I'm stumped trying to animate a digger machine with track and tread, like a military tank. I've tried the motion path export, animated 1 tread around the racetrack path, created the treads with rail clone. I've created a layer for each of the 34 treads, used follower in the motion related pluggin, very long process, with limited success, it's the same as a train with cars along a path, it seems there should be an easier way. anyone with a solution? or point me to a tutorial. Thanks:help:

This is sumthing ive been working on over the last couple of days. Hopefully I will get time to finish it. Tell me what you guy's think?>.......
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Hello all, this is an animation I "completed" a while back. Due to time constraints it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. But now I have plans to revamp it pretty heavily: possible plans are to reanimate some scenes, add more scenes, re-render, tweak colors, and play with the editing.

Animation and general timing are by far my weakest areas, so I need quite a bit of help there. But pointers and critiques in any other areas are just as welcome and appreciated.

The animation can be seen here: http://blip.tv/file/1054416

The compression for internet purposes is pretty lousy, so I've also attached a high quality still. The still is an example of the re-rendering and color tweaknig I plan to do.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
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This is a model and some renders i did for fun this weekend. Trying out some black and white. Comments welcome.:D
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Hi everyone

this is my latest project. This is a steamboat from the 1900s and this is part of a much larger project.
I'll try to post the updates here with some frequency.
What is sad is that everything will quite probably be rendered in XSI (or maybe Max) for sure it won't be rendered in lightwave (workflow reasons only).
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I get network red x on my network icon in vista.

I am not able to connect to network and most of the times also not able to connect to internet... but that varies alot from day to day....

I have really problems here....

http://www.xoxideforums.com/networki...ou-server.html
and
http://windows.ittoolbox.com/groups/...ection-1726991
and the threads there...

this solves some but man that even do not make it propper as now and then I dall of the network... and it is up!

All other machines can access!


Please if someone have an thought here please respond.

Hello,
It's been quite long time since I posted something. But lack of time was my best excuse. I decided to work on my reel for 2008 and I got allready first piece completed. Now its time for the secon piece.
I decided to make WIP here to get some feedback, critics and motivation.

This piece is called greed. The life of a noble knight that fought many battles and monsters, completed numerous quests, and dangerous tasks, finaly came to an end.
And he wasn't defeated by enemies, sword or claws of evil monster. He was beaten by his own weakness - greed. After slaining the monster and comming back with the tresure chest he stuck in the swamps. With the chest full of gold he was too heavy to move, and starts slowly to sunk into swamps, but he decided not to let it go, and died from exhaustion, but still holding his treasure.
This is the story, and I will try to recreate it by making a little 360 diorama that will show my hardsurface and organic modeling skills and texturing :)
I won't have much time, so the updates will be quite small, but it will be defenetely finished.

This is the latest update.




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I'd need to do several complex morphs, from deformed blob to complex object to another complex object, for instance.

LightWave seems to be *****y when it comes to point order. When ILM did Terminator 2, they modelled the different stages of the T-1000 seperately. Each of these objects had the same amount of points. Then they had a software that interpolated the point order so when Stage 1 morphed into Stage 2, it didn't end up in a mess.

Is there something like that for LightWave? Or for any other 3D app out there?
In LightWave, you have to model the morph out of the base mesh, so you get the point order right. But that is sort of a real pain in the rear section.

Here's what I would need. I have two different objects with the same point count, but not with the same point order because during the modelling process it got messed up anyway. I'd now like to be able to select one point of Object 1, select another one on Object 2 and tell them to morph together. Like you can do with 2D morphing software, where you select several reference points that then morph together.



Then, second achievement of T2, ILM used a software called Body Sock. If two seperate objects came close together, creating ugly seams and hard edges, Body Sock computed a smooth transition, which also helped them creating some of the morph animations. There is one shot in T2 where a piece of the T-1000 morphs into a blob and then moves towards his shoe and merges with it. It's kind of the effect you can achieve with Metaballs, but with real geometry.



Can it even be done? They did that in 1991, now its 2008, 17 goddamn years passed. It just has to be possible.
ILM also created a Software called Make Sticky, that made a texture stick to the geometry of an object, so that the texture deforms when the object deforms. You get the idea, today we call that UV mapping. Now what happened to the other two pieces of software?

I've created these glasses as a test for a picture that I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to fill them with liquid, but I've no idea how to do that.
The first picture has the completed martini glass and can, the second has the completed big bottle. When I try to fill them it just looks like they are filled with a paper cutout. Any ideas will help.
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I've been told that a vector displacement map is a true mesh displacement, as opposed to normal maps which are more of a shading trick like a bump map.

If this is so, when applying a vector map, through Denis Pontonnier's Vector Map node in his DPKit, does a mesh displacement also need to be selected or activated for the object?

Then, thinking about it, a greyscale image used for a bump map could also be applied to a high res mesh as a displacement... if anyone can give any guidance I'd be grateful, especially regarding vector displacements?

I'm new to this whole area of mesh sculpting and vector displacement painting and looking at how to apply this in Lightwave.

PS.
If this is a case of RTFM please say so. I was looking for general direction but also personal experiences or advice.

I've recently had LW crash when trying to do a couple different things.

When trying to load an obj file in LW9.3, I get "microsoft C++ runtime library error, abnormal termination" and LW crashes. I've seen on another thread someone had the same problem and they reinstalled dll's from microsoft, and it fixed the problem. I've done that, but the problem still exists.
Works fine in LW8 though. I've even copied the 3dconv.p from my LW8 folder to the LW9.3 folder and reinstalled that plugin. Doesn't help.

