Lightwave 8.2 Embedded scene Fix

[maks]

Thanks for the tip, it works :)

[ThomasHelzle]

I already have a LWMASTERS8.cfg in that directory with the LW_LScriptCommander and the WINDOWCONFIGURE.LSC in it.
Wouldn't I get problems with other stuff if I make this write protected?

Do you know what the mechanism is for plugins to be registered as masters?

pmG should definitely look into this, maybe it is just a recompile of the plugin with the latest LW-SDK and some defines?

For now I think I will stick with PointOvenPro - too many times I lost my work with the plugins...

Thanks for the infos!

[a3dmind]

:thumbsup:
Worked for me.
Don't know if I broke something but i'm sure the connection works now.
I already had the cfg file. I just added those lines at the end
Thanks for the help

a3dmind

[heynewt]

I can get Messiah to work with LW 8.3 fine just getting objects to connect. But if I save the LW scene ( I guess that's what's called embedded) and I re-load it, the objects say they are there, but the mesh is not actually there. If I switch to Messiah, same problem. The objects says it's there, but there is no actual mesh there.

I tried the above fix, but it did not help the problem. I've tested this with several scenes.

Anyone know how to get LW 8.3 to work - and save with - Messiah?

I've never used point oven. I guess it's time to learn something new.

[DMack]

I did that LWMasters.cfg thing a while back but I'm pretty sure it caused other problems in LW itself....I can't remember the details so I'm probably not being very helpful - sorry.

For me, Point Oven Pro works best. Network rendering and other issues make it a more stable pipeline (just as an example, with embedded scens half the time, the link is not saved so you have to keep checking that the last time you saved you actually got te LW scene with the embedded PMG stuff - you can tell by file size). I'm just hoping that POP will continue to be developed/supported LONGER term - see my 'A Serious Grumble' thread.

Heynewt - Look into POP....I think it's like $99 so not too much of a gamble. It partially works with layered objects but in the main, works very well. If you're not sure what it does.....you use messah animate as a standalone application....do your super duper animation, then select all your meshes that get deformed and use POP (within animate) to write baked files (files that contain data on where all the points are at each frame). You then load up your LW scene, with your characters and apply a POP reader to those characters, that re-plays where all the points in all your models should be....It means that your scene files remain small and manageable, fast to load and are far far far less prone to plugins failing, links being lost etc. It also removes a certain level of 'oh LW has been upgraded and now the link doesn't work.....' The plugin can automatically build a LW scene that contains the objects and automatically assigns the correct bake files (actually mdd's) but this does not work with layered files....hence 'partially works' at the start of my explanation. Hope that helps and I haven't told you what you already know ;)

[heynewt]

The plugin can automatically build a LW scene that contains the objects and automatically assigns the correct bake files (actually mdd's) but this does not work with layered files....hence 'partially works' at the start of my explanation. Hope that helps and I haven't told you what you already know ;)

DMack,

Thanks so much for that. No, I did NOT know how POP worked, though I had heard people talk about it. I'm rendering this Messiah/LW scene now, and 3 CPUs are sitting idle because I can't network it. Arrghh. I'm also really concerned about locking that .cfg file. There has to be a reason it's built the way it's built (though, gosh, how hard could it be to code LW so that it writes that Messiah handler to that .cfg file each time?).

I'm going to look at POP now. Isn't there a "lite" version or something? And I read your other "grumble" post. Great point on SB!! I do hope that guy continues to support POP.

Robert

[DMack]

Hey Robert,

3 CPU's being wasted! POP for $99 seems like a good investment ;) . Not sure what the limitations are for the lite version.

If you don't hafve layered objects, it's a real breeze...if you do, then it's only a little bothersome to manually assign the files.

A good purchase IMO.

[ThomasHelzle]

PointOven Light has only the very simple plugins for messiah to bake points and play back mdds. It doesn't write scenefiles nor does it contain plugins for other software.
For Lightwave, you can use it's own MDD Reader (mdd is a Lightwave format in the end) but this can be very slow and memory intensive since the whole mdd is loaded into ram.
PointOven only reads the data for the current frame on the fly instead and therefore is very fast even with mdds that are some hundreds of megabyte in size (I had a job with very heavy CAD files lately = big mdd files but no single problem at all with rendering over the network).

PointOven is surely the best thing you can get for a good nights sleep when under production pressure ;)

+ You only need to have one Software open.
+ failure-rate drops to something like Zero.
+ Changes to the animation only need you to re-bake from messiah (fast). In Lightwave, just move the timeslider and you're up to date :)
+ really works as advertised with the supported software.

PO = The best messiah plugin available IMO, the next version will be even more impressive...
And no, I don't get money for this - I just love it ;)

Cheeers,

[heynewt]

C'mon Thomas, tell us how you really feel :)

So in a standard working situation you would have both programs open. If something in your animation didn't look quite right in LW, then you could go into Messiah, make a tweak, bake the motion, overwriting the old .mdd file, and you wouldn't have to exit LW. It would update automatically when you hit the slider? If so, that's pretty cool.

Robert


PointOven Light has only the very simple plugins for messiah to bake points and play back mdds. It doesn't write scenefiles nor does it contain plugins for other software.
For Lightwave, you can use it's own MDD Reader (mdd is a Lightwave format in the end) but this can be very slow and memory intensive since the whole mdd is loaded into ram.
PointOven only reads the data for the current frame on the fly instead and therefore is very fast even with mdds that are some hundreds of megabyte in size (I had a job with very heavy CAD files lately = big mdd files but no single problem at all with rendering over the network).

PointOven is surely the best thing you can get for a good nights sleep when under production pressure ;)

+ You only need to have one Software open.
+ failure-rate drops to something like Zero.
+ Changes to the animation only need you to re-bake from messiah (fast). In Lightwave, just move the timeslider and you're up to date :)
+ really works as advertised with the supported software.

PO = The best messiah plugin available IMO, the next version will be even more impressive...
And no, I don't get money for this - I just love it ;)

Cheeers,

[DMack]

That is exactly how it can work.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yep, that is how it works - but I normally don't have both apps open (that is one of the main advantages for me), only sometimes in the correction phase.
But even more cool is if you work with an animator that bakes out the motion files to the server from his machine and you work on another machine with Lightwave. He just gives you a yell if new files are written and magically on your machine you have the new animation without even closing Lightwave.

So sweet.

Ok, I'll stop now :p

Cheers,

[DMack]

I also normally only have messiah:animate open...do all my work, then bake and checlkk at the end. Nice to keep things really simple :)

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