136

140 Rendering Depth of Field. The first tab is for setting Motion Blur for your objects/camera, but also particles. The effects can be seen in the VPR display mode, but only if you are not in Draft mode (changed in the VPR options window or the Viewport Options dropdown menu). Motion Effects Tab When using a camera to film fast-moving objects, these objects are often blurry. This is because they continue moving while the shutter of the camera is open. It is this feature that LightWave aims to replicate with Motion Blur. Motion blur becomes essential when animating, especially for use with live action. It prevents the crisp quality that normally pervades computer-generated animation and helps an animation appear more fluid. LightWave s motion blur system takes everything that can change over time into account. From shadows, to surfaces, from light intensities to object or camera movement. It accounts for curved motion and does not blur in a linear fashion, but rather following the path that the motion is taking. There are three types of motion blur - Normal, Dithered and Photoreal. Normal and Dithered are legacy motion blur created for a time when rendering took longer, Photoreal provides the best quality blur. Instead of rendering a new pass for each motion blur sample, Photoreal Motion Blur allows for multiple samples within each render pass. To make sure the motion blur is smooth ensure that there are enough samples for the scene and perhaps add additional Motion Blur Passes to the Motion Effects tab. Page 137

141 Rendering Stereo Tab In the middle tab of the three you can set up a stereo view of your scene. This works with Anaglyph glasses and 3D glasses of either an active or passive nature using the method described in the LightWave 11.6 Addendum manual starting on page 299. DOF Tab DOF, or DoF or Depth of Field is a way to duplicate the real world nature of real cameras. In LightWave, by default everything is always in focus so you need to use DoF to give your renders Page 138

142 Rendering more realism. For the example image shown we ve exaggerated the effect to make it more visible in the PDF, but the principle remains the same. Adding Depth of Field also means that more samples are needed for a render so the graininess goes away. All three effects can be applied at the same time. Render Globals - Lights Tab The Lights tab is accessible through Render Globals and also when you are using Lights and hit the keyboard shortcut p. LightWave has nine standard lights and more are available from third party developers. LightWave s basic lights that have been in the software for years are Distant, Point, Spot and Area/Linear. More modern lights include Dome, Spherical and Photometric. Dome is a sampled version of Distant; Spherical is a sampled version of Point and both give soft shadows and are more realistic but take longer to render. Photometric allows the use of.ies files to recreate real-world lights and lights can be looked through using the Light Viewport display mode. In LightWave, lights can affect or not other elements in the scene meaning you have complete control over how they work. The intensity goes from % but you can also set negative values or values vastly higher than 100 % manually. Most lights have a falloff possibility with Inverse Distance ^2 being the most realistic. If you have lit your scene but it s still too dark, add more lights. Don t be tempted to increase the quantity of Ambient Light. Page 139

143 Rendering Render Globals - Output Tab This is where you decide just how you want to save your renders when you hit F10 to render your scene. You can save multiple image types - animations, still frames, alpha images - all at the same time at no extra cost in rendering time. If you are distributed rendering, you will not be able to save an animation, only still frames. To choose a save type, just click on the tick box associated with it. This will open a file requester where you can choose a base filename and location. The file extension will be added according to your setting in the Output Filename Format dropdown menu. If you wish to change the base filename, just click on the File Type button (Animation, Image, Alpha) a second time. This will open the File Requester again and you can change the base name. You can turn on and turn off any of the save types without losing their settings. Save Animation Once you have chosen a base name for your animation you can choose a type. It s a good idea to save an animation only in addition to, not instead of a file sequence. The reason is in the case of a crash during a render you will have to re-render an animation from the start again, but with an image sequence you will be able to resume from the last frame rendered. A file sequence is easily made into an animation using LightWave. Simply use the sequence as a background image sequence in an empty scene. If you set the resolution the same as the original frame size and save an animation, you will rapidly convert your still frames into an animation. Page 140

144 Rendering Special Animation Types Although most of the animation file types are self-explanatory, there are some that may require some explanation. All are covered in the LightWave 10 Surface and Render manual. Saving Individual Images You have several choices for saving images, you can either save them at 32-bit to have an included alpha, for those formats that support it; in 24-bit with no alpha or with a separate alpha file (by turning on the Save Alpha image). If you are working with HDR images, you have the choice some formats support built-in alphas, some don t (LightWave s native FLX, EXR and the SGI 64-bit do; Cineon, Radiance and TIFF LogLuv don t). If you choose to save a separate alpha, be sure it has a different name than your color image. Selecting a Filename Format When you save an RGB or alpha image, LightWave will append a numbered extension to the base name, based upon the frame rendered. The file naming convention is determined by the Output Filename Format dropdown menu setting. Name will be replaced with the base name. The number one with the leading zeros (e.g., 0001) indicates the number of digits used for the numerical sequence. The standard PC file extension will replace.xxx. For example, with Name001, frame 34 of an animation using the base name Explode would save out as Explode034. Using Name0001.xxx, Explode as the base name, and a Targa file format, the 256th frame would save an image named Explode0256.tga. The.xxx formats are recommended for general use, since most applications and operating systems require that you use the proper filename extension. A filename example appears to the right of the Save buttons. The last used Output Filename Format is saved as the default for the next time you start LightWave. Fader Alpha If you plan to use an alpha channel generated by LightWave along with an external video fader or linear keyer, or a different compositing program, you may need to activate Fader Alpha Mode in the Compositing tab of the Effects window (keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F7). Certain switchers can use an alpha image as a fade control. When you select this mode, LightWave computes the saved RGB images and alpha images a bit differently. Transparent items in an RGB image render in a more intensified manner, with rough, aliased edges. Lens flares appear overblown. In alpha images, however, the transparency levels render properly so that the appropriate transparency levels are used when you combine the RGB images with the alpha channel. Page 141

145 Rendering Do not use this mode if you plan to digitally composite images in LightWave or another digital compositing package that allows for additive compositing. Render Frame To render the current frame, determined by the position of the frame slider, choose Render > Render Frame or press F9. The Render Status window is a modal window. You may not be able to access options in other LightWave windows until it is closed. Render Scene Select Render> Render Scene to render the entire scene using the defined range of frames on the Render Globals Panel, or press F10. Make sure Auto Frame Advance is set as desired. Render Selected Object You can render only the selected object(s) at the current frame by choosing Render > Sel Object or hitting F11. Unselected objects can still cast shadows or be seen in reflections on the rendered objects. Mac-specific Rendering If you are using LightWave on a Mac, Apple s Exposé will interfere with LightWave s default rendering keyboard shortcuts. You can use Cmd-r to launch a render, but it s probably better, and easier, to change the default Exposé shortcuts. Page 142

146 Rendering Rendering for Print The Print Camera is fully described in the LightWave 11.6 Addendum starting on page 311. Rendering a Limited Region You can use a limited region to mark off a specific rectangular area to be rendered. This is a great feature when you wish to test render an area of the frame without rendering the entire image. The Limited Region setting is available on the Render tab in Layout, and can be called up with the l key (lower case L). Using the keyboard shortcut will switch between three different modes - Limited Region with Borders, Limited Region No Border and no Limited Region. When you have Limited Region on, you will see either a yellow dotted bounding box or a solid yellow bounding box surrounding your camera view, dragging the large corner handles allows you to resize the limited region you wish to set, while clicking and dragging the LMB inside the bounding box allows you to move the Limited Region area around your camera view. To stop editing the Limited Region, choose the Move tool with the keyboard shortcut t. There is also an interface for numerically editing the Limited Region if you would like more control. Called Set Limited Region it can be found just under the Limited Region button on the Render tab. Page 143

147 Rendering Above: What Layout looks like, Middle: Render Limited Region Borders, Right: Render Limited Region No Borders Limited Region with Borders - This renders the area you have selected but puts it onto a black background at the image size you have chosen in the Camera Properties window. Limited Region No Border - This creates a render at the size you set in the Limited Region setting. Setting a limited region when in Camera View and in VPR mode is a good idea because by default the Limited Region is 100 % the size of a render. This means VPR won t be rendering stuff outside the camera view, but visible in Layout s interface. In OpenGL Camera View we can see darker bars down the side of the screen representing the areas the camera can t see. Going into VPR starts rendering across the whole viewport. Hit l and get this, faster: Page 144

148 Rendering Tips for Successful Rendering Make yourself a checklist to go over before you hit F9, and especially F10. Is everything good to go? Have you done a final save of scene and objects? Enough antialiasing? Textures all working, no missing images? No deformed polygons that will cause trouble? And so on. Never, ever do your primary render to an animation format; always render to a sequence of still images and compile into an animation afterwards. Page 145

149 Rendering Running Tutorial - Truck We re going to do a tutorial that runs through this Getting Started guide. Feel free to skip it if you know what you are doing, but even though it s basic it might give you a surprise on some of the things you can achieve. Things you ll see in this part of the tutorial: Textured Environment Fog Depth of Field Motion Blur Zoom Factor Envelopes 1) Our animation take places at night but the truck clearly visible even in the distance. We need to add some fog in LightWave to reduce visibility. Hit Ctrl-F5 and add an image of a night sky to your scene by choosing Textured Environment from the Add Environment dropdown. You should pick an image that s big enough to fill your rendered image without pixelization. Here we ve chosen an image that s roughly 3000 x In Textured Environment there is a Texture button. Click on it and choose Image as the Layer Type you want to use. There s no need to adjust any settings. Page 146

