NEW weekly tut and tool thread !

#1

Well the old threads were looking a lil stale ! So on a suggestion of minus i though having a weekly tut and tool thread would be nice ! well start it on monday maybe with mikes cloth tut hes getting together feel free to post suggestions or chip in with a tut of your own ! keep bringing the ideas !

#2

I would like to see a charcater rig setup that the community can work on collectively where it can be downloaded played with and dissected by all. I realize that there are a million possible ways of rigging and some people will poo poo the idea just based on that alone. But I still think there are some of us that could learn a lot from something like this.

Tom

#3

the rig idea is good. I’m not quite ready with the cloth thing so until then maybe someone else has an idea…

#4

I’d like to see a tutorial on animation set-up of rigid body models. Moving pivot points, setting up goals, nulls.

I ask because i’m trying to do a homage to From Software’s mech designs and can’t figure out how to set up the parenting properly for animation…:love:

#5

w00t! – This is great news! – I could see a lot of learning come of this. Could this place possibly be any better? This is something I believe will also drive in a lot more traffic to the Lightwave forum. (equals more talent / ideas). :thumbsup:

#6

yes indeed!
great idea, i think more luring than the older “tutorial threads” coz you’ll have to come here every week to get the news! (like we didn’t already check this forum at least twice per day…)

I think the rigid body rig is a great idea!

what i’d like to know is how to make a good walking cycle once you’ve got a good rig (let’s say they give you a human rig, how do you do a really good walk cycle?)

#7

Hi all,
Below is a copy of a “pseudo tut” I just wrote for “Perpendicular Viewports”. It’s about using one of my old scripts “Move&Align”, to construct a Construction Plane.
This was only the 2nd time I ever saw someone ask about it, so I never “formalized” a tutorial.
I know It’s a little complicated without pics - but I think you’d get the grasp after seeing the images that show how it works.

…

Hey guys.
I made a plugin that lets you do a Construction Plane through a workaround. It’s called : Move&Align
http://www.m2estudios.com/move_align.htm (edit-to put direct link)

There’s an explanation of how to use it when you click through the link on the page, but what you’d need to do is a couple of steps and is a little complicated without pictures. Assume all of your geometry is in Layer 1:

  1. copy the polygon (Poly-A) you wish to have perpendicular to an axis into layer 2. (Poly-B)
  2. create a plane in Layer 3 with it’s normal down that axis. (Poly-C)
  3. in Layer 1 select Poly-A, put Poly-C in background. Run the Move&Align script, select Yes-Yes-LAYER-(your option).

What it will do is move & rotate the entire layer so your selected polygon in Layer 1 has it’s spatial center centered on your “reference polygon” in the background, as well as having the normals parallel, either postively or inverted.

So you do what you gotta do. So long as you DO NOT MOVE OR ROTATE YOUR POLYGON IN LAYER ONE!!! :thumbsdow
Or if do, make damn sure you write down the amount and angle of change, cause you gotta put it back EXACTLY the same. Because to put Layer 1 back, you must:

  1. select, again Poly-A
  2. Put Poly-B, this time, in the Background
  3. Run the script with the same selections, except the last is always +

And your entire Layer will be back where it was, with whatever changes you made.

I know it’s a bit of a pain, but after I made the script, I realized I could do this with it. :thumbsup:
The steps aren’t too bad once you get the hang of it, and a heck of a lot easier than some expressions set-ups I’ve done! :slight_smile:

Obviously you should try it on an object or something that’s not to killer.

Because it rotates every point in the Layer, it can be slow if you have major mesh.

Another option is to just use the copy (Poly-B) in Layer 2 for your alterations, then rotate Layer 2 back to “normal” based upon Poly-A in Layer 1. Then copy and paste your changes from Layer 2 to Layer 1.
This way is a bit less scary, and a little simpler, but obviously you don’t have the rest of your mesh in the layer to work with.

Anyway, I’ll answer any questions I can, if any if you decide to try it.

#8

after the character rig it will be awesome, great, awesome, to have the character move a little bit around, and some MotionMixer stuff, if it,s not to much. even a scene will be fantastic, if not a tutorial.
anyway thanx a lot, u rock

#9

Hmm if there are no other ideas or tuts ready for a weekly tool… I do vote we post info’s on Cmans “Move&Align” plugin. I was the one who asked for the construction planes, though unfortunately I haven’t had the time to get to try out the plugin. I won’t be able to get Lightwave time for the next couple days probably. Has anyone else given this a go? – The benefits for example would be that you could make an object like a cylinder with various bevels… and then select the base of that cylinder and then using this plugin… attach it perfectly to a polygon so that it will protrude straight out.

Sounds usefull to me :slight_smile:

#10

Excellent… I’ve gotten it to work. :slight_smile:
So far I have found that it works best for me to just copy the polygon with the normal I like to another layer… and then move the geometry I want to Align, into yet another layer. From there just make the alignment and then copy that all back to the first layer. It really isn’t a pain at all.

This kinda free’d up my work flow in that if I have an idea for a “chunk” I want to protrude out from a normal, I don’t have to worry about aligning it. I just get right to work designing my “chunk”, and from there I can attach it later, with a little resize first even if desired. This is great!