At the same time this problem showed up, anytime I try to use a plugin from the Worley Polk collection, or Sasquatch, LW freezes for about 15 seconds then closes. No error messages. Both LW9.3 and LW8 do this.


Seems like it's not a LW problem, but something to do with windows. I suspect windows update overwrote some dll's that even reinstalling the dll library won't fix. Anyone have a clue what to do apart from reinstalling windows?

(July 4, 2008) - Its Art complies 10 great shorts and along with interviews with their directors.
www.itsartmag.com/features/tenshorts/tenshortmovies.html

Hey everyone,

As you might have read on the rigging forum I'm doing an animation of someone snoring in a tent. I'm quite happy with the animation so far and I'm moving on to lighting.

The problem is that I can't seem to make a convincing night scene. It's all way to dark. Can someone help me out to make this a believable night scene?

I've attached a render so you can see what's the lighting like now.

Cheers!
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hey all.

back in 05 and 06 i worked on a mechwarrior short film, known to many as mechwarriormovie.com, which btw is no longer there.
some may even wondered what happened to it. and well truth is my partner Carl and I just feel out of doing it, we had other things to do.
another fact however is that we did alot of work, putting it together that when i looked back on it a few weeks back i thought to myself that i should definatly have finished that.
being 2008 now, i have learned a bit more since those days and i am taking up the duty of finishing my work on the film, maybe even complete it.

any. so i will be posting up pics and images here for your pleasure and enjoyment and if someone happens to want to give some good advice i always love those.

A little bit about the project and whats done
Carl and I worked both on a script to a short but enjoyable mech moc battle. idea was to have a band of mercs(in this case three pilots) to engage an enemy unit and take it out. idea was simple and in no time, after several revisions, we had a script and soon after a shot-list.

Carl then proceeded to make an "animatic" of the short. in the mean time i took mech models from various sources, which only actually included on guys models, known as "Pawel Czarnecki". most of the models i took right from his cob files, and converted for lightwave, fixed em up, textured and rigged them for animation. we have 9 in total but only 8 will be in the film.
some of the models i had to add some detail to and one i remodeled completely.

anyway. work now continues on this project and i plan to do all the pilot shots live action, as well as the general animation, using lightwave.

First image is of the Mech lineup, featuring the Mechs to be used in the short film.


link to an old script. much revising to be done still.
MechWarriorShort_ScriptRev11

some close ups of the MadCat with a new texture i did today.




and two animations i did, first one is of a simple walk cycle of the madcat with the camera panning around it. second is just the walk cycle of the fafnir, ya need to play it in loop mode.
MadCatCCC
FafnirWalk4

Any comments, questions, anything, are welcome.

Also, for anyone who would like to view the "animatic" I have please PM me and i will send you the link.

****some models by Pawel Czarnecki, sorry for no credit in images.*****
Jack.
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Alright...had a project I finished up last week where I got to test out LWCAD v3 beta roof tool. All I can say is AMAZING! The shot I have won't convey too much, but this was a decently complex roof, obviously more then what Viktor showed in his demo of the tool, and it worked beautifully. I set a hot key for the tool, set up the roof tiles how I wanted on one of the initial roof polys, and from then on...it was just a matter of hot keying>selecting a roof poly in perspective...hot keying>selecting a roof poly in perspective...etc. Very cool tool.
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Can anyone verify that the "Slates" procedural in the Renderman Collection is a bit broken? I find that the texture starts at 0 in the Z axis, as in, it wont produce any texture at all in the negative range unless you change the position of the texture. It also seems to degrade the further out it goes in the positive Z and negative X directions. At about 8 meters out in the positive Z, the pattern quickly changes its nice light and dark randomness to a heavy contrasted version that seems to go on forever.
It seems both the standard procedural as well as the nodal version react the same. I am wondering if anyone else gets this same error and if it is a LW version problem or the texture itself.

Currently using LW 9.3 - RMan Collection 32-bit.
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Greetings SpinQuader's,

I just wanted to show you the result of the work I did on the music video "Give Me Your Soul" by King Diamond a while back. I worked through a director but did most parts of it's CG and post production.

For the ones interested, here's a link to the exclusive uncut version on my site: http://www.framecore.se/demoarea_kingdiamond_eng.htm


Oh, and most of it is of course made in Lightwave 9.3 ;)

Best Regards.
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Hi,

I have been grappling, literally for years with Lightwave and Grey scale displacement Maps in the Nodal editor.

I have followed Proton's video on how to make a Nodal Displacement tree. I have pushed and pulled Lightwave until the early hours, but still I don't see displacement in Lightwave. I know that it can be achieved, as I have seen the resulting rendered images here and on other sites.

Is there anyone out there who can please share a scene / object file that has a working version of a Nodal Displacement tree included please.

This would make my day

DaveLEWIS

Hello,

it's time to post the latest Interior archviz we've made. This is single project of these 3 images for a client, done in about week or so, bit of back and forth with the clients wants and needs, but here they are...

Naturally these are again scaled down a little, and rendered with Kray.

C&C apreciated, even though these are already "finished works".










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This is so far what i got......i still got to make the sword, ear rings, hair, and still need to fix up her face some more..... i made a 360 degree spin animation you can check out here:

http://one.xthost.info/renderings/Ivy%20360spin.avi

Please note: you have to click the button called "Download Ivy 360spin.avi"

Thanks for any comments you submit.