150529

LightWave 2015

Update 3

(Replaces and updates all previous 2015 documentation)

LightWave 2015

Contents

Contents

CONTENTS

Installation
System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Upgrading From a Prior Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Software Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Conventions
Running the Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
About the Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Key LightWave Terms and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Licensing
How it works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Feedback
Feedback Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
New to 2015
Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 1- Welcome to LightWave

Introduction to Layout
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Working With The Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Color Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
LightWave 3D Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Import/Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
LightWave 3D Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
LightWaves Virtual World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
World and Local Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Changing Your Point of View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Taking Aim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Resetting Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Bone Weight Shade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Bone X-Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Viewport Display Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Recipe for a Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Selecting Multiple Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Selecting by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Deselecting Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
The Layout Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Schematic View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

CONTENTS

Close/Save Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Chapter 2 - Camera
Camera Basics
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Multiple Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Matching Perspective to Camera or Light View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
2015

Independent Viewport Cameras and Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

CameraSelector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
2015

Perspective Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Example - New Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Camera Types
Classic Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Perspective Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Zoom Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Advanced Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Orthographic Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Real Lens Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Surface Baking Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Shift Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Camera Settings
Maximum Render Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Constrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
2015

Overscan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Frame Aspect Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

About Unified Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Sampling Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Reconstruction Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Soft Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Additional Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Antialiasing Using Edge Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Motion Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
2015

Deformation Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Rolling Shutter and Motion Blur Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Example: Rolling Shutter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Stereoscopic Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Depth of Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Depth of Field/Motion Blur Viewport Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

CONTENTS

Classic Camera Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Chapter 3 - Light
Introduction
Lighting Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Basic Light Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Ambient Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Light Properties
Light Color and Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Basic Tab settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Light Display Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Shadows Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Objects Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Advanced Light Properties
Intensity Falloff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Negative Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
The Envelope Please . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Lens Flares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Lens Streaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Lens Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Volumetric Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Light Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Volumetric Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Luxigons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Light Types
Saving Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Light Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Distant Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Point Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Linear and Area Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Spherical Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Dome Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Photometric Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Chapter 4 - Scene Management

Introduction
Organizing your Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Clear Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

2015

Save and Clear/Exit Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

CONTENTS

Load Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Load Items From Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Revert Scene to Last Saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
File Management
Load Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Load Object Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Load Multiple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Load Motion File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Recent Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save Scene As . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save Scene Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save Scene Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Save Current Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Save Object Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Save Object Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Save All Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Save Trans Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Save Endomorph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Save Current Llight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Save Motion File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Organizing Your Items: List Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Load Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
2015

Improvements to Load from Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Load Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Object Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Null . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Convert Powergons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Clone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Clear Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

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LightWave 2015

Interchange
Importing Items into Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

CONTENTS

2015

Alembic Import Improved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Alembic Import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

FBX and Collada Import Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Mocap_BVH_Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
2015

Collada and FBX Export Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

2015

Export Alembic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

2015

MD Multi Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Save 4.0, 5.6, 6.0, 9.2 Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Export Scene As VRML97 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Shockwave 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Image List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Package Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Graph Editor
Editing Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
2015

Adding keys to curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Graph Editor: Adjusting the Curve Edit Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Toolbar Selection Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Toolbar Keys Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Toolbar Footprints Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Toolbar Autofit Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Toolbar Display Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Graph Editor Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Cancel Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Channel Bin Pop-up Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Curve Edit Window Pop-up Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Key Pop-up Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Graph Editor - Editing Color Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Graph Editor: Curves Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Incoming Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Graph Editor: Expressions Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Using Expressions - Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Graph Editor: Modifier Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Scene Editor
Classic Scene Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
LScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

CONTENTS

Edit Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

Chapter 5 - Object Properties

Introduction
Add Custom Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Geometry Tab
Object Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
ObjList . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
ObjectSequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Using SubPatch Objects in Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
SubPatch Display and Render Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Meta-Primitive Display and Render Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Custom Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Depth of Field Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
HyperVoxels Drawing (HV Custom Object) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
IK Booster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Camera Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Effector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Frame Rate Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Object Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Item Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
LScript and LScript/RT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Level-of-Detail Mesh Refinement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Protractor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Range Finder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Ruler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
SockMonkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Speedometer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Motion Capture Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
ShowCurve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Sliders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Visor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Example: Setting up Visor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
VRML97 Custom Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Deform Tab
Morph Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Displacement Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Displacement Map Order Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Displacement Mapped Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Displacement Mapping Versus Bump Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Edit Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

CONTENTS

Bump Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Add Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Curve Conform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Deform Displacement Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Deform: Bend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
Deform: Pole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Deform: Shear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Deform: Taper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Deform: Twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Deform: Vortex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Effector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
FX_Hardlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
FX_Hardlink Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
FX_MetaLink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
FX Metalink Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
HyperVoxels Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Inertia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Joint Morph Plus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Lazy Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
LScript and LScript/RT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
2015

MD Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

2015

MD Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

MD_MetaPlug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
MD_MetaPlug_Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Morph Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
NormalDisplacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Python Lazy Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Relativity Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
Serpent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Sock Monkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
MD Multi Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Spline Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Object Displacement: Morph Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Morph Mixer: Morph List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Render Tab
2015 Clip Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Matte Object Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Alpha Channel Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Object Dissolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

CONTENTS

Distance Dissolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Unseen By Rays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Unaffected By Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Unseen By Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Object Shadow Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Receive Shadows and HyperVoxels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Edges Tab
Edge/Outline/Line/Point Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
2015

New Edge Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Lights Tab
Object Exclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Global Illumination Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Global Illumination Tab
FX Tab
Add FX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Instancer Tab
Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
Python City Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Chapter 6 - Previsualization
Previsualization
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Creating a Preview Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Layout Transport Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
VPR (Viewport Preview Renderer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Creating a VPR Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
3D Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
VIPER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Preview Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
Virtual Studio
About Virtual Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
The Device Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
The Control Booth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
The Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Example: Car Shoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
3Dconnexion Example Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Virtual Studio Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
Move.me Example Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

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LightWave 2015

Virtual Camera Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520

CONTENTS

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

Chapter 7 - Rigging and Animation

Rigging
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
2015

Genoma 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531

Setup Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531

Bone Edit Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
Bones On/Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Enable IK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Enable Deform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Child Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Draw Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Draw Child Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Convert Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
Joints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Joint Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
Tip Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
Bone Twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Scale Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
Split Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
Merge Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
UnParent Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Copy Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Mirror Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Rename Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
Import RIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Export RIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562
Animation
Motions Options Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Alembic Motion Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Camera Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Cruise Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
CurveConstraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
Cyclist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Effector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570

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LightWave 2015

Expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

CONTENTS

Flocking - Item Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

Follower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
FX_CLink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
FX_Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
FX_Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
Jolt! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
LeadtheFollower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
LScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Lscript/RT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
master . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
MM_MotionDriver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Motion Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Nodal Motion Modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
2015

Parenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588

QuaternionBooster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Sun Spot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Textured Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Controllers and Limits Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Bone Properties Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
Use Bones From Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Clear All bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Falloff type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Use Morphed Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Faster Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Current bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Bone Active . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Rest Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Rest Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Rest Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Bone Weight Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Use Weight Map Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Weight Normalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Multiply Strength by Rest Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Limited Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Joint Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Joint Comp for Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Muscle Flexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604

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LightWave 2015

Parental Muscle Flexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604

CONTENTS

Twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
IK Boost Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
IKB Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
IK Booster and the Dope Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
Keyframing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
Navigating a Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Playing a Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Creating Keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
Creating and Modifying Keys Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641
Editing Motion Paths Directly in a Viewport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Move TCB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Deleting Keyframes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644
Delete Motion Key Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644
Delete Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
Threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
Saving and Loading Motion Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647
DopeTrack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
2015

Multiselect Copy/Paste keys in DopeTrack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

BioVision Motion Capture Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656

Keyframer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
Move Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665
Path Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
Rotate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
Rotate Pivot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668
Add to Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
Stretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670
Squash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670
Add to Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
Coordinate System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Avoiding Gimbal Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Reset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Light Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Sliders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Spline Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678
Edit Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
Motion Options Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Motion Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683

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LightWave 2015

More on X Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706

CONTENTS

MDD Multi-Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707

Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
2015

Align and Distribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713

Nodal Metalink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714

Relativity
What is Relativity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715
The Relativity Morph Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
The Relativity Expression Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
Dr. Item Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Dr. Equation Maker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Dr. Wheel Rotator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
Dr. Follower - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
Dr. Oscillator - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735
Dr. Delayer - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
Dr. Gear Grinder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
Dr. Cycler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
Dr. Motion Blender - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
Dr. Blend Machinist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738
Dr. Dist Maintainer - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738
Dr. Event Maker - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739
Dr. Camera Shaker - Multi-slot professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
Dr. Morph-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
Dr. Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
Dr. Matcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
Dr. MoveVec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
Dr. Snake Maker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
Spline Control
Spline Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
How to Create the Spline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
2015

Modeler Spline for Spline Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745

How to View the Spline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746

Getting Started with Spline Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749
Going Further . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752
Curve to Spline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Export Spline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Example: Curve to Spline and Spline Instancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Raycast Node
Raycast Node for Motion , Displacements and Instancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 758
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 758

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LightWave 2015

Going Further . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761

CONTENTS

2015

Example: Using 2015s Inside RayCast Node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762

Chapter 8 - Instancing
About Instancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
Getting Started with Instancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769
Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 772
Surfacing Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Example: Monitor Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791

Chapter 9 - Dynamics
Bullet Dynamics
About Bullet Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 796
2015

Example: Getting started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797

2015

Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799

2015

Bullet Item Properties Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801

Item Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803

2015 World Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806

Rigid, Static and Kinematic Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807

Parts Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
Example: Choreograph your destruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811
Deforming Body Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 814
Example: Getting started with Deforming Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
2015

Bullet Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

2015

Example: First Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

2015

General Constraint Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 821

2015

Point to Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822

Example - Point to Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823

2015

Hinge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
Example - Hinge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 826

2015

Slider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 828
Example - Slider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 829

2015

Cone Twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831

Example - Cone Twisty Snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 832

2015

Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834
Example - Mars Rover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834

2015

6 DoF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
Example - 6 DoF Camera Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835
Example - Non-object Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837

Forcefield, Vortex and Explosion Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837

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LightWave 2015

Example: Swirling Leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 840

CONTENTS

Bullet Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844

Bullet and Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844
Bullet and Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844
Bullet and FiberFX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 845
Fracture
Fracture in Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 848
Flocking
About Flocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 850
Using Flocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851
Setting up a Simple Flock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851
Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853
Path Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 857
Flocking Nodally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
Example: Chasing a Flock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863
Using Objects as Goals or Avoids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
Example: Missile Launcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 866
Example: Avoid and Attract Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869
Example: Mecha Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872
FX Dynamics
Adding Dynamics to your Scene and Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 878
FX Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 878
Object Properties: Dynamics Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883
Cloth Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 884
Soft Body Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 902
Hard Body Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 912
ParticleFX (Emitter) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 925
Dynamics: Collision Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 937
Dynamics: Gravity Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 944
Dynamics: Wind Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 945
Additional Dynamics Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949
FX Linker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 952
FX Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953
FX_Hardlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953
FX_MetaLink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 955
FX Metalink Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 956
ParticleFX DynamicLinker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 957
ParticleFX_Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 957
FX_Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958

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LightWave 2015

Chapter 10 - FiberFX

CONTENTS

2015

CyHair Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962

Overview of controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963

FiberFX Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 965
Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968
Styling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 973
Bundle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 977
Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 978
Shading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 982
Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 986
Edit Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990

Chapter 11 - Environments
Backdrop Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994
Volumetrics and Fog Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 998
Normal Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000
Volumetric Antialiasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1002
Ground Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003
SkyTracer2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1005
Skygen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1016
HyperVoxels
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1018
Blending HyperVoxels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1032
Pixie Dust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1048

Chapter 12 - Interchange Tools

2015

Alembic Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1051

Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1052

GoZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1054
Setting Up GoZ for LightWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1055
2015

Multi-Tool Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1057

Example: Using ZBrush to Edit Morph Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1057

Example: Converting ZBrush Fibermeshes to FiberFX guides . . . . . . . . . . . . 1060

Additional GoZ Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1063
2015

FBX Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064

2015

OBJ Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064

Unity Interchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1065

Example: Texturing in Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1066
Additional Unity Interchange notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1070
Example: Realtime Visualization with Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1072

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LightWave 2015

Example: LightMaps in Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1078

CONTENTS

2015

After Effects Interchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081

DPX (Digital Picture Exchange) Image Loader/Saver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083

Chapter 13 - Customizing LightWave

Customizing Layout
Layout Edit Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1085
Edit Menu Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1086
Edit Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087
Window Config Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1089
Content Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1121
Navigation Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1126
Schematic View Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1127
2015

Scene Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1128

Interface Color Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1129

2015

-d Startup Option for Modeler and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1129

Layout Startup Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1130

Customizing Layout Viewport Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1130
Customizing Camera Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1130

Chapter 14 - Introduction to Modeler

Modeler
Introduction to Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1132
Components of a 3D Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1132
Modeling in 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1133
Points, Polygons, and Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1133
Selection Mode: Points, Edges and Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1135
Edge Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1138
Polygon Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1140
Interface
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1144
File Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1149
Importing an Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1150
Exporting Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155
Edit Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1157
Redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1158
Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1158
Maintaining Key Mapping Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1160
Edit Menu Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1160
Syncmesh Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1161

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LightWave 2015

Example: Rapid Sofa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1164

CONTENTS

Edit Modeler Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1165

Custom Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1166
General Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1167
Curve Divisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1168
Subpatch Divisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1168
Sub-D Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1168
Metaball Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1169
Symmetry Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1169
Image Cache Maximum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1169
OBJ Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1169
Color Space Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1169
Display Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1172
GL Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1179
Viewports Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1181
Rendering Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1183
Upright Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1187
Titlebar Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1187
Independent Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1188
Independent Visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1188
Backdrop Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1188
2015

Interface Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1191

Units Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1195

Font Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1197
Windows Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1198
Layer Browser Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1202
2015 Vertex Map Panel

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1204

Viewports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1207
Save View Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1208
Resetting Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1208
Bottom Edge Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1209
Modes: Action Center Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1210
Numeric Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211
Make Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211
Symmetry Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211
Surface: Change Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1213
VMap Shortcut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1214

Chapter 15 - Create Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1216
Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1218
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LightWave 2015

Ball . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1223

CONTENTS

Cone Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1232

Capsule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1239
Toroid Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1243
Unit Primitives Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1245
Bubbles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1245
Platonic Solid Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1249
Wedge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1252
Gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1253
Gears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1254
Gemstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1259
SuperQuadric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1262
Parametric Surface Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1264
Plot 2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1265
Equilateral Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1266
StarSphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1267
2015

OS Font Support in Modeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1269

Manage Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1269

Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1270
Multi Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1275
Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1280
Text Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1282
Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1284
Spray Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1285
Stipple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1288
Random Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1289
Pen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1290
Line Pen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1292
Edges 2 Poly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1292
Make Polygon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1292
Points to Polys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1294
Metaballs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1294
Meta Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1297
Sketch Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1300
Sketching Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1301
Bezier Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303
Spline Draw Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1305
Spline Cage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1312
Plot 1D Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1314

Chapter 16 - Modify Tab

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1316

CONTENTS

Falloff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1316

2015 Texture added to Falloffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1324

Move Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1324

Drag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1325
Snap Drag Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1326
Tweak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1327
Center Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1328
DragNet Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1328
Magnet Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1329
Shear Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1332
Axis Translate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1332
Align . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1334
Aligner Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1335
Rest On Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1336
Align to Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1337
Center All... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1337
Center X, Y, Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1337
Center Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1338
Move Plus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1338
Translate Plus Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1339
Rove Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1342
2015

Point Normal Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1345

Untangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1346
Rotate Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1347
Axis Rotate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1348
Bend Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1349
Twist Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1351
Dangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1353
Vortex Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1354
Rotate Any Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1355
Rotate HPB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1357
Rotate About Normal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1358
Rotate Arbitrary Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1359
Rotate to Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1360
Rotate to Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1361
Rotate Morph Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1362
Stretch Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1363
Size Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1365
Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1366
Axis Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1367

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Taper Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1367

CONTENTS

Taper Constrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1369

2015

Segment Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1369

Heat Shrink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1373

Spline Guide Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1376
Jitter Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1379
Set Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1381
Fit to Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1381
Background Conform (BG Conform) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1382
Absolute Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383
Pole Evenly Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383
Pole Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1385
Scale Morph Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1388
Smooth Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1389
Center Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1389
Center Stretch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1390
Smooth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1390
Quantize Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1391
Wrap Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1393

Chapter 17 - Multiply Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1395
Bevel Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1395
2015

Chamfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1401

Rounder Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1402

2015

Extrude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1412

2015

Lathe Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1414

Smooth Shift Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1416

Smooth Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1418
Multishift Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1419
Thicken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1423
Extender Plus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1423
2015

Rail Extrude Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1425

2015

Magic Bevel Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1429

2015

Edge Bevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1434

Create Rows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1436

Extender Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1437
Rail Bevel Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1439
Router Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1442
Motion Path Extrude Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1444
Seashell Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1446
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Spikey Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1448

CONTENTS

Create Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1449

Morph Polygons Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1450
Mirror Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1452
Mirror XYZ Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1453
Clone Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1453
Rail Clone Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1456
Array Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1461
Place Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1463
Particle Clone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1464
Clone to Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1466
Motion Path Clone Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1468
Symmetrize Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1470
Point Clone Plus Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1470
Radial Array Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1471
Helix Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1472
Spin it Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1474
Add Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1475
Knife Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1475
Slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1477
Connect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1478
2015

Band Saw Pro Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1483

Triple Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1488

2015

Cut Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1488

Divide Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1492

Fractalize Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1493
Split Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1494
Band Saw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1494
Julienne Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1497
Julienne2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1497
Fast Triple Fan / Fast Triple Fan Traverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1498
Make Pole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1498
Random Pricks Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1498
Quick Cut 1, 2 and 3 Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1499
Quick Saw Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1500
Fracture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1502
Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1503
Fracturing Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1505

Chapter 18 - Detail Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1508
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Merge Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1508

CONTENTS

Weld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1509
Unweld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1510
Weld Average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1511
Set Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1512
Straighten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513
Swap Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1514
Edit Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1515
Spin Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1516
SplitRing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1516
Border Slice Quad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1516
Border Slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1516
Add Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1517
ExtendEdges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1520
EdgeWalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1521
Set CC Sharpness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1522
Decrease/Increase Sharpness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1522
Merge Polys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1523
Flip Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1524
Spin Quads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1525
Unify Normals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1526
Align . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1526
Mesh Repair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1527
Set Face/Subpatch/CC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1529
Sketch Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1529
Flatten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1531
Fix Poles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1531
Fix 3-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1532
Double Sided . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1533
Unify Polys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1534
Normal Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1534
Smooth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1535
Control Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1536
Create Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1538
Surface to Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1540
Measure Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1541
Angle Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1541
Measure Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1543
Calculate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1544
Bounding Box Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1544
Point Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1545

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

CONTENTS

Find Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1546

Chapter 19 - Construct Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1548
Reduce Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1548
Reduce Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1549
2015

Reduce Polys + (Qemloss2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1550

Merge Triangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1556

Dissolve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1556
Dissolve Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1556
Weld Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1557
Weld Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1557
Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1558
Remove Vertices from Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1558
Remove Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1559
Collapse Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1560
2015

Bandglue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1561

Boolean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1562
Speed Boolean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1567
Drill Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1567
Solid Drill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1571
Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1572
Connect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1574
Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1576
Auto Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1579
SubPatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1580
Freeze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1583
Meta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1584
Convert Metaballs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1584
Edit Metaballs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1584
Convert Metaedges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1585
Convert Metafaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1585
Toggle Metamesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1586

Chapter 20 - Map Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1588
What are UV Maps? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590
What are Per-polygon Maps? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593
Set Map Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1594
Airbrush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1597
Clear Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Edit Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604

CONTENTS

Cull Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1606

Normalize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607
Normal Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1608
New Weight Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1609
Weights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1609
Bone Weights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1612
UV to Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1613
PatchWeight2Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1615
Weight Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1615
New Color Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1616
ColorMap Adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1618
Point Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1619
Textured Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1621
Vertex Paint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1624
Vertex Paint: Light Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1636
Vertex Paint: Vertex Color Paint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1638
Vertex Paint: Bone Weight Paint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1648
Vertex Paint: Misc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1665
New UV Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1677
Make UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1677
ABF Unwrap UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1679
Flip UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1679
Transform UV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1681
Poly Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1683
Adjust Polygon Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1683
Clear Polygon Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1684
Lock UVs to Polygon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1684
Poly Map to UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1684
New Quad Polygon Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1685
Point Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1686
Spread UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1686
Quantize UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1687
Set UV Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1688
Polygon Normal UVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1689
UV Spider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1690
Guess Viewport UV Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1693
Texture Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1694
UV Map Jitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1699
Free Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1700
Weld UV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1701

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Heal UV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1701

CONTENTS

New Endomorph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1702

Bkg to Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1703
Apply Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1704
Create Joint Morph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1705

Chapter 21 - Setup Tab

Create Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1711
Edit Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1715
Changing Skelegon Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1715
Rotate Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1715
Rename Skelegon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1718
Split Skelegon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1719
Skelegon Tree Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1719
Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1721
Skelegon Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1722
Convert Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1722
Mocap Skelegons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1725
Add Luxigon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1727
Add/Edit PGons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1729
Clear Powergons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1732
FiberFX Strand Modeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1733
Global Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1733
Strand Maker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1744
Strand Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1745

Genoma
Genoma
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1747
Genoma 1 Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1748
Atomic Element (SubRigs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1748
Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1748
Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1749
Active and Passive Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1750
FK Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1750
Pitch Alignment and Control Size Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1751
Parenters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1751
Spline Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1752
Example: Animating a rollercoaster train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1753
Example: Animating an Octopus tentacle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1753

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Arms, Legs and Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1754

CONTENTS

Heads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1755
Muscles and Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1755
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1757
Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1758
Creating Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1758
Example: Rigging the Cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1759
Genoma 2
2015 Genoma 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1769
Presets... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1769
Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1769
Set... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1780
Clear... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1781
Add Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1782
Add Suffix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1782
Indexed Rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1783
CreateControl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1783
IKFK@ARM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1786
CreateZeroMatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1787
CreateZeroWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1787
DeleteMe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1787
Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1788
ParentInPlace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1788
ParentLayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1788
ParentLayerInPlace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1789

Chapter 22 - Selection Tab

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1791
Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1794
Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1795
Invert Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1795
Expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1796
Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1796
Select Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1797
Select Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1798
Select Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1798
Selection Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1799
Select Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1799
Drop Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800
Sel Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800
Sel Outline Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Select Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800

CONTENTS

Loop Contract / Expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1800

Sel Edge Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1801
Sel Open Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1801
Sel Polygons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1802
Sel Outline Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1802
Select Entire Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1802
Select Entire Surf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1802
Pick Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1803
VMap Poly Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1803
Select by Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1804
By Vertex Map Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1804
Select by Polygon Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1805
Select UV Seam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1805
Select by Normal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1805
Select Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1806
Select Nth Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1807
Radial Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1808
Select Powergons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1809
Selection Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1810

Chapter 23 - Layers Tab

Layers Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1814
Layer Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1815
Delete Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1816
Insert Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1816
Swap Front and Back Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1817
Next / Prev Lyr Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1817
Pivot Point Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1818
Center Pivot / Center Pivot Lyrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1818
Cut Swap Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Copy Swap Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Copy Undo Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Connected to Lyrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Flatten Sel Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Collapse Obj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1820

Chapter 24 - View Tab

Pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1823
Magnify Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1824
OpenGL Display Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1825
Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Zoom Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1825

CONTENTS

Toggle Background Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1826

Fit All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1827
Fit Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1828
Zoom In/Zoom Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1830
Single View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1830
Hide Selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1832
Hide Unselected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1832
Hide Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1832
Unhide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1832

Chapter 25 - Interchange Tab

GoZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1834
Setting Up GoZ for LightWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1835
Example: Using ZBrush to Edit Morph Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1837
Example: Converting ZBrush Fibermeshes to FiberFX guides . . . . . . . . . . . . 1839
EPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1844
Vertex Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1846
PDB Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1847
OBJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1848
FBX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1848
COLLADA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1848
EPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1848
3DS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1849
3D Printing Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1849
Introduction to 3D printing with LightWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1849
Upresing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1850
Example: Preparing the Alien Emissary for 3D Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1851
STL Import/Export Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1861
PLY Import/Export Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1862
VRML Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1863
Curve to Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1864
Motion Throw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1864
Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1865

Chapter 26 - Utilities Tab

Edit Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1867
Edit Startup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1869
Save Cmd List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1870
LScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1871
LScript/RT (Run Time) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872
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LightWave 2015

LSCompiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872

CONTENTS

Execute Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872

Open Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1873
Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1873
Add Plugins Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1874
Edit Plugins Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1875
Edit Modeler Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1876
Additional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1877

Chapter 27 - Introduction to Surface and Render

Introduction to Surfacing and Rendering
Color Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1879
2015

Color Space Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1881

Chapter 28 - Surface Editor

Surface Editor
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1885
Surfacing Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1885
Assigning Surface Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1886
Surfacing Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887
Surface Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887
Surface Editor Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887
VPR Surface Picking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1891
Mass Surface Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1891
Basic Surface Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1894
Color Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1896
2015

Clip Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1901

Envelopes and Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1902

Texture Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1907
Blending Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1909
Layer Type: Image Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1918
2015

UV Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1928

Example - Different Image Aspect Ratios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1928

Layer Type: Procedural Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1930
Layer Type: Gradient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1951
Advanced Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1957
Environment Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1960
Shaders Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1961

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LightWave 2015

CONTENTS

Chapter 29 - Image Editor

Image Editor
Getting to Image Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1985
2015

Image Editor Sorting and Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1986

2015

Mipmapping Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1990

Source Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1990

Editing Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1993
Processing Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1994

Chapter 30 - Node Editor

Node Editor Interface and Usage
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1996
GUI Anatomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2000
Menus and Hot Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2002
General Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2004
Connection Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2013
Color Type Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2014
Scalar Type Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2015
Integer Type Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2016
Vector Type Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2017
Function Type Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2018
Node Editor Probe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2019
About Using Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2023
Common Inputs and Outputs
Noise Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2029
2D Textures
Bricks2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2030
CheckerBoard2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2031
Grid2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2032
2015

Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2034

NormalMap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2036
Planks2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2040
Turbulence2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2042
3D Textures
Bricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2044
Checkerboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2046
Crumple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2048
Crust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2049
Dots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2049
FBM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2052
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LightWave 2015

fBm Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2053

CONTENTS

Flakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2054
Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2055
HeteroTerrain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2056
Honeycomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2057
Hybrid-MultiFractal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2059
Marble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2060
MultiFractal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2062
Ridged MultiFractal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2063
Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2066
Turbulent Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2067
Underwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2068
Veins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2069
Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2070
Wood 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2072
Additional
FiberNode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2074
Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2074
Constant
Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2075
Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2075
Integer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2076
Pi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2077
Scalar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2077
Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2077
Displacement
MDD Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2078
MetaLink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2078
Functions
Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2080
BoxStep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2081
Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2082
Gamma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2082
Modulate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2083
SmoothStep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2084
Wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2085
Gradient
Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2086
Gradient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2088

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LightWave 2015

CONTENTS

Item Info
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2092
Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2092
Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2093
Light Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2095
Studio Trait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2095
Layers
Bump Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2096
Scalar Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2097
Materials
Carpaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2099
Dielectric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2105
Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2107
Make Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2110
Multi Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2111
Sigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2120
Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2124
Math
Scalar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2125
Abs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2125
Add . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2125
BoxStep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2125
Ceil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2126
Clamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2126
Divide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2126
Floor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2126
Fresnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2127
Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2127
Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2127
Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2128
Min . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2128
Mod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2128
Multiply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2129
Pow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2129
Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2129
Smooth Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2129
Subtract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2129
ArcCos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
ArcSin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
ArcTan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
Cos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
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LightWave 2015

Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130

CONTENTS

Tan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2130
Add . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
Add4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
Add Scaled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2131
Divide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132
Dot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132
HPBAdd, HPBMatrix, MatrixHPB, Tanspose Matrix 3x3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132
Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132
Multiply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2132
Normalize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2133
Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2133
Subtract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2133
Subtract Scaled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2133
Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2134
Transform2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2134
RayTrace
RayCast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2135
RayTrace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2135
Python
Python Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2136
Shaders
Diffuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2137
Lambert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2138
Minnaert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2138
Occlusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2138
Occlusion II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2139
OrenNayar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2140
Translucency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2142
Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2143
Ani-Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2143
Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2145
Anisotropic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2146
Blinn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2147
CookTorrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2147
SSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2148
SSS2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2149

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LightWave 2015

Ani-Refractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2149

CONTENTS

Refractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2150
Spot
Instance Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2151
Spot Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2151
Tools
Color Scalar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2152
ColorTool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2153
Compound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2154
Make Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2156
Make Vector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2156
Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2156
Random Integer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2156
Random Scalar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2156
Vector Scalar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2157
Vertex Map
Morph Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2158
UV Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2158
Vertex Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2158
Weight Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2159

Chapter 31 - Preset Shelf

Preset Shelf
2015 Presets path de-referencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2164

Chapter 32 - VPR
VPR
2015 VPR Render Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2015

2166

Alpha Channel Support for VPR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2168

VPR Draft Mode Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2169

VPR Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2170
Creating a VPR Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2174

Chapter 33 - Rendering and Compositing

Rendering and Compositing
Render Globals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2177
Save Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2206
2015

Quicktime Windows 64-bit Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2207

Copyright 1990-2015 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

LightWave 2015

Special Animation Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2207

CONTENTS

Saving Individual Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2212

Monitoring Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2213
Viewing the Finished Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2214
Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2216
Motion Blur Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2221
Radiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2224
How Radiosity Is Calculated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2226
Lighting Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2228
Using Radiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2229
Rendering a Limited Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2234
Render Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2235
Render Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2235
Render Selected Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2235
Print Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2237
Batch Render on One Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2239
Rendering Without LightWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2239
Image Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2241
2015

Copy to Clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2242

Compositing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2244

2015

Effects > Compositing Updated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2244

Image Processing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2249

Pixel Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2251
Image Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2253
Compositing Buffer Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2257
2015

New Buffers for Compositing Buffer Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2261

Photoshop PSD Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2271

Vector Blur (Post-processing only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2278
Video Legalize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2279
Video Tap (Post-processing only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2280
Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2283
SpriteEdger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2285
WaterMark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2285
Wave Filter Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2286
TimeWarp (Camera Motion Options) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2291

Chapter 34 - Distributed Rendering - An Introduction

Distributed Rendering: Introduction
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2299
Organizing Configuration Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2303
Command Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2305
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LightWave 2015

Setting up ScreamerNet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2307

CONTENTS

Show Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2308

Screamernet Time Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2312
Installing Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2312
Batch Rendering with Render-Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2313
Rendering Without LightWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2313
Preparing Scenes for Screamernet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2314
Troubleshooting and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2314
Mac OS X Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2318
Updating LightWaves Config Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2318
LightWaves Config File Path on Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2318
Creating a New Set of Config Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2319
Config Settings for LWSN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2319
Starting an LWSN Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2321
Batch/Network Mode (-2) Command Line Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2325
Standalone Mode (-3) Command Line Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2326
Mac Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2327
Information
For More Information and Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2328

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LightWave 2015

Installation
System Requirements
General Requirements:
Hardware (Windows):
64-bit
Intel Core 2 or better or AMD64.
System RAM: 4GB minimum
32-bit
Intel or AMD equivalent of Intel Core or better
System RAM: 2GB minimum
Operating System (Windows):
Windows 7 or better
Hardware (Macintosh):
Intel processor
Operating System (Macintosh):
Snow Leopard 10.6 or better
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 series or ATI X1600 (minimum)
Minimum Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768 pixels

Upgrading From a Prior Version

If you already have a version of LightWave 3D installed on your computer, you will already
have a hardware key (USB or parallel), also known as a dongle. This is no longer necessary for
LightWave normally, but can still be useful if you are freelancing at a company that has strict
network requirements for instance.
Other than the above noted issues regarding hardware keys, the same installation instructions
apply for an upgrade as for new users. The installation program will not delete any existing
objects, scenes, or images on your system unless an existing item has the same name and is in
the same directory as an item that LightWave 2015 installs. For this reason, you should install
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Installation
LightWave 2015 in a new directory. We strongly recommend that you back up your system before
you install LightWave 3D.
NewTek strongly recommends that you backup your system before you install LightWave 3D.

Software Installation
Download and install the most current current version of LightWave for which you have a licence
here: https://www.lightwave3d.com/account/. If you dont already have an account you can
download the trial version found here: https://www.lightwave3d.com/try_lightwave/ and then
create one.

Legacy Plugins
LightWave has a long and rich history and many plugins from that history. If you find yourself
needing a legacy plugin for resurrecting an old project or similar, you will find a file called legacy.
zip in the support\plugins folder.

Registering and Licensing Your Software

There are two choices for registering for license of LightWave. You can either:
Use the Cleverbridge number you received in email when you purchased LightWave on the
form on this page: www.lightwave3d.com/register_product/
or:
Start Layout or Modeler, go to the Help menu and choose About LightWave 3D. This will
present a window showing the LightWave serial number at the bottom (ghosted in the
screenshot below) that can be copied. Then, visit: www.lightwave3d.com/register_product/
and paste your serial number.

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Conventions
If you dont have Internet access at all you can send a letter containing your address details,
LightWave serial number and reseller you bought LightWave from and what sort of computer you
are using LightWave on to:
NewTek
Attn: Customer Service
5131 Beckwith Blvd
San Antonio, TX 78249

Running the Program

LightWave 3D is started the same way as any other program on the particular platform on which
its installed. LightWave 3D has two major applications that work together: Layout and Modeler.
Each program can be started independently; however, you may also access them by clicking the
appropriate button on their respective interfaces.

About the Manual

LightWave 3D is generally divided into two separate environments: LightWave Layout and
LightWave Modeler. (It is a common convention to refer to the animation and rendering toolset as
LightWave, or just Layout, and to refer to the object creation toolset as Modeler.)
For Layout, the buttons on the toolbar are often shortcuts to controls that can also be accessed
from one of Layouts many panels. The Layout section of the manual begins with a panel and topicbased approach to explaining Layout, since many controls for certain tasks are grouped together
on panels, and continues with a breakup of the tools into a workflow based layout.
Modeler is a little different. All of its tools are accessed from the toolbar, and panels are used to
execute more focused tasks. Therefore, the Modeler portion of the manual is generally organized
by the order of tools in the toolbar.

Typographic Conventions
The following conventions will be used throughout this manual.

Typefaces
ALL CAPS Computer keys, directories, device names (e.g., ENTER, C:\LIGHTWAVE\
OBJECTS, Ctrl +P, etc.).

Keystroke Combinations
KEY1 + KEY2 Simultaneous keystrokes. Hold the first key and press the second key.
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LightWave 2015

Conventions
Mouse Operations
LMB Left mouse button
MMB Middle mouse button (if applicable)
RMB Right mouse button
Selecting Single-clicking an element with the LMB so that it becomes active or
selected.
Deselecting Single-clicking an element with the LMB so that it becomes inactive or
unselected.
Activating Selecting an option by clicking on its toggle button.
Deactivating Unselecting an option by clicking on its toggle button.
Clicking Placing your mouse pointer over something and then pressing a mouse
button. This nearly always means the LMB.
Right-clicking Clicking an element with your RMB.
Double-clicking Rapidly clicking an element twice.
Dragging Selecting an element with your mouse pointer and continuing to hold the
mouse button down as you move your mouse. This nearly always means
with the LMB.

Important Information for Macintosh users: For maximum functionality, a two or three button
mouse is recommended with LightWave. Using a single button mouse, a RMB action can be applied by
holding the COMMAND (Apple) key while pressing the mouse button.

Symbols

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LightWave 2015

Conventions
The warning symbol will highlight a discussion that warns you about something. You should pay
special attention to text marked with this symbol.

The note symbol will highlight a discussion that is particularly noteworthy or interesting
information that will not necessarily make you smarter with LightWave, but will allow you to amaze
and amuse your friends with your inside knowledge of 3D industry trivia.

Key LightWave Terms and Concepts

The following are a brief selection of some common terms and concepts used with LightWave that
will help you to get started. These are also covered in the Glossary, in some cases at greater length.
Animation Channel - Animation Channel refers to the different Position, Rotation, and Scaling
settings an item can have in Layout. It can also refer to other envelopeable elements like light
intensity. See also motion channel.
Axis - Axis refers to the XYZ coordinates used as the basis for positioning elements in LightWaves
3D space. It is somewhat like the concept of left/right, up/down, and near/far.
Bone - For any object, you can define a skeletal system composed of bones. By moving bones
around, you can change the shape of an object.
Bounding Box - A Bounding Box is a six-sided box conforming to the outer dimensions of an object.
It is commonly used as a quickly drawn stand-in for a more complex object.
Camera - As in real life, a camera records events. Looking through LightWaves camera shows you
the view as it will be generated.
Control Mesh - A Control Mesh is a cage of points used to shape SubPatches.
Endomorph - An Endomorph is an object containing one or more Morph Maps.
Envelope - An envelope is a way of setting a particular value that usually changes over time using a
graphical input mode.
Flocking - a system in LightWave to simulate the motion of natural flocks - of birds, fish or
spaceships.
Frames - LightWave works with frames. A frame is one image out of many that define an animation.
There are 25 frames per second in PAL video, approximately 30 frames per second in NTSC video,
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Conventions
and 24 frames per second in film. HDTV frame rates vary but are often 30FPS.
Geometry - Geometry refers to the positional layout of points and polygons that define an object.
Item - An item in Layout refers to an object, bone, light, or camera.
Instance - virtual geometry that takes little memory and is ideal for when you require a large
number of a specific object: grass for instance.
Keyframe (Also known as just a key) - A keyframe is a frame for which you define a value for an
animation channel(s) (e.g., position or rotation) for an item in Layout. Animations are composed
of a beginning keyframe, an ending keyframe and usually some number of keyframes in between.
See also tween, in the Glossary.
Light - A light in LightWave is generally used just like a light in real life. Lights illuminate a scene
and allow you to see the objects within it.
LScript - This is LightWaves built-in scripting language. LScripts can be installed and used just like
plugins.
Motion Channel - Motion Channel is generally the same as Animation Channel, but refers only to
position, rotation, and scale. (i.e., not light intensity.)
Normal - A polygon normal is the imaginary line projecting out perpendicular to a surface at any
point indicating the direction of the polygon. A polygon surface normal is represented as dashed
lines on selected polygons in Modeler. LightWave sees polygons or faces of an object only from
the surface normal side. A single-sided polygon (like a piece of paper) with its normal facing away
from the camera will be invisible to the camera from that viewpoint (unless the surface is using
the Double Sided option). A vertex normals direction is the average of the polygon normals it is
connected to.
Null Object - A null object is an object that contains no geometry and will not show up in a
rendered image. Nulls are useful for tracking, grouping (parenting), and using with inverse
kinematics functions. They are also commonly used to control plug-ins.
Object - An object is composed of points and faces. Points connected together to form a polygon
define a face. Faces joined together form an object.
Parenting - Parenting refers to LightWaves ability to set hierarchical associations between items
in a Scene. Generally, the parent item will have some level of influence on its child, whether it is
position, rotation, size, etc. The child can also be a parent to another item.
Particles - Usually refers to animated points used for sparks, fire, and even liquid. LightWaves
particle engine is called Particle FX.

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LightWave 2015

Conventions
Pivot Point - The position in an object that acts as the center of rotation and position reference.
Pixel - A pixel is the smallest unit of measurement in an image and is used to describe the images
width and height.
Plane - A plane refers to a two-dimensional (i.e., flat and level) surface. You might want to think of a
plane as a piece of glass that is infinitely large, but has no depth.
Plug-in - A plug-in is a program that works with and extends the functionality of LightWave.
Render - Rendering is the computers process of calculating and generating an image based on the
values you have selected for the different options in LightWave.
Scene - A Scene is a LightWave project defining the objects loaded and their motions, the number
of lights and their values/motions, the resolution of the final image, special effects, Camera
settings, and so on. This ASCII text file is generally saved from Layout.
Session - A session is a single use of an application. A session starts when you first boot the
application and ends when you exit.
Spline (Curves) - LightWave uses splines or curved paths between keys while moving items about.
When modeling, splines refer to open or closed curves.
SubPatch - SubPatch is a modeling mode where polygons become a cage that controls an
underlying mesh of NURBS.
Surface - Essentially, the surface is the skin of an object. A single object can have multiple surface
names, each with its own independent attributes (e.g., color), and multiple objects can share the
same surface name(s).
Texture - A texture is an attribute of a surface, or an entire object, in the case of displacement and
clip maps.
Vertex - A vertex is the point at which the sides of a polygon intersect.

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LightWave 2015

Licensing

LightWave now uses a software-driven licensing scheme for LightWave. Existing users with dongles
can continue to use their dongles or use the software version as they choose and commercial
plugins tied to the dongle using the SDK will continue to work using the software license. As with
the dongle, running LightWave multiple times on the same machine is possible, and the software
license is applicable to Windows 32-bit and 64-bit, and Macintosh OS X equally.
New purchasers of LightWave can purchase a hardware dongle on request but it wont be
necessary, meaning that LightWave can become a completely digital product making purchasing
licenses much simpler since no physical product will need to be shipped.

How it works
Everything from now will work through the www.lightwave3d.com website. LightWave will be
available through your favorite reseller if youd like that personal touch, but www.lightwave3d.com
is open 24/7, 365 days a year. If youd like to buy a new license, or upgrade an older LightWave to
the latest version you can do it here.
To do so visit the Store pages on the LightWave3D site. You do not have to be logged in to do so.
The shop will sense your location, put the price for LightWave in your local currency and include
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LightWave 2015

Licensing
local sales tax once you click the Buy Now button.
Enter your payment details and hit next. You will be given a confirmation page so you can make
any edits and then you can hit next again. There will be a pause as your payment is processed
and then you will be presented with download options for LightWave and the license.key file. If
you already have the trial version of LightWave (11.0.3 or more recent) installed, you only need to
download the license.lwk file and apply that to your Trial Edition for it to become a full license.
Applying the license.lwk is a matter of dragging the lwk icon over your Layout or Modeler window
and dropping it. You will need to restart LightWave to activate your license.

FAQ
Will my dongle continue to work?
Dongles will continue to work and can continue to be used. If you are still running Windows XP you
will have to keep using the dongle. Software licensing needs Vista or more recent.
Will my commercial plugins work if I dont use my dongle?
Commercial plugins tied to a dongle should* work equally well with the software license.
I usually have several Layouts open and a couple of Modelers. Will I still be able to do that with a
software dongle?
Multiple copies of LightWave using the software lock can be run on the same machine, there is an
alert if multiple copies of the same license are run on different machines on the same network.
What happens if I run multiple copies of the same license on different machines on the network?
You will get a message that your dongle could not be found and then a message saying that the
number of licenses owned has been exceeded. You can either buy additional licenses or close other
copies.
I like the dongle. Will I still be able to buy new seats using it?
Yes, purchase of a dongle will be available however you will need to wait to receive your LightWave
physically if you would like a dongle. Before it arrives you can use the fully-featured trial edition.
I would like to upgrade an older license of LightWave that I bought from someone to the latest version.
Will I be able to?
Yes. As long as you bought a full version with a dongle you can upgrade it. Purchasing an older
version of LightWave without a dongle means that the owner is selling an upgrade, not a full
version.
If I want to drop my LightWave on a USB key and take it to a job can I?
Yes, but you will continue to need to use your dongle. The software license only works when you
install LightWave locally using the provided installer.
* Commercial plugins getting the Lock ID using the SDK will normally work without changes. Plugins using their own scheme may need to be updated.

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LightWave 2015

Feedback
Feedback Agent
The Feedback Agent helps users to provide the 3D Team with the most possible information about
LightWave issues they encounter. It can create a log of the problem or crash situation, and can
email the log to NewTeks bug reporting system.
Please edit the Exception in LightWave portion of the default subject line to include a
description of the problem, such as Crash in Modeler when hit all keys on keyboard at once.
Please be sure to list steps to duplicate the problem in the Brief Description field.
Please attach the content with which the problem was encountered.
You will not usually have to fill in the To: field. Feedback Agent knows to send to the LW
Bugs address if this is left blank.
You may need to fill in your smtp-server information if the Feedback Agent doesnt seem to
be able to send out email.

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LightWave 2015

New to 2015
Updates
Here is a list of elements that are either new in LightWave 2015 or have been updated from previous versions.
Clicking on the line that interests you will take you to the appropriate page.

2015

Independent Viewport Cameras and Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

2015

Perspective Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

2015

Overscan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

2015

Deformation Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

2015

Save and Clear/Exit Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

2015

Improvements to Load from Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

2015

Alembic Import Improved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

2015

Collada and FBX Export Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

2015

Export Alembic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

2015

MD Multi Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

2015

Adding keys to curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

2015

MD Baker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

2015

MD Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

2015

Clip Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

2015

New Edge Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

2015

Genoma 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531

2015

Parenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588

2015

Multiselect Copy/Paste keys in DopeTrack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

2015

Align and Distribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713

2015

Modeler Spline for Spline Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745

2015

Example: Using 2015s Inside RayCast Node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762

2015

Example: Getting started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797

2015

Overview of Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799

2015

Bullet Item Properties Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801

2015 World Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806

2015

Bullet Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

2015

Example: First Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

2015

General Constraint Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 821

2015

Point to Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822

2015

Hinge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825

2015

Slider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 828

2015

Cone Twist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831

2015

Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834

2015

6 DoF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 835

2015

CyHair Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962

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LightWave 2015

New to 2015
2015

Alembic Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1051

2015

Multi-Tool Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1057

2015

FBX Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064

2015

OBJ Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064

2015

After Effects Interchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081

2015

Scene Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1127

2015

-d Startup Option for Modeler and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1128

2015

Interface Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1190

2015 Vertex Map Panel

2015

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203

OS Font Support in Modeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1268

2015 Texture added to Falloffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1323

2015

Point Normal Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1344

2015

Segment Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1368

2015

Chamfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1400

2015

Extrude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1411

2015

Lathe Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1413

2015

Rail Extrude Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1424

2015

Magic Bevel Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1428

2015

Edge Bevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1433

2015

Band Saw Pro Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1482

2015

Cut Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1487

2015

Reduce Polys + (Qemloss2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1549

2015

Bandglue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1560

2015

Genoma 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1768

2015

Color Space Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1880

2015

Clip Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1900

2015

UV Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1927

2015

Image Editor Sorting and Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1985

2015

Mipmapping Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1989

2015

Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2033

2015

Presets path de-referencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2163

2015 VPR Render Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2165

2015

Alpha Channel Support for VPR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2167

2015

Quicktime Windows 64-bit Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2206

2015

Copy to Clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2241

2015

Effects > Compositing Updated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2243

2015

New Buffers for Compositing Buffer Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2260

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Chapter 2
Camera

Chapter 1Welcome to
LightWave

LightWave 2015

Introduction to Layout
Introduction
Congratulations on your LightWave purchase.
NewTek LightWave 3D is the most complete 3D solution to model, render and animate. Used
extensively in television and film production, video game development, print graphics and design,
LightWave artists have won more Emmy Awards for visual effects and animation than any other
CG artists. Plus, LightWave is designed to be used by a single artist, a small team, or a major facility,
with seamless integration into diverse pipelines.
LightWave 2015 gives you the workflow and functionality youve heard about, along with new,
interactive tools for a real-time experience. You get the speed, flexibility and control you need to
create quickly, easily and affordably.
This manual will help you learn the basics of 3D with LightWave - from installation and operation,
to accessing and using the essential tools to model, animate and render. Once youve installed
the software, please watch our tutorials, and the hundreds more on sites like YouTube to learn the
landscape. You should also join the online forums, where a passionate community of LightWave
users from all over the world, help each other to elevate their craft. Our 3D team also provides
valuable tips and tricks for you to increase your knowledge and expertise, so visit our website often
for the latest information at: www.lightwave3d.com.
Welcome to the NewTek family.

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Working With The Interface
In no time, youll find yourself mastering LightWaves intuitive interface. LightWave uses very few
graphical icons. Instead, most functions are listed on the interface panels in plain text. Listed below
are a few other conventions involved with the LightWave interface:
Button - A button refers to an area on the screen that you click on with your mouse to cause some
function to occur. Generally, only a single click is required. There are also special types of buttons,
like toggle, pop-up menu, and envelope buttons. Some buttons become highlighted, indicating a
chosen or active status.
Contextual Pop-ups - This refers to context-sensitive pop-up menus. Such menus appear when you
Shift + Ctrl +LMB and are aware of the area the mouse pointer is over.
Dialog - See Requester
Drag Button - A drag button is similar in effect to a slider, except the button does not move. To use,
just click on it and hold the mouse button, then drag the mouse. Depending on the parameter
being adjusted, the direction and mouse button used will have different specific effects.
Envelope Button - An Envelope button is a small button marked with an E. Selecting this button will
display the Graph Editor where you can create an envelope for the setting. A highlighted envelope
button indicates a value has an envelope applied. To turn off (i.e., remove) an envelope, hold the
Shift key and click on the Envelope button.
Ghosted Item - LightWave will ghost out parameters that are not available to you. This is usually
the result of a certain option not being activated. Selecting a ghosted item will display a message
informing you why it cannot be used.
Information Field/Display - Information Fields/Displays are text displays found throughout the
different panels. These displays cannot be changed directly and simply provide information and
feedback.
Input Field - Input fields are areas on the screen where you can enter data.
Mini-Slider - A mini-slider is a button with two arrows on it, pointing right and left. Clicking on
one and holding the LMB, then dragging to the right or left will raise or lower the value of the
parameter next to it. In many cases, however, the slider does not encompass the entire spectrum of
possible values.
Panels - Panels are any one of the windows that open when you click on a button in LightWave.
Many panels have additional tabbed sections that are selected when you click on a tab. Panels
may be Modal or Non-modal. A modal panel must be closed before you can continue working with
the rest of the application. A non-modal panel lets you shift the focus between it and another part
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of the application without having to close the panel - you can continue to work elsewhere in the
current application while the panel is displayed. Modelers Numeric Panel is non-modal because
you can do other things while it is open. In contrast, Modelers Display Options Panel is modal
because you must close it before you can continue working.
Pop-up Menu - Pop-up menu buttons have a downward facing arrow on their right edge. To use,
click on it and hold the LMB. The menu will pop up and as you move your pointer over the menu,
each item will become highlighted. When the desired selection is highlighted, release the LMB.
If you decide not to select an item, simply move the pointer off the menu and release the LMB.
Certain pop-up menus contain lists of objects, images, and lights, which are normally listed in the
order they were loaded or created.
Requester - A requester is also known as a dialog box. These appear on the screen for operations
like file loading and saving. This also refers to smaller windows that appear requesting you to input
data into various fields.
Reset Area - The reset area is a non-active open area (e.g., not a button) on the Modeler toolbar that
acts as a reset button, much like you might use the ESC key on other applications.
Scrollbar - See Slider
Shaded Display - See Solid-Shaded Display.
Slider - A slider allows you to modify a setting by dragging the sliders button along the bar.
Alternatively, you can click to the right or left of the button or use the arrow buttons at either end
to incrementally change the setting value. (Also known as a scrollbar.)
Solid Shaded Display - Solid shaded display refers to a non-wireframe display mode where some
level of surface texture detail is visible.
Texture Button - A Texture button is a small button marked with a T. Selecting this button will
present a texture panel allowing you to define a texture for the chosen parameter. A highlighted
texture button indicates a texture in use for the given parameter. To turn off (i.e., remove) a texture,
hold the Shift key and click on the Texture button.
Toggle Button - A Toggle button is a small button that becomes highlighted with a check mark
when clicked. This indicates the adjacent feature is active.

LightWave Panels and Dialogs

LightWaves panels and requesters are generally non-modal and can be left open even while you
interact, say, with the Layout window and its controls.

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Maths in Input Fields
Numeric input fields support basic maths operations (+, -, *, /, and ^) and algebraic equations. You
can even mix units. Here is an example: (12ft+14m)^2+(3/5). The result, 312.3908 m, would appear
after you press the Enter key. Note that the result is shown using the default unit; here, it is meters.
Also, since we didnt specify the unit of measure for the 3 and 5, the default is used.

Enter/Tab Keys with Input Fields

When you enter values into dialogs that have multiple input fields, the Tab and Enter keys have
special functions to save you time. Pressing the Tab key stores the entered/current value and
automatically advances you to the next input field. Shift + Tab moves to the previous field. The
Enter key also stores value, dismisses the dialog, if appropriate.

Yes and No
Whenever a requester asks you a Yes or No question, pressing the Enter key is the same as selecting
Yes, while pressing the Esc key is the same as selecting No. Likewise, an Error, Warning or Reminder
requester with a choice of Continue or Cancel can use Esc for Cancel and Enter for Continue. For
those requesters with only a Continue, pressing either Esc or Enter will close the panel.

Color Selection
Where you must select a certain color (e.g., surface color), there will be a three-number color
component display and a color swatch box. You can also drag your mouse on each color
component to change its value. By default, the standard RGB color space is displayed; however, if
you right-click on the display, you may also use the Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) color space, if
that is more familiar to you. HSV is based on the artists concepts of tint, shade, and tone. There are
over 16.7 million possible color combinations.

Left: RGB, Right: HSV

Unlike RGB, HSV color components are not independent. For example, if Value is 0 (i.e.,
brightness is 0), you will not be able to change Hue (color) nor Saturation. Similarly, if Saturation is 0,
you will not be able to change Hue. Moreover, reducing one component may cause another component
to decrease.

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Color Picker

LightWaves default color picker has been renewed and given powerful new features.
The color pickers features are fully explained in the Surface and Render guide, starting page 1896.

Standard List Windows

Windows that contain lists of items (surfaces, scene items, menu items, etc.) all have a slider bar to
scroll through the list. If the list is hierarchical in nature, there will be arrowheads to the left of item
names. If the arrowhead is facing to the right, then they are subordinate items to this parent item.
Clicking the arrowhead will make it point downwards and also reveal the subordinate items.

Left: All lists are collapsed, Right: Camera Entry is exposed

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If selection is appropriate, you can click on an item to select it.
contiguous items and Shift + Click will select a range of items.

Ctrl

+ click will select non-

List windows that are hierarchical in nature can be reorganised by dragging items around in the
list. Where appropriate, multiple selection is supported.

Reorganizing Lists
In some list windows (e.g., menu configuration), you can reorganize entries by just dragging them
in the window. Place your pointer over the entry and drag it up or down. You will see a thin line
appear as you drag. This is the insert point. Releasing the mouse button will drop the entry here.
Now, if your pointer is at a position where the dropped item could be, say, a sub-item of an entry,
the same level as the entry, or even the same level as the next entry, the length of the line would
change as you drag. The position of the left end of the line determines the level of the drop.

Context Pop-up Menus

Both Layout and Modeler have special context pop-up menus that you display by holding Ctrl
+ Shift and clicking your LMB, MMB, or RMB with your mouse pointer over a viewport - there are
different menus for each mouse button.

Customizing Your Interface

We strongly suggest that you keep the default menu organization intact. Otherwise, technical
support and using the documentation may become difficult. A better solution is to create a new menu
tab and/or groups and place your frequently used tools in them.

Menus
LightWave menus are customizable. You can add, remove, group, and reorganize commands.
Choose Edit >Edit Menu Layout to open the Configure Menus Panel. In the (left) Command window,
a list of available commands will appear. These will be grouped by type.
In the (right) Menus window, several main sections have sub-items, which are indented to show
the hierarchical relationships. Top Menu Group contains the items that are always visible no
matter which tab is selected. Main Menu items are the main tabs and related buttons for the main
interface toolbar. Bottom Edge is for Modeler only and relates to the controls along the bottom
edge of the screen. Left, Middle, and Right Mouse Button Menu (when available) are the menus
that appear when the Shift + Ctrl keys are held down along with the corresponding mouse button.
There may be other menu sections defined.
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In the Menus window, dots indicate commands while arrows indicate groups of commands/subgroups beneath it. If the arrow points to the right , the groups sub-menu items are collapsed and
not visible. To reveal the sub-menu items for a collapsed group, simply click on its right-facing
arrow. To collapse an open group, click on its downward-facing arrow.
A set of Studio Production menus has been included. These menus are recommended for more
advanced users.

First-Level Menu Items

Menu items on the first-level must always be a group. Commands and sub-groups may exist on the
second menu level. On the toolbar, a Main Menu groups name will appear as a heading above the
grouped command buttons. If the group name is blank, no heading will appear. On the next menu
level, commands or sub-groups can also be used. If a sub-group is used, it will appear as a pop-up
menu on the interface.
The hierarchy would look like this:
Section Type (e.g., Main Menu)
Group (Group name appears on row of horizontal tabs on the main interface)
Command/Sub-group (If a group, its name, if any, appears as a header above the next group
of commands)
Command/Sub-group (If a group, its name appears on pop-up button)

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Adding New Groups
If you select a collapsed group when you click the New Group button, it will be added at the same
level as the group. If you select an un-collapsed group when you click the New Group button, it will
be added inside the group.

Divider Line
Clicking the New Divider button will add a dashed line below the selected menu item. This is
displayed as a dividing line between menu items when it appears in a pop-up menu group.

Renaming Menu Items

You can rename any menu item (including commands) by selecting it with your mouse and then
clicking the Rename button.

The command name is not always what is displayed on a button. If the command uses a shorter
name, the button may use the exact or a similar name. However, the button name can be very different
in some cases. Of course, you can always rename the displayed name.

Automatic More buttons

If an interface (e.g., Layout or Modeler) is sized too small to fit all Toolbar buttons, a More popup button will appear at the end of menu groups and contain the hidden buttons. Note that
sometimes the menu names can be different depending on whether they are listed on the toolbar
or listed in a pop-up menu.

Adding Commands
To add a command, select it in the (left) Command window and select the target position in the
(right) Menus window. Then click the Add button. The command will be added under the selected
target - inside the group if a group was selected. Alternatively, you may drag the command to the
Menus window.

Reorganizing Menus
You can reorganize entries by just dragging them in the window. Place your pointer over the
entry and drag it up or down. You will see a thin line appear as you drag. This is the insert point.
Releasing the mouse button will drop the entry here.
Now, if your pointer is at a position where the dropped item could be, say, a sub-item of an entry,
the same level as the entry, or even the same level as the next entry, you will see the line change its
length as you drag. The position of the left end of the line determines the level of the drop.

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To place the group/command at a specific point in a group, make sure the group is uncollapsed
before you begin dragging.

Default Menu Locations for Plug-in Commands

The plug-ins that come with LightWave have default (Layout or Modeler) menu locations for their
commands. However, when you add plug-ins, the commands will be placed in their default menu
locations only if you are using the default menu. (You are using the default menu, if you have never
customized the menu configuration or have chosen Default from the Presets pop-up menu.)
Modeler places commands without default menu locations in the Construct > Utility > Additional
pop-up menu. For Layout, you must manually assign such commands to menus.

Finding Assignments and Commands

If you have a command selected in the left window and click Find, the command, if any, on the
right will become selected. Selecting a command in the right window and clicking Find will select
the matching command in the left window.
Since a command can be assigned to more than one menu location, successive Find clicks will
show the next assignment, if more than one exists.
Clicking Search allows you to type in a search phrase to find a command. Note that this will only
find the first instance and it is case sensitive.

If you know the keyboard shortcut, but want to find the corresponding menu location, use the
Find function on the Configure Keys Panel to determine the command name. Then, use the Find function
on the Configure Menus Panel to see where it is assigned.

Deleting Menu Items

To delete a command/group, select it and click the Delete button.

Window Pop-up
The Window pop-up menu lets you select different menus to edit (e.g., Graph Editor), if available.

Maintaining Menu Sets

The Load and Save buttons let you retrieve and store menu sets that you develop. To restore the
default menu configuration, choose Default from the Presets pop-up menu. If youd like to have a
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LightWave 2015

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menu set for Layout similar to previous versions these are also available, but tools newer than the
version chosen will not be available in the menus. In Modelers Configure Menus tool you have
similar options.

Arranging Menu Tabs

You can reorganize the main menu tabs by simply dragging them left or right on the main
interface. Before you release the mouse button you will see an insertion point marker appear.

Middle Mouse Button Menu

The context menu for the middle mouse button exactly mirrors the group structure for commands,
as found in the menu and key editing dialogs - including any plug-in commands added to the
system. If you know where a command is located in the master groupings, you can find it in the
middle button menu.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are displayed on the right side of buttons, if applicable. Keystrokes that
need the Shift key are displayed in uppercase if they are letters. (e.g., A) Unshifted keystrokes
are displayed in lowercase. (e.g., a) For example, M is Shift + M and & would be Shift + 7 on a US
keyboard. This manual, however, always explicitly indicates when the Shift key should be used and
shortcut letters are shown as upper case.
You need to be aware of the state of your Caps Lock. If this is active, it can affect upper and
lowercase keyboard shortcuts.

Panel-Specific Shortcuts
Some panels have their own special keyboard shortcuts. To use them, you must have that panel
active. (Click on it, if it isnt already active.) If the panel is not active and that shortcut has another
meaning for LightWave in general, the general function will be run. Moreover, if the panel is active,
but doesnt use the keyboard shortcut, it will be passed to the main interface.

Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts

We strongly suggest that you keep the default keyboard mapping assignments and make new
assignments only to unmapped keys. Otherwise, technical support and using the documentation may
become difficult.
Like the menus, keyboard shortcuts can be configured to suit your own needs. To display the
Configure Keys Panel, choose Edit> Edit Keyboard Shortcuts.
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The window on the left contains a complete list of all assignable commands grouped by type. The
right window shows a complete list of all keystrokes and assigned commands, if applicable.

To assign a command to a key:

Select a command in the left window.
Select the target key in the right window. (You can hit the desired key or keystroke combo to
quickly select the key.)
Click the Assign button. This will overwrite any existing assignment. Alternatively, you may drag
the command to the right window.

To unassign a command to a key:

Select the target key in the right window.
Click the Unassign button.
Finding Assignments and Commands
If you have a command selected in the left window and click Find, the command, if any, on the
right will become selected. Selecting a command in the right window and clicking Find will select
the matching command in the left window.
Clicking Search allows you to type in a search phrase to find a command. Note that this will
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only find the first instance and it is case sensitive. Clicking the Search button again will find the
following instance and so on.

Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to only one command. Assigning a command that is
already assigned to a different key will assign it to the new key, but remove it from the old one.

Maintaining Key Mapping Sets

The Load and Save buttons let you retrieve and store key mapping sets that you develop. The Clear
button clears out all assignments, so use with caution.

In Modeler, you can use Modeler > Preferences > Revert to Startup Preferences to restore your
initial settings; however, any changes since you first ran the application will not be reflected.
Any available preset key mapping sets can be chosen from the Presets pop-up menu. The Window
pop-up menu lets you select different menus to edit (e.g., Graph Editor), if available.

Generic Plug-ins
Generic Layout plug-ins (Scene > Utilities > Generics) will appear in the Plug-in commands group.
Thus, they can be added to menus or mapped to keyboard shortcuts.

Configuration Files
For Macintosh OS X, the LightWave configuration files are stored in your ~/Library/NewTek/2015.0
folder like so:

Extension Cache
Extensions 2015
Hub 2015
Layout 2015
Modeler 2015

For Windows 7 and onwards, the configuration files are kept in <USERNAME>\.NewTek\
LightWave\2015.0. They are named:
Extension Cache-64
LW2015-64.CFG
LWEXT2015-64.CFG

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LWHUB2015-64.CFG
LWM2015-64.CFG
Generally, you will not need to edit these files directly, however you might need to remove these
files if they get corrupted.

LightWave 3D Basics
LightWave Scene and Object Statistics
unlimited images, unlimited surfaces

Because of memory considerations, the available number of cameras, objects and lights per
scene is set at 100, 1000, and 1000, respectively, in the LW2015-64.CFG file.The values may be increased
- within the limits above, but not decreased below 100; however, this will require more memory, so keep
the new values as small as possible. Do not edit the CFG file while LightWave is running.

Measurement Units
LightWave supports a large number of units of measurement. When entering numeric values into
input fields, you may specify the unit of measurement using the following abbreviations:
Abbreviation
um
mm
cm
m
km
Mm
mil
in or
ft or
kft
mi
nmi
f
s

Description
Microns (one-millionth meter)
Millimeters (one-thousandth meter)
Centimeters (one-hundredth meter)
Meters
Kilometers (one thousand meters)
Megameters (one million meters)
Mils (one-thousandth inch)
Inches (2.540 centimeters)
Feet (.3048 meters)
Kilofeet (One-thousand feet)
Miles (5,280 feet)
Nautical miles (1.151 miles or 1852 meters)
frame
seconds

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Since the meter is the default unit of measure for the SI or Metric unit systems, entering the
meter equivalent is often easier than typing in the abbreviations. For example, enter .01 for centimeters,
.001 for millimeters, 1000 for kilometers, and so on.

Filenames and Extensions

We recommend that users avoid using spaces in hard drive, directory, and file names for scene,
image, and object files: this can possibly cause problems later if you use LightWaves distributed
rendering feature.
LightWave uses several filename extensions for the different types of files it uses. The following list
gives you some examples of these extensions:
Ext.
.env
.lwo
.lws
.mot
.p
.srf

Type
Envelope data
LightWave object
LightWave scene file
Motion data
Plug-in
Surface attribute file

Generally, LightWave will automatically add the appropriate extension to filenames when saving
files, if one is not provided. However, this is not the case with most plug-ins.
Additionally, there are numerous standard filename extensions (.bmp, .iff, .tga, .wav, etc.) that
LightWave uses, but are not specific to this application.

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Import/Export
You may load foreign object and scene formats supported by LightWave directly into Layout or
Modeler. To load an object in a foreign format into LightWave, you only need to use the normal
Load Object menu entry. Complete explanations are found in the Interchange chapter of this
manual starting page 1050. However, only Modeler can be used to save an object using a foreign
object format. To do this in Modeler, choose File > Export and select one of the Export options.

Imported Object Formats

Format
OBJ
DXF
3DS
DAE
FBX
STL
PLY

Supports
M, SA, T, UV
M, SA
M, SA, SSP, T, UV
M, SA, T, UV
M, SA, T, UV
M
M

Exported Object Formats

Format
LW5 (5.x LWO format)
OBJ
DXF
3DS
DAE
FBX
VRML97
STL
PLY

M = Geometry mesh
SA = Surface assignments (LW default properties)
SSP = Standard surface properties (color, glossy, etc.)
T = Texture maps (non-procedural)
UV = UV texture information

Supports
M, SSP, T
M, SA, T, UV
M, SA, T, UV
M, SSP, T, UV
M, SA, T, UV
M, SA, T, UV
M, T
M
M

Before exporting to a foreign object format, save the object as a LightWave .LWO file first.
When appropriate, an options dialog may appear when you load or save a foreign object format
file. Some trial and error may be needed to get acceptable results. OBJ settings are presented in the
Options window, available when tapping O in Layout or Modeler.

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3DS import option dialog

3DS Export option dialog

Generally, you should merge points after loading a 3DS object.

Image and Animation Types

You can load and save various image and animation formats. What is available to you depends on
the platform you are using, as well as the plug-ins you have active. Please check the NewTek Web
site (www.newtek.com) for additional plug-ins as they become available.
The Flexible Format, TIFF LogLuv, and Radiance image formats contain high dynamic range data
(discussed below). In addition, they store the data with floating-point accuracy instead of using
integers.

When a 32-bit format is selected for saved RGB images, the 8-bit Alpha image is stored along
with the 24-bit RGB data. However, when you save alpha images directly, you save only the alpha
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image, even if the format is 32-bit.

The filename extension for Radiance images is .HDR.

If you have any of these images using the .PIC extension, you should rename them.
Supported image formats include but are not limited to: PSD, Alias, BMP, Cineon FP, DPX, Flexible
Image Format, IFF, JPEG, PCX, PICT, PNG, Radiance, RLA, RPF, SGI, Sun, TIFF, Targa, VBP, and YUV
image formats.
Supported animation formats: AVI (any installed codec), QuickTime, QuickTime Stereo, Flexible
Image Format, Storyboard, 4X Storyboard, Film Expand.
Supported Web 3D: QuickTimeVR, VRML and Shockwave for export.

Images and Memory

Mipmapping is a process where a series of images with progressively lower resolutions are created
from a base (full-resolution) image. Each pre-processed image is a power of two smaller than the
previous level. As textures move farther away from the camera, they obviously must be scaled
down. However, because the mipmaps are pre-processed and loaded into memory, they can be
used immediately for textures instead of continually shrinking down the base image; this saves
rendering time, but requires more memory. Eight-bit grayscale and eight-bit index-color images
remain in eight-bit form internally. For color images, their mipmaps, however, are 24-bit since they
must include colors in between color palette entries. Floating-point images use 96 bits per pixel
and have 96-bit mipmaps.
Here are some examples dealing with a 512 x 512 image in various formats, and how much
memory is used for the base image and the first couple mipmaps:
512 x 512 eight-bit grayscale image:
Base image 262,144 bytes (512 x 512 x 1)
First mipmap 65,536 bytes (256 x 256 x 1)
Second mipmap 16,384 bytes (128 x 128 x 1)
Total 344,064 bytes
512 x 512 eight-bit color-mapped image:
Base image 262,144 bytes (512 x 512 x 1)
First mipmap 196,608 bytes (256 x 256 x 3)
Second mipmap 49,152 bytes (128 x 128 x 3)
Total 507,904 bytes
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512 x 512 24-bit image:
Base image 786,432 bytes (512 x 512 x 3)
First mipmap 196,608 bytes (256 x 256 x 3)
Second mipmap 49,152 bytes (128 x 128 x 3)
Total 1,032,192 bytes
512 x 512 floating-point image
Base image 3,145,728 bytes (512 x 512 x 12)
First mipmap 786,432 bytes (256 x 256 x 12)
Second mipmap 196,608 bytes (128 x 128 x 12)
Total 4,128,768 bytes

High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI)

In computer graphics, color is displayed as a triplet value: red, green and blue. These values
typically range from 0 to 255. Those 256 steps of color represent eight bits and together all
three channels make up a 24-bit image. This means the maximum amount of color or luminance
variation an image is allowed is merely 256 steps.

See the discussion on radiosity for additional information on high dynamic range images.
In the real world, the human eye can perceive a much higher range of brightness and color values.
Film can also react to a much wider range. Video cameras, however, are limited to a fixed range that
fits closely to the same 256-step limit.
When exposed to high dynamic range visuals, such as a sunset or a desert landscape, the lens of
a camera will produce some level of artifacting. Some of those artifacts can be seen as blooming
areas of brightness, color bleed, luminance spill, lens streaking, and many other visual cues that tell
the viewer there is a very bright light source in the scene.
These very bright surfaces can also contribute to the overall lighting of a scene. For example,
sunlight streaming into a room will bounce off the floor and add a subtle illumination to the walls
and ceiling that would otherwise be left dark ( this bouncing of light is known as radiosity). All of
these effects can be seen in images captured by devices that do not support high dynamic ranges.
Because computer graphics applications were designed to output to devices that would not
understand pixel values above RGB 255, 255, 255, most applications do not provide for any value
to exceed these limits. LightWave, however, calculates all internal data without limits and with IEEE
floating-point accuracy. This means that when LightWave points a light at a surface, while the final
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rendered pixel may reach only RGB 255, 255, 255 for pure white, internally that pixel may have
reached ten times that amount. This may not seem significant at first glance - white is white after
all - but, if we look at how LightWave utilizes that data, it becomes very exciting.

Import/Export
LightWave can utilise high dynamic range detail, as it is generated internally (e.g., in the case of
a very bright light) or from data in image files. This can be imagery generated from a series of
photographs taken at various exposures and composited (see Recovering High Dynamic Range
Radiance Maps from Photographs by Paul E. Debevec and Jitendra Malik at http://www.debevec.
org/) or data rendered in LightWave saved in one of the high dynamic range formats.
Once these images are imported into the system, they can be used just like any other image in
LightWave 3D (e.g., as a texture, background, etc.). During the rendering process LightWave will
respect the extra data in the image to assist in secondary lighting and other calculations.
Imagine using a high dynamic range image as an environment wrap (e.g., using the Image World
environment plug-in.), which also illuminates the scene. With the appropriate imagery you can
illuminate a scene without any lights and the results will match the look and feel of the original
photograph.

Image by Darkside Animation.

Once LightWave finishes rendering, you can export images with the same high dynamic range
data. This lets you bring that data back into LightWave or into compositing applications that
support such data. Using this extra data in the compositing process is very important as it can
more accurately represent imagery as it would look if it were recorded directly to film. For example,
compositing applications could use the extra dynamic range data to calculate the amount of
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diffuse bloom or color bleed from one pixel to the next.

Internal Compositing
Another area where high dynamic range imagery is supported is in LightWaves own internal
compositing through pixel and image filters. Any filter can be designed to take advantage of the
high dynamic range data with floating-point accuracy. This way, high dynamic range data can be
leveraged in the post-process phase with included filters and by third party additions.

Preview Compression Codec

The NTCodec.dll adds LightWaves preview compression scheme into the Windows AVI codec.
You just need to install it if you want to play/load compressed preview anims into other Windows
applications/players. See the README.TXT file located in the NTCODEC directory for installation
instructions.

The Hub
The Hub is essentially a message board that LightWave modules use to synchronize information.
It contains entries like synced object filenames and configuration memory blocks. When the same
object is loaded into both Layout and Modeler, changes made to the object are automatically
synchronized. If the object appears in Layout, but not Modeler, you can quickly load it into Modeler
by selecting it from the object pop-up menu - initially, the name will be ghosted.

If you have modified an object in Modeler (without saving) and then load the object file into
Layout, the modified version will appear - since it is synced - not the data from the object file.
The Hub runs automatically when you run LightWave. Basically, it is a background process and you
shouldnt need to directly interact with it. However, you can bring up its interface by clicking its
icon (when running).

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If you expand the Launch Processes menu, you should see applications that the HUB is aware of
(e.g., Layout, Modeler). You can launch the application by double-clicking it. If you single-click (to
select it) and then press the L key, you will also launch the application. If you press the DEL key
instead, you will delete the application from the launch list. (This has no effect on the program files
on your hard drive.)

The Launch Processes menu will be empty initially. However, once you run Layout or Modeler,
entries will be added.
Under Windows, the Hub icon will appear in the System tray. You can right-click on it to access a small
menu:

Open Open Hub window

Close Close Hub window
Launch Launch applications that the Hub knows about
Properties Set options to quit the Hub after you exit LightWave
Exit Close the Hub program

Properties
You can set the Automatic Shutdown to various time intervals, after which the Hub will shutdown
when there is no activity. Note that even when Layout and Modeler are idle, there is still some
minimal communication activity which will keep the Hub from shutting down.
When Layout or Modeler are running, you can set LightWave to auto-save objects and scenes
in your Preferences dialog. On the General tab go down the near the bottom where you will see
two dropdown menus, one for auto-saving Objects, the other for Scenes. In Modeler, you can just
choose to auto-save Objects in the General Options panel.

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If you would like to run Layout and/or Modeler independently, append -0 to the command (e.g.,
Lightwav.exe -0. Thats a zero, by the way.) You will have to load and save objects manually.

Command IPC
We have implemented an interprocess communications system, CommandIPC, into Layout and
Modeler. When LightWave is started without Hub support (the -0 command line option), Layout
and Modeler all notify each other when a mesh file has been saved to disc, and the applications
that have that file open and have not applied modifications during the session will update from
the new version on disc. For example, if both Layout and Modeler have bob.lwo open, Modeler
has some edits applied to it, and Layout saves it transformed, Modeler will not automatically
update from the disc.
If subsequently the object is saved out from Modeler, that will overwrite the changes made by
Layout, and Layout will update from the save if no further changes were applied in Layout during
the interim. LightWave CORE users should note that the IPC system is only active in the Windows
and Mac builds, since LightWave HC code is not built for Linux.
The isolate flag (-i) will completely disable all IPC mechanisms (Hub and CommandIPC), leaving
the application isolated from all other product actions.

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Optimizing RAM Usage
If your computer is accessing virtual memory frequently during rendering, you may find a
substantial increase in performance by installing more RAM on your machine or reducing the
amount of RAM LightWave needs to store the render information.
One of the best ways to minimise the need for RAM is to reduce the color of the images used for
texture mapping effects. Except for those used as a Surface Color, Texture Maps usually need to be
only 256-level greyscale images.
Other ways to reduce RAM usage are to render your animation in multiple passes or decrease
Segment Memory Limit on Layouts Render Globals Panel.

LightWave 3D Resources
Internet Resources
LightWave-specific forums, newsgroups and mailing lists are maintained on the Internet. Here
you can find new users asking questions about using LightWave and experts answering them.
Also, many topics related to computer animation are discussed in these groups, such as the
performance of various graphics cards, CPU speeds, platforms, and many more. NewTeks own
forum can be found at http://vbulletin.newtek.com/ and there are many others out there.
LightWave 3Ds Facebook, Google+ and YouTube pages can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/LightWave3D
https://plus.google.com/105443668744745125881/posts
https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialLightWave3D

NewTek Web and FTP Sites

In addition to information about NewTek products, upgrades, and the latest releases of LightWave
software, our websites (www.LightWave3D.com and www.newtek.com) have tutorials, LightWave
images and animations, technical support FAQs, tech support email links, and links to related sites.
NewTek maintains an FTP site (ftp.newtek.com) on the Internet. Here you can find objects, scene
files, images, and other items of interest to LightWave users.

Community
A unique attribute of LightWave 3D is the LightWave community. It is rare to find such a passionate
group of professionals that are so talented and yet so willing to share their secrets, ideas, and
creations. Make certain you also take a look into the available resources such as local users groups
and training books and videos.

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Technical Support
The best source for help with installing or configuring software or hardware is the retailer from
whom you purchased your NewTek product. While we have made every effort to keep your
software and hardware trouble-free and easy to use, you may occasionally need help right from
the source. If you have problems with NewTek-supplied hardware or LightWave doesnt seem to be
functioning as it should, please contact technical support using the contact form:
https://www.lightwave3d.com/contact/tech_support/
Email support hours are between: 9am - 6pm US Central Time (+6hrs GMT), Monday - Friday.
In your communication, please include as much information as possible including:

Your computers operating system and version;

The version of LightWave you are using;
The amount of RAM in your computer;
Which display card you are using and what version of drivers are installed;
CPU and make and model of computer or motherboard;
Your product serial number

Your product must be registered before you can receive support.

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LightWaves Layout has been designed to provide the most efficient interface possible for your
3D animation work. By default, there is a single large viewport, but you can display multiple
viewports if you desire. A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world
you are creating. How well this corresponds to what the final output will look like is completely
configurable by you. This can range from bounding box stand-ins to wireframe representations, all
the way to textured and solid-shaded displays. How you view your creations will vary depending
on their complexity, your machines capabilities, and other factors.

Image courtesy Chris Jones

LightWaves Virtual World

LightWaves world is defined using three axes: X, Y, and Z. Here weve loaded the Cow object and
havent rotated it. At its default position, from front to back, the cows body is aligned along the Z
axis and is facing the positive Z direction. The X axis runs left to right, with right as the positive side.
The Y axis runs up and down, with up as the positive side.

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It is common to see objects that have a front and back (e.g., vehicles, spaceships and animals)
facing in the positive Z direction. As you will understand later, this orientation works best with
LightWaves motion features.
The center of the world, called the Origin, is defined by the XYZ coordinates 0, 0, 0 and represents
the intersection of all three axes. Any position in LightWaves virtual world can be defined by
positive and negative XYZ values. The cow is standing right over the Origin. (The Size and Stretch
tools also use XYZ (scaling) values along those axes; note that these are applied relative to the
objects Pivot Point, also known as the Local Origin, discussed in the next section, rather than the
World Origin.)

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World and Local Axes
Objects in a scene also have axes and, thus, an Origin, called the local Origin. When an object is first
loaded, its local Origin is lined up with the world Origin. Moreover, its local axes are lined up with
the world axes. However, once you move or rotate the object, this is no longer the case. LightWave
provides functions that let you move and rotate items using global or local axes. Now, most of the
time youll use World, but sometimes using local will be invaluable.
To illustrate the difference, lets say you are standing in the middle of a one-room house facing the
front door. If you held your right arm straight out, it would point to the right side of the house, and
your left arm would point to the left side of the house.
Now, lets say you turned 90 degrees clockwise. (Youd be facing the right side of the house.) If I told
you to point your right arm towards the houses right side (global axes), youd move it straight out
in front of you. However, if I told you to point your right arm to your right (local axes), you would
point to the back of the house.

Your Point of View

By default, Layout uses a single viewport. Later on in this section, youll learn how to use up to four
simultaneous viewports. You can choose between several different points of view (POV) for each
viewport using the View Type pop-up menu at each viewports top-left corner. Manipulating items
in virtual 3D space on a 2D display (i.e., your monitor) can be difficult at times, so you will switch
between nearly all of these as you edit your scene.

It is sometimes easier to work in just two dimensions at a time. The options with the axis notations
(e.g., Top (XZ)) are the orthogonal views, which let you move items in only two dimensions
(horizontally or vertically), along the XY, XZ, or ZY axes. The (none) setting blanks out the viewport.
Note that there are two options for each axis set. This allows you to look in either direction along
the perpendicular axis (e.g., Top (XZ) and Bottom (XZ). For these, Y is the perpendicular axis.)
The Perspective view is a forced-perspective view. That is, it gives you a three-dimensional look at
your scene.

The orthogonal and the Perspective views are dependent on each other. Changing the position
of one will affect the other.

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There are also pseudo-physical POVs. When setting up a light, youll often want to look through it
to see exactly what it points at. In such a case, youll use the Light view to look through the current
light. Youll always want to see your scene from the Camera view at some point since that is the
perspective used in your rendered images.

Changing Your Point of View

With the View Control drag buttons located on the upper-right edge of a viewport, you can
interactively alter the orthogonal and perspective POVs. The buttons are dimmed to indicate that
they are not available when you use the Light or Camera views, where they have no effect since
those are based on their respective items POV in the scene itself.

Center Continuously centers the viewport on the selected item. You may also activate the Center
Current Item option on the pop-up menu next to the view selector.

For an object, the centering is based on its pivot point, which is discussed later. This is not always
the center of an object. If you deactivate this mode, the existing POV position will remain until
changed. As such, you can use this feature to establish a starting point if the need arises.
You can use the keyboard shortcuts A and Shift +A to Fit All and Fit Selected in any viewport. Fitting
is based on pivot points rather than geometry.
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Move
Orthogonal view: Moves your POV horizontally when you drag left or right and vertically
when you drag up or down.
Keyboard shortcut: Alt
Perspective view: Moves your POV horizontally when you drag left or right and farther/closer
when you drag up or down with the LMB. Moves your POV vertically when you drag up or
down with the RMB.
Keyboard shortcut: Shift + Alt

You can use the keyboard shortcut G to center the area under the cursor.

Since you are changing your POV, the scene items will appear to move in the opposite direction
of your mouse movements.

Rotate
Orthogonal views - not applicable.
Perspective view - Rotates your POVs heading when you drag left or right and its pitch when
you drag up or down with the LMB. Rotates your POVs bank when you drag left or right with
the RMB.
Keyboard shortcut: Alt

Zoom
All views - Zooms in and out when you drag left and right. (You can also use the < and >
keys.)
Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Alt
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Use the keyboard shortcut A to zoom the view out to where all items in the scene are visible.

Taking Aim
Each orthogonal and perspective view is based on a single aimpoint. In other words, you are
always looking at the same point in 3D space, no matter which view type you use in that viewport
(except Light and Camera view, of course.) That point is also the center of the view rotation. Thats
why, if you move around in the Back view and then change the View Type to Perspective, youll find
the view has moved in that view type as well.
The position, rotation (affects only Perspective mode), and zoom of each viewport can be specified
numerically using the Set View menu items in the viewport title bar.

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If you are using multiple viewports, each has its own independent aimpoint and set of position,
rotation, and zoom values.

Resetting Views
Also on the pop-up menu, above, are options to reset a views position (Move), rotation, and zoom
to default values.

Bone Weight Shade

Activating Bone Weight Shade in the Viewport Options pop-up menu will show the selected bones
influence range in any shaded viewport. The influence coloring is based on each bones color,
which can be changed in the Scene Editor. A bright yellow is used for the currently selected bone.
Note that the bone must be active to see this effect. This mode will override the normal texture
display.
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Bone X-Ray
By default Bone X-Ray is on to show bones inside geometry.. Note that bones may still be invisible
if the object surface is similarly colored/shaded. Change the bone colors using the Scene Editor,
if this becomes a problem. If you wish to switch off Bone X-Ray you can uncheck the item in the
Viewport Options menu.

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Viewport Display Mode
You can also set the display mode used by the viewport using the Viewport Display Mode pop-up
menu next to the View Type selector. This is much faster than using the Scene Editor Panel.

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Recipe for a Scene

LightWave animations (or still images) always start as a Scene - basically, a collection of objects,
lights, cameras, and images, which can move and change over some specified length of time.
Creating a basic LightWave scene involves the following steps:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)

dding items (e.g., objects and lights) to a scene

A
Setting the starting position for all items in the scene
Setting the length of the scene
Placing items in key positions at certain points in time
Previewing the motions of the items
Setting and testing render settings
Rendering the final animation
Selecting an Item in Layout

Usually, you work on one item at a time, the current item, and you need to tell LightWave which
item it is. But before you learn how to do that, you need to know that Layout items are grouped
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into four different types: objects, bones, lights, and cameras. When you work on any item, the edit
mode buttons along the bottom (i.e., Objects, Bones, Lights or Cameras) are set to the current
items type.

To select an item:
There are several ways to select an item in Layout:
Click on the item in a viewport;
Click on the items name in the Scene Editor Panel (Scene Editor); or
Manually select the edit mode and then select the item from the Current Item pop-up menu.
Note that you cannot select a locked item (a little lock icon appears next to name).
Use the Item Picker master plugin
You can select items in a viewport by clicking on any polygon edge rather than just on a pivot
point.

You can use your Up and Down cursor keys to cycle through the Current Item list. All items,
except objects, are highlighted in yellow when selected. When an object is selected, a dotted-yellow
bounding box will appear around it.

You can select a bone by clicking near its midpoint, rather than its pivot point, making it possible
to pick different bones that branch from the same point in a hierarchy.

Selecting Multiple Items

You can select multiple items of the same type, like all objects or all lights, and perform edits on
them simultaneously.

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Holding the

Shift

(or

Ctrl

) key will allow you to select multiple items of the same type.

Multiple bones in the hand object selected and rotated

If the toolbar command is a state-type command and the selected items have mixed settings, the
button will be shaded diagonally. Clicking the button will toggle the state of the current item and
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make all other selected items the same. Clicking again will toggle the state of all items.

Selecting by Name
Pressing the apostrophe () key launches a special selector dialog. Simply type-in a few characters
that uniquely identify the desired item and click OK. You can select any type of item.

Deselecting Items
In Layout, one item is always selected. It becomes deselected when you select a different object.

Item Selection: Bounding Box

A selection bounding box can be created by dragging your middle mouse button in any viewport.
Items whose points appear within the box will be selected, and if the Shift key is held down, the
items will be added to the existing selected items, if they are the same type. If items of more than
one type are within the box, preference is given to those items matching the current edit mode.
In addition to the viewports, this also works in other areas of the interface, such as the Graph
Editor.

If your mouse has a scroll wheel, it should also function as a MMB when clicked.

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The Layout Interface
LightWaves Layout has been designed to provide the most efficient interface possible for your
3D animation work. By default, there is a single large viewport, but you can display multiple
viewports if you desire. A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world
you are creating. How well this corresponds to what the final output will look like is completely
configurable by you. This can range from bounding box stand-ins to wireframe representations, all
the way to textured and solid-shaded displays. How you view your creations will vary depending
on their complexity, your machines capabilities, and other factors.

1. Top Toolbar, 2. Layout Tabs, 3. Modeler Access, 4. Toolbar, 5. Workspace, 6. Info Display, 7. Grid Display, 8. Start Frame, 9. Timeline, 10.
Tooltips, 11. Current Item, 12. Item Picker, 13. Item, 14. Properties, 15. Selected, 16. Key Section, 17. End Frame, 18. Transport Controls, 19.
Preview, 20. Undo/Redo, 21. Rate/Step

1. Top ToolBar

The Top Tool Bar buttons will appear no matter which Tab is selected and contains elements that
are always required, such as File and Edit menus. You can completely hide (or unhide) the toolbar
by pressing Alt +F2 (or choosing Edit > Display Options > Hide Toolbar On/Off).

2. Layout Tabs
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The tabs located at the top of the interface will determine which tools appear in the Tool Bar.
Generally, menu group names that are verbs contain commands based on the type of action they
perform. Menu group names that are nouns contain commands based on the type of object they
affect. The menu tab names are all intended to be read as verbs.

Items - Add objects, lights, and other items to your scene here.
Modify - Move, Rotate, Scale, and more.
Setup - Bone tools, Genoma and other rigging tools.
FX Tools - Dynamics, Fracturing, Flocking and FiberFX.
Render - Render Options, Print Camera and more.
View - Display options and selection tools can be found here.
Modeler Tools - Create basic objects without needing to go into Modeler.
I/O - All that is import and export.
Utilities - Lscript and Plugins Access.

3. Modeler Access

This command will switch to your Modeler window if it is open or opens Modeler if you do not
already have it open.

4. Toolbar

The buttons presented in this toolbar will depend on which menu tab you select along the top.

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5. Workspace

The Workspace consists of Viewports. By default, there is a single large viewport, but you can
display multiple viewports if you desire (using the F3 and F4 keyboard shortcuts or visiting Options
> Display). A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world you are creating.

Viewport Titlebar

You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display
Options Panel by using the pop-up menus on the left side of each viewport titlebar. You can also
activate Weight Shade and Bone X-ray modes.

The buttons on the right side of a viewport affect centering, panning, rotating, zooming, and
minimizing/maximizing your view.

6. Numeric Adjustment Controls

You can change Position and Rotation settings numerically by entering the desired values in the
XYZ or HPB fields, located in the lower left corner. The function of these fields changes depending
on the editing being done.

Protecting from Changes

Whether you are moving, rotating, or stretching an item, or moving its pivot point, Layout lets you
independently deactivate any of the three components used for those settings. You deactivate the
components by clicking on them on the information display in the lower-left corner of the screen.
This protects the deactivated component(s) from changing as you move your mouse.

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The Y channel wont be affected when moving the currently-selected item.

You can also confine changes by using any of the orthogonal views (i.e., Front, Top, and Side). In
these views, you can generally make changes only along the displays horizontal and vertical axes using
your mouse.

7. Grid Display
The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around, but it will never render in a final
image (no matter how much you wish it to). The grid lines are darker every tenth square for visual
reference. The Origin is located at the center of the grid.
You can find the current size of the grid squares in the information field at the very lower-left
corner of the screen. The size of each grid square is adjustable as is its overall size on the Display
Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options). If you adjust the size of the grid
squares you also adjust the relative size of the camera and the lights within the scene.

8. Start Frame

This displays the first frame of the scene. It can be raised or lowered. This number remains in
frames, even if you should set the timeline to be displayed in one of the other options (SMPTE, Film
Key, Seconds) in the Options window. By default it is set to 0.

9. Timeline and Dope Track

The Timeline, located beneath the viewport area uses the Frame Slider which can be dragged to
change the current frame or shuttle through your scene. The input field to the left of the timeline is
the first frame in your scene and the input field to the right is the last frame. You can change these
settings by simply changing the values in either field.

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The DopeTrack allows you to modify keys. You can adjust not only their position in time and the
scene, but also alter their properties. You can set up markers here to tell you when things should
happen in the scene and bake ranges of keys to make your animation concrete. You can open or
close the DopeTrack by clicking on the thick bar above the time line.

10. Tooltip

This line of the interface shows information about tool actions or potential actions, and the render
time for VPR as shown.

11. Current Item

This dropdown menu changes depending on the type of item you have chosen (13). You can
choose between Objects (including dynamics), Bones (contained within objects - choose the
object containing the bones first, then switch to Bone mode), Lights and Cameras. These items are
exclusive, you cannot select a camera at the same time as an object.

12. Item Picker

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The Item Picker window allows you to quickly select one or more objects and to set up selection
sets of objects for faster use.

13. Items

As mentioned above you can only choose items from one of LightWaves four groups at the same
time. You can switch between the groups with these four buttons.

14. Properties

This button brings up a Properties window for the four item types. Theres a window for Objects,
one for Bones and Lights and Cameras share a window.

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15. Selection Info

The Selection Info displays how many items are selected.

16. Keyframe options

To automatically create or modify keys you must activate the Auto Key option on the main interface.
This is the global on/off switch for automatically creating keyframes. It works in conjunction with
the Auto Key Create setting (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel).
Use the Create Key and Delete Key commands to add and remove keyframes.

17. End Frame

This displays the last frame of the scene. It can be raised or lowered. This number remains in
frames, even if you should set the timeline to be displayed in one of the other options (SMPTE, Film
Key, Seconds) in the Options window.

18. Transport Controls

Besides dragging the frame slider to navigate through your scene, you can also use the transport
controls.

19. Preview

You can create a previsualization of your scene for when playback in Layout is not fast enough.

20. Undo/Redo

The Undo function will reverse motion changes (Move, Rotate, Size, or Stretch tool) that you have
made. The Redo function will re-execute a sequence of actions that have been undone, beginning
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with the action most recently undone. You can set the number of undo levels that you wish to have
available in the General Options tab of the Preferences Panel, discussed later, in the Edit Menu
section. If there are no actions available to undo, the Undo button will be ghosted.
The Redo button is ghosted if there are no actions available to redo.

If you are not using the Auto Key feature, you can quickly reset all aspects of a frame (i.e.,
position, rotation, etc.) if you havent created the key yet. Just press the Right cursor key and then the
Left cursor key. This advances the current frame and then goes back to the original frame. The frame will
return to the last keyframed state, or if the frame is not a keyframe, to its in-between state.

21. Rate/Step

This value sets the speed of playback. If you have the option Play at Exact Rate checked in Options
then this field will be labeled Rate. If not, it will be labeled Step. Rate is a percentage of real time,
while Step is what frames will be played - 1 indicates every frame, 2 indicates every other frame, 3
indicates every third frame and so on.

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The Grid
A grid of squares, made up of an planar axis at 0,0,0, is visible in any of the orthogonal views, as
well as the Perspective view. The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around,
but it will never render in a final image. The grid lines are darker every tenth square for visual
reference. The Origin is located at the center of the grid.

You can find the current size of the grid squares in the information field at the very lower-left
corner of the screen. The size of each grid square is adjustable as is its overall size on the Display
Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options).

The Grid and Relative Camera/Light Sizes

The size of lights and cameras (that is, how they appear in the viewport) are relative to the size of
the grid squares, with the exception of Area Lights and Linear Lights, which are independent of
the grid square size. If you have very large grid squares, you will also have very large lights/camera
compared to objects, and vice versa.

The size of the lights/cameras does not affect their functionality.

The Grid Square Size Effect on Positioning

The Grid Square Size (Display > Options: Display Options) also determines the incremental change
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as you drag your mouse. Thus, a smaller size lets you edit your objects position with greater
accuracy than using a larger one. If you find that you cant edit an object with the accuracy
required, try lowering the Grid Square Size. However, this will also affect the Orthogonal and
Perspective view modes.

Grid Square Size Auto-Adjustment

When you start creating a new scene, your Grid Square Size will automatically adjust itself upwards
only, if necessary. This can be problematic when you use objects that differ significantly in relative
size, like planets and spaceships. Objects may seem to disappear, when in reality they are just too
small or too big to see in the viewport.
Once you manually set the Grid Square Size or save and reload a scene, the automatic sizing
adjustment is deactivated. As such, you may want to load the smaller objects first and then
manually change the Grid Square Size to the same value. Then, load the larger objects.

Schematic View
The Schematic viewport type is a two-dimensional view showing all items in the scene as
rectangles that can be selected and moved into any arrangement. You access this mode by
selecting Schematic from the Viewport Options pop-up menu on a viewports titlebar.

Each rectangle appears in the associated items wireframe color, and hidden items are shown as
outlined instead of filled rectangles. Solid lines link children to their parents and end effectors are
connected to their goals with dashed lines.
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Also see the Display Options and Schematic View tool generic plugin.
Navigation is consistent with other 2D viewports (e.g., Alt / Alt + Shift =move, Ctrl + Alt =zoom,
Center Current Item, etc.). Press the (A) key to fill all items into view or (G) key to center.

Parenting in Schematic View

Parent items can be assigned by holding your Ctrl key down and clicking on the desired parent for
the current item. Ctrl -clicking in a blank area unparents the item.

Other Schematic View Options

When you right-click an item, it displays a pop-up menu. This menu can clear, clone, rename, open
the Properties Panel for the item, and set the items wireframe color.

Close/Save Window

View Modified Only - shows only items that have had changes applied in the work session.
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Scene File Version will save the file in the version selected. The version 6.0 entry covers
LightWave versions 6.0 through 9.0.
Save All Modified - will save all changes made in a session.
Items - shows the items in a scene. Clicking on the arrow will expand or collapse the menu
tree.
Modified - shows which items have been changed.
Save Mode - has different save options that are available by clicking in the Save Mode
section.
Scene files: Do not Save, Save, Save As, Incremental
Object files: Do not Save, Save, Save As, Incremental
Files - is the file path where the items will be saved. Double clicking there will open a save
options window.
Save - will save based on the options chosen above.
Save and Clear / Exit - will save based on the options above and then either clear the scene or
exit Layout.
Clear / Exit - will clear the scene or exit without saving.
Cancel - will close this window without performing any of the above operations.

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Camera Basics
Introduction

Image courtesy Kevin Quattro, Inhance Digital

The camera is the conduit for your imagination to a final image. When creating your render you
need to decide what it will be used for, what its destination will be. Will it be an image for film or
broadcast, print or computer screen?
Whatever your images destination, there are two defining characteristics for it. One is how big it is,
the other is the shape of the pixels that make it up.
You can make all these decisions in the Render Globals window, Camera Properties tab, which will
appear when you pick a camera and hit the P button on your keyboard, or the Properties button on
your LightWave screen.

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Multiple Cameras
You can have as many cameras as you like in a scene. However, you can only render the current
camera view. You add extra cameras into the scene by clicking on the Items > Add > Camera button,
you can clone existing ones (with Ctrl -C) or you can use the Perspective views Viewport Options
menu to Match Viewport Perspective to a selected or new Camera (or light) as shown below. If you
have more than one camera in a scene, you can choose the camera you wish to be active, when
in Camera mode, either in the Camera Properties Panel or the Current Item button under the main
Layout window.

Matching Perspective to Camera or Light View

Its often easy to set up what seems like a really good camera angle in the Perspective viewport
and duplicating it in-camera isnt as simple. Layout can match your Camera or Light View to your
Perspective Viewport. You need to have your current Camera (or Light) selected at which new
options become available in the third Viewport dropdown menu as shown:

You can choose to either copy the Perspective views orientation to the current camera (or light) or
clone it and create a new one to which the Perspective view is copied.

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To exactly match the Perspective viewports perspective, you should set the Cameras Lens Focal
Length to 30 mm instead of the default 24.0 mm

2015

Independent Viewport Cameras and Lights

As of LightWave 2015 there has been a change to the Viewport display menu. You can now have
multiple views from different cameras or lights, making setting up multiple viewpoints easier
without needing to constantly switch between views. The above viewports show three different
camera angles and a light view. When you switch between views you can always continue to use
the current light or camera, or you can choose specific lights and cameras from a sub-menu.

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Hitting F9 will render the Camera marked as Current Item in Layout

CameraSelector
This Master plugin allows you to switch between different cameras in Layout. The current camera
is still the one being rendered but this can be used to preview camera switches in-scene or in a
Preview.
To access the CameraSelector, click on the Master Plugins button in the Utilities Tab. This will bring
up a window with a drop down menu in which you can select CameraSelector. Double clicking on
its entry in the Master Plugins list window will open the CameraSelector plugins window. To create
a list of camera changes all you need do is to scrub through your scene selecting the camera you
want for each shot. Simply click on the Add button in the CameraSelector window for each camera
change you wish to take place. If you then start playing your scene, you will see that the camera
switches at the time you stated. If you wish to remove a camera change, select the change you
want to get rid of and hit delete in the CameraSelector window.
If you would like to see your scene play through just one camera view, you can turn off Camera
Selector by clicking the Enable Dynamic Preview switch, during scene playback.
For CameraSelector to work its magic, it needs information not normally available to master
plugins. This is why it automatically creates a null object called SpecialTriggerNull whose only
purpose in life is to serve CameraSelector. If you wish to use a different object, you can select it on
the Trigger drop down menu but, normally, there is no reason to do so.

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2015

Perspective Match

New to LightWave 2015 is a tool called Perspective Match to be found on the Render tab of Layout.
It enables the matching of the perspectives of a background image to Layouts setup to make
compositing still images containing real world elements and computer graphics much simpler.
In order to make use of it, you will need a digital photo that can be used as a background image,
preferably with some obvious vertical, horizontal and depth lines that can be used for alignment.

Set Background Image

Although this is a separate tool and Perspective Match can be set up manually without it, Set
Background Image automates things to a large extent. Choose the image you wish to use from
those already loaded or load a new image.
Match Camera Frame Size to Image - Will match the pixel size of the image used.
Set Background Image Options - Will place the image chosen in the Effects > Compositing >
Background Image field.

This script cannot pull data from the EXIF information in the picture. If you want to get the best
possible match, then use the Real Lens camera and pull EXIF data that way, including lens focal length
and Field of View. That said, Perspective Match does a very good job as it is.

If you use a huge image with Set Background Image you might need to add it to Effects >
Compositing > Background Image yourself if the image isnt made available to the script in time.

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Numeric Panel

Perspective Match has a GUI panel which pops up with the N key (or whatever shortcut you have
the Numeric command linked to). It has the following settings and options:
Lock - what value to lock to solve for the perspective amount
Zoom Factor - keeps zoom factor fixed, changes film size
Focal Length - changes zoom factor and film size, keeping focal length fixed
Frame Size - frame size remains fixed, changes zoom factor
Origin - when on, places a gizmo in the scene with which you indicate where the world origin
should be. This moves the camera in X and Z.
Height - to solve for the camera Y position (in essence, scene scale)
(Fixed Height) - leaves the camera at its current height.
Height From Floor - adds a gizmo with which you can indicate the vertical height of
something in the scene as measured from the floor (the XZ plane). Supply the height
value in the provided widget.
On Floor - adds a gizmo with which you can indicate the length of something in the
scene as measured on the floor.
So if you have a person in the scene with a known height, use Height From Floor, enter
the persons height, and set the gizmo from their feet to the top of their head. Note that
the direction of this gizmo does matter: the flat end should be on the floor, the arrow at
the other end.
On the other hand, if for example you have a ruler lying on the ground (or on a table, or
whatever horizontal surface you want to place the XZ plane on), the use the On Floor
option. Enter the length of the ruler, and place the gizmo along the ruler (which end
goes where does not matter).
Swap XZ - swaps the X and Z indicators, because sometimes you change your mind what
the X and Z directions should be in your scene. Effectively it spins the camera around by 90
degrees.
Reset - resets the gizmo positions to their default.
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Solve More - runs the solver a few times every time you press the button, in case it hasnt
converged to a good solution completely yet.

Example - New Delivery

1) Before using Match Perspective, first start the Set BG Image tool just above it. This will open a
window wherein you can choose the image you will be matching to. Aside from choosing an
image, leave the other settings at default for the time being.

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2) Once you hit okay, the background image you chose will appear in the Camera Viewport.
Now it is time to structure your scene so it can be populated. Hit the Match Perspective tool
and you will see six lines appear - two red, two green and two blue.

3) It doesnt matter in what order you arrange these lines, nor which end is which; but the red
ones should represent the X coordinate of your screen. Theres some architrave above the
entrance that will work well so move the central handle up to the line then double click to
pin it. The central handle will turn solid red. Now that it is pinned you can line up either end
of the line and the whole line will rotate about the fixed point. You can do the same for the
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other red line across where the house meets the ground.

4) Ive continued with the green lines, but just from preference. You can arrange the lines in any
order you like. If you right click on a handle at the end of a line, or in the center, you will get
a magnified view of the pixels of the image to better help you locate exactly the point you
want.

5) Now that the green lines are in place, just the blue lines left and there isnt much thats
obvious. As you can see the grid starts to come into alignment with the image as you
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organize these lines. The bottom of the porch wall is a good candidate, but for the other
one let use the grid of paving stones. Its not a very long Z line, but it will have to do for this
scene. Try and scope out when photographing to make sure you have six useful axis lines.

6) Now that all our lines are in place, its time to bring in the objects we are going to populate
our scene with. Already they look quite at home with the perspective used and just need
shifting into better positions. You may find yourself changing views to organize this better
and while there is some guesswork, already youll find things much easier than before.

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7) One last thing to make sure were well situated in our scene. I know that the width of the
black tiles on the porch is exactly 1.514 m across. So, I hit N to bring up the Perspective
Match numeric window and set the On Floor measurement bar to stretch across the black
tiling and entered the measurement.

8) The gray object behind the parcel and the floor below it were both
given Shadow Catcher surfaces and an additional strip was put down
the right side of the porch to conceal one side of the box.

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Camera Types
Classic Camera
Classic Camera refers to the only camera type available previous to LightWave 9. It doesnt have
many of the features found in other cameras now and wont show instancing. It is included for
legacy use with old assets. It is detailed starting page 158.

Perspective Camera
The Perspective camera is the replacement for the Classic camera, uses Unified Sampling, renders
from the top of the frame down and complex scenes tend to render faster.

Zoom Factor
The zoom factor drop down menu allows you to set a zoom factor equivalent to a real world
camera lens. It has four different types of zoom factor for you to choose from, but LightWave
defaults to a zoom factor of 3.2, equal to a 24 mm lens. LightWave users that are familiar with real
world camera equipment may find that using the Lens Focal Length type on the drop down menu
is the easiest to use. Those who are solely used to LightWaves way of doing things may be more
comfortable using the Zoom Factor type. You can also use the Horizontal and Vertical FOV (Field of
View) settings. These set the degree of angle of view.

Left:138 mm lens, Right: 8 mm lens

Smaller Zoom Factor or Lens Focal Length values will produce a wider angle lens effect while larger
values give a narrow field of view, similar to a telephoto lens effect. You can create an envelope to
achieve effects such as reverse zooms where you pull the camera away while concentrating the
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field of view. The envelope will be based on Zoom Factor regardless of which mode on the drop
down you choose to use.

To perfectly match the Camera to the Perspective viewport when using Match Viewport
Perspective, set the Lens Focal Length to 30 mm.

Advanced Camera
The advanced camera is a multi-purpose camera. With the advanced camera, you can recreate real
cameras and lenses. You can shift the lens distortion over time. Custom lenses can be created by
using a mesh object

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Ray Start - This item defines the starting position for every Ray in the scene(world coordinate
based)
Item Position - this is used for pinhole type cameras(like the standard LW camera), that is a
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single point in space as a ray start position.

Item - the item in the scene to be used as a camera
Time Sweep: this can be used to control when in time to read the item position.
UV Position on a mesh - camera plane defined as a UVmap on a mesh, I would probably
recommend trying to stay within a semi square plane as a starting point as you can get
highly unpredictable results otherwise, the mesh itself can be animated in any manner(quite
fun to play with)
Mesh - well the mesh used for the camera plane.
UV Map - Select the UV map you want to use
Item XY - X and Y start position is taken from the Items cordinate system
Item - what item to use as ray start
Time Sweep - same as the item position Sweep function.
Custom - definable with XYZ using numerical input, envelopes or textures
Ray Direction - this defines where the rays should go once they leave the starting position,
given in world coordinates.
Reverse - The direction of the ray is reversed.
Towards Item Position - Each ray goes through the origin of the item.
Towards UV Position on a mesh - Each ray goes through the matching UV coordinates on a
mesh.
Mesh UV Polygon Normal - same as above but goes through the polygon normal instead of
UV coordinates.
Mesh UV smooth normal - same as above but with normal smoothing.
Field of View - Behaves mostly like a normal camera, aligning the rays to move along the Z
axis in the FOV defined by the settings. This has a couple of sub modes you can play with as
well:
Perspective - Standard perspective view with definable X and Y FOV
Orthographic - Planar projection mode, area rendered is defined by size of the ray start item.
Cylinder - Y axis is orthographic while the X axis roams free, this is useful for making things
like panoramas.
Spherical - Produces a similar effect as a fisheye lens. The vertical settings will be disabled.
The horizontal value controls how many degrees the fisheye lens covers. Note that this mode
affects both horizontal and vertical FoV.
The field of view has a default value of 45.24.
Through item XY - rays set to go through item XY, dependant on ray start.
Custom - Definable with XYZ using numerical input, envelopes or textures.
Orientation Reference - Determines the orientation of the rays in relation to the selected item.

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Standard Perspective Camera render

Example of Time Sweep

Example of Spherical Camera (camera moved in to the shoulder of the rasper cow)

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Example of Camera using UVMesh (view mapped to the UVs of the room)

Orthographic Camera
For the Orthographic Camera, the direction is the same for all rays, and the position is determined
by the location of the corresponding pixel on the imaginary screen. Perspective of distance
between objects is not possible when using the Orthographic camera. An example of using this
camera is in top-down architectural renderings.

While it is possible to use the stereoscopic tools with the Orthographic camera, it is not
recommended

Real Lens Camera

The Real Lens Camera Setting in the Camera Properties Panel will simulate a physical camera lens.
Several camera manufacturers are listed and act as filters -selecting a specific manufacturer will
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limit the models and lenses shown.

Camera and Lens Menus

The first filter (top-left) will select the manufacturer of the camera. The second (top-right) filter will
select the camera body. The third (bottom-right) filter will select the lens type.

If the first two filters are left at the default All selection, the Lens filter will show all lens types.
Irradiance falloff simulates the darkening towards the boundary of the image, much like a real
camera. What is happening on a technical level is the brightness of a pixel is reduced as a function
of the angle between the ray and the film plane.
The brightness is proportional to the cosine of the angle between the film plane normal and the
ray direction, taken to some power given by the falloff value. So a falloff of 0 effectively disables it
as the brightness will always be 1. Higher falloff values make the brightness drop off sharper and
faster.

Load Image
The Real Lens camera can take its settings from the EXIF tags in an image or image sequence.
The model selection dropdown in the Real Lens camera panel has an (from image) option.
Selecting this opens a panel in which an image can be selected, and the settings to use from it
picked.
There is also support for getting settings from image sequences. Image sequences should first be
set up in the image editor. You can set the time in the sequence from which to get the settings.
Some settings can be animated, which creates an envelope. Keyframes are set for all frames
between the Scene Frame Start and End frame numbers (inclusive). If an image sequence is
used, for each frame it will use the settings from the image matching the frame according to the
sequences settings.

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Limitations and cautions:

If Use Model is greyed out, even though a make and model is shown, its because the Real
Lens camera doesnt recognize it.
There is no EXIF tag that says what lens is used. LightWave does put the lens info in the
MakerNote for a rendered image, and it will use that if available. Otherwise it will default to
Standard.
Focal distance is only rarely stored in the appropriate EXIF tag. Some of the most popular
digital camera makers keep the focal distance in a proprietary MakerNote (presumably to get
you to use their crappy photo software), if at all. Again, LightWave rendered images do store
the focal distance correctly (if rendered with DoF).
The focal length is the actual focal length, not converted to a 35mm film equivalent.
Exposure is mapped to blur length using the current scene FPS setting, and causes
photorealistic motion blur to be turned on.

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Surface Baking Camera

This camera considers each pixel as a UV coordinate, computing the position on a mesh polygon
matching that UV coordinate, and shooting a ray at that position from close range.
Unlike the Surface Baker shader it is multi-threaded, rendered by the raytracing renderer, it works
with ScreamerNet, and works with VPR when not in Draft mode and VIPER. Furthermore, as it
produces a normal render, all the render buffers are available for saving.
The disadvantage is that only one mesh and UV map can be rendered at a time. However, you can
set-up multiple cameras, each with its own mesh and map set, and render an animation that is
setup to switch to a different camera each frame.
Mesh - This is the object that you want to bake.
UV Map - This is the map on that object that you want to use as the baker map.
Offset from Surface - This is the distance from the mesh surface the ray should be shot from.
Too large a value may mean that the ray encounters an intervening surface instead of the
intended surface. Too small a value increases the possibility of floating point errors causing
the ray to slip through the mesh surface instead of hitting it, or the ray direction to become
erratic.
Direction Reference - Ray directions can be set to be equal to the polygon normal, the
smoothed polygon normal, or in the direction towards the origin of the mesh. The ray
will still hit the same spot on the mesh. The difference is in the direction in which the ray
approaches that point.
UV Border - This is the overdraw of the UV polygon boundaries. Using this setting, you can
remove the visible seams in your UV projection.
Fit UV map to image - This control just determines how to fit the map to the rendered image
size. Fit both width and height, or just width or height.
Flip UV Y - this inverts the map by flipping it around the Y axis.
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Bake Surroundings - This allows you to flip the rays around, thereby baking the surroundings
instead of the mesh. Use for baking a reflection map or environment map.

Shift Camera

The Shift Camera is a tilt/shift type of camera capable of 2-point perspective views, popular for
exterior renderings of building designs for architectural visualization. It works the same as the
Perspective camera, but removes the vertical perspective from the view. If part of the OpenGL
preview is cut off, change the size of the grid size with Fixed Near Clip turned off.
Vertical Shift - Shifts the camera along the vertical plane.. The Use Cam Pitch checkbox gives
the original perspective correction behavior.
Horizontal Shift - Shifts the camera along the horizontal plane.
Focus Item - An arbitrary focus plane can be selected from a dropdown menu of objects.
This creates a focal plane from the XY plane of the selected item, allowing items at different
distances to remain in focus.
The focus plane can be toggled on/off by checking Show Focal Plane.

The camera must be kept horizontal and not banked, as unexpected results may occur in a
render.

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Resolution

The Resolution drop down menu will present you with a series of pre-defined resolutions to choose
from for your render. It will automatically set the Width, Height and Pixel Aspect ratio fields.

You can add your own presets to this list, but it requires you to delve into the LW2015.cfg file. If
this thought doesnt scare you, then well proceed.
If you look in your LW2015.cfg file you see that near the top there are several lines that look like
this:
ResolutionPreset 1920 1080 1 0 0 1920 1080 HDTV (1920 x 1080)

The first two numbers are the size of the frame, the next one is the pixel aspect ratio and then the
next four are the default Limited Region frame. The last bit of text is the title of the preset that will
appear in the drop down menu.
Feel free to make your own lines. For instance heres one you may wish to add to get the ball
rolling:
ResolutionPreset 2480 3508 1 0 0 2480 3508 A4 page (300dpi)

As you can tell from the title, this Resolution Preset gives you a full A4 page at 300dpi.
The width and height fields can be set to anything between 16 and 100,000 (LightWave running on
a 32-bit machine can render up to 16,000 pixels). Be aware that larger resolutions can make serious
demands on the memory of your machine.
The Resolution Multiplier gives you a much more consistent way of quickly checking a scene rather
than changing the width and height fields when you want a small test render. It takes into account
the scaling of things such as particle, line, and edge thickness, as well as the glow radius.
If you have selected a resolution preset and you alter the width or height fields, it will override
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any preset and the menu will then show the word Custom. If you have already set a resolution
multiplier, it will then operate on the Width and Height settings you have chosen.
The resolution multiplier does not scale an image after it has been rendered. Therefore, it can be
used in a situation where the boss asks for an image about two thirds as large again. Deciding
which resolution to use on a project is largely down to its intended use. An image for broadcast can
almost always use the appropriate PAL or NTSC resolution presets. An image for print will always
vary depending on the size of the final image, whereas film is usually one or two size settings.
Both provide high-resolution images that can take a long time to render and a lot of memory. If,
however, you are rendering an animation for display on a computer, you will often want to use a
lower resolution for reasons such as the running speed of the final animation and its file size.
Print Assistant
In the Additional menu in the Utilities Tab, you should find the Print Assistant plugin. This will enter
width and height details for your render based on inch or Pica measurements at a specified dpi
rate.

Maximum Render Resolution

The maximum render resolution for 32-bit versions of LightWave is still limited to 16,000 x 16,000
pixels but machines running a 64-bit version of LightWave can render images up to 100,000 x
100,000 pixels given enough memory. Bear in mind that 100k x 100k is an extreme size. Just a
blank image at this size requires around 149GB of memory - 100k x 100k x (RGBA @ 4 bytes per
channel = 16 bytes)/(1024 x 1024 x 1024) = 149GB). Also, anything above 30,000 x 30,000 pixels
wont load into versions of Photoshop older than CS4.

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Constrain

Often you will want to increase the size of your render but keep the same picture aspect ratio. The
Constrain check keeps the Width and Height values in same proportion, which ever you change.
You can uncheck the Constrain gadget and recheck it to change the aspect ratio of your rendered
image.

2015

Overscan

LightWave 2015 introduces an overscan setting for rendering. You can set the overscan amount in
pixels or in percent and the relations will be kept as you change.
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The overscan amount will be added to each side and displayed in the viewport as a lighter overlay
than the normal frame overlay. You cannot extend a Limited Region into an overscan area.

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Pixel Aspect Ratio

Once youve been using a computer for a while you forget that pixels actually come in different
shapes. Ones for NTSC TV are tall and thin; ones for PAL TV tend to be a bit fatter, while ones for
print and HDTV are the same as those for computer screens square as square can be.
The Pixel Aspect Ratio setting in LightWave is calculated by dividing the width of a pixel by its
height. A pixel intended for print or a computer screen is square, as we said, so its aspect ratio is
1.0. Because NTSC pixels are taller than they are wide, the aspect ratio tends to be between 0.86
and 0.9. PAL ones, on the other hand, tend to vary between 1.01 and 1.06. Values for widescreen
displays are considerably wider in both NTSC and PAL.
Why worry about the pixel aspect ratio? After all a pixel is a pixel, right? Well yes, but if you look
at a perfectly round ball that has a radius of 50 cm and you are using an NTSC resolution preset,
the ball will look squashed on a computer monitor, whereas it will look perfectly round on your
NTSC monitor. When selecting one of the resolution presets you will notice that the pixel aspect
ratio changes along with the resolutions for width and height. As for things looking squashed or
stretched on your computer monitor, Im afraid its either something youll have to get used to, or
you will need an output to a proper broadcast monitor to reassure yourself.

Left to right: NTSC (0.9 or 10:11); Computer monitor, HDTV or print (1.0 or 1:1) ; PAL (1.0667 or 12:11). Widescreen versions of NTSC and PAL
are still the same quantity of pixels, but the Pixel Aspect ratios are 1.21 or 40:33 for NTSC and 1.45 or 16:11 for PAL

Same ball, different monitors.

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Aperture Height (Frame)
You can change the aperture height, or Frame, of your virtual camera in LightWave to match the
optical characteristics of a real world camera, especially for film work. Changing this setting will
only affect the Depth of Field effect and the lens focal length.

Aperture Height is always listed in inches, even if you are using a metric unit system.

Frame Aspect Ratio

Before we move on, dont confuse the pixel aspect ratio with the frame aspect ratio figure, often
referred to simply as the aspect ratio. The way to work this out is to take the pixel width of a
picture, divide it by the pixel height and multiply the result by the pixel aspect ratio. As an example,
a standard VGA screen is 640 x 480. This equates to a frame aspect ratio of 1.333, which is the result
of the following sum (640/480)*1 and converting it to a ratio. You will often see this figure quoted
on the back of DVD cases to indicate the width of the display compared to its height (which
indicates how much of your TV screen will be covered by black bars).

Camera Settings in a Viewport

When you use the camera view (NUMERIC KEYPAD 6), areas of the viewport that are outside the
render area will be colored with the overlay color chosen in Display Options (D). You can have
horizontal bars showing the exclusion or they can be vertical bars, depending on the frame aspect
of the render you are making (in the image below demonstrating this we are using a monitor with
a resolution of 1920x1080 and rendering an image at 1280x720).
Furthermore you will be able to show safe areas for overscan and underscan displays by turning on
the Show Safe Areas switch in the Display Options (D). You will also have a grid displayed to allow
you to better divide up the frame by selecting Show Field Chart.
If you are using a view other than the camera view, you will see the camera represented on-screen
together with a pyramid showing its field of view. This pyramid is only shown when the camera is
the selected item.

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Left Camera view, Right: Camera View with Safe Areas and Field Chart

Perspective view

If you are using an orthogonal projection and you have Show Fog Circles option switched on in the
Display Options (D), you will be able to see the area around the camera affected by fog. If you press
Ctrl F6 and choose a standard fog type while in a top view mode, for example, you will be able to
see circles around the camera indicating a minimum and maximum fog radius around the camera.

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Top view, with Fog circles

Rendering a Limited Region

You can render a limited rectangular region of your scene if you only wish to test your work, rather
than taking the time to render a full image. Limited Regions are also useful if you would like an
accurate representation of your final frame in VPR, rather than the whole viewport. As an added
benefit, it will speed up rendering, not having to render pixels that will not be in the final frame.
Simply hit the L key and you will see that a dotted line will surround the renderable area of the
frame. You can change the size and shape of this area by clicking and dragging the left mouse
button on one of the dotted lines that surround the area.

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Above: What Layout looks like, Left: Render Limited Region Borders, Right: Render Limited Region No Borders

Borders, no Borders

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There are two different types of limited region that you can use, either with or without borders
and you cycle through these choices by repeatedly hitting the L key or by choosing the drop down
menu in the Render Globals window. The difference between a limited region with a border and
one without it is the fact that a limited region with a border puts your limited region on a black
page the size of a full render, whereas a limited region without borders will just render the shape
you desire as the full image. The frame aspect ratio in Camera Properties will remain at the aspect
ratio for a full frame, but all other options, such as antialiasing and Masks still apply.
The limited region with border allows you to patch only a segment of a frame, rather than having
to re-render the whole frame for re-compositing. This can be a major time-saver.

Memory Considerations
Limited Region allocates only enough memory to render the horizontal limited region area. If you
stitch parts of an image together, you can effectively render images that are much larger than
those you could render one pass. This is especially useful for high-resolution print images or in
low memory situations. However, note that some post-processing filters require a full-sized image.
In such cases, you may be able to apply those filters to the stitched image in an additional step.
The way to do this is to take your final rendered image and save it to disk. Then clear your scene
- or better yet, quit and restart LightWave and load this image into an empty scene. Make it the
camera backdrop and add whichever post-process filter you wish to use, and then render again.
Since you arent rendering all the objects, textures, Image Maps, etc., the memory requirements
will be a lot lower.

Antialiasing
If aliasing (the stepping effect on diagonal lines seen when image resolution isnt high enough)
is the crime, then anti-aliasing is the cure. Aliasing occurs because a pixel is rectangular in shape
which means that there will always be a jagged effect with anything other than rectangular shapes.
This effect can be reduced by working at high resolutions but cannot be removed. All imageprocessing programs, including LightWave, employ a device called anti-aliasing in order to reduce
this stair-stepping effect. It compares the RGB values of two neighboring edge pixels and adds an
average-valued pixel between them. This fools the eye into seeing a smooth line.

About Unified Sampling

The way that LightWave handles shading, lighting and antialiasing quality was overhauled in
LightWave 11. The Classic camera will still use the antialiasing measures set down after the unified
sampling instructions.
For all other cameras, including third-party cameras, these settings now work in tandem with each
other and the render engine, and the render engine now only takes samples where it needs to.
This often results in improved quality at equal or improved render times. It is also now much easier
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to control the maximum number of samples LightWave will use. Previously this was not possible
and could result in overly long render times.
When using Volume lights with jittered sampling, set the Volume Quality to Low and adjust the
quality/speed using the max camera samples and adaptive quality. They can render much faster this
way. This is the same reason we set the light and shader samples to 1 by default with the new sampling.

Overview of Controls

Shading Samples
This affects all nodes that previously had a Samples setting (such as blurry reflections/refraction)
and replaces them with a single, global value.
To shade a pixel, LightWave needs to gather information about it. Shading samples define how
many rays are fired to that pixel to determine its overall shading. Every pixel in the rendered image
is hit by an initial ray fired from the camera; when a hit occurs. If you have Shading Samples higher
than 1, more rays are fired. The amount fired is set by the number of Shading Samples, so if you set
it to 4, that many rays are fired. This process is repeated for each pixel if Minimum Samples is higher
than 1, and is repeated as many times as set by the Maximum Samples in Camera Properties.
Lower numbers render faster at the expense of quality or noise in the image, the reverse is true for
higher numbers.

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Light Samples
Works in a similar way to shading samples, but for light (or shadow) quality. The lower the number
the faster rendering will be, again at the expense of noisier shadows. Higher numbers result in
smoother soft shadows, but will result in higher render times. This setting is now for all lights.

In previous versions of LightWave this setting was samples squared, so the default light quality
setting of 4 prior to LightWave 11 would equate to a sample setting of 16 in LightWave 11, worth
bearing in mind if you are loading older scenes.

Antialiasing

On the Camera Properties panel, there are now two controls that replace the previous Antialiasing
controls found in LightWave except when using the Classic Camera - Minimum Samples and
Maximum Samples. If Adaptive Sampling is unchecked, Maximum Samples is ghosted and you only
need concentrate on the Minimum Samples value. When using only Minimum Samples, this is
similar to the standard Antialiasing levels in previous versions of LightWave.

Classic Camera antialiasing remains unchanged. The new settings do not apply. See the Classic
Camera section starting on page 158 for more details.

Minimum Samples
This value determines how many camera rays are generated per pixel. As the name suggests, this
allows you to set how many samples are ALWAYS taken per pixel on the first pass of the image.
When Adaptive Sampling is active, setting a higher minimum value will result in fewer Adaptive
Sampling passes, because the image has already been through initial antialiasing. This does not
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always lead to faster renders; leave Minimum at 1 unless you are sure of what you are doing.

Maximum Samples
Available when Adaptive Sampling is on, this allows you to limit the number of samples LightWave
will ever get to during the Adaptive Sampling process. Previously in LightWave it was difficult
to set a limit to this stage of the process, meaning that LightWave could keep on refining in the
Adaptive Sampling stage, even when no more antialiasing was really needed, or visible. This can
result in equivalent or improved quality at equal or faster render times than previous versions.
While the threshold detection has not changed, the way in which additional samples are taken has.
Previously when the Adaptive Sampling Threshold was breached, the Adaptive Sampling routine
would be in control of how many more samples it would take; you had no control over this. Now
in LightWave, every time the Adaptive Sampling Threshold is passed it will now take one more
sample. It will keep taking one more sample every time the threshold is hit unless it reaches the
Maximum Samples setting, or there are no more pixels that are selected by Adaptive Sampling
detection for refinement.
The result of this means that lowering the Adaptive Sampling Threshold to resolve finer noise in an
image does not mean it will result in the expensive render times of previous versions, due to the
render engine not taking the same amount of samples at that stage. Render times will clearly be
increased, but whats important to understand is that before in LightWave, a setting of 0.01 would
be as extreme as most users would be willing to go; now you can set it to 0.005 or 0.001 along with
an appropriate Maximum Samples setting to achieve equivalent or in many cases higher quality
than previous versions of LightWave, without the same time penalty this once meant.
As with previous versions of LightWave, finding a good balance between render quality and speed
is very scene dependent. You may need to experiment with the Maximum Samples and Adaptive
Sampling Threshold on a smaller area of your scene using the Limited Region render.
This change means that setting up your scene and hitting F9 immediately will give a faster
impression of what your final image will be like, but you will probably need to massage your
settings to get the best balance between speed and quality for your final image. Start by raising
your Max Samples setting in Camera Properties to 16 and if you are using traditionally noisy lights
or surfaces you might consider raising the Lighting and/or Shading Samples but slowly, perhaps to
2 or 3. Examples of noisy lights would be Area, Dome, Spherical and noisy surfaces would be things
like blurred reflections or CarPaint - things that in previous versions would have had a Samples or
Quality setting.
You should think of the Lighting/Shading Samples and Max Samples settings as being multipliers.
For example, your Shading Samples are set to 8 and multiplied by the Max Samples setting in
Camera Properties. If we imagine that you have set this to 16, then 16 x 8 would fire a maximum of
128 shading samples in total for every pixel of your image. If you also set your Light Samples to 8,
you would have 128 shading samples and 128 light samples per pixel, and this starts to become
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quite heavy to render.
Lowering the default Light and Shading Samples from 8 to 1 has decreased render times
dramatically, at the cost of extra graininess. In typical usage, increasing these samples too much is
overkill because the samples lost are already regained for free once you begin using antialiasing
and Adaptive Sampling to eliminate flicker and aliasing.

When using the Shadow Catcher nodes Roughness setting Shading samples need to be set to
at least 2 or any reflections will disappear.

Sampling Pattern
There are three choices for how the antialiasing samples are arranged within a pixel. These are
selected from the Sampling Pattern menu. Low-Discrepancy generates a semi-random sample
pattern and is best used when you are using a large number of samples (16 or more) or Adaptive
Sampling is enabled. The Fixed pattern generates samples on a fixed grid. This mode works best
with fewer samples or when the image contains straight edges. There is a limit of 64 fixed samples.
If you select Fixed sampling and more than 64 samples, the additional samples are generated with
Blue Noise. Since Blue Noise is semi-random, it does not produce Moir patterns when there are
thin parallel lines close to each other. Classic uses the sampling pattern written for LightWave 6, for
visual compatibility with old assets.

Low-Discrepancy
Low-Discrepancy is a quasi-random sampling pattern. For a given pixel, Low-Discrepancy will
choose a semi-random point on the grid for a ray.

Fixed
Fixed sampling takes ray information from the center of the grid. As more information is gathered
from the grid, the aliasing produced is reduced.

Classic
The classic sampling pattern uses the original LightWave sampling pattern, which is another type
of fixed pattern.

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Reconstruction Filters
In addition to these significant changes to the raw antialiasing engine, the LightWave 3D renderer
now includes a full implementation of reconstruction filters. These filters determine how the
rendering data is combined into a final image at a sub-pixel level in order to produce a final image.
Reconstruction filters have been a subject of research over many years and the names of these
filters are often derived from the research that led to their development. The new LightWave filters
include the most important state-of-the-art techniques and are outlined in the table below.
Box Filtering: This is the most common form of filtering, and the method that most traditional
applications use to reconstruct an image from raw rendering samples. These samples are simply
places in a pixel box and averaged. Although this technique is fast, it can exhibit significant
artifacts on motion and when there is fine image detail. From a signal processing point of view, this
is a very poor technique for reconstructing an image from the raw data that comprises it.
This mode is very close to the traditional LightWave modes.
Gaussian Filtering: Gaussian filter based image construction takes the samples that compose the
image and builds the final pixel data by weighting their contributions based on a Gaussian kernel
of approximately one pixel in size. This technique typically performs quite well, although images
tend to have a soft look. In practice this mode can be very valuable for video output where it can
help hide some of the artifacts introduced by fielded or reduce bandwidth content.
Mitchell Filtering: Mitchell filtering is a technique that is now very popular and was suggested as
an alternative to Lanczos filtering (see below.) It does not suffer many of the ringing artifacts of
Lanczos filtering and generally is a very good starting point for most situations.
Lanczos Filtering: Lanczos filtering is arguably the technique that yields the closest to the perfect
results for image reconstruction. This technique is based on a windowed sinc function (a sinc
function being the optimal infinite image reconstruction filter.) Unfortunately in practice Lanczos
image reconstruction tends to produce overly emphasized edges and ringing in high contrast
areas of the image.
The filters listed above are all implemented in Sharp, Normal and Smooth modes that give
users a huge variety of options to fine tune the look of their rendering to their particular needs and
desired look.

Soft Filter
In the Render Globals window next to the Adaptive Sampling switch, you will see an option for a
Soft Filter. Selecting this will render your objects with a soft look, akin to a film image. It is not an
appropriate substitute for antialiasing except in real emergencies. Note that it only affects objects,
background images will not be affected.

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Additional Notes
Old scenes loaded into LightWave are not aware of the Minimum Samples and Maximum Samples
settings, and therefore will be set to their defaults. This could mean that your old scene appears to
render either slower or faster but noisy. You will need to adjust the values to suit your scene.
Due to changes in the way samples are generated, the Rays Per Evaluation and Secondary Bounce
Rays in the Global Illumination panel are affected. This means in order to get similar results to
previous versions of LightWave, you will need to increase these values, often doubling them. It
wont take any extra render time, but is needed to account for the differences in number of GI
samples generated with the new system.
When the Use Gradient option is checked in the Global Illumination panel LightWave uses the old
sampling method for Global Illumination only. When off then it uses the new sampling.
Ray Cutoff on the Render Globals panel looks at the effect of the ray on the final pixel color. The
more times a ray bounces the less it contributes to the final pixel color. The cutoff is a way to save
computation by eliminating rays that have no real effect on the final pixel.

Antialiasing Using Edge Detection

By default, LightWave uses Adaptive Sampling (edge detection) to determine which areas of
an image should be antialiased. This focuses the antialiasing process primarily on the edges of
objects. With Adaptive Sampling active, you can tell LightWave which areas to antialias by entering
a sampling Threshold value. If the Adaptive Sampling option is inactive, LightWave will antialias the
entire frame.
The adaptive sampling Threshold functions by comparing the brightness of two neighboring
pixels. A value of 0 will antialias everything in the scene, but values between .0314 and .1255 work
well in most situations - the higher the level, the fewer edges are detected and, thus, the lower the
rendering time.
A value of 1 is the maximum brightness difference in a 24-bit color space; however, internally
LightWave can work with pixels brighter than RGB 255, 255, 255. Since you might want antialiasing
only when nearby pixels differ by more than 1, the adaptive sampling Threshold can be set higher
than 1. If you want to ensure that extra antialiasing is never performed, use a large Threshold value.
When Adaptive Sampling and the Show Rendering in Progress (Render Globals Panel) options
are active, you can see the area where LightWave has detected edges highlighted in white on the
rendering screen. By adjusting the sampling Threshold, you can increase or decrease the amount of
white areas (and thus the antialiasing) to correspond to areas you know contain prominent edges.
These white lines do not appear if you are using one of the enhanced antialiasing modes.

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Motion Effects
When using a camera to film fast-moving objects, these objects are often blurry. This is because
they continue moving while the shutter of the camera is open. It is this feature that LightWave aims
to replicate with Motion Blur.

Motion blur becomes essential when animating, especially for use with live action. It prevents
the crisp quality that normally pervades computer-generated animation and helps an animation
appear more fluid.

Use a camera view and see a preview of your depth of field and/or motion blur by choosing DOF/MBlur Preview from the Viewport Options
menu.

LightWaves motion blur system takes everything that can change over time into account. From
shadows, to surfaces, from light intensities to object or camera movement. It accounts for curved
motion and does not blur in a linear fashion, but rather following the path that the motion is
taking.
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There are three types of motion blur - Normal, Dithered and Photoreal. Normal and Dithered only
work with all cameras, while Photoreal only works with the advanced cameras. First introduced in
LightWave v9.2, Photoreal provides the best quality blur. Instead of rendering a new pass for each
motion blur sample, Photoreal Motion Blur allows for multiple samples within each render pass.

Left: a Particle explosion, Right: Rendered with Particle Blur on Photoreal settings

Particle Blur - is for giving particles a motion blur effect. If it is not needed then keep it
switched off for speed.
Blur Length - Blur Length sets the time that the simulated camera shutter will be open during
a frame. 100% would mean that the shutter is open for the entire frame. 50% would mean
that the shutter is open for half the frame and is a more typical setting. Increasing this value
increases the length of the motion blur streaks. It is possible to enter values larger than 1.0
if you wish to capture more than one frame worth of action. The quality of the streaks is
determined by the antialiasing settings.
Motion Blur Passes - Motion Blur Passes sets how many sub-frames will be rendered. Each sub
frame will be anti-aliased with the settings described above. These sub-frames are blended
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together to produce the final image. This is the same way the the classic motion blur has
worked in earlier versions of LightWave with the addition that each sub-frame can now be
anti-aliased. If your scene contains object deformations, you should use multiple Motion
Blur Passes when using Photoreal Motion Blur. This will save you a lot of rendering time and
produce more precise motion blur streaks. Motion Blur Passes are necessary to render in
either Classic or Dithered mode motion blur with cameras other than the Classic Camera.
Shutter Open - Lets you shift the time of the frame, up to one frame forward or backward, for
the purpose of controlling whether the motion blur covers the first half of the frame, the last
half, middle, etc., in order to match motion blur from other applications.
Shutter Efficiency - determines the amount of time, per frame, the shutter will be open. A
value of 100% means the shutter is open 100% of the frame time, so the light exposure
is equal for the entire frame. A value of 50% means the shutter does not open fully until
midway of the frame, so the beginning and end of the light exposure are darker.
Rolling Shutter - Is for a Rolling Shutter effect detailed on page 150.

Left: Classic Motion Blur; Right: Dithered Motion Blur

Photoreal Motion Blur

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Left: Alpha of Classic Blur; Right: Alpha of Photoreal Blur

Photoreal motion blur is the best of the three in terms of quality, however the two older styles are
much faster so might be a better bet for fast-moving scenes where time is an issue.

2015

Deformation Motion Blur

LightWave 2015 will now perform motion blur on deformed objects (animated characters for
instance) in both F9/F10 renders and final quality VPR.
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Rolling Shutter and Motion Blur Bias

LightWave 11.5 added a rolling shutter to the Motion Effects settings for the camera. Working with
footage that has been tracked in applications like Syntheyes can sync badly with CG-generated
footage if the camera used is CMOS-based (CCD-based cameras have no problem with rolling
shutter). A rolling shutter offset helps with such issues and ensures that your tracked footage
matches the CG you create in LightWave.
Shutter Open - defines the time offset for the start of the render. If the Blur Length is set to 50%, a
Shutter Open value of -25% will center the motion blur for each frame.
This is because a Blur Length of 50% is a half-frames worth of blur between the current frame and
the next frame. A Shutter Open value of -25% would start the render a quarter-frame before the
current frame. The 50% Blur Length would then carry the render past the current frame to end at a
quarter-frame past the current frame, centering the motion blur.
Rolling Shutter - mimics the shearing distortion of a rolling shutter. Each horizontal line in the
frame is progressively shifted forward in time, up to a maximum of a single frames worth on the
bottom or top line. The positive or negative value of Shutter Skew determines whether the top or
bottom get sheared forwards in time. At 100%, the bottom of the frame will show the positions of
everything as they appear on the next frame. At -100%, the top of the frame shows the positions
from the next frame.

Example: Rolling Shutter

Heres a visual explanation courtesy of Dave Jerrard:
Heres a shot of five marbles, all rolling in different directions. The ones along the edges of the
frame are all moving along the edges of the frame in a clockwise direction. The white one in the
center is moving diagonally from top left to bottom right.

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Now the same image with Rolling Shutter set to 100%.

Note that the marble on the right, which is moving down the frame, appears stretched vertically,
while the one on the left is squashed vertically.

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Now with Rolling Shutter set to -100%, the skewing effect is reversed.

And finally with motion blur added. In this case, Shutter Skew is set to 100% again.

With spinning objects, this can look pretty weird...

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Stereoscopic Rendering

Stereoscopic rendering gives you the familiar two-image set seen from slightly different
perspectives that can be combined in a variety of ways to produce a 3D image. Further explanation
of stereoscopy is outside the remit of this manual, but there are plenty of resources on the web for
people interested in this field. When rendering using the Stereoscopic Rendering function you will
get two images for each frame of your animation suffixed with either an L or R for Left and Right
eye images respectively.
When Stereoscopic camera always renders the Left Camera first then the Right Camera. So when
using F9 it will render the left camera image, then it will then render the right camera image. When
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you have a RGB file format and path chosen it will save the sequence of Left and Right images into
that folder.
Also, when you check on Apply Anaglyph Filter it will render the Left Camera Image and then
composite that with the Right Camera image to create an Anaglyph Red / Blue image saved as
the Right Camera Image. If rendering with the Anaglyph filter for best results you should use an
image format without an alpha because the resulting final Anaglyph image is composed of both
right and left camera so the alpha would cause the image to not display properly. If you need an
alpha then you should render just straight Right and Left stereoscopic images (uncheck the Apply
Anaglyph Filter) so that two separate images (Right and Left) will be generated with their proper
alpha channels for compositing.

Use Apply Anaglyph Filter if you wish to make a 3D image viewed through red/blue glasses.

Eye Separation - This field is set by default to 70 mm, the average distance between the
centers of the pupils in a human adult. You can change this value to exaggerate the 3D
effect.
Use Convergence Point - The Convergence Point is the point a specified distance away from
the center of the camera that each eye focuses on. If it is checked off, the eyes will point
directly forward.
The original method of camera convergence is what is called Toe-in, which causes each
camera eye to be rotated towards the convergence point. A setting of 0.0% for the
Convergence Toe-in setting is equal to 100% for Off-Axis.
LightWave supports all three of the major stereoscopic camera rig types used in live
action and animation rendering and when Use Convergence Point is on, you can drag the
Convergence point to where you want it in the viewport, or change the numeric values.

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Stereo Tracked Eye - You can choose to center the tracking for the cameras motions or
bias it to the left or right eye. When Use Convergence Point is enabled, the distance to the
convergence point is always taken to be from the center eye.
Stereo OpenGL - Has three different modes. Off switches off the OpenGL display of
stereoscopy for a less visually cluttered workflow, Anaglyph displays the OpenGL so that the
3D can be seen using anaglyph (red/Blue) glasses, and 3D Glasses that requires a 3D monitor,
3D-capable graphics card and accompanying 3D glasses.

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Depth of Field

LightWave allows you to have a whole series of objects in a scene at differing distances from the
camera and to render them all in perfect focus! The human visual system cant even do that, and
thats the problem. For your images to look as realistic as possible, they need to use a feature of
reality called Depth of Field. Fortunately, you can emulate this functionality inside LightWave.
Settings are found on the DOF tab at the bottom of Camera Properties and become active once the
Depth of Field button is checked.

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Depth of Field refers to the area of acceptable sharpness in front of and behind the actual area in
focus. When you enable Depth of Field you need to change two settings. The first setting, Focal
Distance, refers to the distance from the camera to the object that you would like to be in focus.
The second option is Lens F-Stop. Camera focus typically encompasses a range, from near to far,
that we call in focus. Objects nearer than this, or farther than this, appear out of focus. The Lens
F-Stop value determines the range of focus around the Focal Distance (the near and far distances
from the camera in which objects still appear in focus).
If you are familiar with real world cameras, you know that the f-stop sets the diameter of the lens
aperture. An f-stop of f/4 (which corresponds to a LightWave Lens F-Stop of 4) indicates an aperture
diameter that is a quarter of the lens focal length (LightWaves Lens Focal Length). Higher f-stop
numbers refer to a smaller aperture, because the number is the denominator of a fraction. The
aperture (f-stop) control on a real camera affects both the brightness and sharpness of an image.
In the LightWave world, the Lens F-Stop works in the context of Depth of Field where it affects only
sharpness.
The larger the Lens F-Stop value, the larger the depth of field, that is, the greater the distance
between the near and far distances where objects appear in focus. Conversely, the smaller the Lens
F-Stop, the smaller the range of focused area.
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In general, remember that the Depth of Field becomes progressively greater as the Lens F-Stop
setting increases, the Focal Distance value increases and/or the Zoom Factor (and therefore the
Lens Focal Length) setting becomes smaller.
When starting to experiment with Depth of Field, try using a short Focal Distance setting
(shorter than the distance to the object you wish to be in focus) so that the depth of field is more
pronounced. You can also look at the scene in an orthogonal viewport and be able to see a ring
around the camera indicating the focal distance of your lens - the distance at which things are in
perfect focus. Dont worry that the display will get confused if you are also showing fog circles in
the viewport; the lines indicating the fog are visibly different to that of the focal distance.
The settings on this tab are as follows:
Focal Distance - This value is the distance at which the rays your camera sees are brought
into focus. Without Depth of Field being engaged, everything in a scene is in focus all the
time.
Lens F-Stop - This is the aperture setting that determines the strength of the Depth of Field
effect. To create something exaggerated, use an F-Stop of less than 1.
Diaphragm Sides - The lens aperture is polygonal and this is here you can side how many
sides the aperture has.
Diaphragm Rotation - How far off vertical the aperture is rotated.
The two diaphragm settings are for creating a so-called Bokeh Effect, where lens reflections appear
in the final image.

A simple explosion of cubes with extreme depth of field. Diaphragm Sides has been set to 3 and Rotation to 23 to better show the Bokeh
effect.
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Rather than waiting for realistic renders when setting up your depth of field, use the Quickshade
rendering method in the Rendering Options window to get a quick preview of how blurry or sharp the
objects are in your scene.

Left: Quickshade render, Right: Full render

You can get an accurate measure of the distance between the camera and your selected object
using the Ruler or Range Finder custom objects.
You can also set a null to be parented to the camera and linked to the focal distance envelope of
the camera so that you can control the focal distance by moving the null. This way you can get an
interactive distance tool to control the focal range. Heres how you do it:

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1) Add a null to your scene and parent it to your camera in the Motion
Options window (M). In Layout, turn off the X and Y axes so that the null
can only be moved along its Z-axis. Name this null CameraFD;
2) Go to the Object Properties window (P) and assign the Range Finder custom
object to the null. You can turn on the link to camera if you wish;
Go to the Camera Properties window. Make sure that the Focal Distance is set to 0 m;
Hit the Envelope button next to this field so that you can link the distance between the null and
the camera to the focal distance used.
Click on the Modifiers Tab in this window and use the Channel Follower Modifier. Double click on
this in the list under the Add Modifier drop down menu to set up the Channel Follower Modifier;
From the list of channels, choose the CameraFD.Position.Z channel, make sure that the time lag is
set to 0, scale to 100% and start frame and end frame to 0 and 1 respectively.
You can now key the position of the null and the cameras focal range will be set to the distance
between the null and the camera meaning that you can pinpoint a single object in a busy scene to
be focused upon. The smaller the value for the Lens F-Stop, the smaller the range of focus.

Depth of Field/Motion Blur Viewport Mode

You can preview motion blur or depth of field in OpenGL using the preview option located in the
third Viewport dropdown menu.

The number of preview passes is controlled in the Preferences Panel. You must use the Camera
View to use the Motion Blur preview.

The Display tab of the Preferences window is open and highlighted is the quantity of DOF/MBlur passes. You can have up to 35 presented in
OpenGL.
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Classic Camera Settings
There are two possibilities for antialiasing when using the Classic camera. There are the PLD
options, then there are the old Low, Medium, Extreme and their Enhanced versions settings that
rendered in multiple passes.

Using any of the Cameras other than Classic, antialiasing will occur in one pass for all levels, instead
of one pass for each level. Using the Classic Camera with a PLD-9 level will render in nine passes.
The advantage of a single pass cameras other than Classic is that the renderer does not have to
reconstruct the geometry data for each AA level.
The PLD antialiasing modes can be used either to render a scene using fewer passes, or to keep the
number of passes constant and get a higher quality image.
In previous versions of LightWave, it was only possible to render the image in 1 (no antialiasing), 5,
9, 17 or 33 passes. This meant that the jump from a preview image with no antialiasing to one with
low antialiasing meant up to a 5x jump in rendering time. The PLD modes help address this not
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only by allowing much higher quality images with fewer passes, but also by opening up a much
larger number of rendering pass options to users. This allows a user to find a much better trade-off
between rendering time and image quality, thus significantly improving the production work-flow.

Pixel Lattice Deformation

When an image render begins the antialiasing process, a determination must be made as to what
type of samples will be taken and how long antialiasing sampling will occur. The new form of
render pass for LightWave is the Pixel Lattice Deformation, or PLD.
PLD takes information about how the edges in the scene fall onto the lattice of output pixels.
The pixel lattice is then deformed and realigned to best represent the underlying geometry. This
generally helps with edges in images and textures. One limit to this method is that it cannot
reconstruct details that have not been sampled at all, such as highly undersampled data. The
advantage gained with PLD is that it gives you an image with some level of antialiasing without the
need for extra samples being taken.
Compared to the Classic modes:
Low and Enhanced Low: 5 passes
Medium and Enhanced Medium: 9 Passes
High and Enhanced High: 17 Passes
Extreme and Enhanced Extreme: 33 Passes
The Classic modes have five levels of antialiasing from None to Extreme. These levels are then
subdivided into two: normal and enhanced antialiasing. Enhanced will usually give a better effect
for a given level of antialiasing because it uses almost twice as many samples for each pixel and
filters them more intelligently, giving a better result at an additional cost in rendering time.

Left: No antialiasing, Right: PLD 1-Pass

Low or medium levels of anti-aliasing usually suffice for video resolution images, but if depth
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of field or motion blur is required in a render, the high level of anti-aliasing may be useful. The
extreme level of anti-aliasing is useful for the highest level of fidelity in motion blur or depth of
field.
Anti-aliasing can also be achieved by rendering at a higher resolution than needed with no antialiasing, and then shrinking the resulting image using another graphics package or LightWave
itself. To use LightWave for this, simply load the rendered image into an empty scene and set the
render resolution to less than the images original resolution. You do not need to turn on antialiasing. Now render at the final desired resolution something that will take place very quickly
and you will have your anti-aliased image.

Reconstruction Filters
In addition to these significant changes to the raw antialiasing engine, the LightWave 3D renderer
now includes a full implementation of reconstruction filters. These filters determine how the
rendering data is combined into a final image at a sub-pixel level in order to produce a final image.
Reconstruction filters have been a subject of research over many years and the names of these
filters are often derived from the research that led to their development. The new LightWave filters
include the most important state-of-the-art techniques and are outlined in the table below.
Box Filtering: This is the most common form of filtering, and the method that most traditional
applications use to reconstruct an image from raw rendering samples. These samples are simply
places in a pixel box and averaged. Although this technique is fast, it can exhibit significant
artifacts on motion and when there is fine image detail. From a signal processing point of view, this
is a very poor technique for reconstructing an image from the raw data that comprises it.
This mode is very close to the traditional LightWave modes.
Gaussian Filtering: Gaussian filter based image construction takes the samples that compose the
image and builds the final pixel data by weighting their contributions based on a Gaussian kernel
of approximately one pixel in size. This technique typically performs quite well, although images
tend to have a soft look. In practice this mode can be very valuable for video output where it can
help hide some of the artifacts introduced by fielded or reduce bandwidth content.
Mitchell Filtering: Mitchell filtering is a technique that is now very popular and was suggested as
an alternative to Lanczos filtering (see below.) It does not suffer many of the ringing artifacts of
Lanczos filtering and generally is a very good starting point for most situations.
Lanczos Filtering: Lanczos filtering is arguably the technique that yields the closest to the perfect
results for image reconstruction. This technique is based on a windowed sinc function (a sinc
function being the optimal infinite image reconstruction filter.) Unfortunately in practice Lanczos
image reconstruction tends to produce overly emphasized edges and ringing in high contrast
areas of the image.

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The filters listed above are all implemented in Sharp, Normal and Smooth modes that give
users a huge variety of options to fine tune the look of their rendering to their particular needs and
desired look.

Reconstruction Filters can be used with Classic and PLD antialiasing and even work with no
antialiasing option selected.

Each of the Reconstruction Filters renders differently, so you might want test each of the different
filters to see which one best fits your project.

Classic Motion Blur

For motion blur to work, some level of antialiasing needs to be enabled. LightWave uses these
antialiasing passes to generate the additional images used by motion blur. You will be able to see
the process working when rendering in a render view. For each antialiasing pass, LightWave seems
to move the objects a little and then composites them all together to get the motion blurred
image. Because only five steps (a low level of antialiasing) can give a stepped effect, higher levels of
antialiasing are recommended.
Dithered provides a better quality result with double the number of images to dither in between,
and doesnt take as long as using the next level of antialiasing, but provides results just as good if
not better.
All of LightWaves Classic rendering modes and options are still available to ensure that scenes
rendered with previous versions of the product can be rendered identically; or for use in rendering
scenes where some of the advanced new options might not be applicable.

Classic Depth of Field

You need to render an image with antialiasing set to more than Low for the effect to be available,
and then you can turn on Depth of Field. If this is going to give you unacceptably long rendering
times, please also check out the image filter Digital Confusion.

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LightWave 2015

Introduction
Lighting Introduction
Along with objects and the camera, lights are a basic element in any LightWave Scene. In Layout, a
Scene must always have at least one light. In fact, LightWave will not allow you to remove the last
light source. If you really dont need it, you can just turn its Light Intensity to zero or deactivate the
light in the Scene Editor.

The lights colored Magenta do not require samples. The NGon and Area lights can be made to only point in one direction using the Render
Globals > Render > 2 Sided Area Lights option.

LightWave has several types of lights, and you can give them different names, colors, and
attributes. Along with lens flares, volumetric and shadow casting options, you can control light
with a high degree of precision. All of these features are found within the Lights tab of the Render
Globals Panel.
Along with the several lights, LightWave also features radiosity and caustic light effects, which can
add tremendous realism to your scenes.
Remember that LightWave lights do not act exactly like lights in the real world. For instance, you
cannot see a LightWave light source, only its illuminating effect in the scene, unless you add a lens
flare to the light source. This is actually a handy feature because unlike a movie set, you can place
lights anywhere, including in front of the camera!

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You can also place lights inside objects. For example, you may have a solid ball inside a box and
you may want the inside walls of the box to be lit. Placing a point light inside the ball will shine
light through the ball onto the inside of the box. Likewise, you could light the faces of a string of
dominoes by placing one light aimed at the face of the first domino in line. Of course, you may not
want the light to go past the first domino or through the ball and so there are options that allow
for this behavior as well.
LightWave lights also differ from the real world because you can have negative lights that take
away color, as well as diffuse and specular shading.

Basic Light Attributes

Light Properties are to be found by selecting a light and hitting P. This will bring up the Render
Globals window, on the Lights tab. The Lights tab can vary quite a lot in size depending on what
sort of light youve chosen, but they all have options at the top of the window in common.

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Clear all Lights - Doesnt need much explanation. Since LightWave always requires at least
one light in the scene, a single Default light, in its default position will replace all the lights in
your scene. This action cannot be undone.
Lights in Scene - Just an info field that tells you how many lights you have in your scene.
Ambient Color - The color of the ambient light in the scene.
Ambient Intensity - How much ambient light there is in a scene.

Ambient Light
Ambient light does not come from any light source, and it produces no shadows. It is a general,
ever-present light source that gets into every nook and cranny; it provides a type of fill light for
objects and shadows. Selecting Ambient Color lets you choose a color for the ambient light.
Changing the Ambient Intensity value lets you determine the amount of ambient light in a scene.
LightWaves ambient light does not exist in the real world because it does not come from any
specific source or direction. Many animators use lower intensity lights aimed in the opposite
direction of the main light source to simulate reflected bounce light as opposed to using
LightWaves ambient light feature.

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Light Properties
Light Color and Intensity
The Light Color setting on the Light Properties Panel modifies the color for the current light.

Light Intensity lets you set the brightness for the current light. You can drag the mini-slider to set a
value between 0% and 100%, or enter a numeric value manually. You can even enter values greater
than 100%. This is sometimes necessary, particularly when using radiosity or Photometric lights.

The default light is set at 100% Intensity. Lights added subsequently are set at 50% by default.
Light intensity is additive, so if multiple lights hit a surface, their intensities are added together.
As such, too high a Light Intensity value tends to wash out a scene, particularly when you have
multiple lights. Eventually, the rendered image becomes solid white when the values of light
sources exceed a certain brightness.

A surface hit with multiple lights which exceed a total of 100% is not necessarily bad, and
usually occurs in most scenes. Elements like surface Diffuse values, shadows, light falloff, and so on, will
all tend to diminish the initial light intensities.

Basic Tab settings

Affect Diffuse - Deactivate to prevent a light from affecting the general color or brightness
of a scene. This is particularly useful when you add lights to a scene for creating specular
highlights. Often you want a light that creates a nice specular highlight on a surface, but you
dont want it to affect the rest of the lighting.
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Affect Specular - Deactivate to prevent the light from creating specular highlights; the light
still affects the color and brightness of the scene, however. This is very nice for adding lights
in a scene to approximate the look of radiosity. A scene often needs a very high number of
lights to give it the appropriate realism and warmth. However, adding too many lights can
cause objects with a high Specularity setting to reveal the lights presence with multiple hot
spots. By disabling specularity for these lights you can overcome the problem. For similar
reasons, there is the Affect Caustics option. Affect Caustics can also be turned off to limit
caustics calculation to only desired lights, drastically speeding up calculation time.
Affect OpenGL - This option is for display purposes only. It will not change the effect a light
has on a rendered image. With this option you can prevent the light from affecting Layouts
display, which uses OpenGL. This is important since the number of lights that can affect an
OpenGL display is usually limited to 8 depending on the graphics card (if your card supports
more, see the GL options tab of the Preferences Panel to increase your maximum).
Lens Flare o
 ptions - these are discussed in full starting page 127.
Volumetric Lighting options - these are discussed in full starting page 138.

Light Display Size

Lights are displayed on the Layout screen in a size relative to the Grid. If you increase or decrease
the Grid Square Size on the Display Options tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options), all
lights change size to match the grid. This does not affect the light sources coverage or intensity
at all, only its visual representation. Also, the true light source is actually located at a center point
within the visual representation of the light.

To add a light:
Choose Items > Add > Lights and select the desired light type from the submenu.

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A dialog prompts you for a name when you add lights. Click OK to accept the default.

You can also select Light mode and use the Viewport Options menu Match Viewport Perspective
item to move an existing light to look in the same direction as the Perspective view, or add a new
light that does. The new light will be of the same type as the light that is active.

To remove a light:
Select the light and choose Items > Delete > Clear Selected or Clear All Lights, or use the keyboard
shortcut -.

To adjust a lights properties:

Select the light and open its Properties Panel (P). If the panel is open, you can choose different
lights to adjust using the Current Light pop-up menu.

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Shadows Tab
In LightWave, the light goes through objects unless the light is set to generate shadows. So unless
you use a light with Intensity Falloff, the light will continue on forever.
When a light generates shadows, it respects objects that block the beam, which keeps the light
from continuing on its merry way. A shadow is created when you have a lighted area next to an
unlighted or partially lighted area.

With Shadows Inactive

Say you have a scene containing a house with a fully-detailed interior. Without shadows, if you
have a light emulating the sun, its light always affects the interior of the house, even if you position
the light itself outside the house.
In order for an object to cast ray-traced shadows onto other objects, it must contain polygons
that face the object receiving the shadow. In other words, the surface normal of a polygon must
face the surface receiving the shadow. This is rarely a problem with solid objects, but if you cast
shadows of flat planes, and do not see a shadow, make sure to use the Double Sided surfaces
attribute or build the object with polygons facing both ways.

Volumetric lights pass directly through objects when there are no shadows.

Shadow Type
You initially set lights to generate shadows via the Shadow Type setting. By default, any light added
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to a scene has its Shadow Type set to Ray Trace. Ray tracing a light produces accurate shadows.
Distant, Point, and Spotlights produce ray-traced shadows with hard edges. Area, Dome, Linear,
NGon, Photometric and Spherical lights produce ray-traced shadows with physically accurate
shadow edges that are hard near the object casting them and softer further away. The last type,
Shadow Map, is only available with Spotlights.

When ray tracing shadows, the Ray Trace Shadows option (Render Globals > Render Options)
must also be active. It is active by default.

Single-point polygons (particles) and two-point (lines) polygons do not normally cast ray-traced
shadows. They will, however, cast shadows with Shadow Maps.

Shadow Color
A Shadow Color setting is available on the Light Properties Panel. If a shadow-casting light uses the
default black color (0, 0, 0), it will have no direct effect on areas that are blocked by opaque objects.
This matches the behavior of previous versions of LightWave (and the real world). Using colors
lets you tint shadows without having to adjust ambient lighting. This option works with both ray
tracing and Shadow Mapping.
The original light color dissolves into the shadow color as the amount of shadow increases from
zero to 100%. To change the density of shadows without tinting them, set the Shadow Color to be
the same as the Light Color (Light Properties) and then adjust the Shadow Color value (using the
HSV colorspace controls. Note: Right-click on the Color settings to change to HSV from RGB).

An easy technique to lighten a lights shadow is to clone the light and set the Shadow Type to
Off for the clone. Then adjust the Light Intensity of both lights so that they add up to the value for the
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original single light. The more intensity you give to the non-shadow light, the lighter the shadow.

Shadow Mapping

In earlier versions of LightWave, Shadow Maps were the fastest way to achieve soft-edged
shadows. With the advent of lights able to produce soft-edged ray traced shadows, they are no longer
used as much, particularly given their dependence on a single light type. Since they are still available in
the software, the full explanation of how to use them is presented here. If you are using Spotlights, its
possible that they can produce faster renders, but its up to you to try.
An alternative to ray-traced shadows is the Shadow Map option, available only for Spotlights. These
are not as accurate as their ray-traced cousins, but will render much more quickly and can have
a soft edge. Shadow Mapping is a derivative of the same procedure used to calculate areas that
are hidden from the camera view by objects. Instead of the cameras view, LightWave determines
whether areas are hidden in the lights view. If so, these areas will be in shadow.

Make sure that Shadow Maps is active on the Render Globals > Render options or Shadow Maps
will not appear.

Transparent Objects
One of the biggest limitations of Shadow Maps is that they do not respect transparent surfaces or
dissolved objects. The shadow appears as if the object is solid. For transparent shadows, you must
use a ray-traced light source.

Cache Shadow Map

Cache Shadow Map specifies that the Shadow Map for the light should be calculated only once
during each render session, no matter how many motion blur passes or frames are rendered. This
saves rendering time, but should be used only when the light and all objects that are illuminated
by it are not moving.

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Shadow Map

Ray Trace Shadows on a semi-transparent skull

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Shadow Map Size
The Shadow Map Size value determines the resolution of the Shadow Map. This number represents
one side of a square view, therefore the default of 512 generates a Shadow Map that is 512 by
512 pixels. The higher the setting the finer the detail of the Shadow Map. Too low a setting results
in artifacts that manifest as pixelated shadows with jagged edges, or shadows that jump while
animated.
Remember that the Shadow Map Size has a direct correlation to memory requirements. The
amount of required memory is equal to four times the square of the Shadow Map Size value.
Therefore a value of 512 consumes one megabyte of memory (512 x 512 x 4 = 1,048,576 bytes = 1
megabyte. The reason for the multiple of four is to account for the four channels used - Red, Green,
Blue and Alpha). A size of 1,024 consumes four megabytes of memory.

Shadow Map Area

When Use Cone Angle is active, the default, the area covered by the Shadow Map is determined
by the Spotlight Cone Angle. In other words, the entire area lit by the Spotlight is calculated in the
Shadow Map.
Deactivating the Use Cone Angle option lets you enter an independent Map Angle. Use this
option when you want to illuminate a large area by the Spotlight but do not have enough RAM to
effectively Shadow Map the entire area, or when you need only a small area shadowed.

The best-looking Shadow Maps occur when you have the largest Shadow Map Size you can
afford and the smallest Map Angle possible for the given Spotlight.

Smoothing Out an Edge

You can set the edge sharpness or smoothness of shadows cast by a Shadow Map by changing the
Shadow Fuzziness value. Higher values give a fuzzier edge while lower values yield a sharper edge.
A value of 0 results in no smoothing and you will see the square pixels of the Shadow Map.

Also see the discussion Object Shadow Options.

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Objects Tab
You can exclude any light or lights from the shading of any object. Simply click in the Exclude
column to activate the exclusion.

You can also exclude or include all lights in the objects properties panel or all objects in the lights
properties panel or invert your selection by right-clicking on the Lights heading.

If for some reason you need the excluded lights to continue to cast shadows, deactivate the
Shadow Exclusion option. When this global setting is not activated, all lights will cast shadows even if
they are excluded. You will need to add the Shadow Exclusion command (Lights command group) to a
menu to access it.

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Intensity Falloff
All lights, aside from Distant, Dome and Photometric, can be set to fall off over a specified distance.
You activate the option on the Intensity Falloff pop-up menu. The falloff can be Linear or non-linear.
The non-linear option Inverse Distance reduces intensity as the light moves farther from its source.
The Inverse Distance ^2 uses a higher, more natural level of reduction. There are two further falloffs,
the Clamped versions of Inverse Distance and Inverse Distance ^2. These clamp the light at the
nominal value rather than ramping it up further the closer the light gets.
When using Linear falloff, the Range/Nominal Distance values set the distance from the light
where the lights intensity is zero, the range of the light. When using Inverse or Inverse Distance ^2
falloff, the Range/Nominal Distance value determines the point where the Light Intensity reaches
the Light Intensity setting, or the nominal distance, so the closer to the light source the brighter it
gets..
In orthogonal views, the falloff area is visible as a circle around the light. The light will fall off to zero
exactly at the edge of the circle if using linear falloff. With inverse falloff, the circle shows exactly
where the falloff begins.
The clamped light falloffs behave in two ways. First, light inside the falloff area is now clamped to
the value of the light, rather than continuing to get brighter as was previously the case.

Heres how it works:

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The second thing that the clamping does is to cut off ray tracing when the amount of light being
emitted drops below a useful level, which will have a good effect on render times in scenes with
lights with a falloff.

If you are using the clamped falloff, be sure to adjust your falloff distance to prevent large
monotone regions caused by the clamping of the light. Smaller radius, higher intensity lights will work
better to minimize this effect.

If you do not use Intensity Falloff, the light will travel forever, unless a shadow option is active.

Negative Lights
The Light Intensity can also be set to a negative value. This takes away Diffuse and Specular
shading. Moreover, if you use a colored light, that is, something other than white, a negative light
subtracts the light color from the surfaces it affects.

The Envelope Please

Numeric light properties can use envelopes to control their values over time. A highlighted E
button signifies that an envelope is in use. Clicking on the E button allows you to make changes to
an envelope in the Graph Editor. Shift + LMB on a highlighted E button removes the envelope.
All lights, with the exception of Distant, Dome and Photometric, can be set to fall off over a specified
distance. You activate the option on the Intensity Falloff pop-up menu on the Light properties. The
falloffs are all described starting page 175.
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Lens Flares
LightWave was the first professional 3D package to incorporate lens flares into its arsenal. Simply
put, a lens flare is an artifact that appears in the lens elements of a camera when you aim it toward
a source of light. It is by all definitions a defect-a limitation of the camera lens. However, by
imitating this defect, you can add the realism of using an actual camera to LightWave animations.

While LightWaves lens flares are easy to use and the effect is often very appealing, remember
that lens flares are an artifact that most film and video directors try resolutely to avoid. Judicious use of
lens flares can enhance your work, but overuse can quickly detract from it - qv JJ Abrams work.
You use lights to position lens flares since lights cause them. Lens flares are implemented as a light
property. You can use any type of light; however, Linear and Area lights will generate only a single
lens flare, as do the others. The light retains all of its normal lighting functions, but when it appears
within a frame, a lens flare is generated.

Make sure that Lens Flares is enabled on the Render tab in the Render Globals Panel or
LightWave will not create lens flares.
Understand that lens flares are an additive effect, which means they are added to a rendered
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image after LightWave calculates the scenes appearance. Because of this, you can accidentally
create too many flares, or flares so hot that they wash out other items in the scene. Of course, this
may be a desired effect, such as when a large explosion takes place.
Since lens flares are an additive effect, they will not show up in an alpha channel saved image.
Moreover, since flares theoretically exist only in the lens of the camera, they will not show up in any
reflections or refractions in an objects surfaces.

You can add lens flares to the alpha channel of your render by adding the Flare2Alpha LScript to
the Image Processing > Image Filters window.

Lens Flare Options

The central glow of a lens flare light source is white, while the glow around it is tinted by the lights
Light Color. Unlike real lens flares, LightWave gives you tremendous control over how your flares
look. Additionally, since lens flares are used by LightWave animators for more than camera lens
artifacts, there are some options that help the flares look more like real physical phenomena, like
fire, glowing, and explosions.
To set up a lens flare:
1) Select the light.
2) Click Lights Properties Panel> Lens Flare to turn the option on for the selected light.

3) Click Lens Flare Options and set the options as desired.

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Lens Flare Viewport Preview

You can see an approximation of your Lens Flare settings in any viewport using the Camera view.
You must activate the OpenGL Lens Flare option on the Display Options Tab of the Preferences Panel
(Edit > Display Options). Note that this is just an approximation of how the actual lens flare will
appear and the actual rendered effect will likely be somewhat different.

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Not all lens flare options can be seen in the preview, so you need to do test renders or use VPR in
final mode.

Fade and Dissolve Options

Flare Intensity sets the brightness of the lens flare. The default value is a good starting point.
Fade Off Screen - For when you want a lens flare light source to reduce its flare intensity
automatically as the light source enters or exits at the edge of the screen. This simulates the
properties of actual lens flares within a film camera. When this option is not active, the lens
flare will remain constant as it moves off screen. (On by Default)
Fade In Fog - For when you want a lens flare to automatically reduce its flare intensity as
it is affected by the minimum and maximum distances set for fog on the Effects Panels
Volumetrics Tab (Windows > Volumetrics and Fog Options). The further into the fog the
lens flare is, the less bright it will be. Once past the maximum fog distance, the lens flare
is completely dissolved by the fog. If Fade in Fog is not selected, the lens flare will remain
bright no matter how far away it is. (Off by Default)
Fade Behind Objects - Select when you want a lens flare to reduce intensity automatically as
the light moves behind other objects in the scene. This simulates the properties of actual
lens flares within a film camera. Flares even change color when passing behind stained glass
windows with the Fade Behind Objects option, which uses ray tracing to determine when
lights are obscured by objects. If you do not select this option, flares will appear through
objects. (Off by Default)

Left: Normal Flare Settings, Right: Fade Behind Objects selected

Fade With Distance - Selecting this will automatically fade a lens flare as its distance from the
camera increases. If you bring a flare closer to the camera, it grows brighter. (Off by Default)
The Nominal Distance field, active only when Fade With Distance is selected, is the distance
from the camera where the flare is at its input intensity. For instance, if your Flare Intensity
is 100%, and your Nominal Distance is 10 meters, moving the flare to a distance of 20
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meters causes the intensity to drop to 50% (at twice the distance it drops to one-half the
brightness). Conversely, at half the distance, 5 meters, it climbs to twice the intensity, 200%.
Flare Dissolve - Enter a value to adjust the transparency of the lens flare effect. This option
is handy when you wish to see large streaks of light coming from the lens flare but do not
want a bright hot spot at the center of the flare. The higher the Flare Intensity, the larger the
streaks (if selected), and the brighter the flare. Flare Dissolve values below 0% or above 100%
are not useful, since the flare is either fully visible or fully invisible and cannot be more so.

Glow Options
The second section of the panel is devoted to Glow options.
Central Glow - is a glow of light at the center of the light source flare. This is the color of the
light source. Red Outer Glow is a luminous, soft-edged red glow around the light source,
available only when Central Glow is active. You may want this option off for deep undersea
environments, where the color red is not visible. (On by Default)
Glow Behind Objects - simulates a glow that surrounds a light source. This effect is different
from that of a true lens flare, and should not be confused with that effect. A true lens flare
is a phenomenon that occurs within the camera lens and thus appears to be in front of
all objects in a scene. When the light source that causes the flare is obscured by objects
between it and the camera lens, the flare fades or disappears depending on whether the
light is partially or completely obscured (an effect that is handled by the Fade Behind
Objects option). (Off by Default)
Glow Behind Objects is designed to simulate glows physically located at the light source
rather than within the lens. These glows are caused by the illumination of a medium
surrounding the light (such as murky water or foggy atmosphere) as opposed to true lens
flares, which are caused by diffraction and reflections among the glass elements inside a lens
assembly. Unlike true lens flares, glows, at a distance, can be partially visible even if the light
source itself is obscured.

Left: Normal Flare Settings, Right: Glow Behind Objects selected

Central Ring - is a small ring of light, like a halo, surrounding the light source. The Ring Color
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option controls its color. The rings size is set by the Ring Size value, which defaults to 22%.

Use an enveloped Ring Size for shock waves or other similar anomalies.
Anamorphic Distortion - causes the lens flare to stretch horizontally. This simulates the effect
of the wider lens flares you see in motion pictures filmed in Panavision. The Distortion Factor
acts as an aspect ratio control. The height of a flare is determined by its Intensity setting
and proximity to the camera. The relative width of the flare is determined by the Distortion
Factor.
The default value, 1.77, sets the flares width at 1.77 times the flares height. A default value
of 3 causes the flares width to be three times wider than it is tall, and so forth. The higher the
value, the more elongated the flare. To distort the flare vertically, enter a value less than 1.
The lower the value, the taller the flare.

Lens Streaks
The Lens Flare panel divides in two at the bottom. The first is the Streaks tab.

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Star Filter - this is a pop-up that lets you choose the number of points on the star-shaped
streaks that emanate from the flare. The + n secondary options add in-between minor
streaks. You can rotate the streaks with Rotation Angle. Positive values rotate the streaks
clockwise as seen from the camera. Negative values rotate the streaks counterclockwise.

Off Screen Streaks - allow lens flares that move off the visible screen area to continue to cast
occasional streaks across the LightWave camera and into the scene.

You must activate Fade Off Screen to use Off Screen Streaks.
Anamorphic Streaks - are elliptical horizontal blue streaks emanating from the lens flare
light source. This simulates the effect of similar streaks seen in motion pictures filmed in
Panavision.
The Random Streaks options adds dozens of tiny random streaks of light emanating from
the light source. The intensity of these streaks is governed by the Streak Intensity, which is a
percentage of the brightness of the lens flare. The higher the value, the brighter and larger
the streaks. The default value of 3.0% produces streaks that closely match those found in
film.
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Streak Density - sets the number of random streaks. The number you enter is used as a rough
approximation to determine the actual number of streaks, but your results will be close to
the value entered. Higher values make for more streaks.
Streak Sharpness - determines how defined the random streak edges fall off and blend into
the background. Low values blur the streaks together, making for softer, wider streaks.
Higher values create very distinct streaks. The default value of 6.0 closely matches streak
effects found in film.

A very low Streak Sharpness value (like .0001) will blur the streaks into each other to create a
glow-like effect.

Lens Reflections
The Lens Reflections option adds reflections of light in the LightWave camera, as if it were shooting
the scene through a standard camera lens assembly. This effect emulates the multiple lens
elements that make up a typical lens. Such flares commonly occur whenever you aim a camera at
an intense light source.

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If either the light source or the camera is moving, then the reflections will move across the screen
also. This can be a dramatic effect.

To get the most visibility out of Lens Reflections, place the lens flare light near the side or corner
of the cameras view.
The Polygonal Element Shape will change the shape of the reflections. The sided settings simulate
lenses with n-blade irises. Since theres just one iris per lens on a real camera, all polygonal
reflections in a particular flare have the same shape. Settings are global for the scene, which means
that different lights cant have different patterns.

Some of the available Shapes

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You can modify the default Element Type, Element Position, Element Size, and Element Color for each
of the sixteen reflection elements. To edit an element, first select it using the Current Reflection
Element pop-up menu. The elements are aligned in a straight line going through the center of the
cameras view through the light.
By default, the Elements 1 through 16 are aligned starting near the light, then through the center
and on to the opposite side. However, each elements position could be anywhere, if you want it
to be. An Element Position of 0 is at the center of the screen, 1 at the lights position and -1 on the
opposite side. You can use values beyond 1 or -1 to move elements past those positions.

Element 15 (Yellow) Left: Position = -1, Middle: Position = 0, Right : Position = 1

An Element Size of 100% vertically fits the element to the camera resolution. It can be clipped
or there can be space to the left and right, depending on the relative Camera Resolution Height
setting.

A reflection using a Bright Center Element Type will not be the same size as the Even Center.
The Element Type setting determines the shape and density characteristics of the reflection.

Circle- Bright Center, Even Center, Dim Center, Circular- Ring

Polygon- Bright Center, Even Center, Dim Center, Rainbow Ring

If you select a Polygon Element Type, you should also choose a shape other than Circular as the
Polygonal Element Shape.
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The viewport display will not show all lens reflection attributes.

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Volumetric Lights
Volumetric Lighting turns a selected light into a volumetric light. This gives lights - or more
accurately their beams - physical volume. These effects are common in everyday life and can play a
key role in creating dramatic and realistic environments.

Use Enable Volumetric Lights On/Off to enable or disable all volumetric lights in the scene.

Also see the Volumetric Antialiasing option on the Volumetrics Tab of the Effects Panel,
explained in Volumetric Antialiasing on page 1002.
An outline of the volume for volumetric lights is displayed in Layouts viewports.

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Linear, Area, Dome, NGon, Photometric and Spherical lights cannot be volumetric.
Click the Volumetric Light Options button to display a selected lights volumetric options.

Quality - Use the lowest Quality setting that achieves acceptable results. Obviously, higher
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settings will take longer to render.
Jittered Sampling - Keeping with the fuzzy nature of volumetrics, you can make sure the
sampling needed for drawing them is jittered.
Sprite Mode - This mode will render the effect much faster. However, there are a few
limitations, the biggest being that volumetric shadows will not be cast. Also, in some cases,
the light textures will look unnatural - this occurs mostly with spot lights when looking in
the direction of the light. Note that the Quality setting becomes unavailable when using this
mode.
Effect Dissolve - Effect Dissolve reduces the amount of the effect.
Fade in Fog - Activate Fade in Fog for volumetric lights to dissolve into fog, just like lens flares
can. (Off by Default)
Opacity Casts Shadows - This option causes volumetric lights to cast ray-traced shadows
based on the volumetric lights Opacity setting. If Opacity is set to 0, no shadow will result.
(Since shadows are ray-traced, the illuminating light must have Shadow Type set to Ray Trace
and Ray Trace Shadows needs to be active on the Render Options Panel.) (Off by Default)
Radius/Cone Base - Radius is the radius of the volumetric beam for Distant and Point lights. If
the light is a Spot, the Cone Base setting (replaces the Radius setting) lets you adjust where
the base of the cone begins.
Height - The length of the beam for Spotlights and Distant lights.
Edit Nodes - Activated, this option allows you to use options from the Node Editor.
Luminosity - The strength of the volumetric effect. Values can be positive or negative.
Negative values have no physical sense, but you can use them to create interesting effects.
A 0 value means that no light is emitted from the medium, which can be useful if you want
dark smoke or dust effects.
Opacity - The effects surface opacity, that is, how non-transparent the effect is. A high value
will cause an object inside and behind to blend into the effect. Negative values are allowed,
and can cause dense areas to become very bright. You may need to increase Luminosity to
compensate for increased Opacity settings.

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Attenuation - Determines how fast the effect declines in intensity as the light leaves the
emitting point. The default value is 25%. Low Attenuation values will make dense areas
become very bright and totally saturated. High values will make dense areas darker and
make the volume boundaries brighter.
Some level of attenuation always exists, even if you set Attenuation to 0%.
Red Shift - The Red Shift setting works in conjunction with Attenuation, controlling the
interior behavior of light. When light scatters from one point, it must travel inside the
medium from the point of emission to the viewer. During this travel, the light attenuates
depending on the length of the travel and on the lights wavelength.
The sky is a good example of this: at sunset, light from the sun gets red because the
thickness of the atmosphere crossed at the horizon is more than at the zenith. Red light
is attenuated less over long distances, thus the horizon is red while the sky is blue. The
Red Shift parameter is used for this: 0 values means that Attenuation is not wavelength
dependent, which means that light will be attenuated with no color changes. Positive values
will make the color shift towards the red, while negative values will make a shift towards the
blue.
Density - controls the global density of the medium. This essentially works like a multiplier for
Luminosity and Opacity.
Specify Medium Color - Activate this option to set the color of the medium (i.e., the substance)
through which the volumetric light is transmitted.

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Light Textures
To add a texture to the volumetric effect using the Texture Editor, click Edit Texture. The Enable
Texture option must be active to apply the Texture settings. Deactivating it will not affect any
existing settings. The Texture Only option means that the texture is not blending with the base
color, but replacing it totally.

Left: Marble Texture on Point Light, Right: Fractal Noise Texture on Point Light

Left: Gradient and Turbulence on a Distant Light

Volumetric Presets
To use the Preset Shelf, activate it through Edit > Presets, or by pressing F8. With these weapons you
can quickly set up lighting as you like. The Presets window is context-sensitive, so make sure the
Volumetric Light Options window is open before you open the Presets window.

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Volumetric Shadows within Lights
To achieve volumetric shadows within lights, make sure you enable Shadow Maps, if you are using
shadow map shadows. If you are using ray-traced shadows, activate the Ray Trace Shadows option
on the Render Options Panel (Rendering > Render Options).
Note that it is much better to use Shadow Maps because they render much faster and you can
control the fuzziness of the shadows. If you find that the shadow rays are creating aliasing
patterns, you can easily correct this by increasing the Shadow Fuzziness value (Light Properties).
This is a better solution than increasing the Volumetric Light Quality setting, which increases render
times.

If you are using the Node Editor with Volumetric Lights and using the Raytrace Node, or any
node that samples the scene recursively, or a node that multi-samples, this can increase render times
significantly.

Luxigons
Luxigons are very similar to Powergons, but are specialised just to add lights and set certain light
properties. To use, in Modeler select the desired polygons and choose Setup > Layout Tools > Add
Luxigon.
When the dialog appears, select the type of light you wish to add and set its properties.

Next, load the object into Layout and choose Items > Lights > Convert Powergons. After you click,
the light type defined will be created, positioned at the center of the appropriate polygons, aligned
with the polygons normal, and parented to the object.

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You can clear Luxigons from selected polygons using the Setup> Clear Powergons command.

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Saving Lights
Choose File > Save > Save Current Light to save the current light to a scene file. You save normal
Light settings as well as Lens Flare and Volumetric Light settings. You can add the light to a scene
by choosing File > Load > Load Items from Scene and selecting the previously saved light file - which
is really just a scene file with only light information.

Light Types
LightWave has several types of lights, each with their own characteristics, features, and abilities.
Once you add a light, you can change its type by changing the Light Type on the Light Properties
Panel.

None of the lights colored Magenta require samples. The NGon and Area lights can be made to only point in one direction using the Render
Globals > Render > 2 Sided Area Lights option.

All the lights we are about to present have had their picture taken using VPR in final mode with
the light in the default position, orientation and settings. The Photometric light has had a rotation to
point at the skull and its power has been increased to 1000 % to better light the skull and show the rings.

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Distant Light
A Distant light is somewhat like the light from the sun. Surfaces receive an infinite amount of
parallel light rays traveling in the direction that the Distant light points to. Distant lights are handy
when you want equal illumination on objects in a scene.

The location of a Distant light doesnt matter - only its rotation is relevant. Because of this, you may
place one Distant light in a scene pointing straight down and all objects in your scene are lit as if
from above - the light can be a million meters or one meter above the object. You will see the exact
same results on the object. In most cases, you will need only one Distant light in a scene, although
you can add more. Generally, you will get much more realistic results using the other types of
lights, if you need more.

Because LightWave, by default, places one Distant light aimed from the upper left to the lower
right in a scene, you can simply load any object and immediately hit the Render (F9) button or go into
VPR mode (without setting any key frames) to see what the object looks like.

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Point Light
A Point light sends light out from a central location equally in all directions. Light bulbs, camp fires,
and fireflies are good examples for Point lights. In a way, a Point light is the opposite of a Distant
light. It doesnt matter how you rotate a Point light since it casts light in all directions, but it does
matter where it is located.

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Spotlight
Spotlights behave somewhat like their real world counterparts, sending light out in a specified
direction and size. Spotlights are probably have the most uses of any light available to the
LightWave animator, although for realism newer, sampled lights are better. Flashlights, car
headlights, and searchlights are all good examples of Spotlights.

As you might have guessed, a Spotlight can project light onto objects using a cone of light. The
size of the cone is determined by the Spotlight Cone Angle and Spot Soft Edge Angle values.
The Spotlight Cone Angle determines the width of the cone of light. It is equal to the angle from
the edge of the Spotlight to an imaginary line projecting straight out from the middle of the light
source. So a 30 Spotlight Cone Angle actually defines a 60 arc of light.
The Spot Soft Edge Angle determines the width of the falloff zone from the illuminated cone to the
Spotlight edge. It is equal to the angle from the Spotlight edge to the line projecting straight out
from the spotlight. Within this area, the spotlight slowly fades away to no light, thereby creating a
soft edge.

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A Spot Soft Edge Angle of 0 creates a Spotlight with a hard edge, while a setting less than or
equal to the Spotlight Cone Angle creates a soft-edged light.

Virtual Projector
Another cool feature of Spotlights lets you use the light to project an image onto an object, much
like a movie projector. You select the image to project from the Projection Image pop-up menu.

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The projected image will not conform to the circular shape of the cone angle. To do this, you
could place a cookie-cutter object (e.g., a flat box with a round hole) in front of the spotlight or use a
paint package to edit the image and fill the unwanted area with black. You may also want to use the
Blur Filter to soften the edges.

Spotlight Viewport Display

You can manipulate how Spotlights display in Layout. First, when you selected the Spotlight Cone
Angle, it is represented by lines emanating from the light. If you interactively adjust the cone angle
the shape of the lines will expand and contract.
If you use the Light View mode (on a Viewports Display mode menu or NUMPAD 5), you see a
circle that represents the Spot Cone Angle. If you adjust the Spot Cone Angle in this view, the circle
remains the same size. As such, it looks like you are zooming in/out.

If Fit Cone is not active for the spotlight and the Map Angle is equal to or smaller than the Spot
Cone Angle, you will see a square outline. This represents the Map Angle.

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Linear and Area Lights
If you could turn a two-point polygon into a light, youd have something similar to a Linear light.
Light is sent out equally in all directions, except at the ends. This type of light is great to use in
objects like fluorescent strip lighting.

Now, if you could turn a four-point double-sided polygon into a light, youd have an Area light.
Light is sent out equally in all directions, except along the edges. This type of light might be used
for flat light panels. Area lights behave, by far, the most like real world lights, but come at a cost of
increased render times.

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Unlike the Distant, Point, and Spotlight lists, you can size these lights, just as you would an object.
Another distinction is that ray-traced shadows will have physically accurate edges that are sharpest
near the object that is casting them and get softer further away A smaller area light will result in
sharper shadows than a large area light.
The quality of the shadows produced by all sampled lights, including Linear and Area, is directly
related to the number of samples used. In the image above you can see that the quality is pretty
grainy using the default 9 passes of antialiasing. Increasing it will improve the graininess, here we
put it at 57 passes.

Left: 9 passes of antialiasing; Right: 57 passes of antialiasing.

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Lights that are double-sided have a toggle in the Render Globals Panel Render tab to become
single-sided. The icon for lights like Area or NGon will update and indicate if they are single or
double-sided. The switch toggles all suitable lights in the scene.

Spherical Light
The spherical light emits light rays from the edges of a sphere. The default size is 100 mm, but
you can edit the size in the Properties to make it smaller or bigger. At a size of 0 m it essentially
becomes a point light.

The position and size of the spherical light are important, but, like the point light, not its rotation.

Dome Light
A dome light lights the scene from all sides within a dome that encompasses the scene, the icon is
merely a visual representation. It is exclusively the rotation of the light that determines the lights
effect in the lighting solutions. Position and scale do not contribute any effect to the lighting
solution. Set the Pitch to 90 to light a scene from the top.
The ability to add a spherical map or light probe to a Dome light was added for LightWave 11.5.
This is great for rendering more realistic shadows, or as a buffer export from a single light in the
scene.
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There are four possibilities for mapping:
None - the light works in just the same way dome lights always have.
Image (Spherical Map) - the Image menu becomes active and an image can be chosen to be
wrapped spherically around your dome lights projection.
Image (LightProbe) - the Image menu becomes active and a light probe image can be chosen
to be wrapped around your dome lights projection.
Backdrop - This evaluates backdrop shaders in the scene rather than directly using an image.

The default Angle setting of 90 gives a diffused light and is grainy as shown here if you do not
increase the Maximum Samples field in Camera Properties. Reducing the Angle to 3 will give
sharper, but still natural shadows and less grain.

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Left: Dome Angle set to 90 ; Right: Dome Angle set to 3

Photometric Lights
Photometric lights are custom lights used to replicate real lights. The bottom section of the
Light Properties panel allows you to load Photometric settings files in the IES format and control
different aspects of the lights..

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Photometric Info provides information about the loaded light.

The Thumbnail Angle, Brightness, Zoom and Distance settings in the Light Properties affect only the
Thumbnail Preview window and do not change the display in Open GL or in a render. Often you
will find you need to radically increase the Intensity of a Photometric light to better match realworld lights.
Show in OpenGL will turn on/off the Photometric light for OpenGL display in the viewport. I this is
unchecked, the lights web will disappear and only the small pill-shaped icon will show.

A wide variety of IES lights,are available online. A search for IES Lights in a search engine
should bring up a list of different web sites providing IES lights.

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Scene Management

LightWave 2015

Introduction
Organizing your Scenes
Taking on a CG project can be a challenge, whether it is a simple scene with one object, one light,
and one camera, or a complex scene with hundreds of objects, bones,surfaces, dynamics and
everything else in-between. Keeping it all organized is key to a successful project and this chapter
is all about the tools you can apply to keep your scenes manageable.
Starting with the basics of loading and saving items in a scene, the chapter then progresses from
management tools like the List Manager onto more complex tools such as the Scene Editor and
Graph Editor.

File Menu
Layouts File menu contains common file management commands and tools.

Clear Scene
Clear Scene - (File > Clear Scene) will remove all data from Layout and return Layout to its default
setup. All unsaved data will be lost.

2015

Save and Clear/Exit Improvements

The Save and Clear/Exit Panel has several slight name changes to make them clearer - the Save State
column has now been renamed to Save Mode and a downward-pointing arrow to indicate further
options has been added whereas before you had to know to click the right mouse button on the
column to make changes.

Load Commands
The important difference between loading an object directly versus loading from a scene lies in
what is stored in an object file versus what is stored in a scene file. The object file contains only the
object geometry and surface settings - what the object looks like in its most basic state.
There is no movement information in an object file.
Movement information is saved in the scene file. However, this is not only movement in the normal
sense, like moving an object from point A to point B, but also includes movement of the points in
their positional relationship to each other.
Moving points can change the shape of an object, sometimes dramatically. However, generally, the
number of points and polygons, as well as their relationship, remains the same.

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Understanding object and scene files is fundamental to understanding LightWave.

Due to the increase of the Layout scene file format version to 5, the Export menu in Layout has
been updated to accurately represent the scene file versions to their LightWave releases.
For example, say we had a flag object that was a flat-subdivided rectangle. In Layout, we could
make the flag wave using something called a displacement map - essentially this animates the
points in the object. The displacement map settings are saved in the scene file. The underlying flag
geometry and surface settings are stored in the flag object file.

Load Scene
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

O)

To load an existing scene:

1) Choose File > Load > Load Scene and use the file dialog to navigate to the desired scene file.
2) If the scene is not in your current content directory you will be asked if you wish to switch to
the content directory for the scene. There are very few occasions where you wont want to.
3) When the scene is loading, a progress dialog will appear. You may abort the load operation
by clicking the Abort button; however, this may result in a partially loaded scene.

Load Items From Scene

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Introduction
Loading objects from a scene is accomplished using File > Load > Load Items From Scene. After you
choose the scene, a panel will open up and you will have the option to choose which items from
the scene you would like to load. Double-clicking on the root of an item type, for example Lights,
will enable/disable all items of that type. The object layer number will be listed when loading a
multi-layered object.
Expand All and Collapse All will perform the respective function on the root of the item.
Select All selects all items and Select None deselects all items.
Clicking on Merge only Motion Envelopes will load only the motion envelopes for the selected
items.
Selecting Load Meshes as Instances will add a null to the scene and add

Be aware that when the first child in the chain becomes the new parent of the remainder of
the chain, some transformation issues may arise as that child is no longer bound by the parents
transformations. These transformations will have to be cleaned up manually after the scene is loaded.

Improvements to Load from Scene for LightWave 2015 are detailed starting on page 211.

Revert Scene to Last Saved

This option will close the current scene and re-open it to the last saved version.

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Load Object
(default keyboard shortcut +)
When you set up a new scene, you will need to load the appropriate objects into the scene.
To load an object file into a scene:
Use File > Load > Load Object or press +. The Load dialog will initially go to the Objects directory
of the current content directory. Objects here will reference images in the same content directory
and so on. If you wish to use an object not currently in the content directory consider using
Package Scene to regroup objects and images into a single, new content directory.
(Note: Multiple objects may be selected in the file dialog.)
If the object contains multiple layers of geometry, each layer will be loaded as a separate editable
item in Layout. An object is initially loaded so that its local Origin is at the global Origin and its local
axes line up with the world axes.

Load Object Layer

Choose File > Load >Load Object Layer to load a specific layer from a multi-layer object. A dialog will
appear allowing you to define which layer to load.

Load Multiple
The Multiloader command allows you to use the standard Load Object, Load From Scene, and
Load Lights from Scene, with the added ability of selecting how many times you want to load the
selected items.

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Load Motion File
Load a saved motion file into the selected item by choosing File > Load > Load Motion File.

Modelers Path Extrude and Path Clone commands use these files to execute their operations.

Recent Scenes
Choose File > Load > Recent Scenes, and select a Scene file from the submenu.

Save Commands

Save Scene
(default keyboard shortcut S)
This option saves the current scene using its filename. If the scene has never been saved before,
this is the same as using Save Scene As.

Save Scene As
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl S)
This option opens a file dialog letting you name (or rename) the scene before saving.

Save Scene Copy

Choosing File > Save > Save Scene Copy will allow you to save a copy of a scene using a new name.

Save Scene Increment

(default keyboard shortcut Shift S)
This option gives you the ability to save a version of a scene by adding incremental numbers to the
scenes name. This is handy when you are wanting to save your scene in various stages.

Save All
(default keyboard shortcut 

Alt

S)

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Saves the scene and all objects. Each needed to have already been saved before, you cannot use
Save All as the first save you do of a scene and/or objects.

An asterisk will appear next to the names (on the current pop-up menu) of scenes that have been
modified since their last save.

Save Current Object

You should always save objects after you have altered their surface settings.
To save an object:
1) M
ake sure your Content Directory is properly set.
2) Select the object you want to save.
3) S elect File > Save > Save Current Object to save the currently selected object.

Save Object Copy

Choosing File > Save > Save Object Copy will allow you to save a copy of an object using a new
name, without affecting the object used by the scene.

Save Object Increment

This option gives you the ability to save a version of an object by adding incremental numbers to
the objects name. This is handy when you are wanting to save your object in various stages.

An asterisk will appear next to the names (on the current pop-up menu) of objects that have
been modified since their last save.

Save All Objects

You can also use the File > Save > Save All Objects function to save all objects in the current scene.

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Use Save All Objects with caution. Be sure it is what you really want to do!

Save Trans Object

Choose File > Save > Save Transformed Object to save an object with any changes of location,
rotation, scale, morph, skeletal deformation, displacement map, and so on. The new object is also
saved relative to the Origin. The current frame in Layout controls the state of the saved object.

There is a unique quality to an object that uses displacement mapping with an image (planar,
cylindrical, or spherical) as well as surface color mapped with an image. With the displacement map
altering the objects shape, the color map is also bent to follow the contours of the transformed object.
However, if you save this reshaped object with Save Transformed Object, it will now be permanently
reshaped and the surface color mapping will no longer match.

Save Endomorph
You can save the current mix of your morphs back into the endomorph by choosing File > Save >
Save Endomorph. The morph will appear on a new Miscellaneous tab on MorphMixer. (Note that
you may need to remove and then re-add MorphMixer.) Dont forget to save your object if you
want to keep the new morph.

Save Current Llight

This command will save a scene file that contains the currently selected light and the lights
properties.

Save Motion File

To save the selected items motion path to a file, choose File > Save > Save Motion File.

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Quit
(default keyboard shortcut

Shift

Q)

Closes Layout. If you have a scene open, or have made changes to the default scene you will be
warned first.

Organizing Your Items: List Manager

Located directly to the right of Current Item pulldown menu, The List Manger allows for quick and
easy management of the items in your scene.

If you have a scene with a large number of items, you can use List Manager to organize your
objects, cameras, lights, and bones into selection sets.

The default setting for List Manager will list all of the items of the Item Selection mode you have
selected.
If you are looking for a particular item in a long string of items, you can use Find. The search is
case-sensitive, so keep that in mind if an item is not showing up. After you type the name in,
press enter and the first matching item will be selected. Pressing enter again will choose the next
available item.

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Selection Menu
The Selection menu allows for the creation of selection sets for a group of objects. For example,
you may have a group of bones where you want to change all of the setting of all the bones on the
right side with the same settings.
You create selection set by first highlighting a group of items. You can select multiple items by
holding down Shift or Ctrl . Next, select Create Set in the Selection menu and give it a name When
you open the Selection menu again, you will see the named selection group

You can delete a selection set by choosing Remove Sets.

If you have both the Bones and Objects List Manager panels open, when you select an object in
the Object List Manager panel the corresponding set of bones for that object will show up in the Bones
List Manager panel.

Filter Menu
The Filter menu works like the Selection menu, except it takes the process further and will hide all
other items not in the set.

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You can delete a filter set by choosing Remove Sets.

If you would like to see all items after choosing a filter set, select Show All in the filter menu.

Actions Menu
The Actions menu allows you to manage the list order and rename your items.
You can change the list order in ascending or descending order by Name, ID, or Selection, if you
have created Selection groups.

If you want to manually change the order of items, simply left click on the item, or group of
items, and move it up or down in the list. This will automatically update the list in List Manager and in
the Current Item menu.

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Items Tab
Load Scene
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

O)

To load an existing scene:

Choose Item > Load Scene or File > Load > Scene or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl O and use the
file dialog to navigate to the desired scene file. If the scene is not in your current content directory
you will be asked if you wish to change to the new scenes content directory, do so. While the scene
is loading, a progress dialog will appear. You may abort the load operation by clicking the Abort
button; however, this may result in a partially loaded scene.

Load Items From Scene

Using Load From Scene (Items > Load From Scene) allows you to import existing lighting rigs,
characters from other scenes and many other things into a new one.
This can be extremely useful when working with complex scenes that have many items. Having the
ability to set up a character in one scene and load the entire setup into a different scene is just one
example of how useful Load From Scene can be.

Build a collection of nice Lighting setups and quickly add them to your scene using Load From
Scene.

You can also Load Items From a Scene by choosing File > Load > Load From Scene.

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2015

Improvements to Load from Scene

There are nearly 2,000 items in this kitchen scene. If just the spoons were needed for another scene
it would take a long time to pick through all 2,000, with no guarantee all the spoons would be
chosen. That is why the Load from Scene panel now includes a filter field at the top to allow the user
to select items by filtering on a full or partial name.

Just entering part of the object name in the filter field at the top of this window will now limit the
available items to load into the scene. No wildcards are necessary (* or ?) since they are implicit.

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Furthermore, at the bottom of this window, you can now set a pattern for renaming non-geometry
items loaded from another scene to prevent confusion with items already in the scene you are
loading to. Non-geometry items include Lights, Cameras and Nulls.
Regular expression support has been added to the Find/Replace fields. As with the Filter
field, activate in the Find field with an @ prefix. When enabled, the Replace field may have
substitutable parameters of the form <INDEX>$ that correspond to each captured value in the
regular expression (e.g., Bob_$1_$2 would expect to match two captured text values from the
expression @^(.+)_pattern(\d+)_lino).

Load Object
(default keyboard shortcut +)
When you set up a new scene, you will need to load the appropriate objects into the scene. Use
Load Object (Items > Load Object) to add objects to your scene.
To load an object file into a scene:
1) If the object you wish to load is in your current content directory then it will load with
any accompanying images without problem. If the object is from outside your content
directory there are two main options. If the object has no accompanying images,
then loading it from elsewhere wont pose a problem anyway, but you should copy
the object into your current content directorys Objects folder. If it has accompanying
images, these should go in the Images folder of the current content directory. You
can perform all these steps by using Package Scene, detailed on page 254.
2) Select Items > Load Object and use the file dialog to navigate to the desired object file.
(Note: multiple objects may be loaded when more than one is selected in the file dialog.)
If the object contains multiple layers of geometry, each layer will be loaded as a separate editable
item in Layout. An object is initially loaded so that its local Origin is at the global Origin and its local
axes line up with the world axes.

Object Layer
Choose Items > Load Object Layer to load a specific layer from a multi-layer object. A dialog will
appear allowing you to define which layer to load.

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You can also load an objects layers by choosing File > Load > Load Object Layer.

Add
Null
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

N)

The Null Object

Null objects are special objects that can be used for many different purposes in LightWave Nulls
can act as a target or parent item for lights or cameras, or perhaps a handle to help in manipulating
a group of objects. They are often used with object/bone hierarchies to group major components
and with Inverse Kinematics to act as goals for items to reach for.

Example of a character using Null objects for Inverse Kinematics and Proxy Items.

Null objects appear in the Layout window as six-pointed stars or jacks; however, they never render
in an image. Null objects, like the camera and lights, will appear to grow or shrink in relation to
objects as the grid size is changed. They can be moved, rotated, scaled, and so on, just like
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any regular object.

You can change the appearance of a Null object by applying Item Shape in the Add Custom
Object list, within the Object Properties panel.

Null Objects with Item Shape Applied

To add a null object:

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1) Select Items > Add Null.
2) Enter the name you wish to use for the null object in the dialog
that appears or accept the default name of Null.
3) If you would like to change the properties of the null click on Edit and the menu will expand.

When there are multiple items of the same type with the same name, a numerical suffix is added
automatically (e.g., Null (1), Null (2), etc.).

Shape:- Determines the shape of the null. Standard is the default Star null.
Axis:- Determines the direction the null faces towards the positive axis.
Filled:- If this option is available and you select it, the item shape will be a solid color.
Label:- You can enter text which will be displayed in the viewports.
Justification:- If you enter text in the Label section, you can specify where on the null where
to display that text.
Draw Line To:- Will draw a line from the null to the selected item.
Selected Color:- When the null is selected, this will be the color of the null.
Unselected Color:- When the null is not selected, this will be the color of the null.
Text Color:- If you have entered text, this will be the color of the text.
Opacity:- Determines the opacity of the null - whether it is transparent and see-through or
solid.
Null objects are created by LightWave on a scene-by-scene basis and are not real objects that can
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be saved to disk. They remain part of the scene file, however, and will reload with the scene.

Lights
Choose Items > Add > Lights and select the desired light type from the submenu. A dialog prompts
you for a name when you add lights. Click OK to accept the default or type in the name you wish to
use and click OK.

For more information on Lights and Light Types see Chapter 3 Light, starting on page 163.

Camera
You can add additional cameras by choosing Items > Add > Camera; however, only the Current
Camera is used to render a scene. If you have more than one camera in the scene, use the Current
Camera pop-up menu on the Camera Properties Panel (or Layouts Current Item pop-up menu) to
select the currently active camera. A dialog prompts you for a name when you add a Camera. Click
OK to accept the default or type in the name you wish to use and click OK.

For more information on Cameras see Chapter 2 Camera starting on page 104

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Convert Powergons
Powergons allow you to execute a short Layout command script, which is attached to selected
polygons in Modeler. You can use this feature to quickly add, say, lights using polygons for
positioning. Moreover, all of the lights properties can be defined as well.

Executing the Commands

Powergon commands that are attached in Modeler can be loaded into Layout. Then choose Items >
Add > CVT Powergons. This executes any command scripts attached to the selected object.

For more information about Powergons see Add/Edit PGons on page 1729.

Clone
This opens a submenu with four items:

Clone
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

C)

If you want to duplicate an item that is already in your scene, you can just choose Items > Add >
Clone > Clone. The new item will inherit all of the source items properties and motion. As such, this
can be a real time saver.
Steps to cloning an item:
1) Select the item you would like to clone.

2) Choose Clone (Items > Clone) and input the number of clones you would like to create.
Click OK.

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3) You should now have clones of your original object.

The newly created Clone(s) will be located at the exact coordinates as the original so you will
need to move them.

Clone Hierarchy
(default keyboard shortcut Shift Ctrl C)
If you want to duplicate an item and all of its children in a hierarchy that is already in your scene,
you can just choose Items > Add > Clone > Clone Hierarchy. The new items will inherit all of the
source items properties and motion. As such, this can be a real time saver.

The newly created Clone(s) will be located at the exact coordinates as the originals so you will
need to move them.
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Clone Instance
(default keyboard shortcut

Alt

Ctrl

C)

This will create a null, with an Instancer, with an instance of the original object. The object in the
scene will be called <Original Object Name>_inst. Very useful for placing instanced trees or cars in
a scene for example.

Python Bake Instance

This will converted instanced geometry into real objects.. To use, select the original of the
instanced objects and run this command.

Mirror
(default keyboard shortcut

Shift

V)

If you want to duplicate an item or group of items that are already in your scene, you can choose
Items > Add > Mirror. This tool works in a very similar way to clone with one difference. Instead of
duplicating the selected item(s) on top of themselves, Mirror gives you the option to mirror the
selected items along the X, Y, or Z axis.
Steps for using Mirror in Layout:
1) Select the item or items you would like to duplicate.

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2) Choose Mirror (Items > Mirror) and a dialog box will appear. Choose the Axis to Mirror on, you
can choose an offset.

3) Click OK.

Your original items will remain selected.

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Array
Array is a non-interactive tool that will create an array, rectangular or radial, of selected items.

Array cannot be undone, so the best way to use it is to save your scene and create the array. If it
isnt exactly as youd like Revert Scene to Last Saved.

Rectangular
The Total Counts at the top of the window represent the final object count in your array.
The Distances can be individually set as
Between - The distance between each member of the array
Multiply - the distance between the members of the array gets multiplied by the
number from the original unit. Thats to say, the original item is item one, the second
item in the array in a direction is item 2 and so on. The distances between arrayed items
will be Item 2 at 4 m, item 3 at 6 m and so on.
Total - the arrayed item quantity will all fit in the distance entered.

Radial
Total Count - will be how many items are in the radial array.
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Axis - will be around which axis the array will be created.
Rotation - Is how far in degrees you would like the radial array to go.
Clone Rotation - This can be set to either:
Normal - The cloned items are rotated so that they face along the line the are cloned
on.
None - The clones maintain their original aspect.
Offset - This value gives an offset between clones based the Rotation Center values given.
Copy Center from - Allows you to use another scene item as the basis of your radial array. It is
purely that items coordinates that are used. It is not otherwise implicated in the array.

Common
Random Position +/- - gives a random offset in the X,Y and Z dimensions to the positive and
negative of the extent chosen to each item in the array.
Rotation +/- - gives a random rotation in the H, P and B dimensions to the positive and
negative of the extent chosen to each item in the array.
Scale +/- - gives a random scale in the X, Y and Z dimensions to the positive and negative of
the extent chosen to each item in the array.
Clone Hierarchy - For each item, its descendant(s) will also be copied.
Group Clones on Null - When the clones are created, they will all be parented to a null called
Rectangular or Radial_Array_Group.

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Replace
Rename
You can rename the current item, like cameras, bones, and lights, but not objects, using Items >
Replace > Rename.

Replace
The commands found in the Items > Replace > Replace drop down menu let you replace the current
object with another object, a layer from another object or a null object. You might use this feature
to animate a very complex object by inserting a stand-in object with a low-polygon count and
then replacing it when it is time to render.

Replacing a Multi-layer Object

When replacing a multi-layer object, select the first layer before replacing. The first layer will be
replaced with the first layer from the new object file. Subsequent layers - belonging to the same
original object - will be replaced if their layer numbers match those found in the new object file.
You can also use Items > Replace > Replace > With Layer to replace an object with a single layer from
a multi-layered object. A dialog will appear to let you specify the layer.

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Delete
Clear Selected
(default keyboard shortcut -)
Clear Selected (Items > Delete > Clear Selected) will remove the selected item or items from a scene.

Clear
You can use commands on the Items > Delete > Clear dropdown menu to remove selected items or
all of the items of a specified type from a scene:

Clear All Objects - Will remove all objects from the scene.
Clear All Bones - Will remove all bones from the selected object.
Clear All Lights - Will remove all but one of the Lights in the scene.
Clear All Cameras - Will remove all but one of the Cameras in the scene.

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Importing Items into Layout
Most of the time you will be able to simply use the Load Scene requester to load scene-type items:
LWS - LightWave Scene
DAE - Collada file
FBX - MotionBuilder file
For objects, using the Load Object brings in even more file formats:

2015

LWO - LightWave
OBJ - Wavefront
DXF - AutoCAD
3DS - 3D Studio

DAE - Collada
FBX - MotionBuilder
STL - Stereolithography
PLY - Stanford mesh

Alembic Import Improved

For LightWave 2015, Alembic support has been updated to v1.5.5 supporting the Ogawa backend
for much faster read and write times.

Alembic Import

Alembic files can be imported into Layout with this function. Since Alembic is a container for
scene elements, you will be bringing new elements into an existing scene and using the Import
Under Current Selection check you can import an Alembic hierarchy parented to an existing scene
element. If your Alembic item is a revision of an existing item you can choose to Merge this import
with your existing scene or Add a new copy of contained objects. Your Alembic items scale can be
changed using the dropdown for size, which switches between centimeters and meters.

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FBX and Collada Import Options
FBX and Collada imports just as a LightWave scene file, go to Load Scene/Load Object, locate the
file. In the load panel, click Open.

When importing FBX and Collada files as scene files, the following requesters open. The file path is
where the objects associated with the imported scenes are stored.

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Mocap_BVH_Setup
LightWave provides a couple of plugins to support the BioVision (BVH) motion capture file format.
(the other is The MoCap_BVH_Setup generic Layout plugin reads a BioVision BVH file, creates
bones, and applies the motion capture data to them. This is one, the other is the plugin Motion
Capture Preview attached to the geometry of a null in Object Properties.

Set Start frame offset to the frame you want the motion to begin. The Bone name postfix is simply
a number appended to the end of all of the bone names (e.g., LeftKnee_1).
After you run the plugin, replace the top null (in the created bone hierarchy) with the object to be
animated. You could also use the Use Bones From Object feature on the Bones Properties panel.
If you need to change the initial resting position of bones, make sure you reset their rest positions
(use the R key). Youll probably need to adjust some of the individual bone properties after you run
the plugin.

Exporting Items from Layout

2015

Collada and FBX Export Options

The exporter for Collada will save as a .dae file and offers the opportunity to scale the scene for use
with other applications. The exporter for FBX has different options, such as Binary or ASCII types,
and allows you to save as different FBX versions.

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FBX Filename - This where you set the name of the FBX file and the location where it will be
stored.
Export - Choose whether you want to export the Models and Morphs (Blend Shapes) in the
scene.
Mesh Type - Cage (Subdivision Off) will export the object without any subdivision applied to
it. Subdivision will apply subdivision to the mesh when it is exported.
Re-parent bone hierarchy - when exporting a rig from Layout with the bone hierarchy
parented to the mesh, the actual movement of the deformed mesh is double of what it
should be. Checking Re-parent bone hierarchy creates a null which acts as the new parent of
the bone hierarchy, keeping the mesh in place.
Materials - LightWaves standard Surface channels and image maps can be translated
through FBX to appear correctly in a different application. Procedural textures and nodes
cannot be translated.
Embedded Textures - Embedded Textures are image maps included in the FBX file directly,
rather than as a separate image directory. This will create much larger FBX files, but selfcontained.
CgFX Shaders - Any CgFX shaders used in the scene will be exported to the FBX file.
Collapse Materials - This switch will collapse surfaces with identical names, but there are
some rule:
Material names match and all surface parameters match - the two materials always get
merged, independent of the export settings
Only Material names match - materials are exported separately, except when the
collapse material setting is switched on
Cameras - Export a scenes cameras in the FBX file.
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Lights - Export a scenes lights in the FBX file.
Animations - Simple animations based on movement, rotation or scaling can be exported
without baking. Character animation or other animation using IK or dynamics should still be
baked, using the next item.
Bake Motion Envelopes - This will only be available if Animations is checked and allows you
to set an arbitrary start and end point for baking, in case there are setup frames you do not
wish to capture.
Scale Scene - This setting will scale the scene based on the input entered.

The FBX and Collada exporters do not export information associated with plug-ins, including
plug-ins natively shipped with LightWave.

2015

Export Alembic

When you export an Alembic file you now have the opportunity to include the active camera in
the scene. Since you need to select the geometry you wish to export in Alembic, the Active Camera
is the one you would switch to if you went into Camera mode. The Alembic exporter can export
in either the rapid Ogawa format, or the original HDF5 format for programs that dont yet have
Ogawa.

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2015

MD Multi Baker

Similar to MD_Bake, MD Multi Baker contains the following options for exporting motion data and
objects:
Output Directory - This sets the directory where the MDD files will be saved. The default
directory is the VertCache folder of the scenes content directory.
File Format - Determines the file type the motion data will be saved as.
Bake Mode: Sets what the motion data will record. Some file types only recognize data from
specific mesh types.
MDD - LightWaves own motion data cache format
GeoCache Single - Motion data is saved as a single vertex cache
GeoCache Multi - Motion data is saved for every frame as individual files. If the motion
cache file will be more than 2 GB in size, this mode becomes necessary if you are using
MC mode. MCX mode allows for files bigger than 2 GB.
MC/MCX - This option only becomes available when GeoCache Single or Multi are chosen
as the cache format.
Cage Only - The cage is the mesh before any subdivision is applied. Choosing this option will
apply only motion data of the cage.
Subdivision Only - Subdivision occurs after the cage. Choosing this option will record only the
subdivided mesh data.
Cage and Subdivision - This option will record both the cage and subdivided mesh data.

If you would like to export the objects as an OBJ file, select Save OBJs.
If you would like to export the objects as a LWO file, select Save LWOs.
First Frame - Sets the first frame to start recording on.
Last Frame - Sets the last frame for recording.
Frame Step - Sets the number of steps for recording. A setting of 1 will record the next frame,

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while a setting of 2 will record every other frame.
Up Vector - Sets the up vector. Consult your specific software package to determine which
direction the Y-Axis is set but most packages, including LightWave, set the Y-Axis to up.
One advantage for MD Multi Baker over MD_Bake is that it can export multiple objects motion
files at once. Select all of the objects you would like to export and activate MD Multi Baker. After
selecting the settings desired, select OK and MD Multi Baker will bake out all of the motion data
for each object you have selected. Each motion file will have the name of the object from which it
originated.

Save 4.0, 5.6, 6.0, 9.2 Scene

This command will save the scene data to the LightWave scene format for the numbered version to
ensure that older versions of LightWave can read the file.

Export Scene As VRML97

The VRML97 Exporter plugin (File > Export > Export Scene as VRML97) creates a VRML97 World based
on the current scene. The VRML output complies with the ISO-VRML97 specification. The objects
in the scene may be saved as separate files into the Content Directory or an alternate path. The
following list shows some highlights:

Accurate Translation
Keyframed hierarchical animation
Light intensity envelopes, including ambient
Non-linear fog
Color image texture mapping using projection or UV maps
Solid, non-linear gradient and image backgrounds
Support for SkyTracer warp image environments
Particle animation with single-point-polygon object to PointSet node conversion
Two-point-polygon object to IndexedLineSet node conversion
SubPatch object morph capture (for capturing morph, displacement map and bone effects
on SubPatch objects).
High-performance output
3D Sounds
Level-of-detail object replacement animation
Object instancing
Vertex color and lightingsupport
Multiple custom viewpoints

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Custom VRML nodes

Touch activated behaviors
Viewer proximity activated behaviors
Object visibility activated behaviors
Objects output as prototypes (PROTO) definitions (optional)
Scene object ignore
Standard object viewpoints (optional)
Optional embedded objects for single file scene output!
Optional lowercase conversion for embedded object/image filenames
Direct avatar navigation speed control
Improved compliance for export to VRML97 editors, including conversion of illegal VRML97
names (like 2Legs or My Light), and reflection of illegal negative scaling

VRML Creation Settings

Output .wrl is the file path for the VRML97 World.

Author is comment text to embed in the file.
Use Prototypes is used to define and use objects in the VRML scene more efficiently. Some older
importers may not like this, but it is required for morph capture.
When Lowercase Filenames is enabled, the filenames used in the file can all be converted to
lowercase. This can be helpful on UNIX-based Web servers, where filenames are case sensitive, and
links with mismatched cases will fail.
Use Embed Objects to include the geometry for all meshes in the main VRML97 World file. This may
be more convenient, but for complex worlds, or reusing objects, it is less efficient. Using external
object files allows the main world to load faster, and display bounding boxes while the objects are
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loaded. This option must be off for morphing objects as well as LoD objects - loading them all at
once would defeat their purpose!
If Overwrite Objects is enabled and the Embed Objects option is not used, external object files
will be created for objects in the scene. If the objects already exist, this option must be enabled to
overwrite the objects, thus updating surface or morph changes.
Local .wrlPath is the file path on your machine where external VRML objects will be found and/or
saved. This will default to the current LightWaveContent Directory.
VRML Object URL is the URL where browsers will search for external objects, this should be the web
equivalent of the local path (e.g., http:\ \ www.someplace.net\ vrml_objects\).
Text entered into the Texture URN field will be pre-pended to texture map image filenames, as
an alternate texture location. This should facilitate work with libraries like the Universal Media
textures. This information, when specified, will appear in addition to the regular URL elements.

On the Scene Item pop-up menu, select a scene element to which you want to apply the settings
on this tab.
The Sensor Type is the sensor used to start the items animation.
For some sensor types, like Proximity, a distance range is required. When the viewer approaches
the item within the Range, the animation is triggered.
Alternate Trigger is an alternate item to serve as the animation trigger for this item.

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On the Object pop-up menu select an object whose settings will be edited on this tab.
The Ignore Object option will exclude a selected object and its children objects from export.
Use Attach Sound to add a sound effect, triggered with the selected objects animation. Enter
the URL for the audio file triggered in the URL field. You can also set the volume and whether the
sound should be looped once it has started.
The Record Morph option saves a Morph Object - a special animated Proto object - in
place of the standard external object files. This requires that the exporter step through the
animation and capture the deformed mesh at different times. The deformed positions are
used in a CoordinateInterpolator node hidden in the morph object. This currently works for
SubPatchobjects.
First Frame is the starting frame for the Morph Object animation. Last Frame is the final frame in
the morph capture for this object. Frame Step is the number of frames between captured morph
keys. Making this too small results in huge objects; making it too large results in an animation that
is not smooth or points with motion that is too linear.
Enable Loop to repeat the morph animation, once it has been triggered.
Enable the AutoStart option to make the animation start as soon as the world is loaded.

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Use the Navigation Mode pop-up menu to set the initial navigation mode for Web browsers.
Enable Headlight for good defaults in dark places.
Standard Viewpoints creates extra ViewPoint nodes (top, left, etc.) for scene and external objects.
Avatar Size lets the browser set appropriate movement for the dimensions of your world.
Global Light Scale globally scales all light intensities.
Environment Images are warp images generated by SkyTracer. These map nicely to VRMLs idea
of environment mapping. Enter only the basename portion of the image files. (For example,
if you had skyWarp__back.jpg, skyWarp__front.jpg, etc., you would enter skyWarp.) Note
that any panoramic images should be compatible, provided they are renamed to match the
SkyTracerfilenamingconvention.
The text in the Image URN field will be pre-pended to the image filename and added to the list of
URLs for the environment image.

So What is VRML?
VRML, also known as ISO-VRML97 (ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997), stands for Virtual Reality Modeling
Language. It is a standard for describing 3D objects and scenes via the Internet.
Like HTML-based web pages, VRML worlds can contain links to remote files. However, rather
than using text or images for links, VRML uses 3D objects. As a result, the Web browser for VRML
resembles a 3D animation program or video game more than a word processing program.
VRML worlds can be embedded in HTML pages and vice versa. VRML models are based on either
primitives, like spheres, cubes, and cones, or, more likely, sets of points and polygons. Since the
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latter is basically the approach used by LightWave3Ds polygonal models, there is a pretty good
match between LightWave scenes and VRML worlds.
Before you can view any of your VRML creations, youll need to get a VRML 97 Browser. The VRML
files produced by LightWave are text files that follow LightWaves style of separate object and
scene files. This is not a requirement of VRML, but a powerful feature that lets a VRML scene include
objects from different files, even from some remote library.
These external objects in the scene file consist of a file URL, a bounding box, and a set of position,
rotation and scaling transformations. The bounding box information is used by browsers to render
stand-ins while the objects are loaded.
VRML scenes also include multiple point lights, directional lights, and spot lights with adjustable
cones. The VRML equivalent of the LightWave camera is a viewpoint. The exporter will add a named
viewpoint for each camera in the LightWave scene, which browsers can use to jump between
points of interest or standard views. In addition, VRML objects created by LightWave may include a
set of standard viewpoints for the object.

Animation
Objects in your LightWave scene that have keyframes in any motion channels will be given linear
motion keys in the VRML file, through PositionInterpolator and OrientationInterpolatornodes.
The Pre Behaviour and Post Behaviour set for the channels in the LightWave motion has a critical
influence on the VRML behaviour of an object. If the Pre behaviour is set to Repeat, the motion will
begin when the world is loaded and keep on playing. Otherwise the motion will begin when the
item is triggered. If the Post behaviour is set to Repeat, the animation will loop until re-triggered,
otherwise it will stop after playing.
The default triggering is a click (TouchSensor) on the object that causes the animation to run from
the beginning. Currently, the TouchSensorswitch is placed on the highest-level animated object in
a hierarchy, and triggers the animation of all the children simultaneously (as one would expect).
Morphing in VRML uses a CoordinateInterpolator node. The node is part of the Proto in the
object file, if morph data has been captured. For this reason, Prototypes should be enabled and
embedded objects disabled for morphing worlds.

Surfaces
Double-sided surfaces are not supported in VRML97. Thus LightWave objects with polygons whose
surfaces are double-sided are translated as if they werent double-sided. VRML objects that seem
to be missing polygons may actually have double-sided surfaces that need to be either flipped
or aligned in Modeler. If the surface is truly meant to be double-sided, you will need to model the
geometry with double-sided polygons.
If your model has a texture map image associated with it (color only, not diffuse, specular, etc.),
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there are a few tricks that can minimise the nuisance of hand-editing your VRML models. Since
some browsers will have to load the image named in the object, that image name, saved in the
LightWave object, is critical.
It pays to use LightWaves Content Directory system properly, so that the image path will be
relative to that content directory (i.e., images\ wood.jpg rather than C:\ NewTek\ images\ wood.
jpg). You may also want to move the image to the Content Directory so that the name in the object
will have no path, and browsers will seek the image in the same directory as the object.
In any event, wherever the VRML object finally resides, you will want a matching directory
hierarchy where the browser will find the image or you can just edit the VRML file.
Another image issue is that of file format. JPEG and GIF images are almost universally supported
on the Web, but the PNG format is gaining acceptance as a modernised, yet unencumbered,
replacement for GIF. JPEG images are nice and small, and compression artifacts should be virtually
invisible at Web/VRML resolutions. If you have nice high quality texture images for your rendering
work and want VRML versions, make smaller JPEG versions of the images for the Web. Large
textures may be limited by the browsers rendering engine in most cases anyway. When you install
the VRML model, just use the smaller JPEG image or edit the VRML file.

LightWave VRML Implementation

The organization of LightWaves VRML object output follows that of LightWaves own object format.
A list of XYZ coordinate triples describe the vertices in the object. For each surface, there is also an
IndexedFaceSet node that holds the polygons with that surface, described as a number for each
point in the polygon, which refers to an entry in the main list of point coordinates. There may also
be an IndexedLineSet node or a PointSetnode containing any two-point and one-point polygons.
If the original LightWave object had a color texture map image, there will be an image file name
and a set of texture coordinates. Texture coordinates, also known as UV coordinates, are 2D pixel
positions in an image. They describe how the image lies on the 3D surface by pinning certain pixels
to each polygons vertices. These values can be calculated from LightWaves mapping and texture
size settings.
In the case of planar UV mapping, U and V are simply x and y, (for Z-axis planar). Spherical UV
mapping yields U and V coordinates somewhat analogous to longitude and latitude, with the Us
all bunching up at the poles. Cylindrical mapping uses Us from the spherical case, then the Vs are
the coordinate lying along the texture axis. If the LightWave texturing is using UV mapping already,
then these coordinates are used, since VRML texture coordinates are defined in a per-polygon
fashion (i.e. discontinuous UVs).
The entire object may be embedded in a VRML Anchor, which makes it an active link on the Web.
If you supply a URL for the object when you create it, then anytime that object appears in a scene,
it will act as a clickable link to some other page. This should be used sparingly, as it can be quite
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annoying to keep jumping around the web when youre just inspecting an object.
The uses for URLs in your objects can range from booby traps or ads for your favorite Web site, to
inventory data for some widget. A nice example is a VRML origami site, where each step in the
folding of a paper menagerie has a simple model with a link to the next stage. This is similar to the
VRML level-of-detail mode, where multiple models are grouped together and the viewers distance
determines which model, if any, is actually rendered.

Performance Notes
Although the VRML format is capable of describing complex scenes, current 3D browsers are
limited by the real-time rendering capabilities of their underlying computers. Thus, exquisitely
crafted models with painstaking detail, suitable for those print-res close-ups, may fail painfully
when they enter the realm of VRML renderers. To avoid the twin perils of long download times and
slow rendering, remember: the first key to VRML success is efficient, low-polygon count Modeling.
Similarly, elaborate layers of diffuse, specular, and luminosity textures, whether images or
algorithmic, will not survive any conversion to VRML. Dont even ask about bump maps,
displacement maps, or surface shaders. Love it or leave it, VRML supports a single image map for a
color texture, as well as diffuse, color, specular, and transparency values. Since that texture image
may very well have to fly through a modem, youll probably want to keep it small.
Elaborate textures and lighting can be baked into a models image map however, and lighting
effects and coloring can also be baked into vertex color maps.
PointSetobjects are stored most efficiently if there is only one surface per object. Otherwise,
duplicate references to the vertices are required. For large scenes, this could be significant.

Scene Tags
Many of the VRML attributes set in the exporter UI are stored in the Lightwave scene file as
comments. These comments can be viewed and edited on an item-by-item basis with the
Comments (Layout Generic) plugin. These Comments should be formatted as <Tag>=<value>
where the Tag is one of the following:
Item

Tag Name/Usage Description

URL

URL=<url> (URL=http://etc.

Item URL, overrides object and childrens URLs.

SOUND

SOUND=<url> [<volume> <loop?>]

Sounds can be added to objects. Currently these

are triggered with any animation
TOUCH

TOUCH=

Trigger when mouse is over object (mouse grope).

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Item

Tag Name/Usage Description

PROXIMITY

PROXIMITY=W H D

Trigger if viewer enters active region (WxHxD).

VISIBILITY

VISIBILITY=

Trigger when viewer sees object.

INCLUDE

INCLUDE=<filename>

Dump contents of file directly into output.

IGNORE

IGNORE=

Skip this object and its children.

TRIGGER

TRIGGER=<object>

Other object for sensor.

VRML

VRML=nodeName{ node fields}

Node creator, dump node from comment into file.

LABEL

LABEL=<text>

Create text node

MORPH

MORPH= <start> <end> <step> <loop?>

Morph animation capture. Creates external

MorphObject.
LOD

LOD=<objectfilename> [<range>]

Level of Detail node. Use multiple tags in order of

decreasing complexity (increasing range).
Camera - Tag Name/Usage Description (stored in
first camera in scene)
NAVIGATE

NAVIGATE=<type> [<speed>]

NavigationInfo Type is one of NONE, WALK,

EXAMINE, FLY, or ANY. Browsers may restrict user
navigation with this
ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT=<basename>

Override scene background image with URLs for

front, back, left, right, and top images named like
basename__front.jpg, etc.
HEADLIGHT

HEADLIGHT=

NavigationInfo Headlight on, if present.

Shockwave 3D
This exporter is only available in the 32-bit Windows version of LightWave. There is no 64-bit
Windows or Mac version of this exporter.

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The Shockwave3D Exporter (File > Export > Shockwave3D) allows you to export Layouts current
scene as a Adobe Shockwave file (.w3d). This encapsulated file contains all of the information
needed to recreate objects, surfaces, and animation, as well as the image files used in the scene.
The exported file can then be integrated into Adobe Director as a Cast Member. With this exporter,
you can combine the content creation toolset of LightWave with the interactive functionality of
Adobe Director, creating an integrated solution for distributing multimedia content.

Although the exported file can be previewed in LightWave, you must have Adobe Director in
order to create files for distribution. More information on Shockwave and Director can be found at
Adobes website: http://www.adobe.com/products/director/

The top portion of the panel contains controls for the export selections, quality controls and
preview options for the exported file. The options for these items can be found on the tabs located
on the lower portion of the panel labelled Objects, Animation, Textures, and Cameras. The file
location is determined when the OK button is pressed and the file dialog appears.
Some things should be considered when Modeling and animating a scene that will be exported
with Shockwave3D. Because this media is meant for distributing large multimedia files, many of the
exporters features and options keep performance issues in mind. Please take a moment to read
through this section and familiarise yourself on how LightWave and Shockwave3D are compatible
with each other. It could save you a considerable amount of time on your next Shockwave3D
project.
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Export Selection
This list of items determines which portion of the scene will be exported into the .w3d file. The
Scene Structure option preserves the parenting hierarchy of your scene, while Cameras, Lights,
Surfaces, Objects, Animations, and Texture Maps all control which elements of the scene will
actually be exported. Simply activating these checkboxes will include these items in the file.

Quality Controls
For three of the item export parameters, Objects, Animations, and Texture Maps, there are
additional controls to adjust the quality of the assets used in the .w3d file. Since the .w3d file is
encapsulated, these adjustments will have no effect on the items or settings within your LightWave
scene. Only the data within the exported file will be affected. If you are concerned about download
times, or performance issues, modify these parameters to create smaller or faster playing files.

Preview Options
On the Microsoft Windows platform, the Shockwave3D Exporter has the option of playing a
Shockwave-enabled preview window. You can simply choose the resolution of the preview
window, and on export, a separate window will open displaying the exported file. This
representation of the exported scene is how it will appear as a Cast Member in Macromedia
Director.

Objects
The Shockwave3D Exporter exports polygonal models and frozen SubPatch objects from the
scene into a .w3d file. To increase performance, Shockwave3D also creates multiple Level Of Detail
(LoD) objects. These features are automatically enabled and their parameters can be controlled in
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Macromedia Director. Unfortunately, object morphing is not supported in Shockwave3D.

By activating the Enable Toons and SDS (cel shading and subdivision surfaces) feature, the objects
are exported with the neighboring mesh information needed by these features in Director. Since
this option increases the size of the exported file, deactivate Enable Toons and SDS if these features
wont be utilised in Director. (Note that the SDS modifier must be added in Lingo.)
The Crease Angle determines how much of an angle is allowed between neighbouring normals
before polygons are joined together. This parameter is used as a geometric smoothing angle when
objects are being optimised. Normal Deviation sets a limit that normals can deviate from when the
exporter creates any LoDs. The smaller the number, the less likely the reduced models normals will
be drastically different than the original object.
The Shockwave3D Exporter will remove very small triangles from your models and does not
support 1 or 2 point polygons. Base vertices are points that will be removed last during any
compression or polygon reduction during the export. To use the base vertices feature, create a
Point Selection Set in Modeler named base verts. Any points included within this set will be given
priority when the exporter does any of its optimisation functions, and will be reduced last.

Animating Objects
All items (lights, cameras, objects, and surfaces) should have unique names. Also, only two of
LightWaves scene items are capable of being animated with Shockwave3D, objects and bones.
Thus, you cannot directly animate cameras or lights. However, you can animate a null object
and parent the camera or light to the null object and achieve the same effect. Hierarchy controls
exported from LightWave include both item parenting and pivot point manipulation.

You can select the range of the animation to be exported by defining the Start and End fields
located on the Animation tab. By default, these initial values will match the start time and end time
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of the current scene. These options are not available if Force Sampling is not activated.
In LightWave, animation is created using keyframes. The exporter takes the motion defined by
these keyframes and all the motions modifiers from a single frame and creates what is called a
Sample. This is much like freezing the motion curves of an item, but for that single frame.
These samples are then used in Shockwave as the keyframes of the animation. By adjusting the
sample Interval, you control how often the exporter samples the animation. For example, a value of
five will export a sample every fifth frame. This is very similar to LightWaves Frame Step parameter.
The smaller the Interval is, the more samples the exporter will create. In order to store this
information, a larger file is created and will take longer to download and store in memory. Having
the sample Interval set as high as possible will reduce the overhead needed to play the animation.
However, having an incredibly high value wont solve all your problems either.
The Shockwave3D Exporter will rotate an item based on the fastest route from angle A to angle B.
Obviously this is not how LightWave works. For this reason, it may be necessary to export a scene
using a much smaller sample Interval. This will give the Shockwave player more keyframes to rotate
an item with and will match the LightWave scene more accurately.

Animating Bones
Animating bones is one of the more advanced features of the Shockwave3D Exporter. However,
one thing to keep in mind is that Shockwave uses a different bones system than LightWave. The
major difference between the two systems is how points get bone influences assigned to them.
The animator should make all influence adjustments in weight maps as opposed to LightWaves
bone setup options. For this reason, all bones must have a weight map assigned to them. Any
point not assigned to a weight map is assigned to a null bone located at the root of the hierarchy.
Also, unlike LightWave, a Bones rest position is determined on frame 0.

Surfacing and Texturing

Surfacing is converted from LightWave to Shockwave as closely as possible. This includes Color,
Luminosity, Diffuse, Specularity, Glossiness, Reflection and Transparency. However, because the
rendering methods (rendering vs. OpenGL) used in these two applications are setup differently,
some tweaking may be needed to these settings in order to get the desired effect.
All surface mapping is converted to UV mapping when exported. However, Shockwave does not
support the use of layered textures. Therefore, any surface channels that use layered textures must
be flattened and turned into a single texture by using LightWaves surface baker. Texture mapping
in the diffuse, glossiness, reflection, or specularity channels also works a little differently than
LightWave. Any maps used in these channels are projected environmentally in Shockwave3D, thus
ignoring any user-defined mapping.

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Double-sided surfaces are not supported in Shockwave and must be created using actual doublesided geometry.

By overriding the texture size, you can force the Shockwave3D Exporter to globally reduce the
image size of the textures in the .w3d file. For example, if you had 512 x 512 images, you could
reduce them down to 64 x 64 by simply selecting Override Size and choosing 64. Disable Alphas
simply disables the alpha channels on all the images.

Cameras

The Camera pop-up menu lets you decide which camera should be exported. If All cameras is
selected, the camera data for all the cameras will be embedded within the exported file. Switching
between cameras is handled within Macromedia Director.
The Fog pop-up menu lets you choose which camera will have the fog settings attached to them.
Fog settings exported include, Fog Type, Fog Color, and Fog Falloff.
The Backdrop drop-down menu lets you determine which camera will have the scenes backdrop
color setting attached to them.

Take note of the aforementioned animation limitation when animating Cameras.

Lighting
Shockwave3D supports three of LightWaves internal light types, Distant, Spot, and Point, as well
as ambient light. The lighting parameters supported by Shockwave3D include Light Color, Light
Intensity, and Spot Angle.

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Take note of the aforementioned animation limitation when animating lights.

Image List
This command will save a text file that contains a list of every image used in a scene and its
location.
Lightwave Image List
6769194:

LW_Box_Front.tga

E:\images\Endo_Sliders\LW_Box_Front.tga

6769195:

LW_Box_Back.tga

E:\images\Endo_Sliders\LW_Box_Back.tga

6769196:

LW_Box_SideL.tga

E:\images\Endo_Sliders\LW_Box_SideL.tga

6769197:

LW_Box_SideR.tga

E:\images\Endo_Sliders\LW_Box_SideR.tga

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Package Scene
Package Scene gathers information from your scene and locates the items into the specified
directory. You can choose to Package Files for transporting it to a different hard drive location,
either locally or on another machine; Consolidate Files, which will bring any files that are currently
not in your content directory into it; or Create a Zip Archive of your scene. This last is like Package
Files but with the addition of archiving the content directory.

Package Scene is an LScript that uses only Lightwave/LScript commands to accomplish everything
that the previous Content Manager tool did, but also will work with .MDD, .BDD, and .PFX files, and
works whether or not your content is actually in the current content structure. If a content element
is currently loaded into your Lightwave scene, Package Scene will find it.
Select the destination folder and if you want a new level under that for each subdirectory, type the
name in the Subdirectory box. The paths will be updated after tabbing or pressing the Enter key.
After the interface in which you select the target directory for the export, the script:
1) Gets a list of all images and their paths.
2) Copies these images to the target directory.
3) Replaces all the images with their new location.
4) Changes the content directory to the target content directory.
5) Saves each object to the target location.
6) Saves the scene to a temp location.
7) Parses the scene file to find .MDD, .BDD, and .PFX references.
8) Finds and copies the dynamics files to their target location.
9) Rewrites the scene file, changing the respective dynamics paths, to the target location.
10) Loads the new scene file. This means at the end of operations, the
user is now active in the newly exported and saved version of the
scene, not the original scene from the original location.
11) If Reload Original Scene is checked, it will instead load the original scene.
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Graph Editor
When you create keyframes for items, you specify a set of keys for the items animation channels
(generally position, rotation, and scale, but also light intensity, etc.). The Graph Editor provides
both a more global and more detailed way to alter the settings that govern an items animation
channels. You have all of Layouts keyframe editing capabilities, plus some others like dragging
keyframes to different frames, or graphically adjusting keyframe attributes. Use it to visually finetune or dramatically change an items animation characteristics.

The Graph Editor also controls all envelopes for options like light intensity, color, camera zoom,
etc.

Each Animation Channel is displayed on a two-dimensional graph. Time is constant along the
bottom and the Channel value or setting is equal to the vertical position. Because time is constant,
you can visually judge things like where an item slows down or speeds up based on the slope of
the curve. The Graph Editor is a great way to identify and fix those annoying hiccups, which can
occur from time to time, in what should be a smooth animation.
The Graph Editor has four major interface areas: the Channel (Curve) bin, the Curve Edit Window,
the Curve/Expressions controls, and the Scene/Expressions list.

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You can click the Collapse buttons to hide the left side and bottom areas of the panel. This will
increase the screen real estate used by the Curve Edit window. When the left side is collapsed, the
primary selected curve is shown in the information field.

Collapse buttons

Collapse Trees Active

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Collapse Tabs Active

Collapse Trees and Tabs Active

Frame Range
If frames outside the range of frames in your scene (i.e., less than your first frame or greater than
your last frame) are visible in the Curve Edit Window, those areas will be slightly darkened. There
will also be a small handle at the very bottom of each border. You can drag these to interactively
adjust your scenes first and last frame.

Start and Last Frame handles

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The Time Slider
You can grab the time slider in the Curve Edit Window by its base and drag to change Layouts
current frame. The current frame is displayed below the slider handle.

Clicking at the bottom of the graph - where the frame slider handle would be - moves the frame
slider to that frame.

Panel Layout Adjustments

You can drag the border between the Scene list and Channel Bin, and between the Channel Bin
and Curve Edit Window to change the spacing between the two sides (if the Graph Editor is not at
its minimum overall size).

Using the Channel Bin

When you first open the Graph Editor, the appropriate curves for the currently selected item are
displayed in the Channel Bin. The Channel Bin is merely a repository to show you which curves
are available for display and edit. Deleting curves from this window will not affect your scene. This
system makes it very simple to edit multiple curves from several different items.
To replace/add channels to the Channel Bin:
1) Locate the desired item in the Scene list.
2) Double-click on an individual channel or an item name (for all its channels). This will replace
any existing channels in the bin. To add the channels to the Channel Bin hold the Shift key
as you double click on an item or its channels, or drag it into the bin. If you use the drag
method, you can drag multiple channels/items into the bin by selecting multiple items in the
Scene list ( Shift key for range and Ctrl for non-contiguous selection).
To remove channels from the bin, select them and hit

Shift

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Once you add channels to the bin, you can rearrange their order by dragging and dropping.

The Channels Pop-up

The Channels pop-up menu, above the Channel Bin, has a few functions. You may select Filter to
filter out channels from the Channel Bin that do not match a pattern. The pattern is case sensitive.
*.Position.* would remove any channel that wasnt a Position channel. You could use *.Y to show
only Y channels.

Choose Create Favorite Set to manage curve sets. It lets you create sets of editable curves so that
you can easily switch between different combinations of curves to manipulate during a session.
To create a favorites entry:
1) Make sure the desired curves appear in the Channel Bin.
2) Select Create Favorite Set from the Channels pop-up menu.
3) Enter an appropriate name in the input field that appears and click OK.
You can revert to any saved favorite set of curves by selecting it from the bottom of the Channels
pop-up menu.
Choosing Replace Favorite Set lets you replace an existing favorite set with the curves currently in
the bin. Choosing Delete Favorite Set lets you remove an existing favorite set from the Channels
pop-up menu.

Editing Curves
With the Graph Editor, you can easily edit multiple curves simultaneously or use curves from
different items as references. Since you can mix curves of different types in the bin, you can do
interesting things like compare the curve of light intensity with the X position of an object - any
curve in LightWave can be compared or edited together!

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You can interactively cut and paste key frames from one curve to another as well as simply replace
an entire curve. This is also a good way to lock areas of curves together. By selecting multiple
curves when you create keys the curves can be identical at those segments of the animation.
If you put your cursor over a key you will see a data label pop up to inform you of that points
Curve, Value, and Frame.

A Keys Data Label

Edit Mode Selection

You can select from the edit modes by clicking one of the buttons beneath the Curve Edit window.
From left to right, the mode buttons are Move, Add, Stretch, Roll, and Zoom. Pressing your Spacebar
cycles you through the modes.
The information display, just to the right of the buttons, will display the name of the selected mode
button, the shortcut key, and mouse operation information.

To select curves for editing:

Click on the channels in the Channel Bin to select their curves for editing. (Hold the Shift key
for range and Ctrl for non-contiguous selection). Selected curves will become highlighted, but
unselected curves will still be visible as a reference.
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You can also Alt +RMB on a curve in the Curve Edit window to make it the (only) selected curve.
Use Alt + Shift +RMB to add the curve to the current curve selection.
Your keyboard up and down arrow keys will cycle the selected key through the curves in the curve
bin. Hold the Shift key as you press the cursor keys to increase or decrease the curves selected.
When multiple curves are selected, one will be the primary selected curve and its selection color
will be a little brighter. Some commands, like Fit Values by Type, use the primary selected curve
when more than one is selected.

To select/unselect keys for editing:

In Move mode, select keys by clicking on them with your LMB. In any mode, except Roll, you can
drag out a bounding box with your RMB. This will toggle the state of the bounded group of keys. To
add to or subtract from a selection, hold the Shift key. To deselect all selected keys, just right click
in the graph. To select all, Shift +double-click.
If only a single key is selected, you can use your keyboard left and right arrowkeys to cycle the
selection of keys along curves.

To add keys to curves:

1) Select the channel curve(s).
2) Click the Add Mode button, or press the keyboard shortcut +.

3) Click on the graph at the desired frame (horizontal) and value (vertical)
position. Before you release the mouse button, you can drag up and
down to adjust the value. Hold the Ctrl key to adjust the frame.
2015

Adding keys to curves

New to LightWave 2015 is the ability to double click on an existing active curve to add a key where
you click while in Move mode. The cursor will have extra lines added to it when in a good position,
as shown.

To delete keys from curves:

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1) Select the channel curve(s) and then the key(s).
2) Press the Delete key.
In the Add mode, you can delete keys with

Ctrl

+ LMB.

To change key value/time:

1) Select the key(s) and click the Move Mode button (or press the keyboard shortcut T).

2) Drag with your LMB to change the value. Hold the

Ctrl

key to change time.

To scale selected keys:

1) Select the key(s) and click the Stretch Mode button, or use the keyboard shortcut H.

2) Place your mouse pointer at the position you want to use as the center of the scaling.
3) Drag using your LMB to scale value. Hold the Ctrl key to scale time.

To roll a range of keys:

1) Select the Roll mode or use the shortcut Y.

2) Drag out the time range using your RMB.

3) Drag your LMB to roll the keys-as keys go past the end of the
range, they reappear at the other end of the range.

To Zoom in and Out of the Graph Workspace:

1) Select the Zoom tool

2) Drag your Left Mouse button and drag a bounding box in the area you want to magnify.

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3) Right Click to Zoom out. You can also use the Magnifying Glass icon
at the top right of the Graph Editor, or the normal keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl + Alt +LMB to interactively zoom in and out.

Copying Keys
You can copy keys using your mouse or keyboard.
To copy selected keys with a mouse:
1) Select the keys for editing. Any mode except Roll can be used. Drag using Ctrl +RMB.
2) When you copy a single curve, an insertion point marker (and paste time
display) will appear as your pointer moves over the curve. Release the mouse
button to insert. Move your pointer off the curve to abort the paste.
3) When you copy multiple curves, color-coded insertion marks will appear. With
your mouse pointer not directly over a curve, release to paste. Selected keys may
be on different curves, but they can be copied only onto the same curve.

Existing keys will be shifted over if you paste in more than one key (unless the Insert Overwrites
Keys option is enabled).
See also the Copy Time Slice command (Keys > Copy Time Slice), page 265

Graph Editor: Adjusting the Curve Edit Window

Like other LightWave viewports, you can pan around the graph by holding the Alt key as you drag
around the Curve Edit Window. Alternatively, you can use the drag-window drag button in the
upper-right corner. You can change the zoom by holding Ctrl + Alt while you drag or by dragging
on the zoom-window drag button in the upper-right corner.

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Zooming and Panning

The Zoom Box tool button is the right-most Mode button. Click it and you can drag out a box on
the graph and zoom in on that area.

You can get a 2X zoom out by clicking your RMB with the Zoom Box tool selected. The zoom out
will be centered at the point you click.
If you have a mouse wheel, scrolling it over the Curve Edit window will affect the zoom. Hold the
Ctrl key to pan horizontally and use Ctrl + Alt to pan vertically.

The Graph Editor Toolbar

The Toolbar contains a slew of commands for the Graph Editor. Many of these are also available on
the various Curve Bin and Curve Edit Window pop-up menus, described later.

Toolbar Selection Menu

The Selection menu contains commands that affect curves in the Curve Bin.

Add Layout Selected (default keyboard shortcut L) - This command will add the channels for
the currently selected item(s) in Layout to the Channel Bin.
Get Layout Selected (default keyboard shortcut Shift G) - This command will replace the
contents of the Channel Bin with the channels for the currently selected item(s) in Layout.
Clear Unselected Channels (default keyboard shortcut X) - This command will remove any
unselected curves from the Channel Bin.
Clear Channel Bin (default keyboard shortcut Shift X) - This command will empty the Channel
Bin.
Remove Channel from Bin (default keyboard shortcut Shift D) - This command will remove all
selected curves from the Channel Bin.
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Invert Channel Section (default keyboard shortcut I) - This command will invert the selection
state of curves in the Channel Bin.
Select All Curves in Bin (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl UP) - This command selects all of the
curves in the Channel Bin.
Reset Bin Selection (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl DOWN) - This command leaves only the
first curve in the Channel Bin selected.
Filter Curves (default keyboard shortcut W) - Use this command to filter out channels from
the Channel Bin that do not match a pattern. The pattern is case sensitive. *.Position.*
would remove any channel that wasnt a Position channel. You could use *.Y to show only Y
channels.
Filter Position Channels (default keyboard shortcut !) - Use this to filter out everything but
Position channels from the Channel Bin.
Filter Rotation Channels (default keyboard shortcut @) - Use this to filter out everything but
Rotation channels from the Channel Bin.
Filter Scale Channels (default keyboard shortcut #) - Use this to filter out everything but Scale
channels from the Channel Bin.

Toolbar Keys Menu

The Keys menu contains commands that manipulate the selection, creation, deletion, frame
setting, and value of keys.

Create Key (default keyboard shortcut Return) - This allows you to create a key, Layout-style. A
dialog will appear where you can enter the Frame and Value.
Delete Selected Keys (default keyboard shortcut Delete) - This command will delete any
selected keys.
Lock Selected Keys (default keyboard shortcut Shift L) - This locks the selected keys so they are
uneditable. Locked keys are grey.
Unlock Selected Keys (default keyboard shortcut Shift K) - Unlocks selected keys.
Invert Selected Keys (default keyboard shortcut Shift I) - This flips the order of selected keys in
time.
Snap Keys to Frames (default keyboard shortcut Q) - This command causes every selected key
that falls on a fractional frame to snap to the nearest whole frame.
Set Key Values (default keyboard shortcut =) - This command will bring up a dialog where you
can enter a new Value for the selected keys.
Bake Selected Curves (default keyboard shortcut B) - This bakes the state of selected curves
by creating keys at every frame. Curves do not necessarily need to be affected by a Modifier,
but their effects will be taken into account.
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Copy Time Slice (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl C) - You can copy values of selected curves at
the current frame (even if there are no existing source keys) and paste them elsewhere. This
command will copy the values. These values may be pasted at any frame with Paste Time
Slice, but only onto the same curve(s).
Copy Footprint Time Slice (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl X) - This works like Copy Time Slice,
but uses the value(s) from the curves footprint instead of the actual curve. Use Paste Time
Slice to paste.
Paste Time Slice (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl V) - Pastes in values copied with Copy Time
Slice or Copy Footprint Time Slice at the current frame. Keys will be created (or modified, if
they already exist) at the new frame with the new values.
Match Footprint Time Slice (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl B) - This creates a key on the curve
that matches the footprint value at the current time. Essentially, it is the same as doing a
Copy Footprint Time Slice operation and immediate paste.
Copy Selected Keys (default keyboard shortcut C) - This copies selected keys to a memory
buffer. To paste the buffer, you must have your mouse pointer over a curve and use the Paste
Keys command on the Curve Edit Window pop-up menu ( Ctrl + Shift +LMB), discussed later.
Add to Key Bin (default keyboard shortcut K) - This creates a named set of keys that you can
insert into a curve later. To paste the set, you must have your mouse pointer over a curve
and use the Insert From Bin item on the Curve Edit Window pop-up menu ( Ctrl + Shift +LMB),
discussed later.
Numeric Move (default keyboard shortcut Shift T) - With this command you can shift the
selected keys. Frame Offset is the number of frames to use for the shift. Value Offset is a
number to add to or subtract from the value for each keyframe.
Numeric Scale (default keyboard shortcut Shift H) - This command lets you scale the key
times and values for selected keys. A Time Scale Factor of 1 means no change. A value of
2 would double the time and .5 would halve it. The Time Scale Origin is the center of the
scaling. Thus, if you place this at one selected key, the scaling will happen around it and
not affect that particular key. This setting uses the units displayed on the graph. Value Scale
Factor and Value Scale Origin work similarly except they affect the selected key values.
Roll Keys Left (default keyboard shortcut [) - Shifts the values of the selected keys to the left
without affecting their time. This command works only with contiguously selected keys.
Roll Keys Right (default keyboard shortcut ]) - Shifts the values of the selected keys to the
right without affecting their time. This command works only with contiguously selected
keys.
Reduce Keys (default keyboard shortcut -) - The Reduce functions let you remove consecutive
keys that are within a certain threshold value of one another. The threshold is set by
selecting Set Key Reduction Threshold.
There are two modes: Reduce Keys and Reduce Keys ( Recursive), whose default keyboard
shortcut is _. As an example, assume consecutive keys A B C D E all have values within the
threshold. Choosing Reduce Keys would remove keys leaving A C E. Selecting Reduce Keys
again would leave A E and a final Reduce Keys would leave only A. Reduce Keys (Recursive)
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would go directly from A B C D E to A in one step.
If you set the threshold to a negative number, Reduce Keys will eliminate every other key.
Reduce Keys (Recursive) will remove all but the first key.

Toolbar Footprints Menu

The Footprints feature lets you create an imprint of the current curve(s) to use as a reference and as
a state you can revert back to.

Leave Footprint (default keyboard shortcut Shift F) - Creates the imprint that will be visible as
a shade of the real curves color (once you make a change).
Pickup Footprint (default keyboard shortcut Shift R) - Erases the footprint for the current
curve(s).
Backtrack Footprint (default keyboard shortcut Shift B) - Will restore the curve to its
footprinted state.

Toolbar Autofit Menu

This group of commands affect the range of frames and values shown in the Curve Edit Window.

Autofit (default keyboard shortcut A) - You can automatically scale the graph display to show
all of the selected curves with this command.
Autofit Selected (default keyboard shortcut Shift A) - You can automatically scale the graph
display to show all of the selected keys with this command.
Autofit By Type (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl A) - Autofit By Type will scale the graph to fit
the values for the primary selected curves type (i.e. position, rotation, scale, and so on).
Fit Values By Type (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl F) - This works like Autofit By Type, but only
scales the graph vertically, retaining the current frame range.

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Toolbar Display Menu
The Display menu contains commands that affect the graph display, as well as global options.

Numeric Limits (default keyboard shortcut Shift N) - This will display a small dialog. The Min
Frame and Max Frame values set the range of frames you want to see on the graph. The Min
Value determines the value of the bottom boundary of the graph and the Max Value sets the
upper boundary.
Go To Frame (default keyboard shortcut F) - This action sets the current frame to the entered
value. It also centers the Curve Edit Window around that frame.
Center Graph (default keyboard shortcut G) - Centers the graph on the current mouse
position.
Reset Graph (default keyboard shortcut /) - This simply resets the graph to default frame and
value ranges.
Edit Keyboard Shortcuts (default keyboard shortcut Alt F9) - This command will bring up the
standard Configure Keys Panel. However, it will list shortcuts for the Graph Editor. (Note that
the Window pop-up menu will be set to Graph Editor.)

Edit Menu Layout (default keyboard shortcut Alt F10) - The Graph Editor has its own set of
menus. These can be customized using the normal Configuring Menus Panel. (Note that you
are editing the Graph Editor menus when Graph Editor is selected in the Window pop-up
menu on the Configuring Menus Panel.)
Beneath the Main Menu group is the Graph Editor group. This is the group used for the
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Graph Editors toolbar. It can contain its own group for pull-down style menus. In the Popup
Menu group are the commands that will appear when you press Ctrl + Shift +LMB over the
Curve Edit window.

Insert Overwrites Keys (default keyboard shortcut `) - Normally, when you paste in more than
one key, existing keys may be shifted over. Enable this option to replace the paste range and
not shift over keys.
Filter Static Envelopes (default keyboard shortcut numpad 1) - This option will keep envelopes
that have fewer than two keys from being displayed in the Channel Bin when selecting
groups (both from the scene list, as well as from other Layout panels.)
Large Autosize Margins (default keyboard shortcut numpad 2) - This option will add an extra
amount of outside space when you use autofit commands.
Allow Fractional Keyframes (default keyboard shortcut numpad 3) - This option keeps frame
adjustments to whole numbers. This is linked to Layouts Allow Fractional Current Frame
setting (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel).
Lazy Layout Update (default keyboard shortcut numpad 4) - When active, the Graph
Editor will not update in Layout until after you release the mouse button. This can allow
smoother adjustments in complex situations. When inactive, Layout will update as you make
adjustments.
Track Layout Time (default keyboard shortcut numpad 5) - This option will scroll the Curve
Edit window to keep the frame slider centerd. This is useful for watching the curves scroll by
as Layout is playing.
Allow Passthrough Keys (default keyboard shortcut numpad 6) - This option lets you drag keys
through each other in time. Normally, you stop at a neighboring key.
Lock Motion Keys in Time (default keyboard shortcut numpad 7) - This option causes keys to
be created for all motion channels of the selected channel(s). Only Position, Rotation and
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Scale channels are affected. For example, Position.Y, Position.Z, Rotation.H, etc. would all be
affected if Position.X was selected.)
Move No Keys Sel (default keyboard shortcut numpad 8) - By default, if no keys are selected,
no editing will occur when using tools like Move or Stretch. Activate this option to change
this so that all keys are considered selected when none are selected (like in Modeler).
Track Item Selections (default keyboard shortcut numpad 9) - This is a mode that will
automatically bring the channels for the currently selected Layout item into the Graph
Editor.
Fit Values when Selected (default keyboard shortcut numpad 0) - When this option is active,
your view will automatically fit the values of the selected curve. This will not affect the visible
range of frames, however.
Show Modifiers - Activate this to always make the modified curve (i.e., after the effects of
motion Modifier plugins) visible as a dotted line.
Show Tangents - This command will activate or deactivate tangent handle display.
Center Speed Curves - Keeps the speed curves in the center of the Graph Editor display.
Antialias Curves - This command will activate or deactivate the feature that smooths the
display of curves.

If you are working with a lot of curves and keys, turning off the Antialias Curves and Show
Tangents options can help speed up display refreshing.
Show Key Info - This turns the pop-up display of key information off or on. This appears when
your mouse pointer is directly over a key.
Hide Background Curves - Normally, non-selected curves in the Curve Bin are visible in the
graph. This display option will toggle their visibility state.
Large Keyframe Points - Activate this option to increase the display size of keys.
Custom Point Color - This turns on the user-defined (unselected) point color. Selected points
are always yellow.
Collapse/Show All (default keyboard shortcut F5) - This collapses or shows the Tabs and Trees
areas of the Graph Editor.
Collapse/Show Tabs (default keyboard shortcut F6) - This is the same as clicking the Collapse
Tabs button.
Collapse/Show Trees (default keyboard shortcut F7) - This is the same as clicking the Collapse
Trees button.

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Graph Editor Options
(default keyboard shortcut O)

Most of the options on this panel can also be set from the Display menu and have been described
previously. There are a few that can only be set here, however. On the General Tab, you can change
the Default Incoming Curve. On the Display Tab, you can set the color used when the Custom Point
Color option is active.

Undo

Undo Last Action (default keyboard shortcut

redo of the last edit.

Ctrl

Z). Use this command for a single level undo/

Also see the discussion on the Footprints feature, starting page 267

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Cancel Changes
(default keyboard shortcut

Shift

U)

This command restores all envelopes to their state at the time the Graph Editor Panel was last
activated (i.e., making it the top window).

Channel Bin Pop-up Menu

The Channel Bin has a pop-up menu that appears when you right-click a curve:

Replace - Used to load a curve from a file.

Save - Saves a single curve to a file.
Copy - Copies the curve under your mouse pointer when you open the menu to the curve
memory buffer.
Paste- Pastes the curve stored in the memory buffer. Your mouse pointer must be over the
curve you wish to replace before you open the menu.
Remove from Bin - Removes the selected curve(s) from the Channel Bin.
Footprints- See discussion on Footprints on page 267.
Show Velocity- Adds a non-editable background curve representing the velocity of the
selected curve. Velocity is defined as the time rate of change for a single curve including a
vector. In other words, a velocity curve defines how much the value of the current single
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channel changed at that time.
Show Speed- Adds a non-editable background curve representing the speed of the current
curve. Speed is defined as the magnitude of the velocity vector. This means the Speed curve
represents the time rate of change of all three position, rotation, or scale curves.
Show Modified - If the Show Modifiers option (Display menu) is active and your curve is being
modified, from a modifier plugin for instance, this will let you see the actual modified motion
curve.
Append to Expression - This command will place the selected channel in the expression
field. This is handy and will save you from having to type out channel names when creating
expressions.

Curve Edit Window Pop-up Menu

Another pop-up menu is available when you work in the Curve Edit Window. It appears when
you Ctrl + Shift +LMB click over the graph. This gives you quick access to many commonly used
commands.

Most of the commands have been discussed; however, some only appear on this menu because
they require your mouse pointer to be directly over a curve.
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Copy Selected Keys - This copies selected keys to a memory buffer.
Paste Keys - Inserts the keys stored in a memory buffer with the Copy Selected Keys
command- existing keys may be moved over if the buffer has multiple keys. Your mouse
pointer must be over the pasting point on a curve before opening the menu (pointer will
highlight).
Add to Key Bin - Creates named set of keys that you can insert into a curve later.
Insert - Works like Paste Keys, but gets data from a specified key set.
Options - Displays the Graph Editor Options Panel.

Key Pop-up Menu

Another contextual pop-up is available when you work in the Curve Edit Window. It appears when
you right-click directly over a key - the operations affect that key only.

Key Locked - Locks/unlocks the key so it is uneditable; locked keys are gray when selected,
black when not.
Copy Key Value - Copies the key value to memory buffer.
Paste Key Value - Pastes the value stored in memory to the key.
Ease In/Out - Sets the Incoming Curve for the key to TCB Spline and sets the Tension to 1.
Incoming Curves - Quickly change the Incoming Curve type for the key by selecting it from
the list at the bottom of the menu.

Other customizable menus will appear when you

Ctrl

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+ Shift +RMB and

Ctrl

+ Shift +MMB.

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Graph Editor - Editing Color Channels
You can also animate color channels. If you add an envelope for, say, a surface color, you can edit
the related RGB channels on the Graph Editor.

Clicking the Color Envelope Button

Color Envelope in the Graph Editor

When a color channel is selected in the Channel Bin, a color bar will appear at the bottom of the
graph. The bar shows you the color for the combined red, green, and blue values at any particular
point in time-even if you dont have all three color components in the bin.

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You can adjust any color channel beyond the normal maximum and minimum - creating a high
dynamic range color. This may have no visible effect on the color bar, but could affect how the color is
interpreted by other factors.
You can use a color requester to set the key values by right-clicking on a key and selecting Open
Color Picker. Note that the selected color will only set the color component for the selected
channel(s). If other channels are selected, keys will be created as needed.

Graph Editor: Curves Tab

The Curves Tab in the Curve Controls area contains specific values for a selected key(s). The Frame
field contains the frame number and the Value field holds the related value.

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Multiple Values
If you select multiple keys, input fields will show (mixed) if the keys have different settings. You can
still edit the fields, which will change all selected keys to match the entered value. You can use this
method to flatten a portion of a curve(s) or to match key times across multiple curves.

Pre and Post Behaviors

The Pre Behavior setting determines what happens before the first keyframe. The Post Behaviour
determines what happens after the last keyframe. The available settings are:
With Reset, the motion value is reset to zero.

With Constant, the values beyond the ends are constant, that is, equal to the first or last keyframe
value.

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With Repeat, the motion repeats from the first to last keyframe.

With Oscillate, the motion is mirrored over and over.

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With Offset Repeat, the motion repeats, but it is offset by the difference between the first and last
keyframe values.

With Linear, the curve receives a linear angle consistent with the angle at the start or end points.

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Incoming Curves
The type of curve that precedes a key can be set using the Incoming Curve pop-up menu.

TCB Spline
TCB Spline (Tension, Continuity and Bias) curves have three controls that determine the shape of a
curve as it passes through a key.
Tension causes an object in motion to slow down, or move a little bit less in each frame, as it nears
the keyframe, and to accelerate as it passes the keyframe (-1 = low tension, 0 = normal tension,
1 = high tension). Without Tension (i.e., value of 0), the object would pass through the keyframe
position at a constant speed. Positive values slow an item through a keyframe (ease-in) while
negative values speed it up (ease-out).

Tension 1

Tension 0

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Tension 1

A high Tension value (1.0) is often used at the end of a flying logo move in order to make the logo
come to a gradual stop. High Tension at the beginning of this move would make the logo start
slowly, while a negative value would make the logo start quickly.

If you right-click on a key, choosing Ease In/Out from the pop-up menu will set the Tension to 1
for all selected keys using TCB Spline.
Continuityaccentuates a break or change in an objects graph (-1 = sharp , 0 = normal , 1 =
smooth). Negative Continuity gives a sharper transition in the spline path at a keyframe, while
positive Continuity gives a broader transition (sometimes over-continuous) through a keyframe.
Negative Continuity is usually used to replicate a sharp change in motion such as that of a falling
ball striking a floor and quickly reversing direction.

Continuity 1

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Continuity 0

Continuity 1

You would rarely want to use a positive continuity - this will cause an object to overcompensate as
it passes through the keyframe and appear to stutter or roller coaster at the frame.
Bias determines whether an items spline path leans to one side of a keyframe or the other (-1
= more slack incoming, 0 = equal slack, 1 = more slack outgoing). You accomplish this effect
by moving the slack in the spline path to one side or the other of a keyframe. This serves to
accentuate motion - the incoming motion by undershooting the keyframe and creating a feeling
of anticipation, or the outgoing motion by overshooting the keyframe. For example, a racing car
moving through a turn could use either a negative or a positive Bias setting to a) anticipate the
turn with a negative Bias, or b) overshoot the turn with a positive Bias.
Negative Bias values place the slack before the keyframe while positive Bias values place it after the
keyframe.

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Bias -1

Bias 0

Bias 1

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Interactive TCB Adjustments
You can interactively adjust TCB keys with your mouse. Simply press F1 for tension, F2 for
continuity, or F3 for bias and then drag your mouse left to decrease or right to increase the value.
You will see a small indicator in the lower-left corner of the graph.
This only works in the Move Edit Mode and for the first mouse drag. The tool stops when you
release the mouse button.

Hermite Spline
If you use Hermite Spline, a tangent control handle will appear, emanating left from the key. This
type of curve is an extension of the standard TCB Spline, but allows a wider range of results. Drag
the handle (at the end) up or down to change the angle of the tangent and thus the shape of the
curve.

Note that TCB Splines generally limit you to more realistic results.

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Bezier Spline
Splines using Bezier Spline operate like bezier curves do in many industry-standard paint and
illustration packages. When you create a key, you must drag before releasing your mouse button
to edit the handles. Otherwise, bezier keys have handles that coincide with the key. For an existing
key, select it and then click-drag on it to pull out the handles.

Drag the handles to change the angle of the tangent and thus the shape of the curve. If you are
curious, Bezier splines are indeed a variant of Hermite splines, and thus the results will be very
similar.

Bezier curves were developed by Pierre Bzier for designing Renault automobile bodies.

Linear
Linear removes the gradual, smooth nature of a spline curve change and replaces it with more
direct, sudden change. Linear affects the changes between the current keyframe to the previous
keyframe only. By turning Linear on or off at different keyframes, graphs may contain both gradual
and sudden changes.

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Stepped Transition
Stepped transition holds the preceding keyframe value and then abruptly jumps to the next
keyframe value at that frame.

Dual-handled Control Points

When a Hermite or Bezier (incoming curve) key is followed by another key with the same incoming
curve type, the (outgoing) tangent on the right side will affect the outgoing curve as well.
Normally, the outgoing tangent will be unified with the incoming tangent. That is, they will operate
as though there is only one tangent.

You can break the tangents, that is, make them operate separately by holding the
then dragging either side.

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Alt

key and

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To reunite the tangents, just double-click on either control handle. The opposite side will line back
up.

Expressions
Expressions are an advanced LightWave 3D feature that uses mathematical formulas to modify the
value of any animation channel. Expressions let you make the motion of scene items dependent on
other item motions or factors in a scene. You could, for example, force an object to stay between
two other objects, keep feet from going through the floor, or even control the entire posture of a
character based on its feet! The possibilities are endless.
There are two types of expression, Bracket expressions and LScript expressions. Each has their
advantages and disadvantages. Bracket expressions take their name from the fact that the channel
they are reading is always enclosed in square brackets, [ and ]. The LScript expressions have a
syntax similar to that of LScript. You can use much of the LScript documentation to help with the
use of the functions available for using in LScript expressions.

You can obtain a reference of available functions from the LScript documentation or from
Expression Builder.

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Graph Editor: Expressions Tab
Expressions are built right into the Expressions Tab on the Graph Editor. This implementation has
several advantages over the channel expression modifier. First, expressions are not an attribute
for a single channel. Instead, the expressions stand alone and channels are attached to them. This
allows you to attach multiple channels to a single expression! Moreover, you can save and load
libraries of expressions you create.

To get interactive updates in Layout for expressions, make sure you have Auto Key active.

To create an expression:
1) Click the New expression button. No channels need to exist in the Channel
Bin nor does any channel need to be selected-expressions stand alone.
2) Enter a name for your expression in the Name field.
3) Enter your expression in the Value field.
You may also copy the selected expression by clicking the Clone button. This creates an
independent copy that you can alter.

Additive Expression
You can use the Value variable to make an additive expression. Value is equal to the (base)
keyframed value. For example, if the cameras keyframed X position was 2m and the Lights
keyframed X position was 3m, the expression Value + [Light.Position.X], placed on the cameras X
position, would move it to 5m.
Note that editing an item in Layout with an additive expression attached (e.g., Value + [Null.
Position.X]) can cause recursive updates, since youre changing the Value. There are a few workarounds:
1) Do the edit in the Graph Editor;
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2) Turn off the expression in the Graph Editor. Perform the edit and then turn it back on; or
3) Add a null and animate it the same way as the item itself (except without the expression).
Then, replace Value in the expression with the nulls corresponding channel (e.g., if Value was
the items Y position, then use the nulls Y position instead).

To rename an expression:
1) Make sure the expression is selected. Its name will appear in the Name field. To
select a different expression, choose it from the Expressions... pop-up menu.
2) Type a new name into the Name field. This will have no effect on any of the expressions
channels.

To attach an expression on a channel:

1) Make sure the expression is selected. Its name will appear in the Name field. To
select a different expression, choose it from the Expressions... pop-up menu.
2) Select the channel(s)in the Channel Bin.
3) Click the Apply button. The modified dot () will appear to the left of the channel name in the
Channel Bin. The expression must be legal, of course.

It is possible to attach multiple expressions to a single channel, but this is not recommended.
The expressions will be evaluated in the order they were attached; however, there is no way to determine
that order.

To determine what channels are attached to an expression:

1) Make sure the expression is selected. Its name will appear in the Name field. To
select a different expression, choose it from the Expressions... pop-up menu.
2) Click the Get Channels button. The contents of the Channel Bin will be
replaced with the channels attached to the current expression.

The name of an expression on the Expressions... pop-up menu will list the number of channels
attached to it in parentheses.

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To remove a channel from an expression:
1) Select the channel(s)in the Channel Bin.
2) Click the Remove button.

Libraries
You can save all of the existing expressions to a file on your hard drive by choosing Expressions... >
Save Library. To load a previously saved library, choose Expressions... > Load Library. If an expression
exists with the same name, it will be replaced. Otherwise, the library of expressions will be added
to the list.
You can clear all unused expressions by choosing Expressions... > Clear Unused. This clears out any
expressions that do not have any channels attached.

Expression Syntax
LightWave supports two types of expression syntax. The first is identical to the Channel Expression
syntax (e.g., the x position of a light at time t is given by Light.pos(Time).x). This works normally, as
does all of the control syntax (x < 5 ? y : -y).
With integrated expressions, you can also use a bracket notation syntax to reference any channel in
the system. By placing square brackets ([]) around a full channel name, you may access any channel
in the system. This includes MorphMixer channels, envelopes, and so on (e.g., [Camera.Rotation.H]).
You can freely mix and match the two methods of referencing item information ([Light.Position.X]
and Light.pos(Time).X).
Channels referenced in this way will be evaluated in a dependency-conscious way. In other words,
if channel X references channel Y, which has an expression that follows channel Z, then the bracket
notation insures that the Y channels expression (referencing Z) is evaluated before computing
channel X.
Bracket notation expressions may also take an optional time argument. The syntax is
[Channel,Time_arg] where Time_arg may be any legal expression, but cannot include anything
using the bracket notation syntax. An example of a bracket notation expression that follows the
cameras X position, but lags by half a second, would be [Camera.Position.X,Time - 0.5]. To make it
lag by four frames, it would be [Camera.Position.X,Frame - 4].

To use bracket notation expressions:

1) Add two null objects named Control and Action to an empty scene.
2) Animate the Control null on its Y axis.
3) Attach the expression [Control.Position.Y] to the Action null. This would
lock the two together on the Y axis; wherever Control goes, Action follows.
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4) Change the expression to [Control.Position.Y,Time]. This has the exact same result.
As such, unless you want to modify Time, you do not need to use the time argument.
5) The expression [Control.Position.Y,Time - 1] would
lock Action to Control, but give it a one second delay.
6) The expression [Control.Position.Y,Frame] also has the same result
as the original expression, but differs in that it feeds the time of the current
frame to the expression. This lets you do something like: [Control.
Position.Y,Frame - 30]. [Control.Position.Y,Time - 1] and [Control.
Position.Y,Frame - 30] yield the exact same results (assuming 30 fps). One
expression is working with seconds and the other is working with frames.

Make sure you use spaces around math operators, like the minus sign used above. Not doing so
may confuse the expressions parser, which allows some of those characters in scene item names. Loops
are not allowed and the system will report an error if any are detected.

Bad Expressions
If an integrated expression is erroneous, an error dialog will appear when you attempt to apply it
or otherwise exit the input field (e.g., using TAB key, ENTER key, mouse click, etc.). Also, the Apply
button will show Uncompiled instead of Apply.

Subexpressions
An expression may reference another expression (subexpression). The format is identical to other
bracket notation calls, except that in place of a channel name, you supply an expression name.
Time may still be specified, just as if it was a channel reference.
So [myCenter, Frame - 5] would cause the system to evaluate the expression myCenter at
the current Frame - 5 and return that value.
If the subexpression contains a reference to the Value variable, then the current value of
the channel - whose expression is using the subexpression - will be used. In other words, all
expressions within an expression are using the same Value variable.
Also, subexpressions may not themselves contain subexpressions. There will be no error, but any
sub-subexpression will always return 0.0 upon evaluation.

Vector References
Bracket notation references to channels may also reference a vector for position, rotation, or scale.
This works with the built-in expression functions that take vectors as parameters.

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For example, this expression shows how you could find the center X coordinate of two items using
scalar values:
([Left.Position.X] + [Right.Position.X]) / 2.0

Here is an expression that performs the same feat, but using vectors:
center ([Left.Position], [Right.Position]).x

An advantage to the second method is that items with spaces in the names can now be referenced
by vector functions.

Expressions Tree
The Scene list area for the Graph Editor has an Expressions Tab. The Expressions tree shows all
the expressions in the system. The first column reflects the active state of an expression. You
may toggle the expression on and off by clicking in the On column. All attached channels will be
affected.

The Attached column shows the number of channels attached to the expression.
Double-click an expression name and the contents of the Channel Bin will be replaced with the
channels attached to that expression. You will also select the expression. Hold the Shift key and
double-click to add the channels without removing any.
If you right-click an expression name, a pop-up menu appears, allowing you to delete the
expression. This will detach any channels that may be using it.

Expression Builder
The Expression Builder is a wizard-type feature designed to help you write expressions. To access
it, click the Builder button on the Graph Editors Expressions Tab. This will guide you through
setting up a single function as an expression.

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To use, first select an expression function from the Expression Builder Basics pop-up menu at the
top.
The Description Tab gives you a description of what the expression is. The Example Tab gives you
an example of how to use the expression. The Applications Tab explains why the expression might
be used.
Once an expression template is chosen you will be presented with a composite of the expression
below the info windows where you are presented with pop-up menus to set what values and/or
channels are driving each of the components.
Once youve set the inputs, click Accept. You will be able to rename and modify the expression on
the lines below. Click Create Expression to add the expression to the Graph Editors list.

Bracket Expressions - Syntax

Bracket expressions always have the channel reference enclosed in square brackets and have the
general syntax as shown in the figure.

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You can also use Frame in place of the Time and you can also do things like refer to earlier times
e.g. [objectName.Position.X, Time 0.1]
The primary disadvantage of Bracket expressions is that they may only be used via the Expressions
Tab in the Graph Editor.

LScript Expressions - Syntax

LScript expression are not enclosed by square brackets. The object property is all lowercase, as is
the channel - see the figure below.

LScript Expressions are generally used via the Modifiers Tab in the Graph Editor, or, more typically,
via the Motions Options Panel.
One advantage of LScript expressions applied in the Motion Expressions Panel is that they can act
after an IK example.
LScript expressions can also be used to create expression-controlled displacements via the
Displacements Panel where the expression can act before or after a bone deformation.

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Using Expressions - Examples
Example 1: Expression Basics: Rotating a Gear
William Vaughan says: Ive been using LightWave for many years now and Expressions have always
been something that I considered too technical, something that Id give my math friends to work
on. It wasnt until recently that I found out that its quite simple to use expressions. This tutorial will
walk you through setting up a basic expression that will help speed up animating gears on a Mech.

Creating an Expression:
1) Load the Crunk Car from the Content CD.

Our goal in this setup is to have the gears automatically rotate when the Thigh
Crunk_rightthigh is rotated. The lower gear Crunk_Gear01 is already setup to
rotate by being parented to the thigh. We can do this because the lower gears pivot
point is in the same place as the Thigh. The upper gear Crunk_Gear02 doesnt
share the same pivot point and needs to rotate in the opposite direction. You could
manually animate the upper gear but using an expression will save you the hassle.
2) Select Crunk_rightthigh as the Current Object.

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3) Open the Graph Editor by clicking on the Graph Editor

button, or use the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl F2.
4) Click on the Expressions Menu Tab located under the graph display.

5) Click the button labeled New and give it a name. I chose to name mine Gear_02.

6) In the Value field, select Value and replace it with -.

The - will make the gear spin the opposite way of the thigh by giving it a negative value.
7) We want the Gear to spin the opposite way of the Thigh by giving it a negative value of the
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Thighs Pitch. The - makes it negative, now all we need is the Pitch value of the Thigh. From
the Channel List choose Crunk:Crunk_rightthigh.Rotation.P.

8) Right-click and choose Append to Expression.

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The Value Field should look like this:

Congratulations! You have just written your first expression. Now that
wasnt so hard was it? All we need to do now is apply this expression
to Crunk_Gear02 and well be finished with the setup.

Applying an Expression:
9) Now that we have our Expression lets apply it to the Gear. From the Channels list select
Crunk_Gear02.

10) From the Channel List choose Crunk_gear02.Rotation.P.

11) Click Apply.

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A small dot is placed next to the channel to let you know that it has an expression attached to it.

Lets take a look at what happens when we rotate the Thigh.

12) Close the Graph Editor window and make sure that Auto Key Create is selected.
13) Select Crunk_rightthigh as the Current Object, and rotate its Pitch.
Crunk_Gear02 should rotate on its Pitch in the Opposite direction of Crunk_Gear01 and
Crunk_rightthigh.

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Well, there you have it. Your first expression applied and in action. Weve only scratched the surface
on the power of Expressions in LightWave.

Example 2: Expression Builder

In this example we will use the Expression Builder to center the hips of a character between its two
feet. This example assumes the characters hips are not determined by any form of IK calculation. If
that is the case you will need to use LScript expressions (applied via the Motion Options Panel) as
only Lscript expressions can act after IK.
Assume the name of the characters two feet are footLeft and footRight and that the position
of the hips are controlled by a single null called hip. To center the hip null we will fix its X and Z
coordinates (and leave the height, Y, to the animator).
Open the Graph Editor and load the hip channels. Click on the Expressions Tab - your panel should
look like the figure.

If you select your hip null before opening the Graph Editor the hip channels will automatically be
added to the channel bin.
First we will create the bracket expression to center the X coordinate of the hip null. Click on the
Builder button to open the Expression Builder Panel, click on the Expression Template button at the
top of the panel and select the Hip Center (Type A) menu option as shown below.

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This brings up the expression template - all you have to do is say which channels you want to slot
into the template. Expression builder will then create the full expression for you and add it to the
Graph Editor. The template for hip centring can be seen below.

The good thing about the Expression Builder (apart from creating a template for you) is that it
also gives an explanation for how to use the expression template. To center the hips we will use
the center function. This function takes two arguments, the two coordinates between which you
want to center the object. The important thing to understand is that the expression can only center
in one dimension. To center in two dimensions (ie. the X and Z coordinates) we use the expression
twice. Once to center the X coordinate and a second time, using the Z coordinates, to center in the
Z direction.
Back to the Expression Builder template First for the X direction. We need to enter the X position of
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the left foot and the right foot. To do this for the left foot click the Left Foot pop up menu button
and select the Channel option to bring up the Channel Selection Panel as shown:

and then select the Position.X of the footLeft object. Click Choose and you should notice that the
X position channel of the footLeft object has been entered into the expression (which is written in
the Value field on the panel) as shown:

Do the same for the Right Foot pop up menu, but now select the Position.X channel for the
rightFoot object. The Expressions Builder Panel should now look like this:

Now, click the Accept button to accept the expression. Expressions Builder gives the expression
a name in the Name field - usually something like newExp_2 - delete this and replace it with
something meaningful like centerHips_X. Finally, click Create Expression - this tells Expressions
Builder to enter the expression in the Expression fields in the Graph Editor. Close Expressions
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Builder and the Graph Editor should now contain your expression as shown below.

In order for the expression to actually affect the X coordinate of the hip object we need to Apply
the expression the X channel of the hip object. To do this select the hip.Position.X channel in
the channel bin and then click the Apply button. The hip.Position.X channel should then have a
dot to the left of the name to show that that channel has an expression applied to it. If you have
the Always Show Modified switched on in the Graph Editor options then as soon as you apply the
channel the modified curve will appear in the curve window as shown:

We still have to center the Z coordinate of the hip object. To do this you could use the Expression
builder again (choosing the Position.Z channels for the foorLeft and footRight template slots),
however, there is a quicker method. Since the expression for the Z coordinate is similar to the X
coordinate we can create it by Cloning the centerHip_X expression. You do this by clicking the
Clone button (on the Expression Tab of the Graph Editor). This will create the same expression, but
with the new name centerHip_X (Clone). All you need to do is edit the expression name change
it to something like centerHip_Z and then change the Xs in the actual expression to Zs. Then
select the hip.Position.Z channel in the channel bin and click Apply to get:

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Your hips will now remain centered between the characters feet no matter what the feet do.
If you look at the Utility functions in Expression builder you will notice there are several variations
of hip centring which are a little more complex to set up but they give you more control over your
character.

Example 3: Joystick Control for Morphs

In this more advanced example we will use Expression Builder to create the expressions for a
joystick control. The joystick will be used to control the blinking of a characters eyes.
Overview: We begin by explaining what we are trying to do. The blinking of a characters eyes is
modelled using four morphs: A left eye blink, a right eye blink, both eyes blinking and both eyes
opening wide. We will control the left and right eye blinking by moving a null to the left and right
respectively. The opening and closing of both eyes will be controlled by the same null, not with the
left/right motion, but with the up/down motion of the null. We will call this null the joystick null.
The big advantage of using this method is that if we move the null both sideways and up (or down)
ie. diagonally, we will simultaneously combine all four morphs by using only one controller - the
joystick null.
How do we achieve this with expressions? We will use four expressions:
blinkLeft,
blinkRight,
blinkBoth and
wideOpen.
Each expression will connect the joystick null to one of the four morph channels:
object.Body.Eyes.Blink_Left,
object.Body.Eyes.Blink_Right,
object.Body.Eyes.Blink_Both and
object.Body.Eyes.Wide_Both.
(The actual object in the screenshots is called William_Rig.) There remains one further hurdle: when
the joystick null moves, it will move a certain distance (eg 50mm) which will need to be converted
into a morph percentage. When using morphs, 100% is actually represented by the number 1
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(and 0% by 0). Thus if we want a distance change of 50mm to correspond to a morph percentage
change of 0% to 100% a function called maprange will convert this range of 0 to 1 for us.
The joystick is just a null which we will move in the XY plane to control the morphs. The utility
of the joystick approach is greatly enhanced if there is some graphic on-screen indicating which
directions correspond to which morph changes, and also, where 0% position is. For this example
we have created all of these using five other nulls. Four nulls are used with an Item Shape custom
object whose only purpose is to place some text in the viewport. The last null has a square as the
custom shape showing the range for the joystick (and the center). Also, all the nulls are parented
to the square window null. This allows us to position the whole joystick control setup anywhere
in the scene. For convenience, the joystick is usually placed in a viewport by itself (or alongside any
other such controls).

We will start by creating the BlinkLeft expression. This expression will control the closing of the left
eye as the joystick moves from O to A (see the figure).

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In terms of distance the null is moving from X=0 (at O) to X=-50mm (at A) the full range of the eye
closing corresponds to a morph percentage change of 0 to 75% or, for the expression, a change
from 0 to 0.75.

We will use Expression Builder (EB), so open the Graph Editor, click the Expression Tab and click the
Builder button. Once the EB is open, use the pop-up menu to choose the Clamped Range utility
function as shown:

We now have an expression template with five inputs.

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This is the function that maps the range of the joystick controller (ie. 50mm to 0mm) to the
range of the morph (ie 0.75 to 0.0) To use it we need the joystick controller to go in the first input,
so, select the Channel from the Controller input

and then select the X position channel of the joystickControl object.

Now, the Input Min is the minimum value (as a number) that the joystick controller will take. In
this case it is 50mm, or 0,05. Thus, choose the number option in the Input Min popup,

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and enter 0.05. Similarly, for the remaining three entries: The Input Max is the maximum value
we expect the X coordinate of the joystick to take (for controlling the left wink it will actually
move to +50mm for the right blink, but for the left wink we want an X value of 0 to correspond
to the 0 morph percent. Thus the Input Max is 0. For the Output Min we want 0.75 the morph
percent that corresponds to 50mm (which isnt actually the smallest number), and for the Output
Max we want 0 (giving a morph percent of 0%). Once all your numbers are entered, the template
should look like this:

Now, click the Accept button, which tells EB to accept all your template entries. EB usually gives the
expression some generic name; so delete it and type in winkLeft for the expression name.

Finally, click the Create Expression button. This tells EB to send the expression to LightWave. If you
now open the Graph Editor and click on the Expression Tab you should see your expression!

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You can close the EB Panel as we wont need it until later. Back in the Graph Editor (GE), we now
have to attach or apply the expression to the channel which it is going to control ie the left blink
morph channel. To do this you need to get the channel into the channel bin (the list is on the top
left of the GE). In our scene the morph channel is called William_Rig:Body.Eyes.Wink_Left. Once it
is in the channel bin select it and then click the Apply button on the Expression Tab. A dot should
appear next to the morph channels name telling you it now has an expression attached to it.

Thats it for the left eye winking. If you move the joystick controllers X position from 50mm to 0
the left eye should wink.
We now have to repeat this three more times to create the expression to control the right wink, the
wide open case and the both closed case. The process is exactly the same except that the numbers
entered into the Expression builder need to be changed and, for the blinkboth and wideOpen
cases, it is the Y position of the controller that is used. These three EB Panels are shown below:

Wink right
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Blink Both

Wide Open

Once you have applied these three expressions to their respective channels your joystick controller
should be fully functional.
One last thing. Why is the clamp function part of each expression? The maprange function can
take values outside the range of the output min and max values i.e. it can give negative morph
percents or percents greater than 100%. But the clamp function stops this from happening. It takes
in the values of the maprange function and forces them to stay within the range of the very last
two numbers in each expression (in this case, the range 0 to 0.75)

Connecting LScripts to Expressions

You can write an Lscript function, or user defined function (UDF), using all the keywords available
in LScript and then access the function in an expression.
Employing embedded LScript, users can now write their own functions to use with LightWave
Expressions.
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Expressions UDFs are used just like any built-in Expressions function. Parameter passing is limited
to simple data types - strings, numbers and vectors. As long as an expression evaluates to one of
these data types, it can be used as an argument. Expressions UDFs are stored in the LightWave>LScripts directory within their own directory called expressions. A default library of functions
can be maintained within this directory called library.ls. This library of functions is automatically
loaded into the Expressions engine when LightWave is initialised, and its defined functions are
consequently available to any LightWave expression or Expressions UDFs that references them.
Additionally, individual Expressions UDFs can be stored in their own files in this same directory.
The name of the file containing the UDF must exactly match that of the function name being
referenced. The file may contain any number of other UDFs to support the main function, but must
contain at least a UDF whose name and argument count matches that being referenced in the
expression.
Data exchange between UDFs is not limited in their types. UDF-to-UDF calling is exactly the same
as it is in LScript.
By way of example, assume the following files exist in the required directory:
\LightWave\support\plugins\scripts\LScript\expressions->library.ls
\LightWave\support\plugins\scripts\expressions->channelValue.ls
The library.ls file contains the following content:
locateChannel: fullchannel
\{
parts = parse(.,fullchannel);
group = ChannelGroup(parts[1]); // start with root channel group
lastgroup = group;
subgroup = nil;
x = 2;
while(group)
\{
// scan sub-groups to match parts[x]
// if a match cant be found, then it
// is probably the start of the channel
// name
subgroup = ChannelGroup(group,subgroup);
last if !subgroup;
if(subgroup.name == parts[x])
\{
group = subgroup;
lastgroup = group;
subgroup = nil;
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++x;
\}
\}
if(!lastgroup) return(nil);
// anything left in the parts[] array are the components
// of the channel name itself. put them together for
// channel searching
channelname = ;

// avoid creating an array

psize = parts.size();
while(x <= psize)
\{
channelname += parts[x];
if(x < psize) channelname += .;
++x;
\}
// scan the defined channels in the final group to see
// if we can match the channel name
chchannel = lastgroup.firstChannel();
while(chchannel)
\{
last if chchannel.name == channelname;
chchannel = lastgroup.nextChannel();
\}
return(chchannel);
\}
// replace the built-in clamp() function
clamp: val, lower, upper
\ {
result = val;
if(val < lower)

result = lower;

else if(val > upper) result = upper;

return(result);
\}
While the channelValue.ls file contains the following content:
chan;
chanName;
channelValue: channel, time
\{
if(chanName != channel) chan = nil;
if(!chan)
\{
// cache the channel for speed
chan = locateChannel(channel);
if(!chan) return(0);
chanName = channel;
\}
return(chan.value(time));
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\}

In Layout, you might then enter an expression like: clamp(channelValue(WashLight.Intensity,

Time),0.0,1.0)
This will invoke the channelValue() UDF, which then invokes the locateChannel() UDF (defined in
the default library file library.ls) to resolve a string channel reference to an actual LScript Channel
Object Agent. The channelValue() UDF returns the value of the specified Light Objects intensity
value at the current time. This value is then passed to the (script) clamp() UDF (also defined in
library.ls) to keep it in a specified range.
Alternately, you could use the Graph Editors direct channel reference syntax with the UDF call:
clamp([WashLight.Intensity,Time],0.0,1.0)

UDF references that have been loaded into the Expressions engine are automatically updated the
next time they are evaluated when their respective files have been modified. For instance, if you
have expressions referencing channelValue(), altering the last line of the function to read:
return(chan.value(time) + 1.0);

will instantly return new values the next time the expression is evaluated (e.g., on the
next frame).
\end{document}

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Object References
Objects are referenced by their name. The system does not currently support space characters (
) in object names, so cloned objects (i.e., Null (1), Null (2), etc.) cannot be used unless they are
renamed.
The Scene object is the only pre-defined object in the system. All other object references must
equate to an object in the current scene.

Built-in Functions
All the built-in functions are described in the coding manual available with the SDK.

A vector is a group of related values. They could relate to position (X, Y, Z), rotation (H, P, B), color
(R, G, B), etc. To get only one component, use a selector as demonstrated below.

Expressions react to interactively moved items, even if Auto Key is turned off.

You may use XS, YS, and ZS as aliases for Scale.X, Scale.Y, and Scale.Z.

Sample Expressions
HeadLight.rot(Time).h returns the heading rotation value of the HeadLight item at the

current time.
Left.pos(Time).x + Right.pos(Time).x returns the sum of the Left and Right items

positions on the x axis.

<1,2,3>.y returns 2
<1,1,1>.rgb returns <255,255,255>
<.5,.25,1>.rgb returns <127,63,255>

BackLight.color(frame / Scene.fps).rgb returns RGB vector value for color BackLight

at a user-defined frame converted to a time index using the Scene objects fps setting. The frame
variable is returned to the caller and can have its value explicitly set before each evaluation of the
expression.
2 * 1 2 3.asVec.y returns 4

((Scene.usingLR ? (Scene.lr.right - Scene.lr.left) : Scene.width) /

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2).asInt finds the horizontal center of the frame.

Graph Editor: Modifier Tab

Channel Motion Modifiers
Channel motion modifiers are added on the Modifiers Tab of the Graph Editor. These modifiers
control the motion at the channel level, as opposed to the (scene) item level, where motion is
handled by item motion modifiers.

To use a channel motion modifier, select the target curve in the Graph Editors Channel Bin. Then
select the modifier from the Add Modifier pop-up menu on the Modifier Tab. Once added, click on
its name in the list to access its settings, if any. Channels with modifiers will have a small dot to the
left of their names in the Channel Bin.

Modifiers that do not have an explicit additive option are generally additive in nature.

Also see the MasterChannel Scene Master plugins. This lets you create custom user-defined
channels.

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AudioChannel
The AudioChannel modifier modifies a curve based on an audio file.

Click the Name button to select the audio file you want to use. The Value Offset lets you move
the entire motion up or down. (The units are the ones used on the graph.) Waveform Scale is a
multiplier. Thus, a value of 1 will have no effect. A value of 2 will double the values of the effect and
.5 will halve it. Use the Start Time to enter a frame number when the audio should begin. The Filter
Strength value will determine the sampling frequency used to convert the audio into a curve. A
higher value will cause the curve to more closely follow the contours of the audios sound wave.

BoosterLink
IK Booster Link can be used to link a channel from one controller to a channel in another
controller. The Linked controller can be driven by the referenced control. This is very similar to how
expressions can be used without writing any expressions.

See the IK Booster section for more information.

ChannelFollower
Using Channel Follower (aka Set Driven Key) is similar to parenting an object to another, except
that you have control over which motion channels you wish to inherit. You can also modify and
delay the inherited value. Moreover, the motion can be inherited from the camera, a light, a bone,
or any object in the scene.

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Select the channel you wish to follow from the Channels list window.
The amount of seconds entered into the Time Lag field is added to the current time. This number
may be negative.
The value can be scaled by inputting a factor other than 100% in the corresponding Scale field.
The Start Frame and End Frame parameters specify when the modifier is applied.

Cycler
This is a channel-oriented version of the Cyclist item motion modifier.

Select the controlling channel in the Channels list window. The Controller Low Value and Controller
High Value settings define how much change is required to equal one full animation cycle. The unit
of measure for this parameter depends on the selected control channel.

Expression
Expressions are an advanced LightWave 3D feature that uses mathematical formulas to modify the
value of any animation channel. Expressions let you make the motion of scene items dependent on
other item motions or factors in a scene. You could, for example, force an object to stay between
two other objects, keep feet from going through the floor, or even control the entire posture of a
character based on its feet! The possibilities are endless.

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The Expressions Panel has four buttons: Copy, Paste, Load and Save. The Copy and Paste functions
work on a per-screen basis - if you type in your full expression, you may click on Copy, open
another channel up, and then click on Paste and the entire expression is pasted in, including
scratch variables. Click on Save if you create an expression that you want to use again in the future.
You will then be able to load it into other channels at your convenience.
The A, B, C, and D fields are scratch variables for the expressions. Each of these can have an
expression, which is evaluated before the main expression. This means that the main expression
can use the variable A, B, C, and D for some other calculated value. The scratch variables are
evaluated in alphabetical order, so B can use A, C can refer to A and B, and the D expression can
contain A, B, and C.
Scratch variables are useful both for breaking up massive expressions and for logically separating
the functional elements of an expression. For example, driving a balls pitch based on its Z-distance
can simulate rolling if the ball rotates once for every pi*diameter it moves. This expression (pitch
= pi*Z/Diameter) fits on a line, but you need to include the models diameter. If you apply it to
another ball, the expression must change. If you include the diameter in A, then changing the
expression is more obvious; when you scale up the ball, A can be more complex.

FX_Clink
These channel and motion modifiers let children of a parent, which uses FX_Link, respect the
parents time shift setting. This modifier has no interface.

FX_Link
The FX_Link channel modifier has two functions. First, it can be used to dissolve out the object
when the particles die.

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To dissolve an object based on particle life:
1) Open the Object Properties Panel for the object to be dissolved.
(Youll also need an existing emitter controller.)
2) On the Rendering Tab, click the Object Dissolve Envelope button. This
adds a Dissolve channel for the object and opens the Graph Editor.
3) On the Modifiers Tab of the Graph Editor, add the FX_Link modifier. Open its
Options Panel by double-clicking its name in the list after it has been added.
4) Set the mode to Particles dissolve and select the emitter from the Particles pop-up
menu. Enter the particle number in the Node/numbers field; 0 is the first emitted.
5) Click OK. When that particle dies, the object will be dissolved to 100%.
FX_Link can also be used to vary a channel based on the number of particles at the emitter

To control a channel based on the number of particles:

1) Open the Graph Editor and select the desired channel in the Curve bin.
2) On the Modifiers Tab of the Graph Editor, add the FX_Link modifier. Open its
Options Panel by double-clicking its name in the list after it has been added.
3) Set the mode to Particles numbers and select the emitter from the Particles
pop-up menu.
4) Click OK to close the panel and play your scene. The channel you selected will be changed
based on the number of particles in that particular frame.You can scale the value by entering
a number in the Node/numbers field. The number of particles will be divided by this value.

Lscript and Lscript/RT

These commands allow you to load a channel-oriented Lscript.

MM (Motion Mixer) Channel Driver

When an X Channel is added to a Motion Mixer Actor, this modifier is automatically added.
Removing X Channels from an actor is achieved by either using the Remove Items entry in the
Actor Menu, clearing the item from the scene, or manually removing the MM_ChannelDriver
modifier on the Graph Editor.

For more information see Motion Mixer documentation, starting on page 683

NoisyChannel
This modifier randomizes a channel.

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The Offset lets you move the entire motion up or down. (The units are the ones used on the graph.)
The Scale parameter multiplies the noise amount added in to the channel, so a factor of 1 will have
a noise effect, a factor of 0 will have no effect, 2 will double the effect, .5 would halve it, and so on.
Speed is the rate of change of the noise, basically like a texture velocity. Phase shifts the effect in
time.
The formula is: channel value = old value + scale * fractal noise(phase +
speed*time )

Oscillator
This is a channel-oriented version of the Oscillator item motion modifier. The channel is
determined by which channel the modifier is added to in the Graph Editor. The effect is always
additive.

Proximity

The Proximity plugin is implemented as a channel modifier plugin. It can be added as a channel
modifier to any channel. This can be done either directly through the graph editor, or via an
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envelope for a parameter.
Source(item the plugin is applied to):- Proximity computes the distance between the position
of a source item and one or more target items or meshes. This setting is used to set the
source item.
When set to (self ), Proximity will use the item to which the channel being modified is
attached. If the channel is not attached to an item, Proximity wont do anything if the source
is set to (self ).
Target:- Sets the target to which the distance from the source is measured. The target may be
any item, with or without a mesh. If an item has a mesh, the shortest distance between the
source position and the mesh will be computed. If an item does not have a mesh (such as a
null, a camera, or a light) the position of the items origin is used.
Use ( How the channel will be effected) Target Only - The distance from the source to the target is used. If the target has a mesh,
the distance to the nearest point on the mesh is computed, otherwise the distance
from the source to the target origin is used.
Target and Decendants - Like Target Only, but any items parented to the target (and the
items parented to those items, etc.) are considered as well. The nearest distance found
for all items is used.
Target Leaves Only - Like Target & Descendents, but only the leaf items are used. The
leaf items are those items in the tree which have no children.
Target Leaves as Line - Like Target Leaves Only, but the positions of leaf items with
a common parent are considered as the vertices of a polyline. The shortest distance
between the source position and the polyline is used.
Signed Distance:- When computing the distance from a source to a mesh, the distance
can be either signed or unsigned. When signed distance is turned on, the distance will
be negative if the source is below the surface of the mesh. Otherwise the distance will
always be positive.
Distance Modfier:- remap the distance calculation
None:- The channel value is set equal to the computed distance.
Scale:- The distance is scaled by the given factor to give the channel value.
Remap:- Arbitrarily change the distance to a channel value. Typically this is used in
combination with a gradient texture or an expression.
All the distance modifiers can be enveloped, textured, etc. for full control of the effect.
Added Channels:
Sticky.rMeshDistance: Distance of the sticky item to the nearest point on a sticky surface
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Distance to mesh: Distance of the sticky item to the nearest point on a sticky surface

Python
Will load a Python script, like the LScript modifier above.

Python Noisy Channel

Example Python code that you can play with for your own scripts, the source can be found in
LightWave/Support/plugins/scripts/Python/Layout/ChannelFilter.

RelChanneler
Open the Relativity Channeler Expression Module.

SetDrivenKey
Using SetDrivenKey (aka ChannelFollower) is similar to parenting an object to another, except you
have control over which motion channels you wish to inherit. You can also modify and delay the
inherited value. Moreover, the motion can be inherited from the camera, a light, a bone, or any
object in the scene.

Select the channel you wish to follow in the Channels list window.
The amount of seconds entered into the Time Lag field is added to the current time. This number
may be negative.
The value can be scaled by inputting a factor other than 100% in the corresponding Scale field.
The Start Frame and End Frame parameters specify when the modifier is applied.

Textured Channel
This is a channel-oriented version of the Texture Motion item motion modifier. It works exactly the
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same except that you apply it directly to the channel you wish to modify.

Since textures are three dimensional, particularly procedurals, use the Axis setting to use the X, Y
or Z of the texture. (Note: The differences between the Axis selection can be subtle.) You can also
move the texture with the Offset setting and change the size of the texture using the Scale setting.

Virtual Studio Trait

This is a modifier to add to an object you wish to control inside Virtual Studio. See the Virtual Studio
section starting page 501 for more details.

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(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

F1)

The Scene Editor gives you the big picture of your scene. The Scene Editor is a data viewing and
editing hub for many of the properties with Layout that pertain to items and surfaces. It does not
intend to encompass all properties in Layout nor act as a complete replacement for those that it
does support. But, it does intend to offer ease and speed when modifying data about multiple
items or multiple surfaces. It also intends to allow users to have chosen data appear simultaneously
within a single panel instead of having to jump around from panel to panel to make changes.
Not only are properties about items and surfaces presented, but also any channel data that is
attached to these item types. Items refers to Layout Items that may consist of Objects, Bones,
Cameras, or Lights. Surfaces refer to surfaces currently loaded within Layout. Since surfaces are
always attached to Object Items, an object item must exist in Layout before a surface can exist.

The New Scene Editor is a user configurable scene overview tool. It is used to see everything
that exists in a given scene, and can be used to edit most attributes of any item or groups of
items in the scene, all from a single location. Multiple instances of it may be opened at any time,
and each can be configured independently of the others. This would allow you to configure
one Scene Editor specifically for settings that relate to a character in a scene, while another can
be set up with options relating to the environment. A third may also be added that configured
specifically to control lighting, etc. Each Scene Editor stores its own set of configurations, so theyre
remembered each time that particular scene is reloaded. Different configurations can be saved
for different scenes. You have full control over how these can be set up.
Since all instances of the Scene Editor are displaying the same scene information, changes made
in on will automatically be updated in all other instances, so all Scene Editors are displaying the
current state of all the scene properties at all times.

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To launch the new Scene Editor, click on the Scene Editor drop down menu and choose New
Instance. You also have the option of choosing the Classic Scene Editor as well as multiple
instances.

The Scene Editor has five main sections to it, each with a specific purpose. These areas are the
Item List, Spread Sheet Property Panel, Dope Sheet Panel, Scene Playback Controls, and the Scene
Editor Options.

Item List
The Item List allows selection of various items to work with. These include Objects, Lights,
Cameras, Bones, Channels, Channel Groups, and Surfaces. Because of the similarities between
Objects, Lights, Cameras, and Bones, they have been grouped together to form the Item List view.
Surfaces have widely different characteristics and form the Surface List view. Each of these may
contain Channels and Channel Groups and these channels and channel groups form the Channel
List.

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Item List View: Items Tab

This view is used to view Objects, Lights, Cameras, Bones, and their associated channels, for
modification within the Property and Dope Sheet views. It also allows manipulation of item
hierarchies, names, existence, colors, lock states, selection status, channel selection, and more.
The item view consists of an item list with each row representing a single item. Four columns
extend throughout the list. These are Active, Visibility, Locked, and Name.

The Active column activates or deactivates items. Deactivating an object is like setting its Object
Dissolve (Object Properties) to 100%, and deactivating a light is like setting its Light Intensity (Light
Properties) to 0%. For a bone, this toggles its Bone Active state (Bone Properties).

This only applies to Lights, Cameras, Objects, and Bones, not Channels, or Channel Groups.
The Visibility (eye) column determines how the item will be displayed. For objects, clicking on this
icon will display a pop-up menu where you can select how the object is displayed. This can range
from making the object hidden all the way up to showing it as a textured shaded solid. For Objects,
the choices are Hidden, Bounding Box, Vertices, Wireframe, Front Face Wireframe, Solid Shaded,
and Textured Solid Shaded. For Lights, Cameras, and Bones there is only an on/off state for visibility.

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You can override the Visibility setting to a certain extent by using the viewports Maximum
Render Level pop-up menu located on the top left edge of a viewport.

The Color and Visibility options affect only the appearance of items in the Layout view. They do
not affect the final rendered image.
Clicking in the Lock State column will toggle the locking function on for that item. Locked items
cannot be selected in the viewports. However, not all methods for manipulating items obey this
flag.
The lock icon will also appear on the Current Item pop-up menu (on the main interface) next to the
items name.

The Name column has more options then the other columns. It shows the item name, the type of
item, item color. It also allows context menu options, hierarchy management, visibility (showing/
hiding) of the hierarchy structure, channel visibility, shows and edits Layout item selection, and
shows row selection.

Display/Hide Channels
The plus/minus sign icon will display or hide the individual channels for the item. Most of the time,
these are the position, rotation, and scale channels; however, other enveloped channels can also
be included, like light intensity.

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Expand/Collapse Groups
The scene list is a standard LightWave list window. You can expand and collapse groups as well as
subordinate items (e.g., child objects) by clicking the arrow icon that appears to the left of the item
name.

Item Type and Color

The item type icon indicates the type of item and the color used when the item appears in
wireframe. You can change the color by clicking on the item and selecting a color from the pop-up
menu. When working with complex scenes with overlapping objects, it can be beneficial to use
different colors for certain items in the scene.

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Item Name
Simply displays the name of the item.

Active Item Indicator

When an item is selected (active) a check mark will appear to the right of the items name.

Hide Unselected Toggle

This option allows you to hide any item that is not selected in the list. Clicking the button again
will unhide all items. This can be very handy when working on complex scenes that contain many
items.

This doesnt affect the visibility in the viewport, it only affects the visibility in the item list.

Hierarchy Mode
At the top of the item list view is the Hierarchy Mode button that toggles the display of items
hierarchically. When enabled, the items parenting information will be used to indent child items to
the right of their parents. In addition, the ability exists to manipulate the parenting information
via the mouse within the item list.

ALT-CLICKING on an arrow in the Scene Editor will unfold the complete hierarchy, then ALTCLICKING on an item name will highlight it and its children recursively.
There are some rules that govern the hierarchical relationships:
Object Item:- Can be child of Object Item, Light Item, Camera Item, (none)
Bone Item:- Can be child of Bone Item, Object Item.
Light Item:- Can be child of Object Item, Light Item, Camera Item, (none)
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Camera Item:- Can be child of Object Item, Light Item, Camera Item, (none)
Channel:- Can be child of Object Item, Bone Item, Light Item, Camera Item, Channel Group
Channel Group:- Can be child of Object Item, Bone Item, Light Item, Camera Item, Channel
Group

Re-Parenting
Once some items are highlighted, use the mouse to drag and drop them onto an existing object,
bone, light, or camera item to change the parent of the highlighted items. The mouse drop point
can also be below the desired parent item at the same indentation level of that parent. Visual
markers appear in both cases. The visual aids are brightest when all the highlighted items are
appropriate for the reparent operation and darkest when none are appropriate. As an example,
trying to reparent a bone from its owner object to another object is an inappropriate reparent
operation. Reparenting can only be performed when the item view is in hierarchy display mode.

The above image shows reparenting the highlighted items to Light

Re-ordering
It is possible to change the internal storage sequence of lights, cameras, objects, and bones when a
Sequence sort modes is active. The sort modes are changed by mouse clicking on the item views
item column. The mouse is used to drag and drop a highlighted selection between existing items.
It is important to note that the sequence is implicitly defined as: all objects (for each object, all
bones in that object) followed by all lights followed by all cameras. As such, it is not possible to
reposition an object between two lights, for example. The horizontal mouse position is important
in determining where to actually reorder items. A visual aid shows the desired insertion point, even
if that insertion point is not valid for the highlighted items.

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The above image shows inserting the highlighted items between Null (1) and Null (4)
Of important note is that the instance part of the name (the (2) in Null (2) for example) can
change when saving and reloading the scene. This is because the instance value assignment
is based on the item sequence at during certain item updates internal to Layout. Instance
identification is not part of a scene reference to an item. To best ensure item name display
consistency, each item name should be unique.

Adjusting Hierarchy
You can drag item names up and down to change the order and hierarchy (i.e., parent/child
relationships). As you drag, a light blue insert line will appear. You insert the item by releasing your
mouse button at the lines position. The line will cycle between different lengths as you drag; the
different lengths indicate different levels of hierarchy. The relative length indicates the level the line
becomes when you release the mouse button.

General Rules
Channels cannot be rearranged in either their hierarchy or top-down sequence.
When moving an item, it must not be an ancestor to any new parent.
An item cannot be moved to be a child of an item that it can have as a parent.
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If multiple items are selected for rearrangement, the selected parents of any selected
children will be used for rearrangement. The selected children will not be rearranged
directly, but will follow their parent automatically.
Only the parenting/owner structure may be modified when any sort order display is used.
Sorting applies to each level of hierarchy individually.
Any child of a filtered item will also be filtered.

Item Sorting
Clicking on each column heading can alter the order in which items in the item list are displayed.
The columns are: Active, Visibility, Locked, and Name.

Clicking on the Active column will sort based on the active state of the item. Sorting toggles
between increasing and decreasing active state. The Visibility and Locked columns sort the same
way.
The Name column uses alphabetical sorting and applies to item names and channel names.
However, lights and cameras are always separated from objects. Therefore, within each hierarchy
level, all bones are presented before objects, which are presented before lights, which are
presented before cameras. Channel hierarchies are always presented just below the item that owns
them. Bone hierarchies are also always presented below the objects that own them and always
after the objects channel hierarchies.
There are really two hierarchies present here: one for items, and one for channels. They are
managed separately and then incorporated into the final item list view. Item sorting may also
support the natural and reverse natural order. This sorts an items ItemID.
The Active, Visibility, and Locked columns are always displayed on the left of the Name column so
that they do not keep shifting position as the Scene Editor Panel resizes or the item view resizes.
The column heading of the Active column is an icon that looks like an A. If this column is used
for sorting, an up or down arrow is displayed next to the column heading when increasing or
decreasing sorting is used, respectively. When this column is not used for sorting, no such arrow
appears.
The column heading of the Visibility column is an icon that looks like an eye. If this column is used
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for sorting, an up or down arrow is displayed next to the column heading when increasing or
decreasing sorting is used, respectively. When this column is not used for sorting, no such arrow
appears.
The column heading of the Locked column is an icon that looks like a pad lock. If this column is
used for sorting, an up or down arrow is displayed next to the column heading when increasing or
decreasing sorting is used, respectively. Not locked is lower than locked.
The column heading of the Name column is the word Name. If this column is used for sorting, an
up or down arrow is displayed next to the column heading when increasing or decreasing sorting
is used, respectively. When this column is not used for sorting, no such arrow appears. In addition,
the use of natural sorting is supported, and is indicated with an arrow that also has a sort indicator
of ID.

Item List Right Click Menu

Context menu options are available by RMB-clicking in the item view rows. The row context may
change depending on what type of item is in that row. When combining the contexts of multiple
highlighted rows, only the options available to all highlighted items will be available.

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Selection:

Select in viewports - applies current selection to Layout item selection.

Select all - This selects all displayed items (after filtering).
Select none - This unselects all displayed items.
Invert selection - This will make all (displayed) items switch their selection state.
Select channels - selects the displayed channels of selected items.
Unselect channels - unselects all channels belonging to currently selected items.
Select child items - selects the displayed child of the currently selected items.
Select child items (recursive) - select all displayed children of currently selected items as well
as their descendants.
Unselect child items - unselects all displayed children of currently selected items.
Unselect child items (recursive) - unselects all displayed children of currently selected items.
This differs from a non-recursive form by affecting the expand state of deeper child levels
as well as the selected items.
Select similar - selects all displayed items that have a similar item type and name as the item
right-clicked on.
Highlight view port selection - all items selected in the viewport will become selected in the
Scene Editor.

Hierarchy:

Expand channels - This will show all channels for the selected items.
Expand channels (recursive) - this will progressively un-nest channel hierarchies.
Collapse channels - This will hide all channels for the selected items.
Expand child items - This will make the children for all selected items visible.
Expand child items (recursive) - This will make all descendants of the selected item as well as

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their descendants visible.
Collapse child items - This will hide the children of all selected items.
Collapse child items (recursive) - This will collapse all descendants of the selected items.
This differs from a non-recursive form by affecting the expand state of deeper child levels
as well as the selected items.

Manipulate:
Motion property panel - opens the Motion Options Panel for the selected item.
Item property panel - opens the Properties Panel for the selected item.
Edit Channels - opens the Graph Editor Panel with all the channels of the selected items ready
to be edited.
Rename - Triggers a dialogue box to rename a single item. Renaming of multiple items at
once is not supported.
Rename Layer - Rather than renaming the objects root name you can choose just to rename
individual layers. Renaming of multiple layers at once is not supported.

Add:

Add null object:- Activates the Null Object Name panel and adds a new null.
Add object:- Activates the Load Object panel.
Add object layer:- Activates the Load Object Layer panel.
Add (root|child) bone: adds a single bone to either an object item or as a child to an existing
bone item. The context determines which.
Add camera:- allows adding a single camera to the scene.
Add area light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds an area type light to the scene.
Add distant light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a distant type light to the scene.
Add dome light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a dome type light to the scene.
Add linear light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a linear type light to the scene.
Add photometric light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a photometric type light to
the scene.
Add point light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a point type light to the scene.
Add spherical light:- Opens the Light Name panel and adds a spherical type light to the
scene.
Add spotlight:- Activates the Light Name panel and adds a spotlight type light to the scene.
Clone:- allows cloning of any item or selection of items.
Clone hierarchy - clone a parent item with its children.

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Clear:

Remove/Clear:- Removes the selected items from the scene.

Clear all objects:- Removes all objects from the scene.
Clear all lights:- Removes all lights from the scene.
Clear all cameras:- Removes all cameras from the scene.
Clear all bones:- Removes all bones from the scene.

Item Searching
The Find tool at the top of the item view list is an option to perform item name and channel name
searches. Enter a simple search string (the case does not matter), press the Enter or Return key, and
the search begins.

If a match is found, the item cursor is placed there and any list scrolling or item expanding
necessary to view the matched item will be performed as well. It may also be useful to have the
perspective camera (or a special camera) change to view that item.
That may be accomplished indirectly by selecting the found item while the object centring feature
is enabled in layout, which puts the selected item into the perspective cameras view. The search
iterates through each list item (regardless of what type it is) starting with the current item list
cursor location, progressing to the list end, wrapping around to the list beginning, and winding
up at the iteration starting point. The iteration is aborted once a string match is found. Filtered-out
items do not get searched. If the search string used has more than one instance, all instances are
selected.

Filter
At the top of item view is a Filter option drop down button. These options allow the weeding out
of unwanted items and channels.

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The drop down menu has the following options:
Options - This brings up a separate, but modeless, Options Panel used for selecting the
filtering criteria for both items and channels. With the Options Panel previously used filtering
criteria can be recalled easily as well. Making changes to the criteria can be viewed in the
item list as the criteria changes.
Enable/Disable Item Filter (Boolean) - Toggle to affect if item filtering is used on Object, Light,
Camera, and Bone items.
Enable/Disable Channel Filter (Boolean) - Toggle to affect if channel filtering is used on
Channel items.
The Options Panel has a section for item criteria and a section for channel criteria. Checkboxes
that enable/disable the filtering are duplicated here so that the dropdown toggles may be used in
addition to these.

Filter Option Panel: Items Tab

For Items criteria, the following controls exist:

Enable Item Filtering (Boolean) - Toggle to affect if item filtering is used on Object, Light,
Camera, and Bone items.
Stored filters dropdown - choose any stored filter. Once selected, it is loaded. You only need
save filter settings you wish to use over and over again.
Remove - this will remove the filter that is currently selected, if one exists.
Save - this will overwrite the current filter choice with the current settings. If no filter is
currently selected, this button acts as a Save As button.
Save As - click to save the current filter criteria to a filter name. The filter name is requested
after clicking this button.
Contains - This determines how to use the item name string. Choices include: contains,
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equals, starts with, ends with, does not contain, does not equal, does not start with, does not
end with.

Item name string field - Any string can be entered to be used to match against all Layout
items (not just those currently in the item list).
Ignore Case - enable and disable case sensitive compares.
Include Object Items - enable to allow object items
Include Bones Items - enable to allow bone items
Include Lights Items - enable to allow light items
Include Camera Items - enable to allow camera items
Include Locked Items - enable to allow locked items
Include Unlocked Items - enable to allow unlocked items

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Filter Option Panel: Channels Tab

For channel criteria, the following controls exist:

Enable Channel Filtering (Boolean) - Toggle to affect if channel filtering is used on Channel
items.
Stored filters dropdown - choose any stored filter. Once selected, it is loaded. You only need
Save Filter settings you wish to use over and over again.
Remove - this will remove the filter that is currently selected, if one exists.
Save - this will overwrite the current filter choice with the current settings. If no filter is
currently selected, this button acts as a Save As button.
Save As - click to save the current filter criteria to a filter name. The filter name is requested
after clicking this button.
Channel name string field - Any string can be entered to be used to match against all channels
(allowed)
Contains - This determines how to use the channel name string. Choices include: contains,
equals, starts with, ends with, does not contain, does not equal, does not start with, and
does not end with.
Ignore case - This is used to enable case insensitive compares.
Include Position Channels - enable to allow position channels, which include Position.X,
Position.Y, and Position.Z
Include Rotation Channels - enable to allow orientation channels, which include Rotation.H,
Rotation.P, Rotation.B.
Include Scale Channels - enable to allow scaling channels, which include Scale.X, Scale.Y,
Scale.Z.
Include Other Channels - enable to include any channels that are not the standard position,
rotation, or scaling channels

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Scene Editor Selection Sets

The currently selected items, which may include objects, lights, cameras, bones, channels, and
groups of channels, can be remembered for later use via a Selection Set. This simply allows the
current selection to be saved and later recalled. Selecting Save Selection will bring up the Specify
Selection Set Name Panel.

Once a name has been entered, click OK and the selection set will be added to the Sets drop down
menu. Select the set name from the list when you would like to recall that selection. Select Remove
Set to delete a selection set from the list.

Surface List View: Surfaces Tab

This view displays the names and ownership of surfaces currently loaded in Layout. Surfaces
always belong to objects. Some of the same behaviours that apply to the Item List View will also
apply here.

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Surface List Display

Surfaces may be displayed By object or By surface. Display By Object groups all surfaces
belonging to a single object as children of that object. Display By Surface groups all objects that
contain a surface with the exact same name as children of the surface.

Either way, highlighting a surface will also select that surface in the Surface Editor window.
The method of display is indicated within the column heading of the list as either (By Object) or
(By Surface).
Surface items may also contain channels and groups of channels. For such surfaces, a channel
expand icon will appear in that row and will operate as it does in the Item List View.

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There is only one column in this list, the Name column. This column is sorted alphabetically by
name, but can be reverse sorted as well by clicking on the column heading. A horizontal scroll bar
located at the list bottom accommodates rows that are too wide to be fully seen.

Surface List Right Click Menu

RMB-click on a surface row presents context menu options.

The options are the same as for:

Selection:

Select all - This selects all displayed surfaces (after filtering).

Select none - This unselects all displayed surfaces.
Invert selection - This will make all (displayed) surfaces switch their selection state.
Select channels - selects the displayed channels of selected items.
Unselect channels - unselects all channels belonging to currently selected items.
Select children - selects all displayed children of currently selected surface groups.
Unselect children - unselects all displayed children of currently selected surface groups.
Select similar - selects all displayed surfaces that have a similar name as the item right-clicked
on.

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Hierarchy:

Expand channels - This will show all channels for the selected surfaces.
Collapse channels - This will hide all channels for the selected surfaces.
Expand items - This will make the children for all selected surfaces visible.
Collapse items - This will hide the children of all selected surfaces.

Manipulation:
Surface property panel - opens the Surface Editor.
Edit in graph editor - opens the Graph Editor Panel with all the channels of the selected
surfaces ready to be edited.

Filter Option Panel: Surfaces Tab

Surfaces and channels can be filtered much like they can for the Item List View. It is a way to
prevent certain surface items from appearing in the list. The surface filtering is available via a drop
down menu button at the top of the list:
Options - opens a panel used to select surface item and surface channel filtering options.
With the Options Panel previously used, filtering criteria can be recalled easily as well.
Making changes to the criteria can be viewed in the item list as the criteria changes.
Enable/Disable Surfaces Filter - Toggles filtering of surface items
Enable/Disable Channels Filter - Toggles filtering of surface channels
The Options Panel has a section for surface criteria and a section for channel criteria. Checkboxes
that enable/disable the filtering are duplicated here so that the dropdown toggles may be used in
addition to these.

Surface Filter Options Panel: Surfaces Tab

For Surface criteria, the following controls exist:

Enable Surfaces Filtering - Toggles filtering of surface items.
Stored filters dropdown - choose any stored filter. Once selected, it is loaded.

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Save - this will overwrite the current filter choice with the current settings. If no filter is
currently selected, this button acts as a Save As button.
Save As - click to save the current filter criteria to a filter name. The filter name is requested
after clicking this button.
Remove current filter button - click to remove the currently selected filter button. A
confirmation requester is presented first.
Contains - This determines how to use the string. Choices include: contains, equals, starts
with, ends with, does not contain, does not equal, does not start with, does not end with.
Name String Field - Any string can be entered to be used to match against all Layout surfaces
(not just those currently in the item list).
Ignore Case - This is used to enable case insensitive compares.

Surface Filter Options Panel: Channels Tab

For channel criteria, the following controls exist:

Enable Channels Filter - Toggles filtering of surface channels.
Stored filters dropdown - choose any stored filter. Once selected, it is loaded.
Save - this will overwrite the current filter choice with the current settings. If no filter is
currently selected, this button acts as a Save As button.
Save As - click to save the current filter criteria to a filter name. The filter name is requested
after clicking this button.
Remove current filter button - click to remove the currently selected filter button. A
confirmation requester is presented first.
Channel name string field - Any string can be entered to be used to match against all channels
(allowed).
Contains - This determines how to use the channel name string. Choices include: contains,
equals, starts with, ends with, does not contain, does not equal, does not start with, does not
end with.
Ignore Case - This is used to enable case insensitive compares.

Channels List View: Channels Tab

This view displays the names and ownership of channels used through the entire scene. This can
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include channels that are not normally visible by other means.

The operation of this list is similar to that of the other list views. See Item List and Surface List
View documentation above for more info.

Spread Sheet Property Panel

Often you want to edit certain properties of an item, and luckily, changing the values and
properties of items is simple in Layout. But what if you need to change the properties for 20
objects?
The Property Panel organizes these properties and lets you edit a wide range of values quickly and
easily.
The Spread Sheet Property Panel consists of two sections, The Bank section and the Column
section.

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Property Panel Banks

A collection of columns is called a Bank; and each bank can hold any number of columns. Some
predefined banks exist that help to organize the vast multitude of properties available. Custom
banks, which allow you to define which columns make up the bank, are also supported.
LightWave ships with a large collection of Bank Presets listed below:

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Bank Options Menu

Right clicking on the Bank drop down menu will bring up the Bank Options Menu.

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Add current cell selection to this banks cells - This will use any selected cell position and apply
it to the other columns in that bank for that same row. Only cells of matching type as already
selected cells will be selected.
Transfer current cell selection to this banks cells - this works like the add current cell... except
that transfer, clears out the current selection, so that the first type of cell encountered in the
bank will be used.
Apply item selection to this banks cells - This looks at highlighted items on the left side and
tries to select cells in the same rows as those items in all the columns of the bank.
However, only columns that are of similar types can have cells selected. For example, a check
box type cell and a numeric type cell cannot be edited at the same time.

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Add this bank from selection - attempts to select all cells in the bank.

The cell types must match.

Remove this bank from selection - Deselects all cells in the bank
Rename bank - This will rename the current bank for this instance of bank existence.
Save as custom bank - once any arrangement of columns (including resizing) are made, this
custom bank can be named and saved for future use.

Delete custom bank - deletes the custom bank preset. It will not remove a bank instance
based off that custom preset, just the preset so that it will not show up as a bank preset.

Sizing Banks
A bank can be resized using the right-most vertical line. In addition, using the upper portion of the
vertical line (the part where the bank name row is) will proportionally size the columns in the bank,
while it would normally just affect the last column.

Adding and Removing Banks

To add a bank, simply click the Add Bank button (+) located at the end of the bank name. To
remove a bank, click the Remove Bank button (-) located under the Add Bank button.

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Use the slider-bar at the bottom of the Property Cells to adjust which bank(s) are currently
displayed in the viewing area.

Property Panel Columns

A Column consists of Cells. Each column in the Scene Editor is a property instance having a specific
cell type. The Property cells contain the values for each of the properties, for all items.
The values range from numerical values to file names, depending on which property you are
editing.

There are many column types available to choose from. Left click on the column header to select
the Cell Type for that column.

Column Options Menu

Right clicking on a Column drop down menu will bring up the Column Options Menu.

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Add column after this one - This will create a new column to the right of the selected column.
Add current cell selection to this columns cells - This will select the same cells that are currently
selected in another column and apply that selection to the selected column.
Transfer current cell selection to this columns cells - This will select the same cells that are
currently selected in another column and apply that selection to the selected column. It will
then remove the selected cells in the previous column.

Apply item selection to this columns cells - This will select the cells in the selected column
based on the items selected.

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Add this column to selection - This will select the cells that make up this column to add them
to the selection.

Remove this column from selection - This will unselect the cells from the selected column.

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Remove this column - This will delete the selected column from the bank.

Sizing Columns
Left click on the vertical dividers between columns to size a column.

Property Panel Cells

Each property has a cell and cell type depending on the type of data being manipulated. Each
column in the Scene Editor is a property instance having a specific cell type. The rows are the
items shown in the list view. Cells may be edited via a property editing panel, which allows greater
manipulation flexibility when it comes to changing multiple cells at the same time.

Cell Types
Each cell type has its own unique Adjust Properties Panel, but they all share the Preview, Apply, and
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Revert options.

Preview - This option allows you to see updates to the Scene Editor in real time.

This is a preview for the Scene Editor Only.

Apply - This will apply any changes made to the cell property.
Revert - This will undo the last change applied to a cell property.

Unique Cell Type Adjust Properties:

Toggle - Check Box

Check - This will activate the option.

Uncheck - This will deactivate the option.
Toggle - This will toggle between active and deactive.
Numeric - Subtypes of integer, percent, distance, angle, time, float.

Change Value To - Value that will be applied to the cell property.

Change Value Effect - Determines how the value will be applied.
The Replace edit mode lets you make absolute changes to the cells values. That is, when you apply
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the edit to the selected cells, the new value will replace the current values. For example, you select
ten cells with various values in each cell, and in the Change Value To field you enter a value of 2.0.
When the edit is Previewed or Applied, the cells will now all read 2.0.
The Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide functions are all relative editing modes. They adjust the
cells values relative to their original values.
Use Step - This will add the Step value to the primary value incrementally according to the
order in which the cells have been selected.
Step Effect - Determines how the Step Value will be applied.
List - Array of items like a drop down menu.

Change To - This will replace the cell property with the chosen option.
String - Strings used for item tag properties.

Mode - Determines how the string will be applied to the cell property.
String - The text or comment to be applied to the cell property.
Color - RGB color values where each component is 8 bits (not used for high dynamic
lighting).

Change Color To - RGB value that will be applied to the cell property.
Change Color Effect - Determines how the RGB value will be applied.
The Replace edit mode lets you make absolute changes to the cells values. That is, when you apply
the edit to the selected cells, the new value will replace the current values. For example, you select
ten cells with various values in each cell, and in the Change Value To field you enter a value of 2.0.
When the edit is Previewed or Applied, the cells will now all read 2.0.
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The Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide functions are all relative editing modes. They adjust the
cells values relative to their original values.
Use Step - This will add the Step value to the primary value incrementally according to the
order in which the cells have been selected
Step Effect - Determines how the Step Value will be applied.
Item - layout item that is used for parent item, target item, etc

Change Item To - The item that will be applied to the cell property.
Enable Item Filter - For scenes with many items, use the filter option to limit your selection
options.
Image - Images used for items like Projection image.

Change Image To - The image that will be applied to the cell property.
Enable Item Filter - For scenes with many images , use the filter option to limit your selection
options.
Vertex Map - Vertex Maps used for items like Bone Weights.

Change Vertex Map To - The VMap that will be applied to the cell property.
Enable Item Filter - For scenes with many VMaps , use the filter option to limit your selection
options.

Cell Options Menu

Right clicking on a cell brings up the Cell Options Menu.
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Toggle Selection - This will select and deselect the cell.

Ctrl

+ LMB will toggle selection as well.

Select Panel - This panel gives you the ability to numerically select cells.

Deselect Panel - This panel gives you the ability to numerically deselect cells.

Jump to Editor - It is possible for a property cell to open a custom editor. The standard
properties dont use this function but it is possible for third party tools to add properties that
do.
Deselect all - This will deselect all cells.
Reverse selection order - This function will reverse the selection order of the cells that are
currently selected.

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Other reorder options are Reorder selection (left to right increasing toward bottom),
Reorder selection (right to left increasing toward bottom), Reorder selection (top to bottom
increasing toward bottom), and Reorder selection (bottom to top increasing toward
bottom).

Selection Zone
When a cell is available for multi-selection, it will be divided in two parts: on the left will be the
Selection Zone and on the right is the Value Zone. Left clicking and dragging in the Selection Zone
of a cell will add the cell to the selection set.

-left clicking while selecting a cell will mark the corner of a selection box, expanding the
selection box further out the more cells are selected. Control-left clicking will toggle on or off the
selected cell. The cells are numbered in the order they are selected.
Shift

If you are using the stepping features in the Adjust Properties panel, order of selection will be
important. Also, Adjust Properties is defaulted with Preview off to allow you to manipulate the values
before seeing their effect on the cells. The Preview button will also be turned off after clicking the Apply
button

Selection Zone Right Click Menu

Right clicking in the Selection Zone will bring up a new menu. This menu has options for changing
the selection order. The Adjust Properties panel is also accessible from this menu.

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String values cannot be added directly in the cell, but must be entered in the Adjust Properties
Panel.

You can hide the Scene Editor by hitting the Tab key.

If you have a Bank and Column selection that does not apply to the item type, the cell will not
be selectable at all. The Bank and Column sections will now change the selected choice a different color
instead of hiding it when the menu is activated.

If you have multiple cells selected and would like to only change a value for one, hold the
key while changing the value.

Ctrl

Scene Editor: Dope Sheet

The Dope Sheet is a form of scratch sheet with which the animation of channel data (position,
rotation, scale, etc.) can be manipulated without going into the details of what the exact channel
values are. This gives an overview of the scene animation and is useful when the multiple items
need to be viewed simultaneously so that their relative timing is correct. This view also allows easy
manipulation of a large number of channels in one operation. It allows time offsetting and time
scaling of channel data.

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It can also accelerate the process of cutting out portions of motion or transferring motion from an
item or channel to other items or channels. This view basically offers a method of manipulating key
frame existence without worrying about the exact value of each key frame; one of Graph Editors
purposes in Layout.

The Dope Sheet does not modify key frame values.

The Dope Sheet is a grid, or 2D array, in appearance. The horizontal dimension is time measured
in blocks. Each block represents a range of time, which is user adjustable in the Options Panel. The
horizontal block visible width has a pixel width, which can be adjusted to see more time blocks or
fewer within the visible portion of the sheet.

There is a minimum pixel width of three pixels for each block.

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The vertical dimension is measured in rows. Each row represents a single channel of key frame
data, a group of channels, or nothing. The height of each row is predetermined and matches
the row height of the Item List View rows and Surface List View rows. Each channel that contains
at least one key frame will have its appropriate block colored differently. Similarly, an item that
contains one or more channels (i.e. a channel group, but may be any row that has channel children)
with a colored block will have its own block colored, differently from the color of the channel block.
The range of time that the dope sheet will allow viewing of is determined by the preview first and
last endpoints set within Layout. The scrollbar will then allow viewing within that frame range.
There are numeric controls within the dope sheet at the bottom, which also allow setting the
preview first and last frames. These endpoints are shared with the ones in Layout.

The scrollbar has sizing handles on both sides. These are used to adjust the block pixel width so
that more or fewer blocks are visible at once. Minimum and maximum pixel widths exist as well.

The horizontal scrollbar has a size limit so that it does not get too small to grab hold of.
At the top of the sheet is a timeline tick marker display showing what each block represents. A time
code is displayed for each block for which there is room to display a time code.

Selecting Blocks
Blocks may be selected by using the Left mouse to drag a selection box around the blocks of
interest. The selection box starts in one corner of a block and ends in a corner of a block. The box
will snap to the nearest block boundaries and will indicate a selection of contiguous time and
contiguous rows.

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During selection, the box may extend beyond the visible portions of the sheet; this will cause the
dope sheet to scroll hidden areas into view.
The left edge of the dope sheet contains an empty area to show which rows (items) are selected
in the dope sheet. Rows that contain some selected blocks appear differently. The top of the dope
sheet shows which columns have selected blocks. The selection box itself is an outline of the
selected blocks. The left and right edges of this box have thin vertical handles used for time scaling
operations.

Clicking the LMB in the left edge of the Dope Sheet will select the entire row for all columns. It is
important to note that the dope sheet block selection is independent of an item list selection or
surface list selection.

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Clicking the LMB in the top of the dope sheet (where the time line tick marks are) will select the
blocks in that column for all rows shown. This does not include hidden rows or filtered items.

Clicking the LMB inside a single block will select that one block.

To add to an existing selection use the

Shift

+ LMB.

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A new selection always overwrites an existing selection.

Manipulating Selections
Once a selection box has been formed, the contents may be manipulated. If a channel group is
manipulated, all channels contained within (that are not filtered out) are manipulated even if the
group is not expanded. When a range of time is manipulated, only the keys originally selected will
be manipulated, even if the selection box now has moved as a result of an operation.
LMB and drag is used to move the time offset of a selection. Time offsets are applied block by
block. If finer time resolution is needed, using the control-key modifier while dragging allows the
keys to move in time with smaller increments.
LMB and dragging the left or right Scale Handles will allow time scaling. Using the left edge will use
the selection box end time as a scale reference time. Using the right edge will use the selection box
start time as a scale reference time.
The control key can be held down while mouse left-clicking. Doing so will allow the precise
location of a key in time to be manipulated instead of whole block manipulations. This can be done
when creating the selection box, moving a selection, and scaling a selection.

Holding the Shift key down while dragging, will reacquire the keys to be manipulated. This means
any key blocks that are currently highlighted AND inside the manipulation box
When you highlight some blocks and offset them so that now those original blocks are moved,
only some keys may exist that are inside the highlighted blocks and the manipulation box. Hitting
Shift while manipulating further will only affect those blocks that are both highlighted and inside
that manipulation box.

Selection Right Click Menu

Clicking the RMB inside the selection box will popup a context menu:

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Sheet:
Select all - select all blocks that the dope sheet will allow (all tracks all times within preview
range)
Unselect all - unselect all blocks currently selected
View all - set the block pixel size such that the preview range can be seen in full.
Select Highlighted Tracks - This will move the manipulation box to the highlighted blocks.

Time:
Set time here - set current time to the nearest frame to the current mouse position.

Selection:
Numeric offset - present dialog to offset the current selection in time.

Numeric time scale - present dialog to scale the current selection in time.

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Erase - Delete all keys within original selection. No keys After the selection will be shifted.
Insert Gap - Make the selection box a blank gap. Shift left edge to be right of right edge
Delete - destroys all keys within selection regardless of originally selected keys and shifts all
keys after the selection right edge to the left.
Cut - Stores keys from original selection into a temporary buffer. Those keys are deleted. The
selection box remains. Key times are stored relative to the selection left edge time. The time
range is also stored so that the right edge of the buffer is not determined by the last key.
Copy - Works like cut without deleting the original keys.
Paste Over - Only available if there are keys stored in the temporary buffer. Places keys into
the selection box starting with the left edge as a reference point. The selection box remains.
Keys will not be pasted beyond the right edge of the selection box. Tracks are processed top
to bottom regardless of where the stored keys came from. Existing keys in the selection box
are left alone. Keys with the same time value will be overwritten. When pasting, it is possible
that the number of rows copied will differ from the number of rows pasted to. When copy
row count is less than the past row count, the copied rows are applied row by row and will
cycle around again when the end is reached. In other words a copy count of two rows paste
count of five will result in source row 1 being applied to target rows 1, 3, and 5; and source
row 2 being applied to target rows 2 and 4. When the copy row count is greater than the
paste row count, the excess copy rows will not be used.
Paste insert - like Paste Over except that all time from the left edge of the selection is moved
forward in time in order to make room for the stored keys first. Then, the paste occurs
ignoring the selection box left/right, but it does consider the top/bottom selection.
Edit in graph editor - opens the Graph Editor with the current selection box selected. This
includes time range and tracks that may be selected.
Zoom - set the block pixel size such that the selection box time range occupies the visible
portion of the sheet.
Quantize - This useful operation will make all keys move in time to the start of the block
period they are contained within. This can help fix slight offset errors that may have crept in.

Scene Editor Playback Controls

Besides dragging the frame slider to navigate through your scene, you can also use the transport
controls located in the lower right corner of the Scene Editor. You can also play your scene
backward (left arrow) or forward (right arrow) from the current frame using the playback controls.

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Keyboard Shortcuts
There are also some keyboard shortcuts that can be used for playback:

Previous frame - (CURSOR LEFT)

Next frame - (CURSOR RIGHT)
Previous keyframe - ( Shift + CURSOR LEFT)
Next keyframe - ( Shift + CURSOR RIGHT)
Play Forward - (PAGE UP)
Play Backward - (PAGE DOWN)
Pause - (INSERT)

Your playback speed will vary depending on the complexity of your scene, object display mode,
system capabilities and so on. Reducing the size of your Layout window can dramatically increase
playback speed.

Workspace
A workspace is a collection of user specific settings that can be stored and recalled quickly. Settings
include: panel width and height and location, view dimensions within the panel, Item view
selection, filter options, display options, Property view bank and custom bank choices, dope sheet
settings, etc. These Workspace settings are stored on a per user basis. A user-specific configuration
file is used. The initial workspace data to use is built-in as a default workspace.

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The menu presented will show the existing workspaces available as well as options to save one,
reset it, and remove one. Selecting a named workspace will transfer its settings to the current
Workspace settings. Changes to the current workspace do not affect any stored workspaces unless
that workspace is overwritten via the Save current as option.
Save current as - Allows user to pick a name for the workspace. Using an existing
workspace name will overwrite that workspace; otherwise, a new storage workspace is
created.

Reset workspace - The current Workspace settings (not any of the storage Workspace settings)
are reset to their built-in values.
Remove workspace - A pop-up menu displays the existing workspaces, which can be
removed. Choosing one results in losing that stored workspace; this has no affect on the
settings of the current workspace.

Scene Editor Options

The Scene Editor options are categorized via the part of the GUI they affect: General, Items,
Properties, and Dope Sheet. A separate panel is used to adjust these options, which are stored as
part of the current workspace.

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General Options

Background color (odd rows) - click to change color of odd numbered rows.
Background color (even rows) - click to change color of even numbered rows.
Hierarchy indent (pixels) - (unsigned short) set to number of pixels used as a gap for each
additional child depth when displaying hierarchical data like layout items.
Highlight color (RGB) - color of background for highlighted items.

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Items Options

Default Object Color (RGB) - new objects are created in this color
Default Bone Color (RGB) - new bones are created in this color
Default Light Color (RGB) - new lights are created in this color
Default Camera Color (RGB) - new cameras are created in this color
Auto-apply selection to viewports - This will select items in viewports as they are selected in
the Scene Editor.

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Properties Options

Multiselect cells must have matching units - This is useful when selecting multiple channels
and properties. When enabled, only those cells that share the same storage units (e.g.
length, angle, percentage) will be selectable. It may be useful to turn this off when you
would like to select position, rotation, and/or scaling values simultaneously.
Limit color component values to 255 - When enabled, color values are limited to the 0-255
range. Some properties do interpret and benefit from color component values outside this
range. (Light intensity for example)
View and edit color as HSV - This uses the Hue, Saturation, Value approach to displaying and
editing colors within a cell.
Show cell selection order - When enabled, each cell will contain a small numeric indicator of
what order that cell was selected. This can be useful when applying values that depend on
the sequence of how the cells were selected in a multi-cell selection.
Open graph editor via E button: (Boolean) - Normally, pressing on a cells E button will add
an envelope and then open that envelope (channel) in the Graph Editor. When this option is
disabled, the Graph Editor will not be altered from its current state. When working with many
cells at once, it may become cumbersome to have the Graph Editor open up when you only
wanted to add the envelope.

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Dope Sheet Options

Show render first/last frame markers - When enabled, the gadgets for the Render Start Frame
and Render Stop Frame are presented and can be moved with the mouse by clicking on
them with the left mouse button.
Show Key ticks - This will allow the precise location of a key in time to be displayed.
Allow Group Selection - determines if groups of channels can be selected and manipulated
when collapsed. If disabled, only channels can be manipulated and never groups of
channels. If enabled, a group of channels can be manipulated by simply manipulating the
group blocks (as long as the group item is not expanded). When expanded, only the desired
channels will be manipulated even if the parent group is also highlighted.
Block period based on FPS value - Uses the current frames per second value in layout to
determine the block period (or amount of time a block represents). When disabled, you can
specify the custom time amount that a block should represent.
For example, an animation may be intended for 30FPS rendering, while the creation of the
animation may depend on a music rhythm based on a tempo of 96. So, you could set the
block period so that each block represents a 1/4 note or 1/8 note.
Block period - This is how much time each block in a dope sheet should represent. Normally
this is one frame but may be larger or even fractions of a frame. This is currently measured in
seconds per block and defaults to 1/30th s/block.
Block width min. - This is the minimum pixel width that a block (that contains key frame data)
should be.
Block width max. - This is the maximum pixel width that a block (that does not contain key
frame data) should be.
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Override block colors - This setting will use the Key block color and Group block color instead
of the default block colors.
Key block color - Choose a color for blocks that represent a single data channel that contains
one or more keys.
Group block color - Choose a color for blocks that represent multiple data channels in which
at least one of the data channels contains one or more keys.

Scene Editor Audio Options

A Menu button is located at the bottom of the panel that controls some basic audio support
features available in Layout.

Play Audio - This will play a loaded audio waveform from start to finish.
Load Audio - presents a file requester to get an audio file to be loaded. The audio waveform
is loaded and can be seen in the main Layout window within the timeline. Not much detail
about it is available however.
Audio Start Time - This requests the scene time when the audio should start.
Audio Scrubbing -When checked, the loaded audio will play whenever the timeline is
scrubbed. If it is unchecked, no audio will play. The loaded audio file will record with
previews.
Fixed Frequency - This is a toggle option. When enabled, the audio will play at its intended
sampled rate. If time scrubbing does not maintain real time playback rates, then gaps or
skips in the audio may occur. When disabled, the pitch of the audio will vary as a result of the
playback sample rate changing to accommodate the actual time scrubbing rate.
Clear Audio - clears out any audio currently loaded.

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Classic Scene Editor
The Classic Scene Editor (Scene Editor > Classic Scene Editor) has been completely replaced with the
new Scene Editor (Scene Editor > New Instance) and NewTek suggests that you use the new one
over the classic one. The Classic remains to help the transition for our customers who have a history
with the Classic Scene Editor.
You can see a list of all of the items in your scene arranged hierarchically as well as all of the
individual enveloped channels, perform global edits on keyframes, and change hierarchy. It also
allows you to set the wireframe colors, change visibility modes, and even load a reference sound
file.

Basic Functions
The scene list is a standard LightWave list window. You can expand and collapse groups as well as
subordinate items (e.g., child objects) by clicking the arrow icon that appears to the left of the item
name.
The +/- sign icon will display or hide the individual channels for the item. Most of the time, these
are the position, rotation, and scale channels; however, other enveloped channels can also be
included, like light intensity.

The item type icon indicates the type of item and the color used when the item appears in
wireframe. You can change this by right-clicking on the item name and selecting a color from the
pop-up menu. When working with complex scenes with overlapping objects, it can be beneficial to
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use different colors for certain items in the scene.

Double-clicking an items name will bring up the related Properties Panel.

If you drag the right edge of the panel, you can shrink the size of the Scene Editor and hide the
keys display. Use in this mode as a scene item picker!

The checkmark column activates or deactivates items. Deactivating an object is like setting
its Object Dissolve (Object Properties) to 100%, and deactivating a light is like setting its Light
Intensity (Light Properties) to 0%. For a bone, this toggles its Bone Active state (Bone Properties).
This option has no effect on cameras.
The eye column is the visibility column. For objects, clicking on this icon will display a pop-up
menu where you can select how the object is displayed. This can range from making the object
hidden all the way up to showing it as a textured shaded solid.

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The Visibility setting can dramatically affect not only how an object is displayed, but also how fast
the display is updated. Moving a 200,000-polygon 100-surface spacecraft around the screen using
a textured display surely requires greater computing power than a wireframe six-sided bounding
box. There are other reasons as well. Often, in a very complex scene, you may need to play with
object visibility options in order to concentrate on certain aspects of the scene.
Most of the Visibility settings are self-explanatory. Front Face Wireframe will show only polygons
that face the camera. The Textured Shaded Solid adds image-mapped surface textures.

You can override the Visibility setting to a certain extent by using the viewports Maximum
Render Level pop-up menu located on the top left edge of a viewport.

The Color and Visibility options affect only the appearance of items in the Layout view. They do
not affect the final rendered image.
For lights, cameras, and bones, you can make them visible or hidden by clicking in the visibility
column.

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Clicking in the lock column will toggle the locking function on for that item. Locked items cannot
be selected in the viewports. The lock icon will also appear on the Current Item pop-up menu (on
the main interface) next to the items name.

Pop-up Menu
When you right-click an item, it displays a pop-up menu. This menu can set the items wireframe
color, clear the item, clone the item, rename the item, and open its Properties or Motion Panels.

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Keyframes
The colored bars to the right indicate the length of the keyframed channel. The bar starts at its first
keyframe and ends at the last one. (Note that the ends may be past the end of the visible display
area.) The plus signs indicate keyframes.

The line with the items name is the master channel and will show a composite of all of the
keyframes in any of the underlying channels.

Adjusting Channels
You can move individual keyframes by dragging them with your mouse. The affected key is
highlighted when you initially click on it. Dragging on the bar, off any key, will move the entire bar
forward or backward in time.

Key becomes highlighted as you drag one key

Move all keys for channel by dragging bar

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You can also drag keys on the master channel, which will affect only the appropriate underlying
channels.
There are square handles at the beginning and end of every bar. You can drag these to scale all of
the keys in the bar.

For more precise adjustments, use the

Shift

Keys and/or Scale Keys functions.

Adjusting Hierarchy
You can drag item names up and down to change the order and hierarchy (i.e., parent/child
relationships). As you drag, a yellow insert line will appear. You insert the item by releasing your
mouse button at the lines position. The line will cycle between different lengths as you drag; the
different lengths indicate different levels of hierarchy. The relative length indicates the level the line
becomes when you release the mouse button.

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An item inserted between a parent and child will always become another child.

Effects of Selections
You can select a contiguous range of (same type) items by holding the Shift key down as you
select. Hold the Ctrl key down to select/unselect non-contiguous items.

You can then drag the entire selected range of items to a new hierarchical position. Most of the
editing functions can be limited to selected items only. These items will also be highlighted in the
viewports.

Adding Audio
You can sync your animation to sound: from the Audio pop-up menu, load a reference audio file
(WAV format) that you can hear when you play the scene. A simple waveform is shown behind the
time slider on the main interface. You can scrub though the audio by dragging the timeline slider
or preview the audio by selecting Play Audio. Use the Clear Audio option to clear the audio from
the scene.
The Fixed Frequency option keeps the audio from changing pitch when you scrub the frame slider.
You can delay the start time of a loaded audio file by selecting Audio Start Time from the Audio
pop-up menu. The value you enter into the dialog is the delay amount in seconds (e.g., if Frames
Per Second, on the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel, is set at 30, entering 1.0 starts
your audio at frame 30).
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Classic Scene Editor Buttons
Use the Favorites pop-up menu to create (or delete) selection sets for items that you want to access
quickly. For example, if you always move the same five lights, you could multi-select them and
make a favorite. Then, the next time you want to move them, you just select the favorites set you
created and all five lights are selected automatically.
The Select pop-up menu lets you quickly select all items based on their type. To unselect a group
of items, just click on any item. (One item is always selected.)
The Visibility pop-up menu will show/hide selected or all items.
The Colors pop-up menu will apply the selected color to all of the selected items. You can also set
the default colors and apply them to the scene.
The Channels pop-up menu will expand/collapse selected or all items.
With Shift Keys you can Shift keyframes for all or just selected items forward or backward in time.
The Low Frame and High Frame values set the range of frames to be affected. This function lets
you fine-tune the animation without making individual changes for each item in the scene (a
potentially tedious task). Enter a negative Shift Frames by value to shift backwards in time.

Some operations can affect frames outside the specified range. For example, shifting a range of
frames in the middle of a motion path will cause keyframes after the range to shift so they are not
overlapped by the newly shifted keyframes.
With Scale Keys you can extend or shorten either the duration of all or just selected items. The
Low Frame and High Frame values set the range of frames to be affected. The result is that events
occur either more slowly or more quickly, as they have been scaled to take place over a longer or
shorter period of time. Scale Keys enables you to fine-tune the animation, allowing certain events
or the entire animation to take place within a specified time frame so that you do not need to alter
specific keyframes manually. The Scale Time by value represents the scaling factor with 1 being
equal to 100 percent.

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Time-related elements of the scene other than motions and envelopes will not change with the
use of either Shift Keys or Scale Keys. Therefore, image sequence loop lengths and texture motion will
not be affected.

Utilities Tab
Commands
Command History
The Layout interface is built on a command system. Buttons, keyboard shortcuts, plugins, etc.,
essentially submit commands to the underlying Layout engine, which performs the actual
operation. You can view a list of the last commands that were executed by choosing Utilities >
Command History.

You can execute a single command by entering it - with any required parameters - in the input field
at the bottom of the Command History Panel. Clicking an entry in the list will automatically copy it
to the input field - you can edit the command before hitting the Enter key.

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To execute commands in a programmatic fashion, use LScript.

You can save a list of commands to a file by choosing Utilities > Save Command List.

Command Input
If you dont wish to use the Command History window, you can choose Utilities > Command Input
and enter a command into the dialog that appears.

Obviously, using the user interface to execute commands is far easier, and most users do not
need to use these functions. However, you might use the information from command history to
reproduce or document the exact operations you made interactively. Moreover, some commands
are not available to menus and keyboard shortcuts, thus, running them directly is the only way to
execute them.

To execute commands in a programmatic fashion, use LScript.

Save Command List

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You can save a list of commands to a file by choosing Utilities > Save Command List.

LScript
Executes an un-compiled Lscript.

The un-compiled Lscript file format is (*.ls)

LScript is a high-level wrapper for the LightWave plugin Application Programming Interface (API).
It encapsulates the complex underpinnings of the API away from the plug- in developer, allowing
them to concentrate more fully on the task to be accomplished. LScript also provides added
features not available in the plugin API, making plugin development faster.
Because LScript has its roots in the C language, the transition between scripting and nativelanguage (binary) plugin development is eased a great deal. Scripts written in LScript can often be
ported into C with far less effort. This makes it possible to use LScript as a rapid prototyping tool for
plugin development.
Nearly all of the LightWave plugin architectures have scripting capabilities through LScript.
LScripts can be installed in the same way plugins are. The LScripts then become commands that
can be added to menus or assigned to keyboard shortcuts.
LScript also provides a run-time system, allowing scripts to be compiled into an encrypted binary
form that prevents modification or reverse engineering. Facilities for timed or counted execution
are also provided by the run-time system.
Most important, LScript is a virtual machine system. LScripts are platform independent - scripts
written on one platform should work directly and immediately on any other platform supported
by LightWave. This differs from traditional plugin development in that each platform must have its
own compiler, and each plugin must be compiled and maintained on that platform.

LScript/RT
LScript/RT (Run Time) executes a compiled Lscript.

The file format for compiled LScripts is *.lsc

LScript is a high-level wrapper for the LightWave plugin Application Programming Interface (API).
It encapsulates the complex underpinnings of the API away from the plug- in developer, allowing
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them to concentrate more fully on the task to be accomplished. LScript also provides added
features not available in the plugin API, making plugin development faster.
Because LScript has its roots in the C language, the transition between scripting and nativelanguage (binary) plugin development is eased a great deal. Scripts written in LScript can often be
ported into C with far less effort. This makes it possible to use LScript as a rapid prototyping tool for
plugin development.
Nearly all of the LightWave plugin architectures have scripting capabilities through LScript.
LScripts can be installed in the same way plugins are. The LScripts then become commands that
can be added to menus or assigned to keyboard shortcuts.
LScript also provides a run-time system, allowing scripts to be compiled into an encrypted binary
form that prevents modification or reverse engineering. Facilities for timed or counted execution
are also provided by the run-time system.
Most important, LScript is a virtual machine system. LScripts are platform independent - scripts
written on one platform should work directly and immediately on any other platform supported
by LightWave. This differs from traditional plugin development in that each platform must have its
own compiler, and each plugin must be compiled and maintained on that platform.

LScript Commander
Lscript Commander (Utilities> LScript > Lscript Commander) can be used to create a command
sequence or an actual LScript for Layout. A command sequence is merely a list of commands that
can be executed in order from top to bottom. An LScript is similar, but more powerful. In an LScript,
for example, you can have programming type commands like loops and so on.

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The top black area is the session window and can contain either a command sequence or an
LScript. You can type directly into this window or copy commands from either of the bottom two
tabs.
The Events Tab contains a list of commands from operations that have occurred in Layout. The
Command Sequence Tab contains a list of all available commands. You can copy commands from
either list by selecting them (multiple selection is supported) and then right clicking on the list.
Once copied to the session window, you can edit the lines as needed.
You can execute single commands by entering them in the Command field.
You can define and use multiple sessions. The left Session pop-up menu contains controls to start
a new session, load an existing one, save the current session to file, and close the current session.
The Clear Session option erases all of the commands in the current session. Also on this menu are
options to convert a command sequence into an LScript and convert an LScript into a command
sequence.
The pop-up menu to the right is used to choose the current session, if there are more than one.
Click the Execute button to run the current command sequence or LScript.
Clicking the Install button will add the script to the Macros group on the LScript Menu Tab.

Select Hierarchy
This LScript will select the entire hierarchy which the currently selected item belongs to.
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Select Children
This LScript will select all of the children (and their children) of the currently selected item.

LS Compiler
This command will translate an un-compiled Lscript to a Binary compiled Lscript. Use the options
on the panel to enable timeout, expiration message, and more.

Choose a Target type before file browsing. The Target is the architectural type of the script. If the
script has a @script identifier in it, then you can specify it first, and the compiler will automatically
select the architecture.

IF - Image Filter
PT - Procedural Texture
DM - Displacement Map
IA - Item Animation (Item Motion)
OR - Object Replacement
GN - Generic
MC - Master
CF - Channel Filter
CO - Custom Object
Lib - Library file

un-compiled Lscripts file format is (*.ls), The file format for compiled LScripts is *.lsc.

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Plugins
Add Plugins
To add plugins from Layout, choose Utilities > Plugins > Add Plugins. (Hold the Shift key to select
a range. Hold Ctrl to select multiple non-contiguous files.) In Layout, an informational dialog will
appear telling you how many plugin (commands) were added.

Re-adding a plugin that is already added will not do any harm.

A single plugin file can have many functions, some internal and not directly accessible by the
user. Thus, when
you add one, it may report back that it has added more than one plugin. This is normal.

To add a directory of plugins:

You can quickly add all of the plugins in a directory (including subdirectories) using the Scan
Directory button. (It may take a few seconds to scan all of your plugin files. Be patient!) You can
access the Scan Directory feature on the Edit Plugins Panel.

Edit Plugins
To use the Edit Plugins command to review and delete plugins that have been added In Layout,
chooseUtilities > Plugins > Edit Plugins. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt -F11

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To delete a plugin command:
You can delete a plugin command by selecting it and clicking the Delete button. (Other commands
from the plugin will continue to exist.) Click Clear to delete all plugins listed. These operations have
no effect on the actual files stored on your hard drives.

To rename a plugin command:

You can rename a plugin commands name by selecting it, clicking the Rename button and
entering a new name.

You can also add plugins on this panel. The Add Plugins and Scan Directory buttons will add an
entire directory of plugins.

File Grouping Method

If desired, you can list the plugin commands by their .p plugin filenames. Just select the File
Grouping Method button at the bottom of the Edit Plugins Panel.

Last Plugin
The Last Plugin function (Utilities > Plugins > Last Plugin) will launch the window/panel of the last
plugin used in the scene. This includes shaders, deformers and more.

This function does nothing if no plugin has been used.

Flush Plugins
Choose Flush Plugins (This option is unassigned to a menu) to tell the unused plugins to let go of
their memory allocations.

Master Plugins
Choose Utilities > Plugins > Master Plugins or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl Q to display the Master
Plugins Panel. Use the Add Layout or Scene Master pop-up button to add global-type plugins.

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In some cases, plugins which are not meant for direct use, but are used internally, will be listed on
the pop-up menu.

Some of the Items in the Master Plugins Panel can be found on the interface and others can only
be accessed through this panel.
Here is a list to work from:

AnchorChain AnimationTakes - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.

Camera Selector - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.
Flock Master - Located on the FX Tools tab.
FX Master - has no interface.
Item Picker - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.
LScript - Located under the Utilities Tab.
LScript Commander - Located under the Utilities Tab.
LScript/RT - Located under the Utilities Tab.
Lw_macrorecorder - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.
Master Channel - Located in Utilities > Additional drop down menu.
Motion Mixer - Located under the Windows drop down menu.
Proxy Pick - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.
Python - Located under the Utilities Tab.
Python Tests - Available through Python requester.

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Render-Q - Located under the Render Tab.

Scene Editor - Located in the Top Toolbar menu.
SE Item Selector - Only located in Master Plugins Panel.
Window Configure - Located in the Edit drop down menu.

Camera Selector
The Camera Selector master plugin lets you switch between multiple cameras. Note that this
cannot be used to switch the camera during a render - the current camera is still used for that.
However, you can use it to switch between cameras while playing a scene in Layout or when
creating a preview anim.

To access, first bring up the Master Plugins Panel (Utilities > Plugins > Master Plugins).
Then, add CameraSelector. Double-click the entry to bring up its setting panel.

The Render Camera Keys window lists a sequence of frames and the camera to switch to on those
frames. Clicking the Add button adds the current camera at the current frame to the list. To delete
an entry, just select it with your mouse and click Delete.
The Enable Dynamic Preview option turns this function on and off.
For CameraSelector to do its magic, it needs information not normally available to master plugins.
As such, it automatically creates a null object called SpecialTriggerNull whose only purpose in life
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is to serve CameraSelector. If you wish to use a different object simply select it on the Trigger popup menu; however, normally, there is no reason to do so.

Item Picker
Item Picker (Utilities > Plugins > Master Plugins > Item Picker) displays the Quick Pick Panel. You can
instantly select frequently used items in your scene by just clicking on the items name in the list.

Use the Add Item pop-up menu to add an item from the scene to the list. To delete an entry, select
it and click Remove.

The Scene Editor can also be used as an item picker.

Master Channel
The Master Channel (Utilities > Plugins > Master Plugins > Master Channel) tool lets you create a
user-defined channel, which will appear in the Scene list of the Graph Editor under the entry MC.
You can keyframe the channel and use it as you would any channel.

To create the master channel, add the plugin and enter a name into the Channel Name field of its
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options dialog. The Type setting determines the units of measure for the channel. You can add the
plugin more than once to create multiple master channels.

LightWave Macro Recorder

This tool will monitor the stream of Command Sequence events that take place in Layout, and will
generate a v2.0 Generic LScript file that will reproduce the sequence of commands, including their
timings.

Proxy Pick
Proxy Pick (Utilities > Plugins > Master Plugins > Proxy Pick) translates the selection of one object,
known as the proxy, into the selection of another, known as the target. This is useful for picking
small but crucial items out of complex, crowded scenes.

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The Apply Label button uses the selected Proxy Object and Target Item to apply the ItemShape
custom object to the proxy. The name of the target is used in ItemShapes Label setting and its
Draw Line To option is set to the target. If a previous proxy was used, this button will clean up the
settings. This is an optional step.

Remember to disable Proxy Pick when you want to actually select the proxy rather than the
target, as it is not yet telepathic.

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Object Properties

LightWave 2015

Introduction
The Object Properties Panel controls the settings for the current object - the object last selected in
Layout. It will be shown on the Current Object pop-up menu on the Object Properties Panel and
changed here as well.

The Properties Panel for the current editing mode (i.e., Objects, Bones, Lights, etc.) can be
displayed by clicking the Item Properties button on the main Layout interface.

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Geometry Tab
Geometry Tab

Add Custom Object

Use the Add Custom Object pop-up menu on the Geometry Tab of the Object Properties Panel to
apply a Custom Object plugin to the current object. Custom objects are usually used to change the
look of a null and give you additional visual feedback features. Like null objects, custom objects do
not render.

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Object Replacement
You can use special plugins to replace objects during the course of an animation.

Level-of-Detail Object Replacement

Adding Level-Of-Detail Object Replacement lets you replace the object with another object based
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on its distance from the camera. This can be a great time-saver for objects that are sometimes close
to the camera and sometimes far, during your animation. There is no reason to waste rendering
power on a gazillion-polygon battle cruiser that is too small to make out any of its details. If its far
enough away, you might be able to get away with a simple box or sphere!

From top to bottom, the entries must be in near-to-far order, so the furthest entry is last. When the
distance from the camera to the object is within each range, the corresponding object is loaded.
The Base Object setting defaults to the object the plugin is added to; however, you can define a
different one if you like.

ObjList
ObjList replaces the current object with those listed in a text file. The file is defined using
a file requester that appears when you click the Options button. ObjList works much like
ObjectSequence, discussed later, but the object replacement list lets you use objects in different
directories or even across a network. The file must be formatted as follows:
#LW Object Replacement List
<replacement frame number>
<replacement object file>
<replacement frame number>
<replacement object file>
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<replacement frame number>
<replacement object file>

The replacement object information is defined in pairs of lines. The first line of the pair is the frame
number at which the object is to be replaced. The second line of the pair is the filename of the
replacement object, using a full path.
For example, to sequence through a series of box objects, this list would be used:
#LW Object Replacement List
0
c:\Newtek\Objects\terrihendrix.lwo
10
c:\Newtek\Objects\lloydmaines.lwo
20
c:\Newtek\Objects\willoryfarm.lwo

The sequence of objects does not need to be similar copies of the same thing. You can replace the
cow with a chrome teapot if you want to.
The first paired lines must be the object you want at frame 0. LightWave will assume this even if
you enter a different frame number. As such, if you used:
#LW Object Replacement List
35
c:\Newtek\Objects\box2.lwo

The Box2 object would still be loaded at frame 0.

ObjectSequence
ObjectSequence replaces an object with another one at a certain frame of the animation. This
replacement is like choosing Items > Replace With Object File except that it happens during the
animation. ObjectSequence is to objects, what an image sequence is to images.
To perform an object replacement, you must have multiple objects with names that differ only by a
three-digit number. For example, if you want to change between a series of box objects, you would
name the first object box000.lwo. If you want that object replaced by a second object at frame 10,
name the second object box010.lwo. This would be replaced by box027.lwo at frame 27, and so on.
These objects dont need to have anything in common except their names.
To use ObjectSequence, load the first object normally. Then, select ObjectSequence as the Object
Replacement plugin. All of the object files must be in the same subdirectory.

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Object geometry is normally created in Modeler and object animation is accomplished in Layout.
However, you can also animate object geometry, that is, change the relative positioning of points
in an object and thus change its shape. A simple example of this is sending a ripple through a
flag, which might be a simple segmented flat box. LightWaves bones feature lets you bend and
distort object geometry using an object skeleton. Often the bones are set up in a hierarchy using
Inverse Kinematics (IK) to help animate a complex structure, but IK can just as easily be applied to a
hierarchy of objects. Geometry can also be influenced by morphing.
To create such object sequences, you can use the Save Transformed Object command (File > Save >
Save Trans Object) to save the stages of transformation for an animated object.

Sequence of objects created using Save Transformed Object to save object in various stages of
animation. Note that the location as well as the shape of the geometry is recorded.

Using SubPatch Objects in Layout

The Subdivision Order setting controls the order in which LightWave meshes and deforms a
SubPatch object (using bones, Endomorphs, Displacement Maps, etc.). This can have a huge impact
on what the rendered object will look like. LightWave subdivides the SubPatch object, converting
it into a polygon mesh (i.e., meshing) on the fly. First is the default and should be used whenever
possible since it allows any deformation to affect an object in detail. For example, you cant add
displacement wrinkles to skin with Last, since the wrinkles would affect only the low-resolution
cage. Moreover, choices other than First take twice as long. This is because LightWave actually does
the meshing computation first regardless, to get the undistorted point positions that are later used
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for surface texture mapping purposes. Thus, choices other than First require a second meshing
computation.

However, if the meshing is performed first and then bones considerably bend the object, you
may get unwanted pinching in your object. In this case, Last or After Bones may work better since
the conversion is not done until after the SubPatch cage is deformed. Also, if you are morphing a
SubPatch object, you will want meshing to occur after morphing (using After Morphing, Last, etc.).
This is because the SubPatch object is really a control-point cage. If you mesh before the morph,
you are actually changing the shape of the control cage and unexpected results will likely occur.
If you use a Displacement Map on a SubPatch object, you probably want the subdivision to occur
before the displacement (using First, etc.). This will give the displacement more points to displace.
If you need to choose one of the in-between settings, here is the order in which LightWave
performs object deformations:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

Morphing
Before-bones plugin displacements
Bones
Object coordinate plugin and built-in displacements
Motion (scale, rotate, move)
World coordinate plugin and built-in displacements

This is the order of all the mesh operations:

1) First subdivision
2) Morphing
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3) After Morphing nodal displacement
4) After Morphing bump displacement
5) After Morphing displacement map
6) After Morphing displacement plugins
7) After Morphing subdivision
8) Before Bones nodal displacement
9) Before Bones bump displacement
10) Before Bones displacement map
11) Before Bones displacement plugins
12) Bone deformation
13) After Bones subdivision
14) Before Local nodal displacement
15) Before Local bump displacement
16) Before Local displacement map
17) Local displacement plugins
18) After Displacement subdivision
19) Local to world motion transform
20) After Motion subdivision
21) Before World nodal displacement
22) Before World bump displacement
23) Before World displacement map
24) World displacement plugins
25) Last subdivision
Before all those mesh operations are done, the motion of all the items in the scene is computed.
Keyframing, IK, motion controllers, motion plugins, etc. That creates a transformation from each
items local coordinate system to the world coordinate system. It includes everything: translation,
rotation, scaling, parenting. (The transformation is actually a matrix; there is no explicit rotation
from local to world for example).
The local to world motion transform (step 19 on the list) applies that transform to each vertex of
the mesh item. Before that step only the vertex positions in the items local coordinate system are
known (without the effect of item motion). After that step the positions of the vertices are in world
coordinates (with item motion applied).
The Before World steps are slightly misleading in name. It actually means Before World
displacement plugins. As you can see they are in fact applied after the item motion is applied, i.e.
to the vertices in world coordinates.

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SubPatch Display and Render Levels
SubPatch objects may be used in Layout as any other object. In Layout, the Object Properties Panel
includes two settings that are important when you use SubPatch objects. The Display SubPatch
Level and Render SubPatch Level settings determine the level of subdivision smoothing needed
for display and rendering purposes, respectively. These values, generally, have an effect similar to
Modelers Patch Divisions (General Options Panel) setting, discussed next.

The SubPatch levels may be set to zero. This is similar to a level of one, except that the patches are
not continually remeshed, even if Subdivision Order is not set to First. In other words, a level of zero
makes patches act like normal polygons, and this allows faster interaction.

Adaptive Pixel Subdivision (APS) is a system of subdividing an object. With APS an object can
be subdivided per polygon, by a texture, or even by pixels. It works by computing the subpatch level for
each polygon, and storing those levels in a VMap.

Additional Settings for Render Subpatch Level

Per Object: The classic method of having the same subdivision level for the entire mesh.
Per Polygon: Sets the Subdivision level per Cage Mesh polygon independently (commonly refered
to as variable subdivision)
Pixels Per Polygon: Ties the amount of pixels of the output frame to the subdivision level of the
cage polygons. For example, a setting of 4 means that a given polygon will have an area no larger
than 4 pixels.

When you make an item inactive in the Scene Editor, the mesh will still remain. in the scene This
is necessary for a number of reasons, plugins and other parts of LightWave may still need to reference
the item. APS effectively gives the mesh a setting of 0 for a subdivision level. This is for both CatmullClark and subpatch subdivision.

Value modifiers:
Numerical Input: Set the subdivision level directly
Envelope Control: Animate the Subdivision level, and can also use expression, motion modifiers to
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control the level here. Use this setting for manual control over the subdivision level, use this if you
know an object will not need more geometry than a given level for a given timeframe.

When using a black and white texture, usually an Alpha Map, you will need to tell APS which
values are black and white. You do this by setting the Gradient to Previous Layer and the gradient
settings to the subdivision levels.

If an item is made inactive through the Scene Editor, that item will not have APS applied to it
during rendering.

Texture Control:
Use any of the standard LightWave texture controls to drive subdivision(texture, procedural or
gradients):

Standard Gradients:

Previous layer
Distance to Camera,
Distance to Object,
X Distance to Object,
Y distance to Object,
Z Distance to Object

APS specific gradients:

Angle to Camera Z axis - Uses the angle between the position of the object/polygon in
camera coordinates and the camera Z axis. 0 == object/poly in center of view, 90 == beside
the camera
Weight Map - Using a weightmap to control the subdivision level, an averaging method is
used to get a uniform weight on a per cage polygon level.
Incidence Angle - Uses the angle between the surface normal and the ray from polygon
center to camera.
Face Angle - Uses the angle of the polygon normal in camera coordinates. 0 == facing the
camera XY plane.
Projected Size - Uses the projected size of the polygon, in square meters. Basically, it
calculates how big the polygon would look if it were held 1 meter away from the camera.

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Currently, to use the distance gradients you need to set the subdivision order to after motion. As
you need world cordinates to evaluate items that are not parented to the object itself, you can only get
to world coordinates after motion of the object have been applied.
Treat Subpatch objects just likepolygonal objects. You can use all of the normal Layout features,
like bones, to animate and deform the SubPatch object.

Meta-Primitive Display and Render Levels

The Display Metaball Resolution value represents the number of subdivisions. To get a smoother
surface, increase the value. There is no limit. A companion setting, Render Metaball Resolution,
controls the resolution used for rendering, which can be different.

Custom Objects

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Depth of Field Display
The Depth of Field Display custom object is a handy tool for seeing your Focal Distance and Lens
F-Stop Depth of Field settings found in the Camera Properties Panel. Anything that is located in the
Focus shape will be in focus and anything outside of the Focus shape will be out of focus.

Steps for applying the DOF Display custom object:

1) Add a Null to your scene.
2) Parent the Null to the camera.
3) Activate Depth of Field in the Camera Properties Panel and
adjust the Focal Distance and Lens F-Stop settings.
4) Add the Depth of Field Display Custom Object from the
Add Custom Object drop down menu.
Use the numeric options to set the Circle of Confusion setting. This setting means the size of a
point that is recognized as a single point. The smaller the value, the smaller the area will be in
which objects are defined as sharp.

HyperVoxels Drawing (HV Custom Object)

This custom object is automatically placed in the Add Custom Object list when HyperVoxels are
applied to an object.

IK Booster
IK Booster is discussed in the IK Booster section on page 605. One option of applying IK Booster
is to do it here in the Add custom Objects list. The preferred way is to add it with the IK Boost tool
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(Modify > IK Boost).

Camera Mask
It is sometimes necessary to use a textured object for the background instead of using a
Background Image (Effects Panel, Compositing Tab) for effects like casting shadows onto the
background or when you want to move the background around. The Camera Mask custom object
can be used to compute the exact Z distance needed to fill your camera view.

To use Camera Mask:

1) Model a flat Z-facing rectangle object with the proper aspect ratio. For example,
640 mm x 480 mm for a 4:3 aspect ratio. Apply your surface texture.
2) Load the object into Layout and parent it to the camera.
3) Add the Camera Mask custom object plugin to the object. Enter the objects size into its
options dialog and then close it. You will then see a rectangle that represents the exact
Z position where the object would fill the camera view. The numeric value of this magic
distance is also displayed.

4) Now, adjust the Z position of the object. You will see a representation of the camera view
extend from the object with your textured rectangle attached to the end. If you have a
Camera Mask set on the Camera Properties Panel, it will be visible.

Note that when the object is selected, the cameras mask will appear as dotted lines. Otherwise, the mask
will be the masks set color. (Note: You may see OpenGL display errors when the mask is solid.)

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5) Adjust the objects Z Position to the magic distance. The object will now fill the camera view.

You might also use a background plane with parts cut out, in conjunction with a Background
Image, so you can position things between the plane and Background Image.
A cross (+) also appears, which marks the cameras Focal
Distance setting from the Camera Properties Panel.

Effector
The Effector custom object can be used with the Effector Displacement plugin. This custom object
is designed to give you better visual feedback of your effector in Layout. Note that it does not
directly communicate with the related Displacement plugin, so all settings must be set manually.

It has two modes to match the shape of the effector: Point and Plane.

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When Effector Shape is set to Point, set the Solid Core Radius and Falloff Distance to match those
settings on the Displacement plugins panel. The arrows and dotted-lines indicate the falloff area.
The solid-line ball in the center is the solid core.
When Effector Shape is set to Plane, the effector will look like a four-sided plane. The Axis settings
will become available, and you can then set them accordingly. The other settings have no effect in
this mode.

Frame Rate Meter

Adding Frame Rate Meter to a null object will display frames-per-second information when you
play a scene or drag the frame slider.

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Object Comments
If you add a comment to a scene item using the Items Comments plugin (Utilities > Additional >
Comments), you can add the Item Comment Display custom object plugin and see the comment in
your viewports.

The Item setting determines which scene item gets its comment displayed. It does not have to be
the item you add the custom object plugin to. You also have control over the text Color, density
(Alpha), and Justification.

Item Shape
Item Shape lets you specify the shape and look of your custom object. This is a great way to give
each null in your scene a unique identity. When you create a null, clicking on the dropdown at the
bottom of the window gives you access straight away to the Item Shape properties.

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Shape - Choose the actual shape that will be displayed. Your choices are Standard (Standard
Null), Box, Ball, Pyramid, Diamond, Tetra, Ring, Grid, and None.
Axis - Which axis the shape is facing. This is best represented with the Ring and Grid shape.
Scale - Size of the shape.
Filled - This checkbox will determine whether the shape is displayed in wire or solid.
Label - Places a Label for the Item Shape.
Justification - Label Placement with the standard choices Left, Center, Right.
Draw Line To - Allows you to draw a dotted line to any item in the scene.
Selected Color - Color the item shape will be when it is selected.
Unselected Color - Color the item shape will be when it is not selected.
Text Color - Color of the Label text.
Opacity - Determines how opaque the item shape will appear.

LScript and LScript/RT

These two items will allow you to apply a Custom Object LScript.

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Level-of-Detail Mesh Refinement
Adding the Level-Of-Detail Mesh Refinement custom object tool allows you to independently
change the display and rendering resolution of SubPatch and Meta-primitives based on their
distance from the camera. This can save you rendering time when those types of objects are
sometimes close to the camera and sometimes far, during your animation.

From top to bottom, the entry groups must be in near-to-far order, so the furthest group is last.
When the distance from the camera to the object is within each range, the corresponding Display/
Render settings are used.

A value of -1 disables that (display/render) parameter. It is like deactivating the Enable option for a
group, but lets you control it differently for individual items in that group.
In your viewport, concentric rings are displayed around the object showing the defined distance
ranges.
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Protractor
Protractor sets up a custom object you can use to measure angles. With the Shape setting you can
make it a Full or Half circle. The Label option places numerical labels at set intervals. Use the Show
Mark option to place a tick mark at a set angle. Use Show Range to highlight a set range.

Range Finder
Adding Range Finder to an object will display the distance in meters from the selected item in the
scene. The Draw Link option will draw a dotted line between the items.

Null objects work best. However, if you add this to a regular object, you may want to use the
Bounding Box rendering level (selected on the viewports titlebar). Otherwise, the objects surface
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may obscure the numeric display.

Ruler
Adding Ruler to a null object provides a measurement device. You can change the length of the
ruler by stretching the object along the selected Axis. The units of measure can be 1/10 of a meter
or feet/inches. The Draw Numbers option controls the display of the numbers.

SockMonkey
The SockMonkey custom object plugin draws bounding boxes for links created in the main
SockMonkey displacement plugin. However, if you use the Auto-add Control Item button on the
main interface, this custom object plugin is automatically added to the created control item, so you
dont need to worry about adding this manually. If instead, you use the Add Relationship option
- where you manually define the Control Item - you can add this custom object plugin to get the
bounding box.

The Parent Object is the main SockMonkey object. The Pending Relationship is the related Vertex
Group defined on the main interface. Once assigned, this dialog will no longer appear when you
try to access the options. If not assigned to a link, adding this plugin does nothing.

Speedometer
Adding Speedometer to a null object allows you to measure the speed of an item in meters per
second. Choose the item whose speed you wish to measure with the Item pop-up menu. Activate
the World Coords option to measure the actual speed based on world coordinates. (Youll probably
want to do this if the item is parented to moving item.)

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The Max Speed setting determines the value when the pointer is pegged all the way to the right.
Select Auto-Range to have the plugin determine the maximum. Note that the pointer can go past
the maximum if the speed exceeds it.

Motion Capture Preview

This custom object plugin can be used to preview BioVision motion data. The preview is fast and
accurate. Use it to determine if there were any errors in the motion conversion.
Simply add the MotionCapturePreview custom object to a null object on the Object
Properties Panel. (If you run the MoCap_BVH_Setup generic Layout plugin, a null called
MotionCapturePreviewNull will automatically be added to the scene with the custom object
plugin already applied.)

ShowCurve
ShowCurve displays an object curve in Layout - normally curve objects are a Modeling tool and
cannot be seen in Layout. (If there is more than one curve in the object, the first curve is used.)

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The color of the curve can be adjusted using the Curve Color setting on the Options Panel. The
Draw Cage option, when active, displays the cage of the curve by connecting the vertices with
dashed lines in a color of your choice. The Draw Points option, when active, adds arrowheads to
each of the vertices to indicate the direction of the curve.

ShowCurve was designed to be used with the CurveConform displacement plugin.

Sliders

Sliders (Modify > Sliders) are slider gadgets that are displayed over viewports. An individual slider is
tied to a specific animation channel. A slider will indicate the current value of a channel and also let
you interactively adjust that channel value.

To configure your sliders:

Open the Sliders custom object settings dialog from the Object Properties Panel.

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The left window (Channels List) will list all of the channels in the scene. To attach a slider to a
channel, simply select the channel in the left window and click Add Channel. Selected channels in
the right window can be removed with the Remove Channel button.
The Range Min and Range Max settings define the interactive range of the slider. The underlying
channel can go beyond these values, but the sliders range of control and feedback will be limited
to this range. If the underlying channel goes outside of the range, the slider value will turn red.
Clicking on the slider handle will immediately change the channel to the sliders corresponding
value.
The description Label will default to the channel name, but you may edit that if you desire. You can
also set the color used for the slider with the Color preset pop-up menu or specific RGB values.

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Visor

Visor shows images and renders in a Layout viewport. The images and renders are organized in
panes. A pane can show one or more images and/or renders, and there can be multiple panes in
multiple viewports. Panes can be arbitrarily sized from taking up very little space, to a strip along
the side of a viewport, to covering an entire viewport. Visor can be used to keep reference photos
conveniently available in Layout without having to open yet another window. Visor can also be
used to show the last few F9 renders in a viewport without the need to have the render window
open.

Interacting with a pane

A pane can be activated by clicking in it or by selecting the Null to which the Visor custom object is
associated. Note that sometimes other items in the scene may interfere with clicking in the pane.
Clicking near the corners usually works best.
If there are multiple panes, all the panes will at first become active. You can then click on the pane
you want to work with by clicking in it again.
An active pane will show six gray handles. Four in the corners that can be dragged around to resize
the pane, one on the border that is a slider if there are more image than can be shown in the pane
and one in the center to move the pane. Youll need to add some images with the Image Editor or
by rendering in order for the slider to be useful.
The panes can be deactivated by selecting some item in the scene. Initially you may have to do this
by changing the Current Item. Afterwards Visor will keep track and return you to the last tool used
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and the items last selected.

Images and renders

Panes can show both images present in the Image Editor, and any F9 renders. To have an image
show up in a pane, simply load the image into the Image Editor.
To have renders appear in panes, the Render Display in the Render Options has to be set to the
entry called Render2Image. This option is added by Visor and it adds renders to the Image Editor
instead of renders appearing in the render display. From there they are picked up by the Visor
panes.

Visor can be used without using Render2Image, but F9 renders wont appear in the panes.
References to images which are shown in a pane will be saved into the scene file, even if they arent
used as part of the scene. However, this does NOT apply to renders. Renders will be lost if the scene
is cleared (you can always access a render through the Image Editor and save any you want to keep
from there). For renders, depending on how much space is available, Visor shows some helpful
information about each render, for example:
[8] 05/05/15 01:28:12, 73s, 12f, (1280 x 720)

This reads as: this is the 8th render made, at the given date and time, took 73 seconds to render, its
a render of frame number 12, and was rendered at a size of 1280 by 720 pixels.

The interface

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The interface can be opened either by double clicking on the Visor custom object entry, or by
double clicking on an active Visor pane.
As well as a button to add a new pane, there are also a set of global settings, and a bunch of
settings for the currently active pane.

Global settings
Max number of renders - Each rendering takes up memory to keep around. The number of
renders Visor keeps around is limited to the given number of most recent renders. If the
maximum number of renders is reached, the oldest render is deleted. Note that this does not
affect images, only renders. Default: 8
Double click time - This gives the maximum amount of time (in seconds)between clicks on a
pane in order for it to be registered as a double click. Double clicks on an active pane open
up the Visor interface. Default: 0.5

Pane settings
Remove pane - Clicking this button removes the currently active pane.
Viewport - Sets the index of the viewport in which the current active pane is placed.
Viewports are numbered from zero up to a maximum of three. 0 means the first viewport,
1 the second, and so on. Which viewport is the first, second, and so on depends on the
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viewport layout.
Negative viewport numbers indicate a viewport index relative from the last viewport. So -1
means that he pane will always appear in the last viewport, -2 means the second to last, and
so on. Default: -1
Show - Selects if the currently active pane will show images only, renders only, or both types.
Default: Images & Renders
Sort - Sets the sorting order between images and renders for the currently active pane.
Default: Images first
Sort images by - Sets the sorting order of the images (if there are any) for the currently active
pane. If Reverse is checked, the ordering of the images is reversed. Default: Name
Sort renders by - Sets the sorting order of the renders (if there are any) for the currently active
pane. If Reverse is checked, the ordering of the renders is reversed. Default: Index, Reverse
Background color - Gives the color used to fill the background of the currently active pane. If
Background is checked, the background is drawn, otherwise it isnt drawn. Default: 204 204
204, Background
Pane opacity - Sets the opacity with which the currently active pane is drawn. The pane
opacity is only used if the pane is not active. When the pane is active, it will always be drawn
completely opaque. Default: 100.0%

You can send images rendered to the Image Viewer to Visor using the File > Frame Buffer > AutoSend function.

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Example: Setting up Visor

Using one of the scenes in the 2015 content we will make use of Visor. Load the Bullet Mars
Explorer scene and reduce the resolution to speed up rendering for this example (set the Multiplier
to 50% in Camera Properties).

1) Load the scene and add a null object called Visor (to make it easy to find). In the Geometry
tab of the Object Properties window add Visor from the dropdown. Also, use F4 to split the
viewport in two and make the left side bigger than the right.

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2) Make sure you are in Object mode and that the Visor object is selected, then double click on
the Visor entry in your Object Properties window. In the new window that opens choose Add
Pane. A new blue pane will be placed in the right-hand viewport. The one here has finished
renders in it to show what they will look like.

3) In order to push renders to Visor you have two options. You can choose Render2Image in
Render Globals > General > Render Display or you can leave it at Image Viewer and pass
finished renders from there. For your first tests, set the Render Display to Render2Image.
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4) Render a couple of pictures so that you can see your pane filling up, then change the
Render Display back to Image Viewer. Do another render and when the Image Viewer
appears go to File > Frame Buffer > Render2Image and also choose Auto-Send Image.

Visor keeps renders in RAM, so if you find yourself running short and/or you want to save
your renders, you can go into Image Editor (F6) and delete or save images there with names starting
!Render...

VRML97 Custom Object

The VRML97 custom object can be applied to an object to make its VRML attributes visible in
Layout. It will display URLs, the Proximity-Sensor bounding box, LOD ranges, sound nodes, and
links to alternate triggers.

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Deform Tab

Morph Targets
Metamorphosing, or Morphing, causes a 3D metamorphosis from one object into the shape of
another object. Morphing requires a minimum of two objects: a beginning object and a target
object. These controls are on the Deformations Tab of the Object Properties Panel.

To be able to morph successfully between objects, the number of points and their order must be
identical.

Using Endomorph objects simplifies the process by keeping all target data within a single object
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file. This guarantees the same number of points and helps to maintain point order.
When you enter a Morph Amount, the object will be transformed by that percentage into the
Morph Target object. However, you will almost always animate the amount of morphing over time
using a standard LightWave envelope to control the morphing of an objects shape, surface colors,
or both, during an animation.

If you use an envelope, the Morph Amount will have no effect on the result.
The Morph Target is the destination object (the object that the current object will morph into). The
target object itself can have its own target and you may create a chain of up to forty targets. (Any
number of objects may be morphing within a scene.)
With Morph Surfaces you can cause the surface attributes (color, texture, etc.) of the first object in
a morph chain to convert to the surface attributes of the second object. Even if additional objects
are morphing, only the first and second objects may use Morph Surfaces.

Multiple Target/Single Envelope

To morph a single object through a chain of multiple targets using only one envelope, you can use
the Multi Target/Single Env option.The morph chain should be set so that object A has target B,
object B has target C, object C has target D, and so on. Once that is set up a morph value from 0 to
100 morphs the A object into the B object. Morph values from 101 to 200 will morph object A into
object C. Values of 201 to 300 will morph to D, and so on.

Multi Target/Single Env with surface morphing will reflect only a surface change during the first
morph.

Displacement Maps
Displacement Maps are similar to Surface Maps, which add color and texture to object surfaces.
However, instead of affecting the way an objects surface looks, Displacement Maps move the
points in an object, which changes its shape. The change can be subtle or dramatic, making it look
like a totally different object.

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Left: Without Displacement, Right: With Displacement

Remember that Displacement Mapping is saved in the scene file not in the object file. If you want
to load an object with its Displacement Map information, choose File > Load > Load Items From Scene.
You can easily make blowing curtains, rippling water surfaces, and bumpy terrain by applying
a Displacement Map to an object. Although the objects points move around, the polygon
relationships remain and, thus, surfacing information follows the displaced polygons.

Differences from Surface Textures

For the most part, textures for Displacement Maps are set up in the same way as textures for
surfaces. You will, however, notice a few differences.
One difference is that 3D textures (i.e., procedural and gradients) have an option that lets you
select the Displacement Axis.

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You can also factor the effect you would normally get from an Image Map displacement using the
Texture Amplitude setting. Use a value less than 1 to lessen the effect or more than 1 to increase it.

Example: Displacement Map

1) Create a plane with about 23 segments in both directions at a size of about 400 mm high
and 1m wide and load it into Layout.

2) Press p to open the Object Properties Panel.

3) Click the Displacement Map Texture button on the Deformations Tab.
When the Texture Editor appears, change the default Layer Type to
Procedural Texture. Select Turbulence as the Procedural Type and set the
Displacement Axis to Z since we want the flag to move along that axis.

4) Study the effect of the Displacement Map on the object. Interesting, but a little too
exaggerated. Essentially, the size and amount of the displacement is out of proportion for our
object. Its like dropping a boulder into a padding pool. What we really need is a small stone.
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5) Go back to the Texture Editor and change the Texture Value to .2. This will reduce the general
amount of displacement.
6) Now, this object is only about 400 mm wide. To get smaller ripples, change the textures
Scale to 500 mm for all axes.

This tones down the wave in the object.

7) Click the Play button in the lower right corner of the main interface.
The display updates automatically and we get better feedback as
we animate the texture. (Note: the flag doesnt move yet.)
8) You can animate the wave by animating the textures Position, which is the
center of the texture. Click on the Envelope button for the X position field.

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9) The Graph Editor will appear. Select only the Position X for the texture and add a key at
frame 60 (the last frame in the scene) with a value of about 2m. (You may need to adjust the
graph zoom a little. Just drag on the magnifying glass icon.)

if your scene is still playing, you should see your flag waving. We
are moving the texture two meters over 60 frames.
10) Now of course, if this were a real flag, it would be attached to a pole and the left side would
not wave as much as the right. We can simulate this by moving the center of the texture and
applying falloff to the effect.
Set the textures Falloff to X = 100%. This sets the amount to reduce the displacement
per default unit, which should be one meter (General Options Tab of the Preferences
Panel). Now, the effect is in full force at its center and reduced 100% at one meter
from the center (the left edge, since the flag is 1 meter wide). If you want a little
more movement towards the left side of the flag, reduce the Falloff value.

11) The flag is one meter wide, but its local Origin is at its center - you could figure this out by
looking at it in Modeler or where it loads by default in Layout. Thus, the right edge is at
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500mm. This should be the starting point for the textures X Position.
Back in the Graph Editor, switch to the Move Mode and drag the first key (at frame 0) up.
As you drag, look at the layout viewport. You should see the texture move to the right
(along the X axis). Since you have falloff, as you move the key, the falloff will begin at a
different point - eventually the right edge of the flag - and fall off completely at the left.

When you animate the Position values, the Falloff center is based on the Position at frame 0.
12) To add a little more variance to the wave, you could add keys
to the Z position of the Displacement Map.

Displacement Map Order Menu

Determines the sequence of Displacement Map evaluation order:
After Morphing
Before Bones
Before Local Displacement
Before World Displacement

Displacement Mapped Objects

Generally, when you construct objects in Modeler, you try to minimise the number of polygons
that are used. However, if you know you will use the object with a Displacement Map, you may
need to subdivide certain or all areas of an object into a greater number of polygons to create
more bendable areas. All polygons should also be triangles. Displacement Mapping can cause fourplus sided polygons to become non-planar, which may result in rendering errors.

Displacement Mapping Versus Bump Mapping

Displacement Mapping is different from Surface Bump Mapping in that the objects geometry
actually changes, where Bump Mapping fakes the change with shading.
If you use an Image Map as a Displacement Map (instead of a procedural texture), pure white areas
will displace an objects points 100 percent of the value of the Texture Amplitude. Pure black areas
will not displace at all, and in-between values will be applied relatively.
Note that the Texture Amplitude value has an enveloping option, which can animate a
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displacement over time.

The Ripples displacement texture will not actually raise the surface, but rather it spreads the
points out across the surface. If you need to create water ripples that appear to rise when you view the
surface edge closely, try using the Fractal Noise texture instead. Fractal Noise will actually displace
points out from the surface.

It is recommended to have mipmapping turned off when using displacements.

Edit Nodes
When checked on, you can use the Node Editor to displace your object.. When you open the Node
Editor you will notice a new node, Displacement, and this is the hook for your displacements.

Example of Node Editor with Displacement Map

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Examples of Displacement Node:

Left: Nondisplaced ball; Right, Displaced ball

In order for the Displacement node to function as expected, use a Vector as the input. Otherwise
you may get unexpected results. You should also use the Spot Info node with the Normal output.
You can also import displacement maps from other programs, such as ZBrush, with the node
editor.

Left: Normal head; Right: Head with Displacement map

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In the image above, there is a subtract node, then a multiply node. Subtract - In LightWave
black is usually used as no displacement and white as full displacement, but ZBrush is different. ZBrush
uses black as a negative displacement (displace in the opposite direction of white), mid grey as no
displacement, and grey as full displacement. To do this subtract 0.5 so that instead of the image going
from 0 to 0.5 to 1, it goes from -0.5 to 0 to 0.5. Multiply - Instead of making the image go from -0.5 to 0
to 0.5, we would really prefer it to go from -1 to 1, so multiply the image by 2. However this node also
has the added bonus on controling how far we want to displace the vertices, especially because we will
displacing them by a default distance of 1 meter!

Bump Displacement
The Bump Displacement option uses the bump texture on a polygon and vertex, and applies it
as a displacement texture. The direction of the displacement is set by the vertex normal, and the
amount of displacement is set by the Dist value.

Bump Displacement is great because it creates actual geometry deformations from bump shading.
(Remember, bump shading by itself does not affect the geometry.) The result is better looking
bump contours, shading, and shadows.

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This feature is especially good on SubPatch objects because their detailed geometry allows the
displacement to more closely match the bumps and surface contours, particularly when Render
SubPatch Level (Object Properties) is set to high values.

Bump Displacement Order Menu

Determines the sequence of Bump Displacement evaluation order:
After Morphing
Before Bones
Before Local Displacement
Before World Displacement

Add Displacement
Use the Add Displacement pop-up menu on the Deform Tab of the Object Properties Panel to
apply a displacement plugin to the current object.

Curve Conform
Curve Conform uses a curve object to deform an objects mesh. In order to determine what part of
the curve applies to what part of the mesh, you must define an axis and a range of distances along
that axis. The axis is the direction in the mesh, which will be transformed to lie along the curve. The
Range Start and Range End values define where the beginning and end of the curve match up with
the selected Axis.

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When Curve Conform is first added, it scans the mesh to compute a bounding box. The range and
axis are set to match the longest side of this bounding box. The Auto-Range button can be used to
rescan the mesh and set the range based on the bounds of the currently selected axis.
The curve object is set on the Curve pop-up. If there is more than one curve in the object, the first
curve is used.
The Flip option reverses the influence direction of the curve. World Coordinates leaves the curves
position fixed in 3D space, deforming only that part of the mesh that moves into its range.
Stretch alters the mapping of the range to the curves arc length (the length of the curve), so that
the entire range exactly fits into the length of the curve. This can cause stretching or compression
of the mesh along its axis.
When Align is enabled, the vertices are rotated, as well as translated, so the meshs thickness
along the axis is preserved, like a bend operation. This mode maps the range directly to the curve,
so the Flip option has the effect of flipping the mesh, but leaving the basic shape the same.
The Curve Influence percentage blends the deformed shape with the original un-deformed shape
Show Curve (Custom Object) displays an object curve in Layout - normally curve objects are a
modeling tool and cannot be seen in Layout. (If there is more than one curve in the object, the first
curve is used.)

Deform Displacement Plugins

The Deform Displacement plugins let you deform objects much like Modelers Flex and Deform
tools. Each needs two null objects to operate.

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Deform: Bend
The Effect Base object defines the start of the bending point along the selected Axis. The Effect
Handle object determines the direction of the bending.

Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

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Deform: Pole
The Effect Center is the center of the effect and scaling it will distort the geometry. The Effect
Corner defines the corner of the influenced area. Use the sliders to shape the influence area.

Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

Deform: Shear
The setup for Deform: Shear is nearly the same as Deform: Bend. You can also control how the
effect is applied from the base to the handle by using the two tension sliders. The top slider
controls the beginning and the bottom one controls the end. Use the Preset pop-up to select from
some common settings.

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Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

Deform: Taper
Deform: Taper works just like Deform: Shear, except that you size the handle instead of moving it.

Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

Deform: Twist
Deform: Twist works just like Deform: Shear, except that you rotate the handle instead of moving it.
The center of the twisting is defined by the base object.

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Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

Deform: Vortex
The Effect Center is the center of the effect and rotating it around the selected Axis will distort the
geometry. As such, if you select the X axis, you rotate the objects pitch; for Y, you rotate heading;
and for Z, you rotate bank. The Effect Corner defines the corner of the influenced area. Use the
sliders to shape the influence area.

Add Deform: Vortex three times using a different Axis setting on each to have full rotational
influence.
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Nulls used in image are using Item Shape instead of the standard Null Shape.

Effector
Effector causes effector objects to repel or attract the points of the affected object. The effector
objects may be any objects you wish, but Null objects work best.

The Effector Object(s) Prefix is a name prefix with the default of Effector, and any object that begins
with this name will be an effector. This lets you have more than one effector based simply on their
name.
Solid Core Radius defines a spherical area, within which all points are equally affected. There is a
gradual falloff of the effect between the Solid Core Radius and Falloff Distance. Points outside the
Falloff Distance are not affected at all.
You can also choose the Effector Shape: it can be a Point or Plane. If it is a Plane, you need to
specify the Axis. Plane can make an impenetrable plane that begins at the negative side of the axis
based on the effector position (like keeping feet squashed against the floor). Falloff Distance and
Solid Core Radius will have no effect.
The impact of the effector object is set and animated by keyframing its XYZ Size channels. Positive
values repel and negative values attract.

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Expression
Expression is a sister plugin to the Expression channel modifier. You use it in the same way.

You can set independent expressions for the XYZ point displacements using the Channel pop-up
menu.
Some global options are available that are not on the channel modifier version. The After Bones
option will cause the displacement to occur after bone displacement. With World Coordinates
checked, the XYZ variables in the expression are in world space, not local space.

FX_Hardlink
FX_Hardlink is a very powerful tool that allows you to use the dynamic motion from one object
and apply it to another. In most cases the dynamic object contains very few polygons (2-point
polygons) while the HardLink object has a higher polygon count.
In the example below, Cloth Dynamics is applied to a 2-point polygon chain made up of (x4)
2-point polygons. It is the parent of a single layered object that is made up of four monkeys. When
you use FX_Hardlink, the monkeys take on the motion of the 2-point polygon chain.
Hardlink keeps the geometry rigid and will displace it based on the Piece Mode setting.

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The HardLink Object must be parented to the Dynamic object in order for FX_Hardlink to work.

FX_Hardlink Properties

Under the Basic Tab you can choose what Piece Mode you would like to use. Polygon treats each
segment as its own object. 1 Piece will make the entire object a solid and considers it one piece.
Point Set will read selection sets that you could create in Modeler.
The Edit FX Tab allows you to change what pieces are linked to what nodes. This is handy if the tool
doesnt quite link what you thought it would on complex objects.

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FX_MetaLink
FX_Metalink is a very powerful tool that allows you to use the dynamic motion from one object
and apply it to another. In most cases the dynamic object contains very few polygons (2-point
polygons) while the MetaLink object has a higher polygon count.

You may run into problems if the Dynamic Object is too rough. Subdividing the Dynamic Object
may help.
In the example below, a 2-point polygon chain with Cloth dynamics applied to it is the parent of
the Worm (MetaLink Object). The Work takes on the dynamic motion of the 2point polygon chain
with zero calculation time.

The MetaLink Object must be parented to the Dynamic object in order for FX_Metalink to work.

The Smoothing option attempts to smooth the reshaping of the Metalink object. If unchecked, the
reshaping can pass through the vertex of the cage object (dynamic Object).

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If you want to use other Displacement Maps and not have them be ignored by MetaLink also
apply Metalink_Morph.

FX Metalink Morph
FX_Metalink_Morph is a displacement plugin that enhances the functions of FX_Metalink. By itself,
FX_Metalink cannot use normal morphing information because it ignores bones, Morph Mapping,
and Displacement Maps. However, if you use FX_Metalink with FX_Metalink _Morph, you can use
normal morphing data.

The FX_Metalink _Morph plugin can be added before or after FX_Metalink.

FX_Metalink _Morph has one pop-up menu called Morph Mode. Set this to One time morph to
execute morphing only one time. This mode is appropriate when the morphing is from Morph
Mapping. Use Every time morph to execute morphing for each displacement process. This mode
is appropriate when the morphing varies, like the Displacement Map of waves. The Non morph
setting simply disables this plugin.

HyperVoxels Particles
The HyperVoxels Particles Displacement plugin lets you set the base color for a HyperVoxels
particle to the color of the Vertex Color Map, if one exists. You can also set the particle weight using
a Weight Vmap.

These options are only available when HyperVoxels have been applied to an object.

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Inertia
Inertia creates lazy points. It will delay the point positions in an object, and cause them to catch up
over a period of time.

Lag Rate (s/m) is the amount of delay (in seconds) for points that are one meter away from the
pivot point of the object - points closer or farther will be adjusted accordingly. If you had the pivot
point for the cow object at the tip of her nose and moved her forward, her nose would move with
the pivot point; however, the rest of her would be delayed. If you set Lag Rate to 1, then the portion
of the cow that is one meter from her nose would be one second behind.

Normally, the objects movement triggers the effect; however, you can point at a different object
instead by using Inertia Pivot Object. Then, the object doesnt even need to move to get the effect.
Inertia Pivot Object replaces the items pivot point, and becomes the center from which the inertia
acts. Points farther away from this center have a larger delay in their animation - they are delayed
by a time equal to the distance multiplied by the Lag Rate. Activating Local Pivot uses the pivot
points local coordinates rather than world coordinates.
You can also specify a Weight Map. Zero weighting will result in no delay for those points. Using
100% is the same as not using a Weight Map on those points.

Joint Morph Plus

Joint Morph Plus drives an Endomorph based on the angle of a bone. This displacement function
replaces the common, but cumbersome, use of Morph Mixer in combination with an expression or
plugin to control the morph channel based on a bone angle. This would allow you to, say, bend an
arm using bones, but also control a Morph Map that might bulge muscles.

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The first three entries define the object you are using the bones from, the bone and its axis that
control the morphing. Usually the object will be (self ) i.e. the object you are attaching to this
plugin, but sometimes it makes sense to have the Endomorph controlled by another object s
bones (e.g. if you have a high resolution object and a low resolution proxy).
The next two entries define what kind of morph is used if the control bone is below (Angle < Min)
or above (Angle > Max) the defined range. If these options are set to (base), the base model (i.e. no
morphing) will be used, otherwise the lowest (Min Morph) value or the highest (Max Morph) value
will be used.
The next (up to five) values define the range of the morphs. Every entry (make sure to activate the
checkboxes at the left) defines a morph at a given angle. The values can be in any order, but make
sure that you also define the angle for the base model (usually this angle will be at zero degrees). If
you define multiple morphs for one angle, only the first entry will be considered.
The percentage entry scales the morph, usually this entry will be set to 100%.
Rotate the control bone now and you will see the effect of the morphing. If the angle of the control
bone matches exactly a defined position, the corresponding morph will be used, otherwise the
plugin will interpolate between two morphs.

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Lazy Points
Lazy Points alters time for the points of an object it affects. When the Lazy Points Plugin is active
for an object, the further an objects points are from its center, the longer it takes them to move,
rotate, size and stretch.

LScript and LScript/RT

These two items will allow you to apply an LScript.

2015

MD Baker

MD Baker is a Displacement Map plugin that incorporates motion data from Layout into Motion
Designer. MD Baker can handle motions, such as those of bones affected by Displacement Map
plugins. The resulting data becomes an MDD or Geocache file to be used with the main Motion
Designer plugin.

MDD Filename - This is the name the file will be saved as.
File Format - Determines the motion file type. You can choose from:
MDD - LightWaves native Motion Designer format
GeoCache Single - creates a single GeoCache .mc file and its accompanying .xml file
GeoCache Multi - creates a separate GeoCache file for each frame of the scene. This is
mainly necessary when Single .mc files become too large to be comfortably managed.
MC/MCX - When saving in a GeoCache format an option new to LightWave 2015
becomes available - to save in the new MC or MCX format.
Bake Mode - Sets what the motion data will record. Some file types only recognize data from
specific mesh types.

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Cage Only - The cage is the mesh before any subdivision is applied. Choosing this
option will apply only motion data of the cage.
Subdivision Only - Subdivision occurs after the cage. Choosing this option will record
only the subdivided mesh data.
Cage and Subdivision - This option will record both the cage and subdivided mesh data.
First Frame - Sets the first frame to start recording on.
Last Frame - Sets the last frame for recording.
Frame Rate - Sets the number of steps for recording. A setting of 1 will record the next frame,
while a setting of 2 will record every other frame.
Save OBJs - Checked on will save an OBJ file with the same name as the object.
Save LWOs - Checked on will save an LWO file with the motion file.

When you use MD_Baker with other Displacement Map plugins, be sure to add MD_Scan last.
To use MD Baker:
1) Add MD Baker to the Deformations Tab of the Object Properties
Panel for the object whose motion you wish to incorporate.
2) Double-click the added plugin to open its Options Panel.
3) Define the desired MDD filename and set the parameters. Click OK.
4) Click OK for the next dialog that appears.
5) Make a preview animation.
6) Open the MD Baker Options Panel again. This time a different version
of the panel will appear. Click OK to save the MDD file data.
7) Remove MD Baker or deactivate it.
8) Load the file into MD Reader.

You can also bake multiple objects and read multiple MDD or GeoCache files using the MD MultiBaker and MDD Multi-Loader tools on Layouts I/O Tab.

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2015

MD Reader

MD Reader is the Displacement Map plugin that applies motion data (MDD, vertcache or Alembic
file) to an object in Layout. New to LightWave 2015 is support for MCX format vertex caches.

MD_Reader is automatically added to the Target when you click the Activate button on the MD
Property, Objects Tab. It is removed if Deactivate is clicked. As such, you will normally not need to add or
adjust this plugin manually.

Setting Options
File Name - Use this to load the motion data file.
Frame Offset - The default load time is at frame 0, you can use this setting to offset the load
time.
Replay Speed - If you want the motion data to replay at a different speed, adjust this setting.
100% would be the same, 50% would be replay at half speed.
End Behavior - This setting determines what happens with the motion data once it has
finished.
Stop - The motion data will stop.
Loop - The motion data start at the beginning again once it has finished.
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Comp - Plays back the MDD file continuously.
PingPong - The motion data will reverse once it has reached the end, then go forward
once it has reached the beginning again.
Apply Cache to - Choose between World or Object Space.
Match-By - Matches the MDD by the specified setting.
Point Order - Using this option, points must be in the same order on the object as
the cache file. The advantage for using this Match-By option is lighter processing is
necessary.
Coordinates - Matches the cache data with the object in Layout by the coordinates of
each point in the object. The number of points in the cache and the new object do not
need to match with this option.
Frames to Load - When left to the default of 0, all frames in the cache file will be loaded.
Vertex Cache Units - Allows the MDD to scale the data brought in.
Alembic Mesh - Used when you have loaded an Alembic file, this item shows the Alembic file
name associated with the cache data.
Up Vector - Offers a choice between Y-Up and Z-Up. LightWave is Y-Up.

When using MD with other displacement plugins (which should be loaded after MD) be sure KeyMove is ON. Motion Designer ignores any plugins loaded above MD_Reader.

MD_MetaPlug
MD_MetaPlug is a Displacement Map plugin for extending MD_Plug and applying a MDD file to
the object in Layout without restricting the shape or the number of points. This lets you create the
animation, and lets you completely separate the object for animation and the object for rendering.
For example, you might use this to add buttons on a dress after the MD calculation.

Setting Options
Specify the target MDD file in the MDD Filename field. The details include the number of MDD
frames, recorded time, and the number of points on the plugin button. Verify the information.
Specify the object used for the calculation of the MDD file as Cage Object. This object should
be made up of triangles and quads. The smooth reshaping is executed based on the lattice by
polygons.

You may run into problems if the Cage Object is too rough. Subdividing the Cage Object may
help.
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In the ActionStart field, specify the time (in seconds) at which motions based on the MDD should
start.
Use the EndBehavior pop-up menu to specify what happens at the end of the motion based on the
MDD. Stop maintains the last state, Repeat repeats the motion, and Composite plays back the MDD
file successively.
Key-Move is used to specify whether or not to displace the shape using the standard keyframe.
Since the MDD already contains displacement information, setting Key-Move to ON can duplicate
the displacement of shapes. As such, you will usually set this to OFF. However, this will also disable
any movement in Layout.
The Smoothing option attempts to smooth the reshaping. If unchecked, the reshaping will pass
through the vertex of the Cage Object.
Activate Disable to turn the plugin off without losing your settings.

MD_MetaPlug_Morph
MD_MetaPlug_Morph is a displacement plugin that enhances the functions of MD_MetaPlug. By
itself, MD_MetaPlug cannot use normal morphing information because it ignores bones, Morph
Mapping, and Displacement Maps. However, if you use MD_Plug with MD_MetaPlug_Morph, you
can use normal morphing data with Motion Designer.
The MD_MetaPlug_Morph plugin can be added before or after MD_Plug. Make sure MD_Plugs
Key-Move is set to OFF.
MD_MetaPlug_Morph has one pop-up menu called Morph Mode. Set this to One time morph to
execute morphing only one time. This mode is appropriate when the morphing is from Morph
Mapping. Use Every time morph to execute morphing for each displacement process. This mode
is appropriate when the morphing varies, like the Displacement Map of waves. The Non morph
setting simply disables this plugin.

Using MD_Metaplug_Morph is CPU intensive, so be sure to select the appropriate Morph Mode.

Morph Mixer
Use the Morph Mixer Displacement plugin to animate using Endomorphs. You dont really need
to use the plugin now as a button to access MorphMixer has been added to the top of the Deform
tab.
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See Morph Mixer Section, later in this chapter and starting on page 453, for more information.

NormalDisplacement
NormalDisplacement can displace each vertex either along its normal or using Morph Maps.
NormalDisplacement differs from regular displacement in that with regular displacement, the
direction is fixed by you (or texture). With NormalDisplacement, the displacement is set by the
geometry, an effect similar to using Smooth Shift in Modeler.

A vertexs normal direction is the average of the polygon normals it is connected to.

An image of normal displacement would be very helpful in describing the tools use.
The Displacement Amplitude sets the amount of displacement. Displacement Direction lets you
choose whether the direction of the displacement is along the vertex Normals or using Morph
Maps. The Texture button brings up the Texture Editor, where you can add a texture (like in a
regular displacement texture).
If you are displacing along Morph Maps, set the MorphMap pop-up menu to the target Morph
Map.
The Detail Attenuation option reduces the displacement in highly detailed areas, preventing the
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geometry from intersecting itself. This is accomplished by weighting each displacement by the
neighboring polygons area, so vertices in small polygon areas are displaced less than in large
polygon areas. You can adjust this weighting with the Attenuation Bias parameter. A bias of 0
percent will attenuate most polygons and 100 percent will affect only very small polygons.
The Cache Normals option causes the normals to be calculated only once. These results are used
for later evaluations, making the evaluations much faster. This option is recommended for solid
objects, but not for objects that are being deformed (e.g., with bones).

If you are network rendering, Cache Normals will not work since the scene is unloaded and
reloaded for each new frame. Instead of using Cache Normals for a solid object that does not change
over time, freeze the deformed shape with the Save Transformed command, save it under a new name,
and use the new object in place of the old.

Play your scene while tweaking the settings to get real-time feedback.
Remember that textures are three-dimensional and generally have different values for any point in
3D space (assuming your texture is something dynamic, like Turbulence). The value of the texture
at each vertex acts as a multiplier against the Displacement Amplitude value. So if a texture was at
50 percent for a particular vertex and the Displacement Amplitude was 500mm, that vertex would
be displaced 250mm (500mm x 50 percent). Each vertex would have its own evaluation.
Because each vertex gets its own texture value, when using Morph Maps, the amount of morphing
is usually different for each vertex. If the texture is animated, you will see the amount of morphing
change over time.
A cool trick would be to use a gradient texture with Distance to Camera or Distance to Object set
as the Input Parameter. The gradient could just be a ramp from 100 percent to 0 percent. Then, you
can cause a morph to occur based on the distance to the object or camera.

Python
Opens a file requester for a Python script to create displacement for your object.

Python Lazy Points

A Python version of the Lazy Point script, included for learning and reference.
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Relativity Morph
A Relativity Morph Expression module for the Relativity scripting system.

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Serpent

Serpent is a displacement plugin that deforms an object so that it hugs its path. The object is
expected to travel along some axis of alignment.

Alignment Axis sets the axis along which the object will be aligned. The Start Frame and End Frame
parameters turn the deformation on and off at those frames, respectively.
Object deformation is usually not pretty when the object slides past the Start Frame and End
Frame. To get around this glitch, give the object a nice straight lead-in, possibly with a linear
keyframe. The length of this segment should be about the length the object extends past its
center (0,0,0 in Modeler). Also, let the motion path and end frame extend beyond the end of your
intended animation, or end with a nice straight segment along the Alignment Axis. Dont make the
bends in the curve too sharp relative to the thickness and subdivision level of the object.
Serpent is computationally intensive. Using the following steps will maximise your efforts:
1) Set up the motion path (i.e. keyframes) before applying the plugin to the object.
2) Apply the plugin to a low-polygon-count stand-in object and refine your Scene.
3) Use Items > Replace > Replace With Object File to replace
the stand-in object with the finished version.

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Serpent does not work well with Align To Path controllers (Motion Options Panel) activated for
the object.

Sock Monkey
Sock Monkey is an animation plugin that uses scene items - typically null objects - to deform an
objects mesh. You can deform an object like it is a puppet.
Sock Monkey parallels bones in many respects. You may want to use it if it matches your animation
style. One big difference, however, from using bones is that the control objects are external to the
object.

Basic SockMonkey Setup:

1) Create an object in Modeler using selection sets or Weight Maps. These will define
the regions of the mesh to be deformed (e.g., chest, upper arm, lower arm, hand, etc.).
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Using Weight Maps lets you vary the influence based on the vertex weighting.
2) Load the object into Layout and add the SockMonkey displacement plug.

3) Open the SockMonkey Options Panel. On the Relationship Setup Tab, set Vertex Group
Types to the type you used in step 1.

4) Click the Auto Setup Object button. Control items (objects) will be added to the scene and a
relationship with each vertex group will be set up.

(If you are using Weight Maps, select each group and activate the Use Weight Values option
(Control Item Tab).)
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To manually add a control item, select the selection set or Weight Map from the Vertex Group
pop-up menu. Then, click the Auto-Add Control Item button. If the item already exists in the scene,
select it from the Control Item pop-up menu and click the Add Relationship button.
Instead of using Auto-Add Control Item, which c=reates the control items, Auto Assoc. w/Existing
will add relationships to existing scene items. Just make sure the scene items have the same name
as the groups before running. In other words, if you have a Weight Map called Shoulder, you must
have, say, a null object called Shoulder. Note that this operation will not position the scene items
like Auto-Add Control Item does.

Control items dont have to be null objects, although this is usually the case. They can be lights
or even cameras.

Control Item Tab

The settings on the Control Item Tab affect the selected group in the list. Use Rotation will cause
the control items rotation to influence the group. When using Weight Maps, youll probably want
to activate Use Weight Values so the weighting of vertices will affect influence.
Like bones, control items have rest positions that provide the starting point of their influence.
To change a control items rest position, activate the Edit Rest Position option, move the item and
then deactivate the option.

Display Options
Use the settings on the Display Options Tab to change how (or if ) the group bounding box is
displayed in viewports.

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Use the Display Bounding Box option to toggle the bounding box on and off. Choose a Line
Pattern for the bounding box.

Left to Right: Solid, Dotted

Left to Right: Dash, Dash-Dot

Choose a preset color from the Line Color drop down menu or pick a Custom Color for the
bounding box.

Batch Operations

Use Enable All Relationships and Disable All Relationships to activate or deactivate all of the group/
control item relationships.
The Edit All Rest Positions option allows you to edit the rest position for all control items.
The Remove Relationship button removes the group/control item relationship for the selected
group. You can also remove all relationships in one step using the Remove All Relationships.

MD Multi Baker
MD Multi Baker is similar to MD_Baker and can export multiple objects MDDs at once, see the File_
Menu > Export section on page 238 for more details.

Spline Displacement
The Spline Displacement tool (Modify > Spline Displacement) is a simple way to animate hoses,
tentacles, etc. using a spline with control handles.
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Object Displacement: Morph Mixer
Using LightWaves Vertex Map feature, all of your morph targets can be wrapped up neatly into a
single object, with point-offset information. This type of object is called an Endomorph and the
targets are referred to as Morph Maps.
Another advantage of Endomorphs is that a morphed pose can be a mixture of multiple targets.
With normal object morphing, discussed previously, you are limited to the morphed states
between the beginning and target objects only.
Whats more, animating an Endomorph is simple because you just keyframe your poses using the
Morph Mixer Displacement plugin.

Morph Mixer: Morph List

The Morph List will display all of the Endomorphs that have been created for the object. If no
groups were created in Modeler they will all appear in one group. To have pre-defined groups use
the group naming convention when creating your morphs.

Placing a (.) after the first part of the name creates a new group. Its suggested that you name
your morph using the group.pose format; like Eyes.Open or Mouth.Smile.

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For more information about Endomorphs see the Endomorphs section at the end of the Map tab
chapter in the Modeler part of the manual.

Managing Groups
You can move a morph from one group to another by simply dragging it to the desired group.

Create a new group using the New Group button. This allows you to re-organize your morphs
without having to return to modeler. Use the Rename Group button to give any of the morph
groups a new name. You also have the option to remove groups with the Delete Group button.

Deleting a group that contains morphs will place those morphs in the previos group in the list.
Also, deleting a group doesnt delete it from the object.
Clicking the Graph Editor button in the Morph Mixer Panel will launch the Graph Editor with all the
morphs channels in the channel list that appear in the Morph Slider area. The Reset Group button
will set all the morph sliders in the Morph Slider Area back to 0%.

Morph Mixer Options

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Morph Mixer gives you the ability to save and load grouping information using the Save/Load
Grouping Data commands. Use the Save/Load Endomorph Mix to reuse your morph animation data.
Morph Mixer has three View Modes to choose from. These modes will determine what morph
sliders will appear in the Morph Slider Area.
Normal - Will display all the Morphs from the Current group.
Display all morphs as one group - Every morph in the object will be displayed and treated as
one group.
Display Active Morphs Only - Only morphs that have been animated will be displayed.
Use the Set Slider Range setting to set the Low/High (min/max) values for all sliders.

Morph Slider Area

The Morph Slider Area is where you will do all your animating of the individual morphs.

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Individual Slider Banks

Morph Name - Name of morph for the Slider Bank.

Morph Slider - Slider used to interactively change the morph value.
Morph Value - Value of the current morph. You can manually enter in a value without using
the slider.
Previous Keyframe - This button will skip to the previous keyframe in the animation.
KeyFrame - Displays Keyframe off and on.
Left click on K button creates key for the morph.
Left click on K button removes key if current frame has a keyframe for the morph.
Shift + Left Click on K button keys all morphs in active group (respects view modes) at
current value.
Shift + Left Click on K button removes keys on all morphs in active group (respects
view modes) if the current frame has a keyframe.
Ctrl +Left click on K button resets individual slider to zero and creates key.

Keyframes are always automatically created when the slider is adjusted.

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Next Keyframe - This button will skip to the next keyframe in the animation.
Envelope - This will launch the Graph Editor with the morph channel selected.

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Render Tab

2015

Clip Mapping

The Clip Mapping function, located on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel, offers
a way to quickly alter an object. Basically, it allows you to cut away portions of an object using
a texture. This is a great way of creating 2D pop-ups, as well as holes, tears, or grids in objects
without having to model them.

In LightWave 2015, Clip Maps are still available in Object Properties as before, but they can now
be saved as a Surface Editor property meaning that clips now become part of surfacing and thus
saved with the object rather than only being a Scene property. This means that there is no longer a
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need to use Load from Scene to load an object with clip maps - as long as said clip maps have been
assigned using the Surface Editor.
This change also means that you can have multiple clip maps that are surface-limited rather than
having to juggle different layers in the Texture Editor to create the clip map arrangement you want.

Left: Flat Plane Object, Right: Clip Map Image

Rendered Image

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Object Cloned Several Times

Army of Dorks with Cute Anime Girls

There is one important distinction between a Clip Map and normal texturing options: there is no
partial clip. The information in the Clip Map either cuts the relevant area away or leaves it intact.

If you need a partial-clip effect, try using a Surface Transparency Map instead.
If an image is used as a Clip Map, any value of 50% luminance (brightness) or higher will clip the
corresponding part of the object, while a value below 50% will not. Using Procedural Textures
works similarly, except LightWave calculates the image data instead of providing it in a picture. A
two-color image will give you the most control over the results of a Clip Map.
Like Displacement Maps, Clip Maps are also saved as part of the scene file and not as part of the
object if you use them through Object Properties. In order to load an object and its Clip Map, use
File > Load > Load Items From Scene.
If, on the other hand, you used the Surface Editor to place your clip maps, they will be saved with
the object directly making reloading into another scene simple.

Place a clip-mapped flat polygon outside the camera view to fake shadows through grids, trees,
or a window, using Shadow Maps. Use this where a shadow-mapped light source doesnt result in the
correct shadow due to features like a transparent surface.

Matte Object Option

A Matte Object option has been added to the Render Tab. It causes an object to be rendered in a
single user-specified color (usually black or white) with no shading, overriding all of the objects
surfaces.

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When an object is set as MATTE, it should take on the matte color where it is visible to the camera
but it should not be seen by any other rays. In addition, the luminance channel should be 0 for the
objects pixels. The matte color is still affected by fog.

Alpha Channel Options

On the Matte Object section of the Render Tab panel there is also an Alpha Channel pop-up.
You can choose from the following:
Use Surface Settings - uses the surface settings of the object to determine the objects effect
on the Alpha Channel
Unaffected by Object - to have the Alpha Channel be unaffected by the Object (essentially an
Unseen by Alpha option)
Constant Black - the object is black as far as the Alpha Channel is concerned.

Object Dissolve
Entering a value for Object Dissolve on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel will cause
LightWave to render the object in a semi-dissolved state. If you enter 100 percent, LightWave will
not render it at all. Since the value supports envelopes, you can change the dissolve amount over
time. For example, you may wish to slowly dissolve clouds in on a rainy day, or replace one object
with another by dissolving them in and out in the same frame.

The appropriate Properties Panel will appear based on the current edit mode (Objects, Bones,
Lights, or Cameras) when you press the p key or click the Item Properties button.
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Distance Dissolve
Activating Distance Dissolve lets you automatically dissolve the current object out after it has
moved a certain distance from the camera. The Max Dist value determines the distance at which
the object should be totally dissolved. The dissolve is gradual, thus the object will have some
amount of dissolve any time it is between the camera and the Max Dist.

Underwater particles and moving stars often benefit from Distance Dissolve.

Unseen By Rays
Selecting Unseen by Rays for an object tells LightWave to ignore the object in its ray-tracing
calculations when reflection and refraction are involved. This means that the object will not appear
in the reflections or refraction of another object. It will, however, render normally in the scene. This
is especially handy for objects that are front projection-mapped; you probably do not wish them to
show up in the reflections within other objects. Unseen by Rays will not affect the shadow options
of a given object.

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Unaffected By Fog
Objects that have Unaffected by Fog selected will be excluded from the fog effect. Also, the fog
Level setting, to the right of the Unaffected by Fog option, will let you apply an amount less than or
greater than normal. Normal is 100%.

Unseen By Camera
An alternative to making an object 100-percent dissolved is to activate Unseen by Camera. This
makes the object invisible to the camera when you render; however, you will still be able to see it
and work with it in the Layout window.
Although the camera wont see these objects, lights will. You can use this option to cast fake
shadows into your scene from off-screen objects, like window pane frames.

Left: Normal Render, Right: Unseen Clay Sculpture

Object Shadow Options

If a light has shadows enabled, any objects illuminated by it will generally cast shadows on
themselves or onto other objects. However, you have complete control over this. LightWave lets
you decide exactly which shadow options an object should employ. For example, you may wish
for some objects not to cast shadows and others not to receive shadows. By default, all shadow
options are on.

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All Shadow Options Active

Judicious use of the Self Shadow, Cast Shadow, and Receive Shadow options (Rendering Tab) for
the objects in your scene can greatly speed up rendering times for both ray-traced and shadowmapped lights.
Deactivate Self Shadow if you do not want or need an object to cast shadows on itself. An egg is a
good example of an object that cannot cast shadows on itself. A tree on the other hand is a prime
candidate for Self Shadow.

Self Shadow Inactive

Do not confuse Self Shadow with shading. An egg under a solitary light source may be shaded so
that one side is darker, but this is shading and not casting a shadow on itself.

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Deactivate Cast Shadow if you do not want an object to cast a shadow onto other objects.
A spaceship orbiting a planet would be a good example of an object that usually should not cast a
shadow.

Cast Shadow and Self Shadow Options Inactive

Deactivate Receive Shadow if you do not wish an object to receive shadows from other objects.
In the spaceship orbiting a planet scenario, perhaps a better option would be to turn off Receive
Shadow for the planet as opposed to turning off Cast Shadow for the spaceship. You may want the
spaceship to cast shadows onto nearby asteroids or other ships.
Shadow options apply whether LightWave is using ray-traced shadows or Shadow Maps. However,
when you use Shadow Maps and you do not wish an object to receive a shadow, you need to
deactivate both Receive Shadow and Self Shadow. Likewise, for an object that you do not wish to
cast a shadow-mapped shadow, deactivate Cast Shadow and Self Shadow.
There is a Shadow Offset text entry and mini-slider in the Render tab of the Object Properties
panel. This defaults to 0. By entering a small amount (100 mm worked in internal testing) the
origin of the shadow rays cast by the object will be offset along the smooth surface normal by the
Shadow Offset distance. This will cause nearby polygons on irregular objects to not cast shadows
on their neighbors if they are roughly co-planar with them. More distant polygons on the same
object or polygons that are not co-planar will still cast shadows as usual. This feature can be used
to get rid of flickering shadows on the surface of irregular objects such as asteroids.

Receive Shadows and HyperVoxels

Currently, plugins do not have access to all lighting information. As a result, HyperVoxels, for
example, will continue to receive shadows, even if the Receive Shadows option is disabled.

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Edges Tab
Edge/Outline/Line/Point Rendering
The rendering of all types of lines has been improved. All edge types work on instances. Nodal
shaders can be used to adjust the taper, color and opacity of the edges. Lines and outlines can be
tapered. Using a negative value for the thickness of any edge, line or outline causes them to be
rendered in perspective. The negative thickness is used as a radius in meters. This shows in both F9
and VPR.

Jennifer Hachigian very kindly gave us an example of cel shading using the new features in VPR. There is a Turbulence2D bump texture
uv-mapped to the hair. An Anisotropic Specular shader is applied to the bangs and a Function (SmoothStep) to increase the contrast of the
Specular highlights. The two Edge types used here are Silhouette Edges and Unshared Edges. Silhouette Edges draws lines on the polygonal
edges that represent where the surface angles away from the camera, and these Silhouette Edges can change from frame to frame if
the camera or subject matter change position. Unshared Edges highlights polygonal edges that belong to only one polygon and are not
shared by any other polygon. Unshared Edges cannot change from frame to frame.
In this 11.5 render, a weight map controls the taper of the Silhouette Edges. The weight map has values of 0 % at the chin and neckline to
taper the Silhouette Edges at those points. An incidence angle gradient controls the taper of the Unshared Edges at the neckline, so that the
Unshared Edges are thickest where the geometry faces the camera and thinnest where the geometry angles away from the camera.

Edges are a selective means of wireframe rendering. Unlike surface-based inking with highcontrast incidence-angle gradients (think of the computer-generated Galactus in the 1990s
SILVER SURFER cartoon), Edges can look as stable as any wireframe render. For models made of
subpatches, this means that higher Render Subpatch Levels will deliver smoother ink lines, and
lower Render SubPatch Levels will deliver chunkier ink lines.
An Edge will not appear where there is no polygonal edge for Edges to render. Two intersecting
boxes, for example, will not have an Edge at their intersection unless they are Booleaned or Sliced
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together to create a polygonal edge at that intersection. If you do not want to Boolean or Slice
intersecting geometry, however, you can use a texture map of an ink line along the intersection to
suggest a line without actually altering the geometry. Edges should be just one tool in your toolkit
to create the look of a cel. It should not be the only tool that you use when celshading.

The correct spelling for a sheet of acetate used in traditional hand-drawn animation production
is cel. Only one l is used in the spelling. Before acetate, animation artists used sheets of celluloid, and
the first syllable of celluloid is cel. A cell can mean a prison cell or a plant cell, but it does not mean the
same thing as cel.
To render all possible Edges in a scene, make sure that Render Lines is enabled in the Render tab of
the Render Globals panel.
To set the Edges for an individual object, select that Object and open up its Properties panel. Go
to the Edges tab to see the Edge settings. To turn off Particle/Line Thickness rendering for just
that object, set the value of Particle/Line Thickness to 0.0. The remaining Edge types use on/off
checkboxes, and they will be turned off by default. These can be turned on individually by clicking
on their names to turn on their checkboxes.
Particle/Line Thickness - this value handles the thickness of one-point and two-point
polygons. One-point polygons will render as Particles, and two-point polygons will render
as Lines. With negative values, one-point polygons become raytracable spheres, and twopoint polygons become raytracable tubes. Unlike the other Edges, the surfacing for Particles
and Lines are controlled by the Surface Editor. For example, if you would like your one-point
polygons to render with a blue color, go to the Surface Editor and set the Surface assigned to
those one-point polygons to the color blue.
Silhouette Edges - these render along the edge shared by two polygons when the normal of
one of those polygons faces the camera, and the normal of the other polygon faces away
from the camera. The edges that qualify as Silhouette Edges will change with the angle
of the model to the camera. This means that rotating the model, deforming the model
or moving the camera will change the Silhouette Edges on each frame. An edge must be
shared by two polygons to qualify as a Silhouette Edge - Silhouette Edges will never appear
on a mesh that consists of a single polygon.
Silhouette Edges follow a similar rule to that followed in life drawing classes: a line represents
the point where the surface of the subject matter turns away from the viewer.
Unshared Edges - these appear on edges not shared by any other polygon. Unshared Edges,
when checked, will always appear on a model that consists of a single polygon. For nonsubpatch models, selecting an area of geometry and then applying a Cut and Paste
operation will create an Unshared Edge at the border of the selection in your object. You
might use this trick to get Edges to help you describe the panels in a spaceship, for example.
Any overlapping points of a subpatch model will get merged into a shared edge in Layout
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for Render SubPatch levels higher than 0, so the Cut and Paste trick will only help you
sharpen edges in your model - it will not give you an Unshared Edge in Layout. If you want
the Cut and Paste trick to work on subpatch models, create an endomorph that separates
the overlapping points. Layout will back off when it sees the endomorph, and it will not
merge those points.
Sharp Creases - might also be called UnSmoothed Edges. Whether or not a given edge
qualifies as a Sharp Crease depends on the Smoothing Angle of the surface to which that
polygonal edge belongs. Lowering the Smoothing Angle of a surface will increase the
number of Sharp Creases traced; increasing the Smoothing Angle will decrease the number
of Sharp Crease edges. If the Smoothing option is left unchecked in the Surface Editor,
most (if not all) of the polygon edges in your model will qualify as Sharp Creases. These
edges could be good for sharp-edged machinery, buildings and rocky terrains. If the object
is deforming (for example, an animated ocean surfaced with a low Smoothing Angle), the
smoothed/unsmoothed property of the edges can change from frame to frame and the
Sharp Creases will change with them.
Surface Borders - this type of Edge will appear at the edge shared by two polygons when
those polygons have different surface names. The polygons can have the exact same texture
parameters, but Surface Borders will not care. If the surface names differ, then the polygons
will have an ink line render along their shared edge (unless the artist leaves Surface Borders
unchecked).
Other Edges - any polygonal edge that does not qualify as a Silhouette Edge, Unshared Edge,
Sharp Crease or Surface Border will fall into this group. Turn this on along with all of the
other Edges for an old-fashioned Wireframe Render.
Positive values will render in a fixed screen size defined in pixels. For example, a 1.0 pixel thickness
will always draw an Edge of 1.0 pixels no matter how close or how far away the object is to the
camera.

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Negative values will render raytracable spheres and tubes. Starting with LightWave 11.5, negative
values define the thickness of the Edges in meters (3D space) instead of pixels (screen space). A
value of -0.01 will always draw an Edge of 1cm (0.01 meters) in 3d space that will shrink/increase as
the object changes its distance from the camera.
LightWave 11.5 also introduced a Node Editor control for Particles, Lines and Edges. These
properties are offered for most Edge types:

Taper - the thickness of the particle, line or Edge. Suggestions:

Use the Alpha of a Turbulence texture to create a wobbly line.
Use an Incidence Angle gradient on Unshared Edges, Sharp Creases, or Surface Borders
to taper those non-Sihouette Edge types as the surface turns away from the camera.
Use a Weight Map to control the taper of Silhouette Edges. Use low values to taper
the lines as they approach corners of the model. On a characters face, those corners
could be the tip of the nose, the bottom of the chin or the edge of the lip. These points
would be where the artists brush or pencil lifted up from the paper at the end of a
brushstroke or pencil stroke, so the lines should taper there.
Use a Lambert shader (Add Node > Shaders > Diffuse > Lambert) to drive a Gradient that
controls the thickness of the Edge based on how much light that part of the surface
receives, so that heavier lines appear in shadowed areas and that thinner lines appear
in the most brightly lit areas.
Use a Distance to Camera gradient to shrink pixel-sized ink lines as the subject matter
gets farther away from the camera.
Color - the color of the Edge. Ideas:
Use a Lambert shader to drive a Gradient that controls the color of the Edges, so that
the most brightly lit areas have the lightest color and the most shadowed areas use
the darkest color. This approach to inking was used in the 2003 animated feature,
Wonderful Days (also known as Sky Blue).
Use a Weight map to mask off different sections of a model, then use those weight
values to drive a Color gradient so that each section of the mesh has a different-colored
ink line.
Opacity - the transparency of the Edge.
As mentioned above, Particle/Line surfacing properties are handled in the Surface Editor, so Color
and Opacity are not available for Lines.
In the Edges tab, Edge Color offers a base color for Edges that can be overwritten by the Node
Editor.
Edge Z Scale is a legacy property. We strongly recommend leaving it at its default value of 1.0.

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Edges Tab

2015

New Edge Functionality

LightWave 2015 adds two new settings to the Object Properties > Edges tab. The first is called Patch
Borders and shows the borders of subpatches in VPR and F9 renders instead of the triangular
polygons subpatches are made from.

Intersection Edges will show where two objects interpenetrate without requiring a boolean
operation. They work equally well with subpatch and polygonal objects; still or with animation.

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Edges Tab

The cartoon mushroom rendered here makes use of the new 2015 intersection edges to produce the face and circle line work, avoiding the
need to paint and map images to achieve the desired 2D look.
To produce an illustration appearance to this character, no cel shading was used. The surface uses a diffuse of 0% and luminosity of 100%,
with the surface colors being produced by a gradient controlled by a weight map set up for the bones in the character.
The circles and the face geometry are two separate layers of geometry that intersect with the base character form. They share the same
weight maps as the base layer and make use of the option to use the bones from the base layer. This enables them to deform along with
any squash and stretch actions.
The face is animated through a series of morph targets applied to the geometry producing the face edges. By utilizing the new intersection
edges, any requirement to produce animated facial image maps that are carefully timed to match the performance are not needed. The
performance is controlled by the animator.
Silhouette edges are applied, and their taper value is animated through the node editor with a crumple procedural texture. This breaks up
the thickness of the line work and creates a more organic appeal to the style.
Mushy character and explanation courtesy Kevin Phillips

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LightWave 2015

Shadowing Options with Edges

The new edge options with LightWave 2015 bring a new level of artistic control for the user.

By default, negative value edges (those with a Particle/Line Thickness with a negative value)
will cast shadows into the scene because they have a physical size. If you do not wish to have
shadowing for your edges, the solution is to click Edit Nodes in the Object Properties > Edges tab.
Once in the Node Editor, add a Spot Info node and an Invert node and link up the Shadow Ray
output from Spot Info to Invert and then onto the Opacity input you wish to control on the
destination Edge node.

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LightWave 2015

Lights Tab
Lights Tab

Object Exclusions
You can exclude any set of lights, as well as radiosity and caustics, from the shading of any object.
Simply click in the Exclude column to activate the exclusion.
If for some reason you need the excluded lights to continue to cast shadows, deactivate the
Shadow Exclusion option. When this global setting is not activated, all lights will cast shadows
even if they are excluded. You will need to add the Shadow Exclusion command (Lights command
group) to a keyboard shortcut or menu to access it. Note that adding to a menu may be preferable
so you can see its current state.
Use the drop down menu by right clicking to Select All, Clear All, and Invert Selection.

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LightWave 2015

Global Illumination Tab

Global Illum Tab
Global Illumination Tab
A localized set of Global Illumination values on a per-object basis is available. The per-Object
GI controls are: (see Global Illumination section for details). These controls are for interpolated
radiosity. In brute force there are no object-level properties.
Use Global check box - defaults to on for backwards compatibility, and stored with the object
info in the scene.
Rays Per Evaluation
Secondary Bounce Rays
Angular Tolerance
Minimum Pixel Spacing
Maximum Pixel Spacing

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LightWave 2015

FX Tab
FX Tab
Add FX
This tab is for applying LightWaves original FX dynamics system. Now that LightWave has a
Bullet implementation available from the FX Tools tab in Layout, there is less need for this object-based
dynamics system. It is still included for legacy use and the particle emitter, for which there is currently no
Bullet replacement.

The FX Tab of the Object Properties Panel is where you can Add FX and manipulate the settings.
Add FX choices:
Cloth - Cloth Dynamics
Soft - Soft Dynamics
Hard - Hard Body (Rigid Body) Dynamics
Emitter - Particle or Partigon Emitter
Wind - Wind controller.
Collision - Collision controller
Gravity - Gravity controller

Information on the dynamics options can be found in Chapter 9 - Dynamics starting on page
795.

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Instancer Tab
Instancing is covered in full in the dedicated chapter devoted to the subject, Instancing, starting
page 767

Python
Loads a Python script.

Python City Block

Creates an instant, instanced grid-based city. To use this tool heres a simple example:

1) Create your base block. Weve added sidewalks and road around our block so that we can
butt the instances together.

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Instancer Tab
2) On the Instancer tab of Object Properties, add Python City Block from the Add Instancer
dropdown menu. In the City Block window first click on Active. At this point the other
settings become available and you can see instances of your block spreading out.

3) Since we have created road and sidewalk around our block we need to turn off Randomize
Width and Depth otherwise the blocks wont butt together with our Building Margin set to 0
m.

4) Add a Gradient backdrop, position your view and hit VPR. The whole scene
took less than five minutes to build including modeling the initial block.

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Chapter 6 -

Previsualization

LightWave 2015

Previsualization
Introduction
There will be times, more often than not, when you will want to plan out your animations or review
your progress as you are working without doing a full render. This is the role of previsualization, or
previz.

Creating a Preview Animation

In addition to playing a scene using the transport controls, you can also create special preview
animations. In most cases, these will give you a more accurate preview of your final animation.

To Create a Preview Animation:

1) If you are using multiple viewports, you will be asked which you wish to use. You can indicate
the viewport for the preview by clicking the small camera icon that appears when you have
multiple viewports.

2) Make sure the viewports Maximum Render Level is set as desired. If you would like a
full-rendered preview, set the viewport to VPR (there are other options if you do so).
3) Select Make Preview from the Preview pop-up menu. A dialog will appear asking you for first
and last frame settings, as well as Step. This initially defaults to the scene settings, but may
be set independently. Click OK and the preview animation will be created.

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4) When the preview is complete, the Preview Playback Controls Panel will appear.

You can press the Esc key to stop creating the preview animation. The animation will still be
playable up to the point of termination.
Heres a rundown of the Preview Playback Controls:

01 Got to the end of playback, 02 Step, 03 Pause, 04 Play, 05 Multiplier, 06 Slider, 07 End Preview, 08 Playback rate

To save time creating a preview animation for a complex scene, do the Texas Two Step: use a
Step of 2 and playback using a frame rate one-half the desired rate.

Preview Options
Also from the Preview pop-up menu, you can replay the preview currently in memory, free it from
memory, and load/save a preview animation file. Selecting Preview Options from the Preview popup menu will display a dialog.

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Here, you can select a compression level for preview animations, as well as select the format and
codec used when you save them. Compressed previews use much less memory, thus you can have
a lot more frames before virtual memory starts being used, which bogs down playback.
Compressed preview files are also smaller when saved to disk. You can also set whether or not to
use virtual memory for preview animations.
Using the Make Preview Buffer option, you can choose to record the OpenGL back (offscreen) or
front (on screen) display buffer. Other options may be available (e.g., Direct Draw). You may get
better performance with different settings, depending on your video card.
When Virtual Memory is set to Disabled, LightWave attempts to use only RAM for storage and
playback. (Your operating system can still ultimately swap the data to virtual memory, however.)
Setting Screen Size to Stretch to Fit causes the image to fit the window, even if it is a different size
than what was used when the preview was made.

You will want to install additional codecs, especially on Windows systems. The only codecs built
into Windows tend to be very old. Consider XViD, QuickTime and Lagarith codecs.

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Layout Transport Controls
You can use the transport controls to navigate through your scene.

The controls are symmetrical forwards and backward. They are Go to Start, Go to Previous/Next Key, Frame Step and Play/Pause. The Rate/
Step field allows speed of playback control.

Keyboard Shortcuts
There are also some keyboard shortcuts that can be used:
Previous frame LEFT
Next frame RIGHT
Previous keyframe Shift + LEFT
Next keyframe Shift + RIGHT
Play Backwards PAGE DOWN
Pause INSERT
Play Forwards PAGE UP

Going to a Specific Frame

If you press the F key, a dialog will appear. Enter the frame you want to go to.

Playing the Scene

You can also play your scene backward (left arrow) or forward (right arrow) from the current frame
using the playback controls. The Step field, in the bottom-right corner, determines the frame
increment. A setting of 1 will play all frames; 2 will play every other frame, and so on.

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Your playback speed will vary depending on the complexity of your scene, object display mode,
system capabilities and so on. Reducing the size of your Layout window can dramatically increase
playback speed.

VPR (Viewport Preview Renderer)

VPR is Layouts native Interactive Render. Essentially, VPR is the LightWave renderer in a next

gen interactive form. The VPR Interactive Renderer handles Radiosity, Ray-Tracing, Reflections,
Refractions, and Transparencies - pretty much anything in short - to provide stunning LightWave
renders as quickly as possible.
VPR is activated in the Viewport Display menu by selecting VPR instead of one of the standard
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OpenGL view types. Once activated the viewport will begin rendering using the settings in the
Render Globals panel. VPR will continually update when changes are made. VPR is explained in full
starting page 2166.

Creating a VPR Preview

While VPR is running, you can create previews just as with any other viewport display mode. You
also have the choice of either making the preview in a viewport or as a separate window. To do so,
visit the Display Options tab of the Preferences window (D) and check Undock Preview Win. You can
also choose to use the Camera Resolution, but beware with this that your camera resolution isnt
bigger than your screen resolution (you can hit ESC to leave the window).
The last option is to set the Preview Scale Level. This setting applies whether you undock the
Preview window or create a preview in a viewport and offers a dropdown with a choice of
Antialiased at the top down to Every 32 pixels at the bottom. Obviously, the lower the resolution,
the faster the preview will render. Its up to you to determine what level of detail you require from
your preview.

With a Preview Scale Level of Antialiased, Every 4 pixels and Every 32 pixels.

3D Display

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LightWave 11.6 added a 3D viewing mode for people with the right hardware. If you have a 3D
monitor or television and a graphics card capable of quad-buffering a display (for NVidia this
means a Quadro graphics card but most AMD/ATI cards work), then you can see your scene in
stereoscopic 3D. The display works both in OpenGL and VPR and supports both anaglyph and
active or passive 3D (shutter glasses or RealD 3D glasses) depending on your hardware capabilities.
To enable the display 3D Plugin in a full-screen window.
1) Load a scene;
2) Pick Texture Shaded Solid / Texture Shaded Wireframe ( for color OpenGL );
3) In Camera Properties go to the Stereo tab and enable Stereoscopic Rendering;
4) In the Stereo OpenGL dropdown pick 3D Glasses;
5) Set your viewport to VPR and in VPR Options choose Add Display / 3DVisionPro;
6) Edit Properties or double click 3DVisionPro;
7) Check Full Screen if necessary for your graphics card
ESC closes the 3D display or you can click Toggle Window in the VPR options window.

CgFX Shaders

LightWave 11.6 added CgFX hardware shaders for viewing and manipulating shaders written in
the industry-standard CgFX format. They are often used by artists working in previz or the games
industry. CgFX hardware shaders only affect OpenGL viewports in Layout and not VPR, F9, F10 or
LWSN and are implemented as a Surface Editor shader on a per-surface basis to allow you to share
your shaders as assets between various 3D applications and 3D engines.
Users can download free Cg shaders from these sites among many others:
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/shaderlibrary/webpages/cgfx_shaders.html
http://blog.leocov.com/p/downloads.html

Downloaded shaders have often been developed to work on a specific range of graphics cards
or drivers. Especially if you own an ATI card modifications to the shader code may be necessary to make
it run on your machine. Checking the CGFX code and changing profiles to GLSL profiles is a step that
often works.
All possible profiles are currently: arbfp1, arbvp1, fp20, fp30, fp30unlimited, fp40,
fp40unlimited, glslf, glslv, gp4fp, gp4gp, gp4vp, gpu_fp, gpu_gp, gpu_vp,
vp20, vp30 and vp40 and only glslf and glslv are known to work reliably on ATI cards.

This means that for any given shader code, you can search within looking for:
FragmentProgram = compile
and
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Previsualization
VertexProgram

= compile

For example, in this snippet:

VertexProgram
= compile vp40 VS(true);
FragmentProgram = compile fp40 PSFull();
vp40 should be replaced with glslv and fp40 should be replaced with glslf.

The LightWave 3D Group cannot take responsibility for third party CgFX code, nor offer support
on coding CgFX shaders for LightWave.

Example: Adding a Cgfx Hardware Shader

Note that the check buttons marked with >>>>>... are merely separators, they serve no function.

1) Load an object with a normal map (here we are using the NevronMotion
Bounce character). Open the surface panel and go to the Shaders
tab where you should add a Cgfx Hardware Shader.
2) Load the lcUberShader_3.0.cgfx available from http://blog.leocov.com/p/downloads.html

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3) On the Group 1 tab, select the UV map from the TexCoord UV Map dropdown
4) Check Use A Diffuse Texture and choose the diffuseMapSampler Image from the drop-down.
5) On the Group 2 tab, check Use a Normal Map, check the Invert Normal Map
Green Channel checkbox for normal maps originating from ZBrush and
choose the map using the normalMapSampler Image drop-down.
6) In Group (and 4, not pictured), you can set lights for your Cgfx
surface, setting color; and attenuation for point lights.

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Previsualization
VIPER
(default keyboard shortcut F7)

VIPER is the preview renderer that shipped with LightWave from version 7 onwards. It is
increasingly unlikely you will need to use it as VPR takes on more and more of its functionalities and
improves on them. The documentation is included here as a courtesy.

Enable Viper
In the Render Tab menu, you can enable VIPER by clicking on the so-named button (Render >
Enable VIPER). Be sure to turn it off when you are ready for your final render since it takes memory
and processor time, slowing down your renders. VIPER stands for Versatile Interactive Preview
Render and is a good way to speed up finalizing your scene. It can preview volumetric lights, Sky
Tracer, HyperVoxels and surfaces.
In the render options window, or the Render Tab menu, you can enable VIPER by clicking on the sonamed button. Be sure to turn it off when you are ready for your final render since it takes memory
and processor time, slowing down your renders.

Surface Preview Mode

For surface previews VIPER needs to have a data buffer to work on so you will need to render an
image for it to work with. Before you hit F9, make sure you have Enable VIPER turned on in Render
Options or the button in the Render Tab!
Once your render has finished you can open the VIPER window by hitting F7. When you do, hit
the Render button and you will see your image take shape in front of you. If you dont have a fast
machine, a Draft Mode render (at half resolution) is often enough for you to get what you want and
you can always check with a full-res render as and when needed. You can also change the size of
the VIPER window to get more detail, but be aware that such a change requires a new F9 render to
take effect.
When LightWave renders an image, it generates much more information than the red, green, and
blue components of the pixels you see in your images. The color components represent only
a small fraction of the data that is generated. LightWave also generates, alpha (transparency),
z-buffer (depth), luminosity, diffuse, specular, reflection, shading, shadow, geometry, object, diffuse
shading, specular shading, and even custom surface buffers.
As a result, VIPER can determine not only what color a pixel is, but also how far back on the z-axis
a pixel is, what surface it relates to, and so on. By manipulating this extra data, VIPER can change
a surface color or Specularity setting and show the result amongst the rest of the scene without
requiring another full frame render. This will even show the appropriate shading, scene lighting
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changes, as well as backdrop color changes.
To select a surface in the Viper window, you can click on the part of the image containing the
surface you wish to edit.
Since VIPER does not do a full-scene evaluation, there are some things that are not accounted for,
like Vertex Maps (Weight, UV, etc.) on SubPatch objects, ray-traced effects (reflections, refractions,
shadows), Shadow Maps, fog, double-sided polygons, radiosity, light falloff, and so on. As such, it is
not a replacement for an F9 render. Also, VIPER will not be affected by moving geometry.

Other Preview Modes

VIPER can be used to preview HyperVoxels, SkyTracer skies and volumetric lights. In all of these
cases full-scene evaluation is not required, so you dont need to perform a render before you can
use VIPER.
If you render your scene first you can preview SkyTracer in VIPER with the foreground scene
elements.
There are two drop down menus that need to be explained at the top of the window: Preview
Size, which dictates the size of your VIPER window and Preview Options. Preview Size allows you
to dictate what sort of preview you want to work with. Be aware that in Surface Preview Mode you
cannot change the Preview Size without doing another render.

Preview Options
This drop down will only display the option (none) when you are using VIPER in Surface,
Volumetrics or SkyTracer Modes. If you would like to see what this menu does, try adding some
HyperVoxels to your scene and then use VIPER. You will then see that the Preview Options drop
down menu has three options - Object, Scene and Particle.
The difference is as follows:

Object Preview
This will show the object you have HyperVoxels attached to. If, for instance, you have an emitter
selected, the object preview will show the whole stream of particles coming from it. The active
object is selected in the HyperVoxels window.

Scene Preview
The scene preview will show all HyperVoxel objects that are visible from the camera view. If you
have three emitters, this mode will show all three at once, rather than just the active one.

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Particle Preview
This mode shows a close-up of a single particle. This will allow you to see an emitted particle in
detail.

Animated Preview
When previewing HyperVoxels, skies or volumetric lights, a very powerful feature of VIPER is the
ability to make a preview over time. If you click on the Make Preview button you can make an
animation that can be played back within the VIPER window.

For any of the VIPER modes, you can add a new preset to the current presets window (F8). This
allows you to keep a library of useful settings for particles, skies or volumetric lighting types.

If you have more than one object type in a scene - for instance, a fountain spraying water into
an afternoon sky under the watchful eye of a streetlamp - and you want to be able to preview them all
in VIPER, clicking on the interface for each object type - Surface Editor for the fountain, HyperVoxels
for the water, SkyTracer for the sky and Volumetric Options for the street lamp - will switch VIPER to the
appropriate mode.

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Virtual Studio

LightWave 2015

Virtual Studio
About Virtual Studio
Virtual Production workflows are changing the face of CG
and live action production, visualizations, and design.
Most individuals and small to mid-sized studios
assume that virtual production technology is out
of reach but the truth is that this technology is
scalable and very flexible. With LightWave
and its Virtual Studio you can perform
virtual location scouts of a 3D set, record
handheld camera moves on a fully 3D
LightWave scene, use game controllers
like the PS3 Move controllers to
drive character animation, and
control lights all in real time. In fact,
any channel that can be animated
in LightWave can be controlled with
Virtual Studio. Clients love this type of
interaction for meetings and virtual walkthroughs and it is easily within your reach with
LightWave Virtual Studio.
LightWaves development team are bridging the gap between real and virtual
worlds. Our real world interface with LightWave has been fairly constant
for years using a 2D screen output, a keyboard, and a mouse pointer with
some buttons. These days, there are more real world devices we can tap
into to allow real world humans to interact with LightWave. These include:
motion tracking devices, 3D mice, gesturing, accelerometers, virtual
buttons, wireless displays, joysticks, cameras and more.
With Virtual Studio, LightWave can support many of the capabilities of
a real studio, such as recording and adjusting live action, the key being
live action. Animators have always had the ability to adjust motion
in an animation at a fundamental level (key frames) but producing
the most realistic looking motion requires capturing real world data
or simulating it procedurally. The purpose of LightWaves Virtual
Studio is to work with real world data by bridging the gap between
LightWave and a real world studio.

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Virtual Studio
Overview of Controls

Before we go into specifics, here is a presentation of the three principal windows Virtual Studio
uses in Layout. These can all be found in the Virtual Studio tool group in the Top Menu section of
Layouts menus. The button beneath this group labeled Studio LIVE is a toggle that replicates the
LIVE! button inside the Studio window for ease of access.

The Device Manager

This assigns your connected device to be used for the Virtual Studio. You need to click the
Enable column for the device type, this will be either a HID (Human Interface Device) compatible
peripheral, the Intersense VCam or the PlayStation 3 Move controller. If there are devices you dont
own, or are never likely to, you can remove them from display to make it tidier. Right click on the
manager entries you wish to remove.

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Virtual Studio
If you plug in a device of the type you have removed, you will get the entry back in Device
Manager.
Once you have enabled your specific device, you can click on the devices name to see the readout
of LightWave-supported Tracks. In the case of PlayStation 3 Move.Me controllers you can adjust
the gem hues at the top of each Move controller. The gem color settings in this panel are just used
as a guide for Move.Me to change the gem colors (they wont necessarily be exactly the same as on
this panel) and colors that are too similar will not be allowed. The Console Sword button changes
the onscreen appearance of the Move controller to the sword object assigned to the gem on the
PS3.

The generic version of a HID device is purely the HID manager version. The generic device is limited
in functionality, usually just to button presses; elements like accelerometers need to be specifically
programmed. If you need to choose between devices always choose the non-generic version that
has been specifically programmed for LightWave. Going further, you can remove them from view
with the HID Manager Settings window.

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Virtual Studio
The Control Booth

This is where you set up behaviors using Layout commands to drive functionality for your device.
The control booth is a way to control Layout similar to how one would assign keyboard shortcuts
to do things that the user would normally use the GUI to do. These behaviors are not part of the
scene. The control booth is a user interface tool. To know what commands are available go to
the Utilities tab and click Save CMD List. The Space Explorer in this example has fifteen buttons
in addition to the central controller and these can be assigned actions in the Control Booth.
These settings are saved into a config file in your user directory: %USERPROFILE%\.NewTek\
LightWave\2015\configs\ControlBooth.cfg on Windows systems, and under OS X: ~/Library/
Application Support/NewTek/LightWave/2015/configs/ControlBooth.cfg
You can import or export collections of commands by clicking on the + symbol at the bottom left
corner of the window.

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Virtual Studio
The Studio

This is where you will record your performances using the devices you set up in the Device
Manager, using the behaviors you set up in the Control Booth although the Virtual Studio can
be driven without a third party peripheral. You can have an unlimited number of Performances
recorded for a device to choose between for incorporation into your scenes timeline.

Listed in this window are the traits that will be recorded with the Virtual Studio.
Name - the name of the item. Double clicking on the name will open the node graph
showing the connections needed for setting it up. Alternatively you can single click on Edit...
in the Nodes column.
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Virtual Studio
Value - is the readout of the current output from the trait.
Nodes - Click on the entry in this column to edit a traits node network.
Padlock - Allows the user to lock all the settings for the item (or group) so that no changes
can be accidentally made without first clicking the padlock again.
A - For active. This determines whether the virtual studio will be looking at output from the
trait.
Clapper board - The take number you are on. You can click on this number to change the
take, or to add a new one.
Snowflake - Freeze. This icons stops all evaluation from the item.
Rec - This arms the device for recording. This is an individual record function so that you
control which traits are to be recorded.
Play - This arms the specific channel for playback. Like record, its an individual function.
By default, when you bring a new trait into this window the Rec and Play columns are armed.
At the bottom of the window there are more functions:
+ Clicking this button brings up a submenu:
New Empty Collection - Allows you to create a new group for assembling your traits.
New Collection Of Selection - If you have a series of traits selected in the Studio window,
this will put them all in a new collection. Collections are renamed by double clicking on
them.
New Take - This will set up a new take for the selected trait.
- Will bring up a submenu:
Remove Active Take of Selection - Removes the current take.
Reset Active Take of Selection - Zeroes out the take, but doesnt remove it.
Remove All Takes of Selection - Deletes all takes from the selected Studio trait.
Remove Selected Collections - Removes the selected collections.
Active - A global button to evaluate Studio functions.
LIVE! - Live is the live-feedback evaluation of the scene (and its traits) that updates viewports
to see the feedback. Without Live!, scene evaluations only occur when the scene time
changes and in a few other situations, but not at a consistent frame rate like with Live!
enabled.
FPS field - This requests a frames per second rate for the whole scene when used through the
Virtual Studio. The following number is the actual reported FPS, useful for complex scenes
that might not be able to play back at the requested rate.
Allow Rec - This is the Global record button. It allows the individual Rec settings.
Allow Play - This is the Global Playback button. It allows the individual Play settings.
Punch In/Out - used if you only want to use the Virtual Studio for a section of the scene. Left
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at 0 it will record the whole scene.
1-shot - this records the motion of your traits during a single playback of your scene, when
it reaches the end of the timeline recording stops. This also works if you are playing back
in reverse to reverse-record your traits at which point it will automatically stop when the
timeline reaches the beginning of the timeline.
Performances - this opens a sub-menu related to storing multiple performances.
Performances are useful for more complex setups where there are multiple scene assets
being affected. A use case may be giving a director multiple options to choose from; but
instead of being able to change just one take to accomplish that, it may require a lot of
settings changes. The performance would encapsulate all the setting changes (to traits only)
for quick switching. Another example could be a single actor performing multiple roles in
the scene: camera man, lighting, driving a car, effecting explosions where the car drives. A
performance could be setup for each so that the real person can switch roles quickly and
record or playback only the parts needed.

Studio Assets Submenu

Rather than needing to use Load from Scene to bring in a camera or light from a scene where they
have been set up, the user can simply choose the appropriate command from the menu to add a
camera or spotlight. Examples have been put in this menu for PlayStation 3 Move.Me devices and
3Dconnexion Space Navigator, Explorer and Pilot Pro devices.
Users can add their own devices to this submenu by editing the Python scripts and providing an
identically-named scene. Look in LightWave/Support/Plugins/Scripts/Python/Layout/Virtual Studio
directory to see the examples. Once done, the new scripts need to be added using the Edit Plugins
window or by restarting LightWave if you use Autoscan Plugins, and then the plugin needs to be
added to the Assets menu using Edit Menus.

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Example: Car Shoot

Note that to get VPR to resolve you need to turn off the LIVE! function so that the Virtual Studio isnt constantly evaluating your 3D device.

The director wants to shoot a turntable of a new car and wants to direct you in the motions you
will use. Were using the Studio_Spyder scene from the content for this example. Use the Virtual
Studio > Studio Assets menu to add a camera for the Space Explorer, Space Navigator or PlayStation
3 move.me system to the scene. If you wish to build your own node network to control the camera,
individual nodes are explained starting on page 512; the 3Dconnexion setup used for this
example is explained starting on page 511 of the manual and a move.me node explanation can
be found starting on page 515

Before anything else, make sure your Nav tab in Options is set to Device: (none)! You dont want
to make Layout use the same device for two different purposes.

A Space Explorer was used for the purposes of this scene. If you have a 3Dconnexion device not
listed in the Studio Assets menu, you will need to double click on the trait item in the Studio window and
open the Device node to associate your 3Dconnexion device with the node network.

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Once you have your new camera in the scene you will see that it is positioned badly so you need to
give it a better starting position using your 3Dconnexion device, if it doesnt move, make sure Live!
is ticked in the Studio window or in the Top menu group of Layout. Now we can start.
1) You need to make sure you have Active, Live!, Allow Rec and 1-shot all checked in
the Studio window. Up on the trait for the Item Motion: Single you want the Rec and
Play buttons checked too. You should be on Take 1. The scene only has 60 frames
so its going to be quick, but thats okay for this test. You need to be comfortable
with using the 3Dconnexion device to control the camera smoothly and accurately
and you can always change the playback rate of your scene if necessary.
2) When ready, press play on the scene and be ready to move your
3D mouse to capture the changes in position you want.
3) When the scene is done playing the Allow Rec button will switch off. Click the Allow Play
button in the Studio window and play your scene back. You will see the motion you
recorded. If youre not happy with it, you can always hit the Allow Rec and 1-shot buttons
again and redo the take. If however, youd like to keep this take and try another, click in the
Studio window in the clapperboard column. You will be presented with the possibility to
choose between your takes or create a new one.

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4) Your takes can be chosen between and played back on the timeline and when
you are happy to render make sure the Studio Allow Play button is active for
the take you want to render. All your takes are saved into your scene file.

All four takes were rendered and saved into a single scene.

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3Dconnexion Example Setup
The node network for the 3Dconnexion example shown at the start of this section looks like this:

This is how the individual nodes work:

1) This is our Device node. Here we are using a 3Dconnexion Space Explorer. If you are
using a different model you will have different outputs, but the main ones devoted
to movement are the same for all models - v for Position and w for Rotation.
2) This Multiply node allows you to scale the sensitivity of the movement controls
of your 3Dconnexion puck. The settings are shown in the window above.
3) This Multiply node allows you to scale the sensitivity of the rotation controls of
your 3Dconnexion puck. The settings are shown in the window below.
4) These three Vector Scalar nodes allow you to change the axis order to
match the devices rotation to the Euler angles LightWave uses (Heading/
Pitch/Bank). Here Y goes to X, X goes to Y and Z is passed through.
5) The three Scalar outputs from 4 go into a Make Vector node.
6) The all-important Studio Trait node. This links a scene item (in this case
VirtualStudioCam) with your node network and thus your device. The Position
goes straight to the Add node in item 10 and the Rotation to item 7.
7) The HPBAdd node combines the two rotations of your controlling device
and your scene item. The result is sent to the destination Trait node.
8) The HPBMatrix node converts heading/pitch/bank Euler angles
to a 3x3 matrix output as right/up/forward vectors.
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9) These outputs are taken, along with the original scaled output from the Devices
v output, and an inverse transform is applied. This is to make the right/up/
forward vectors be relative to the Studio Trait nodes orientation (in order to
better visualise this, imagine an arrow pointing northeast. What this node does is
translate a forward push on the 3Dconnexion devices puck into forward motion
for the arrow, that is to say in a northeasterly direction, not just north).
10) The Studio Trait Position and transformed Device v are Added.
The result is sent to the destination Trait node.
11) The destination Trait node.

Virtual Studio Nodes

In order to set up a virtual studio scene and be able to use peripherals such as the 3Dconnexion
mice a series of nodes have been added to LightWaves Node Editor. They are accessed by adding
a Virtual Studio Trait motion modifier to your scene item like so:

and then double-clicking its entry in the Virtual Studio window.

Item Info > Trait - A trait is a motion modifier added to a scene item making it visible to the Virtual
Studio. Once you have added this modifier to your scene item, the scene item will become
available in the Trait node in the node editor.

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Item Info > Device - A device is the tool you are using to control the Virtual Studio, whether it be a
3Dconnexion peripheral like the Space Navigator or Explorer; a PlayStation 3 Move controller or an
Intersense VCam. The outputs for a specific device will be appropriate to that device.
The Space Navigator for notebooks here shown has just four outputs for movement, rotation and
the two buttons present, whereas the Space Explorer has a total of 15 outputs representing the
different buttons on the device.
When you add a device to your nodal network, you need to double click the node to present the
following window where you will choose the device you wish to use.

If you set up a scene with a 3Dconnexion Space Explorer or similar with additional buttons and
configured nodes relating to those buttons; then use a Space Navigator with no additional buttons the
connections for the missing buttons will be lost if you save the scene. The nodes will still be there, but the
connections will have to be remade when you reconnect a more fully-featured 3Dconnexion device.

Math > Vector > HPBMatrix - convert Euler angles (heading/pitch/bank) to a 3x3 matrix output as
right/up/forward vectors (each being a nodal vector type).

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Math > Vector > MatrixHPB - convert a 3x3 matrix (specified as right/up/forward vectors) to a vector
of Euler angles (heading/pitch/bank).

Math > Vector > Multiply Matrix 3x3 - multiply two 3x3 matrices. For rotation matrices, this has the
effect of combining rotations. The output is another 3x3 matrix represented as right/up/forward
vectors.

Math > Vector > Transpose Matrix 3x3 - a rotation represented as a 3x3 matrix can be transposed
which has the effect of inverting it meaning the rotation is reversed.

Math > Vector > HPBAdd - combine two rotations represented as Euler angles and output the
resulting rotation as Euler angles.

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Move.me Example Setup
This is a PlayStation3 application that uses up to four PS3 Motion controllers and the PS3 Eye
camera to track the position and rotation of each controller and sends that data across a network
to client. That client, in this case, is the LightWave move.me device manager. Once accessible to
the LightWave device manager, the data can be used to control your scene elements and user
interface.

PlayStation3 Setup
1) You must have the necessary hardware and physically set it up. Please refer to your PS3
console for specific setup instructions such as linking the controllers to your system.

PlayStation3 console
PS3 Eye camera
PS3 Motion Controller (up to four; this example specifies two)
Network connectivity to a LightWave11 system

2) You must also acquire the PS3 move.me software application. This is available via
the PlayStation Network Store (availability in certain markets may be limited).
3) Start the move.me application and get past its instructional splash screens. The screen
should display what the camera is seeing, and the upper left corner of the screen will show
the consoles IP address with a port of 7899. This is the server that LightWave11 will need to
refer to shortly.

4) Repeat this next step for each PS3 Motion controller (also referred to as gem). At about
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three feet from the camera (PS3 Eye), point the Motion controller directly at and inline with
the center of the camera lens, remain stationary, and press the Motion controller Move
button (the largest top-side button). The gem will flash and finally settle-in on a color (Each
gem will have a unique color.) You must be fairly still until the final color is visible; this is a
calibration procedure. After the calibration, do not rotate the camera as that will disrupt
the orientation calibration. As the controller is moved, you will see a sword (or other avatar)
represented on the screen. To disconnect the gem, press the SELECT button on its left side.
This does not power off the gem, it only disconnects it from motion tracking in the
Move.me application. You may then repeat the calibration as needed. It is important to
note that gems can only be connected or disconnected when no clients are connected
to the Move.me application. After about 10 minutes of non-use, a gem may disconnect
automatically (the gem color will go out). If any clients are connected at that time, they
must be disconnected before the gem can be reconnected. This behavior may change in the
future.

LightWave Device Manager Setup

The device manager in LightWave is the central place to decide what devices can participate with
the studio and control booth features. The studio allows devices to affect your scene while the
control booth allows devices to affect your user interface, which can also affect your scene. To be
more clear, the studio feeds device data into your scene through its natural evaluation process
similar to motion plugin evaluation, and the Control Booth interprets device data to issue Layout
commands like those that can be entered by a user in the command input and command history
panels.
1) Open the device manager panel. A table of existing managers is shown
2) Find the manager called PS3 Move.me and enable it.

3) Open the settings for it.

4) Click on the + button to add an address entry. The default of 192.168.x.x:7899 should
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appear.

5) Look back at the console screen upper-left corner and change the IP address
in the Move.me Manager settings to it. The address format is IP:port, so make
sure there is a colon separating the IP address and the port value.
6) Enable the address entry. If all is well, the status should show 1. It is important that the
PS3 Move.me entry on the device manager panel is enabled before attempting to enable
an address entry. You can now close this settings panel.

The PS3 Move.me manager should now have four devices (gems).

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7) A device must be enabled for its data to be received; so enable the devices of interest in
the device manager panel. Highlight a device to see its data in the tracks table below and
confirm its operation by watching the data change as you manipulate the gem.

At this point, the gem devices are available to studio and control booth.

More than one PS3 console may be connected simultaneously therefore allowing more than four
gems in LightWave11.

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IMPORTANT! Windows firewall rules may be preventing the data stream even though the setup
appears correct. A quick way to troubleshoot this is to disable the Windows firewall for the network
connection that the console is on and re-check for track data changes. For a direct network connection
between the LightWave11 system and the PS3 console, there is less risk in disabling the firewall; but
when the connection is also to the internet, special firewall rules may be necessary. The Mac platform
does not have this issue.

The name of a device is its identity when used through LightWave and it should be unique from
other devices. Because this name will change depending on how the hardware is setup and what
hardware is available, it makes sense to rename devices to something you will use in your scenes and
on your system. That way, a simple name change in the device manager will keep away the need to
change all scene references to a device. Device names can be changed by double-clicking on its name.
The device name and active state are remembered the next time you start Layout as well.

Scene Setup
The scene can be as simple or complex as you like. With up to four gems per PS3 console, you
have a lot of options. This example sets up a virtual camera and a virtual spotlight as well as some
control booth behaviors.

Take recording requires mapping device data to your scene elements; this is the purpose of studio
traits. Control booth behaviors are not recorded in a take.

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Virtual Camera Motion

The virtual camera motion will be directly tied to the gem motion.
1) Create a scene camera and name it virtual camera.
2) Open the motion properties for it, and add the Virtual Studio Trait modifer. This will add a
new trait to the Studio.

3) If the studio panel is not already open, you may open it in either of two ways:
a) Open the properties for the plugin and click on the Studio button, b) choose
the studio menu option (provided your menu configuration has it available).

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4) Edit the node graph for this new trait. In the studio panel, locate the trait named
ItemMotion:virtual camera and double-click its name or click Edit in the Nodes column. This
opens a node graph with a target node representing the traits position, rotation, and scale.
5) Add a device node from the Item Info category to the node graph.

6) Open the properties for the device node, and set the manager
and device to PS3 Move.me and PS3_Gem0 respectively.

If the devices are available in the device manager window, they can be selected via the
drop-down gadgets in the panel. Otherwise, you may simply enter the names directly; however, no
understanding of them will be available to complete the node graph. You may continue on with the
node graph and make the final connections once the required devices are available. Once the node
graph connections are made, they will be remembered when reloading your scene even if the devices
are no longer available.

7) Connect the device node XYZ and HPB to the trait Position and Rotation respectively;

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8) In the Studio panel, enable the LIVE! button and make sure the value to its right is reasonable
for your system (suggested 10 to 30). This value is a evaluation update rate. It determines
how many times per second the scene is evaluated and redisplayed in the view ports. This
allows you to see scene changes as a result of gem movement even though the scene time
is not changing. Once this is done, you should now see the virtual camera moving in your
scene as you move your gem.

The PS3 Eye must be able to see your gems colored orb to track its motion completely.
9) The scale and orientation of gem motion may not be appropriate for your scene.
Parenting the scenes virtual camera to a null item is now useful by providing a
more flexible reference for the gem data. Create a null item called eye origin.

By default, the PS3 Eye is mapped to the scenes origin and gem data is relative to this.
10) Parent virtual camera to eye origin. The virtual camera will now move relative to eye
origin. The eye origin item can be further parented to other items, even animated ones.

Virtual Camera Zoom

The gem virtual camera would not be very useful without the ability to control the zoom factor of
your scene camera. We will create a channel trait for the camera zoom and applied the necessary
node graph utilizing the gem trigger and move buttons.

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1) Open the camera properties for the virtual camera scene camera.
2) Add an envelope to the zoom factor property (sometimes listed
as lens focal length). This will open the graph editor.
3) Add the Virtual Studio Trait modifier to the new ZoomFactor channel. This will create a new
studio trait called Channel:virtual camera.ZoomFactor. Due to internal technical reasons, this
will also create another studio trait called Channel:virtual camera..LegacyZoomFactor.

4) We must adjust the node graph of the .LegacyZoomFactor trait only. Double-click its name
to open its node graph. The target node has a single value called Value; this represents the
traits value.

5) Construct the following node graph. An explanation follows.

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This zoom graph relies on the Motion controllers Move and TPressure button data. The Move
track is a simple toggle where 1 is pressed and 0 is not pressed. The TPressure track supplies
values from 0 to 255 depending on how hard the user squeezes the T trigger button. When
you do not know what data values are possible for a track, look at the device manager panel in
LightWave and highlight the device in question; the available data tracks and expected format will
be displayed interactively.
The result of the graph will be this: zoom in when the Move button is not pressed and zoom out
when it is; the T determines how quickly to zoom.
The logic node outputs a negative value when the Move button is pressed having the effect of
zooming out. The node output values act as a scaling to affect how fast the zoom will occur. This
output is multiplied by the TPressure value and sent to a pow node, which allows the zooming to
appear more natural like that of a real camera zoom.

The previous zoom factor trait value is needed to give the node graph something to modify, since
it applies a relative amount to arrive at a final absolute trait value. The Studio Trait node allows us
to specify which trait to use. We choose the same trait for which this is a node graph for.

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The previous trait value is combined with the pow effect and clamped to keep the resulting zoom
factor within a reasonable range.

The above scalar affects how fast the zoom with occur. The value must be very close to 1.0.

This is a very basic zoom control. One enhancement is to add another logic node to allow multiple
zooming speeds based on the amount the T trigger button is squeezed. A gentle press to zoom
very slowly and a hard press for maximum zoom speed.

Virtual Spotlight Motion

Similar to the virtual camera, the spotlight directly uses the gem motion.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Create a spotlight type light called virtual spotlight

Open its motion properties and add the Virtual Studio Trait modifier.
In the studio, open its node graph.
Create a device node set to the manager PS3 Move.me and device PS3_Gem1.
Connect the device node XYZ and HPB to the trait node position and rotation respectively.

Virtual Spotlight Light Intensity

The gem can also be used to adjust the light intensity via additional buttons.
1)
2)
3)
4)

Open the light properties and add an envelope to Light Intensity

Attach the Virtual Studio Trait modifier to the channel in the graph editor.
In the studio, open the new traits node graph.
Construct the following node graph.

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This node graph uses the gem Triangle track to increase the light intensity while the Square track
decreases it.

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The light intensity is clamped between 10% and 98%.

Virtual Spotlight Cone Angle

Similar to the virtual camera zoom, the spotlight cone angle can use the trigger and mode buttons
1) Add a studio trait for the Spotlight Cone Angle. (Add Virtual Studio Trait to its channel)
2) Construct the following node graph, which is very similar to the virtual camera zoom factor
node graph.

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Glossary
Behavior - An assignment of a device track to a LightWave command setup via the Control Booth
panel.
Cast - A collection of characters
Cast Performance - A combination of various chosen character performances.
Channel - A devices data stream
Character - A collection of traits.
Character Performance - A combination of various chosen takes for each trait in a character.
Character Preset - A definition of a character via its traits and connections to device channels and
scene elements.
Character Track - The desired movement a character is expected to make as the scene progresses.
Collection - A container to better organize traits in the virtual studio and behaviors in the control
booth.
Control - An interpretation of device channel data to cause an action. Controls can have child
controls.
Control Booth - A feature that allows real world devices to issue commands in Layout.
Device - An data input/output container usually representing a real world physical control.
Device Manager - a manager of devices usually devoted to a specific method of communicating
with them. The device manager panel accesses devices that are or have been available.
Device Track - A part of a device that provides or uses time-dependent data.
GEM - Motion controller used within the PS3 move.me application.
HID (Human Interface Device) - This is an industry standard to communicate with devices. The HID
Manager supports this mechanism and provides access to devices that support it as well.
InterSense - An precise and range-limited motion tracking system.
LIVE - A 3D view port feedback mode that evaluates virtual studio traits many times per second
without adjusting the current scene time.
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Performance - A particular arrangement of all traits such that they produce a desired result.
Preset - A collection of data used to remember settings applicable to specific aspects of the virtual
studio. Its purpose is to save the user time and grief while setting up their virtual studio.
Prop - A scene element that does not cause a response from a character, although, they can be
manipulated by characters.
Device - A set of channels representing input. Typically, devices represent real world hardware.
Spike - A location marker for a prop or character.
Stage - A place to arrange the cast and props and define how the scene is to progress.
Studio Asset - A virtual studio setup that can be added as an asset to your existing scene.
Sword - An avatar used within the PS3 move.me application to represent a GEM.
Take - A recording of a trait value as it changes through scene time.
Trait - A scene asset that participates in the virtual studio.
Virtual Studio - A feature that allows real world devices control of scene assets.

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Rigging and Animation

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Rigging
Introduction
Part of preparing a scene is the rigging process. Rigging a character, or any other object, involves
setting up a system of interactions, in many cases using bones and applying the rules and
limitations to those bones. There is no one way to prepare a rig, so your rig may have different rules
from someone else and still achieve the same goal.
A number of tools can be applied to a rig, including all of the tools in the Setup Tab. Additional
functions are available in the Motion Options Panel, where you can apply Inverse Kinematics and
other rules for motion, and IK Booster, which can be used to augment normal IK, as a separate IK
system, and even have dynamics applied to your rig. You can also Export and Import your rig data
for use in other models.
2015

Genoma 2

New to LightWave 2015 is a completely revised version of Genoma, turning what was a relatively
simple rigging tool into more of a rigging development kit. Since a lot of Genomas work is
performed in Modeler, the main documentation for both Genoma 1 and Genoma 2 is in the
Modeler manual, starting page 1747.

Setup Tab
General
Bone Edit Mode
Bone Edit Mode allows you to edit your character rigs quickly and easily within the scene you are
creating.

Enter Bone Edit Mode

(default keyboard shortcut Shift E)
Entering bone edit mode will do a number of things to help you work on character rigs in your
scene.
When it is invoked it will turn off the visibility of all items in the scene except the object that you
have selected and will take you to frame 0. All of the items that have been hidden will also be
locked so there can be no accidental selection of another object. Enable IK will also be toggled off
but can be turned back on when needed.
If you use the Scene Editor while in Bone Edit Mode make sure you only edit the character that you
had selected in Bone Edit Mode.
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Before entering Bone Edit Mode.

After entering Bone Edit Mode (note that a red border appears around the viewport).

The other character that shared the same origin has been hidden and locked.

Exit Bone Edit Mode

(default keyboard shortcut Shift D)
Exiting Bone Edit Mode will restore all visibility and locked items to their original state. You will have
to move to the original frame manually.

After exiting Bone Edit Mode.

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Moving the time slider from frame 0 will cause LightWave to exit Bone Edit Mode.
The objects do not need to share an origin for Bone Edit Mode to work. Selecting any object in the
scene and invoking Bone Edit Mode will work. But some of the Bone tools (Mirror Hierarchy) are
easier to use if the character is worked on at X= 0, Z= 0.

Bones On/Off
Turns all bones on or off.

Enable IK
(default keyboard shortcut Shift F8)
When Enable IK (Setup > General > Enable IK) is active LightWaves IK will be applied to all items with
IK set up on them.

It is sometimes necessary to disable IK when editing a rig.

Enable Deform
(Setup > General > Enable Deform) will toggle on or off LightWaves ability to deform a mesh with
bones.

Add
Bone
Setup > Add > Bone. A bone will be added with its base at the selected objects local Origin, along
its positive Z axis.

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Child Bone
(default keyboard shortcut =)
Setup > Add > Child Bone. A bone will be added with its base at the tip of the selected bone, along
its positive Z axis. The new bone will be a child of the original selected bone.

Draw Bones
Draw Bones will allow you to draw a bone in any orthogonal viewport (This will not work in
Perspective). This bone will be parented to the object. Each successive bone added will also be
parented to the object. If you need to add a child bone use Add Child Bone or Draw Child Bone.
To draw a bone in a viewport:
1) In any Layout orthogonal-view viewport, select the object,
or existing bone if you are drawing a child bone.
2) Select Setup > Add > Draw Bones. (Since this is the initial bone,
you can alternatively choose Draw Child Bones.)
3) Place your mousepointer where you want to place the base of the bone.
4) Drag your mouse to create the bone.

Draw Child Bones

(Setup > Add > Draw Child Bones) allows you to draw child bones from a parent.
To use Draw Child Bones:
1) Select a bone or object that you want to add a bone to.
2) Click Setup > Add > Draw Child Bones.
3) Use the LMB and draw out the bone to the length and in the direction you want.

If you want to continue adding bones just keep drawing more bones. The next bone will be
added as a child to the previous bone. If you want to add a child to a different bone than the one that
was just created you will have to select the bone first.

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Convert Skelegons
One way to create Skelegons is to create curves first. You can then convert the curves into
Skelegons, which will be placed between the curve knots (points). With Convert Skelegons, (Setup >
Skelegons > Cvt Skelegons) you can even use points from the object to create the curves.
To use Convert Skelegons:
1) In an open Modeler layer, create points that will correspond to the bases and tips of the
bones you want to eventually create. (Youll probably want the object to be boned in the
background for reference.)

2) Select points, working from the (theoretical) base of the first child bone to the tip of the last
bone in the chain. Then choose Create >Make Curve > Make Open Curve to create an openended curve with your points.

3) Repeat the previous step for all chains, if you have more than
one. You can use the same point in multiple chains.
4) Still in Modeler, choose Setup > Skelegons > Convert Skelegons to create the Skelegon from
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the curves. You can edit the base/tip of the bones using standard modelling tools. The
Skelegon bones will stay attached to each other.

If you desire, you can select and delete the curve afterward.
5) If you want, you can optionally cut and paste the Skelegons into the layer with the normal
object geometry.

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Joints
An alternative to LightWaves default Bone type is also available, Joints. Joints are similar to the way
that rigs are created in other 3D applications and offer some advantages over LightWaves own
bone system, particularly if you are in a multi-app pipeline.

The older Bone type has been labeled Z-axis. You can change the bone type in the Bone Type dropdown menu in the Bone Properties Panel.
The easiest way to visually tell a Joint from a Z axis bone is the small circle where the bone types
are connected. The small circle is actually the Joint, two connected joints are represented by a
triangle pointing towards the child joint. Keep in mind that a single joint will be represented by
only the circle portion as it does not have a child.
Deformation is entirely defined by the change in position of the joint. Currently, joint rotation has
no effect whatsoever on deformation. Joint-based animation and deformation control allows for a
stretchy bones effect with considerable control for the user. A more organic and natural motion
effect for shoulder and neck movements can be achieved, for example, or a more exaggerated
effect for cartoon-type characters. Even zero-length bones (e.g. isolated joints) can cause
deformation (activate them and turn off Multiply Strength by Rest Length).

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Add Joint
A bone will be added with its base at the selected objects local Origin.

Add Child Joint

A bone will be added with its base at the tip of the selected bone, The new bone will be a child of
the original selected bone.

Draw Joint
Draw Bones will allow you to draw a Joint in any orthogonal viewport (This will not work in
Perspective). This bone will be parented to the object. Each successive bone added will also be
parented to the object. If you need to add a child bone use Add Child Bone or Draw Child Bone.

Modify
Joint Move
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

J)

Joint Mover draws lines along each bone and puts a cross hair at the base of the child bone(s),
which is usually coincident with the tip of the parent (but need not be).
In any view, you can then click the LMB and drag the cross hairs to the new location where the tip
of the parent and base of the child should be, in effect, moving the joint location between two
bones. After the mouse button is lifted, hit the space bar to actually change the bones. Using the
RMB will constrain the bone to move along its length.
Attributes edited in LightWave will be the parents rest rotation and rest length, and the childrens
rest rotation, rest position, and rest length.

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If you select the object and run Joint Mover, the tool will be drawn through the entire hierarchy.

Here is a hierarchy with Joint Mover active. You can see the green cross hairs that are drawn at the
joints and at the tip of the single bone at the end.

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Using the LMB each one of the joints and the tip of the bone at the end has been moved (one at a
time) to a new location.
After all the editing is done, hitting the space bar will exit Joint Mover and move all the bones to
the new locations.

If you want to execute your edits but keep Joint Mover active just invoke Joint Mover again
instead of hitting the space bar. This will move the bones and keep Joint Mover on.

These edits cannot be undone.

A bones tip can be moved away from the base of its child by selecting the bone you want to edit
and running Joint Mover. The tool will only be active in the selected bone which is not the case
when the object is selected and the tool is drawn through the whole hierarchy.

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This will allow you to move the tip of the bone away from its childs base.

After the tool is dropped (hit space bar), the bone is moved to its new position.

If you have bones whose tips have been offset, Joint Mover can still be used to edit the joints
position.
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The tool will behave just as it does when the parents tip and its childs base are touching.

This is the result of that edit. The spacing is maintained even with the bones in their new position.

If multiple child bones share a joint with the same parent you can move them by selecting the
object and drawing Joint Mover through the entire hierarchy. Or you can choose the bones
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individually.

Use the LMB and drag the common joint where you want it to be.

Once the edit has been executed, the bones will be drawn in the new location still connected.

You can choose what bones in a common joint you want to move. As long as the parent is selected,
as many of its children as need be can be selected and moved.

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Tip Move
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl T)
Tip Move will allow you to move an entire hierarchy by moving the tip position of the hierarchys
parent bone. Attributes edited in LightWave will be the bones rest rotation, rest position, and rest
length.

Single Bone
If a single bone is selected, Tip Move draws a line along the bone and puts a cross hair at the tip of
the bone. If there is a hierarchy with a child relationship to the selected bone a yellow line is drawn
through the remaining bone but there will be no cross hair at the tips. Only the tip of the selected
bone will be editable.

If you use the LMB to move the selected bones tip, its hierarchy will move along with it. Even
though the parent bones angle and size change the hierarchy, it will maintain its original
configuration. If the RMB is used on the selected bones tip, it will expand along its own length.

Once you get the selected bones tip where you want it you can hit the space bar and all the bones
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will be moved to the correct place. Or if you want to continue using the tool just select Tip Move
again. All the bones will be moved and Tip Move will stay active.

Entire Contiguous Hierarchy

If the object itself is selected and Tip Move is activated. The tool will be drawn through the entire
contiguous hierarchy.
In this mode every joint will be editable instead of just a single bone. But the same rules apply to
the child/hierarchy of the tip that is being moved. Even though the parent bones angle and size
change the hierarchy, it will maintain its original configuration. If the RMB is used on the selected
bones tip, it will expand along its own length.
Once you get the selected bones tip where you want it, you can hit the space bar and all the bones
will be moved to the correct place. If you want to continue using the tool just select Tip Move
again. All the bones will be moved and Tip Move will stay active.

Bone Twist
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl K)
Bone Twist allows you to change the bank rotation of a bone while leaving children of that bone
unaffected. If no bones are selected, the tool will allow you to go bone to bone and adjust each
bones bank. When invoked, this tool draws a circle around the base of the selected bone in blue,
and draws representations of the three axes of the bone (in local coordinates). These drawn axes
represent the right, up, and forward (x, y, and z) orientation vectors.

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When the LMB is held down on the yellow cross and the mouse dragged right, the drawn axes
rotate in a positive direction, when the mouse is dragged left, rotation is in the negative direction.
Rotation is the similar to doing a Rotate operation in LightWaves standard interface, and changing
the bank angle by dragging the yellow cross in the blue circle.
However, the children of the selected bone will remain in place with Bone Twist. After the mouse
button is lifted, hit the space bar to actually change the selected bones bank angle, or invoke the
Bone Twist tool again to have the rotation of the bone occur with the tool remaining active.

Selecting a bone and running Bone Twist will allow you to edit the bone selected and that bone
only. Selecting the object containing the bones and running Bone Twist will allow you to edit all
bones contained in the object. The reason for this is to give you the ability to isolate a bone that
may be difficult to see when all bones have the tool active.

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Scale Hierarchy

Scale Hierarchy will allow you to scale a hierarchy up or down. This can help you when you import
an existing hierarchy into a new mesh or if you are reusing pieces of your rig in another part of your
object.

Select the object to scale the entire bone structure. If you want to only scale a section, select the
parent bone of that particular hierarchy. You can also choose to scale targets and goals along with
the bones.

Depending on the configuration of the hierarchy you may have to adjust the target and goal
positions manually.

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Selecting the parent bone of a hierarchy will allow you to scale just that part if needed.
Use the LMB to make coarse changes and the RMB to make fine changes.

In this example the object has been selected so Scale Hierarchy will affect all the bones.

If you choose to scale targets and goals. Scale Hierarchy will attempt to move them along with the
bones.

Orientation
Align Pitch
Twists the selected bone so that its pitch rotation axis is coplanar with that of its parent.
To use Align Pitch:
1) Select the child bone whose pitch you want to align with its parent.
2) Run Align Pitch located under Setup >Modify >Orientation > Align Pitch.
Align Pitch will change the bones rotation and automatically move to the next child bone.
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This makes it easy to just step down a chain you want to align.

Ensure that IK is disabled and that Bones are turned off. An easy way to do this is to use Bone
Edit Mode. Setup > General > Bone Edit: Enter Bone Edit Mode.

This operation cannot be undone. Please save your work before executing the tool.

Record Pivot Rotation

(default keyboard shortcut Shift P)
(Setup > Modify > Orientation > Record Piv Rot) RPR is used to zero out the current items rotation at
its current physical rotation. Basically it masks the real rotational values and allows LightWave to
see H=0, P=0, B=0 after it is set. This can help avoid problems with Gimbal Lock.

Before RPR is applied in this example the bones heading (the red circle) is not aligned with its bone.

After RPR is applied the bones heading (the red circle) is now aligned with the length of its bone.
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Record Bone Rest Position
(default keyboard shortcut R)
Once a bone is placed and keyframed you must set its rest position and activate it. Usually, you will
use the keyboard shortcut for the Record Bone Rest Position command, which is the lowercase R key.
This does two things: records the rest position and activates the bone. From then on, any changes
to the bone will deform the object.

When adjusting a chain of bones individually youll need to keyframe each bone (or use Auto
Key Create) before moving on to the next bone.
When you use the Record Bone Rest Position command, LightWave sets the rest position by
copying the bones current position and rotation values to the Rest Position and Rest Direction
values (Bones Panel). This creates a point of reference, so that if you later move the bone (not the
object), it can influence the objects shape.
If you need to reset the rest position, you may want to deactivate the bone before reapplying the
Record Bone Rest Position command. Alternatively, you could manually edit the Rest Position and
Rest Direction values.

All of the Bone Edit tools (Joint Move, Tip Move, Bone Twist) will record the bones rest position
automatically.

Remove Pivot Position

Setup > Modify > Orientation > RemovePivotPos will remove Record Pivot Position from the entire
rig. When invoked, a warning will be displayed. Press OK and RPP will be removed.

Remove RPR

Setup > Modify > Orientation > Remove RPR will remove Record Pivot Rotation from the entire rig.
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When invoked, a warning will be displayed. Press OK and RPR will be removed. The rotational
values of the bones that had RPR applied will no longer read 0 degrees.

Detail
Split Bone
Split bone breaks the selected bone(s) using the interactive Split Bone widget.

Bone before Split Bone.

Bone with Split Bone widget active.

New bones after Split Bone used. Notice that if you select two bones, two split bone widgets will be active.

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Merge Bones

Merges two selected bones, if they have a parent/child relationship.

The newly created bone will have its base located where the parents base was and its tip located where the childs tip was.

The newly created bones name will be the original name of the parent.

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UnParent Bone
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl U)
(Setup > Detail > UnParent Bone) The selected bones relationship with its parent bone (if there is
one) is severed, and it is parented to its object. After being unparented, the selected bones rest
position is edited so that it remains in place, not moving, with respect to global coordinates.

Edit
Copy Hierarchy
When invoked, the selected bone and all of its children are copied along with goals and targets
if you choose. The copied hierarchy will appear next to the selected bone but slightly offset. The
parent of the newly created copy will be the same as the copied bones parent.

Root of Hierarchy to Copy - Displays the selected bone that is the root of the hierarchy that
you want to copy.
Copy Goals, Item Shapes, Targets - Select YES if you want any of these copied and NO if you
only want the bones in the hierarchy copied.
Name Edit Method Add Prefix/Add Suffix - The user interface panel allows you to add a Prefix or Suffix. You
can type in your own into the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names text box. Or choose
one from the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names pop up menu.
Replace String - You also can choose to replace an existing text string in the original
hierarchy with a new text string. Type the string you wish to replace into the Replace this
String text box and the string you want to replace it with into the With this String text
box.

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Example: Copying a Hierarchy

1) Select the root bone of the hierarchy that you want to copy. Run Setup > Edit > Copy
Hierarchy and select your options and set the Name Edit Method.

2) The copied hierarchy will be placed right below the original

and parented to the same bone as the original.

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Mirror Hierarchy
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl W)
When invoked, the selected bone and all of its children are mirrored about a plane.

Root of the Hierarchy - This displays the selected bone whose hierarchy will be mirrored.
Mirror Goals, Goal Item Shapes, Mirror Targets - Select YES if you want any of these mirrored
along with the hierarchy and NO if you only want the bones in the hierarchy copied.
Center - Allows you to add an offset from the center.
Use Major Axis - Two choices are presented:
Use Coord Axis - You can choose this option to mirror across the X, Y or Z axis.

Other - This option will allow you to mirror using compound angles. Every unit you add
to each axis adds to the angle of the resulting mirror

Name Edit Method - Four choices:

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Add Prefix/Add Suffix - The user interface panel allows you to add a Prefix or Suffix. You
can type in your own into the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names text box. Or choose
one from the Add Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names pop up menu.
Replace String - You can also choose to replace an existing text string in the original
hierarchy with a new text string. Type the string you wish to replace into the Replace
this String text box and the string you want to replace it with into the With this String
text box.

None - No user-defined rename.

Rename Hierarchy

When invoked, the selected bones hierarchy can be renamed. The options are Add Prefix, Add
Suffix, or Replace String.

Name Edit Method

Add Prefix/Add Suffix - The user interface panel allows you to add a Prefix or Suffix. You can
type in your own into the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names text box. Or choose one from
the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names pop up menu.
Replace String - You also can choose to replace an existing text string in the original hierarchy
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with a new text string. Type the string you wish to replace into the Replace this String text
box and the string you want to replace it with into the With this String text box.

Import RIG
(default keyboard shortcut Shift I)
(Setup > Edit > Import RIG) Import RIG will read files saved in the RIG file format (See the RIG SDK for
more information) and load them into LightWave.

Hierarchy will be parented to:

Displays the bone or item that the imported hierarchy will become a child of.
Browse Rig File:
This will open a file requester so you can navigate to the location of the RIG file that you want to
import.

Import Goals, ItemShapes, Targets

Select YES if you want to import goals and targets along with the bones.

Name Edit Method

Add Prefix/AddSuffix - The user interface panel allows you to add a Prefix or Suffix. You can
type in your own into the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names text box. Or choose one from
the Prefix/Suffix to add to Bone Names pop up menu.
Replace String - You can also choose to replace an existing text string in the original hierarchy
with a new text string. Type the string you wish to replace into the Replace this String text
box and the string you want to replace it with into the With this String text box. To use
Import RIG to import a hierarchy:

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1) Select the bone or object you wish to import to be parented to and run Setup > Edit > Import
RIG.

2) Browse to the folder that contains the RIG file you want to use.
3) Select the import options.
4) Click OK.

5) The RIG information dialog will pop up. Press OK.

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6) The arm has been imported along with IK and custom

object and parented to the selected bone.
Just enable IK and it will work.

Export RIG
(default keyboard shortcut Shift I)
(Setup > Edit > Export RIG) With Export RIG (hierarchy) you can select a parent bone of a hierarchy or
an object containing a hierarchy and export it for future use in another mesh. You can export goals,
targets and keep the custom item shapes that may have been added.

Whats Exported?
Most settings applied to the hierarchy will be exported. IK settings and other properties will go
along with the RIG file. See the note below for limitations.

With this first release there are limitations to what can be exported from the rig.
The motion modifiers that make up many of the rigs used right now are not supported, but will
be very soon. A new scheme to allow plugins to communicate and share their settings data will
be added. The first to have this done is the ItemShape plugin that allows you to customise the
way Nulls and other objects are displayed. This allows the RIG file format to read the data directly
from the plugin. As the other plugins add this feature, the RIG file format will be able to export and
import ALL items and settings used in rigging a character.

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Root of Hierarchy to Export

Displays the parent or root of the hierarchy to be exported.
Browse Export File:
This will open a file requester so you can choose a place to save your export.

Description of Rig to Export

Enter a useful description about the export so you will know what you have when you import this
file back into LightWave.

Export Goals, ItemShapes, Targets.

Select YES if you want to export goals and targets along with the bones. To export a hierarchy from
a selected bone:

1) Select the bone that is the parent of the hierarchy you wish to export.

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2) Run Setup > Edit > Export RIG and the dialog box will appear.

3) Browse to the folder you wish to export to and choose the settings.
4) Click OK.

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Delete
Delete Hierarchy
(Setup > Edit > Delete > Delete Hierarchy).

When invoked, the selected bone and all of its children and grandchildren, etc. are deleted, leaving
all other bones in place.

Delete Bone
Delete Bone will delete the selected bone without causing the remaining bone to move.

Bone To Delete - Displays the name of the selected bone.

Parent Child Bones to Deleteds Parent - Will parent the remaining bones (if there are any) to the deleted
bones parent.
to Object - Will parent the remaining bones (if there are any) to the object.

This operation cannot be undone.

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Motions Options Panel
Motion Options Panel (default keyboard shortcut M)
When an item in Layout is selected, clicking the Motion Options button opens a panel containing
various controls for the selected item.

Parent Item - This dropdown menu allows you to parent the current item to any other item in
the list excluding bones, which can only be parented to another bone belonging to the same
object or to the object they belong to.
Target Item - This brings up a list of items that will allow the currently selected item to target
or point at.
Pole Item - Sets up a link to another item (often a null) that will be used as a Pole Vector. Pole
Vectors are to the items Bank as Targets are to the Heading and Pitch.
Spline Control - Determines the Spline Control element that will be used for the selected
item.

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After each of these controls there is an X icon. This is used to rapidly de-reference the Parent,
Target, Pole and/or Spline Control items without needing to go into the dropdown menu and
selecting (none), although that option remains available.

IK and Modifiers Tab

Unaffected by IK of Descendents - This option is used to define the root of an IK chain. It acts as
an anchor for IK based motions and stops the motion from passing back beyond that item.
Goal Object - This is an item which is usually the handle at the end of an IK chain. This
handle serves the same function as a control rod on the end of a muppets arm or the strings
on a puppet.
Objective Menu - This menu selects how the item uses the goal. The default is Go to Goal,
which the familiar way of trying to get the item to be as close to the goal as possible. Point at
Goal is similar to targeting in that it aims to make the items Z-axis point at the goal. YZ Plane
through Goal the IK solver will attempt to get the YZ plane of the effector to go through the
goal position. This menu is only available when a Goal Object is selected and in turn it makes
the Goal Strength field available.
Goal Strength - This option is used to determine how much the end of the IK chain
follows or is attracted to the goal object. This is particularly important when using
multigoal IK chains. One goal for example could be used to control the placement of
a leg/foot and another to determine the orientation of a knee joint. You would want
the goal at the end of the leg to have a greater goal strength then the one at the knee.
Sometimes this takes a little tuning to get right. With a character that is modelled to
human scale, goal strengths from 30 -100 work well. Interestingly enough the smaller
the character the larger the goal strength and the bigger the character the smaller the
the goal strength needed.
Base on... - Four choices are presented:
Base on First Keyframe Base on Most Recent Keyframe Base on Current Time Base on Frame Number - Makes the field next to this dropdown available for adding a
frame number, which can be enveloped
Chain - Activates the IK/FK blending options for the entire chain.
IK/FK Blending - Will blend the calculations for inverse kinematics and the keyframes for
forward kinematics based on the percentage, with 100% being full FK.

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Soft IK

Soft IK can be used with the Go To Goal objective. Its purpose is to smooth out the transition from
a bent chain to a straightened out chain. It does this by changing the position of the goal that
the chain uses, moving it closer to the chain root. Three types of Soft IK are available from the
dropdown that each offer different ways of treating the transition. Experimentation is necessary to
see which of Exponential, Linear and Clamp work best for your specific needs.
The threshold at which it starts to do this is set by the Max value. If the distance between the chain
root and the goal is larger than that indicated, the soft IK will kick in smoothly.
There are three ways to specify what the distance between the chain root and the goal means:
1) Chain Chord - the Max value is given as a percentage of the straight-line distance between
the chain root and the goal.
2) Chain Length - the Max value is given as a percentage of the distance between the chain root
and the goal, as measured along the chain.
3) Given Lengths - the Max value is used as the distance.
Additionally, as well as a soft IK on stretching the chain, there is a soft IK on squashing the chain as
well. If the distance between root and goal is less than a given minimum value, then it will start to
push the goal away.
Full-time IK - When this option is off, IK is not calculated full-time. This means that animating
the goal object will have no effect on the items with IK active. The goal object will affect
the IK items while posing. The items that are part of the IK chain will have to be keyframed
manually. In this mode the Goal object acts as an aid to pose the IK chain. When this option
is turned on, as it is by default, IK is calculated full-time.
This allows the goal object to be used to animate with full-time and the items in the IK chain
do not need to be keyframed.
Match Goal Orientation - As stated before the Goal object acts as a sort of handle or the
control rod on the end of a muppets arm. By turning on match goal, the last bone in the IK
chain will match its orientation to that of the goal objects. This allows things like a foot or
hand to stay locked in place rather then pivot around the goal object.
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Keep Goal Within Reach - It is possible for the goal object to move away from its IK chain once
it exceeds the length of the chain. This is normal but can be disconcerting to some people. If
this option is turned on, the goal object will always stay at the end of the IK chain.

Add Modifier
This panel allows additional plugins included with LightWave or available from third party sources
to be activated. These plugins will allow motions to be controlled or modified in various ways.
Next to each motion modifier in the list is a check box. This can be used to temporarily activate or
deactivate the modifier next to it.

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Alembic Motion Controller

For assets controlled through an Alembic file import.

Camera Trigger
Camera Trigger is an internal plugin with no user-accessible functions. It can be called by tools such
as Camera Selector.

Cruise Control

Will move item with constant speed. The direction of motion will be the direction at time 0. There
must be at least two keys in the object motion, preferably linear.

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CurveConstraint

CurveConstraint moves an item along a curve object, similar to a motion path. The curve object is
selected on the Curve pop-up menu. (If there is more than one curve in the object, the first curve is
used.)
Align - Will rotate the object so that it faces along the curve in the traditional Z axis manner.
Start Time/ End Time - These values determine how long the item takes to traverse the curve.
Curve Influence - The Curve Influence percentage blends the curve motion in or out.
CurveConstraint does not remain locked to the curve, but adds the curves position to its own
keyframed motion. To lock the item to the curve, simply parent the item to the curve, reset
the items position then delete all its keyframes. You might use CurveConstraint to move
an object along the same curve used to create the geometry (or create the curve from the
geometry), just like you would with a roller coaster.

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Cyclist
Cyclist will associate the action of one item with a repeatable action (an animation cycle) of
another item.

Channels are activated by clicking on the buttons that represent each channel at the top of
the Cyclist Panel. All activated channels will have their values replaced by the animation-cycle
values of that same channel, but at the time determined by the Cycle Controller. Channels that
are not enabled will retain their normal value at the particular frame. For example, you can setup
keyframes on wheels of a car so they revolve continually, while parented to a car. Then, apply
cyclist to the individual wheels, setting the car (or master parent) as the cycle controller. When the
car moves, the wheels will turn.
Cycle Frames - Defines the frame range that contains the action that you want repeated (i.e.,
the animation cycle).
Cycle Controller - Controls the item based on the selected control parameter, defined on the
pop-up menu just to the right. The control parameters can be an items position, rotation,
scale, speed, or the distance it has traveled along its actual path length. The Forward
Progress, Side Slip, and Climb parameters take into account the items orientation and
tell how far the item has been moving forward (Z axis), to the right (X axis), or up (Y axis),
respectively. Speed looks at the items velocity.
Controller Range - Defines how much change is required to equal one full animation cycle.
The unit of measure for this parameter depends on the selected control parameter. For
Position and other Distance settings, the unit of measure is in the LightWave Default Unit
defined on the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel. Rotation uses degrees and
scale is a factor where 1 equals 100 percent. Speed is in default units per second.
End Behavior - Determines what happens after the first cycle is completed.
World Coordinates - Select this button to use the Cycle Controllers actual (world) coordinates,
rather than its relative coordinates. These could be different if, for example, the object is
parented to another object.
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After IK - Although the motion of the item will always come from keyframes, the motion can
be used to move an IK goal, if After IK is off.
Additive - this option is for use if you have more than one Cyclist added to an object. It adds
Cyclist motions together rather than only taking the last one added.

Effector
Effector causes effector objects to repel or attract the motion path of the affected object. The
effector objects may be any objects you wish, but Null objects work best.

Effector Object(s) Prefix - Use this to set the prefix name. Any object that begins with this
name will be an effector, allowing you to have more than one based simply on their names.
Solid Core Radius - Defines a spherical area, within which all objects are equally affected.
Falloff Distance - There is a gradual falloff of the effect between the Solid Core Radius and
Falloff Distance. Objects outside the Falloff Distance are not affected at all.
Effector Shape - There are two choices, Point or Plane. If you choose Plane, you will need to
specify the Axis. The Axis buttons will be greyed out if you choose Point.
The impact of the effector object is set and animated by keyframing its XYZ Size channels.
Positive values repel and negative values attract.

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Expression
This is a motion-modifier version of expressions, which can use the results of other motion
modifiers, as well as IK. This is not possible with a channel modifier.

Channel
You can select multiple channels from the pop-up menu and apply different settings for each (i.e.,
you dont just pick one). They can all share scratch variables (A through Z) and the expressions can
be aware of other components of the items motion. Thus, H can depend on Z, for example, without
trying to reference the items object.

Flocking - Item Motion

This plugin gets assigned automatically when you have an item that is part of the flock.

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Follower
Using the Follower item motion modifier is similar to parenting an object to another, except that
you have control over which motion channels you wish to inherit. You can also modify and delay
the inherited value. Moreover, the motion can be inherited from the camera, a light, a bone, or
any object in the scene. Follower looks at the pivot point of the item to follow, therefore, certain
objects that follow another should match pivots.

Item To Follow - Use the pop-up menu to define the item whose motion you want to use. This
item would be considered the leader.
World Coordinates - Activate this option to use the leaders actual (world) coordinates, rather
than its relative coordinates. These could be different if, for example, the object is parented
to another object.
Time Delay - The amount of seconds entered is added to the current time. A negative number
can be used if desired.
Randomize - Is a maximum amount of time (in seconds) to be added to the delay. The actual
amount will be between 0 and the Randomize value. This number may be negative or even
larger than the Time Delay. (The latter would cause the item to sometimes anticipate the
leaders moves and lag at other times.) The overall delay amount for each item is fixed over
the course of the animation, so this is useful for basic flocking effects.

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The random number seed is taken from the object ID, which should be the same among
ScreamerNet nodes and, thus, will cause items to have different delay amounts. The delay stays the
same from frame to frame.
Path Delay - This parameter specifies a fixed following distance along the path of motion
of the leader, which is helpful for keeping cars in a train following correctly through
accelerations.
Align to Path - This option will align the follower object to its new path.
After IK - Allows you to apply Follower taking (or not taking) into account changes from IK.
Channel - Represents position, rotation and scale.
Source - Select a Source for any of the leader objects motion channels you wish to use.
Generally, the type of motion channels will match. That is, the follower objects, say, X
Position will be determined from the leaders X Position. However, the settings can be
different. For example, the follower objects Bank Angle might be derived from the leaders Z
Position. Select none to disregard that channel.
Multiply By - You can scale the value applied to a channel by inputting a factor other than 1 in
the corresponding field.
Add - The channel value may be offset by inputting a value other than 0 in the Add field.

FX_CLink
Used by FX Linker and cannot be directly addressed

FX_Link

Particles - Choose particle group.

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Rotation - This dropdown menu determines which rotation method the particle will have
when emitted. The default value, none, has no rotation added.
Random - gives the item a random starting rotation.
Align to Path(h) and Align to Path(hp) will rotate the item according to the particles path.
Copy from Emitter - will use the original particles motion path.
Time shift - moves the start of the items sizing/rotation motion according to the settings in
the drop-list. The None value doesnt alter the timing of the items motion, it plays as it was
originally keyframed. The Start Shift and End Shift options move the items motion to the
beginning or end of the particles life. The Start Adjust (distance) and End Adjust (distance)
settings will alter the frame rate of the motion according to the value in the Distance/Sec
field. As the particle travels a certain distance, a percentage of the motion is animated.
The Pre and Post Behavior settings indicate what the items rotation/scaling state will be
when the motion isnt being animated. This represents the time before the particle is born
and after it dies.
The Stay behavior will hold the first frame of the motion for the Pre Behavior and the last
frame with the Post Behavior. The Original setting returns the object to its original state in
either the beginning or ending of the animation.
The Size Dissolve setting will dissolve the item in either the beginning or ending of the
particles life. So in the Pre Behavior, while the particle is waiting to be generated, its not
visible. Then for the Post Behavior, after the particle dies, it becomes invisible.
Size effect applies the particle size to the object. The objects normal layout size becomes a
factor where 0 = 0% and 1 = 100%. You can animate an overall size of particles using normal
layout sizing functions.

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FX_Motion
Mode Tab

make key - Generates a key for every frame.

Group - Select an existing group or create a new one.

Mode
After collision - Choose an action post collision: none, reverse, random, stop.
Start Frame - Choose what frame to start the effect.
Start by event - Use this option if you want to trigger the motion upon collision.

Weight
This option sets an arbitrary weighting value that will influence how factors like gravity affect the
item.

Size
This option affects the outer boundary used for collision detection. It can also be used by
volumetric plugins like HyperVoxels.
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Resistance
This option adds an air resistance effect. Items will move slower as this value is increased.

Momentum
This option adds in a momentum or increased mass effect. Items will tend to resist being stopped
or slowed down.

Rotation Resistance
This option has the same effect as Resistance except that it affects the items rotational channels.
z-Rotation by wind(deg/m)
This option rotates the item in its bank channel as it moves or is affected by the wind.

Vector Tab

Initial Velocity
This option sets the initial direction and force.

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Velocity coordinates
This option sets whether these settings use the items local axes or world coordinates.

Initial Rotation(deg/s)
This option sets the items initial HPB rotation.

Random Rotation Start

This option randomises the initial HPB rotation.

Update
This option updates/refreshes the current seeings in the Layout viewport. This is good to do with a
heavy scene.

Copy
This option copies the current settings.

Paste
This option pastes settings in the copy buffer over the current settings.

Gravity
Gravity simulates the effects of the Earths gravity on an items motion, making it fall naturally and
even bounce with varying degrees of elasticity.

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Strength - This is the acceleration due to gravity in units of g, the Earths standard gravity.
Axis - The objects position will be altered along the specified Axis.
Ground Level - Sets the height at which the object will meet the ground. This is measured in
the Default Unit (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel).
Elasticity - Describes the amount of energy lost on each bounce, which equates to the
relative height of the bounces. Thus, 100% Elasticity is completely bouncy, and bounces
forever, 0% doesnt bounce at all.
Start Time/End Time - The Start Frame and End Frame parameters specify when the effect is
applied.

The most natural results will occur if all the keyframed motion within the range of frames is a
single linear path. In particular, the trajectory is determined by an objects initial speed and direction of
motion.

Your object must start in a positive position along the selected Axis.

Jolt!
Jolt! is an item motion modifier that simulates the chaotic and uncontrolled movements that occur
twhen physical impacts have enough weight and velocity to cause jarring vibrations. For example,
he collision of a celestial body striking another, the impact of a robots foot with the earth,
the collision of a laser beam with a passing spaceship, and so on. All of these events are good
candidates for Jolt!

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Jolt! also lets you specify vibration events using keyframes that indicate when a vibration will
begin and be at its most intense. You can also specify the duration of the vibration and its initial
intensity. Intensities can be set based on the objects position (X, Y, and Z axis) and its rotational
values (heading, pitch, and bank).

Jolt! does not provide the basic motion of an item, but rather modifies an existing motion. Jolt!
does not modify existing motion except to radically deviate from it temporarily at specified intervals.

Global Options
Save Keys/Load Keys - Lets you save and restore Jolt! settings.
Save Motion/Load Motion - These buttons save and load standard LightWave motion files
based on the keyframed data. The Save Motion button is ghosted if no keyframes are set,
and both buttons are ghosted when the Events Tab is selected.
Linear - Motion files saved with the Linear button active have their keyframes set to the
(spline control) linear mode.
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Intensity Ramp - Instructs Jolt! to track the movement of a LightWave item (i.e., Camera, light,
object, or bone) and based upon its distance from the Jolt! object, increase or decrease the
effect of the vibration proportionally.
Minimum Range - Is the radius in meters of Jolt!s effective range. LightWave items outside
of this range will not create a visible effect. If you forget to set this value when you leave
the Jolt! interface panel, you will be reminded and Jolt! will disable Intensity Ramp (with a
minimum range of 0.0, it is ineffective anyway).
Shock Wave - With Shock Wave activated, vibration keyframes are adjusted internally to offset
for the distance of the ramp object. The further away the ramp item is, the longer it will take
for the vibration event to actually trigger, and the later it will trigger from its indicated start
time. This option is useful if you use Jolt! on items in your scene other than the Camera.
Items using Jolt! that are closer to the ramp item begin their vibration events sooner than
items that are further away. With items positioned correctly, this option can produce a visible
shock wave effect from the ramp items location.
World Coordinates - If you select an item that is part of a parental hierarchy, Jolt! alerts you
and if it isnt selected already suggests that you turn on the World Coordinates option.
This option ensures that you get proper movement information from the child item.
The NonLin2 button activates an alternate calculation for Jolt!s motion calculations. It
creates motions that are less harsh.
Keyframes Tab - The Keyframes section houses the Jolt! key controls. When you want the
jolting to occur on specific keyframes, you will utilise this tab. (If you want the effect to occur
based on the position, rotation, and/or scale of an item, this is set on the Events Tab. You can
set both.) The Jolt Keys slider selects the current frame. The range of the slider will exactly
coincide with the number of render frames that have been specified on LightWaves Render
Options Panel not necessarily the same value that is used in the Preview settings. The <<
and >> buttons will jump to the previous or next keyframe, if any exist.
Clicking the Create Key button makes a keyframe at the current frame. Use Delete Key to
remove an existing keyframe. Note that the current frame must be a keyframe to do this.
Clicking the Populate Key will take the settings for the current keyframe and copy them to
every existing keyframe. In other words, it populates all keyframes with the current settings
and saves you from the tedious task of copying and pasting settings, frame by frame.
Randomising Keys - Randomising (or jittering, if you prefer) provides a means of breaking
up potentially monotonous key settings. Although Jolt! will internally randomise settings
to some degree as it applies them to the item, unless you are using intensity ramping, the
actual key values themselves will not be altered. By using the Randomize button, you can
generate variances such that the motion of subsequent keys does not look so similar.
The randomising process requires two or more keys in order to function. The settings of the
first key are never altered (nor is there any reason to alter them because no other key will
look exactly like them after the effect is applied). The degree of variance can be altered by
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using the Threshold control input field to the immediate right of the Randomize button. This
control lets you specify, as a percentage, the maximum amount that each altered key will
deviate from its current value.

Jolting Effect
The bottom half of this tab sets the actual jolting effect. Clicking Light, Medium, or Heavy will
update a keyframes Position and Rotation values to reflect preset values for a light, medium, or
heavy vibration. This feature can be used for starting points or final settings.
Please be aware that when you press any of these buttons, any existing Keyframe settings will be
destroyed.
Clicking the Copy Key button will copy all of the Jolting Effect settings to an internal memory
buffer. Clicking the Paste Key button will paste the settings into the fields currently visible. Note
that this can affect either the Keyframe or Events Tab interchangeably.

Using Preset Values

You can alter preset values. If you press the D button to the immediate right of any of the presets,
then you store the current settings for the key as the default values for that preset. These new
default values will persist between sessions with LightWave 3D. (Jolt! stores its preset defaults in a
file called JOLT.PRE. You can restore the built-in Jolt! preset values at anytime by deleting this file;
however, it can be stored in various places depending on the system configuration. You will need
to search your hard drive to find it.)

Applying Turbulence
Jolt! can apply turbulence to your items motion path in several ways. When you select Falloff, the
turbulence applied will gradually decrease throughout the duration of the event. In other words,
at the first frame of the event, the position and rotation values you have entered for the event will
be at their strongest, while at the last frame of the event they will be at their weakest. If you do not
select Falloff, then Jolt! applies the event values at their full strength at each frame throughout the
event duration.
If you select Spring, Jolt! applies turbulence uniformly, and makes it appear as though your item
is supported and buffered by springs. Without Spring, Jolt! applies turbulence more chaotically or
randomly, which produces more of a true vibration effect.

Key Settings
A Duration value must be specified, in terms of the number of frames, within which Jolt! must
complete the effect. Because you can specify duration and location of vibration events, keyframe
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data may overlap. Jolt! handles this situation by warning you about the overlap condition.
The overlapping key will start before the preceding key ends. If a keyframe is deleted, Jolt! will
recalculate all keys to ensure that any overlapped keys are corrected.
The Position controls let you define the maximum deviation on each of the three axes for the item
at the current frame. These values are all specified in meters. The higher the number, the more
dramatic the initial movement in that direction. A value of zero (0.0) in any position will prevent the
item from deviating in that direction. The Rotation controls work similarly, but set deviation values
for heading, pitch, and bank (in degrees).

Events Tab
On the Events Tab, you can cause jolting based on the position, rotation, or scale of items. (If you
want the effect to occur on specific keyframes, this is set on the Keyframes Tab. You can set both.)
The Watch pop-up menu gives you a list of all the items currently in your LightWave scene. You may
select any available item from this list as the watched item, that is, the item that triggers the event.
With the watched item selected, click on the Position, Rotation, and/or Scale button to activate the
watched attributes. Click either the < (less than) or > (greater than) button next to the input field
you wish to set. The Position and Scale fields correspond to X, Y, and Z, from top to bottom and the
Rotation fields correspond to H, P, and B.

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The << and >> buttons let you watch more than one item. To add another watched item, simply
click the >> button. The informational display to the left will tell you what item is currently selected
and how many there are in total (e.g., 01 of 03). The << and >> buttons are also used to navigate
through existing watched items. If you add a watched item by mistake, set Watch to (none). You
also cannot add another watched item if the last existing item is set to (none).
Activate the Re-arm button if the item repeats its motion and you want it to trigger the
event again. If Cascade is active, Jolt! will ignore the event (i.e., not evaluate it) until the event
immediately preceding it has occurred at least once.
The settings on the lower half of the tab work as described for the Keyframes Tab (see Jolting
Effect, above).

LeadtheFollower
An example LScript that you can pull apart to see how it works. It is a kind of reverse-Follower.

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LScript
Allows you to add an LScript motion modifier to an item.

Lscript/RT
Allows you to add a compiled LScript motion modifier to an item.

master
Another demo LScript. This one serves for locking channels. There is no interface, you will need to
edit the script so it does what you want.

MM_MotionDriver
This plugin is for use with MotionMixer and is used automatically as necessary.

Motion Baker
Motion Baker will freeze the motion of an item into individual keys. Motion Baker takes into account
not only IK, but also motion/channel modifiers, align to path, and so on. Dragging your frame slider
or playing the scene starts the computation.

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New Key Mode

Extra Channels - Places the keys in a special AfterIK channel group - you might use these with
expressions.
Use Existing - Will create normal keys for the selected position or rotation channels.
Overwrite Keys - Any existing key data will be overwritten. Note that the existing key data will
include the effect of Motion Baker recorded on a previous pass.

Motion Bakers position in a list of item motion modifiers does not matter unless another
modifier has an AfterIK option and it is active.

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Nodal Motion Modifier

In the motion modifiers for a Layout item there is a Nodal motion modifier that allows you to apply
a nodal networks vector output to your items Position, Rotation and Scale.

Oscillator
Oscillator applies damped harmonic oscillator motions (i.e., decreasing waves) to selected
animation channels of an objects motion. Examples of this effect are everywhere, from springs and
guitar strings to a grandfather clock pendulum.

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Channel - Use the Channel pop-up menu to select an animation channel to be affected.
Enable - Activate the Enable button to turn on the selected channel. The oscillator value will
replace the normal channel value. You may independently enable multiple channels and
each channel may have its own independent group of settings.
Additive - Additive adds the oscillator value to the channel rather than replacing it. If this
setting is active, a plus sign (+) will appear next to the channel name. If Additive is off, an
asterisk (*) will appear next to each enabled channel name.
Cycle Time - Cycle Time is the period of the oscillation (i.e., wave), that is, the number of
seconds between successive crests.
Wave Size - Refers to amplitude; the oscillator adds/subtracts this amount at its positive/
negative crests.
Offset - The Offset value is also added to the oscillator value on each frame. Essentially, this
sets the value of the horizontal axis that runs through the wave. By default it is zero.
Phase - Phase sets where the wave crests with respect to the beginning of the cycle, it ranges
from 0 to 360 degrees. Essentially, the wave is shifted horizontally.
Damping - If Damping is applied, the crests will fall or grow over time, as is appropriate for
harmonic oscillators. Damping units are a percent per cycle.
Start Frame/End Frame - The Start Frame and End Frame parameters specify when the
oscillator is applied.
Copy/Paste - Copy and Paste use an internal clipboard to move Oscillator settings between
channels or Layout items.

The formula is: channel value = old value + size * sin( phase + 2*pi*time/cycle time ) * exp(t*damping factor). Where the damping factor is a special number computed from the Damping
percentage.

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2015

Parenter

New to 2015 is an interactive way of dynamically parenting. With this Motion Modifier you can drag
a circular gizmo in the Layout viewport to items at the right time in the scene. To remove parenting
you can right-click on the gizmo in the middle.

Parenter Example
We set up a simple scene. The cube goes from back left to front right and the tetrahedron goes
from back right to front middle then middle left. We have a little golden ball that will be parented
to first the cube, then the tetrahedron and finally the ground plane.

01 We attach Dynamic Parenter to our golden ball through the balls Motion Options panel and open its interface, just so we can see. We
wont need to use this window to create our parenting though. 02 A circle appears on our ball when we add Parenter. We advance the
frame slider to frame 54 to start our dynamic parenting.

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03 At frame 54, dragging the circle over the red cube shows us the cubes name, so we know we have the right object and 04 letting go of
the LMB straps the ball to the cube.

05 We advance the frame slider to 74 and decide this would be a good spot to swap our ball to the tetrahedron. Still with the golden ball
selected and the circle visible, we drag it from the cube over the tetrahedron until we see the name appear (06).

07 Letting go of the LMB when the tetrahedrons name is showing gives us the solid link between ball and terahedron, and the ball starts
following it instead of the cube. 08 As we move the frame to 99 we decide we want to stop the ball from moving, so one way is to parent it
to the unmoving floor.

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09 Letting go of the LMB for a solid link with the floor, we let the animation play on until the end frame shown in 10.

QuaternionBooster
This plugin is for use with IKBooster and is used automatically as necessary. The plugin has no
interface.

Sun Spot
Sun Spot is a motion modifier that will rotate an item, usually a Distant light, to match the suns
angle at the specified date and time.

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Distance - The radial distance from the rotation center, at which the light is pointing.

Remember that the position of a Distant light is not that important since the light will always
come from the direction it is pointing, even behind the Distant lights position.
Time Settings - Determine the starting angle. For example, the Hour field should be set from 1
to 24 and Day is the day of the selected Month.
Time Lapse - When Time Lapse is set to 0, there is no sun rotation. A value of 1, will make the
sun rotate in real-time, which is very slow (i.e., one second of animation equals one second
of sun rotation in the real world). The rotation may be imperceptible in short animations.
In such cases, you may want to leave it at 0 to minimise any impact on rendering time from
moving lights.
You can accelerate the movement by increasing Time Lapse. For example, 86400 (60 seconds
* 60 minutes * 24 hours) will cause one days rotation to occur in one second.
Longitude/Latitude - Set the Longitude and Latitude for the part of the world your sun is
(theoretically) shining on.
Time Zone - Time Zone is +/- Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). There are presets provided.
During night hours, the sun will stay at its lowest point at the end of its cycle and then pop
to the starting point at the beginning of the next cycle. In other words, it will not revolve in a
360-degree circle.

Textured Motion
Textured Motion lets you apply the contour of texture to a motion. Thus, if you used the same exact
texture for a Displacement Map (on a subdivided plane), you could automatically have the item
move over it following the contour without much effort!

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Offset - Lets you move the motion in the positive or negative direction along the selected
Axis.
Scale - Acts as a multiplier for the motion. A value of 1 has no effect.
Axis - Determines the perpendicular mapping axis, as would be the case with an Image Map.
Texture - Opens the Surface Editors Texture Editor so you can set a texture to follow.

Replace Keyframed Motion

This option lets the formula contained in the Value field to modify or override the items keyframed
motions.

Value
This is the mathematical formula that will create the motions.

LeadtheFollower
To use:
1) Create a motion path for an object, and then parent one or more other objects to it.
2) Run LTF.LS for each of the child objects.
3) Use the Options button to bring up a requester where you can set the number
of frames each object should be in relation to the parent object. (If the parents
motion is set to Repeat, then the child objects motions will repeat too.)

Simple Constraints
Use Simple Constraints (SimpleOrientConstraints, SimplePointConstraints, and
SimpleScaleConstraints) to achieve dynamic parenting effects. You can independently inherit
(world) position, rotation, and scale from other items in the scene and even use different items
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for different channels. These modifiers are keyframe-aware so you can have different settings at
different times in your animation. You can also use Simple Constraints to set up your motion and
then bake the motion into keys.
To use SimpleConstraints, simply open the Motion Properties Panel for the item you want
to control and add one of the Simple Constraints motion modifiers. SimplePointConstraints
is used for positional effects; SimpleOrientConstraints is used for rotational effects; and,
SimpleScaleConstraints is used for scaling.

Adding Constraints
The window lists each constraint entry in the order it becomes effective. The number on the left
indicates the frame.
To set up a constraint, first make sure the Layout current frame is where you want the constraint
to start. Click the Add button to add a constraint entry to the list. A panel will appear where you
adjust the settings for the entry.
There are three main rows of settings. Each row controls the XYZ position, XYZ scale, or HPB
rotation, depending on which modifier you are using. Each channel has its own targeted scene
item.

The scene item selected on the pop-up menus will default to item currently selected in Layout
just prior to clicking Add.
The Weight value determines how much the channel is followed. The default, 100%, will match
the targeted channels exactly. You can use less than 100% or even more than 100%. Note that you
can use the Envelope (E) button to animate the weighting.
SimpleConstraints uses the pivot points for the source and target for its computation, so keep this
in mind if the effect isnt turning out like you expect. Also, world space position, rotation, and/or
scale are used, overriding the sources parenting and keyframed data.
Select Null constraint if you want to disable and bake (see next section) the constraint at the
current frame.
You may disable any channel by clicking off the XYZ or HPB button, making it unhighlighted. You
can also set the selected item to none.
You can edit an existing entry by selecting it with your mouse and then clicking the Edit button.
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Baking
To disable all constraints within a range of frames, but retain the constrained states, you can bake
the constraint effect into actual keys. However, note that keys are only created where the targeted
object has a key, not at every frame. Also, the keys Incoming Curve will be set to Stepped. This
locks the state at each create key.
To bake the constraints, click the Bake Range button. In the panel that appears, set the sliders to
define the range of frames you want to be baked. If you only want to bake the current frame, click
Bake Current Frame to set the sliders to only the current frame. Click OK to execute the process.
After baking, the constraints falling within the baked range will become disabled. Obviously,
subsequent adjustments to targeted items will not affect baked motions.
If you click UnBake Selected, the selected constraint will be re-activated. Any keys created from
baking will remain; however, remember that constraints will override them.

Deleting Constraints
To delete a constraint from the list, simply select it with your mouse and click the Delete button.

Simple Constraints vs. Parenter

Simple Constraints are slightly faster than Parenter and allows you to control motion channels
separately. In general, you should use Parenter, unless your item hierarchy is deep enough to cause
performance issues.

Simple Affectors
The Simple Affector modifiers (SimpleOrientAffector, SimplePointAffector, and
SimpleScaleAffector) are set up exactly like Simple Constraints, described above. The difference is
that the object retains its keyframe motion and is merely influenced by the target.

Parenter
Parenter is also a dynamic-parenting modifier, but is easier to setup compared to
SimpleConstraints. It also differs in that you can keep the (source) items initial state and take only
into account changes in the parent.
To use Parenter, simply open the Motion Properties Panel for the item you want to parent to
something else and add the Parenter motion modifier.
To add a parenting entry, change Layouts current frame to the desired time and click the Parent
on Parenters settings panel. A dialog will appear. Select the parent item on the pop-up menu.
You may independently select to keep initial position, rotation, scale, and/or parent after taking
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into consideration effects of IK. Click OK to close the dialog and add the entry to the list. Note that
when you are using the After IK option, you will need to manually create a key (in Layout) for the
parented item at that frame.
Clicking Unparent freezes or bakes the parented state at the current frame, but only until the next
parenting entry, if any.
To delete an entry from the list, select it and click the Delete button.
You may edit a selected entry by clicking the Edit button.

Edit
This allows you to check the properties of a motion modifier plugin or access its control panel.
You can also copy, paste and remove motion modifiers. This makes it easy to set up the attributes
on one object and then copy/paste to other objects.

Controllers and Limits Tab

The Controllers and Limits tab has been updated to include Position and Scale controls. The limits
are based on the parent space and not world coordinates.
The World options for Rotation will use the world coordinates, rather than the local coordinates.
The Transform Item option will select the item which influences the current item.
Interpolate uses the blend to interpolate between Same As Item value and channel value.
Compensate removes the Same As Item value from the channel value to a degree specified by the
blend.

Heading, Pitch and Bank Limits

We can determine a range within which a rotational channel of an item can rotate. This is useful to
keep joints from hyperextending or keeping IK controlled joints from popping. It is also useful to
keep items that are very closely spaced from rotating in and through each other.