150 Rendering 2) That gives us a starry sky, but still no limit to visibility. Click on the next tab of the Effects window - Volumetrics. We want to set our Fog Type to Nonlinear 2 and make our Fog Color black (000, 000, 000). Our viewport should go black and we won t be able to see anything. This is because the Min Distance is set to 0 m and Max is at 1 m. Try changing Min to somewhere around 30 m and Max will jump up, but only to m, so up that to something like 100 m. You should just see our truck faded in the distance. If you slide your timeline along now you should see the truck getting more and more defined the closer it gets to the camera and once past starts getting foggy again. Page 147

151 Rendering 3) Our camera is going to try to focus on the front of the truck as it zooms past, so we ll need depth of field. Hit F4 to divide your Layout screen in two. The lefthand viewport should still be Camera View/VPR, but the righthand side might be Perspective. We want to set it to Top, so move your mouse over the right viewport and hit numpad 2. Now open the Camera Properties window and on the third tab at the bottom, turn on DOF. In the Top viewport you should see a dotted circle surrounding the camera icon. This is your Focal Distance. Change it to about 10 m so that the focus is on the middle of the road and to exaggerate the look, drop the F-Stop down to 1. To see the DoF in the Camera View OpenGL or VPR mode, go to the Viewport Options dropdown menu and click DOF/MBlur Preview. If you are in VPR mode, make sure that Draft Mode in that menu is unchecked. Page 148

152 Rendering 4) We need to add Motion Blur for our truck as well! If it s going fast, the camera isn t going to catch it in full focus. In the Camera Properties window go to the first tab at the bottom of the window - Motion Effects. Set Motion Blur to Photoreal. Change the Blur Length to 100 %. 5) The last thing we want to do is zoom in on the How s my Driving? message on the back of the truck. We are going to need an envelope on the DOF > Focal Length, and on the Zoom Page 149

153 Rendering Factor for the camera. Zoom Factor is in the dropdown just under where it says Perspective Camera and is normally set to Lens Focal Length. This is not something we can walk through step-by-step with precise numbers since your scene diverges from the one in this guide by quite a lot already. Suffice to say, the camera turns right to follow the truck out of shot and zooms in on the back of the truck, with the DOF Focal Distance changing to make the back of the truck come into focus. Add 30 extra frames to the scene to give the viewer additional time to appreciate the text, but still try to get your zoom and focus in by about ) Okay, our animation is sorted. The director is happy. We need to be absolutely sure to save the scene and objects and that everything is nicely contained in our Content Directory. Next, we need to check the tabs on Render Globals. In General, is our frame range set correctly? In the Cameras tab, set the resolution for your scene from the dropdown list of resolutions (HDTV (1280x720) is a nice compromise between size of the frame and speed of rendering). Then go to the Output tab and see what options you want to use here. Save RGB should be checked, always, and when you do you will be asked where the images are to be rendered to. You can then set your filetype. Here perhaps the best bet is to use LW_PNG24. Save Animation can be checked as well if you d like LightWave to create an AVI ready to watch, but don t only have Save Animation checked. Save the scene again and then hit F10. Congratulations, you re rendering your first LightWave animation! Going Further The truck still needs a license plate added for a start and the temporary images aren t exactly suitable livery. Page 150

154 Information For More Information and Updates For updates to LightWave, this manual and all the latest LightWave news including a gallery, tutorials, articles about LightWave artists and new third-party plugins visit: Learning Resources For help learning LightWave visit: Sales Inquiries and General LightWave Support For questions related to Pre-Sales, Licensing, Installation, or General LightWave software support: support@lightwave3d.com Website: LightWave Bugs & Feature Requests Bug Reports: lw-bugs@newtek.com with the subject heading: BUG: Description Feature Requests: lw-features@newtek.com with the subject heading: FEATURE: Description Bug report s should have attached Zip-archived content (scenes, objects, images) simplified down to just show the problem. The file size for any attachments should not exceed 10 MB. LightWave Community To connect with other LightWave artists for tips, tricks and tutorials, visit our online community: Copyright and Trademarks LightWave and LightWave 3D are registered trademarks of NewTek, Inc. Copyright NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved. ZBrush and GoZ are registered trademarks of Pixologic, Inc. Maya, MotionBuilder and FBX are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Page 151

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