Posts Tagged ‘LightWave’
I have added some changes to the polygon islands LScript.
New LScript for you all. One thing to keep in mind is that the script can make Modeler stop recognizing scripts and plugins if it is clicked alot, some bug in LScript I guess.
This is a really simple script, the only thing it does is to set the weight of the currently selected points to 100%.
main {
selmode(DIRECT);
editbegin();
vmap = VMap(VMWEIGHT,0) || error(“Please select a weight map first.”);
foreach(sp, points) {
vmap.setValue(sp, 1.0);
}
editend();
}
Here is a tutorial by Mikael Burman on how to create some nice water effects on a window, by using my UV 2 Morph LScript. The plugin is just a small part of it all, so watch the whole thing and you’ll see the overall coolness. This technique can also be applied to realtime 3D scenarios, animated normal map textures in Unity anyone?
Although Nuke can read FBX files, it’s something reassuring about open text file formats, so I have created an LScript that creates a chan file from the selected item in LightWave.
This is an old and I think my first LScript I made. It keeps things tidy.
Saves increments in a folder and does not overwrite any existing files. If you incremental save your file “myModel.lwo”, this script creates folder “myModel_incr” and adds the file “myModel_001.lwo” to it.
At the next incremental save it will add “myModel_002.lwo”, but you will still be working on the original “myModel.lwo”.
This helps in having a clean incremental history of your work as well as you will always know that “myModel.lwo” is
the actual latest save together with the highest number in the “myModel_incr” folder.
The script looks for the highest numbered file in the _incr folder, and creates a new file, one number higher.
If the file has not been saved yet, it will provide a file requester to specify a destination file.
I have recently worked with Chilton Webb and Rommany Allen in developing a simulator based on the NASA’s Constellation Program architecture. Development was done in Unity while all models was done in LightWave and the majority of them supplied by JF&M.
I think this is a perfect example on how useful game based technologies can be when used industrially. This is something I have been preaching since the release of ShockWave3D and now through the use of Unity. The use of interactive 3D can be applied to anything from product visualization to training and procedure visualization and is applicable to any type of industry, be it onshore, offhore or in space.
Specific examples of usage:
- - Getting to know an area without going there physically
- - Virtual training on dangerous scenarios, i.e. explosions
- - Visualize and train on important procedures, i.e. evacuation of oil rigs
- - Performing virtual fire drills, i.e. what to do in case of a fire in the machine room
- - Visualize buildings and large constructions, i.e. city planning
- - Visualize technical products and solutions, i.e. tools for drilling
- - Showroom presentations of your business and products
Please feel free to drive the Rover by either downloading the Mac version from Apple or download the Windows version from JF&M.
My latest LScript is a motion baker script for LightWave that bakes such things as items animated through Denis Pontonnier’s DP Kit + Node Item Motion and other “non standard” ways of animating in LW.
It also bakes all selected items, and on a test of 100 nulls, it took about 12 seconds to bake them over 100 frames, so 10.000 keys set in total. To make sure that it bakes the correct value, it runs through the timeline once, extracting the values from each selected item, and then afterwards applies those values to the respective channels: position, rotation and scale.
Once it is done baking, it goes back to the frame you were at when triggering the script, nothing grand, but just a little extra touch to make it a nicer workflow. As far as I can tell, this script will bake other tricky animations such as expression based animations and the like. Give it a spin and see if it works in your projects.
Thanks to Mikael Burman for suggesting and testing the script!
Edit: updated the script to have a GUI so you can specify the range of frames to bake.
I have gotten some questions about what the point is with this script, so I am just going to post a little explanation of it here.
One example of where it would be useful, is if you want to add particle effects inside AE instead of in LW. Say you want to add smoke effects to an animation but can’t afford the render time of using HyperVoxels. Just render out the animation without any particle effects or HyperVoxels, place a null in LW of where you want the particles to emit, and then export that to AE and use that as an emitter inside of that application instead.
So if you have a moving locomotive you parent the null to its chimney, export that and the camera. The rendered image sequence from LW would not be 3D but just a plain 2D backdrop of course, with a null and camera that moves correctly according to the rendered sequence.
It is also generally a good workflow to render out passes so you can tweak the end result in AE instead of having to re-render everything. Janus is supposed to be a very good plugin for rendering out passes in LW, but I have not tried it yet myself. http://janus.faulknermano.com/
Also, keep this in mind:
- 1 meter in LW == 100 pixels in AE
- Check that the x, y, z coordinates of the plane in AE is set to the same as the one in LW (with some potential reversal of some axis, but if something is placed at 0,0,0 in LW it should be the same in AE (which it rarely is by default when a layer is set to 3D)
- Make sure the zoom level on the camera matches. In AE it is specified as pixels and degrees in parenthesis ie. (45.2°). Set this zoom to match the horizontal FOV in LW and you should be good to go.
This is an LScript for transferring animation data from LightWave to After Effects. It is done by exporting the position and rotation of the selected item in LW into a .ma file (ASCII Maya file). At the same time, After Effects is either launched or brought to front and told to open that specific file. This makes it feel like you have a direct connection between the two applications.
It always exports it as a camera so that AE does not create a whole bunch of solids for the models inside the .ma file. Think of it as exporting a null that just so happens to look like a camera 
What do you think, should the script also export scale as well, or is it not needed?
Something weird happens with the sound in the end. I might re-record it, but it works for now: