Lightwave 3D - Showroom & Tutorials

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by Muadib

Heya all,

I have uploaded a new LW tutorial on Aminet regarding advanced and more realistic lighting.

It is located here: http://aminet.net/package/gfx/3d/lw_AdvLights_tut

Have fun!!

Cool, thanks.

[Pyromania]

Thanx for the new LW tutorial SnkBitten.

[d4rk3lf]

Muad is the man!
We are short on spice, but I'll see he will get some, for his enormous effort for the Amiga 3D community.

Thanks mate... still haven't look at tutorial, but very soon I will.

[klx300r]

@ Muadib

awesome stuff I'm praying I can get some spare time to get back into some ideas I had for new ships in Elite back in the day on Lightwave on my Amiga...I wish I could retire early or win a lottery

[Muadib]

Thanks guys, let me know if there is any mistake etc.

Now, who wouldn't want to make Frontier movies back in the day?... Or better, why not make a collaborative one now?



muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[d4rk3lf]

Collaborative animation would be an awesome project, but I am afraid I am not skilled enough to contribute (yet).
However, I'dd gladly watch the progress.

Few questions:
1) Ok, so I rendered my first animation (iff images). How can I preview it on my (winuae) Amiga? What software? And how do I transfer to PC? I tried with After Effects, but it doesn't suport iff's.

2) When you create a keyframe in Lightwave, can you create just a single key (for example X rotation) without creating keys for all move/position/scale? Here is a simple example. Spaceship is raising on Y (up) in 50 frames. First key at 0, last at 50 frames. I want that he start rotates at 25 frame, and to stop rotate at 75 frame. However at frame 50, he already have key for rotation. Can I delete that key?

Cheers.

[Muadib]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Collaborative animation would be an awesome project, but I am afraid I am not skilled enough to contribute (yet).
However, I'dd gladly watch the progress.

Any skill level is welcome, darkelf! And since we will be doing it primarily for our fun, we learn in the process!

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Few questions:
1) Ok, so I rendered my first animation (iff images). How can I preview it on my (winuae) Amiga? What software? And how do I transfer to PC? I tried with After Effects, but it doesn't suport iff's.

1. Okay, here's what I do in both real and emulated Amigas:

• When the scene is rendered, I use ImageFX's AutoFX hook program to convert the IFF24 pics to IFF HAM8.*
• When its done, I then use Scala Infochannel's Animlab to convert the IFF HAM8 pics to Anim8L, which is the fastest Anim format I have tested so far.
• Scala can then playback the anim, and you can also add music in the Background.

* I usually save LW output pics in .tif format, since I can then transfer them to a PC and use a video editing program to join them into an .avi or .mov for internet uploading.

Another approach is to convert the IFF24 pics to Anim5 directly in AutoFX.

A third approach is to use Wildfire to convert IFF24 pics to yafa anims, which then can be played back with YafaPlayer.

I've also heard about Art Department Pro that can do such conversions. The choices are numerous.

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

2) When you create a keyframe in Lightwave, can you create just a single key (for example X rotation) without creating keys for all move/position/scale? Here is a simple example. Spaceship is raising on Y (up) in 50 frames. First key at 0, last at 50 frames. I want that he start rotates at 25 frame, and to stop rotate at 75 frame. However at frame 50, he already have key for rotation. Can I delete that key?
Cheers.

Yes, you can delete it, and then create frames at 25 and 75.
You can also see the motion curves for each coord channel inside Motion Graph editor by pressing 'm'.

[d4rk3lf]

Thanks a lot Muad.
Crazy I didn't saw all the formats lightwave can export. I did it with tga.

Ok, so here is my first Lightwave anim.
(model of the spaceship is from lightwave library)
[ Show youtube player ]

[Muadib]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Thanks a lot Muad.
Crazy I didn't saw all the formats lightwave can export. I did it with tga.

Ok, so here is my first Lightwave anim.
(model of the spaceship is from lightwave library)
[ Show youtube player ]

That's great, Darkelf, really nice motion!
Keep it up!

muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[d4rk3lf]

Thanks Muad!
Without your help, my progress would me much slower.

I've tried to fix some thigs that bothers me most.
- Added one red animated light, to simulate like alarm effect. Now, the ship is not in full dark all the time.
- Fixed the ship movement, so it starts to raise a bit slower, not fast like before
- some small improvements

Here it is:
[ Show youtube player ]

Hope it's a little better now.

I'll move on the next animation, I hope, for first anim, this wasn't so bad. Maybe, for hte next anim, some flying through asteroid fields, with much faster/aggresive camera and movement then this. Or maybe some totally other theme (fantasy medieval)... I'll see yet.
Hopefully I'll have some free time soon.

Now questions
-

Originally Posted by Muadib

Any skill level is welcome, darkelf!
Yes, you can delete it, and then create frames at 25 and 75.
You can also see the motion curves for each coord channel inside Motion Graph editor by pressing 'm'.

1) I tried this now when I was fixing the motion of the ship.
When I delete key at Y position, it also deletes on Z and X position (maybe even on rotation). Can I delete keyframe at just Y position, not affecting others?
----------

2) I can't find particles on Lightwave? Do Lightwave have them at all, or they are plugins? Maybe they are in modeler (that I barelly touched so far).

3) Did Amiga had some composite app, so I can render several passes (with alpha) in Lightwave, and just slap them on top of eachother? Or they did that with hardware video mixers, back at the time?

Thanks in advance, and cheers to all!

[Muadib]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Thanks Muad!
Without your help, my progress would me much slower.

I've tried to fix some thigs that bothers me most.
- Added one red animated light, to simulate like alarm effect. Now, the ship is not in full dark all the time.
- Fixed the ship movement, so it starts to raise a bit slower, not fast like before
- some small improvements

Here it is:
[ Show youtube player ]

Hope it's a little better now.

I'll move on the next animation, I hope, for first anim, this wasn't so bad. Maybe, for hte next anim, some flying through asteroid fields, with much faster/aggresive camera and movement then this. Or maybe some totally other theme (fantasy medieval)... I'll see yet.
Hopefully I'll have some free time soon.

Now questions
-



1) I tried this now when I was fixing the motion of the ship.
When I delete key at Y position, it also deletes on Z and X position (maybe even on rotation). Can I delete keyframe at just Y position, not affecting others?
----------

2) I can't find particles on Lightwave? Do Lightwave have them at all, or they are plugins? Maybe they are in modeler (that I barelly touched so far).

3) Did Amiga had some composite app, so I can render several passes (with alpha) in Lightwave, and just slap them on top of eachother? Or they did that with hardware video mixers, back at the time?

Thanks in advance, and cheers to all!

Really cool upgrade Darkelf, I love how the camera shakes when the ship engages its main engines!

Now answers... ;-)

1. No, unfortunately, in LW 5 you can either keyframe everything or nothing

2. Particle systems do not exist inside LW's internal engine, you can however use Sparks for particlesFX. Thats what I used in my BSG-Viper animation.

3. How exactly do you mean? Like having a BG video and putting e.g. 3D on top?

muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[d4rk3lf]

Thanks

Originally Posted by Muadib

How exactly do you mean? Like having a BG video and putting e.g. 3D on top?

Yeah, some compositing application like (Adobe) Premiere and After Effects, or Combustion, Nuke, Fussion... etc
Not sure if they existed at early nineteen, or they did all composites with real hardware video mixers.

Oh.. I just remembered... maybe Skala app can do that stuff... gotta try it.

[Muadib]

Well, LW has some such capabilities. Check Effects tab -> Compositing.
Its rather simple to put a BG, try it out. You have to add an image/sequence in Images tab first.

Scala has some neat fading/cutting effects, rather cool!

muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[midwan]

I think some of these items would be great to include in some sort of tutorial as well... Maybe something to show in the upcoming Amiga Ireland event, or others?

[Muadib]

Of course. Depending on the time available we 'll be having at the event, we will visit all aspects the program and the Amiga offers coupled with the stages of producing a complete animation/production.

muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[midwan]

cool!

[Marchie]

The reason LW was created was to add 3D to video projects with the Video Toaster, so surely it should be quite easy to composite 3D into videos and do various effects.

That said, I am running LW with a VT system and don't know the first thing about using any of it except Lightwave...

Harking back to one of your earlier posts Maudib - a non-Facebook group would be a really good thing in my view.

And nice work Darkelf, keep it up!

[Marchie]

Hey, a quick questch -

I'm (finally) editing my vid on creating characters in Amiga LW and I want to make sure I include useful info - for those of you (if any) who are interested in creating characters in LW, what tools/steps would you most like to see explained?

[Muadib]

Originally Posted by Marchie

Hey, a quick questch -

I'm (finally) editing my vid on creating characters in Amiga LW and I want to make sure I include useful info - for those of you (if any) who are interested in creating characters in LW, what tools/steps would you most like to see explained?

That would be great!
For me it would be best to explain the coupling with time and sound, like do you use sound from the beginning? Plus, how do you make keyframing fall to the right exact moment you want it to happen?

Thank you for that!

And a general, website question:
How does 'ars.org' sound for the Amiga Raytracing Society site/forum?

muadib
Amiga Raytracing Society

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Marchie

And nice work Darkelf, keep it up!

Thanks man.
I hope, soon I'll have some time to animate something more dynamic/drammatic

Originally Posted by Marchie

The reason LW was created was to add 3D to video projects with the Video Toaster, so surely it should be quite easy to composite 3D into videos and do various effects.

Thanks for clarification. I guessed it's something like that.
The reason why I asked, is more like 3D animation compose over 3D animation.
That way, for example, if I want to make a crowd of 3D people marching, or huge fleet of battleships, I don't need to render them all at once, but 10, then 10, then 10 (with various distance), and compose them over each other.
And the other importang thing, I'd like to do (don't know if it's possible) is a simple color correction. Some brightness, contrast, simple color balance, maybe additive mode (for particles). Maybe I am asking much.
I can do all that in After Effects, with lightwave render passes But I would feel bad if I do it, because it's not an Amiga app, and it would be cheating (imho).

As for characters, I am so far for these things (I'll first try some simple riggs), but whaever you made, I'll gladly watch.