MentalFish

Archive for the ‘Computer Graphics’ Category

Here is the first doodle of my series of space ship jam sessions. 37 minutes. I think it is a fighter of sorts.

Would a space ship a day keep the doctor away? Considering doing a ship doodle each day, a one hour session of LightWave speed modeling.

Here is a doodle that took a day to finish:

This is a free LScript for LightWave to remove keyframes, so I call it Keyfragger. Peow peow! Its pretty much the evil twin of the Motion Baker script which has been renamed Keystove, just to stay in character.

Download LScript

The Gnomon Workshop has released a training DVD by Aristomenis (Meni) Tsirbas on how to do good camera work in Layout. Based on the preview video it looks quite nice.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/887/Camera-Fundamentals-for-Layout

Rob Powers is showing off LightWave 10, speedy OpenGL and Viewport Preview Render.

The Foundry has just released NukeX v6.1 with a preview build of the 64-bit version for Mac. The GUI has gotten an overhaul as well and it is lookin’ sharp.

http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/articles/2010/07/30/113/nuke-61-and-nukex-61-released/

NewTek has announced LightWave 10 at SIGGRAPH and I like what I see and hear. The message is clear, the aesthetics are in place. Good job NewTek!

Check out the nice brochure: http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/images/lw10/LightWave1010.pdf

Just in time for SIGGRAPH, we are happy to announce that Polygon Islands v2.0 is out and available for purchase. Alexandre Labedade ( aka Alexx ) have created a new version of this tool, and it has so many improvements it became a 2.0 release.

It is faster and got more features than the first version:

• Added taper and bend tool
• User definable deformation center (“pivot”)
• Preview of single islands when deforming
• Creation of morphs based on current deformation
• Creation of weight maps

Available now: http://mentalfish.com/store/polygon-islands/

I have been adding (leeching from Mike Green ) some LScript documentation to the LightWiki reference section, and adding some of my own LScripts to it.
http://www.lightwiki.com/Category:LScript

I was looking for some documentation on how to let the user specify a folder, and found it by chance in a page listing all the changes to the LW 9.5 SDK.
http://www.lightwiki.com/Getfolder
http://www.lightwiki.com/Ctlfoldername

I’ll keep adding info to the wiki so anyone else that come across the same issues I have can find some tips and tricks there.

Dang, almost one month since last post. Oh well, I’ll try to make it up with some upcoming cool things, first up is the new Iron Maiden music video where all the VFX was done by Darkside Animation. Space-flight animation and all rendering done in LightWave (of course ) while Eddie was animated in Messiah. I love the song and the video (with all its cheese) but I have some crits though. The surfacing of Eddie seems a bit too uniform, especially the specular sheen and as such looks very CG, and there is something off in the way he moves in some parts of the video. Still, awesome awesome, two thumbs up and many replays.

Also, got to say I like the look and design of the dude’s armor, a cross between StarWars and Battlestar Galactica. Cool stuff.

Now the big question is, should I pay 800 NOK (~=130 USD) to go to the Iron Maiden concert here in town?