Cman… this was the first plug-in that I’ve looked into of yours. I’m relativly new to the LightWave toolsets so I don’t yet recognize the benefits of a lot of plug-ins over the tools included with LW. That said I have heard a lot of good things about your plug-ins, especially Bandslice. Thanks a lot for making these tools! As soon as I recognize the beauty of Bandslice, i’m sure you can count me in as a customer on that one aswell. :slight_smile:

#11

Before a rig tut i sugest we have a character modeling tut and then use that model for the rig.
Then an animation (black vs white) tut of that character.
(To kep things in the comunity)

#12

hi Minus,
thanks for the compliment. :slight_smile:
There’s lots of cool stuff ot there.

After you’ve used LW a while, you’ll find some thing very frustrating, and you want to automate. That’s where LScript comes in!
I once did a search on Flay.com’s plugin list with “.” Needless to say hundreds of scripts came up. I just spent one afternoon going through and discovered lots of gems! :applause:

Character Rigging/Animation, I’ve been doing that new Lightwave3d7 book, and it’s very very good.
He suggested yoichi’s mirror weights. It took me a few tries to figure out how it worked, but now I’d swear by it too! Very excellent for doing weights if you’re working with a “mirrored” model. :slight_smile:
I agree with Daymeare.
But maybe we could vote on a good one already on the net, and then work together to go through it, and help each other?

#13

So what happened to the old tutorial sticky thread? There were quite a few good links in it.

Why not repost all those links within a single post here so they can be accessed.

Good Idea, Chewey, why not just do something yourself?

hmm…?? ???

Okay here they are in a short form with brief comments and credits to the submitters!

First of all if you are completely clueless on the basics of Lightwave and feel you just have to post a really simple, basic question that you can’t take the time to figure out on your own, this link should be required reading for you

http://www.kolumbus.fi/erkki.halkka/LWFAQ/Smart_Q_01.html

Of course, no list would be complete without
the ultimate in Lightwave newbie help,
the actual Lightwave 7.5 pdf manual!
Who woulda thunk it?
submitted by Chewey
ftp.newtek.com/pub/Patches/LightWave_Support/lw75

A tutorial for setting up leg skelegons in modeler
and converting and rigging them in layout with a
reverse foot setup.
submitted by Mike RB
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/rtut.html

UV texturing in Lightwave By Max Glick
submitted by Fuzer
http://www.borderequals0.org/articles/uv_intro.cfm

Todd Grimes updated character tutorial:
submitted by Mike RB
http://www.evil-plan.com/CS_01.html

Philip Meyer’s JD Bottle tutorial. submitted by yog
http://www.liquid-arts.de/tech/JD/JD-01.htm

I have a few tutorials on my website, feel free to check 'em out:
submitted by Mgfx
http://www.mgfx.net

BAROBA’s tutorials
submitted by BAROBA
www.lwg3d.com

more nice rigging rigging tuts !
submitted by Chewey
http://www.pazur.3d.pl/

Another one
submitted by The Ripper
http://lw3dresource.com/links/Tutorials/

this site has some interesting lightwave tutorials.
submitted by [msf]
http://www.niklasindustries.com/tutorials/index.php

Modeling Tutorials
submitted by AnimaLMotheR
http://www.nickscott.fsnet.co.uk/

nice modeling videos in the tutorial section of this site:
submitted by policarpo
www.trhlogos.dk

lot of great tut’s
submitted by Galo
http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/

Another multi tutorial link site with other stuff!
submitted by Chewey
http://www.3dlinks.com/tutorials_lightwave.cfm

CREATING A SPREADING FLAME by Nick Hatzichristos
submitted by Chewey
http://users.otenet.gr/~nixx/flame_tutorial.htm

heres 2 really quick 7.5 tutorials.
One on getting sliders to behave and hide when not in use,
as well as hooking up more than one value to a single slider.
submitted by Mike RB
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/stut/stut.html

This next one is cool, you can use Motion Mixer weight curves
on overlapping motions to create a pose bank that you can access
by sliders. Pose mixer anyone?
submitted by Mike RB
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/pmtut/pmtut.html

#14

Boy am i glad u reposted those links Chewey. :slight_smile: Good job man. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

#15

Cheweeee :slight_smile:
The man!! :buttrock:

#16

Exceelent thanks chew!

#17

Chewey, those last 2 links got whacked!
(elipses destruction!)

#18

Chewey edit your post with these:

Sliders
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/stut/stut.html

Pose Mixer
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/pmtut/pmtut.html

#19

I’m making some tutorials, well more than tutorials are modeling techniques… you know those little tricks :wink: that we use when we model.

Here are 3 examples, they are not finished but close enough

adding detail

organic

disc to 4 side polys

I think it would be really nice if all of you people share those kind of tricks.

#20

Those last 2 of Adding detail are exactly what Bandslice does! Doh-out of business again! :smiley: -lol

Those are cool tips. Never thought of the patch divisions before!

The organic technique is awesome.
The disc to 4-sided poly you can do with PolySubDivide.

http://www.m2estudios.com/Files/PolySubDivide.zip

It cuts across like that, but without the center split. Try it out! :wink: