lwpro@internet.online

Welcome to another installment of "lwpro@internet.online." The World Wide Web is growing fast, and when it comes to LightWave, there have been many advances as well. If you subscribe, like I do, to the LightWave mailing list, you may have noticed some really frantic activity over the past month. Thankfully, most people have broken away from the whining and whimpering about whose system is bigger, better and faster; now they're concentrating on getting involved in some cool animations. With the final 4.0 release hitting the streets, there are fewer bugs and problems, which means that all we have left to do is use the programs! I have my final 4.0 and am pretty pleased with it. Every once in a while I think back to the 1.0 and 2.0 LightWave days. My, how far we've come.

Anyway, let's get to what's been happening on the Net. On the mailing list, there're all kinds of topics to choose from. People have been posting questions about field rendering, glow features, laser beams, pools of water and all kinds of stuff to choose from. On the newsgroup list, comp.graphics.apps.lightwave, many of the same topics have been popping up, as well as many others. Topics of discussion include women in animation (Mom would be proud to know), cracks (never a good subject), and LightWave in commercial television (e.g. blue M&Ms and Space above and Beyond).[Editor's Note: For feature coverage of Space and the M&Ms--plus exclusive tutorials from the animators behind their LightWave effects--see the November 1995 and January 1996 issues of Video Toaster User, respectively--JG]

There's been chat about almost everything, so picking topics for this month's article was relatively easy.

You Slinky Thing

Oddly enough, I noticed a lot of talk about creating a Slinky in LightWave. Some people responded with ideas, others with complete parameters for modeling the object. I've played around in Modeler a bit, and this is what I came up with:

Enter Modeler, Select Box (Objects), and in the numeric requester (n), enter these values:

                    Low       High     Segments
X                  176mm     253mm           1
Y                   0          1mm           1
Z                   0           0            1

Next, select Lathe (Multiply) and then Numeric (n). Enter these values first:

Start          0
End            6600
Sides          800
Offset         200mm
Axis           Y
Center         0,0,0

This will produce a short slinky. The slinky object can be used for just, well, sitting around. Save it as "slinkyshort.lwo". Slinkyshort.lwo will also be used to morph to the next slinky object, which should be created by applying these values to the original polygon:

Start          0
End            6600
Sides          800
Offset         1.5 m
Axis           Y
Center         0,0,0

These settings will result in a tall slinky that has been pulled apart. Save this object as "slinkytall.lwo".

In Layout, load the short and tall slinky objects. In the Objects panel, select slinkyshort.lwo as the current object, then select slinkytall.lwo as the Metamorph Target.

Click the (E) button next to Metamorph Amount. Create a keyframe at 5. Create another at frame 50, set the value to 100%, and select Spline Controls (s) and input a Tension of 1.0. At frame five, set spline tension to 1.0 also. Click OK.

Select slinkytall.lwo as the current object. Bring Object Dissolve to 100%

Finally, set the Last Frame (Scene Panel) to 50 and save the scene.

Make a preview, and watch the slinky grow!

We morphed this object because it will look more realistic in an animation. We could have easily loaded just the slinkytall.lwo object, and stretched it on the Y-axis over time, but the results would look like it was stretched. The morph, on the other hand, give the appearance of springlike movement. And speaking of springs, try varying the above settings for Box and Lathe to create a nice looking spring or coil.

But we all know that slinkies walk down stairs, and it's a wonderful thing, right? It's fun for a girl and a boy, so read on.

I experimented with a series of morphs--from short slinky to bent slinky to tall slinky--and it just wasn't looking right. So, along came bones. The image in the color pages shows the final bent slinky a la bones. Figure 1 shows the bone structure I set up for a wonderful toy. I set up four base bones to anchor the slinky when it bends. I configured a hierarchy such that if I decided to move the base to make the slinky jump and come to life, the other bones would follow. Now let's see who can make it walk down all those stairs.

Other Interesting Topics

There have been a number of posts on the LightWave mailing list about 4.0's new Glow feature and field rendering. By now, if you have been keeping tabs on the mailing list, you'll see that the Glow option seems to flicker when used in conjunction with field rendering. I'll find out more about this and include the information in an upcoming article. And, with that, since it will be a more of a technical column, I'll include information about color matching and LightWave. It seems a whole discussion has started regarding LightWave, the PAR, the Toaster and NTSC video signals.

A few people on the LightWave newsgroup were discussing the proper way to make a snake slither. After your snake is modeled, set up and size one bone. From there, use the Add Child Bone (=) feature. Turn off the Move functions X, Y, Z, then turn off the Pitch and Bank for the rotation.

Move the bones back and forth from the head on back. There you go--a slithering snake. However, this procedure would take a long time, so taking a step further, add the bones in a Inverse Kinematics chain and just move the null. Check out LIGHTWAVEPRO author Mark Thompson's LightWave in.focus, Volume 1 training tape for a great tutorial along these lines.

Another person asked how to make random stars. If you are using Amiga LightWave, you'll have the Points to Polygon macro. If you are using PC LightWave, use the Points to Polygon function located in the Custom pop-up in the Tools menu (make sure you add all of the Modeler plug-ins first). In either case, make random points in Modeler on a very large scale and use the Points to Polygons function to create single point polygons (particles). For added measure, make two sets offset from each other. Under the objects panel in Layout, select one set of stars with Small Particle/Line size. Set the other to Medium. This will add variation to your star sizes when rendered. Place a fractal noise reflection map on one of the star objects to give the stars a shimmer.

Bookmarks

Here's a list of some interesting LightWave-related Web sites for you to check out:

http://www.cabot.nf.ca:80/~sean/
http://www.creativedir.com/
http://www.iomega.com/
http://www.lei.net:8080/dml/digitalsite2/digitalsite.html
http://www.mt-inc.com/MT.html
http://www.ci.chi.il.us/
http://www.lightside.com/~dani/
http://www.winternet.com/~derekb/
http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/3D-animate/
http://info.acm.com/~joyces/homepage.html

If you or anyone you know has a cool LightWave-related Web site, please contact me with the information so I can include it in an upcoming article.

Remember to check out the LightWave newsgroup and mailing list when you can, and don't be afraid to post a query, even if you feel it's a dumb one. No question is dumb if it's going to help you understand how to become a better animator.