Heading, Pitch and Bank Stiffness

This setting allows you to set a stiffness or resistance on the rotational channels of an item. This
works when the controller for a channel is set to IK. The Stiffness setting can help to determine
which items in an IK chain will bend first or last. Higher values make a joint harder to bend and
lower values easier to bend.

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Heading, Pitch and Bank Controllers

Scale Controllers

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Position Controllers

Controller Types
These contain seven options for controlling the rotation, position and rotation channels. Not all
options are available for all channels.
1) Keyframe - This simply means that you can manually orient an item
in that channel and keyframe its position at anytime.
2) Point at Target - This allows a particular rotational channel to target an item.
Target Item in the main motion panel must be set to some item.
3) Align to Path - This allows the rotational channel of an item to align to its
motion path. With the Align to Path Look Ahead controller under the IK and
Modifiers Tab we can make this channel look ahead or anticipate a turn.
4) Inverse Kinematics -This allows IK to control this channel. If other channels are set to FK
we can selectively determine which rotational channels are controlled via IK or FK.
5) Align to Velocity - The channels controlled by this option will have the same values as the
corresponding channels of the set item. The stiffness value can be used to interpolate.
The one for position has the option to use the world coordinates of the position item
(instead of local). The calculations currently assume that X, Y, and Z are controlled, so the
result may not be optimal if not all three position channels are Same as Item controlled.
6) Align to Pole - This option adjusts the angle of the item so it points towards the
pole. It is similar to the target item, and typically used in combination with it.
7) Same as Item - The channels controlled by this option will have the same values as the
corresponding channels of the set item. The stiffness value can be used to interpolate.
The one for position has the option to use the world coordinates of the position item
(instead of local). The calculations currently assume that X, Y, and Z are controlled, so the
result may not be optimal if not all three position channels are Same as Item controlled.

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Limits
Record Minimum/Maximum Joint Angles
You can interactively set the rotational Min and Max values by rotating the item to the desired
minimum direction and choosing Setup > Motions > Limits > Record Minimum Joint Angles. This will
activate minimum limits for any rotational parameters (heading, pitch, or bank) that are currently
active for the chosen item. Similarly, rotating the item to the desired maximum range limit and
choosing Setup > Motions > Limits > Record Maximum Joint Angles will automatically input the
values into the maximum limits for the active rotational parameters. You can deactivate Heading,
Pitch, and/or Bank to avoid setting limits for the deactivated setting.

Bone Properties Panel

The Bone property panel gives you access to all the settings available for bones in LightWave
Layout.

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Bone properties can be accessed in two ways:
Select the Bones button at the bottom left corner of Layout and then click the Properties button
located in the same corner.
Press

Shift

B and then P.

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Use Bones From Object
This pop up menu allows you to choose a different object whose bone properties you would like
to edit. When you first open the Bone Properties Panel, you only have access to the bones of the
object that you had originally selected. This allows you to change to a different object without
having to leave the Properties Panel.

Clear All bones

As the name suggests, this button will clear all bones from the current object.

Falloff type
Falloff Type uses a mathematical formula to set the falloff strength of a bones influence in the
current object. An exponent is used (^2, ^4, ^8, ^16) to figure out how quickly the falloff will
happen. The larger the number the quicker the influence of the bones will falloff.

Inverse Distance

Inverse Distance ^2

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Inverse Distance ^128

Use Morphed Positions

With this enabled, bone deformations will be applied after morphs. This option can adversely affect
performance; normally it should be turned off.

Faster Bones
Each vertex will only be affected by the four closest bones in the object. This can increase
performance in objects with more than four bones.

Current bone
Shows the currently selected bone.

Bone Active
When checked bone is on (active).

Rest Position
This determines the position of a bone at the time it is rested. When a bone is rested in layout it
has an effect on every vertex in the object. How much effect it has is called weighting (not to be
confused with Weight Maps). How much a point is weighted towards a specific bone depends on
several factors. The most important is distance from the bone and bone falloff.

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Rest Rotation
This determines the orientation of a bone at the time it was rested.

Rest Length
This determines the length of a bone at the time it was rested.

Bone Weight Map

Use this pop up menu to select a Weight Map to apply to the current bone. The influence a bone
has on a point is now modified with the strength of the various Weight Maps on a given point.

Use Weight Map Only

Only uses values attained from an applied Weight Map to set bone influence. Since each vertex can
have multiple Weight Maps, various bones can have a distinct influence on a vertex based on the
strength of each Weight Map it is assigned to.
Note that if a point has only one Weight Map, the bone assigned to that weight will have 100%
influence on that point no matter what the value of the Weight Map is.
In order for a bone to have partial control over a point, that point must have at least two Weight
Maps assigned to it. If the total value of the combined Weight Maps exceeds 100%,unpredictable
results can occur. The same goes when using negative weights. To insure predictable results in this
mode, it is best to also check Weight Map Normalization.
Another thing to know is that in this mode all other bone functions cease to apply.

Weight Normalization
Use this option to obtain predictable results when using Weight Map Only.
This feature ensures that the total values of several Weight Maps applied to a vertex never exceed
100%. To calculate the amount of influence a bone will have on a particular point we have to know
how many Weight Maps are assigned to bones and what their values are. For example, to calculate
the amount of influence a bone will have on a vertex we have to know both the total number of
Weight Maps on that point, and also their values. Assuming each Weight Map is assigned to a
bone, we will conclude that the amount of influence a bone has on that point is derived as follows:
Point A has three weight maps assigned to it named Upp_Arm, Low_Arm and Elbow.
What is the amount of influence the Elbow bone will have on Point A ?
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Point A = Elbow/(Upp_Arm + Elbow + Low_Arm)

Strength
Whenever two or more bones are present, Strength (Bones Panel) will determine the influence one
bone has over another when ranges of influence intersect. If the option to limit the bones range is
inactive, all points within the object are considered completely within the influence range of each
bone.

Multiply Strength by Rest Length

The Multiply Strength by Rest Length option (Bones Panel) causes a bone to multiply its Strength
by its Rest Length to determine the influence of the bone. Bones with larger rest lengths will exert
greater influence over other bones with equal Strength values, but smaller rest lengths.

Limited Range
When Limited Range (Bones Panel) is active, the Min value determines the sharp cutoff point of a
bones influence. Any points within this range are 100 percent affected by movement or sizing of
the bone. Any points outside of this range are affected to a smaller extent or not at all depending
on whether they fall within the Max. In an orthogonal view, the Max setting is visible in the
viewport.
A short bone will exert a spherical influence, while longer bones exert a more oblong influence.

The following options only operate on the pitch channel.

Joint Compensation
Sometimes bones used to create joints can cause pinching or unwanted bunching, much like
a folded garden hose. Joint Compensation (Bones Panel) will remedy this effect by making the
affected points tend to maintain the original volume inside the joint. The result is a more realisticlooking joint. You can modify the compensation amount to increase or decrease the effect.

Joint Comp for Parent

This option shears the points affected by the parent bone during the child bones rotation. This
compensation also alleviates the pinching effect often caused by bones. At the same time the
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point shear occurs, the bone will also try to maintain the volume inside the joint.

Muscle Flexing
With this option the points affected by the bone will flare out as the bone is rotated. The effect
simulates muscles bulging under the skin.

Parental Muscle Flexing

This option is generally more commonly used than Muscle Flexing. For example, when your forearm
rotates your biceps flex. The forearm is the child and the bicep is the parent. It would not look
natural for the forearm to bulge as it is rotated, but it looks perfectly natural when the biceps flex.

Twist
The rotation axis most aligned with the bone at rest is used. For zero-length bones the bank
axis is used. The amount of twist is the change in rotation of that axis between rest and current
(limitation: local rotation values are used, so a twist of a bone is not inherited by child bones). There
is a Twist toggle in the bone panel (default on), and an input which controls how curly it is (0% is
no curl, 100% is curl by the amount of twist over the length of the bone).
Bone Icon Size changes the size of the bone icon in the OpenGL display. It does not affect how the
bone influences the mesh or other bones.

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IK Boost Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl B)
IK Booster (Modify > IK Boost Tool) is an animation system that can work independently from
LightWaves base Inverse Kinematics or it can be used with LightWaves base IK. With IK Booster
applied to an object you can gain access to Bone Dynamics and IK Booster character tools.

Applying IK Booster
IK Booster can be applied to an object by adding it to the Custom Object list (Add Custom Object)
in the Object Properties Panel.

You can also add IK Booster to an object using the IK Boost tool (Modify > IK Boost Tool).
Select the IK Boost tool and Right- Click on the object pivot point to bring up the option to Apply
IK Booster.

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When IK Booster has been applied to an object all the bones in the object and all of the objects
children will be set up with IK. Although IK Booster is ideal for character rigs, it can be a powerful
tool for mechanical rigs as well.
Steps for applying IK Booster:
1) Load your object (s) into Layout and either create bones, or convert Skelegons to bones.
In the case of a segmented object, make sure all parts are parented properly.

2) Select the IK Boost tool (Modify > IK Boost Tool). Select the IK Boost tool and Right- Click on
the object pivot point to bring up the option to Apply IK Booster. Select Apply IK Booster to
activate IK Booster.

IK Booster can also be applied in the Object Properties Panel as discussed above.
3) Although there are some cases where Step 2 would be the last step before animating, in
most cases you will want to apply further settings discussed below.
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KeyFrame Mode
IK Booster has several keyframe modes you can choose from the Keyframe Mode drop down menu.
If the DopeTrack is active, the Keyframe Mode button will be located on the left side of the track.

If the DopeTrack in not active, the Keyframe Mode selection will be located on the left side of the IK
Booster track. The IK Booster Track is located at the bottom of the viewport windows.
The Keyframe Mode selector on the IK Booster track doesnt bring up a drop down menu, instead it
toggles between the modes as you click on it with the LMB.

KeyFrame Modes
All Item - When this mode is selected,if you create a key on an item, it creates a key for that
item and the entire hierarchy.
Parent - With Parent mode, if you create a key on an item, it creates a key for that item and
every parent up that items chain.
Child - In Child mode, if you create a key on an item, it creates a key on that item and all of its
children.
Parent + Child - In this mode, if you create a key on an item, it creates a key for that item and
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every parent up that items chain, and every child down the chain.
Current Item - With Current Item mode, if you create a key on an item, it only creates the key
on that item.

IKB Menu
The IK Booster menu has several options to work with. If the DopeTrack is active, the IKB Menu will
be located to the right of the DopeTrack.

If the DopeTrack is not active, the IKB Menu will be located on the right side of the IK Booster track.
The IK Booster Track is located at the bottom of the viewport windows.

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IKB Menu Options

Bone Dynamics
This option enables and disables all bone dynamic functions for the object that IK Booster has been
applied to.

Global fxIK
IK Booster provides a global IK on/off switch. When this option is active all hierarchies in the object
will be solved with IK. When this option is not active only the current hierarchy will be solved with
IK.

IK bind
IK Booster has the option to fix an item, which locks the position of the items controller. When IK
Bind is active all fixed items will stay fixed. When it is not active, items that are fixed will ignore their
fix setting and will no longer be locked to their position.

Commands
Reset Rotation - This command will set the rotational values of the item(s) back to their original
value.

The KeyFrame Mode selected will determine the items affected by Reset Rotation.
re-BakeSpot-all - Any Bake Spot in the scene will be re-baked when this command is selected.

Any Bake Spot that was not previously baked will not be affected.

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Motions
IK Booster has several motion options to help speed up animating and increase productivity.
Motion Copy - This function will copy the objects entire motion to the clipboard.
Motion Rollback - This function will paste the last motion that was copied to the clipboard.

This will remove any work that you have done since the time of copying the motion.
Motion Save - This function will save the entire motion data of the IK Booster object to a text
file.
This gives you the ability to re-use motions from your object on objects that share the same setup.
Motion Load - This function will load an IK Booster motion data file that was previously saved
using the Motion Save command.

Options
This brings up the IK Booster Options Panel.

FxIk size - This setting determines the accuracy of the IK solving. The higher the number the
less accurate the IK solving will be.
Group - you can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted
interaction. This also works with Particle FX controllers. This becomes very handy when you
are working on a complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to only affect certain
objects.
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<default> Includes all groups.
<new group> Creates individual group. Can associate functions within a group.

You can assign IKBoost settings to a group shared with Particle FX.
Gravity - Setting for downward (-y) gravity.

This option only applies to objects that have Bone Dynamics active.

9.8 in the Y is considered the value of earth gravity. If you are simulating any terrestrial effect,
make sure you use this value..

Fix by Collision - This function will fix items that pass through a collision object.

This option only applies to objects that have Bone Dynamics active.
Controller Size - Use this setting to change the size of the controller when it is unselected.

Controller Size: 50mm

Controller Size: 100mm

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Size Mode - This setting determines the size of the controller when it is selected.
Size 1 - Smallest selected size.
Size 2 - Medium selected size.
Size 3 - Largest selected size.
Not Change - The selected controller size will be based on Controller Size. The controller size
when selected and unselected will be the same.

IK Booster and the Dope Track

When the DopeTrack is active while in IK Booster mode, there are two different menus that can
be used, the Right Click menu, and the Right Click and drag menu. You will also see the Keyframe
Mode and IKB Menu buttons that are unique to IK Booster discussed earlier.

Right Click Menu

Right clicking on the dope track will bring up a menu with several functions described below.

Copy key from current - This function will copy a keyframe from the current frame (the frame
the time slider is at), and paste the keyframe on the frame you right clicked on.
Make Key - This function will create a keyframe at the frame you have right clicked on.

If you would like to create keyframes for a range of frames, use the Bake Keys function in the
Right Click and Drag Menu.
Delete Key - This function will delete the Keyframe at the frame you have right clicked on.

If you would like to delete a range of frames, use the Delete Keys function in the Right Click and
Drag Menu.
Save Pose - This function will save an external file that contains the keyframe data of the IK
Booster object for the frame you right clicked on.
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Load Pose - This function will load a previously saved Pose file on the frame you right clicked
on.

Right Click and Drag Menu

Right clicking and dragging to select a desired time range on the Dope Track will bring up a menu
with several functions described below.

Bake Keys - This function will create keyframes for the selected time range.

Time Range Selected

After Bake Keys

Delete Keys - This function will delete keyframes in the selected time range.

Above: Time Range Selected, Below: After Delete Keys

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Apply Keys
All three applies use the first and last keyframe in a range as boundaries, and the keyframe that
the slider is currently sitting on (Current Frame) as a control point.
Soft - In the case of Soft Apply, a Hermite spline is generated using these keyframes as
points to smooth out the intervening keyframes. Default Hermite coefficients are used.

Linear - Linear Apply uses the same keyframes, but simply increments the keyframe values
between the control points.

Flat - Flat Apply snaps all intervening keyframes to the value of the control keyframe (the
one the slider resides on).

Record Motion
This function will record the motion of the selected controller at fixed distance intervals.
Right Click and drag to select the time range, select Record Motion, and set the options in the
Record Motion Panel.

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Record Interval - The set distance for each keyframe.

Record Key - Determines what items motion will be recorded using the various Keyframe
Modes.
After you set the options for Record Motion, the IK Booster track will display red to show that you
are recording. After you have moved the controller through the time range the track will return to
the default mode.

Set Bakespot - This function will create a Bakespot in the select time range. A Bakespot is a
time range in which you can bake keys into the desired time range so that they will remain
for future operations.

Use the Bakespot Handles to adjust the time range for the bakespot at any time.

Bakespots have a right click drop down menu that gives you the following options:

Bake Keys - This function will create keyframes for the selected bakespot.
Re-bake-All - Any Bake Spot that has been baked in the scene will be re-baked when this
command is selected.
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Remove Bakespot - Clears the bakespot from the track.

Dynamics Effect
This function will apply dynamic motion to a controller over the selected time range. When this
function is selected the Dynamic Effect Preview Panel will appear.

The graph in the preview, displays the motion that will be applied to the controller.The line in the
background represents one second intervals. This graph gives you a visual representation of the
motion that will be applied.
Weight - Defines the weight of the controller. You can achieve heavy motions by increasing
the Weight value, and you can create light motions by decreasing Weight.
Spring - Controls the springiness or stiffness of the controller. Reducing the Spring coefficient
creates soft motions, while raising the Spring coefficient produces motions with a stronger
repelling force. Setting the coefficient to an extremely large value creates stiff motions.
Resistance - Controls the amount of air resistance.
Once applied a keyframe will be placed on every frame in the selected time range.

No calculations are needed when using this function.

Bind Motion
This function will bake keyframes for the entire time range based on the keyframe of the first frame
in the range.

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The example above shows bind motion in action. The Time range selected is from frame 36 to 49.
When Bind Motion is selected every frame in the time range uses the data from Frame 35.

IK Booster Track
If the DopeTrack is not active while in IK Booster mode, the IK Booster Track becomes functional. The
Keyframe Mode and IKB Menu buttons appear on the track as discussed earlier and all operations
for IK Booster that were available on the Dope Track are available for the IK Booster Track.

IK Booster Track Time Ranges - The IK Booster track displays time ranges differently then the
DopeTrack. The time range will be shaded as it is in the Dope Track, but only the first and last
frame numbers will be displayed unlike the DopeTrack.

Time Range Keyframe Shifting - You can use the IK Booster Track to shift a selected area of
keyframes. This function is unique to the IK Booster Track and can be very useful.

IK Booster Frame Marker - Place a frame marker by left clicking on the IK Booster Track. The
Frame Marker is the frame on the track that marks the frame that the time range ends or
begins depending on which side of the marker you click and drag in.

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To remove the frame marker, simply left click on it.
Keyframe Origin - This marker shows the original location of the keyframes before any
movement has taken place.
Keyframe Move Location - This marker shows where the Keyframe Origin is being moved to.
The Time Range will be shaded to display what area of time is being affected.

The items that are affected by Time Range Keyframe Shifting are determined by the Keyframe
mode.

IK Booster Viewport Controllers

Once you have applied IK Booster to your object you have many options for displaying and
working with the controllers that are created for each item. The controllers appear as circles while
in Rotate mode and boxes while in Move mode.

Left clicking and dragging on the controller will allow you to move and rotate the controller freely.
You can also left click and drag on individual channels to constrain the movement of the controller.
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Rotate Mode:
Red - Heading Channel
Green - Pitch Channel
Blue - Bank Channel
Move Mode:
Red - X Channel
Green - Y Channel
Blue -Z Channel

Controller Right Click Menu

Right clicking on the controller will bring up the controller menu.

Fix - This function will lock a controller in place. The controller will be displayed as a solid
circle to indicate that it is fixed.

Ankle Controllers are fixed

IK Stop - This function will make the selected controller the new base of the IK chain, and only
controllers farther down the chain are affected by any IK operation.The controller will display
a diamond shape to indicate that IK Stop is active.
A good example of using IK Stop is wagging the tail of a dog. Imagine a string of bones
inside a solid dog object, extending down its tail. You want the tail to follow the dog as it
moves about, but you do not want the dogs body to wag as the tailbones are animated. You
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activate IK Stop for the bone at the base of the tail to accomplish this.

This function is similar to Unaffected by IK of Descendants.

The Shoulder Controller has IK Stop applied.

FK Control - This function will change the controller from Inverse Kinematics to Forward
Kinematics (FK). Forward kinematics is the standard type of motion generated in LightWave
when you rotate/move any parents in a chain. The position of the last controller in the chain
is determined indirectly by the combination of all positions of any parent controller up (i.e.,
forward) through the chain. (For instance when you move your upper arm, your forearm and
hand also move with it.)

File Tools - The options listed below are file management tools for a controller.

Pose Save - This function will save an external file that contains the position of the selected
controller for the frame you are currently on.
Pose Load - This function will load a previously saved Controller Pose file at the frame you
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right clicked on.
Motion Save - This function will save the entire motion data for the selected controller to a
text file. This gives you the ability to re-use motions from the selected controller.
Motion Load - This function will load a controllers motion data file that was previously saved
using the Motion Save command.

Controller Options
The Options drop down menu has several functions to work with.

Move/Rotate - This function will toggle the control between Move and Rotate mode.

Left: Rotate, Right: Move

Quaternion - This function will activate quaternion inverse kinematics solving for the
selected controller. Quaternion IK will help any controller that suffers from gimbal lock and
the controller will be displayed with a Q to indicate that Quaternion is active.

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Interesting side note: The quaternions are members of a noncommutative division algebra first
invented by William Rowan Hamilton.
Set IK Target - This function will allow one controller to drive another controllers motion. In
other words, the currently selected controller drives the previously selected controller. The
controller will be labelled with a T to indicate that Set IK Target has been applied. Choose
Reset IK Target to remove the target setup from the controller.

Steps for setting an IK Target:

1) Select the controller that you want to animate.
2) Select the controller you want to drive the animation.
3) Select Set IK Target. The target is setup and ready to go. Use the
Target controller to drive the controller in step 1.
Setting Copy - This function will copy the settings from the previously selected controller. This
can be a real time saver when setting up controllers on like items. One example would be
setting up the left leg and copying the settings over to the right leg.
Dynamics Edit - This function will activate Dynamic Edit mode. Dynamic Edit mode allows
you to set the dynamic properties for your controllers.

To change the values for Weight, Resistance, Spring, and Viscosity, simply left click and drag on the
control. Dragging left will decrease the value while dragging right will increase the value.
Weight - Defines the weight of the controller. You can achieve heavy motions by increasing
the Weight value, and you can create light motions by decreasing Weight.
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Resistance - Controls the amount of air resistance.
Spring - Controls the springiness or stiffness of the controller. Reducing the Spring coefficient
creates soft motions, while raising Spring coefficient produces motions with a stronger
repelling force. Setting the coefficient to an extremely large value creates stiff motions.
Viscosity - Controls the impact of a collision. A controller with a higher Viscosity value tends
to keep its shape more. If a controller bounces, a higher Viscosity value will have less bounce
motion because the Viscosity absorbs the bouncing force.
Size - This setting determines the area of influence the controllers have. The image below
shows various sizes on the controllers that make up the head and torso area of this character.

On/Off - This function will determine whether a controller will be affected by dynamic
calculation.
End Edit - This function will take you out of Dynamic Edit mode.

Bone Dynamics must be active for these settings to be calculated.

Controller Edit
This function will activate Controller Edit mode. While in Controller Edit Mode you can freely move
the controllers by left clicking and dragging them to a location.

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Left: Before Edit, Right: After Edit

Controller Edit Mode has several options that can be used to customise your Controller settings.
Right click to bring up the Controller Options menu.

Reset - This function will reset the controllers back to its default setup.
Float /Unfloat - This function toggles the controller between Float and Unfloat.
Float - The controller moves along with the item.

UnFloat - The item moves but the controller is anchored.

Size Mode - This setting determines the size of the controller when it is selected.
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Size 1 - Smallest selected size.
Size 2 - Medium selected size.
Size 3 - Largest selected size.
Not Change - The selected controller size will be based on Controller Size. The selected and
unselected controller size will be the same.
End Edit - This command will exit Controller Edit mode.

Channel Menu
Right clicking on an individual channel will bring up the Channel menu. Each channel can be
configured independently.

Lock/ Unlock - This function will lock and unlock a channel. When it is locked, the number is
surrounded with ().

The Controllers Heading Channel is Locked

Set/ Use Limit - This function will limit the channels value range. When a channel has a limit,
the number is surrounded with <>.

The Controllers Pitch channel has a limit.

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By default the limits are 180 to 180. This is not ideal in most cases so you will want to edit the
limits.
Edit Limit - This command brings up the Edit Limits Panel.

You can independently limit heading, pitch, and bank rotations between maximum and minimum
values. You can prevent actions like bending a leg backwards at the knee (unless youre animating
a sports injury). To use the limiting feature, set the Min and Max values on the Edit Limits Panel.
Setting rotation limits can be particularly important when using inverse kinematics. When setting
the Min/Max Limits, you will see a visual guide in the viewport that represents the limits.

The maximum value must be greater than the minimum.

Stiffness - Controls the springiness or stiffness of the limit. Reducing the Stiffness coefficient
creates soft motions, while raising the Stiffness coefficient produces motions with a stronger
repelling force. Setting the coefficient to an extremely large value creates stiff motions.
Copy and Paste - Use these commands to copy and paste settings between channels.
Reset Limit - This function sets the maximum and minimum settings of the limit to a present
value. When Reset Limit is applied, you can edit the Maximun value by holding down the Ctrl
key + left click and drag to the value that you want the limit to be set at.

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Reset Value - This function will set the value of the channel to zero (0). This is very handy
when you need to quickly set the channels value back to zero.
Add Link - This command will add a Booster Link to the selected channel. The reference
controller will be the last controller selected.

Graph Edit
This command will launch the Graph Editor with the selected Channel active.

IK Booster Link
IK Booster Link can be used to link a channel from one controller to a channel in another controller.
The Linked controller can be driven by the referenced control. This is very similar to how
expressions can be used without writing any expressions.

Remove - This command will remove the Booster Link Modifier from the channel.
Change Shift - This function will adjust the motion of the linked controller at different times
during the referenced controllers motion. To remove Change Shift from a channel, simply
right click on the channel and choose Key Control.

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Change Item - This function will change the reference controller to the last controller
selected.

This option can be changed in the IK Booster Modifier Panel under the Reference Item drop
down menu as well.
Change ch - This command will allow you to change the channel that drives the selected
controller.

This option can be changed in the IK Booster Modifier Panel under the Reference Ch drop down
menu as well.
Copy and Paste - These commands will copy and paste Booster Link settings.
Edit Graph - This command will launch the Graph Editor.

IK Booster Link will abide by any limits that have been set on the channel that is driving the
current controller.

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IK Booster Link Modifier Options

Reference Item - This function will change the reference controller. The reference controller is
what drives the linked controller.
Reference Ch - This command sets the channel of the Reference Item that drives the linked
controller.
Shift Frames - Delays the linked motion by the number of frames specified.

Entering 5 moves the frames -5, and -10 moves it +10.

Source Value - This function sets the percentage between the minimum and maximum value
of the referenced channel that will be used.
Change Value - This function will change the value of the selected channel.

IKB Calculate (default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

X)

The IKB Calculate operation (Modify > IKB Calculate) is used to calculate IK Boosters Bone Dynamics
and generate keyframes based off those calculations. A keyframe will be created on every frame
much like motion-capture data.

Bone Dynamics need to be properly set up before this will work. Otherwise, clicking it causes an
error.

: The IKB Calculate button will also calculate dynamic objects as well. For more information
about IK Booster and Bone Dynamics see the IK Booster section.

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Move TCB Tool (default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

G)

The Move TCB tool (Modify > Move TCB) allows direct manipulation of Tension, Continuity and Bias
in the main layout viewports. Use the input field in the lower left hand corner or interactively drag
in the viewport to change the settings.

Mouse Operations:
LMB - Tension
Ctrl+LMB - Continuity
RMB - Bias

With AUTOKEY OFF - it will only allow you to adjust where a keyframe already exists. With
AUTOKEY ON - it will add a new keyframe, if you adjust where there isnt a keyframe already.
TCB defined:
Tension causes an object in motion to slow down, or move a little bit less in each frame, as it nears
the keyframe, and to accelerate as it passes the keyframe (-1 = low tension, 0 = normal tension,
1 = high tension). Without Tension (i.e., value of 0), the object would pass through the keyframe
position at a constant speed. Positive values slow an item through a keyframe (ease-in) while
negative values speed it up (ease-out).
A high Tension value (1.0) is often used at the end of a flying logo move in order to make the logo
come to a gradual stop. High Tension at the beginning of this move would have the logo start
slowly, while a negative value would have the logo start quickly.
Continuity accentuates a break or change in an objects graph (-1 = sharp , 0 = normal , 1 =
smooth). Negative Continuity gives a sharper transition in the spline path at a keyframe, while
positive Continuity gives a broader transition (sometimes over-continuous) through a keyframe.
Negative Continuity is usually used to replicate a sharp change in motion such as that of a falling
ball striking a floor and quickly reversing direction.
You would rarely want to use a positive continuity - this will cause an object to overcompensate as
it passes through the keyframe and appear to stutter or roller coaster at the frame.
Bias determines whether an items spline path leans to one side of a keyframe or the other (-1
= more slack incoming, 0 = equal slack, 1 = more slack outgoing). You accomplish this effect
by moving the slack in the spline path to one side or the other of a keyframe. This serves to
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accentuate motion - the incoming motion by undershooting the keyframe and creating a feeling
of anticipation, or the outgoing motion by overshooting the keyframe. For example, a race car
moving through a turn could use either a negative or a positive Bias setting to a) anticipate the
turn with a negative Bias, or b) overshoot the turn with a positive Bias.
Negative Bias values place the slack before the keyframe while positive Bias values place it after the
keyframe.

You can also adjust TCB settings in the Graph Editor, under the Curves tab at the bottom of the
panel.

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Introduction
Now that you have reviewed cameras, lights, objects and rigs, its time to discuss animation.

Keyframing
The way to tell the computer where an object - be it camera, models or lights - is at any given point
is to use keyframes. Keyframes fix an objects location, rotation and scale for a given moment in
time. Setting one at the start of your animation and one at the end means that LightWave will
automatically interpolate between them for the duration of the animation. In fact it will create
these in-between frames, called tweens, between every keyframe resulting in a fluid animation. To
get you started, lets create a piece of the easiest animation possible.

1) Start Layout and check to see if Auto Key: All Channels is enabled at the bottom of the
interface window. Add a cube by clicking on the Modeler Tools > Create > Geometry > Cube
button and accept the default entries by hitting the OK button. The cube will appear at 0, 0,
0.

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2) Click in an empty part of the viewport and move the mouse. You will see the cube moves
since it is the selected object. If you wish to restrict movement to an axis, hit Ctrl Z to undo
your move and click and hold on the red arrow indicating the X axis. Drag the cube over to
the left side of the screen.

3) Move the slider at the bottom of the Layout viewport to the end of the slider range - it will
be at frame 120 by default. You can also do this by clicking on the rightmost button of the
transport controls under the viewport.

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4) Move the cube over to the right edge of the viewport, either by the X axis arrow or just
freehand in the viewport. You will see two things. The first is that theres a yellow line on
frame 0 in the timeline under the Layout viewport (theres also one under the slider at frame
120 now, but it wont be as visible), the second is that theres a gray dotted line marking
some of the path that the cube is taking. If you were to count the dots when the cube is at
frame 60 by hand, you would see that there were 120 dots - 60 in front, 60 behind, but just
take our word for it. These mark frames along the way.

5) If you hit the play button just under the right-hand side of the Layout viewport you will now
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see your cube moving across the screen and starting again when the slider reaches the end
of the timeline. Congratulations! Youve made an animation. Its not exactly Disney calibre,
but it is an animation.

6) To make it slightly more interesting, stop the playback by hitting the pause button. Move the
timeline slider to the middle of the timeline.

7) Move the null up to the top of the viewport. You can do this by grabbing the green arrow
pointing upwards from the null, or by using the right mouse button anywhere in the
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viewport. You will see the motion path change to match the new keyframe. Now when you
press play again, you can see that LightWave has taken note of your changes and made the
appropriate in-between frames for the motion to proceed smoothly.

8) Stop playback by hitting the Pause button and go through your scene adding more keys as
you go. Create a real rollercoaster ride for the Cube to take.

9) When you want to check the nulls motion path, press play. When your viewport is in
Perspective mode, if you use the navigation controls at the top right of the viewport, you
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can see how the animation looks from any angle. See something you dont like? Press pause,
move the timeline slider to the frame you want to change and move the cube.

10) All items in a LightWave scene can have independent keyframes - while your cube is getting
sick on its rollercoaster ride, you can have the light in the scene changing direction and
the camera following it around to make it even more disoriented. Even better, just because
youve keyframed an objects heading, theres nothing to say that you cant keyframe its pitch
and bank on different frames.

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11) Go back to our short tutorial and get everything - and I mean everything: cube, camera,
light - moving. Dont forget that in addition to the Move tool you used to reposition the null,
you also have the Rotate tool (keyboard shortcut: Y) and the Size and Stretch tools (keyboard
shortcuts: Shift +H and H). Youll find all these tools on the Modify Tab or you can just roll the
mousewheel. Were not looking for great art, just trying to get you used to how things work.
Normally speaking, LightWave doesnt work in seconds because motions tend to be too quick and
seconds too coarse a measurement. It works in frames - there are 25 to a second in PAL and 30
frames to a second in the NTSC TV system, HDTV is more complicated, varying between 24 - 60 fps.
For film work, there are 24 frames to a second. If youve left your time settings at standard they will
be at 30 fps and you have created four seconds of animation.
Keep working on your simple animation until you start to feel the cubes pain at being forced to
ride the rollercoaster one more time This is easy and youll be glad youve practised before things
start getting harder.

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Navigating a Scene

Just under the Layout viewport (or viewports) is the frame slider that weve already used for our
exciting null animation. Although its main action is obvious, you also have the ability to change the
range shown and also to pan through this range easily. To scrub through the frames you can move
the slider with the mouse or you can use the cursor keys.
LEFT and RIGHT move you through the frames one at a time, and holding down the Shift key at the
same time moves you to the previous or next keyframe. If you hold down the ALT key while you
move the slider with the mouse you will pan the frame range this means that you will keep the
same number of frames on the slider, but the start and end points will change accordingly. If, for
instance, you had a 500 frames long animation, the amount of action would cause the detail in the
frame slider to be confused. But if you set the end frame to a 100, you can then pan through the
other 400 frames of your animation, so this 100 frames could show the range between 0-100, or
357-457, as you like.

You can also jump to a specific frame in your scene by hitting the F key on the keyboard, which
will bring up a requester where you can enter a frame number.

Playing a Scene

Under the transport controls for the scene, you will see two playback arrows and a Pause button,
and under that a Step counter. The playback arrows allow you to playback the scene in either
direction while the step counter allows you to set how many of the scenes frames you wish to
see played back. Setting this counter to 1 will play every frame, setting it to 2 will play every other
frame, and so on.

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Make sure your scene is not playing back before you move anything. If you have AutoKey on, you
will end up with keyframes all through the animation.

Your playback speed will vary depending on the complexity of your scene, object display mode,
system capabilities and so on. Reducing the size of your Layout window can dramatically increase
playback speed.

: If the Hub active, you can modify an object in Modeler even while your scene is being played
back in Layout and the object will automatically update to reflect the changes you make.

Creating Keyframes
As weve already learned, objects are always loaded at the Origin. This is the center of Layouts grid:
0, 0, 0 and every new item will have a default keyframe for frame 0 here. If you never create another
keyframe for an item, it will stay at this default location throughout the animation.

Frame 0 is the default starting point, but you can create keys at frames less than 0, if you need to.
We used Autokey in the tutorial at the start of this section, but if we turn it off we will need to set
keys by pressing the RETURN key twice. A window appeared but was dismissed by us hitting the
return key the second time. Lets go in for a closer look at this window.

By default the Create Key At field will contain the current frame. You can change the frame number
to create the key - using the animation channel values for the current frame - at a different frame
by entering a different frame number here. This is a good way to copy a keyframe. You can also repose your item and create a new key over an old one.

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The For pop-up menu has several options. You can create keys for:
Selected Items - All items that are selected, which will always include the current item.
Generally, this will be the one you use the most.
Current Item Only - Only the current item, even if others are selected.
Current Item and Descendants - The current item and any child items.
All Items - All items in the scene. Beware that this is not limited to just items of the same type. A
key will be created using the current Animation Channel settings for all objects, bones, lights, and
cameras.
The dialogs for creating motion keyframes for scene items have three rows of Toggle buttons. This
lets you create animation channel keys independently. The Position, Rotation and Scale buttons
allow a row to be turned on or off with one click. All channels are enabled by default and their state
is remembered.

Keys created using the Create Motion Key dialog use the Graph Editors Default Incoming Curve
type, discussed later. Generally, we suggest you use TCB Splines and not Bezier Splines. Bezier tangents
are determined at the moment of creation and dont automatically adjust as new keys are created. This
can cause awkward movement through keys.

Creating and Modifying Keys Automatically

To automatically create or modify keys you must activate the Auto Key option on the main
interface. This is the global on/off switch for automatically creating keyframes. It works in
conjunction with the Auto Key Create setting (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel).
Auto Key is a time-saving feature for advanced users and can be very useful for quickly roughing
out a motion path; however, beginners may want to stick with creating keys manually.
Make sure you are always aware of the status of Auto Key and Auto Key Create. These options can
result in an animation with extraneous keyframes.

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The Auto Key function has been refined to allow quicker access to the various modes it can operate
in. Previously this feature was hidden away in the Options panel, but is now located directly on
the main interface in Layout. The Auto Key preference in the Options panel now only serves as a
default startup preference.
An option also appears in the Auto Key popup menu called Auto Key: Existing. This mode was
available before but was somewhat hidden; it has now been made much clearer which Auto Key
mode you are in. The checkbox is now a visual indicator as to when Auto Key is active and when
its completely off. Auto Key now has the following modes:

Automatic Keyframing is completely off, no new keyframes will be created or existing ones
modified.

New keyframes will be created/modified, but only on the channels you edit. E.g. If you only move
an item, keys will be created/modified only for the translation channels you change, but not for
rotation or scale.

New keyframes will be created/modified on ALL channels regardless of whether you only move,
rotate or scale an item.

Only existing keyframes will be adjusted, no new keys will be ever be created, this is to allow
tweaking of keys without fear of ever creating new ones. In previous versions of LightWave this
mode was available when Auto Key Create Default in Options was set to Off, but the Auto Key
button in Layout was active. Now you just need to select this option.

Note that the Autokey indicator at the bottom of Layout works in a similiar manner to how the
original Autokey on/off button did. For your Autokey preferences to be saved, you still need to visit the
Options panel. This setting is not scene-specific.

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Editing Motion Paths Directly in a Viewport
You can also move an items motion path directly in a viewport using the Move Path tool (Modify >
Motion Path > Move Path).

The Move Path tool allows you to shift your completed motion path for an item, keeping all the
keys in the same places relatively. Lets say you had a very complicated scene, it would be useful to
be able to move to an empty portion, create the motion path for your object and then move it into
place. With Move Path, thats exactly what you can do.

Move TCB
Another tool in the Modify menu will directly affect your motion path. At the bottom of the Modify
list you will find Move TCB. This allows you to set the biases discussed in the Graph Editor section of
the manual, but from Layout, rather than having to visit the Graph Editor itself. To use it, move to a
keyframe, click on the Move TCB tool and you will notice that the lower left corner now displays T,
C, B instead of the more familiar X, Y, Z or H, P, B.

You can enter figures in here for what you wish your TCB settings to be, or you can use the mouse:
LMB: Moving left and right alters the Tension
Ctrl +LMB: Moving left and right controls the Continuity
RMB: Moving left and right controls the Bias

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Deleting Keyframes
You delete keyframes in a similar way to how you create them.

To delete a keyframe:
1) Select the item. Normally, you will also go to the keyframe you wish to delete.
2) Click the Delete Key button at the bottom center of the Layout interface or press the DEL key.
3) The Delete Motion Key dialog will appear. It uses all of the same controls
previously described for the Create Motion Key dialog.

Delete Motion Key Plugin

Use the TMP Motify Delete Motion Key generic plugin (Utilities > Additional > Motify) to delete
keyframes, clear motions, delete ranges of keys, delete keys within a threshold, and more. Motify
can be used to completely replace the built-in Delete Key dialog.
To use Motify:
1) Select the item(s) you want to delete keyframes from. Normally,
you will also go to the keyframe you wish to delete.

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2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)

Run Motify
Choose a Delete mode.
Enter a range of keys in the Delete Keys From and Through input fields.
Enter a Threshold.
Choose a For mode.
Enable or disable channels
Click OK.

Many of the above steps are optional. For example, to simply delete a keyframe at the current
time (using the previous For mode), run Motify and click OK.
The For pop-up menu determines which objects will have their keys deleted and has several
options. You can delete keys for:
Selected Items - All items that are selected, which will always include the current item.
Generally, this will be the option you use the most.
Selected Items and Descendants - The selected items and any child items.
Current Item Only - Only the current item, even if others are selected.
Current Item and Descendants - The current item and any child items.
All Items - All items in the scene. Beware that this is not limited to just items of the same type.
The Position, Rotation and Scale buttons allow a row to be turned on or off with one click. Only the
selected channels will be processed. You can Shift click to invert a groups selection state.
The All Other Channels button is a powerful feature, but can cause a lot of damage to your scene if
used incorrectly. All non-motion channels will also be processed (the Position, Rotation and Scale
buttons still determine if the motion channels are processed). This includes all envelopes applied
to those items (like Camera Zoom Factor and Light Intensity), envelopes for applied plugins (such
as Morph Mixer channels), and surface envelopes applied in the Surface Editor. Use this feature
carefully, especially when deleting keys on multiple items at once.
The About button will open an informational dialog, including a list of keyboard shortcuts.

Delete Mode
The Delete Mode determines what is done to the items motion. The default mode, Delete Key,
deletes the key at the frame entered in the Delete Keys field From field. Both integer and fractional
keyframe values can be entered.

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The Threshold field can be used to determine how close a keyframe has to be to the defined frame
to be deleted. This is useful for deleting fractional keyframes when Fractional Frames is disabled on
the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel.
Delete Keys Within Range will delete all keyframes between and including the From and
Through frames. The Threshold setting, in this case, will extend the range lower and higher all keys within the range will be deleted.
Delete Keys Outside Range will delete all keyframes outside, but not including, the From and
Through frames. Threshold is not used in this mode, as it only applies when the end frames
are also deleted.
Delete Keys Before Range deletes all keyframes before, but not including, the From frame.
Similarly, Delete Keys After Range deletes all keys after, but not including, the Through frame.
With Clear Motion, all existing keyframes will be deleted. This will only clear the channels
marked at the bottom of the dialog.
If all keyframes become deleted in any of these modes, a new default keyframe is created at frame
0 with a position and rotation of 0.0 on all axes, and a scale of 1.0.

Threshold
Threshold determines how close a keyframe has to be to the From and Through frame numbers
in order to be deleted. The default value of 0.0 means that the key must exactly match the frame
numbers entered. A value of 0.1 means that any keyframe within 0.1 frames will be deleted. For
example, if you are trying to delete keyframe 20 with a Threshold of 0.1, all keys between 19.9 and
20.1 will be deleted. A value of 0.5 can be used to ensure that any fractional keys between the
current frame and the next or previous frames are deleted without going into the domain of the
next keyframe. The small pop-up menu to the right of the Threshold input field contains a number
of reasonable presets values.

Protection
The Protection pop-up menu can be used to ensure that certain important keyframes are not
deleted. This is especially useful when using the Delete Keys Outside Range or Clear Motion modes,
where deleting all keyframes could ruin your scene or destroy your characters bone setup and IK
poses.
No Protection means that no keyframes will be protected from deletion. This allows you to
delete any keyframe.

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Protect Frame 0 will ensure that no keys at frame 0 are deleted. Similarly, Protect Neg & 0 will
protect frame 0 and all negative keyframes.
Protect First Key and Protect Last Key will keep you from deleting the first or last key in the
channel, respectively.

Saving and Loading Motion Files

To save the selected items motion path to a file, choose File > Save > Save Motion File. Use the
filename extension .mot when saving a motion file. Mac users should note that this extension is
not automatically added - you must type it as part of the file name and then save the file. To load a
saved motion file and apply it to the selected item, choose File > Load > Load Motion File.

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Modelers Path Extrude and Path Clone commands use these files to execute their operations.

DopeTrack
Just above the time slider that shows all the frames in a LightWave scene there is a thick bar.
Clicking on this seems to open a new time slider, its actually a tool called the DopeTrack, to help
the workflow of animators.
The DopeTrack allows you to play with keys. Not only their position in time and the scene, but also
to alter their properties. You can set up markers here to tell you when things should happen in the
scene and bake ranges of keys to set your animation from frame to frame.

Youll notice that when the DopeTrack is closed and your mouse pointer is over the thick bar, your
mouse pointer will change from being a cross hair to an arrow pointing upwards. When DopeTrack
is open and the mouse is over the thick bar, it will be a downwards-pointing arrow.
Whats the point of DopeTrack? Lets say you have an animation and theres a keyframe at frame 13
that you really want at frame 12. You could open the Graph Editor and move the keys there. If you
have a lot of items in your scene, it may take a while to find the object you want to edit.
Lets say youve moved this frame, but then your boss decides he wants an identical keyframe a bit
later in the animation say ten frames on. Then, being the indecisive management type he is, he
wants to have those two keyframes moved along a bit in the animation. You could do this in the
Graph Editor, but instead, you can just sit there nonchalantly, with a breezy no problem, boss!, and
just use the DopeTrack
When you first open the DopeTrack it just looks like another timeline. The difference is that you
can grab any keys on the DopeTrack and shift them about. Moreover you can grab a section of
the timeline and any keyframes in that area will be selected. You will then be able to move all
the selected keyframes at once. By default, the lines representing the keys are simple pale yellow
lines, but if you click the right mouse button over the DopeTrack, a menu will pop-up where
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you can enter Channel Edit Mode, where the three channels that make up a keyframes X, Y and
Z coordinates are represented by the red, green and blue lines. If you are in Rotate Mode the
red, green and blue represent the Heading, Pitch and Bank channels. If you turn off some of the
channels over on the left, you can then select just the channels you wish to move.
If this were all DopeTrack could do, it would be enough, but theres more. A right click on the
DopeTrack itself will reveal a menu that gives even more options.

Select All Keys - Selects all the keyframes visible on the timeline
Clear Selection - Deselects all selected keyframes
Add Marker - This adds a marker to your timeline that is visible no matter which item you
have selected in the scene. You can also set a text that appears in the normal info window
under the timeline. You can select this menu item, or you can hold down the Shift key and
double click to set a marker. You can set a marker anywhere on the DopeTrack, regardless of
the location of the timeline cursor.
Delete Marker - Position the timeline cursor on a marker and this option becomes available.
Clear All Markers - Clears all the Markers you have placed on the DopeTrack.
Set Marker Text - Put your timeline cursor on a marker and it will become bright yellow
and this menu item will become available. A marker is visible whichever item you select it is based on the scene rather than an individual item. Whenever the time slider is on the
frame where a marker is placed, and the DopeTrack is open, the marker will light up in bright
yellow and the Marker text will appear in the status window. There is a limit of 62 characters
visible in this status window, although there is no limit on the quantity of characters you can
put in the Set Marker Text window.

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Baking
If you right click and drag a selection on the DopeTrack this menu option will become available to
you. Baking allows you to generate keyframes at every frame over the region you specify, to make
sure of your animation or for export to another package.

You can set a local or global bake zone. A local one bakes the current item and is shown in the
same color as the keyframe markers on the DopeTrack, whereas a global bake zone will bake all
items through those keyframes and is shown in blue. You can resize a bake zone by dragging the
arrows at either end of it to make it shorter or longer, or move it in time by dragging on the line
between them.
You can also hold down the Alt key and LMB drag on the time line and this will create a local bake
zone immediately. There will be no need to even use the menu to set it.
Either way, when you have selected a zone to bake, the next thing is to know exactly what baking
means. It means that you will create a keyframe at every frame in the zone youve selected. This
sets in concrete your motion path, which can be useful if you have something precise to follow,
or you need to export your motion to another application, like a game engine, for instance. Game
engines dont usually like IK, so by baking the motion your character goes through; you can
replicate the effects of using inverse kinematics, without actually using it.

If you have local bake zone(s) marked, but want to clear them, you can choose Clear Current
Zone from the Baking sub-menu by right clicking on the DopeTrack again. Clear All Zones will remove
both local and global zones.

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We now have our baked keys, lets move onto the Apply sub-menus. All three Apply sub-menus use
the first and last keyframe in a range as boundaries, and the keyframe that the slider is currently
sitting on as a control point. The slider should be sitting inside the baked range.
First, heres our scene before a bake of the motion:

Heres our scene after a bake:

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Now, heres the scene with the various Applies applied. Remember the shape that results depends
on the position of the frame slider. For demonstration purposes we will continue to leave ours
on 42, even if the results could be more dramatic with it elsewhere. Also to be noted is that if you
dont like the results of a particular Apply, you can change it for one of the others with no penalty.
However, you cant go back to the previous un-Applyed state, so make sure you save your scene
before you use the Applys

Soft Apply
In the case of Soft Apply, a Hermite spline using default Hermite co-efficients is generated using
these three keyframes as points to smooth out the intervening keyframes.

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Linear Apply
Linear Apply uses the same keyframes, but simply increments the keyframe values between the
control points.

Flat Apply
Snaps all intervening keyframes to the value of the control keyframe (the one the slider is currently
on).

To get rid of a set of baked keyframes, select them all by wiping over them using the left mouse
button to select them all and then click the right mouse button to access the Delete Keys menu item - the
Del key will bring up the Delete Keys window that will force you to delete the keys one by one.

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DopeTrack Apply Zones
The Apply Zones in Dope Track have been enhanced with color for improved navigation. The new
zones use a CMY (Cyan , Magenta, Yellow) color scheme.

Local Zones are represented with Cyan. Global Zones are represented with Magenta. Proxy Zones, such as IK Booster, are represented in
Yellow in this montage image (Normally you can only have the first two or the last one at a time).

Snap Keys
If you have received a scene that uses fractional frames, but you dont want to use all or part of
those keys, you can select the keys that are off-integer frame numbers that you wish to adjust, and
use Snap Keys to quantise them to the nearest whole frame number.

Cut, Copy, Paste Keys

As you might expect, these allow you to move keys around the scene by cutting or copying them
from where they are, and pasting them where you want them. If a group of keys are selected and
you copy them, you will paste them starting at the time slider position.

Add and Delete Keys

The Add function will create a keyframe in the DopeTrack where the mouse is at the time, so if you
have an item at frame 10 in the scene and you Add key at frame 40, it will duplicate your objects
position from frame 10 at frame 40.

Channel-edit Mode

By default, the keyframe marks in DopeTrack are the same shade of yellow as the keyframes in
the normal time slider. By switching to Channel-edit Mode you can choose individual channels
by turning off the ones you do not wish to select in the bottom left-hand corner of the Layout
window. When you switch back to Keyframe edit mode, any channels you have separated in time
will become new keyframe lines in their own right.

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Once youve shifted the channels separately, new keys appear in the normal timeline.

Turn off individual channels to move the remaining keys where you want them.
You can combine the keyboard and mouse to make DopeTrack even easier to use:
Alt LMB copies a keyframe
LMB doubleclick creates a keyframe
Shift LMB doubleclick creates a marker
Alt LMB Drag creates a local zone for baking

2015

Multiselect Copy/Paste keys in DopeTrack

The Dopetrack clipboard was designed to contain channel information for only a single object. It
has been re-factored to contain copied channel information for as many objects as are selected
within the current edit mode. Clipboard data can be subsequently pasted on to multiple selected
objects, as long as the clipboard data lasts (i.e., which ever is exhausted first: selected objects or
clipboard data).
It should be noted that clipboard data is not cognizant of the edit mode that was active when it
was stored. This means that, for example, data copied during a position edit can subsequently
be pasted into the rotation channels of selected objects if the edit mode is changed, whether
intentionally or not.

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BioVision Motion Capture Support
LightWave provides a couple of plugins to support the BioVision (BVH) motion capture file format.
The MoCap_BVH_Setup generic Layout plugin (File > Import > MoCap_BVH_Setup) reads a
BioVision BVH file, creates bones, and applies the motion capture data to them. For any use of
Motion Capture files, you will need to have AutoKey ( Shift F1) enabled.
Set Start Frame Offset to the frame you want the motion to begin.
Bone Scale Factor allows you to set a scale for your object from the start and may need some
repeated experiments to get close to the scale of your object. Often BVH files come in at an
extremely large scale. As a start, try a scale of 0.1.
The Bone Name Postfix is simply a number appended to the end of all of the bone names (e.g.,
LeftKnee_1).
After you run the plugin, replace the top null (in the created bone hierarchy) with the object to be
animated. You could also use the Use Bones From Object feature on the Bones Properties Panel.
If you need to change the initial resting position of bones, make sure you reset their rest positions
(use the r key). Youll probably need to adjust some of the individual bone properties after you run
the plugin.
Applying motion capture to a LightWave object is an arduous process fraught with difficulties but
yields good results.
MoCapSkelegons is a Modeler plugin that creates skelegons in Modeler that match the initial rest
position of the Biovision BVH data. Use it to determine the correct scale, position, etc. for your
object mesh. This object can then be used with the bones created using the MoCap_BVH_Setup
generic plugin in Layout.

Motion Preview
There is also a custom object plugin that can be used to preview BioVision motion data. The
preview is fast and accurate. Use it to determine if there were any errors in the motion conversion.
Simply add the MotionCapturePreview custom object to a null object on the Object
Properties Panel. (If you run the MoCap_BVH_Setup generic Layout plugin, a null called
MotionCapturePreviewNull will automatically be added to the scene with the custom object
plugin already applied.)

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Keyframer
Keyframer is essentially a collection of keyframing utilities. Its functions can be applied to currently
selected items or defined by an external text file. You can even save and load frame and motion
data.
To use Keyframer, choose Utilities > Plugins > Additional > Keyframer. The functions are divided into
three different tabs on the panel: Standard, Transfer, and Other.

What is affected
When you choose certain functions, the Select Range and Objects Panel will appear. Here, you set
which range of frames, scene items, and channels to affect. All operations only modify items listed
in the Affected Channels and Affected Objects lists.
The Start and End values define the range of frames that will be affected.

Affected Channels
The Affected Channels list shows all of the channels that will be affected by operations. You may
remove a channel by selecting it with your mouse and then clicking the Remove button.
If you click the Save button, you can save the list of Affected Channels into a text file. You should
use the file extension .lw_channels. The file contains just a straight list of the channels, like:

Position.X
Position.Y
Position.Z
Rotation.H
Rotation.P
Rotation.B
Scale.X
Scale.Y
Scale.Z

You may replace the list of Affected Channels with the channels listed in a text file using the Load
button.
Clicking the Default button returns the list of Affected Channels to the default ones.

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Affected Objects
The Affected Objects list will default to the currently selected item(s) in Layout. You can list all scene
items by clicking the All button.
If you click the Save button, you can save the list of Affected Objects into a text file. You should use
the file extension .lw_items. It will be just a straight list of the scene items, like:

Null (1)
Null (2)
Light
Camera

You may replace the list of Affected Objects with the scene items listed in a text file using the
Load button.
The Use selected objects only option, will cause the list to only show the item(s) currently selected
in Layout.
The Include all subchildren option will cause all children of the listed items to be shown.
If Use custom loaded is enabled, all of the items in the Affected Objects list will be affected.
Otherwise the list is always dynamically determined by what is selected in Layout, what the
children are, and so on.

Standard Tab

Choose Cycle (Bake) Keys - Keys within the range are copied and pasted after the End frame plus
the Cycle Gap. The copy is repeated by the number times set with the Repeats slider.

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Destroy Keys - Keys within the range are deleted.
Defractionalize - Fractional keys within the range are rounded to the nearest integer value.
Create Random Keys - Creates new randomly spaced keyframes between the Start to End range.
The animation curve should maintain its shape, if possible.
Random/Jitter Keys - This adds noise (i.e., jitter) to existing keyframes between the Start
to End range.
MoveRotateScale - Modifies the position, rotation, and/or scale of items. If the Add method is used,
the entered value is added to existing key values. If Multiply is used, the existing key values are
multiplied by the entered value(be careful using 0!). The Overwrite method replaces existing key
values with the entered values.

Transfer Tab

Node-to-Node Frame Copy - Copies the Position, Rotation, and/or Scale of the Source to the Target
at the current frame. If the Use World co-ordinate Copy option is enabled, the target will take on
the world space values of the source (i.e., not the local values). Note that you will still need to
create a key with the copied values.
Node-to-Node Motion Copy - Copies the entire motion of the Source to the Target. (This is the
same as saving and loading a motion file.) If All descendants is enabled, all descendants of both
the Source and Target will be used and modified. If you are using All descendants, the Source and
Target hierarchies should be identical or results will be unpredictable.
Load Single Frame data - Use this function to load the motion data saved with the Save Single
Frame data function. Note that the position and rotation channels are loaded regardless of what
appears in the Affected Channels list. Also, it will only affect the same item (when the data was
saved)-that item must be in the Affected Objects list.

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Save Single Frame data - This function will save all of the motion data for the Affected Objects at the
current frame. Note that the position and rotation channels are saved regardless of what appears in
the Affected Channels list. The file should be saved with the .lw_frame filename extension.
Load Clip data - Use this function to load the motion data saved with the Save Clip data function.
Use the Start and End sliders to trim data. Regardless of the Start and End, the range is always
copied in starting at frame 0. Note that the item must have the same name as the item used to save
the data.
Save Clip data - This function will save all of the motion data for the Affected Objects for a defined
range of frames. Note that all channels are saved regardless of what appears in the Affected
Channels list. The files are saved to a directory you specify.
Only the data at actual keys within the range is saved. If the start of your range is not a key, the data
for the next key (in time) is used. Keys retain their position in time even if you dont save starting
from frame 0.

Other Tab

Dissolve - This function adds keys to the Object Dissolve channel (Object Properties, Render Tab).
The object will be 100% dissolved at the Start frame up until the End frame, where it becomes 0%
dissolved.
UnDissolve - This function is the opposite of Dissolve, described above.
Key All Morphs - Sets keys in every MorphMixer channel at the current frame for items with
MorphMixer.
UnKey All Morphs - Deletes keys in every MorphMixer channel at the current frame for items with
MorphMixer.
Reset All Morphs - Sets key values to zero in every MorphMixer channel at the current frame for
items with MorphMixer.
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Now we shall examine the Modify tab:

Translate

Move
(default keyboard shortcut T)
When you move an (unparented and unrotated) item in Layout, generally your mouse movements
have the following effects:
Movement
Move
Left/Right LMB
Left/Right
Up/Down LMB
Fwd/Back (3D*), Up/Dn (orthogonal)
Up/Down RMB
Up/Down
*3D = Perspective, Light, and Camera views

For parented and rotated items, see also the subsequent discussion on Coordinate System.
You generally use a viewports arbitrary horizontal and vertical axes to adjust an items position
(Move tool). As such, no matter how much you have rotated a Perspective view, dragging your
mouse left or right will always move the item left or right on your display. Dragging your LMB left/
right in the Right view would move an object along the Z axis. The same mouse movement in the
Back view would move it along the X axis.

Local Axis Adjustments

Sometimes you may want to move an item using its local axes instead. You can do this by simply
holding the CTRL key as you drag. The movement will be along the objects local axis, no matter
what view you use (or how much you rotate the item).
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Movement ( Ctrl )
Left/Right LMB
Up/Down LMB
Left/Right RMB

Move
X axis
Z axis
Y axis

Move Pivot
Understanding pivot points is fundamental to understanding LightWave.
The pivot point is a point of reference used for all objects and does not correspond to any point
used in an objects geometry. The pivot point is the center of position, rotation, and scaling. By
default, it is located at the objects local Origin. The pivot point, a small yellow star, becomes visible
when you select an object.

You cannot animate the pivot point.

Pivot Point (Shown selected with handles)

Moving the Pivot Point

You can modify the pivot point from its default position in Layout or Modeler. Think of this as
giving an offset amount from the objects local Origin. When you move the pivot point, the object
will appear to stay in the same position. On the face of it, this might seem confusing to you; if
the pivot point is the point used to reference position, the object should move if the pivot point
is moved. The reason the object doesnt move is because LightWave automatically adjusts the
objects position by the same amount the pivot point is moved.
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To move the pivot point in Modeler:
Select View > Pivot to activate the Pivot Point tool and move the crosshairs to a new position
in any viewport.

The Modeler section of this manual has additional info about moving the pivot point in the
section on Modelers View Tab.
To move the pivot point in Layout:
1) Select the object.
2) Select Modify > Translate > Move Pivot.
3) Move the pivot point as you would any item in the Layout. (If you select the Move tool
and look at the objects Position settings, you will see that they have been changed to
compensate for the movement in the pivot point - the object will not visibly move.)

We strongly suggest that you leave an object at its default rotation and scale before you move
its pivot point in Layout or you may get unpredictable results.

Layout or Modeler
Setting the pivot point in Modeler saves its position in the object file. Setting it in Layout only saves
the data in the scene file. As such, it is usually best to set your pivot point position in Modeler.

Why Move the Pivot Point?

You might be wondering why you might want to move the pivot point. Why not just model all
objects so that the Origin is the desired center of rotation? Well, you certainly could do this and
should probably try to do this as much as possible. However, there are often circumstances when
multiple objects are just parts of a larger element. You want the individual parts to be positioned
in their respective locations by default. But you may want to rotate them individually, around their
own center point.
Lets take puzzle pieces for example, where all of the pieces fly in to form the complete puzzle. If
you modelled each piece centered around the Origin, it would be a real pain to move each piece
perfectly into its final resting place. It would be much easier to load each piece by default at its
resting position and then set arbitrary starting positions and rotations. To do the latter, you need to
move the pivot points to the center of each piece.
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A robot is another good example. The arms, legs, feet, torso, etc., are all separate objects, each
modelled in their natural resting position in Modeler. However, all parts must be rotatable around a
unique axis. This is possible only by moving the pivot points of each object.

Pivot Point moved so that rotation is at the Knee.

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Move Path
You can move an items entire motion path directly in a viewport using the Move Path tool (Modify
> Translate > Move Path).

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Path Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl Y)
The Path Tool (Modify > Translate > Path Tool) will allow you to directly edit the current items
motion path, right in a Layout viewport. To use, simply activate the Path tool and drag any of the
current items keys. The perfect tool for tweaking an items motion path.

Green Handles on motion path represent each Keyframe.

The key will only move along the vertical and horizontal axes of the view, even in perspective.

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Add to Position
You can numerically add to Position values by using Add to Position (Modify > Add to Position).
It works like editing the Position input fields in the lower-left corner of Layout, but adds to the
existing values instead of replacing them.

Rotate

Rotate
(default keyboard shortcut Y)
When you adjust rotation, in contrast to adjusting position, the action is relative to the global axes
around the items pivot point. By default, the pivot point is at the items local Origin.
Rotation uses a similar three-coordinate system: Heading, Pitch, and Bank. (These are rotations
around each of the axes: Y, X, and Z, respectively.) You can think of heading as the movement
in shaking your head no. Pitch is like the movement in shaking your head yes. Bank is like the
movement of tilting your head left and right, saying maybe.

Heading, Pitch, Bank

When you rotate an item, your mouse movements have the following effects:
Movement Rotate
Left/Right LMB Heading
Up/Down LMB Pitch
Left/Right RMB Bank

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Rotate Pivot
Understanding pivot points is fundamental to understanding LightWave.
The pivot point is a point of reference used for all objects and does not correspond to any point
used in an objects geometry. The pivot point is the center of position, rotation, and scaling. By
default, it is located at the objects local Origin. The pivot point, a small yellow star, becomes visible
when you select an object.

You cannot animate the pivot point.

Pivot Point (Shown selected with handles)

Rotating the Pivot Point

You can rotate the pivot point, which sets a starting point for rotation that is different from the
default rotation, which is in alignment with world coordinates.

: Pivot rotation is most useful when used with bones. You may want to stick with normal item
rotation for other rotational needs.

Unlike the Move Pivot tool, which changes the position values, when you use the Rotate Pivot
tool, it does not compensate with changes to rotation values.

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If you have rotated an object and wish to transfer its current rotational state to the pivot rotation,
choose Setup > Orientation > Record Pivot Rotation, which runs the Record Pivot Rotation
command. Then you can start all over as far as rotating the item is concerned. It will add the
rotations to any existing values for pivot rotation.

Add to Rotation
You can numerically add to Rotation values by using Add to Rotation (Modify > Rotate > Add to
Rotation). It works like editing the input fields in the lower-left corner of Layout, but adds to the
existing values instead of replacing them.

Transform

Size
(default keyboard shortcut Shift H)
You can scale an object (but not Distant lights, Point lights, Spotlights or cameras) using the Size
tool (Modify > Transform > Size). Size scales your object proportionately along all axes around its
pivot point.

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Linear and Area Lights can be Scaled.
When you Size an object, it is scaled equally along all axes. Dragging left will make it smaller and
dragging right will make it bigger.

Stretch
(default keyboard shortcut H)
You can Stretch an object (but not Distant lights, Point lights, Spotlights or cameras) using the
Stretch function (Modify > Transform > Stretch). Stretch lets you scale each axis of an object
independently around its pivot point.

Linear and Area Lights can be stretched. Increased size for these types of lights also changes the
softness of shadows.
When you Stretch an object, your mouse movements affect the following axes:
Movement
Left/Right LMB
Up/Down LMB
Left/Right RMB

Stretch
X axis
Z axis
Y axis

Squash
The Squash tool (Modify > Transform > Squash) is similar to the Stretch tool; however, when one of
the scale channels is modified, the other two channels are automatically adjusted to preserve the
objects volume. Squash lets you scale each axis of an object independently around its pivot point.

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Linear and Area Lights can be squashed.

Use the handles shown to perform a squash operation.

Add to Scale
You can numerically add to Scale values by using Add to Scale (Modify > Transform > Add to Scale).
It works like editing the input fields in the lower-left corner of Layout, but adds to the existing
values instead of replacing them.

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Coordinate System
The Coordinate System setting (Modify > General > Coord System) affects the Move, Rotate, and
Move Pivot Point tools.
World (default keyboard shortcut Shift F5)
World allows easy movement based on the world axes, even for items deep within a hierarchy that
contain rotated parents.
Parent (default keyboard shortcut Shift F6)
Parent is for movement based on the axes of an items parent(s). If an item has no parent then this
setting is equivalent to World.
Local (default keyboard shortcut Shift F7)
Local is for movement based on an items own axes (such as dollying a rotated camera along its
view direction). For un-rotated items it is equivalent to Parent. Local can be temporarily activated
by holding CTRL.
Below, we have rotated a null and then parented a distant light to it. The Show Handles option,
discussed later is also active for illustration purposes, as it is by default. The handles will line up
with the movement axes that would be used if you dragged your mouse.

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World

Parent

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Local

Note how with World, the handles line up with the lines on the grid. With Parent, the handles line
up with the rotated (parented) null. Finally, with Local, the handles line up with the distant lights
rotation.

The Position and Rotation Coordinate System settings are independent. To change the system,
select either the Move or Rotate tool first.

One thing to remember about Local and World rotation is that they are only for interactive
manipulation. Internally, the Parent system is always used since its the only one that can encode
absolute rotation values. This will affect how an items orientation is interpolated between two
keyframes. As such, rotating the pivot point might still be useful in some situations.

Avoiding Gimbal Lock

Gimbal lock normally occurs after you rotate an item 90 degrees on its pitch using the Parent
coordinate system. Once this has occurred, rotating the object about either its heading or its bank
axis gives you the same result-you have lost the ability to rotate about the objects local heading.
Gimbal lock is commonly a problem with bones in a hierarchy. By nature, bones have a starting
position that is often rotated 90 degrees on their pitch, like bones in the arm of a human figure.
You can avoid Gimbal lock by rotating using the Local coordinate system.

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Reset
You can quickly reset position and rotation to their initial states by selecting the item, activating
the channel you wish to reset (i.e., Move, Rotate, Size, and other tools), and then clicking Modify >
Reset. Each function must be reset individually.

If you plan to move a pivot point, you should reset the items position and rotation first.
Reset is not an undo feature, although it can sometimes work similarly. Resetting restores the state
for the selected channels to what it was when the item was first loaded or created.

If you have Position or Rotation axes deactivated, Reset will have no effect on those settings.

Light Intensity
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl H)
Selecting a light, or several for that matter, and using this tool allows you to adjust light intensity
interactively by holding down the LMB and moving the mouse left and right. Feedback is given
down in the bottom left corner as usual. If you adjust more than one light at once, the feedback
area reports how one is being adjusted, but all that are selected are adjusted equally. Make sure
you multi-select with the Shift key rather than making a banding box.

Sliders
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl D)
Sliders (Modify > Tools > Sliders) are slider gadgets that are displayed over viewports. An individual
slider is tied to a specific animation channel. A slider will indicate the current value of a channel
and also let you interactively adjust that channel value. Sliders are useful for all kinds of animations,
especially character animations. A good example can be an animated hand, with multiple bone
movements for multiple fingers.

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To use sliders in a scene:

Add the Sliders custom object (Object Properties Panel) to any object.

To display and interact with the sliders, choose Modify > Tools > Sliders. The sliders for the last
current object (with the Sliders custom object) will be editable when the Sliders tool is active. Keep
this in mind if you have more than one object with the Sliders custom object.
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Remember, as with all Layout tools, youll need to select another tool (Move, Rotate, etc.) to
deactivate the Slider tool.

To configure your sliders:

Open the Sliders Custom Object settings dialog from the Object Properties Panel.

The left window (Channels List) will list all of the channels in the scene. To attach a slider to a
channel, simply select the channel in the left window and double click or click the Add Channel
button. Selected channels in the right window can be removed with the Remove Channel button.
The Range Min and Range Max settings define the interactive range of the slider. The underlying
channel can go beyond these values, but the sliders range of control and feedback will be limited
to this range. If the underlying channel goes outside the range, the slider value will turn red.
Clicking on the slider handle will immediately change the channel to the sliders corresponding
value.
The description Label will default to the channel name, but you may edit that if you desire. You can
also set the color used for the slider with the Color preset pop-up menu or specific RGB values.
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Working with OpenGL Sliders:

There are three controls along the top. Drag the far-left one to move the slider group. The Envelope
(E) button will display the Graph Editor with the associated channels in the curve bin. The right/left
arrowhead (<>) button can be dragged to scale the size of the slider group. The arrowhead button
on the right will minimise/maximise the slider display.

To simplify using sliders, use the Add Slider Bank generic plugin command (Not assigned to the
interface by default). It will add a null object, apply the sliders custom object to it, and open the sliders
interface, all in one step.

Spline Displacement
The Spline Displacement Tool (Modify >Tools > Spline Displacement) is a simple way to animate
hoses, tentacles, etc. using a spline with control handles. This tool will create a spline the length of
the object with a user specified amount of control points that can be used to deform an object.

To use Spline Displacement

1) Select the object that you would like to animate with Spline Displacement.

2) In the Object Properties window, Deform tab, choose Spline Displacement from the
Dropdown menu.
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3) Double-click Spline Displacement to open it interface.

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4) Choose how many Control Points you want (you can change this later) and other options.
5) Use the Spline Displacement button (Modify > Spline Displacement) to activate and move the
nodes around.

Spline Displacement Options:

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Control Points - This field will determine the number of control handles that will be
generated.

Each control point will be numbered starting from 0. This number will appear in OpenGL.
Object Axis - Defines the axis the control spline will be drawn on.
Auto Key Create - Similar to Layouts standard Auto Key in that it will automatically create a
keyframe as you move a control point. The only difference is that it will always create when
on frame zero regardless of whether or not this option is active.
Create Key - When Auto Key Create is not active use this to create a keyframe.

Hitting Enter on the keyboard will not set a keyframe for a control point.
Set Rest Shape - Use this to change the default rest position of the control points in
relationship to the object.
Reset - This function works like undo, however instead of just undoing the last move it will
reset all control points to their rest position.
Allow Stretch - When this option is activated the object is able to be stretched past its original
scale.

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Left: Allow Stretch OFF, Right: Allow Stretch ON

Scale by Weight Map - This option will use the Weight Map selected and only deform that area
of the mesh.

Edit Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl E)
The Edit tool (Modify > Tools > Edit Tool) activates the ability to edit points on dynamic objects and
particles. You will be able to visually see that youre in Edit Mode in the viewport. All the points that
make up the object will become highlighted and all the Edit tool functions will become active.

For more information about the Edit tools and some of its options, see the Dynamics and
Particles sections.

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Motions

Motion Options Panel

(default keyboard shortcut M)
See Motions Options Panel on page 563

Motion Mixer

Motion Mixer was designed to bring the same concepts found in non-linear video editing to
computer animation. You can store, re-use, and adjust motions for entire hierarchies. You can even
mix motions together.
Motion Mixers actors define objects or groups of objects, while motions define their
animations. The Timeline gives you the ability to move, trim and scale motions together. You can
add transitions to control exactly how motions blend together. Creating incredibly complex
animations from a library of relatively simple moves is fast and easy, bringing exciting possibilities
to your LightWave animations. The best way to get comfortable with Motion Mixer is to play with a
pre-made animation that will give you ideas for more.

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Steps for using Motion Mixer:
1) Load the ProtonJack_MM01 scene. You will see a rigged brown dog.
2) Choose Motion Mixer from the Windows dropdown menu or press the keyboard shortcut
F2. The Motion Mixer Panel is broken down into four areas, Actors and Motions on the left,
and the Timeline and Toolbar buttons on the right. Beneath the toolbar is the familiar frame
display.

Beneath the frame display are the Motion Mixer tracks where motions and transitions are
placed. There can be any number of tracks, each of which can hold any number of motions
or transitions.

3) Press Play in Layout and watch the animation of Jack walking, looking around and running.
Youll notice that the movements correspond with the blocks on the timelines. Turn on and
off the eyes on each timeline to isolate the motions.
To create our own Motion Mixer scene, well start with an empty scene to which well add a
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standard Modeler Tools cube.
1) In Layout, select the camera. Next, on the Motion Mixer Panel click Create Actor. Enter
Camera as its name and click OK.

When you create an actor, you are telling Motion Mixer which items in the scene
you want it to control as a group. Scene items may be added or removed at any
time and an actor can contain items of different types (i.e., objects, bones, cameras,
and lights). However, an item can only belong to one actor. An actor may represent
a character and its bone structure, a mechanical apparatus such as an aircrafts
landing gear, or as in this case, an individual item such as the scenes camera.
2) The panel will begin to come to life. The Actor List pop-up menu will display the Current
Actor, which we just created. If you had other actors, you could use this pop-up menu to
change the current actor.

If there were multiple actors in a scene, you would choose the current actor from the Actor
List pop-up menu. The current actor is the one you want to work with and the one whose
tracks and motions are displayed on the Timeline.
The actor information display shows the number of actors in the scene and the number of
items defined in the current actor.

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Anything in Layout with an Envelope (E) button can be used by Motion Mixer. When you create
an Actor, you will see that a new item has been added to the Actor, called ExternalXChannels. This is
a virtual item to which any channels that are not part of an items channel group are added. There
is a new entry on the Actor menu, Add XChannels, which will bring up a panel that will allow you to
choose channels to add to the Actor. Double-click on a channel in the left-hand tree view to add it to the
selection list.
3) Repeat steps 1-2 with the Cube object so that you now have two actors in Motion Mixer.
Change back to the Camera.
4) Now, lets create a motion. Motions are segments of animation that can represent anything
from a characters walk cycle to a jet fighter performing a barrel roll. When an actor is active,
Motion Mixer controls it. So to create a motion in Layout, you must first deactivate the actor.
Disable Actor Active.

5) In Layout, keyframe the camera so that it moves straight along the Z axis from frame 0
through 40. Make a key at frame 20 that makes it jump up along the Y axis.

6) Click Create Motion on the Motion Mixer Panel. Enter Jump for the Motion Name and set the
End Frame to 40, since that is the end of the motion we set up. Leave other settings at their
default and click OK.

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If we had used Selected Items instead of Actor Items, the motion would come from items
selected in the scene.
XChannels are non-transformation channels (i.e., any channel other than Position, Rotation,
and Scale). Select XChannels opens a new panel that allows you to specify which XChannels
will be present in the motion. You can toggle them on and off later in the Channel Editor.
Clear Channels removes the animation from the items in Layout - after capturing into
Motion Mixer of course. Since Motion Mixer normally overrides and controls the motion,
the animation is not usually needed. However, you may wish to disable Clear Channels,
so you can create further motions from different parts of the same animation.
7) The actual keyframed motion of the camera has now been sucked into Motion Mixer.
If you drag the Layout frame slider, you will notice that the camera doesnt move.

The motion information display will show the number of motions that are defined
in the current actor and the number of items contained in the current motion.
The Motion List pop-up menu will display the current motion, which we just
created. If the current actor had other motions, you could use this pop-up menu
to change the current motion - this is the motion you are working with.
8) We can now add a motion to the timeline. Click Add Motion on the toolbar and then click on
the 00 Timeline slot at frame 25. This will add the motion to the timeline.
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If you want to cancel the operation, prior to clicking in the Timeline, click in an empty
area of the panel, outside of the Timeline display. To remove a motion from the
Timeline select it, hit the RMB and select Remove from the menu that appears.
9) Enable Actor Active.

Drag the Layout frame slider. Motion Mixer is now in control and moves the camera. You can
reposition the motion by dragging the center of the motion bar. You can scale the motion
by dragging either end of the bar to resize it. The range and scale of the motion will be
displayed at the bottom of the panel.

10) Thats it for the Camera, apart from to make it target the Cube. With the Camera selected, hit
M and choose the New Cube Object as a target.

11) Now well get the cube doing something. Set a keyframe at 50 having moved the cube along
the X axis. Then at each ten frames between, rotate the cube a little this way and that on the
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Pitch to give it a nice waddle.

12) Well suck that motion into Motion Mixer like we did the Camera jump by choosing Create
Motion and naming it Waddle.

13) Lets do another. Keep Actor Active turned off and this time go to frame 10 and hit Return
twice to make a key without changes, then go to frame 5 and raise the Cube up a bit. Call
this motion Bounce.

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14) Now, make sure both actors are active, and add the Jump motion for the camera at frame
25. The camera will just follow where the cube goes and jump over its path, all the while
keeping it in view.

15) Add Waddle to the Cubes timeline, by having it visible in the Motion List, clicking Add
Motion and placing it at frame zero. We want the cubes motion to continue through our
animation, so right-click on the motion in the timeline and choose Add Post Behaviour. A
small gray bar will appear after the blue bar of the motion and you can stretch this out with
its handle to reach frame 150 (past the end of our scene).

16) The gray bar will have Constant written on it, but right-clicking will allow you to change this
to Offset Repeat, which will continue the motion of our cube.

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17) Now swap the Motion List to our other motion, Bounce and add that to Timeline 01 a couple
of times. My first was at about 30 and the second about 70. The only problem with our
Bounce motion, as youll see when you hit Play, is that because our cube didnt move along
the X when we made it, every time it gets to a Bounce when we play, the cube jumps back to
X=0!

18) To prevent this from happening, select the first Bounce in the timeline and click on the
Channel Editor button at the top of the Motion Mixer window. Select the motion and then
turn off every channel apart from Y, do the same for the second Bounce. Now the cube
continues on its way bouncing at a couple of intervals.

19) Well show you something else with the camera. With the Actor still active,
go to the last frame in our scene (120) and move the camera along the
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X-axis, as though its shadowing our cube. Again, well have the same
problem when the camera jumps, so use the Channel Editor again.

Motion Properties
A motions properties can be edited by right-clicking a motion in the Timeline. The motion can
be renamed by simply editing the Motion Name field. The Scale field allows the motions scale to
be modified numerically. Use Local Start Frame and Local End Frame to trim the ends of a motion
without changing the original data.

A motion uses behaviours in the same way that LightWave uses them in the Graph Editor. After
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you click OK, you will see any behaviours added to the appropriate ends of the motion on the
Timeline. You can change the length of a behaviour by dragging its end handle.

Pre and Post Behaviour Options

You can add behaviours without going into the Motion Properties window. Right-clicking on the
motion will offer Pre and Post Behaviours and once those are in place, right-clicking on them will
present a menu where you can choose between the different options:

Reset - the motion value is reset to zero.

Constant - the values beyond the ends are equal to the first or last keyframe value.
Repeat - the motion repeats from the first to last keyframe.
Oscillate - the motion is mirrored over and over.
Offset Repeat - the motion repeats, but it is offset by the difference between the first and last
keyframe values.
Lock - Normally, when you move a motion that has a behaviour, the behaviour will move
along with the motion and retains its length. However, the Lock option pins the start or
end frame of a behaviour to the Timeline. Dragging the motion will shorten or lengthen the
behaviour. Eventually, it will push the behaviour once it has reached its minimum length.
Remove - the behaviour will be deleted/removed from the timeline.

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Weight Curve
Motions can be assigned a Weight Curve that allow you to specify the influence a Motion has over
time. These curves have the added benefit of allowing you to weight to any keyframed animation
underlying the Motion in Layout. The weighting system works on a value of 1.0 indicating full
influence and a weight value of 0.0 indicating no influence on the final animation. The difference
with MotionMixers weights is that as the weight approaches 0.0, and if theres underlying
animation in Layout, then more of that underlying animation will be mixed into the final value:
Weight Value
1.0
0.75
0.5
0.25
0.0

Motion Influence
100%
75%
50%
25%
0%

Layout Influence
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%

If a Motion has no Weight Curve attached then its treated as if it has a weight of 1.0. Weights can
also be increased above 1.0. This is very useful for overlaying other Motions, the higher the weight
value you apply the more influence that Motion will have over any others at that time (i.e., if you
give a Motion a weight of 10.0, it will have ten times more influence over another Motion with a
value of 1.0). When a Weight Curve has been applied, a small green bar is drawn under the Motion
on the Timeline. Weight Curves can be added, disabled temporarily and opened in the Graph
Editor either through the Motion Properties Panel or directly from the Timelines context menus
(see below).

Curve Translation
Curves for Transitions, TimeWarps & Weights are moved and scaled to match their positions on the
Timeline. This makes working with the curves far more intuitive; the frame indicator in the Graph
Editor now shows the position on the curve at the current time.

Motion Instancing
Any number of instances of a Motion can be placed on a Track and each can have their own
independent attributes (i.e., Item/Channel states, in/out points etc.)
To create an instance of a Motion, select the source Motion from the Motion Menu (this can also be
a previously created instance) and click Add Motion.
Freeing the source Motion also removes all instances.

TimeWarp Curves
These can be attached to any Motion (or instance) and allow you to vary the timing of the
animation, you can speed up or slow down sections, go backwards or freeze time and continue.
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A small red bar is drawn under the Motion to signify that a TimeWarp curve is attached. These can
also be temporarily disabled.
Controls to add/remove/disable TimeWarp curves are in the Motion Properties Panel and on the
context menus.

Relative XZ Custom Offset Type

This is a hybrid of the normal Relative Offset and the Absolute Offset types. All channels are
evaluated as relative offsets apart from the Y axis. This allows motions to be blended relatively but
retain their Y heights (i.e., you dont end up with a follow-on Motion under the floor or floating
above the ground).

Character Custom Offset Type

As the name implies this offset type is specially designed for characters and makes it very simple
to align Motions automatically. Say you have a Motion where a character turns a corner and ends
up facing 90 degrees, you append a Motion of a walk in a straight line. MotionMixer can now rotate
that Motion so that it continues in the direction that the last Motion ended on.
The Adjust Alignment control can be used to modify the calculated rotation value allowing you to
fine tune the direction your character travels.
The Compensate for Start Angle checkbox allows you to compensate for a Motion that doesnt travel
along the positive Z axis. This is very handy for motion capture where motions are often not axis
aligned (i.e., in situations where the performer runs diagonally to make the best use of the capture
area, or probably more commonly, where people dont create their forward motion along the
positive Z axis).
To use the Character offset type set any items that control the characters movement (e.g., pelvis
bone, IK Goals etc.) to CHAR in the Offset Editor (Custom Offset type).

Blending Motions with Transitions

Transitions are one of the most powerful features of Motion Mixer. They allow you to blend
motions together.

1) Well start by loading ProtonJack again. Apart from the walking and running, we can make
him look right and slow back to a walk using Motion Mixer. Make the end of the scene 250
frames so we have a bit more time for our extra stuff.
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2) Already we can see theres a transition between Jack walking and running. It is represented
by the gray bar between the two motions. Lets slow Jack down again. Change the Motion
List to read Jack_Walk and add it to timeline 02 at frame 175. If we hit Play now we can see
that Jack resumes walking, but its not a smooth switch from running to walking.

3) Select the short blue Jack_Run Motion on timeline 01, click Add Transition at the top and
then click on the Jack_Walk:01 you added to timeline 02. You can move the Jack_Walk:01
forwards and backward in time to get the transition you want.

4) Add a Post Behaviour to the Jack_Walk:01 motion and set it to Repeat. Make it last to the
end of the scene and now your dog should start off walking, start running, then go back to
walking in a loop. If theres a slight hiccup just move the Jack_Walk:01 forwards or backwards
a little on the timeline until the keys match up.
5) Press Layouts Play button and watch the movement of the dog. During the frames
controlled by the transition, the dogs gait is interpolated to line up with the start of the
second motion. You might notice that the movement between the motions is quite abrupt.
This is because it is a linear interpolation curve by default. For a smoother blend, read on.

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Right-click on the transition bar and choose Edit Transition. This brings up the Graph Editor
and the transition should be listed as an animation channel.

The vertical range of the curve represents the percentage of transition. For example: a value
of 0% means 100% of the start motion and 0% of the end motion, 60% means 40% of the
start and 60% of the end, and so on.
The horizontal axis, which normally is frames, represents how far through the transition you
are-not the range of frames in the transition. For example: 0 means the start of the transition
(i.e., 0%) and 100 means the end (i.e., 100%).

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Ignore the time slider in the curve window, if youre scrubbing the animation in Layout. It does
not reflect the position within a transition.
To smooth out the transition, you simply set the Tension to 1 for both Incoming Curves (they are both
TCBSplines). You can do this quickly by selecting both keys and right-clicking one of them and selecting
Ease In/Out from the pop-up menu.

Of course, since this is like any other curve, you can add more keys, use different Incoming Curve options,
and so on. However, the first and last keys should always be left at 0 and 100. If you add new keys, only
add them between 0 and 100 or you will likely get unpredictable results.

Renaming or Replacing Items in Layout

Renaming or replacing an item in Layout that belongs to an Actor will update the Actor and any
motions. However, the channel names (as seen in the Graph Editor) will not be updated until the
scene has been saved and reloaded. This does not affect the operation of Motion Mixer, but you
should save and reload as soon as it is convenient.

The Track Area

Clicking on the eye icon with your LMB can deactivate each track. When a track has been
deactivated, all motions and transitions on the track are also disabled. This is useful for isolating
a motion on another track, so that it can be worked on without the effects of any transitions or
blending.

The display can be scrolled horizontally by holding down the Alt key while dragging your LMB on
an empty area of the display. Scrolling the display vertically can be achieved by using your Up and
Down cursor keys.
You can add or remove Tracks by using the RMB on an existing track. Insert Track adds a new track
to the Timeline at the end of the current list of tracks. Remove Track removes the currently selected
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track along with any motions on it. You can select a track by clicking on it.

Selection Menu
The Selection Menu can be used as shortcuts to select items in Layout.

Actor Menu
The Actor Menu pop-up menu provides methods for working with actors and the items defined
within them.

Add Items adds the currently selected items in Layout to the current actor.
Removes Items removes the items selected in Layout, from the current actor. Motion Mixer will no
longer control these items. This does not clear the item from Layout, however. Clearing an item
from your scene will also remove it from an Actor.
You can use Scan X Channels to add Endomorph channels, if Morph Mixer is added to an item after
that item has been added to an actor. Motion Mixer allows you to mix all of the animation channels
belonging to an item. The non-transformation channels (i.e., any channel other than Position,
Rotation, and Scale) are called X Channels. Other examples of X Channels are: a lights RGB color
and Intensity channels, a cameras Zoom Factor, an objects Dissolve channel, and so on.
Free Actor removes the current actor from memory. All items contained in the actor are removed
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and all motions are freed.
Edit Actor Map opens the Actor Map Panel, discussed below.

Motion Menu
The Motion Menu provides methods for working with motions and the items defined within them.

Add Items adds the currently selected items in Layout to the current motion. Use this when you
need items of different types in the same motion.
Remove Items removes the currently selected items in Layout from the current motion. Any
animation data for these items will not be restored.
Load Motions loads a motion into the current actor. Motion files have an .hmot file extension and
contain data for all the items in an animation. If the motion thats being loaded contains animation
data for items that are different from those in the current actor, the Motion Mapping Panel will
be displayed.
Save Motion saves the current motion to disk.
Copy Motion creates a copy of the current motion. You will be prompted for a name, after which
the motion will be added to the Motion List.
Rename Motion allows you to change the name of the current motion. This can also be done in the
Motion Properties Panel.
Free Motion removes the current motion from memory, all channels are cleared and the motion is
removed from the actor.

Actor Maps
The Actor Map informs Motion Mixer which channels in an item should be evaluated on playback
and while baking. By default, all channels and all items are active.

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Usually, an animation will not use all channels in all items. Having fewer channels active will
improve playback performance in complex scenes and reduce the amount of keyframe data
generated by the baking process. For example, in a character bone hierarchy, scaling is unlikely
to be used, so these three channels can be deactivated for each item. Moreover, often only one
item has any positional animation (e.g., the pelvis), so all the other items can have their position
channels deactivated.
Finally, some bones, like an elbow joint, only rotate around one axis, so the other two rotation axes
can be deactivated.
To toggle the state of an item or channel, click in the column marked On. A check mark in this
column indicates that the item or channel is active. A Padlock icon indicates that this item or
channel is locked (i.e., inactive). This is a global setting and overrides any states set in the Channel
Editor.

Actor Maps are saved and loaded in the LightWave scene file.

Editing Motions
The Edit Motion button on the toolbar places the currently selected motion back into Layout for
editing. All other tracks and motions are disabled while this mode is active. Once the motion is in
Layout, you can edit the animation as you would normally. When youve finished making changes,
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toggle the Edit Motion button off. This will bring up the Edit Motion dialog.

Accept Changes to Motion updates the motion with the changes you made. Discard Changes to
Motion does not update the motion.
Restore Channels restores any animation that was present in Layout before editing the motion.
Keep Channels leaves the motion in Layout. This is handy for creating new animations based off an
existing motion. Clear Channels clears all the channels in Layout associated with the motions items.
Motions are placed back at the frame/time from where they were created and are reset to their
original (100%) scale.

Baking Motion
The Bake Range button on the toolbar allows a range of frames to be recorded by evaluating
the animation at a specified interval. This enables any combination of motions, transitions, and
behaviors to be collapsed into a single motion that can be loaded back into Motion Mixer or just
used in Layout.

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The Start Frame, End Frame and Frame Step fields specify the range of frames that will be baked and
the frequency of the evaluation. Note that Motion Mixer will always create a key on the first and
last frames of the range.

Often a Frame Step of 2 or 3 is accurate enough and much quicker to bake..

By enabling Create Motion, Motion Mixer will automatically create a new motion from the baked
sequence and place it in the Motion List. The Motion Name field enables you to specify a name
for this new motion. If this is disabled, the baked keyframes will be left in Layout, allowing you to
perform further editing before creating a motion as described earlier.
The current Actor Map determines the items and channels that are baked. If an item or channel
is locked, then no new keys will be made for it. This is an effective way of reducing the amount of
new data created and optimizing the resulting motion.

Currently, you will need to bake the entire animation sequence, if you intend to render the scene
with ScreamerNet. Once this is done, remove the Motion Mixer plugin from the scene and save the scene
using a different name.

Baking does not currently support X Channels.

The Channel Editor

The Channel Editor gives you complete control over which motions, items and channels contribute
to your animation. Open it by clicking Channel Editor on the toolbar.

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The panel contains three lists. The list on the left controls the states of the motions that are
currently placed on the Timeline. Clicking in the left hand On column, toggles the state of each
motion. In the center of the panel is the Items list. This shows all the items that are controlled by
the motion selected in the Motion List. Any or all of these items can be enabled or disabled. The
list on the right shows the state of the channels for the item currently selected in the Motion Items
list. If a channel is marked with the [L] symbol, that channel has been locked by an Actor Map and
cannot be altered here.
The Channel Editor can be used to combine two or more motions together. For example, say you
have a character walk cycle and a waving animation and youd like to combine them to create a
walking waving animation. First, youd position each motion on the Timeline so that they play at
the same time.
Then, open the Channel Editor to edit the state of the items in each motion. In the walk cycle
animation, youd disable all the items for the upper body, leaving just the legs animating.
For the waving animation, youd disable all the items relating to the characters lower body, leaving
just the upper body animating. Now, when you play back the animation, youll see the lower body
animation from the walk cycle playing along with the upper body animation from the waving
animation. The resulting animation can then be baked and saved for future use. Other animations
could be layered on top of these, providing an easy way to add secondary motion to your work.

Offset Editor
By default, Motion Mixer uses an absolute offset when evaluating motions. This means that each
motion is evaluated in isolation from any other motion on the Timeline. Alternatively, a motion may
be offset from another motion. This is called a relative offset. If you want a motion to continue on
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from the point at which another motion has finished, you can use a relative offset.

To set an offset:
1) Select the motion on the Timeline that youd like to set the offset
for and click on the Offset Editor button on the toolbar.
2) Select the motion you want to create an offset from the Offset From
pop-up menu and the type of offset from the Offset Type popup menu. Note that you cannot offset a motion from itself.

To remove an offset:
You can remove an offset from a motion either by setting Offset From to (none) or setting the
Offset Type to Absolute.

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More on X Channels
When you create an actor, or add items to an actor, Motion Mixer looks for any non-transform
channels and assigns them automatically. If channels are added to an item after it has been added
to an actor, Motion Mixer will detect the change and add them to the actor. The exception to this
is Endomorphs. Endomorph channels will be added to an actor automatically only when Morph
Mixer has been added before the item was added to the actor. If Morph Mixer is added after that
item has been added to an Actor, you must use Scan X Channels in the Actor Menu, which was
mentioned earlier.
Removing X Channels from an actor is achieved by either using the Remove Items entry in the
Actor Menu, clearing the item from the scene, or manually removing the MM_ChannelDriver
modifier on the Graph Editor.
Custom Offset - when you add this to a Motion, you can choose, on a per item basis, whether to
use Absolute or Relative offsets. This is very useful for animations containing translation. Just set
the translation item(s) to Relative and the rest to Absolute. Changing the offset type is done by
clicking on the column next to the item name in the Offset Editor list box, this will toggle between
ABS and REL.

Key Commands
+LMB Click: Add/remove Motions to/from the selection.
Shift +LMB Drag: Moves selected Motions on the Timeline. Drag anywhere other than on a Motion.
Ctrl +Drag: Moves the entire contents of active tracks. Disable a track if you dont want to move
its contents.
Ctrl +RMB Drag: Moves the contents of active tracks that have their start frames after the frame at
which the drag operation is started.
Ctrl +MMB Drag: Same as Ctrl +RMB Drag, but affects only those Motions that have their end
frames before the initial click frame.
Timeline can be zoomed by Alt + Ctrl +LMB dragging.
The Timeline will pan vertically during a normal Alt +LMB drag if the mouse is moved up or down
more than the height of a track.
Shift

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Additional Notes
Displacement/HyperVoxel Texture Layer Position, Rotation and Scale envelopes etc. can be used.
General XChannel support has been improved.
MotionMixer creates a config file (in the same directory as the LightWave configs) to store settings
between sessions. Colors for Motion & Behaviour bars and the Toolbar are specified here. Other
colors will be affected by any changes made to the LightWave color scheme.
Scenes containing the same Actor can be imported using Load from Scene, this creates a duplicate
Actor.
Motions on the Timeline that have been made inactive through the Channel Editor cannot be
selected or moved.

MDD Multi-Loader

The MDD workflow is central to using LightWave in a multi-product pipeline, or to enforce

consistency when network rendering. LightWave has long been able to save and load MDD files
and this new window makes them much faster and easier to apply scene-wide. On the left side of
the window are presented the objects in your scene with their point counts. The list on the right
will hold the MDD files you load using the Add MDD file(s) or Scan Folder buttons. Once you have
objects on the left and MDDs on the right you can either assign by hand, clicking on the object in
the left list first, then the MDD; or you can use one of the automatic matching routines:

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Names - Matches the MDD filename to the object name in Layout
Points - Matches the object pointcount with the MDDs pointcount (MDDs with pointcounts
different to the objects they are aplied to dont give predictable results)
Points & Name - Will only match the MDD to the object if both Name and pointcount are
identical (the most secure)
Points or Name - Tries to match pointcounts first, then name if the first attempt finds no
matches
Following the Match By... options there are three other buttons.
Assign Random - this will randomly choose an MDD in the right list to assign to the objects
on the left list.
Unassign - This removes the MDD assigned to the object. You can also click in a blank area in
the MDD list
Unassign All - This gives a warning before removing all MDD assignments to the object list
All of the Name options respect the Name Match Tolerance percentage field under the left object
name field. At its default 0% assigning MDDs is based on a strictly exact name match. Increasing
this percentage will match more and more items to 100% where everything will be matched.
To the right of this field is Ignore Clone Suffix. This is checked by default since you often need to
assigned MDDs to cloned objects. If you wish to control which MDDs get assigned to which of your
cloned objects uncheck this button.
Once matched a tick will show by the object name in the left list. Clicking on an object with
an MDD assigned will highlight the MDD it has been assigned in the right list. You can assign a
different MDD by clicking on it in the right list and you can Remove MDDs by clicking the button
with the same name, or Clear All MDDs by clicking the button to its right. This presents a warning
before clearing the entire list of MDDs from the right list.
Under the MDD list on the right side of the window are the same options you will find in the MD
Reader you will have used previously in LightWave for going through each object in the scene one
by one. There are Random Frame Offset and Random Replay Speed buttons with ranges beneath
each to allow you to apply some randomisation automatically across MDDs rather than needing to
each individually.
The last two buttons are:
Clear Existing MDDs - This clears MDDs already assigned to the objects in the left list before
applying those you have chosen in this window
Reset MDD Settings - This button merely resets the MDD settings in the lower right half of the
MDD Multi-Loader window back to their defaults if you have made changes you dont like

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When you hit OK, the MD Readers are applied to the objects as in previous versions of LightWave.

Example: Using MDD Multi-Loader

Our simple scene has five objects that have all been assigned Bullet dynamics. The objects fall to
the floor and bounce and roll around beautifully. To ensure the integrity of their motion, to not
have to endure the time taken to repeat the Bullet calculation (which in this case is admittedly
negligible) and to be able to export the scene to another piece of software we will bake the
motions that the objects make.

To do this, select all the objects you wish to bake - in this case the five objects dropping to the floor.
There is no need to bake the floor, there is no animation applied to it.

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On Layouts I/O tab you will find MDD Multi-Baker in the Export group. There are plenty of settings
you can change for a variety of situations but for this exercise we will immediately hit OK. You may
be prompted to create a VertCache directory in your content directory. Do so, this is where the
MDDs will be stored.

Further up the I/O tab, in the Import group you will find MDD Multi-Loader. Before opening it, we
turn off Enable Dynamics in the FX Tools tab and press play to assure ourselves that the objects
in the scene no longer fall to the floor. Now we return to the MDD Multi-Loader and open it. The
window contains the six objects in our scene, the five falling shaped and the inanimate floor. On
the right side we can either load the MDDs by multiselecting them in the load requester or by
hitting the Scan MDDs button and navigating to the right folder. In either case, we rapidly get five
MDDs in the right window.

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We can go through the objects one by one, carefully selecting the appropriate MDD file to go with
the right object, or we can just hit Match Names. In either case we will see that we have one MDD
assigned to each of the five falling shapes and none to the floor. Now when we hit OK to close the
window and press play on the scene we see our five shapes falling to the floor object exactly as
they did when Dynamics were enabled on the FX Tools tab.

Assignments
Assignments allows you to quickly Target, Parent, Goal, Pole, Spline Control, Position, Rotation or
Scale a number of items in your scene. It works by first choosing an item to be the recipient of the
above actions, and then selecting other items you wish to perform the action. Its perhaps easiest
to demonstrate with a small example.

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1) Add a null to a new scene. This is going to be our target, parent, etc. In Setup > Assignments
hit Store Selected.

2) Select the light in our new scene and clone it nine times. Spread out the lights, perhaps
using the Distribute tool. Click on the Assign... dropdown and choose an assignment, or you
can use the Assign UI. Choose Target as our first example. All your lights should point at the
null.

3) Using Undo wont help here if you clicked on something other than Target, but you
can clear individual Assigns, or all in one go using the Clear... dropdown or Clear UI.

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Align and Distribute

Located on the Modify Tab > Arrange Group in Layout, these small but useful tools make aligning
and spacing items equally in Layout easier. The Align tools work in much the same way as the
Align to Last Point tools in Modeler, but for any Layout Scene items. To use them select the items
you wish to align, then select the last item to which you want to align the other items. From the
Align menu choose which axis (X/Y/Z) you wish to align against. Once clicked, all the items you
selected will be aligned to the last items axis you picked.

Selected items, dark blue sphere was the last selected item

All items are now aligned on the chosen Y axis

To distribute, or equally space items, you dont need to worry about the selection order, simply
select the items you wish to equally space between each other, and choose the axis (X/Y/Z, or All
Axis new to 2015) you want to space the items along.

Items aligned on the Z axis, but unequally spaced

Items equally spaced between each other along the X axis

Please Note: Due to the way Generic Scripts operate in Layout, these tools will not contribute to
any Undo. Make sure you save your scene if you are unsure whether you want to keep the changes, or
you will lose the original positions of the items.

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Nodal Metalink

Users that have been LightWave artists for a long time will be familiar with the Metalink
functionality for creating a simulation with a low polygon mesh and then using that simulation to
drive the motions of a higher quality mesh. LightWave 11.5 introduced a nodal way of metalinking
objects together. To use it, simply visit your high polygon meshs Object Properties window, the
Deform tab and click Edit Nodes. Choose Displacement > Metalink and select the low polygon mesh
you have used for the dynamics simulation.

The Metalink node cant handle a lowpoly SubPatch mesh that was used for dynamics
simulation linked to a highpoly SubPatched or polygonal object unless the lowpoly SubPatched object is
set to a Display level of 0, but this shouldnt prove much of a limitation.

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What is Relativity?
Relativity is a motion and displacement plugin (applied via the Motion Options panel and/or the
Object Properties panel) that allows the motions and/or deformations of one item (camera, light,
object, or bone) to be related to the motions of another item via mathematical expressions. Below
is a picture of the main Relativity motion plugin panel (accessed via the Options motion plugin
button):

Current Item - This menu allows you to bring up and edit the expressions of any item in
LightWave that is currently using Relativity.

You cannot access Relativity morph expressions from the motion panel or vice versa.
Disable - Turning this button on will disable this instance of Relativity for this object, allowing
the original keyframed motion to play through untouched. This setting is saved in the scene
file for this instance of the plugin as well.
Rot in Deg (Rotation in Degrees) - Allows rotation values to be calculated in degrees, as
opposed to the default radians that LightWave uses internally. For most, it is much easier to
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think in degrees.
Explicit WCs - This button forces Relativity to calculate the global position of a child object
based on just the rotation, scale, and motion of each of its parents. LightWave normally
supplies this information, but in the case of Full-Time IK and in cases where a motion plugin
controls the motion of a parent or ancestor of the particular child object, LightWave supplies
bogus world-coordinate information to a plugin. So, Relativity can go in and reconstruct the
position explicitly using position, scaling and rotation data. Using this option can slightly
increase the amount of time needed to perform an expression in Relativity.
Motion Channels - It is ultimately the contents of these nine little fields that comprises all that
Relativity really is. At its heart, you enter expressions defined in a simple expression language
that end up relating the value of each motion channel to something else happening in
LightWave. For instance, you could enter in the H slot the expression X(light,t+2). What
would happen then is that the expression interpreter would look at the lights X position at
2 seconds before the time for the current frame and then pass that into LightWave as the
heading rotation value for the camera. I could also make the expression 3*X(light,t+2) and
then have the X position of light multiplied by 3 before being passed as the heading value
for the camera.
Special Functions - This slot is used for several special functions that Relativity can perform,
like targeting and dynamic parenting.
Clear - Clicking this button will clear everything out of the current panel, allowing you to
start over. If you happen to do this accidentally, click Cancel to lose the changes and then
come back in.
Copy/Paste - Copies/Pastes the expression into/from an internal buffer, all settings and
variables will be copied and pasted as well.
Copy to Descendants - Copies the current set of expressions to the descendants of an object.
An example would be in setting up a motion cycle for the thigh of a character. You could
then take those same expressions and copy them to the descendants of the current object.
NOTE: The descendants will need to already have Relativity applied to them via their own
Motion Graph panels. Relativity is unable to do this automatically due to limitations in the
LightWave plugin architecture.
Load/Save - Loads and Saves the expression settings To/From a file. The file format is just text
with all the parameters listed sequentially in it.
Search/Replace - Search for instances of a text string, and replace it with another. The search
can either be case-sensitive or not.
Comments - Put in anything you darn-well please in these slots they are there to help you
remember why you set up an expression the way you did.
Professors - For those who feel rather math-shy, there are a number of Professors that allow
you to set up common types of expressions. Note that next to the expression slot for each
motion channel, there is an Ask a Professor menu choice. For most professors, it is context
sensitive (i.e. for the Gears professor, the rotation used in the expression will match that of
the slot selected so the bank slot would be filled with a B(object,t), the heading slot with
H(object,t) and so on.). The Dr. Follow professor will actually place data in any slot specified

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and is thus not context sensitive. To use a professor, select it from the choice menu and fill in
the blanks. If youve filled in everything correctly, your expression will be automatically set
up for you. You can then take the expressions created and tweak them further.
A detailed staff listing of the professors and what they do can be found later in this chapter.
Variables Panel - Above is a picture of the variable panel, accessible via the Variables button
on the main panel. Relativity has a number of variables available that you can use in your
expressions. Basically, each variable can be a sub-expression which then gets dropped
into the grand expression for each motion channel. For instance, I could define the subexpression X(object1,t)*sin(t*5) as a sub-expression for variable A. This can then be
substituted into the final motion channel expressions.
Say we put the expressions:
3*#a

and
2*#a

in the X and Y slots of Relativity if you expanded things out, youd end up with:
3*(X(object,t)*sin(t*5))

and
2*(X(object,t)*sin(t*5))

which are certainly more unwieldy to manage than putting the sub-expression in A and
substituting in #a where needed.
In addition, note the two buttons, Shift Variables Up and Shift Variables Down on the
panel. What these buttons do is move the variables up or down in the slots, replacing the
variable names in all expressions accordingly. The reason for these buttons is if you as the
expression designer decide you need some extra slots at the beginning or end of a group
of expressions finding and replacing all references to variables within the expressions as
necessary.

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The Relativity Morph Plugin

Using the Relativity Morph plugin, found in the Object Properties panel Deform Tab, you can easily
morph from one object to many potential targets, using complex expressions. You can even do
additive, subtractive, multiplicative, and division-based morphs. There is a single expression slot
MORPH into which you can enter any number of morph expressions (any other expressions in this
slot will be ignored). Each morph expression has the following syntax:
<command character>MORPH(target,value)

where command character can be any of the following:

& - replacement morph - this interpolates from the presently calculated morph into the target.
+ - additive morph - adds the values of the target points to the currently calculated morph
- - subtractive morph - subtracts the values of the target points from the currently calculated
morph.
* - multiplicative morph - multiplies the currently calculated morph by the values of the
target.
/ - division morph - divides the calculated morph points by the point values of the current
target
So, a typical morph expression might look like this:
&MORPH(morph1,#a)+MORPH(morph2,#b)-MORPH(morph3,#a+#b)

where #a, #b, etc. were derived from expressions in the variables panel.
You can enter any of the standard Relativity expressions in the variable slots, A through R, and then
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use these in the MORPH expressions. You can also place expressions directly in the morph value of
the MORPH expression as well (e.g. MORPH(targ1,sin(t)))
You will also notice the options buttons at the top of the morph panel, labeled Evaluate Expression
Point-by-point, Evaluate Point using World Coordinates, and Transform Morph Target(s).
Evaluate Expression Point-by-Point - If this option is on, then the variables x, y, and z are
replaced with the value of each point in the original object, as they are moved. This is useful
for creating partial morphs, like effector-morphs, gradient morphs and ripple morphs. If this
option is off, then x, y, and z use the keyframed motion values from the object itself for these
variables.
Evaluate Points using World Coordinates - If this option is on, then the world x, y, and z values
of each point is used in evaluating the morph. This will also cause the morph to be evaluated
after bones have been applied. If this is off, then individual points are evaluated using their
before-bones local coordinate.
Transform Morph Target(s) - If this option is on (and it must go hand-in-hand with Evaluate
Points using World Coordinates), the morph plugin will transform the target points by the
motion of the morph target object, allowing you to have the morphed points move with
their target.
It is highly recommended that you avoid using functions like DIST and ODIST in the expressions
if you have any of the point-by-point options on you will be waiting a long time for those
expressions to finish with objects that have any significant point count.
There are several example scenes included in the latest example scene archive that show the Rel_
Morph plugin in action.
In addition to the object morphing, the X, Y, and Z slots allow for expression based deformation on
the X, Y, and Z coordinates of each point in your object.

The Relativity Expression Language

Syntax
The Relativity language syntax is very similar to that of the NewTek Math Motion and Math
Morph plugins, which ends up being a sort of LISP-ish type programming language. Basically, you
enter a mathematical expression in a slot, and the plugin will evaluate it, applying the final value of
that expression to that channel. In the slots on the variable panel, the expression is applied to that
variable, whose value can then be placed in other expressions. Some simple expressions would be:
sin(t) - the sine of the current time value
cos(x) - the cosine of the x value of the objects own keyframed motion
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X(blah1,t)+Y(blah2,t) - adds the X value of blah1 and the Y value of blah2
#a*sin(t)+XS(SELF,t) - multiply whatevers in the A slot by the sine of t and add the X
scale keyframe value of its own keyframed motion at the current time.
X(something,t-.5) - gets the X motion value of object something where it was a half
second ago (time is always in seconds)
The goal is to create an expression for each motion channel of interest. For motion channel slots
left blank, the keyframed value for that channel will default through to the motion of the object.

Object Names
In order for relativity to grab object names, full names (case insensitive) need to be supplied for all
functions, object and bone names also need to be unique in order for Relativity to find the correct
object. Object names that end with the .lwo extension need to have their names specified in
functions in Relativity with their extension.
Null objects should be specified with their exact names (typically, they do not have the .lwo
extension on their names). There are also 3 predefined object names:
camera - grabs motion info from the camera
SELF - grabs information from the items own keyframe data
PARENT - grabs information from the objects parent.

Variable Substitutions
If you click on the Variables button on the main Relativity options panel, you will notice a panel
with a number of additional slots: A through R. These are there to allow the build-up of complex
multi-expressions that would become quite unmanageable very quickly if all strung into one
string. Relativity will scan each string, looking for a # character followed by a variable name and
substitute that value in. For example, if I had:
X: 3*#i
Y: 4*#i
I: sin(X(something,t))

the value of I would be evaluated and X would be essentially set to 3*sin(X(something,t))

and Y to 4*sin(X(something,t)). Note how using the variables also allows you to remove
repetitive sub-expressions from your main expressions. In addition to that, each variable slot can
take variables from the previous slots so, we could have:
I: X(blah,t)
J: Y(more,t) + #i
K: Z(amore,t) + #i + #j

etc.
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Relativity also has several special variables:

#ex
takes the numeric extension of the objects name, either the (1), (2), etc.) of a cloned objects
name, or any numeric extension on an objects filename (i.e. myobject001.lwo, myobject002.lwo).
This can be useful in setting up a set of expressions that automatically offset clones and numeric
duplicates of objects into their appropriate position when cloned (this was used in the newtank.
lws example scene to make all the tread links fall into their correct position. A simple example
would be:
X: #ex

Now, anytime this object is cloned, the clones will each offset themselves by one meter in the X
direction.

#frm
gets the number of the current frame.

#fps
gets the current frames-per-second value

#def
this passes through the default value for whichever motion channel its on.. So, for example, if you
had an object keyframed at X=2, Y=-3, Z=5, and then had the following expressions:
X: #def+2
Y:#def-6
Z:#def*2

would change the coordinates of our object to 4, -9, 10.

In addition to the user-defined slot variables, Relativity has several predefined variables (these
SHOULD NOT BE PRECEDED BY THE # SYMBOL):
x - the x position of the current item (in local coordinates)
y - the y position of the current item (in local coordinates)
z - the Z position of the current item (in local coordinates)
t - the current time

Comments
You can put whatever you want into the comment fields, which will be saved with the expressions
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in the scene file. In addition to that, the user can end any expression line with a comment preceded
by either a double-forward-slash //, or a forward-slash followed by an asterisk /*, Relativity will
ignore anything after the comment character and will not send that part of the expression on to
the parser/compiler/evaluator. An example would be the following, entered in the X field of the
main panel:
X(object1,t) //here were getting the X value of an object

or
X(object1,t) /*here were getting the X value of an object

Functions
Relativity supports all of the standard math functions supported by LightWave. These can be
found listed in the appendix in the Reference manual. In addition, Relativity supports the following
functions (NOTE: the function names are case sensitive, X is not the same as x). It should also be
understood that object names containing these functions in their proper case may confuse the
Relativity expression parser so, for example, dont include an objects name as myXobject,
instead, change the name to myxobject and all will be well with the world. IT IS HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED THAT ALL OBJECT NAMES USED IN RELATIVITY EXPRESSIONS BE DONE IN ALLLOWERCASE:
X(object, time expression)
Y(object, time expression)
Z(object, time expression)
H(object, time expression)
P(object, time expression)
B(object, time expression)
XS(object, time expression)
YS(object, time expression)
ZS(object, time expression)

gets the x, y, z, heading, pitch, bank, x scale, y scale, and z scale of object, respectively.
XW(object, time expression)
YW(object, time expression)
ZW(object, time expression)

gets the world coordinate position of object.

XL(object, time expression)
YL(object, time expression)
ZL(object, time expression)

converts the global coordinate of object into the local coordinate space of the object to which
were applying Relativity.
Example:
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X(object,t)

This would get the X position of object at the current time.

MOTX(object, time expression)
MOTY(object, time expression)
MOTZ(object, time expression)

These functions return a normalized vector representing the motion of the object. This can be
useful, when combined with the vector parameters below, to gauge how much of the objects
motion is forward and how much is side-to-side.
Example:
X: MOTX(object,t)
Y: MOTY(object,t)
Z: MOTZ(object,t)

would cause our Relativity instance to point in the direction of motion of object.
UPX(object, time expression)
UPY(object, time expression)
UPZ(object, time expression)
FORX(object, time expression)
FORY(object, time expression)
FORZ(object, time expression)
RITX(object, time expression)
RITY(object, time expression)
RITZ(object, time expression)

These are the Relativity vector parameter functions, and return a normalized vector representing
the orientation of objects local X, Y, and Z axes in global space (UP = Y, FOR=Z, RIT=X).
OBJDIZ(object, time expression)

evaluates the dissolve factor of object, which can then be used in your expressions.
Example:
OBJDIZ(myobject,t)

will evaluate the dissolve amount for myobject.

BONERX(bone)
BONERY(bone)
BONERZ(bone)
BONERH(bone)
BONERP(bone)
BONERB(bone)
BONERL(bone)

Get the rest X, Y, Z, heading, pitch, bank, or rest length of bone.

Example:
BONERX(bone)+BONERY(bone)
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adds the X and Y rest positions of bone together.
CAMZOOM(time expression)
CAMHORZ(time expression)
CAMVERT(time expression)
CAMFL(time expression)
CAMFD(time expression)
CAMFSTP(time expression)
CAMBLR(time expression)

Gets the zoom factor, horizontal view angle, vertical view angle, focal length (in millimeters), focal
distance, f-stop, and motion blur factors, respectively, for the camera at time time expression.
Example:
Z: Z(CAMERA,t)+CAMFD(t)

would position a null right at the focal point of the camera, provided its looking down the Z axis
and unrotated.
LIGHTCON(light,time
LIGHTEDG(light,time
LIGHTRED(light,time
LIGHTGRN(light,time
LIGHTBLU(light,time

expression)
expression)
expression)
expression)
expression)

Gets the cone angle, soft edge angle, red color, green color, blue color, respectively of light at
time time expression.
Example:
LIGHTCON(light,t)

would get the cone angle of light at time t.

XCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
YCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
ZCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
HCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
PCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
BCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
XSCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
YSCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
ZSCYCLE(object, driving expression, start time in seconds, end time in
seconds)
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Cycles the objects motion from the start time to the end time whenever the decimal portion of
the driving expression is 0, the position of the object at the start time is copied if it is .99999, the
position at the end time is copied, if it is 0.5, the position halfway between the start and end times
is returned, etc.
Example:
XCYCLE(SELF, t, 0, 0.333)

This would cycle the X values between 0 and 10 frames (frame 10 = 0.333 seconds), repeating the
cycle each time the time value ticks off a second.
XMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
YMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
ZMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
HMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
PMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
BMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
XSMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
YSMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)
ZSMINPATH(object, following distance, time expression)

Gets the motion value at a minimum path distance of following distance behind the objects
position at time t.
Example:
XMINPATH(leader, 1, t)

This would get the X coordinate of object leader 1 meter in path-length behind its current
position.
TARGET(object, time expression)

Entered in the special expression field for the object, target will target the heading and pitch of the
item toward the target object, pointing the local Z axis at the targeted object.
Example:
TARGET(object, t)

would target the position of object at time t.

MATCH(object, time expression)

This function will match an unparented object to correcspond with the object listed in the MATCH
function, no matter how deeply object is buried in a hierarchy (including bones and child bones).
Useful for such things as attaching objects to bones properly. MATCH is a special function, and as
such, should go in the Special Functions slot.
Example:
MATCH(footbone, t)

This would match the position of our object to that of footbone at time t.

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GAP(object1, time expression1, object2, time expression2)

This function measures the gap between the global position of object1 at time time expression 1
and object2 at time expression 2
DIST(object, time expression)

Gets the total path distance traveled (in global coordinates) from time 0 to the time specified.
Example:
DIST(whatever,t-0.5)

Gets the total path distance traveled by whatever from time 0 up to 15 frames ago.
ODIST(object,time expression)

This returns the oriented distance traveled by the object, with the orientation being determined
by the direction of travel and where the objects own local Z axis is pointing. Using this distance
function, it is possible for an object to walk forward and backward, stepping properly as it does
so. The original DIST function did not take object orientation into account and will return the total
path distance traveled by an object regardless of the direction of the path motion with respect to
its orientation.
Example:
ODIST(PARENT,t)

Gets the oriented distance traveled by the parent of our object.

MOVEVEC(velocity,time expression)

Entered in the Special Functions slot, this will move the object along the Z direction (wherever
this happens to be pointing) at the specified velocity (in meters/second). Using this function, you
can simply rotate your object and have it smoothly fly wherever you need it to go. This function is
perhaps most useful for situations where you have the rotation of an object controlled by some
sort of virtual steering mechanism (like a virtual joystick or steering wheel) and want the object to
respond to the rotation changes by moving in the new direction.
Example:
MOVEVEC(X(controller,t), t)

Moves the object by the velocity indicated by X(controller,t), incorporating the rotations of our
object up to the current time to determine its current position.
SUMX(object,time expression)
SUMY(object,time expression)
SUMZ(object,time expression)
SUMH(object,time expression)
SUMP(object,time expression)
SUMB(object,time expression)
SUMXS(object,time expression)
SUMYS(object,time expression)
SUMZS(object,time expression)
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This function adds the value of the objects respective motion channel incrementally, once per
frame. So, for example, if you have an object keyframed to X=0.5, at frame 1, SUMX would equal
0.5, at frame 2, SUMX would equal 1.0, etc. To use the SUM functions as a pseudo-time function (for
throttle type controls), you will probably have to multiply the SUM expression by 1/(frames per
second rate), i.e. 1/30 or 1/24, etc.
Example:
SUMX(blah, t)

This would sum the X component of object blah from time 0 to the present time.
IF(expression1 <comparison character(s)> expression2)

the IF function will evaluate expression1 and expression2, compare them using the <comparison>
character(s) and evaluate to 1 if the comparison is true, 0 if it is false. The following comparisons are
supported by IF:

< - less than

> - greater than
<> - not equal to
<= - less than or equal to
>= - greater than or equal to

Example:
IF(X(blah,t) < 0)

This will evaluate to 1 if the x coordinate of blah is less than 0, and will evaluate to 0 if the x
coordinate of blah is greater than or equal to 0.
AND(expression1,expression2)

Performs a logical AND between two expressions, if expression 1 and expression 2 are BOTH not 0,
then the AND function evaluates to 1, if either or both are 0, then the AND returns 0.
Example:
AND(IF(X(blah,t)<0),IF(Y(blah,t)>0))

would return 1 if the X value of blah is less than 0 and the Y value of blah is greater than 0,
otherwise, the AND would return 0.
OR(expression1,expression2)

Performs a logical OR between two expressions, if either or both expression 1 and expression 2 are
not 0, then the OR will return 1. If they are both 0, the OR will return 0.
Example:
OR(IF(X(blah,t)<0),IF(Y(blah,t)>0))

Would return 1 if either the X value of blah is less than 0, or the Y value of blah is greater than 0,
or both. If neither is true, then the OR would evaluate to 0.
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NOT(expression)

NOT will return 0 if the expressions value is not 0 and 1 if it is zero, i.e. a logical NOT operation. This
is most useful for negating IF() expressions.
Example:
NOT(IF(x>0))

Will return 1 if the x value of our item is not greater than zero, and 0 if it is greater than 0.
COND(expression <comparison character(s)> expression,trueresult,falseresu
lt)

this function implements a conditional expression, basically giving the user an IF ELSE kind of
logical decision-making. The first part is identical to the format of the IF statement, this is followed
by an expression to evaluate to if the condition is true (i.e. trueresult). If the condition is false,
then falseresult is returned instead.
Example:
Y: COND(X(self,t)<=0,1,Z(object,t))

in this example, if the X position of the object itself is less than or equal to zero, COND will evaluate
to 1. If it is greater than zero, the COND expression will evaluate to the Z value of object.
FT(framenum)

converts a frame into a time value in seconds (as Relativity equations use seconds to calculate the
time). NOTE: framenum must be a constant value it cannot be an expression.
Example:
FT(30)

would convert to 1.0000, or 1 second, in the typical 30 fps scenario.

EVTIME(expression)

this function is a very powerful one, using it, you can set up an animation to play back when
a specific trigger condition occurs. The way this function works is it will return a time value,
indicating the last time that expression changed from 0 or less than zero, to greater than zero,
most typically done by some form of IF statement. As long as expression remains greater than
0, EVTIME will keep ticking off time. Whenever the expression is 0, or less than zero, EVTIME will
return 0. EVTIME will also return 0 if the expression starts out as true (i.e. greater than zero) without
having switched from a false condition to a true condition. NOTE: EVTIME will only evaluate
expression at frame boundaries, not at interframe time values in order to save calculation time.
If expression changes from false to true at an interframe time, the time at the next frame will
actually start the count.
Example:
Y(SELF,EVTIME(IF(Y(botfoot,t) < 0.1)))

This would start playing back the animation of the object itself once the Y value of botfoot gets
reasonably close to zero. Something like this could be used to simulate camera shake whenever a
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bot s foot hit the ground.
Another Example:
A:
B:
C:
D:
X:
Y:
Z:

EVTIME(IF(GAP(object,t,sensor,t) < 1))

COND(#a <= FT(5), #a, FT(5))
EVTIME(IF(GAP(object,t,sensor,t) > 1))
COND(#c > 0,FT(5)+#c,#b)
X(SELF,#d)
Y(SELF,#d)
Z(SELF,#d)

In this example, say we have a door keyframed to open from frames 0 to 5 and keyframed to close
from frames 5 to 10. In this example, an event trigger is thrown by A when object and sensor come
within one meter of each other, causing the open animation to play. However, we dont want the
close animation to occur until our object gets far enough away. So, the B expression limits the
playback of A to frames 0 through 5 by returning the time value for 5 frames if A gets bigger than
that. The C expression is set up so that its triggered when the object moves further than a meter
away. Finally, the D expression is set up to return the C value if it has a value, and the B expression
otherwise. The net result of all this gibberish is that when object gets close to sensor the doors
fly open. When it moves away from sensor, they fly shut again.
EVONE(expression)

This function is the same as EVTIME, except it doesnt reset when the condition becomes false
again. EVONE remains triggered no matter what happens to the tracking event.
VX(object,t)
VY(object,t)
VZ(object,t)
VH(object,t)
VP(object,t)
VB(object,t)
VXS(object,t)
VYS(object,t)
VZS(object,t)

computes the directed velocity of an object along the appropriate motion channel. NOTE: This
value is sensitive to direction, so an object moving in the positive direction at the same speed as
one moving in the negative direction would have opposite X velocities, one positive and the other
negative, respectively. NOTE: All velocities are in meters per second (except rotational velocities
which are in degrees per second if the Use Degrees button is on, in radians per second if Use
Degrees is off ), if you need a different velocity measurement, such as miles per hour, you will need
to multiply the velocity value by the appropriate constants.
Example:
VX(object,t)

gets the X velocity of our object at time t (in meters per second)
SPEED(object,t)
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SPEEDW(object,t)

Gets the speed in local coordinates or world coordinates, respectively, of the object at time t.
Speed is irrespective of direction, and takes all axial motions into account.
Example (a simple speedometer):
B: 180*SPEED(car,t)
AX(object,t)
AY(object,t)
AZ(object,t)
AH(object,t)
AP(object,t)
AB(object,t)
AXS(object,t)
AYS(object,t)
AZS(object,t)

computes the acceleration of an object along the motion channel. In this case, acceleration is
direction insensitive, returning the change in the absolute value of the velocity on the channel in
question.
Example:
AH(object,t-0.1)

this would get the heading velocity of object at .1 seconds behind the current time.
SPDCHNG(object,t)
SPDCHNGW(object,t)

gets the change in speed over time of an object at time t, in local or world coordinates,
respectively. This can be considered akin to acceleration, but in all directions, rather than just one
axis.
Example:
Y: 30*SPDCHNG(myobject, t-X(timecontrol,t))

This would measure the rate of speed change for object myobject at the current time minus the X
value of control (in seconds).
ABSDEG(expression)

converts a rotation value in expression into an absolute degree value between 0 and 2*PI radians,
or betwen 0 and 359 degrees if the Use Degrees button is checked on. This can be useful when
you have something continually rotating, and yet you want to create a behavior that works
between a set of rotation values, like bones placed in a tire to do tire-bulge.
Example:
ABSDEG(P(obj,t))

would have the following values with corresponding values for the pitch of obj.
Value of Pitch of obj

Value of ABSDEG

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30 degrees
360 degrees
740 degrees

30 degrees
0 degrees
20 degrees

FRAC(controller object, # of frequencies)

gets a fractal noise value (a single value between 0 and 1.0) at the global position of an object,
using the controller object to determine the position, rotation, and scale of the fractal texture. The
way this works is as follows:
Relativity will grab the global position of an object and transform that coordinate into the
coordinate space of the controller null. - Using this information, and the # of frequencies value,
Relativity will apply a Perlin fractal turbulence function to the coordinate and wrangle out a single
value between 0 and 1 for that point.
Example:
X: X(SELF,t) + 0.5*FRAC(fracnull,3)

this will add a bit of fractal noise to the X position of our object

Tips for using Fractal noise:

1) Since the FRAC function will only return a single value for the coordinate of the item
involved, you may want to use several fractal controllers to apply different fractal
values to different motion channels of an item to shake things up a bit more.
2) The fractal controller null determines the size, position, and rotation of the fractal
texture permeating throughout space. So, for example, you have an object sitting
still, but you want it to wiggle a bit, no problem, move or rotate the fractal controller
object(s) and the fractal texture at the objects location will change. Another
example: Say you want an object to bump around very quickly, changing values
dramatically at almost every frame, just scale the fractal controller null to a very
small size, and youll reduce the size of the fractal lumps causing the texture to vary
much more quickly from point to point. Conversely, larger scale values for the fractal
controller will cause the variation to be much more smooth between points.
Remembering these tips can give you a high degree of control of the fractal randomness.
NOISE(expr)

returns a noise value based on the value of expr. Basically, you feed it a value, and out pops a
fractal noise value.
Example:
NOISE(t)

will return a noise value based on the current time.

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NOISE(3*t)

will return a more jagged noise value.

BLEND(value 1, at point 1, value 2, at point 2, current position)
TBLEND(value 1, at point 1, value 2, at point 2, current position)

Blend can be used to linearly blend between values 1 and 2, with the result of blend equaling
value 1 when the current position expression is at at point 1, and will return value 2 when
the current position expression is at at point 2. BLEND basically sets up a linear interpolation
relationship between the values, and will over-interpolate if current position is less than at point
1 or is greater than at point 2

Over-interpolation is not necessarily a bad thing, as many mechanical relationships can be set
up by knowing relationships between various values at two distinct points, which can be used to define
behavior outside of the range of those two points. If you desire the blend to stop when the current
position goes outside the range specified by value 1 and value 2 , use TBLEND (short for TruncatedBLEND) instead.
Examples:
BLEND(0,3,5,6,X(blender,t))

this would blend between the values 0 and 5, with 0 being returned by BLEND when X(blender,t) is
3, and 5 being returned when X(blender,t) is 6. Note: if X(blender,t) were 9, then the blend function
would return 10 for its value, as it overinterpolates based on the value of X(blender,t). If this were
a TBLEND instead, then the maximum value that the BLEND function would ever have would be 5,
no matter how high X(blender,t) got.
BLEND(X(obj1,t),0,X(obj2,t),1,X(blender,t))

this would blend from the X motion channel of obj1 when X(blender,t) is 0 to the X motion channel
of obj2 when X(blender,t) is 1. So, basically, X(blender,t) can be used as a toggle to switch the
motion of our item from obj1 to obj2.

The Relativity Staff Directory

The following information will give you an overview of the professors in Relativity and what they
do.

Dr. Item Picker

Dr. Wheel Rotator
Dr. Oscillator
Dr. Gear Grinder
Dr. Motion Blender
Dr. Dist Maintainer
Dr. Camera Shaker

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Dr. Equation Maker

Dr. Follower
Dr. Delayer
Dr. Cycler
Dr. Blend Machinist
Dr. Event Maker
Dr. Morph-o
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Dr. Target
Dr. MoveVec

Dr. Matcher
Dr. Snake Maker

Most of the professors in Relativity are accessed from the menu next to an expression slot on the
Relativity panel. What they do, is allow the point-and-click automated set-up of many commonly
used expression set-ups. It is quite likely that this list will expand in future releases of Relativity.
One thing to note about the professors: some professors are context sensitive, they will only setup the expression for one motion slot at a time, and may change how they set up the expression
based on which motion slot theyre being run from. Other professors work on a more global level,
and can set up multiple motion expression slots all at once. A few will even commandeer some
variable slots. This will be noted as we go through the documentation, professors that set up
multiple slots will have the statement Multi-slot professor before their description.

Dr. Item Picker

Dr. Item Picker is a simple professor panel that will blast an object name onto the end of whatever
you are typing. So, for instance, if you were typing:
2+X(

and then forgot the name of the object you wanted, you could use Dr. Item picker to pick the name
youre interested in so you would end up with:
2+X(mynull

and then you could add the ,t) to finish off the expression. If you need to insert an object name
into an existing expression, like:
2*sin(XW(blah,t))

and realize that you forgot your object name and need to replace blah with the correct name, use
Dr. Equation Maker below.

Dr. Equation Maker

This professor is the most powerful, complex, and yet easy-to-use in your arsenal. It turns the
task of hand-building an expression into an exercise in point-and-click. Now, whether or not your
expression does what you expect, thats up to you, but this professor will do all it can to help steer
you in the right direction. On this panel, you have a total of eight menus that allow you to pick
eight different possible elements that make up your expressions: LightWaves math constants and
functions, Relativitys arsenal of expression functions, Rels special functions (for use only in the
Special Function slot), Object names, bone names, light names, and special reserved Relativity
objects (PARENT, SELF, camera, etc.).
To use this professor, simply select what you want from a menu and click it into place. As you
select items, the text control at the top will give you a description of the choice youve made, to
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make sure you have what youre looking for in this sample image, X(obj,t) has been selected, and
the description tells you what this Relativity function does. If you click Add Choice to Expression, the
professor will append your choice to the current expression in the edit field.
You can also tell this professor that you want to insert a choice into the middle of your current
expression, rather than just at the end. By placing an @ character wherever you want an insertion
point, you can make the professor insert your next choice where the @ is, rather than at the end
of the expression. So, we could start by selecting X(obj,t) and clicking that into place. Then we
could edit out the obj and replace it with an @. Finally, we could select the actual object name
we were interested in from the object menu, say it was called heavynull. Once we click the Add
Choice to Expression button, heavynull will replace the @ character, turning our expression into
X(heavynull,t).

Dr. Wheel Rotator

This professor has a simple task, making your object rotate as it tracks the motion of some other
object. To use it, pick the object that will drive this rotation (this will most often be the direct
parent, or an otherwise ancestor of your object). However, there is nothing that can stop you from
letting the objects own motion drive its own rotation. Here is a field-by-field break-down of the
panel:
Object Driving the Rotation - This is the object whose motion will cause the rotation of our
current object to occur.
Pick Vehicle - Brings up the object picker panel to get a point-and-click selection of the object
you want.
Diameter - Here you enter the diameter (i.e. the total distance across) of the wheel.

Dr. Follower - Multi-slot professor

This is the professor for setting up following motions of all kinds. You can set up many kinds of
relationships, like a delayed following of another object, or have an object follow at a specified
distance. You can even set up an offset-following motion where an object or group of objects will
follow a leader, yet maintain a respectable distance from it. Here is a break-down of the fields:
Object to follow - This is the object we want to follow this is hopefully not a hard concept to
grasp
Pick follow object - allows point-and-click selection of object
Channels to follow - allows you to determine which channels were going to follow on this
will set up multiple expression slots at one time.
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Offset Motion by Difference at Frame 0 - If this button is clicked on, then this object will follow
its leader in a flocky sort of way so the follower object will move with the leader, but
maintain its relative position with respect to the leader.
Follow at a specified distance - This slot, if it contains a value, specifies that we want to follow
at a specific path distance behind the lead object. This is useful for things like roller coasters,
trains, etc. etc. where you need successive cars to maintain an exact distance behind the
leader or behind the car in front of it. The distance will be maintained no matter how fast the
lead object moves.
Follow with a constant time delay - This slot, if filled, will cause the follower object to either lag
behind or anticipate the motion of the lead object by a specified time delay.
Optional Time Delay Control Object - This slot will allow you to specify an object (often a null)
as a delay controller.
Channels to Control - Select the channel(s) for the delay object to control. If you only select
the X channel, the X channel of the object will control the delay on ALL THE MOTION
CHANNELS of our follower object. Otherwise, the X channel of the delay control will
determine the X delay, the Y channel will determine the Y delay. Unclicked channels will not
have the delay controller specified in them.
Use Object Extension for Follow Delay - This will multiply the objects numeric extension or
clone number (i.e. the (1) in null (1) or the 3 in obj003.lwo) by the delay factor, either the
time delay or the distance delay. This way, you could set up an expression for one object and
copy it verbatim to other objects and have them lock into the right place behind the leader.
Extension Offset - This is the offset for the extension for instance, if you want object001.lwo
to not have any delay, but object002.lwo to delay by one delay factor, you could make the
offset 1, this would zero out any delay for object001 but turn it on for subsequent objects.

Dr. Oscillator - Multi-slot professor

This professor is the one for setting up any and all oscillating motions (i.e. objects swinging back
and forth, bobbing up and down, wiggling around, weaving side-to-side, etc.). The setup of this
panel is quite simple:
Channels to wiggle - Select any and all channels that you want to oscillate.
Wiggles per second - This determines the frequency of the oscillation.
Frequency Controller - You can optionally have a frequency controller instead, its set up so
the X channel of the controller object controls the frequency (this can always be edited after
the fact to a different channel).
Wiggle Intensity - Determines the intensity of the oscillation.
Intensity Controller - You can optionally have an intensity controller whose X channel controls
the oscillation intensity.

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Dr. Delayer - Multi-slot professor
Dr. Delayer allows you to delay an objects own motion by an offset in time. This is useful for
moving the dreaded locked 0 keyframe to another time, so cyclic motions can start off at frames
other than 0. Its also possible, using a delay controller, to soften acceleration and deceleration
much more than when using just tension on your spline values. Heres a breakdown of the fields on
this professor:
Fixed Time Delay - Enter a value (in seconds, or add a F at the end to specify frames) and your
motion will be delayed by that amount.
Delay Controller - Choose an object to control the amount of the delay, which makes the
delay factor animatable.
Channels of the controller object - This specifies which single channel of the delay controller
will control the delay. You can also choose all channels to get a channel-by-channel delay
control.
Delay on which channels - Pick the channels to set up a delay on.
Tie Delay to Object Extension - Use the object number extension in the expression as a
multiplier by the delay factor. This is useful for setting up a sequence of numbered objects
to delay by specified amounts.
Extension Offset - This value is subtracted from the object extension before applying it to the
expression.

Dr. Gear Grinder

Dr. Gear Grinder is great for relating the rotation of one object to the rotation of another. You pick
the controlling gear and then tell it the radius or diameter of each gear (note: you must use either
radius or diameter values for both slots). If you are actually setting up gears, you could specify the
number of teeth for each gear instead of radius.

Dr. Cycler
Dr. Cycler is the ultimate professor for setting up all sorts of nifty cyclic relationships in LightWave.
Before you run the professor, though, you need to have a cyclic motion keyframed for your object.
Dr. Cycler will take that cyclic motion and figure out a way to apply that motion over-and-overagain (i.e. cyclically) over the course of your animation. Heres what all the fields mean:
Motion Channel to Cycle on - The motion channel the cycle will be applied to.
Object to Pull the Cycle from - You can select any object as the source of the cycle. In many
cases, you would select SELF to choose the objects own keyframed motion as the basis for
the cycle.
First and Last frame of the Cycle - Again, this should be self-explanatory.
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Object driving the Cycle - This is the object whose motion is driving the cycle, unless you
select time as the driving function, which makes the object irrelevant.
Driving function - Choose what aspect of the objects motion is going to drive the cycle. Most
of the options should be clear, path distance means the absolute path distance traveled by
the object with no sense of orientation. Oriented distance will grow larger as the object
moves forward and grow smaller as the object moves backward. Oriented distance is
probably what will be most often used. NOTE: if you happen to have constructed your
object so that its forward end faces down the negative Z axis, you will need to go in by
hand and edit the expression to have a negative ODIST value.
Stride Length - Quite often a cycle will need to repeat over a specific distance (like 2 times
the step distance of a character, or the distance around the path of a tank tread unit), the
distance over which the cycle repeats is known as the stride length.
Optional Length Delay - This field can be used to push the cycle back over its stride length,
used to offset opposing legs in a walk cycle, or pushing one element of many back down its
path a little bit.
Tie length delay to object extension - Use the clone number (i.e. the 3 in null (3), or the 10 in
obj10.lwo) as a multiplier for the length delay. You can use this field to create an expression
that should automatically tailor itself to clones of that same object.
Extension offset - This value is subtracted from the objects extension and can be used to turn
the clone number of null (1) to 0, so the first object doesnt have an offset along its path.

Dr. Motion Blender - Multi-slot professor

Dr. Motion Blender can be used to blend between the motion paths of two objects interactively
during an animation. What applications that might have in your animations is entirely up to you.
Here is a breakdown of the fields:
Object 1 and Object 2 - Pick the objects whose motions you want to blend between. NOTE:
if you put SELF in for one of the objects, it would blend this objects own keyframed motion
with something else.
What Channels will we be blending between - Pick one or more motion channels for the
motion blend.
Constant Blend Percentage - Pick a constant blend percentage between the motions.
Blend Control Object - If this field is filled, it negates the blend percentage field. Use an object
to control the blend.
Channels of the controlling object - You can choose a single channel of the controlling object
to control the blend on all channels of our blend object (for instance, the Y value of our
object would control the blend as it moved from 0 to 1). If you pick All Channels, then the X
value of the control object will determine the X blend percent, the Y value will control the Y
blend, etc.
Truncated Blend - If the control objects values get above 0 or 1, cut them off at 0 or 1,
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otherwise, youll get an overblend.

Dr. Blend Machinist

Dr. Blend Machinist is one of the most powerful professors. Using this panel, you can set up lots of
interesting relationships between objects, where one channel of one object control the action on
one or more channels of another object. For instance, imagine a foot where you need the toes to
curl as it lifts off the ground. Or imagine a mechanical system where you need a piston to expand
and contract with a rotation. Or imagine a key-state animation, where you can control the opening
and closing of multiple bones/segments using a single control null (or group of nulls) basically
any kind of reaction to some slider value Blend Machinist can do these and much more. Heres
a breakdown of the fields:
Truncated Blend - This will cut off the blend as it reaches its min and max values, a nontruncated blend will continue the blend beyond the min and max values.
Type of Blend - A blend between values will do just that, blend between two values. A time
blend will push the time value back and forth and play back a keyframed motion. Quite
often, a time-based blend is whats required to properly blend-animate a motion that has
more than two distinct keyframed values.
First and Second Value - These can either be straight numerical values or expressions unto
themselves only used if were blending between two values.
First and Second Frame - Used if were blending time, at the lower blend value, the current
motion channel will go back to the start frame. As the blend value increases to the upper
blend value, the current motion channel will play along to end at the second frame value
when the blend value reaches the upper value.
Track what value for the blend - You can either click on a motion channel to track, or enter an
explicit expression by clicking on the Custom Expr button and designing an expression using
Dr. Equation Maker from the Expression button.
Expression - Used when the Custom Expr button is clicked.
Lower/Upper Blend Trigger Values - Lower and upper values for the blend to track.

If you need to set up a blend for more than one motion slot, you will need to re-select the
professor next to each slot that you want set up.

Dr. Dist Maintainer - Multi-slot professor

In order to understand how to use this professor, you need to understand the two modes it works
in. One is a linear distance maintainer, the other is a spherical distance maintainer. For the first
mode, its important that you choose wisely which motion slot you select the Dist Maintainer
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professor from, this will become the sliding axis. For instance, say you want an object to slide up
and down the Y axis to try to keep its distance constant to some other object, you would then
select Dr. Dist Maintainer next to the Y slot. Note that Dr. Dist Maintainer doesnt make much sense
in the rotation or scaling slots. In spherical distance mode, the expressions generated will draw a
line from the current object to the tracking object and measure the length of that line. It will then
move the current object along that line until the distance is the value desired. Heres a breakdown
of the fields:
Other object - This the object that you want to maintain a constant distance to.
Distance to maintain - Distance to the maintainer.
Spherical distance - Throw the professor into spherical distance mode, as described in the
preceding paragraph. If this button is off, the distance formula works in sliding-axis, linear
mode.

Dr. Event Maker - Multi-slot professor

Dr. Event Maker is one of the most powerful professors available in your arsenal. Using this
professor, you can set up an animated event to play back when some particular action occurs: the
object will play back its own keyframed motion in response. You can also set up a closing event
for when the particular action undoes itself. A good example (indeed, an example scene), is a set
of sliding doors, like on the turbo lift in Star Trek. As an object approaches the doors, they slide
open, and then as the object gets far enough away, they slide shut again. But theres lots more
events than that play around, experiment see what automated responses you can come up
with. Heres what the fields on the panel do:
Type of Event - If set to Resettable, the time of the event will reset every time the trigger event
becomes false again, and then start ticking again while the trigger event is true. A One-timeonly event will keep ticking even if the condition for the trigger event becomes false.
Channels for Event: Pick the channels that you want this event to play back on. Note, you
are selecting the objects own keyframed motion for this event. If you want to play another
objects motion back instead, you will need to hand-edit the expressions generated to point
to the object in question.
Object to control the event - This is the object that were tracking.
Look for Event - Here, you choose what event to look for. For now, it simply tracks whether
a motion channel becomes greater than > or less than < a specific value. Notice if you
choose Dist > or Dist <, the From what object field becomes active.
Value - this is the value that our object must hit to trigger the event. Once it falls above or
below this value (depending on whether you chose a greater-than or less-than button), the
event will be triggered.
From what object - If you are tracking distance, there needs to be an object to track the
distance from.
Play Event From/To Frame - Pick the first and last frame that our object will play back in
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response to the event trigger.
Closing Event - You can set up a closing event that happens when something else occurs.
NOTE: if you are choosing to undo some action, like having a door close back shut, its
important that you set up both events so that they are mutually exclusive i.e. if you have
a door open when an object gets closer than 1 meter, you should not have it close when
the object gets out to 0.5 meters otherwise, there will be a conflict between the two
conditions.
All the other fields are functionally equivalent to the original event fields.

Dr. Camera Shaker - Multi-slot professor

This professor is great for not only setting up a camera shake when an event occurs, but also for
making stuff jiggle with impact, and other sorts of impact-related events.
Channels to shake up - Pick what channels you want to set the impact on. Next to each
channel selector is a power field increasing this value will increase the intensity of the
impact. Decreasing will do the opposite.
Object that should shake the camera - This is the object that will make the camera shake occur.
Look for Event - Look for either a motion channel or the distance of this object from another
to either become less or greater than some value.
Length of shaking - Determines the length of the shaking.
# Shakes/second - This is the frequency of the shaking, higher values for this will make faster
shakes, lower values will make slower shakes.
Would you like shake to fall off with distance? - You can have the shake fall off with distance.
Distance when shake is optional - The impact expression will be at full force at this distance;
closer, and it will become a super-impact; further, and it will become a soft impact.
Quadratic Falloff - Make the impact distance expression fall off more rapidly as the object
gets further away. A non-quadratic falloff doesnt decay down as rapidly as the object moves
further from the camera.
Would you like the shake to fall off with impact velocity? - Turning this on will cause the shake
to change depending on how hard the object hits the ground.
Velocity strength factor - Changing this to a higher value will make the shake more sensitive.
Changing it lower will make it less sensitive.

Dr. Morph-o
Dr. Morph-o is the professor to use for setting up Relativity morphs. It should be noted that Dr.
Morph-o currently only sets up morph expressions with either a morph controller or an effector. If
you need some other expression to control a morph other than just the X value of a control null,
you will need to hand-edit the expression to make it happen.
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Target - This is the target for the morph. NOTE: it doesnt have to have the same number of
points as the base object, but it would be quite advisable.
Sign of morph - Determines how the morph is applied; replace is like LWs traditional morph;
add will add the values of the target points to the base object; subtract will subtract the
points; difference is a cool morph, it morphs only points that are different between the base
and target objects.
Type of morph - Normal is like LWs regular morph. Effector will apply a morph in an effector
like fashion, in a spherical gradient around an effector object.
Object to control morph - Choose an object to control the morph.
Morph effector - This is the effector that controls an effector morph.
Min radius - This is the area around the morph effector when everything is fully morphed.
Max radius - In the area between the max and min radius, points close to the max will be
barely morphed, while points close to the min will be almost fully morphed. Points outside
the max radius are not morphed at all.
I want a min and max null: Choose a min and max null to interactively animate the min and
max values for the effector.
min null - The minimum value for the null
max null - The maximum value for the null.

These last two dont have to be nulls, but usually are.

Dr. Target
Dr. Target is used to set up a targeting relationship between the current object and a target.

Dr. Matcher
Dr. Matcher is used to match an unparented, free-floating object to an object or bone deep in a
hierarchy. If you want to dynamically parent/unparent an object to another, heres how to set it up:
1) Create a null and use Dr. Matcher to match to whatever child
object/bone/whatever youre interested in.
2) Set up a motion blend using Dr. Motion Blender between
your unparented object and the MATCHd null.
3) When you want the object to move from unparented to parented, quickly keyframe the
blend null over one frame. If you need to have motion blur and not have your object do
some sort of odd sub-frame rotation, you might want to change the expressions for the
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Motion Blend from:
X=BLEND(X(SELF,t),0,X(matcher,t),1,X(blah,t))

to
X=BLEND(X(SELF,t),0,X(matcher,t),1,IF(X(blah,t)>0))

That will cause your motion blend to be instantaneous, even on a sub-frame level.

Dr. MoveVec
Dr. MoveVec sets up a really odd form of motion basically, whichever way a MOVEVECd object
is turned, it will move in that direction. This was originally done as a means of making an object
move as if it were under the influence of a joystick just set up an expression to make it rotate
accordingly and the object will act like its in a video game.

Dr. Snake Maker

Dr. Snake Maker is a generic level plugin that can set up a scene for you with a bone-snake (for
path-level deformations) stretching through an object. Heres a breakdown of the fields:
Set up bones for object - Picks your object.
How many bones do you want - Tell it how many bones in the snake. Keep in mind, you want
to balance between having enough bones for a smooth path deformation but not having so
many that the scene becomes unwieldly.
How long is your object - Measures your object and tell the nice professor how long it is. As
an aside, the head of your object should rest at the origin (i.e. XYZ=0,0,0) and the tail
stretch out into positive Z.
Bone name prefix - Each bone will be named with whatever prefix you choose, followed by a
number i.e. SnakBon01, SnakBon02, etc.
Target name prefix - The way a bone snake is set up in Relativity, a train of nulls follows your
object around, and the bones target those nulls. This lets you choose the prefix for each
target null.

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Camera

Spline Control

LightWave 2015

Spline Control
Spline Control

LightWave offer a way to animate using a virtual spline. LightWave users familiar with the
Animation Path Wind tool will feel instantly at home with the way that Spline Control is set up
and users transitioning from other 3D software will appreciate the flexibility LightWave brings
with its virtual splines.

How to Create the Spline

In order to use this tool, the user must create a virtual spline. This is not a new idea for
LightWave, since Animation Path Wind used a virtual spline back in LightWave v9. To create
a virtual spline, the user must parent two or more items to a parent item. These child items
must also meet the following two conditions: they must be marked active with checkmarks
in the Scene Editor, and they must have no children of their own. Then that parent item must
be referenced by the Spline Control setting of at least one other item in the scene. The parent
item represents the container for the spline, and the child objects will represent the nodes for
that spline.

Bones and Joints can serve as the child items that define the nodes of a virtual spline. Unlike
Objects, Lights and Cameras, however, Bones and Joints default to inactive (unchecked in the
Scene Editor) when first added to a scene. Because Spline Control ignores inactive items in a Spline
Control Items hierarchy, Bones and Joints will not appear to work until they are activated in the
Scene Editor. In addition, two or more of these active Bone/Joint items must have no children of
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their own in order for these items to count as the nodes of a virtual spline.

When the root of a hierarchy is presented as a Spline Item, Spline Control considers all of
the items on that hierarchy that have no children of their own. This means that the user can parent
items together in order to insert puppet controls between the nodes of the virtual spline and the
Spline Item that forms the root of the hierarchy. An example of how Spline Control only considers
leaf-children can be found in the 01_Learning section of the example content.

To align the rotations of a virtual splines nodes to itself, change the Heading Controller,
Pitch Controller and/or Bank Controller to Spline Control. When no specific spline item is specified,
the nodes will align their rotations to the spline that they themselves describe.

2015

Modeler Spline for Spline Control

You can now use splines created in Modeler as Spline Control splines in Layout. Splines are
created in Modeler by laying down points and using CTRL-P to create a spline rather than P to
create a polygon. Once saved and sent to Layout, they can be used as a Spline Control spline
simply by selecting the items to be on the spline and choosing the Modeler spline object as
their control.

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Spline Control
How to View the Spline
You have the choice of how you would like the spline displayed in the GL section of the Options
panel. Here are the choices:

Off

Curve When Selected (Spline is not selected so theres nothing to see otherwise it would look like s yellow version of 4)

Ribbon When Selected (Spline is selected)

Curve (Spline is not selected)

Ribbon (Spline is not selected)

Curve, Ribbon When Selected (Spline is selected)

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Spline Control
When the Spline is not selected and the Curve or Ribbon options are chosen it will be drawn in the
object color for the Spline object. If the Spline is selected it will appear in the normal LightWave
yellow as shown in 3 and 6.
There is an additional option, Show Spline Targets. This links a dotted line back from each node to
the parent of the whole spline no matter how deep inside the hierarchy it is.

Show Spline Targets and Curve, Ribbon Selected options chosen (Spline is selected)

How to Tweak the Spline

Rotating the Heading and Bank of each node on the virtual spline will affect the bend and twist of
the spline.

How to Activate/Deactivate Spline Control on a Per-Channel Basis

Spline Control affects Position and Rotation channels by default. However, these can be disabled
on a per-channel basis by going to the Controllers and Limits tab of the Motion Options panel and
changing Controller options in the Position/Rotation tabs from Spline Control to Key Frames.

Open vs Closed Splines

A spline is open by default. To create a closed-loop spline, select the spline item - that being
referenced as the Spline Control of another item. Type M to access the Motion Options panel, and go
to Controllers and Limits. Activate the Closed Spline checkbox to close the spline.

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Spline Control
The Z Position Represents the Distance Traveled Along the Spline
Animate the Z Position of an item driven by Spline Control to push that item up or down the spline.

Item Chains
A chain of items refers to a hierarchy where each item is the child of the next item. An example
of an item chain would be a linked chain of train cars, where the caboose is parented to a boxcar,
which in turn is parented to the engine. Another example would be the bone chain that represents
the spine of a snake or the spine of a Chinese dragon.
To apply Spline Control to an item chain, select all members of the item chain, type M to access
the Motion Options panel, and change the Spline Control item from (none) to the parent item
representing the virtual spline. All items in the chain will conform to the spline. Animating the Z
Position of the root item in the item chain will push/pull the entire item chain along the spline.
You do not have to apply Spline Control to an entire hierarchy. For a Chinese dragon, apply Spline
Control only to the spine bones of the dragon and not to the leg and arm chains. That way you
can use Spline Control to animate the spine of the dragon and other means (such as FK or IK) to
animate the legs, arms, head and jaw of the dragon.

Animate the Nodes of the Spline to Animate an Item Chain

Animate the nodes of the spline to change the shape of the spline. This, in turn, will change the
shape of the item chain that conforms to the spline.

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Getting Started with Spline Control
1) Launch Layout.
2) Add a null object to the scene, and name it Spline ( the name
isnt important for identification, just for simple steps)
3) Add two more null objects to the scene, and give them each the name,
node. (Again, the name isnt important, name it what you want)
4) Parent the two node null objects to the Spline null object.
5) Give the second node null object a Z position of 1 m so that it is
spaced 1 meter away from the other node null object.
6) Select the Camera of the scene and use the keyboard
shortcut M to open up its Motion panel.
7) Locate the Spline Control setting near the Parent and Target settings. Change this Spline
Control setting to Spline.

Congratulations! You have just created a virtual spline that by default overrides the Position and
Rotation channels of the Camera. A line will be drawn through the two node null objects to show
you the path of the spline.
8) Now, select the second node null object and clone it twice.
9) Move these clones away from the original null object and from each other. You have just
added two more control points to this spline.
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10) Select the Camera (which still refers to the Spline null as its Spline Control).
While under the influence of Spline Control, the Z position of the Camera
represents the distance traveled along the spline. In the lower-left-hand corner
of Layout, enter XYZ values of 0 m, 0 m, 0 m for the Position data. If you do
not have Auto Key enabled, make a key now to keyframe the Camera.
11) Scrub to frame 24, enter a Z value of 2 m for the Position data and make a keyframe for
the Z Position. The Camera will travel 2 m along the spline. The values shown in the lowerleft-hand corner will be the XYZ values applied by Spline Control. These are the same XYZ
values that will be reported to tools that reference motion data, such as Same as Item.
12) If the Camera banks unexpectedly, there are two ways to correct it. The first way:

Select the Camera
Type M to bring up the Motion Options panel

Go to the Controllers and Limits tab

Go to the Rotation tab

Change Bank Controller from Spline Control to Keyframes.

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The user can then keyframe the bank by hand. However, the alternate way is to try to correct the
spline path itself:
Select each null item called node (the child objects that define the nodes of the Spline) and
rotate their Heading to align them with the path of the spline.
This can help reduce unexpected banking errors as the camera moves along the spline, but it
may not be as reliable as disabling Spline Control for the Bank Controller.

Note that you can also use Spline Control with Instancing for interesting animation possibilities.
The process is described in the Instancing section on page 57. Genoma also adds Spline Control features
described starting page 241.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Going Further
Included with the content for 11.6 are a number of scenes that demonstrate very well what
SplineControl can do, with helping text.

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Curve to Spline
Creating splines in Layout is fine when you are only using a few nulls to make your spline, but if you
need hundreds to make a complicated path then creating them all with nulls in Layout could be a
laborious process. A tool has been added to Layout to streamline the creation of such splines. To
use it, create a curve in Modeler using whatever method you like (Add Points, then Make Open Curve
on the Create tab; import an EPS using the Spline Curves option, etc.), save it and send it to Layout.
In Layout, go to the Setup tab and in the Edit group use Curve to Spline. If you have multiple splines
in your object you need to split them over several layers since Curve to Spline only works on the
first spline in a layer. Rather than using nulls, the controls in the spline in Layout are created using
bones (specifically Joints), which has two advantages - the Layout object list isnt filled with nulls
needlessly, joints automatically have a pleasing control shape and can be sized in the viewport
using the Options > Display > Handles & Icons settings.

Export Spline
Export Spline is a tool in Setup > Edit to convert Spline Control splines in Layout into Modeler curve
objects. Simply select the head of a spline object and hit Export Spline and the entire spline will be
saved as an LWO that can be further edited in Modeler, then reimported to Layout using Curve to
Spline again. When reimporting like this, Curve to Spline will note that the spline has already been
used and intelligently update node positions and quantities as needed rather than generating a
new spline.

Example: Curve to Spline and Spline Instancing

In a very bling example, our client wants their name to appear in diamonds. We have created
similar scenes with Flocking before, but now lets use tools new to 11.6 for a similar effect.

1) Starting in a vector drawing package we will create our logo and export it as an EPS file.
Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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2) Bringing the EPS into Modeler we will use the Spline Curves option and the Rough Curve
Division Level will be plenty. Use Layers > Connected to Lyrs to split all the characters onto
their own layers. Because we have imported splines, the centers of letters and dots on lower
case Is will be separated. If you are using a script font, the text will come in as though joined,
but you may well want to Kill Polygons and recreate the spline as a single loop.

3) Name all the layers of your object to make things easier. For each object making the logo we
will want an object to instance. For our example, use the Gemstone tool to create a new layer
in our spline object.

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Spline Control

4) Save the object and send it to Layout. In Layout use Setup > Edit > Curve to Spline to convert
your curves into Spline Control splines. If the Bone icons are too big, hit d to enter Display
Options and change the Bone Icon Size.

5) Get Properties on your Spline objects and add an Instancer. In the Instancer choose the gem
to Instance and set the Instance Type to Spline. Choose a number of instances that seems
right for the letter and check Distribute. Youll want to mess around with Scale and Rotation
to give a more random appearance.

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6) By default, an Instanced object is set to World Coordinates and we will use

that to our advantage to create an implosion where the diamonds come
together to form our word. At frame 0 move the instanced object away from
0, 0, 0. At after the delay you want, say 60 frames, move it back to 0, 0, 0. This
will form a cloud of diamonds that come together to create your logo.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Raycast Node

LightWave 2015

Raycast Node
Raycast Node for Motion , Displacements and Instancing
The easiest way to think of the RayCast node is that it makes objects aware of their
surroundings. Cars can stick to roads, lamps to desks, automatically. The node has the following
settings:
In:
Ray Origin - origin of the ray
Ray Direction - direction the ray is traveling
Offset - Offsets the ray origin slightly backwards along the ray direction
Range - How far to look to decide if an intersection occurs.

Out:
Distance - How far the ray traveled before hitting something
Intersect - World space point of intersection
Hit Normal - Normal of the hit polygon in world space.
Inside - Checks to see if the ray cast intersects with an odd or even number of polygons
and returns true (or 1) for an odd number of polygons, false for an even number (or 0).
used to see if the ray origin is inside closed geometry. An example for this can be found
starting page 762.

Getting Started

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To begin with well use the simplest of examples. Create a new Ground Plane object using Modeler
Tools > Create > Geometry > Ground Plane. Give it 10 subdivisions in X and Z. Once done, click
Modeler Tools > Toggles > Toggle Subpatch to make it a subpatch object.

Select the Ground Plane and go into Object Properties with p. On the Deform tab, click the
Displacement Map T button. In the window that opens, change Layer Type to Procedural and hit Use.

Now use Modeler Tools > Create > Geometry > Sphere to make a ball. Were not going to be accurate
in this example since we just want to show the ball reacting to the terrain, not rolling. Accept the
defaults, and when the ball is presented move it up to Y = 1 m.

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Go to a Top view and animate the path the ball will take across your bumpy terrain and then switch
back to Perspective view. If you press Play now the ball will float over the terrain.

Lets change that by going into the balls Motion Options by pressing M. Click on Add Modifier and
choose Nodal Motion (01). Double click on the entry and a node editor will open showing two
nodes, Input and Nodal Motion. Were going to add a third: Ray Trace > RayCast Geometry (02).

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Raycast Node
The only things that need to be done with this new node are to double click it to set the RayCast
Object(s) to be used, and to connect the Intersect output to the Nodal Motions Position input (03).
Now press Play again.

Going Further
Perhaps the twisty turny path you have imbued the ball with is trying to avoid obstacles placed on
the terrain. We thought the same so wanted to place some concrete pillars in the way of our plucky
ball. We used the same RayCast node to position these pillars on the bumpy terrain.

Use Modeler Tools > Create > Geometry > Cube to make a single pillar and give it a Height value of 3
m in Y. Dont forget to move your pillar up in the Y so it is above the terrain. Copy the Nodal Motion
modifier from the balls Motion Options and paste it into the pillars Motion Options. Now as you
drag the pillar about you will see it is stuck to the terrain. Clone it a few times and dot them around
the terrain for your ball to avoid.
The Ray Cast Geometry node can be processor-intensive and your scene playback might stutter
particularly if the Nodal Motion window is open or you are showing Motion Paths (GL tab in Options).
If performance is still sluggish with these options disabled, make sure you bake the displacement to an
object by using File > Save > Save Trans Object.

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2015

Example: Using 2015s Inside RayCast Node

LightWave 2015 adds a new Inside output to the RayCast Geometry node. With it you can create
an intersection between geometry and instances where only the instances inside the geometry
render. To make things clearer, we will refer to the geometry object as the Host and the instanced
object as the Block. The Inside output is binary in nature and based on the pivot point of the Block
- if the pivot point is inside the Host, the Block will appear. If the pivot point of the Block is outside
the Host, the instance is not visible. It is very easy to set up as this example will now show.

1) Our example starts with two objects as shown in the image. Our Host is an abstract heart
object called Squishy, the Block is a simple cube. Weve visited the Edges tab in Object
Properties and ticked Other Edges and set the color to white so that when the cube is
repeated you can still see the individual cubes.
The first thing well do is add a pair of objects to our scene. These will be the host object and
the block that will recreate the host. There is no restriction of how your objects should be,
but the host should definitely be much bigger than the block.

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2) Add a Null to the scene with CTRL-N. Go into Object Properties for the null with the
keyboard shortcut P and go to the Instancing tab. In here, add the block object and create a
rectangular array with it. We have set ours to 20 x 20 x 20. Set the Scale mode to Uniform.

3) Go into the Nodes tab in the Instancing window and add the following:
RayTrace > Ray Cast Geometry
Gradient > Gradient

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Raycast Node
Connect the Base Position from the Input node to Ray Origin on the RayCast Geometry node;
then double click on the RayCast node to choose the item you wish to use. For us, its Squishy
that is our Host object. Connect the Ray Cast Geometrys Inside output to Input on the
Gradient and set the Gradient up as follows:

Key at 0 - black
Key at 1 - white (and set the Smoothing to Step)

Lastly, take the Color output and bring it into the Scale input on the InstanceGenerator end
node.

4) Now when you have a look in OpenGL you should see your Host object filled with the Blocks.
The ones that seem to be outside the heart still have their pivot points inside the Host.

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5) If you really dont want to see your two objects in OpenGL you can hide
them, but its more important to only see the Blocks in the render. Here we
have VPR with both the Host (Squishy) and Blocks (Cube) unchecked in the
Render column in the Scene Editor, but both are still visible in OpenGL.

Going Further
This is a very powerful technique. The Host object can be deformed or moved, rotated and scaled
without issue and the Blocks will follow (you may need to go forwards and backwards a frame),
however it will severely slow down the program with large numbers. It would probably be better to
use an MDD-scanned version of animation in order not to have too many evaluations going on.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 8 Instancing

LightWave 2015

Instancing
About Instancing
Changes have been made to Instancing in response to user requests for the ability to have the
same object in an instance generator multiple times for different scale, offset, rotation, etc. This new
functionality means that loading 2015 instancing into earlier versions of LightWave is not possible.

Instancing allows vast duplication of objects in a scene with very little overhead. With instancing
huge virtual polygon counts can be achieved allowing the artist to populate their scenes with
incredible detail, yet retain reasonable render times and memory usage.
While instances can be thought of as clones of the original source objects, they do not need to look
identical. They can be randomly scaled, positioned, rotated and even surfaced entirely differently
from the source, allowing for a huge variety of uses.
Instancing capabilities have now been added to Layout. The Instancer Tab on Layouts Object
Properties panel is where the action happens. The selected object in the Object Properties panel
will be the point source for the Instance Generator, once it has been added to the source object.
Several instancing distribution methods are provided.
Instances can be displayed in OpenGL as normal objects, bounding boxes, as points, or not at all, as
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the user chooses and are fully supported in VPR.
Instances work with Classic, Dithered and Photoreal Motion Blur and Surfaces can be varied among
the instances.

Instances work with all LightWaves built-in cameras except the Classic camera.
You can directly enable and disable rendering of Instances in the Render Globals > Render tab.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Getting Started with Instancing
To get you going with Instancing, were going to make a very simple example purely using Layout
that should whet your appetite for knowing more.

Start by visiting the Modeler Tools tab and use the Create > Cube and Create > Ground Plane buttons.
You can leave the settings for these exactly as they are.

Make sure the Ground Plane is selected and go into Object Properties by hitting P on your keyboard
or the Properties button at the bottom of the Layout interface.

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Go to the Instancer tab and choose Instance Generator from the dropdown menu.

Double click Instance Generator and from the Add Object dropdown choose New Cube Object.
Congratulations youve made an Instance. Right now, its Type is Item Pivot and since the Ground
Planes pivot is in the same place as the Cubes, the instance you have created is in the same place.

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Lets make things more interesting. Change the type to Surface and put in 1000 instances. They are
all overlapping, so lets shrink them down and position them more dynamically.

In the Scale tab set the Min to 1 % and Max to 10 %. In the Offset tab just change Max Y to 2 m. In
the Rotation tab set Max H to 45 .

Now play. Use VPR to show your cubes rendered instead of those blue bounding boxes. Up the
quantity of Instances - try a million or more!

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Instancing
There are several types of instancing for the user to choose from. Most of these provide additional
dedicated controls when activated. In addition, each instance type can use the options found
under the tabs at the bottom right of the panel to control the distribution and range limits of
various attributes for instances. Nodes are available to allow for varying the surfaces among
instances, and controlling other attributes as well. First we will list the types and their dedicated
controls, then we will cover the controls in the tabs below.

Overview of Controls

Instance Generator Name

You can have multiple Instance Generators attached to an object. The text entry field found at the
top left of the panel allows you to enter a name for the Instance Generator youre editing. This is
the name that will appear in the Instancer list on the Object Properties panel, so that you can tell
multiple Instance Generators apart.

Add Object Popup Menu

This lists the objects in the scene, and allows the user to select the objects that will be instanced.
When an item is selected, it then appears in the Instanced Objects List, just below the two
dropdown menus.

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Edit Popup Menu
Remove Selected - Removes the selected object from the Instanced Objects Window.
Remove All - Removes all objects from the Instanced Objects Window.
Replace Object - Pops up a list of the objects in the scene, and the user can pick one to
replace the object currently selected in the Instanced Objects Window.
Add from Layout - Adds selected object or objects to the Instanced Objects Window.
Remove from Layout - Deletes selected object or objects from the Instanced Objects Window.
Replace From Layout - Swaps one item selected in Layout for one item selected in the
Instanced Objects Window.
Copy Settings - This copies all the transform settings (Scale, Stretch, Offset, Rotation and
Nodes) for the selected instance item now that all instance items in an Instancer can have
different values.
Paste Settings - This pastes all the transform settings for an instanced object now that all
instance items in an Instancer can have different values.

Instanced Objects List

Lists the instanced objects and provides controls for several basic attributes.
Active (Checkmark) - Controls whether an object will be instanced or not.
Instance Color - Selects the OpenGL color for instances of this object.
Visibility - Controls how the instances for this object are displayed in Layout.
None - Instances are hidden in the viewports (but they are still active)
Point - Instances are displayed as points.
Bounding Box - Instances are displayed as bounding boxes (default option).
Wireframe, Front Face Wireframe, Shaded Solid, Textured Shaded Solid - Displays the mesh
of the instanced object. This could severely slow down your scene, use with caution.
Transformation Handling - Sets handling of transformations of the instances with respect to
the source object.
World - When world coordinates are used, the instances will respect any
transformational changes made to the source item (default option).
Local - When local coordinates are used, the instances ignore any transformational
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changes made to the source item.
Parent - When instancing hierarchies, setting parent mode ensures the hierarchy
maintains the relative positions of its elements.
Hierarchy (Checkmark) - Selects whether a hierarchy attached to the source item should
also be instanced.
Off - Attached hierarchy is not instanced (default option).
On - Attached hierarchy is instanced.
Item - Name of the object(s) used as an instance source.

Generation Tab

The controls in this tab are where you set the type of generation for instances. The types are:
Item (Pivot) - Creates an instance at the pivot point of the host object. A usual use case for
this would be to use a null to create a clone of a scene item. This is what Clone Instance does.
Points - Creates instances at the points of the host object.
Max Points - Automatic way to set instances to match the number of points in the host
object. This setting evaluates subdivision geometry, so youll always get the full number
of instances regardless of display vs render subdivisions.
Instances - Set the number of instances to create.
Polygons - Creates instances at the polygons of the host object.
Max Polygons - Automatic way to set instances to match the number of polygons in the
host object. This setting evaluates subdivision geometry, so youll always get the full
number of instances regardless of display vs render subdivisions.
Instances - Set the number of instances to create.
Particles - Creates instances at the locations of particles (for use with particle emitters only).
Surface - Creates instances on all surfaces or a designated surface of the host object. The host
surface must be quads or triangles, no n-gons.
Instances - Set the number of instances to create.
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Surface Name - Select the surface(s) on which the instances will be placed.
Distribution :
Random - Places the instances randomly on the selected surface(s).
Uniform - Place instances at uniform distances on the selected surface(s).
Relax - (Active when Uniform is selected) You can relax the instance distribution across
your object in a series of iterative steps that will gradually quantize placement making
instances more evenly spread. There are 40 levels of relaxation and each one marks an
iteration, so setting it immediately to 40 will take some time to show results depending
on the quantity of instances to be processed. If the instances overlap, then either too
many are being packed in or the scale is too high.
Rectangular Array - Creates instances in a 2D or 3D box-like array.
X, Y and Z Instances - Sets the number of instances to create in each Axis.
X, Y and Z Spacing - Set the spacing of the instances along each Axis.
Radial Array - Creates instances in a 2D circular array on the selected axis around the pivot
point of the host object.
Instances - Set the number of instances to create.
Axis - Set the axis for the array.
Radius - Set the radius of the array.
Start Angle - Set the starting angle of the array on the circle.
End Angle - Set the ending angle of the array on the circle.
Offset - Sets an offset distance perpendicular to the axis chosen between the instance
at the start angle and the instance at the end angle. The instances between will be
proportionally offset.
Motion Path - Creates instances along the motion path of the host object.

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Giving a Null a motion path and then assigning it an Instance Generator allows this chain of Layout-created cubes to follow the Nulls
motion path with a great deal of control.

Instances - Set the number of instances to create.

Separation - Time in seconds between each instance.
Time Offset - This slips the instances forward and backward along the motion path,
and again is in seconds. If the value was 1 , then the instances would appear 1 second
further along the motion path. Negative values slip the instances further back.
Lock Motion to Time - This makes the instances move along with the motion object. You
can use this in conjunction with Time Offset to make the instances move along with the
object, but further ahead or behind in time.
Scale Motion Time - Scales the speed that time passes when Lock Motion to Time is
on. For example, 0.5 would move the instances at half the speed of the motion object,
while 2.0 would move them twice as fast.
Follow Motion Object - Instances are generated from the motion object forward in time,
or backward; this control determines the behavior. If Follow Motion Object is on, the first
instance is generated at the motion objects position and the rest trail backward down
the path. Otherwise the instances are generated ahead of the motion object with the
final instance generated at the motion objects position.
Separation Jitter - Jitters the Separation randomly so the instances are not uniformly
distributed along the path. A value of 1 would jitter randomly from 0 to the separation
value in either direction.
Offset Frequency - Setting is in seconds; randomly jitters the position of the instances as
they move down the path, like a simple flocking behavior. The positions change every
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second of the value of Offset Frequency, so for a value of 2 the instances should change
position every two seconds.
Use Local Offset - The offset values in the Offset tab can be either applied in world or
local coordinates relative to the alignment of the instance on the path.
Scale Positions Only - If the motion object is scaled as it moves, the instances can be
scaled along with it, or just their positions can be scaled, to make them spread out from
the path or move towards it.

Spline - Creates instances along a Spline Control spline.
Instances - How many Instances youd like to place along your spline.
Separation - How far apart you want the instances. The control is disabled if you choose
the Distribute checkbox.
Distribute - This control spreads the instanced items evenly along the spline. It ghosts
the Separation control when used.
Offset - You would use the Offset setting to create an offset from the start of the spline
for your instances. If you set an Envelope for this setting, you can animation your
instances moving along the spline
For Rotation, there are three Alignment options in the Rotation tab:
Spline - World - Uses world coordinates for item rotation
None - no rotation
Spline - Local - uses Spline coordinates for the rotation of the instanced mesh

Options Tab

Display Preview - For faster interaction when working with a large number of instances, set the
percentage of instances to be visible in the viewport. This does not affect final rendering, but will
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make the UI, OpenGL and VPR more responsive by rendering with a lowered amount of instances.
Random Seed - This value is what instancing uses as a base to generate a random number.
Changing this will vary any settings using random values e.g. random scale. Every Instance
Generator will have its own unique number, but if you wish different instance generators to use the
same random state, you can set the same number here. Useful if you want items in more than one
instance generator to be aligned.
Motion Blur Time Slices - This is a setting for rotations. Low numbers give a segmented look to
objects moving in an arc, but the default setting of 10 should give a good look in most cases.

Above the transform settings are three controls:

Weight - The weight property can be used for limiting (turning off ) the number of instances
being shown, despite how many instances you have set. It does this by determining an
approximate amount of probability of an item being shown, using the value you set. You
can use a simple value, or the Texture Editor for more advanced weighting. This property can
also be animated, so you can have instances appear/disappear over time.

The weight is not the percentage of the maximum number of instances for each item, but is
the approximate probability as a percentage of that item being shown. Note that this randomness is
designed to work with large quantities of instances. If you are working with a small number of instances
it would be wise to use a different method, such as Points or Polygons, if you expect fixed quantities of
instances.

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Weight Examples
Imagine we have a scene with only one item being instanced across a plane, with the max number
of instances set to 100. At a 100% weight (or probability) it would clearly show all 100 instances.
However, this setting can be used to limit the number of instances; if we set the weight 50%, you
would only see approximately 50 instances, because they have a 50% chance of being shown.

1 Item, Weight: 100% (100 Instances out of 100)

1 Item, Weight: 50% (53 Instances out of 100)

If you count the number of instances in the 50% weight image above, youll notice there are 53
instances and not 50 as you might expect. To explain why this is the case, we need to add another
item into the mix.

2 Items, Weights: 100% (100 Instances out of 100)

2 Items, Weights: 50% (53 Instances out of 100)

Two items being instanced at 100% weight will result in 100 total instances, but with each
item approximately equal in number (both have 100% probability of appearing, so they are
approximately equal in number). If we set both items to 50% weight, they now have 50%
probability of being shown, however, we wont see 100 instances as you might think, but 53 as
before. This might not make sense at first, but the key word here is probability, so lets try and
explain.
The instancer has been set to have a maximum number of 100 instances. Lets imagine that
number as a list of 100 instance slots, that are drawn in order from 1 to 100 (this is not how it
works internally, but will help explain the concept).
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To achieve a random distribution when we have more than one item to instance, that list of
instances also needs to be filled randomly, so as the instancer draws each slot in order, we see the
instances scattered in a random fashion rather than ordered in groups of each instance item.

However, creating a randomly ordered list of items to be instanced is not very efficient, especially
when you have the potential to have thousands or even millions of instances. This is why the
instancer does not work this way. Instead, it uses the probability of an instance being shown, or
the weight value.
In reality, the instancer goes through the number of instances set, looking at the items in the
instancer list and working out the probability to be shown for each item at that instance number.
It determines this by a random percent value, if that value is less than the weight amount for the
item, then the instance number its on is shown.
Due to this randomness, the probability that an instance will be visible can vary a little, which is
why there are 53 instances in this case and not exactly 50, but doing it this way is much faster than
building and storing a pre-determined list of random numbers. That is why this method should not
be used if instance numbers are low or exact numbers are required, since the variance for a small
set will be larger proportionately than for a large set 53 out of 100 is a lot more significant than
503 out of 1000 although both examples here have the same +/- 3 variance.
Time Scale - Allows any instanced hierarchies to be animated slower or faster than the
original object hierarchy that was instanced.
Time Offset - Sets the animation offset (in seconds) of any instanced hierarchies from the
original object hierarchy that was instanced.

Time Offset only works when the Instanced item is set to Parent and not World Coordinates.

Instance Transformation Options

At the bottom of the Instance Generator panel are a set of tabs for controls that can be used with
each type of instancing. These are Scale, Stretch, Offset, Rotation, Nodes.

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Scale, Stretch, Offset and Nodes are identical for each type of instancing. Scale, Stretch, and Offset
each provide two modes, Uniform and Random, for handling of the distribution of the attribute. In
11.5 these settings are unique to each item in your Instance list.

Scale Tab

Allows for varying the size of the instances. At the top of this tab are two functions that need
additional explanation.
Scale by Polygon Area - This compares the size of the polygons that will be used to position
instances with the size of the original object being instanced. It also controls the amount of
influence the original objects scaling has on the Neutral Scale Factor.
Neutral Scale Factor - This factors what size your instances will be for the polygon area they
are being instanced on. Hence a Neutral Scale Factor of 2 will mean that two instances will fit
inside the area of the polygon.
Both of these settings function in conjunction with the other scaling and stretching options
available to you, increasing the flexibility available.
Mode :
Uniform - All instances will be scaled at the same size.
Scale - Sets the size by percentage.
Random - Creates instances at varying scales based on the min/max settings.
Min - Smallest size for an instance, as a percentage.
Max - Largest size for an instance, as a percentage.

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Stretch Tab

Allows for varying the proportions of the instances along each axis (X/Y/Z).
Mode:
Uniform - All instances will have identical proportions.
Stretch X/Y/Z - Settings for the percentage of change to make in each axis.
Random - Creates instances at varying proportions based on the min/max settings.
Min X/Y/Z - Sets a minimum size in each axis.
Max X/Y/Z - Sets a maximum size in each axis.

Offset Tab

Allows for an offset from the initial position the instance was created.
Modes :
Uniform - All instances are offset the same distance on each axis.
Offset X/Y/Z - Settings for the offset distance for each axis.
Random - Instances are offset at varying distances based on the min/max settings.
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Min X/Y/Z - Sets the minimum value for the distance of the offset.
Max X/Y/Z - Sets the maximum value for the distance of the offset.

Rotation Tab

Allows for controlling the rotations of the instances in a variety of ways. Some of these options will
be determined by the type of instance generation used.
Alignment (Dependent on generation type):
Item (Pivot) :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
Points :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
Normals - Each instance aligns with the normal of its associated point.
Polygons :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
Normals - Each instance aligns with the normal of its associated polygon.
Edge Align - Rotates an instance so its Z axis points at the center of the shortest edge of
the polygon its generated on.
Particles :
Particles - Each instance aligns with its associated particle.
Surface :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
Normals - Each instance aligns with the normal of the surface at its location.
Rectangular Array :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
Radial Array :
Item - Instances align with the host item.
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Rim - All instances are oriented to the pivot point of the host item.
Motion Path :
Motion Item - Instances align with the motion item.
Path - Instances align heading to the direction of travel along the path.
Mode :
Uniform - All instances have the same orientation.
Rotation H/P/B - Entry fields to set Heading, Pitch and Bank.
Random :
Min H/P/B - Set minimum rotations for Heading, Pitch and Bank.
Max H/P/B - Set maximum rotations for Heading, Pitch and Bank.
Target Item - Instances orient to the pivot point of a target item.
Target Item - Pick the target from the list of scene items, including lights and cameras.
Target Mode - Changes how targeting is calculated.
Look At - Instances all look at the pivot point of the target item.
Axis Aligned - Instances all align with an axis of the target item.
Axis X/Y/Z - Active when Axis Aligned is the target mode; selects the axis of the
target object to align the instances with.

Nodes Tab

Access to the Node Editor for controlling the transformation and weighting of instances using
nodes. Node flows can also be turned on/off without needing to delete or hook them.
Use Nodes - Toggle on/off.
Edit Nodes - Allows the user to access the Instance Generator Node and control instancing
and attributes using a node flow.

Instance Generator Node

This works in conjunction with the settings in the transformation tabs on the panel, and allows
node-based control of these items, as well as of the weighting of the instanced items. Any settings
not controlled by nodes will use the panel settings, this allows you to mix node-based control with
those on the main instance generator panel.
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Each of the inputs correspond to their equivalents in the main interface:

The node transformation inputs are affected by whatever mode you have chosen in the main
panel for the corresponding transformation. For example, if you had a node flow controlling Scale Min/
Scale Max, but in the instance generator panel you have the Scale Mode set to Uniform then the node
flow will not influence anything as you have chosen a different Scale Mode to that which the node flow
is controlling. TimeOffset only works when the Instanced item uses Parent coordinates.

Changes have been made to Instancing in response to user requests for the ability to have the
same object in an instance generator multiple times for different scale, offset, rotation, etc. This new
functionality has made loading 2015 instancing into earlier versions not possible.

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For the animated abstract sphere above, we used a Turbulence procedural texture to drive the
uniform Scale of our instanced cubes. We also set the Stretching to be Random and converted the
same Alpha output from Turbulence into a Vector to drive the Stretch Max value to exaggerate the
effect.

Hiding Instanced Objects

When you have used an object as an instance, it can be irritating to see it in OpenGL and renders
still. You have several ways of removing it from view.
6) You can untick the Active entry in the Scene Editor. This removes it from VPR and renders,
but not OpenGL.

7) You can use the Scene Editors Maximum Render level to hide the original object.
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8) You can set the Instances of this object to use a Local coordinate system, whereupon you can
move the original object out of camera view or position it to swim against the tide, as here.

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Surfacing Instances
Instances can be uniquely shaded using Nodes in the Surface Editor, whether just a simple color
change, or completely different materials. This section deals with the options you have at your
disposal.

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Random Colors (Fixed Random Output)
Creating random coloring of instances is done using the Instance Info node, connecting the Fixed
Random output into a Gradient node, and then into any color channel. Setting keys at 0 and 1 on
the gradient represents the total number of instances. An easy way to understand this is to think of
key 0 as being the first instance, and key 1 being the last. Every instance in between is then given
a randomly picked color from the 0 - 1 gradient range. This is useful so that even if you change the
number of instances in the Instance Generator, all instances will be included in the 0 - 1 range.
The colors are picked at render time, and remain associated with the instance they were assigned
to for the life of the instance. However if you change the number of instances, then the coloring
may change as there are now more instances to consider.

You can of course add as many gradient keys as you like to introduce more random colors

Setting Up Random Coloring

9) Once you have instances setup, open the Surface Editor and click on the Node Editor.
10) Add the following nodes to your flow:
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Spot > Instance Info
Gradient > Gradient
11) Connect Fixed Random on the Instance Info node to Input on the Gradient node,
and then Color on the Gradient node to the Color input on the Surface node.
12) Open the options for the Gradient node and gradient keys at positions
0 (top) and 1 (bottom). Choose a different color for each key.
When rendered, instances will now have random colors between the two colors you set in the
Gradient node.

Absolute Coloring (ID Index Output)

The ID Index output on the Instance Info node allows you to specify exact colors for each instance
using gradient keys at set values, whole numbers that correspond to the instance ID number.
Only keys set at whole numbers will be correctly assigned, as instance IDs are integer values, for
example, setting a key a 1.5 will not change the color, it would have to be set to 2 to have any
effect.

Setting a gradient key to Stepped mode will continue the previous key color until you specify a new
one. You can also blend between colors by setting the gradient key to either Linear, Hermite or
Bezier modes.

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Example: Monitor Screens
A project requires you to have monitor screens showing different images. Using Instancing means
it is simple to have a large quantity of monitor screens, but showing different images?

In order to show different images we will need to use the Node Editor for texturing. First we will
create a Gradient with several entries. You do not need to change anything about these entries
except to toggle Show Output on each key, change the Smoothing to Step and the Post Behavior to
Repeat.

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How many keys depends on how many different images you have. We are using four for this
example, so we add five keys - one for each image and one for the repeat. This last one does not
need its output shown.

Use a 2D Texture > Image node for each of your images and a Spot > Instance Info node. Put the ID
Index output from Instance Info as the Input for the gradient and load an image into each Image
node and send its Color output to appropriate Key Color node on the gradient. You can also use the
Fixed Random output from Instance Info, but then you need to be sure the keys on your gradient
are at integer values. You can of course use image sequences instead of still images to have a set of
television screen in a department store, for example.

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Using an image sequence works with instances, but using an image sequence copied in the
Image Editor (instanced) fails upon scene reload. If you need to modify a sequence, then just use a new
original sequence to prevent the failure.

Using Material Nodes (Multi Switch Node)

Material nodes are a special case when used with instancing. You can clearly use one Material
node with random coloring on its inputs, but having completely different materials applied to
individual instances is a different matter. There is a special node designed for this purpose.

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The Multi Switch node allows you to switch between different Material nodes based on the
instance ID. Heres how to set it up:

1) Once you have instances set up, open the Surface Editor and click on the Node Editor.
2) Add the following nodes to your flow:
Spot > Instance Info
Materials > Multi Switch
Materials > Car Paint
Materials > Dielectric
Materials > Conductor
3) Connect ID Index on the Instance Info node to Switch on the Multi Switch node, and
then Material on the Multi Switch node to the Material input on the Surface node.
4) Open the options for the Multi Switch node and click Add Input until
you have three inputs in total on the Multi Switch node.
5) Connect each Material output on the Material nodes to each
successive Material input on the Multi Switch node.
If using ID Index as the Instance Info input, every instance will cycle or switch through each of the
Material nodes you have connected in the Multi Switch node, if you want to randomize the chosen
materials, add a Random Integer node (Tools > Random Integer). Connect the ID Index to the Seed
input on the Random Integer node, then the Out node to the Switch input on the Multi Switch
node as shown in the diagram above.
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Chapter
9
Camera
Dynamics

LightWave 2015

Bullet Dynamics
About Bullet Dynamics

LightWave 11 added Erwin Coumans open source, production proven Bullet Physics Library to its
dynamics tools. This feature is extremely simple to add to a scene, but its use is a little different to
the HardFX plugin existing LightWave users are familiar with.

In order to ensure dynamics calculations are free of problems, it is worth noting these guidelines:
Make your models not too small, or too large, as Bullet gives more predicable results when
working with objects sized roughly between 0.4 - 10 m.
Any collision objects such as ground planes should not be infinitely thin, but have some
thickness.
Objects made of triangles and quads will generally behave better.
When using the built-in shapes within Bullet, have some Collision Margin set. 5mm is a good
default.
Bullet doesnt work with negative frame numbers.
Prepare your objects for dynamics, ensuring:
Models are air-tight, meaning all points are merged and there are no un-modeled holes
in your mesh (missing polygons).
All single points, and 2-point poly chains are removed.
Objects dont have extremely long, thin polygons.
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2015

Example: Getting started

Lets start with a simple example just to try it out. For this we wont even need to use Modeler, since
we will use the Modeler Tools in Layout to create all the geometry we need for the scene.
1) To get going, we will make a standard cube. Go to the Modeler Tools tab > Create Geometry >
Cube and hit OK.

2) We need a floor for our test object to collide with, so create another Cube but set Width: 10
m, Height: 0.25 m, Depth: 10 m.
3) With the floor selected, in the FX Tools tab, select Collision Body > Static Body. Now select the
cube and choose Dynamic Body > Rigid Body. You will see that your Rigid Body object has a
blue wireframe overlaid.
4) Next, well make some clones of our cube, four should do the trick. Well need to move the
cubes up from Y=0, separate them and rotate them to different angles to give them some
distance to fall and more visual interest and you should end up with something like this:

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5) If you hit play now, you will see your cubes hit the floor in a realistic, if not very interesting
fashion. Set your timeline slider to the beginning of the scene at 0 and lets spice up the
uninteresting column with a different type of dynamic object. Still using Modeler Tools,
make a standard sphere and position it at the lower left of the view shown for step 4. Make
this one a Rigid Body as for the cubes, but were going to add animation.

6) Line up your Perspective view so that you are behind the sphere and can see your column of
uninteresting cubes. We should be at frame 0 on our timeline still but move to frame 3. Now
move the sphere towards the column and up a bit - as though you were firing the ball at the
middle of the column (for that is what were about to do). If you press play now, you will see
that the Sphere gives a little bounce but only slightly bumps into the uninteresting column.

7) Now well go into the FX Tools > Item Properties window. Choose your Sphere object
and click on the Activation tab. For Initial Activation choose Activate on Last Key. Your
sphere should now fly faster and knock that column into a more interesting look.
For more variation, give your objects different properties in the Item Properties window. The
following section covers the controls you have in Bullet to achieve various dynamic effects.

Although we have used Layouts Modeler Tools to create our spheres for this quick example, for
the best results with dynamic bodies always use a tessellation-type sphere, not a globe-type sphere. All
those edges converging at the poles of a globe sphere makes for a weak spot, making it much easier to
deform there than anywhere else on the sphere.
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2015

Overview of Controls

In the Layout FX Tools tab that hosts Bullet as well as other motion effects items Bullets properties
are split into the following groups:
Bullet Group:
Enable Dynamics - This turns Bullet on and off globally for the scene.
Item Properties - This opens Bullet Properties on the Item tab. If any dynamic objects in
Layout are selected when this is clicked, they will be selected in the Bullet panel.
World Properties - This opens the Bullet Properties on the World tab.
Remove Body - Removes selected objects from Bullet, so they are no longer part of any
calculations. The Bullet settings for the objects will be lost.
Dynamic Body:
Rigid Body - The object will be subject to all the Hard Body settings that Bullet can offer, such
as Gravity or Density, but will not break apart.
Parts Body - This is a great accompaniment for the Fracture tool. It keeps your object whole
until there is a collision event.
Deforming Body - This adds a Soft Body matrix to your object. Your mesh will now be
deformed following the rules you set for it.
Collision Body:
Static Body - This is the type to add for objects that will not move or be subject to other
forces, but will react with other bodies. A floor is a good example of a static body.
Kinematic Body - Gives the selected object characteristics similar to Static, but it can be
moved through keyframed animation, thus it is an object that is under user control. As with
Static, it affects other dynamic items but cannot be affected by them.
By default, LightWave draws an overlay on dynamic objects in OpenGL to show that not only are
they dynamic, but what type.

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Constraints:
Point to Point - The Point to Point constraint, also known as ball socket joint, limits the
translation so that the local pivot points of two rigid bodies match in world space. A chain of
rigid bodies can be connected using this constraint. No other controls than just attach A to B.
Hinge - The Hinge constraint, or joint, restricts two additional angular degrees of freedom,
so the body can only rotate around one axis, the hinge axis. This can be useful to represent
doors or wheels rotating around one axis. Contains Limits and Motors.
Slider - The Slider constraint allows the body to rotate around one axis and translate along
this axis. Contains Limits and Motors.
Spring - The Spring constraint can creates linear springs as shown; or angular springs, like the
winding of a watch spring.
Cone Twist - The Cone Twist is a special point-to-point constraint that adds cone and twist
axis limits. The x-axis serves as twist axis. It is useful when creating ragdolls, specially for
limbs like the upper arm. Contains Limits and Motors.
Spring - The Spring constraint emulates real-world springs, both linear and rotational (like the
winding of a clock). Contains Limits.
6 DoF - This generic constraint can emulate a variety of standard constraints, by configuring
each of the six degrees of freedom (DoF). The first three DoF axes are linear axes, which
represent translation of rigid bodies, and the latter three axes represent angular motion.
Each axis can be either locked, free or limited. Note that several combinations that include
free and/or limited angular degrees of freedom are undefined. Contains Limits, Motors and
Springs.

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You can simulate resistance on a hinge constraint by enabling the motor. Keep the target speed
at 0 and increase the motor force. An initial try for a motor force would be about the mass of the object
times the gravity.
Think about how you would make something real also. You dont have a door with only one hinge.
That can cause twisting and even breaking the hinge. You can have multiple constraints between two
objects. So for a door, you could put two hinges between the door and the wall. Or you could have the
hinge constraint in the middle, with point to point constraints at the corners. The key is that the error
due to the twisting is relatively small in the middle, but at the corners it is a large positional error. So like
in real life, add some supports at the corners to stop it from twisting apart.
Forces:
Forcefield, Vortex, Explosion - These three Bullet Dynamics types share similarities in their
settings and effect. They are global to a scene and affect all other dynamic objects in the
scene although falloffs can be created using gradients to isolate the effects to certain regions
of 3D space. Note, textures for Force settings using World Coordinates wont work correctly.
2015

Bullet Item Properties Window

Inside this window, the first button at the top of the window is to Enable/Disable Dynamics
globally in the scene. The same button is present on Layouts FX Tools tab for ease of access. Next
to it is a Reset button, use it when the simulation isnt working as youd expect. The Edit dropdown
menu presents several options to add, deactivate and activate or remove selected or all items like
so:

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You can also open the Preset shelf (F8 when the Bullet Dynamics window is active) or save presets
for the selected dynamic item. Currently, the Bullet properties that can be saved within presets are:

Density
Friction
Bounciness
Linear and Angular Damping
Glue Strength
Breaking Angle
Breaking Distance
Merge Points
Mesh filter
Linear and angular stiffness
Shape retention
Damping, drag and lift coefficients
Volume scaling and conservation
Dynamic friction
Self collision
Solver iterations
For forces: field type, strength, density, axis, direction

In fact, its probably now easier to say which settings are not saved to presets and why. They are:

Enable/disable dynamics item

Shape
Activation and deactivation settings
Collision margin

In addition, neither the mass method nor the given mass are saved to presets currently. The
intention is that presets save material properties, independent of the specific mesh used.
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Next to the Edit menu is a button that allows the user to either show all of a scenes items or only
those that have some dynamic properties.

Select and View Dropdowns

In LightWave 2015, you can now better choose and view items in the Bullet Item Properties
window.

Bullet Dynamics Properties

The other buttons in the window are divided into two tabs and a list. The list contains every
dynamic item in the scene along with the type of dynamic body assigned and a checkmark for
individually enabling or disabling the object.

Item Tab
Dynamic - This button replicates the functionality found in the list, for enabling or disabling
an individual object. (You can also double-click an item in the list to activate/deactivate it
from dynamics calculations, remember, when an item is disabled, the dynamics solution will
need re-calculating).
Type - Shows a dropdown with the same dynamic type choices as presented in the Layout
FX Tools tab - Rigid, Parts, Static, Kinematic, Deforming; the constraints Point to Point, Hinge,
Slider, Cone Twist and 6 DoF; and the Forces Forcefield, Vortex and Explosion.

Shape sub-Tab
Shape - The collision shape the object has for Bullet. This is a dropdown with five options Box, Sphere, Capsule, Cylinder, Convex Pieces and Mesh. Convex Pieces approximates the mesh
shape as a set of convex pieces. Convex pieces are faster to simulate than Mesh shapes, but
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take time to pre-process (the Decomposing passes you might see happen). Since Convex
Pieces only approximates the shape you can lose some details that may or may not be
important, unlike using Mesh which uses the shape exactly. The other four are simplified
shapes to make calculation swifter.
Major Axis - Only available when using a predefined Shape, not Convex Pieces or Mesh,
and usable mainly with the Capsule or Cylinder shapes. It defaults to Y since that is the axis
most used for modelling objects that stand up, but if you are creating a dynamic pencil, for
instance, you might choose X or Z, depending on the direction in which the pencil is lying.
Mesh Filter - This setting is only available with Kinematic objects and determines which parts
of a mesh are subject to dynamic simulation. It is further detailed in the Kinematic section.
Collision Margin - Adds a margin to the collision shape. It makes the shapes a bit thicker and
can prevent fast moving objects from tunneling through other objects.

When using the built-in shapes, a Collision Margin greater than 0 is recommended (5 mm).
It wont offset your objects, but helps with calculation errors, this is especially true for smaller objects.
When using any of the Mesh modes, the Collision Margin will offset your geometry, but can greatly
reduce any calculation errors, so try setting to a low value, and only set to 0 mm if you really need to.

Activation sub-Tab
Initial Activation - Sets whether the object starts off active (affected by forces such as gravity),
or sleeping (not affected by forces until the first time the object is hit). When an object stops
moving (or close enough), it will be put to sleep, unless it is set to the third option, Always
Active. The fourth option, Activate on Last Key allows you to give an item some momentum
before it is affected by Bullet dynamics and works based on the velocity of the motion keys
you have assigned the item.

Two keyframes have been set for the ball at 0 and 3. When the last keyframe has passed,
Bullet takes over using the velocity and vector set by the keyframes. The distance between
the two keyed positions will give the velocity of the ball so setting a wider gap will make for
a faster trajectory.

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Deactivation Time (s) - This allows you to control when dynamic items are set to rest by Bullet.
Measured in seconds, this value sets how long a dynamic items linear or rotational speed has
to be under the threshold settings, before it is then put to sleep by Bullet. This helps control
any jittering of items near the end of a simulation. Sleeping items will naturally be awoken if
they are disturbed by any further collisions.
Linear Speed Threshold - This allows you to set the maximum distance an item can travel per
second to be considered by the Deactivation Time before it is stopped by Bullet.
Angular Speed Threshold - Same as Linear Speed, but for rotation. This sets the threshold
rotation speed (degrees per second) which the item needs to be below to be considered by
the Deactivation Time before it is stopped by Bullet.
Under the Shape and Activation sub-tabs are two further sub-tabs. Properties and Transform.
Properties contains the individual properties of a specific Bullet Type (Rigid; Static; Vortex; 6 DoF,
etc.), which are all detailed below for the specific Bullet types.

Transform sub-Tab

The controls here are for adjusting the predefined shape you have chosen for your collision - they
are not available when Convex Pieces or Mesh is chosen as the Shape for your dynamic item.

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World Tab

The settings on this tab affect all of a scenes Bullet simulations.

Gravity X/Y/Z - Although the default is set to an Earth standard gravitational acceleration of
-9.8 m nothing prevents you from having your gravity point in any direction, or even varying
it using Envelopes and Textures.
Dynamics Framerate (fps) - Set the frames per second for dynamics calculations. By default
this is at 180 fps. Decreasing the value will result in faster calculation times at the expense of
simulation accuracy (objects penetrating each other). Increasing will result in the opposite,
more accurate simulation, but with slower calculation times.
Start Offset - Chooses when to start the beginning of the dynamic simulation. If using Frame
Number, SMPTE Time Code or Film Key Code the number you input will be converted to the
frame equivalent in that format. If using Seconds, there will be no conversion. For example,
a value of 50 in this field translates to: 50; 00:00:02:02; 3 +02 and 50.0 s respectively when
using an FPS setting of 24 in Options.
Time Scale - By default this is set at 100%, however, using an Envelope you can slow down,
speed up or even reverse dynamics time independent of the scene time to create Bullet
Time animations like those first popularized in the Matrix films.
Draw Collision Shapes - There are three dropdown menus here - Draw Bodies, Draw
Constraints and Draw Forcefields. Each of them has the following options:
None - No collision shapes are drawn for the scene.
All - the default; all collision shapes are drawn for the scene.
Selected - only the item(s) selected in Layout will have their collision shapes drawn.
Related - the items in the selected hierarchy have their collision shapes drawn.

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By default, all three Draw Collison Shapes settings are set to Related.

Reset - If you ever see results in Bullet that seem strange to you, it could be the cache needs
re-calculating from scratch. This button does just that, it clears and resets the cache Bullet is
using when solving the dynamics, then rebuilds it when you scrub or play the timeline.

Rigid, Static and Kinematic Properties

Mass Distribution - Determines how Bullet considers the mass of an object to be distributed.
Two objects with different mass distributions can behave differently even if they have the
same shape and weight the same. For example, a solid sphere can act differently than a
hollow sphere. Bullet offers several distribution methods:
Solid - Mass is distributed through the object, it is solid.
Surface - The mass is distributed over the surface of the object, the object is hollow.
Vertices - The mass is concentrated at the vertices of the mesh of the object only.
Mass Specification - Determines how Bullet calculates the heaviness of an item. Bullet
can calculate an objects weight based on mass, or density. Mass is the overall weight
regardless of what the object is made of or how big it is. For example: you can set a 1m
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cube to be the same weight as a 10m cube, and they will clearly be the same weight,
whereas if you set the density of a 1m and 10m cube to 1kg, the 1m cubes mass will be
1kg/m cubed (1m x 1m x 1m x 1kg = 1kg) and the 10m cube would be 1,000kg/m cubed
(10m x 10m x 10m x 1kg = 1,000kg). Quite a difference in Bullets world! Bullet offers
several calculation methods:
Mass (kg) - Only available when Mass Specification is set to Given Mass. For Parts mode,
the amount is divided up accordingly to each parts overall volume, so smaller pieces
will be lighter than larger pieces, as expected.
Density (kg/unit) - Only available when Mass Specification is set to Density. The mass of
the object is then calculated by multiplying the unit specified (kg) per the unit type set
in either of the density modes. Therefore; kg x (Volume/Area/Number of Points).
Friction - The friction coefficient of the object. Makes objects slow down when in contact
with other items.

Friction: 0% (Blocks Only)

Friction: 25%

Friction: 50%

Friction: 100%

In order for Friction to have an effect, colliding objects must each have a non-zero Friction value.
Bounciness - Determines the level of rebound when objects collide with each other.

Bounciness: 0% (Blocks Only)

Bounciness: 25%

Bounciness: 50%

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In order for Bounciness to have an effect, colliding objects must each have a non-zero
Bounciness value.
Linear Damping - Dampens the linear (translational) motion of the object to slow down its
movement.

Linear D: 0% (Blocks Only)

Linear Damping: 25%

Linear Damping: 50%

Linear Damping: 100%

Angular Damping - Dampens the Angular (rotational) motion of the object to slow down its
spinning.

Angular D: 0% (Blocks Only)

Angular Damping: 25%

Angular Damping: 50%

Angular Damping: 100%

Parts Properties
When Parts is chosen as the body type for an object, additional parameters become available:
Glue Strength - This determines how tightly bound parts are to each other. A low value will
have them explode apart at first touch, a high value will keep them together.

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Glue Strength: 0%

Glue Strength: 25%

Glue Strength: 50%

Glue Strength: 100%

Glue Strength with no Breaking Angle/Distance set is very dependent on the items scale and
Mass Method used. Be aware that if your objects weight/mass is too low, Glue Strength can appear to
have little effect when set above 0%. Try increasing your objects weight/mass until you see the effect.
Breaking Angle - The threshold angle up to which parts can twist/bend before the bond
(Glue Strength) between them breaks and the parts then separate.
Breaking Distance - The threshold distance up to which parts are allowed to move apart
before the bond (Glue Strength) between them breaks and the parts then separate.
Merge Points toggle - When active, Merge Points will attempt to ensure that matching
vertices on either side of a fracture have the same position, ensuring the mesh stays air-tight
while the parts are not broken.. This does have a cost in processing time and memory.

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Example: Choreograph your destruction
Achieving realistic destruction is as much as matter of choreography as it is modeling. You need
the parts to break when most dramatically suitable. To do this you need more than just Bullet on
its own. Lets start with a modeled floor and tower. Use the box tool to create a wide and deep box,
but dont give it much height, the example here is 65 m2 by about 1.5 m high. Our tower stands
about 30 m tall and is 4 m square. Note that the tower is subdivided - Fracture works better with
square polygons so if it had been left as a single polygon we would have long thin splinters from a
fracture.

Our Tower with the Floor in a Background layer. Fracturing the Tower using Voronoi shatter and 300 cells. The resulting Tower showing its
exploded Morph. (The layer with the original tower model on should be removed from the Send to Layout list by clicking in the rightmost
column in the Layers panel (F7) in case you wish to make further changes to the original.

Now that the preparation for our model is complete, we turn to Layout. In Layout, make the ground
a Static object and the tower a Parts object in the FX Tools tab. If you run the scene now the tower
falls apart instantly. What we want is for the tower to break only where and when we want it to. To
do this, first we need to set our Tower not to fall apart immediately. Setting the Glue Strength to 100
% and turning off Breaking Distance will achieve that. Now if we run the scene we see that nothing
breaks.

We need a way to reduce the Glue Strength in an area of the Tower so it can break in that area. The
way to do it is with a gradient on the Texture button of the Glue Strength. First, add a null to the
scene and set a path for it that directly intersects the tower over the course of the animation.

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We have given our Null an Item shape at 2 m to give some idea of the volume of breakage our null
will cause. The ball wont appear in the render, this is purely an invisible cause for the breakage.
Now we need to create the gradient for the Glue Strength value.

Things to note here are:

1) Set the Input Parameter to Object Distance
2) The name of the object you are using to provoke the breakage
3) Set the 0 m Parameter to 0
4) Set the next parameter to the distance away you want to start reducing the Glue Strength
5) You can switch the Smoothing to Step if you want a clean break.
If youd like to use multiple nulls to break your tower in different places at once, you must set the
Blending Mode for each additional null to PShop Darken.

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All you now need do to complete your choreography is judge when and where the impacts on the
tower take place by animating your nulls to suit. Dont forget to turn off Enable Dynamics while you
are creating the motion paths for the nulls and go to frame 0 to turn it back on, then go to the end
frame of the scene to make Bullet calculate all the dynamics in one go.

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Deforming Body Properties
When Deforming is chosen as the body type for an object, additional parameters become available:

Mesh Filter - This uses the chosen weight map in the geometry to determine what parts are
dynamic. Any polygons with vertices in the chosen geometry with a non-zero value in the
weight map will be considered as a deforming body, those with no weight map value are
ignored by Bullet.
Shape Retention - This works in two ways. With Shape Lock set to None, it determines how
little or much the mesh is deformed by Bullet. This mode is controlled completely by
dynamics. If you set Shape Lock to one of the other options, your object will react in different
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ways, as noted below.
Shape Lock - works in conjunction with Shape Retention. It presents a dropdown with four
choices:
None - The shapes translation and rotation are fully controlled by Bullet;
Translation - Translation responds to keyframing. Depending on the level of Shape
Retention set Translation will still respond to the dynamic solution as well. Rotation is
still completely controlled by Bullet;
Rotation - The opposite. Rotation can be keyframed but Bullet controls the translation;
Translation & Rotation - The mesh will follow the keyframed rotation and translation, but
will be reacting to dynamics in relation to the motion.
Linear Stiffness - How resistant edges are to stretching or shrinking, or how stiff or stretchy
the object is. The higher the value the more it will attempt to maintain the lengths of the
edges.
Angular Stiffness - How resistant the object is to bending. The higher the value the more it
will attempt to maintain the angles between edges.
Damping - Dampens the motion of the vertices.
Volume Scaling - Scales the volume of the object, inflating or deflating it.
Volume Conservation - How well the object maintains the (scaled) volume. When set to 100 %
it attempts to keep the volume of the object equal to the target volume; set to 0 % it doesnt
conserve the volume at all.
Friction - Defines the friction of the softbody. 0 % for frictionless (lots of sliding), 100 % for
maximum friction (no sliding).
Solver Iterations - How many passes are done by the solver to solve the linear and angular
stiffness constraints. Higher values take longer to calculate, but increase the simulations
accuracy.
Self-Collision - Enable/disable detection of and response to the softbody colliding with itself.
Self-Collision Margin - The collision margin used for self-collision only, unlike the other
collision margin which is used for collisions between different objects.

Make sure you set the Subdivision Order to After Displacement or Last for any Deforming Body
subpatch objects or they will not work. Subdivision Order does not matter for polygonal objects.

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Example: Getting started with Deforming Bodies
As for our first example with Rigid Bodies, well repeat but with Deforming Bodies. This requires a
very small amount of additional setup, but with satisfying results.
1) In common with the previous example we need a floor for our deforming objects to fall on.
Choose Modeler Tools > Create Geometry > Cube and set Width: 10 m, Height : 0.25 m, Depth:
10 m. Set the Surface to Floor.

2) Now make an element to bounce off the floor by using Cube again, but this time setting it to
Width: .5 m, Height: .5 m, Depth: .5 m. The number of Segments should be set to X: 10, Y: 10,
Z: 10 and the surface to Cube.

3) In the FX Tools tab, set the floor object to be a Static Body

and the small cube to be a Deforming Body.
4) Now we need to make three clones of our small cubes. Then move the four objects up in the
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Y and rotate them randomly to end up with something like this:

5) Open FX Tools > Item Properties. Select the four deforming cubes and set their Collision
Margin to 10 mm and Shape Retention to 50 %.

6) Give the fours cubes different Shape Retention settings. 100 % will not deform the object at
all, but setting it lower will give increasing amounts of deformation.
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Using a Deforming object for Collision

When using a character or anything else deformed by bones, morphs or displacement as a
softbody collider, you need to transform the mesh itself (or part of it) into a Bullet Deforming body.
If you want to maintain the original shape of the deformed object, you need to set some
parameters in the Bullet Softbodies panel:

Shape Retention must be set to 100%

Shape Lock must be set to Translation & Rotation
Both Linear and Angular Stiffness must be set to 0
Volume Conservation must be set to 0.

Use simple kinematic shape objects parented to the bones of characters to create effective
softbody colliders. Capsules are perfect for this.

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2015

Bullet Constraints

Weve given an overview of the different constraints for Bullet on page 796. Now we will go into
how to use them in a scene. The simplest way to add a constraint is to have two Bullet objects in
your scene already, select them both and hit the Constraint you want in the FXTools tab, but there
are many other ways to create the Constraints you want.

2015

Example: First Constraint

1) Well start very simply. Create a standard Cube with the Modeler Tools tab. On the FX Tools tab,
make this object a Static Body.

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2) Back to Modeler Tools and create a standard Sphere. Drop it on the Y so its below the Cube
and move it a little to the side and back. On the FX Tools tab, make this object a Rigid Body.

3) Select your Cube, hold down SHIFT and select your Sphere again. On the FX Tools tab, click
Point to Point in the Constraints.

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4) Hit Play.
You can change the Point to Point Constraint for the other Constraints as you like. To do so, you
need to visit the Constraint in the Bullet Item Properties window because if you just repeat the
steps to make the first constraint you will merely add another, not replace it.

2015

General Constraint Rules

Before we detail each of the different Constraints and how to use them, there are some rules that
apply to all of them.
The constraints in Bullet are designed to attach objects together, not to stand in for some
invisible long wire. For a visible link you will need to create geometry.
To create a Constraint between a Bullet item and another, select the Head first, then the
acting object, then hit the constraint you wish to use. This will create a Null object, set to
the constraint chosen, with the first and second objects selected as the two Bodies for the
constraint. You can also have a single object selected and choose your constraint. Doing
this will set the current object as the constraint and you will need to visit the Bullet Item
Properties window to choose Attach Body 1 and Attach Body 2.
The Head of a Constraint will be based on a Null placed at the center of mass of the head
object, whose position, rotation and scale can be changed, but not animated. Best to do this
with Enable Bullet Dynamics deactivated.
All constraints are Breakable. For the specific Constraint, visit the Activation tab and set the
Breaking Force. You can set an Envelope or Texture for the Breaking Force. As an explanation
of how Breaking Force works think of a 1 kg weight hanging on a constraint in Earth gravity.
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2015

This weight exerts a force of 1*9.8=9.8 on the constraint. So if the Breaking Force is set to 9,
the constraint will break. If it is 10, it will not (at least not until some more force is introduced,
for example through a collision).
All Constraints have an Enable Collision setting. When on, enables collision detection
between the two bodies connected by the constraint. When two bodies connected by a
constraint are set up so that they initially touch or intersect, instability can occur due to
collision detection wanting to move the bodies apart, while the constraint tries to keep
them together. In a bone rig, for example, it is typical to disable collision detection between
connected bones for this reason, and to use rotation limits to stop a child bone from rotating
too far into the parent bone.
All Constraints apart from Point to Point can have Limits set. Limits will be explained with
each Constraint, but mean that you can control how far Hinges bend, for example.
Constraints apart from Point to Point and Spring can have Motors. Motors can act as brakes,
slowing down a motion, or accelerators to give motion to things that are otherwise static. A
Motor has two settings: Target Motor Speed and Motor Force.
The 6 DoF Constraint also has Linear and Rotational Springs. If you are using a Layout-created
default 1 m Cube as a test object, try a spring stiffness of something on the order of 50,000
as a start (based on the mass of the object at 1,000 kg/unit) and adjust up and down to suit.
While Bullet is normally used only with objects, you can apply constraints to other scene
items. Try making a chain of festive decoration lights, or restraining the camera to a
dynamically-animated object.

Point to Point

The simplest of the constraints, also known as the ball socket joint. It is represented by a single line
in OpenGL. The only option on the Attachment tab is Enable Collision. There is no damping.

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Example - Point to Point
To keep things simple, we will use Layout-created objects to keep things quick. Please apply what
we do here to your own objects and scenes. Likewise, we will be using Bullet defaults. You can
achieve a completely different effect by varying settings, particularly the weight of your pendulum
object.

1) As in our first constraint example we will create a cube and sphere. Move the sphere to be
below the cube. On the FX Tools tab, set the sphere to be rigid and the cube to be static.

2) Select the cube and then add the sphere to the selection and choose Point to Point from the
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Constraints group in FX Tools.

3) The sphere wont do much if we dont give it an impetus. At frame 0, move it to the side and
a little up on the Y and you will create a pendulum effect for the sphere. Hit Play to see it.

4) Rather than a simple pendulum, lets make the motion more interesting. First, set your scene
length to 600 so we have more time to see the swing. With Enable Dynamics switched off,
go to frame 2 of your scene and move the sphere somewhat sideways. A little difficult to
describe in text, but imagine you are holding a real sphere and you want to swing it in more
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of a circle under the cube. In the Bullet window, set Item > Activation > Initial Activation to
Activate on Last Key, then click Enable Dynamics. Hit Play again.

5) The sphere will continue to swing for a very long time and as stated above, the Point to
Point constraint has no damping feature. However, your Sphere already has the ability
to be damped. Select your sphere in the Bullet window and on the Item > Properties
tab you will see you have Linear and Angular Damping. You can increase the default
values of 1.0 % to better control the swinging of your pendulum. Upping the Linear
Damping to 50 % will stop your swinging sphere very quickly (within a couple of
hundred frames), but setting it to something like 5 % will still feel like a realistic rate.

2015

Hinge

The Hinge only bends around one axis. As its name implies, its very useful for making hinges for
doors etc.., but for the same reason that a door has two or more hinges, it makes sense to do the
same in Bullet because otherwise torsion can cause problems. If you would like hinges that are
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stiffer, harder to move, use Motors. Keep the Target Motor Speed at 0 but increase the force until
you achieve the stiffness you want. Bear in mind that you might want to increase the Force in a
negative sense if your hinge bends in the opposite direction.

Example - Hinge
Load this example scene saved in the 2015 content as HingeBreak. The scene shows several things.

1) The first thing to note is the five hinged blocks above the floor. The first one is Static and acts
as the base for the other four plates, which each have two hinges to attach them to the next
plate. Note also that the last plate in the chain is considerably heavier than the others.

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2) All of the constraints for the plates are Hinges apart from one Point to Point. It is the
connection between the final two plates that are different from the others. The Hinge
constraint is Breakable and the Breaking Force required is 10000 here. As noted in the General
Constraint Rules on page 821, start with a breaking force based on the Mass*Gravity and
adjust up and down.

3) The other connection for this last plate is a Point to Point, so that when the Hinge breaks the
last plate swings around. This constraint is also breakable and this time an envelope was
used to dictate exactly when the constraint would break.
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4) The scene also shows the destruction of the fractured cube sitting on the floor. Note that
a solid cube is shown to hide the cracks in our cube to be broken. This cube is dissolved
at the moment the last plate hits when the cracks are perfectly natural to be shown.

2015

Slider

The Slider constraint offers translation along a single axis. You can set limits for the distance of
the slide and also for how much Body 2 swings around the axis of the slider. Again, you can use a
Motor to slow downslope motion or move upslope.

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Example - Slider
Load this example scene saved in the 2015 content as SliderCollision. We will use this scene as a
starting point showing several options when using this constraint.

1) Press Play on the scene when it loads. Youll see the red shape tip over from one side to the
other and also rotate on its pitch. The green shape follows, constrained to the axis shown
in blue. The yellow squares at either end of the constraint are the linear limits for the green
shape.

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2) We have Slide Limits enabled and thats why the green shape doesnt intersect the smaller
bar of the red shape. We could stop the green shape intersecting the other side by setting
the Lower Slide Limit to -285 mm and then you would completely stop the green shape from
intersecting the red.

3) Equally, we can Enable Spin Limits. This would allow us to restrict the angular movement of
the green shape around the axis. The problem is that setting all these limitations is timeconsuming (although sometimes they will be more useful than our next option).

4) That next option is to engage Enable Collision. This option will prevent intersection of
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geometry that are linked by constraints. Other geometry, not associated with the constraint,
will react following the type of dynamic object your constrained objects come into contact
with. Motors can also be used to restrain the green shape - to keep it at one end of the other
of the axis, for instance.

2015

Cone Twist

A Cone Twist constraint is a little like a Point to Point, only with more restrictions. There are Limits
and Motors that can be used to better sculpt the motion you require.

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Example - Cone Twisty Snake
Get this scene from the 2015 content, its called ConeTwistySnake, perhaps unsurprisingly. It is a
scene you can make for yourself pretty simply, but included to run you through the important
parts swiftly:

1) Only the tail item is Kinematic in Bullet, the rest of the objects are all Rigid bodies. When
making the scene, the tail was added first, then the constraint and then a segment.
Afterwards I was careful to copy the constraint and then copy the segment to add them in
order to make the scene easier to read.

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2) Doing it this way means you need to manually assign Attach Body 1 and Attach Body 2. You
might also need to turn the constraint on the heading if it is not facing along the snake
(the snake in the example is running down the Z axis and the constraint had to be turned
-90 on H). When setting the first constraint Swing and Twist Limits were enabled to give the
characteristic motion of a segmented snake toy.

3) The motion of the snake is directed by the keyframes on the tail. The rest of the motion is
dynamic. Tipping the tail up and twisting it seemed to produce the most satisfying motion.

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2015

Spring

The Spring constraint can also be used within the 6DoF constraint, however that constraint is a
bit complex if all you want it a simple linear or angular bounce. Spring follows the same rules
weve already encountered with other constraints with regards to attaching bodies and enabling
collision, but the main points of interaction are the Spring controls. By default, Linear Spring
Stiffness is set to 10000 to give a satisfying result with default Modeler Tools dynamic objects. You
can bring your spring to a halt using the Linear Spring Damping setting, but be aware that small
values work best with this, larger values tend to look unrealistic.
To create an angular Spring it should be noted that the Spring is always around the axis of the
constraint. If you wish to make a vertical spring youll need to create a horizontal constraint as
shown in the metronome example in the content.

Example - Mars Rover

Load the Mars Rover scene from the 2015 content. This complex example shows how you can
use Springs to recreate a suspension system on a six-wheeled vehicle that is driven completely
dynamically.

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2015

6 DoF

The most complex of Bullet constraints, this offers both directional and rotational possibilities
that are set up in the same way as the separate Slider and Cone Twist constraints. In addition to the
Limits and Motors found in almost all other constraints, there are also settings for Springs. To work
well, a spring needs to counteract the mass of the object hanging off it as well as gravity.

Example - 6 DoF Camera Work

Again, this is a scene in the 2015 content. Load the 6dof_Jeep scene and hit play. Watch as the van
bumps over the terrain (it doesnt really, there are Noisy Channel modifiers on Y and P), but notice
the camera bobbing around on top. For the first time since LightWave has had Bullet dynamics, its
use is not restricted to objects and you can now apply the new constraints to other scene items.
Particular things to note:

1) The car was given a simple path to follow, Align to Path was used on the Motion Options
panel, and then the car set to Kinematic in Bullet.
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2) The constraint was made by making the Camera a Rigid Body for Bullet and its 1 m box was
reduced in size on the Transform tab to not take up so much room on screen. The car object
was selected and then while holding SHIFT, the Camera was selected again and the 6 DoF
constraint was chosen.

3) The constraint was set up with a small amount of movement on X, Y and Z; H, P and B.
To dampen the movement, if desired, motors can be used. Our scenes camera has a
mass of 1000 kg/unit so start your Linear Motor forces around there. There is no need
to add a Target Motor Speed. The same can be applied on the Rotation Motors.
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Example - Non-object Dynamics

In this example (stairs.lws), a camera has been made a Rigid body and given a spherical shape to
better bounce down the stairs. The other objects in the scene are set to Static bodies.

To create a chain of items, select the head of the chain first, then select the rest of the chain in
order and hit the constraint you wish to use. They will all be set up correctly in the Bullet window.

Forcefield, Vortex and Explosion Properties

These three Bullet Dynamics types share similarities in their settings and effect. They are global to
a scene and affect all other dynamic objects in the scene although falloffs can be created using
gradients to isolate the effects to certain regions of 3D space. Note, textures for Force settings
using World Coordinates wont work correctly.

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For each of the three types - Forcefield, Vortex and Explosion - the effect is chosen between one of
three options:
Force - applies the type as a force. That means that lighter objects will accelerate faster.
Similar to hitting something.
Acceleration - is like gravity. All objects accelerate at the same rate regardless of mass.
Velocity - is more like wind. Objects will have forces applied to them so that they reach
a given velocity (even if that velocity is 0). Using Velocity opens up the Density property.
Density is used to determine how quickly the objects match the velocity set. Set to 0 it will
never match (like there is no air at all), while 1 means it will get to the target velocity pretty
much immediately (like a stick in a fast-flowing stream of water).
The forces can be directed along the axis chosen and can be varied using Envelopes or Textures. In
addition the Explosion Type has an extra Direction - Center. This marks the Explosion dynamic object
as the centre of a radially expanding explosion. In the example shown below, the ball and cube are
subjected to a forcefield to prevent them hitting the floor.

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Note that the gradient is applied to the floor rather than the falling objects. Forces are global, so
the two rigid body objects falling toward the static floor object are the items that will be affected
by the Forcefield. The strength of the field that is applied to a given rigid body is determined by
evaluating the texture at the position of that rigid body. In this case, it would evaluate the gradient
by determining the distance of the rigid body position from the gradient input object. The ball and
cube thus fall toward the floor but are rebuffed the closer they get.

You can animate the position, rotation and scale of a force-type Dynamic element over the
course of a scene rather than using the axes to vary how your scene reacts to a Force.

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Example: Swirling Leaves
Thanks go to Greenlaw from Little Green Dog for sharing this scene. All the settings were arrived at
through experiment and you should feel free to substitute your own.

Bullets Forces are ideal for creating this kind of scene. It is easy to set up and reacts very naturally.
For the example shown, we began with creating a solid floor and some columns to add interest
and turbulence for the leaves. The leaves themselves are simple hexagons divided down their
length for more of a shape:

The leaf is given a UV map to make it easier to texture and textured with a Color map the alpha of
which is used for Transparency. The leaf is made double-sided to ensure that it remains visible and
the Specular and Glossiness channels are textured to make the leaf more visually interesting. Lastly
the leaf is duplicated using Point Clone Plus. Open the Multiply > Duplicate > More > Point Clone Plus
panel and enter the desired parameters. For floating leaves, use full randomization for rotation;
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Bullet Dynamics
for ground cover, Randomize only the Heading the full 360 degrees and randomize the Pitch only
slightly (maybe 10 degrees). Click OK.

In Layout, on the FX Tools tab, the floor and columns SquareBV object is made Static, the
LeavesFloating object is added and made Parts and lastly three nulls are added to the scene and
Vortex, Explosion, and Forcefield are applied.

Lets start with the simple. Our SquareBV object has Static applied, and the other settings are as
follows:
Set the Shape to Convex Pieces and Collision Margin to 10 mm;
Mass Distribution should be Solid and Mass Specification set to Density with a Density of 1000
kg/unit;
Friction is set at 30 % and Bounciness reduced to 10 %.
Now well deal with the LeavesFloating object:
Type is set to Parts so that each leaf is treated separately, Shape is Cylinder and Collision
Margin to 10 mm;
Mass Distribution set to Surface and Mass Specification to Given Mass with a value of 0.001 kg;
Friction is set to 30 %, Bounciness 5 %, Linear and Angular Damping to 50 %;
Glue Strength is set to 0 % and none of the other settings in this section are engaged.
Lastly, well change our three Force settings. The three forces are arranged in a column at the center
of the scene with the following settings:
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LightWave 2015

Bullet Dynamics

For the Forcefield layer, the size of the Fractal Noise texture is 2 m on all axes.

The Explosion layer is the simplest. Set it to a low negative number so that it drags the leaves into
the center rather than forcing them out.

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Bullet Dynamics

The Vortex layer has a gradient on the Strength setting. It is set up like this:

The values go from 0 to 0.1 and back to 0 over the 6 m range. With these settings you should have
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Bullet Dynamics
a fine swirl of leaves rushing around your courtyard. Add other objects or use a texture to create a
more visually interesting Vortex.

Bullet Cache
As Bullet solves dynamic calculations, it stores the results in a cache so that animation playback
can be fluid. The cache is automatically stored in the Dynamics folder of the current Content
Directory for the scene (this can be changed in the Options > Paths window, which can be accessed
by pressing the O key). The cache file is named the same as the scene file, but has a .dynacache
extension.

To generate the full cache for a dynamics simulation, a quick way is to go to the end frame
on the timeline, rather than pressing play. Either click on the last frame in the timeline, or bring up the
Goto Frame window (F key). Doing it this way means that although LightWave has to calculate the
simulation for the whole scene in one go, it doesnt have to display every frame update in the viewport,
resulting in quicker calculation times.

Bullet and Hierarchies

If you note that the motions of a parent object are not being updated in Bullet for a child object
with Bullet applied, reset your dynamics cache on the World tab of Bullet Properties.

Bullet and Bones

You can parent a Bullet-controlled kinematic object to a bone and animate the bone using IK,
targeting, etc. Bullet dynamics will read the motions.

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Bullet Dynamics
Bullet and FiberFX

To create hair and fur that is affected by Bullet, you should first set FiberFX Dynamic Gravity to Off
and set Gravity to 0% so they do not interfere with Bullets calculations.
Fibers need to be polygonized by right-clicking on the item in your FiberFX window and choosing
Polygonized Mixed.

This will create guides in geometry that are automatically weighted from end to tip with 0 %
weight at the root and 100 % weight at the tip. Make sure you save your fiber object after it has
been polygonized.
If you want the hair to deform but not the object its attached to, use a Mesh Filter in the Bullet
window set to the fiber weight map that was created when you polygonized the hair. If you want it
all to deform set the Mesh Filter to none.
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Page Title

Bear in mind that if you dont want the object to deform you will need to animate it to get the hair
to flow. Bullet wont react to the object at all because objects that have no weight map are ignored
by Bullet and the hair will merely hang down unless you move the object around.
In Bullet set Mass Distibution to Vertices if you have a polychain-only object (or you are animating
only the polychains of a mixed object).
Styles in FiberFX are morph maps that need to be activated in the scene by choosing Morph Mixer
from the Object Properties window. Nothing needs to be done in Morph Mixer but by opening
the window you are telling LightWave that it should remember you have a style on your fibers.
Dynamics wont work with styles though and when you use Morph Mixer it turns off the style. If
you want to animated your FiberFX styles you can use Morph Mixer and Bullet will react to the
changed style.
Speed up calculation of dynamics by turning off the display of fibers when calculating.

FiberFX requires multiple passes to work with LightWaves photoreal motion blur. Since this
adds a considerable overhead to rendering time you may prefer to motion blur as a post-process.

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Chapter 2
Camera

Fracture

LightWave 2015

Fracture
Fracture in Layout
Fracture is also available in a simplified version directly in Layout. You can find the tool in the FX
Tools tab in the Destroy group.

Like Fracture in Modeler, you can define the interior surface name, the random seed you wish to
use and the number of cells you wish to break your object into. The Voronoi method will be used
for fracturing and your object will be saved with the new filename you choose.

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Flocking
Chapter 2
Camera

LightWave 2015

Flocking
About Flocking
LightWaves flocking system is based on 3D computer models of coordinated animal motion,
things like flocks of birds, herds of animals or schools of fish. It can be used with LightWaves
instancing system or HyperVoxels.

The flocking algorithm itself is based on just three principles in order to create this seemingly
complex motion. These are Separation, which keeps your flock from getting overcrowded;
Alignment, which keeps the flock all heading in roughly the same direction; and Cohesion, which is
effectively the opposite of separation and keeps your flock bunched together.
Flocking can be seen in OpenGL and VPR. Instances and HyperVoxels controlled by Flocking can
be motion blurred and use Depth of Field like other instances. Hypervoxels, like other volumetrics
need the camera to be moving to be compatible with Photoreal Motion Blur (PRMB).

Flocking doesnt currently work with negative frames.

When using Flocking with network rendering (LWSN, for instance) you must bake your Flocking
results.
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Using Flocking
In order to set up Flocking in LightWave you will need a flock and at least one director. This
director can be a goal or something to avoid, meaning you can either lead or chase your flock.
An effector can be as simple as a null object though you can attach a director to geometry - for
instance, the leader of the pack or the nasty predator chasing the herd.
The director needs to move to excite the flock into movement of their own. Although an
unmoving goal will draw the flock to it, its not very interesting behaviorally. It should also be
stated that the behavior of the flock is completely deterministic, there is no fractal randomness
here. A flock animated on one machine will work in exactly the same way on another, and
more importantly will render the same too.

Setting up a Simple Flock

1) Well start with an empty scene of 200 frames to which you add Flocking from the
Windows menu, or the FX Tools tab.

2) In the Flock Master window add a Generator. The defaults wont give us a very
interesting result, so change the following values:
Count X: 10.0
Count Y: 10.0
Count Z: 10.0
Size X: 4.0
Size Y: 4.0
Size Z: 4.0
This will give us a flock of 1,000 agents ready to fly.
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3) Add a Director - Goal to your scene and move it off in the distance. For this
example ours is moved about 20 m in the Z. If you hit Calculate All Motions now
and then Play on your timeline your agents will all head off to the goal, avoiding
bumping into each other, but otherwise not interesting until they reach the
goal, at which point they overshoot and try to reach it again, and again.
4) So well give them something to avoid. Add a Director - Deflect and change its Deflect
Core and Strength to 5.0 and 3.0 respectively. Position it about halfway between your
flocks starting point and the goal. Hit Calculate All Motions again and you should get
something like the image below:

To get the pretty colored trails for your flock, increase the Show Trails number. It represents the number of frames before and after the
current one that will be shown.

Make sure you hit the Calculate All Motions button each time you make changes to your
flock or directors before you press Play on the timeline again.

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Overview of Controls
Flocking is composed of several custom objects all controlled through a central Master Window
as we saw in the first simple example. You can always control your flock and directors through
the Object Properties > Geometry > Custom Object window and your settings will be duplicated in
the Master Window. For simplicity, this documentation will only describe the presentation of the
settings through the Master Window interface.

This window has three main sections. Across the top we have two dropdown menus and the
Calculate All Motions button. Down the left we have a familiar listview of all the flocking elements in
the scene. On the right, the settings for each individual element broken down into tabs.

Menus
Add New...
Generator - will create a Null-based flock generator.
Director - Goal - will create a Null-based director that your flock will gravitate towards.
Director - Avoid - will create a Null-based director that will repulse your flock directly
away.
Director - Deflect - will create a Null-based director that will push your flock away
tangentially.
Director - Arrive - will create a Null-based director with deceleration rules for your flock.
Director - Path - Will create a null-based director that will be the basis of a Path director.
You will need to animate the null over the course of the scene for it to work.
From Scene Items
Generator - This allows you to add a Flocking generator custom object to an
existing scene item.
Generator from Mesh Points - If you use this option it turns the points in the object
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into placement for your initial flock giving the opportunity to create initial
flock shapes other than the default box or sphere.
Generator from Mesh Polys - As above but uses the meshs polygons to place
the flock. In both cases, flocking rules apply so if the points or polygons are
too closely spaced the flock will initially explode outwards.
Director - Goal, Arrive - Adds a Director custom object to an existing scene
item.
Director - Avoid, Deflect - As above.
Director - Path - Will create a Director from a null that you have animated over
the course of the scene..
Basic Setup - Creates a Generator and a Goal Director, both will be placed at the
origin. This is simply a rapid way of adding flocking to a scene, since in most cases
that is what you will do.
Predator-Prey - This will create a pair of flocks - one predator, one prey. The prey will
have a Goal Director attached to it so that the predator flock will rush towards the
prey flock. The predator flock has an Avoid Director attached so as it rushes toward
the prey they scatter. You will want to adjust the base values
Edit...
Remove Selected, Remove All - Removes either the selected flocking generator or
director, or removes them all at once.
Duplicate - An exclusive operation (copy operations outside the Flocking window
do not affect what you have copied inside it) that allows you to duplicate Flocking
elements.
Rename - Renames the selected item.
Multithread - A toggle to optionally multithread flocking calculations. Some calculations
are actually quicker to calculate single-threaded, which is why this is left as an option.
Full Evaluation - Forces deformations to be evaluated per frame, to make sure the agents
react to the final deformed positions of the meshes. If you just use the regular Calculate
button Flocking takes a best guess if you need full evaluation or not, since full evaluation
is about ten times slower
Calculate all motions - The most important button in the Flock Master window. Make sure
you hit it every time before you hit play in the scene. Calculations should not take very
long to accomplish, even with complex flocking motions.

Items List
The listview on the left contains the following fields:

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A (checkmark)- Determines whether the element is active in the scene.

Class - Whether the item is a generator or director.
Type - What sort of generator or director the item is.
C - The display color in OpenGL
Scene item - the name of the item for the scene.

Generator/Director Cache Settings

Starting with the Cache tab since that is unique for all flock elements, this tab controls caching for
the scene to make it less processor-intensive.
Use Cache toggle - Ticking this will lock the Properties tab completely, you will not be able to
make new changes to the behavior of your flock or directors.
Cache filename - When Use Cache is on, this field is ghosted and serves only to be able to
read the cache filename and location.
Load Cache - This button is available whether you are using a cache or not and allows you to
load a different saved solution for your flock elements.
Save Cache - Available when Use Cache is not enabled, presents a file requester where you
can choose where your cache will be saved.

Director Properties

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Directors are the Flocking elements that direct flocks. There are several choices to make when
picking the type you want:
Goal - The flock will be drawn to this director in as direct a route as possible.
Arrive - As above, but there is a user-definable deceleration zone surrounding the director.
Avoid - The flock will flee this director in as direct a route as possible. If the Avoid director is
large, the flock may stutter as it tries to find its way around.
Deflect - The flock will flee this director in a more tangential fashion giving a smoother result.
Path - The animation path for this Director will be used as a path for the flock to follow.
Plane - The flock will not cross an infinite plane. Multiple planes can be set up to provide a
tunnel.
Goal and Avoid directors have the following options:
Range - Leaving this at 0 will affect the whole scene. If you have multiple directors in a scene
you can give them fixed ranges and when entering the range of a second goal some will peel
off to go to the new destination. The Range circle shown in the viewport is an indicator of
the linear falloff for the attractive power of the goal with maximum at the central point and 0
at the circle edges.
Weight - For a Goal or Arrive Director this dictates how an agent will make a choice between
two equidistant goals. A higher weight makes the director more attractive to the flock. For
Avoid or Deflect Directors weight determines how repellent the directors are when there are
multiple directors equidistant from the flock.
Strength - Directors all apply a change in speed to an agent. Strength is a multiplier of that
change. For an Avoid or Deflect Director Strength determines how far out from the central
point of the director the flock will be permitted to come. Set the Strength high enough and
the flock wont enter the sphere of influence at all.
Deflect directors add a further option:
Deflect Core - This is the inviolable core of a Deflect director. Flocks will try not to enter it.
Path directors add one additional option to Goal and Avoid directors:
Steps - Defines the resolution of the path.

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Arrive directors add two different additional options to Goal and Avoid directors:
Arrival Radius - This determines the size of the arrival point for the Director.
Decelerate Radius - This determines at what distance flocks should start to decelerate for
landing.
Plane directors have no options.

Path Example
The Motion Path option for a Director gives you a lot of direct control over your flock, with a little
bit of chaos as some fall out of the path you give them. It creates a very natural-looking pathfollowing animation. Heres a quick guide how it works:

1) Set your scene to 600 frames and change your viewport to Top. Zoom
out so you can see the whole width of the grid. Create a Null.
2) Give it a motion path over 300 frames. To simplify our starting example
make sure the path doesnt get too close to itself over its course.

3) In the Flocking Master window choose Add New... > From Scene Items > Director - Path.
4) Set the new paths resolution. You want it to follow the nulls
motion path quite closely. Here we have set 24 steps.
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5) Now Clone the Path null twice and change the two clones animation paths. The fact that
the frames used for the paths is the same does not affect how the paths work in Flocking.
6) Add a Generator in the Flocking window. By default it comes
in at the origin, which is great for our first path.

7) Hit Calculate All Motions in the Flocking window and you should see
that your scene isnt long enough for the flock to get to the ends of
both paths, but the fact they separate into two groups is nice.
8) We have added a couple of Arrive directors to the end of the right path and a Goal to the end
of the left path and made our flock massively larger. More paths could be added to further
subdivide the flock and the goals are radius-limited to only capture flocks that fly nearby.

Generator Properties
There is a main section common to all Generator types that lists several important things.

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OpenGL Color - Shows the color that will be chosen for the generator in OpenGL only. This
has no bearing on rendered output.
Display Preview - The percentage of your flocks you wish to show in Layout. If you are
creating very large flocking scenes you dont need the slowdown of showing all the
elements at once.
Visible Trail Frames - This shows a trail leading and following each flocking agent to the extent
you request. Setting to 100 will show the path an agent will take both 100 frames in advance
and 100 frames behind.
Show Details toggle - With this on you will see the collision circle around the agent and an
arrow denoting its direction and orientation. With it off, each agent is represented by a dot.
Use Variance toggle - This toggle enables the Agent Variance tab explained below to be used
otherwise it is grayed out.
Edit - This presents a dropdown with the following options:
Copy - Takes a copy of the current agent settings
Paste - Pastes previously copied settings into this panel
Copy to Variant - Copies the current base settings to the Agent Variance tab to reset the
values to the same.
Old Flight Mode - Provided for backwards compatibility with Flocking scenes set up in 11.0
- 11.0.3. Some users also prefer the flowing motion given to flocks by the initial algorithms,
but they do not work well with Arrive directors, which were added later.
There are four tabs for Generator Properties as follows:

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Flocking
Generator
Start/End Frame - If you wish for your generator to begin animating your flock for the
whole scene, leave these set to 0. If you wish a delayed takeoff set the Start value to a
number greater than 0 and the flock will start to leave the generator at the time you
choose. You will also need to change the End Frame for the time that the flock will have
completely left the generator.
Generator Shape - This dropdown offers two choices for the starting shape of your flock
Box and Sphere. If you have used Object Properties to attach a Flocking Generator to an
object you are also given two further choices:
Mesh Points - There are two options. The Use Max toggle will set an agent at every
vertex of the mesh, or you can use the Count field to determine how many you
want to create.
Mesh Polygons - As above. The agents will be placed at the center of each polygon.
Count X/Y/Z - If you are using the Box or Sphere options, you can decide how many
flocking agents you would like in your flock. For ground-based flocks use 1 in Y.
Size X/Y/Z - If you are using a Box generator this is the length of each side, if a Sphere,
the radius in each axis.

Agents
All the following options can be enveloped and driven by Textures.
Particles use Agent Size - This toggle allows you to duplicate the size you set here for
particles, to be rendered with HyperVoxels or other particle systems.
Agent Size - This is a hard sphere radius that agents cannot get closer than. Like
marbles stacked in a jar they can touch but they dont intersect, within the limits of the
algorithm.
Range - This is the range at which the agents attempt to avoid colliding with any other
agents. This isnt a hard collision, it simply directs agents away from each other to
maintain a gap between them. All entities in a flock such as birds or fish, will attempt to
steer to avoid crowding their neighbours too closely and this is the setting that defines
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the closest distance at which they start reacting. This couples with the Avoid Collisions
option detailed below.
Cohesion Range - This is the range at which the agents attempt to move towards each
other to maintain formation. It can be considered the stickiness of a group of agents,
whether they stay in a big group or tend to splinter into small groups easily. This
couples with the Cohesion setting detailed below.
Match Velocity Range - This is the range at which agents try to match the direction of
travel with their neighbours. In all groups of traveling things there is a general motion,
usually each agent moves mostly in the same direction as its neighbors. This couples
with the Match Velocity setting detailed below.
Avoid Collisions - This is the strength of the agents desire to avoid getting too close to
its neighbors. High values will make the agent move erratically, low values will produce
much slower reactions.
Cohesion - This is the strength of the agents desire to maintain formation. Higher values
would move agents quickly towards each other, low values would produce more
flowing movements.
Match Velocity - This is the strength of an agents desire to match the velocity of its
neighbors. Higher values will result in very uniform movement, like an army marching;
low values will result in very localized motion.
Acceleration m/s2 - How fast the flock can achieve its maximum speed to chase Goaltype directors or flee Avoid-types.
Min Speed m/s - If the flocks speed is not at 0, this is the minimum speed it will move.
Use more than 0 to simulate a flock of birds or school of fish.
Max Speed m/s - How fast the flock can travel.
Turn Rate H/P/B - Agents move freely in any direction and try to orient themselves
toward the direction of travel. This behaviour can be adjusted in the node editor, but
the Turn Rate defines in what axes and how fast the agents can turn. Note these axes are
relative to each agent. 0 values for any axis prevents rotation in that axis.

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Agent Variance
All the settings on this tab will be ghosted unless you toggle the Use Variance setting
above. When you use it then the settings become available. The Variance tab initially uses
the default values but you can specify a range for each option that is distributed randomly
between the agents. For example, if the Max Speed on the Agent tab is 10 and on the Variant
tab it is 20 and Use Variant is turned on, an agents Max Speed will be randomly fixed between
10 and 20. The Particles Use Agent Size toggle is common to both tabs, the state of the option
is the same regaardless of what tab youre on.

Takeoff
Initial Velocity m/s X/Y/Z - Assigns an initial direction for your flock to move in.
Use Normals - If you have assigned your flock to be generated by the vertices or
polygons of an object, you can use their normals as a vector for initial velocity
otherwise this control is disabled.

Flocking Nodally

LightWave 11.5 added new nodes for more complex Flocking.

RayCast(Flocking) - This node is designed to be used with the Custom Object Ray Receiver
in order to lock a flock to a surface. It has two inputs (Ray Origin, Ray Direction) and two
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outputs (Distance, Intersect). If you dont specify a Ray Origin or Direction, this node assumes
that you are trying to lock agents to a ground plane and so taking the Intersect output from
RayCastNode(Flocking) into New Position on the AgentControl destination node will normally
lock the agents to whichever object you have applied RayCastReceiver to (in Object Properties
> Custom Object) with no further modification needed.
AgentInfoNode - this node gives vector information on the Position, Velocity and Bank Up
Vector of an agent. It is most useful for adding banking to a flock. To do so, make sure that
the Turn Rate for your agents is set in the Agents tab of the Flocking window. You will need
some Bank and perhaps Pitch as well if your flocks motion is in all three dimensions. You
can see that we have also added a VectorAdd node. The addition of a small value (0.3-0.6 is
suggested) in the Y channel will bias the agents Bank rotation towards being upright. If you
dont add this node, the motion of a flock going round bends will be more chaotic with some
agents perhaps rolling completely.

Example: Chasing a Flock

This example shows both predator/prey behavior in Flocking and nodal control for flocks. Well
start with a new 600-frame scene and the new Predator-Prey entry on the Flocking Add New...
menu.

1) The default entries need some tweaking to get a more predator and prey-like setup. There
are never as many predators as there are prey, so well move the Generator away from the
Origin and reduce our attackers to only X: 2, Y: 1, Z: 2. Likewise well increase our prey flock
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to X: 10, Y: 1, Z: 10. Youll need to increase the box size to X: 5, Y: 1, Z: 5 too. Lastly, well
change the Range on the Avoid Director to 8.0 to give the flock a chance to get away.

2) Well add a hilly terrain with a subdvided, subpatched 100m2 plane. Go into Object
Properties and use a Displacement map to displace the terrain as you see fit. We
used a simple Turbulence procedural set to 15 x 15 m and raised some 8.5 m.

3) You need to tell Flocking that this terrain is your ground for the flock and their pursuers
and you do that by adding a RayCaster to the terrain in Object Properties > Custom Object.

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4) Now, you need to tell Flocking to tell both your predator and prey to use the ground. Make
sure Use Nodes is checked and go into the Node Editor from the Flocking Master window. Add
a RayCastNode from the Additional group and take its Intersect output into the New Position
input on the Agent Control destination node. Remember to do this for both generators.

5) Hit Calculate All Motions in the Flocking window and watch your flock flee
over the hills. Interestingly, once they reach the boundary of the terrain they
beam up since the RayCastNode has no ground to put them on.

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Using Objects as Goals or Avoids
Going into Object Properties on scene objects you can set any as Flocking items by visiting
the Geometry tab and choosing Flock Director or Flock Generator. If you choose a Goal Director,
Flocking will automatically deduce that you wish to use the polygons of your object as a goal,
but you need to manually select Avoid Mesh if you wish for an object to become something to be
avoided in your scene.

Example: Missile Launcher

We can use a new tool for Flocking to create smoke trails for a missile launcher firing. The scene
requires a bit of setup and youll need to provide your own missiles. terrain and missile launcher.

1) Create a flat polygon with 12 subdivisions. This will be our launcher. Send it to Layout and
open the Flocking Master window and choose Add New... > From Scene Items > Generator Mesh Polygons.

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2) Add a Null, call it Path. Animate its passage over the course of your scene. Dont make turns
that are too sharp or you may lose your missiles. You can clone this null a couple of times if
you like and change the course of the other nulls so you end up with a choice of paths your
missiles can take.

3) With your Path null selected, go back to the Flocking Master window and choose Add New...
> From Scene Items > Director - Path. You may want to increase the Steps in your path if the
course taken is intricate. We have given our three paths 39 Steps here.

4) Add another Null and call this one Emitter. This will be your particle generator, so add an
Emitter from the FX tab of Object Properties. In the settings for the emitter, go to the Motion
tab and set Explosion(m/s) to 2.0. In the Etc tab set Parent Motion to 0 %.

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5) Open the Motion Options for the Emitter null and add the Flocking - Item Motion modifier. You
can choose which of the flock will have particles trailing by changing the Index number here,
but were going to put this emitter on all of our missiles.

6) Clone the Emitter using Ctrl -C and set it to 11 clones. An emitter will
be placed on each missile in the flock. You can now use Instances to
change your flock members into missiles trailing smoke.

Sometimes the link gets lost between emitter and flock agent. Hitting Calculate for the PFX gets
that link going again.

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Example: Avoid and Attract Mesh
Meshes can be used both as things for flocks to avoid and things to attract flocks. In this simple
example well do both.

1) Youll need some asteroids. For this example, a level 4 tessellated sphere was
used sized to about 1.5 m, sized in two dimensions to make it flatter and
jittered to make it less regular. It was subpatched then frozen to give it more
detail. In a second layer, a level 1 tessellated sphere was created and resized
to be larger than our first layer. This is going to be our avoid mesh.

2) With our asteroid made, send it to Layout. Parent the Avoid layer to the Asteroid
itself so that it moves with it and you may want to use the Scene Editor to hide the
Avoid mesh since were more interested in what happens with the asteroid.
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3) Make a Clone Hierarchy of the Asteroid layer (so that the avoid layer is cloned too) and
move and rotate it a bit in front of the first asteroid. Now well open the Flocking Master
window and first select our original asteroid and use Add New... > From Scene Items >
Director - Goal. Now select the cloned avoid layer and choose Add New... > From Scene Items
> Director - Avoid. Change the Director Type to Avoid Mesh (as shown in the green inset).

4) Clone Hierarchy our cloned asteroid with its Avoid Mesh layer a few
times so you can create an asteroid field. Position them in all three
dimensions and change rotation on each to get more variation.

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5) Now create a generator in the Flocking Master window. Use Add New... > Generator. Move it
away from the goal asteroid. In our example weve moved it to about 15 m away in Z with
the avoid asteroids between the flock and its goal. Your scene elements are complete. Now
hit Calculate all Motions in the Flocking Master window. Your flock should go to the goal
asteroid and alight. If they dont avoid the other rocks we need to set the Probe Length and
Strength accordingly - by default they are at 1.0 and are sensitive to the scale of your scene.
When you select an Avoid Mesh director you should see a pincushion effect. This is that
directors Probe Length. Setting it too short will mean the flock has less chance of seeing it,
setting it too long will result in avoidance long before necessary. To get this good effect here
we have set it at 1.2 for each of the Avoid Mesh Directors and upped the Strength to 10.
6) This is a satisfying result, but lets expand. Directors dont have to stay as they are for
the whoie scene. Make your scene 500 frames. Using Envelopes, we can make the
asteroid nearest to where they started more interesting. Select the asteroid nearest
the Generator, not its child Avoid Mesh shell. Add a goal to it using Add New... > From
Scene Items > Director - Goal. Add an envelope to this goals weight starting at 0 ending
on 30 at frame 500. You can either change the TCB handles (as shown in the image)
so that you have an increasing curve of weight or put in a third key somewhere in the
middle so that the first asteroid doesnt attract the flock before they have reached the
other perch. Either way, your flock should avoid all the asteroids to get to the last one,
land, then take off again to head back to the first asteroid before the scene finishes.

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Example: Mecha Fish

This example is a loose guideline to steps to follow since your own will doubtless follow a slightly
different path, just like Flocking.
1) Well start with loading Lino Grandis menacing mecha fish. Use Load from Scene to bring in
the fish from \Flocking\Mecha_Fish\Scenes\Fish_Animation.lws.

2) In Layout, well set our scene length to 600 frames and make a new Generator for
a flock. Use a Box with a count of 4 x 4 x 4 and a size of 5 x 5 x 5. Open the Presets
window and double click School. That will give us a flock of 64 agents that behave like
fish. Once were happy with how they move we will vastly increase the numbers.
3) We need to apply our fish model to our flock, so call up Object Properties for the Generator
and go to the Instancing tab. Add an Instance Generator and set it to Particles. Add object
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and choose your fish model.

4) You now have a school of 64 fish with no goal, so we should add one.
In the Flock Master window add a new Goal Director. Move the goal
away from the fish so they have something to swim towards.
5) We have made an instanced school of fish swim towards our goal, but the
animation is fairly static and the fish stay in their initial cube shape so we need
to add more interest. On the path between our Generator and Goal add a new
Deflect Director and set its range to something adequate for your scene (try a
Range of 10 m and a Deflect Core of 5 m to start and if that seems overlarge adjust).
Calculate again and now your fish will split to go around the obstacle.
6) Its still not amazingly interesting so add two or three more Deflect directors and place them
offset to the side and above of the direct path, making sure that they at least overlap the
path a little and influence the flock as it passes them to the goal. They will also need Ranges
and Deflect Cores adjusted. Lastly, add some Avoids starting at their default Range of 1, but
with Envelopes set to stepped to explode them into 10 m balls as the school of fish passes.

7) Now lets move the Goal. Scrub through the timeline and watch for when your
flock reaches the goal. At this frame, move the goal to a different location and
keyframe it in place (if Autokey is active, this will happen automatically). Now
calculate and watch the fish change direction. If the new position for the Goal
takes the fish past the Avoid or Deflect directors so much the better.
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8) To get rid of our original model and only leave the instances in our scene, we need to visit
the Scene Editor and make sure that the original model is marked as inactive by unchecking
the left most column entry for it. This will stop the original fish from being rendered.

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9) You have probably noticed that we have six entries in our Scene Editor for MechaFish. Our
fish is animated through an MDD file and to prevent all our flock from making the same
movement at the same time, we have cloned our initial fish several times. We then visited the
I/O tab to use the new MDD Multi-Loader, explained in full on page 228.

10) Now that you have an animation you are satisfied with, all that remains is for our 64
fish to become a real school. Try upping the quantity to 10 on each axis for 1,000
fish, but youll also want to increase the size of the box they hatch from because
if its too small they will explode out of there trying to maintain their distance. Bear
in mind also that you will probably want to increase the size of your avoid and
deflect directors so they have more impact on a much larger quantity of fish.

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In addition to moving your goals, try using the Envelopes for size and weight for the Avoid and
Deflect directors to create sudden disturbances that make the fish create sudden turns or billowing in
their movements.

If you need to use Calculate all Motions once you have applied your MDD-animated,
subdivided fish, the chances are that calculations will be very slow. Turning SubD level down to 0 on the
fish helps a lot, but better to remove the instances until you are ready to render your final animation.

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FX Dynamics

LightWave has long had its own system of dynamics and they are presented here. They can
sometimes interact with the more modern Bullet dynamics though they often require their
own calculation or perhaps saving as MDD files. For most purposes, Bullet will provide better
simulations and largely supersedes the original FX dynamics. As of LightWave 2015, there is still
no Bullet equivalent for LightWaves own particle emitter, which means that you should be familiar
with the Particle Emitter at the least.

Adding Dynamics to your Scene and Objects

Items: Add: Dynamic Object
One way to quickly add dynamic objects to your scene is to use the Add Dynamic Object drop down
list (Items > Add Dynamic Obj). Choose between Collision, Wind, Gravity, and Particle from the drop
down menu. You can add one or more of these controllers to your scene. Then, each can be set
with its own Parameter settings to create just the effect you are looking for. A dialog prompts you
for a name when you add a dynamic object. Click OK to accept the default or type in the name you
wish to use and click OK.
Collision - The Collision controller lets you add an element for the particles and/or dynamic
objects in the scene to bump into (does not work with Bullet dynamic objects).
Wind- The Wind controller lets you add wind to blow your particles and/or dynamic objects
around (does not work with Bullet dynamic objects).
Gravity- Add a Gravity controller to add gravity-like effects to your particles and/or dynamic
objects motions (not needed for Bullet dynamic objects).
Particle- The Particle Emitter controller is the controller and the source for particles. There
are two emitter selections: HV Emitter, which adds a HyperVoxels Emitter to the scene, and
Partigon Emitter, which adds an emitter of single point polygons (partigons) to the scene

FX Browser
The FX Browser Panel is where you can add various controllers. From here, you can also open the
property panels for the controllers that you add. To open this panel, choose Utilities > Additional >
FX Browser.

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To add an FX controller:
From the Add pop-up menu, choose the controller you wish to add, load, or apply.

FX controllers can also be applied to an item in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel.

When you add a controller from the FX Browser that is not one of the Apply options, a null
object is added to the scene. Then, an FX custom object plugin is added (e.g., FX_Emitter, FX_Wind, etc.).
Just check out the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel.

To delete a controller:
Select and clear, just as you would any other Layout item (Items > Clear Selected or - on the numeric
keypad).

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To open a controllers property panel:
Choose the controller from the Item pop-up menu and click the Property button to open the
Properties Panel for the selected controller.

You can also display the Property Panel for the currently selected controller by choosing Utilities
> FX_Property or by accessing the Dynamics Tab in the Object Properties Panel.

You can open multiple property windows, one per dynamic type, by holding
the selection in the Item Select Menu.

Ctrl

then changing

The Start Button

Some effects require a pre-calculation before they can be previewed in your animations. These
are instances where you have particles interacting or have post-deformed geometry. By activating
the Start button, the FX will begin solving any simulations that are currently setup in the scene. The
progress of the simulation is displayed in the output pane located at the bottom of the Particle FX
Browser. A shortcut to this is on Layouts toolbar at Modify > IKB Calculate.

Many scenes dont need this step, but clicking Start wont do any harm if you are unsure.

The Save Button

Clicking the Save button saves all controller motions, using individual files, to your FX directory
(defined on the Option dialog). These can be loaded using the Load Motion option on the
Controllers Properties Panel.

Options Dialog
The Options dialog has some options that affect the manner in which LightWave computes
controllers.

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The Background Job option activates multithreading. The update by Background Job option will
update Layout when background tasks are complete. In most cases, you should leave these
options in their default state of off.
The Resolution setting adjusts the parameter used when performing the physics simulations.
The smaller the Resolution setting is, the more accurate the simulation will be. However, this also
has a direct effect on the rendering times.
In this dialog you can also set the FX Directory. This is the default directory used when saving
Controller settings.

Real-time Display
Just click the Play button in Layout and as you tweak the various controller parameters, you get
real-time updates of how your changes affect the particles.

Scenes with particles interacting or with post-deformed geometry require you to click the Start
button first to pre-compute some motions. Clicking Start wont do any harm if you are unsure.
You can control how FX Controllers are updated using the UpdateMode pop-up menu.

Auto updates all emitters as parameters are modified. Use this for fast systems or in low-particle
count simulations.
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If you have multiple emitters and are using the Select update, then only the emitter showing in the
Select pop-up menu, if any, will be updated.
Adaptive dynamically scales the number of visible particles based on your CPU performance. This
setting attempts to keep interactive performance at a useful level.
User turns off particle updating completely. You may force an update by either clicking the Start
button on the Particle FX Browser, or the Update button on the File Tab of the Emitter Controller
Panel. This setting is useful in situations with heavy particle counts.

Groups
You can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted interaction.
This also works with Particle FX controllers. This becomes very handy when you are working on a
complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to only affect certain objects.
<All Group> - Includes all groups.
<default> - Includes all items in scene.
<new group> - Create individual group. Can associate functions within a group.

You can associate particle FXs functions by using groups. If multiple emitters are in the same
group, you can associate settings. Also, if you do not want to associate, just by removing an emitter from
the group, you can stop the association.

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Object Properties: Dynamics Tab

Figure 1: Dynamics Tab, Add Dynamic drop-down menu.

The Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel is where you can add FX Dynamics and
manipulate their settings.

Add Dynamic
The Add Dynamic dropdown menu lets you select Dynamics to apply to an object.
Add Dynamic choices:

Cloth - ClothFX, applies Cloth Dynamics to a target object.

Soft - SoftFX, applies Soft Body Dynamics to a target object.
Hard - HardFX, applies Hard Body (Rigid Body) Dynamics to a target object.
Emitter - adds a ParticleFX Particle or Partigon Emitter to the scene. Note that if you wish
to add a HyperVoxel emitter rather than a particle emitter, you should use the Item: Add:
Dynamic Object: Particles menu option to add the HV Emitter.
Wind - adds a Wind controller to the scene, which can be placed, sized and oriented to affect
a specific portion of the virtual stage.
Collision - adds a Collision controller to the scene, which can be placed, sized and oriented to
affect a specific portion of the virtual stage.
Gravity - adds a Gravity controller to the scene, which can be placed, sized and oriented to
affect a specific portion of the virtual stage.

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Dynamics List Window
Once you have added a Dynamics type and selected it, you will see controls for that dynamics type
presented under the list portion of the Object Properties window. In addition, above the listview,
on the right hand side of the window there will be a Calculate button.

Calculate
Clicking on the Calculate button will perform the dynamics calculations for the scene. If the
FX Browser is not open, please note that if you change focus to another application or attempt
to move the Object properties panel, the viewports will stop tracking the dynamics progress
and stop refreshing. Layout will appear to be locked up, but the calculations are continuing,
and the interface will refresh again when they are complete. Having FX Browser (Utilities/Plugins/Additional/FX Browser) open during calculations is therefore recommended to avoid the
appearance of a lockup.

Cloth Dynamics
Cloth Dynamics (ClothFX) have a variety of uses for supplying physical characteristics and natural
movement simulation to thin, flexible materials.
Examples:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

Clothing on a character such as a dress or shirt

Flag blowing in the wind
Curtains
Tablecloth or anything that needs to be draped over another object
Mud flaps on a truck
Hair

ClothFX Menu Tabs, Basic Tab menu

Cloth Dynamics are located in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel. Choose Cloth from
the Add Dynamic drop down list and then follow that by clicking on ClothFX in the Dynamics list
window to open up the ClothFX options.

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Sew function in use

Basic Tab

Basic Tab menu

Group - you can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted
interaction. This also works with ParticleFX controllers. This becomes very handy when you
are working on a complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to affect only certain
objects.

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Fix - The shape of polygons with Fix on remains intact and is not affected by the dynamics.
In the image below, the ends of the cloth have been Fixed so that they stay in place while
the rest of the geometry is pulled down by gravity.

Fix applied to polygons indicated inside orange outlines these stay in place, while gravity
affects the rest of thecloth object.
Weight - defines the weight of the material. You can simulate the motions of a heavy material
by increasing the Weight value, and you can simulate the motions of a light material by
decreasing Weight.

The dress on the right hangs down more due to its weight and also will not flap as much.
Spring - controls the springiness or stiffness of the material. Reducing the Spring coefficient
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creates soft motions, while raising Spring produces motions with a stronger repelling force.
Setting the coefficient to an extremely large value creates stiff motions.
Viscosity - controls the level of impact that a collision will have on the shape of an object.
An object with higher Viscosity value tends to keep its shape more. If an object bounces,
a higher Viscosity value will have less bounce motion because the Viscosity absorbs the
bouncing force.
The pieces of cloth below are the same except for the Viscosity parameter. Here, a ball is
moving up, pushing the piece of a cloth. The cloth with the higher Viscosity value tends to
keep its shape more.

Effect of viscosity parameter on cloth. Left = lower viscosity, Right = higher viscosity

Resistance - This parameter is not a characteristic of the object itself, even though it can be
set per object. Resistance controls the amount of resistance of the environmental medium
in which the simulation is taking place. For example, this affects how quickly a cloth object
moves through the virtual air in the scene by determining how thick the virtual air is.
The default setting is 1.0; raising this number increases the resistance and lowering to a
number between 1.0 and 0.0 decreases the resistance. This allows the simulation of a wide
range of gaseous or even liquid media as the environment for the physical simulation. A
negative number amplifies a collision of the cloth object. To simulate behavior within a
normal atmosphere at sea level, a value of .14 would be appropriate. A value of 1.0 gives the
medium a character close to that of molasses.

If you are coming to LightWave from Maya, the function that is most similar from that
application is Damping.
Sub-Structure - The surface of a pure, elastic body model has a high degree of freedom,
which causes the object to easily distort. To prevent distortion, you can apply an auxiliary
form, called a Sub-structure, to restrict the instability of the surface. This can improve your
results with a two-dimensional object (i.e., one with no thickness) making it act as if it has
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some thickness. However, this reinforcement can require a high Sub-Structure setting that
can take longer to calculate.
When Sub-Structure is used on a square mesh, it creates something that looks like two
triangular polygons placed on top of each other in opposite directions. The Sub-structure
mitigates the tendencies to bend and to resist bending in certain directions.

Substructure applied to the quadrangles of a mesh.

When the Sub-structure value is non-zero, the auxiliary form is applied. The higher the value,
the more the form will have a tendency to keep its shape.
Hold-Structure - because a pure elastic body model simulates only the surface structure, it is
limited to two-dimensional motions, such as a bed sheet. In order to simulate elastic threedimensional motions, such as a lump of gelatin, a Hold-structure needs to be used. This
parameter causes a surface to tend to maintain its original shape, like gelatin does when it
jiggles.

The effect of Hold-structure is uniform throughout the surface, while with Sub-structure it is nonlinear, which will often result in a more natural look. You can use a combination of both to achieve just
the right result.
FX Button - Allows you to use a Vertex Map to control the value of an attribute (spring,
viscosity, etc.) or a function (delay, wave size, compress bump).

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FX Drop Down menu buttons

From the FX drop down menu the user can select a Vertex Map as well as change the base
value.
Vertex Map Will be displayed by name and type.

Example: LeftArm/Weightmap
Weight Map The weight value of each point is defined in Modeler when you create a Weight
Map. In Layout you cannot edit Vertex Map values. But the FX button allows you to add a
modifier that, when combined with the original values of the Vertex Map, provides a way
to adjust the values of the selected attribute/function without changing the original Vertex
Map value.
Pointset A pointset is created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from
a pointset. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier that, when combined with the
pointset (value of 100%), provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
Surface Surfaces are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from
a surface. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier that, when combined with the
surface (value of 100%), provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
UV UV maps are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from a
UV. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier that, when combined with the UVs value,
provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.

You can always check value information for points in the Point Info windows.
Base Selecting the <base = 0> option from the FX Drop Down menu will open a small
requester that allows the user to edit the base value. Changing the base value changes the
effective range. Example: Base=0% (0 100), Base=20% ( 20 100). The base value is 0% by
default.

For those interested, the equation used to calculate the vertex point value is: Vp = Vmap * value+
(1- Vmap) * base. Another way to look at the equation is: Vp=(value-base)*Vmap+base.

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Collision Tab

Collision Tab

Record Collision Points - When this is activated, ClothFX will record the time and location of a
collision, which will trigger a particle emitter that has been set up and that is parented to the
ClothFX object.

Record CP works with ParticleFX and Nozzle=Parent collision, but you cannot use it with FX
Collision and Parent Recorded CP (FX emitter>playback mode).
Fix By Event - This function will fix points that pass through a collision object that is set to
Event mode.
Collision Detect - allows other objects to influence the motion of a dynamic object. This
lets you create complex motions caused by obstacles in the path of the dynamic object.
The simulation is performed by taking an object that collides (the collision object) with the
elastic body model (dynamic object) into account in the calculation.
Exclusive Collision - When a collision object is selected from the list in this control parameter,
it becomes the sole collision object. All other collision objects are excluded from the
calculation.
Interaction - By Default you would want Interaction set to All so that all geometry will
interact with each other. However you have the option of limiting the interaction by Vertex
Maps.
Collision Offset - By default the collision offset is set to 0 so that the collision object will
collide with the surface of the target object, allowing the target object to deform. Increasing
the Collision Offset will result in the collision object deforming the target object at the
distance specified in the Collision Offset field.
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Collision offset
You should understand that the collision is detected using a point on the target object (elastic
body model) and a polygon of the collision object. As a result, a polygon of the target object can
possibly penetrate the collision objectusually an undesirable result. Use the Collision Offset
setting to avoid undesired surface penetration.
Bound - adds a rebounding speed change at collision.
Friction - Like real-world friction, the Friction parameter makes the surface of the dynamic
object less slippery. So, if you want the Dynamic object to tend to slip off the collision object,
set Friction to 0. If you want it to stick more, increase the value.

The settings on the right image have a higher friction causing the cloth to stick to the collision
object.
Fix Force - causes the dynamic object to stick to the surface and not slide around.

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The image on the right has a higher Fix Force setting.
Self Collision - The Self Collision setting helps prevent a soft or cloth objects mesh from
passing through itself when the object is transformed during the simulation. Self Collision
is calculated based on a point on the target object and a polygon on the collision object. If
a surface has Self Collision and Collision Detection active, Self Collision is computed on the
same surface.
Self Collision works in much the same way Collision Detection does, and there is no collision
detection for polygon edges. As such, you may also want to adjust Collision Offset to avoid errant
point penetrations.
Connected - Connected is a Self-Collision option that derives its name from the Select
Connected option in Modeler. When activated, a contiguous mesh within an object can selfcollide. When deactivated, adjacent meshes within a single object can self-collide with each
other, but any given mesh will not be able to collide with itself.
An example would be a character object that has been modeled with a complete body mesh and
with clothing as additional meshes that are not part of the body mesh, such as a T-shirt. The T-shirt
and the body of the character would be separate contiguous meshes - that is, in Modeler, selecting
a few polygons on the T-shirt and hitting Select Connected will select all of the polygons of the
T-shirt, but not select the polygons of the body. Selecting a few polygons on the body and hitting
Select Connected will select all of the polygons of the body, but not the T-shirt.
In ClothFX, if Self-Collision is on but Connected is de-activated, the T-shirt can collide with the body,
but not with itself. If Connected is activated, the T-shirt can collide with itself and with the body of
the character. Deactivating Connected, then, can speed up a self-collision calculation at the cost
of accuracy. Use only when separate meshes contained within a single object layer must collide
against each other, but do not have to collide with themselves. Do not deactivate this option when
dealing with curtains, windsocks, or any other situation where the material must self-collide with
areas actually connected to itself.
Double Side - Collision is detected even if the motion is from behind the polygon.
Advanced Tab

Figure 16: Advanced Tab

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Resistance Mode - Resistance mode tells the Resistance setting in Basic Tab how to react.
With some amount of Resistance applied, you can see as you change Mode settings how the
polygons will resist wind effects.
None - points move based on wind direction.
Polygon - points move based on wind direction + point normal.
Polygon (front) - points facing the wind move based on wind direction + point normal.
Polygon (back) - points facing away from wind move based on wind direction + point
normal.

Resistance Mode settings only apply to wind.

Mode Ratio- sets the amount of Resistance applied to specific effects set by Resistance Mode
versus standard. 75% sets 75% of the Resistance Mode and 25% of the standard resistance.
Compress Stress- controls the amount of compression a surface exhibits as a result of stress. A soft
fabric like cotton can be made using a large Spring value and a low Compress Stress setting.
A stiffer fabric would use a higher Compress Stress setting. An example for use: you could easily
make the apparent thickness of drapery vary with this setting.

Compress Stress affects the strength of Spring and Substructure spring forces when they become
compressed during the calculation. Suppose a polygonal edge, which represents a Spring force, is 1m in
length, and the Spring strength is set to 1000 and the Compress Stress to 30%. If the material is stretched
so that the edge becomes more than 1m in length, the Spring force will snap back with its full force of
1000. If the material is compressed so that the edge becomes less than 1m in length, the Spring force
will push the points back with a force of only 300 (30% of 1000). The same Compress Stress percentage
applies to Sub Structure forces when a Sub Structure spring is compressed below its original length.
Stretch Limit- To prevent a surface from stretching like rubber, lower the Stretch-limit below
the default value of 100%. This restricts the amount that the surface can be stretched.
Setting Stretch Limit to 0% turns it off completely. For free-moving cloth like flags and
curtains, one might set it as low as 1%. However, give clothing some breathing room in the
Stretch Limit, and do not lower it below 10% for clothing items like sleeves, shirts, and pants.
To reduce sagging in clothing, reduce the Polygon Size, not the Stretch Limit.

Although you could also increase the Spring value to reduce stretching, increasing that value can
make the behavior of the surface too complex and cause problems such as weird folds.

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Polygon Size- Changes the surface to a specified size. For example, a value of 90% reduces the
size of the surface to 90%. Use Polygon Size to reduce the looseness of a dress or to create
frills.
Fiber effect- Allows you to set an axis for the traditional Fiber effect, basically making a certain
axis stronger than the others. For example, setting Y as the axis makes the built-in folds of
the dress (dress_fx002) stronger so the folds arent disregarded during calculation.
Relax Start - When this option is on, the ClothFX object starts out with no Stress State,
meaning that the object is considered to be in its true or base state. Thus, if any
displacements are applied to the object on the first frame of the calculation, the resulting
form will be considered the true or base form of the object. This includes any Stretch/Size,
bones, displacement maps, or morphs present on the first frame of the calculation. ClothFX
will respect the size of each polygonal edge as the true length of each polygonal edge, and
it will stick close to the distorted proportions of the object during the calculation.
When Relax Start is turned off, ClothFX considers the undistorted state of the object as it would be
seen in Modeler to be the true or base state of the object. If the object is deformed by Stretch/
Size, bones, displacement maps, or morphs on the first frame of the calculation, the object is
considered to be stressed and will regain its true proportions during the calculation.
For example, take a sheet of polygons aligned with the XY plane and fix the uppermost row of
points. If this object is stretched to a value of 4 on the Y axis, and Relax Start is turned ON, then
the stretched version is accepted as the true version, and the calculation will be for a tall version
of the object, without any great fuss. If Relax Start is turned OFF, then the unstretched version is
regarded as the true form of the object. Because the object is stretched to four times its original
size on the first frame of the calculation, the effect is as though the object begins by being
stretched like a rubber band. As soon as you hit Calculate, the non-fixed points of this non-relaxed
object will SNAP back into distances between themselves and their neighbors that more closely
resemble the distances between them in the undistorted version of the object as would be seen in
Modeler.

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Etc. Tab

Figure 17: Etc. Tab. Note that the entry shown would be the setting to use for Earth-normal gravity.

Gravity(m/s^2)- Specify the direction and intensity of gravity along the world axes for this
particular dynamic object. Note that when you set gravity in the Etc Tab for your dynamic
object, it is not necessary to add a gravity controller separately. Conversely, if you add a
gravity controller and set your gravity characteristics properly there, it will not be necessary
to set gravity for the dynamic object on the Etc Tab. If you have a number of objects in the
scene that you wish to have affected by gravity, then it might save effort to add a gravity
controller and properly set it up and size it to affect all the necessary objects.

: The gravitational acceleration constant on earth is 9.81m/s^2. On planets with a less strong
gravitational pull, (such as the moon) it is much lower, whereas on planets with a stronger pull (such
as Jupiter) it is much higher. In LightWaves coordinate system, you would set gravity by entering a
negative value in the Y entry field; -9.81 m for Earth-normal gravity.
Resolution- Set the accuracy of calculation by how big the maximum error is.
When it approaches 0 the accuracy increases and errors will decrease, but calculation workload will
also increase so it will take more time to calculate.
Timestamp Method was introduced to resolve an issue where ClothFX could get stuck doing
very small timesteps in some cases. This would most often happen with meshes having vertices
surrounded by tiny polygons. The default is Velocity which is the old method, and Frequency is
the new method. Frequency does not always work, so if one doesnt work try the other.
View Feedback- Set the feedback in Layout when controlling ClothFX. When the display is
poor or the display speed is slow, you uncheck this.
Numeric Feedback- Set the numerical feedback in Layout when controlling ClothFX. When the
display is poor or the display speed is slow, you uncheck this.
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Presets- Similar to surface presets, ClothFX has 5 built in presets that give you a good place to
start. Presets include: Cotton Thin, Cotton Thick, Silk, Rubber, Jelly.

File Tab

Figure 18: File Tab

Load Motion- Loads a previously generated Motion file.

Clear Motion- Clears a loaded Motion file.
Save Motion- saves the generated motion to a file, which will be used subsequently to
deform the object.

After a motion file is saved, the name of the file will automatically be entered into the load field.
Load Limit- Loads a limited range of Frames. Example: If you have a MDD file with 2000 frames of
data you can limit loading to just 100 frames to make it less memory and processor intensive.

Playback Mode
Normal- Plays back all Motion settings of the .mdd file.
Local- Plays back based on the local translations (move, rotate and scale) of the object.
Allows a .mdd deformation on an object while respecting new motion applied to that object.
Distance Map- This adjusts the motion data to the movement of the object. When the speed
is 100%, 1s (second) of motion data is used to move the object a distance of 1m.
Speed- When Playback Mode is set to Local or Distant the user is able to control the playback
speed. One can also play the MDD file backwards from by setting Speed to 100% and
inputting the frame-length of the MDD file into Shift Frames. For example, if the user
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recorded a 300-frame MDD file, he could play it backwards by setting the Playback Mode to
Local, the Speed to 100% and the Shift Frames value to 300
Node Match- When Node Match is activated, the motion data can be played back on the
objects local position. Node Match allows one to play back MDD data recorded from an
object with a different point count and order as long as the points share the exact same XYZ
coordinates in Modeler. For example, suppose you had a castle model with a flag on top.
One could run ClothFX on the whole castle, but this would result in a large MDD file for such
a tiny detail, the flag. So, in Modeler, delete the castle polys and save the flag as a different
object. Record the ClothFX calculations on the flag, and save the MDD file. Load the castle
into Layout, apply ClothFX, load the MDD file calculated from the flag, set the playback to
Local and activate Node Match. Node Match will remap the MDD data recorded from the
flag-only object to the XYZ equivalents on the castle-with-flag geometry
Shift Frames- The user can shift the time the motion starts. Use Shift Frames if you need the
motion to start on an earlier or later frame. By default, the number entered is regarded as
a number of seconds to shift the .mdd file. If you prefer to use frames, enter the number of
frames followed by the letter f; -400f, for example, to shift so that the motion in the .mdd
file starts at frame -400.
Loop- The user has the option to loop the motion file in two ways.
Repeat- Plays the motion from start to finish and then repeats the motion from start to finish
continually.
Oscillate-Plays the Motion from start to finish and then plays it from the end frame
backwards to the start frame and then repeats the cycle. (Ping Pong motion)
Motion Size- Motion Size increases the distance relationship between points in a motion file.
Copy- Use the Copy button to copy the current settings between dynamic objects.
Paste- Use the Paste button to paste the current settings between dynamic objects.
Save- Saves all the settings contained in the ClothFX properties.
Load- Loads a saved Settings file. This is similar to using a Preset.
Scan Motion- Scans the motion of the object and applies the scanned results (.mdd file) to
the object.

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This means you dont have to apply another plug-in to scan the motion (including bones, etc). It
eliminates the steps of loading the motion file back in, and also enables you to quickly scan an
objects motion to allow for the use of EditFX on an object even if its not using dynamics.
Info- Clicking the Info button brings up a window that gives you the version # of ClothFX and the
MDD file information.

EditFX Tab

Figure 19: EditFX Tab

EditTool- Activates the ability to edit points. You will be able to visually see that youre in Edit
Mode in the viewport. All the points that make up the object will become highlighted and all
the EditTool functions will become active.

Figure 20: Sew function applied

Undo- The EditTool has its own undo. Click this button to undo the last edit that was made.
You can only undo one edit.
EditNode- Specify the ID number of the point to be edited. If the EditTool is activated, you can
select the target point from the Layout viewports by clicking on the point.
EditFrame- There are 4 modes to edit the Nodes (point) motion path.
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All- will edit the entire Motion Path.
After- will edit the current frame and everything after it.
Before- will edit the current Frame and everything before it.
Current- will edit only the current Frame.
EditStart/EditEnd- Use the EditStart and EditEnd Fix options to set the range of frames that
the user will be able to edit. All other frames will be fixed (locked).
EditSize- (Edit Range) This field changes the influence range.
Edit Falloff- This drop down is located to the left of EditSize. This will change the Falloff
settings to either None, Soft, Linear, or Hard. As shown in Figure 19, by default the setting is
Soft.
None- All vertices are influenced; in other words the whole mesh moves.
Linear- Deformation in the range of EditSize is attenuated linearly.
Soft- Deformation is attenuated smoothly in the range of EditSize.
Hard- Deformation occurs uniformly in the range of EditSize, and is not attenuated.
EditAxis- This sets the axis/axes in which the Node (point) can be edited. (All, X, Y, or Z)

You do not have to re-calculate when you move the path or keyframe data with EditAxis.
EditMap- This option lets you limit the portion of the object that is editable by giving the
user the option to edit by Vertex Maps.
SelectUpdate- When activated, you can re-calculate only the parts selected by EditNode. To
re-calculate, click Calculate with SelectUpdate checked.
Command- The Command drop-down offers two commands for use during the editing
process, Smooth and Makepath.
Smooth- Referring to the current frame, the movement of the parts that were selected by
EditNode will be smoothed. When EditStart and EditEnd are not specified, the movement
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of the selected parts to the current position will be smoothed across all the frames. When
EditStart and EditEnd are specified, it will make the position information smooth from the
specified frames to the current frame.
Makepath-This command will create a Null object whose path is identical to the motion path
of the selected part.
Sewing Tool- Enables Sewing Mode. Sewing Mode gives the user the ability to sew Nodes
(points) together.
Sewing- This button is the third step in a three-step process of sewing Nodes together using
the Sewing tool.
Steps to Sewing: Left Click on the first point and Right Click on the second point. Then click on
the Sewing button.

Current Sew Object- Drop down list located to the right of the Sewing tool enables the user to
choose which object is being sewn.
Link Node- Displays the Node that has been selected.
Event- This drop down menu determines whether the linked nodes will be Cut by an event or
sewn by an event.
Cut by Event- When an Event object passes through the Nodes (points), they will break apart
and become separated.
Sew by Event- When an Event object passes through the Nodes (points) they will be sewn
together (Merged).

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Soft Body Dynamics
Soft Body Dynamics (SoftFX) are used to set physical behavior characteristics and to calculate
physical simulations for an object that is intended to have an elastic nature through all or a
portion of its volume. Generally a soft body maintains its volume, but the shape will vary based
on motion and on forces being applied in the scene, including collision with other objects. Some
examples:
1)
2)
3)
4)

Jello wiggling on a plate

The Pillsbury Dough Boys tummy jiggling as he jumps around
A flat tire flopping as the vehicle comes to a stop
A ball deforming as it bounces on a floor

SoftFX is located in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel. Choose Soft from the Add
Dynamic drop down list and then follow that by clicking on SoftFX in the dynamics list window to
open up the SoftFX options.

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Input Tab

Group- you can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted
interaction. This also works with ParticleFX controllers. This becomes very handy when you
are working on a complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to affect only certain
objects.
Delay- Delays the deformation by a set amount of frames. Delay will not take effect until the
Delay check box is selected for motion force, wind force, or wind force direction.
FX Button- Allows you to use a Vertex Map to control the value of an attribute (spring,
viscosity, etc) or a function (delay, wave size, compress bump).
From the Effects drop down menu the user can select a Vertex Map as well as change the base
value.
Vertex Map Will be displayed by name and type.
Example: LeftArm/Weightmap
Weightmap The weight value of each point is defined in Modeler when you create a Weight
Map. In Layout you cannot edit Vertex Map values. But the FX button allows you to add a
modifier, that combined with the original values of the Vertex Map provides a way to adjust
values of the selected attribute/function without changing the original Vertex Map value.
Pointset A pointset is created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from
a pointset. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the pointset
(value of 100%) provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
Surface Surfaces are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from
a surface. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the surface
(value of 100%) provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
UV UVs are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from a UV. But
the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the UVs value provides a
way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.

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You can always check value information for points in the Point Info windows.
Base The base value is 0% by default. Changing the base value changes the effective range.
Example: Base=0% (0 100), Base=20% ( 20 100).

For those interested this is the equation used to calculate the vertex point value. Vp = Vmap *
value+ (1- Vmap) * base.
SoftFX has 3 inputs: Motion, Wind and Force.
Motion Force- Uses the Delay setting based on the motion of the object. The user has the
ability to change the amplitude as well as apply an envelope.
Motion Force Delay check box- Activates the Delay setting for Motion Force.
Wind Force- Uses the Delay setting based on wind present in the scene. The user has the
ability to change the amplitude as well as apply an envelope.
Wind Force Delay check box- Activates the Delay setting for Wind Force.
Force Direction- Forces the object to move along the axis selected (X, Y, or Z).
Force Direction Delay- Activates the Delay setting for Direction Force.
Force By Key- Only works when an envelope is applied. Takes the keyframes in the envelope
and applies a force for every key.
Force- The value that Force Direction uses. The user has the ability to apply an envelope.

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Operator Tab

Operator 1 and 2 Map a deformation can be applied to nothing, everything or a particular

Vertex Map.
Mode- How the Operator Map affects the objects deformation.
None default (no change)
Square Dampens the Operator Map so that the map is affecting the object
deformation 0% at the start of the map to 100% at the end of the map.
Invert- Reverses the Operator Maps original effect on the objects deformation.
Quad- Divides the maps effect on deformation into 4 equal regions.
Inv Square Reverse of Square. 100% at the start of the map and 0% at the end.
Inv Quad Reverse of Quad.
Effect Size- increases the amplitude of the deformation.

Left: Effectsize 50%; Right: Effectsize 200%

Wavecycle- number of cycles inside the deformation.

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Left: Wavecycle 1.0; Right: Wavecycle 8.0

Wave Size(s)- the frequency of the deformation.

Left: Wavesize 0.1; Right: Wavesize 0.4

Op1 Motion/Op2 Wind- Limits the operator 1 map to the motion of the object and limits the
Operator 2 Map to the wind. By activating these, the motion input affects the Operator 1
Map, and the wind input affects the Operator 2 Map.
Calculate Op2 Last- Applies operator 2 after everything in SoftFX has been calculated.
Operator Switch (blend operator)- if set to 50% it uses both Operator 1 and Operator 2 Map
equally. If set to 0%, it uses 100% of Operator 1 Map. At 100%, it uses 100% of Operator 2
Map. You can also have a Texture Map which will control this blending.

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Deform Tab

Collision Detect- reflects the influence of other objects upon the motion of an object. This lets
you create complex motions caused by obstacles. The simulation is performed by taking an
object that collides (the collision object) with the elastic body model (dynamic object) into
the calculation.
Exclusive Collision- Selecting an item from this list will exclude all other collision objects from
the calculation.
Collision Size- Determines how the force of the collision is distributed across the SoftFX
object.

Delays- Delays the reaction of the object returning to its original shape.
Fix By Event- This function will fix points that pass through a collision object that is set to
Event mode.
Keep Root (keep original size)- object will keep its original size through SoftFX calculations. For
example, you start with a 12 ruler. With Keep Root unchecked, this ruler might stretch to 14.
If Keep Root is checked it will maintain 12.
Follow To- Uses these modes:
Path - Deforms the object along its motion path.
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Wind Deforms the object in the direction of the wind.
Gravity deforms the object based on the gravity emitter.

Normal , Follow To Path

Path Shift- shrinks the root size (original size).
Ring- Ring does for a cylinder what Keep Root does for a straight line. You are limited to only
4 rings for calculation but can use Hard link or Meta link to apply it to objects with more then
4 rings.
A Circle is one Ring. A Cylinder contains 2 Rings.

Limit Size- Drop down menu- When activated:

Max Size-Will limit the size of the deformation by clipping it to the limit size.
Resize- Will limit the size of the deformation by shrinking it to the limit size.
Limit- Amplitude setting for the Limit.
Vector Limit- Constraining the movement to a particular axis, Normal, and object radius.
X - Becomes deformed only in the x direction.
Y - Becomes deformed only in the y direction.
Z - Becomes deformed only in the z direction.
X (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local x direction of object.
Y (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local y direction of object.
Z (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local z direction of object.
XY - Becomes deformed only in the XY direction.
YZ - Becomes deformed only in the YZ direction.
ZX - Becomes deformed only in the ZX direction.
XY (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local XY direction of object.
YZ (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local YZ direction of object.
ZX (local) - Becomes deformed only in the local ZX direction of object.
Object radius - Becomes deformed only in the spherical direction, which centers pivot.
Normal vector - Becomes deformed only in the normal direction.
NV-Front - Becomes deformed only in the direction of normal grain side.

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NV-Back - Becomes deformed only in the direction of normal reverse side.
Limit Ratio -percentage of the Vector Limit.

Bump Tab

Compress Bump- Applies bump (bulge) to polys that are under compression (push) and
maintains the objects volume.
FX Button- Allows you to use a Vertex Map to control the value of an attribute (spring,
viscosity, etc) or a function (delay, wave size, compress bump),

From the Effects drop down menu the user can select a Vertex Map as well as change the base
value.
Vertex Map Will be displayed by name and type.
Example: LeftArm/Weightmap
Weightmap The weight value of each point is defined in Modeler when you create a Weight
Map. In Layout, you cannot edit Vertex Map values. But the FX button allows you to add a
modifier, that combined with the original values of the Vertex Map provides a way to adjust
values of the selected attribute/function without changing the original Vertex Map value.
Pointset A pointset is created in Modeler. In Layout, you cannot add or subtract points from
a pointset. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the pointset
(value of 100%) provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
Surface Surfaces are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from
a surface. But the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the surface
(value of 100%) provides a way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.
UV UVs are created in Modeler. In Layout you cannot add or subtract points from a UVs. But
the FX button allows you to add a modifier, that combined with the UVs value provides a
way to adjust values of the selected attribute/function.

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You can always check value information for points in the Point Info windows.
Base The base value is 0% by default. Changing the base value changes the effective range.
Example: Base=0% (0 100), Base=20% ( 20 100).

For those interested this is the equation used to calculate the vertex point value. Vp = Vmap *
value+ (1- Vmap) * base.
Negative Bump - Applies negative bump (dented) to polys under tension (pull).
Cycle Bump - Generates bump(s) across the Vertex Map selected. The higher the cycle the
more bumps generated.
Cycle - Number of bumps generated by Cycle Bump.
Bump Offset - Allows you to create a bump/negative (bulge//dent) without any compressed
polys.

there must be a compressed bump or negative bump value for Bump Offset to function.
Bump Limit - Limits the maximum effect of the bump value(s).
Make Wave By - Uses the Vertex Map information to create a rolling wave.
Wave Size - Amplitude of the wave created. At a higher value the total height of the wave
increases.
Loop Cycle - Effects number of waves generated.
Loop Speed - Effects how fast the waves move across the object.

File Tab

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Load Motion - Loads a previously generated motion file.
Clear Motion - Clears a loaded Motion file.
Save Motion - saves the generated motion to a file, which will be used subsequently to
deform the object.
Shift Frames - Shifts the starting playback frame of SoftFX data. By default, the number
entered is regarded as a number of seconds to shift the motion of the .mdd file. If you prefer
to use frames, enter the number of frames followed by the letter f; -400f, for example, to
shift so that the motion in the .mdd file starts at frame -400.

Playback Mode
Normal - Plays back setting all motion to .mdd file
Local - Plays back based on the local translations (move rotate and scale) of the object.
Allows an .mdd deformation on an object while respecting new motion applied to that
object.
Copy - Use the Copy button to copy the current settings between dynamic objects.
Paste - Use the Paste button to paste the current settings between dynamic objects.
Save - Saves all the settings contained in the SoftFX properties.
Load - Loads a saved settings file. Similar to using a Preset.
View Feedback - Set the feedback in Layout when controlling HardFX. When the display is
poor or the display speed is slow, you uncheck this.
Numeric Feedback - Set the numerical feedback in Layout when controlling HardFX. When
the display is poor or the display speed is slow, you uncheck this.

Animation Feedback
Info - Clicking the Info button brings up a window that gives you the version # of ClothFX
and MDD file information.

EditFX Tab

Edit Tool - Activates the ability to edit points. You will be able to visually see that youre in Edit
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Mode in the viewport. All the points that make up the object will become highlighted and all
the Edit tool functions will become active.
Undo - The Edit tool has its own undo. Click this button to undo the last edit made. You can
only undo one edit.
Edit Node - Specify the ID number of the point to be edited. If the Edit tool is activated, you
can select from the Layout by clicking on the point.
Edit Frame - There are 4 modes to edit the Nodes (point) motion path.
All - will edit the entire Motion Path.
After - will edit the current frame and everything after it.
Before - will edit the current Frame and everything before it.
Current - will edit only the current Frame.
Edit Start/Edit End- Use the Edit Start and Edit End Fix options to lock off frames from being
edited. This is the range of frames that the user will be able to edit. All other frames will be
fixed (locked).
Edit Size - (Edit Range) This field changes the influence range.
Edit Falloff - This drop down is located to the left of Edit Size. This will change the Falloff
settings to either None, Soft, Linear, or Hard. By default the setting is Soft.
None - It has an influence on all apexes, in other words the whole mesh moves.
Linear - Deformation in the range of editSize is attenuated to linear.
Soft - Deformation is attenuated smoothly in the range of editSize.
Hard - Deformation occurs uniformly in the range of editSize, and is not attenuated.
Edit Axis - This limits the axis in which the Node (point) can be edited. (All, X, Y, or Z)
Edit Map - This option lets you limit the portion of the object that is editable by giving the
user the option to edit by Vertex Maps.

Command
Smooth - Referring to the current frame, the movement of the parts that was selected by
editNode will be smooth. When editStart and editEnd are not specified, the current position
will be copied to all the frames. When editStart and editEnd are specified, it will make the
position information smooth from the specified frame to the current frame.
Makepath - This command will create a Null object whose path is identical to the motion
path of the selected part.

Hard Body Dynamics

Hard Body Dynamics (also called Rigid Body Dynamics or Geostatic Simulation) are used to set the
physical interactions and characteristics of bodies that are solid, or fixed in shape. Some examples:
1) Bowling Pins
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2)
3)
4)
5)

Windowpane breaking
Objects exploding into pieces
Dominoes
Pinball machine

HardFX will easily create rigid body characteristics and behavior when applied to a goal object in a
scene. You then need to set the Weight, Reflection, and Collision settings and calculate.
The object that has an impact will rotate and move according to its shape and size. It will
automatically calculate the result so that the outcome will be more realistic.
You do not have to create individual objects for the pieces that break into parts for calculation. If
the points are connected as a continuous surface, or if it is a group, it will be determined as parts.
Also, it is possible to create the events as a trigger.
One of the big features is the Edit tool which allows you to adjust the path of the objects by simply
dragging the mouse, and to move, rotate, and smooth the motion itself. With this addition, you
do not have to calculate every time you make some changes. As a result, you can easily create the
movement that you wish.
HardFX is located in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel. Choose Hard from the Add
Dynamic drop down list and then click on HardFX in the list to open up the HardFX options.

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Basic Tab
You can set the basic settings like air resistance, weight, and size.

Group - you can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted
interaction. This also works with ParticleFX controllers. This becomes very handy when you
are working on a complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to only affect certain
objects.
<default> Includes all groups.
<new group> Creates an individual group and can associate functions within a group.

You can associate with ParticleFXs functions using group function. If it is in the same group, you
can associate settings. Also, just by removing from the group, you can break the association.
Piece Mode - Setting for how HardFX will treat the object.
1piece - Make all polygons as one piece.
Parts- Make polygons that have common points as one piece.
1piece>parts (collision) - When it starts, it will be in 1 piece mode, but with Collision, it
will change to parts mode.
1piece>parts (event) - When it starts, it will be in 1 piece mode, but with a Collision
event, it will change to parts mode.
The events detection is made by each parts pivot.
Adv. Resistance - Changes the calculation of the air resistance to an Advanced Mode. Usually,
the value for air resistance is set only in Resistance; however, by turning Adv. Resistance on,
it will include the objects XYZ ratio. This helps create realistic physical movement like leaves
falling.

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: If the value for the resistance is 0 or the ratio of each part is the same, even if you turn on Adv.
resistance, you will not get any effect. In the case of a sphere (with same radius), since XYZ ratio are the
same, you will not get any effect.
Size - used to set the size of the object that will be used for collision. The size will be the
percentage of each part.
Size Effect (weight) - Proportionate to each parts weight to size. By turning it on, you can set
weight proportional to the size (scale).
Weight - Sets the mass for each part. A higher value will increase the velocity from the items
origin, while a lower value slows the velocity.
Size Effect (Resistance) - Controls the relationship of each parts resistance to size. By turning it
on, you set resistance proportional to size (scale).

If the value for the resistance is 0 or the ratio of each part is the same, even if you turn on Size
Effect (resistance), you will not get any effect.
Resistance - This one is not a characteristic of the object or part itself, even though it can be
set per object, per group or per part. Resistance controls the amount of resistance of the
environmental medium in which the simulation is taking place. For example, this affects how
quickly an object or part moves through the virtual air in the scene. The default is 1.0; raising
this number increases the resistance to the items movement and lowering to a number
between 1.0 and 0.0 decreases the resistance. This allows the simulation of a wide range of
gaseous or even liquid media as the environment for the physical simulation. To simulate
behavior within a normal atmosphere at sea level, a value of .14 would be appropriate. A
value of 1.0 gives the medium a character close to that of molasses. This can be used as a
way to differentiate the behavior of differing parts or objects within a given scene.

If you are coming to LightWave from Maya, the function that is most similar from that
application is Damping.

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Fix
Sets a Fix each parts pivot.
Free - Will not fix.
Spring Fix - Fixes with a spring, causing a back and forth motion.
Fix - Fixes.
Spring - When Spring Fix is selected, this represents the power of the Spring, which acts like a
rubber band.
Spring Length - Setting for length when spring power is 0. Spring length is the length of the
spring and with the length of spring offset of the pivot, it moves freely. Depending on the
value of spring, spring length will vary.
Gravity - Setting for downward (-y) gravity.

Rotation Tab
The Rotation Tab will set the parameters for rotation.

Axis -Restricts rotation along the specified axis.

Free - Not restricted
x axis - Allows rotation only along the X axis.
y axis - Allows rotation only along the Y axis.
z axis - Allows rotation only along the Z axis.
xz axis - Allows rotation only along the X and Z axis.
xy axis - Allows rotation only along the X and Y axis.
yz axis - Allows rotation only along the Y and Z axis.
Impact Effect - Settings for the effect on rotation when there is an impact.
Roll - Creates rotation depending on the size and velocity.
Force - Creates rotation depending on the impact. This is useful for regular physical
movement.

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None- No effect to the rotation.
Stop - Stops the rotation.

If the Impact effect mode is roll, you cannot assign Y axis rotation to the Axis. Roll refers only to X
and Z rotation.
Wind Effect - Setting for rotation from the effect of Wind.
None- Does not effect the rotation.
Accelerate- Strengthens the current rotation.
Roll- Creates perpendicular rotation to wind and moving direction.
Spin- The object will rotate around the axis that it is moving along..
Size Effect (torque)- Makes a ratio to each parts torque to size. By turning it on, you can set
torque proportional to the size.
Torque Min- Sets the minimum value for force for the rotational direction. By combining
it with torque Max and giving a different torque to each part, you obtain a different
rotation for each part.
Torque Max- Sets the maximum value for force for the rotational direction. By
combining it with torque Min and giving a different torque to each part, you obtain a
different rotation for each part.
Shift- Sets the direction of the pivot shift.
Random- Moves the pivot point in a random direction.
x shift- Moves the pivot point in the X direction.
y shift- Moves the pivot point in the Y direction.
z shift- Moves the pivot point in the Z direction.
object pivot- Sets the parts pivot as the objects pivot.
Pivot Shift- Moves the pivot of the rotation towards the direction set in shift. The
amount is the percentage of the parts size.
Collide- Restricts the movement of Resist (spin).
Free- Resist (spin) will always be on.
Collide- Resist (spin) will turn on only when a collision occurs.
Collide (axis)- Resist (spin) will turn on only when collision occurs and the axis is
perpendicular to the collision surface.
Resist (spin)- Applies resistance to the rotational direction. This is useful when speed
decreases by friction.

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Swing- Fixes each parts position. Useful when you want to create a jiggly movement.
Free- Will not fix the position.
Swing- Turns on swing for fixing the position.
Swing (wind)- Turns on swing and also adds wind to the jiggle.
When you have roll or spin selected in wind effect, the effect of the wind will be
invalidated.
Spring- Sets the restoring force when swing is on.

The value for spring power is for each rotational direction.

Switch By- Changes the setting by the specified trigger.
Changed group- When the group is changed in Collision, settings will change.
Event- When an event is given by Collision, settings will change.
New Impact Effect- Changes the mode of impact effect when the trigger set in switch
by is given.

: Supplement: By default, HardFX sets the axis of the calculated parts to the objects pivot, unless
it is changed by Shift or Pivot Shift.
Set Shift to Object Pivot to make the objects pivot point the center of the axis,.

Collision Tab
Settings for collision.

Exclusive Collision- Selecting an item from this list will exclude all other collision objects from
the calculation.
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Collision By- Sets the detection method for collision.
Node- Detects the objects vertex.
Box- Detects with a box vertex including the object.
Sphere- Detects the sphere set, in size, in Basic Tab.

From let to right: node, box, and sphere

Collision Node- When Collision By is set to Node, you can select the vertex of collision
detection by using Vertex Maps.
Stop By Event- With Collision: Event, the movement will stop. It will move again with
startByCollision or RestartByCollision. Event is determined by each parts pivot.
StopByStabilizer - will attempt to stop a dynamic object from continually oscillating if the
calculation reaches a set amount.
Start By Collision
Start By Collision-Usually, an animation starts from the start of the calculation, but when
you select StartByCollision, the animation is made after the collision is determined.
Restart By Collision- The animation is made after the collision is determined. The
difference with StartByCollision is that even if there is no collision, the animation is still
created.

StartByCollision is valid only with Collision. It will not work with two HardFX.
Break Distance- Sets the condition for Start By Collisions collision factor. The calculation
will not start if the distance is shorter than the specified distance.
Self Interaction- Sets the interaction within the same object.
None- No calculations made for interaction.
Sphere- Detects the sphere set, in size, in Basic Tab.
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Box- Detects with a box vertex including the object.
Interaction- Sets the interaction between objects.
None- No calculations made for interaction.
Sphere- Detects the sphere set, in size, in Basic Tab.
Box- Detects with a box vertex including the object.
Bounce- Sets the power of the interaction. When the relative speed is kept at 100% after
collision, the energy of the collision is not lost.

Force Tab
Applies settings for amount and behavior for the types of force that will be applied.

Force Mode-Sets the type of force that will occur.

Start- Force will occur at the beginning or when started by StartByCollision.
break(1piece>parts)- In Piece mode, when you select 1piece>parts, force will occur
when it starts to break.
Event- Force will occur from FX_Collisions event mode. The detection will be each parts
pivot.
Initial Axis- Set the axis of the rotational power.
Random- Sets the axis to a random direction.
x- Sets axis to X direction.
y- Sets axis to Y direction.
z- Sets axis to Z direction.
Local Axis- When activated, specification for Velocity(m/s) is set to the objects local axis.
Velocity(m/s)- Sets the velocity of the force along the specified axis.
Rotation (c/s)- Sets the rotational power by rotational speed (cycles/sec).

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File Tab
Manages copy, paste, and HardFXs motion data.

Load Motion - Loads a previously generated motion file.

Clear Motion - Clears a loaded Motion file.
Save Motion - Saves the generated motion to a file, which will be used subsequently to
deform the object.
Playback Speed - This will set the percentage of the playback speed of HardFX data about to
be played.
Shift Frames - Shifts the playback starting frame of HardFX data. By default, the number
entered is regarded as a number of seconds to shift the motion of the .mdd file. If you prefer
to use frames, enter the number of frames followed by the letter f; -400f, for example, to
shift so that the motion in the .mdd file starts at frame -400.
Local - Plays back based on the local translations (move, rotate and scale) of the object.
Allows an .mdd deformation on an object while respecting new motion applied to that
object.
Copy - Copies the current settings between dynamic objects.
Paste - Pastes the current settings between dynamic objects
Save - Saves all the settings contained in the HardFX properties.
Load - Loads a saved settings file. Similar to using a Preset.
Resolution - Sets the accuracy of calculation by how big the maximum error is. When it
approaches 0 the accuracy increases and errors will decrease, but the amount of calculation
will also increase, resulting in longer processing times.
View Feedback - Sets the feedback in Layout when controlling HardFX. When the display is
poor or the display speed is slow, uncheck this.
Numeric Feedback - Sets the numerical feedback in Layout when controlling HardFX. When
the display is poor or the display speed is slow, uncheck this.

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EditFX Tab

Edit Tool - Activates the ability to edit Nodes. To edit, you will have to calculate HardFX, or
load HardFX data.
Undo - The Edit tool has its own undo. Click this button to undo the last edit. You can only
undo one edit.
Edit Node - Specify the number of the parts to be edited. If the Edit tool is activated, you can
select from the Layout by clicking the parts.
Lock - Displays whether the parts specified by editNode are in Lock state or not. When
parameters like size is changed by Value, it will be in Lock state. In this state, even if the size
parameter is changed from the original, the Locked parameter will not change. To activate
the size parameter, uncheck the Lock.
Edit Frame - Specify the frame(s) to be edited.
All - All frames will be editable.
After - Can edit frames before the count.
Before - Can edit after the count.
Current - Can edit only the current frame.
Edit Axis - Specify the direction to edit.
move(xyz) - Move the selected parts.
move(x) - Move the selected parts to X direction.
move(y) - Move the selected parts to Y direction.
move(z) - Move the selected parts to Z direction.
rotation(x) - Rotate the selected parts to X axis.
rotation(y) - Rotate the selected parts to Y axis.
rotation(z) - Rotate the selected parts to Z axis.
bend(x) - Rotate to X axis by making the center as the location data and rotation data
from the selected parts.
bend(y) - Rotate to Y axis by making the center as the location data and rotation data
from the selected parts.

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bend(z) - Rotate to Z axis by making the center as the location data and rotation data
from the selected parts.
Fix Edit Start - Activates EditStart. When activated, the current frame value is inputted in
EditStart. When this is not specified, all the frames before the current frame will be edited.
When you specify fix, you can get a smooth edit effect with EditStarts frame, but when you
press Ctrl key while dragging, you will get a linear edit effect.
Edit Start - Fixes the specified frame value and you can get a smooth edit effect between the
current frames.
Fix Edit End - Activates EditEnd. When activated, current frame value is entered in EditEnd.
When this is not specified, all the frames after the current frame will be edited. When you
specify fix, you can get a smooth edit effect with EditEnds frame, but when you press Ctrl
key while dragging, you will get a linear edit effect.
Edit End - It will fix the specified frame value and you can get a smooth edit effect between
the current frames.
Value Type - Select the parts data to edit using value.
Size - Changes the size parameter for the parts selected in editNode.
Weight - Changes the weight parameter for the parts selected in editNode.
Resistance - Changes the resistance parameter for the parts selected in editNode.
Torque - Changes the torque parameter for the parts selected in editNode.
pivot(x) - Changes the pivots X axis for the parts selected in editNode.
pivot(y) - Changes the pivots Y axis for the parts selected in editNode.
pivot(z) - Changes the pivots Z axis for the parts selected in editNode.
Value - Sets the value for selected item in Value type. When edited, Lock will be checked.
In this state, even if the original parameter is changed, the Locked parameter will not
change. To activate the size parameter, uncheck the Lock.
Selected Update - When activated, you can re-calculate only the parts selected by editNode.
To re-calculate, activate Calculate with SelectUpdate checked. You do not have to recalculate when you move the path or key frame data with editAxis

Command
Smooth -Referencing the current frame, the movement of the parts that was selected by
editNode will be smooth. When editStart and editEnd are not specified, the current position
will be copied to all the frames. When editStart and editEnd are specified, it will make the
position information smooth from the specified frame to the current frame.
Make Path - This command will create a Null object whose path is identical to the motion
path of the selected part.

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ParticleFX (Emitter)
With LightWaves integrated particle system, ParticleFX, you can create scintillating effects like
sparks, explosions, liquids, smoke, and much more. Because the system is integrated, there is no
need for a secondary viewing interface or duplication of existing items like cameras. Everything is
handled within the normal Layout interface, reducing the learning curve tremendously.

ParticleFX features several basic controllers: Emitters, Wind, Collision, and Gravity. You can add one
or more of these controllers to your scene. Then, each can be set with its own parameter settings to
create just the effect you are looking for.

Adding a Particle Emitter

If you wish to add a new Particle Emitter to your scene, choose Items > Dynamic Object > Particle.
You can also add a particle emitter by choosing Emitter from the Add Dynamic drop down menu
on the Dynamic Tab in the Object Properties Panel.

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The main difference between adding an emitter from the Dynamic Objects drop down menu is
that you have the option of creating a Partigon Emitter by choosing it from the Emitter Type drop
down menu.

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Partigons are a special object type for particles. Partigons provide a means for particle systems
(like ParticleFX) to automatically generate single-point polygons as needed. You can apply surface
attributes to single-point polygons and, thus, make them visible when they render.

Use the Particle2Partigon (Utilities > Additional > Particle2Partigon) function to convert a
Particle Emitter into a Partigon Emitter.

Emitter Types
There are two emitter types: HVEmitter and PolygonEmitter. Either type automatically uses the FX_
Emitter custom object plug-in to create the particles. The difference between the two selections is
the type of object that each uses in Layout, which affects how they render.
HVEmitters use null objects that are invisible by themselves. To render particles from HVEmitters,
you must add the HyperVoxels volumetric plug-in on the Volumetrics Tab of the Effects Panel. Then,
on the HyperVoxels Panel, activate the HVEmitter object. If you use gradients with HyperVoxels
parameters, special particle-related Input Parameters will be available.
PolygonEmitters, on the other hand, use partigon objectsspecial objects designed specifically
for use by particle systems. Essentially, they generate single-point polygons on the fly. Single-point
polygons have a surface and you can use normal surfacing techniques. The surface will even be
visible in shaded OpenGL viewports.
You can achieve many effects, like fireworks and sparks, by using PolygonEmitters alone (i.e.,
without HyperVoxels). You can save significant rendering time compared to HVEmitters, which
require HyperVoxels for rendering.

PolygonEmitters can use HyperVoxels just like an HVEmitter can. As such, you may want to
use PolygonEmitters exclusively to avoid confusion. If you do not wish to see the particles (e.g., when
HyperVoxels are transparent), just deactivate the object on the Scene Editor. This will not affect the
rendering of the Hypervoxels.

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Using an Object as an Emitter
You can use a LightWave object as an emitter by adding Emitter from the Add Dynamic drop
down menu on the Dynamic Tab in the Object Properties Panel. You must also use one of the
objectNozzle settings discussed below under Emitter Controller.

The custom object bounding box will continue to appear.

Generator Tab
On the Generator Tab, you set parameters relating to the creation of the particles.

Group
When you work with multiple controllers, you may want to isolate specific groups. That is, perhaps
you want Emitter (1) affected by Wind (1), but you want Emitter (2) to be affected only by Wind (2).
This is easily accomplished by using groups.
The <default> group is a special global group that disregards independent groupings. Thus, if an
emitter is set to a defined group (e.g., new_group), a wind controller set to <default> will still affect
it.
<default> - Includes all groups.
<new group> - Creates an individual group. Can associate functions within a group.
Once you add a new group, it appears in the Group pop-up menu, where you can select it, as
desired, to associate groups of controllers.

The Group feature works in conjunction with the Other Dynamic tools! Thus, if you add an
emitter, a wind controller, and a soft body (Dynamic Object) element to the same group, they are all
affected by the wind!

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You can use the Group feature to disable a controller by simply setting it to a group not
associated with an emitter.
The Birth rate works in conjunction with the Generate by setting. Essentially, it determines how
many particles are born per the Generate by setting. The texture T option generates particles
where the texture exists.
Generate by has several possible settings. With the frame and sec options, every new frame or
second, the number of particles set as the Birth rate are created.
When Generate by is set to speed, it creates the particles based on the speed of the emitter, caused
by moving it. You need to keyframe some movement for the emitter to use this setting. The faster
the movement, the faster the particles are created. The effect is similar to salt coming out of a
saltshakerthe harder you shake it, the more salt comes out.
When Generate by is set to collision event, the particles are created when a collision event occurs.
You need to use a collision controller whose Mode is set to event.
When Generate by is set to wind, particles are created if the wind speed exceeds the threshold1
setting (Motion Tab). (Threshold2 has no impact here.) The force of the wind has no effect on the
birth rate. The windspeed setting is similar, but the birth rate is affected by the wind force. The
greater the wind force, the greater the number of particles born.
The Nozzle setting determines the shape of the emitting source. With box, particles are emitted
from inside a box. With sphere, particles are emitted from inside a sphere. With cone, particles are
emitted from inside a cone.

For best results when using cone as the nozzle type, some Velocity and Vibration settings (nonezero) should be added in the Motion Tab.
You can use geometry as an emitter, by adding the FX_Emitter custom object to any loaded
object. This will allow you to use the Object-vertices, Object-normal, Object-surface, and Objectline nozzle types. When you use these nozzles, you can offset the center position by changing the
Center Position values on the Etc. Tab.

Setting Particle Life Time to 0 means the particle will never die.

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When you use the parent-emitter, parent-emitter(end), parent-collision, and child-pivots nozzle
types, they use one controllers relationship to another in order to create multiple or cascading
effects.
To use parent-emitter, you need to create two emitters and parent one to the other. Then, set the
childs Nozzle to parent-emitter. The parents particles will spawn particles, essentially becoming
emitters themselves. Parent-emitter(end) is similar, but emits the particles after the parents
particles dieperfect for exploding fireworks. Parent-collision doesnt emit the particles until the
parent particle has a collision. (Make sure you click Start to compute the motion.)
Child-pivots aligns the emitters particles with the pivot point of child objects (i.e., objects parented
to the emitter). The child objects must have the FX_Link motion modifier added. This allows you to
use particle collision detection to move (e.g., break up) a group of objects.

Usually, you use the object modes in conjunction with an Explosion value (Motion Tab).
The Size effect setting determines how keyframing a Size change for the emitter affects the
particles.
The Key effect option causes particles to be created when a keyframe is encountered. The key
setting differs from key-env, in that key-env creates them in a smoothed non-linear fashion. Set to
none to turn this option off.

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The XYZ Generator size fields set the default size of the emitter.
Particle limit sets an overall limit for the number of particles that are emitted.
The Start frame field is normally an informational field that indicates the frame the particles will
start being born. By default, this is the first frame setting in Layout. You can manually change this
starting frame by checking the Fixed option and entering the desired frame in the Start frame field.

Particle Tab
On the Particle Tab, you set parameters that describe the created particles.

Particle weight sets an arbitrary weighting value that will influence how properties like gravity
affect the particles.
The plus(+) and minus(-) fields randomize the preceding field by adding or subtracting a value
between 0 and the number entered. So if Particle weight was 1 and its randomize value was .1, the
Particle weights would range from .9 to 1.1. A total particle value of zero or less will be zero.
Particle size affects the outer boundary used for collision detection. It can also be used by
volumetric plug-ins like HyperVoxels.
Particle resistance adds an air resistance effect. Particles will move slower as you increase this value.
Life time (frame) sets the life of the particles in frames. Once a particle is born, it lasts only this long.
If you activate Fixed Random, random calculations are constant, so they yield more predictable
results.
By activating the Show Id option, each particle will display a number in the Layout viewport
indicating the index number of the particle.
The Show Size option draws a wireframe sphere around each particle representing the particles
current size.

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If the Output Size is not checked, the size will always be 1.
The display of particles in the OpenGl windows can now be turned ON/OFF in the Particle Tab of
the Particle Property Window.

Motion Tab
On the Motion Tab, you set how the particles are placed into motion.

Use the Velocity setting to scale the overall speed of the particles. A setting of 100% is normal.
Lower values will slow down your particles and higher values will speed them up.
The XYZ Vector settings determine the initial direction and speed of the particle motion. Other
factors, like gravity, wind, and so on, will impact the actual result, however. You may override the
Vector settings and point the particles to an object in the scene by selecting it in the Target pop-up
menu.
If you want the Vector settings to relate to World coordinates instead of the emitters local
coordinates, activate the World coordinates option.
The Explosion setting makes the particles move out from the center of the nozzle with an initial
velocity equal to the value that you set.
Vibration(m/s) randomizes the initial trajectory of each particle. You can achieve a fountain-like
effect by reducing the size of your nozzle (e.g., XYZ=.1), adding some vector speed and increasing
the Vibration value.
Vibration(min) sets a minimum vibration amount.
The threshold1 and threshold2 values set up a vibration effect range. If a particles initial speed is
under the threshold1 value, no vibration will occur. If it exceeds the threshold2 value, the vibration
is applied. The vibration is phased in for speeds between threshold1 and threshold2. Use this for
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effects like water coming from a garden hose, where the water tends to fan out as more water
comes out.
Threshold1 is also used when particles are generated by wind. When the wind speed exceeds the
threshold1 value, particles are generated.

Etc Tab
On the Etc Tab, you set miscellaneous parameters for the emitter.

In most cases, if you want gravity, you set the Gravity Y value to something like -1. However, you
can set up inverse gravity by using positive values, and you can apply gravity on other axes.
The Center Position XYZ values set the center for particle effects like Explosion (Motion Tab).
Sometimes you may not want the particles exploding from the center of the emitter.
The Position blur value randomizes the initial particle position by using velocity. If you set this
option to 0%, the particles are created side by side.
Use the Parent motion setting to control how much of the emitters motion is applied to the
particles. If it is set to 0, the particles are emitted the same no matter how the emitter may be
moving.
Setting the Max Speed (m/s) field regulates the top speed of the particle.
The Loop Frame setting is used to repeat the particle generation and motion in the set number of
frames. For example, if you enter a Loop Frame value of 30 frames, in a two second animation two
particles will be generated with the same birth location and motion.

Rotation Tab
The settings on this tab affect the rotation properties of each particle.
Rotation Menu:
None-No rotation will be calculated for the particles.
Align to Path-The particle will align to the rotation of the path it is travelling along
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Random Rotation&Scale-Will align, spin, and scale the particle randomly as it travels along the path

Interaction Tab
The settings on this tab affect the way particles from both the same and other emitters of the
group interact with each other.

The Self Interaction drop-list determines how particles react to other particles of the same emitter.
The Interaction drop-list determines how particles react to other particles from different emitters
(within the same group). Options include having colliding particles push emitters, bounce off, drag,
and crowd around each other.
The Force setting adjusts the strength of the interaction effect. Adjust the Viscosity setting to
change the amount of resistance which particles receive when they interact with each other. This
setting is useful when creating different types of liquid effects.
Turning on and off the interaction effects is done by activating and deactivating the Interaction
Detect option.

File Tab
The File Tab contains options for handling the clipboard and file commands.

You can save the particle motion of an emitter using the Save Motion button. The motion will take
into account wind, gravity, and other options. It effectively freezes the particle motion; the particles
will move just as they did when the motion was saved. Changing the Emitter settings, clearing/
adding wind and gravity controllers, and so on, will have no impact.
Save motion is a great time-saver for network- rendered scenes or scenes that require heavy
calculations for collisions. Once youve saved the motion, it doesnt need to be calculated again.
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To use this feature, first, get your particles moving the way you want. Then, make sure your scene
plays back without any pausesthis means that ParticleFX has finished its calculations. Now,
you can click the Save Motion button to save out the .pfx file. (If you look at the emitters Object
Properties Panel, youll see the .pfx file referenced in the FX emitter custom object entry.) Now save
the scene and youre done. Remember, you can even clear wind, collision, and gravity controllers
without affecting particle motion.

You can save time by advancing to the last frame, letting the frame refresh, then saving the PFX
file.
When this feature is active, the Save Motion button will be ghosted. To clear a loaded motion, click
clear motion. You can also load the motion file into another emitter using load motion.
The playback mode works with the motion and determines how it will playback. The Normal mode
indicates that it will playback normally, starting at frame zero. With Key the motion will be started
every time a keyframe is encountered for the emitter. Parent-Key is similar, but uses the parent
items keyframes.
Parent Particles and Parent Particles (end) work like the identically named Nozzle options. Of
course, the particles come from the motion file instead of Emitter settings. Make sure that the
parents Particle size is set greater than 0.
Parent Recoded CP uses the Recode CP option on the Collision controller, which must be the parent
of the emitter. Playback will occur when collisions are detected. Use this for effects like splashes in
water from rain drops, where one emitter provides the rain and another emitter (with this option
set) creates the splashes from the detected collisions with a ground plane.
The Copy and Paste clipboard buttons allow you to copy the settings of a controller and apply
them to another. Use the Save and Load buttons to add custom saved ParticleFX controllers to your
scene.

EditFX Tab
The EditFX Tab contains options for real-time editing of your Particles.

Edit Tool - Activates the ability to edit each individual particle (Node).
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Undo - The Edit tool has its own undo. Click this button to undo the last edit. You can only
undo one edit.
Edit Node - Specify the number of particles to be edited. If the Edit tool is activated, you can
select from the Layout by clicking the parts.
Edit Frame - Specify the frame(s) to be edited.
All - All frames will be editable.
After - Can edit frames before the count.
Before - Can edit after the count.
Current - Can edit only the current frame.
Edit Axis - Specify the direction to edit.
move(xyz) - Move the selected parts in any direction.
move(x) - Move the selected parts along the X direction.
move(y) - Move the selected parts along the Y direction.
move(z) - Move the selected parts along the Z direction.
rotation(x) - Rotate the selected parts along the X axis.
rotation(y) - Rotate the selected parts along the Y axis.
rotation(z) - Rotate the selected parts along the Z axis.
rotation(View Axis) - Rotate the selected parts.
Fix Edit Start - Activate editStart. When activated, current frame value is inputted in editStart.
When this is not specified, all the frames before the current frame will be edited. When you
specify fix, you can get a smooth edit effect with editStarts frame, but when you press Ctrl
key when dragging, you will get a linear edit effect.
Edit Start - It will fix the specified frame value and you can get a smooth edit effect
between the current frames.
Fix Edit End - Activate editEnd. When activated, current frame value is inputted in editEnd.
When this is not specified, all the frames after the current frame will be edited. When you
specify fix, you can get a smooth edit effect with editEnds frame, but when you press Ctrl
key when dragging, you will get a linear edit effect.
Edit End- It will fix the specified frame value and you can get a smooth edit effect
between the current frames.
Edit Size- (Edit Range) This field changes the influence range.
Command
Smooth -Referencing the current frame, the movement of the particle that was selected
by editNode will be smooth. When editStart and editEnd are not specified, the current
position will be copied to all the frames. When editStart and editEnd are specified, it will
make the position information smooth from the specified frame to the current frame.
Make Path - This command will create a Null object whose path is identical to the
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motion path of the selected particle.
Delete - You can delete individual particles from the Emitter.

Dynamics: Collision Controller

The Collision controller lets you add an element for the particles to bump into.

Collision controllers (FX Gravity) can be added in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel
or on the Items Tab in the Dynamic Objects drop down menu.

Mode Tab

Group - you can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted
interaction. This becomes very handy when you are working on a complex scene and you
want certain Collision objects to only affect certain objects.
<default> Includes all groups.
<new group> Creates individual group. It can associate functions within a group.

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You can associate with ParticleFXs functions using group function. If it is in the same group,
you can associate settings. Also, if you do not want to associate, you can disregard the association by
removing from the group.
The Type setting controls the shape of the collision object. The Sphere, Box, and Plane options
can be used for basic primitive collision shapes. The object, object-subdiv, and object-advanced
settings are used when you use a LightWave object for collisions. Use the Infinite setting for an
infinite-sized collision area. This is particularly useful with the Scatter and Attract modes. (Note that
the Bound and Stick modes will continue to respect the Radius/Level setting.)
Use the Recode CP option to set up an event-like trigger to be read by a child emitters Playback
Mode. As particles cross the collision plane created by the collision item, this event triggers the
playback of a saved motion.
The InSide option causes the collision to occur inside the collision object.
Child Mesh will apply the current collision settings to a child object mesh, if one exists.

The Noshift option disables any offset the particles may generate in the collision process. This
ensures that the particles will collide directly on the collision surface.
By activating the Change option, particles passing through the collision item can switch to a
different group, to be affected by a different controller. The New Group defines which group the
particles will switch to.
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The Mode setting determines what happens when a collision occurs. The Bounce option causes
the collision to change the direction and velocity of the particles. With Stick, the particles simply
adhere to the surface. Erase kills the particle upon contact. The event mode is used when the
emitter has its Generate by option set to collision event: it creates particles at the time of collision.
In Scatter mode, the collisions occur within the interior of the collision object and not at its surface.
This causes the particles to scatter. The Attract mode causes the particles to be attracted to the
center of the collision object.

Bounce

Stick

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Attract

The Radius/Level setting sets the size of the collision object based on this radius. If Type is set to
Plane, this setting controls the level of the plane. If you are using a LightWave object, this setting
controls the distance from the surface where the collision occurs.

Left: Radius = 3m, Right: Radius = 0m

The Bounce/Bind power setting controls how particles bounce off the surface, when Mode is set to
Bounce. The Stick mode controls the amount of attachment the particles have.

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Left: Bounce Mode, Bounce/Bind: 50%; Right: Bounce Mode, Bounce/Bind: 400%

Left: Stick Mode, Bounce/Bind: 10%; Right: Stick Mode, Bounce/Bind: 90%

Friction power adds friction to the collision surface when you use the Stick mode, which slows the
momentum of particles sliding over the surface.

Left: Friction: 0; Right: Friction: 20

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Fix power causes the particles to stick to the surface and not slide around.

Left: Fix: 0; Right: Fix: 1.0

Increasing the Roughness setting roughens up the collision surface. Roughness changes particle
motion after collisions, but it also depends on the Mode setting.

Left: Roughness: 0; Right: Roughness: 200

If you reduce the Probability setting below 100%, you reduce the chance of a particle being treated
as having collided with the collision object.

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Left: Probability: 100%; Right: Probability: 10%

Etc Tab
On the Etc. Tab, you can Copy, Paste, Load, and Save settings for the Collision controller.

Using an Object for Collisions

You can use a LightWave object as a Collision object by adding Collision from the Add Dynamic
drop down menu in the Object Properties Panel, Dynamic Tab. You must set the Type to object
on the objects Collision Controller Panel. If you use a SubPatch object, you set the Type to objectsubdiv to use the subdivided mesh instead of the base polygonal object. Use the object-advanced
type to get even more accurate collision detection.

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Dynamics: Gravity Controller
A Gravity controller may be added to your scene to produce gravity-like effects on your particles
and dynamic objects.

Gravity controllers (FX Gravity) can be added in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel or
on the Items Tab in the Dynamic Objects drop down menu.

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Size effect determines how scaling the Gravity controller in Layout affects the gravity. The Gravity
option scales the gravity effect. Region scales the overall size of the effect area.
The Direction Gravity mode applies the gravity in a single direction using the Gravity XYZ values.
The Point mode causes the center of the Gravity controller to attract/repel the particles. Negative
values attract and positive values repel.

Point Mode
The 2Pole Gravity mode creates two attraction points, one meter on either side of the center. It can
create magnetic or electric field effects.
The Falloff Mode setting determines how the gravitys effect tapers off at its region borders. Linear
means the effect is linear throughout the controllers region. The Inverse Distance setting uses a
one divided by the radius of the controller region to taper off the gravitys power from the center of
the region. Off means no falloff. With this setting, the particles do not need to be within a controller
region to be affected.
The Radius setting sets the radius of the controller region.
The Power setting scales the overall force of the gravity.
The Gravity XYZ settings determine the direction and force of your gravity when Gravity Mode is set
to Direction. Normally, youll want to set Y to something like -1.
Use the Copy, Paste, Load and Save options to re-use Gravity settings.

Cloth and Hard dynamics have Gravity settings as well.

Dynamics: Wind Controller

The Wind controller lets you add wind to blow your particles and dynamic objects around. The
Wind controller appears in a Layout viewport as a cloud of wind indicatorsa bunch of short lines
with pivot point dots at one end. The length of the lines indicates the force of the wind: the longer
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the line, the more powerful the wind. The angle of the line indicates the direction of the wind at
the lines location.

Wind controllers (FX Wind) can be added in the Dynamics Tab of the Object Properties Panel or on
the Items Tab in the Dynamic Objects drop down menu.
Mode Tab
On the Mode Tab, you set the basic characteristics of the Wind controller.

The Wind mode setting determines the type of wind and how it changes over time. You can get a
feel for what the setting does by looking at the wind indicators. There are a few special indicators,
however. If you select Turbulence, you can set the size of the effect and direction using the
Turbulence settings on the Vector Tab. If you select Direction as the Wind mode, you can use a
Texture Map (Texture button on Vector Tab) to control the wind power and turbulence. Animate
the texture to animate the wind. If you select rotation(y) or doughnut, use the Spiral setting at the
bottom of the panel to adjust the intensity of the rotation. Sticky wind pushes items away. Vortex
creates effects similar to a tornado or water spout.
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rotation (y)

doughnut

Animation Path is a bit different. It uses handles which can be used to control the path of the wind
effect. The path can be controlled by the position and rotation of the handle.

One way to add extra handles is to add a null and parent it to the wind controller. Or, you can
clone one of the other handles.
The Blend mode sets how the wind blends with other overlapping winds. Add is additive. Max
means the highest wind controls. With overwrite; the wind is replaced with itself. Heavy-wind
disregards particle weight.
If winds have different Blend mode settings, obviously only one can control the blend. The priority
order from highest to lowest is: overwrite, max, add, and heavy-wind. So, if Wind1 is set to add and
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Wind2 is set to max, the overlapping area will use max blend because it has the highest priority.
The Size effect setting determines how scaling the Wind controller in Layout affects the wind.
Setting it to Wind scales the wind power. Setting it to Region scales the overall size of the effect
area.
The Falloff mode setting determines how the winds effect tapers off at its region borders, if at all.
Linear means the wind is the same throughout its borders. The Inverse Distance setting tapers off
the winds power from its center. The Distance setting makes the wind falloff towards its center.
OFF means no falloff. With this setting, the particles do not need to be within a controller region to
be affected.
The Radius setting sets the radius of the controller region.
Use the Power setting to scale the overall force of the wind.
The Spiral Amount setting is used for the rotation(y) or doughnut Wind modes.
The Spiral Thickness setting controls the thickness of the doughnut wind.

Vector Tab
On the Vector Tab, you set the direction and force characteristics of the wind controller. The vectors
are scaled per second.

The Wind XYZ settings determine the basic direction and force of your wind.
If you are using the Direction, Rotation, Cylinder-Explosion, or Hemisphere Wind mode, use the
Envelope E button to animate the wind direction and force. To remove the envelope, Shift+ Click
the E button.
If you are using the Direction Wind mode, use the Texture T button to add a 3D texture that affects
wind direction and force. Note that the texture is added to the base Wind XYZ settings. To remove
the texture, Shift + click the T button.

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Textures are three-dimensional. Thus, adding a texture adds it to all channels. Also, for
envelopes, make sure you have the correct channel in the channel bin.
If you are using the Turbulence Wind mode, the Turbulence Vector sets the direction and power of
wind turbulence. Turbulence size sets the wavelength of the turbulence.

Etc. Tab
On the Etc. Tab, you can Copy, Paste, Load, and Save settings for the wind controller.

Additional Dynamics Utilities

Deleting an FX controller
Select and clear, just as you would any other Layout item (Items > Clear Selected Item).
To open a controllers property panel:
Choose the controller from the Item pop-up menu and click the Property button to open the
Properties Panel for the selected controller.

You can also display the Property Panel for the currently selected controller by choosing Utilities
> FX_Property or by accessing the Dynamics Tab in the Object Properties Panel.

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The Start Button
Some effects require a pre-calculation before they can be previewed in your animations. These
are instances where you have particles interacting or have post-deformed geometry. By activating
the Start button, the FX will begin solving any simulations that are currently setup in the scene.
The progress of the simulation is displayed in an output pane that opens at the bottom of the FX
Browser when the Start button is activated. A shortcut to this is on Layouts toolbar at Modify > IKB
Calculate.

Figure xx: Dynamics Window during calculation

Many scenes dont need this step, but clicking Start wont do any harm if you are unsure.

The Save Button

Clicking the Save button saves all controller motions, using individual files, to your FX directory
(defined on the Option dialog). These can be loaded using the Load Motion option on the
Controllers Properties Panel.

Options Dialog
The Options dialog has some options that affect the manner in which LightWave computes
controllers.

The Background Job option activates multithreading. The update by Background Job option
will update Layout when background tasks are complete. In most cases, you should leave these
options in their default state of off.

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The Resolution setting adjusts the parameter used when performing the physics simulations. The
smaller the Resolution setting is, the more accurate the simulation will be. However, this also has a
direct effect on the rendering times.
In this dialog you can also set the FX Directory. This is the default directory used when saving
Controller settings.

Real-time Display
Just click the Play button in Layout and as you tweak the various controller parameters, you get
real-time updates of how your changes affect the particles.

: Scenes with particles interacting or with post-deformed geometry require you to click the Start
button first to pre-compute some motions. Clicking Start wont do any harm if you are unsure.
You can control how FX Controllers are updated using the UpdateMode pop-up menu.

Auto updates all emitters as parameters are modified. Use this for fast systems or in low-particle
count simulations.
If you have multiple emitters and are using the Select update, then only the emitter showing in the
Select pop-up menu, if any, will be updated.
Adaptive dynamically scales the number of visible particles based on your CPU performance. This
setting attempts to keep interactive performance at a useful level.
User turns off particle updating completely. You may force an update by either clicking the Start
button on the Particle FX Browser, or the Update button on the File Tab of the Emitter Controller
Panel. This setting is useful in situations with heavy particle counts.

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Groups
You can group Dynamic objects with a user-defined name to prevent unwanted interaction.
This also works with Particle FX controllers. This becomes very handy when you are working on a
complex scene and you want certain Wind emitters to only affect certain objects.
<All Group> Includes all groups.
<default> Includes all items in scene.
<new group> Create individual group. Can associate functions within a group.

You can associate with particle FXs functions using group function. If it is in the same group, you
can associate settings. Also, if you do not want to associate, just by removing from the group, you can
disregard the association.

FX Linker
Using FX Linker is a one-way shot. You cant undo what it does after you click OK. Therefore, you
should definitely save your scene before running this modifier.
FX Linker (Utilities > Additional > FX Linker) automates FX_Link setup on multiple particles. It
basically clones the specified object and adds the FX_Linkmotion modifier using the settings you
specify. This is a great tool for creating a flock of bats, or for creating a quick crowd simulation.

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To use FX Linker:
1) Save your scene!
2) Load the target object.
3) If you plan to use the Size effect option, keyframe the size on this object. Also,
make sure your particles have some amount of size (Emitter properties).
4) Choose Utilities > Additional > FX Linker and set the copy field
to the number of instances you want to create.
5) The Random, Time Shift, Pre/Post Behavior, Distance/Sec, Size effect,
and Make key options correspond to the same options on FX Link,
see above. Check them if you want those options set.
6) If you are using Random or Size effect, you may set maximum
and minimum values in the provided fields.
7) Click OK. Depending on how many copies you make, it
may take a while before FX Linker finishes.

Using FX_Linker is a one-way shot. You cant undo what it does after you click OK. Therefore, you
should definitely save your scene before running this modifier, or better, press shift + s to save a scene
increment.

FX Property
You can display the Property Panel for the currently selected FX controller by choosing Utilities >
Plug-ins > Additional > FX_Property .

You can also access the Controllers Property Panel by using the Dynamics Tab in the Object
Properties Panel.

FX_Hardlink
FX_Hardlink is a very powerful tool that allows you to use the dynamic motion from one object
and apply it to another. In most cases the dynamic object contains very few polygons (2 point
polygons) while the HardLink object has a higher polygon count.
In the example below, Cloth Dynamics is applied to a 2-point polygon chain made up of (x4)
2-point polygons. It is the parent of a single layered object that is made up of 4 monkeys. When
you use FX_Hardlink, the monkeys take on the motion of the 2- point polygon chain.
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Hardlink keeps the geometry rigid and will displace it based on the Piece Mode setting.

The HardLink Object must be parented to the Dynamic object in order for FX_Hardlink to work.

FX_Hardlink Properties

Under the Basic Tab you can choose what Piece Mode you would like to use. Polygon treats each
segment as its own object. 1 Piece will make the entire object a solid and considers it one piece.
Point Set will read selection sets that you could create in Modeler.
The Edit FX Tab allows you to change what pieces are linked to what nodes. This is handy if the tool
doesnt quite link what you thought it would on complex objects.

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FX_MetaLink
FX_Metalink is a very powerful tool that allows you to use the dynamic motion from one object
and apply it to another. In most cases the dynamic object contains very few polygons (2 point
polygons) while the MetaLink object has a higher polygon count.

You may run into problems if the Dynamic Object is too rough. Subdividing the Dynamic Object
may help.
In the example below, a 2 point polygon chain with Cloth dynamics applied to it is the Parent of
the Worm (MetaLink Object). The Work takes on the dynamic motion of the 2-point polygon chain
with zero calculation time.

The MetaLink Object must be parented to the Dynamic object in order for FX_Metalink to work.

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The Smoothing option attempts to smooth the reshaping of the Metalink object. If unchecked, the
reshaping can pass through the vertex of the Cage Object (dynamic Object).

If you want to use other Displacement Maps and not have them be ignored by MetaLink also
apply Metalink_Morph.

FX Metalink Morph
FX_Metalink_Morph is a displacement plug-in that enhances the functions of FX_Metalink. By itself,
FX_Metalink cannot use normal morphing information because it ignores bones, Morph Mapping,
and Displacement Maps. However, if you use FX_Metalink with FX_Metalink _Morph, you can use
normal morphing data.

The FX_Metalink _Morph plug-in can be added before or after FX_Metalink.

FX_Metalink _Morph has one pop-up menu called Morph Mode. Set this to One time morph to
execute morphing only one time. This mode is appropriate when the morphing is from Morph
Mapping. Use Every time morph to execute morphing for each displacement process. This mode
is appropriate when the morphing varies, like the Displacement Map of waves. The Non morph
setting simply disables this plug-in.

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ParticleFX DynamicLinker
Allows you to replace particles with other objects.
Particles --Choose the particle emitter to do the replacing.
Replace Object --Choose the object to replace the particles
Rotation --Give the item a rotation, once it is replaced
Time Shift --The amount of time to wait to replace the object

Size effect
time shift - Contains: start shift, end shift, start adjust (distance) and end adjust.
Lock Cloned Item --Locks the current item to be the same cloned item
Copy --The number of replacements to make

ParticleFX_Link

Particles
Choose the particle group.

Node
Rotation - The choices in rotation are: random, align to path (h) and align to path (hp).
Random will rotate the item starting from a random rotational position.
align to path (h) Will align the item to a path using heading.
align to path (hp) Will align the item to a path using heading and pitch.

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Size effect
time shift - Contains: start shift, end shift, start adjust (distance) and end adjust.

Make Key
pre behavior - Contains: original, stay and size dissolve.
post behavior - Contains: original, stay and size dissolve.
distance/sec

FX_Motion
Mode Tab

make key - Generates a key for every frame.

Group - Select an existing group or create a new one.
Mode
After collision - Choose an action post collision: none, reverse, random, stop.
Start Frame - Choose what frame to start the effect.
Start by event - Use this option if you want to trigger the motion upon collision.
Weight - This option sets an arbitrary weighting value that will influence how factors like
gravity affect the item.
Size - This option affects the outer boundary used for collision detection. It can also be used
by volumetric plug-ins like HyperVoxels.
Resistance - This option adds an air resistance effect. Items will move slower as this value is
increased.
Momentum - This option adds in a momentum or increased mass effect. Items will tend to
resist being stopped or slowed down.
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Rotation Resistance - This option has the same effect as Resistance except that it affects the
items rotational channels.
z-Rotation by wind(deg/m) - This option rotates the item in its bank channel as it moves or is
affected by the wind.

Vector Tab

Initial Velocity - This option sets the initial direction and force.
Velocity coordinates - This option sets whether these settings use the items local axes or
world coordinates.
Initial Rotation(deg/s) - This option sets the items initial HPB rotation.
Random rotation start - This option randomizes the initial HPB rotation.
Update - This option updates/refreshes the current settings in the Layout viewport. This is
good to do with a heavy scene.
Copy - This option copies the current settings.
Paste - This option pastes the current settings.

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FiberFX
FiberFX
FiberFX is LightWaves native hair and fur system. Fibers using Solid Volume mode can be textured
with nodes and FiberFX contributes to alpha channels for all render modes.

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2015

CyHair Support

Alien Iggy Pop

FiberFX now supports the cyHair hair model data format from Cem Yuksel (http://www.cemyuksel.
com/research/hairmodels/). This means you can style hair in a variety of packages and import your
hair into LightWave for rendering, or inversely export from FiberFX for use in other packages. Load
a cyHair wigs in Modeler as any other file. Keep it as a separate object or put it on a different layer
to the rest of your geometry. When sent to Layout, apply FiberFX to it.
If you have styled hair in FiberFX you wish to export as cyHair, right click on the hair in the FiberFX
window and choose Save as cyHair Wig.

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Overview of controls

FiberFX-bearing surfaces are now seen in the listview to the left of the interface, making it easier
to see at a glance which surfaces have hair and which do not. The checkmarks we can see in the
image above show that FiberFX is activated on the DemiBird_V2_Body_v001 object and that it is
applied to the Torso surface.
The GroundPlane object also has a checkmark, but because no surface name has been selected it is
red. If an object only has one surface, the checkmark will be white anyway.

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FiberFX
If you right click on an object you will be presented with a dropdown menu like so:

The options in this menu are as follows:

Clone - Creates a new instance of the object that the parameters can be changed on. As an
example you make a short white undercoat and the another layer of sparse long guard hairs
over them.
Save as Default - Saves the current style as the default for FiberFX from now on.
Reset Default - Puts the default back to the medium-length brown hair style.
Polygonize - Creates a polygon mesh of your hair style. Choosing this option brings up the
following interface:

Polygonize has the following parameters:

Sides: 1-sided is a single poly chain; 2-sided is flat with polys on each side; >2 is an extrusion
of n sides.
Flatten: flattens the tube.
Triangles: make tris instead of quads.
Billboard: makes crossed polygons suitable for mapping.

Sides: 2, Billboard

Sides: 8, Triangles

Sides: 12, Flatten 76.95 %

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Polygonize Mixed - Will use the guides on a surface object to make new mixed mesh object
with guides attached to the mesh.

Polygonized Mixed generates two-point polygons. There are two ways to keep these two
point polygons from showing up in the render. The artist can disable Render Lines in Render Globals to
prevent all two-point polygons in the scene from rendering. Alternatively, the artist can set the Particle/
Line Thickness of the object containing two-point polygons to 0.0. Particle/Line Thickness is found under
the Edges Tab of Object Properties.

FiberFX Buttons

The first two lines give you information about your current FiberFX settings and are followed by
some general settings for FiberFX.
Activate - To add FiberFX to an object, simply select it in the list on the left and click the Activate
button. Alternatively you can double click the entry in the list.
Deactivate - To remove FiberFX from an object click this button.
Edit - This brings up a menu with four options:
Copy - Copies all FiberFX settings from an object.
Paste - Pastes all copied FiberFX settings.
Load - Loads saved settings.
Save - Saves settings.
Edit Nodes - In common with all other node editors in LightWave there is a checkmark to use or not
use any node networks that have been set up. With it checked you will use any node network that
has been set up, with it off the only settings that will be used are those set up the main interface.

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The FiberFX nodes provide many opportunities for advanced hair manipulation. In addition to
the destination node, there is one FiberFX-specific node, called Fiber Info that will give you all the
information about your Fiber setup.

FiberFX
Color - Changes the color of the fibers. Use a Fiber V input on a gradient to change colors based on
the position along the fiber length.
Alpha - This scalar input allows you to drive the transparency of fibers.
Material - This input is for linking with Material nodes.
Amplitude - Use this scalar input to change the amount of amplitude of the Vector inputs
perturbation. Without any amplitude input 100% of the Vector input will be used, often resulting in
harsh changes of direction.
Vector - Controls the direction of the fiber edge vector. The old and new fiber directions are
interpolated together by the Amplitude amount.
Length - This scalar input controls the length of the fiber.
Double clicking the FiberFX node presents the user with this window:

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Local Displacement orients the displacement to be performed along the underlying polygons
normal, this mode is useful for creating swirls, as the ripples radiate down the fiber. Turning it off
uses object space displacement, use this mode for things like fields of waving grass.
Nodal First changes the order that the nodes and other effects are evaluated, for instance, if you
have gravity set to make the fibers droop, it is possible to set the nodes to override the effect of the
gravity. The default setting for nodes first will prevent this.

FiberFX-FiberInfo
Fiber U/V - The position of the evaluation around (U) and down (V) the length of the fiber.
V starts from 0.0 at the root to 1.0 at the tip. Use this as an input to opacity on a node to
control effect strength down the length of your fibers.
Poly Normal - The normal vector coordinates of the underlying polygon that the fiber is
growing from.
Poly Center Position - The center position of the underlying polygon that the fiber is growing
from.
Offset - The offset position of the fiber currently being evaluated.
Fiber Tangent - The normal vector of the edge currently being evaluated.
Fiber Base Position - Position in local coordinates of the base of each fiber currently being
evaluated.
Fiber Edge Position - Start position in local coordinates of the edge currently being evaluated.
Fiber Number - Returns the fiber number that is being evaluated.
Offset Amt - The offset of each added fiber from the parent guide fiber.
Cluster - Returns the fibers Cluster number. Use it to determine if a clustered fiber is being
evaluated.
To Up Right - Transform from polygon coordinates to up right.
To Up Up - Transform from polygon coordinates to up up.
To Up Forward - Transform from polygon coordinates to up forward.
From Up Right - Transform from up right to polygon coordinates.
From Up Up - Transform from up up to polygon coordinates.
From Up Forward - Transform from up forward to polygon coordinates.
Double clicking the FiberInfo node presents a window allowing the user to choose which FiberFX
object is being used for evaluation:
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FiberFXs controls are now divided over four tabs, with subtabs for the Fibers and Rendering tabs.

Fibers
Fibers has three subtabs and it is probably where youll spend most of your time with FiberFX. The
subtabs are as follows:

Geometry

Max Fiber Density - Dictates how many fibers your surface will have. Max Fiber Density can either be
expressed with a number or with a texture. It can also be animated over time using an envelope.
Relax - You can relax the fiber distribution across your object in a series of iterative steps that will
gradually quantize placement making fibers more evenly spread. There are 40 levels of relaxation
and each one marks an iteration, so setting it immediately to 40 will take some time to show results
depending on the quantity of fibers to be processed.

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Relax: 0

Relax: 40

Cluster - This will place additional copies of the guide fiber around the initial fiber to increase
dynamic responsiveness.
Cluster Radius - The radius around the original guide fiber that is used for the placement of fiber
copies.
Edit Guides - This allows you to style your hair and save the style as a Vertex Map with the object it
is applied to. It will be discussed in detail after the overview of FiberFX functions, starting on page
968
Style - Apply a style created with Edit Guides.
Volume Only - This toggle needs to be checked if you would like to see your fibers in VPR. By
checking it you turn off Fiber Type since that only concerns pixel filter fibers, not volume fibers. If
you do not check Volume Only then Volume Type and End Caps will be ghosted.
Fiber Type - Ghosted if you have Volume Only checked. This setting gives you a dropdown menu
with four choices. If you polygonize them to make a model they maintain that alignment in the
model as well:
Thin - This a rasterized antialiased line at a maximum of two pixels thick in screen space.
Thick X Align - This creates thicker lines that are rasterized into a buffer so they can be drawn
as flat triangle strips. If you Polygonize them you can convert them into round or flattened
shapes. The fibers are all aligned on the X axis.
Thick Y Align - This creates thicker lines that are rasterized into a buffer so they can be drawn
as flat triangle strips. If you Polygonize them you can convert them into round or flattened
shapes. The fibers are all aligned on the Y axis.
Thick Camera Align - This creates thicker lines that are rasterized into a buffer so they can
be drawn as flat triangle strips. If you Polygonize them you can convert them into round or
flattened shapes. The fibers are all aligned to face the camera.
Thick Random Align - This creates thicker lines that are rasterized into a buffer so they can
be drawn as flat triangle strips. If you Polygonize them you can convert them into round or
flattened shapes. The fibers are all aligned to a random axis.
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Volume Type - Ghosted if you dont have Volume Only checked. This setting gives you a dropdown
menu with two choices:
Stroke - Will create a camera-facing 2D shape.
Solid - Will create a solid tube. It can be applied to any fiber guides. You can generate and
style the fibers directly within FiberFX using the Edit Guides option, or you can use models
set up with the FiberFX tools in Modeler (Fiber Modeler and StrandMaker, both available on
the Setup tab in Modeler). Solid mode render fibers with 3D volume at render time, in much
the same way that Layout treats 2-point poly chains when you assign a negative Particle/Line
Thickness for an object.

Pixel Filter:
Thin Mode

Pixel Filter:
Thick Mode

Volume Only:
Stroke Mode

Volume Only:
Solid Mode

End Caps - Only available if Volume Only is checked. Presents a dropdown list with a choice
between:
None - The ends of the Strokes or Solid fibers are squared off.
Cap Base - The base of each fiber is rounded.
Cap Tip - The tip of each fiber is rounded off. In Stroke mode, you might need to reduce the
amount of tip transparency to see the effect, since the default 20% hides the rounding.
Cap Both - Both ends are rounded.

LightWave has an automated switch to Volume Only mode when using PixelFilter mode.
PixelFilter rendering mode cannot support transparency, refraction or reflection; Volume mode
does. Since the two modes now render very similarly, an automated switching capability has been
implemented. When any PixelFilter FiberFX items appear behind transparent objects or in reflections,
Volume Only mode will engage for these areas. For this to occur, the Raytrace Reflections/Refractions
switches need to be active.

Fiber Width - Sets the thickness of fibers. Thinner fibers are more transparent and build up density
more slowly, whereas thick fibers are less transparent and build up density faster. Model scale has
an effect on fiber width, as does the distance to camera. Fibers further away are smaller in screen
space and are more transparent.
The percentage is based on human hair which has been measured at 0.017mm to 0.181mm with
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blond hair being the thinnest and black hair the thickest. At 100% width a fiber is calculated using
a median value of 0.05mm.

Fiber Width 10%

Fiber Width 25%

Fiber Width 50%

Fiber Width 75%

Fiber Width 100%

Depending on the size of your object you may need to increase or decrease this value for a realistic
effect. By default Solid fibers have an equal thickness across their length. To vary the thickness,
click the T button and select the Gradient Layer Type, then choose Fiber V as the Incoming Parameter
and vary the thickness.

Note: In previous versions of FiberFX, changing parameters from root to tip relied on the Fiber
U gradient type. With the addition of the new Solid Mode, an additional third dimension was needed.
This means any setups using the Fiber U parameter will need to be switched to Fiber V.

Default, Equal Thickness

Modulated Using a Gradient

Edges - This is the geometric resolution of each fiber. Fibers are given two by default, but if you
have long fibers you may need to increase edges in order to smooth the fiber and avoid awkward
corners rather than bends.
Fiber Smooth - This is a subdivision technique for fibers at render time so that Edges can remain low
and long fibers will still bend rather than corner. Since it happens at render time it has little impact
on memory while working in Layout. By default Fiber Smooth is set at 2, which will subdivide each
fiber four times. There are four levels of subdivision each of which doubles the previous level.

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No Fiber Smoothing

Fiber Smoothing Set to 4 (Max)

Note: Setting Fiber Smoothing higher than needed can impact render times. Try incremental
settings until you hit the smoothing level you need, rather than maxing it out.
Gravity - FiberFX offers a simplified gravity. The default is set to 0 %, but 140 % approximates earth
gravity on human hair if you wish to use it.
Use Dot - This function uses the dot product of the gravity calculations to make the fibers act more
like they are hugging the surface to which they are assigned.
Dynamic Gravity - If you have applied gravity to your fibers, checking Dynamic Gravity will ensure
the position of the fibers will be animated to always point in an appropriate direction for the
movement of the object the fibers are assigned to.

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FiberFX
Styling

Fiber kink - This setting is only available when Fiber Smooth is set to 1 or above. As fiber
edges are subdivided, each newly created edge end point can be perturbed. This creates a
kinked look to the fibers.

Kink 20%

Kink 40%

Kink 60%

Kink 80%

Kink 100%

Because subdivision of fibers is performed just before the edges are drawn, they are not used in
creation of the shadows, as these are created prior to subdivision. As a result, the kinking effect will not
be visible in shadows.
Splay - This setting controls how far away fibers are tipped from each other using the
polygon center or guide fiber as the basis for splaying the fibers.

Splay 20%

Splay 40%

Splay 60%

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Splay 80%

Splay 100%

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FiberFX
Stray - Random fibers can be shorter or longer giving a look where just a few strands of hair
stand out from the rest, giving a more natural look.

Stray 40%

Stray 80%

Stray 120%

Stray 160%

Stray 200%

Swirl - Controls how much each fiber is twisted, based on a splay center based around the
polygon center or the guide fiber.

Swirl 20%

Swirl 40%

Swirl 60%

Swirl 80%

Swirl 100%

Random - Only available when Swirl is not zero, this randomizes the starting rotation of each
fiber.
Swirl Turns - Gives the number of complete revolutions swirls make.
Tuft - Progressively shortens fibers further away from the center of the polygon or guide
fiber.

Tuft 20%

Tuft 40%

Tuft 60%

Tuft 80%

Tuft 100%

Clump - Gathers fibers together as though sticky or wet based on polygon center or guide
fiber.

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Clump 20%

Clump 40%

Clump 60%

Clump 80%

Clump 100%

Scale - Gives a length to fibers. Scale is based on the size of the object - 100 % long fibers on
a mammoth built to scale will be a lot longer than similar 100 % fibers on a fly modeled to
scale.

Scale 20%

Scale 60%

Scale 120%

Scale 200%

Scale 400%

Random Length - Randomizes the length of all the hairs on a surface to give more variation.
Distinct from Stray because the randomization is applied to all fibers.

Rand Length 20%

Rand Length 40%

Rand Length 60%

Rand Length 80%

Rand Length 100%

Part Angle - Defines an angle between adjacent guides that cause the fibers to follow
the nearest guide and not interpolate. This causes parts in the hair style instead of
interpolating. The Part Angle will by default be applied to all fibers on an object, but can be
controlled as in the image below by using a gradient texture applied to a Weight Map or
simply a Slope in this case. The Part Angle can be small and still have a large effect since it is
based on an examination of the first segment on the guides and the dot product is used to
determine if fibers should interpolate or follow the closest guide.

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Bump - This effect perturbs the initial fiber direction by simulating a surface bump using the
local gradient of the texture. Similar to the Bump Channel in LightWaves Surface Editor. This
effect needs a procedural texture or image in the texture channel to be visible.

Bump 50%

Bump 150%

Bump 300%

Bump 600%

Bump 1200%

Root Only - Only the root of the fiber is used to calculate the bump giving a different look to
the fiber arrangement.

Bump w/RO 50%

Bump w/RO 150%

Bump w/RO 300%

Bump w/RO 600%

Bump w/RO 1200%

Direction Bias - This setting becomes available when the object with fibers has a Bias Vertex
Map created with Modelers FiberFX interface. It determines the ratio between the settings
for the fibers in the window and those contained in the VMap concerning direction.
Bias VMap - Presents a dropdown from which you can choose a Bias Vertex Map.
Remap - Only available when you are using a Bias VMap. When using RGB colors you cant
specify a value of -255(-1). Using Remap, the value of 0 is remapped to -255(-1), 128(.5) is the
the new 0, and 255(1) remains the same.
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FiberFX
Bundle

The Bundle tab is only for a single polygon guide for fibers, any other object will ghost the settings
on this tab. The polygon guide should consist of a chain of two-point polygons with at least four
points along the chain. The quantity of fibers in the bundle is decided on the Geometry tab and
then options are applied here.
Bundle - This presents a dropdown with three options as follows:
None - Removes all bundles of fibers.
Twist - Creates a twist of fibers based on the Count field.
Braid - Creates a plait of fibers. You arent limited to a Count of three for this however setting
the Count field to two will result in exactly the same result as using Twist.
Count - Determines how many bundles of fibers are going to be created.
Strength - Sets how tightly the Twist or Braid will be applied to the fibers. Higher values lead to an
increase in turns involved for the full length of the fibers, which will always extend the full length of
the guide.
Spread - The radius of the circle the braided or twisted fibers make. A gradient can be used to
reduce the size of the circle as the fibers grow.
Twist - While Strength dictates how the bundles as a group are twisted, Twist twists each individual
bundle in the count.

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FiberFX
Rendering
This tab and subtabs is where you will set up how your fibers look when rendered.

Color

This tab is where you control the base color of your rendered fibers. At the top of this tab is a
dropdown menu where you choose the type of texturing you wish to use. There are two modes for
coloring fibers, Mixed (default) and Textured.
Mixed - This color mode blends between two fiber colors (each with a different root and tip
color). You can also set the amount each color influences the overall fiber color. At 0% Base /
Tip Color 1 will be the predominant color, at 100% Base / Tip Color 2 will be the predominant
color.

Color Mix 0%

Color Mix 25%

Color Mix 50%

Color Mix 75%

Color Mix 100%

Blend - When Blend is checked, the color values themselves are actually mixed, as opposed to
just the quantity of fibers using those colors.

With Blend 0%

With Blend 25%

With Blend 50%

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With Blend 75%

With Blend 100%

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FiberFX
Highlight - This setting randomizes fiber shading by choosing lighter and darker values based
on the original base colors used. The percentage determines how different the light or dark
values are from the original colors.

Highlight 0%

Highlight 50%

Highlight 150%

Highlight 200%

Highlight 400%

Textured - When this mode is selected you will be left with only one Color setting. Unlike
Mixed color mode, all your fibers will be the same color. However, you can now also use
the standard LightWave 3D texture editor to color your fibers, this offers many options for
texturing your fibers.

Plain Color

Texture Map

Fiber U Gradient

Texture Mapping Solid Fibers

All the previous controls for shading are available for Solid fibers, however if you enable the Node
Editor youll notice that the Color and Shading controls are ghosted out. This is because they no
longer apply as all texturing will now be done in the Node Editor.

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Nodal UV Mapping
When using the Node Editor, you can access the automatically created UV maps for the Solid fibers.
To utilize the UV map youll need to add the following nodes:

The FiberFX-FiberInfoNode is where you can access all the information about the fibers that FiberFX
outputs. Add an Image node and connect the Fiber U and Fiber V from the FiberFX-FiberInfoNode
to the U Offset and V Offset inputs on the Image node. Next add a Standard material node and
connect the Color output from the Image node to the Color input on the Standard material node,
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and finally connect the Material output on the Standard material node to the Material input on the
FiberFX node. The last step is to choose an image in the Image node to map along the fibers UV,
but importantly, set the texture scale to 0, 0, 0. Leave the projection at its default of Z planar, you
cannot change the image scale if you use UV projection. Without setting the scale like this, your
texture will not be mapped correctly. The reason is outlined in the tip below.

Because the Solid fiber geometry is virtual (created at render time) we need to use a clever trick
to drive the UV lookups directly. By setting the texture map scale to 0, 0, 0 in the Image node we can
feed the UV inputs for the texture with FiberFX-FiberInfo nodes UV outputs, bypassing the internal UV
mapping mode

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FiberFX
Shading

Now that the basic color of your fibers has been managed, its now time to turn to the nitty-gritty
of texturing. Almost all of the following settings can be enveloped and a texture applied, it will be
noted when this is not appropriate.
Diffuse - Determines how much your fibers react to the diffuse setting on lights. Essentially
simulating the scattering of light over the fiber surface (not to be confused with sub-surface
scattering). The higher the percentage the brighter overall your fibers will look.

Diffuse 10%

Diffuse 50%

Diffuse 100%

Diffuse 200%

Diffuse 400%

Specular / Specular Color - Controls how much your fibers will react to specular settings on
lights. As with other specularity settings in LightWave this is the simulation of lights being
reflected on your fibers. Higher values will increase the intensity of this effect. You can also
specify the color of the specular highlights using the Specular Color picker.

Specular 10%

Specular 50%

Specular 100%

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Specular 200%

Specular 400%

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Gloss - In order to see the effect of the gloss setting, you must have Specular above 0%.
Much like the gloss setting in the surface editor, the gloss setting controls the spread of
the specular highlights on your fibers. This setting works slightly differently however. At 0%
gloss is off, once over 0%, low values result in a broader spread of your specular highlights,
as the percentage goes higher the spread then becomes narrower. In the examples below, a
specular value of 200% was also used.

Gloss 5%

Gloss 10%

Gloss 30%

Gloss 60%

Gloss 90%

Luminosity - Another similar acting surface editor setting. Luminosity controls how bright
or self-illuminating your fibers look, higher percentages mean brighter fibers. They dont
actually emit any light though.

Luminosity 10%

Luminosity 50%

Luminosity 100%

Luminosity 200%

Luminosity 400%

Ambient - Controls how much ambient light affects your fibers. In order to see any changes,
your scene must have Ambient Intensity in your Light Properties panel above 0%. Higher
percentages mean your fibers receive more ambient light, and therefore look brighter as a
result. In the examples below Diffuse was set to 50%, Specular 100% and Ambient Intensity
50% to better see the effect. This is a setting that has no T for texture editor access.

Ambient 10%

Ambient 50%

Ambient 100%

Ambient 200%

Ambient 400%

Tip Transparency - Tip Transparency controls at what percentage along your fibers length
(starting from the root) your fibers start to have transparency down to 0% at the ends,
effectively fading them out. 0% means your fibers have no transparency, and so will appear
solid right to the tips. 50% would mean that at 50% along your fibers, they start to fade out
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until they reach 100% transparent at the tips. Makes hair look thick (0%) or fine and fly-away
(100%). In the examples below Diffuse was set to 75% and Specular 100% to better see the
effect.

Tip Trans 0%

Tip Trans 25%

Tip Trans 50%

Tip Trans 75%

Tip Trans 100%

Translucency - Translucency is only really apparent with lights placed behind the subject.
Higher translucency settings give the impression of more light passing through the fibers
making them lighter. This effects the outer edges of your fibers more than the main body.
In the examples below Diffuse was set to 75% and Specular 100% to better see the effect
(more noticeable down the right hand side).

Translucency 10%

Translucency 50%

Translucency 100%

Translucency 200%

Translucency 400%

Cuticle Tilt Root <> Tip - This setting only works when the Specular setting is above 0% as it
controls the position of the specular highlight on the fibers. At 0% the specular highlight
is where it naturally lies when light hits it, negative values pull the highlights towards the
roots, whereas higher, positive values push the highlights away from the roots and towards
the tips. Think of it as a manual override for where specular highlights hit your fibers. In the
examples below Diffuse was set to 75%, Specular 100% and Gloss 5% to better see the effect.
This is a setting that has no Envelope or Texture editor access.

Cuticle Tilt -100%

Cuticle Tilt -50%

Cuticle Tilt 0%

Cuticle Tilt 50%

Cuticle Tilt 100%

Secondary Gloss / Cuticle Tilt 2 Root <> Tip - This is only available if Secondary Gloss is set to
more than 0 %. Simulates the secondary gloss or shine fibers display (mainly hair) when
light is bounced around inside the fibers as a result of being naturally translucent (not linked
to Translucency setting). Works the same way as the first Gloss setting. Cuticle Tilt 2 controls
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the position of the secondary gloss in the same way Cuticle Tilt controls the first Gloss setting.
This is a setting that has no Envelope or Texture editor access.

Secdry Gloss 5%

Secdry Gloss 10%

Secdry Gloss 30%

Secdry Gloss 60%

Secdry Gloss 90%

Cuticle Tilt2 -100%

Cuticle Tilt2 -50%

Cuticle Tilt2 0%

Cuticle Tilt2 50%

Cuticle Tilt2 100%

Pigment - This chooses the tint you want to use for the Secondary Gloss. It is only available if
Secondary Gloss is set to more than 0 %.
Reflections - You can choose to turn off using fibers in reflections if you wish to speed up
rendering and save memory when their presence is not essential to the image you are
working on.
Radiosity - You can choose to turn off using the scenes radiosity to light the fibers unless
necessary for your shot to save memory and time.

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Shadow

This tab contains the controls for tailoring the look of the shadowing of your fibers. FiberFX uses
LightWaves Volumetric system for creating shadows by creating Voxel objects along the fiber
length. Each voxel contains the fibers opacity at that point, which means unlike standard
LightWave 3D Shadow Maps, the shadows from fibers can be opaque or solid where the fiber
density changes. Shadow Maps also require a Spotlight, whereas FiberFX can use any LightWave
light, and only needs to create one shadow structure for all lights in the scene, whereas Shadow
Maps require this process to be completed for each light using shadow maps.
To globally toggle shadows on/off, use the Volumetric Shadows button on this tab.
There are two settings for how much fibers cast shadows on themselves and how much on other
items in the scene. These settings are the same for the different shadow types detailed below.
Setting the values low will result in less dense shadowing making the fibers look thinner while high
values leads to darker shadows and an appearance of thicker fibers. Both values can be enveloped
over time. Setting Cast Shadows to 0 % will remove shadowing from the fibers on an object, but
not the objects shadow. To do so you need to turn off Cast Shadows on the Object Properties Render
tab.

Self Shadow 0%

Self Shadow 15%

Self Shadow 30%

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Self Shadow 60%

Self Shadow 100%

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Cast Shadow 0%

Cast Shadow 15%

Cast Shadow 30%

Cast Shadow 60%

Cast Shadow 100%

Shadow Type

Interpolate - These are the fastest shadows to render.

Ray Trace - These are the slowest, but also the most accurate.
Point Sample - This is a middle road allowing you control over the amount of detail you want
Sample Radius - Sample Radius is only available when you use the Point Sample method of
shadow generation and refers to the size of the sample area used for creating shadows. The
smaller the radius, the more detail the shadows have and thus the slower the render.

Sample Radius 1

Sample Radius 2

Sample Radius 3

Sample Radius 4

Multi-Sample - This produces multiple shadow samples randomized on a hemisphere about

the Light direction. Shadows are smoothed by the samples but more rays are cast and thus
rendertimes go up.
Shadow Depth - This controls the shadow quality. Shadows are created by subdividing the
fiber object into many small voxel boxes. The density of each little box is measured and used
to create the shadows. Lower values result in coarser, less accurate, shadows that will render
faster. Higher values mean smoother, more accurate shadows, but slower rendering. A value
of 16 works well for most setups.

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Shadow Depth 2

Shadow Depth 4

Shadow Depth 8

Shadow Depth 12

Shadow Depth 16

Output

The options on this tab are not available in Volume Only mode. They are intended for use with
final F9 and F10 renders. Both save images consisting only of the hair in the scene so that it can
be better composited using a more complex image pipeline than simply taking the render as it
comes. Be sure to save RGBA files in a format type that supports an alpha channel and Z Depth files
in a floating point format. When these options are used, fibers will not be drawn into the image
filter buffer.

Options

Before Volume Render - Runs the pixel filter and sets the depth buffer before any volumetric
plug-ins. This allows volumetric effects like LightWaves HyperVoxels to contribute to the
FiberFX depth buffer.
Cull Angle - To speed up the OpenGL display of fibers, this setting eliminates fibers early
in the drawing stage that would be behind the object and not be drawn. At 100% fibers
beyond the objects profile edge will be culled, at 0% no fibers are culled.
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Fade Angle - This is the angle the fibers fade out over. Tweak this value to have long back
facing fibers fade gradually instead of just disappearing from the OpenGL view.
Scene Edge Limit - Sets the maximum number of fiber edges drawn in OpenGL. The higher
the number the more fibers will be visible at the expense of slower OpenGL responsiveness.

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Edit Guides
FiberFX allows styling of fiber guides directly within the LightWave Layout OpenGL viewport using
Edit Guides. The tools presented in this window are intuitive to use and allow more natural styling
of fibers than using just the basic parameters found in the Geometry and Styling tabs of the main
FiberFX window.

Fibers should be edited (using Edit Guides) in their undeformed state. Combing fibers must
be done before any deformation is applied, and before they are parented, moved or rotated in space.
Disabling Deformation, IK and Motion Controllers is a must.
To bring up the styling tools click the Edit Guides button on the Geometry tab of the main FiberFX
interface. Once clicked, the main FiberFX interface will be hidden and you will be presented with
a window asking you to name the style you are about to create. If you have already created a style
and have it selected in the dropdown below the Edit Guides button you will immediately enter Edit
Guides where you can make changes. If you wish to create a new style, set your Style to None.
When using the Edit Guides window individual fibers become hidden and the guides that control
them are shown instead, these are what you will be styling. Its worth noting at this point that
when you begin styling your guides the Edges setting in the Geometry tab locks, so either make
sure you have edges set to what you want before styling, or save a before styling version of the
scene to preserve the ability to edit edges. You can also set your style to None and your Edges
setting will unlock again allowing you to recreate the style from scratch.

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As soon as you click your left mouse button in an OpenGL viewport with this window open you will
see two circles for your mouse pointer. The inner circle determines the strength of your brush, the
outer the size. These values can be changed numerically in the Edit Guides window, or using the
right mouse button interactively in the viewport. RMB up/down controls brush radius, while RMB
left/right controls brush strength. This applies whichever of the three Brush Modes you choose to
use.
The three brush modes are as follows:
Radius - This is an airbrush-like manipulation of the guides on your object.
Global - This affects all guides equally, your brush radius has no effect here, but the strength does.
Surface Hug - This works similarly to Radius mode but attempts to keep to the surface of your
object.
The are four brush types as follows:
Push - This combs the guides in the direction you drag the mouse over them. The amount it
drags them depends on the strength of your brush.
Scale - You cannot interactively change the radius and strength of your brush when in this
type since clicking on the left mouse button grows the hair inside the radius of the brush,
right clicking shrinks the same hairs.
Straighten - This will unbend your fibers the longer you leave your mouse button held down
until they are back in their initial direction of the normal of the polygon they are on.
Single - A special-use type, this allows you to manipulate a single guide, for instance to create
a kiss curl on the forehead.
Brush Depth - Because styling in most often done in a Perspective viewport sometimes you dont
want to affect fibers that are seemingly within the brushes radius but are actually on the ther side
of the shape you are styling. Using Brush Depth will enable you to control just how deep into the
screen the brush goes.
Symmetry Axis - You can brush symmetrically on your object using these buttons and a plane will
appear bisecting your object perpendicular to the plane you choose. Also a single circle shows the
fibers you are affecting on the opposite side of the symmetry axis.
History - The Checkmark with On written on it is to enable or disable the keeping of a history of
steps performed in the Edit Guides window and can be turned off to save memory. The history is
only kept during the session using Edit Guides, not between sessions.
Revert - This reverts the style back to what it was when you opened the Edit Guides window initially
and functions regardless of the state of the History On/Off Checkmark.
Reset Default - This button takes the style back to its original, default state. Be warned that there is
no undo for using this function.
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Style settings
Style dropdown - Allows you to choose between the different styles applied to your fibers.
New - Creates a new style based on the one you were previously editing.
Remove - Deletes the currently selected style from your fibers.

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Environments
Fire! Smoke! Flowing Magma! This is where you add these types of dynamic effects. You can also
create fog effects, or even enhance your backgrounds with the effects controls. The Compositing
and Processing tabs of this window are covered in the Rendering and Compositing chapter.
Compositing Options starts on page 2244, and Image Processing Options starts on page 2249.

Backdrop Options
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl F5)
LightWave lets you change the colors of the backdrop behind all of the objects in a scene. The
settings are on the Backdrop Tab of the Effects Panel (Windows > Backdrop Options). You can elect to
have a solid color using the Backdrop Color setting or a Gradient Backdrop. By default, the backdrop
is solid black.

If you have any reflective surfaces and you want the backdrop included in the reflection, set the
Reflection options on the Surface Editors Environment Tab to one of the backdrop options.

Gradient Backdrops
LightWaves Gradient Backdrop settings essentially provide a quick earth-like environment
background. Note that no shadows can be cast on the backdrop since it really isnt there.
Although youre unlikely to use it much for real-life imagery, it is great for faking a sky behind
mountain objects, instructional animations, and logo animations. Use it when you need something
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to stick in the background.

There are actually two gradient areas. Think of it as a huge sphere cut into two halves. One half
rests on top of the Y axis plane, and the other half sits directly beneath it.

The Sky Color begins all around the edge of the top half of the sphere and gradually turns into the
Zenith Color moving towards the top. The Ground Color begins all around the edge of the bottom
half of the sphere and gradually turns into the Nadir Color moving towards the bottom. Note that
there is no gradual change of color between the Sky Color and Ground Color.

If you want the Gradient Backdrop to blend everywhere with no sharp color change, make the
Sky Color and Ground Color the same.
The camera is always positioned right in the center of the sphere. Thus, if you move the camera,
the Gradient Backdrop will always look the same. However, if you rotate the camera, you will see the
various colors.

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There are several additional Gradient backdrops available using the Textured Environment plugin
available on this tab. Select it and hit F8 to bring up the Presets window in which you will see
several choices including an updated oldskool Desert Chrome backdrop.

Left: Sky and Ground Squeeze both at 6.0, Right: Both at 20

The Sky Squeeze value determines how the Zenith and Sky colors are blended. The Ground
Squeeze value determines how the Ground and Nadir colors are blended. The default value of 6.0
yields a nice spread between the various colors. A lower value will spread the change in colors over
a greater area and a higher value will compress the change.

Environments
Several plugins may be used to create exciting backgrounds for your animations. You access these
plugins by adding them on the Add Environment pop-up menu on the Backdrop Tab of the Effects
Panel.

Image World
The Image World Environment lets you apply an image as a spherical environment wrap; this
approach is perfect for high dynamic range images. You can offset the heading and pitch of the
image, as well as adjust its brightness.

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Textured Environment
The Textured Environment lets you apply a texture as a spherical environment wrap; this approach is
perfect for high dynamic range images. Clicking the Texture button launches the standard Texture
Editor giving you access to gradients, procedurals, and the use of images to create an endless
variety of textures.

The texture is not stuck to the camera background, like a normal background image Therefore, as
you move the camera, you will pan over the environment.
An interesting application would be to use a gradient and select the (camera) Heading or Pitch as
the Input Parameter. This lets you vary a glorious sunset sky based on the rotation of the camera.
You might also use this to add a nebula behind your starfield using a simple Turbulence or Fractal
Noise procedural texture.

For more information on the Texture Editor see the Texture Editor section starting on page 1907

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Volumetrics and Fog Options
(default keyboard shortcut

Ctrl

F6)

LightWave features volumetric effects - essentially lighting and particle effects with physical
volume. These effects are common in everyday life and can play a key role in creating dramatic
realistic environments. However, they are difficult to reproduce using standard polygonal models.

Courtesy Pixel Magic

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A very common example of volumetric lighting is the atmosphere: the color of the sky comes from
the scattering and absorption of light in the different layers of the atmosphere.
The combination of light scattering and absorption is the very core of volumetric lighting effects.
Additionally, other parameters must also be taken into account, like volume size and shape, density
distribution inside the volume, lighting conditions, and behavior of light inside the medium.
Adjusting these parameters lets you create a wide range of natural effects.
The sky, for example, is usually blue because light attenuation depends on wavelength and
distance. When the sun is at the zenith, its light crosses fewer layers of atmosphere than when
the sun is on the horizon. Blue light is stronger at the zenith than at sunset because the thinner
atmosphere does not interfere with its shorter wavelength. In red sunsets, the thicker layers of
atmosphere attenuate blue light, but the longer wavelength of red light passes through the
atmospheric layers.
Fog is another good example. It is a medium composed of vaporized water where density is
distributed in a non-homogeneous manner. The water particles in the fog cause a dispersion/
absorption phenomenon that causes the lighting effect, while the density distribution gives the
global appearance of the fog. If you want a thick fog lying on the ground and fading with altitude,
you will have to use a density distribution that makes the density high at lower altitudes and low at
higher altitudes. If you want to add turbulence in the fog (to have a more cloudy appearance), you
can add fractal noise, which creates a 3D density field.

Computational Issues
Volumetrics are calculated by integrating all the scattering/absorption contributions along a
ray (which comes from the camera). When you use a 3D fractal density field, the integration
must be made numerically with a limited number of sampling points. In this case, the values will
be calculated at each sampling point, which means that for 50 sampling points, the algorithm
calculates 50 density field values, 50 lighting values, and 50 scattering/absorption values. All
those values can take a lot of time to compute. Using fewer sampling points will result in a faster
rendering but will introduce numerical errors: this is volumetric aliasing. Volumetric shadows can
be obtained this way by measuring the lighting conditions at each sampling point along the ray.
When you work with a normal density distribution, you can make the integration literally, which
gives a much faster rendering. But in this model (which we call fast model), it is not possible
to measure lighting conditions along the ray, and as a consequence it is not possible to get
volumetric shadows.
Another important note about numerical issues is how to adjust values to get the desired effect.
The intensity of the effect is always related to the length of the medium crossed by the ray. This is
obvious if you compare cigarette smoke to smoke from a large fire - the size of the volume has a
big influence on the result. The behavior of light may also change completely when the volume
size changes, because absorption may overpower scattering, and vice versa. A good example of
this is clouds.
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When you look at clouds, you see that small thin clouds are bright and totally white, while
big clouds have dark grey areas and a thin white border. The dark grey color comes from the
absorption of light inside the cloud. Even the scattering of light emitted inside the cloud
is absorbed from the point of scattering to the boundaries of the cloud. In this example,
absorption takes precedence over scattering when thickness gets bigger. However, under other
circumstances, the opposite could occur. When you use high absorption and scattering values, you
can create explosion-like effects, where there is very high contrast between bright and dark areas.
In conclusion, when adjusting parameters, you must be aware of the scale of the object you are
working on.

About Particles
When you work with particles, a sphere of gas is associated with each particle. As a result, a
particle cloud is really just a union of spheres. Computing the effect for every particle can be
computationally intensive, particularly when their spheres overlap one another. The solution is
the automatic particle sizing option, which evaluates a particle size so that each particle is close to
another. The result is a dense cloud optimized for numerical integration and lower rendering times.

Normal Fog
LightWave can generate a quick fog effect that is useful for many special effects. Just as objects
seem to blend into real fog with distance, the effect fades the objects away into the fog color you
set. Fog surrounds the camera in all directions, as though the camera were in the middle of a huge
spherical fog bank extending in all directions.
The Fog settings are on the Volumetric Tab of the Effects Panel (Window > Volumetrics and Fog
Options). In setting up fog, you will set a minimum and maximum distance from the camera. Within
and beyond this range, objects will take on some amount of the Fog Color. You can also specify the
percent of fog color that objects take on at the minimum and maximum distances.

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The Fog Type pop-up menu sets the characteristics of your fog. Off, obviously, turns off the fog
effect. The other fog types differ in how the effect falls off toward the camera. Linear falls off in
a linear manner. Nonlinear 1 is somewhat more realistic in appearance, since the fog will appear
to grow thicker with distance. Nonlinear 2 has a steeper falloff curve. Realistic generates realistic
fog that works correctly with objects that have reflection, refraction and/or transparency that are
inside the fog. Unlike the other fog modes, it has no exact limit to the fog range.

Its important to realize that the Fog feature doesnt actually calculate a wispy volumetric fog
around objects, but rather changes the color of the objects to that color chosen as the Fog Color.
As such, the backdrop will receive no amount of fog. For volumetric 3D fog, use the Ground Fog
volumetric, discussed later.
A negative Minimum Distance will start the fog behind the camera. You can even enter a larger
minimum amount than the Maximum Distance amount, which results in an effect whereby objects
will render in more of the fog when closer to the camera.
With Linear, fog is applied linearly between the Minimum Distance and Maximum Distance. NonLinear 1 and 2 apply the fog amount more rapidly as they are moved away from the camera, then
less so as they approach the maximum distance. The small graph to the left of the setting gives you
an indication of the fog application over distance.
The Use Backdrop Color option causes an object to blend in with whatever backdrop you have
set, including a background image. This can have the effect of making objects appear slightly
transparent. Use this option to simulate the effects of an underwater environment or a hazy, foggy
day with an appropriate Backdrop Color like bluish green for underwater and greyish white for a
foggy day.
If you add a Texture Environment environment (Window > Backdrop Options) and also activate Use
Backdrop Color, your fog (and backdrop) can use a texture.

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Textured Fog

The rendering speed of the Fast Fog Render Type for the Ground Fog volumetric comes at a price.
Because it is not a full volumetric effect, it will not always blend accurately with other volumetric effects,
like volumetric lights. This may result in visible artifacts in your rendered images.

Volumetric Antialiasing
The Volumetric Antialiasing option activates or deactivates the antialiasing of volumetric plugins
and volumetric lights. If this option is off, the volumetric effects from the first rendering pass
are stored and reused in later passes, instead of being re-rendered in each pass. Obviously, this
can save rendering time, but will require more memory and may cause problems when used in
conjunction with motion blur or depth of field.

Volumetric Plugins
Volumetric Plugins are added on the Volumetrics Tab of the Effects Panel.

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Ground Fog
Use the Ground Fog volumetric plugin to add three-dimensional fog to your scene. The fog
has actual physical size so, for example, the camera can move in and out of the fog. This differs
fundamentally from normal fog, discussed previously, where the camera is always within the fog.

With the Render Type pop-up menu, you can choose between two different types of Ground Fog.
Fast Fog is a quick-rendering fog with a uniform thickness. It is basically the three-dimensional
version of normal fog. Ray Marcher adds an uneven fog, particularly when you use a texture.
Since this fog varies by precise physical position, like real fog, it is computationally intensive, but
generally yields a more accurate and realistic result.
When using Ray Marcher, you can throttle the amount of computations using the Quality pop-up
menu at the bottom of the panel. Add a texture by activating the Use Texture option. Clicking the
Edit Texture button will bring up the standard Texture Editor. A fog texture will make your fog more
interesting and less flat.
The Top and Bottom settings control the altitude of the fog, that is, where your fog starts and stops
vertically. Falloff determines how the fog decreases to zero, from the Bottom to the Top. The higher
the value, the more the fog will decrease its density. Note that the Ray Marcher mode tends to fall
off quickly at the fogs edges, while Fast Fog has a uniform linear fall off.

Make sure you know where your camera is when using GroundFog. The effect is really best seen
from outside of the fog. If your camera is inside the fog, changing settings may appear to have little
effect. In fact, if your camera is always within the fog, you may want to just use the (faster) normal fog.

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The Luminosity and Opacity values are the values where the fog is at its thickest.
Nominal Distance is the distance at which the fog has a medium effect - it is not like standard Fogs
Minimum Distance. You will want to use small values for small-scale scenes. Large-scale scenes may
require higher values to keep close objects from getting too affected by the fog.
You can set the color of the fog with the Color setting or you can just use the backdrop color.

Left: No Fog; Right: FastFog

Ray Marcher Fog using a Texture

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SkyTracer2
The SkyTracer2 Environment was designed to create sophisticated atmospheric effects using realworld parameters. You can adjust the Atmospheric, Cloud, and Sun settings within the interface to
create a variety of beautifully rendered sky images. These skies can be rendered (volumetrically or
as a 2D effect) within an existing scene, or saved as image files to be composited or used as Texture
Maps.The SkyTracer2 Environment was designed to create sophisticated atmospheric effects
using real-world parameters. You can adjust the Atmospheric, Cloud, and Sun settings within
the interface to create a variety of beautifully rendered sky images. These skies can be rendered
(volumetrically or as a 2D effect) within an existing scene, or saved as image files to be composited
or used as texture maps.

SkyTracer2 simulates light scattering and light absorption in the atmosphere. The settings for this
simulation are real-life parameters such as atmosphere thickness, cloud altitude, sun position
and so on. Because SkyTracer2 uses volumetric lighting techniques, you can even get spectacular
effects like the sun casting light rays through the clouds. You can adjust both the current Time and
Location settings to accurately simulate the sun rising or setting, anywhere in this world or another.

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Default SkyTracer2 settings

Several Presets

The interface is split into two sections: global controls are at the top of the panel and controls to
adjust atmospheric effects are at the bottom of the panel.

The SkyBaker button brings up the SkyBaker Panel.

The Dissolve setting adjusts the transparency of the SkyTracer2 effect and the Planet Radius adjusts
the size of the planet, and thus the size of the atmosphere. The default value of 6.3Mm represents
the size of the Earth.

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The Atmosphere Panel

Think of the sky as a stack of two layers, Atmosphere and Haze. These layers have identical controls,
but each can have different values for scattering, absorption, and density distribution.
Quality is the level of sampling performed along the cameras viewing direction. Higher Quality
levels give more accurate renders, however, this setting also affects rendering times. Therefore, the
High setting should be reserved for very precise effects.
The Thickness setting controls the thickness of the atmosphere and haze layers. Thickness is
measured in kilometers and meters respectively, with 100km and 1000m as default values.

Left: Thickness 100%; Right, Thickness 50%

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The Luminosity parameter adjusts the percentage of light that scatters within the layer. This
scattering intensity is greatest in front of the sun and lower elsewhere.

Left: Luminosity 100%; Right, Luminosity 0%

Opacity measures the percentage of light absorbed within the layer. High values attenuate light,
and objects disappear at the horizon. When you use opacity with haze, you can create pollutionlike effects. However when you adjust the opacity within the Atmosphere Panel, you can create
strange, out-of-this world skies.

Left: Opacity 50%; Right, Opacity 200%

Fall Off modifies how density is distributed throughout the layer. Values higher than 100% decrease
density rapidly with altitude, while a value of 0% has no decrease at all. Negative values in the Haze
Falloff setting will invert the density distribution.

The Clouds Panel

No sky would be complete without some clouds! By controlling the clouds altitude, density,
luminosity, opacity, and contrast parameters, SkyTracer2 can create an incredible range of cloud
effects. The two layers in SkyTracer2, low and high-altitude clouds, have identical parameters; you
can enable these layers separately for drastically different effects or together for complex
sky patterns.
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Use the Enable Clouds switch to turn the two cloud layers on or off.

The Texture button opens the Texture Editor Panel, which is where you specify the type of cloud to
render and adjust its coverage parameters. (see below)
Altitude sets the height in the sky where the cloud layer will start.
The Density setting controls how dense the cloud layer is. Think of this setting as adjusting the
probability of rainfall for the area. A Density value of 10% means that the clouds are fairly devoid of
water. This gives a much thinner cloud layer, which allows more light to travel through it. A value of
75% has a much thicker appearance, and shows a higher probability of rain.

Left: Density 20%; Right: Density 200%

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Luminosity controls the scattering intensity of light through the clouds. With high values, you
create bright clouds. The light scattered from the cloud is attenuated by the Atmospheric and Haze
settings.

Left: Luminosity 10%; Right: Luminosity 100%

Opacity controls how much light is allowed through the layer. A setting of 100% renders a
completely dark sky, while a value of 0% renders a much brighter sky.

Left: Opacity 10%; Right: Opacity 50%

The Contrast setting affects the coverage of the cloud layer. A value of 10% gives a constant
sheet of clouds, with little variation within the layer. While the default value of 200% shows subtle
variation within the cloud, it also reduces the clouds coverage.

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Left: Contrast 100%; Right: Contrast 200%

Enable the Volumetric Rendering option to specify how SkyTracer2 will render the layer. When
Volumetric Rendering is enabled, SkyTracer2 renders the clouds as a volume that has both density
and mass. When Volumetric Rendering is disabled, SkyTracer2 renders the layer like an image
projected on a piece of geometry in the sky. Disabling this effect will greatly reduce rendering
time, but it will also generate a less convincing cloud layer.
If enabled, Volumetric Rendering also makes the cloud quality, height, shadow strength, and
ambient light parameters available. These options do not apply to a cloud layer when you disable
Volumetric Rendering.

Activated, Deactivated

Textured Shadows activates the cloud layers self-shadowing option, which generates more
accurate shadows within the layer, but increases rendering times. Textured Shadows is similar to
HyperVoxels self-shadowing feature.
Like in reality, you can get an under-lit effect when the sun is very low on the horizon. In this
case, the clouds are lit from beneath, creating spectacular red lighting effects. The effect is best
accomplished by using volumetric clouds with textured shadows.

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The Texture Editor Panel
SkyTracer2 uses a texture defined in LightWaves Texture Editor to control the style, coverage, and
placement of the cloud layers. Although you can use a Procedural, Image, or Gradient texture layer,
the most common texture used will be the STClouds procedural texture. This procedural texture is
specifically designed to work with SkyTracer2 and contains many of the settings needed to create
realistic clouds.
Use the procedural preview window in Texture Editor to quickly see results when you adjust
settings for cloud style and coverage. Simply adjust one of the procedurals settings and watch
how it affects the computed fractal.

The Texture Value controls the strength of the cloud layer. The higher the percentage, the
more cloud coverage in this layer.
The Small Scale and Big Scale values are two fractal scale parameters for the appearance of
the clouds.
Lacunarity sets the turbulence within the cloud layer. A value of 1 renders the clouds nice
and smooth, while a value of 5 or higher breaks up and distorts the cloud to give it a much
more natural appearance.
The Octaves setting controls the amount of frequencies or detail your fractal receives. The
higher the value, the more frequencies are used when rendering. This will create more
details within the cloud, but it also causes longer rendering times.
Cloud Type lets you select from cloud styles. Cumulus clouds are big and puffy low-altitude
clouds; Cirrus clouds are long and thin and are generally found at higher altitudes. You can
even simulate the streaming effect that jets create when flying at high altitudes by selecting
the Jet Trails Cloud Type.
SkyTracer2 applies textures to an imaginary cloud layer that is parallel to the XZ plane. Therefore
when you apply textures with a planar projection, you should use the Y axis. You can create realistic
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cloud effects like attenuating the clouds in the distance using X and Z Falloff, or create pyramidshaped clouds (as in Cumulus) by using a texture Falloff on the Y axis.

The SkyTracer2 default texture has a Falloff setting already applied.

Instead of using a procedural approach, you can specify the clouds exact coverage by loading a
fractal-like image on the Y axis. To get a convincing effect, you should use a smoothly repeating
texture.
Use a gradient in any layer to modify the previous layers effect. The gradient Input Parameters are
Heading (ray heading angle), Pitch (ray pitch angle), and Height. The height is the height inside the
cloud layer.

That is 0 in the bottom and 1 at the top.

The Suns Panel

SkyTracer2 uses one or two lights to render the clouds and atmospheric effects. You can use either
your own lights or the SKT_Sun lights added by SkyTracer2. An added bonus: you can also set up
these lights to render as either a sun or a moon flare.

By default only one Sun light is added.

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You can select which light(s) SkyTracer2 uses to calculate the appearance of the clouds in the Sun1
and Sun2 Light drop down list. The Type lets you choose to render the light as a sun or a moon. You
can change the appearance of the sun or moon by adjusting the flares Size, Flare Intensity, Flare
Boost, Streaks, and Color Shift values.

Sun Position
By pressing the Sun Position button, you access the Sun Spot Motion Modifier. You adjust the suns
position by specifying the exact day and time for the light to be positioned.

Although you may never see it, the position of the SKT_Sun light rotates properly as time passes.
To increase the speed of the animating sun, edit the Time Lapse field. To complete the time lapse
effect, animate the clouds texture parameters.
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The Sky Baker Panel
Once you create your sky, you can either render it on every frame along with your scene or Sky
Baker can generate image files to map it onto geometry and fake the effect. Several reasons are
listed below for why you would want to bake a sky:
1) You can see your sky in real-time using OpenGL.
2) The sky is saved as an image, so you can edit it with the Image
Editor controls (e.g., hue, saturation, gamma, etc.).
3) The solution is already figured out, so the sky renders extremely fast.

The Sky Baker Panel lets you select the resolution of the images, their image type, mapping
projection style and a file prefix name. The Antialiasing option activates and deactivates the
Antialiasing pass when rendering the images.

The spherical projection has the advantage of being more compact and not distorted when
compared to the cubic projection.
By pressing the OK button Sky Baker will start to render all images. A progress bar shows you how
much Sky Baker has completed. Once Sky Baker completes the job, you can choose to generate,
position, and map the geometry needed to complete the effect.

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Skygen
SkyGen (Utilities > Plugins > Additional > Skygen) is a set of pre-made procedural texture
environments. From realistic to cartoon the sky samples cover daytime, evening and night.
Complete with procedural clouds and the ability to animate each parameter. SkyGen scripts will
also add all necessary control objects and images.

The initial Skygen Panel gives you the option to toggle on the Presets Panel as well as VIPER.
Also, you can add a reference null to be used in animating the clouds. Do this by selecting Add
Reference Null on the panel.

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Use the Add Skygen Sun and Moon options to add a Sun and Moon to your sky environment.
Once you click OK, if these options are selected you will be given options for each for the default
orientation.

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Introduction
With ordinary polygonal objects, realistic effects like liquids, smoke, clouds, and fire are difficult, if
not impossible, to achieve without HyperVoxels. It simplifies the creation of volumetric rendering
effects such as photo-realistic clouds, flames, explosions, dust, nebulas, contrails, fluids, smoke,
ash, pyroclastics, gelatin, electro-microscopic images, rusted materials, detailed solid and rocky
surfaces, and much, much more.

HyperVoxels have computed mass, as opposed to the modelled mass of normal LightWave objects.
This opens the door to effects of greater complexity. You can now transform objects dynamically,
like merging and slicing objects, without modeling multiple geometries. A common example of
this is the action of the substance inside lava lamps.
HyperVoxels can be a surface, volume, or sprite. Surface HyperVoxels are similar to standard
LightWave objects. They have a defined surface, but no interior. If you go inside such an object,
there is nothing. Volume HyperVoxels, on the other hand, have computed volume. You would use
this option to create effects like gases, flames, clouds, explosions, or even short hair or fur. Your
camera can go inside these HyperVoxels and still see the texture. The Sprite Mode is a slice of a
volume HyperVoxel. It renders more quickly, but lacks much of the volume modes 3D quality.
The HyperVoxels volumetric filter is usually applied to a points-only object or a null object. The
reason is that polygons may be visible after rendering and usually this is not desired. However,
having polygons may make the object easier to see in Layout. In such cases, you can use the
Unseen by Camera object property.
HyperVoxel textures are 3D algorithmic textures, unlike normal surface Bump Maps, which only
appear to have depth. This means you can actually get very close to the surface and the textures
will look three dimensional. HyperVoxels feature sub-pixel displacement, which results in surface
details no matter how close you get.
You can determine the position of HyperVoxels by using a null object or an objects points. Moving
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the object will move the HyperVoxel object. Changing the position of an objects internal points
will also change the look of a HyperVoxel object. HyperVoxels will appear around each point and
their proximity to each other affects how the object appears on the whole.
A particle animation system is not required. You can achieve many spectacular effects using null
objects or points animated by conventional means. However, to achieve realistic dynamic liquid
effects, you will probably need a LightWave particle system, like Particle FX.

Image courtesy Christophe Desse

HyperVoxel objects exist just as normal objects do. Thus, they cast shadows, are reflected, and so
on. However, currently, plugins do not have access to all lighting information. As a result, HyperVoxels
will continue to receive shadows, even if the Receive Shadows option on the Object Properties Panel is
disabled.

HyperVoxels and Transparent Surfaces

Because volumetrics are ray-traced, to see a HyperVoxel behind a transparent surface, you must ray
trace transparent surfaces. You can do this by simply activating the Ray Trace Transparency option
on the Render Options Panel. However, this is not necessary if the Refraction Index of the objects
transparent surface (Surface Editor) is set greater than 1.0 (even 1.001) and Ray Trace Refraction on
the Render Options Panel is enabled.
Also, if you want to see an object behind a transparent HyperVoxel surface, you need to set the
Refraction Option to Ray Tracing + Backdrop on the HyperVoxels Shading, Environment Tab.

Example - Starting with HyperVoxels

Here are some short exercises to jump-start you with HyperVoxels. This exercise gives you a quick
hands-on feel for how to use HyperVoxels.
1) Add a null object to an empty scene in Layout.

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2) Add HyperVoxels from the Add Volumetric drop down menu (Window > Volumetrics and Fog
Options) or hit Ctrl F6. Open the HyperVoxels Settings Panel by double clicking on it in the
list.

3) On the HyperVoxels Panel, double-click on the null in the list window. This will activate
HyperVoxels for this object. A check will appear to the left of its name. (You could also select
the object and click the Activate button.)

4) Object Type should be set to Surface. When you activate an object, the automatic size
function is performed. The value 1 m should appear in the Particle Size field.

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5) Make sure the Automatic Preview options are active so we can see the results of your efforts.
Automatic Preview updates the preview as you make changes, so you dont have to keep
clicking Render.

For this example we are going to use VIPER. VIPER is VPRs predecessor and still works better with
rendering HyperVoxel particles, while VPR does everything else better.
6) Open VIPER (there is a button for it on the Render tab, or you can hit F7). You should already
see a rather dull ball in the VIPER window - of course its a lot more interesting than a
rendered null.

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You can preview animated textures with VIPER. Remember that VIPER uses the camera view, so
make sure the camera can see your particles.
7) Change the Particle size to 2. The ball will be larger in VIPER. Click on the HyperTexture Tab.
This is where you define the surface texture - essentially the terrain of the surface. Select FBM
from the Texture pop-up. Notice that this is similar to setting a surface procedural texture.

VIPER Render
Go ahead and play around with the various settings on this tab and watch the HyperVoxel change.
You can actually apply all of the standard surface attributes to HyperVoxels on the Shading Tab.
All of the settings should be familiar to you since they are identical in name and operation to the
normal LightWave Surface settings. Try changing the various values and see their effects on VIPER.

Example - HyperVoxel volumetrics

This exercise will give you a flavour of some of the volumetric features.
1) Using the HyperVoxel from the previous example, change the Object Type from Surface to
Volume.

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2) Go to the HyperTexture Tab and select Turbulence as the texture. You should now see a nice
wispy volumetric cloud. This object is totally three dimensional. You could fly the camera into
it and continue to see all of the details.

3) Lets add some color. Go to Shading Tab > Basic Tab and click the Color Texture button.

4) Change the default Layer Type to a Gradient and use Local Density as the Input Parameter.
This will apply the gradient based on the density of the cloud.

5) Create three keys: blue, yellow, and red, top to bottom. To create these keys, just click in the
gradient bar and then adjust the appropriate Color. You will see VIPER updating the preview
as you make changes. Click Use Texture to close the panel when you are done.
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6) The options on the Shading > Basic Tab control the basic look of your volumetric HyperVoxel.
You can adjust the color, luminosity, opacity, and density. The lower half of the tab
controls the fractal look of the object. Try playing with the settings to see their effects.

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7) Click on the Advanced Sub Tab. As you might expect, this tab contains more advanced
options. Included are options to define how the HyperVoxel object is lit, as well as selfshadow options.

8) Try playing with the various settings, including the Sprite Mode.

Example - Blending HyperVoxel Objects

This exercise shows how different HyperVoxel objects can interact with one another.
1) Add three null objects to an empty scene in Layout.
2) Move Null (1) to Y = 1m and Null (3) to Y = -1m.

3) Choose Windows > HyperVoxels to open its panel and activate HyperVoxels for all three
objects.

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4) Open VIPER and set Preview Options to Scene Preview. This will give us a preview of all of the
HyperVoxel objects in the scene.

5) Select Null (1) and choose New Group from the Blending Group pop-up menu on Geometry
Tab. Accept the default name Blend Group (1) by clicking OK.

6) For each HyperVoxel set the Blending Group to Blend Group (1) and the Blending Mode
to Additive (Geometry Tab). By placing all of the HyperVoxels in the same group, they can
interact with each other.
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7) Try changing the Color (Shading Tab > Basic Tab) of each null and giving them Texture
(HyperTexture Tab).

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Preview Options
When used with HyperVoxels, the Preview Options pop-up menu on the VIPER window has some
options. Object Preview gives you a preview of the selected HyperVoxel object from the cameras
perspective.

Scene Preview will show you all of the HyperVoxel objects which are visible from the cameras
perspective.

Particle Preview will give you an enlarged view of a single particle, which is particularly helpful if
your HyperVoxel object consists of many particles.
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Use Z-Buffer
The Use Z-Buffer in Preview option (on the main HyperVoxel Panel) allows you to preview your
HyperVoxels in the last rendered frame. (Note: Object Preview or Scene Preview modes only.) This
requires that the Enable VIPER option be active on the Render Options Panel.

Sprite Texture Resolution

The Sprite Texture Resolution setting (on the main HyperVoxel Panel) is a Display setting and does
not affect your rendered HyperVoxels nor VIPER. It allows you to set the quality of textures used on
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HyperVoxel particles in Layout.

HyperVoxels Setting Management

Load/Save buttons allow you to retrieve and store HyperVoxels setting files. This can be used to
create a library of attributes.

Use the Copy button to copy the settings for the selected HyperVoxel object to a memory buffer.
These can be pasted to the currently selected HyperVoxel object using the Paste button.
You can enable/disable HyperVoxels for an activated object by clicking in the checkmark column
and you will not lose your settings. The Activate button will activate the selected object and set all
settings to their defaults. The Deactivate button places the object in an inactive default state. With
Activate and Deactivate, you will lose any existing settings.
If the Show pop-up menu is set to All Objects, then all objects in the scene will be listed.
HyperVoxels Only will list only HyperVoxel objects; however, this includes disabled HyperVoxel
objects.

Sprites
The Sprite mode is a simplified two-dimensional slice (or slices) of a HyperVoxel, so it can quickly
produce results to give you a fast sketch of the HyperVoxels rendered appearance. You might think
of it as a slice of a Volume that has been mapped on a polygon that always faces the camera.
You may want to use Sprite to accelerate the setup process for Surface or Volume modes.
Its even great for instances where you dont need a full 3D volumetric effect, like a smokestack in
the distance.
Although Sprites are two-dimensional in nature, you can still fly a camera through them. The sprite
will begin to dissolve when the camera gets into it and eventually fully dissolve when the camera
hits the slice.

Geometry Tab
Enter a specific radius for the individual particles in the Particle Size field. Click Automatic Sizing to
compute an average size - this is a handy way to find a starting point. The average particle size is
based on the shape of the entire object - HyperVoxels surfaces will not intersect at this setting.

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When you first activate an object, automatic sizing is performed for you.
Rendering time is related to how much the particles intersect each other - the more intersections
you have, the longer the rendering time. For fastest rendering, always try to use the smallest
number of particles and the smallest Particle Size that achieves acceptable results.
Size Variation sets the maximum percent that the particle size can vary. For example, a particle
size of 1m with a variation of 100% can be as small as 1m and as large as 2m. Using a variation
of 50% would yield particles ranging from 1m to 1.5m in size. Use this setting to create random
disturbances in the surface.

Stretching and Rotating HyperVoxels

You can stretch HyperVoxels on a selected axis or based on velocity (Stretch Direction). The
amount of stretching is determined by the Stretch Amount setting, which may be animated. When
using nulls, you may stretch HyperVoxels by animating normal Layout XYZ size values.

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Left: Without Stretch Direction, Right With Stretch Direction

HyperVoxels also respect the rotation of the object. The Maintain Volume option on the HyperVoxel
Panel Geometry Tab will cause the HyperVoxels to maintain their volume. This means that when
they get squashed, they will maintain the same area.

Align to Path
Align to Path causes the HyperVoxels to rotate as they follow a path. This can be particularly
important when using particles.

Blending HyperVoxels

Separate HyperVoxel items can interact with one another. You can individually set how the selected
object interacts with other HyperVoxel objects. In order for HyperVoxels to interact:
All must belong to the same Blending Group.
All must have a Blending Mode selected.
To view with VIPER, you must have Scene Preview set as the Preview Options.
Here, the two objects are shown separately:

Left: Object 1, Right: Object 2

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(none) means it will not interact with other HyperVoxel items.

No Blending

Additive will smoothly blend HyperVoxels.

Object 1 Additive, Object 2 Additive

Negative will make the object push away portions of other HyperVoxel items that it comes in
contact with - sort of like an animated boolean effect.

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Object 1 Additive, Object 2 Negative

Effector is kind of a cross between Additive and Negative.

Object 1 Additive, Object 2 Effector

A Blending Group is the group of HyperVoxel objects which you want to interact with each other.
You can select an existing group or create a new one.
The Metaball blending method can be used with all HyperVoxel types. Rather than just retaining
the two former preset choices (Metaballs 1 and Metaballs 2) the implementation was revised to
allow for control of the algorithm via a percentage entry field and animation of the value using an
envelope.
To enable, first check on the Blending toggle. The Blending Scale field now allows for control of the
blending algorithm. The former Metaballs 1 option can be matched with a setting of 75%, and the
Metaballs 2 option with a setting of 100%.
It is now possible to use any value, including values above 100%. This helps to provide quite a
range of looks, including more fluid-like HyperVoxels setups. The setting can also be animated,
something not possible before.
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The upper limit for particles, which was always set to 1 million, has been removed. Although
there is now no fixed upper limit, bear in mind that each particle can take 2.5 KB or more per second
of animation at 30fps. Increasing the number of particles to more physical memory than you have
available will result in LightWave crashing

Show Particles
The Show Particles option will display a bounding sphere in viewports.

The Blending Box will enable/disable the surface tension of HyperVoxels. Checked, Blending will
result in the HyperVoxels connecting in close proximity. Unchecked, the HyperVoxels will not
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connect in close proximity.
With Blending off, you can create things like sand, gravel, and other loose particulate matter.

Use ParticleStorm Color

The HyperVoxels will use the color from Particle Storm particles, if available. Particle Storm (retitled
Napalm) is a plugin available from Dynamic Realities.

The HyperVoxels Particles Displacement plugin lets you set the HyperVoxels particle base color to
that of the Vertex Color Map, if one exists.

Shading Tab: Surface Mode

The parameters on the Shading Tab work just like their cousins on the Surface Editor.

Self Shadows lets the HyperVoxel cast shadows on itself. (The HyperVoxel will cast shadows on
other objects in the normal way.) Full Refraction forces rays to bounce each time a new refracting
(i.e., transparent) surface is found. If this option is inactive, one refraction bounce is computed,
which is enough most of the time. Full Refraction will, of course, increase render time, but will
result in more sophisticated effects.

You might try the (faster-rendering) corresponding bump textures on the Shading Tab without
HyperTextures, if you dont need the true surface details. Remember this: Dont get hyper if bumping will
do or A bump in the night is not worth getting hyper over.

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Shading Tab: Volume Mode
The options on the Shading Tab are different for Volume HyperVoxels, which are gas- or cloud-type
effects. Use Color, Luminosity, Opacity, and Density settings to change those parameters for the
volumetric object.

The Thickness setting, which defaults to 50%, lets you adjust the general heaviness of the volume.
Higher Smoothing values yield less of a hard-edged look and volumes will appear more wispy.

Baking HyperVoxels
The baking feature subdivides HyperVoxels into a 3D grid of subvolumes (a space subdivision).
This dramatically reduces the necessary computations and allows preprocessing of the HyperVoxel
effect, including shadows, textures, and so on. The result is essentially a stack of Image Maps.
Click the Options button to display the baking options. The size of the image map stack is set on
the Resolution pop-up menu. The first two numbers define the size of the images and the third
defines the number of frames.
Enter the name of the file to save in the Filename field. The File Type used when saving the volume
data is very important. By default it uses 4x Storyboard because this format will create a set of
images that contain all the slices for your Hypervoxels. The luminosity of each slice encodes the
volume opacity information. (Note that you could edit the file externally in another program or
even create one from scratch.)

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Click Bake Object to execute the baking computation. When complete, you should notice that
all the normal shading settings will be ghosted except for the Dissolve setting at the top of the
HyperVoxels window

Volume Mode Advanced Sub-tab

The various items on the Render Quality pop-up menu determine the level of detail HyperVoxels
uses to render the volume. The default is Medium and should be adequate for most situations.
Near Clip is the distance from the camera where the rendering starts. The default value is normally
fine. A lower value will render finer details, but take longer to render. You might adjust this setting
if the camera was inside a cloud. It really depends on the scale of the HyperVoxel objects and the
scale of the details you want to see.

The Volumetric Shadows option creates shadows within the volume, which add detail and realism.
However, it can increase render time significantly, especially when you are trying to simulate very
dense clouds, like volcanic smoke. The Texture shadows option yields a very realistic shading of the
hypertexture, but increases rendering time significantly. If you disable this option, you will miss all
of the hypertexture shadow details.
Use the Shadow Quality pop-up menu to choose the render quality of the shadows. The Shadow
Strength sets the darkness of the shadows.
The Illumination pop-up menu determines how the HyperVoxels volume is lighted. Self acts as if
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the light comes from the viewer. It can be useful to see more details on the object. With Constant,
the scattering of light is constant, that is, the amount of light scattered at one point is proportional
to the amount of light received at that point.
Rayleigh simulates a strong forward scattering of light within the volume. Light scatters in the
direction of the light relative to the viewer, which means that illumination will be at its maximum
when the light faces the viewer. This is perfect for back-lit clouds, smoke, and so on.
Beer uses the patterns sample density amount as the illumination value, dramatically reducing
contrast between lighted areas. The setting uses the physical model for scattering of light inside a
gas, and is a good setting for clouds. For a more cartoony look, try CelShade.
You can choose to have all lights affect the HyperVoxel with Use All Lights, or choose one or two
specific lights.

Try to avoid using these Light options, if you are ray tracing shadows. Ray-traced shadows on
volumetrics is incredibly computationally intensive and will often result in unacceptable rendering
times. A single pixel in volumetrics requires 20 or more samples and a shadow is ray traced for every
sample. Try to fake lighting with Ambient Intensity and surface Luminosity or use Shadow Map
Spotlights.
Ambient Color lets you specify the ambient light color of the volume. This setting works hand-inhand with the Color setting on the Shader Tab.
Ambient Color is similar to ambient light in Layout, except that it applies only to the selected
HyperVoxel object. Basically, the shading process is very similar to what happens with regular
object surfaces.
Because of the way illumination is calculated inside volumetrics objects, Ambient Intensity can be
higher than 100% without overexposing the image.

Shading Tab: Sprite Mode

The options on the Sprite Mode Basic Subtab are similar to the options available for the Volume
mode. This makes sense since the Sprite mode is just a slice of a Volume mode HyperVoxel.

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Density on sprites is a multiplier for both Opacity and Luminosity. It is essentially the opposite of
Dissolve.

With the Number of Slices setting, you can thicken up the effect by increasing the number of
slices used for sprites from the default setting of 1. This allows you to get something a little closer
to the Volume Mode while still retaining the speed of the Sprite Mode.

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Left: 1-Slice, Right: 3-Slice

You may choose to light the Sprite using all lights in your scene or up to two specific lights.
Orient Slices to Ray orients the sprites coordinate system with the ray, rather than the default of
aligning with the camera.
On the Clips Subtab, you can map an image directly onto a sprite using the Add Clip button.
Any image available to the scene may be selected. Use the Image Editor to load an image not
already available.

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Clips are added to the HyperTexture. If you want to see only the clip, set the Texture option to
(none) on the HyperTexture Tab.

Some options on the Alpha pop-up menu let you cut away parts of the image you dont want to
use. If the image file includes an alpha channel, choose Embedded to use the alpha channel. Use
Luminosity to leave brighter parts of the image. The Black mode will cut away black areas. The
Threshold level lets you increase the range for what is considered black.
The Rotation setting sets a rotation speed for your clips. This is perfect for effects like billowing
smoke and explosions. The higher the setting, the faster the rotation. Positive values make the clip
rotate clockwise. Rotation always faces the camera.
If you do not want to use the color information in the image, uncheck Use Color. Then, only the
greyscale information will be used. Antialiasing will yield better-looking edges, but it significantly
increases render time and memory requirements.
When Solid is checked, the sprite is rendered as a solid object, preventing the normal additive
result of overlapping sprites.

Sprite Clip Frame Offset

If you use HyperVoxels with particles, you can use multiple clips. The Frame Offset setting
determines how you want to map an image sequence to a given particle. Particle Age starts the
sequence for a particle at birth. Thus, the image will likely be different for particles at a given frame.
Uniform will use the layout time as the time in the sequence. Thus, the image used is the same at
each frame. When the bottom of the list is reached, it starts again from the top. Random will assign
a random offset to each particle.
Frame Offset is an important control for sprite animations. It allows you to decide how to attach
images to particles. Particle Age is probably the most useful. You can have literally hundreds of
particles, each mapped with distinct image sequences. For example, you could have particles with
independent water-splash image sequences, creating a complex and rich visual effect.

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HyperTexture Tab
The Texture pop-up menu determines what the texture will look like. The textures in this menu
correspond to the identically named procedural textures, although not all of them will be available
here.

The big difference is when you are using a Volume (Object Type) HyperVoxel. In this case, you can
animate the texture effect.

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In the Texture Effect pop-up menu you have several options. Turbulence makes the texture move
towards the viewer. It is like animating a texture with the texture velocity parameter. Billowing
animates the texture by rotating outward along a velocity vector ( la Dantes Peak). It is very good
for explosions. Displace adds variations to the texture. The effect is best seen when the texture is
moving. Dissolve gradually lowers density, making particles disintegrate.
Velocity Translate moves the texture in the direction of the particle velocity. Since each particle has
a different velocity, this can result in a cool and complex texture motion. Dissolve & Expand might
be used on explosions. It dissolves the effect as it expands. Some trial and error may be necessary
to get the desired look.
The Effect Speed setting is the duration of the looping cycle. The value is equal to a percentage of
Layouts Default units, on the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel, per frame.

Animated textures can be previewed with VIPER.

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Gradient Input Parameters
Special Input Parameters will be available for texture gradients on HyperVoxel parameters. Particle
Age is simply the age of (Particle FX) particles, in frames. Particle Speed is the particle speed in
default LightWave units (usually meters) per second. Use Time to change the setting over
a range of frames.

The Particle Weight Input Parameter is used with regular objects that use HyperVoxels and requires
them to have a Weight Map. The object must also have the HyperVoxels Particles Displacement
plugin added. Set Particle Weight should be checked and the Weight Map selected.

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For HyperTexture and Shading settings, gradient textures can use a distance to particle (along a
specific axis) input parameter. This is the surface distance from the actual particle position along
the selected axis.

To use the Particle Weight Input Parameter:

1) Create an object in Modeler.

2) Create a Weight Map and add some random weighting to the points.

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3)
4)
5)
6)

Load the object into Layout.

Choose Window > Volumetrics and Fog Options.
Open the HyperVoxels Panel and activate the object.
Open the objects Properties Panel, add the HyperVoxels Particles Displacement plugin.
Open its options, activate Set Particle Weight and choose the Weight Map.

7) On the HyperVoxels Panel, add a texture to the Particle Size and set the Layer Type to
Gradient. Choose Particle Weight as the Input Parameter. Create some keys.

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Pixie Dust

Pixie Dust is a Volumetric Sprite Particle Renderer that is in most cases faster than HyperVoxels
while rendering loads of particles,. This does however doesnt replace HyperVoxels as there is no
light model within the particle renderer, which means Pixie Dust uses ambient light and does not
take information from other lights in the scene..

Controls:
Open Preset Shelf - Opens the Preset Shelf panel, which allows the use of saved Pixie Dust
presets.
Add Preset - Adds the current configuration of Pixie Dust to the Preset Shelf.
Use particles from item
All - Uses all particle systems in the scene
Item - Uses particles within an item plus items parented to it
Particle size - Numerical, envelope and texture control
Particle Opacity
Fuzzy - Controls the opacity with a nonlinear gradient from the center to the edge with
Numerical, envelope and texture control.
Custom - Controls the opacity with Numerical, envelope and texture control
Particle Color
From Particle - Get color from the particles themselves (if available)
Custom - Control the color with Numerical, envelope and texture control

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Pixie Dust Specific Gradients:
Particle Birth Time - The time at which the particle was created
Relative Particle Birth Time - The particle birth time as a fraction of the current time.
Ray to Particle Distance - How far the ray passed from the particle center.
Relative Ray to Particle Distance - Same as above but normalized so that 0 is through the
center and 1 is just touching the edge of the particle.
Grid Size - Speeds up rendering by putting the particles on a grid, and then searching the
grid for particles that intersect a given ray. There is a per case tradeoff depending on size,
amount of particles, density and opacity, having a fine grid (lots of grid squares) means fewer
per-particle tests need to be done, but more grid squares have to be tested.
Fixed Spacing - Set each grid square to the given size with Numerical or Envelope.
Fixed Resolution - Set the grid resolution directly(n by n grid squares) with Numerical or
Envelope.
Spacing per Particle Size - Sets the size of each grid square as the given multiple of the
particle size with Numerical or Envelope.

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2015

Alembic Support

Alembic is an open-source object and scene format that was created primarily by Sony
Pictures Imageworks and Lucasfilm and presented at SIGGRAPH 2011. It is supported by most
production 3D packages and LightWave 3D introduces support for Alembic v1.5.5 in 2015.
Unlike MDD files that are point-based, Alembic supports polygons and subdivision-surfaced
objects. In LightWave it is similar to using Load from Scene in that it doesnt overwrite an
existing scene file, but instead adds an object, or several, to an existing scene. Objects brought
in with Alembic are purely controlled by the baked animation and cannot be moved, rotated or
scaled otherwise.

Unlike most other packages, LightWave supports replacing an Alembic file while the
application is running, but you should avoid working in Layout until the new version of the Alembic
file has finished writing!

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Overview of Controls
Importing Alembic

To import Alembic .abc files into Layout you need to either visit File > Import > Alembic Loader,
or the I/O tab and choose Import > Alembic Loader. A window will present a choice for scaling
the Alembic file and for importing the file in a hierarchy with the selected item in Layout. When
Alembic files are brought into Layout, two things happen. The first is that all the objects contained
withint the Alembic file are converted to LightWave objects (LWOs), then second is that each
object gets a Motion Modifier (AlembicMotionController) that deals with differing rotation orders,
and a Deform modifier (MD_Reader) that handles deformation of the object.
Surfacing is not maintained through Alembic but multiple Alembic files can be brought into the
same scene. Dynamically-generated geometry is not currently supported.

Exporting Alembic

To export to an Alembic file you need to have the objects selected that you wish to export. Items
to be exported can be nulls as well as geometry and things like Bullet dynamics are taken into
account. Items will be baked to create the deformation/motion, so simulations are converted into
frame-by-frame keyframe animation. The Alembic Exporter now allows you to export the active
camera in addition to objects from your scene. To do this, in Camera mode, choose the camera
you wish to export. Then, go into Object mode and select the objects you wish to export and then
choose I/O > Export > Alembic Export and check the Export Active Camera option.

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You can choose whether to use the standard HDF5 export format or the new Ogawa format for
applications that support it.
Objects exported to Alembic can only have a single UV map. If there are multiple maps on an
object, only the first will be taken.

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GoZ
GoZ support is available in both Modeler and Layout. As with any data interchange there are
certain ideal workflow practices to be aware of to achieve the best results. You should prepare
geometry with tri and quad polygons only. ZBrush also expects one surface name and a single UV
map on the object.

Our GoZ implementation is flexible enough to allow you to work in a variety of different ways.
You can begin your model in LightWave Modeler and send to ZBrush to create the UV map and
paint your color texture map and generate your displacement and normal maps for the object.
Then with a press of the GoZ button in ZBrush you can load the changed model back into Modeler
and your shaders will be automatically applied to the object containing all color, displacement,
and normal map information. Our LightWave Modeler GoZ implementation allows you to send an
Endomorph on your object for further sculpting to ZBrush and back to Modeler. Imagine the facial
targets and other effects you can create with this technique.
Alternatively, you could begin the model in ZBrush and use GoZ to send your sculpt to Modeler for
more detail, then go back to ZBrush to continue sculpting. You could then send your final result
directly to LightWave Layout, again with all the texture, displacement, and normal map shader
information automatically set up. In Layout, even your bump displacement will be automatically
set up on the object with the bump distance supplied by ZBrush to make it easier for you to get to
the render quickly.
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Setting Up GoZ for LightWave

For our purposes here we will assume you have already installed and are using ZBrush and now
you would like to add LightWave to your sculpting pipeline.
For Windows users, normally the installation of LightWave sets up the necessary links with ZBrush,
but just in case and also for OS X users, here are the steps to ensure communication between the
packages:

LightWave support of GoZ by ZBrush.

ZBrush out of the box doesnt have built-in support of LightWave. LightWave itself supports GoZ.
You, the end user, needs to copy a few files into the right location to activate this support inside of
ZBrush.
LightWave GoZ support files are located here:
Windows: C:\Program Files\NewTek\LightWave2015\support\3rdparty_support\GoZ
OS X: ~Applications/Lightwave2015/support/3rdparty_support/GoZ
1) With LightWave and ZBrush NOT RUNNING, Copy both the LightWaveLayout and
LightWaveModeler directories from that folder to:
Windows: C:\Users\Public\Pixologic\GoZApps\
OS X: MacHD:/Users/Shared/Pixologic/GoZApps/
2) Now launch ZBrush and open Preferences and choose GoZ at the bottom.
You will then find LightWave Layout and LightWave Modeler
3) From there, you can have ZBrush find the install - or you can point it there yourself.
Load the model you wish to sculpt in either Layout or Modeler. In Modeler it is the current
foreground layer (or the selected endomorph) that will be sent while in Layout it is the currently
selected object. Now go to the I/O tab in either application and choose GoZ. The first time you do
so there will be a slight pause as LightWave copies the necessary files to your ZBrush installation
and then you will be in the ZBrush interface waiting to draw your object onscreen as a tool. Once
done and modified to your satisfaction, pressing the GoZ button at the top right of ZBrushs
interface will send your object back to LightWave, now with the additional sculpting.
Here is an overview of what GoZ offers in both LightWave Modeler and Layout:
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GoZ for Modeler

Geometry (tris and quad polys required)

Color Map
Displacement Map
Normal Map
Endomorphs
UV maps can be created in Modeler or ZBrush. ZBrush only supports one UV map per object.
The shader nodes are set up on the object but are not all present in Modeler. You need to
open the object in Layout to access or edit all the nodes.
Sub Tools are separate objects and that is how you should think of them in Modeler, not
additional layers.

GoZ for Layout

Geometry (tri and quad polys required)

Color Map
Displacement Map
Normal Map
Bump Displacement (with bump distance automatically supplied by ZBrush)
When you send your ZBrush Item with Color, Displacement, and Normal map to Layout
nodes are automatically set up on the object and bump displacement in the object
properties is activated.
There is a continuous update of texture maps as long as you are painting to actual texture
maps in ZBrush and not just poly painting.
You can see your displacement and normal maps with VPR.

If you select an endomorph in Modeler to send to ZBrush via GoZ, sculpt that endomorph and
then send back to Layout instead of Modeler the base mesh will be overwritten. Always select the
endomorph that you want to send and then make sure that same endomorph is selected on the object
in Modeler before exporting back from ZBrush.
Finally, note that if you change the geometry or polygon count in the middle of your process then
vertex maps could be lost when exporting back to Modeler or Layout. This means you should get
your geometry up to a certain level where it has enough points and polys to hold the sculpted
detail when you res up in ZBrush. Do your sculpting and painting at that higher resolution level
then when you hit GoZ in ZBrush to send back to LightWave the resolution automatically gets
lowered back down to the base mesh. This is the typical workflow most often used with ZBrush
and other applications.

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2015

Multi-Tool Support

New to 2015 is the ability to export Sub-Tools from ZBrush into LightWave. Sub-Tools come into
LightWave as distinct objects, rather than the usual LightWave layered object concept. To send
Sub-Tools, use the All button next to the GoZ button as shown.

Example: Using ZBrush to Edit Morph Maps

One of the most exciting uses for the new GoZ functionality is to sculpt morphs for your characters.
The process is very simple and straightforward, but illustrating it should set minds at rest. We will
use the Mangalore warrior head for this example, found in the LightWave content (characters\
Mangalore).

1) Well add a morph map to our Mangalore head. Weve called it Morph.Mouth_Open. Make
sure its selected in your Morphs list and hit the GoZ button on the Modeler I/O tab.

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2) ZBrush will load or open and you can draw your warrior onscreen. Use ZBrushs Move Brush
to spread the lips apart and hit the GoZ button in ZBrush.

3) The Mangalore head will reappear in Modeler and youll notice that you are still in the Morph.
Mouth_open morph.

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4) Now you can create a new morph to sculpt. This time we are typing Morph.Frown. Once
added, hit the GoZ button again.

5) In ZBrush we brush in the frown for the model and send back. You can
carry on adding new morphs and sculpting them like this.

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Example: Converting ZBrush Fibermeshes to FiberFX guides
ZBrush v4R3 adds the ability to export the fibers supported by ZBrush into LightWave to be used
as guides for LightWaves own fiber solution FiberFX. To do this is very simple:

1) Start with a project inside ZBrush and comb the hair as youd like it. Since the hair from
ZBrush will only be guides for FiberFX you will not need a large amount of fibers.

Reduce the Preview Fiber Visibility down to a low figure. ZBrush will give you the total
number of fibers that will be saved.

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2) Save your guides out of ZBrush as an LWO file and load it into Modeler.

3) The fibers need to be converted into guides for FiberFX using the StrandMaker tool on the
Setup Tab, in the FiberFX group.
4) The new polychains will be created on a separate layer, so they need to be saved to a new
object (you can replace the existing curves on Layer 1 and save over your original object if
you prefer).

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5) Send this object to Layout and add FiberFX to it. Turn on Draw to see your newly-added
fibers. Youll see that the fibers arent exactly following your guides. This is because of the
Random Length and Gravity settings. Set them both to 0%.

6) If you wish to increase the quantity of fur on your object, increase the
number of fibers per guide using the Fiber Quantity setting in FiberFX.
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Additional GoZ Notes
Surfaces and UV Maps - Dont forget that ZBrush only expects one of each and will discard
any others you have in your object. Make sure that if you have several of either you reduce
them before sending to avoid losing your work.
Saving your objects - It is a good idea to save your sculpt as a ZBrush tool. In case of any
problems or wanting to continue work started before, saving the LWO from Modeler alone
will not keep your sculpting information.
Object assemblies - If you want to sculpt an object assembly as one piece in ZBrush, make
sure the parts are separate objects (not just layers) and tick Import as SubTool in ZBrush GoZ
Preferences.
Cache - to perform the task of shifting data between ZBrush and LightWave, ZBrush has
a directory of intermediate files. These are normally kept in C:\Users\Public\Pixologic\
GoZProjects\Default on a Windows system and /Users/Shared/Pixologic/GoZProjects/Default
on a Mac. These temporary files are not automatically deleted and can take lots of room. If
you see messages asking if you would like to use the object from disk, it is almost certainly
because your ZBrush cache already has an object by the same name in it. You can clear this
directory safely (when no GoZ process is running). Alternatively in ZBrush GoZ preferences
there is an option to clear cache files.
Layout or Modeler? - When you first start sending your object between LightWave and
ZBrush, you will possibly begin using GoZ with Modeler to initially prepare your object for
sculpting and texturing. Once you are happy with this first stage, you can tell ZBrush to start
sending to Layout instead. To do this, can click the R icon on the ZBrush interface near the
GoZ button to change which application GoZ communicates with. In this case, change it
over to use Layout rather than Modeler.

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2015

FBX Enhancements

FBX support has now been updated to version 2015 to support the most recent version of
Autodesks MotionBuilder at time of writing. The ability to export CgFX shaders used in the scene
has been added as an option.
Please note that Camera Export from Maya to LightWave is only pixel-perfect when baking
the envelopes in Maya, since curves are interpreted slightly differently between applications.
A command has also been added so that FBX export can be scripted. The command Generic_
ExportFBXCommand has the following arguments:

<SceneFile>
<Version>
<ExportCameras>
<ExportLights>
<ExportMorphs>

<ExportModels>
<ExportAnimations>
<ExportMaterials>
<EmbedMedia>
<Type>

Re-parent Bone Hierarchy - This option, off by default, lets LightWave deal with Maya scenes where
a deformed mesh is not in the same hierarchy as the bones. In LightWave, we usually have bones
parented to the mesh directly (thats how LightWave understands what he has to deform using the
bones). For a Motion Capture workflow to work properly, this option needs to be off.

2015

OBJ Enhancements

Large OBJs are now saved much faster than versions of LightWave before 11. OBJs textured with
image maps or numeric values in other packages will come in textured but Nodal or procedural
textures will not translate in either direction. Autodesks Maya and Max reverse diffuse and
ambient, so the default behavior of LightWave now is to Reverse Ka & Kd for OBJ export. If you find
that textures are being transferred incorrectly, try switching this off on the OBJ tab of Options.
New to LightWave 2015 is OBJ support of continuous and discontinuous UV maps.

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Unity Interchange

LightWave can save scenes for Unity to enable a seamless transfer between the two programs.
It is important to note, to avoid disappointment, that Unity is a very different beast to LightWave,
with different restrictions and benefits. There is a certain workflow to follow to ensure that your
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Unity scene works as well as your original LightWave scene.
First things first, Unity is a game engine. It can create beautiful imagery but:
Everything is dependant on UV mapping;
A maximum of two UV maps per object are allowed;
Procedurals, gradients, clip maps and nodes will not carry across - everything needs to be
baked to image maps.
LightWaves node system is a great benefit here. If you can texture your scene as you would like
using nodes, then bake out those textures to use as image maps in LigthWaves layered system
then you can keep both ways of texturing in the same scene. If not, then you will probably want to
set up a second content directory containing your scene repurposed for Unity.
It is probably best not to assume that your delicate surfacing in LightWave will carry across and
actually texture in Unity where possible, using LightWave to model the geometry and place lights,
etc. Transferring surfaces between LightWave and Unity will use LightWaves Color channel (Diffuse
in Unity) and Luminosity channel (a second channel in Unity, usually used for Lightmaps, but also
for Bump/Normal maps).
The example scene provided in the 11.5 content shows various surfacing techniques in LightWave
and how they translate.

Example: Texturing in Unity

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1) Well use this scene to get to grips with how texturing works in Unity. If this is your first taste
of Unity, install it as usual and then go to the support/3rdparty_support/Unity3D folder
of your LightWave3D installation directory where you will find a Unity package labeled
LightWaveAppLink.unitypackage. This needs to be copied to your Unity installations Editor/
Standard Packages folder. Under Windows, this is usually here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Unity\
Editor\Standard Packages (for machines running a 64-bit version of Windows) and on a Mac
here: Applications/Unity/Standard Packages.

2) Open Unity and select New Project. It will ask where, so create a new folder where
you would like Unity to run from. Also import the following packages:
Character Controller.unitypackage
LightWaveAppLink.unitypackage
3) Go to the folder you have created for this project and you will find an Assets directory
in it. Copy the Textures content from the 11.5 content folder into it. You should only
use this version of the scene when you want to modify your Unity project.
4) Open the scene in Layout and hit S. This saves the scene and tells Unity that something has
changed. Unity will re-import the scene as an FBX file.

5) In Unity, click the FBX version of the scene file and in the Inspector panel on the
right set the Scale Factor to 1.0. Drag the icon nto the Hierarchy window on the
left side of the screen. The FBX version is the icon with the image of the scene
rather than the LightWave logo and is highlighted in the image above.
6) Now we will go through the textures in Unity, because you can see
right away that they are not the same as those in LightWave.
Clip - Change the shader to Transparent/Cutout/Diffuse and you should get a clipmap Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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like behavior.

Tex_Bump - This is the most awkward one. Unity has assumed that this and the Tex
material are the same because they have the same image in the Color channel in
LightWave. We need to make a new Material in Unity. Do so by right-clicking in the
Project window and selecting Create/Material. This will put a new material in the Assets/
Texture/Scenes/Materials folder ready to be named. Call it Tex_Bump, change its Shader
to Bumped Diffuse, select the UV-Fill image as the Base (RGB) image and the UV-Fill_BMP
image as the Normalmap. You will be told that the image chosen isnt a Normal map,
but do not click the Fix Now button. Instead, find the image and click on it and change
its type to Normal map in the Inspector and hit Apply.

Lastly, go back to the Materials folder and drag and drop your new Tex_Bump material
onto the appropriate polygon in the viewport. There is a second way of importing the
scene so that this issue doesnt come up. Before you drag the scene into the Hierarchy
list in step 5, click on the scene and look at the Inspector pane.

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Note the Material Naming dropdown at the bottom of the image. By default it is set
to Base Texture Name, but set it to From Models Material and you shouldnt have the
problem described above.
Tex - This one should have come in okay. You should just change the Shader to Diffuse.
Bump - This one is nearly okay. Change the Shader to Bumped Diffuse, clear the image in
the first slot and put the same image in the second slot. The same warning will appear
about it not being a Normal map, so repeat the process from before of finding the
image, changing it to Normal map and hitting Apply.
Proc - As you know, procedural textures dont travel between applications so they have
to be baked, so for Unity this surface is the same as the Tex surface. You should just
change the Shader to Diffuse.
Floor - Change the Shader to Bumped Specular and set the Normal map to FlrTile-Bump.
You will need to change it as per Bump and Tex_Bump.
7) You have now brought your LightWave scene into Unity and converted the
surfaces into Unity materials. Any time you make a change in LightWave and
save the scene it will be reflected in Unity, but this means that you may have to
revisit some of the steps listed above to get things right again. To take things
further and create a walkthrough, you can add the following Components:
Camera:
Character/Character Controller
Character/FPS Input Controller
Camera-Control/Mouse Look
Floor Object:
Physics/Mesh Collider
8) Now you can hit the Edit > Play command and your camera should fall to the floor
where you can pilot it using the FPS controls of the WASD keys and your mouse.

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The first time Unity uses the LWS importer it will ask for the path to your LightWave directory and
the path you specify will be remembered across sessions. If you would like to use a different path,
use the Unity > LightWave > Choose LightWave Install Path menu button:

Additional Unity Interchange notes

Unity does not support animations with a scale of 0. For scenes where you will have
explosions or other things that require a scale of 0 in LightWave, use a very small but nonzero value.
LightWave lights and cameras are not carried across. The items only serve as place holders
for Unity lights and cameras in the hierarchy view if needed.
Textures for your LightWave scene should be baked to UV maps for the most faithful
duplication inside Unity. Unity only allows two UV maps per object. The first should be used
in the Color channel, the second in the Luminosity channel, even if the LightWave textures
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are not intended for these channels.
Because LightWave saves objects separately from scene files, you need to save both when
you make texturing changes in LightWave. Unitys surfacing isnt as dense as LightWave
so you will have to bake your surfaces (and lighting) to image maps since procedurals and
nodes dont translate.
While you dont absolutely have to stick to sizes at power of 2 values (256, 512, 1024, 2048,
etc.), if you dont use them Unity will not be able to compress your images, meaning they will
make the binary game file larger and might use more texture memory.

Use the Inspector before you bring in your LightWave scene. You can change your scenes
Scale, turn on Mesh Colliders for all your objects so that you dont need to enable them
piecemeal as you create your Unity scene, and also use the From Models Material Material
naming setting to better match your LightWave surfaces.

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Example: Realtime Visualization with Unity
One of the frequent requests we have is for some aspect of realtime visualization for architectural
scenes. Unity in its free version is very capable of not only providing a standalone executable to
give to your clients, but also a web player version so you can share using the web. Obviously this
tutorial is not to give you a full understanding of Unity, but rather a taste of what is possible. Its up
to you to find out more about this excellent tool.

For our example were using the Lighting Challenge scene British Natural History Museum,
modeled by Alvaro Luna Bautista and Joel Andersdon, available here: http://bit.ly/Hbijrp. The file is
just an object so we have put it in a scene with a dome light lighting the exterior and four spherical
lights for the interior. The texturing is not set up for LightWave (or Unity) but if we just wanted to
get the scene into Unity quickly, the steps we need to take are as follows:
1) Once you have set up the scene for your Natural History museum in LightWave, we will
create a new project inside Unity.

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Tick Character Controller.UnityPackage. This will give us FPS-style navigation,

and also tick LightWaveApplink.UnityPackage. This will give us our LightWave
automatic updating. Hit Create. Once Unity is loaded, you will see that there is an
Assets folder inside your project directory. As an additional touch you can add
the Skyboxes.UnityPackage package to create a sky for around the museum.
2) Copy your LightWave content directory into the Assets folder. From now on, only load
your scene from this directory for any modifications you do to the scene in LightWave.
3) If this is your first use of Unity, it will ask for the path to LightWave. Once you have set that,
start Layout and load your scene from the Unity project Assets folder. Whenever you save the
scene in LightWave now, it will be updated in Unity. Right now we need to make an initial
save so that we have something we can position in Unity. If you switch to Unity as soon as
you have saved your LightWave scene you will see Unity is waiting for something and you
may see progress bars like this appear:

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4) Once it has finished you will see a new item in the Project tab. In our Scenes folder there will
be a new file with the same name as your scene with a different icon. Click on this file so it
appears in your projects Inspector pane, like so:

The Scale Factor needs to be set to 1. If you tick Generate Colliders and Generate LightMap UVs,
which would be good, the initial import will take a long time. Also change Material Naming to
Use Models Materials Once youve done this, drag the FBX file up into the Hierarchy tab. Unity
will ask if you want to apply settings, do so and your model will appear in Unitys viewport.

The GlobalScale variable was set to 1 in Unity to make LightWave objects come in at the right
scale since the script is LightWave-specific. However, it meant that all objects brought into a Unity
project after that would also be set at 1, which could cause problems if you wanted to bring in OBJs or
Max files into a project you created with LightWave assets. Thus the global scaling has been reset to 0.01
for safety and you will need to apply a scaling of 1 to your LightWave objects inside Unity.

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5) In your Hierarchy view, select the Main Camera and in its Inspector pane
choose Add Component. You will need to do this three times to add:
Character > Character Motor
Character > FPS Input Controller
Camera Control > Mouse Look
6) Our original LightWave scene had several lights, so we will now recreate them in Unity.
Select the first light in Unity and select Add Component in its Inspector pane. Add Rendering
> Light and make this light Directional in the Inspector. Now select the other lights you
placed in your LightWave scene and choose Add Component and Rendering > Light again, but
make them Point lights and increase their range.

We have added a sphere GameObject to each of the lights so they show up in the
game as glowing globes. Note also that we have set each of the lights to cast soft
shadows. We are using the free version of Unity so it rightly warns us that we can only
use realtime shadows with Unity Pro, however the aim here is to bake a lightmap.

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7) Select all objects and lights in your scene and open the Lightmapping window.

Tick the Lightmap Static box and up the number of Shadow Samples and the Shadow Radius
to get better quality shadows. Now hit Bake Scene. It wont take long to bake and apply
the lightmaps and you will have shadows applied to your scene. Be aware that if you move
something in LightWave or Unity, you will need to bake again.

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8) Now you can hit the Play button at the top of Unitys interface to go into your realtime
version of the scene. You can navigate by using the traditional FPS controls of WASD on a
QWERTY keyboard or the cursor keys while your mouse dictates the view.

You can now use the Build Settings item in the File menu to create an excutable file for
Windows, Mac OSX or Linux, or make a web player version for your clients to look at.

If you make changes to your LightWave scene, the changes will be propagated to Unity.
Remember that since LightWave saves objects separately to scenes you will need to save both to get any
changes you make to surfacing update in Unity.

If you follow along with this tutorial you may note you need to jump to get up the stairs and
wonder why. This is because Unity splits the single Natural History Museum object into 27 parts to fit
within the maximum of 65k vertices in a single object and that means that the steps get carved up too.
To keep the stairs in a single piece that can be climbed without jumping you will need to separate them
from the main object manually.

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Example: LightMaps in Unity
One way to make your lighting more subtle even in the free version of Unity is to use lightmaps to
recreate your LightWave lighting. Transferring these lightmaps is done by assigning them to your
surfaces Luminosity channel and Unity will automatically place them in a second material slot
dedicated to lightmaps.

Example

1) Here is a very simple scene with a box, with textures inside for the walls and floor. The
textures are images applied to the UV Map in the Color channel.

2) The only light in the scene is a dome outside the box angled so that the inside of the box is
lit partially. Well add a new Spherical light to the scene and position it inside the box, with a
falloff that means it just touches one wall and the floor.
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3) Now well set up a surface baking camera. Set it to the mesh for the box and the appropriate
UV map. Set the resolution low. Were using 256 x 256 but you may even be able to get away
with 64 x 64.

4) Add a Compositing Buffer Export to your Image Filters ( Ctrl F8) and choose Shading and/or
Radiosity.

5) Render an image. In the Image Viewers Layer dropdown you will see the colour rendered
image, plus an image for the Shading and/or Radiosity.

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6) In the Surface Editor, add the lightmap render to the Luminosity Channel. LightWave only
supports greyscale images for any channel other than Color, but when the scene is sent to
Unity, Unity will move the Luminosity Channel mapping to a secondary UV channel for a
lightmap, which can be in color.
7) Save your objects and scene to update them in Unity.

8) In Unity, select the object that has the lightmap and you will see that the texture concerned
is listed as Legacy Shaders/Lightmapped/Diffuse. There will be two image slots in the Texture one Base, which should contain your image map and one Lightmap, which may be empty. All
you need is click the Select button to add the lightmap image you rendered. The Lightmap
wont look great in the viewport, but pressing Play should show it nicely in the game view.

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2015

After Effects Interchange

LightWave offers a bidirectional link between LightWave and Adobe After Effects CS5 and
higher. This link can deal with cameras, lights and nulls. To set up After Effects to make it ready to
communicate with LightWave, you need to activate full scripting features in After Effects.
The default is for scripts to not be allowed to write files or send or receive communication over a
network. To allow scripts to write files and communicate over a network, in After Effects choose
Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and select the
Allow Scripts To Write Files And Access Network option.

The other step you need to do is to copy the AEtoLW.aex file from
LightWave2015/support/3rdparty_support/AfterEffects to your After Effects Plug-Ins folder normally
found in Adobe/Adobe After Effects CS5 (or higher).
In Layout the AE link is on the I/O tab in Layout where there are two buttons.

Send to AE sends your scene to After Effects and the Settings button allows you to change the path
After Effects is installed on after the first use where you are asked for the path. If you have multiple
versions of AE installed select the one you want to use with the Settings button.
New to 2015 is the ability to send multiple selected layers from After Effects to LightWave at the
same time. Simply select the layers you wish to send in After Effects and use the File > Export > Send
Selected Layers to LightWave.

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Select your scenes camera and hit the Send to AE button. If After Effects is not running it will start
and your camera will appear in a new composition named Default. If After Effects is running the
item(s) sent from LightWave will appear in the currently active composition. You can undo this
action in After Effects.

Once taken to After Effects and modified, you can send the camera and reference nulls back to
LightWave using the File > Export > Send Selected Layer to LightWave 3D menu item. Make sure you
have the After Effects camera selected for this to work. LightWave will appear with a camera with
a baked motion path. You can repeat the same operation with reference nulls if you have any. Be
aware that as of this time, only one item at a time can be sent.
If required, you can reset the path to LightWave in After Effects using the Edit > Preferences > Reset
Path to LightWave 3D menu item.

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DPX (Digital Picture Exchange) Image Loader/Saver

DPX is the most common digital intermediate format for scanned film plates, whether analog or
digital. It is the sister format to Cineon, and it can hold more color depth than a PNG or TGA file
with varieties at 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit being most commonly used. Many facilities convert DPX
files into low res JPG files purely to act as proxies for background images in a scene for compositing
against, but LightWave now offers the possibility to directly use DPX files in a scene. You can even
save renders in DPX format, though this is not advised for typical visual effects productions.

LightWave offers RGBA savers for the DPX file format in addition to RGB. However, few
packages accept DPX files with an embedded alpha channel at the time of this writing. Do not use one
of the RGBA savers unless you know that your destination package can open a DPX with an embedded
alpha channel. For most production needs, the RGB savers should suffice.

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Customizing LightWave

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Customizing Layout
Layout Edit Menu
Undo
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl Z)
The undo function (Edit > Undo) will undo motion changes (Move, Rotate, Size, or Stretch tools).

If you are not using the Auto Key feature, you can quickly reset all aspects of a frame (i.e.,
position, rotation, etc.) if you havent created the key yet. Just press the Right cursor key and then the
Left cursor key. This advances the current frame and then goes back to the original frame. The frame will
return to the last keyframed state, or if the frame is not a keyframe, to its in-between state.
The number of undos is determined by the Undo Levels setting found in the General Options
Panel.

Redo
(default keyboard shortcut Z)
The Redo function (Edit > Redo) will redo motion changes (Move, Rotate, Size, or Stretch tools) that
were previously undone.
The combination of Undo and Redo is a powerful one, allowing you to step backward and forward
through the evolution of a motion.

The Undo/Redo functions can also be found in the lower right corner of Layouts interface.

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Edit Menu Layout
(default keyboard shortcut

Alt

F10)

We strongly suggest that you keep the default menu organisation intact. Otherwise, technical
support and using the documentation may become difficult. A better solution is to create a new menu
tab and/or groups and place your frequently used tools in them.
LightWave menus are customizable. You can add, remove, group, and reorganize commands.
Choose Edit > Edit Menu Layout to open the Configure Menus Panel.

In the (left) Command window, a list of available commands will appear. These will be grouped by
type.
In the (right) Menus window, several main sections have sub-items, which are indented to show
the hierarchical relationships. Top Group contains the items that are always visible no matter which
tab is selected. Main Menu items are the main tabs and related buttons for the main interface
toolbar. Left, Middle, and Right Mouse Button Menu (when available) are the menus that appear
when the Shift + Ctrl keys are held down along with the corresponding mouse button. There may
be other menu sections defined.
In the Menus window, dots indicate commands while arrows indicate groups of commands/subgroups beneath it. If the arrow points to the right, the groups sub-menu items are collapsed and
not visible. To reveal the sub-menu items for a collapsed group, simply click on its right-facing
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arrow. To collapse an open group, click on its downward-facing arrow.

Finding Assignments and Commands

If you have a command selected in the left window and click Find, the command, if any, on the
right will become selected. Selecting a command in the right window and clicking Find will select
the matching command in the left window.
Clicking Search allows you to type in a search phrase to find a command. Search is case-sensitive.
This will find the first instance when first run, and can be used iteratively to find additional
instances by just hitting the button again, as it retains the string until you type in a new one.

Maintaining Menu Layouts

The Load and Save buttons let you retrieve and store menu layouts that you develop.
Any available preset menu layouts can be chosen from the Presets pop-up menu. The Window
pop-up menu lets you select different menus to edit (e.g., Graph Editor), if available.

Edit Keyboard Shortcuts

(default keyboard shortcut

Alt

F9)

We strongly suggest that you keep the default keyboard mapping assignments and make new
assignments only to unmapped keys. (Most of the function keys are open.) Otherwise, technical support
and using the documentation may become difficult.
Like the menus, keyboard shortcuts can be configured to suit your own needs. To display the
Configure Keys Panel, choose Edit > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts.

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The window on the left contains a complete list of all assignable commands grouped by type. The
right window shows a complete list of all keystrokes and assigned commands, if applicable.

To assign a command to key:

9) Select a command in the left window.
10) Select the target key in the right window. (You can hit the desired
key or keystroke combo to quickly select the key.)
11) Click the Assign button. This will overwrite any existing assignment.
Alternatively, you may drag the command to the right window.

To unassign a command to key:

1) Select the target key in the right window.
2) Click the Unassign button.

Finding Assignments and Commands

If you have a command selected in the left window and click Find, the command, if any, on the
right will become selected. Selecting a command in the right window and clicking Find will select
the matching command in the left window.
Clicking Search allows you to type in a search phrase to find a command. Search is case-sensitive.
This will find the first instance when first run, and can be used iteratively to find additional
instances by just hitting the button again, as it retains the string until you type in a new one.

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Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to only one command. Assigning a command that is already
assigned to a different key will assign it to the new key, but remove it from the old one.

Maintaining Key Mapping Sets

The Load and Save buttons let you retrieve and store key mapping sets that you develop. The Clear
button clears out all assignments, so use with caution.
Any available preset key mapping sets can be chosen from the Presets pop-up menu. The Window
pop-up menu lets you select different menus to edit (e.g., Graph Editor), if available.

Window Config Loader

This command is a quick way to launch a window configuration that was generated by the Window
Configure tool.

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Layout General Options
(default keyboard shortcut O)
Choose Edit > General Options to bring up the General Options Tab on the Preferences Panel.

Clear Scene to Default

When this option is enabled, if a default scene exists in the Scenes directory of the current content
path, it will be loaded into Layout whenever the user successfully performs a Clear Scene.

Layout recognizes a default.lws scene. If you save a scene named default.lws in the Scenes
directory of your Content Directory, each time you open Layout it will open this scene.
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Input Device
The Input Device pop-up menu lets you select either a Mouse or Tablet as the primary input device.
When you choose the input device, the default system drivers for the appropriate device are used.

File Dialog and Color Picker Selection

The File Dialog and Color Picker pop-up menus let you use custom LightWave dialogs for file
loading/saving and picking colors. Selecting Default will use your standard system dialogs.

The Visual Browser

You can make the LightWave visual browser the default file dialog for Layout by choosing VB File
Requester on the File Dialog pop-up menu. This appears on the Interface Tab of Modelers Display
Options Panel (Edit > Display Options).

Color Format
The Color Format setting determines the scale used where the color selector appears next to
the color swatch in Panels and Dialogs. Integer uses values 000 to 255, Float uses .00 to 1.00, and
Percentage uses 0% to 100%.

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Popup Positioning
Center On Selected: this is the method where the selected item is always centered on the popup
button. This can cause the menu to be partly truncated if it falls partly outside of the screen, which
means that the user may have to scroll through the menu to get at the desired item.
Keep All On Screen: this is the method which ensures that the whole popup menu is always shown
on screen. This may require the menu to be moved so that the selected item is no longer centred
on the popup button.

Automatically Creating Keyframes

The Auto Key button on the lower part of the main interface turns the overall auto key mode on or
off. When active, existing keys are automatically adjusted if an item is modified.

The pop-up menu on the General Options Tab has three settings:
Off - Off will modify only the settings of an existing keyframe for the current item.
All Modified Channels - All Modified Channels creates a keyframe, but for only the modified
motion channel group (e.g., XYZ or HPB). So, for example, if you change only an items
heading, a key is created only for the current items heading, pitch, and bank at the current
frame.
All Motion Channels - All Motion Channels creates a keyframe for all motion channels.
This feature can be a nice time-saver when compositing still images or initial keyframes, but can be
a detriment when changing a feature like a position, as a test to see if you like it.

Parent in Place
When Parent in Place is active, an item will maintain a constant position, size, and orientation when
it is parented or unparented.

Left Mouse Button Item Select

When Left Mouse Button Item Select is active, you may click on an item with the LMB to select it in
a viewport. (Those of you with three-button mouses can always use the MMB.) The reason to turn
this item off is to prevent accidental selection of other items while trying to move, rotate or scale
your current item.

Dbl. Click Bone Mode

With Double Click Bone Mode activated, bone mode is selected when a bone is double-clicked on.
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Frame Slider Label
The Frame Slider Label pop-up menu lets you choose a type of measurement on the frame slider,
which is the ruler-like control on the main interface.

You can select between Frame Number (the default), SMPTE Time Code (HH:MM:SS:FF, where HH is
hours, MM is minutes, SS is seconds and FF is frames), Film Key Code, or Time in Seconds.

Frame

SMPTE

Film Key Code

Time in Seconds

Frames Per Second

The Frames Per Second rate is specific to the calculation of texture velocities and other internal
information that can be accessed by LightWaves plugin architecture. If you had based a moving
texture velocity so that it appeared to repeat every 25 frames, but your output was going to film (at
the film rate of 24 frames per second), you would want to set this value to 24 so that the repeating
nature of the pattern repeated properly. Change this frame rate if you are working on film or
another medium that has a frame rate different than video (25 fps).

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Frame 0 Time Code
Enter a starting SMPTE time code for frame 0 in this input field if it is other than 00:00:00:00. This
can be important, even if you are not using SMPTE Time Code as your Frame Slider Label, but are
using it in the Data Overlay setting on the Render Options Panel (Render > Render Options).

Frames Per Foot

When using Film Key Code, you can specify the Frames Per Foot.

Fractional Frames
When Fractional Frames (formerly Allow Fractional Frames) is turned on, the frame slider can be
placed at non-integer frame values, either by adjusting the frame slider, jumping to the previous or
next key, or typing into the Go to Frame requester.

Changing this value does not move keyframes. Keyframes are located based on time rather than
frames so theyre always allowed to lie on fractional frames. If you want to move fractional keyframes to
integral frame values, use the Snap Keys function in the DopeTrack.

Show Keys in Slider

When Show Keys in Slider is active, a line will appear in the slider where a keyframe exists for the
selected item(s).

Play at Exact Rate

Play at Exact Rate causes forward and reverse playing of the scene to ignore the frame step
and instead play in real-time, waiting or skipping frames as needed. It has no effect on preview
animation playback.

Measurement Unit System

LightWave supports several units of measurement. You can choose to work in different notations;
however, you may input a value using a unit of measurement other than the default, and it will
be converted on the fly. For example, you may be using meters, but if you type in 5 ft LightWave
converts it to 1.524 m. (Metric is basically the same as SI except that it also uses centimeters.)
The Unit System setting determines what units of measurement Layout uses and displays.

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SI - SI is the International System of Units. (SI is the abbreviation of the French Le Systme
International dUnits.) Unit measurements in Layout will now use a base system of meters.
Grid sizes and distances can be measured in megameters, kilometers, meters, millimeters,
micrometers, and nanometers.
Metric - Metric is the same as SI with the addition of centimeters.
English - The English system refers to measurements in miles, feet, and inches.

We strongly suggest that you use SI or Metric since that measurement type is generally assumed
for exercises and tutorials.

Setting the Default Unit

If a unit is not specified in an input field, the default is used. You can select the default unit using
the Default Unit pop-up menu.
We strongly suggest that you use the SI or Metric Unit System and meters as the default unit. Use
other settings only for special situations. Both systems are based on 10, which will make your Modeling
and animation life easier. The Default Unit of meters is assumed for exercises.

Undo Levels
The number of available undos is determined by the Undo Levels setting found in the General
Options Panel. You can set a specific number of levels by typing in a number in the Undo Levels
entry field, or you can click to activate the Unlimited Undos option.

The Autokey Management option will delete the keyframe when an undo is performed.
When Autokey Managment is deactivated, the last action will be undone, but a keyframe will be
left in place.

Save Options
There are three different Save Options:
Disabled - When you clear scene, load a new scene or close Layout it happens immediately
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with no warning if things are unsaved.

Simple - This brings up the above message if you clear scene, load a new scene or close
Layout without having saved first.

Advanced - The default option brings up a panel where you have control over what you wish
to save, and how:
View Modified only - Shows only items that need saving
Scene File Version - 9.5 is the current save format and default, but scenes can be saved as
earlier versions to support people that dont have the latest LightWave. Obviously these
older scene formats wont include features that were only introduced in later versions.
Save All Modified - Overrides the Save Mode column that indicates whether an item
should be saved, saved under a new name or saved as an incremental version.
Save Mode - Defaults to Do Not Save, but this only applies if Save All Modified is
unchecked. If is unchecked then the choice can be made individually for each scene
item whether to Save, Save As, Incremental.
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Save, Save and Clear, Clear and Cancel - These four options finalize the saving, or not, of a
scene.

Auto Save
You can set Layout to auto save objects and scenes to the current content directory in a folder
named Backup. This folder will contain sub-folders for sorting dates and times. The times that can
be set are 1 min, 5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour. The auto save does not to save if there have been
no changes made.

Be warned that saving endless backups can rapidly fill a hard disk!

Enable Master Autoload

This toggle will automatically load Master plugins when loading a scene. Normally it should be left
checked, but studios with a specific Master plugins policy can disable it.

FSPE
A toggle has been added for FSPE (Full Scene Parameter Evaluation), which was previously a
hidden feature. You can find it in the General Options panel in Layout. FSPE is a legacy plugin
which was intended to take IK data into motion plugins.

It is recommended to keep FSPE disabled. A continuous loop can be added if a child object is
dependent on the motion of the parent object.

FSPE and Fixed Near Clip Distance are set back to the default settings upon Clear Scene or New
Scene.

Autoscan Plugins
If checked on, Autoscan Plugins scans the plugins folder and creates a file Extension Cache with
contains a list of all of your plugins. If you leave Autoscan Plugins off, you can fill the LWEXT10
configuration file by running the Scan Directory.
Autoscanning is a process to look for plugins in specific locations for the current session. To speed
up this process in subsequent sessions, the new extension cache file remembers the previous
autoscanning and allows comparisons with the new session to see if these specific plugin locations
have added or removed plugins from their folders. Plugins founds through this approach are
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tagged internally as non-persistent, since they may not be around the next session. Manual
scanning of plugins (the edit plugins panel, either adding a single plugin or scanning a folder)
makes the system aware of persistent plugins, which are plugins you have specifically chosen
to use regardless of any non-persistent (autoscanned) plugins. Knowledge of persistent plugins
is kept in the usual Extensions 10 file. Persistent plugins supersede non-persistent plugins
if they should ever conflict, thus giving the user more control of what plugins are used. It is
recommended you have autoscan enabled and manually add plugins that are not in the predetermined plugin locations. If you turn off autoscan, you are still able to manually add persistent
plugins, but no non-persistent plugins will be available.

Clear Scene to Default

Checking this open the default scene when a scene is cleared.

Threaded Mesh Evaluation

Threaded Mesh Evaluation will use however many cores you have and may help speed up mesh
deformations..
The multithreading only happens in Layout for interactive work, not when rendering. Currently the
following parts of the mesh evaluation have been multithreaded:
Morphing
Bone deformation
Motion (application of item move/rotate/scale to mesh)

Thumbnail Review
When this is checked and the Render Scene (F10) function is running, a series of thumbnails will
appear in the Render Status Panel, showing the last several renders in the sequence..

Graph Editor Audio

This option enables the graphical representation of audio in the Graph Editor. Obviously you need
some audio to show. Audio files can be added to Layout in the Scene/Dope Editor.

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Image Cache
This feature is intended to allow you to have an alternative to having all images active in RAM
during the work session. If Image Cache is enabled, then the most used images are retained
in RAM, and the least used are stored to the ImageCache folder in the Content directory. This
conserves memory at the expense of a slight speed reduction in handling the images.
The feature is activated via toggle in the Preferences Panel > General Options tab in Layout and
Modeler. If toggled on in one application, it is on for both, as well for for the ScreamerNet renderer,
once the setting is saved to the Configs file. Note that in all cases, the content directory specified
in the Configs file will host the ImageCache folder. All nodes in a network render farm would use
the same folder. The user should insure that the drive has sufficient space on the target drive to
accommodate caching by the nodes.
The image cache system is handling both those images that are present in the application that
have not yet been saved and those that have a source file on disk. All the cached images are saved
in a single file operation, with all kept in the internal working format for LightWave. This provides
very quick handling for saving and for reloading. This also eliminates the need for repeating the
time-costly processing steps that would be required for the source files from disk if they were to be
simply loaded and cleared multiple times throughout the work session.
If the ImageCache folder is not present in the Content folder, a dialogue box will open when you
toggle the feature on, asking if you wish to create the ImageCache folder. The image cache will
flush when the feature is disabled.
The Image Cache Maximum [or RAM Limit for Images] entry is the total amount of RAM that
you wish to allow for images, collectively, before caching to disk is engaged. The default setting
is for systems with small RAM capacity. If you have more than one gigabyte of RAM, you will likely
want to use higher settings. The maximum setting for 32-bit LightWave is two gigabytes; for 64-bit
LightWave the maximum entry is one terabyte.
On systems with large RAM capacity, you will gain some speed in image handling by turning the
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feature off; if you are using large images or a lot of images, this will, however, take up considerably
more memory than when Image Cache is on.

Layout Display Options

(default keyboard shortcut D)

The Display Options Tab on the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options) controls the settings for
display options that are global in nature.

The display always uses OpenGL; it is not an option. Also, many of the display options are
approximations and your actual rendered results may be different.
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Viewport Layouts
You can display more than one viewport by changing the Viewport Layout pop-up menu. All of the
normal viewport options can be set independently and all viewports will update simultaneously.

You can customize the relative sizes of multiple viewports by dragging the borders between them.
Click the Save as Default button to use the selected Viewport Layout for future sessions. Otherwise,
it will affect only the current session. The state of Undock Preview Win can only be saved with a
scene.
Undock Preview Window will make an undocked preview window when Make Preview is used.
With Undock Preview Window active, Use Camera Resolution becomes an option. With Use Camera
Resolution checked, the preview will use the resolution settings in the selected camera. Preview
Scale Level is used for VPR previews and allows you to choose at what level to render previews.
Every 32 pixels will be very rapid, but only clear in the largest strokes where Every 1 Pixel will be
slower to render and clearer. Antialiased will render each frame to the best VPS can before it moves
to the next frame.

Alert Level
The Alert Level setting controls how error, warning and informational messages are displayed.
When set to High, these messages are displayed as dialog boxes, which you need to manually
dismiss. The Medium level moves warning and information messages to an information line near
the bottom of the interface and Low moves all messages.

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Layout Information Line

Toolbar
The Left or Right settings determine on which side of the interface the Toolbar appears. (If you are
left-handed, select Right.) If you are a keyboard shortcut expert, you can activate the Hide Toolbar
option, which makes the Toolbar and Tabs invisible.

To redisplay the toolbar, press

Alt

F2 or open Display Options again.

Customize Interface Color

Brings up a new window that allows you to choose the interface colors that suit you. There are
three tabs, each with specific settings. LightWave must be completely closed (including the Hub)
for the new settings to take effect from the following launching of LightWave.

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Grid Settings
Use the Grid Type pop-up menu to set the size of the overall grid or turn it off. Adjust the Grid
Square Size to change the size of each square. Display Origin Only will display only the origin lines
of the Grid. The Grid Antialiasing option will smooth out jaggies when active.

Fixed Near Clip Distance

The near clipping distance is the point at which surfaces disappear in your OpenGL display.
Normally, the distance to the near clipping plane is set automatically to one-tenth of the grid size,
multiplied by the camera zoom factor. You may change the base value by activating the Fixed Near
Clip Distance option and entering a value in the input field.
If near clipping becomes a problem, you may find it easier to just adjust the grid size using the [
and ] keyboard shortcuts.

The near clipping distance only affects your OpenGL display and has no impact on your rendered
images. There is also a far clipping distance that is always set to 10,000 times the near clipping distance.
Normally you never see its effects unless you zoom out extremely far or have very distant objects, like
stars.

Dynamic Update
The Dynamic Update pop-up menu affects how the Layout window is updated with respect to
changes on various panels. Interactive will continuously update the Layout window while changes
are made. Delayed will update the Layout window when you release the mouse button. Off will
update the window only when you close the panel.

Which setting you use will depend on many factors, like your processor speed, available processing
resources, scene complexity, and so on. You may want to try Interactive and then back off to a
lower setting, if updates become too sluggish.

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Bounding Box Threshold
This value is an absolute limit for the number of points or polygons an object must have for it to
automatically change to a bounding box during editing (move, rotate, size, etc.). For example, if the
value is set to 5000, any object that has fewer than 5000 points or polygons will remain in solid or
wireframe mode even as the object is manipulated. This can result in jerky movements depending
on the speed of your computer and the quality of the video card. Any object with more points or
polygons than the limit will automatically switch to bounding box mode so that the object can be
manipulated smoothly. You should experiment and find a level that your computer can display at a
decent rate and then leave that as your default.

The Bounding Box Threshold does not affect instances.

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Camera View Tab

Camera View Background

LightWave lets you choose how you want the Layout interface background to appear when using
the Camera view (only).
Blank - is the default choice and will show nothing but the normal blank grey background.
Backdrop Color - uses the color selected as the Backdrop Color on the Backdrop Tab of the
Effects Panel (Scene > Effects > Backdrop).

This setting is independent of how the background will appear in a rendered image. That is, if
the Backdrop Color is orange and there is a Background Image set, the viewport background will still
appear orange if this option is set to Backdrop Color.
Background Image - lets you see the image set as the Background Image on the Compositing
Tab of the Effects Panel (Window > Compositing Options) in the Camera view. You can use it to
help you align objects that need to be positioned properly with respect to the background
image. It will also show when you make preview animations using the Camera view.

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Preview - This requires you to have a preview animation loaded into memory of course. This
can be one that was just generated or one that was loaded.
The preview animation will load starting at the upper-left corner of the Layout window. Make sure
to use the same size interface as you did when you generated the preview for easy reference. It will
also load beginning at frame 0 no matter what the frame was originally when the animation was
created.
This feature is invaluable for creating moving composite shots and mattes. Using an image
sequence composed of live footage as the background image, create a preview animation of
that sequence with no objects or grid. Save the preview and load it in later when you need it. The
preview animation will update much faster than using the original images as a background.

Composition Overlay
The Composition Overlay divides up the screen in a number of ways and is used to help with the
aesthetics of a composition. Some of the overlays use the Golden Ratio (sometimes called the
Golden Cut or Golden Proportion) which is represented by the Greek , or phi, which is a constant
of about 1.6180339887. In mathematical terms, using a line as an example, the ratio of a to b is the
same as the ratio of a+b to a, a and b being lengths on the line.
Golden Sections - The camera view is divided by in both directions for X and Y directions.

Golden Triangle - The camera view is divided by using the sides of triangles for the ratio.

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Harmonious Triangles - Similar to the rules for Golden Triangle, it draws from opposite sides.

Rule of Thirds - Divides the screen into three equal parts in X and Y.

Spiral Sections - Using the rule of , the screen area is divided into a series of rectangles in
the form of a spiral pattern.

Golden Spiral - Similar to Spiral Sections, the screen is divided by a curve using proportions of
.

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Flip H - Rotates the Horizontal orientation 180 degrees.

Flip V - Rotates the Vertical orientation 180 degrees.
Rotate Compositional Overlay - Rotates the overlay by the specified amount.
Compositional Overlay Color - Select the desired color for the overlay.

Show Safe Areas

If your animation will be viewed on a television, be aware that viewers will not see the entire
image. Select Show Safe Areas to toggle outlines in a Camera view that indicate the safe text
(the inner border) and safe action areas (the outer border) for television. To allow for the display
differences of different brands and designs of television sets, you should use this guide to ensure
that text and action elements in your animations remain on screen when it is important that they
be seen.

These are reference guidelines and are not absolute positions.

Alternate Aspect Overlay

The Alternate Aspect Overlay setting lets you overlay the borders of an alternate frame aspect ratio,
within the normal frame in camera viewports. This information-only display mode can be used
to simultaneously compose shots for both film and television, for example. The default alternate
aspect ratio is 1.85.
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OpenGL Fog
If you have the OpenGL Fog option active, you can see an approximation of your Fog settings from
the Camera View as well.

Show Field Chart

The Show Field Chart option turns on a crosshair chart similar to a 12-field chart as used in the film
industry. It divides the camera view into quadrants, with each quadrant having 12 segments.

OpenGL Lens Flares

The OpenGL Lens Flares option lets you see lens flares right in a viewport while you use the Camera
view. If you have the Lens Flares Options Panel open you can interactively make changes to the
settings.

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Copy to Perspective
The Copy to Perspective option will use the settings in the Camera for the Perspective view.

DOF/MBlur Preview Passes

The DOF/MBlur Preview Passes setting sets the number of passes for Depth of Field and Motion
Blur previews in the viewport.

Schematic View Tab

Several display options for the Schematic view appear on the Schematic View Tab.

Choose between Straight or Right Angle from the Link Style toggle.

Also, choose between Vertical or Horizontal from the Link Direction toggle.

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If the Show Goal Links option is active, item links to goals are shown in dotted lines.
If the Drag Descendants option is active, moving a parent will move all its children as well.
If the Show Plugin Links option is active, motion dependencies from motion and channel
modifier plugins are shown as dotted black lines.

Handles And Icons Tab

Handle, Camera, Light and Bone Icon sizes can now be changed and Bone sizes can also be
changed individually in the Bone Properties Panel. Draw Bones Filled will draw filled in bones.
Handle Wire Smoothing will set the amount of smoothing for handles in the viewport.

Draw Joint Rot. Tripod - displays the three arrows showing the axes for Joint-type bones only.
This means you can see at a glace the orientation of your Joints without having to select
them.
Render Thicker Gizmo Handles - Makes the handles for the various gizmos (Move, Rotate,
Scale, etc.) bigger in the OpenGL window.

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OpenGL Options
Display Characteristic Settings

The Show Motion Paths option toggles the visibility of the motion path and keyframes for the
current active item in Layout.
A motion path looks like a line with small white (+) symbols at each keyframe. Motion paths are
subdivided into smaller segments corresponding to the number of frames between keyframes.
With Show Motion Paths active for an object that is stationary during an animation, the graph will
display a single keyframe symbol only, indicating that this is its only keyframe position.

Motion Path for the Right Hand Bone

You have the ability to set the quantity of frames shown before the current frame and after it
using the Motion Path Pre- and Post- fields. The setting defaults to 60 to match previous versions of
LightWave. Other changes in this area of the GL tab of Preferences are:
Use Item Color - If checked, Motion Paths will be drawn using the item color (defaults to on).
Show Frame Markers - If checked, Motion Path Frame Markers will be drawn (defaults to on).
Show Keyframes - If checked, Motion Path Keyframes will be drawn (defaults to on).

Be aware that Layout evaluates to whatever length the motion paths are, so the longer the
paths are, the more they will impact performance.

Show Handles
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The Show Handles option will display reference handles for the current item when you are moving,
rotating, or stretching. These are based on the items local axes at its pivot point.

Show IK Chains
The Show IK Chains option will display a solid line for the IK chain and a dotted line for the
direction of the item reaching for the goal object.

Show Target Lines

The Show Target Lines option turns on/off the line that connects between an item being targeted
and the item targeting it.

Show SubPatch Cages

When using SubPatch objects, you may want to see the SubPatch cage. Activate Show SubPatch
Cages, if this is the case.

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Show Fog Circles

When you want to see the extent of your fogs Max Distance and Min Distance on the Volumetrics
Tab of the Effects Panel (Scene > Effects > Volumetrics), activate the Show Fog Circles option and use
one of the orthogonal views. You will see circles representing the two fog radiuses, a result of the
minimum and maximum fog values. Just as the backdrop gradient sphere is centered about the
camera, so is fog.

If you activate fog and the Show Fog Circles option, but do not see the indicator, check for the
following factors:
Verify that Fog Type on the Volumetrics Tab of the Effects Panel is not set to Off.
Verify that you are using an orthogonal view.
Verify that you should be able to see the fog circles. Are you too close or too far from the
camera for the circles to be visible? Use the grid as a guide. Also, is the Overlay color too
similar to the object color? Try changing to a different display mode, or try changing the
Overlay color (discussed below).

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Show Spline Targets

The controls in this section of the GL tab of the Options panel refer to the Spline Control tool. Visit
that section starting on page 744for more information.

Overlay Color
The color of the overlays for the field chart, limited region, fog circles, and so on, can be set to any
of the standard wireframe colors using the Overlay Color pop-up menu.

Shaded Display Options

The following options affect the shaded OpenGL display characteristics.

Max OpenGL Lights

Enter the maximum number of light sources you want used in the OpenGL display. This lets you see
their your lights effect right in the viewport in real-time. It is normally set at 8 since most graphics
cards have this as a limit. Professional cards can sometime have more OpenGL lights. The number
of OpenGL lights set does not affect renders.

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OpenGL Textures
Activate to show image-mapped textures (not procedural) in the viewports. Use the Texture Size
pop-up menu to select the pixel resolution (e.g., 128 x 128). Lower settings will update faster and
use fewer system resources.

Left: OpenGL Textures Off, Right: OpenGL Textures On

Usually the first Color or Diffuse image map layer is shown in the Texture Mode viewports.
Enable Show Texture Editor Layer to show the Texture Editors current layer instead, if applicable.

Reflection Mapping will only be visible when the surface Reflection value is greater than 50
percent.

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Faster Highlights
The Faster Highlights option makes the display of (specular) highlights faster, but less accurate.
Note that the difference may not always be visible and will vary depending on circumstances.

Pixel Blending
This OpenGL option will activate a smoothing display function.

OpenGL MipMap
Mipmapping is similar to what is used in todays games to avoid graininess of textures in a distance
or at a flat angle. Basically lower- res versions of the texture are generated in realtime and blended
in. This feature is supported in hardware by most of todays graphics cards. This feature also works if
Mutitexturing is turned off. Please note however that due to the nature of this filtering method,
low-resolution textures may appear a bit blurry.

Reflections
This OpenGL option lets you see the effects of image-mapped reflections (not ray-traced) in a
Layout window.

Transparency
The OpenGL Transparency option activates a surface transparency feature in viewports. This
lets you see through transparent surfaces in shaded viewports. (Of course, this is only an
approximation of your actual rendered result.) This setting also controls Modelers display of
transparent surfaces, if the Hub is running. Modeler will remember the last used setting, if you
arent using the Hub.

Multi- Texturing
Multi-texturing means multiple textures layers per polygon in OpenGL. Depending on the settings
that you activate (see below), the following combinations of texture layers are possible:
1) Two color-layers with one diffuse-layer, one luminositylayer and one reflection map (5 textures/polygon).
2) One color-layer with one transparency-layer and one reflection map (3 textures/polygon).
Currently the Multitexturing is made to work with graphics-cards with at least two texture memory
units.

Frame Buffer Object

The Frame Buffer Object option applies the z buffer to the viewport object. This speeds up the
display of non-deforming objects and so is on by default.
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Color Channel - For the display of textures in the Color Channel if Multi-texturing is on.
Diffuse Channel - For the display of textures in the Diffuse Channel if Multi-texturing is on.
Transparency Channel - For the display of textures in the Transparency Channel if Multitexturing is on.
Luminosity Channel - For the display of textures in theLuminosity Channel if Multi-texturing
is on.

Shading Options
In the Shading Method dropdown you have the choice between Multi-Texture and GLSL Shaders.
We have detailed how Multi-texturing works just above.

GLSL HW Shading
GLSL HW Shading (OpenGL Hardware Shading) is now among the selections in the Display Options
panel. Support for the OpenGL 2.0 hardware shader technology in video cards has been added to
Layout to provide very close approximations of render functions in the viewport displays. Light
falloff, surface blending, gradients, and many procedurals can now be displayed in the OpenGL
viewports in Layout when GLSL HW Shading is turned on.

Geometry Acceleration
Determines how the graphics card displays OpenGL. Streaming renders the mesh immediately
to screen, using the lowest amount of memory at the cost of speed. Buffered(VBO) will attempt
to store the geometry in graphics card memory, allowing for the highest speed, at the cost of
memory. In cases where the mesh or shading changes with every frame no caching is possible, a
fallback to the Streaming method will result, for example with animated meshes and reflection
maps. Smooth shaded geometry will benefit the most from the Buffered(VBO) mode. If the mesh
is buffered in graphics card memory the performance you will get as much performance as your
graphics card can give you.

Transparency Sorting
Its usually fastest to leave this as it is, on SortbyObject. However, if you have a large quantity
of surfaces with varying degrees of transparency, for accuracy you may prefer to choose
SortbyPolygon. AlphaClipping is the fastest of the three methods but really is clipping. Anything less
than 100% transparency shows as solid.

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VSync
There are three options and again, leaving this setting to Always On should be the best choice in
most cases. If your scene is extremely heavy setting it to Off or Only When Playing might give you a
speed advantage when setting up the scene.

Defaults Tab

The Defaults Tab is concerned with default settings - including Scene Length, Frame Size, Camera
settings, and the maximum number of items allowed in a scene.
Default Edit Mode will allows you to specify which of the four edit modes (Objects, Bones, Lights,
Cameras) to make active whenever the scene is initialized. This happens, for example, when the
application starts, or when a scene is loaded.

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Paths Tab

Here you can set default paths for LightWave to use, including network paths if you are using
LightWave in a team with a centralized Content Directory. It also supports the use of non-standard
content directory folders to better fit with other software in a pipeline if necessary. The Presets
path has a cross at the end to clear any input path rather than needing to visit LightWaves configs
to clear.

Auto-Detect
With Auto-Detect enabled, when you open a scene, Layout will attempt to automatically detect the
paths for items in a scene.

Use custom paths

With custom paths enabled, you can specify a separate path for each category. This needs to be
ticked before you can access each of the Scenes, Hierarchies, Objects, etc. buttons below.

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Content Directory
LightWave defaults to looking in certain directories under the Content Directory when you load
scenes, objects, surfaces, images, envelopes, motions, previews, etc. This is usually the directory
you installed the LightWave software into. The Content Directory is LightWaves master directory;
LightWave expects to find all of the appropriate subdirectories within this master directory.
The Content Directory allows you to create a truly portable LightWave scene, including all object
and image files. It essentially acts as a pseudo root directory. By saving all your object and image
files in subdirectories below the Content Directory, your LightWave scene and related files can be
moved from drive to drive, from system to system, and even platform to platform, and still load
properly.
Portability is important because LightWave scenes are often rendered on multiple machines or
shared for education or fun.
If you use LightWave in a network environment, it is imperative that you use the Content Directory
correctly.

Relative Links
When you save a scene, LightWave tries to save only a relative link to image and object files. So an
object stored on your hard drive as C:\MyProjects\StretchPrincess\Objects\Jo.lwo where the Content
Directory was C:\MyProjects\StretchPrincess, would be saved in the scene file as only Objects\
StretchPrincess.lwo.
If you use objects or images outside of the Content Directory, those links are hard-coded (e.g., F:\
Stretch\Princess\Jo.lwo). If you never move the scene and support files to another computer, the
scene will load fine, but this isnt the way you should do it.

If you load a scene where an object/image file cannot be found, a file dialog will appear, letting
you manually locate the file. To prevent having to keep redirecting LightWave, save the scene once
loaded and better use Package Scene to unite all elements into a content directory.

Object File Links

Like scenes, objects can also have linked files. These are usually Image Maps used for surface
textures. The Content Directory concept is also relevant here. Using image files below the Content
Directory will avoid loading problems.
If you make any changes to object surfaces, you must save the object file - a step separate from
saving a scene.

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To set the Content Directory:
Open the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > General Options) and click the
Content Directory button. A file browser will open and you can navigate to and select the folder
you wish to use as your Content Directory.
You can also choose Set Content Directory from the Edit button, or choose from among the
Content Directories that youve used lately by using Edit > Recent Content Directories, or by using
the keyboard shortcut Alt + F12.
You can also change it in Modeler, on the General Options Panel. (If the Hub is active, Layout and
Modeler will sync any changes to this setting.)

Ways to Use the Content Directory

Here are a couple of different ways to use the Content Directory feature:
Use a separate directory as the Content Directory for every project. Youll need to create
subdirectories for Objects, Images, and Scenes beneath it. All files relevant to the project
would be stored here. As you change from project to project, you must also change your
Content Directory. (Note that your project could contain a multitude of scenes.)
Create subdirectories called MyProjects in the Objects, Images, and Scenes subdirectories
that are created when you installed LightWave. (e.g., C:\ Lightwave\ Objects\ MyProjects,
C:\ Lightwave\ Images\ MyProjects, etc.). Then, for each project, create identically named
subdirectories in each of the MyProjects subdirectories and store your files accordingly.

Production Data Files

Subdirectories other than Images, Objects, and Scenes (e.g., Surfaces, Motions, etc.) are generally
important only during the production stage. The information from these files is incorporated
in the scene or object files and is not tracked independently. For example, when you apply that
cromulent silver surface file to your spaceships skin, the settings are saved in the object file. The
surface is not referred to again, unless you use it again.

In Layouts File Menu, Package Scene, discussed later in this section, can be used to collect a
scenes supporting files and ensure correct compliance with your content directory.

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CS (Color Space)Tab

Since LightWave 10, LightWave has been able to use Color Space information to give better results,
above all with images used for texturing. Color space conversion is performed in four places in
LightWave.
1) On loading, an image can be converted from its native color space format to linear.
2) When sent to the Image Viewer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
3) When saved from the Renderer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
4) When picked from the Color Picker, a color can be converted
from and then to linear color space.
By default, LightWave is set not to do any conversion - the Linear setting, but to better suit work for
the monitor, switch to sRGB. For better work for cinema choose Cineon and for widescreen highdefinition TV choose Rec.709. These choices will help convert images that may already have color
space definitions and keep their colors pure.
LightWave provides presets for sRGB and rec.709 but a personalized mix can be set up with the
dropdown choices for each of the different elements and saved as a preset for future use. You can
also load in color space definitions to exactly match existing setups. A color table can be loaded by
using Load Table from the pop-up. The color tables are stored in the project directory, in a directory
called ColorTables.
The options are as follows:
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Convert Color Space to Linear

Picked Colors - Colors chosen from the LightWave or other color picker
Light Color - The color chosen for lights
Palette Files - Palettes loaded into LightWave
8-bit Files - 8-bit here refers to images that are 8 bits per channel such as JPGs, PNGs or TGAs,
previously known as 24-bit or 32-bit. These benefit the most from color space conversion.
Float files - Images using floating point colors schemes dont benefit from color space
conversion, indeed it would cause severe banding and thus this should always be left on
Linear
Alpha - Again, alpha images need to be preserved exactly as they are since the level of gray
indicates distance. As such they dont require or want color space conversion

Apply Color Space

Display Color Space - What Layout looks like. Normally, this should be left at sRGB unless you
are working on a cinema screen or loom or something
Output Color Space - This is the color space for your renders. Again, if they are for the
monitor choose sRGB
Output Alpha Color Space - This should be left at Linear as for the conversion settings

Other Options
Auto Sense on Load - when you load a scene LightWave detects what CS setting were already
in use and changes to them automatically when this option is activated
Color Correct OpenGL - to better match the colors of polygons and lights when not viewig in
VPR or a render
Affect Color Picker - Best left checked since otherwise the colors you choose in the color
picker wont be those you get in the render
Convert 8-bit to Float - Converts 8-bit per channel files, otherwise known as 24-bit, to floating
point files. This increases the memory overhead a lot for textured images. It will increase the
fidelity of the results but is not always needed

For more information about Color Space and Linear workflow see the introduction to the Surface
and Render manual starting page 1879

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OBJ Tab

The OBJ tab contains options for importing and exporting OBJ file objects.

OBJ One Layer - imports the object as a single layer

OBJ One VMap - imports the object with a single vertex map (UV or otherwise)
OBJ Pivot at Center - creates the pivot of the object at the center of the object
OBJ Write Normals - writes the normals associated with the object when saved
OBJ Merge Points - merges points sharing the same space
OBJ Reverse Ka & Kd - reverses the Color and Diffuse channels for better compatibility with
Maya
OBJ Double Sided - polygons are marked double-sided in the OBJ
OBJ Parts - For improved compatibility with Maya
OBJ Foreground Layers - Not really appropriate in Layout, this is more for Modeler where
you can have foreground and background layers in objects. Activating this just saves the
foreground layers as an OBJ and ignores the others
OBJ Import Scale - sets the scale of an object when it is imported
OBJ Export Scale - sets the scale of the object when it is exported

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Navigation Preferences

Preferences for using 3D mice and other HID controllers with Layout. It can be found in Edit >
Navigation Options. You can create presets for settings to be able to quickly store and retrieve
settings for different devices. References to a pucks X, Y and Z axes consider the navigation device
to be laying flat on a table and the x-axis being to the right, the y-axis being upward, and the
z-axis being forward away from the user. The Sensitivity and Scaling can be controlled for individual
channels for your external control device. You can stop specific channels from being evaluated
completely if you choose by unchecking the channel concerned, or reverse a channels direction.
The System Panel... button will launch your operating systems Preferences for the selected device.
There are several Subjects and Styles:
View - Acts like using the Viewport navigation controls. If the view is a camera or light you
will be controlling the camera or light in the scene.
Grab - This attempts to emulate grabbing the world as you see it.
Orbit - This is similar to grab but using a point of interest in front of the viewer that it
will rotate about.
Helicopter - This attempts to emulate flying a helicopter
Walk - The is similar to helicopter but with limits on the pitch and bank. It attempts to
emulate walking.
Current Item - Moves and rotates the currently-selected object.
Grab - This emulates grabbing the item relative to what the viewer sees.
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Customizing Layout
Helicopter - This emulates flying the item from the point of view of the item (as if the
user were inside the item flying it like a helicopter).
Timeline - A mode that uses the Twist on a Space Explorer or equivalent to act like a jog/
shuttle dial on a video control surface. Holding the Alt key while rotating the devices puck
will result in faster scanning through the timeline. The difference is more noticeable when
the scene length is longer - a 120-frame scene is only barely noted whereas the difference
between normal scanning and Alt-scanning a 600-frame scene is very obvious.

Schematic View Tools

This tool, found in Layouts Edit menu, helps you organize the scene items when using the
Schematic View.

You can set the Grid Size by typing an entry in the field or by using the sliders to the right of the
entry field. Snap Selection to Grid will snap the selected items to the specified Grid Size. Snap
Hierarchy to Grid is similar, but only works on the hierarchy from the selected root item. Snap All
Items to Grid snaps everything.
If Move Parent is active, the parent will be repositioned along with the children. If inactive, only the
children are moved.
The Tree View button will organize a hierarchy in a tree fashion. You must select the parent item
before clicking the button.
The Skeleton View button will organize a hierarchy based on the positions of the items at frame
0, from the perspective set on the Projection pop-up menu. You must select the root item before
clicking the button.

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2015

Scene Metadata

If your pipeline dictates that you need to use a different path structure for use with other
applications, it can be awkward when you need to bring scenes back into LightWave for further
editing, needing to tell LightWave where a projects images are for instance because you have them
under a different path. You can now save metadata to a scene file as comments if your workflow
dictates that you vary from the standard LightWave content directory structure of Images, Objects
and Scenes.
When saving out a scene file, append the content directory information as comments to the very
end of the scene file.
If USE CUSTOM PATHS is left unchecked, this should be a single comment like this:
// ContentDir: X:/project/_library/assets/LW_Content

If USE CUSTOM PATHS is checked in your LightWave options Paths tab, append all of the custom
paths as comments to the end of the LWS file as well:
// ContentDir: X:/project/_library/assets/LW_Content
// ObjectsDir: X:/project/_library/assets/LW_Content/Objects
// ImagesDir: X:/project/_library/assets/LW_Content/Images

The full list of custom path is as follows:

ContentDir X:/project/
ScenesDir X:/project/Scenes
ObjectsDir X:/project/Objects
SurfacesDir X:/project/Surfaces
ShadersDir X:/project/Shaders
ImagesDir X:/project/Images
PreviewsDir X:/project/Previews
MotionsDir X:/project/Motions
EnvelopesDir X:/project/Envelopes
AnimationsDir X:/project/Animations
NodesDir X:/project/Nodes
SoundsDir X:/project/Sounds
DynamicsDir X:/project/Dynamics
RigsDir X:/project/Rigs
LightsDir X:/project/Lights
RadiosityDir X:/project/Radiosity
ColorTablesDir X:/project/ColorTables
ImageCacheDir X:/project/ImageCache
VertCacheDir X:/project/VertCache
BackupDir X:/project/Backup

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Interface Color Customization

Customizing the Interface colors for Modeler and Layout is accessed through the Options panels in
both applications - the Display tab in Layout and the Display Options Interface tab in Modeler. You
will need to restart LightWave to see the changes you have made.

2015

-d Startup Option for Modeler and Layout

LWSN (LightWaves Screamernet network rendering system) has had a -d option for a while now
for designating a content directory to be used at startup. This functionality has now been added
to the startup options of Modeler and Layout and in Windows can be added as a startup option by
editing the icon properties and adding -d and the directory you wish to use, like so:

...Layout.exe -dC:\Content

For OS X, the procedure is more involved. Here is how to make an launch shortcut icon using
AppleScript:
1) Open the /Applications/Utility/AppleScript Editor.app application
2) Choose to create a New Document.
3) Enter the following text: do shell script /Applications/NewTek/
LightWave_2015/Layout.app/Contents/MacOS/Layout (command
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line arguments should be added here, before the quote marks)

4) Save the document as an Application to your Desktop.
5) Double-click the resulting application icon.
To re-edit the resulting application, drag it to the dock AppleScript Editor icon.

Layout Startup Command

If the LW2015-64.CFG configuration file contains a line beginning with StartupCommand, Layout
will try to execute the rest of the line as a command after the main interface is first opened. The
command can have arguments and it can refer to a generic plug-in or script.

Customizing Layout Viewport Navigation

The mouse directions used for viewport navigation can be customized by editing the
WorldNavigation entry in the LW2015-64.CFG configuration file. It has four boolean values that
correspond to panning via icon and Alt key, and rotation via icon and Alt key. Zero values mean
that the viewpoint moves in the same direction as the mouse, and ones mean that the world
appears to move with the mouse. For example, the default in LightWave 9 is 0 1 0 1. The old 5.6
setting would be 1 1 0 0.

Customizing Camera Presets

The camera resolution presets are stored in the LW2015-64.CFG configuration file using the
keyword ResolutionPreset. Each preset includes a width and height, pixel aspect ratio, mask
settings (left, top, width, and height) and a name that will appear in the pop-up menu. They can be
modified, deleted, or added to. If no presets are found in the file, the original list is restored. See the
configuration file for examples.

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Chapter 14 -

Introduction to Modeler

LightWave 2015

Modeler
Introduction to Modeling
LightWave Modeler lets you create objects from scratch or edit existing objects. Object Modeling
is the design and creation of wireframe objects from a simple shape, like an apple, to a complex
shape, like a finely-detailed sports car. In Layout, you are the interior designer moving furniture and
putting up pictures. In Modeler, you are the furniture maker and the builder of the house.

Components of a 3D Object
What makes up a 3D object? It has two traits: its physical shape and its visual appearance. The
physical shape of an object comprises points joined by lines to form faces that we call polygons.
The form that the polygons present to us makes up an objects shape.

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The visual appearance of an object consists of color and texture qualities that connote realism to
the eye, which are called surface attributes or material properties. When you enter a room and look
at your chair you see a certain shape (that of a chair) and a certain surface (maybe wood or metal),
so you think, chair. In LightWave 3D you have the tools to create simple or complex objects and
define their surface qualities with great precision and detail.

Modeling in 3D
How would you make a mug? It depends; if you were a sculptor, you would mould a lump of clay.
If you were a designer, you would draft it with paper and a mechanical pencil. If you were an artist,
you would probably sketch it. But suppose you were using a computer. How would you make a
mug? What tools would you use?

You want to portray the mug with realistic color, depth, and shading. You need drawing tools, yes,
but also power tools! With the computer, you can create the mug in a variety of ways. LightWave
recreates drafting and workshop tools on screen so that people who are neither sculptors nor
traditional artists can use them just as easily. In fact, LightWaves tools do more than their reallife counterparts. There are several bonuses to computer design also. You can undo a mistake,
something that is difficult to do in many of the arts. And theres no mess to clean up.

Points, Polygons, and Edges

Generally, 3D Modeling is based on two simple elements: the point and the polygon. A point is a
location in space, just as a point in a dot-to-dot coloring book represents a location on the page.
Points are used as anchors to create polygons. Since points alone do not have height, width, or
depth, they cannot be seen or rendered. However, you can load them into Layout and use points as
invisible influences on other objects: as a center of rotation, or to play an invisible role of influence
in an object hierarchy, for example. A third, in-between, mode is the edge mode. Edges are the
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Modeler
lines which connect the individual points and form the outline of a polygon.
The process of creating 3D objects is a lot like drawing in dot-to-dot coloring books - of course,
with 3D Modeling, the dots can also be placed in a third dimension (i.e., depth). Once placed, the
dots can be connected with lines to form polygons. That collection of polygons, also referred to
as an object, forms a recognizable shape that the computer can draw and animate. Polygons are
usually three-sided triangles or four-sided quadrangles (although they can consist of more sides).

You create or edit all objects using the same XYZ coordinate system used in Layout. The difference
is that in Layout you are usually positioning an entire object, whereas in Modeler you are
positioning the points that make up an object. Modeler also uses the XYZ coordinates 0, 0, 0 as the
Origin.

Left: Points that make up a head, Right: Polygons that make up the same head

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Modeler
The Origin is the default rotation center (called the pivot point) for objects in Layout. Keeping this
in mind as you model your objects will make the objects load into Layout properly without having to
move the pivot point.

Editing Objects

Generally, to build a 3D object, you create, combine, and modify simple shapes into more complex
shapes. This is known as editing. The basic building blocks (i.e., primitives) include cubes, spheres,
cylinders, and other shapes. Using tools not unlike those found in a wood or metal shop, you form
a realistic representation of the envisioned object.

Have a Plan!
If you were building a desk, you would work from a sketch, a photograph, plans, or a small model
of the desk you intended to build. This approach also works well for Modeling 3D objects. Having
the actual shape or a representation of the object in front of you while you design is invaluable,
and it will aid you in determining size, shape, angle, color, and more. Whenever possible, work from
pictures or small-scale models. Picture books, magazines, blueprints, and visual dictionaries are
useful companions to have nearby.

Selection Mode: Points, Edges and Polygons

The process of object editing involves manipulating points, edges and polygons. It will include
selecting some portion of an existing object, choosing the operation to perform, adjusting any
parameters for that operation, then carrying out the operation.
The concept of selecting is very important to Modeler. Selection is the act of specifying either the
object itself, or a portion of it, that you intend to edit next. The most basic elements that you can
modify include points, edges and polygons - the dots and multi-sided shapes that make up all
objects. Any number of points, edges, polygons, or objects, in any combination, may be selected
for a specific operation.

Everything in a layer is considered selected when nothing is selected.

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When selecting and unselecting, make sure that no Modeling tool is currently active. You can
usually tell if a tool is active based on the mouse pointer. You can quickly deactivate any tool by pressing
the Spacebar (or RETURN); however, if no tool was active, you will change the edit mode.

Point Selection

Points generally appear in two ways on-screen, selected and unselected. Selected points are
highlighted, while unselected points remain small dots.

To select points:
6) Use Point Selection mode (Point button or Ctrl +G). The Mode Selection buttons are located
at the left of the screen under the top menu group.

7) Drag your LMB over points in an object and then release the mouse button to select those
points.

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Once you have selected points and released the mouse button, you cannot select additional
points in the same manner. You will need to hold down Shift to continue selecting or use the MMB.

If you know the number of points you want to select, check the information display above the
Point (Selection mode) button. It shows you the number of selected items.

To add more points to a selection:

Hold the Shift key while you select with your LMB to add points to the existing selection or just
click your MMB.

To lasso a group of points:

With the RMB, drag out a circle around points to select a group. As you might expect, you can add
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more points to a selection by holding the
points you wish to select.

Shift

KEY and dragging out a circle around the additional

To deselect points:
If selected points exist (and you have released the mouse button), dragging over them with your
LMB will deselect them. You can also use the lasso by dragging with your RMB.
2015

To deselect all points:

Click in any non-active (i.e., not a button) area on the toolbar to deselect all points. You can also use
the Drop Current Tool command (/). Also, clicking on the number of selected points in the Selection
Counter information display above the Point (Selection Mode) button will deselect all selected
points.
New to 2015.2, there is an option in Display Preferences to double-click (off geometry, anywhere in
the viewport) to drop the selection. The last selection can be restored by hitting the Drop/Restore
Selection button or using the default keyboard shortcut of /.

Edge Selection
Edges generally appear in two ways on-screen, selected and deselected. A selected edge will
appear highlighted with outlines in yellow (default). You will see that selecting edges is very similar
to selecting points or polygons.

To select edges in a viewport:

1) Use Edge selection mode . The Mode Selection buttons are located at the left of the screen
under the top menu group.

2) If you are using a viewport set to a non-shaded Rendering Style (Display Options),
like wireframe, drag your LMB over the edges and then release the mouse button.

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Once you have selected edges and released the mouse button, you cannot select additional
edges in the same manner.

To add more edges to a selection:

Hold the Shift key while you select with LMB to add more edges to the existing selection or just
click your MMB.

To lasso a group of edges:

With the RMB, drag out a circle around edges to select a group. Only the edges located completely
within the outline are selected. Of course, you can add more edges to a selection by holding the
Shift key and then drag out a new circle around the edges you wish to add to the selection.

To deselect edges:
If selected edges exist (and you have released the mouse button), dragging over them with your
LMB will deselect them. You can also use the lasso by dragging with your RMB.

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2015

To deselect all edges:

Click in any non-active (i.e., not a button) area on the toolbar to unselect all edgess. You can also
use the Drop Current Tool command (/). Also, clicking on the number of selected edges in the
Selection Counter information display above the Point (Selection Mode) button will deselect all
selected edges.
New to 2015.2, there is an option in Display Preferences to double-click (off geometry, anywhere in
the viewport) to drop the selection. The last selection can be restored by hitting the Drop/Restore
Selection button or using the default keyboard shortcut of /.

Edges are always part of a polygon. Cutting, or otherwise deleting or hiding, an edge will also
remove the associated polygon.

Polygon Selection
Polygons generally appear in two ways on-screen, selected and deselected. A selected polygon
will appear highlighted with outlines in yellow (default). You will see that selecting polygons is very
similar to selecting points and edges.

To select polygons in a viewport:

1) Use Polygon selection mode ( Ctrl +H). The Mode Selection buttons are located at the left of
the screen under the top menu group.

2) If you are using a viewport set to a non-shaded Rendering Style (Display Options),
like wireframe, drag your LMB over the edge of polygons and then release the
mouse button. This selects polygons that share that edge. With a shaded rendering
style like Texture or Smooth Shade, you can click directly on the polygons face.

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As polygons become selected, they will become highlighted and you will see a dotted line
extending out of the face of the polygon and perpendicular to that polygon (The Normal display
option must be active.). This dotted line is also referred to as the normal of the polygon or surface.
The normal line indicates which side of a polygon has a face (the surface of the polygon you can
see) or which direction the polygon is facing. In LightWave polygons by default have only one face.
This means if you rotate a polygon the other side will not be visible because it is not double sided.

Once you have selected polygons and released the mouse button, you cannot select additional
polygons in the same manner.

If you know the number of polygons you want to select, check the information display above the
Point Selection Mode button. It shows you the number of selected items.

To add more polygons to a selection:

Hold the

Shift

key while you select with LMB to add more polygons to the existing selection or just

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click your MMB.

To lasso a group of polygons:

With the RMB, drag out a circle around polygons to select a group. Only the polygons located
completely within the outline are selected. Of course, you can add more polygons to a selection by
holding the Shift key and then dragging out a new circle around the polygons you wish to add to
the selection.

To deselect polygons:
If selected polygons exist (and you have released the mouse button), dragging over them with
your LMB will deselect them. You can also use the lasso by dragging with your RMB.

Selecting a group of polygons and then deselecting the ones you dont want is often the only way
to select the ones you do want.
2015

To deselect all polygons:

Click in any non-active (i.e., not a button) area on the toolbar to unselect all polygons. You can also
use the Drop Current Tool command (/). Also, clicking on the number of selected polygons in the
Selection Counter information display above the Point (Selection Mode) button will deselect all
selected polygons.
New to 2015.2, there is an option in Display Preferences to double-click (off geometry, anywhere in
the viewport) to drop the selection. The last selection can be restored by hitting the Drop/Restore
Selection button or using the default keyboard shortcut of /.

Selection with In-line Points/Polygons/Edges

If there are points/polygons/edges in-line (on top of each other) in a viewport using a non-shaded
rendering style (i.e., Wireframe), you select all of the points/polygons/edges when you select
with your mouse. However, shaded viewports respect polygons facing away from you and those
obscured by other polygons. Thus, you can select by clicking on a polygons face without worrying
about whats behind or on the other side. You can change the Rendering Style from the pop-up
menu on the viewport titlebar or on the Viewport Tab of the Display Options Panel.

Symmetrical Selection
When you select polygons/points/edges on the positive X axis and Symmetry mode (Symmetry
button) is active, polygons/points/edges on the negative X axis are also selected (or deselected).
Polygons/points/edges must be exactly opposite each other on the positive and negative sides of
the X axis for this command to work properly.

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Interface
Symmetry also affects polygon editing.
1) Sel Entire Surface - Selects all the polygons making up the
surfaces of the polygons that are currently selected.
2) Sel Entire Part - Selects all the polygons making up the parts
of the polygons that are currently selected.
3) Select Path - Selects a shortest path (there can be multiple) between two
elements. The selected elements can be of any type (vertex, edge, polygon).
4) Select Outline Points - Selects the outer points of a selected set of polygons.
5) Select Outline Edges - Selects the outer edges of a selected set of polygons.
6) Edge Selection
7) Loop Expand - Expands an edge selection along an edge loop.
8) Loop Contract - Shrinks an edge selection along an edge loop.

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Interface
Overview
Modelers screen is divided into several areas. By default, the workspace of the screen consists of
four viewports. Modeler displays four simultaneous points of view (Top, Back, Right, and a forcedperspective view), each looking at the same portion of the workspace from a different angle. These
are not unlike Layouts viewports. Changes made in one view are immediately updated in the
others.

1 and 8. ToolBar, 2. Edit Mode, 3. Modeler Tabs, 4. Current Object, 5. Layer Bank Selection, 6. Layers, 7. Layout Access, 8. ToolBar, 9.
Workspace, 10. Info Display, 11. Grid Display, 12. Selection Info, 13. Progress Bar, 14. Action Centers, 15. Symmetry, 16. Tool Tips, 17. SubDType, 18. Numeric Window, 19. Change Surface, 20. Drop Tool, 21. Drop Selection, 22. Undo / Redo, 23. Vertex Maps

Each area of Modelers Interface is fully customizable in the Configure Menus Panel (

Alt

+ F10).

1 and 8. ToolBar
The toolbar sits at the side of the screen. The buttons presented will vary depending on which
menu tab you select along the top. The Top Tool Bar buttons will appear no matter which Tab is
selected. You can completely hide (or unhide) the toolbar by pressing Alt +F2 (or choosing Edit >
Display Options > Hide Toolbar On/Off).

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Hiding Panels
Since your screen can often get cluttered with open panels, you can quickly hide/show these
floating windows by pressing Alt +F1.

2. Edit Mode
To the right of the grid display are the three mode buttons. These are mutually exclusive buttons,
so only one can be active at any one time. These determine when you are editing Points, Edges or
Polygons using the space bar cycle. You can also select Volume mode from this section.

3. Modeler Tabs
The Tabs located at the top of the interface will determine which tools appear in the Toolbar.
Each Toolbar is divided into menu groups. Generally, menu group names that are verbs contain
commands based on the type of action they perform. Menu group names that are nouns contain
commands based on the type of object they affect.

Create - Primitives, Points , Polygons, Curves and more. All the basic building blocks can be
found here - see Chapter - Create Tab starting on page 1215.
Modify - Move, Rotate, Transform, and more - Chapter - Modify Tab starting on page 1315
Multiply - Expand on existing geometry - see Chapter - Multiply Tab starting on page 1394

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Detail - Tools to detail your object - see Chapter - Detail Tab starting on page 1507
Construct - Reduce and combine points and polygons and much more - see Chapter Construct Tab starting on page 1547.
Map - All the tools you need to create and manage Vertex Maps - see Chapter - Map Tab
starting on page 1587
Setup - Skelegons and other tools that can be used inside Layout - see Chapter - Setup Tab
starting on page 1710
Selection - Tools related to selecting points, edges and polygons - see Chapter - Selection
Tab starting on page 1790
Layers - Controlling an objects layers and tools for managing layers - see Chapter - Layers
Tab starting on page 1813
View - Display options and selection tools can be found here - see Chapter - View Tab
starting on page 1822
I/O - Tools related to imported and exporting for Modeler - see Chapter - Interchange Tab
starting on page 1833
Utilities - 3rd-party tools or your own scripts - see Chapter - Utilities Tab starting on page
1866

4. Current Object
Like files in your wordprocessor, multiple object files can be loaded simultaneously. The Current
Object pop-up button to the left of the layer buttons switches from object to object. Object names
listed with an asterisk (*) have been changed and may need to be saved. Attempting to close the
application triggers a request to save all changed objects. Ghosted objects are ones that have been
loaded into Layout, but not into Modeler. Choosing a ghosted object from the pop-up menu will
load it.

Use the Current Object pop-up menu to select which object you are editing.

5. Layer Bank Selection

You can use the layer buttons in the top-right corner of the main interface to work with layers in
banks of ten. LightWave gives you unlimited banks of ten which can be accessed here.

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6. Layers
Every object can be a MultiMesh, that is, consist of an unlimited number of layers, similar to
layers in many paint programs. The MultiMesh lets you work independently on specific parts of
an object. During Modeling operations, you can set layers independently to be in the foreground
or background, so you can work on a combination of layers as if they were in the same layer.
Background layers can be used as a reference, but are often required when using certain Modeling
tools.

7. Layout Access
This drop down menu gives you the following options:
1) Switch to Layout - switches to your Layout window if it is open or
opens up Layout if you do not already have it open.
2) Synchronize Layout - Changes to objects in Modeler are reflected
automatically in Layout when you select the Layout interface. You
can force this synchronization by choosing this option.
3) Send Object to Layout - sends the current object to Layout. Actually, it sends a pointer
to the current objects file. As such, the object must be saved to your hard drive first.

These options assume that you have the Hub running.

8. ToolBar
The buttons presented in this group will change depending on which tab is active across the top of
Modelers interface.

9. Workspace
By default, the workspace of the screen consists of four viewports. Modeler displays four
simultaneous points of view (Top, Back, Right, and a forced-perspective view), each looking at the
same portion of the workspace from a different angle. These are not unlike Layouts viewports.
Changes made in one view are immediately updated in the others.
The crosshair at the center of the four viewports can be grabbed and moved where you want. If
you have fewer than the normal four viewports, the borders between viewports can be used for
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Interface
resizing.

Viewport Titlebar
You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display
Options Panel by using the pop-up menus on the left side of each viewport titlebar.

The buttons on the right side affect panning, rotating, zooming, and minimizing/maximizing your
view.

10. Info Display

Just above the grid display is an information display. Most of the time this gives you feedback
on the position of your mouse. However, depending on what you are doing, it can also display a
variety of other information.

11. Grid Display

In the bottom-left corner of the screen you can see the grid size information display. As in Layout,
this tells you how big each square is in the Modeler workspace.

12. Selection Info

Above the Action Centers (14) is the selection info display, which tells you how many points, edges
or polygons you have selected.

13. Progress Bar

Displays tool processing.

14. Action Centers

These tell you how any modification is going to be made to geometry - based on the position of
your mouse pointer, based on the center of the selection, the pivot or the origin.

15. Symmetry
The Symmetry mode (Symmetry button, located along bottom edge) not only works on selection,
but also on editing. Operations on the positive side of the X axis also inversely affect the negative
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side of the X axis. When this mode is active, your object is theoretically split in half at X=0.

16. Tool Tips

Displays helpful information for current tool.

17. SubD-Type
Allows you to switch between two SubDivision modes, Subpatch and Catmull-Clark.

18. Numeric Window

You can enter numeric values for every tool in Modeler. Access it at the bottom of the interface.

19. Change Surface

Activates the Change Surface Panel to set the surface name and basic attributes for the selected
polygons. See Surface Editor for more information.

20. Drop tool

Finalizes your adjustments to geometry.

21. Drop Selection

Deselects all selected geometry.

22. Undo / Redo

Button equivalents for the

Ctrl

-Z / Z operations.

23. Vertex Maps

VMaps can be created using the buttons in the lower-right corner of Modeler. In a way you can
think of Vmaps as surfaces for points. Its a way of tagging some information onto points that
allow much more control of various Lightwave functions on a point level.
W - Weight, T - UV Texture, M - Morph, C - Color, S - Selection Set.

File Menu
Starting a New Object
(default keyboard shortcut Shift N)
To start editing a new object from scratch, select File > New Object. A new object called Unnamed is
created with empty layers.
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Loading an Existing Object from Disk
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl O)
Objects can be created, loaded into Layout, or loaded directly into Modeler.

To load an object into Modeler, select File > Load Object. The object becomes the current object
and all of its layers are loaded.

You may select multiple objects to load at once, by selecting more than one object at once in the
file requester.
Choose File > Load Object into Layer to load an object file into the currently selected layer. If the file
contains multiple layers, they will all be loaded into the same layer.
Choose File > Recent Files to reload an object that you had recently opened.
Choose File > Revert Current Object to put the current object in its last-saved state. Essentially, this is
like closing and reloading the object.

Importing an Object
EPS
The EPSF_Loader command (File > Import > EPSF Loader) converts Illustrator (.ai) and encapsulated
PostScript (.eps) files into two-dimensional LightWave objects, by converting bezier curves into
tessellated polygons.

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If the EPS uses a gradient fill, you will need to convert it to a solid fill (e.g., using Illustrator) before
using this loader.
The Curve Division Level option sets the desired level of detail.

Curve Level - Rough,

Standard,

Fine,

Super Fine

The Convert to pop-up menu sets the type of object that will be created.

Closed Polygons & Poly Lines - Will create a 2-point polygon chain and Polygons where vector
lines are in the file.
Closed Polygons - Will create closed polygons where vector lines are in the file.
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PolyLines (Line Polygons) - Will create a 2-point polygon chain where vector lines are in the
file.
Spline Curves - Will create splines where vector lines are in the file.
The EPS file is defined by either typing the full path in the EPSF File input field or using the
requester button to bring up a file requester.
Auto Axis Drill will attempt to automatically drill holes in faces, where appropriate. (e.g., the two
holes in the number 8).

If this option is not checked, the geometry will be created and you will have to manually create
the hole.
Auto Centering will center the resulting geometry.

Due to the inherent differences between 2D structured drawings and 3D objects, there will
usually be some amount of cleanup required.

This command has been tested with Illustrator files up to version 8.

Pdbreaderv3
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is an archive of experimentally determined three-dimensional
structures of biological macromolecules, serving a global community of researchers, educators,
and students. The archives contain atomic coordinates, bibliographic citations, primary
and secondary structure information, as well as crystallographic structure factors and NMR
experimental data.

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This importer will read the PDB data and convert it to a LightWave Object.

More information about the PDB can be found here: http://www.rcsb.org/pdb

Vertex Loader
Use Vertex Loader in order to edit Weight Maps for bones that were created from scratch in Layout,
or bones that were converted from Skelegons.
To use Vertex Loader, choose File > Import > Vertex Loader. First the Load Scene requester opens;
select a scene file that has object(s) with bones. After you select a scene file, the following dialog
box appears. There you select an object that you want to edit and click OK.
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The selected object is automatically loaded into Modeler and displayed in Vertex Paint with its
bones. If the object is already loaded, only the bones are loaded from the scene file. Weight Maps
set on the Bone Properties Panel in Layout are used for each corresponding bone.

Before launching Vertex Loader, please make sure Layouts Content Directory setting matches
Modelers.

Saving Object Files

When you save an object, all layers are saved and preserved. You have several options which are all
available from the File menu:
Save Object (default keyboard shortcut S) - This option saves the current object using its
filename. If the object has never been saved before, this is the same as using Save Object As.
Save Object As (default keyboard shortcut Ctrl S) - This option opens a file dialog letting you
name (or rename) the object before saving.
Save Layers As Object - Use this to save a foreground layer to its own object file. If multiple
layers are selected, they will be saved in a single layer. Make sure you add the .lwo filename
extension to your object name when saving.
Save All Objects - This option saves all files using their filenames. If any new objects havent
been saved before, you are alerted and given the option of naming them.
Save Incremental (default keyboard shortcut Shift S) - This option will give you the ability
to save a version of an object by adding incremental numbers to the objects name. This is
handy when you want to save your object in various stages of the Modeling process.

An asterisk will appear next to the names (on the current pop-up menu) of objects that have
been modified since their last save.

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Closing Object Files
Once you are finished with an object, you can close it by selecting Close Object from the Files popup menu. You can close all object files by selecting Close All Objects. If any objects are unsaved,
you are alerted and given the option of saving them.
Objects revert to their on-disk version in other Hub applications (e.g., Layout) when you close
them or exit Modeler and do not save them first. This will cause you to lose unsaved attributes like
surface changes.

Sections
Save-Object-Section - You can use this to save a selected polygon as an object
Save-Object-Section-Cut - Saves the selected object section, and then cuts it from the object
itself.
Save-Object-Section-Points - Use this plugin to save selected points of an object.
Save-Object-Section-Points-Cut - Saves the selected points, then cuts them from the object
itself.

Exporting Objects
The File > Export menu has several options to export your LightWave object into different formats.

Export Encapsulated Postscript

This plugin will allow you to save your object as an encapsulated postscript file (.eps). In the View
pop-up menu, select which of your viewports you want to include in the file. The Texture UV View is
especially useful for exporting UV projections to use as templates in a paint program. If you want to
include the grid or points, activate Draw Grid or Draw Points.

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Enter the path and filename in the file input field or click the Export File button to bring up a file
dialog. Define the size in inches of the resulting drawing using the W (width) and H (Height) field.

Export 3DS
Use this to Export to AutoDesk 3DS file format. An object can consist of no more than 65,535
polygons that must be triangulated for this format.

Export DXF
Use this to Export to DFX file format. DXF is the standard format for 3D objects and is used by most
programs that support 3D content. DXF files cant contain polygons with more than four points.

Export LightWave 5
Use this to Export to LightWaves old Object file format. Anything after LightWave 5.7 uses current
LWO file format.

Export OBJ
Use this to convert a LightWave object to Wavefront .obj file format specification. UV maps are not
preserved in Export OBJ unless you follow these steps:
1) Load the object
2) Give it a UV texture map.;
3) Hit F5 and open the Surface Editor and hit the T next to the Color channel. In
the Texture Editor, leave the texture type as Image Map, select UV as Projection
and the UV map you created. You do not need to load an image;
4) Export as OBJ and then reload the object. You will see that the
UV texture map is preserved, albeit renamed..

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Path to Motion
Takes a spline from Modeler and makes it into a motion path for Layout.

Throw
Calculates trajectory and bounce on given item and inputs - output is a motion file for Layout.

Quit
(default keyboard shortcut Shift Q)
Quit will shut down LightWave Modeler.

Edit Menu
Basic Point, Edge, and Polygon Maintenance
Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste in Place, Delete
The basic steps to copy and paste points, edges, and polygons are essentially the same. First, you
select the points, edges, or polygons. Then you either click the Copy button ( Ctrl C) to copy the
selection into the memory buffer, retaining the original, or click the Cut ( Ctrl X) button to delete
the selection. You can also use the DEL key to run the Delete command; it is similar to Cut, but does
not copy the data to memory for future pasting.
Once something is in the memory buffer, you can click the Paste in Place tool (Edit > Paste in Place)
( Ctrl V) to paste the contents back into the layer. The memory buffer is not reset after pasting.
Thus, you can paste the contents multiple times. The buffer contents change only when they are
replaced by a subsequent cut or copy. For interactive pasting, use the Paste tool (Edit >Paste).

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Geometry cut (or copied) to the memory buffer loses its association with geometry it is cut away
from, even when it is pasted back in.

Undoing Operations

LightWave Modeler offers an undo function that lets you take back the last change you made
while working on an object. The Undo button ( Ctrl Z) is located in the Edit drop down menu. The
number of undos is determined by the Undo Levels setting found in the General Options Panel.
The maximum value is 128, but you can also be limited by your computer system RAM. However,
minimally-configured systems should be able to go back several steps if necessary. Even powerusers should find 10 undo levels sufficient.

Redo
Its possible to go too far unintentionally and undo too many steps. To correct this error, click
the Redo (Z) button located in the Edit drop down menu. As long as you have made no editing
changes, you can redo all the way back to your last Modeling operation.
The combination of Undo and Redo is a powerful tool, allowing you to step backward and forward
through the evolution of a model. This is especially useful when you use some of the more
advanced Modeling tools, and you may need to make a series of subtle changes to a model as you
design it by undoing and redoing as needed until you achieve the desired shape.
If you undo back five steps, then use a new tool, you will no longer be able to redo those steps.
Undo is like history that unfolds as you model. If you go back and change the model, then you have
changed the course of history in a fundamental way. The structure of the model is now different, and
redo will be unable to restore it.

Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts

We strongly suggest that you keep the default keyboard mapping assignments and make new
assignments only to unmapped keys. Otherwise, technical support and using the documentation may
become difficult.
Like the menus, keyboard shortcuts can be configured to suit your own needs. To display the
Configure Keys Panel, choose Layout / Modeler > Edit > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts or the default
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keyboard shortcut of

Alt

F9.

The window on the left contains a complete list of all assignable commands grouped by type. The
right window shows a complete list of all keystrokes and assigned commands, if applicable.

To assign a command to a key:

1) Select a command in the left window.
2) Select the target key in the right window. (You can hit the desired
key or keystroke combo to quickly select the key.)
3) Click the Assign button. This will overwrite any existing assignment.
Alternatively, you may drag the command to the right window.
4) Commands can also be dragged and dropped into the proper key slot on the right.

To unassign a command from a key:

1)
2)
3)
4)

Select the target key in the right window.

Click the Unassign button.
Finding Assignments and Commands
If you have a command selected in the left window and click Find, the assigned
key, if any, on the right will become selected. Selecting an assigned key in the right
window and clicking Find will select the matching command in the left window.
5) Clicking Search allows you to type in a search phrase to find a command.
Note that this will only find the first instance and it is case sensitive.

Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to only one command. Assigning a command that is already
assigned to a different key will assign it to the new key, but remove it from the old one.

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Maintaining Key Mapping Sets
The Load and Save buttons let you retrieve and store key mapping sets that you develop.
The Clear button clears out all assignments, so use with caution.

In Modeler, you can use Modeler > Preferences > Revert to Startup Preferences to restore your
initial settings; however, any changes since you first ran the application will not be reflected.
Any available preset key mapping sets can be chosen from the Presets pop-up menu. The Window
pop-up menu lets you select different menus to edit (e.g., Graph Editor), if available.

Edit Menu Layout

(default keyboard shortcut

Alt

F10)

We strongly suggest that you keep the default menu organisation intact. Otherwise, technical
support and using the documentation may become difficult. A better solution is to create a new menu
tab and/or groups and place your frequently used tools in them.
LightWave menus are customisable. You can add, remove, group, and reorganise commands.
Choose Layout/Modeler > Edit > Edit Menu Layout to open the Configure Menus Panel. In the
Command list on the left, a list of available commands will appear. These will be grouped by type.
In the Menus list on the right, several main sections have sub-items, which are indented to show
the hierarchical relationships. Top Menu Group contains the items that are always visible no
matter which tab is selected. Main Menu items are the main tabs and related buttons for the main
interface toolbar. Bottom Edge is for Modeler only and relates to the controls along the bottom
edge of the screen. Left, Middle, and Right Mouse button menu (when available) are the menus
that appear when the Shift + Ctrl keys are held down along with the corresponding mouse button.
There may be other menu sections defined.

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In the Menus window, dots indicate commands while arrows indicate groups of commands/subgroups beneath it. If the arrow points to the right , the groups sub-menu items are collapsed and
not visible. To reveal the sub-menu items for a collapsed group, simply click on its right-facing
arrow. To collapse an open group, click on its downward-facing arrow.

LightWave 9.0 introduced the Studio Production Style Layout. These are keyboard shortcuts and
menus developed by production studios. If you like the new menus, you can use them ,just remember
the documentation is geared toward the default menus

Syncmesh Tools
Modeler gained new functionality and architectural changes that allowed increased interactivity
for tools and more rapid tool development. 11.5 introduced several new tools for Modeler showing
this systems power and lays the groundwork for future first- and third-party modeling tool
development. These tools are called Syncmesh and are differentiated from traditional Modeler tools
by the presence of several new interface features.
All these new tools work on multiple layers and with Symmetry and share the same controls where
appropriate:

Measure Amount - Clicking the button marked Measure Amount in one of the new tools
Numeric window and the Numeric window will change to show a Line Start and Line End
set of coordinates and you can pick a length using snapping to align with an object in the
viewport, or even in a background layer.

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Help text - Whichever viewport your mouse is over has the possibility of having a help text
floating over it. This feature can be turned on or off in the Numeric panel and the state is
remembered between tools.

Render Modes - A high-polygon mesh can slow Modelers performance, but the new Render
Mode choice sidesteps the problem and offers more fluid viewport updates even for high
resolution meshes. There are three choices of Render Mode:
Normal - Modelers standard speed of redraw.
Fast Preview - Fast Preview attempts to do everything that Modelers mesh system can
do, only faster. The set of behaviors replicated in Fast Preview is not yet complete, but
as new functions are added tools will automatically gain access to them.
Fast Deformation - The fast deformation mode bypasses dealing with smoothing angles
and surfaces. For organic modeling where smoothing angle isnt so important, you can
get something on the order of a 3x or 4x speed boost compared to fast preview, which
is fast already.
Uniform Input Handling - Where appropriate, all new tools can use either two clicks to select
either end of a line, or a click-drag motion. This makes manipulating the view of your object
while using a tool possible. SHIFT constrains the line to the normal of the polygon you have
initially clicked on.
Snapping - Snapping to various elements is available to all the new tools where appropriate.
The snaps panel overlay in the viewport allows the user to enable or disable snapping to the
following items.

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Pre-selection highlighting - All of the new tools share pre-selection highlighting where it
make sense. This makes it much easier to see whether your click will select a point, edge or
polygon.
Nudging - Depending on the tool chosen you can nudge using buttons in the numeric panel,
or the keyboard cursor keys for Up, Down, Left, Right and Page Up, Page Down keys for in
and out. In the Numeric panel you can also change the Nudge amount.
The Syncmesh tools present in Modeler as of now are:

Create > Polygons > Line Pen

Modify > Translate > Align... > Align
Modify > Translate > Axis Translate
Modify > Translate > Tweak
Modify > Rotate > Axis Rotate
Modify > Transform > Heat Shrink
Modify > Transform > Axis Scale
Modify > Transform > Transform
Multiply > Extend > Chamfer
Multiply > Extend > Thicken
Multiply > Duplicate > Place Mesh
Multiply > Subdivide > Slice
Detail > Points > Straighten

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Detail > Edges > Edit Edges
Selection > Polygons > Pick Surface

Example: Rapid Sofa

Using the new tools Thicken and Edit Edges we can make a sofa model extremely quickly.

First make a box with two segments on the X axis (01) and select the polygons on the front and top of the box and delete them (02 and 03).

Use the Thicken tool to give our sofa thickness (04). Next bevel up the cushions from the two seat polygons (05) and see what it looks like in
subpatch mode (06). Too rounded so well need to fix that.

Using the Edit Edges tool, add an edge loop around the sofa (07). Switch back into subpatch and see how it looks moved to the front of the
sofa(08). Repeat for the sofa back (09).

Add a loop going front to back along the sofa arms and move it to the outside to tighten that surface (10) and finally add a loop at the
bottom (11) and top (12) of the sofa to square it up.

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Edit Modeler Tools

This Options Panel gives you the ability to set new default settings on Cut, Divide, and Make Poly.
Also, this is where you will need to set the settings for the three Quick Cut tools. By default the
Quick Cut tools all have the same setting and you will need to define them in this panel.

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Custom Preferences
You can use Edit > Import Preferences File and Edit > Export Preferences File to load and save,
respectively, Preference settings. Use this feature to access special-purpose Preference settings you
might set up. You can also use Edit > Revert to Startup Preferences to go back to the settings that
existed when you first started Modeler.

The Preference settings that exist when you shutdown Modeler will become the startup settings
for your next session.
General Options - See General Options Section below.
Display Options - See Display Options Section, starting on the next page.
Backdrop Options - Part of the Display Options.
Recent Content Directories - The Content Directory is a central file path for loading objects, images,
and scenes. Note that this setting is shared by all LightWave applications. This drop down menu
will store recently used Content Directories to help gain access to past projects.

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General Options
(default keyboard shortcut O)
You can access the General Options Panel by choosing Edit > General Options.

Content Directory - The Content Directory is a central file path for loading objects, images,
and scenes. Note that this setting is shared by all LightWave applications.
Default Polygon Type - Some operations in Modeler create many polygons in one operation.
As such, the computer must decide whether to generate triangles (three-point polygons) or
quadrangles (four-point polygons), depending on the shapes requirements.
To force the computer to use Triangles or Quadrangles, select either for the Polygon setting.
Choose Automatic to let the computer create the most appropriate polygon type for each
given operation.

To create optimal objects, your goal is to keep the polygon count down. They will load and render
faster than bloated objects, with no visible difference. As such, Quadrangles is the suggested setting for
most cases. This lets you manually choose the areas that require triangles.

Flatness Limit
The Flatness Limit setting determines whether Modeler regards a polygon as planar or not. Note
that a non-flat polygon considered planar according to this setting can still cause rendering errors.

The Default Surface Name

All polygons must have a surface name. When geometry is created, polygons are given the default
surface name of Default. You can change the default name by changing the Surface field. This will
affect only geometry created from that point on, however. Use the pop-up to the right of the field
to select from existing surface names.

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When you create a surface using the Change Surface dialog (Detail > Polygons > Surface), the
option (Make Default) automatically sets the default surface name.

Curve Divisions
The Curve Divisions setting determines how smoothly a curve (e.g., spline curves, text, etc.) should
be interpolated. The finer the setting, the greater the number of polygons used, and the smoother
the resulting curve division.

Subpatch Divisions
When a SubPatch object is frozen with the Freeze command ( Ctrl D), it is converted into a
polygonal object. The Patch Division setting determines the level of detail used in the resulting
object. The number entered in the Patch Division field must be 1 or greater and is restricted to
whole numbers.
The number of polygons per SubPatch surface will be equal to the square of the Patch Division
number. For example, if set to 4, each SubPatch surface will be converted into 16 polygons
arranged in a 4 by 4 array. A setting of 2 would result in 4 polygons arranged in a 2 by 2 array.
The higher the setting, the higher the number of polygons used. Because of LightWaves surface
smoothing capabilities, you can often get away with a setting of 2 and sometimes even 1, which
will keep the polygon count of your objects to a minimum.

Setting this value too high with heavy-polygon SubPatch models can cause the performance of
Modeler to degrade. If Modeler appears to be running sluggishly when working with SubPatch models,
lower this value to help improve performance.

Sub-D Type
Subpatch
Subpatches the number of polygons increases linearly with the level.

Catmull-Clark
Every level of Catmull-Clark subdivision quadruples the number of polygons

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Metaball Resolution
The Metaball Resolution setting determines the amount of detail used to display metaballs.

Symmetry Tolerance
Sets the amount matching elements can differ on opposite sides of the symmetry for symmetry to
work.

Image Cache Maximum

If enabled, sets the amount of caching available for images in megabytes.l

OBJ Tab
The OBJ tab contains options for importing and exporting OBJ file objects.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)

OBJ One Layer - imports the object as a single layer.

OBJ One VMap - imports the object with a single vetex map.
OBJ Pivot at Center - creates the pivot of the object at the center of the object.
OBJ Write Normals - writes the normals associated with the object when saved.
OBJ Merge Points - merges points sharing the same space.
OBJ ZBrush Mode - exports the object to work with ZBrush.
OBJ Import Scale - sets the scale of an object when it is imported.
OBJ Export Scale - sets the scale of the object when it is exported.

Color Space Tab

Color space conversion is performed in 4 places in LightWave.
1) On loading, an image can be converted from its native color space format to linear.
2) When sent to the Image Viewer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
3) When saved from the renderer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
4) When picked from the Color Picker, a color can be converted
from and then to linear color space.
The color space defaults are set up on the Layout Preferences panel.
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When an option is selected in the pop-up it becomes the current item for that selection.
Color tables are added to the selections, as if they were built-in.
A color table can be loaded by using Load Table from the pop-up. The color tablesare stored in the
project directory, in a directory called Color Tables.
In the Image Editor, there is a check box, Treat as Alpha. This means use the alpha channel from the
Preferences Default setting, not the alpha channel from the color space in the Image Editor. This is
an override on the alpha color space selected in the Image Editor.
One can set the color correction for the Viewer files with palettes, 8-bit files, floating point files,
alpha channel and the color picker from the preference default panel and the Modeler General
Options panel.
When an image is loaded, if the file setting for that image is set to default, then an attempt is made
to look at the metadata setting for that image. If the metadata settings have the color space the
image was saved in, then it is used. For example, jpegs have metadata setting for sRGB and Adobe
1998 linear format.
The built-in color spaces are:
1)
2)
3)
4)

Linear, LightWave linear color space.

sRGB, Standard RGB color space.
rec709, BT.709, HDTV
Cineon, Eastman Kodak Co.

The color lookup tables come in two formats:

1) LightWave color table format.
2) 3D LUT format.
LightWave color table format is as follows:
Code:
EGA
17, -0.5, 1.5
; Convert on load.
-0.5, -0.5, -0.5, -0.5
-0.375, -0.375, -0.375, -0.375
-0.25, -0.25, -0.25, -0.25
-0.125, -0.125, -0.125, -0.125
0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
0.125, 0.125, 0.125, 0.125
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0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25
0.375, 0.375, 0.375, 0.375
0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5
0.625, 0.625, 0.625, 0.625
0.75, 0.75, 0.75, 0.75
0.875, 0.875, 0.875, 0.875
1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
1.125, 1.125, 1.125, 1.125
1.25, 1.25, 1.25, 1.25
1.375, 1.375, 1.375, 1.375
1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5
; Convert on save.
-0.5, -0.5, -0.5, -0.5
-0.375, -0.375, -0.375, -0.375
-0.25, -0.25, -0.25, -0.25
-0.125, -0.125, -0.125, -0.125
0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
0.125, 0.125, 0.125, 0.125
0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25
0.375, 0.375, 0.375, 0.375
0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5
0.625, 0.625, 0.625, 0.625
0.75, 0.75, 0.75, 0.75
0.875, 0.875, 0.875, 0.875
1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
1.125, 1.125, 1.125, 1.125
1.25, 1.25, 1.25, 1.25
1.375, 1.375, 1.375, 1.375
1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5

Where:
EGA is the name of the color space that appears in the pop-up.
17 is the number of entries in the color table.
-0.5 is the lower range of the look-up table ( black ).
1.5 is the upper range of the look-up table ( white ).
-0.5, -0.5, -0.5, -0.5 are the rgba values for the table entry.
Blank lines and lines beginning with comments, are skipped over.
3D LUT format tables are read in and a reverse lookup table is made. The name of the color space is
the name of the file on the pop-up.
Auto Sense on Load detects the Color Space settings and uses those when a scene is loaded.
Color Correct OpenGL will color correct the OpenGL viewports.

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Display Options
(default keyboard shortcut D)

Modelers interface is highly configurable allowing to tailor it to your specific needs. You can
change the arrangement of viewports as well as change the display characteristics for each
viewport independently. Choose Edit > Display Options to bring up the Display Options Panel.

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Layout Tab

Layout options control the global arrangement of the viewports, the number of viewports and
some other Global Display settings. Use the Presets pop-up menu to quickly set common layout
configurations (Quad is the default setting). Selecting a Preset will affect the Layout setting, as well
as settings on the Viewports Tab.
If you want to set up your own custom layout, make a selection from the Layout pop-up menu. The
icon to the left of the description will give you an idea of how the viewports will be arranged. Later,
you will see that you have total control over what is in each viewport. In fact, each Layout option
will remember the Viewport settings as they were the last time that Layout option was used.

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Texture Resolution
The Texture Resolution setting determines the resolution to use for displaying textures in
viewports that have their Rendering Style set to Texture. Higher settings increase the detail of
image textures displayed in viewports, but increase memory usage and display refreshing time.

Perspective Amount
The amount of perspective in the perspective view can be varied by changing the Perspective
Amount slider on the Layout Tab. You can go from a very wide-angle to a flat nearly orthogonal
view. The setting is global and affects all the perspective views the same way.

Background Color
Use the Background Color selector to change the color that appears in the background for
viewports using a shaded display.

Default Sketch Color

Use the Default Sketch Color setting to change the color that the wireframe will appear in the
various view modes. You can always change the Wireframe color on polygons using the Sketch
Color tool located under the Detail Tab.

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Selection Color Options
Use the Selection Color Palette for editing Point > Edge > Polygons when selected. Other options
include changing the color for Normals and the color of active Tools.

Fixed Normal Length

Change the length of the normal here.

Show Options
The various Show Visibility options let you independently set what you want to see globally in your
viewports.

Show Points
Points appear as small dots.

Left: Show Points On, Right: Show Points Off

Show Surfaces
Surfaces are the polygon (or SubPatch) surfaces.

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Left: Show Surfaces On, Right: Show Surfaces Off

Show Cages
A cage is the outline that connects all of the control points when you edit a SubPatch object.

Left: Show Cages On, Right: Show Cages Off

Show Point Selection

When points are selected they appear highlighted if this option is selected.

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Show Guides
Guides are the dotted-lines that extend from the surface (patch vertex) to the control points on the
cage (if visible) when you edit a SubPatch object.

Left: Guides on,

Right: Guides off

Show Normals
Normals are dotted lines that extend perpendicularly from selected (planar) polygons and indicate
the direction a polygon is facing.

Show Origin
This option will show the 0 axis in the viewports. For the perspective view, only the X and Z axis are
shown.

Show Grid
The grid is the background reference grid.

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Show Polygon Selection

When polygons are selected they appear highlighted if this option is selected.

Show Backdrop
A Backdrop is an image loaded for viewports on the Backdrop Tab. These images can be useful as
Modeling reference.

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These visibility options can be overridden independently for each viewport on the Viewports Tab.

Toggle Background Display

A new command for turning on/off the background image display. Currently, this command must
be added either as a menu option or a keyboard shortcut.

GL Tab
Texture Resolution determines the display resolution of images used. Lower settings will update
faster and use fewer system resources.

Shading Method
OpenGL Multi- Texturing
De- /Activates Multi-texturing multiple textures layers per polygon in OpenGL.
Depending on the settings that you activate (see below), the following combinations of texture
layers are possible:
Two color-layers with one diffuse-layer, one luminosity-layer and one reflection map (5
textures/polygon).
One color-layer with one transparency-layer and one reflection map (3 textures/polygon).
Currently the Multitexturing is made to work with graphics-cards with at least two texture memory
units.
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GLSL HW Shading
GLSL HW Shading (OpenGL Hardware Shading) is among the selections in the Display Options
panel. Support for the OpenGL 2.0 hardware shader technology in newer video cards has been
added to Layout to provide very close approximations of render functions in the viewport displays.
Light falloff, surface blending, gradients, and many procedurals can be displayed in the OpenGL
viewports in Layout when GLSL HW Shading is turned on.

Geometry Acceleration
Determines how the graphics card displays OpenGL. Streaming renders the mesh immediately
to screen, using the lowest amount of memory at the cost of speed. Buffered(VBO) will attempt
to store the geometry in graphics card memory, allowing for the highest speed, at the cost of
memory. In cases where the mesh or shading changes with every frame no caching is possible, a
fallback to the Streaming method will result, for example with animated meshes and reflection
maps. Smooth shaded geometry will benefit the most from the Buffered(VBO) mode. If the mesh
is buffered in graphics card memory the performance you will get as much performance as your
graphics card can give you.

Mipmap
Mipmapping is similar to what is used in todays games to avoid graininess of textures in a distance
or at a flat angle. Basically lower- res versions of the texture are generated in realtime and blended
in. This feature is supported in hardware by most of todays graphics cards. This feature also works
if Mutitexturing is turned off. Please note however that due to the nature of this filtering method,
low-resolution textures may appear a bit blurry.

Color Channel
De- /Activates the display of textures in the Color Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Diffuse Channel
De- /Activates the display of textures in the Diffuse Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Transparency Channel
De- /Activates the display of textures in the Transparency Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

Luminosity Channel
De- /Activates the display of textures in the Luminosity Channel if Multi-texturing is on.

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Viewports Tab
Viewport options let you change how objects are displayed in each viewport. To change the
settings for a viewport, first select it using the Viewport buttons.

Use the Presets pop-up menu to quickly set the options on this tab for the selected viewport
region. The selections are listed by view types, but will affect all of the settings on this tab.
The View Type pop-up menu determines the editing axes you want to use for the selected region.
For the Orthogonal settings, the names generally indicate the viewing perspective. Back (XY), for
example, lets you edit along the X and Y axes. This means you are looking along the Z axis.
Since it is called Back, that means your perspective is from the back (i.e., negative side) of the Z
axis, looking toward the positive side. UV Texture is entirely different - it is not used as a Modeling
viewport but for adjusting UV texture maps.

There are four Display (group) commands assigned by default to certain keyboard shortcuts
which affect the viewport beneath your mouse pointer. Shift F1 toggles the view between Back and
Front, Shift F2 toggles between Top and Bottom, Shift F3 toggles between Right and Left, and Shift F4
toggles between Perspective and UV.

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Perspective
You may edit in a Perspective viewport, just as you would in any other, but you may also rotate your
view perspective. This is Modelers virtual trackball, which enables you to rotate the object without
affecting its orientation in the other three edit windows. It effectively provides you with three axes
of rotation. While holding down the Alt key, you can perform these actions:
Rotate around the X axis (pitch) by dragging up or down directly across the verticle center of
the viewport
Rotate around the Y axis (heading) by dragging left or right directly across the horizontal
center of the viewport.
Rotate around the Z axis (bank) by dragging to the left or right around the perimeter
If the title bars are visible, you can drag the rotate drag button with your LMB to rotate. If you use
the RMB, the viewport will rotate around its perpendicular axis. Holding the Ctrl key (or using your
MMB) will cause rotations to snap to 15-degree increments.

Imagine you are manipulating an imaginary ball with your mouse when you manipulate the
Preview window.

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Rendering Style
The Rendering Style pop-up menu determines the style of display you want to use for the selected
region.

Wireframe
Although the Wireframe is arguably the most limited display mode, it is the most commonly used
Rendering Style because of its ease in viewing, selecting, and unselecting points and polygons.

Color Wireframe
This is nearly the same as Wireframe, except the polygon edges are drawn using their Sketch color
(Detail > Polygons > Sketch Color).

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Hidden Line
Hidden Line shows an objects Front Face polygons in wireframe view.

Sketch
Sketch shows an object in a combined wireframe and flat-shaded view. All polygon edges are
drawn, but faces are also visible. This mode does not account for Surface settings, however. The
polygon edges are always drawn in white and faces are grey. Background layers are visible.

You can change the polygon shading color in this mode by choosing Detail > Polygons > Sketch
Color.

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Wireframe Shade
Wireframe Shade is a smooth-shaded mode that overlays the wireframe lines.

Flat Shade
In Flat Shade mode, the object is shown as a flat-shaded solid. This mode supports some Surface
settings, but not smoothing.

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Smooth Shade
Smooth Shade is a smooth-shaded mode that supports some Surface settings, such as Color,
Diffusion, Specularity, Glossiness, Smoothing, and Double-sided.

Weight Shade
Weight Shade provides visual feedback for editing Weight Maps.

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Texture
Texture is similar to Smooth Shade, but it also shows images mapped to surfaces.

Textured Wire
Textured Wire is similar to Texture, but it also shows wireframes on the surfaces.

Upright Rotation
The Upright Rotation pop-up menu lets you rotate a viewport clockwise by 0, 90, 180, and 270
degrees to accommodate imported objects from applications that may use other axes as up, or for
exporting to them, for that matter.

Titlebar Shortcuts
You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display
Options Panel by using the pop-up menus on the title bar. Clicking on the left-most pop-up allows
you to choose which View Type you want to be in and will then display it. The pop-up menu just to
its right lets you choose the Rendering Style.
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Note that if you have UV Texture selected as the View Type, the Rendering Style pop-up menu will
instead list all loaded images. Select one to load it into the backdrop of that viewport.

Independent Options
The Independent options let you make certain viewport characteristics independent from other
viewports. Changes to the selected characteristic do not affect it in other viewports and vice versa.
For example, if a viewport uses Independent Zoom, zooming in it does not affect the zoom of
other viewports. You must have your pointer over the viewport to affect an independent viewport.
Independent Rotation is only applicable to perspective views. Normally, it is enabled. If you have
multiple perspective views and this option disabled, they will move in unison when you rotate a
view.

Independent Visibility
The lower portion of the panel contains the independent visibility options. You can individually
select which visibility options are independent. To use them, you must also activate the
Independent Visibility option. This option lets you quickly enable/disable this feature without
losing the state of each setting.

Backdrop Tab
On the Backdrop Tab, you can add full-color backdrop images that act as reference guides when
you build objects. They let you model much like tracing a picture using tracing paper. To use
backdrops, select the Viewport and the desired image from the Image pop-up menu.

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If you are using a UV Texture viewport, you can choose a backdrop using any loaded image from
what is normally the Rendering Style pop-up menu on the viewports title bar.
From the Presets pop-up menu, you can save the settings for the selected Viewport to a file by
choosing Save Current Backdrop. You can load this file later using Load Backdrop for any selected
Viewport. You can also save the settings for all viewports by choosing Save All Backdrops. When
this file is loaded later - using Load Backdrop - the individual Viewport settings are restored.

The backdrop images for the current default layout for each view configuration are cached as
long as possible. Also, backdrops are not saved in config files or view presets.
Use the Image drop down menu to select from the loaded images or choose (Load Image) to
bypass the Image Editor and load a new image into Modeler and automatically select it for the
current viewport.
You can also adjust Brightness and Contrast. Use the sliders to adjust the settings. You can invert
the colors by activating the Invert option. If you want to blend pixels for close-up work, activate the
Pixel Blend option. Image Resolution determines the accuracy of the displayed image.

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Colored background images sometimes make the wireframe hard to see (especially if the image
has a bright white background). Setting the Contrast to its lowest value, and the Brightness to a little
above the darkest value will produce a reasonable-looking backdrop that works well when Modeling.

Aspect and Video images

The two Center and Size input fields are horizontal (top field) and vertical (lower field). Clicking
Automatic Size will enter values that fit the defined image into an implied bounding box that
surrounds visible geometry.
If you activate the Fixed Aspect Ratio option, you can enter a frame aspect ratio in the input field.
Then, you only need to specify a horizontal size - the vertical size is computed automatically.
If your images originated from video, you need to account for the pixel aspect ratio, since video
pixels are not square like computer pixels. For example, a D1 NTSC image is 720 x 486 pixels;
however, the frame aspect ratio is not 1.48 (720/486) as you might expect. The width of a D1 NTSC
pixel is 90 percent of the width, that is, a pixel aspect ratio of .9. As such, the true frame aspect ratio
is 1.333 (720/486*.9).

The frame aspect ratio of a D1 PAL image is also 1.333 (720/576*1.067).

If you do not account for this difference, your models may appear slightly stretched when
ultimately viewed on video. A way to fix this is to scale the object after the fact.

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2015

Interface Tab

The Alert Level affects how error, warning and informational messages are displayed.
The Toolbar Position setting determines if the main toolbar appears on the Left or Right side.
Activate Hide Toolbar to make it hidden and maximize your screen real estate. Alt +F2 will hide
(and more importantly, Unhide) the Toolbar as well.

Toolbar On

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Toolbar Off

The Viewport Titles option turns the titlebars, which appear above each viewport, on or off.

Toolbar On, Viewport Titles Off

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Use the Input Device buttons to select the type of input device you are using.
New to LightWave 2015, you can optionally set Mouse Wheel Zoom to enable the use of the mouse
scroll wheel to zoom in and out of a viewport. As with using the CTRL ALT shortcut, the view will
zoom based on your mouse pointers location.
The next option is for Double-click Deselect, also new to 2015. This gives you the possibility to
double-click on any empty space in the Modeler interface to deselect all selected Points, Edges or
Polygons. You will still be able to use a single click in the normal deselect areas (under the menu
buttons, on top of viewports, etc.) will this option is engaged.
The Fine Detail Cursor option, when active, makes your mouse pointer use the main crosshair
pointer at all times instead of changing when the various tools and selection functions are used.
The File Dialog pop-up menu lets you use custom LightWave dialogs for file loading/saving.
Selecting Default will use your standard system dialog.

The custom File dialog provides many additional features not available with the standard system
dialogs.

The Visual Browser

You can make the LightWave visual browser the default file dialog for Layout and/or Modeler by
choosing VBFileRequester on the File Dialog pop-up menu. This appears on the Interface Tab of
Modelers Display Options Panel (Edit > Display Options).

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The Color Picker pop-up menu lets you use custom LightWave dialogs for picking colors.

The Color Format setting determines the scale used where the color selector appears. Integer uses
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values 000 to 255, Float uses .00 to 1.00 and Percentage uses 0% to 100%.
The Simple Wireframe Edges option turns off polygon offsetting for the sketch-like display modes.
This may fix display problems on some video cards. The Simple Wireframe Points setting uses
OpenGLs own points for wireframe points and selected points at a user-specified size. These points
can draw much faster than the standard points.

Units Tab

The Unit System determines the units of measurement that are used and displayed by the Modeler
screen.
SI - is the International System of Units (SI is the abbreviation of the French Le Systme
International dUnits). Unit measurements in Modeler will use a base system of meters.
Grid sizes and distances can be measured in megameters, kilometers, meters, millimeters,
micrometers, and nanometers.
Metric - The Metric System is the same as SI with the addition of centimeters.
English - The English System uses miles, feet, and inches.

We recommend you use the SI or Metric systems to model objects, since a system using base 10 is
often much easier to use for purposes such as applying textures and adjusting object movement.

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If you input a value that uses a different unit of measurement than that of the default, LightWave
will convert it on the fly. For example, you may be using meters, but typing in 5 ft will convert to
1.524 m.

Default Unit
Use the Default Unit pop-up menu to set an assumed measure when none is given for distance
values.

If you use a metric Unit System, you should set the Default Unit to meters.

Grid Units
Grid Units affects the zoom step amount but has no effect on the actual size of the object. You will
likely find that 1 2.5 5 and 1 2 5 are your most commonly used Grid Unit settings.
1) 1 - The grid resizes in values that begin with 1, as in 10m, 1m, 100mm, 10mm, etc.
2) 1 5 - The grid resizes in values that begin with 1 or 5, as in
1m, 500mm, 100mm, 50mm, 10mm, etc.
3) 1 2.5 5 - The grid resizes in values that begin with 1, 25, or 5,
as in 1m, 500mm, 250mm, 100mm, 50mm, etc.
4) 1 2 5 - The grid resizes in values that begin with 1, 2, or 5, as
in 1m, 500mm, 200mm, 100mm, 50mm, etc.
5) 1 2 - The grid resizes in values that begin with 1 or 2, as in
1m, 200mm, 100mm, 20mm, 10mm, etc.

Grid Snap
The Grid Snap setting forces point creation and item movement to be limited to a specific
increment.
1) None - None deactivates grid snap, so that items move freely
and are not constrained by any grid intersections.
2) Standard - Standard sets the grid snap to one-tenth of the current grid size.
3) Fine - Fine makes the grid snap as small as possible for the current zoom level.
This will be typically two to five times smaller than using Standard.
4) Fixed - Fixed lets you specify the increment of movement in the Snap Value
input field. The grid will resize itself to use the value you specify.

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Time Format
The Time Format setting allows you to set the display format for time values, like the Frame Slider
Label option on Layouts General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel. If the Hub is active, Layout
and Modeler settings will be kept in sync.

Font Specification
You can specify the font to use for Modeler and Layout by launching with a commandline option.
This was already available in LightWave v9 but only for Layout. Buttons will remain the same size
for LightWave interfaces so this option should be used judiciously.
The possibilities are as follows:
-f <fontname>@<pointsize>
--font-app=<fontname>@<pointsize>
--font-edit =<fontname>@<pointsize>
Dont forget to enclose font names with spaces in them in quotes as follows:

This will give this look to Modeler:

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Note that the Color channel text is missing and Luminosity, Diffuse and others are truncated.

If you want to create shortcut icons to launch Layout/Modeler follow the same methods as for
redirecting configs and plugins.

Windows Menu
Multi-Layer Object Standard
Every object can be a MultiMesh, that is, consist of an unlimited number of layers, similar to
layers in many paint programs. The MultiMesh lets you work independently on specific parts of
an object. During Modeling operations, you can set layers independently to be in the foreground
or background, so you can work on a combination of layers as if they were in the same layer.
Background layers can be used as a reference, but are often required when using certain Modeling
tools such as boolean or cutting operations.

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When you save an object, you save all layers with it. When you load an object, all of the individual
layers remain intact; however, you may specify that certain layers be hidden when you use
the object in Layout. You can thus save things like scratch objects - which you would not want
rendered - in the same object file.

When loaded into Layout, individual layers of a MultiMesh are treated as individual objects.

Multi-document Environment
Like files in your word processor, multiple object files can be loaded simultaneously. The Current
Object pop-up button to the left of the layer buttons switches from object to object. Object names
listed with an asterisk (*) have been changed and may need to be saved. Attempting to close the
application triggers a request to save all changed objects. Ghosted objects are ones that have been
loaded into Layout, but not into Modeler. Choosing a ghosted object from the pop-up menu will
load it.

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Layout Communication
If the Hub is running, a small pop-up menu button appears in the top-right corner of the interface,
just to the right of the layer buttons.

Switch to Layout - switches to your Layout window if it is open or opens up Layout if you do
not already have it open.
Synchronize Layout - Changes to objects in Modeler are reflected automatically in Layout
when you select the Layout interface. You can force this synchronisation by choosing this
option.
Send Object to Layout - sends the current object to Layout. Actually, it sends a pointer to the
current objects file. As such, the object must be saved to your hard drive first.
If you load an object in Layout only, its name is ghosted in the Current Object pop-up menu.
Selecting a ghosted item will load it into Modeler and initiate the syncing process.

Layer Navigation
You can use the layer buttons in the top-right corner of the main interface to work with layers in
banks of ten. You can apply most Modeling functions across multiple layers simultaneously by
placing them in the foreground. You do this by clicking the top part of a layer button; all other
layers are unselected, whether they are in the foreground or background. You can add foreground
layers by holding the Shift key as you click. You can unselect a foreground layer by holding the Shift
key as you click on a selected foreground layer button.
To place a layer in the background, click on the bottom part of a layer button. Selecting a
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background layer will unselect all other background layers. You can add background layers by
holding the Shift key as you click. You can unselect a background layer by holding the Shift key as
you click on a selected background layer button.

You can quickly swap the state of foreground and background layers by pressing the apostrophe
key ().

If you notice a tool not working when multiple layers are selected, just select the one layer you
need to work on and try the tool again.
You can change which bank of layers - ten layers per bank - are controlled by these buttons.
Just click the < or > buttons. Bank 1 controls layers 1 through 10, bank 2 controls layers 11 through
20, and so on. The Bank Selection buttons are mapped to your PGUP and PGDN keys by default.
The highest bank number is 99, but you can access higher layers using the Layer Browser Panel.

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Layer Browser Panel

(default keyboard shortcut F7)

You can also use the Layers Browser window (Windows > Layer Browser Open/Close) to do the
following:
Access more than ten layers at a time
Set foreground/background state, even between objects
Navigate between objects
Name layers
Set layer visibility flag
Parent object layers
Layers panel has a pop-up menu that lets you switch between List and Hierarchy views.

The List view lists the layers. In the Hierarchy view, the layers of an object are shown in their
parental relationship, and that can be altered by dragging and dropping layers. Layers cannot be
moved between objects and all children at the same level are shown in numeric order.
When in Hierarchy view, the layer list shows layers with nothing in them leftmost in the list, and
lists two more than are currently being used. This makes it match list mode behaviour more closely.

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The Alt +NO. (1 through 0) keyboard shortcut will place a layer into the background. Note that if
only one layer is active, it cannot be placed into the background.

All of the currently loaded objects will be listed. Click on the white triangle to expand or contract
the layer listing for a particular object. Layers in the foreground will have a checkmark in the
corresponding F column. Clicking in the F column for a different layer will place that layer by itself
in the foreground. To add to the current selection, hold the Shift key as you click. The B column
works similarly on background layers.
The Visibility flag can be toggled on/off for each layer by clicking in the column. A layer is invisible
to Layout when the (Visibility flag) dot does not appear. You may want to use this on scratch layers
and cutting objects used for booleans. This setting has no effect on Modeler.

A pair of empty layers are always listed after the last occupied layer.
Double-click on a layer name (unnamed by default) or choose View > Layers > Layer Settings to
bring up the dialog to set the layer name and parent.

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2015

Vertex Map Panel

(default keyboard shortcut F8)

You can display a non-modal window listing all Vertex Maps in the current object, grouped by type,
by choosing Windows > Vertex Maps Panel.

Right-clicking on a map will display a pop-up menu where you can select various maintenance
operations. This menu is also available for the VMap selected in the list using the pop-up menu
button (down arrowhead) in the upper-right corner.

The pop-up menu also has options to show all Vertex Maps or to only show those that are in use in
the current object, the default.

VMap Selection
There are two levels of selection. First, one main VMap, regardless of type, can be selected by
clicking on its name in the window (or selecting it in the pop-up menu in the lower-right corner of
the Modeler interface). Its name will become highlighted. This is used by various commands that
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work on any type of Vmap (e.g., Copy VMap and Delete VMap).
Generally, one VMap from each type (e.g., Weight and Morph) may be selected by clicking in
the Sel column. A checkmark appears for these. (Note that the main selected VMap is always the
selected VMap for its type.) This selection state is used by tools that only deal with certain VMaps,
like the Airbrush tool.

Changing the VMap selected in the pop-up menu on the (main) Modeler interface will change the
main selected VMap and the VMap selected for its type. However, remember that not all VMap
types (e.g., color VMaps) are accessible from this pop-up menu.

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In LightWave 2015, you can select up to eight Weight Maps for display. They will be visible in
Weight Shade Mode using different colors. You can rename or delete multiple selected maps (of
one sort) at a time now as well.

Vertex Maps Shortcuts

VMaps can also be accessed using the buttons in the lower-right corner of Modeler. These are
simply shortcuts to the same options that can be found in the Vertex Maps Panel. Choose a Vmap
Mode to work in by clicking on one of the Vmap Mode buttons (W, T, M, C, S). Select which Vmap to
edit from the Vmap drop down menu located next to the Modes buttons.

W- Weight, T- Texture, M- Morph, C- Color, S- Selection Set.

Hide Floating Windows On/Off

Since your screen can often get cluttered with open panels, you can quickly hide/show these
floating windows by pressing the Alt F1. This option can also be found under the Windows drop
down menu.

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Viewports
The largest part of the interface consists (by default) of four viewports. You can edit in any viewport
and will be spending a lot of time in this area of the interface. The default four viewports starting in
the top left and moving counter-clockwise are labelled Top, Back, Right, and Perspective.

The Top view is an overhead point of view looking down on the object. The Back view looks
directly at the object from the rear. The Right view is positioned as if you stood to the objects right.
Perspective is a forced perspective view that you can rotate by holding the Alt key and dragging
your mouse on it.
You can change the relative sizes of the windows by dragging any border between the viewports.

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As you grow familiar and gain experience with Modeler, you will find yourself switching back and
forth among these viewports, changing their size, position, and function, and even changing the
number, to get the best view from which to use a particular tool. You can adjust the screen to see
as much or as little detail as you want, by using various options.

You can Maximise a viewport by moving the cursor over it and pressing the Numeric 0 key on the
keyboard.

Save View Presets

You also have the option in Modeler of saving viewport presets. You can place the cursor over
a particular viewport and use the Ctrl key in combination with any of the number keys on the
numeric keypad to map that viewport or the whole window to that hotkey. For example if you
place your cursor over the perspective viewport and hit Ctrl numpad 9 you can assign that
viewport to that hotkey. Each time you hit the numpad 9 key while holding the cursor over ANY
viewport it will change to your preset. This is a great way to easily switch viewports or even whole
viewport setups instantly for different workflows.

Resetting Tools
Non-interactive areas (e.g., not a button) on the toolbar and bottom border (including the leftcorner information display and grid size) act as a Reset button, much like you might use the ESC
key on other applications. What happens when you click in a reset area depends on the current
state of tools. For example, if you have points/polygons/edges selected and you are in the Point/
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Polygon/Edge Selection Mode, they become unselected.

All built-in tools (i.e., primitive and modifying) maintain their state, if they are used, unselected,
and then used again. The default state of the tool can be recovered by dropping (clicking in a reset
area or choosing View/ Selection/ Drop Selection when a tool is selected, but inactive.) If the tool
is active, the first drop deactivates the tool, keeping the current settings. The second drop would
then reset to the default settings.
You can also choose the Make tool. This is just like clicking the Active Tool button, making it
inactive.

Bottom Edge Menu

Info Display
Just above the grid display in the lower left-hand corner of Modeler is the Information Display.
Most of the time this gives you feedback on the position of your mouse. However, depending on
what you are doing, it can also display a variety of other information.
Below are a few examples of what might be displayed with various tools:

Grid Info Field

A grid of squares - cleverly known as the grid - is visible in any of the orthogonal views, as well as
the Perspective view. The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around, but it will
never render in a final image. The grid lines are darker every tenth square for visual reference. The
Origin is located at the center of the grid.
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You can find the current size of the grid squares in the Grid Information field at the very lower-left
corner of the screen. Set the Unit System, Default Unit, and other options pertaining to the Grid in
the Display Options Window.

Modes: Action Center Control

The Rotate and Stretch tools (i.e., Rotate, Size, Stretch, Twist, Taper1, Taper2, Vortex, Pole1, and
Pole2) can use different centers. This Action Center is located at the bottom of Modelers Interface.

Mouse ( Shift F5) - means to use the mouse position.

Selection ( Shift F8) - uses the center of a bounding box around what is currently selected.
Pivot ( Shift F7) - uses the first active layers pivot point.
Origin ( Shift F6) - means to use the very center of the universe: XYZ 0, 0, 0.

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Numeric Panel
(default keyboard shortcut n)
The Numeric Panel is a multi-functional non-modal window. Its contents and abilities change
depending on what tool is selected. When you create primitives, it lets you refine graphically set
values. When you use modifying tools, it lets you change various settings that affect how the tool
performs. The Numeric Panel is located at the bottom of Modelers Interface, or by just pressing the
N key. It may be left open continuously.

Use the Actions pop-up menu to Reset the fields to their default settings or to Activate the
tool. (You can also press the N key to activate the tool.) Generally, activating a tool turns on its
interactive handles, if any, in the viewports. This can be for primitive shape, influence range, and so
on. It will also activate the numeric fields, if they are ghosted.

You can also reset to defaults by clicking a reset area when a tool is selected, but not activated.

Make Command
(default keyboard shortcut Return )
The Make command (Located at the bottom of Modelers Interface) will commit to the changes
made with the currently selected tool and will deactivate the current tool.

Symmetry Mode
(default keyboard shortcut Shift Y)
Working in Symmetry Mode (Symmetry button, located along bottom edge) works on selection, as
well as on editing. This mode will allow you to work on one half of your object and Symmetry will
perform all edits and selection on the opposite side of the geometry.

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Symmetrical Editing
Operations on the positive side of the X axis also inversely affect the negative side of the X axis.
When this mode is active, your object is theoretically split in half at X=0.
Generally, you should perform all of your edits on the positive side of the X axis when using
Symmetry. Using the negative side may lead to unpredictable results.

If you get unpredictable results, make sure the negative-side geometry is exactly the mirror of
the positive-side geometry with X=0 as the center point. If the negative-side geometry is the
slightest bit off, it will not be affected. Generally speaking, this mode was meant to be used
where the geometry to the left and the one to the right of X=0 mirror each other. (However,
all of the geometry does not need to be a mirror image, only the portion you want to work on
symmetrically.)

The Fit Selected command ( Shift A) respects symmetry. If both sides of an object are selected and
Symmetry is active, then only one-half of the selection is used to compute the fit.

Symmetrical Selection
When you select polygons/points on the positive X axis and Symmetry Mode (Symmetry button) is
active, polygons/points/edges on the negative X axis are also selected (or deselected).

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Polygons/points/edges must be exactly opposite each other on the positive and negative sides of
the X axis for this command to work properly.

Symmetrical Modeling: Many of the Modeling tools will work in Symmetry mode. Most of the
Modify menu tools work fine. Others such as bevel or smooth shift also work. Some tools such as
Bandsaw do not work in Symmetry mode. In such a case you may have to use the tool on one side then
use the Mirror tool to make sure the changes are done on both sides of the X Axis.

Surface: Change Surface

(default keyboard shortcut Q)
The Change Surface command (Located at the Bottom of Modelers Interface) will bring up the
Change Surface dialog to set the surface name and basic attributes for the selected polygons.

1) Name - This defines the surface name of the selected polygons. The
Pop-Up menu will let you choose from existing surfaces.
2) Make Default - Selecting this option will assign this surface to
any geometry created after the surface is made.
3) Set Initial Color - This option determines whether or not
you can set basic attributes for your surface.
4) Color - Color is probably the most obvious surface parameter. It doesnt take much
experience to know that if we want something to look like a banana, we need to make
it yellow, right? However, since you are dealing with a 24-bit color palette and, thus,
over 16 million colors, there are probably thousands of shades of yellow. Moreover,
other settings, such as Diffuse, can have a dramatic effect on the final rendered color.
5) Diffuse - Diffuse (sometimes called diffusion) is the amount of light scattered by a surface.
A high level scatters a lot of light, and therefore, the surface appears bright. A low level
absorbs most of the light, and therefore, the surface appears dark and dull. Metal and
dirt surfaces are good candidates for a low Diffuse level. Common values are 40% to
80%. Surfaces must have some diffusion for shadows cast on them to be visible.
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6) Specular - Specularity is a kind of reflection or highlight that occurs on the surface of smooth
or shiny objects. This highlight is really the reflection of the light source. High Specular levels
are commonly used on glass spheres, chrome bumpers, and so on. How the surface reflects
this highlight tells the observer if the surface is dull, smooth, shiny, hard, or even metallic.
7) Smoothing - Smoothing causes objects to appear to have smoothly rounded
surfaces even though the object is composed of flat-faced polygons. To do
this, LightWave uses a technique known as phong shading. If the edges of two
smooth-shaded polygons share vertices (points), they appear as one continuous,
curved surface. The shared edge between them is no longer visible.

VMap Shortcut
VMaps can be created using the buttons in the lower-right corner of Modeler. These are simply
shortcuts to the same options that can be found in the Vertex Maps Panel (Windows> Vertex Maps
Panel). Choose a Vmap Mode to work in by clicking on one of the Vmap Mode buttons
(W, T, M, C, S). Select which Vmap to edit from the Vmap drop down menu located next to the
Modes buttons.

W- Weight, T- Texture, M- Morph, C- Color, S- Selection Set.

See Vertex Maps Panel for more detail.

Help Menu

The Help menu (located in the upper left-hand side of the interface) gives you easy access to
documentation, NewTeks website, and LightWave 3Ds about box.
1) Contents - Choosing Contents will launch LightWaves digital help file.
Use this to quickly search for information about a specific tool.
2) Web Based Help - Choosing Web Based Help will take you to NewTeks website where
you can get the latest news about LightWave, LightWave Patches, tutorials, and more.
3) About LightWave Modeler - Choosing About LightWave Modeler will display Modelers
about box with information about the development team, as well as the Build number.

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LightWave 2015

Create Tab
Introduction
The tools on the Create Tab allow you to make geometry. A wide range of tools is provided,
including pre-made basic shapes known as primitives, drawing tools to create lines, curves and
polygons, text, metaballs, and point creation tools that let you make points one at a time where
you want them, or in groups at a time.

Tools and the Mouse Buttons

As will be shown in the examples for the primitive tools below, the LMB allows you to activate a
tool by clicking on it, interactively adjust the geometry, and finally make the geometry by clicking
again on the tool to drop it and complete the operation. Most (interactive) tools that create
geometry (Box, Ball, Capsule, etc.) use the RMB to complete one operation with the tool - making
new geometry, if applicable - and then begin a new operation with it, essentially dropping the tool
and then reactivating it in a single step.

Creating in Perspective
You can create primitives in a perspective viewport in a similar way to how you would do it in
a 2D viewport. You will see highlighted control points at the corners, sides, and center. You will
also notice that you can see (fainter) hidden sides and control points. You can also drag any of
the control points. Dragging a side control point will move the corresponding side along its
perpendicular axis.

Remember, you can rotate your view by holding the

Alt

key as you drag.

Numeric Panels
For most tools there is also a Numeric panel available, which provides for precision when you need
it, and which many find a quick and convenient way to control the various characteristics of the
object they are creating. The contents of the numeric dialog will change as you select different
tools. You may find it handy to just leave the numeric dialog open.

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For example with the Box tool, the numeric panel offers two different ways to adjust the shape of
your box, the Size and Range modes. Other options allow you to round off the edges of the box
(Radius and Axis) or to make the edges sharp or smooth them (Sharp Edge).

Using the cursor Keys

The cursor keys let you quickly adjust settings for most primitives. For the Box tool, for example,
they work as follows:
Right/Left cursor
Up/Down cursor
Incr./decr. Horizontal Segments*
Incr./decr. Vertical Segments*
*based on viewport beneath mouse pointer

Make UVs Option

The Make UVs option at the bottom of the various primitive Numeric Panels assigns some default
UVs based on the geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected
or this option will be ghosted.

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Primitives
Box
(default keyboard shortcut

Shift

X)

The Box tool is located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group. To create a box simply
drag out a two-dimensional shape in one of the viewports and then add depth to your object by
expanding it in a different viewport. Youll probably use the Box tool most often, because most
objects are box-like in general form.

Creating a Box
1) Select the Box button located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group.

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2) Drag out the initial 2D shape in any viewport with your LMB. This activates the tool.
Pressing the Ctrl key before you click and holding it while you drag will symmetrically
constrain the shape. The dimensions of your outline are shown in the lower left corner.

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3) After you release the mouse button, you can adjust the shape by dragging
any of the sides or corners. You can reposition it by dragging the center.
4) Go to another viewport and drag to extend the shape into the third dimension. Release the
mouse button.

5) You can continue to adjust the boxs size and position.

If you find you need to start over from scratch, just click in an inactive toolbar area or use undo.
6) When you are satisfied, deselect the Box tool by clicking on it or choosing Make to
turn your outline into an object. (Alternatively, you can select another tool.)

Numeric Panel Option: Box Tool

When you click on the Box tool to activate it, you can then bring up the numeric panel using the
default keyboard shortcut N, or click on the Numeric button on the bottom toolbar of the Modeler
window.

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You have two different ways to adjust the shape of your box, the Size and Range modes. With the
Size Tab selected, you can adjust the Width, Height, and Depth of your box dimensions. The Center
XYZ settings set the position of the center of the box.

With the Range Tab selected, you can adjust the positions of two opposing corners of your box
using the Low XYZ and High XYZ settings.

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You can round off the edges of the box by setting the Radius to a value greater than 0. Radius
Segments allows you to specify how many sides are used to generate the smooth corners (larger
segments obviously generate smoother ones). The Axis sets the direction of the radial polygon
pattern used to round the edges. Use the Sharp Edge option to smooth or unsmooth the edges.

Left: Radius 176mm, Radius Segments 5, Right: Radius 176mm, Radius Segments 12

Modeling a box in Perspective view.

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Using the cursor Keys
The cursor keys let you quickly adjust settings as follows:
Right/Left cursor
Incr./decr. Horizontal Segments*

Up/Down cursor
Incr./decr. Vertical Segments*

*based on viewport beneath mouse pointer

Ball
(default keyboard shortcut

Shift

O)

The Ball tool is located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group. To create a ball simply
drag out a two-dimensional shape in one of the viewports and then add depth to your object by
expanding it in a different viewport. The Ball tool is a great starting place for planets, eyeballs, disco
globes and more.

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Creating a Ball
1) Select the Ball button located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group.

2) Drag out the initial 2D shape in any viewport with your LMB. This activates the tool. Pressing
the Ctrl key before you click and holding it while you drag will symmetrically constrain the
shape. The dimensions of your outline are shown in the lower left corner.

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3) After you release the mouse button, you can adjust the shape by dragging any of the sides
or corners. You can reposition it by dragging the center.
4) Go to another viewport and drag to extend the shape into the third dimension. Release the
mouse button.

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5) You can continue to adjust the balls size and position.

If you find you need to start over from scratch, just click in an inactive toolbar area or use undo.
6) When you are satisfied, deselect the Ball tool by clicking on it or choosing Make to
turn your outline into an object. (Alternatively, you can select another tool.)
There are two types of Ball, Globe and Tessellation. The make-up of a Globe is determined by the
number of Sides and Segments. Tessellation balls are set using a Level parameter; these balls are
created entirely of triangles and are, therefore, smoother looking.

Left: Globe, Right: Tessellation

Use a Tessellation ball if the camera will be close to the object and the surface is smooth.

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Numeric Panel Option: Ball

Globe:
Axis - determines the major axis for the ball. This is also set when you click to first create the
ball using the axis perpendicular to the (orthogonal) viewport.
Sides - determines how many segments should be used around the ball.
Segments - sets how many vertical segments should be used. Three-sided polygons are
always used at the top and bottom. Elsewhere, the polygons used are dependent on the
Polygons setting on the General Options Panel (Modeler > Options > General Options).
Tessellation:
Sets the number of segments along the edges between the twelve polyhedral vertices. Higher
settings will increase the complexity of the triangle matrix, taking longer to create and requiring
more RAM.
Center - The XYZ coordinates of the center of the ball.
Radius - The radius of the ball along the X, Y, and Z axes.
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Modeling a Tessellated Ball in perspective view.

Using the cursor Keys

Right/Left cursor
Incr./decr. Segments

Up/Down cursor
Incr./decr. Sides

Disc

The Disc tool is located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group. To create a disc, simply
drag out a two-dimensional shape in one of the viewports and then add depth to your object by
expanding it in a different viewport. The Disc tool is a great starting place for soda cans, pipes and
more.

Creating a Disc
1) To activate the tool, select the Disc button located in the Create Menu Tab under the
Primitives group.

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2) Drag out the initial 2D shape in any viewport with your LMB. Pressing the Ctrl key before you
click and holding it while you drag will symmetrically constrain the shape. The dimensions of
your outline are shown in the lower left corner.

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3) After you release the mouse button, you can adjust the shape by dragging any of the sides
or corners. You can reposition it by dragging the center. At this point it will look similar to the
Ball tool until you continue to the next step.
4) Go to another viewport and drag to extend the shape into the third dimension. Release the
mouse button.

5) You can continue to adjust the Discs size and position.

If you find you need to start over from scratch, just click in an inactive toolbar area or use undo.
6) When you are satisfied, deselect the Disc tool by clicking on it or choose Make to turn your
outline into an object (alternatively, you can select another tool).

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Numeric Panel Option: Disc Tool

Axis - The primitive is aligned with this axis.

Sides - Sides determines how many segments should be used around the perimeter.

Segments - Segments sets how many vertical segments should be used.

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Bottom - Bottom is thestarting point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Top - Top is the ending point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Center - Center refers to the coordinates for the center of the primitive.
Radii - Radii refers to the radius of the primitive along the axes.

Modeling a disc in perspective view.

Using the cursor Keys

The cursor keys let you quickly adjust settings as follows:
Right/Left cursor
Incr./decr. Horizontal Segments

Up/Down cursor
Incr./decr. Vertical Sides

Cone Tool
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The Cone tool is located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group. To create a cone
simply drag out a two-dimensional disc shape in one of the viewports and then add depth to your
object by expanding it in a different viewport. The Cone tool is a great starting place for an Indian
teepee, snow cone, funnel and more.

A cone with only four sides is a great way to quickly recreate the pyramids of Egypt!

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Creating a Cone
1) Select the Cone button located in the Create menu tab under the Primitives group.

2) Drag out the initial 2D shape in any viewport with your LMB. This activates the tool.
Pressing the Ctrl key before you click and holding it while you drag will symmetrically
constrain the shape. The dimensions of your outline are shown in the lower left corner.

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3) After you release the mouse button, you can adjust the shape by dragging any of the sides
or corners. You can reposition it by dragging the center. At this point it will look similar to the
Ball tool until you continue to the next step.
4) Go to another viewport and drag to extend the shape into the third dimension. Release the
mouse button.

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5) You can continue to adjust the Cones size and position.

If you find you need to start over from scratch, just click in an inactive toolbar area or use undo.
6) When you are satisfied, deselect the Cone tool by clicking on it or choosing Make to turn
your outline into an object (alternatively, you can select another tool.)

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Numeric Panel Options: Cone Tool

Axis - The primitive is aligned with this axis.

Sides - Determines how many segments should be used around the perimeter.

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Segments - Sets how many vertical segments should be used.

Bottom - Bottom is thestarting point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Top - Top is the ending point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Center - Refers to the coordinates for the center of the primitive.
Radii - Refers to the radius of the primitive (wide end for a cone) along the axes.

Modeling a Cone in Perspective view.

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Using the cursor Keys
The cursor keys let you quickly adjust settings as follows:
Right/Left cursor
Incr./decr. Horizontal Segments

Up/Down cursor
Incr./decr. Vertical Sides

Capsule
Another primitive tool is the Capsule tool (Create > Primitives > Capsule). This is used to create a
cylindrical object with rounded, closed ends.

Creating a Capsule

Your initial click defines the perpendicular axis of the object. You can drag the center position
handle to move the shape, and you can drag the outer bounding box edges to resize it.

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Numeric Panel Options: Capsule
The numeric settings are similar to those used for the standard primitive tools.

Axis - The primitive is aligned with this axis.

Center - Refers to the coordinates for the center of the primitive.
Length - Refers to how long the center of the object will be. Note: The ends are unaffected
by this setting.

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Radius - Refers to the radius of the primitive along the axes.

Sides - Determines how many segments should be used around the perimeter.

Segments - Sets how many vertical segments should be used on the ends.

Divisions - Sets how many segments should be used on the center of the object.

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Most tools allow numeric input. Thus, the contents of the numeric dialog will change as you
select different tools. You may find it handy to just leave the numeric dialog open.

Toroid Function

Choose Create > Primitives > Toroid to generate a torus or a section thereof.

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Axis - Axis is the axis perpendicular to the doughnut hole.

Sections - Specifies the number of segments used around the doughnut.
Sides - Specifies the number of sides each segment should use.
Radius - Radius is the distance from the center of the doughnut to the center of a cross
section.
Start Angle - Start Angle is the starting angle around the selected Axis.
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End Angle - End Angle is the ending angle around the selected Axis. (360 for a complete
glazed doughnut).
Cross Section - Cross Section is the XYZ size of a cross section. Note that the value
corresponding to the selected Axis is not considered.

Unit Primitives Group

This group creates primitives with no menus or settings. It will quickly create a 1 m-sized Box, Ball,
Plane, Disc or Cone.

More
Bubbles
The Bubbles tool (Create > Primitives > More > Bubbles) provides a quick and easy way to create
bubbles, rocks, stylized clouds, and a variety of other interesting objects. This tool replaces each
selected point in your foreground layer with a sphere.

If no points are directly selected, the Bubbles tool will use every point in the foreground layer.
Remember, more points mean longer calculation times.
To begin, create an assortment of points in the foreground layer. The Spray Points tool is
particularly suited for this.

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Once you are satisfied with the number and distribution of your points, select the Bubbles tool from
the Create Tab in the Primitives section under More.

The options for creating the spheres are similar to those found in the Ball tool.
Under Sphere Type, Globes are composed primarily of four-point polys (also known as quads) and
can appear angular if they are created with a low number of sides or segments. Tessellated spheres
are composed entirely of triangles and, using a comparable number of polys, will often yield
smoother results.
If you choose Tessellated, the resolution of your bubbles will be determined by the Tessellation
Level. Tessellation Level is similar to the Ball tools Segments setting, however, it is important
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to note that these settings are not identical. A Tessellation Level of 2 (which is the default) will
produce significantly more polys than a Segment setting of 2 with the Ball tool.
The default Tessellation Level should work for most bubbles. However, higher numbers (i.e. 4 or 6)
can be used for extremely detailed objects. Though a setting of 6 will produce unwieldy individual
bubbles with more than 100,000 polygons each.
For Globes, the resolution of your bubbles will be determined by the number of sides and
segments, which correspond to those in the Ball tool.

Tessellation Level has no effect when using Globe objects and Sides and Segments have no
effect when using Tessellated objects.
The Bubbles tool uses its own internal routines for varying the size of each bubble it creates,
however you can determine the largest and smallest bubble size by adjusting the Maximum and
Minimum Radius settings.
For the best results, use the Fit All command (a) to show every one of your source points.
Then reference your Grid size before entering the Radius settings. If you enter a Maximum or
Minimum radius that exceeds your Grid size, your bubbles will frequently overlap and produce
undesirable results.
You name the surface for the bubble objects in the Bubble Surface field. The default is Bubble,
although you can choose any name.
Once you are satisfied with your settings, click on the OK button. The position of each point will be
recorded, after which the points will be deleted and bubble objects of varying size will be created
in their place.

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The Bubbles tool requires one undo for every bubble it generates, which means that running
this tool on a large number of points may be impossible to fully undo. If you want to test different Sizes
and Sphere settings, you should copy and paste your points to a new layer before running the Bubbles
tool.

The Bubbles tool uses the points in the foreground layer, however polygons are ignored. As such,
it is possible to achieve interesting results by running the Bubbles tool on
one of your existing objects.

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Platonic Solid Tool

The Platonic Solid tool is located in the Create Menu Tab under the Primitives group. This tool is very
easy to use and can really speed up the modeling process. A platonic solid, as denoted by Euclid
in the last proposition of his seminal mathematics textbook The Elements, is a polyhedron whose
faces are all congruent regular polygons, and where the same number of faces meet at every
vertex. The best known example is a cube (or hexahedron) whose faces are six congruent squares.
Platonic solids are often used as a dice in role playing games, so if you want to make a D4, D6, D8,
D12 and D20 easily, this is the tool for you!
The Shape pop-up menu on the Numeric Panel controls the shape of the object. It gives you seven
primitive shapes to select from.

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The choices are:

Tetrahedron - the simplest of the platonic solids made with just four triangles.

Cube - the best known of the platonic solids, otherwise known as a hexahedron.

Octahedron - an eight-sided object.

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Cubeoctahedron - Although this panel is named the Platonic Solid tool, a Cubeoctahedron is
not actually a platonic solid.

Icosahedron - a 20-sided object made with triangles.

Dodecahedron - a 12-sided object made from pentagons.

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Icosidodecahedron - This one isnt a platonic solid either!

You can drag the center position handle to move the shape, and you can drag the outer bounding
box edges to resize it. You can also use the numeric window to accomplish these options.

Wedge
The Wedge function (Create > Primitives > More > Wedge) will generate an annulus (like a flat
donut).

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Axis - Axis is the axis perpendicular to the doughnut hole.

Sections - Refers to the number of radial sections to use for the object.
Height - Specifies the width of the object.
Inner Radius - Specifies the radius of the inner hole.
Outer Radius - Specifies the radius to the outside perimeter.
Start Angle - Start Angle is the starting angle around the selected Axis.
End Angle - End Angle is the ending angle around the selected Axis (360 for a complete
doughnut).

Gear
The Gear function (Create > Primitives > Gear) creates a gear-shaped object. This tool is very similar
to the Gears function (discussed next) but has fewer options.

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Teeth - Refers to the number of teeth in the gear.

Taper % - Sets the pointiness of the teeth. A higher setting creates sharper teeth.
Inner Radius - Refers to the distance from the center of the gear to the bottom of the teeth.
Outer Radius - Outer Radius is the distance to the outside edge of the teeth.
Thickness - Thickness is the width of the gear.
Axis - Axis is the perpendicular axis of the gear.

Gears
True to its name, the Gears tool (Create > Primitives > More) quickly creates gear-shaped objects.
Before describing the controls, lets first take a look at whats happening behind the scenes.
Gear objects are composed of a disc shaped object with protrusions called teeth. Each tooth is
made up of four points.

Two points comprise the base of each tooth, and two the top. Therefore, a gear with two teeth
would be made up of 8 points, a gear with four teeth would consist of 16 points, and so on.
When you run the Gears tool, it first looks at the number of teeth you requested. It then multiplies
the number of teeth by four (the number of points required for each tooth) and creates a disc using
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this total number of points.
The diameter of the disc is determined by you, and is called the Inner Radius.

Here you can see that a disc with 24 points has been created. At four points per tooth, this will yield
a gear with six teeth. An existing gear with six teeth can be seen in the background.
Once the disc has been created, pairs of points are selected and moved outward. The position
these points are moved towards is determined by you, and is called the Outer Radius.

Finally, the four points comprising each tooth are tapered by approximately 65%.

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Once the basic gear shape has been created, it is extruded to a Thickness specified by you.

To complete the gear, a hole is punched out of the center. This is accomplished by the creation
of a disc whose diameter is exactly half the size of the Inner Radius. It is extruded, placed in the
background, and used as a cutting template for a Boolean Subtract operation.

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This entire process happens internally, and is transparent to you.

Now that weve looked at how gears are created, lets take a look at the controls offered by this tool.

The first row of buttons determines the axis the base gear object will face once it has been created.
It also determines the axis along which the gear object will be extruded using the Thickness setting
(mentioned below).
The Number of Teeth enables you to set the number of teeth your gear will have. Note that at least
three teeth are needed for a usable gear, and that entering 1 for the number of teeth will not result
in a gear at all, as shown below.

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The Inner Radius determines the diameter of the gears base. This is the location from which each of
the teeth will project outward.

The Outer Radius determines the length of the gears teeth. This is the location that the two points
forming the top of each tooth will move towards. Note that it is possible to make the Outer Radius
smaller than the Inner Radius. Doing this will still create a gear shape, although the teeth will
appear to taper outward rather than inward.

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The Thickness field determines the depth of the gear, which is the amount that the gear will be
extruded. Note that the extrusion occurs along the Axis set by you at the top of the window.
Under Gear Type, Angular is the default option, and creates gears using the method described
above. Smooth uses the Inner and Outer Radius to interpolate a smooth arc between the top and
bottom of each tooth.

Bear in mind that smoothing is computationally intensive, and will take longer to calculate. Also, it
will create an object with a higher number of points and polygons.
Finally, the Center option determines the exact center for your gear, which can be useful for
positioning gears that are offset precisely from one another. The three fields correspond to the X, Y,
and Z axis respectively.

Gemstone
You can quickly make a nice round-cut diamond with the Gemstone Tool (Create > Primitives >
Gemstone Tool).

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On the Numeric Panel you can control various aspects of your diamond. Center sets the center
position and Radius the overall radius of the object.

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Higher Symmetry values increase the number of polygons used on the crown and lower values
decrease the number. The Crown, Girdle, Table and Pavillion settings control the size of those areas
on the diamond. (See illustration below for reference.)

Make UVs
The Make UVs option at the bottom of the various primitive Numeric Panels assigns some default
UVs based on the geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected
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or this option will be ghosted.

Make Air Polys

Make Air Polys will create duplicate polygons facing inside the Gemstone with the surface name of
Air. These polygons should be used when using the Classic camera and surfacing glass or any kind
of refractive material to give a more realistic refraction to your object. LightWaves other cameras
dont need air polygons as long as Exclude from VStack is not checked for the surfaces concerned in
the Surface Editor.

SuperQuadric
Use the SuperQuadric tool (Create > Primitives > SuperQuadric) to create quadrics objects
interactively. You can choose between two shapes: Ellipsoid (spherical) and Toroid (doughnut).

Toroid on the left, Ellipsoid on the right (with Top and Side Bulge set to 3)

Ellipsoid
You can use standard drag handles to manipulate the shape and position interactively.

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1) Interactively sizes the object by clicking and dragging here with the LMB.
2) Interactively Center the object by clicking and dragging here with the LMB.
3) Interactively sizes the Hole in the object by clicking and dragging here with the LMB.
The Numeric Panel provides more detailed control.

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Axis - determines the major axis for the object. This is also set when you click to first create
the ball using the axis perpendicular to the (orthogonal) viewport.
Sides - determines how many horizontal segments should be used around the Object.
Segments - sets how many vertical segments should be used.
Center - The XYZ coordinates of the center of the Object.
Size - Overall dimensions of the object.
Hole Size - This option is only available for the Toroid Shape. This setting defines the inner
radius of the toroid.
Top Bulge - This setting defines the vertical curvature of the geometry.
Side Bulge - This setting defines the horizontal curvature of the geometry.
A perfect circle - looking along the set Axis - can be made by setting the Side Bulge to 2. A
value of about 5 yields a rounded square shape.

Make UVs
The Make UVs option at the bottom of the various primitive Numeric Panels assigns some default
UVs based on the geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected
or this option will be ghosted.

A quadric is a shape made of the squares of the coordinates, a generalization of a sphere, which
is x2 + y2 + z2.

Parametric Surface Object

The Parametric Surface Object function (Create > Primitives > ParametricObj) creates parametric
surfaces based on the equations entered for X,Y, and Z in terms of UV coordinates. The function lets
you create the object using Triangles, Rectangles, Curves, or just points (None).

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Plot 2D
The Plot2D function (Create > Primitives > Plot2D) generates a two-dimensional surface in the XY
plane consisting of Triangles, Rectangles, Curves, or points (None). The height (in the Z direction) is
determined by the value of the expression in the Equation field at each division in the X and Y axes.

In the fields labelled X Min, X Max, Y Min, and Y Max, enter the boundaries for the surface. In the
XMesh and YMesh fields, enter the number of divisions along that axis.

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Equilateral Triangle
Equilateral triangles are three-sided polygons whose sides are all equal in length. The Equilateral
Triangle tool is found under Create > Primitives > More.

Side Length determines the size for each of the triangles sides.
The Axis buttons determine the direction along which the polygons normal will run, or simply,
which way the triangle will be facing.

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You also can create an equilateral triangle using either the Ball or Disc tool. If you hold down
the Ctrl key or use the middle mouse button to drag out a circle in one viewport, you will constrain the
width and height, ensuring a perfect circle. Now click N to bring up the Numeric Panel and set Sides to 3.
Using this technique, you can quickly and interactively create perfect triangles, diamonds,
pentagons, hexagons, etc.

StarSphere
When you want to create a starfield with parallax, you can sprinkle some points around, convert
them to polygons and give them surface names, but why bother? NewTek engineers have done
all the hard work for you with StarSphere. This generates up to nine layers of single point polygons
which all have different levels of magnitude allowing you to create convincing starfield models
quickly and easily.

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The first parameters to set are how big you want the StarSphere to be and whether you want it
spread over nine layers, or have it compressed down to one. The remaining settings are how many
of each sort of star you wish to have in your StarSphere. Actual magnitude distributions are hard
to come by and vary from location to location, so the default settings have been left at 100 stars
of each magnitude, but its likely that you will have far fewer bright stars than faint ones, so your
lower magnitude stars (Magnitude 2 - 6) should probably vastly outnumber your brighter stars
(Magnitude -2, - 1).

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Using the StarSphere Generator will create a new object.

Text Tools
The Text tools provide several ways to create 3D text objects, from a single word to multiple lines
of text. A variety of controls over the look of the final text are provided, including bevelling and
extrusion depth, as well as how smooth the curved portions of letters will be.

2015

OS Font Support in Modeler

As of 2015, Modeler supports any font your OS does. This means you can now use OTF fonts as well
as Type 1 PS fonts and TTF. High ASCII characters can be input in the usual fashion in Windows by
holding the Alt key and typing the three- or four-digit ASCII code on the Numeric keypad. Under
OSX you need to refer to a chart for how to enter specific characters. On both, you can copy and
paste existing characters from elsewhere into the Text Tools text entry field on the Numeric panel.

Manage Fonts
(default keyboard shortcut F10)

Use the Font pop-up menu to select the font for your object. Clicking the Add Type-1 button brings
up a file requester where you can load a PostScript font. If you have PostScript fonts, the files often
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have a .pfb filename extension.
Click Remove Current Choice to remove the selected font from the font list. Remove All Manual Fonts
will purge the entire list.
Import List brings up a file requester where you can load a previously saved font list file. This can be
the Lwm.cfg file. Export List brings up a file requester for saving the current font list to a file. Note
that the font list is automatically saved when you exit Modeler, so it is not mandatory that you save
the list. Use this option to create custom file lists for special purposes.
LightWave will automatically populate its font list with any font available to your operating system
including PostScript, TrueType and OpenType formats.

The clearing operations do not affect the actual files stored on your hard drive. Also fonts in the
list utilise no RAM until used.

Text
(default keyboard shortcut Shift W)
The Text tool (Create > Text > Text) lets you interactively create type objects using any font available
to your operating system including PostScript, TrueType and OpenType formats. Once you create
them, these objects can be bevelled, extruded, drilled, and more.

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If the Text tool button is ghosted, make sure you have added some fonts, as discussed on page
1269

Interactively Creating Text

When you first click in a viewport after selecting the Text tool (Create > Text > Text), the text
insertion pointer appears. You can just start typing to create the Text template.

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The Text Insertion Pointer

You can use the BACKSPACE or DELETE keys to clear the last character typed. To clear the entire
text line, press Shift + BACKSPACE or Shift + DELETE. If you need to use a Modeler keyboard
shortcut, like the N key, while using the Text tool, first press the ESC key to exit the Text tool, then
press the desired shortcut key.

Modifying the Template

The position of the text is referenced to the bottom left of the pointer. You can reposition the
text in any viewport. Dragging the sizing handle up or down will scale the text larger or smaller.
Dragging the kerning handle will adjust the amount of space between characters.
Text will be aligned with reference to the vertical bar. Pressing the Tab key will cycle through the
alignment options.
You can cycle through the font list using the Up and Down cursor keys or you can use the numeric
requester. If you have already started a template, the font will change.
You must deselect the Text tool to actually create the object. This can be done by clicking on any
other tool button, mode button, the Make button or hitting the Return key. The Text tool cannot
be dropped with the / key (Drop tool) because it is interpreted as text input. Alternatively, clicking
your RMB will create the object and also move the template to your mouse pointer position. You
can quickly make unlimited copies of the text in this manner.
The number of points used to approximate curves in characters depends on the setting for Curve
Division on the General Options Panel (Modeler > Edit > General Options).

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If you realize you are creating your text in the wrong viewport, click in the grey empty area of the
interface - the text you have created in the viewport will disappear, but you will notice that the Text tool
button remains highlighted and active. Click in the correct viewport, and your text will reappear in that
viewport.

The characters that are available within the selected font may be limited. You may or may not
have all possible characters allowed by the font type depending on whether those characters were
created in the font originally.

The Text Numeric Panel

The related Numeric Panel provides interactive feedback and also lets you set options numerically.
Axis is the perpendicular axis used in creating the text; however, it is usually set interactively by
clicking the mouse in a view window. The Text input field lets you enter the text to generate into a
3D object.

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From the Font pop-up menu, you can select any of the fonts defined in the previously discussed
Fonts List.
Some fonts, when converted into 3D objects, have additional points near their corner vertices.
When these polygons are beveled, these additional points can cause beveling inaccuracies. Use
the default setting, Sharp, for the majority of your text generation, as this will avoid the creation of
such points. The Buffered setting allows the additional points to be created.
The Alignment setting determines how the text is aligned around the text insertion pointer.
Center is the XYZ position of the insertion point; however, it is usually set interactively by clicking
the mouse in a view window. The Scale value sets the general height of the text; however, the
actual size may be less and will vary from font to font. Kern sets the spacing between fonts and
depends on the fonts own characteristics. Negative numbers are allowed to bring characters closer
together.
Characters with separate parts, such as i, or ; will have an edge joining the parts making selecting
the whole letter more easy. This edge wont appear in renders unless you specifically want it to use
Object Properties > Edge options in Layout.

These lines might look odd in shaded OpenGL display modes, but theres nothing wrong.

The Scale setting (Numeric Panel) cannot be set to zero or a negative number.

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Multi Text
The Multi Text tool (Create > Text > Multi Text) generates multiple lines of text and gives you control
over size, kerning, and leading. In addition, it can load ASCII text files, making it a versatile text
generation tool.
As with the other text tools, you must have at least one font loaded into Modeler before you can
use this utility. Any font available to your operating system including PostScript, TrueType and
OpenType formats is usable.
Clicking on Multi Text will bring up the text layout panel.

This window can be broken down into two sections. The top section contains text formatting
options, while the bottom section contains text entry options.
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You begin by choosing your typeface from the Font pulldown menu. Remember that only fonts
which have been loaded with the Edit Fonts utility will be displayed in this list.
The Alignment tool specifies the alignment for all the lines of text. The choices of Left, Center, and
Right operate just like their counterparts in word processing programs.
The Axis buttons determine which direction the text object will face once it has been created.
The Corner buttons determine whether or not extra points will be created around the hard angles
of the characters in your font. Many letters, like an M, have sharp angles. When you extrude these
letters, you wind up with sharp edges, which look unrealistic when rendered because they lack the
tiny bevels needed to catch the specular highlights. These bevels require extra points in the letters
polygons; and by selecting Buffered Corners, the extra points needed to round and refine your
polygons sharp edges are added.
The following picture shows the letter M generated with Sharp Corners.

Notice that almost every corner forms an angle of 90-degrees or more. Now take a look at the same
character generated with Buffered Corners:

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Extra points have been created around the sharp corners. These points act as a buffer, allowing you
to move or delete the points at the edges to create a bevelled shape (as in the example below).

Occasionally, when making a relatively large bevel with the Bevel tool, buffer points can cross over
each other and produce render errors. If this is the case, try regenerating your text using Sharp
Corners and using the Edge Bevel tool to compensate for any sharp edges.
The Center input fields correspond to the X, Y, and Z coordinates, which determine both the left
margin and base for the text object. More often than not, this can simply be left at its default, of 0,
0, 0 that used on a left-aligned text block, will produce an object which rests on the ground and is
situated to the right of the origin. The image below uses center alignment.

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The Scale setting determines the height of the font from its lowest point to its highest point.
Its important to note that the Scale setting does not measure the height of your font from the
baseline up. Certain characters, such as the lower case p, q, and g, all fall below the baseline. And
characters like f, h, and k rise higher than the more common a, s, and e. The Scale setting looks at
the lowest and highest points in your typeface and scales the font so that the range between them
matches your target size.

The Kerning setting determines the spacing between letters. Kerning is determined by em space
and is measured in percentages, with 100% being equal to the width of the capital M in your
chosen font. Negative values will bring your letters closer together. Positive values will spread your
letters farther apart.
Line Pitch refers to the spacing between lines of text (also known as leading). A value equal to the
Scale of your text will usually produce good results. Increasing this value will push the lines further
apart. Decreasing this value will pull the lines closer together.
The Load Text and Save Text buttons enable you to import and export ASCII text files for use with
the Multi Text tool. ASCII character codes are respected in these files, allowing you to utilise the
extended character set of most fonts.

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The Clear Text button will erase all text in the composition window, leaving you with a clean slate.
The lower half of the Multi Text tool enables you to enter and compose blocks of text.

Text is entered one line at a time, and text lines can be entered in any order you desire. Before
entering text, you must select the line onto which the text will be placed. The selected line will
highlight as in the example above.
Once a line has been selected, text can be entered into the field at the bottom of the window.
Pressing the Enter or Tab key will place the text into the selected line.
To edit a line of text, simply select it with your mouse. The text from that line will appear in the
entry field at the bottom of the window. Proceed to edit the text, then press Enter or Tab when you
are finished.
To clear a single line of text, select it with your mouse, then delete the text from the entry field at
the bottom of the window. Pressing Enter or Tab will accept your changes and wipe the line clean.
When you are satisfied with your settings and text layout, press the OK button. A new text object
will be generated. Should you find that a particular setting was incorrect (such as the Kerning or
Line Pitch), simply delete your text object and run the Multi Text tool again. Multi Text retains the
settings from its last use through the duration of your Modeling session. Note that once Modeler
has been shut down, however, your Multi Text settings will be lost.

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Logo
The Logo tool (Create > Text > Logo) generates 3D text. Before using this utility, you must have at
least one font loaded into Modeler.
The Logo Maker Panel is straightforward.

In the Logo Text field, you enter the word or phrase that you want extruded. Multiple lines of text
are not supported. (Multiple lines of text can be created with the Make Text or Multi Text tools.)
ASCII characters may be entered by pressing the Alt key and the four-digit ASCII code. ASCII
characters may not display properly in the Logo Text field, however they will be properly generated
in the final object.
The Logo tool will create your text object in Modelers Back Viewport and extrude it along the
positive Z axis. The Extrusion Depth setting determines the size of the extrusion.
You choose the typeface in the Select Font popup list. Remember that only fonts that have been
loaded with the Edit Fonts tool will be displayed in this menu.

If you use a Dingbat font with the Logo tool, you can quickly generate 3D arrows, starbursts, and
other common design elements.

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More
Text Layers
(Create > Text > More > Text Layers)

The Text Layers tool allows you to type letters, numbers, and other symbols and automatically have
them beveled and extruded. Text Layers also has multiple layers and settings options.

Text Tab
Preview All - Checked, this previews all text. Unchecked, this previews only the first character.
2D - Checked, previews the text in 2D only.
Text - This is where you enter all characters. You can even copy and paste from a text editor
and all characters will be copied over until a carriage return is found.
Font - Select the font you want to use here.
Corners - Some fonts, when converted into 3D objects, have additional points near their
corner vertices. When these polygons are beveled, these additional points can cause
beveling inaccuracies. Use the default setting, Sharp, for the majority of your text generation,
as this will avoid the creation of such points. The Buffered setting allows the additional
points to be created, should you decide that you wish it.
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Font Spacing - Increases/Decreases the amount of spacing between characters. Negative
numbers will start spacing the letters in reverse.
Font Scaling - Increases/Decreases the size of the characters.
Extrude Extent - The amount the characters will be extruded.
Bevel Type:
Single - The bevel is made with only one segment
Round - The bevel is made with a convex edge
Corner Round - The bevel edge is rounded at the corner of the segment
Hollow - The bevel edge is made with a concave edge
Corner Hollow - The bevel edge is inset with a Hollow edge
Bevel Shift - The distance the characters will be beveled out.
Bevel Inset - Affects the size of the bevel.
Bevel Segments - The number of segments created in the bevel.
Mirror - Mirrors the effects on the characters along the axis.
Disconnect Bevel Polygons - Unwelds the beveled edge from the rest of the model.

Surfaces Tab
Separate Surfaces - Checked, allows you to save a surface name for Face, Side, and Bevel.
Unchecked, a single surface name will be given to all of the characters surfaces.
Face - The front and back surface of the characters
Side - The side surface of the characters
Bevel- The beveled edge of the character mesh

Layers/Export Tab
Determines how the characters are laid out in Layers for Modeler.
Layers: Per Letter, creates a new layer for each character. Per Word, creates a new layer for
each word. Single, creates one layer for entire text.
Center All: Checked, will center all text at 0,0,0.
Pivot Positions: Determines the pivot point for each layer. Center will create the pivot point at
the center of the text in each layer. Bottom Left will create the pivot point at the bottom left
of the text.
Create Object: Create an object file for the text.
Object File: Determines the name and location of the object file.
Create Scene: Creates a scene file for the text.
Scene File: Determines the name and location of the scene file.

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Points
Points are the fundamental building block of 3D objects and have an XYZ location LightWave
provides a variety of tools for point creation, ranging from one at a time with precision to mass
creation of points with random locations.

Point
(default keyboard shortcut +)

Point coordinates are the minimum information from which the geometry of an object can be
calculated.

Remember a point needs to have X, Y, and Z coordinates. You can create points in real-time or by
positioning first and then creating. As with every tool in Modeler you can choose to create a point
with the Numeric Panel.

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Creating Points
1) Choose (Create > Points > Points) from the menu or use the + key to activate the Point tool.
2) In any viewport, with your LMB drag the large crosshairs to the desired position (you can
reposition in any viewport). The information display (bottom-left corner) will give you
position feedback as you move your mouse.
3) Click the RMB to create the point. Be careful not to move your mouse
pointer. Deselecting the Points tool will also create the point, if you dont
have a steady hand. Deselecting and then reselecting the Points button
will create the point and keep you in the create point mode.
4) You can also position the point by dragging with your RMB. However, the points will all be
created along the same plane (when you release the RMB).

Alternative Method to Create Points

1) Choose (Create > Points > Points) from the menu or use the + key to activate the Point tool.
2) Move the mouse to the location where you wish to create a point - the
information display (bottom-left corner) will give you feedback as you move
your mouse - and click the RMB to immediately create the point.
You can click down a point with the RMB and then, if you need to adjust the location, immediately
click the LMB and move the point. Alternatively you can simply click the RMB to quickly lay down a
string of points in succession and move them later using something like the Drag tool.

You can convert the point youve just made into a polygon by pressing P.

Spray Points
Creating one or two points is not hard, but what happens when you need to create hundreds or
even thousands of random points for objects such as stars, gasses or bubbles? Enter the Spray
Points tool, (Create > Points: Spray Points), which works like a splatter gun to create a random
assortment of single point polygons.
After selecting the tool, click in any viewport (including the perspective viewport!). A blue crosshair
appears surrounded by a larger blue circle. The crosshair represents the center position of the Spray
Points tool. The circle represents the radius within which points will be created.

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The radius can be adjusted either numerically or interactively. To adjust the radius numerically,
open the Numeric window (N).

Click in the field entitled Radius, type a new number and press ENTER. (You can also use the slider
to the right of the numeric field to make the radius larger or smaller).
To adjust the radius interactively, click the RMB in any viewport and drag. The radius circle will
jump to the position of your mouse cursor. To make the radius smaller, drag your mouse towards
the crosshair. To make the radius bigger, drag it away from the crosshair.

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To create points, drag your mouse while the LMB is held down. Simply clicking the LMB will not
result in the permanent creation of new points. To see this in action, try clicking once, then moving
your mouse to a new location and clicking again. Youll notice that the points from your previous
click disappeared and a new set of points was created under your mouse pointer. For the tool
to generate permanent points, you must continue to hold down the LMB while dragging in a
viewport.
The number of points created as you drag can be adjusted by the Rate setting on the Numeric
Panel. A low rate setting will cause fewer points to be created as you move your mouse. A high rate
setting will cause more points to be created.
The Spray Points tool doesnt just create points, it creates single point polygons (also known as
Particles), which means they can have Vertex Color Maps applied to them and will be visible in a
render with those assigned characteristics. Points themselves can have vertex maps assigned to
them regardless of whether they have polygons attached to them or not. In the case of color maps
those cannot be seen unless the points are attached to polygons.
If you would like to use a Color Map with the Spray Points tool, simply click the Add Vertex Color
checkbox and type a name for it into the Map field. If you have already created one or more Vertex
Maps, you can use the drop down arrow to select one from the list.
Modeler will not display the Vertex Map in any of its viewport displays, however you can see the
effect of the Color Map by running Vertex Paint from Modelers Map menu.

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More
Stipple
The Stipple tool (Create > Points > More) will cover the surface of your object with an even array of
points. When used in conjunction with the Kill Polys tool (K), (Construct/Reduce/Remove/Remove
Polygons), it is an effective way to generate uniform and predictable arrangements of points.
To use the Stipple tool, place your geometry into the foreground layer. When you click the Stipple
button, the Regular Surface Points Panel appears with fields for X, Y, and Z spacing for the points
which the Stipple tool will create.

The initial spacing values reflect the dimensions of your object and are a good place to start
experimenting. (You can undo the results of the Stipple tool by hitting Ctrl Z twice.) If you lower
the Spacing settings, you will generate more points and position them closer together. Increasing
the Spacing settings will generate fewer points and position them further apart. As always, the
smaller the spacing settings, the longer the processing time.

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Random Points
Use the Random Points command (Create > Points > More > Random Points) to create a defined
number of points distributed randomly.

You can choose between a Square or Sphere shape. Constant generally confines the points to the
selected shape, while Falloff tapers off the point distribution along the perimeter.

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Polygons
Polygons are multisided geometric shapes which are arranged so as to make a continuous surface
for a 3D object. LightWave provides several tools for creating polygons, some of which use points
you have already created, and some of which create the points as well as the resulting polygons.

Pen
The Pen tool (Create > Polygons > Pen) gives a quick way to create polygons on the fly, and creates
the points as part of the process.

To create a polygon with the Pen tool:

Choose Create > Polygons > Pen and click in a viewport with your LMB. A polygon is created using
points you define by clicking. If you drag with the mouse button, you can refine the points position
before you create it, which happens when you release the mouse button. You do not need to click
in the same viewport for each point. Once you have the polygon defined as you wish, you can
finalise it by clicking the Pen tool off.
If you wish to create multiple polygons, then once you have completed a polygon, move the
mouse cursor to where you wish to place the first point of a new polygon, click the RMB, then
continue to build the new polygon using the LMB.
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While the pen tool is active, you can click on and drag any point using the LMB to edit its
position.

If you create a new point in your polygon by clicking to closely to an existing point, Modeler
can think you are editing the existing point and not create the point. If this is the case, simply click at a
location that is not close to an existing point, then drag the new point to its desired location.

The Add Point button allows you to interactively add a point to your newly created polygon.

The point will be positioned at the same location as the last created point, so may not be
obvious until you change its position either with the numeric panel, or by clicking on it and dragging
with the LMB.

Once you create a polygon, youll want to view it in the Polygon Selection mode to see if its
surface is facing the correct direction based on the normal, as discussed elsewhere. If you are using the
Back view for example, creating points clockwise will make a polygon with its face or normal facing you.
Counter-clockwise creation of the points will make a polygon that faces away.

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Line Pen
Create > Polygons > Line Pen - Line Pen is a polygonal sketching tool. If you use it to create
interconnected lines, it will create a two-point poly chain, useful for hair guides and dynamics.
If you connect lines to make closed shapes, Line Pen will create polygons. If you have existing
polygons and draw additional lines attached to them, Line Pen will make those lines into polygons
too.

Lines do not have to be sketched in a void. You can draw on existing polygons and holding Shift as
you draw allows you to draw out from the normal of the polygon you are drawing on. Holding Ctrl
will constrain the lines to an axis, in common with other Modeler tools.

More
Edges 2 Poly
(Create > Polygons > More > Edges2Poly) Creates a polygon based on the edges selected.

Make Polygon
(default keyboard shortcut P)
The Make Polygon tool (Create > Polygons > Make Polygon) allows you to turn selected points into
a polygon. Excluding the one and two-point specialty polygons, polygons should contain at least
three points. You will likely find that your finished objects are constructed of a variety of polygons
with different numbers of points.

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Dont get discouraged if making polygons seems very tedious. Not that it isnt, but most of the
time youll create your objects by starting with primitives. Usually, creating polygons from points is the
exception rather than the rule.

You might hear artists talking about building objects point by point. This is the method they are
referring to.
To create a polygon from points:
1) In the Point Selection mode, select your points in a clockwise order.

2) Then, click Create > Polygons: Make Polygon.

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Once you create a polygon, youll want to view it in the Polygon Selection mode to see if its
surface is facing the correct direction based on the normal. If you are using the back view for example,
selecting points clockwise and making a polygon will create it with the face or normal of the polygon
facing you. Counter-clockwise selection of the points will create a polygon that faces away.

Points to Polys
Single-Point Polygons
Sometimes you will want to turn single points into polygons. This is necessary for objects like
stars in a starfield, since you cannot assign surface attributes to a point, and points dont appear
in renders. Choose Create > Polygons > Points to Polys to turn selected points into single-point
polygons (also known as Particles).

Metaballs
Metaballs is one of three Meta-primitives in LightWave. Meta-primitives are similar to HyperVoxels
except that they are polygon-based, and their surface and interaction is more apparent and
viewable in Modeler. In fact, Meta-primitives are a good place to start before you set up with
HyperVoxels, because of their real-time feedback. All Meta-primitives will interact with each other if
they are in the same layer, even though they are different types..
To draw a Metaball object:
1) Activate the Draw Metaballs tool. (Create > Polygons > More > Metaballs)
2) Click in a Modeler viewport. Use any Rendering Style other than Wireframe and you will see
the metaball

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3) You can move the metaball by dragging its center handle. You can change its size by
dragging the sizing handle that looks like an orbiting circle.

If you click anywhere else, another Metaball will be created.

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4) If you move or increase a metaball so that its surface approaches the surface of another,
they will adhere to each other, like the stuff in a lava lamp.

5) Drop the Draw Metaballs tool (i.e., reselect it or press the space bar).

Converting to Metaballs
You can also convert points into plain Metaballs using the Make Metaballs command (Construct >
Convert > Convert Metaballs).

Metaball Appearance
The amount of detail for displaying Meta-primitives is handled by the Metaball Resolution setting
on Modelers General Options Panel (Modeler > Edit > General Options). The value represents the
number of subdivisions (pixels per metaball on the screen). To get a smoother surface, increase the
value. There is no limit.
You can also toggle the Meta-primitive mesh on/off by choosing Construct > Convert > Toggle
Metamesh. You may want to do this if you have a lot of Meta-primitives and your display refresh is
too slow. This is not just a display change and is similar to toggling off SubPatches. If you save
a Meta-primitive with the mesh off, you will not be able to see the surface in Layout.
You can surface Meta-primitives as you would any object; however, you are allowed only one
surface per layer.

Animating Meta-primitives
You can animate Meta-primitives the same way you would animate any object. Of course, you
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wont take advantage of their benefits unless you animate point positions. For this, you can use
features like morph targets, bones, Displacement Maps, and so on. Note that only Meta-primitives
in the same layer will interact with each other.

Editing Meta-primitives
Activate the Edit Metaballs tool (Construct > Convert > Edit Metaballs) to edit existing Metaprimitives. On the Numeric Panel, you can adjust the Radius and Influence.

Radius and Influence Settings

The Numeric Panel has Radius and Influence settings. Radius is simply the size of the Metaprimitive ball. Adjusting the Influence changes the interaction between balls. Setting a negative
Influence will invert the primitive causing it to eat away neighbouring Meta-primitives instead of
blending.
Deactivate the tool by dropping it, reselecting it, or hitting the space bar when you are done.

Meta Edges
Meta-Edges is one of three Meta-primitives in LightWave. To draw Meta-Edges:
1) Activate the Draw Meta-Edges tool. (Create > Polygons > Metaedges)
2) Metaedges are essentially multi-point versions of plain Metaballs. Your initial clicking point
establishes the first point. Hold the LMB down and drag out the second point. Other than
there being two points, this tool works just like the Draw Metaballs tool.

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3) You can move each end of the Meta Edge object by dragging its center handle. You can
change its size by dragging the sizing handle that looks like an orbiting circle.

If you click anywhere else, another Meta-Edges object will be created.

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4) If you move or increase meta-edges so that its surface approaches the surface of another,
they will adhere to each other, like the stuff in a lava lamp.

5) Drop the Draw Meta-Edges tool (i.e., reselect it or press the

Space

bar).

Converting to Meta-Edges
Meta-edges can be created from two-point polygons or curves. Simply select the polygon/curve
and choose Construct > Convert: Convert Metaedges.

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The third type of MetaPrimitive is called a MetaFace. There is no tool to draw a MetaFace; it is
created from existing geometry .

Curves
In addition to making polygons from points, you can also create curves. Curves are a powerful
Modeling tool and help you create smooth edges and flowing organic objects or object details.
They are also used for some Modeling tools as a directional path.
You can create curves using a minimal number of points, yet achieve a smoothness that would take
many times the number of points if you attempted to mimic the curve with a polygon. Moreover,
with fewer points, it is easy to subtly or dramatically change the curves shape. However, by
themselves, curves will never render in a finished image. They are basically a freeform Modeling
tool used to create polygonal objects.
There are basically two types of curves: open and closed. An open curve has a beginning and an
end - essentially a curving line. A closed curve has no beginning or end; it is a closed loop. A circle
is a closed curve.

Sketch Tool
The Sketch tool (Create > Curves > Sketch) is purely a two-dimensional Modeling tool. With it, you
can draw polygons and curves in any viewport.
To sketch a polygon:
1) Choose Create > Curves: Sketch.
2) Open the Numeric Panel and select Face as the Type.

3) Drag out the desired shape. (It is not necessary to touch the beginning of the line with the
end. The polygon is closed automatically.)

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When you release your mouse button, a polygon is created using the shape you sketched out.
The polygon is always centered in the depth dimension of the viewport.

Sketching Curves
You can use the Curve option on the Numeric Panel of the Sketch tool to create a spline curve
instead of a polygon. The tool operates exactly as previously described, except an open spline
curve is created instead of a polygon.
To sketch a curve:
1) Click Create > Curves > Sketch.

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2) Open the Numeric Panel and select Curve as the Type.

3) Drag out the desired shape. When you release your mouse button, a curve is created using
the shape you sketched out. The curve is always written on a plane positioned at 0 of the
viewports perpendicular axis.

Creating open curves can be used in many Modeling operations. The image below is an example of
taking the curve created above and using the Lathe tool to create a solid object. Instant Spray Can!

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Bezier Tool
The Bezier tool (Create > Curves > Bezier) allows you to create standard spline curves using tangent
controls. If youve used any vector program you will feel right at home using the Bezier tool.

To use the Bezier tool:

1) Choose Create > Curves > Bezier.
2) Place your mouse pointer where you would like to begin your curve.
3) Click and hold your LMB - the beginning and ending of your first curve is created. Drag
your mouse to where you want the curve to end and release the mouse button.
4) Successive clicks will create additional curves.
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5) Drag the tangent handles (circles) to adjust the curve shape. Holding the Ctrl key
while dragging will allow you to move both sides of the tangent simultaneously.
6) Click and drag with the LMB in the large circles that represent the
curve control points to change the control points position.
7) Drop the tool by hitting the space bar.

Using the Bezier tool to generate a complex curve actually generates a normal Modeler spline
curve between each control point. As such, you cannot re-edit the curves using the Bezier tool but, you
can edit the control points created on the finished splines. To make the curves a single entity, select all
the curves (you must be in Polygon selection mode to do this) and use the Detail> Merge Polygons tool
( Shift Z) to join all the curves together. (This is essential if the curve is to be used later on with Modelers
Rail Bevel or Rail Clone tool).
On the Numeric Panel, you can set the subdivision level (for smoother or less smooth curves),
create a closed curve, and delete the last tangent point.

Open Curve

Closed Curve

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Spline Draw Tool
The Spline Draw tool (Create > Curves > Spline Draw) is simply a tool for making spline curves.
To use the tool, just click and move points. Clicking off the curve adds new points to the end.

Its Numeric Panel offers options for making control points, discussed later, and deleting the
last point from the curve. Changing the Curve Points value will resample the curve into more
segments. Note that resampling the curve can change its shape, particularly if the number is
incremented gradually, as is the case with the mini-slider. If you want a more refined curve that
accurately matches the one you have drawn, enter the new number directly into the field to avoid
the intermediate curves.

Creating from Points

You can also create curves from points in a similar manner to creating polygons.
To create a curve:

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1) Create a few points. Clicking with your RMB using the Points tool (Create > Points > Points)
will work.

2) Your points must be selected in the order you want the curve to flow. However, if you
immediately go to - or were using - the Point Selection mode, the points should already be in
the selected state. If not, select them in the desired order.
3) To create an open curve from the points, click Create > Curves: Make Curve > Make Open
Curve or press Ctrl P.

To create a closed curve from the points, click Create > Curves: Make Curve > Make Closed Curve.

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You can modify the curves shape by simply moving the individual points. Notice how the curve
flows smoothly through the interior points. It is easiest to see this as you drag points on either side
of a point. If you need additional control, you can add additional points to an existing curve.
To add points to a curve:
Select the spline or splines, activate the Add Points tool (Multiply > Subdivide > Add Points) and click
anywhere along the curve.
To delete points from a curve:
Select the points and use the Cut command ( Ctrl X) or the delete key.

Curve Direction
Curves also have a head and tail. This is important for certain Modeling operations. When the curve
is selected in the Polygon Selection mode, the head is indicated by a small diamond; it is the first
point you selected when creating the curve.

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You can flip the head and tail around by using the Flip command (Detail > Polygons > Flip).

Using Control Points

When using a curve as a Modeling tool, sometimes you need to adjust the curve to get it to that
perfect angle. Because of the way that points control an open curves shape, it can be difficult
to get the desired result at the ends of a curve. Fortunately, Modeler lets you have extra control
points at each end, which affect the curves shape, but dont actually become part of the curves
Modeling characteristics.
To activate control points on a curve:
1) If you have more than one curve, select your desired curve first using the Polygon Selection
mode.

2) Choose Detail > Curves: Control Points > Begin Control Point to detach the first point from the
curve. It is your starting control point. Dragging this point will change the shape of the curve
at the new starting point.

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Choose Detail > Curves > Control Points > End Control Point to detach the last point from the curve.
It is your ending control point. Dragging it will change the shape of the curve at the new ending
point.

The Control Points commands will also toggle the control point state off, if selected again.

It is perfectly legal to have only a beginning or ending control point on a curve.

If you plan to use control points on a curve, you should add an extra point at the beginning and
end of a curve for that purpose.

If you require a sharper corner anywhere on a curve, simply add an extra point close to the
corner using Construct > Subdivide > Add Points.

Smoothing Two Overlapping Curves

When two curves share the same end point, because of point merging or some other reason, the
curve may not flow smoothly through that point. This can be particularly troubling when designing
a complex spline cage. You could kill the curve (K), reselect the points and create a new curve, but
there is an easier way.
To smooth curves sharing a common end point:
1) Select the two curves (Polygon Selection mode).

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2) Click Detail > Curves > Smooth. This smooths the joint as though the two curves were
originally plotted as one continuous curve - even though they remain individual curves.

Make sure that the point they share is in fact one point. (If not, merge or weld the points into
one.)

Turning Curves into Polygons

Since curves will never be seen by themselves, sometimes you need to turn them into polygons.
To convert a curve into a polygon:
Select the curve(s) and choose Construct > Convert > Freeze. Each independent curve will become a
distinct polygon. An open curve will be closed (between its end points) before it is converted to a
polygon.

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The number of points that Modeler will use to approximate the curve depends on the setting for
Curve Division on the General Options Panel (Modeler > Edit > General Options).

Using Modeling Tools on Curves

Most of the standard Modeling tools will work on a curve as well. However, a curve is sometimes
converted into a polygon before the tool is applied. This happens with the Extrude and Lathe tools
(Multiply menu), for example.

Alt

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Spline Cage
Create > Curves > Spline Cage creates a cylindrical spline cage (connected curves).

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Axis - The primitive is aligned with this axis.

Sections - Sets how many vertical segments should be used.

Sides - Determines how many segments should be used around the perimeter.

Bottom - Bottom is thestarting point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Top - Top is the ending point of the primitive along the selected Axis.
Radius - Refers to the radius of the primitive along the axes.

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Plot 1D Tool
The Plot1D tool, which is located in Create > Curves: Plot1D, generates either a curve consisting of
two-point polygons or a spline curve. The curve is generated along the X axis, and its height is in
the Z axis. Get your maths head on for this tool.

The height is determined by the value of the expression in the Equation field at each x. In the fields
Min, Max, and Division, enter the x value for the start of the curve, the x value for the end of the
curve, and the number of divisions of the curve.

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Modify Tab
Introduction
The Modify Tab contains a variety of tools to make changes to existing geometry. These can be
applied to individual selected points, edges, or polygons, portions of an object, or to an entire
object. The available operations range from simple relocation of points or polygons to resizing the
geometry in one or more dimensions, to complex deformations of the entire mesh.

Falloff Mode
Several of the tools on the Modify tab have a Falloff pop-up menu on the lower half of the numeric
panels. By changing the Falloff setting, you can effectively make the function of the Move tool have
the same effects as using the Shear, Magnet, DragNet, and Drag tools, by just changing its Falloff
setting. You might think of these tools as just shortcuts to a defined group of Modify settings. This
type of selection via falloffs is also referred to as a Soft Selection.
We will be explaining the falloff tools here at the start of the chapter.

Falloff Types
None - None means no falloff. The Move tool is set to this by default.
Linear - Linear makes the effect fall off along a linear axis, and operates like the tools Shear,
Twist, Taper1, and Taper2.
Point - Point falloff works like the Drag tool.
Point Radial - Point Radial operates much like the DragNet tool.
Polygon - Polygon means falloff is immediate around a polygon, so you can move only a
single polygon. It behaves like the drag tool but works on single polygons instead of points.
Radial - Radial means the effect will fall off in a radial pattern (in a cylindrical or spherical
shape), so it is the default for Magnet, Vortex, Pole1, and Pole2.
Weight Map - Weight Map uses the selected Weight Map for the falloff. Unweighted points
will not move at all, while heavily weighted points will move the most. Negatively weighted
points will move inversely. This allows you to use an irregularly shaped falloff. This mode is
particularly useful for creating facial endomorphs.

Falloff Mouse Controls

Falloffs are controlled with the right mouse button (RMB).

RMB on a handle to drag it.

RMB on nothing to start a new falloff.
RMB-Click on the handle to switch to Auto falloff mode.
Holding down Ctrl constrains the dragging of falloff handles to horizontal axes.

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Linear Settings

Shape

You can quickly select between various basic falloff directions using the Shape buttons. The Shape
setting determines the Area of Influence. This is shown graphically in both the numeric panel and
viewport windows. You can also use the Left and Right cursor keys to change the selected Shape.

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Tension Sliders
You can adjust how the effect falls off using the two sliders, which act like tension spline controls
for the beginning (upper slider) and ending (lower slider).

Presets
You can quickly set up some common curves by selecting from the Preset pop-up menu. The graph
on the numeric panel, as well as the outer edges of the axis tree (when using a fixed range) gives
you a visual picture of the falloff. You can also use the Up and Down cursor keys to cycle through
the Preset selection.

Range
The Range option determines where the Falloffs center is located. By default, a linear falloff tools
effect is automatically applied to the object (or selected items) 100 percent at one end and zero
at the other, along the axis perpendicular to the editing viewport. This is indicated by the Range
option at the bottom portion of the numeric panel, which has Automatic selected.
To use the tool in the Automatic mode via the numeric panel (by clicking the Apply button), select
the perpendicular Axis. (If the axis has not been set either manually or by a previous mouse-based
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modify operation, the Axis setting is used to compute the falloff when you click Apply.)
Automatic - The center is set by clicking in the viewport.
Fixed - The center is set by entering in values in the numeric window.

Using the Automatic Range is the simplest method. Thus, if possible, model your object along
one of the three axes.
Instead of using an Automatic Range, you can define a specific Fixed Range using an axis tree. This
type of Range can be placed at any position and at any angle in 3D space. The effect tree looks
like a pair of crossed wedges. The tools effect is applied along this tree with zero at its tip and 100
percent at its base (fat end) - portions of the object beyond the base are still affected 100 percent.
The edges of the tree reflect the fall-off curve shape.

To create a fixed range:

1) Select the desired linear falloff tool and drag out the axis tree with your RMB. (The Range
option will be set to Fixed on the numeric panel.)

2) Reposition the ends by dragging them with your RMB.

The XYZ positions of the starting and ending points are reflected in the numeric panel. You can
edit these values, if necessary.

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To reset to Automatic Range:
To reset to Automatic Range, click your mouse pointer on an inactive interface area. Note this will
also switch you back to the Automatic Range mode.

Moving an Object on an Arbitrary Axis

Lets say you had an object that was not aligned nicely along the X, Y, or Z axis. If you wanted, you
could define a fixed range and align the effect tree with the object. However, this can be a tedious
process. A better alternative would be to use a Perspective viewport.
Remember, editing generally occurs along a viewports arbitrary horizontal and vertical axes.
When using a Perspective viewport, this can be something other than directly along the X, Y, or
Z axis. Thus, you can align your object so that it is perpendicular in the viewport and just use the
Automatic Range.

Radial Settings:
This influence area falls off in a radial pattern (a sphere or cylinder). It is set independently of any
selected polygons or points, but works in conjunction with them. That is, if points/polygons are
selected, only those within the influence area are affected.
By default, the tools effect is automatically applied to the entire object (or selected items). This
is indicated by the Range option, at the bottom portion of the numeric panel, which will have
Automatic selected.

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Setting the Falloff Shape

How the effect falls off is determined by the two sliders, which act like tension spline controls for
the beginning/end (upper slider) and center (lower slider). You can quickly set up some common
curves by selecting from the Preset pop-up menu. The graph gives you a visual picture of the
falloff.

Defining a Specific Range

Instead of using an Automatic Range, you can define a specific Fixed Range, which can be
positioned and sized anywhere in 3D space.

To set the influence area:

1) Select the desired Radial falloff tool and drag out the influence area tree with your RMB. (The
Range option will be set to Fixed on the numeric panel.) At this point, you have defined a
cylindrical area that extends infinitely along an axis perpendicular to the viewport. Use the
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Ctrl

key to constrain to a circle.

2) Resize the initial area as needed by dragging the outline edge handles with your RMB or
reposition by dragging the center handle.

3) To limit the depth of the area, drag out the outline in a different viewport. The amount of
influence is strongest at the center and diminishes towards the edges. Polygons with all
points outside of the area will not be affected.

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Creating the radial falloff influence area is similar to creating a Box primitive, particularly in a
perspective viewport.

To reset the influence area:

To reset the influence area, click your mouse pointer on an inactive interface area. Note this will
also switch you back to the Automatic Range mode.

The Numeric Panel

The Radius X, Y, and Z values reflect the size and shape of the influence area. If you have defined a
cylindrical (i.e., two-dimensional) area, one axis will be 0. The Center X, Y, and Z values define the
center of the area of influence.

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2015

Texture added to Falloffs

In LightWave 2015, we have added Texture to the Falloff options for the Move, Dragnet, Rotate,
Scale, Shear and Twist tools. The texture can be chosen with a click on the Texture button (Image
maps, Gradients and procedural textures including Nodes can all be used) and clicking on the Use
Texture toggle will use the Texture falloff or revert to one of the standard Falloffs at the bottom of
the window.

Translate Group
The tools in the Translate group allow you to relocate all or part of the geometry, in some cases
with varying level of effect across the geometry.

Move Tool
(default keyboard shortcut T)
The Move tool (Modify > Move) is the basic tool used to reposition geometry. This tool is used often
so its worth learning the shortcut key.
To move geometry:
1) Select your points or polygons.

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2) Choose Modify >Move (T), click and drag your mouse in any view. The selected geometry will
follow your movement.

Holding the Ctrl key before you click and drag will constrain the movement along one of
the axes. It is also not necessary to place the cursor directly on the selected item. You can move from
anywhere.

Drag
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl T)
To move points around without having to select them, select Move, then select other points, use
the Drag tool.
To drag points:

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1) To limit the edit to certain points, select them first. The Drag tool will not affect unselected
points unless none are selected. Thus, if you have points in-line with each other in a viewport
and dont want to drag all of them, select the target points first. (Note that all of the selected
points do not move as you drag, only the ones under your mouse pointer.)
2) Choose Modify > Drag to access the Drag tool.
3) Position your mouse pointer directly over a point, click and drag.

Snap Drag Tool

(default keyboard shortcut Shift G)
The Snap Drag tool (Modify >Snap Drag Tool) allows points to be dragged and snapped to align
with other points. When you drag a point with the Snap Drag tool, the point is snapped to the grid
or to one of the non-moving points, if any.

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If you set Drag Set to One Point on the numeric panel, only the single point will move. If you
choose Connected Points, points that are connected to the point being dragged will also move. If
you choose All Points, all points will move. As with other tools, you can use selection to limit which
points are affected. Snap makes it easy to manipulate unconnected parts without having to make
explicit selections.

With View Alignment, points will be snapped to approximately align with the other points along an
axis perpendicular to the viewport, but not fully in three dimensions.

Although this tool works on individual points, selecting polygons and working in the Polygon
Edit mode will limit its effect to points that share a vertex with the selected polygons.

Tweak
Modify > Translate > Tweak - The Tweak tool allows you to interactively translate the points, edges
and polygons that make up your object. You dont need to be in a specific mode to use it. Points,
Edges and Polygons can all be tweaked no matter which mode you are in. Clicking with the left
mouse button will drag the elements, clicking with the right mouse button will extend new edges
or polygons.

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Center Data
(default keyboard shortcut F2)
The Center Data command (Modify > Center) centers the contents of the foreground layer(s) on the
Origin (i.e., 0, 0, 0).

DragNet Tool
(default keyboard shortcut ; )
The DragNet tool (Modify > DragNet) combines the Drag and Magnet tools. While you might use
it somewhat interchangeably with Magnet, they operate quite differently. Magnets radial falloff
influence area works independently from the actual use of the tool. With DragNet, the spherical
range is always centerd around the initial point of dragging. Moreover, you must actually drag a
point, although other points in the influence area will also move.
The influence area is defined by the Radius around the initial pointer position. You can graphically
set this by dragging out a circle with your RMB.

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To use the DragNet tool:

Select Modify > DragNet, click and drag a point. Other points in the influence area will also move,
though not as much.

The information display tells you the Offset value, that is, how far you dragged the mouse. If you
set the influence area interactively with the RMB, the information display shows the Radius value.

Magnet Tool
(default keyboard shortcut : )
The Magnet tool (Modify > Magnet) is a nifty tool for pushing in or pulling out sections of objects.
The effect is smoothly applied, so it tends to create soft-edged bulges or dips in a surface. You
might use the Magnet tool to create an egg shape from a sphere. (Simply enclose the upper
hemisphere in the influence range, center the area near the top of the sphere, and drag upward
with the LMB.) You can actually use the tool immediately as sort of a freeform deformation or you
can create an area of influence.

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To use the Magnet tool:

Select Modify > Magnet and drag your LMB in a viewport. The initial pointer location defines the
center of the move, although this may not be obvious if it is located outside of a defined range.

The information display will indicate the Offset amount for the affected axes, that is, the distance
you have moved your mouse.

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The Offset X, Y, and Z values on the numeric panel will reflect the amount of movement along
those axes for the tools last operation. You can edit the values and then click the Apply button to
apply them, which you can do multiple times.

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Shear Tool
(default keyboard shortcut [ )
Shearing is making an object slant to one side. A good example is italicized text. Think of Shear as
Move with axial falloff. That is, the strength of the moving influence is not equal across the object,
but gradually falls off along a selected axis.

To use the Shear tool:

Select Modify > Shear, click and drag your LMB in a viewport in the direction you want the slant.
The information display tells you how much Offset you applied along two of the three axes,
depending on the view you edit in. Hold the Ctrl key down while dragging to constrain the shear
to your initial dragging axis.

The Offset X, Y, and Z values on the numeric panel will reflect the amount of movement along
those axes for the tools last operation.

Axis Translate
Modify > Translate > Axis Translate - Much like CAD tools, the Axis... tools work in a specific
sequence. For Axis Translate, the sequence is that you pick where you want to move from to where
you want to move to. There is no change in attitude for the object you have selected but you can
use snapping again to provide more control.

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Holding Shift and drawing up from the top yellow polygon allows you to move the blue box away from the yellow. As can be seen in
the screenshots, neither box is aligned to an axis, but the blue box is moved along the yellow boxs normal. The third screenshot shows
snapping to the vertices of the blue box. This will move it along its length.

The falloff modes for this tool are described in detail starting on page 1316.

Align...
This submenu presents a variety of options. The To Points Last... align tools each perform a specific
translation based on the last point selected and the axis chosen. When a group of points are
selected and a To Points Last... align tool is used, all the selected points will align to the selected
axis.
Align Points to Axis can perform multiple axis alignments at once.

Align Points to Axis (XYZ) will align any selected points to the specified axis. Multiple axes can be
selected.
Align to aligns the points to the specified element. First will align the points to the first selected
point. Last will align the points to the last selected point. World will align the selected points to the
world axis.

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Merge Points will perform a weld of any points sharing the same world space.

Align
Modify > Translate > Align... > Align - This tool requires two objects, a selection and two clicks on
two normals. These normals can be from the vertex, edge center, or polygon center. The Align tool
will try to move and rotate selected geometry in such a way that the normal of the first click would
face the normal of the second click.
To use the Align tool, first activate the tool. Click on the point, edge center or polygon center of the
selected geometry that you wish to align, then click on the point, edge center or polygon center
that represents the target normal on the unselected geometry. All selected geometry will move so
that the first normal shares the same root as the target normal, and this geometry will also rotate
so that it faces the opposite direction of the target normal.

Note that if you click on the unselected geometry first and then the selected geometry Align will
give unexpected results. Always click on the selected geometry first.
An example of Align usage: first click the center of a polygon on a selected box, then click the
center of a polygon on an unselected box. The selected box will move and rotate so that its clicked
polygon center faces that of the clicked polygon center on the unselected box.

We want to align the front face of the selected object with the yellow object. Both are on the same layer, neither is on any axis. First we click
on the face of the blue object we wish to align, next we click on the face of the yellow object we wish that face to be aligned to and the third
image shows the result.

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Aligner Tool
Aligner will align geometry not only with axes, but also other geometry. The Mode setting
determines what type of alignment you want.

Modes

World - The World mode will align geometry in the foreground to the X, Y and Z axes. The c
setting will center on the axis. The minus (-) or plus (+) settings will place the geometry on
the negative or positive side of the axis. Off disables that axis. So if you had a floor at Y = 0
and you wanted the object centerd, but resting on this floor, set the Z and X axes to c and
the Y axis to +.
Foreground-> Background - In the F.G.->B.G. mode, the foreground is aligned to the
background.
This mode uses a bounding box around all of the geometry in the reference layer (the
background). You can center or position on the negative or positive side of the reference. The
-+ setting will align the right edge of the geometry with the right edge of the reference layer.
The +- setting will align the left edge of the geometry with the right edge of the reference
layer. You may also scale the geometry to the reference layer. Select the axis or axes to scale
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using the Scale Axis pop-up menu.
Background->Foreground - The B.G.->F.G. mode works just like F.G.->B.G., but uses the
foreground as the reference for the background.
Absolute - The Absolute mode works like the World mode except you can numerically define
where the center is. In other words, you can make it something other than 0, 0, 0.
Scale Axis - Gives the option to scale the geometry to the reference layer. Select the axis or axes in
this pop-up menu. This option is only available with FG/BG modes.

Rest On Ground
(default keyboard shortcut F3)
The Rest On Ground command (Modify > Rest On Ground) will move selected polygons so that they
rest on a defined ground plane, that is, where X, Y, or Z equals 0.

The Rest Axis is the axis perpendicular to the plane you want the object to rest on. You may also
center the object on any of the axes.

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The Sense option rests the object on the positive (+) side of the plane or the negative (-) side. The
default setting would be ideal for, say, centring a vehicle around the Origin and placing it so it sits
flat on the Y axis plane.

Align to Plane
Modify > Translate > Align > Align to Plane/Restore Align - The scripts that were added in LightWave
11 to help with modeling off-axis have been moved to the Modify tab since they are no longer as
necessary with the new tools available.

The Align to Plane tool creates a 2-point polygon in the first free background layer to store the
rotation. This lets you save an object mid-way through an Align to Plane operation; quit Modeler; come
back later and carry on. Modeler will know exactly the transformation it needs to do to align the model
back to its original state .

Center...
This submenu contains tools to center geometry on one or more axes.

Center All...
Fires a command to center selected geometry at 0, 0, 0. Remember, if no geometry is selected its
all selected.

Center X, Y, Z
Fires a command to center selected geometry on the selected axis.

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Center Axis

A tool that allows you to select to center on one or more axes and across multiple layers. The
Respect Layers switch centers based on disconnected geometry in one layer being a whole for the
purposes of centering rather than centring each object on the layer separately.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Move Plus
The Move Plus tool (Modify > Translate > More > Move Plus) is a detailed version of the Move tool
used to reposition geometry.
This tool is almost identical to LightWaves interactive Move tool. However, it provides two
additional features. When dragging your selection with the RMB, the selection will be translated
along the local normals. When dragging with the right mouse button with Shift held down, the
selection will be translated along the averaged normal.

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Before Move Plus

Move Plus LMB Move Plus RMB

Move Plus doesnt replace the Move tool as it doesnt have the Falloff settings that are found in
the Move tool.

Translate Plus Tool

Translate Plus is found in Modify > Translate > More and functions as a detailed Move, Rotate, and
Scale tool. You can use a points normal, a segment, or a segments normal to define how to move,
rotate, scale a selection. You can even just use global X, Y, or Z. Each of these operations can have a
falloff.

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Quick Preview Mode - The Quick Preview Mode will show a temporary blue outline of the
translation and the action wont take place until you have applied (RMB) the action. This is
particularly handy when working with very heavy meshes.
Operation - This setting defines what will be performed on the object. Options are: Translate,
Rotate, Scale on Axis, Scale to Point.

Axis - What axis will be used to determine how selection is Operated on. X, Y, and Z are just
the default axes. The other options are Point Normal, Segment, and Segment Normal.

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Origin - Refers to where the Axis originates. By default it is placed at center of whatever the
Axis is. There are times when it needs to be somewhere else. Generally, there wont be a
need to change this unless the operation is Scale on Axis. The options are Default, Point, or
Segment.

When Point and Segment are selected, the object will display blue circles over each point. Select
one point for Point mode and select two points for Segment mode.

Translate Origin - Enables moving of the Origin. For example, if Point Normal was the axis
chosen, it will move the Origin along the normal.

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Controls Tab - Whichever Operation is selected will be editable and the others will be greyed
out. Generally, there is no need to use the controls because it is easier to click on the screen
itself to move selections.
Falloff Tab - The options for falloff are Internal and None. Internal means that the falloff is
only within the selection. Falloff settings can be edited by using the options at the bottom of
the panel.

Falloff Shape - Defaults to Linear, but there are also Bell, Curve Down, and Curve Up. The shape
can be modified further by using Falloff Tightness.
Falloff Tightness - Determines whether points in falloff range will be closer to selection (or
origin) or closer to their original position.
Falloff Center - Same as the Origin settings except instead of Default it is a Selection.
Even though holding Ctrl or using the MMB will constrain movement, sometimes that is hard to
do in perspective. Also, if moving selections with LightWaves Move tool is slow (due to large poly
count), this tool is handy because it moves in real time.

Rove Tool
The Rove tool (Modify >More > Rove) allows you to move and rotate with a single tool!

Position Rove Tool - Click and drag off the tools widget to place it where you want the action
center to be.

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Translation - To move an object, simply click and drag. Dragging on an axis constrains
movement to that axis.

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Rotation - Rotate the object about the center of the tool by clicking and dragging the
rotation ring. The center of rotation can be repositioned by dragging the center of the tool.

The Rove tool only works in one Layer.

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2015

Point Normal Move

Point Normal Move is located under the Modify Tab and allows you to move points along their
normals.

The yellow lines in the image above represent the normals for some of the points on the ball
object. Using Point Normal Move would move each point along its normals.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now move points along their normals on multiple foreground
layers at once and the moves will be on the same layer as the original points.

Mode:
Single Point - allows you to run it without selecting points first and then you can move any
points you want without selecting them.
Selected Points - select the points you want to move, select Point Normal Move tool and then
click and drag anywhere on the screen to move them in and out.

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Untangle
When a polygon is selected, this tool will make it circular. The more sides the polygon has, the
closer to a perfect circle it will become.

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Rotate
This group of tools is dedicated to rotating geometry.

Rotate Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Y )
Select Modify > Rotate, click and drag your LMB left for counter-clockwise rotation or right for
clockwise rotation. The center of the effect is determined by the Action Center setting. Hold the
Ctrl key down as you drag to rotate in 15-degree increments. The information display (lower-left
corner of the interface) will tell you the angle of rotation, that is, the number of degrees you have
rotated.

Rotating an entire object in Modeler is very similar to as doing it in Layout, except that you rotate
around the perpendicular axis of the viewport. Because of that, you will often have to use various
viewports to rotate an object.

The Rotate Numeric Panel

The Angle defines the degree of rotation. The Axis setting defines the axis of rotation. When you
click in a viewport, the axis is an imaginary line running perpendicular to the view you are editing
in (i.e., coming straight out towards you). For the Back view, it would be the Z axis; in the Top view,
it would be the Y axis; and in the Right view, it would be the X axis. If arbitrary axes were used, no
Axis will be selected.
The Center XYZ values define the center of rotation coordinates.

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In any viewport, pressing the R key (Rotate 90 Right) will rotate an object clockwise 90 degrees
around a perpendicular axis located at the current mouse pointer location. You can also map the Rotate
90 Left command to a hot key as well.

Axis Rotate
Modify > Rotate > Axis Rotate - Much like CAD tools, the Axis... tools work in a specific sequence.
For Axis Rotate, the sequence is to pick an end point for a line about which your selected polygons
will rotate. Your second click denotes the other end of this line and then holding down the left
mouse button will rotate the selected polygons about this axis. You can use snapping to snap the
end points of your axis to vertices or the center of polygons on the layer. You can also pick the axis
to rotate around from items on a Background layer. Alternatively, you can hold down the Shift key
and click on a polygon to rotate about its normal.

Were using the two objects from the previous example and we want to even them up. Use Axis Rotate and Shift click on the top blue
polygon, now the box will be rotated about that polygons normal. To get the alignment right, use the Nudge controls in the Numeric Panel
to perfect your rotation.

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Bend Tool
The Bend tool (Modify > Bend) is a combination of Rotate and Shear. It will move one side of an
object and rotate it at the same time, causing the entire object to bend.

To use the Bend tool:

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Select the tool and drag your LMB in the direction you want the bend to occur. The initial pointer
location defines the center of the rotation. The trick is to use the Bend tool in the viewport that is
perpendicular to the axis of the bend. Lets say you have a tube whose main axis is along Y. Use the
Bend tool from the top or bottom view. Also, experiment with the placement of the cursor relative
to the object. Activating Bend when the cursor is centerd over the object has a different effect than
activating Bend with the cursor located away from the object.
The information display tells you the Angle of bending, that is, the number of degrees you bent the
object. Hold the Ctrl key while dragging to constrain movement to increments of 15 degreesthis
makes it much easier to bend along a single axis.

Angle - The Angle value on the numeric panel will reflect the degrees of rotation.
Shape - You can quickly select between two basic falloff directions using the Shape buttons.
The Shape setting determines the Area of Influence. This is shown graphically in both the
numeric panel and viewport windows. You can also use the Left and Right cursor keys to
change the selected Shape.

Range
The Range option determines where the Falloffs center is located. By default, a linear falloff tools
effect is automatically applied to the object (or selected items), 100 percent at one end and zero
at the other, along the axis perpendicular to the editing viewport. This is indicated by the Range
option at the bottom portion of the numeric panel, which has Automatic selected.
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To use the tool in the Automatic Mode via the numeric panel (by clicking the Apply button), select
the perpendicular Axis. (If the axis has not been set either manually or by a previous mouse-based
modify operation, the Axis setting is used to compute the falloff when you click Apply.)
Automatic - The center is set by clicking in the viewport.
Fixed - The center is set by entering in values in the numeric window.

Using the Automatic Range is the simplest method. Thus, if possible, model your object along
one of the three axes.
Instead of using an Automatic Range, you can define a specific Fixed Range using an axis tree. This
type of Range can be placed at any position and at any angle in 3D space. The effect tree looks
like a pair of crossed wedges. The tools effect is applied along this tree with zero at its tip and 100
percent at its base (fat end) - portions of the object beyond the base are still affected 100 percent.

Twist Tool
The Twist tool (Modify > Rotate > Twist) is similar to Shear, although the results are quite different.
With Shear, the sides of the object are moved one way or the other. With Twist, one end of the
object is rotated while the other remains stationary. Think of Twist as Rotate with axial falloff. That
is, the strength of the rotational influence is not equal across the object, but gradually falls off
along a selected axis. The twist occurs around the X, Y or Z axis, so you want to set the tool in a
viewport perpendicular to the axis you want the twist to occur around.

To use the Twist tool:

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Select the tool and drag your LMB left for counterclockwise twisting or right for clockwise. The
center of the effect is determined by the Action Center setting.

The information display tells you the Angle of twisting, that is, how many degrees you twisted.
Hold the Ctrl key down while dragging to twist in increments of 15 degrees.
The Angle value on the numeric panel reflects the degrees of rotation. The Axis buttons relate to
the rotational axis. If you use an arbitrary axis (i.e., twist in a perspective viewport), no Axis buttons
are selected. The Center X, Y, and Z values indicate the center point of rotation, through which the
axis runs.

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More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Dangle
Dangle will rotate a layer or selection relative to a rotation center. The Reference is what determines
the axes used for rotation. Selection is a bounding box around the selected geometry, World is the
Origin, and B.G. Layer is a bounding box around the background layer geometry.

If Influence is set to Affect Layer, the rotation is applied to all of the geometry in the layer. With
Affect Selection, only the selected geometry is rotated. Note that the rotation center can still be
based on the Selection, even if you are using Affect Layer.
When the c setting is used for Axis, the rotation center is at the center of the Reference. Use the - or
+ options to move the rotation center to the negative or positive side of the bounding area, along
the axis - these obviously have no effect if World is used.
When the bounding area is computed, an angle for the top polygon is measured based on
its normal. If you use Absolute mode, it will change the rotation angle to be the exact amount
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entered. Relative will add the rotation to the geometry.
Enter the desired rotational values in the XYZ fields. These relate to the axis around which the
rotation is performed.
To use the Distance function, select two points prior to running Dangle. The distance between
those two points will be shown in the Distance field. Enter a new value and set Influence to Affect
Selection. Click Ok. The two points will now be apart by the entered distance. Essentially, the points
are scaled, using the rotation center defined by Dangle, until the points are at the defined distance.
If you use Affect Layer, the entire layer will be scaled up proportionately. (If only one point is
selected, the Origin is used as the other point.)

Vortex Tool
The Vortex tool (Modify > Vortex) will smoothly rotate a selected area of an object.

You might use Vortex to create a swirl on an ice cream cone, a whirlpool in an ocean, or a cosmic
whorl of stars.
To use the Vortex tool:
Select the tool and drag your LMB in a viewport. Dragging right will rotate the influence area
clockwise, while dragging left will rotate counterclockwise. The center of the effect is determined
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by the Action Center setting, discussed previously.

Select Range

Vortex Applied
The information display will tell you the amount of Angle of rotation.

The falloff modes for this tool are described in detail starting on page 1316

Rotate Any Axis

The Rotate Any Axis command (Modify > Rotate Any Axis) will rotate selected polygons around an
arbitrary axis defined by a two-point polygon in the background layer.

How to use Rotate Any Axis

1) Create a 2-point polygon in a background layer that you would like to use to define the
arbitrary axis you would like to rotate around.

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2) Switch layers so that your object is in the Foreground and the 2-point polygon is in the
Background.

3) Select Rotate Any Axis from the Toolbar and enter a value.

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Rotate HPB
The Rotate HPB command (Modify > Rotate HPB) lets you rotate the contents of a layer using
heading, pitch, and bank values, as in Layout.

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Rotate About Normal
The Rotate About Normal command (Modify > Rotate About Normal) will rotate selected polygons
using the surface normal of the first selected polygon as the perpendicular axis of rotation.
Steps to Use Rotate About Normal:
1) Select the Source Polygon.

2) Select the Polygons that you would like to rotate.

3) Select Rotate About Normal and enter a value.

The Polygons selected in step 1 and step 2 will rotate around the polygon that you select in step 1.
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Rotate Arbitrary Axis

The Rotate Arbitrary Axis command (Modify > Rotate Arbitrary Axis) will rotate selected polygons
around an arbitrary axis defined by a two-point polygon in the background layer.
To Use Rotate Arbitrary Axis follow these steps:
1) Create a 2-point polygon in a background layer that you would like to use to define the
arbitrary axis you would like to rotate around.

2) Switch layers so that your object is in the Foreground and the 2-point polygon is in the
Background.

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3) Select Rotate Arbitrary Axis from the Toolbar and enter a value.

Rotate to Ground
(default keyboard shortcut F4)
The Rotate To Ground command (Modify > Rotate-To-Ground) will rotate and move selected
polygons to a defined ground plane based on the first polygon selected. The Rest Axis is the axis
perpendicular to the plane you want the object to rest on. The Sense option rests the object on the
positive (+) side of the plane or the negative (-) side.

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Rotate to Object
The Rotate To Object command (Modify > Rotate To Object) will rotate in relation to a polygon. The
first selected polygon defines the target orientation. The second and any other selected polygons
will rotate and align to the first selected polygon.
1) Select Destination Polygon.

2) Select Polygons to rotate.

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3) Select Rotate To Object.

4) will rotate to Step 1s selection.

Rotate Morph Function

Rotating the base of an Endomorph with the normal Rotate tool often does not add the proper
amount of rotation to its morph targets. You may achieve better results with the Rotate Morph
function (Modify > Rotate Morph).

You can select an Endomorph to rotate from the Vertex Map drop-down list, or selecting the
Transform All Morphs option will apply the rotation to all Endomorphs in the object (which is often the
preferred option in many cases where the base has been altered on an object containing many morphs)

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Transform
This group contains tools to change the size and scale of your objects along with other tools that
dont fit easily into the Translate or Rotate groups.

Stretch Tool
(default keyboard shortcut H)
The Stretch tool (Modify > Stretch) is similar to the Size tool (discussed later), except that you can
scale the object independently along each axis.

To stretch an object:
Select the Stretch tool (Modify > Stretch) and, using the LMB, drag your mouse right or left to
increase or decrease the size along the horizontal axis. Moving up or down will increase or
decrease the size along the vertical axis. The center of the effect is determined by the Action Center
setting, discussed previously. The information display will tell you the scaling factor you have
applied. Hold the Ctrl key while dragging to constrain movement along the initial dragging axis.

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The Stretch Numeric Panel

The Axis setting defines the axis of scale. When you click in a viewport, the axis is an imaginary line
running perpendicular to the view you are editing in. The Horizontal Factor and the Vertical Factor
represent the amount of scaling on those axes for the viewport. The Center XYZ values define the
coordinates for the center of scaling.

The falloff modes for this tool are described in detail starting on page 1316.

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Size Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Shift H)
The Size tool (Modify > Stretch > Size) allows you to scale an object uniformly along each axis,
retaining its proportions.

To size an object:
Select the Size tool (Modify > Size) and, while holding down the LMB, drag your mouse right to
increase or left decrease the size of the object. The center of the effect is determined by the Action
Center setting, discussed previously. The information display will indicate the scaling factor you
have applied.

The Size Numeric Panel

The Size Numeric Panel has only two basic settings: the Center XYZ values which define the
coordinates for the center of sizing; and the size Factor, which defines amount of sizing, as a
percent.

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The falloff modes for this tool are described in detail starting on page 1316

Transform

Modify > Transform > Transform - A gizmo modeling tool that provides moving, rotating and scaling
of your Point, Edge or Polygon selections or complete objects as needed using the new mesh
system. Clicking the right mouse will reposition the gizmo to a new point, edge or polygon normal
to enable better control. The gizmo itself is a LightWave object that can be edited to suit your
needs and can be found in LightWave/support/gizmos.
The handles are colored to match their axes. The curves at the end of each arrow are for rotating,
the arrows are for translation and the colored boxes are for scaling on a specific axis. The yellow
circles are for translating on two axes and the white box at the center of the default gizmo is to
scale on all axes.

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Axis Scale
Modify > Transform > Axis Scale - Much like CAD tools, the Axis... tools work in a specific sequence.
For Axis Scale, the sequence is that you pick either the point you wish to scale uniformly about or
draw a line that will be used as the origin of the scale as well as the dimension you wish to change
the size of.

Clicking on Part Center allows you to scale the object about its own bounding box center. The second image shows the box nudged down
in 10 percent increments to 50%, but if you just want to halve its height with the base resting where it is, use snapping to go from a vertex
on the base to one at the top.

Example: Scaling Imported Objects

Often for a project we need to import objects from other 3D software and that can lead to scaling
issues. We needed a 22 LCD monitor for a scene, but bringing in this model has lead to a grid size
of 50 m and a monitor over half a kilometer wide.

Using Axis Scale and measuring the diagonal of the screen gives a size of roughly 578 m. Entering
a value of 22 in the Numeric panel and making sure the Uniform toggle is on will bring our whole
monitor down to the correct size.

Taper Tool
The Taper tool (Modify> Taper) is very similar to the Taper Constrain tool. The difference is that it
allows you to scale the affected end independently on the two axes. Basically, Taper is to Taper
Constrain, what Scale is to Size. Think of Taper as Stretch with axial falloff. That is, the strength
of the moving influence is not equal across the object, but gradually falls off along a selected axis.

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To use the Taper tool:

Select Modify > Transform > Taper and drag your LMB left/right to apply the scaling horizontally.
Drag your LMB down to apply it vertically. The center of the effect is determined by the Action
Center setting, discussed previously.
The information display indicates the Scale factor you applied along the two affected axes. Hold
the Ctrl key down while dragging to constrain the tapering to your initial dragging axis.

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The Horizontal Factor and Vertical Factor values on the numeric panel reflect the amount of scaling
in those directions relative to the viewport used. The Axis buttons relate to the axis along which
the effect occurs. If you use an arbitrary axis (i.e., taper in a perspective viewport), no Axis buttons
are selected. The Center X, Y, and Z values indicate the center point of tapering, through which the
axis runs.

Taper Constrain
The Taper Constrain tool (Modify > Transform > Taper Constrain) will resize an object at one end. You
could use this tool to turn a box into a pyramid. Think of Taper Constrain as Size with axial falloff.
That is, the strength of the sizing influence is not equal across the object, but gradually falls off
along a selected axis.
To use the Taper Constrain tool:
Select Modify > Taper Constrain and drag your LMB left/right to apply the scaling. The center of the
effect is determined by the Action Center setting, discussed previously.
The information display indicates the Scale factor you applied.

The Factor value on the numeric panel reflects the amount of scaling. The Center X, Y, and Z values
indicate the center point of scaling.

2015

Segment Scale

Segment Scale (Modify > Transform > Segment Scale) allows you to select a group of points (in order)
and scale them as one segment. This is a real time interactive tool that allows direct manipulation
in any Modeler viewport.

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New to LightWave 2015. You can now scale points on multiple foreground layers at once and the
scaling will take place on the same layer(s) as the original points.

Points on this sphere have been selected in an order that allows Segment Scale to move the points
along an edge.

Scale
Enter the percentage you want the segment scaled or use the Slider button next to the Scale text
box to increase or decrease the value.

The LMB can be used in any Modeler viewport to manipulate the points directly.

Scale Type
Allows you to choose which points to move.
Centered - Will move both sides equally.
Side 1 Only - Will move side 1 only.
Side 2 Only - Will move side 2 only.

Selection Order
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Segment Scale uses the point order of the selected points.
First -> Last - Loop Order.
First -> Second - Pairs
Examples:

Scale Type = Centered, Selection Order = First >Second. Before edit.

Scale Type = Centered, Selection Order = First->Second. After edit.

Scale Type = Side 1 Only, Selection Order = First->Second. After edit.

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Scale Type = Side 2 Only, Selection Order = First->Second. After edit.

Scale Type = Centered, Selection Order = First->Last. After edit.

Scale Type = Side 1 Only, Selection Order = First->Last. After edit.

Scale Type = Side 2 Only, Selection Order = First->Last. After edit.

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Heat Shrink
Modify > Transform > Heat Shrink - Conforms polygonal geometry to a background object by
a desired amount. You can completely transform your foreground geometry to match the
background object, or some way in-between. Our example shows the Mangalorian head
surrounded by a level 6 tessellated sphere and Heat Shrink applied.

There are several controls for Heat Shrink as follows:

Amount - How much you want to apply the geometry of your object to the object covering it.
In our example, how much the sphere adapts to the statues form. The Amount can go into the
Negative allowing you expand a shape to fill a space rather than just shrinking to fit.
Offset - How far away from the underlying object the foreground object is wrapped. Giving some
Offset allows a lower polygon count object to better conform to a higher polygon underlying
object.
Mode - There are six options presented here:
X - Depending on the Sense chosen will start conforming the foreground to the background
from the left, right or both sides. The Amount determines how much of the foreground
conforms to the background object.
Y - Depending on the Sense chosen will start conforming the foreground to the background
from the top, bottom or both sides. The Amount determines how much of the foreground
conforms to the background object.
Z - Depending on the Sense chosen will start conforming the foreground to the background
from the front, back or both sides. The Amount determines how much of the foreground
conforms to the background object.
Normals - Pushes the points along the mesh normal until they hit something.
Sphere - Pushes the points toward or away from a central point until they hit something.
Closest Point - Each point looks for the closest point in the background and moves toward it.
Sense has no effect with this mode.
Sense - The Sense options determine from which direction Heat Shrinks starts conforming:
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+ - Heat Shrink starts from the Positive side of the axis.
- - Heat Shrink starts from the Negative side of the axis.
Both Sides - Heat Shrink starts from both sides of the axis.

Example: Protecting our Alien Emissary with Heat Shrink

Because we dont want anyone to pierce our alien emissarys secret identity when crime fighting
we will create a mask for her with Heat Shrink so no-one will recognize her.
1) Weve loaded the Alien Emissary model found in the LightWave content, but shes too
recognisable. Lets use Heat Shrink to help with that.

2) With the emissary in the background, well make a simple eye mask for her. This is just a
subdivided polygon with holes for her eyes.

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3) Weve set the Mode to Z because our model is facing +Z and weve changed the Sense to - to
make the mask go in the opposite direction. Weve added a bit of Thickness to stand it off a
little from her skin.

4) Weve subpatched and used the Thicken tool to give our mask a bit more form. Now shes
completely unrecognizable.

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Spline Guide Tool

Generally, the Spline Guide tool (Modify > Spline Guide) performs interactive deforming operations
based on a guide curve. Clicking in the window creates the initial guide curve and center axis.
Initially, the guide curve will be aligned along the longest distance of the selected geometry,
extending from its minimum to maximum point. The center axis is centerd within the geometry.

Initially, the guide curve points have no effect on the geometry - like bones in their rest position.
However, moving the points will vary the strength of the effect. Moving the center axis will change
the influence of all the points on the curve.
What effect is applied is determined by the Operation setting on the numeric panel.
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The Scale operation scales the geometry in the plane perpendicular to the axis around the center
axis. Moving the guide points closer to the center shrinks the geometry, moving them farther away
as it expands it.

The Stretch operation scales the model in the plane perpendicular to the axis around the center
like the Scale operation, but uses different amounts of scaling in the plane (call it X-Y) depending
on the X and Y distance of the guide points from their initial positions. Thus, the geometry can be
expanded in one direction and reduced or left unchanged in the other.

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The Twist operation rotates the geometry around the center axis. The Twist Angle parameter acts as
an angle scaling factor.

The Bend operation bends the model to conform to the curve.

The Weight Map operation works a little differently than the other operations in that it doesnt
deform the geometry, but affects the selected Weight Map instead. Essentially, it sets the values
based on the reshaped curve. Move them closer to the center axis for negative weights, farther for
positive.

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If you activate Make Curve, a curve polygon will be created from the guide curve when you
deselect the tool. Use this to save the guide curve shape. This curve can be placed in a
background layer and loaded into the guide curve by clicking Get Background Curve.

Click Keep Edit to accept the current changes without resetting the curve. This is useful if you want
a certain curve to be applied in subsequent operations.
Changing the Curve Points value will resample the curve into more segments. Note that
resampling the curve can change its shape, particularly if the number is incremented gradually, as
is the case with the mini-slider. If you want a more refined curve that accurately matches the one
you have drawn, enter the new number directly into the field to avoid the intermediate curves.

Jitter Command
(default keyboard shortcut Shift J)
The Smooth commands ugly sister is Jitter (Modify > Jitter). This command will add a roughness
to the polygons of an object by randomly moving points within a certain radius of their current
position. Jitter has several Type settings, each applying the effect in a different manner.

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Uniform - Uniform performs a uniform jitter on every point within a rectangular region. A
point may be shifted by as much as the value specified for the Radius parameter.
Gaussian - Gaussian results in a slightly less ragged jitter than the Uniform option,
performing a normal distribution around the starting points location in an ellipsoid of
the given Radius. A point may be shifted by as much as the value specified for the Radius
parameter.
Normal - Normal uses the local surface normal and randomly moves points plus or minus
within the specified Range along that surface normal.
Radial - Radial randomly distributes points inward or outward along a radial vector from a
single point defined by the Center coordinates.
Range is the value used to set the range within which a point may move from its current location.
Scaling - Scaling is a variation of the Radial option. Points are jittered outward from a center
point defined by the Center coordinates. Factor is the value used to set the range, as a
percentage, within which a point may move from its current location.
A jitter value of 0 applies no jittering, meaning no change will occur. Values above or below 0 will
affect the object.

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More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Set Scale

You need to have at least two points selected to use this tool to provide a base measurement. With
the two points selected, choose Set Scale and you will be presented with a measurement in the
LW Measurement Distance field. You can choose the scale you would like your object to assume
by tapping it in the Real World Distance field. There are controls on how to take the measurement
(Measure along Axis: XYZ, X Only, Y Only, Z Only) and how to apply it with the Scale Center or Axis
choices.

Fit to Background

You need a foreground and background layer showing, then you can start this tool. The switches
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(Fit to Background X, Y and Z) can each be checked or unchecked and the foreground object
will assume the same Bounding Box measurements on the axes you have chosen. The Move to
Background Center option moves the foreground geometry to where the background geometry is
sitting.

Background Conform (BG Conform)

The Background Conform function is available through the Legacy plugin Spherize.p. To install it
and get the use of BGConform, Spherize and Squarize, use the Add Plugin command. To add it
to your Modify tab, use the Edit Menu function( Alt F10). This function will take an object in the
Foreground layer and fit it to an object in the Background layer.
Steps for using Background Conform:
1) Place the object that you want manipulated in the Foreground and the effector object in
the Background.

2) Click on the Background Conform button and presto! Instant conform.

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This is a handy tool for creating Morph Targets!

Absolute Size
Absolute Size (Modify > Transform > More) allows you to scale geometry with great flexibility and
precision. With the Values setting set to Independent, the object can be scaled independently on
each axis. If Locked is used, the aspect of the geometry is maintained, meaning you only need to
change one value and the others will change accordingly, to keep the proper relative proportions
of the geometry.

Reference
The Reference setting determines a reference for the selected Action Center. Bounding Box uses a
bounding box around all of the geometry. World uses the Origin. B.G. Layer uses a bounding box
around geometry in the background. Absolute lets you numerically set the center position. The c
setting will scale using the center of the reference. The minus (-) or plus (+) setting will scale using
the negative or positive side of the reference.

Pole Evenly Tool

The Pole Evenly tool (Modify > Transform > More > Pole Evenly) scales an area of an object along the
vertical and horizontal axes.

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To use the Pole Evenly tool:

Select Modify > Pole Evenly and drag your LMB in a viewport. The center of the effect is determined
by the Action Center setting, discussed previously.
The information display indicates the Scale factor you applied.

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The Factor value on the numeric panel reflects the amount of scaling. The Center X, Y, and Z values
indicate the center point of scaling. You can edit the values and then click the Apply button to
apply them, which you can do multiple times.

The falloff modes for this tool are described in detail starting on page 1316

Pole Tool
The Pole tool (Modify > Stretch > Pole) is identical to Pole Evenly, except that you can scale an area
independently on the two axes - dragging your LMB left/right to affect horizontally and up/down
to affect vertically.
The information display indicates the Scale factor you applied along the two relevant axes.

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To use the Pole tool:

Select Modify > Pole and drag your LMB in a viewport. The center of the effect is determined by the
Action Center setting, discussed previously.
The information display indicates the Scale factor you applied

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The Horizontal Factor and Vertical Factor values on the numeric panel reflect the amount of scaling
in those directions in relation to the viewport used. The Axis buttons relate to the axis along which
the effect occurs. If you use an arbitrary axis (i.e., use in a perspective viewport), no Axis buttons
are selected. The Center X, Y, and Z values indicate the center point of scaling, through which the
axis runs. You can edit the values and then click the Apply button to apply them, which you can do
multiple times.

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Scale Morph Tool
Scaling the base of an Endomorph with a normal sizing tool may not add the proper amount of
scaling to its morph targets. You may get better results with the Scale Morph function (Modify >
Scale Morph).

You can select an Endomorph to scale from the Vertex Map drop-down list, or selecting the
Transform All Morphs option will apply the scale to all Endomorphs in the object (which is often the
preferred option in many cases where the base has been altered on an object containing many morphs)

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Smooth Scaling
A variant of the Stretch tool is the Smooth Scale command (Modify > Smooth Scale). This command
will scale selected polygons, but attempt to smooth things out as it scales. No new geometry is
added, so the smoothing is done using existing points and polygons. The scaling is
done based on the normals in the selected geometry.

The Offset value, editable on the numeric panel, is the exact amount that the object will increase
in size overall; however, due to the smoothing effect, not all parts will increase this much. Negative
numbers are also allowed, which reverse the effect.

Smooth Scale is great for use on SubPatch objects. Use it on the stomach of a figure to give it a
beer belly.

Center Scale
Center scale is located under the Modify Tab and will scale a selection around its center point. Factor
is the value (percentage) of the scale operation.

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Center Stretch
Center Stretch is located in the Modify Tab and will stretch a selection on the X, Y, or Z axis around
the selections center. Factor is the value (percentage) of the stretch operation.

Smooth
(default keyboard shortcut Shift M)
Applying the Smooth operation to a group of selected points or polygons will take the average
position of the points and smooth out the area.

Steps for applying the Smooth operation

1) Locate an area where you would like to smooth out the geometry.

2) Select either the points or the polygons that make up the area.

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3) Enter in the values for Strength and Iterations. Strength will set the amount of smoothing
you would like to use. The Iterations value will determine how many times to apply smooth.

Working with smaller values of Strength and larger values of Iterations is suggested.

Quantize Tool
The Quantize command (Modify > Transform > More > Quantize) will snap points to specific
coordinate spacing intervals (like a grid).

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This is very useful for snapping a non-planar polygon into a specific plane or flattening one side of
an organic or curved object.

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Wrap Sphere
The Wrap Sphere tool is located under the Modify Tab. Wrap Sphere will take the selected geometry
(or all geometry) and deform it into a sphere. This is a great tool to use to create a Globe that
unwraps into a flat map.

Results will vary depending on which objects Wrap Sphere is applied to.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

Multiply Tab
Introduction
These tools allow you to add to geometry using a variety of tools. Existing polygons can be used
to create new detail in a model, including processes whereby one polygon can be turned into a
complete 3D object, and objects can be multiplied in a variety of ways.

Extend
The Extend tools offer ways to use one or more existing polygons to create additional polygons and
add depth and detail to objects or to create entire objects.

Bevel Tool
(default keyboard shortcut B)
The Bevel tool (Multiply > Extend > Bevel) is likely one of the most commonly used Modeling
functions. Basically, it takes a polygon and extrudes it away from the original along the surface
normal. It is similar to using the Extrude tool, but there will be no polygon at the position of the
original polygon. When applied to multiple polygons, each polygon receives its own bevel - even
on a double-sided polygon.
Steps for Bevelling a Polygon:
1) Select the polygon(s) you would like to Bevel.

2) Left-click and drag to create a bevel.

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Dragging your pointer after activating the tool lets you graphically place the bevel. Deactivating
Bevel or selecting another tool makes the bevel. Click on an open area of the interface to cancel
the bevel before it is made or use Undo.
Dragging up/down lets you interactively change the Shift amount, the distance that the selected
polygon will move along its surface normal. On the numeric panel, positive values make the bevel
move in the same direction as the normal. Negative values make it move in the opposite direction.
Dragging left/right lets you interactively change the Inset amount, the distance that the edges of
the polygon will move in the same plane as the polygon. On the numeric panel, positive values
move inward and negative values move outward.
Drag at an angle to simultaneously change Shift and Inset. Hold the
Inset, depending on which direction you drag initially.

Ctrl

key to constrain to Shift or

If you select polygon(s), the top polygon will remain selected so you can perform bevel operations
one after another. Click your RMB to accept the current bevel and begin a new bevel operation. You
can also press the B key twice to make and start a new bevel. You can also bevel multiple polygons
simultaneously!

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Other Numeric Options

The +/- fields on the numeric panel let you set randomization for the Inset and Shift values. The
actual value applied will be varied by a random number between plus or minus the +/- value. For
example, if Inset was 20 m and its +/- was 5 m, then the actual Inset would be between 15 and 25
meters. Generally, you want to use this feature only when bevelling many polygons simultaneously.

To avoid negative random values, make sure the +/-value is always less than or equal to the
related Inset or Shift value.
Inner is the default Edges setting and bevels the polygon inward and forward along the surface
normal. Outer will bevel outward and backward; however, the original polygon does not move
and the new bevelled edges extend away from the surface normal. This option reverses the mouse
movement effects. In most cases, you use Inner.
By default, the surface name of the source polygon is used for the new geometry. If you select New
Surface, you can enter a surface name (even an existing one) in the input field. You can change this
setting anytime before accepting the bevel.
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The selected polygon retains its surface name; only the new edge polygons receive the defined
name.

Bevelling Tips
After performing a bevel, the selected polygon remains selected. To accentuate the bevelled edge
when the surface uses the Smoothing Surface option, perform a quick cut and paste to separate
the selected (top) polygon from the added sides. This action precludes LightWave from smoothing
over the bevelled edge. You may also want to cut and paste the original polygon (before
performing the bevel). Make sure you do not merge points after doing this!

Left: Polygons Not Separated, Right: Polygons Separated

If you use the same surface, which uses Smoothing, and the geometry goes from straight to
curved, you may want to separate the polygons (with a cut-and-paste) at the transition point to get
a clean edge.

Left: Polygons Not Separated, Right: Polygons Separated

If you wish for your bevel to become a smooth rounded edge that appears to blend into the object
instead of the sharp defined edge you get with separating the polygons, add an extra bevel before,
and after your bevel (a subtle shift and subtle inset). This will allow LightWave to correctly shade
the bevel to appear the smoothly connect with the rest of the geometry.

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Multiply Tab

If you want to create an enclosed solid object when bevelling a 2D polygon, copy it to another
layer first and choose Detail > Polygons: Flip. Go back to the original layer and perform the bevel
normally. Then, paste the flipped polygon back into the original layer and choose Detail > Polygons:
Merge Polys to merge points.
Cut and paste a polygon (like one side of a box) away from its host and bevel it a very small
amount. Then, cut and paste the top polygon as well. This makes a nice clean edge that catches
specular glints.
When you bevel polygons with sharp edges, you can often run into the problem of points being
too close at the corners - very common when you bevel text characters. One solution is to delete
unnecessary points near the corners prior to bevelling. Dont be scared to delete too many points;
the change is usually so slight that no one will notice, particularly if the text is animated.

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Sometimes you also need to manually drag points on the new polygon away from the corner.
Another corner-fixing trick is to bevel out instead of in. This has the benefit of not requiring you to
work on any points, but it affects the spacing between characters, if you are working with text. For
this, use the Outer setting for Edges in the Bevel numeric panel.

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Multiply Tab
2015

Chamfer

Chamfering Points, Edges and Polygons. In previous versions of LightWave, Edge Beveling the central shape in one operation would not
have been possible with the built-in tools.

Multiply > Extend > Chamfer - A simple, rapid tool which allows the user to bevel an object. Points,
edges and polygons can be chamfered. Unlike a Bevel, which adds to your objects volume,
Chamfer maintains or reduces the volume of your object.
There are several controls in the Numeric window depending on what mode you are in when you
choose to Chamfer (Point, Edge or Polygon). The first is the amount of chamfering with a Measure
Amount button to enable you to measure an existing distance in the viewport. In Point mode, Edge
Compensation will maintain the overall shape of your object while chamfering selected points.
In Edge mode, you have Subpatch-Friendly, which attempts to keep NGons out of the mesh so it
can be successfully subpatched and Edge Compensation.
In Polygon mode, you have Subpatch-Friendly, Group Polygons - a toggle to either chamfer polygons
as a group or individually, much like Bevel - and Edge Compensation. You can also toggle the Group
Polygons mode by hitting INS on your keyboard.

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Multiply Tab
Rounder Tool
The Rounder tool (Multiply > Extend > Rounder) will bevel, smooth edges and generally round off
geometry in a variety of ways. It rounds based on point selection, bevels edges, smoothes corner
edges, has interactive controls, presets and more.

Selecting Edges
The edges you want to round are selected by selecting the edges or points at either end of the
edge - illustrated below, or selecting the edge in Edge mode:

If no points are selected, as with other Modeler tools, Rounder will assume all the points have been
selected (and hence round all edges/points).

If the selected object is small in scale and Rounder is activated, the default values may make the
object explode in size. If this happens, open the Numeric Panel and reduce the Inset Scale.

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With the above method of edge selection it is NOT possible to select all but one edge of a polygon
(eg. to round three edges of a square on one side of a cube). As shown on the left, if all four points are
selected then the polygon is bevelled.

To only round three edges (of the four), add an extra point to the edge you dont want rounding.

Selecting Polygons
If no polygons are selected, Rounder will scan all the polygons of the object. If you are only
rounding a few edges of an object containing a large number of polygons you can speed up the
action of Rounder by selecting the polygons containing only the points/edges you are rounding.

When selecting polygons make sure you select all the polygons adjacent to the edges/points you
are rounding, otherwise Rounder will generate an error.
Clean Geometry. An important part of not generating errors with Rounder is to ensure the
geometry is clean:
1) Rounding edges must be shared by exactly two polygons.
2) Polygons containing rounded edges must be planar.
3) Make sure no isolated points or two-point polygons are selected
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The Rounder Numeric Window

Actions
Activate - you must either select Activate or click on a Modeler viewpoint before Rounder
will actually round any edges.
Reset - select this to set all the controls on the panel back to their previous (ie. the last time
Rounder was used) values.

Points/Edges
Select Points if you only want the points of your selected points to be rounded.

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Multiply Tab

Select Edges if you only want the edges defined by your selected points or edges to be rounded.

Rounding polygons - This option sets the number of bevels that will be applied to the edge
as illustrated below:

The number of Rounding Polygons setting will appear in the viewport.

Inset Distance - illustrated below:

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Multiply Tab

Inset Presets - This is a popup list of preset inset distances (in the units chosen in Modelers
Options panel). You can choose which list of presets to use on the Presets Tab.
Adjacent surfaces - This controls what surface is allocated to the newly created rounding
polygons. If this is selected then Rounder will assign the surface to that of the original
polygon adjacent to the selected edge as illustrated below:

If it is unchecked, then a new surface is assigned to the new polygons. The name of the new
surface is given by the New Surface control.

The central polygon on the point corner is adjacent to all the original polygons and hence its
surface allocation is intrinsically ambiguous - it is assigned the surface the
rounding algorithm first comes across.
New Surface - All newly created rounding polygons are assigned this surface.

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If the Adjacent Surfaces checkbox is selected this option is not available.
Mesh Density - this determines the type of mesh on rounded points.
Low - this creates a mesh with a minimum number of polygons.

High - this creates a mesh on the corners with only quads.

Convexity - illustrated below.

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Rounding points will cause them to be indented as shown below.

Project Inset - This button controls how Rounder projects the inset at edges. This is illustrated
below:

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Multiply Tab
When the projection is on, the width of the rounded edge is equal to the inset distance (0.5
m), but where the rounded edge intersects the side, the width is 1.1 m - which it must be to
keep the rounded width constant along the edges. If the inset projection is off, then where the
rounded edge intersects the side the width is set equal to the inset distance - this results in a
tapering rounded edge. Why have this option? Well, there are situations where the choice of the
intersections widths is ambiguous and Rounder has to guess what you want. It may not guess
correctly and in that case it is better to force Rounder to not use projections, as is illustrated for the
wedge below:

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Multiply Tab
Viewport Tool Tab

Activate Viewport tool - The Viewport tool allows you to drag the mouse in the viewport
to interactively change either the inset distance or the number of rounding polygons by
dragging either horizontally or vertically.
Inset mouse axis - This switch allows you to choose which axis controls the inset distance. If
you want to drag horizontally to change the inset distance (and vertically for the number of
rounding polygons), then choose Horizontal. Choose Vertical for the converse situation.
Inset scale - This controls the sensitivity of the mouse dragging when changing the inset
distance.
Polygon step rate - This controls the sensitivity of the mouse dragging when changing the
number of polygons.

Open GL Polygon Tab

OGL Polygons are additional polygons added to remove OGL display defects. The OGL polygons are
in the same plane as the flat part polygons adjacent to the rounding polygons. Roughly speaking
it stops the OGL renderer smoothing the edge into the bulk of the object and keeps the smoothing
to the rounder part of the object.
Activate OGL polygons - Switch on or off the OGL polygons.

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Inset percent - The size of the polygons is taken as a percentage of the inset distance.
Surface from - The surface name assigned to the OGL polygons can be:
Poly - the same as the original polygon (before rounding)
Edge - the same as that of the new rounding polygons (as determined by the main
panel)
New - the name can be a new name as determined by the next control.
New Surface - The name of the new surface as chosen by the previous control.

Presets Tab

All the settings on the whole panel are saved in a file, called RounderConfigs.txt, and reloaded when
Modeler is launched. You can Revert to the settings in that file or you can revert to the Factory (ie
in-built) settings.
You can assign up to three different inset preset files to the three File boxes. This allows quick
switching between different sets of inset presets - or you can use the default (in-built) set.
More detail for the inset preset files:
1) You need to create inset preset files. You can create the file using a
text editor with one number per line (with no units) . Create as many
files as you like (eg one for mm steps, one for m steps) etc.
2) Click on one of the Preset Inset File numbers (eg File 1), then click on the Change File button.
3) Then navigate to one of your inset preset files and select it.
4) All the inset presets are now loaded in and should appear in the inset preset pop-up.
5) Repeat (if desired) for the other two cases.
6) Now, each time you click on a Preset Inset File number, all the
preset insets in the associated file are loaded.
Preset Inset File - Select one of the four possible inset files to use with the Inset Presets popup menu on the main panel. File 1, File 2 and File 3 are the three presets files, while Def is the
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Multiply Tab
default built in set of inset presets.
File 1 - The name of the File 1 inset preset file is displayed here.
File 2 - The name of the File 2 inset preset file is displayed here.
File 3 - The name of the File 3 inset preset file is displayed here.
Change file - This button enables you to navigate to a text file containing a list of inset
presets. First select which of the three files, File 1, File 2 or File 3 in the Preset Inset File row on
controls, then click the Change File button and navigate to your preset inset file.
Revert Settings - Click on this button to change all the settings in the whole panel to those
saved in the RounderConfigs.txt file.

All the settings of the entire panel are saved to the RounderConfigs.txt file whenever you quit
Modeler.
Factory Settings - Click this button to reset all the settings on the panel to the default built-in
settings.

2015

Extrude

(default keyboard shortcut Shift E)

Use the Extrude tool (Multiply > Extend > Extrude) to give depth to a two-dimensional shape.
You can extrude any two-dimensional polygon or curve. The distance and angle from the initial
dragging point sets the extrusion length and direction. As you continue to drag your mouse, you
see the extrusion length and angle change accordingly.
The initial dragging point is not significant, only the distance and direction matter. In fact, when
you release the mouse button, the axis will reposition itself starting at the object. You can further
manipulate the axis by dragging its end in any viewport.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now extrude polygons on multiple layers at once and the
extrusions will be on the same layer as the original polygons.

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When you are satisfied, simply click Multiply > Extend > Extrude again (or select another tool). To
reset, click in a non-active part of the interface or click Undo.
The numeric panel for Extrude defines the relative XYZ coordinates for the end of the axis in the
Extent fields. You can change the number of Sides created on the panel, which can be useful for
multi-segmented items like snakes, or objects you wish to bend or twist.

Make UVs Option

The Make UVs option at the bottom of the numeric panel assigns some default UVs based on the
geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected or this option will
be ghosted.

The Extrude tool treats the original polygon(s) as a cap on the end of the extruded shape.
Therefore, to create an enclosed object, you should extrude backwards (ie. behind the original
polygon(s)) for all the polygons to be facing outwards. Extruding forward in the direction of the
polygons normal will create inverted polygons and your extrusion will appear to be inside-out. To
correct this, simply select the affected polygons and then select Detail > Polygons> Flip.

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2015

Lathe Tool

(default keyboard shortcut Shift L)

The Lathe tool (Multiply > Extend> Lathe) will sweep an object around an axis. Essentially, Lathe
creates a cylindrical object with a profile of the original form. For example, if you lathe a circularshaped polygon, you create a doughnut. You can sweep any two-dimensional object or curve. The
classic use of this tool is to create a vase or bottle.
Dragging your mouse in a viewport determines the initial axis. The lathe axis has a crosshair at
its center (the initial dragging point), which is used to drag the entire axis around. To change the
angle, drag either end of the axis. You can also drag out the axis, which gives you more control over
the effect, but the length of the axis does not in itself influence the impact of the tool.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now Lathe polygons on multiple layers at once and the resulting
shapes will be on the same layer as the original polygons or curves.

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Multiply Tab

When you are satisfied, deselect the tool or select a different one to execute the edit. To cancel,
simply click in an open area on the interface or click Undo.

Polygons may end up flipped. To correct them, simply choose Detail > Polygons > Flip.
If you wish to change the number of sides in the lathed object (like the number of slices in a pie),
you can use the Left and Right cursor keys. If youd prefer to lathe less than a full 360 degrees,
you can drag the handles as indicated in the following illustration. (Note: If the two handles are
overlapped, you can still drag to separate them.)

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Multiply Tab
Numeric Options for Lathe
You can also open the Lathe tools numeric requester to numerically change settings.

The Start Angle and End Angle fields let you enter the degree of lathing, Sides sets the number of
sides, and Offset will shift the shape along the lathe axis. The Center values define the center of
rotation coordinates.

To create a coiled spring: create a disc with, say, a one meter diameter. Select Lathe and place the
axis about one meter to one side of the disc. Then, open the numeric requester and set the End Angle to
720 degrees (two full rotations), Sides to 48, and Offset to 2 m.

If you plan on using a high level of subpatching on your lathed object, eight sides will usually
suffice for most round subpatched objects.

Make UVs Option

The Make UVs option at the bottom of the numeric panel assigns some default UVs based on the
geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected or this option will
be ghosted.

Smooth Shift Tool

(default keyboard shortcut Shift F)
The Smooth Shift tool (Multiply > Extend > Smooth Shift) is a beguiling tool that may not seem useful
at first; however, you will find a variety of uses for it, like creating thin grooves in an object. Smooth
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Multiply Tab
Shift moves selected polygons along their smoothed vertex normals. The smoothed vertex normal
is computed using the average of the normals for the polygons that share that vertex.
This tool is similar to Bevel; however,Bevel applies effects individually to each selected polygon,
whereas Smooth Shift treats all selected polygons as a group.
Steps to Smooth Shift a group of polygons:
1) Select the geometry you would like to extend.

2) Choose Multiply > Smooth Shift and left click and drag.

Using Bevel would have resulted in this:

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Polygons on a convex surface tend to expand since the normals at their vertices point slightly
apart, while polygons on a concave surface tend to shrink. Polygons that are smoothed together
stay together since they share normals at their shared vertices. Where polygons pull apart, either
because their smoothed vertex normals diverge and exceed the Max Smoothing Angle or because
some are selected and some are not, the gaps are filled with bands of new polygons.

The Offset is the distance of shifting along the vertex normal. Positive values make the shift occur
in the same direction as the normal. Negative values make it shift in the opposite direction.
The smoothing method in Smooth Shift requires a cutoff angle. The Max Smoothing Angle on the
numeric panel determines whether polygons will be smoothed over. Any two polygons with
adjoining edges at angles greater than this value will be smoothed across.
Dragging your mouse horizontally will change the Offset amount on the numeric panel.
The Scale setting, accessible from the numeric panel only, expands or shrinks the new geometry
around the center of its bounding (box) area.

To achieve what amounts to a group-bevel - where the selected polygons are treated as one
instead of individually - use Smooth Shift with an Offset of 0. Then, manually move the polygons (which
will still be selected).

Smooth Scale
This tool brings up a requester for a single offset value. Selected polygons will be scaled by this
amount about their combined normals.

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Multishift Tool

Multishift is an interactive tool similar to Smooth Shift, which allows you to inset and shift groups of
polygons together. Unlike Smooth Shift, this tool lets you interactively inset the selected polygons
by dragging the mouse left/right. Furthermore, the inset algorithm used can be chosen along with
the shifting algorithm through the numeric panel.
Steps for using Multishift on selected geometry:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Select the geometry you would like to extend

On the Multiply > Extend Menu, choose Multishift.
Open the numeric panel, and toggle on Multishift Mode if it is not already activated.
Left-click and drag to move the selected polygons.
Right-click to create a new shift.

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Unlike Smooth Shift, an average normal shifting algorithm is provided to shift groups of polygons
along their average normals rather than along a local normal. Some users find that shifting along
an average normal is often easier to control, as it doesnt deflate/inflate the selection as it grows
inward/outward.
Inset Amount - The movement of the polygons towards the inner selection. Several new
algorithms have been introduced for greater flexibility.
Shift Amount - The movement of the polygons outwards along the polygon normals.
Inset Scale - Controls the scale of inset during a single operation
Shift Scale - Controls the scale of shift during a single operation

Inset Menu

Inset: Contour - A general inset algorithm which is intended to maintain the natural outer
contours of the selection.
Inset: Relaxed Contour - Works like Inset: Contour, with a different set of rules for sharp edges.
Points on an edge with an acute angle, say about 15 degrees or less, when inset will begin
to move closer together faster than those on an edge with a wider angle. Inset: Relaxed
Contour will relax these tight angles, so the points will not move closer or overlap as quickly.
Inset: Hybrid - A combination of the Inset: Flat and Inset: Inner Edge algorithms. When the
geometry is generally flat, meaning the normals do not vary much from polygon to polygon,
it will use the rules for Inset: Flat. When the geometry is not flat it will use the rules for Inset:
Inner Edge.
Inset: Flat - A 2D shape algorithm which uses rules for 2D methods for determining the
direction of moving inwards and outwards. Works best with a group of flat polygons.

Since the algorithm works by projecting on a 2D plane, Inset: Flat will likely fail and move points
in the wrong direction if the geometry is not generally flat.
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Flat is ideal for beveling flat shapes like text
Inset: Inner Edge - The original algorithm for Multishift. Works best if used with quadrangles
that are laid out in a grid-like fashion.
Inset: Regular Scale - This algorithm moves the new points toward the center of the selection.

Shift Menu

Shift: Contour - Similar to the algorithm for Inset: Contour, the outward points along the
normals are moved in a way that tries to preserve the original contours of the geometry.
Shift: Contour 2 - A slight variant of Shift: Contour, in the majority of cases should give the
same result, but will in some cases give a better result and in others a worse result.
Shift: Average Poly Normal - A basic algorithm which shifts the group of selected polygons
along the averaged normal of each polygon within the group.
Shift: Average Point Normal - A basic algorithm which averages the normals of all points
making up the selected polygons and moves the newly created polygons along those
normals.
Shift: Local Point Normal - Moves each point along its normal.

Shift: Local Point Normal tends to be more useful in organic modeling.

Unlike Shift: Point Normal, Shift: Local Point Normals will not include unselected polygons in the
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computation of each point normal.
Shift: Point Normal - Moves each point along its normal, but also includes unselected
polygons in the calculation.

None of the above algorithms are designed to work in all situations, although the contour
algorithms are designed to be general-purpose and should work in most situations. Like any tool it is
best to experiment and see which one works best for the situation.
Preserve UVs - Will create UV Maps for the newly created polygons. The new polygons are
copied to the UV Map but not inset or shifted.
New Surface - Creates a new surface for the new polygons in a shift. You can create a new
surface name or use a previously created surface.
Highlight All Steps - When checked, highlights each shift in a work session. Unchecked, only
the current shift is highlighted.

Multishift Edit Controls

Current Shift Slider - Adjusts the current active shift when two or more shifts are available
Next Shift - Selects the next shift
Prev Shift - Selects the previous shift
Insert Shift - Creates a new shift after the currently selected shift. The new shift will now be
active and created halfway between the previous and next shift.
Delete Shift - Deletes the current shift, only if two or more shifts exist in the operation. After
deletion the next shift is then selected as active.
Multishift Mode - When checked, Multishift Mode is activated and will record shifts and
allow the user to edit and save the profile. A Right Mouse Click will insert a new shift to the
operation, just like Insert Shift will do.

Right-clicking with Multishift Mode Off will only save the last shift when you choose Quick Save
or Save Profile. Each Insert Shift, however, will be saved in the history of the current session.

Save Options
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Quick Restore - The profile for the last Quick Store operation is activated.
Quick Store - Stores the current active operation profile for use with Quick Restore.
Load Profile - Loads a saved profile
Save Profile - Saves the current active operation to a specific file

Thicken
Multiply > Extend > Thicken - Gives single polygon thickness geometry added dimension
interactively inwards or outwards. It can additionally create multiple segments for the offset
polygons and create separate surfaces for both the thickened polygons and the interior of your
thickened object. The Contour algorithm tends to work well for very orthogonal geometry or
geometry without any deep ridges, but Normal is the fail-safe when Contour fails.
The copy of the Thickened geometry is called the New Surface, and the extrusion joining the copy
of the geometry to the original is called the Side Surface. If you activate the checkboxes to Create
New Surface and/or Create Side Surface, then you can assign new surface names to those Thickengenerated polygons. There are three ways to define the surface names assigned to the New Surface
and the Side Surface:
1) Type the new name of the surfaces directly in the text entry field.
2) Left-click on the drop-down arrow next to each text entry field
to choose from a list of existing surface names.
3) Click Choose New Surface and left-click on an existing polygon to use the surface name of
that polygon.

Extender Plus
(default keyboard shortcut E)
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Extender Plus (Multiply > Extend > Extender Plus) clones selected points and creates new geometry
connecting the original points and the clones. Essentially, Extender Plus is like using Smooth
Shift with 0 Offset, except with points instead of polygons. Extender Plus is an updated version of
Extender and works better in many areas.
Extender Plus works in both Point and Polygon modes.
Point Mode: Point Mode allows you to select an unordered group of points, automatically
reordering the polygons it extends to face the proper normals. Furthermore, it detects when it
should loop and when it shouldnt, unlike Extender, which always loops.

Furthermore, it uses a simpler but more efficient algorithm of determining the normals of each
edges connected polygon when creating each extended polygon as opposed to reordering the
entire point selection as a whole. As a result, you dont have to select the first two points in the
proper clockwise order. The entire selection can be selected with a lasso without problems. The
tool works particularly well with the Select Loop tool when used to select borders.

Extender Plus works in Symmetry Mode as well as SubPatch Mode, unlike Extender.
Poly Mode: In Poly Mode, Extender Plus performs a quick grouped polygon extrusion without
providing an interactive interface. It can be a quick way to extrude while having an interactive
transformation tool active such as Scale/Move tool as opposed to using Smooth Shift or Super
Shift, dropping it, and then reactivating transformation tools.

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2015

Rail Extrude Tool

The Rail Extrude command (Multiply > Extend > Rail Extrude) will extrude a point, polygon, or object
along a curved path (single rail clone) or multiple paths (multiple rail clone). It is nearly identical to
the Rail Clone command, discussed later. The difference is that Rail Extrude forms a continuous skin
for the object instead of making individual copies of the object.
The curve(s) must be in the background layer and the polygons must be extruded in the
foreground layer. The orientation and position of the foreground polygons will affect the result.
Generally, they should be at the very beginning of the curve and oriented perpendicular to it - as if
the curve was a thread you were threading through the polygons.

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The direction that the curve faces (which end is considered the beginning) will have bearing on
both the shape and direction of the cloning. The direction affects the direction of the extruding. If
you dont get the results you expect, try flipping the curves starting point with Detail > Flip. If you
are using multiple curves, they should generally run in the same direction.

New to LightWave 2015. You can now use Rail Extrude with multiple layers foreground layers and a
single background layer containing the spline(s) and the extruded shapes will be on the same layer
as the original polygons.

Single Curve
The Single dialog will appear when a single curve is in the Background layer.

Segments: the number of segments in the resulting object. Select Automatic to distribute a
number of segments along the rail curve (based on the Curve Divisions setting on the General
Options panel) according to the curves knot (point) spacing.
Select Uniform Lengths to distribute some number of segments (which you specify) evenly along
the length of the entire curve. No matter what the knot spacing is, the segments will remain evenly
spaced.
Select Uniform Knots to distribute some number of segments (which you specify) evenly between
the knots that make up the curve. Whether the knots are close together or far apart, there will be
the same number of segments between each.
Oriented determines the orientation of the polygon template as it follows the curved path. When
active, it causes all segments to angle themselves automatically so that they are aligned with the
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rail curve as it turns. When inactive, it causes all segments to remain in the same orientation as the
template so that they face exactly the same way.
If a UV Texture is selected, the Make UVs options are available. You can create the UV Map
perpendicular to the U or V axis. You can have the U or V value assigned to a range from 0 to 1. Note
that a UV Texture must be selected or this option will be ghosted.

Multiple Curves
The Multiple dialog will appear when multiple curves are in the background.

In practice, one curve will act as the main cloning curve and the other(s) act as shaping curves. The
effect of the shaping curves is determined by the distance from the main curve. However, you may
change the effect by moving the polygons closer or farther away from any of the curves.
Segments is the number of segments in the resulting object. Select Automatic to distribute a
number of segments along the rail curve, based on the Curve Divisions setting on the General
Options panel. If you also select Knot, segments are distributed with regard to the curves knot
(point) spacing. If you use Length, knot spacing is disregarded.

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To specify the number of segments, choose Uniform and enter the number in the input field. If
Length is also active, the segments will remain evenly spaced no matter what the knot spacing is.
If you use Knot instead, there will be the same number of segments between each knot, no matter
how close together or far apart they are.
Strength determines how strongly the rails vie for control of the point locations. You will not notice
much of a difference unless you have Scaling deselected. The higher the Strength value, the closer
the object will hug the rails.
Oriented determines the orientation of the polygon template as it follows the curved path. When
active, it causes all segments to angle themselves automatically so that they are aligned with the
rail curve as it turns. When inactive, it causes all segments to remain in the same orientation as the
template so that they face exactly the same way.
Scaling determines how segments along an axis are sized. If the rails in the background layer
spread apart along any axis or axes, then the segments will automatically stretch along those axes
as well. Turn Scaling on to scale segments equally, rather than along those specific axes only.

For example, with Scaling off, if you Rail Extrude a polygon along the Z axis using two rails that
spread further apart in the X axis, the segments copies will be stretched on the X axis to maintain
their relationship to the guide rails.

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2015

Magic Bevel Tool

The Magic Bevel tool (Multiply > Extend > More > Magic Bevel) lets you interactively drag out a bevel
along an editable path with tremendous control over how the bevels are created.

This tool works on polygons, SubPatches, one-point polygons, two-point polygons, and
Metaballs.
You create the bevels by dragging any of the blue circle handles. All polygons will get a handle
regardless of what is selected. The path will be drawn along the vertical and horizontal axes of the
viewport, so use a Perspective viewport to bevel off-axis.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now use Magic Bevel on polygons on multiple layers at once and
the bevels will be on the same layer as the original polygons.

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Operation:
Magic Bevel offers the following operations:
Extrude - Extrude is selected by default and is the mode that initiates the bevel creation.
Simply left click on one of the knots and drag out new geometry.

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Edit Path - If you activate Edit Path, drag handles will appear at each bevel. You may drag
them
to change the positioning of each bevel.

Delete Knot - If you activate Delete Knot, you can interactively remove knots from the path.
Simply Left-click on the knot you would like to remove.

Delete Path - Activating Delete Path will give you the ability to remove an entire path.
Left Click on the knot at the end of the path to remove it.

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Uniform Spans - Applying Uniform Spans to a magic bevel path will evenly space each
segment in the path.

Straight - Activating Straight and clicking on the end of a path will align the entire path on
the polygons normal.

Move by Path - When Edit Path is active, you may also activate Move By Path. This option
moves all of the bevel positions, from the current edit up to the end of the path, together at
the same time.. When this is off, only the selected point moves.
Spline - The Spline option turns the path into a smooth spline path. This will change the
bevel positions slightly.
Uniform - The Uniform option causes the bevels to occur evenly along the path. You will
notice that the bevels will no longer occur at each edit handle. This only works when using
the Spline option.

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Align to Path - The Align to Path option aligns the bevel polygons with the tangent of the
path. When this is off, the angle of the bevels matches the starting polygon.
Symmetry:

Axis - Choose the X,Y, or Z axis to determine which axis symmetry to work from.
Sync Direction - Sync Direction allows you to decide in which direction the sync will occur.
Sync Symmetry - Pressing Sync Symmetry will update the geometry in the Sync Direction to
match the other half.

Precision - The Precision value sets mouse sensitivity and determines how closely the bevels
follow the path. When your mouse pointer moves this many pixels, a bevel is created. Higher
values are less precise and result in longer segments.
Scale - The Scale value sets how much to size down (or up) each successive bevel.
Spin - This setting will determine by how many degrees each new bevel will rotate as it is
created.

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UVs for Sides - The UVs for Sides option at the bottom of the numeric panel assigns some
default UVs based on the geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be
currently selected or this option will be ghosted.
U Repeat - All geometry created will share the same U coordinates.
V Repeat - All geometry created will share the same V coordinates.
U Rotate - Adjusting U Rotate will shift the U coordinates of the map.

If you click your RMB after you create a bevel path, blue handles will appear on the new bevel
geometry.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

2015

Edge Bevel

(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl B)

Edge Bevel is a tool for rounding or splitting edges. It can be used in either point, edge or poly
mode. In point or edge mode, the edges, or the edges that are defined by selected points, will be
split (beveled). In poly mode, only the outer edge of the selection will be split.
Select Edge Bevel (Multiply > Extend > More > Edge Bevel) to Bevel selected polygons or edges (by
point selection). The Bevel can be adjusted by scrubbing in the interface or by using the numeric
window. Further adjustments can be made until the tool is dropped (space bar).
New to LightWave 2015. You can now bevel edges on multiple layers at once and the bevels will be
on the same layer as the original polygons.
Steps for bevelling an edge:
1) Choose the edges you would like to bevel.
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2) Choose Multiply > Extend > More > Edge Bevel and adjust the Move setting.

If only one point is selected, nothing will happen when the tool is run (its an Edge Bevel tool, not
a Point Bevel tool)

If all or no polygons are selected (in poly mode), the tool will do nothing because it bevels only
the outer edge of the poly selection. If they are all selected, there is no outer edge.

If you want to round the edges on a cube that is higher resolution, select only the edges of the
cube, not any of the points between edges.
Use the Preview Mode on slower machines to speed up interactivity. To use the tool in Preview
Mode, make selection first and then choose Edge Bevel from the Multiply Tab. To adjust size of
bevel, click and drag on screen. When it is at the desired position, right click and it will set it. The
size of the bevel can still be adjusted more if needed or if finished, just drop the tool.

Edge Bevel will give unpredictable results if the points selected have missing adjacent polygons.

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Edges that are not in the outer edge category can also be split. Selecting any two or more points
in a row will define an edge to be split. Therefore, on outer edges, the hard corners will become soft, on
inner edges, the edges will be split but stay on their current plane.

Create Rows
Creates a row of polygons based on the first row of selected points and the last selected point. The
order of selected points on the first row does not affect the tool.

The first row of points is selected then the last point. The first row determines the number of
polygons created. The first and last point selected determine the edge of the first polygon.

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Left: the last point selected was at a different angle. Right: Multiple rows can be selected. Here, all points on the original grid were selected
before the last point.

Extender Tool
This tool has been superseded by Extender Plus. The Extender command (Multiply > Extend > More >
Extender) clones selected points and creates new geometry connecting the original points and the
clones. Essentially, Extender is like using Smooth Shift with 0 Offset, except with points instead of
polygons.
Steps for extending points (edges):
1) Select the points that make up the edge you would like to extend. Remember to select the
points in order and counterclockwise.

2) Choose Multiply > Extend > More > Extender, then move the selected points away from
original points.

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In Subpatch mode, newly created geometry will be in Polygonal mode. Extender Plus doesnt
have this limitation.

Selecting the points out of order may have unwanted results.

Left: Points selected in order, counter clockwise. Right: Same points selected randomly.

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Rail Bevel Tool
Rail Bevel (Multiply > Extend > More > Rail Bevel) is a very fancy bevelling tool that works in a similar
manner to the normal Bevel tool. Dragging your mouse left/right adjusts the new bevel geometrys
distance from the original polygon. Dragging up/down adjusts the inset direction (towards or away
from the polygons center). The Ctrl key constrains the change to a given degree of freedom - just
like the normal Bevel tool.

The difference between Rail Bevel and Bevel is that Rail Bevel uses a profile from a background
layer to generate several bevel operations in a single step.
The profile is a series of points you create. They can be unconnected, or part of a polygon or curve.
The only important factor is point order, which is normally determined by their order of creation.
The profile is treated as if it were oriented based on the polygons plane and extrudes along the
direction of the polygons normal.

Each point in the profile is treated as a bevel. X=Inset, while Y=Length.

Steps for using Rail Bevel:
1) Create some geometry in a layer that you plan on extending.

2) In a new layer create a curve with the profile you would like to use for your bevel.

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Your profile must be created in the Back/Front viewport to work.

3) Place the curve in the Background layer and your object in the Foreground layer. Select the
geometry you would like to bevel.

4) Click and drag to create your bevel. Dragging your mouse left/right adjusts the new bevel
geometrys distance from the original polygon. Dragging up/down adjusts the inset
direction.

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5) Press the

Enter

key to confirm.

The placement of the curve has no effect on the final outcome.

New geometry inherits VMap and face/curve properties of the original polygon.

Rail Bevel works with multiple polygons selected.

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If you have multiple profiles in different layers, you can apply them one after another by selecting
them (one at a time) as the background layer while using Rail Bevel.

Router Tool
The Router tool (Multiply > Extend > More > Router) will create custom bevelled Edges. The numeric
window will come up as soon as you select Router and will give you several options to work with.

Router has three bevel types to choose from: Round, Hollow, and Stair Step.
Round: This option will create a convex curve profile.
Hollow: This option will create a concave curve profile.
Stair Step: This option will cascade the newly created geometry.

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Depth - Adjusting the Depth setting changes the Height of the newly created geometry.

Edge Width - Edge Width controls the Inset of the bevel.

Steps: Adjusting the Steps setting will change the number of segments created.

Bevel on Corner?: Choosing Yes (Default) will constrain the bevel curve to the Depth and Edge
Width settings. Choosing No will use the Depth divided by the number of Steps to configure the
curve along the edge.

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Multiply Tab
Motion Path Extrude Tool
Motion Path Extrude (Multiply > Extend > More > Motion Path Extrude) will extrude geometry along a
motion path saved out of Layout.

First - This option defines the first frame in the motion file that will be used.
Last - This option defines the last frame in the motion file that will be used.
Step - This option determines how many segments will be used in the extrusion, by setting a
sampling ratio relative to the number of frames of the motion path. The lower the number, the
more segments.
Step Examples:
First Frame 1, Last Frame 60
Step 0.5 - 120 Segments
Step 1 - 60 Segments
Step 2 - 30 Segments
Step 3 - 20 Segments

Make UVs Option

The Make UVs option at the bottom of the numeric panel assigns some default UVs based on the
geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected or this option will
be ghosted.
Steps to extrude along a motion path:
1) Create a motion path for an Item in Layout.

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2) With the item still selected go to File/Save/Save motion file.

Be sure the file has the .mot extension.

3) Open the Modeler and create an object.

4) Select Motion Path Extrude (Multiply > Extend > More > Motion Path Extrude). Select the path
saved above and change settings in the numeric window as needed.

5) Step 5: Click OK.

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Seashell Tool
The Sea Shell tool (Multiply > Extend > More > Sea Shell) lets you interactively make seashell shapes.
Essentially, this is like using the Lathe with a scaling factor on an object.

Open the numeric panel to set options.

Axis - the perpendicular axis around which the shell is twisted.
# of Loops - the number of times the source polygon is twisted fully.
Sides per Loop - is the number of segments to use per loop.
Shift per Loop - controls the vertical shifting of the loop.
Scale per Loop - the scaling factor achieved after each loop.

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Make UVs Option
The Make UVs option at the bottom of the numeric panel assigns some default UVs based on the
geometry of the object. Note that a UV Texture Map must be currently selected or this option will
be ghosted.
Steps for using the Seashell tool:
1) Create a flat polygon that you would like to apply Seashell to.

2) Choose Multiply > Seashell and set the options to your liking.

3) Press Enter on the keyboard.

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Spikey Tool
The Spikey tool (Multiply > Extend > More > Spikey) subdivides the selected polygons and moves the
center point out in the direction of the surface normal giving a spiked appearance. Simply select
the tool and drag your mouse pointer in a viewport.
Steps for using Spikey:
1) Create an object that you would like to use Spikey on.

2) Choose Multiply > Spikey, and open the numeric window.

3) Left click and drag in the viewport or use the Spike Factor input field on the numeric window
to adjust the spikes.

4) Press Enter to confirm the changes.

Using Spikey with a Spike Factor of 0 is a good way to subdivide a polygon for use in ClothFX.
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Multiply Tab
Create Skin
With the Create Skin command (Multiply > Extend > More > Create Skin), you can cover a series of
polygons or curves with a polygon skin. The shapes do not need to have the same number of
points in common. This is also called lofting.
1) Select the geometry to be skinned.

2) Choose Multiply > Extend > More > Create Skin.

The polygons or curves must be selected (or created) in the order that you want them
connected.

This operation can only operate with elements from the same layer.
Create Skin works best when you use single-sided polygons for the framework. Double-sided
polygons can result in strangely skinned objects.
If you skin using curves, the curves will remain in the Modeler workspace following the operation.
However, they do not become part of the resulting skinned object.

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Although Create Skin is similar to the Make Spline Patch command (Construct > Patch), which
uses curves, the difference between the two commands is significant. The Make Spline Patch command
tends to follow smooth contours, which maintains a rounded surface. Create Skin tends to connect
curves with straight-line segments, which creates less smooth profiles.

Morph Polygons Tool

The Morph Polygons command (Multiply > Extend > More > Morph Polygons) will create a number of
connected intermediate polygons between two selected polygons or curves that have the same
number of points. They will have an outer surface, as if you also used the Skin command on them.
1) Select the two polygons/curves that you would like to skin.

2) Choose the Morph Polygons command (Multiply > Extend > More > Morph Polygons) and set
the number of segments and click OK.

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3) The result is

Morph Polygons works best when you use it between single-sided polygons.

To get a twist effect, rotate the source or target polygon a little.

If you morph using curves, the curves are treated as straight-edged polygons, and will morph in a
linear fashion. The curves also remain in the Modeler workspace following the operation, although
they will not be part of the morphed object.
The Number of Segments field defines the number of morphed steps you desire between the two
selected polygons.

As with the Morphing function in Layout, the Morph Polygons command is dependent on point
order. As such, you should create the source and target from the same polygon. You may need to flip
some polygons after using this command.

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Duplicate
The Duplicate group contains tools dedicated to copying existing geometry.

Mirror Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Shift V)
Use the Mirror tool (Multiply > Duplicate > Mirror) to create an exact mirror image of an item. You
can mirror the whole object, selected points, or selected polygons. Many objects you create will be
symmetrical in nature. So it often makes sense to build only half of an object, create a mirror image,
and join them together. At other times, your object may include certain parts that are identical, and
an automated way to duplicate them is very helpful.

This interactive tool works using a mirroring fence. You drag out the fence with your mouse. This
forms the main axis for the fences length. Once you release the mouse button you can reposition
by simply clicking somewhere off the fence - you are essentially repositioning the initial drag
point.

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You can rotate the fence using the rotation handles. The swing rotation handle swings the fence
like a gate around one end of the fence. The axis rotation handle rotates the fence around the axis
along the length of the fence.
The numeric panel defines the XYZ coordinates of the Center point (where the position handle is).
The Axis, if any, is the axis perpendicular to the fence.

If Free Rotation is inactive on the numeric panel, the default setting, you will only be able to draw
and rotate the fence across planes aligned with an axis. If you hold the Ctrl key down, you will be
able to use 15-degree increments. If Free Rotation is active, you are free to draw and rotate the
fence at any angle.
If the Merge Points option is active, any overlapping points are merged automatically. Use this if
you are mirroring two halves of an object together. When you are satisfied, simply click Multiply >
Mirror again (or select another tool). To reset, click a non-active part of the interface or click Undo.

If adjusting the axis rotation handle only resizes the fence, try adjusting the handle in the
perspective view.

Mirror XYZ Tools

Mirrors the selected object along the zero value of the chosen axis.

Clone Tool
(default keyboard shortcut C)
The Clone command (Multiply > Duplicate > Clone) creates copies of an item that you can
spread out in an even layout or array. You can create a series of copies along an axis at specified
increments. Clone duplicates a selected item one or more times using specific increments of
distance, rotation, and scaling. You can create a spiral staircase out of a single step, or a wood screw
out of a triangular polygon outline, for example.
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Enter the number of copies of the selection to create in the Number of Clones fields.

The Offset fields determine the incremental distance between one clone and the next along the X,
Y, and Z axes.
The Scale fields set the amount of incremental scaling for each copy.
The Rotation fields set the amount of incremental rotating.

The effect is progressive, so the change is applied to each clone based on the previous clone. So,
for example, with scaling, the copies will get progressively larger or smaller.

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The Center fields define the coordinates to use as the center point, around which the operation
takes place.

If you plan to clone with rotation, try to build your base object so that the rotation can happen
around the Origin whenever possible.

To evenly space objects around an axis, take the number of total objects you want to end
up with and divide it into 360 (you can even enter the sum into the input field.) This gives you the
incremental rotation. Then set the Number of Clones to the total objects minus one.

Immediately after a Clone operation involving a template (i.e., 2D) polygon, you can use the
lasso to encircle and select the entire group of newly cloned polygons. They are automatically selected in
the order they were created. This means you can use the Create Skin command (Multiply > Create Skin)
to place an outer surface around the new framework. After using Create Skin, the framework polygons
are no longer needed (since they are inside the skin and will not render anyway). They are still selected,
so you can delete them (except maybe the two ends), and leave only the skinned object remaining. This
technique is useful when you create objects like a wood screw, where you no longer need the internal
(unseen) polygons after you complete the outer surface.

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Rail Clone Tool

The Rail Clone command (Multiply > Duplicate > Rail Clone) works just like the Rail Extrude
command, however, instead of resulting in an object with a smooth skin, it creates skinless
segment clones along the background curve(s).
Rail Clone will create clone or clones of a point, polygon, or object along a curved path (single rail
clone) or multiple paths (multiple rail clone). It is nearly identical to the Rail Extrude command. The
difference is that Rail Clone creates individual copies of the object instead of forming a continuous
skin for the object.
The curve(s) must be in the background layer and the polygons must be cloned in the foreground
layer. The orientation and position of the foreground polygons will affect the result. Generally, they
should be at the very beginning of the curve and oriented perpendicular to it - as if the curve was
a thread you were threading through the polygons.

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The direction that the curve faces (which end is considered the beginning) will have bearing on
both the shape and direction of the cloning. If you dont get the results you expect, try flipping the
curves starting point with Detail > Flip. If you are using multiple curves, they should generally run
in the same direction.

Single Curve
The Rail Clone: Single dialog will appear when a single curve is in the background.

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Segments is the number of clones in the resulting object. Select Automatic to distribute a number
of clones along the rail curve (based on the Curve Divisions setting on the General Options Panel)
according to the curves knot (point) spacing.
Select Uniform Lengths to distribute some number of clones (which you specify) evenly along
the length of the entire curve. No matter what the knot spacing is, the clones will remain evenly
spaced.
Select Uniform Knots to distribute some number of clones (which you specify) evenly between the
knots that make up the curve. Whether the knots are close together or far apart, there will be the
same number of segments between each.
Oriented determines the orientation of the polygon template as it follows the curved path. When
active, it causes all clones to angle themselves automatically so that they are aligned with the
rail curve as it turns. When inactive, it causes all clones to remain in the same orientation as the
template so that they face exactly the same way.

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Multiple Curves
The Rail Clone: Multiple dialog will appear when multiple curves are in the background.

In practice, one curve will act as the main cloning curve and the other(s) act as shaping curves. The
effect of the shaping curves is determined by the distance from the main curve. However, you may
change the effect by moving the polygons closer or farther away from any of the curves.
Segments is the number of clones in the resulting object. Select Automatic to distribute a number
of clones along the rail curve, based on the Curve Divisions setting on the General Options Panel.
If you also select Knot, clones are distributed with regard to the curves knot (point) spacing. If you
use Length, knot spacing is disregarded.
To specify the number of clones, choose Uniform and enter the number in the input field. If Length
is also active, the clones will remain evenly spaced no matter what the knot spacing is. If you use
Knot instead, there will be the same number of clones between each knot, no matter how close
together or far apart they are.
Strength determines how strongly the rails vie for control of the point locations. You will not notice
much of a difference unless you have Scaling (below) deselected. The higher the Strength value,
the closer the object will hug the rails.
Oriented determines the orientation of the polygon template as it follows the curved path. When
active, it causes all segments to angle themselves automatically so that they are aligned with the
rail curve as it turns. When inactive, it causes all clones to remain in the same orientation as the
template so that they face exactly the same way.
Scaling determines how clones along an axis are sized. If the rails in the background layer spread
apart along any axis or axes, then the clones will automatically stretch along those axes as well.
Turn Scaling on to scale clones equally, rather than along those specific axes only.

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For example, with Scaling off, if you Rail Clone a polygon along the Z axis using two rails that
spread further apart in the X axis, the clones copies will be stretched on the X axis to maintain their
relationship to the guide rails.

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Multiply Tab
Array Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl Y)
The Array command (Multiply > Duplicate > Array) duplicates the selected item any number of
times using specific increments of distance. You can create a grid out of this object, like a matrix.
The shape of the array can either be Rectangular (box-shaped) or Radial (circular).

Array Type: Rectangular

When Rectangular is selected, you will have the following settings available:
Count - Count is the number of repetitions of the original object along each of the axes.
Jitter - Jitter adds randomisation. A distance up to the value entered is added or subtracted
to what the position would have otherwise been.
Offset - Automatic uses the objects own dimensions as the spacing value. The Scale fields
define a percentage of the dimensions to use. A value of 100 percent in the input fields will
place the objects side by side. Manual lets you enter specific spacing values for each axis.
Use the Merge Points option to automatically merge points at the end of the operation.

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Using Automatic on a 2D object will cause the copies to be on top of each other along the
missing dimension axis.

Array Type: Radial

When Radial is selected, you have the following settings available:

Number - The number of repetitions of the original object.
Axis - The axis perpendicular to the radial shape.
Center - The coordinates of the center of rotation through which the axis extends.
Use the Merge Points option to automatically merge points at the end of the operation.

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Place Mesh

Multiply > Duplicate > Place Mesh - Place Mesh is a tool to place background objects onto the
foreground objects polygons, aligned to their normals. It can work with a single background
object or multiple, and placed meshes can be scaled or rotated as they are placed. If multiple
background objects are used, they will be randomly chosen among. In 11.5 background objects
need to be from the same object as the foreground object on which they are placed.

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The Populate button creates a clone for each normal of a group of selected points or polygons,
depending on the selection mode. Use Random Pitch, Random Heading and Random Scale to
randomize these clones.
Naked points can also be clicked on and meshes applied to them and vertices in geometry will be
snapped to. The snap behavior can be overridden by holding down Shift .

PlaceMesh cannot use layers from a different object as background layers. The solution is to
temporarily copy the layers you require into the foreground object.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Particle Clone
Particle Clone (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Particle Clone) will make a copy of the foreground
object on each point that makes up the background object. Its great for asteroids, bubbles, spikes,
grass, etc.
Using Particle Clone:
1) Place the object that you would like to clone in the Foreground layer and the object that has
the point information in the Background layer.

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2) Choose Multiply > Duplicate > More > Particle Clone, and sit back and enjoy the magic!

If no object is in the Background layer, Particle Clone will clone the object in the Foreground
layer using the points that make up that object.

Point Clone Plus (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Point Clone Plus) performs the same task but
has options.

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Multiply Tab
Clone to Layer
The Clone to Layer command (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Clone to Layer) creates copies of an item
that you can spread out in an even layout or array. You can create a series of copies along an axis
at specified increments. Clone to Layer duplicates a selected item one or more times using specific
increments of distance, rotation, and scaling. You can create a spiral staircase out of a single step, or
a wood screw out of a triangular polygon outline, for example.

This command is almost identical to the standard Clone (Multiply > Duplicate > Clone) command,
but offers the ability to place your cloned geometry in multiple layers.
Clone to Layer Numeric Options:

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Number of Clones - Enter the number of copies of the selection to create in the Number of
Clones fields.
Clone Output - Choose between Current Layer and Multi- Layer.
Current Layer - This option will place the clones in the same layer as the original.
Multi-Layer - This option will place the clones in individual layers.
Select the Use Only Empty Layers option to skip over layers that contain data when clones are being
created.
The Offset fields determine the incremental distance between one clone and the next along the X,
Y, and Z axes.
The Scale fields set the amount of incremental scaling for each copy along the X, Y, and Z axes.
The Rotation fields set the amount of incremental rotating around the Heading, Pitch, and Bank.

The effect is progressive, so the change is applied to each clone based on the previous clone. So,
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for example, with scaling, the copies will get progressively larger or smaller.
The Center Around option consists of Origin (0,0,0), the objects center, and User Definable.
The Center fields define the coordinates to use as the center point, around which the operation
takes place.

If you plan to clone with rotation, try to build your base object so that the rotation can happen
around the Origin whenever possible.

To evenly space objects around an axis, take the number of total objects you want to end
up with and divide it into 360 (you can even enter the sum into the input field.) This gives you the
incremental rotation. Then set the Number of Clones to the total objects minus one.

Motion Path Clone Tool

The Path Clone command (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Motion Path Clone) works just like the Path
Extrude command, however, instead of resulting in an object with a smooth skin, it creates skinless
segment clones along the motion path. Motion Path Clone will create clones of the selected
geometry along the chosen motion path.

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First: This option defines the first frame in the motion file that will be used.
Last: This option defines the last frame in the motion file that will be used.
Step: This option determines how many clones will be used in the extrusion per frame. The lower
the number the more segments.
Step Examples:
First Frame 1, Last Frame 60
Step 0.5 - 120 clones
Step 1 - 60 clones
Step 2 - 30 clones
Step 3 - 20 clones
Steps to extrude along a motion path:
1) Create a motion path for an item in Layout.

2) With the item still selected go to File/Save/Save motion file.

Be sure the file has the .mot extension.

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3) Open the Modeler and create an object.

4) Select Motion Path Clone (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Motion Path Clone). Select the path
saved above and change settings in the numeric window as needed.

5) Click OK.

Symmetrize Tool
The Symmetrize command (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Symmetrize) clones an object n times with
a rotation each time so that the result displays n-fold symmetry about the selected Axis. An object
is said to have n-fold symmetry if it looks the same after being rotated 360/n degrees.

Point Clone Plus Tool

The Point Clone Plus command (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Point Clone Plus) will clone objects in
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Multiply Tab
the foreground to the locations of points in the background. You can randomize the rotation, scale,
and centring independently for every axis between two values. Random Size will randomly change
the overall scaling of objects. The XYZ Axis options specify whether the objects should be centered
on the points or flush on one side or another. To specify static values, enter the same number in the
Min and Max fields.

This command is great for cloning and placing, say, tree objects on a landscape or putting hair on a
head.

Radial Array Tool

Radial Array (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Radial Array) creates an array of geometry around the
Center position using the specified Axis. The Count setting sets the number in the final array.
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This is a non-interactive command so you will need to numerically input the settings.

Helix Tool
The Helix Object function (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Helix) will create a helix (or double helix)
based on a shape you have modeled. To use it, create your initial geometry and then call the Helix
command.

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Multiply Tab

The controls are as follows:

Number of Rotations - This is how many complete rotations of the spline forming your helix
you will have.
Clones Per Rotation - There are two choices in the dropdown Uniform - The Numeric field below is ghosted and as many clones of your original
geometry are made as necessary to ensure a continuous line of geometry along the
spline with no gaps.
User Defined - The Numeric field becomes available for input. The number entered is
how many clones of your geometry are used for each 360 section of the helix.
Helix Radius - The width from the center of the helix to the outside.
Helix Height - How tall the helix is.
Taper - This determines how the helix will change shape over its length. A negative number
will result in a taper towards the top of the helix, while a positive number will taper towards
the base.
Double Helix - This checkmark will create two similar helices twisting around each other,
much like the famous example of DNA.
Oriented - This will orient your shape to best match the curve of the helix.

The Helix tool can need some clean-up once the operation has been made, including deleting
extraneous clones made of the original geometry.

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Spin it Tool
The Spin it command (Multiply > Duplicate > More > Spin it) will create an array of geometry around
the Origin using the specified Axis.

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Multiply Tab
Subdivide
Add Points
The Add Points operation (Multiply > Subdivide > Add Points) will give you the ability to manually
increase the point count on a selected polygon. Sometimes you will need to add a point to a
polygon and then move the point to change the shape of the polygon. You might also want to add
multiple points so you can manually subdivide a polygon into smaller polygons.
To add a point to a polygon:
1) First, select the target polygon. If your selected edge is shared with another polygon, select
that one as well. If you do not, the edge will split and the polygons will no longer be joined.

2) Choose Multiply > Add Points. Click the black plus sign at your desired insertion point along
the edge.

Switch to the Point Selection mode and deselect any points before using Add Points. Adding
points while there are already points selected will cause the added points to snap and weld to the
selected points.

Knife Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Shift K)
The Knife tool (Multiply > Subdivide > Knife) lets you interactively get results similar to the Drill
functions Slice option; however, it requires no background object. You simply drag out a slicing
line in any viewport - nothing needs to be in a background layer. The line is infinite along
the axis perpendicular to the view you initially drag in. This tool is perfect for adding segments to
your geometry.
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The other viewports will let you see the line from a different angle and a small dotted line will be
visible that shows you the direction of the slice. After you have released the mouse button, you can
drag the T-handles at the ends of the line (in any viewport) to reposition them or drag the center
of the line to move the entire line. The tip of the dotted line can also be dragged to change the
direction in increments of 90 degrees. This is an interactive tool so you will see the resulting new
geometry as you position the line.

Like most tools, drop it or select another to make the geometry, or click your RMB to create the
geometry without dropping the tool. Click on an open area of the interface to cancel the operation
before it is made or use Undo.
The Knife tools numeric requester indicates the Start and End XYZ coordinates, defining the end
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Multiply Tab
points of the line. The Axis settings define a target point, relative to the base of the dotted direction
line, that the line goes through.

Slice
Multiply > Subdivide > Slice - A tool to split polygons. It highlights edges automatically and can be
snapped to the center of an edge by holding down Ctrl .

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Connect
The Connect tool can connect two edges together, or divide one edge in two. Heres an example:

1) Create a box and sit it on the ground (use F3)

2) Select two of the vertical edges and hit l on the keyboard or Connect on the Multiply tab

3) With the resulting edge selected, hit l again. A new point will
have been created at the center of the new edge.

Subdivide
(default keyboard shortcut Shift D)
The Subdivide Polygons operation (Multiply > Subdivide > Subdivide) divides any selected polygons
with three or four sides into smaller polygons. This makes an object appear smoother, but also
makes the model more complex.

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The Subdivide Polygons panel appears when you choose Multiply > Subdivide > Subdivide. This panel
provides several commands that let you automatically increase the detail of existing polygons. To
use this panel, you must select the target polygons first.

You cannot use Subdivide Polygons on polygons with more than four sides.

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Randomising Options
All Subdivide options let you enter a Fractal factor that will randomly jitter newly created points.
The result is a subdivided object with its points randomly jittered. A factor of 0 will not jitter points
and higher values will jitter points more.
The jitter radius is a fraction of the edge length, times the Fractal factor. A factor of 1 will jitter the
new points by at most 50 percent of the length of the edge that they will subdivide. A factor of 0.1
is five percent jitter and a factor of 2 will move points 100 percent of the edge length. Points added
to the center of four-point polygons are jittered a comparable amount, although the formula for
them is more complicated.

0 Fractal

50% Fractal

Faceted Subdivide
The Faceted option adds more segments to existing polygons, but doesnt change the overall
shape. Lets say you made a box, but just wanted one side to have multiple segments. In this case
you could use Faceted.

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Faceted Subdivide works on triangles, when the Triple command is used.

Smooth Subdivide
Smooth will subdivide objects that have curved, smoothed, or rounded areas. Modeler assumes
any two polygons are part of a smooth surface and will extrapolate where subdivided detail should
be placed to maintain (even enhance) the curvature of the original form.

Smooth Subdivide

Faceted Subdivide
The value entered in the Max Smoothing Angle field is used to determine whether adjoining
polygons should be smoothed or not. Adjacent polygons whose normals form an angle above this
value will not be smoothly subdivided. The default is 89.5 degrees, so polygons at right angles or
sharper will not be affected.

Metaform Subdivide
Metaform is another method of subdividing. The object will be smoothed dramatically, with the
original object acting as a kind of bounding box template for a slightly smaller, more
rounded form. Metaform is very useful for creating smooth organic-looking objects out of simple
geometric structures.

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Metaform is an adaptive process, meaning that locations that contain greater detail (i.e., more
points/polygons) will have more detail in the smoothing process. It is easy to create rounded forms
with Metaform. Moreover, if you use Metaform on part of an object by selecting polygons, you
can create specific areas of greater detail on an object without subdividing the entire object again
and again.
Adjoining polygons with surface normal angles greater than the Max Smoothing Angle will not be
subdivided in a smooth manner. The default angle is 179 degrees, so only polygons that are nearly
parallel with each other are not affected.
Metaform is often used one or more times on a box to create a rounded starting point for SubPatch
cages. It is superior to using, say, a ball primitive, since all polygons are quads.

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Smooth and Metaform can achieve similar results using the same maximum smoothing angle;
however, Smooth will tend to smooth outward, and make a slightly larger object. Metaform, on the
other hand, smooths inward, and makes a more compact object.

2015

Band Saw Pro Tool

Band Saw Pro (Multiply > Subdivide > Band Saw Pro) will slice through a contiguous band of fourpoint polygons (or patches). While the images below use a simple sphere, Band Saw Pro is capable
of navigating a more complex object note the illustrations used in the later section on Multiply >
Subdivide > More > Band Saw.
To use the Band Saw Pro tool, be sure you are in Polygon selection mode, then just click on an
edge to select two polygons in the band that you wish to divide and activate the Band Saw
Pro tool (Multiply > Subdivide > Band Saw Pro). The tool will select the band of polygons going
either direction from the first two selected, and will indicate the slice(s). The selection band and
the slice(s) will continue all the way around until the operation returns to the point of origin or
encounters a non-four-point polygon. The tools Default setting is for a single a single slice right
in the center. The Numeric panel options can be used to create multiple slices, with a variety of
controls, and these can be saved as custom presets.

Band Saw Pro defaults to the last preset used, even across sessions.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now Bandsaw polygons on multiple layers at once and the cuts
will be made on the same layer(s) as the original polygons.

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Selecting polygons for a horizontal band.

When activated, Band Saw Pro selects rest of band and indicates the slice.

Select polygons for a vertical slice.

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When activated, Band Saw Pro selects the rest of the band and indicates the slice.

In the Top View, note that Band Saw Pros operation stops when it encounters a non-four-point
polygon.

You can select just one polygon, and use the Numeric panel if you need to adjust the selected
band. When you select more than one polygon, the first selected polygon controls the operation.

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Band Saw Pro Numeric Options

Band Saw Pro Numeric Panel and Pop-ups

The Actions pop-up lets you Reset the tool or Activate it to make the slice.
The Preset pop-up lets you apply the default settings for the tool, or one of up to 10 custom
settings. A custom setting can be created by selecting one of the Custom options on the Preset
button, entering the settings for Enable Divide, Value to place the relative position of one or
more slices, the Operation pop-up to add or change the location of slices, and, where needed, by
applying Uniform, Mirror, or Reverse to set or fine-tune the final version of the slice(s). Press the
space bar to accept the entries and execute the slice, and the settings will also be saved as the
options for the Custom setting that was selected.

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The Direction option determines the direction of the band and the slice. With a quad, there are
only two directions to proceed and these are described as Even or Odd. Auto is the default setting,
wherein Bandsaw will pick the direction for you.
Enable Divide activates the slices that you have set up. However, you can also use Bandsaw to just
select the band of polygons by not activating this option.
The Divide Window shows the slices that you have set up for the current operation. You can also
make changes or additions in this window using the Operation pop-up, discussed next. When
there are multiple slices shown in the window, the one shown is red is selected, and the ones show
in blue are not selected.
The Operation pop-up lets you make changes and additions to the slices.
Add allows you to create new slices by clicking with the LMB in the Divide Window.
Edit allows you select a slice using the LMB and move it using the Value slider.
Delete allows you to select a slice using the LMB and remove it.
Value lets you set the location of the selected slice by entering a value in the numeric field or
by using the slider.
Uniform equalizes the spacing between slices.
Mirror will mirror the selected slice across the center.
Reverse inverts the order - handy if you placed the slice(s) on the wrong side.
Clear will remove all slices and set it back to default.

The Band Saw tool (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Bandsaw) is similar to Band Saw Pro in
function, but is not interactive and includes a point selection option. Both tools are tailored for use on
SubPatch objects in areas where you need more control points.

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Triple Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Shift T)
The Triple command (Multiply > Subdivide > Triple) converts the selected polygon(s) into triangular
polygons. For example, a square polygon becomes two triangular polygons. Triangles cannot by
definition become non-planar; therefore, this tool is useful for objects you wish to animate using
bones, or objects that will have Displacement Maps. Tripling non-planar polygons makes them
planar.

Tripling does not change the general shape of the object/polygons. Also, once a polygon is a
triangle, tripling it again has no effect.

2015

Cut Tool

(default keyboard shortcut Shift U)

The Cut command (Multiply > Subdivide > Cut) is a general-purpose, interactive cutting tool. The
tool cuts from edge to edge. You can select edges using the point selection or a quicker yet less
flexible method of selecting edges is to select a sequential set of polygons. The edges in between
the polygons and the opposing edge of each end poly will be selected.
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Cut is capable of cutting through polygons with any number of points. The ability to terminate
cuts and form corner-quads is still restricted, however, to 4-point polygons only. However, you can
safely select n-point polygons even with those features turned on.
Choosing Multiply > Subdivide > Cut brings up the Cut panel.

New to LightWave 2015. You can now Cut polygons on multiple layers at once and the cuts will be
on the same layer as the original polygons.
The Maintain Quads in corners option will create the necessary geometry to maintain 4-point
polygons in corner geometry.

Maintain quads in corners: On

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Maintain quads in corners: Off

The Square Corner Quads option will avoid creating 4-point triangle shapes in corners when the
Maintain quads in corners is selected.

Left: Square Corner Quads: On, Right: Square Corner Quads: Off

The Terminate Cuts option will create extra geometry at the ends of the selection to avoid creating
Ngons.

Left: Terminate Cuts: Off, Right: Terminate Cuts: On

When the Connect Divisions option is activated, Cut will split the polygons at the newly created
points.

Selection

Left: Connect Divisions: On, Right: Connect Divisions: Off

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Multiply Tab
The Select Outer Edges option will define whether polygon edges outside the selection will be
affected.

Left: Select Outer Edges: On, Right: Select Outer Edges: Off

When the Switch to Point Mode option is active the newly created points will automatically be
selected after the operation.

By default, there will be a single default slice right in the center. This is the positioning of the slice
that will be made on the polygons.
The Value field will display the location of the selected slice. You can move it by selecting the Edit
mode and dragging it with your mouse. You can also add more slices in the Add mode or remove
them in the Delete mode.

Uniform equalizes the spacing between slices. Mirror will mirror the selected slice across the center
Reverse inverts the order - handy if you placed the slice(s) on the wrong side. Clear will remove all
slices and set it back to default.
Clicking the Continue button will apply the operation and close the Cut panel.

For faster, non-interactive versions of Cut see Quick Cut and Quick Saw on page 1500.

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Divide Tool
The Divide command (Multiply > Subdivide > Divide) is very similar to the Add Points (Multiply >
Subdivide > Add Points) command in that it will give you the ability to increase the point count on a
selected polygon. The main difference between the two is that the points are automatically added
in the center of the polygons edge when using Divide.
Sometimes you will need to add a point to a polygon and then move the point to change the
shape of the polygon. You might also want to add multiple points so you can manually subdivide a
polygon into smaller polygons.
The Divide command works in both Point and Polygon mode.
Point Mode - Divide will divide edges into two segments based on your point selection.
Each pair of adjacent points you select will be treated as a selected edge to be divided.
The tool will linearly search for adjacent point pairs - every possible linearly ordered pair it
finds is used. This allows for the selection of adjacent edges without running the tool twice.
However, it might take a little time to grow accustomed to the selection style, but it becomes
natural over time.

Polygon Mode - the tool will divide edges between polygons. Its a lot easier, quicker, and
more straight forward this way than through point selections, but isnt as flexible for doing
multiple edges within the same poly. Additionally, the tool can divide the edge at the
starting and ending polygons, provided that they are not adjacent. If they are adjacent, then
a loop is formed and the shared edge between the first and last polygon will also be divided.
The best way to see this is to experiment with the tool.

Configuring Divide:
To configure the Divide settings, simply choose Edit > Edit Modeler Tools and select the Divide Tab.
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Multiply Tab

Fractalize Tool
The Fractalize command (Multiply > Subdivide > Fractalize) will subdivide geometry unevenly in a
fractal pattern. Set the Subdivision Level (1-4) and amount of Fractal noise on the Fractalize panel.
This is great for creating landscapes or rocks.

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Multiply Tab
More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Split Polygons
(default keyboard shortcut Shift L)
Choosing Multiply > Subdivide > Split will divide a polygon into two smaller polygons using its
existing points. If used on a curve, the curve will be split into two distinct curves.
Select a polygon and switch to the Point edit mode. Select two points that do not share any edges.
Clicking Split will subdivide the polygon along a line between those two points.

In Point mode, the Bridge tool (Construct > Bridge) works identically to the Split Polygons
command, except with one convenient modification: you dont have to select the polygons you want to
cut ahead of time.

When working with Splines, repeating the Split Polygons tool when there are multiple points
selected will split the spline into smaller splines.

Band Saw
BandSaw will slice through a contiguous band of four-point polygons (or patches). To use the
BandSaw tool, just select a polygon and activate the BandSaw tool (Multiply > Subdivide > More >
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Bandsaw).

If you select more than one polygon, the first selected polygon controls the operation. This tool
is tailored for use on SubPatch objects in areas where you need more control points.
The operation continues all the way around until it returns to the point of origin or encounters a
non-four-point polygon.

The Edge to select option determines the direction. With a quad, there are only two ways and these
are described as Even or Odd. Select Auto for Bandsaw to pick the direction for you.

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By default, there will be a single default slice right in the center. This is the positioning of the slice
that will be made on the polygons. You can move it by selecting the Edit mode and dragging it
with your mouse. You can also add more slices in the Add mode or remove them in the Delete
mode.
To actually perform the slice, you need to activate the Enable divide option. However, you can also
use Bandsaw to just select the band of polygons by not activating this option.
The Select Boundary Points option will select the points that make up the selected polygons. This
option is only available when Enable Divide is unselected.
Uniform equalizes the spacing between slices. Mirror will mirror the selected slice across the center.
Reverse inverts the order - handy if you placed the slice(s) on the wrong side. Clear will remove all
slices and set it back to default.

The BandSaw Pro tool (Multiply > Subdivide > Bandsaw Pro), discussed previously in this
section, is similar to the standard BandSaw function, but works interactively.

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Julienne Tool
The Julienne command (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Julienne) slices an object into sections that
are regularly spaced along a given axis. Julienne is very useful for subdividing objects that will be
bent or used with a Displacement Map. Use the Division setting to determine how many slices you
would like to make on the selected Axis.

Julienne2
Julienne2 performs the same function as Julienne but it is geared towards a keyboard-centric
workflow. First you are asked the axis and can merely hit x, y or z on the keyboard, then the number
of slices.

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Multiply Tab
Fast Triple Fan / Fast Triple Fan Traverse
The Fast Triple Fan commands (Multiply > Subdivide > More) triple polygons, with new polygons
sharing a common point in a fan shape.

Make Pole
The Make Pole command (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Make Pole) triangulates each poly you have
selected with a pole at the center. Normally, poles are generally avoided in a model, but if you use
the Make Pole tool with the Fix Poles tool (Detail > Fix Poles), they can be a convenient way to close
open geometry without too many smoothing abnormalities. Furthermore, merging the triangles in
an octagon can result in a nice set of quads.

Random Pricks Command

The Random Pricks command (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Random Pricks) creates random surface
points on polygons. Use this to add detail to an object where you will later kill all of its polygons.

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Quick Cut 1, 2 and 3 Tools

Quick Cut (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Quick Cut) is simply a set of pre-configured Cut variants
that allow you to cut quickly without going through a panel. They are designed to be used for
commonly used cuts. They default to all having the same functionality - they need to be configured
before the three start doing different things. To configure each Quick Cut, use the Quick Cut Config
tool (Edit > Edit Modeler Tools) to configure each one to your preferences.

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See the Multiply > Cut tool for full details on QuickCut and QuickSaw, starting on page 1500.

Quick Saw Tools

The Quick Saw tools (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Quick Saw) are simply pre-configured variants
of Cut (Multiply > Subdivide > Cut). Like the Quick Cut tools (Multiply > Subdivide > More > Quick
Cut), these tools are quick in the sense that they do not require going through a panel interface to
make cuts. Unlike the Quick Cut tools, these tools have hard-coded customizations and cannot be
customized for new functionality.

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Multiply Tab
Quick Saw:

QS Double:

QS Term:

QS Double Term:

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Multiply Tab
Destroy
Fracture
This new Modeler tool (Multiply tab > Destroy > Fracture) breaks apart an object and makes the
resulting segments into parts for use with dynamics. There are three algorithms implemented in
the Fracture tool: Voronoi, an algorithmic way of breaking an object in a natural-looking fashion;
Halves, a recursive split-in-half algorithm; and Matrix, a matrix-cutting algorithm.
Many aspects of 3D work involve modeling properly for the intended use of the model. For
example, many articles and discussions are available on how to model characters in order to be
able to animate them properly. The flow of the polygons in the model is critical to getting the
correct deformations to occur. There are similar discussions of modeling requirements for other
purposes. For the current version of Fracture, you will get better results if you avoid geometry with
long thin polygons, or with a disparity in the size of the polygons in the mesh - large polygons
mixed with tiny ones.
Lastly, any object to be Fractured needs to be frozen, not sub-patched because Fracturing will
destroy the polygon flow needed by subpatches.

Cutting tools need to be fully closed meshes. For example, a cutting tool for Fracture cannot be
a cone that you have chopped the top and bottom off of and distorted, so that you have an open mesh
with a hole in the middle; you need a closed mesh, with no holes and preferably tripled.

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Results animated in Layout

Overview of Controls
Common Settings
Interior Surface - Entry field to set a name for the interior surfaces created in the fracture
process.
Random Seed - Entry and minislider to adjust the random seed used for the fracturing
process.
Preserve Original toggle - On keeps the unfractured original geometry in the layer it was
created. Off does not preserve the original geometry. The undo system in Modeler will not
always be able to recover the original geometry, so maintaining the original with this option
can be useful if you need to retry the fracturing to get the results you prefer.
Create in - This offers the choice of either creating a completely new fractured object or
creating a new layer for the existing object.
Part to Layers - LightWave will happily deal with the fractured object being in a single layer,
but if you need to export to a different program that needs separate layers you can use this.

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Multiply Tab
Explode Controls
The Explode morph map can be used as a poor man dynamics. Just animating the morph to
explode a seemingly solid object and adding particles and HyperVoxels can often substitute for
expensive dynamics simulations.
Explode Parts toggle - When checked this makes an exploded Morph map of the parts.
Explode Distance - Sets the maximum distance for the explosion. This controls how far to
move each connected part away from the center of the object.
Explode Randomness - Specifies a percentage by which to vary the distance. For instance,
if distance is 1m and randomness is 50%, then the pieces will move away from the center
anywhere between 0.5m and 1m.
Explode Morph - Name for the exploded morph map.

Morph Maps can be examined using the M icon at the lower right of Modelers interface and
the dropdown menu that goes with it. This way you can see the morphed object and the base fractured
version.

No Dynamics. The morph, some lens flare and particles are enough to make a good background explosion.
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Fracturing Algorithms
Voronoi
Use - There are three choices:
Random Points - This will create randomly positioned Voronoi cells with which to break
up your object based on the value set with the Cell Count field.
Background Layer Points - A set of points on a separate layer to the geometry you wish
to fracture will be used for the basis of the Voronoi cells. The points need to be shown
as a background layer, similar to Boolean operations. Points outside the geometrys
bounds will be clamped to the bounds for the cutting operation.
Background Layer Polys - This is something of a mix between Random and Background
Layer Points. To use it, you need to create a closed 3D shape in a layer that you have as
the BG layer for the object to be fractured, and the Cell Count field is available to fill that
shape with the required number of cells used to fracture the original object.
Cell Count - This field is ghosted if you are using Point Selection since the number of cells is
determined by the quantity of points you use.

This image shows a Background Layer Points Voronoi fracture. Although the points are not within the bounding box of the mesh to be
fractured they still have a pleasing effect.

Background 3D shapes for cutting Voronoi Fractures in Background Layer Polys mode must be
closed objects. It is best to triple them and make sure all normals are facing outwards.

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Matrix
Detail - The detail factor controls how many pieces are created. The value entered is
exponential (similar to subdivision surfaces) - 1 = 4 parts, 2 = 16, 3 = 64, etc.
Jitter Amount - Controls how much to jitter the source cutters. Higher values lead to more
uneven results.
Jitter Iterations - Controls the number of times jitter is applied. This is similar to the iterations
value in smoothing tools. Higher iterations with low values gives a different result to fewer
iterations with high values. The former would move each point around more than the latter,
which will move certain points more.

The three images show differing levels of Jitter and Iterations. 1 is no jitter, 2 is a Jitter amount of 50%, but an iteration count of 50, which is
high and 3 is a jitter amount of 90% with only three iterations giving a far more jagged appearance.

Halves
Cutter - This determines the shape of the cutter used to fracture the objects.
Fractal Cube - Creates more organic results - like a rock being fractured.
Cube - Makes straight slices - very angular results.
Max Angle - This sets the maximum angle of rotation of the cutter as it is making slices. If you
set it to 0, all slices will be axis-aligned and the results are very cube-like. With a high value,
more sharp pieces that arent axis-aligned are generated.
Unevenness - This chooses how uneven the splits are, by percentage. At 0%, everything is
split down the middle. At higher values, the algorithm splits more off center. Its a guide so
where it cuts is still random, but with higher values the results will be more random.

The three images above show: 1. Perfectly even cuts, no unevenness and no angle variation, 2. Changed unevenness to cuts that are not
exactly halves, 3. Shows adding in an angle variation.

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LightWave 2015

Detail Tab
Introduction
The Detail Tab contains a variety of tools for fine-tuning the points, polygons, edges and curves of
your geometry.

Points
This group contains point-related tools.

Merge Points
(default keyboard shortcut M)
Use the Merge Points command (Detail > Points > Merge Points) to remove points that occupy the
same or very nearly the same space. Remember, if all of the points along a polygons edge are
shared, LightWaves surface smoothing can smooth over the two polygons.
Many circumstances exist where you may create unnecessary duplicate points, but here is a list of
some common ones:
1) After you cut polygons to a separate layer and then paste them back.
2) After you use Boolean and Drill operations (including Fracture), because
the complex mathematics involved often generate extra points.

Left: Before merging we can see the smooth ball has facets, one side of the subpatched cube is flat and theres a seam down the middle of
the bust. Merging points cures all these ills.

If the Keep 1-Point Polygons option is disabled, polygons are automatically deleted if they become
single points (due to their vertices merging together). The default is for these polygons to be
retained.
The Merge Points command has two Range modes: Automatic and Fixed. These basically determine
the criteria for when points should be considered mergeable.
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Detail Tab
Automatic merges the points that share the same space. For objects or portions of objects that
you have cut from the main object with the intention of merging later (back into their original
positions), use Automatic.
Fixed merges any points within the specified Distance of one another. When merged, one point will
move to the location of another - Merge will not average the distance between points to create a
new point midway between them. As such, the related polygon may be stretched as necessary.

To speed the operation, select the points you wish to merge before using this command. (Its OK
if you select more than you need.)

See also the Weld command, described next.

Weld
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl W)
The Weld command (Detail > Points > Weld) is similar to the Merge Points command except that the
selected points are welded to the last point selected.

Steps for Welding:

1) Select the points that you would like to weld. The last point selected is where the points will
be welded to.

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Detail Tab
2) Select Detail > Points > Weld. The number of points welded will be shown in the info window
at the bottom of Modeler.

Unweld
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl U)
The Unweld command (Detail > Points > Unweld) lets you create multiple copies of the selected
points so that none are shared by two polygons at once-effectively reversing an executed Weld
command.
1) Select point to be unwelded

2) Select Unweld from the menu or press Ctrl U. The points shown have been individually
selected and moved using the Info window (keyboard shortcut I).

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Detail Tab

Weld Average
The Weld Points To Average command (Detail > Points > Weld Average) is similar to Weld, but
averages the distance between points before welding. There is no source and target concept with
selection.

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Detail Tab

Set Value
(default keyboard shortcut V)
The Set Value command (Detail > Points > Set Value) sets the X, Y, or Z position values for the
selected points or polygons.

This is a great tool for aligning all of the points along a strict axis. You may find a need for this when
you are trying to merge two halves of a mirrored object together and are having trouble merging
all points along the mirroring axis.

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Detail Tab

Straighten
Detail > Points > Straighten - This tool performs a function that can be achieved in many other ways,
but its simplicity means it can be a very fast way of achieving its specific aims. It works by taking
the first and last point of a selection and laying out all the points in-between in a straight line. It is
ideal for straightening bone setups for Genoma for instance, where you dont want misalignment
between the points that make up the shoulder, elbow and wrist rig parts.

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Detail Tab
Swap Points
Swap Points is a tool to use when you create a complex shape by drawing over a background
image and then dont select the points in exactly the right order. In our image on the left we are
recreating some floorboards for a shot and selected the two points highlighted in the wrong order
when making a polygon. Swap Points comes to the rescue for the second image.

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Detail Tab
Edges
This group contains edge-related tools.

Edit Edges

Edit Edges has been used to create an extra loop colored blue and individual edge segments have been moved up and down. The Edit
Edges tool is still active and the vertical edge loop colored Orange shows the preselection highlighting with the circle in the center of the
segment the mouse is over indicating where an additional horizontal edge loop will be inserted if the right mouse button is pressed.

Detail > Edges > Edit Edges - With Edit Edges you can slide edges, create edges or delete them:
Sliding Edges - Left clicking on an edge will select the whole edge loop. Moving the mouse
left and right will slide the loop up and down in the case of a horizontal loop, or left and right
in the case of a vertical loop. If you wish to only slide one segment of a loop, holding down
Ctrl will slide only the segment you click on.
Creating Edges - When you select a loop you will notice a small circle in the center of the
edge segment you click on. Right clicking the edge segment will create a new edge loop at
this midway point - a vertical loop on a horizontal edge, a horizontal loop on a vertical edge.
Deleting Edges - Shift left-clicking on an edge will delete it.
The Numeric panel contains Percent and Distance fields. They are linked and show the distance an
edge has slid. Either one can be modified, the other will update to the equivalent value and the
edge loop will move.

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Detail Tab
Spin Edge
When an edge is selected, this tool will spin the edge and connect each end of the edge to the
next adjacent point.

SplitRing
When you have an edge selected, Split Ring will take the mid-point of the selected edge(s) and
create a new edge loop around the mesh.

Border Slice Quad

When you have edges selected, Border Slice Quad will create a new edge loop based on the
selected edges. The new edges create new polygon quads around the loop.

Border Slice
When you have edges selected, EdgeLoop will create a new edge loop based on the selected edges.
The new edges create new polygons connected by the mid-point of the edges around the loop.
Using this method can result in tri-polygons and n-gons.

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Detail Tab

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Add Edges
Add Edges (Detail > Edges > Add Edges) is part of the Edge Tools toolkit that gives you the ability to
interactively place new edges on your geometry.

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Detail Tab

Position - Each edge is assigned a marker located at the center of the edge (50%). Use the
mini-slider next to the input field or interactively move the position of the marker in the
viewport with the LMB.

Distance From Start - This field will display the distance from the Start point of the selected
edge to the marker on the edge.
Distance From End - This field will display the distance from the End point of the selected
edge to the marker on the edge.
Grid Snap - Checking this will activate Grid Snap. Using Grid Snap will limit movement of the
marker based on the Ratio or Distance found under Grid Snap.
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Grid Unit - Choose between Ratio and Distance to control Grid Snap.
Ratio - Grid Snap is set in percentage from 0% to 100%. Limit the movement in x%
increments.
Distance - Grid Snap is set in Units . Limit the movement in n unit increments.
Stopper - Stopper sets up limits on marker movement.
Unit - Choose between Ratio and Distance to control Stopper settings.
Ratio - Marker Limits are set in percentage from 0% to 100%. Limit the movement in n%
increments.
Distance - Marker Limits are set in Units . Limit the movement in x unit increments.
Release Current - This option will undo the last edge drawn.
Hide Markers - This option will hide the markers but will still allow edges to be created.
Realtime Update - When checked, this option will apply the edge to the geometry. When this
option is off, it will not place the edge, but rather will place a preview of the edge. This can
be very helpful with heavy geometry on slower machines.
Steps to Add Edges:
1) Left click from marker to marker to draw edges.

2) Add the quantity you need. You can adjust the distances for the different connections as you
go.

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3) Press

Enter

on the keyboard to apply newly created edges.

ExtendEdges
ExtendEdges will extend the selected edges to a polygon you have selected, with the length of
the edges matching the rotation of the selected polygon. If no polygon is selected, the edges will
match the ground plane. The selection of the edges is important, see the following example.
1) In Polygon mode, the polygon of the plane is selected.

2) Switching to Edge mode, the edges on the side of the disc are selected. (Note that the edges
along the top are not selected.)

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3) ExtendEdges is activated and the edges stretch to match the angle of the plane.

4) After deselecting the plane polygon, ExtendEdges is activated again and the discs edges
extend to the ground plane.

EdgeWalk
When two contiguous edges are selected, EdgeWalk will create a new polygon from the selected
edges. EdgeWalk works best with edges that are at an angle with each other.

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01-04 Edges selected, then EdgeWalk activated multiple times. Note how it walks around corners.

Set CC Sharpness
Sets the sharpness value. For example, a value of 100% will create a sharp edge, while a value of
25% will result in a softer edge.

Left: Value=0% Right: Value=100%

Decrease/Increase Sharpness
Increases or decreases the sharpness of an edge. This allows for harder or softer corners between
two polygons.

The effect of the edge weighting is only visible when in weight shade mode or when CC
subdivisions are turned on for the given polygons.
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Polygons
This group is for tools that work with polygons.

Merge Polys
(default keyboard shortcut Shift Z)
Detail > Polygons > Merge Polygons joins two selected polygons that share at least one common
edge. A common edge is one where two or more polygons share all of the points along that edge.

The Merge Polygons command also works on curves, if they share a common terminating point. It
doesnt matter if you use the start or end of the curve. They will be merged into one continuous
curve.
Common problems are edges that dont share all points. Try merging points first to eliminate
overlapping points. After using this command, check for non-planar polygons, which often result.
Another issue with both merging points or polygons is the presence of Morph maps. These will
prevent merges.

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Flip Polygons
(default keyboard shortcut F)
Often as you create polygons or use various tools with single-sided polygons, their surface normals
will point in the wrong direction. Modeler provides some tools to help you solve that problem.

To flip polygons:
Simply select the polygon(s) and choose Detail > Polygons > Flip. This action reverses the direction
of the surface normal for the selected polygons.

You should get in the habit of checking regularly for polygons facing the wrong direction as it is
a common problem.
Sometimes you may choose to have the polygons facing the other way (flipped). A room is a good
example.

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This command also reverses the direction of selected curves.

Spin Quads
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl K)
The Spin Quads command (Detail > Polygons > Spin Quads) can be applied to adjacent four-point
polygons (i.e., quads) that share an edge. It merges the two polygons together and then splits
them using a different set of opposing points, each time selected in a clockwise direction. If you
apply Spin Quads three times, youll be right back where you started.

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Spin Quads can be quite handy for fixing areas on a SubPatch object where a seam just doesnt look
right, as in the example below.

Unify Normals
(Detail > Polygons > Unify Normals) When you have normals on the same mesh that are pointing
in opposite directions (such as a flipped polygon), Unify Normals will point them in the same
direction. Unify Normals will flip all polygons in the same direction as the first polygon that is
found or selected.

Align
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Align Polygons (Detail > Polygons > Align) attempts to automatically make all polygons face the
correct direction. After using, you may still need to use the Flip Polygons command (Detail >
Polygons > Flip) before you are done.
To align polygons:
1) Select an area that includes the polygons needing to be flipped, as well as a large number of
polygons facing the correct direction. Selecting polygons that share points and edges helps.

2) Choose Detail > Polygons > Align. Verify that the polygons were flipped as desired.

Mesh Repair

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When exporting as STL or PLY Mesh Repair gets automatically called to check on the quality of your
mesh. It offers several fixes:
Clear Stray Points - if you have any points not attached to polygons in your model, they will
be removed.
Clear One Point Polys - If you have any single point polygons in your model, they will be
removed.
Clear Two Point Polys - Two-point polys can be very useful in LightWave for all manner of
things, but they are no use for 3D printing.
Cap Holes - As previously stated, meshes for 3D printing need to be manifold - thats to say
with no holes. Cap holes gets rid of any holes in your mesh.
Triangulate Polys - Since our mesh doesnt need to look pretty for animation, merely correct
for printing, it is best to triangulate for complete compatibility.
Non-Manifold Edges - Edges that are non-manifold are ones that connect more than two
polygons.
You can also call Mesh Repair manually since its not just useful for 3D printing but for your objects
in general. If you have a reason for wanting to keep 2-point polys you can always uncheck that fix.

The edge of this box was selected and extended. The edge connecting the flap to the box becomes a non-manifold edge.

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Set Face/Subpatch/CC
These three commands change selected polygons into the type desired with no additional
parameters. Useful when you have been flipping in and out of subpatch mode and left some polys
unchanged.

Sketch Color
When using the various Rendering Styles in a viewport, you can change the polygon shading color
by choosing Detail > Polygons > Sketch Color.

Well start with our Alien Emissary figure in Texture mode to show the default view, this does not
use the Sketch Color.

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Texture - Doesnt show Sketch Color. Selected polygons

will be yellow as normal.

Color Wireframe - The wireframes will be shown in the

Sketch Color selected.

Hidden Line - The wireframes will be shown in the

Sketch Color selected.

Sketch - The polygons will be shown in the Sketch Color

selected

Wireframe Shade - The wireframes will be shown in the

Sketch Color selected

Textured Wire - The wireframes will be shown in the

Sketch Color selected

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The default Sketch Color can be changed in the Display Options panel.

Flatten

Flatten is a non-interactive tool that flattens selected polygons to a given axis or to the average
of the polygons normals. It is designed to be used from the keyboard for speed though you can
obviously still click the buttons.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Fix Poles
Fix Poles (Detail > Polygons > More > Fix Poles) is a simple tool which will take the poles you have
selected (or all the poles that exist in your geometry if no points are selected) and will modify
them to look better in subpatch mode by making cuts to form a tiny flat disc section at each pole,
flattening and reducing the smoothing tension caused by the triangles all around it.

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Left: Before, Right: After

Left: Before, Right: After

Note that it doesnt perform any miracles and some slight bumps and abnormalities may appear
on the surface with curved poles. However, it certainly does make them look much better and
more concealed most of the time, and will often obliterate such smoothing artifacts completely
on poles which span across broad, flat regions. You can often apply the tool multiple times to the
same pole to reduce the tension.

Applying it twice on sphere poles looks best. Applying it too many times may cause the flatness
of the discs created at the poles to become more pronounced.

Fix 3-5
Fix 3-5 (Detail > Polygons > More > Fix 3-5) is a simple tool to turn each pair of polygons consisting
of a triangle adjacent to a pentagon into quads which will generally work better with Subpatch
mode.
The tool works with your poly selection, and will repair any 3-5 polygons it detects in the selection.

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If no polygons are selected, the tool will analyze all the polygons in your object.

It is recommended that you always select the polygons you want to repair in a dense object, as the
algorithm can take some time to search through all the polygons in a very dense model with high
poly counts.

Double Sided
Sometimes youll actually want double-sided polygons, for example, when you need to go inside
a hollow object. Most of the time, you can get away with simply using the Double-sided surface
attribute on the Basic Tab of the Surface Editor. However, if you need to actually model the doublesided polygons, it is relatively simple. Just choose Detail > Polygons > More > Double Sided.

It is also possible to make double-sided polygons manually using the following procedure:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Select the target polygons (even if it is the entire object).

Copy the selection.
Paste the selection.
Choose Detail > Polygons > Flip to flip the (still) selected polygons.
Choose Detail > Points > Merge Points to merge points.

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Unify Polys
(default keyboard shortcut Shift I)
The Unify Polygons command (Detail > Polygons > More > Unify Polygons) converts selected
polygons into a single polygon. The polygons must share the same points, such as double-sided
polygons. It creates single-sided polygons with regard to the direction of their surface normals.
However, unusual object shapes can occasionally fool its complex algorithms, resulting in singlesided polygons facing the incorrect direction. If this happens, you may need to use the Align
Polygons or Flip Polygons commands to correct the resulting direction of the normals.

Normal Baker
Normal Baker (Map > Polygons > More... > Normal Baker) will store the (normalized) point normal for
each vertex as three numbers into a VMAP called PNT_NORMALS. The values, starting with the first,
represent the X, Y and Z directions of the vertexs normal.

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Curves
These tools all act on curve elements in Modeler.

Smooth
The Smooth command (Detail > Curves: Smooth) allows you to smooth two overlapping curves.
When two curves share the same end point, because of point merging or some other reason, the
curve may not flow smoothly through that point. This can be particularly troubling when designing
a complex spline cage. You could kill the curve (k), reselect the points and create a new curve, but
there is an easier way.
To smooth curves sharing a common end point:
Select the two curves (Polygon Selection mode).

Click Detail > Curves > Smooth. This smooths the joint as though the two curves were originally
plotted as one continuous curve - even though they remain individual curves.

Make sure that the point they share is in fact one point. (If not, merge the points into one.)

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Control Points
Using Control Points
When using a curve as a Modeling tool, sometimes you need to adjust the curve to get it to that
perfect angle. Because of the way points control an open curves shape, it can be difficult to get
the desired result at the ends of a curve. Fortunately, Modeler lets you have extra control points
at each end, which affect the curve shape, but dont actually become part of the curves Modeling
characteristics.
To activate control points on a curve:
1) If you have more than one curve, select your desired curve first using the Polygon Selection
mode.

2) Choose Detail > Curves > Control Points > Begin Control Point to detach the first point from
the curve. It is your starting control point. Dragging this point will change the shape of the
curve at the new starting point.

3) Choose Detail > Control Points > End Control Point to detach the last point from the curve. It is
your ending control point. Dragging it will change the shape of the curve at the new ending
point.

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The control points commands will also toggle the control point state off, if selected again.

It is perfectly legal to have only a beginning or ending control point on a curve.

If you plan to use control points on a curve, you should add an extra point at the beginning and
end of a curve for that purpose.

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Part
Create Part
Parts are the polygon version of point selection sets. (One distinction, however, is that a polygon
can be assigned to only one part name, while a point can be a member of multiple selection sets.)
You can quickly select a user-defined set of polygons by name as you would with surface names.
This feature operates independently and in parallel with surface naming.

To name polygon parts:

1) Select a group of polygons.

2) Click Detail > Selection Sets > Create Part. Enter the desired name in the Name field and click
OK.

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You can add to an existing part group by selecting the additional polygons and then selecting the
groups name from the pop-up menu.

To select parts:
1) In Polygon Selection Mode, choose the Statistics button at the bottom of the interface to
open the Polygon Statistics Panel.
2) Click on the pop-up menu triangle on the last line in the panel. (If it isnt visible, drag the
bottom of the panel down.) Select the desired part name.

3) The selected parts name will appear on the line. Click the plus
sign (+) to select all of the polygons defined by the part.

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Like surfaces, any one polygon can have only one part name. Therefore, if you create a new part
that uses polygons from an existing part, those polygons will become associated with the new part only.

Surface to Parts
The Surfaces To Parts command (Selection > Selection Sets > Surfs to Parts) can convert surfaces to
part names. The Part names are taken from the original Surface name.

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Measurement
The tools in this group are to measure polygons or volumes you have already created.

Measure Points
You need to select more than one point to use this tool and once you have and clicked on the tool
you will receive the information shown in the window that appears. You will get a Straight Distance
measurement, which highlights the longest straight distance between two points by selecting
them while the window is open (the original selection will return when you leave the window). You
also get the maximum X, Y and Z distance between points.

Angle Tool
You will often need to estimate angles in the modeling process. Modeler provides what is best
described as a virtual protractor. With it, you can measure the angle between any two points in any
view.
To use the Angle Tool:
1) Choose Detail > Measure: Measure > Angle Tool.
2) Place your pointer at the vertex of the angle you wish to measure and drag the LMB out to
form one side of the angle. A line will extend from the drag point.

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3) Release the mouse button. You can reposition the end of the line by dragging
it; however, you cannot move the starting position at this point.
4) Place your mouse pointer near the starting point (but not on top of it) and drag out the
other side of the angle. The information display will now tell you the angle between the two
lines.

5) Once you release the mouse button, you can reposition the vertex or either
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end by dragging them. To reset, click in a non-active part of the interface.

If you place your mouse pointer on top of the starting point in step 4, the starting point will
become the other end to the angle and you will drag out the first vertex instead of leaving it where it
should be.

Measure Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl E)
You will often need to estimate distances in the modeling process. The grid size can yield
reasonably accurate figures, but if the two points are not aligned somewhat vertically or
horizontally, estimating can be more difficult.
Fortunately, Modeler provides what is best described as a virtual tape measure. With it, you can
measure the distance between any two points in any view.

To use the Measure Tool:

Choose Detail > Measure > Measure > Measure Tool and then drag between the two positions you
want to measure. The information display in the bottom left corner will indicate the exact distance.
You can reposition either end by dragging it. To reset, click in a non-active part of the interface.

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Calculate
Calculate (Detail > Measure > Measure > Calculate) is a handy tool for quick calculation right in
Modeler.
1) Click Calculate from the Detail Tab. Enter the Equation and the X,Y and Z values.

2) Press Enter on the keyboard to calculate. The answer will be presented in the Info area at the
bottom of Modelers interface.

Bounding Box Command

The Bounding Box command (Detail > Measure > Measure > Bounding Box) displays size and center
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position information for foreground layers.

Clicking OK will replace the layer(s) with a corresponding bounding box. Use this command to
create stand-ins for complex objects, which can be replaced for the final rendered animation.

Point Center
The Point Center command (Detail > Measure > Measure > Point Center) will display the XYZ
coordinates of the center of the object in the foreground layer in the Info bar.

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Find Center
The Find Center command (Detail > Measure > Measure > Find Center) works very much like the
Point Center command but instead of displaying a requester with the center information, it will
place a point in the center of a single polygon.

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LightWave 2015

Construct Tab
Introduction
The Construct Tab contains a variety of tools for modifying geometry. These include ways to reduce
the number of points and polygons in all or part of the geometry, and ways to shape the geometry
by drilling holes or stenciling the mesh with new points and edges, or connecting meshes. Tools
for patching splines, for converting metaballs and metaedges, for toggling SubPatch mode, and for
freezing subdivision surfaces into a polygonal mesh are also located here.

Reduce
The Reduce group contains tools for simplifying geometry and merging points, edges and
polygons.

Reduce Points
The Reduce Points command (Construct > Reduce > Reduce Points) traverses polygon edges and
removes any points (from the polygons) that form an angle with adjacent points that is less than
the Degrees setting.

This command is especially useful to reduce the number of points and polygons generated by
extruding or bevelling text objects.

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Simply select a Point Reduction Threshold setting and the Degrees will be set automatically.

You can also enter your own Degrees setting. Activate Delete Points to delete the removed points.

Reduce Polygons
The Reduce Polygons command (Construct > Reduce > Reduce Polygons) merges co-planar
polygons with three or more vertices into a single polygon and can optionally remove any stray
points resulting from the polygon removal.

Polygons are merged if the relative angle between two polygons is less than the Polygon
Reduction setting, they share an edge, and have the same surface name.
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2015

Reduce Polys + (Qemloss2)

Always save your objects before you run Reduce Polys +!

The Reduce Polys + function (Construct > Reduce > Reduce Polys+) uses a surface simplification
algorithm in an attempt to reduce the number of polygons in an object. The plugin lets you rapidly
produce good quality approximations of excessively detailed polygonal models. Reduce Polys + is
an excellent way to create low resolution stand-in objects for scene layout or for multi-resolution
models. You can use the object replacement capability in Layout to substitute a low resolution
object in place of an object with a high polygon count when it is far away from the camera.

New to LightWave 2015 is the fact that UV maps are kept when reducing the polygon count with
Reduce Polys+. To maintain integrity, Polygon counts near edges tend to be largely preserved in order to
keep UV maps secure.

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1.6 M polygons get reduced to 159 K polygons gets reduced to 16 K polys

This plugin uses routines adapted from Michael Garlands public domain QSlim Simplification
Software. The algorithms used in this software are described in the papers written by Michael
Garland and Paul S. Heckbert, Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics, SIGGRAPH 97,
and Simplifying Surfaces with Color and Texture using Quadric Error Metrics, IEEE Visualization 98.

Introduction
Many 3D models contain a large number of polygons, especially algorithmically created models
(such as those created by implicit surface construction techniques) and models created with 3D
scanners and digitizers. Obviously, rendering 3D scenes is much faster when the models contain
a minimum number of polygons. Also with the current trend towards sharing 3D worlds over the
Internet, level of detail models (LOD) are becoming absolutely necessary for creating worlds in
which you can browse and interact in a reasonable manner.
This tool provides polygon reduction on objects within Modeler. Only one parameter, the
reduction Goal, must be set by you, the remaining default values should provide good reduction
for many objects with a high polygon count. However, to get the best results, you must understand
some of the basic concepts behind the algorithm.

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Terminology
The simplification algorithm is based on contractions of vertex pairs. It supports two types of
contractions: edge and non-edge contractions. An edge contraction occurs when the vertex pair
shares an edge. This is the primary type of contraction that occurs during the reduction stage
(in fact, non-edge contractions are turned off by the default parameters). The following figure
shows an example of an edge contraction where vertex v1 and vertex v2 are joined to form a new
vertex v3. Since v1 and v2 share an edge (highlighted below), one or more triangles will always be
removed during this contraction. In this example, two triangles are eliminated from the mesh.

Edge Contraction
Non-edge contractions let the algorithm join unconnected areas of the object together. The next
figure shows an example of a non-edge contraction (also called aggregation).

Non-Edge Contraction
In fact, there are two non-edge contractions taking place: v1 and v2 contract to form v5; v3 and v4
contract to form v6. Since by definition the vertices in the contraction pairs do not share an edge
(there is no edge between v1 and v2, or the v3, v4 pair), there is no actual reduction in the polygon
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count of the object. However, since this feature joins previously unconnected areas of the object
together, the potential exists for future reductions. Many times this can also provide a better low
resolution approximation of an object that has many disconnected regions.
As the algorithm proceeds through each iteration, an approximation of geometric error
accumulates at each vertex of the object. If this geometric error is less than the user defined
Maximum Error Tolerance, the vertex is marked as a viable candidate for another contraction.
Once the geometric error for a vertex becomes greater than the maximum threshold value, it will
no longer be considered in any more contractions. During each iteration, the vertex pair with the
smallest combined geometric error is chosen for the current contraction.
The algorithm proceeds until the simplified object is reduced to your targeted Goal (number of
polygons) or until all the vertex errors have become greater than the Maximum Error Tolerance.
These two parameters control how much reduction will take place, the remainder of the
parameters control various aspects of the vertex contractions.
Two types of vertices receive special consideration by this plugin: surface border and boundary
vertices. Parameters are provided for you to weigh the geometric error for these two special
types of vertices:
1) A surface border vertex is a point that is shared by two or more surfaces.
2) An edge that exists in only one triangle is a boundary edge, and
determines two endpoints that are called boundary vertices.
The Surface Border Weight and Boundary Preservation Weight parameters let you weigh the
geometric error at these points. The higher the weight, the less likely the vertex will be replaced.
Clever use of these parameters (along with some equally clever surfacing) can provide quite a
bit of control over the contraction process. The Polygon Area Weighting parameter, causes every
vertexs geometric error to be weighted by the area of the polygons that contain the vertex. Once
again causing larger values (triangles with larger areas) to be less likely to be removed.
To help preserve the shape of these shared borders, weighting of the surface border vertices, using
Surface Border Weight, has been added to the algorithm to help restrict movement/replacement
of those vertices.

Using Reduce Polys +

Make sure you have an object in the current foreground layer(s) of Modeler. You also need at
least one empty layer, because the existing object remains unchanged, and the reduced object is
placed in the first available empty layer. Choose Construct > Reduce > Reduce Polys + and you are
presented with the following panel.

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Reduce Polys + ignores any polygon selections and works only on the entire object in the
foreground layer, including any hidden polygons.
Goal lets you set the final number of polygons you would like in the simplified object. You may
enter either a desired polygon count (an integer such as 1000), or a percent based on the number
of polygons found in the original object (a real number with a percent sign at the end, such as
65.2%). If you enter a percentage, it will simply calculate the polygon goal by multiplying that
percentage by the total polygon count in the original object. So 100% will mean no reduction
takes place, and 0% means the object will disappear completely.
The first major step that Reduce Polys + takes is to triple your polygons, which will increase the
polygon count, if your model contains non-triangular polygons. A Goal of 100%, however, will
reduce the number of polygons back to the original number, but now they will all be triangles. If
that reduction doesnt preserve your models shape well enough, dont hesitate to try percentages
over 100%, those models will still be smaller than the tripled original.

Other Parameter settings may cause the algorithm to fail to reach the reduction goal.
Maximum Error Tolerance sets the geometric error threshold. A large value (such as the default
1,000,000) almost guarantees that you will achieve the reduction goal in the previous parameter
field. Smaller values may preserve the shape of the original object better, however you may not
achieve the desired reduction goal entered above.
Surface Border Weight gives you some control over how often and far surface border vertices are
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relocated during the reduction process. A large value restricts the relocation of points that lie along
surface borders, thereby preserving the shape of the border fairly well. Smaller values let the points
move farther from their original location, possibly causing the border to change its shape. A value
of 0 will not constrain the surface borders at all, and vertices along a border may not end up where
you expect when the simplification is finished.
Boundary Preservation Weight allows you some control over how boundary vertices are relocated
during the contraction process. A small value lets the boundary points move farther than larger
values. A value of 0 will not constrain the boundary at all, and the object may not look at all like
you expect when the simplification is finished.
If you end up with unexpected gaps between non-contiguous polygon surfaces, you can try to
preserve those boundaries by increasing the Boundary Preservation Weight. However, you might
get better results by merging the edge points together before running Reduce Polys +. You can
always just cut and paste the polygons afterward, if the separation was essential.
Pair Selection Tolerance determines whether non-edge contractions are performed during the
simplification process. If this value is 0, non-edge contractions are turned off, and only edge
contractions will take place during the simplification. Any value greater than 0 will cause non-edge
contractions to be possible during the reduction. If you enter a negative number, Reduce Polys
+ will automatically use 5% of the radius of the objects bounding sphere. This is the value you
should use if you want to start experimenting with this parameter.
Take care when changing this value to anything but 0! It is strongly recommended that you leave
this at 0 for all complex models with lots of polygons. If you use this, first reduce the model to a
fairly small polygon count with it turned off (=0), then reduce the reduction again with a carefully
chosen Pair Selection Tolerance, or better yet, just use a negative number. It is a very memoryintensive operation.
Vertex Placement Policy is best left at Optimal. When a pair of vertices is contracted, the algorithm
must decide where to locate the new vertex. The algorithm can use any one of the three final
options listed in this selection of buttons. Optimal calculates the new placement based on the
location with the least amount of geometric error. It doesnt hurt to experiment with these options
though.
Sometimes vertex pair contractions do not preserve the orientation of the faces in certain areas
of the contraction, If Preserve Mesh Quality is changed to Yes, the normal of each neighbouring
face is compared before and after the contraction. If the normal flips, the contraction is penalised
greatly by making the geometric error for that contraction very large (so that contraction will
probably never take place). In most cases, this will not be a problem, and the plugin will work faster
if this parameter stays set to No. Its not terribly slow, so it certainly doesnt hurt to experiment with
it.
If you change Polygon Area Weighting to Yes, the area of the triangle containing the vertex is used
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to weigh the geometric error. This will cause larger triangles to increase the geometric errors of its
vertices, so it is less likely to be chosen for simplification.
The Reduce Polys + function displays a progress monitor while it creates the reduced object in the
first available empty layer, following these steps: first, the object in the foreground layer(s) is copied
to the first available empty layer, then all its polygons are converted to triangles using Modelers
Triple command. Next, all vertices and polygons are converted into the necessary data structures
needed for the simplification routines, and the copied object is subsequently removed. Once the
simplification routine finishes, the reduced polygon object is placed in the previously empty layer.

For additional information, check out http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/.

Merge Triangles
This tool will attempt to combine pairs of triangles to create quads - four-sided polygons. There is
no interface.

Dissolve
Similar to Merge Polys, but works on all elements. Selected edges then applying Dissolve will
merge the polygons used by the selected edges. It cannot be used for deleting edges on the
outside of polygons.

The first and second pictures show an internal edge being dissolved, but the outside edge in the third picture cannot be dissolved.

Dissolve Loop
When you have an edge selected, Dissolve Loop will dissolve the edge loop the selected edges are
part of, leaving a new set of polygons.

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Weld Edges
This tool will weld selected edges along their length, as though you had selected the two points
that make the extremity of the edge and hit Weld Average ( Ctrl Shift W). If you select one edge
and use Select > Ring you can also replicate the next tool.

Weld Ring
The Weld Ring tool takes the same single-edge selection as the previous tool, but welds the entire
ring, as though you had selected one edge, used Select > Ring and used the previous tool.

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Remove
This sub-menu contains three tools:

Remove
(default keyboard shortcut Del )
This will probably be one of your most-used tools. It deletes selected points, edges or polygons
and in the normal Modeler paradigm, in Point or Polygon mode with nothing selected it will delete
everything on a layer. Edge mode requires a selection.

Remove Vertices from Polygons

The Remove Points command (Construct > Remove > Remove Vertices From Polygons) disassociates
the selected point(s) from the selected polygon, but does not delete the point. Non-selected
polygons that used that point remain unchanged.
To remove a point from a polygon:
1) Select the polygon(s) containing the point to be removed (Polygon Selection mode).

2) Select the points to be removed (Point Selection mode).

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3) Choose Construct > Remove > Remove Vertices From Polygons. To actually delete the points,
use the Cut function.

Remove Polygons
(default keyboard shortcut K)
Frequently, you want to use some of the points of an object (often primitives) in creating your
objects. A good example is using part of a discs points to model a rounded corner. The way to do it
is to use the Remove Polygons command (Construct > Remove > Remove Polygons).
To remove polygons but not points:
1) Select the target polygons.

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2) Choose Construct > Remove > Remove Polygons or press the K key.

An easy way to remember this keyboard shortcut is to think of it as killing (K) the polygons.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Collapse Polygons
The Collapse Polygons command (Construct > Remove > More... > Collapse Polygons) replaces
selected polygons with a single point at their average position. It is like moving all of the points for
the selected polygons to their center and then merging the points.

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2015

Bandglue

The Bandglue command (Construct > Remove > More... > Bandglue) merges a contiguous row
of four-point polygons into one polygon. This is a great tool to use to clean up extra rows of
geometry. Bandglue is the opposite of Bandsaw.
New to LightWave 2015. You can now Bandglue polygons on multiple layers at once and the joins
will be made on the same layer(s) as the original polygons.
To use, first select a contiguous row of (two or more) polygons.

Then execute the command. Like Bandsaw, the operation continues all the way around the
geometry until it returns to its point of origin, or hits a non-four-point polygon.

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Combine
This group contains Boolean tools and other means of joining geometry together.

Faster and Better Drills and Booleans

Complex Drill and Boolean operations require a lot of computing. Selecting the affected polygons
in the foreground layer before using either command will greatly speed things up. This lets
Modeler concentrate on only those polygons that need to be affected. Also, if your initial result is
not satisfactory - particularly with complex objects - try it again after nudging one of the objects
on an axis a little.

Boolean
(default keyboard shortcut Shift B)
The Boolean command (Construct > Combine > Boolean) is similar in some respects to the Solid
Drill command, discussed later. However, Boolean operations treat objects as solids with volume,
instead of hollow 3D objects. They will merge, split, carve, and join objects in a variety of ways.
Like the drilling tools, you must have an object in the background layer. The major distinction of
Boolean is that it treats the foreground object as a solid mass and thus creates inside surfaces
along cut edges. There is also the Speed Boolean tool, described later, that can work on a single
layer.
Our example geometry is this red box in the foreground layer and a green tube in the background
layer.

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With Boolean, some portion of the foreground and background objects must physically overlap in
3D space.

Union
Union joins the background layer with the foreground layer, taking the solid objects and
combining them into a single object. Interior faces are removed and no new polygons or surfaces
are created; therefore, all surfaces will retain their original names. To work properly, both objects
must be closed 3D solids. You will need to merge points for the two objects to be truly in union.

From the rendering perspective, you could get a similar result by just pasting both objects into one
layer; however, Boolean results in the fewest polygons and smaller object files, which will use fewer
system resources and render faster. There may be times, however, that due to the complexity of
objects, Boolean will not produce acceptable results.

Intersect
Intersect takes solid objects and leaves behind whatever portion was common between them.
It leaves behind only those portions of the background layer and foreground layer that were
overlapping. (This corresponds to the portion that the Union operation discards.) No new polygons
or surfaces are created; therefore all surfaces will retain their original names. To work properly, both
objects must be closed 3D solids.

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Subtract
Subtract removes the background drilling template object from the foreground object, leaving a
copy of itself embedded there. Essentially, it carves the background layer out of the foreground
layer, leaving new inside surfaces in its wake. New surfaces will take on the names of the surfaces
that carved them. To work properly, both objects must be closed 3D solids.

The results of this operation will vary depending on whether the polygons being drilled consist of
single-sided or double-sided polygons (see subsequent discussion).
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Boolean commands such as Subtract will produce much better results if your objects contain
plenty of geometry to begin with. If a boolean does not appear to produce favorable results, or
generates an error when run, then consider increasing the amount of polygons with tools such as
Multiply > Subdivide > Subdivide before performing the boolean operation.

Add
Add joins the background layer with the foreground layer so that the overlapping shapes are fully
combined as one. You can use combinations of 2D and 3D objects. This is different from simply
saving two overlapping objects from two different layers, since the polygons that physically
overlap are merged in a form of mutual drill operation. No new surfaces are created, although
some polygons may be subdivided. Therefore all surfaces will retain their original names.

The result is similar to just cutting and pasting the tube object into the apple layer. The difference is
that where surface polygons from the two objects intersect they are sliced by each other to form a
common edge. All interior polygons and surface names are retained.
You can use more than two objects at a time, but its often better to work with a pair at a time. The
math involved in Boolean operations is complex, and using multiple objects in a single operation is
quite time-consuming.

To use the Boolean command:

1) Make the object that you are going to use as the cutter
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2) Place the object to be cut in another layer and put the object from step 1 in the background.
3) Click Construct > Combine > Boolean (or use the keyboard shortcut

Shift

B).

4) Select the type of Boolean Operation and click OK.

Single vs. Double-sided Polygons

Single-sided and double-sided polygons play a unique role in the Boolean Subtract operation.
Imagine that you are a knife blade, slicing through a 3D sphere made of single-sided polygons.
Every time you cut through a polygon layer, you pass from the outside of the sphere to the inside.
If you passed through only one polygon, you are now inside the 3D sphere. Accordingly, a Boolean
knife blade slicing through a one-sided sphere would leave solid halves.

Now say there are two spheres made of single-sided polygons, one sphere being smaller than the
other, with the smaller one inside the other (normals facing in). You pass through the first polygon from air to solid - then through a second polygon - from solid back to air. You would now be inside
a hollow core inside the inner sphere. A Boolean knife slicing through this sphere would leave a
hollow core.
Now, if our two spheres were double-sided instead, Modeler would treat each sphere as if it
were constructed with paper-thin walls (double-sided polygons are just back-to-back polygons).
Remember, normally the sphere would be treated as a solid ball. Upon encountering a doublesided polygon, Modeler will think that it has passed through two polygons. In the paper-thin space
between the front-facing and back-facing polygon, the Boolean knife blade sliced through air, then
solid, then air again.

Boolean will usually not operate as expected if the foreground and background objects are both
double-sided.

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Speed Boolean
Speed Boolean works exactly like the Boolean command except that you work in one layer.
For Booleans to work properly in LightWave, you need fully connected, closed objects, and on
two separate layers. What Speed Boolean does is take your polygon selection, expand it to Select
Connected, then it Cuts the selected mesh, Pastes it on a free background layer and executes the
desired Boolean operation, Deletes the background layer then switches back to foreground.

Speed Boolean requires that you have both meshes in the same layer to function. You must also
select at least one polygon on the mesh doing the Cut.
You can either select the Speed Boolean tool, or if you know which operation you are after just
choose the appropriate SpBool operation and there will be no requester to slow you down.

Drill Tools
(default keyboard shortcuts: Solid Drill Shift C Drill Shift R)
There are two drill commands: Drill (Construct > Combine > Drill) and Solid Drill (Construct >
Combine > Solid Drill). The difference is that with Drill you use a two-dimensional object as your
drill bit. The bit extends infinitely along the drilling axis, so it has an imaginary third dimension.
Think of it as looking straight down along the length of a drill bit. Forgetting the fact that you know
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it has length, it would look like a disc, right? With the Drill command, you just need a disc-shaped
polygon and the length is assumed.
Solid Drill is essentially identical to Drill except - as you might have guessed - it uses an actual threedimensional object as your drill bit.
When you use a drill in the real world, you must first place a drill bit in the drill. This same concept
applies to Modeler. Modeler uses an item in the background layer as the drill bit that will cut the
item in the foreground layer(s).

If your drill bit is an open curve, Modeler will treat it as a closed curve with its endpoints joined.

Both Drill tools have the same four options:

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Core
The Core operation will include all polygons that reside inside the 3D space of the drill bit, plus
portions of the polygons that straddle the borders.

Tunnel
Tunnel is the opposite of Core. It creates a tunnel in your object. All polygons that reside outside
the 3D space of the drill bit will be included, plus the trimmed polygons that straddle the borders.

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Stencil
The Stencil option stencils the drill bits shape onto any intersecting polygons. It also names all
of the polygons that fall within the bits shape. You can either enter a surface name in the field or
select an existing name from the pop-up menu.

This option is great for stenciling text or logos onto objects - an alternative to using surface color
textures. To help draw attention to a stenciled area, you might wish to use the Bevel tool (Multiply
>Bevel) or Smooth Shift tool (Multiply >Smooth Shift) on the stencil.
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Slice
Slice is the same as Stencil, except it does not rename any surfaces.

To drill an object:
1) Place the target object in a layer.
2) Place your bit object in another layer and put the target object in the background.
3) Position the bit object as desired. Use the viewport whose perpendicular axis (i.e.,
the axis you cant affect) is the one you want to drill along. For example, if you
wanted to drill along the Z axis, position the bit object in the Back type viewport.
4) Swap foreground and background layers using the apostrophe key ( ) shortcut.
5) Choose Construct > Drill.
6) Select the drilling Axis and the type of drilling Operation. Click OK.

Solid Drill
The Solid Drill command (Construct > Combine > Solid Drill) will work just like the Drill command,
but you have control over the effect along the drilling axis. There is no Axis option. It is unnecessary
since you use a 3D object that has an actual, rather than implied, third dimension.

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The objects in the foreground and background layers must physically overlap for the tool to
work properly. They cannot be just lined up on an axis.

Both the drill bit and the item to be drilled must be closed solids. A hemisphere with one open
side, or a hollow tube, would not qualify, but a closed hemisphere or a tube with sealed ends would.

Bridge
The Bridge Tool is located under Construct > Combine > Bridge.

When in Point Mode the Bridge tool stores your poly selection, select all polys, run split polygons,
then restore the previous selection. As such, the tool has the same problems with split polys when trying
to do elaborate cuts - its recommended that you keep it simple and use the tool multiple times rather
than try to make a very complicated series of cuts at once. This tool works well in combination with
Divide.

Polygon Mode:
In Polygon Mode, the tool serves as a connect tool to form bridges/tunnels between polygons.
Multiple polygons can be selected and bridged together, with or without matching border shapes/
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point counts.

It is recommended that the borders have point counts that are fairly close, otherwise the tool will
perform heavy triangulation to bridge the polygons, which will often give undesired smoothing
results without modifications. When bridging together polygons, the tool will automatically use
a seam point, which will result in the minimal amount of twisting and turning of edges bridging
the two polygons together. If the point counts dont match, the seams are fitted at an angular
tolerance level with triangles bridging the additional points on the border with the higher point
count.

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Connect
(default keyboard shortcut L)

Point Mode:
In Point Mode, the tool works identically to LightWaves Split Poly tool, except with one convenient
modification - you dont have to select the polygons you want to cut ahead of time.

Edge Mode:
In Edge mode, selecting a single edge and hitting L, or this tools button in Construct > Combine
> Connect will seem to do nothing but deselect the selected edge. However, if you then switch
to point mode you will see a point has been added to the center of the edge you selected. If you
select more then one edge and those edges are at an angle to end other, a new edge will be
created joining all the selected edges. If you select edges that are on the same line, the result will
be the same as if you had selected a single edge - new points will be placed in the center of each
selected edge.

Single edge selected and result

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Multiple edges on the same line and result

Multiple edges selected and result

Polygon Mode:
In Polygon mode you cannot just select a single polygon, you must select several contiguous polys.
Hitting L will add edges across the middle of the polygons in much the same way that Connect
works in Edge mode.

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Patches
Tools for creating spline patches.

Patch
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl F)
Modelers feature for Spline Patching lets you model with curves and then smoothly spread a mesh
of polygons over them.
To use Spline Patching:
1) Make three or four curves that create one or more fully enclosed areas. Note that the curves
must share end points, and that they must be head to tail meaning that the origin point of
one curve is the same point as the end point of the preceding curve.

2) In the Polygon Selection mode, select the curves that surround the enclosed area. Do this
in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion. Remember which curve you selected first! Its
okay if you also select some polygons in addition to the curves, they will be ignored in the
patching operation.

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3) Choose Construct > Patches > Patch. The fields for Perpendicular and Parallel refer to the
number of polygons to put along the side that is perpendicular or parallel to the first curve
you selected. Knots and Length let you choose to space your polygons equally according to
the overall length or relative to the knots or points on the splines.

4) Click OK. You should see a polygon mesh added to the area within the three curves you
selected.

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Sometimes a spline cage will be patched unexpectedly. There are some fixes you can try. All of
the selected curves should flow in the same direction, based on their heads and tails. If they dont,
you can flip them and try the patch again. You can also try selecting the curves in the opposite
direction.
Sometimes the resulting surface normals face the wrong way. Just select at least one polygon on
that side. Choose Selection > Modify Selection > Connected (or hit ]) to select all of the connected
polygons in the patch. Then, press the F key to flip the polygons.
If there are not enough curves or they do not share points properly, an error message appears. If
this happens, check the joining points carefully to make certain they are not merely overlapping.
Choose either Detail > Points > Merge Points or Detail > Points > Weld to correct.

When patching a 3-sided spline patch, one corner will always contain a fan of triangles. The
corner where these triangles will be created is determined by the connecting corner of the first and
second spline selected.

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Auto Patch
The Auto Patch command (Construct > Patches > Auto Patch) automatically patches a spline cage.
You can set the number of rows and columns of the patch between 1 and 20.

To space the polygons according to the length of the curve, select the Length Spacing checkbox.
To ensure success, try to have no more than four knots per curve.

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Convert
The Convert group is for switching between LightWave-native subpatches, Catmull-Clark patches
or polygons, and for dealing with Meta-objects.

SubPatch
(default keyboard shortcut Tab )
Standard polygonal surfaces need many polygons to approximate a smooth surface. Even so, a
smooth surface made up of polygons will eventually reveal its inherent sharp-edged nature, if its
examined closely enough. Although you can create extremely polygon-heavy objects to attempt
to compensate for this, it is often difficult to manipulate and manage them from the perspective of
memory-consumption and editing.

A SubPatch - an abbreviation for subdivision patch - is a bi-cubic patch. The idea behind
SubPatching is to repeatedly refine the control mesh until you achieve a smooth surface, called
the limit surface. The SubPatch modeling mode is not unlike a real-time implementation of the
Metaform (Multiply > Subdivide > Subdivide) command.

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You activate SubPatch mode by pressing the Tab key or choosing Construct > Convert > SubPatch.
In most instances you want to affect the entire object, so no polygons are selected when you press
the key. If polygons are selected, only those will have the SubPatch mode turned on. This can get
confusing because the polygons become deselected. If you press the Tab key again, the SubPatch
state of all polygons is reversed.
If you do this by accident, use the Statistics window to select/re-select just the SubPatch surfaces.

To change the shape of the SubPatch object, you manipulate the shape of the polygonal cage (i.e.,
control mesh) using most of the standard Modeling tools, including Bevel, Smooth Shift, Metaform,
and so on, or by just dragging points and polygons around. Dont use tools that may create greater
than four-point polygons, like Boolean.

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You can select the SubPatch vertices by clicking either on the true (polygon cage) vertex location
or the location of the vertex when mapped on the SubPatch surface.

When you use SubPatch, you often manipulate the polygons into what would normally be nonplanar, degenerate, or cattiwompus polygons. Since the polygonal cage is merely a reference for
the SubPatch object, this is perfectly acceptable.

If you end up editing a very complex cage, the display can become confusing. In such a case, the
cage is often close in shape to the SubPatch surface. Thus, you may be able to edit the normal polygons
and just flick the SubPatch mode on to check the results.
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Freeze
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl D)
The Freeze command (Construct > Convert > Freeze) is used to convert curves, SubPatch objects
and Meta-primitives into polygons.

To convert a curve into a polygon:

Select the curve(s) and choose Construct > Convert > Freeze. Each independent curve will become
a distinct polygon. An open curve will be closed (between its end points) before it is converted to a
polygon.
The number of points that Modeler will use to approximate the curve depends on the setting for
Curve Division on the General Options panel (Modeler > Options > General Options or keyboard
shortcut O).

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Meta
This sub-group is for meta-object tools.

Convert Metaballs
You can convert points into plain Metaballs using the Convert Metaballs command (Construct >
Convert > Meta > Convert Metaballs).

Edit Metaballs
Select the Metaball you wish to edit in Polygon mode and then activate the Edit Metaballs tool
(Construct > Convert > Meta > Edit Metaballs). On the numeric panel, you can adjust the Radius and
Influence with the numeric panel or interactively with the handles in the viewport.

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Convert Metaedges
Meta edges can be created from two-point polygons or curves. Simply select the polygon/curve
and choose Construct > Convert > Meta > Convert Metaedges.
1) Select a two-point polygon or curve.

2) Use Construct > Convert > Meta > Convert Meta Edges to convert the selection to a Meta Edge.

Today, its simpler to leave your 2-point polys as lines and use the Object Properties > Edge tab to
draw them with added thickness. Convert Metaedges is present for legacy purposes.

Convert Metafaces
There is no Draw Metafaces tool. They must be created from three- or four-point polygons or
curves. Just select the polygon/curve and choose Construct > Convert > Meta > Convert Metafaces.
1) Select a polygon or curve.

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2) Choose Construct > Convert > Meta > Convert Metafaces.

Toggle Metamesh
You can also toggle the Meta-primitive mesh on/off by choosing Construct > Convert > Meta >
Toggle Metamesh. You may want to do this if you have a lot of Meta-primitives and your display
refresh is too slow. This is not just a display change and is similar to toggling off SubPatches.

Left: On, Right: Off

If you save a Meta-primitive with the mesh off, you will not be able to see the surface in Layout.
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Map Tab
Introduction
What are Vertex Maps?
As you might expect, every point in an object has independent position information. Points even
have rotational information, although you normally dont rotate individual points. A vertex map
(VMap) is additional data that a user can add onto each point in an object. Any point in an object
can have a unique entry (value) for a particular VMap or no entry at all. The VMap data is all stored
in the object file.
Basically, VMaps are to points, what surfaces are to polygons. Like surfaces, you name your VMaps,
which allows you to access them to perform certain operations. Some VMap types are designed for
special built-in functions. For example, UV Maps hold texture placement information. Endomorphs
hold offset information for point position. Weight maps are used more generally, like for bone
influence; however, the SubPatch weight map is used specifically for control-point tension.
If a point has no entry for a particular VMap, the VMap is not assigned to that point - this map will
have holes in it. Note that an assigned value of 0 is not the same as not having the VMap assigned
to that point. However, some functions that use VMaps consider these two states to be equal usually by necessity - essentially filling the holes with zeros.
VMaps are normally created using the buttons in the lower-right corner of Modeler.

Once the map is created, you can set or edit the values in the map. Many LightWave commands,
however, also have the ability to create VMaps.
VMaps are extra data and will increase your objects file size. Thus, depending on the situation, you
may be able to minimise the file size by judiciously assigning VMaps to points.
Because you can use vertex maps (VMaps) throughout LightWave, you should have a solid
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understanding of how they work. Here are some important basic points:
1) Weight maps have a general range of -100% to +100%.
2) Use the Selection Info command (Info button on the bottom taskbar, or press I) to determine
what VMaps and values are assigned to individual points.

Internally, there is a single list of VMaps, which includes the maps from all the objects that are
loaded. However, editing a map in one object will not affect other objects (using the same VMap
name) because the data in the map is attached to the geometry of that object. There is no crosstalk between objects, except in the case of renaming. If you rename a VMap, all VMaps (for loaded
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objects) with the same name are renamed.
Generally, the only VMaps listed in the main VMap pop-up menu are those that contain actual
data in the current object. Other VMaps are filtered out. Not all VMap pop-up menus will do this
filtering, however, particularly those on plugins.
New VMaps are an exception to the above standard. Initially, they will appear in pop-up menus
even if they contain no data. However, if you deselect a new VMap before using it, it will disappear
from current VMap listings. It might save you some typing time, so Modeler still places the name in
the pop-up menu that appears beside the naming field when you are creating a new VMap.
There can be one selected VMap of each general category (weight, UV texture, etc.), and they can
be selected in different ways. The pop-up menu in the bottom-right corner of Modeler shows the
current selection for the weight, UV texture, and morph categories, and can be used to change
them. The VMap List window, discussed later, also shows the selected map in each category. Note
that all new maps start out selected.

What are UV Maps?

Sometimes, when mapping textures onto objects, you will find that the normal projection
mapping just doesnt work. This usually happens when the object is organic, or irregular in shape.
For those occasions, theres UV Mapping.
UV Mapping adds two extra coordinates to the points in your object; those on the U and V axis,
running horizontally and vertically through a flat plane on which you can paint your texture. Since
the coordinates are assigned to points, its essentially as if that painted texture was fixed to the
surface of the object, with pins where all the points are. No matter how irregular your object is, or
how it moves or flexes, those pins stay in place, and the texture stays right where you put it.
Technically, its not as accurate as projection mapping, because the texture is really only exact at
those points, and merely interpolated everywhere else, but artistically, it works.
The trick is to make the map first. LightWave has tools to help you do that.

UV Texture Maps
Sometimes, standard image mapping tools (i.e., planar, cylindrical, and spherical mapping) may be
somewhat limiting where the surface is irregular in shape. These techniques usually work well only
where you can globally map the entire texture image using a linear interpolation along two axes.
The object geometry essentially has no influence on how the texture is applied.
However, what if you could assign areas of a texture image to points on the surface, essentially
tacking it down at key points? Well, you can with UV mapping in Modeler. Between the tacks, the
image is stretched smoothly.
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The U and V refer to texture map coordinates and are really not much different than the XYZ
coordinates you are familiar with. In fact, UV mapping is the process of setting up a relationship
between the two dimensions of an image, U and V, with the three dimensions of an object
surface, XYZ.

UV Map on a Serious Sam Character. Note the selected polygons in both views.
Once this relationship is set up, changing any parameter (i.e., U, V, X, Y, or Z) will also relatively
change the appearance of the texture mapping. With UV mapping, the object provides additional
information for texture mapping, which can be different for any given point on the surface. The
texture is more or less stuck to points on the surface using a relationship that you define.

UVs and Projection

UVs have to come from somewhere. For existing polygonal models, the choices are limited to
setting the UV coordinates for each point in the object manually, or applying some projection,
which automatically generates the 2D texture coordinates from the given 3D point positions. In
LightWave, you can create UVs by using projections, which also happen to be the same as the
standard projections for texture mapping (i.e., planar, cylindrical, and spherical).
Usually, the projection for the UV map is not perfect for the model everywhere. The projected UV
map must be tweaked - eyes and nostrils moved over the right parts of a face, or texture features
matched to geometry features.

Keep in mind that standard projection mapping is more accurate because it has some exact,
continuous value over the entire surface. UV mapping, on the other hand, is technically accurate only
at small sample points. The surface is interpolated for the large areas in between the sample points.
Adjusting the sample points so that the interpolated areas look right is difficult and the reason why UVs
are more difficult to use.

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For illustration purposes, lets say you had your texture image printed on a piece of very flexible
rubber and wanted to fit it on a toy car made of wood. You could conform the rubber material to
contours of the car by tacking it down with thumbtacks. That is more or less what UV mapping
does. However, it is a little bit reversed: what you do is tack the UV points down onto the image.

Discontinuous UVs
VMaps support discontinuous values across polygon boundaries, which are useful for UV texture
coordinates, gradient weights, and other VMap-controlled surfacing parameters.
Discontinuous UVs are automatically used when appropriate with Modelers Modeling tools.

Unweld Command
The Unweld command (Detail > Points > Unweld) creates multiple copies of the selected points so
that none are shared by two polygons. Each polygon is given its own copy of the selected vertices,
and VMap values for the polygon are made continuous over the new vertices. This tool is the key to
being able to edit discontinuous UVs.

Merge and Weld Commands

When points are merged with the Merge Points (Construct > Reduce > MergePoints) or Weld Points
(Detail > Points > Weld) command, any introduced discrepancies between VMap values are resolved
with discontinuous UVs.
Merge points will no longer merge points that are at different locations in any of their morphs.
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This prevents distortions of the topology or discontinuities in the morph VMaps. It also provides a
method to force seams in the mesh.

UVs Outside the Box

You may have noticed that UV coordinates can appear outside of the UV box. That is, have U or V
values less than 0 or greater than 1. The texture is essentially tiled, so these points are still attached
to some part of the texture. It is sort of like the old Asteroids video game where the ship moves off
the edge, but appears on the opposite side.

It may help you understand the result by thinking of two rotation keys in Layout of, say, 0 and 720
degrees. From the viewers perspective, the orientations at those keyframes are the same; however,
there is a (motion) path between the keys that LightWave interpolates. For UVs, there is a texture
path. LightWave interpolates the texture between the UV coordinates.
Lets say you had U coordinates at .9 and 1.3. Now although 1.3 and .3 would be at the exact same
position on the texture, there would be a big difference in the interpolation path of .9 to 1.3 and .9
to .3. The latter would be backwards.

The Inline Help for LightWave includes a set of tutorials on creating and using UV Maps.

What are Per-polygon Maps?

Per-polygon UV Mapping, or Poly Mapping, was introduced in LightWave 6.0b as a way to handle
discontinuous UVs. (Without some kind of handling, they would cause the entire image map to
appear backwards and squashed onto a single polygon at the map seam. Not a pretty sight.) They
were superseded by the current UV Mapping tools found starting in LightWave 6.5, so unless you
are working with a model that was mapped before that, theres really no reason to use them; the
new tools are much more elegant and flexible.
Unlike UV Maps, Poly Maps cannot be edited with the normal Modify tools used in the rest of
Modeler, because they are not continuous. Instead, they are locked snapshots of some UV Mapping
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of a polygon. So any operation on a vertex must also specify which polygons view of that vertex is
being edited.
You can select polygons that use per-poly UVs by choosing the VMap Poly Select command (Map >
Poly Map > Select by Polygon Map).

General
Set Map Value
Set Map Value (Map > General > Set Map Value). Clicking on this command opens a panel that
allows you to directly specify a value for any of the Vertex Maps used in LightWave.

This value will be applied to all selected points. If no points are selected, this value will be applied
to the entire map.

Vertex Map
The Vertex Map pop up menu allows you to choose the map you want to work with. The map
selected will be the only map affected, regardless of what map is actually showing in your
viewports.

Its entirely possible to assign values to maps you cannot see. In other words, if you dont see
anything happening, check to make sure you are looking at the correct map.
Below that are various fields, which will be available or dimmed, depending on the map type
youve chosen.

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Weight Map

If you select a Weight Map, only one value will be available. Whatever value you type into the field
will be applied to all selected points in the map, replacing any values you might already have
assigned.

Texture Map

If you select a Texture Map, two values will be available. The first is the U value, and the second is
the V value. 0% for both values is the lower left corner, where the vertices meet on the UV Map
Texture view. 100%, of course, is the upper right corner. All selected points will snap to the value
chosen.

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Morph Map

If you select a Morph Map, three values will be available. They correspond to the three axes (X,Y, and
Z.) All selected points will be moved along a delta described by the numbers you enter. In other
words, if you enter .3 in the middle (Y) field, all selected points will be moved 300 mm upwards
from their Base values.

Color Map

If you select a Color Map, four values and three ranges will be available. The values are for Red,
Green, Blue, and Alpha. The Ranges are General, Percent and Distance. Its recommended that you
dont use the General field. The Percent is percent, of course. If you use Distance then
1m = 100%.

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Dont forget that if you dont set the Alpha, in the fourth field, you wont see the color on your map.
(For full color, set it to 100%.) Using this tool with no points selected is a quick and easy way to
make sure that all the points are in your Color Map. (Points with no assigned value are not the same
as points with an assigned value of zero.)

Use this tool to assign all the points in your object to a Vertex Color Map if you are so inclined;
but dont use it to assign the colors. For that, it is much better to select the points, and then use the Point
Color tool. It will give you a regular LightWave color requester. (But it will only work on selected points.)

Metaball

If you select a Metaball Map, one Value and three ranges will be available. The ranges are General,
Percent, and Distance. They change the size of the Metaballs, and the distance at which they
influence each other. Once again, any selected points, that is, Metaballs, will react to the numbers
you enter in these fields.
This tool is not interactive; you wont see your changes until you close the panel. All the fields in all
categories revert to zero when the panel is closed.

Airbrush
The Airbrush tool allows you to paint directly on your Vertex Maps. How it works depends on
which kind of map youre working with.

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Choose the desired map from the Vertex Map drop down in the Numeric panel. All the maps
available to the Airbrush will be listed here by name, with the type of map in brackets on the right.
Whichever map you pick will be shown in any viewports capable of showing it, assuming its the
same type of map chosen in the VMap Bar. (i.e. Weight Maps will be shown in viewports using the
Weight Map Render Mode, Color Maps in Smooth Shade, Texture, and Textured Wire, etc.)
If you pick a different Weight or Color Map from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen while
the Airbrush is open, that map will replace the one thats showing, both in the viewports and the
Airbrush Numeric panel, if its the same type.
The same type caveat is important. If you have a map of a different type showing in the Numeric
panel and the VMap Bar, for instance, a Weight Map in the VMap Bar, and a Morph Map in the
Numeric panel, any airbrush strokes will be applied to the map in the panel, in this case the Morph
Map, and not to the one in the VMap Bar, even though thats the one you will be looking at. So, if
the airbrush seems to have no effect, check to make sure you are working on the right map.

Radius
The Radius determines the relative Falloff for the tool. You can adjust it interactively with the RMB,
as you can with the Falloff values of most tools. In order to change anything, the radius must touch
a point on your map; bear that in mind as you adjust it.

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Strength
The Strength determines the intensity of the effect. Small values are recommended; start with 10%
and increase it if you need to.

This tool behaves like a real airbrush in some ways. If you move quickly, youll get less coverage
than you would with a slow stroke, and going back over areas will increase coverage. However,
unlike its real-world namesake, the tool must be moving in order to do anything. Dont expect to
get full coverage by holding it still over a point.
Also, remember that you are painting vertices, not polys. Running the Airbrush up and down the
polys will have no effect unless the Airbrush radius touches a point. For best results, ignore the
polys, and paint the points.

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You can select points or polys to limit the effect to the selected vertices only; however, because of
the nature of Vertex Maps, youll find that the effect is blended with adjacent points or polys. Each
point can only have one value; so as you can imagine, the more points you have, the more detailed
your painting can be.

If you want a sharp edge between two polys, cut them, and paste them back in. Then either select
the polys you wish to work with, or hide the others. In either case, since they are no longer sharing
a point, there will be no blending. When you are finished, merge the points. They will keep their
sharp edges.

Weight Value
To use the Airbrush with a Weight Map, its best to change one of the viewports to Weight Shade.
(You dont have to, unless you want to see what youre doing; the tool will change the Weight value
anyway.) Pick the Weight Map you want to work with from the list; it will automatically be shown in
the viewports.

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Weight Shade display mode shows red on the right for positive weight maps and blue for negative weightmaps.

Type the value you want to apply in the Weight Value field. This value will replace the current one.
In other words, if you are painting with 10% weight, you dont have to worry about any of the
vertices exceeding that value. You can also paint with 0%, to eliminate positive weight without
worrying about negative weight.
If you hold down the Shift key, youll paint with the inverse value. In other words, if youre painting
with 30%, holding down the Shift key will enable you to paint with -30%. If youre using -50%, it will
give you +50%.
If you hold down the Ctrl key, the weight will go towards zero, whether its currently negative or
positive. (In other words, it will go up if its negative, or down if its positive.)
You can push the values far beyond 100% and -100%, if you are so inclined.

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Airbrush and Morph Maps

To use the Airbrush with a Morph Map, select the morph you want to paint on from the VMap Bar at
the bottom of the screen. Select the morph you want to paint from in the Vertex Map menu in the
Airbrush Numeric panel.

Shape
Choose the percentage of the Shape that you want to apply from the Shape text field. You can
change the current morph half way to another one, or change parts all the way, or just take 10% off
the top. Its very flexible.
You can also paint a morph onto the Base; but if you do, it will change all the relative morphs in
your object. You are given a warning if you attempt it.

Airbrush and Color Maps

To use the Airbrush tool with a Color Map, choose the map you want to color from the drop down
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list. Make sure that its being used on a surface, and is visible, the Create Vertex Color Map requester
asks which surface to apply it to. (Check the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor for use.) The
Airbrush will paint on maps that are not showing, so be careful. If you dont see any effect, dont
assume that your settings are too weak.

Choose a color from the normal Color Requester. Be aware, though, that LightWave will apply the
color over the base color of your object using the Multiply Blending Mode. If you are familiar with
Photoshop, its very similar. Adding color will always make the base color darker, never lighter. (If
thats a problem, simply start with a white base color, of course.) The colors you paint on the map
itself will replace whatever colors are there, so its easy to lighten them.

Alpha
If you are using an Alpha Channel in your map, (enabled when you created it,) then you can also
adjust the Alpha with the Airbrush. Do this by either changing the number in the Alpha text field,
or by holding down the Ctrl key as you paint. You can increase the Alpha by using the Alpha text
field; but it will also add color. (Which is just as well, really, since uncolored points with 100% Alpha
are black.)

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Clear Map
(default keyboard shortcut _)
To clear a Vertex Map, select the map you want to clear from the VMap Bar, and click on the
command. All values will be cleared, no matter which kind of map you chose. (Weight, Texture
(UV), Endomorphs, Color Vertex Maps, or Selection Sets.)
To clear an entire map, make sure no points or polys are selected before you click.
This differs from the Delete Map command because it leaves the map. Only the information
contained in the map is deleted, so you can immediately begin to put more information in, without
having to create another map. If you dont add information, the map will be deleted when you
leave it. (Empty maps dont persist in LightWave.)
To partially clear a map, select the points or polys that you would like to clear. Click the button, and
the values for those points and polys will be gone.
This is extremely useful, as it allows you to correct your maps on a point-by-point basis.

Dont use this function to clear a copy of a map to make symmetrical morphs, etc. Instead, just
select the part you want to keep when you copy the map in the first place.

Edit Maps
Copy Vertex Map
(Map > General > Edit Maps > Copy Vertex Map) To copy a Vertex Map, select the map you want to
copy from the VMap Bar, and click on the command.

A dialog will appear that allows you to name the new Vertex Map. By default, it will have the name
of the map you are copying, with a number appended to it. You can accept that name, or type in
any name you like. (It is strongly suggested that you develop the habit of using meaningful names
for your maps.)
Click OK, and the copy is made and selected, ready for you to work on.
All values will be copied, no matter which kind of map you chose. (Weight, Texture (UV),
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Endomorphs, Color Vertex Maps, or Selection Sets.)
To copy an entire map, make sure that no points or polys are selected before you click on the
command.
To copy a partial map, select the points or polys that you would like to copy. Click the button, and
only the values for those points and polys will be copied to the new map.
This is extremely useful, because it allows you to make perfect pairs of Endomorphs, Weight Maps,
etc. by making a full map using symmetry, and then copying half of it to a new map.

For instance, you might make a symmetrical morph of your character closing both eyes. Call it
Eyes.close Then copy the left eye only, use this button, and call the new Endomorph Eyes.lWink
Instant flexible facial expressions!

Be aware that theres no list here to choose from; you must do that in the VMap Bar.

Delete Vertex Map

(Map > General > Edit Maps > Delete Vertex Map)
To delete an entire Vertex Map, select the map you want to delete from the VMap Bar, and click on
the command. (Weight, Texture (UV), Endomorphs, Color Vertex Maps, or Selection Sets may all be
deleted with this command.)
The entire map will be deleted, whether any points and polys are selected or not. (If you wish to
delete only some of the points or polys from your map, use the Clear Map command, instead.)
This is different from the Clear Map command because it doesnt simply empty your map. It
completely deletes it, including its name.

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This command will delete all maps that use the name of the map chosen in the VMap Bar from
all open objects. For example, if you have a model with a morph youre calling Eyes.Blink, and you
decide that this particular character doesnt need that morph, and you might as well delete it, be careful.
As soon as you click, all the Eyes.Blink morphs will be deleted from all the characters that are open at
the time, whether they are visible or not.
Be aware that theres no list here to choose from; you must do that in the VMap Bar.

Rename Vertex Map

(Map > General > Edit Maps > Rename Vertex Map)
To rename a Vertex Map, select the map you want to rename from the VMap Bar, and click on the
command. (Weight, Texture (UV), Endomorphs, Color Vertex Maps, or Selection Sets may all be
renamed with this command.)
Simply type the desired name into the text field and click OK.
Be aware that theres no list here to choose from; you must do that in the VMap Bar.

More...
Cull Map
This command opens a dialog that allows you to select some or all of the points in a Vertex Map,
and to automatically delete the ones that fall below a certain threshold.

To use it, choose the map you wish to cull from the drop down list. All types of Vertex Maps
(Weight, Texture (UV), Endomorphs, Color Vertex Maps, or Selection Sets) from all open objects will
be listed here.

Deselect/Select
Use the Deselect or Select buttons if you want to deselect or select the points in the map.

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Clear Map
Enable Clear Map if you wish points to be automatically cleared from the map. If you enable it, no
points will be selected or deselected; they will simply be cleared if they fall below the threshold.
Then type the number you desire for the Threshold into the Threshold Magnitude field, and hit
Enter. (Its important to do it this way if you are in the habit of using Return or Enter to move to
the next field, because in this case it closes the dialog. If, on the other hand, you use the Tab key to
move from field to field, go ahead and fill in the box in order, then click OK.)
Any points that fall below the threshold will be acted upon. (Deselected, Selected, or Cleared.)

The Threshold for most uses is between 2 and 0, although if you have pushed your weights, your
numbers may be higher.

To select only high threshold points, select all points, and choose Deselect to drop those below
the desired threshold, leaving only the higher ones selected.

Normalize
This command allows you to scale the values of your Vertex Maps. It works on the entire map,
whether any points have been selected or not.

Source VMap
Choose the map you wish to scale from the drop down menu. All kinds of Vertex Maps are listed
here, with the type of map in a code to the left.

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Weight Maps are listed as WGHT.

Texture Maps are listed as TXUV.
Morph Maps are listed as MORF.
Color Maps are listed as RGBA or RGB (if they dont include an Alpha Channel).
Selection Set Maps are listed as PICK.
Metaballs are listed as MBAL.

Minimum, Maximum - Select a Minimum and Maximum value for the map. The entire range
will be scaled, not clipped, to fit between these two values.

Youll have similar results with all Vertex Maps.

Normal Baker
Normal Baker (Map > General > More > Normal Baker) will store the (normalized) point normal for
each vertex as three numbers into a VMAP called pnt_normals. The values, starting with the first,
represent the X, Y and Z directions of the vertexs normal.

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Weight
New Weight Map
This command allows you to create a new Weight Map. It opens the Create Weight Map dialog,
exactly like choosing W and (new) from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen.

Name
To name your map, either type a name into the text field, or choose an existing name from the
drop down list to the right. The list contains all the names of all the Weight Maps used during the
current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any
points assigned to them.
Its recommended that you choose a meaningful name, which will enable you to easily tell what
the map is designed to do. This is especially true if you are working with other people; in fact,
in those circumstances, there might be names that you are required to use, depending on the
function of the map.

Initial Value
Choose an Initial Value by clicking in the box to enable it, and typing the value you desire into the
text field, or using the spinners.
Choosing an Initial Value, even if its a value of zero, will place all the points into the map.
(Unassigned points are not the same as points with a value of zero, even though they might look
the same in the viewport Weight Shade render.) This may or may not be desirable because every
bit of information takes up memory.

Weights
This button allows you to edit existing Weight Maps by assigning weights to your points
interactively.
Its best used with one of your viewports set to Weight Render mode, and with the Numeric panel
open. (These things will allow you to see what you are doing.)
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Choose the Weight Map you want to edit from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen.

Place the tool on the point you wish to edit, and drag right to increase the weight, and left to
decrease it. You can see the weight you are assigning in the Numeric panel, in the Change field.
You may also be able to see it in the Weight Shade viewport, or in the shape of the object,
depending on the Weight Map you are using.
A weight of zero will have a grey-green color. Positive weight values will approach bright red.
Negative values will approach bright blue.

Change
The number in the Change field is a relative number, not an absolute. In other words, it tells you
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how much of a difference youve made in the weight, not what the weight is. This tool doesnt work
particularly well for assigning specific weights to selected points. For that, you should use the Set
Map Value tool. The strength of this tool lies in its interactivity.
Theres nothing better to assign Subpatch Weights with, because you can see the results in real
time as you work. Judicious use of the tool can save geometry, since you can sharpen edges with
weights, instead of cuts.

Falloff
Like many other tools in Modeler, this one allows you to adjust the Falloff range.
By default, the range is Point. In other words, the tool will only affect the point you are working
with.
You can also assign other Falloff types:
None will assign the weight to all selected points/polys equally (or the entire model if none
are selected.)
Linear and Radial allow you to interactively set a range with your RMB, or to use a number of
presets.
Polygon applies the weight equally to all the points of all the polys which share the point
under your tool.
Point Radial allows you to set a falloff with the RMB that remains centered on the tool as you
move it around. (Rather like the airbrush, but you drag to change the weight.)
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Above the different types of falloff there is also the possibility to use a texture to guide how
your weights falloff.

Bone Weights
This tool creates Weight Maps for bones, based on the choices you make within its dialog box.
The map will have the same name as the bone that its associated with. For example, if the bone is
called Bone01, the map will be called Bone01 as well.
To use it, you must have both bone and geometry in foreground layers. Select the bone you wish
to create a Weight Map for. (If no bones are selected, maps will be made for all foreground bones
that dont have one.)

Falloff
A dialog will open that allows you to choose the falloff algorithm for the bone. The various choices
correspond to the Falloffs that you can use on bones when you arent using Weight Maps. But with
this tool you can start there, and then modify the weight to suit your own needs. (You can also see
what the Falloff is doing in any viewport set to Weight Shade, where positive weights are red, zero
is grey-green, and negative weights are blue.)

Additive
If you enable Additive, the weight will be added to any existing value. So, if you have two bones
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with the same name, say both left and right arm bones called armbone.01, the effects from both
would be shown on the same map.

Threshold Value
The Threshold Value is a capsule-shaped region around the bone. You can type the value into the
text box, or use the mini-slider.

Use Threshold
The Threshold Value can be used in several ways.
Off will simply ignore it.
Clip will take any weight outside the threshold and set it to zero, which can have the effect of
giving fairly sharp edges to the Weight Map.
Subtract will subtract the weight at the threshold from all the weights in the map; so the weight
inside the threshold progresses smoothly to zero, the weight at the threshold is zero, and weights
beyond the threshold become negative.
Blend behaves like Subtract inside the threshold, but clips everything above the threshold, so all
the weight beyond the threshold is zero.

UV to Weight
This button allows you to create a Weight Map based on either the U or V value of a UV Map. (It
does not allow you to use a grayscale map that you can color and apply the way you would apply a
Texture UV Map. If thats what youre after, youre looking for Textured Point).
To use it, create a UV Map that has the points arranged along either the U or V axis, the way that
you would like the weights assigned.

Click on the tool to open the associated dialog.

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UV Map
Choose the UV Map you have prepared from the UV Map drop down list, and type the name for
the new Weight Map into the Weight Map text field (or choose it from the list, if you prefer to use
an existing name. All Weight Maps used in this session will appear in the list, whether or not the
object they are associated with remains open, and whether or not any points have been assigned
to the map.)

Use
Choose whether you want to use the U axis or the V axis to create the map.

If you use the U axis, all the points on the left edge of the map will receive a value of 0%, the
points on the right edge will receive a value of 100%, and the points in between will have values in
between, of course.

If you use the V axis, the points at the bottom are 0%, the points at the top are 100%, and those inbetween are in between, of course.

Shift Value
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This option adds the number entered to the 0 to 1 range. For example, if you entered a Shift Value
of -1, the range would become -1 to 0, giving you a map that had weights from -100% to 0%.
Entering a Shift Value of 1 would give you a range of 100% to 200%, and so on.

Scale Value
This option scales the values by the number entered. For example, if you entered a Scale Value of
200%, you would get a weight range from 0% to 200%. A Scale Value of -150% would give you a
weight range of 0% to -150%, and so on.
These values work together. So, for example, if you wanted a range between -100% and 100%, you
would enter a Shift Value of -1, and a Scale Value of 200%.
Neither Shift nor Scale are either clipped or constrained.

PatchWeight2Weight
This command allows you to transfer the information in a SubPatch Weight Map to a new map.

To use it, click to open the dialog box. Choose the Subpatch Weight Map you wish to use from the
drop down list (base, in most cases,) then type the name of the new (or existing) Weight Map into
the Weight Map field. The new map will be created, and chosen in the VMap Bar.
If you used an existing map, the values in that map will be replaced with the values in the SubPatch
Weight Map.

Weight Blur
Weight Blur takes the current weight map and creates a gradient based on the upper and lower
values.

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Left: Top half of weight map set to 100%. Right: Weight map after Weight Blur is activated with 5 iterations.

Color
New Color Map
This button allows you to create a new Color Map. It opens the Create Vertex Color Map dialog,
exactly like choosing C and (new) from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen.

Choose a new name, whether or not to add an Alpha Channel, and which surface you want the
map applied to.

Name
To name your map, either type a name into the text field, or choose an existing name from the
drop down list to the right. The list contains all the names of all the Color Maps used during the
current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any
points assigned to them.

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Use Alpha
Its recommended that you use an Alpha Channel in your texture, unless you intend to completely
color the object. If you dont, you are likely to find that you have black artifacts around the edges
when you use the Airbrush. This happens when a polygon has some points that are in the Color
Map, and some that arent. (Points that are unassigned are not the same as points that are assigned
a value of zero.) The Alpha Channel eliminates this, and allows better feathering, so the color youre
applying blends smoothly into the base color of the object.
In general, Alpha Channels allow you more flexibility, and are considered superior; but they do take
up memory, and arent necessary if there arent any unassigned vertices.

Apply to surface
Choose which surface you would like the new Color Map applied to from the drop down list. All the
surfaces in the current object will be there.
You dont have to choose a surface; but if you dont, the new map wont be visible on anything.
You will be able to assign values to it, and even color on it; but you wont see it until its applied to
a surface. So be careful. You dont want to waste time, or become frustrated, because you think the
airbrush isnt working, when the real problem is that you are painting on an invisible map!

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If you dont choose a surface, you can always choose one later by opening the Surface Editor, and
choosing a map from the Vertex Color Map list in the Advanced Tab. If you do, it will automatically
be added here, at 100% strength. You can increase or decrease the strength in the Surface Editor at
any time.

ColorMap Adjust

This tool allows you to adjust Vertex Color Maps that have already been created. By default it is
shown in RGB mode, but can be switched to HSV. You can send edits to a different Vertex Color
Map by changing the Output Color Map dropdown. The mouse pointer shown in the image
indicates the handle for moving the HUD around.
Make Negative will give the complementary color for your map and the RGB (or HSB) sliders will
return to 0.

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Point Color
This button allows you to assign a color to any selected points. To use it, select the points you
would like to add the color to. (If no points are selected, this tool wont do anything.)

Name
Type the name of the Vertex Color Map you would like to work on into the Name field, or choose
it from the drop down list to the right. The list contains all the names of all the Color Maps used
during the current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps
have any points assigned to them.
You can start a new map either by typing the new name into the field, or by choosing (new) from
the list, and then typing a new name into the field. However, be aware that this map wont be
assigned to any surface, so you wont be able to see the results of your choices until you assign it to
one. (Youll have to open the Surface Editor, and assign the map to a visible surface by selecting the
surface, and then choosing this map from the Vertex Color Map list in the Advanced Tab).
So be careful. If you dont see any change, dont assume that the tool didnt work. Check to make
sure that the map has been assigned to a surface thats visible in one of your viewports.

Use Alpha
Decide whether or not to use an Alpha Map with the selection.

If you are making a new map, its recommended that you do, unless you intend to completely color
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the object. Although the color will look fine, and blend nicely when using this tool, if you ever use
the Airbrush on this map, youll have black artifacts around the edges where the color doesnt
feather properly.
If you are using an already existing, you must choose to use the Alpha if it has one, or not to use it if
it doesnt. The choice will not be disabled; but if you disable Use Alpha on an RGBA Map, or enable
it on an RGB Map, Point Color will simply make a new map with the same name, and follow your
choices. Since that map hasnt been assigned to any surface, you wont be able to see any results.
(But, you can see them if you go to the Surface Editor Advanced Tab, find the other map with the
same name, and assign it to the surface).

Color
Pick a color to put on all the points, using the normal LightWave Color Requester. Drag the numbers
to choose an RGB color, or right-click to toggle to HSV and then drag, or click on the color swatch
to open the Color Picker you have chosen to use.

Color Mode
In the Color Mode field, you can choose how this color will be applied to the points.

Replace
Replace removes any color currently there, and replaces it with this one.

Add
Adds the RGB value of the current color to the RGB value of the color already there, if any. This may
result in RGB values higher than 255, of course, which gives you ultra-bright colors.

Blend
Adds the RGB values of both new and existing colors and averages them by dividing the result by
two. The value wont exceed 255, unless the existing color did.
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Alpha
Finally, if you enabled Use Alpha, specify the amount of alpha you want to use.
Unlike most of the other Alpha fields, this one isnt a percentage. That means that 1 is equivalent
to 100%. So, if you want normal coverage, enter 1 in this field. (If you enter 100, youll really get
10000%, and your color will be far darker than you expect.) If you enter 0, which is the default, you wont
be able to see any color at all, because it will be totally masked. (You can see if its really there, though, by
checking the Point Information (I). You can also change the alpha there, so you can see the color.)
(Its important to enter the Alpha last if you are in the habit of using Return or Enter to move to
the next field, because in this case it closes the dialog. If, on the other hand, you use the Tab key to
move from field to field, go ahead and fill in the box in order, then click OK.)

Textured Point
This button allows you to assign the luminosity values of a normal LightWave Texture (image,
procedural, or gradient) to a Weight or Morph Map, or the Color values to a Color Map. Bear in
mind, though, that the texture is assigned to points, not polys (hence the name) so, unless you
have a very heavy mesh, you wont get the detail youd get by using the textures on a surface.
Other than that, though, it works in a very similar way.

Offset
Offset will move a 3D texture through the surface.

Scale
Scale changes the scale on all three axes simultaneously.

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Axis
Axis allows you to change the Projection Axis for the texture.

VMap Type
Choose the type of map you want to apply the texture to from the VMap Type drop down menu.
The available choices are Weight Map, Morph Target, or Vertex Color.

VMap Name
Type the name of the Vertex Map you would like to work on into the Name field, or choose it from
the drop down list to the right. The list contains all the names of all the maps of that type used
during the current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps
have any points assigned to them.
You can also type a new name into the field to start a new map. In the case of a Color Map, you
can choose (new) and then type one in; but be aware that, as always, you wont be able to see it
until its been assigned to a Surface. (To do that, youll need to open the Surface Editor, go to the
Advanced Tab, and choose the map from the Vertex Color Map drop down.)
Weight Maps, Morph Maps, or existing Color Maps that have been assigned to a visible surface, will
become selected in the VMap Bar, and will be visible in any viewports capable of showing them.
(ie. Weight Maps will be shown in viewports using the Weight Map Render mode, Color Maps in
Smooth Shade, Texture, and Textured Wire, etc.)
Click on the Texture button to open the familiar LightWave Texture panel. This works the same as it
does everywhere else. Youll find that the Gradient parameter choices are limited to Previous Layer,
X, Y, Z, Distance to Center, and Weight Map; but other than that its what you are used to.

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As you work, youll be able to see the texture affecting the map in real time. Colors will change,
weights will go from red to green, and morphs will distort as you watch.

Although you can change the orientation and scaling from within the Texture dialog, as you
normally would, you can also change them in the Textured Point dialog (labeled Apply Texture)
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Vertex Paint
Overview
Vertex Paint is a Modeler plugin that lets you interactively paint a Vertex Color Map on objects and
Weight Maps on Skelegons.
A Vertex Color Map is a LightWave feature that lets you assign colors to an objects vertices (i.e.,
points). Vertex color maps are a basic LightWave feature so you can render their effect without
using surface shader plugins. Although similar to Modelers Airbrush tool, Vertex Paint has its own
independent interface for painting.
LightWave Skelegons let you define bones in Modeler. Weight Maps can provide additional
deformation information. Vertex Paint provides a variety of features for you to set weights for
Skelegons. You can see how the weight will deform the object in real-time while painting.
The Vertex Loader plugin can be used to load the bone information modified in Layout so that you
can edit weights using Vertex Paint.

How to launch Vertex Paint

Vertex Paint consists of two plugins: Vertex Paint and Vertex Loader.
If you want to edit a Vertex Color Map or Weight Maps (for Skelegons):

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First, load an object you want to edit into Modeler. Then, choose Map > Color > Vertex Paint. For
Skelegon Weight Maps, your object must already have Skelegons. The Skelegon names set by
certain tools, such as Skelegon Tree, are used for each Skelegons Weight Map name.
If you want to edit weight maps using Layout bones:
Use Vertex Loader to load objects with bones that were created from scratch in Layout, or bones
that were converted from Skelegons, in order to edit the Weight Maps in Vertex Paint.
To use Vertex Loader, choose File > Import > Vertex Loader. First the Load Scene requester opens;
select a scene file that has object(s) with bones. After you select a scene file, the dialog box shown
below appears. There you select an object that you want to edit and click OK.

The selected object is automatically loaded into Modeler and displayed in Vertex Paint with its
bones. If the object is already loaded, only the bones are loaded from the scene file. Weight maps
set on the Bone Properties panel in Layout are used for each corresponding bone.

Before launching Vertex Loader, make sure Layouts Content Directory setting matches
Modelers.
If multiple skelegons share the same weight map name:
If a single weight map is shared by multiple Skelegons (or bones), Vertex Paint displays the dialog
box below. Generally, one weight map should correspond to only one bone in Vertex Paint.
If you click Yes, Vertex Paint automatically uniquely renames the map so there is no longer a
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duplicate. If you click No, Vertex Paint makes an exception and allows a shared weight map.

Saving the Data

Changes made in Vertex Paint are not automatically updated in the Modeler object. To reflect the
Vertex Paint changes, click the Save button or choose Save To Modeler from the Edit menu. (An
asterisk (*) next to the object name means the object has additional information not yet updated.)

The following is what Vertex Paint updates:

Vertex Color - (RGB VMap, RGBA VMap)

Weight - (WGHT VMap)
Morph - (MORF VMap, SPOT VMap)
Bone name - (BONE, PART PTag)
Bone Weight name - (BNWT PTag)

Vertex Paint: User Interface

Choose Map > Color > Vertex Paint to launch Vertex Paint. The interface appears below.

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Changing the size of the main panel

To change the size of the main panel, drag the mark at the bottom-right corner with LMB. The
display will be jumbled while dragging, but once you release the mouse button, it will display
properly.

Manipulating the 3D window

The large window on the right side of the panel is a 3D view where you can paint the vertex color
of the loaded object or edit the weight value of bones. When you first run Vertex Paint, the 3D
view displays the object you are going to edit. The 3D view is changed in much the same way the
Perspective view is in Modeler.

Rotating the view

There are two ways to rotate the 3D view. One is to drag your LMB on the rotate button at the
upper right of the panel. The other is to drag your LMB while pressing Alt key. Both ways rotate
object in the direction you drag.

Moving the view

There are two ways to move the 3D view. One is to drag your LMB on the pan button at the upper
right of the panel. The other is to drag your LMB while pressing Shift key. Both ways move object in
the direction you drag.
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Scaling the view
There are two ways to rotate the 3D view. One is to drag your LMB on the zoom button at the
upper right of the panel. The other is to drag your LMB while pressing Alt and Ctrl keys. Moving
your mouse cursor to the right magnifies the object, and moving to the left reduces the object.

Perspective and Orthogonal view

Vertex Paint supports both the perspective projection and the orthogonal projection to display
objects in 3D space. To display the object in perspective projection, select Persp from the 3D view
info pop-up menu. To display the object in orthogonal projection, select Ortho from the 3D view
info pop-up menu. You might find that you can paint vertices easier with the Ortho mode.
Changing the camera zoom factor
You can change the cameras zoom factor when you are in the Persp mode. Dragging the minislider next to Fov at the top of the panel left or right, zoom factor changes. Increasing the value,
the camera lens will be a telephoto lens, and decreasing the value, it will be more wide-angle.

Changing the view

Click the down-arrow popup at the top of the panel to change the 3D view display.

Front View - displays the object from the front side.

Back View - displays the object from the back side.
Right View - displays the object from the right side.
Left View - displays the object from the left side.
Top View - displays the object from the top side.
Bottom View - displays the object from the bottom side.
Fit Mode - displays the object at the center of the display.
Fit Bone - displays the selected bone at the center of the display.

Switching the display mode

Vertex Paint can display objects using various display modes depending upon your needs. To
change, use the pop-up menu at the upper left of the 3D view.
Points - Displays the points that make up the object. The vertex color is set for the point color.
Light source is not used.
Wireframe - Displays the objects in wireframe. The vertex color is set for each vertex of the
lines, if the color is different between the start and end point of the line, it displays a gradient
color. Light source is not used.
Front Face - Displays only polygons with normals facing the camera in wireframe. Light
source is not used.
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Vertex Color - Displays the polygons in color, using the vertex color map currently selected.
Light source is not used.
Wireframe Color - Displays the polygons in color using the vertex color map currently
selected, and also displays wireframe over it. Light source is not used.
Lighting Shade - Displays the objects using the light source set on the Light menu. The
objects surface information is used for the polygons color attributes. No vertex color shown.
Weight Value - Displays the weight value assigned to the currently selected bone in red gradient.
If no bones exist, it displays in grey.
Weight Ratio - Displays the weight ratio of the vertices for the selected bone. Stronger color
means more weight. Each bone has its own unique color. color. If no bones exist, the object
is displayed in grey.

B Button
Clicking the B button on, switches to the Blending display mode. This is a blending display using
the vertex color alpha in the Vertex Color and the Wireframe Color modes. This also enables the
translucent display of the texture, using its alpha plane.

T Button
Clicking the T button on, switches to the Texture display mode. This is a texture mapping display
visible in the Vertex Color, Wireframe Color and Lighting Shade mode.

Rotating a Bone
When the rotate button next to the bone VMap name on the Weight menu tab is showing, you
can rotate the bones and see how the object deforms. Each ring means: Red=Heading (Y axis),
Green=Pitch (X axis), and Blue=Bank (Z axis).

Clicking the button next to the bone VMap name cycles it through its settings (rotate, scale,
move).

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To rotate the bone, drag on the 3D window with LMB while pressing
your mouse goes.

Ctrl

key. The bone rotates as

To rotate along only one axis, hold Ctrl and select the ring of the axis you want to rotate with LMB,
then drag it. Selected ring is shown as a wide-band ring.
To reset the rotated bone at the default (Rest Position), with the Weight Tab selected, choose Reset
the Bone from the Edit pop-up menu. To reset all the bones, choose Reset All Bones.

Moving a Bone
When the move button next to the bone name on the Weight menu tab is showing, you can move
the bones and see the deformation. A coordinate axis as shown below is displayed for the current
bone. Each axis represents: Red=X axis, Green=Y axis, and Blue=Z axis.

Clicking the button next to the bone VMap name cycles it through its settings (rotate, scale,
move).

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To move the bone, hold

Ctrl

and drag on the 3D window with LMB.

To move along only one axis, hold Ctrl and select the axis you want to move and then drag it. The
selected axis is shown as a bold line.

Scaling a Bone
When the zoom button next to the bone name on the Weight menu tab is showing, you can scale
bones up or down. A coordinate axis as shown below is displayed for the current bone. Each axis
represents: Red=X axis, Green=Y axis, and Blue=Z axis.

Clicking the button next to the bone VMap name cycles it through its settings (rotate, scale,
move).

To scale the bone up/down, hold Ctrl and drag on the 3D window with LMB. Dragging your mouse
up/right scales up the bone, and dragging your mouse to down/left scales down the bone.
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To scale along only one axis, hold Ctrl and select the axis you want to scale with LMB then drag it.
The selected axis is shown as a bold line.

Changing the Mode

Vertex Paint has four working (editing) modes. You can change those modes by clicking on the
menu tabs at the center-left of the window. Note that the Edit pop-up menu will show the different
menus depending on what mode you are in.

Color - Vertex color edit mode

Weight - Bone weight edit mode
Light - Light setting mode
Show - Polygons Show/Hide setting mode

Displaying a Morph Target

If the object contains EndoMorph targets, you can choose the displayed target on the Morph popup menu.

Vertex Paint: Showing / Hiding Polygons - Selecting / Deselecting Polygons

Select / Deselect Polygons Using Your Mouse

When you are using the + Sel Mode, you can select polygons by dragging your LMB over them in
the 3D view.
When you are using the - Sel Mode, you can deselect polygons by dragging your LMB over them
in the 3D view. Dragging with your RMB deselects the polygon regardless of what selection mode
you are in.
Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys as you drag your LMB to select/unselect using a bounding box.
Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys as you drag your RMB to select/unselect using a lasso.
You can toggle the Sel Mode by pressing the Space key.
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Left: Bounding box selection. Right: Lasso selection

Show / Hide Polygons By Polygon

Vertex Paint can show/hide polygons either by polygon or by surface. Select By Polygon from the
Select pop-up menu to manipulate by polygon. There are also some selection and hiding functions
available in the Edit menu.

Show

shows all polygons

Select

selects all polygons

Hide

hides selected polygons

Hide UnSel

hide unselected polygons

Sel All

selects shown polygons

UnSel All

unselects shown polygons

Default Mouse Operations

The following table is a list of the mouse operations. You can customise the operation on the
Preference panel (File > Preferences).
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Operation

Command

Action

LMB ALT-SHIFT

View Move

Move the view

LMB ALT

View Rotate

Rotate the view

LMB CTRL-ALT

View Zoom

Scale the view

LMB

View Tool Move

Move the view (using the icon)

LMB

View Tool Rotate

Rotate the view (using the icon)

LMB

View Tool Zoom

Scale the view (using the icon)

LMB

Color Paint

Paint the vertex color (in Color mode)

RMB

Color Radius

Show size of the color paint brush (in Color mode)

LMB CTRL-SHIFT

Color PickColor

Select color from the 3D view (in Color mode)

LMB

Color Palette

Select color from the color palette (in Color mode)

LMB

Weight Paint

Paint bone weight (in Weight mode)

LMB CTRL

Bone Navigate

Rotate/Move/Scale the bone

LMB SHIFT

Bone Select

Select the bone

RMB

Weight Radius

Show size of the weight paint brush (in Weight mode)

LMB CTRL-SHIFT

Weight Rectangle Select

Rectangle selection of the point (in Weight / Info mode)

RMB CTRL-SHIFT

Weight Lasso Select

Lasso selection of the point (in Weight / Info mode)

LMB

Light Move

Move the light source (in Light mode)

LMB

Show Select

Select the polygon (in Show mode)

RMB

Show UnSel

Deselect the polygon (in Show mode)

LMB CTRL-SHIFT

Show Rect Select

Rectangle selection of the polygon (in Show mode)

RMB CTRL-SHIFT

Show Lasso Select

Lasso selection of the polygon (in Show mode)

Keyboard Shortcuts
Key

Action

a
A
,
.
F
T
S
F1
F2
F3
F4
F5
F6
F7
F8
u
Down

Display object at the center of the window

Display current bone at the center of the window
Zoom out
Zoom in
Display object in Front view
Display object in Top view
Display object in Right side view
Points Display mode
Wireframe Display mode
Front Face Display mode
Vertex Color Display mode
Wireframe Color Display mode
Lighting Shade Display mode
Weight Value Display mode
Weight Ratio Display mode
Undo
Select next bone

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Map Tab
Up
c
v
V
x
+
r
R
*
/
t
y
h
=
|
SPACE

Select previous bone

Copy current bone weight
Paste to current bone weight
Paste to current bone weight symmetrically in X axis
Clear current bone weight
Scale up current bone weight
Scale down current bone weight
Reset current bone rotation
Reset all bone rotation
Step forward
Step backward
Bone move mode
Bone rotation mode
Bone scale mode
Hide current polygons
Hide unselected polygons
Invert Show/Hide polygons
Switch polygon select/deselect mode

Show / Hide Polygons By Surface

Select By Surface from the Select pop-up menu to manipulate by surface. Youll also need to select
a surface from the Surface pop-up menu.

Show

shows polygons of selected surface

Select

selects polygons of selected surface

Hide

hides polygons of selected surface

Hide UnSel

hide unselected polygons

Sel All

selects shown polygons

UnSel All

unselects shown polygons

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Vertex Paint: Light Setting
Setting the Light Source
Setting light sources on the Light tab determines the number of the lights, color properties,
position, and other properties used in the Lighting Shade display mode. At the same time, it is
used for the baking shading color with the Burn Lighting Colors command in the color mode. You
can have up to eight different lights

Choosing Light
To choose light, select one from the Name pop-up menu or click the light icon in the 3D view with
your LMB, if its visible.
Clicking on the checkbox next to the Name pop-up menu activates the light and affects the
calculations of the light source on the scene. Click the checkbox off to deactivate the light source.
Inactive light sources do not illuminate the scene.

Light Type
In Vertex Paint, you can use distant lights, point lights, and spotlights. You can also set the ambient
color for the lights, which affects the entire scene. Below is a table of the parameters available for
each light. These are used for OpenGLs light settings. For more information on the parameters, refer
to OpenGL Programming Guide, published by Addison Wesley (ISBN: 0-321-17348-1).

Diffuse
Ambient
Specular
Position
Spotlight Position
Spotlight Angle
Constant Attenuation
Linear Attenuation
Quadratic Attenuation

Distant Light
4
4
4
4
7
7
7
7
7

Point Light
4
4
4
4
7
7
4
4
4

Spotlight
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4

Positioning the Light

To move a light, click on the Position field on the Light tab and enter the coordinates in the dialog
that appears. You can also just grab the light in the 3D view with your LMB and drag it to wherever
you like.

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Distant Light
Generally, a distant light is a light source which you only specify the light direction. In Vertex Paint,
the direction of the distant light is measured as a vector from the light Position to the Origin.
Moving the light position changes the vector direction.

Point Light
A Point light is a light source that has no direction and illuminates omnidirectionally (in 360
degrees). In Vertex Paint, the position of the point light is specified as the light Position.

Spotlight
A Spotlight is a light source that has both position and direction information. In Vertex Paint, the
position of the light is specified as the light Position and a coordinate where the spotlight points
is defined by the Spotlight Position. The Spotlight Position is indicated by a red box so you can
drag it in the 3D view. Also, the dotted lines coming out of the light represent the spotlight cone
angle which can be changed by adjusting the Spotlight Angle setting.

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Vertex Paint: Vertex Color Paint

Create Vertex Color Map
To use Vertex Paint, you must define at least one vertex color map before you begin painting. Note
that if an object mesh has more than one vertex color map, Vertex Paint uses the first map as the
current map.

To create a new Color map, select the Color tab, then choose Edit > Create Vertex Color Map. Enter a
unique map name and click OK

Rename Vertex Color Map

To rename a vertex color map, select the Color tab and the map, then choose Edit > Rename Vertex
Color Map.

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Enter the new name and click OK. Note that you still need to update the object by clicking the Save
button next to the Object pop-up menu.

Delete Vertex Color Map

To delete a vertex color map, select the Color tab and the map, then choose Edit > Delete Vertex
Color Map. The change is reflected when you click the Save button next to the Object pop-up
menu.

Vertex Color Map Type

There are two types of vertex color maps. RGBA means that the map includes the alpha
information and RGB means that the map does not include the alpha information. In Vertex Paint,
all the vertex color maps are treated as if they include the alpha. You can change the color map
type by selecting the pop-up menu next to the Color Map option on the Color tab. The change is
reflected when you click the Save button next to the Object pop-up menu.

Component vs. Blending Display

The Vertex Color and Wireframe Color display modes can blend the display of vertex color (RGB)
and Vertex alpha data. Clicking the B button on changes display mode to alpha-blended. The
Vertex Alpha option on the Preference panel determines how to blend the alpha.
If you set the Vertex Alpha option to Surface Color, information on the vertex colors alpha is
displayed as a blended percentage value of the vertex color and surface color - the same way
LightWave handles vertex color alpha.
Color.Red = Vertex.Red * Vertex.Alpha + Surface.Red * (1.0 - Vertex.Alpha)
Color.Green = Vertex.Green * Vertex.Alpha + Surface.Green * (1.0 - Vertex.Alpha)
Color.Blue = Vertex.Blue * Vertex.Alpha + Surface.Blue * (1.0 - Vertex.Alpha)
If you set the Vertex Alpha option to Opacity, information on the vertex colors alpha is displayed as
an opacity value. If the alpha value is 1.0, the vertex color would be completely opaque. If the alpha
value is 0.0, then the vertex color would be completely transparent.

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A component display mode using RGB painting. Only the

vertex color is displayed.

A component display mode using Alpha painting mode. Only

the Alpha luminosity is displayed.

A blended display mode choosing Surface Color for the

Vertex Alpha option. Both vertex color and surface color is
displayed.

A blended display mode choosing Opacity for the Vertex

Alpha option. Vertices with an alpha value less than 1.0 are
semi-transparent.

Vertex Color Painting

Vertex Paint has three painting modes to paint the vertex color using a brush.
Color / Paint - Paint per point
Color / Index - Paint per vertex index of polygon
Color / Polygon - Paint per polygon

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Map Tab
To begin painting, select a vertex color map on the Color Map pop-up menu or create a new vertex
color map. Dragging your LMB on the 3D view paints points or polygons.

Selecting Operation Mode

There are three operating modes that determine how paint is applied to existing vertex colors.
ADD - adds the value of the paint color to existing color.
SUB - subtracts the value of the paint color from existing color.
REP - replaces the value of existing color with the value of the paint color.
ERA - sets the value of existing color to 0.

Selecting Component
You have two components for painting vertex color: RGB and Alpha.
To switch, click on the color component icon.

RGB
Alpha

Selecting Paint Color

There are two way to choose the paint color: the color slider bar and color palette.
The color slider bar has RGB and HSV modes. You can switch modes depending on your needs. The
current RGB color is shown on the swatch to the right of the eye dropper icon. The current Alpha
is shown on the swatch to the right of the color swatch. Although Vertex Paint internally maintains
color using floating values (i.e., 0.0 to 1.0), numerical color values are rounded to the nearest
integral value from 0 to 255.

You can choose a color directly by dragging your LMB over the palette, a color is selected when
you release your mouse button. To choose an Alpha value, use the slider instead of the palette. You
can customise the palette, which is discussed later.

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You can also pick any color displayed on the 3D view. Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys, then click on
the desired color in the 3D view. Another way to pick a color on the 3D view is to activate the
eyedropper icon and drag on the 3D view with your LMB.

You can use the default LightWave color picker to pick a color as well. Clicking on the color swatch
with your LMB will launch it.

Painting Vertex Colors on Points

If you choose Color / Point for the Paint mode, you can paint vertex color on points, using three
parameters: Brush Size, Front, and Strength.
Brush Size - Determines the size of your paint brush. You can visually see the brush size when
you drag and paint on the 3D view with your LMB. To adjust your brush size, enter a value in
the Brush Size input field. You can also adjust the size by dragging your RMB in the 3D view.
Release your mouse button to accept the new size.
Front - Use this option when you do not want to paint points on the opposite side.
Brush Shape - You can paint with a round or square brush by clicking on the icon to the right
of the Brush Size slider.
Strength - Strength allows you to paint as if you were using a soft brush. If Strength is set to
100%, all painted vertices get the same value. If Strength is set to 0%, the effect of the brush
is 100% at its very center, but 0% at its edge. Areas of the brush between the center and
edge use a proportionate value.

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Top: Strength=25%, Bottom:Strength=100%

Painting Polygon Vertex Indices

If you choose Color / Index for the Paint mode, you can paint the vertex index of polygons. The
vertex index is a unique reference for each polygon vertex. Although a point may be shared by
polygons, the vertex index is different. Just click inside the polygon nearest the vertex you want to
affect. Brush Size, Front, and Strength settings are ignored.

Painting Vertex Color per Polygon

If you choose Color / Polygon as the Paint mode, you can paint individual polygons a solid color.

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Brush Size, Front and Strength settings are ignored. This essentially sets all of the polygons vertex
indices to the same value.

Painting Symmetrically along the X Axis

Clicking the symmetry button at the top of the interface lets you to paint symmetrically along the
X Axis. If you paint geometry on one side (left or right), all the polygons and points symmetrical
along the X axis is painted at the same time. This option can be used with any paint mode.

Customising the Color Palette

You can customise your color palette for Vertex Paint by choosing Edit > Customize Color Palette.
There are four palettes available: 16, 64, 256, and Gradient, the default. Activating the Clear Colors
option erases all existing palette information, resetting the colors to black (0,0,0).

Customized palette information is stored in the preference file. It maintains the information until
another palette is loaded or the palette is reset.

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Palette Size = 16

Palette Size = 64

Palette Size = 256

Gradient
To add a color to a swatch in a (non-gradient) palette, first select a swatch with your mouse. Then,
adjust the current RGB color values. Finally, click the set button below the palette. The RGB color
will be added to the selected palette swatch.

Loading a Color Palette

To load a color palette, with the Color tab selected, choose Edit > Load Color Palette File. Then select
a previously saved palette file. The following four formats are supported:
8-bit BMP, 8-bit TARGA, Microsoft Palette (.pal), and ACT color table (.act).

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Saving a Color Palette
To save a color palette, with the Color tab selected, choose Edit > Save Color Palette File. The file is
saved in Microsoft Palette format (.pal).

Baking OpenGL Shading)

With Vertex Paint, you can bake OpenGL color information (including light source calculation) to
a vertex color map. You can see the shading status to be baked using the Lighting Shade display
mode. Adjust the light strength, location and other settings on the Light tab before baking.
To bake the colors, first create a vertex color map, then with the Color tab selected, choose Edit >
Burn Shading Colors.

You have to set your view so that the entire object is visible in the 3D view. If not, the part outside
the view will be omitted from the color calculations, or an error will occur.

The Lighting Shade display mode. The light source is calculated.

The Wireframe Color display mode, displaying vertex color that was baked by the Burn Shading Colors command.

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Reset to Surface Color
Executing Reset To Surface Colors from the Edit menu resets vertex color to surface color.

Adjusting Vertex
Vertex Paint has several tools for adjusting vertex colors baked by Burn Shading Colors or the
Shader Baker layout plugin.

Adjusting Brightness and Contrast

With the Color tab selected, choosing Edit > Brightness/Contrast displays the following dialog box,
where you can adjust brightness and contrast.

When you move the sliders, the change in brightness or contrast is previewd on the display in
realtime. However, the change is not saved until you click the Apply button.

Adjusting Balance
With the Color tab selected, choosing Edit > Color Balance displays the following dialog box, where
you can adjust each RGB component separately.

Adjusting Hue, Saturation and Value

With the Color tab selected, choosing Edit > Hue/Saturation displays the following dialog box,
where you can adjust hue, saturation and value.

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Map Tab

Vertex Paint: Bone Weight Paint

Choosing Bones
There are three ways to select the current bone, which becomes highlighted in yellow:
1) With the Weight tab selected, select the bone name from the Bone pop-up menu.
2) Press the Up or Down cursor key to choose the next or
previous bone until you get the desired one.
3) Hold the Shift key and click the desired bone with your LMB directly in the 3D view.
It may be difficult to choose a bone in the 3D view when it is inside the mesh. In such cases, disable
Hide Unselected Bones on the Preferences panel. This shows the unselected bones outside the
object so they are easily selected.

Disabling Hide Unselected Bones shows the bones

Also, you can work with bones easier when they are centered in the 3D view. To do this, just press
the A key or select Fit Bone from the pop-up menu (small button with down arrowhead) along the
top of the main interface.

Displaying Weight
There are two display modes for bone weight: Weight Value and Weight Ratio.

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Weight Value display mode

Weight Value displays the value of the weight map that belongs to the current bone using a red
gradient. Areas displayed in grey have no weight, or are just slightly weighted. This mode is useful
when you are painting the weight. You can adjust the density of color using the Color Scale option
on the Paint tab.

You can also set the default value for Color Scale with the Weight Color Scale setting on the
Preference panel.

Weight Ratio display mode

Weight Ratio is a mode that displays the ratio of bones influence on each point. Red, blue and
green are preset for each bone; however, you can reset the colors using the color icon next to the
Bone name pop-up menu.

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Map Tab

Bone Color icon

Renaming Bones
To rename bones, choose Edit > Rename Bone with the Weight tab selected. A bone tree, like the
one shown below appears. Select the bone you want to rename with your LMB and enter a name
in the New Bone Name field. You can also rename the weight map name (New VMap Name field) at
the same time.
The bones are displayed in a hierarchical order. Bone visible in the 3D view will be updated in real
time. Also, the bone selected here becomes the current bone.

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Map Tab
Renaming Weight Maps
To rename a weight map, enter new name in VMap field. Dont forget to save your changes.

You might see the following dialog box when you try to rename a VMap. This box appears when
one weight VMap is already used (shared) by one or more other bones. If you click Yes, all of the
VMap names used for the bones that refer to this VMap will be renamed. If you click No, only the
VMap which the current bone refers to will be renamed - if no such VMap already exists, a new one
will be created.

This panel shows that three bones share one name Bone01. So if you click Yes, all three bones that
referred to VMap Bone01 will refer to newly renamed VMaps.

Copying Weight
You can copy a value of the weight map that belongs to the current bone to the Vertex Paint
clipboard buffer. Press the C key or choose Edit > Copy. No message will be shown.

Pasting Weight
You can paste the copied weight value from the clipboard buffer to another bones weight map.
Press the V key or choose Edit > Paste.

Pasting Weight Symmetrically in X Axis

You can paste the copied weight value from the clipboard buffer to another bones weight
map along the X axis symmetrically. Press the V key or choose Edit > Paste-X. The point located
symmetrical along the X axis is found and weight map value is set.
You can specify the amount of calculation error when finding the symmetrical point with the
Mirror Epsilon setting on the Preference panel.

Pasting Weight Symmetrically Along an Arbitrary Axis

You can paste the copied weight value from the clipboard buffer to another bones weight map
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Map Tab
symmetrically along an arbitrary axis. Choose Edit > Paste-Axis to display the panel shown below.
Select the desired Axis and offset Position. Then click OK.

Axis
Specifies the axis which the weight is to be pasted symmetrically. If you choose X, all of the points
that meet the condition X = -X is looked up.

Position
Specifies the origin position. If you selected the X Axis and then set Position to 1m, all of the points
that meet the condition X = -X + 2m is looked up.

Operation
Specifies how the weight will be pasted to the points. REP replaces the whole original weight value
with the new value. OVR overwrites part of the original value only if the new value is bigger than
the original ones.
Using the OVR option allows you to paste the map symmetrically onto the same weight VMap. To
do this, copy the weight and then paste it to the same weight VMap using the OVR option, you can
create a weight map symmetrical to itself.

Normalising Weights
Sometimes you may get excessive weight values from using the BoneWeight Modeler command
or just from painting in Vertex Paint. Weight values go beyond the normal range 0.0 to 1.0. Bone
deformation can deform without normalising the weight because it is performed relatively, that
is, using the percentage of the weight. However, in some cases (such as adjusting the weight
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Map Tab
by painting), you may want to normalize the weight to give you better control. Choose Edit >
Normalize to normalize the weight values between 0.0 and 1.0, according to their percentages.

A weight map that is not normalised

A weight map that is normalised

Trimming Weight
Bones inside branching-type geometry, like fingers, can be problematic when the weight map is
created using a falloff calculation without any correction. Bone deformation will likely affect areas
you wish to be independent. This is because the falloff calculation is performed referring to only
the distance between a bone and a point.
The Edit > Trim Branch function solves the problem by allowing you to trim the weight for the
current weight map. It first calculates the primary bone for each point (i.e., the bone closest to the
point). If the bone is not a descendant of the current bone, the weight map value that the point
holds is cleared. A descendant is a bone route path generated from one parent.

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Map Tab
If you use this command where the bone route path branches, like at the base of a finger, it
may not deform smoothly. As such, try to use this command where there is not bone branching. Also,
trimming may not work well depending on the bone location. If you encounter this problem, try using
the ERA or SUB painting operations to adjust the weight value.

Before using Trim Branch. If you bend the finger using the highlighted bone, neighbouring fingers
will also bend because they have bone weight.

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Map Tab

After using Trim Branch. Unnecessary weight for the points on neighbouring fingers have been
erased. You can now bend the finger independently.

Bones on the red line represent a descendant of the current bone, and bones on the blue line
represents the other descendants.

Painting Weight
Select the Paint subtab on the Weight tab to paint weight. There are some adjustable parameters
that will determine how the effect is applied. Dragging in the 3D view with your LMB paints the
points under your mouse pointer.

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The Brush Size and the Front settings are shared with the vertex color painting operations.

Operation
Specify how the point weight is applied:
ADD - This mode adds the Value to the painted target weight. Note that the operation is only
applied once while you press the mouse button, start dragging, and then release the button.
SUB - This mode subtracts the Value from the painted target weight. Note that the operation
is only applied once while you press the mouse button, start dragging, and then release the
button.
REP - This mode replaces the painted target weight with the Value.
ERA - This mode sets the painted target weight to 0.0.
OVR - This mode replaces the weight only if the Value setting is larger than the painted target
weight value.
Value - This specifies the weight value that you are going to paint. A value of 100% is
internally converted to 1.0 as a weight value. When you activate the picker button, you can
refer to the weight value in the 3D view. Dragging your LMB refers to a weight value of the
point that is closest to your mouse pointer.

Strength
Strength sets the point from the center of the brush where the paint falls off. If Strength is 100%,
points inside the brush are all painted with a the full Value. If Strength is 0%, the center of the brush
is painted with 100% of strength, and the value decreases relatively from from the center to the
outer edge of the brush. If Strength is 50%, points within half the radius receive the full Value, then
it falls off toward the edge of the brush.

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Strength = 100%. All the point inside the brush is painted with the same value.

Strength = 50%. Points inside half the radius are painted with 100% of the Value, then decreases relative to the distance from the center.

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Map Tab

Strength = 0%. The paint strength decreases relative to the distance from the center of the brush.

Color Scale
This adjusts the strength of red gradient color in the Weight Value display mode. This is only a
display setting, so changing this value does not affect the actual weight value.

Calculating Weight
To calculate weight using a falloff, select the Calc subtab on the Weight tab. Basically, this function
works the same as the Modeler plugin Bone Weight. Note that any weight calculations will be
normalized.

Falloff specifies how the weight value is calculated. Linear sets the bone weight closest to the point
to 1.0. Other weight is set to 0.0. Distance uses the inverse of the distance from point to bone as
weight value. Other options (e.g., Distance ^ 32) use the distance raised to a specific power. Higher
powers cause a quicker falloff.

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Calculate Weights executes the calculation based on the settings you have chosen.

Scaling Weight
To scale weight values, select the Scale subtab on the Weight tab.

The Scale setting specifies how the weight values are scaled.
Whole

Scales all weight value uniformly.

At Start
Joint

Scales values using the bones starting point

(the fat end) as the center.

At End
Joint

Scales values using the bones ending point

(the sharp end) as the center.

Click the + button to scale up the weight values using the value set in the input field next to
the button. You can also scale it up by pressing the + key. Click the - button to scale down the
weight value using the value set in the input field next to the button. You can also scale it down by
pressing the - key.

Left: A weight map scaled up from the bones starting point. Right: A weight map scaled up from the bones ending point
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Clamping Weight
To clamp the weight, select the Clamp subtab on the Weight tab. When you deform single-mesh
objects using bones, the more bones you have, the slower the calculation speed. By discarding the
weight value for bones that have little influence, the calculation speed will be improved. This can
be one of the most important factors in single-mesh realtime animations.

The N of Matrix setting corresponds to the number of bones that are sorted by their strength of
influence. Lets say you have a mesh with twenty bones. If you set N of Matrix to 5 and then press
Clamp, up to the top five strongest weight values of the bones (for each bone) are retained. The
other values (that is, values of the bones with weak influence) are set to 0.0.

Viewing Weight Statistics

Use the Weight Statistics tab to select weighted points based on a value. These can be removed
from the map to increase efficiency. To view weight statistics, select the Stat subtab on the Weight
tab.

The Threshold setting specifies the threshold for selecting points. The buttons to the right of the
input field represent the units. Value means the actual weight value. Ratio means a normalized
range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Clicking the Select button will highlight in yellow the points which have a weight value less than
the Threshold. To deselect, click the DeSelect button.

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The Select 0 Weight Points button detects zero-weighted points.

The Discard Selected button removes the map from the selected points.

Setting Weight Value

To set the weight value for individual points, select the Info subtab on the Weight tab.

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Selecting/Deselecting Points
By default, no points are selected. There are several ways to select points to edit.
To select all points - Click the Sel All button to select all points. Press the UnSel All button to
deselect all points.
To use your mouse pointer - Drag your LMB in the 3D view to select points.
To select using a bounding box - Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys and drag a bounding box with
your LMB in the 3D view. Points included in this bounding box are selected when you release
your mouse button.

To select using lasso - Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys and drag your RMB in the 3D view. Points
within the lassoed area are selected when you release your mouse button.

You can use the Sel Mode setting to switch between Select (+) and Deselect (-) modes. You
can also switch modes by hitting the Space key.
Clicking the UnSelect button deselects the current editable point (pink square).

The Current Editable Point

Selected points are shown as a yellow point, and the current editable point is surrounded by a
small pink square.

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The value of the current editable point is displayed in the Value field. You can change the weight
value by dragging the slider or entering a value directly. You can cycling through all of the selected
points, to change the current editable point, by clicking the Prev and Next buttons. The number
of points selected and the (reference) number for the current editable point is displayed in the
information display field at the bottom.

Setting Weight Value

To specify the weight value for all selected points, enter a number in the Value field and click the
Set All button.

Editing the Bank Rotation Axis of Skelegons

Skelegons generated in Modeler have vector information for the bank rotation axis that refers to
the upward direction. This determines the bank rotation angle of the bone when converted in
Layout. To adjust the bank rotation axis in Vertex Paint, activate the Bank Rotation Axis Edit option.
(Note: Vertex Paint will reset all skelegons to their rest position before allowing you to edit the bank
rotation.)

Hold the Ctrl key and drag your LMB in the 3D view. A thick blue ring represents the bank rotation.
The arrow represents the upward direction of the skelegon.
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This editing option is only available for Modelers skelegons. You cannot use this option on the
bones loaded by Vertex Loader.
If you want the bank rotation axis to align to a specified axis precisely, press the N key. The bank
rotation axis will correspond to the axis you chose.

Vertex Paint: Creating a Morph Target

To create a new morph target, choose (new) from the Morph pop-up menu on the main panel.
A dialog will appear where you indicate the Name and Type of morph target.

If you enter a new name when creating a morph target, geometry with bone deformation (from
rotation, move, and scale) in the 3D view is created. Deformed geometry created using the preview
animation function can also be used.

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Vertex Paint: Misc
Import/Export Vertex Paint 1.0 file
The Import and Export items on the File menu can be used to import/export the Vertex Paint
1.0 format of the vertex color file (.vcl). (Vertex Paint 1.0 came with LightWave 5.6)

Loading a Vertex Color file (.vcl) into Vertex Paint

You must first load the LightWave 5.6 format LWO file into Modeler before loading the vertex color
file (.vcl). Then start Vertex Paint. Create a new vertex color map by choosing Edit > Create Vertex
Color Map and then choose File > Import. Select a .vcl file associated with the loaded lwo file on
the file dialog.

Saving the Current Vertex Color Map to a .vcl File

Select the vertex color map you want to save and choose File > Export. Enter a name in the file
dialog and click Save.

Preference Panel
You can define some default setting on the Preferences panel (File > Preferences). Note that some
changes will not take effect until the next time you launch Vertex Paint.

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BG Color
BG Color specifies the background color. Clicking on the color box with your LMB displays the
standard LightWave color picker. The change is applied when you close the Preferences panel.
(Note: If your display does not update, try clicking in the 3D window.)

Wire Color
Wire Color specifies the wireframe line color. Clicking on the color box with your LMB displays the
standard LightWave color picker. This setting affects the Wireframe Color, Weight Value,and Weight
Ratio display modes. The change is applied when you close the Preferences panel. (Note: If your
display does not update, try clicking in the 3D window.)

Checker Color
The two Checker Color boxes specifies the colors used for the checker pattern that makes up the
background in the blending display mode. Clicking either of the color boxes displays the standard
LightWave color picker.

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Vertex Alpha
Vertex Alpha determines how the vertex colors alpha information is displayed in the Vertex Color
and Wireframe Color display modes. If you select Surface Color, information on the vertex colors
alpha is treated as a value of blended percentage of vertex color and surface color. If you select
Opacity, information on the vertex colors alpha is displayed as a value of opacity.

Texture Resolution
Texture Resolution determines the texture resolution displayed in the Vertex Color, Wireframe Color
and Lighting Shade display modes.

Pixel Blending
If Pixel Blending is active, both texture color and vertex color (or surface color) are displayed
together. If Pixel Blending is inactive, texture color overrides the vertex color and Vertex Paint only
displays texture color.

Hide Unselected Bones

Hide Unselected Bones specifies the display mode for unselected bones. If this option is active,
unselected bones hide behind the objects. If this option is inactive, unselected bones are shown in
front of the object so that you can grab and control them more easily.

Enable Bone Colors

If Enable Bone Colors is active, bone geometry is displayed using the Weight Ratio color.

Mirror Epsilon
Mirror Epsilon determines the accuracy used when Vertex Paint searches the axis-symmetry point
for the Symmetry mode, and the Paste-X and Paste-Axis options. The smaller value you set, the
more precise the symmetry point are searched.

Weight Color Scale

Weight Color Scale determines the default value of the color scale used for the Weight Value display
mode.

Undo Levels
Undo Levels specifies the maximum number of undos in the Color and the Weight display modes.
Higher values require more memory.

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Command / Operation
Select desired setting from those pop-up menu when you want to customise the default mouse
operations. Assign each Operation setting to each Command setting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Does Vertex Paint work with SubPatch objects?
A. Yes. A SubPatch mesh is displayed as a polygon mesh. Vertex Paint can edit the required VMAP
information. The original SubPatch information is maintained after it is modified.
Q. I cannot paint vertex colors.
A. One or more vertex color maps are required to paint vertex colors. To create one, with the Color
tab selected, choose Edit > Create Vertex Color Map.
Q. An error Unable to burn render colors. occurs when I try to bake vertex colors.
A. The Burn Shading Colors command uses OpenGL functions to acquire the color that is currently
displayed. Therefore, Vertex Paint will not work properly if there is anything covering the 3D view
or the object is outside the 3D view. Put the object inside the view and try again.
Q. I created a vertex color map but the vertex color is not displayed in Modeler.
A. You have to assign the vertex color map to a surface. To do this, specify the map for the Vertex
Color Map setting on the Surface Editors Advanced tab.
Q. Does Vertex Paint work with Layout in real time via the HUB?
A. Clicking Vertex Paints Save button overwrites modified weight value and/or vertex color in
Modeler. The changes should be reflected on the object in Layout after saving. (Note: Conversely,
Vertex Paint does not acquire surface properties changed in Layout.)
Q. Can I utilise information such as vertex color for game development?
A. You can access information, such as vertex color, by using the LightWave 8.0 plugin SDK. Other
information, such as UV map and bone weight, can be acquired from both Modeler and Layout.
You also can download Object Library 2 from DStorm to convert vertex color information stored in
a LWO file. This could be used for something like in-house tool development.

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UV/Texture Group
What is UV Mapping?
Sometimes, when mapping textures onto objects, you will find that the normal projection
mapping just doesnt work. This usually happens when the object is organic, or irregular in shape.
For those occasions, theres UV Mapping!
UV Mapping adds two extra coordinates to the points in your object; those on the U and V axis,
running horizontally and vertically through a flat plane on which you can paint your texture. Since
the coordinates are assigned to points, its essentially as if that painted texture was fixed to the
surface of the object, with pins where all the points are. No matter how irregular your object is, or
how it moves or flexes, those pins stay in place, and the texture stays right where you put it.
Technically, its not as accurate as projection mapping, because the texture is really only exact at
those points, and merely interpolated everywhere else. But its close enough!
The trick is to make the map first. LightWave has many tools to help you do that.

What is Per-polygon Mapping?

Per-polygon UV Mapping, or Poly Mapping, was introduced in LightWave 6.0b as a way to handle
discontinuous UVs. (Without some kind of handling, they would cause the entire image map to
appear backwards and squashed onto a single polygon at the map seam. Not a pretty sight.) They
were superseded by the current UV Mapping tools in LightWave 6.5, so unless you are working
with a model that was mapped before that, theres really no reason to use them; the new tools are
much more elegant and flexible.
Unlike UV Maps, Poly Maps cannot be edited with the normal Modify tools used in the rest of
Modeler, because they are not continuous. Instead, they are locked snapshots of some UV Mapping
of a polygon. So any operation on a vertex must also specify which polygons view of that vertex is
being edited.
You can select polygons that use per-poly UVs by choosing the Select by Polymap command (View
> Selection > Maps > Select by Polygon Map).

Map Types
UV maps can be of several different types explained here:
Then choose the type of projection you wish to use from the Map Type list. They correspond to the
standard projections you may already be familiar with.

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Planar
The first, Planar, simply looks at the object from one of the three axes (X, Y, or Z.) What youll get
looks just like what you see in one of the Orthogonal viewports, but resized to fill the square of the
UV space. If you choose X, youll get what you see in the Right or Left viewport. If you choose Y, you
get what you would see in the Top viewport. If you choose Z, youll get what you see in the Front or
Back viewport.

Cylindrical
The second, Cylindrical, gives you the same effect as you would get from a camera that rotated
around the object, (sort of like having your teeth x-rayed) using the axis you chose as the center
of the rotation. So, if you choose X, the camera will rotate around a pole going from left to right,
and the top of the map will be the right side of the object. If you choose Y, the camera will rotate
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around an upright pole, and the top of the map will be the top of the object. If you choose Z, the
camera will rotate around a pole going from close to far, and the top of the map will be the back of
the object.

Spherical
The third, Spherical, behaves as if all the points are fastened to the inside of a sphere, and then the
sphere is laid out flat. The poles of the sphere are on the axis you choose. So, if you pick X, the poles
will be at the right and left, and the top of the map will be a few polys on the right side of your
object. If you choose Y, the poles will be at the top and bottom, and the top of the map will be a
few polys at the top of your object. If you choose Z, the poles will be close and far, and the top of
the map will be a few polys on the back of your object.

Atlas

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The fourth Mapping method, Atlas, will call a slightly different dialog, because it has different
tools. Atlas spreads the UVs out, so that none of the polygons overlap, and there is a minimum of
distortion. This is good, if theres no shading from poly to poly. Its not so good if you need to shade
smoothly over a number of polys, because it can be very difficult to paint on. Youll have to decide
according to your needs.

Relative Gap Size

But, because the polys become separated in Atlas mapping, instead of choosing an axis (which
would be meaningless), you can choose how much space should be left between groups of polys
using Relative Gap Size.

Segment by Surface, Segment by Part

This option allows you to choose whether the polys should be separated by Surface or Part.
(Segment by Surface, Segment by Part.) Its recommended that you enable these, if you have a
number of polys in a surface or part group that will be getting the same color, because it can make
it easier to paint.

However, there can be problem areas on a UV map that require special treatment. UV maps can
have edges that are open in a map but closed on the mesh. A single edge on a mesh can be two
edges on a map, or a discontinuous edge. These edges are usually along the UV unwrap seams.
This usually depends on the UV unwrapping method and the UV editing done, which means that
each UV map is unique to every mesh. Discontinuous edges usually surround a so-called UV island.

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A single UV map can contain multiple UV islands. These UV islands can be rotated and positioned
freely in the UV space (by you, or using unwrapping methods like Atlas). A single island or even a
single polygon can also be part of multiple UV maps (with different positions and orientations in
each UV map).
Usually Subpatch-interpolation behaves differently on the outer edge of a mesh than inside a
mesh. Since discontinuous edges are outer edges relative to a UV map or UV map island, but are
inside edges relative to the mesh, it is not always possible for LightWave to automatically perform a
correct Subpatch-interpolation over discontinuous edges or over edges that are shared by multiple
UV maps. For these types of situations, the following interpolation types have been offered to get
the least distortion out of a UV map.

Interpolation Type
Linear - The UV map is interpolated linearly, most similar to the original mapping option and
does not use any subpatching at all.

A UV map with two UV islands enclosed by a 3rd large UV island. Linear Interpolation Mode
The edges on the very left and right of this UV map are discontinuous, as are the edges along
the two small islands in the centre. In this case the biggest problem is that some vertices
are shared by all three UV islands. This makes many of the interpolation- methods fail. The
situation would be even more severe, if each UV island was in its own UV map.
Subpatch - All Edges are interpolated along the subpatch lines, as if the UV map was a
subpatch mesh. (Note that the discontinuous edges do not line up.)

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Subpatch Interpolation Mode

Linear Corners - Corner-Points that are along the outer edge of the UV map, but not the edge
of the mesh, are interpolated linearly. Notice that it looks better than subpatch, but the
discontinuous edges still do not meet up.

Linear Corners Interpolation Mode

Linear Edges - Edges that are along the outer edge of the UV map, but not the edge of the
mesh, are interpolated linearly. Discontinuous Edges now line up, but due to lack of cubic
interpolation, some distortion may still occur.

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Linear Edges Interpolation Mode

In this special case only the Linear Edges method would allow for well aligned discontinuous UV
edges. However you would have to allow for some distortion along these edges.
Across discontinuous edges: Interpolation occurs along discontinuous edges. This method usually
provides less distortion along discontinuous edges. A discontinuous edge can be considered a
point that shares two separate polygons on a mesh, yet falls on the edge of the UV map so the two
polygons are on opposite edges of the UV map. This option lines up the points so the two edges
meet up. Please note that this option does not work across multiple UV maps.

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Across Discontinuous Edges Interpolation Mode

If heavy scaling is used or parts are rotated, Across Discontinuous Edges can produce errors.
However, this solution is recommended first, since most of the time, the least distortion occurs at
discontinuous edges.
The Subpatch Interpolations can be further edited in the Assign UV Coordinates window and the
Vertex Maps Panel.

Axis
Choose the axis you wish to align your UVs to: X, Y or Z.

Settings
In addition to choosing the axes, you can also decide whether to leave the Center and Size settings
on Automatic, or to adjust them Manually. If you click on Manual, the Center and Size fields will
become active. For most purposes, its recommended to simply leave them on Automatic.
Once you have a UV Map and are ready to paint it, dont make a screenshot, which will be of poor
quality at best, and will need to be manipulated before you can use it. Instead, go to File > Export
>Export Encapsulated Postscript, choose Texture UV from the View field, and make an .eps file, so
you can have clean, high-resolution maps.

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New UV Map
This button allows you to make a new UV map.

How do I use this tool?

When you click the button, it opens a dialog that looks exactly like the one you get when you
choose (new) from the T button in the VMap Bar.

Texture Name
First, it allows you to name your new UV Map. Type the name you desire into the text field, or
choose a name from the drop down list. The list contains all the names of all the UV Maps used
during the current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps
have any points assigned to them.

Initial Value
You may also start by assigning your map an Initial Value. If you do, several other fields become
available. If you dont, they remain dimmed, of course. You may or may not want to do this,
depending on how you are planning to build your map, and the shape of your object.
If you do, Map Type will offer you four different kinds of maps to choose from. These correspond to
the standard projections you may already be familiar with.

Make UVs
This button allows you to assign selected polygons to a UV Map. If no polys are selected, then all
visible polys will be mapped.

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How do I use this tool?
This button is normally used when youve decided to make your own Atlas Map by hand. (An
Atlas Map has polygons separated and spread out for painting.) Say, for instance, that you want to
map a can of beans. The can itself would be best mapped as a cylinder, since it is one. The top and
bottom, on the other hand, are really flat planes, and should be mapped using the Planar method.

Theres no built-in way to do that, and that will give you a map thats simple to paint. But you can
do it yourself very easily by selecting all the can polys, and using this button to make a Cylindrical
Map. Then unweld the points on the seam, slide the can down, select the polys for the top and
bottom, cut them and paste them back, and use the button again to get UVs with Planar Mapping.
Select them separately (select connected) and slide them apart. Hit M to merge all the points you
unwelded, and your can is perfectly mapped, and ready to go; and this is all possible thanks to the
Make UVs button. You can guess from the image above which one is easier to paint!

When you click the button, it opens a dialog that looks just like the New UV Map dialog, except that
it doesnt have an Initial Value button.
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Texture Name
Choose the name of the UV Map you would like these polys assigned to from the drop down menu.
The list contains all the names of all the UV Maps used during the current session, whether or not
the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them. If you
would like to start a new map here, you can. Just type the name for the new map into the text field.

ABF Unwrap UVs

Map > UV/Texture > ABF UV Unwrap - A new Angle Based Flattening UV unwrapper including
the ability to split geometry along selected edges for more complex objects. To use it, select a
sequence of edges on your object and hit the button. There are no options.

A single edge segment was selected on the sphere and the right cursor key pressed to select the loop to the poles and then the ABF UV
Unwrap button pressed. A UV map is created with the name Unwrap.

Known issue: Meshes with multiple open borders can cause the resulting UV Map to become
unsymmetrical. To solve this temporarily cap holes prior to running ABF UV Unwrap.

Flip UVs
This button allows you to flip the UVs of selected polys, so that the polys which are showing a
mirror image of the texture can be fixed, or simply so that they fit more conveniently onto the UV
Map.
If no polys are selected, then all visible polys in the current map will be flipped.

How do I use this tool?

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When you click the button, it will open a dialog which allows you to choose to flip the polys across
the U (horizontal) axis, across the V (vertical) axis, or both. (Flipping both, of course, wont fix mirror
images in your render; but it might put the polys just where you want them.)
Simply click to choose a direction, and then click OK. The polys will flip.

In order to do this successfully, you must be sure that you have unwelded all the seams on your
model. If you dont, any polys that arent showing a point will remain stuck to the map in that
place, and will become severely stretched. (In the picture shown, you can see that there are points
missing in the corners marked. There are also points missing all around the circumference of both
circles. Whenever two polys share a point, only one will have it on the map, and its a problem if its
on the edge)
To fix it, undo, then select the points that are being shared (On the model, theyll be on the poly
next to the one without its point. If you select that poly on the map, it will light up on the model
too, and youll be able to find which points to unweld easily.)
Go to Detail > Points > Unweld, and every poly will be given its own points.
When all the edge polys are showing points, go ahead and flip.

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Transform UV
This button allows you to adjust the UV values of selected polygons in several ways. If no polys are
selected, it will act on all the visible polys in the current map.

How do I use this tool?

When you click the button, it will open a dialog which allows you to choose several ways to
manipulate the UV values of selected points on your map. (If no points are selected, it will act on all
of them.)

Offset
This option will move the points by the specified percentage of the UV space, in either the U
(horizontal) or V (vertical) direction. Positive values will move them to the right, or up. Negative
values will move to the left, or down.

Scale
This option will scale the points by the specified percentage, in either the U (horizontal) or V
(vertical) direction. 100%, of course, is the current size. Larger numbers will increase the size, and
smaller will decrease it. Unless you specify a different center, they will shrink or grow from 0,0,
which is at the bottom left corner, where the black axis lines cross.

Rotation
This option will rotate the points around the center point. Positive values will move them
clockwise, negative values will move them counter-clockwise. Unless you specify a different center,
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they will rotate around 0,0 or the bottom left corner, where the black axis lines cross.

Center
This option allows you to use a different center for the Scaling and Rotation, specified as a
percentage of the UV space in either the U (horizontal) or V (vertical) direction. Positive values
move the center to the right or up. Negative values move it to the left or down.
Of course, you can also use the normal Modify tools (Move, Drag, Snap, Scale, Stretch, Rotate, and
so on) on UV Maps, with much the same results you would expect if you used them in a normal
Modeler window. As long as you dont use the Numeric Panel, nothing you do in the UV Window
will affect the geometry of your model at all, since UV space is separate from X,Y,Z space.

Be aware, though, that in order to do any of this successfully, you must be sure that you have
unwelded all the seams on your model. If you dont, any polys that arent showing a point will
remain stuck to the map in that place, and will become severely stretched. (In the picture shown,
you can see that there are points missing in the corners marked. There are also points missing all
around the circumference of both circles. Whenever two polys share a point, only one will have it
on the map, and its a problem if its on the edge)
This image shows the use of the Flip tool; but the same principle applies.
To fix it, undo, then select the points that are being shared (On the model, theyll be on the poly
next to the one without its point. If you select that poly on the map, it will light up on the model
too, and youll be able to find which points to unweld easily.)
Go to Detail > Points > Unweld, and every poly will be given its own points.
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When all the edge polys are showing points, go ahead and manipulate them.

Poly Map
This subgroup contains Polygon texturing tools.

Adjust Polygon Map

This button will allow you to adjust your old Per-Polygon Maps, or to treat new UV Maps as if they
were Poly Maps, and adjust them.

How do I use this tool?

Select the polygons that use the Poly Map, and click on the command to open a dialog, which lets
you adjust them in several ways. It will also let you treat normal UV Maps as if they were Poly Maps,
although its better to use the newer tools. To do that, select the polygons, and enter the maps
name in the Vertex Map field. (If you are editing real Poly Maps, leave that field blank.) This tool will
not work on unselected polys.
Reverse Order and Shift Order adjust the connection between texture points and the polygons
vertices. Checking Transform Texture will enable the Rotation Angle, Scale U and Scale V fields.
They all allow you to perform 2D transformations of the UV coordinates. The power of these
operations is limited in comparison to the tools available for editing VMaps.
If you want to use those tools on your Poly Maps, simply use the Unweld command (Detail > Points
> Unweld). This will put points on all the polys, and remove Per-polygon UV Mapping. At that point,
you can use all the Modify tools, as you normally would. If your models are simple enough, you
can Unweld selected points; if not, you can effectively unweld the entire model. Just be sure not to
move anything in X,Y,Z space, and the Merge command (M) will put it all back together again when
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youre finished mapping.

Clear Polygon Map

This button will clear the per-polygon UVs from their polygons. Just select them, and click. All the
textures will simply vanish.
On the other hand, if you want to translate the old mapping into the new discontinuous UV Maps,
then youll want to use the Poly Map to UVs button (Map > Texture > Poly Map to UVs), and do that
instead.

How do I use this tool?

Just select the polygons you wish to clear, and click. No more maps.

Lock UVs to Polygon

This button is used to assign the old per-polygon maps to the polygons. Unless you intend to use
the older style maps, you really dont need to use this.

Poly Map to UVs

If you want to convert a Per-polygon Map to the more elegant and flexible Vertex UV Map, just
select the polys you want to convert, and click this button.

How do I use this tool?

Vertex Map
Choose a map name. Either type one in, or choose one from the list.
If you have a viewport set to UV Texture, youll see the Poly Map polygons appear there. If you look,
though, youll notice that there arent any points on them; so although you can now see them, you
still cant manipulate them.
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To fix that, just use the Unweld command (Detail > Points > Unweld). This will put points on all the
polys, allowing you to use all the Modify tools, as you normally would. If your models are simple
enough, you can unweld selected points; if not, you can effectively unweld the entire model.
Just be sure not to move anything in X,Y,Z space, and the Merge command (M) will put it all back
together again when youre finished mapping.

New Quad Polygon Map

New Quad Polygon Map (Map > Texture > Poly Map > New Quad Polygon Map)
This button allows you to make a new Per-polygon Texture Map where each selected quad (foursided poly) covers the entire map square.

How do I use this tool?

Select the quads you want to map. (It does nothing with unselected polys, and nothing with polys
that arent quads.)

Vertex Map
Click the tool, and a dialog will open. If you want to make a discontinuous (normal) UV Map, then
enter the name in the Vertex Map field, or choose an existing map name from the drop down list.
The list contains all the names of all the UV Maps used during the current session, whether or not
the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them.
If you want to make a Per-polygon Map, leave the Vertex Map field blank.

Image Orientation
Choose an Image Orientation, either 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees.

Reverse Order
Click Reverse Order if you think the texture is going to be a mirror image.
Click OK. Each corner of each quad will be assigned to one corner of the new Quad Map, so the
entire picture will exist on each one. This works best for boxes and other simple shapes; but it can
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be very interesting on more complex objects.
If you have enabled the Texture Map in the Surface Editor, youll be able to see it. (If you havent,
youll need to go and do that. To get a per-polygon texture to show up, choose an Image Texture,
with UV Projection as normal. Choose any UV Map. It doesnt even need to have any points
assigned to it. Then choose (or load) your image. Youll see it on the quads in Texture or Wireframe
Texture viewports. To see a normal Vertex UV Texture, you have to choose the same UV Map that
you named in the dialog, of course. In either case, if you are using more than one image layer in the
Texture Layer Stack, only the one on the bottom will be visible in the viewports. So, if you want to
see your UV Projection Image, make sure its on the bottom.
You might find that the orientation of the images isnt what youd hoped, or the picture is a mirror
image of itself. If that happens, select the problem quads once more, and try again. Choose a
different Orientation, if thats the problem, or Reverse Order to fix the mirror image.
This is much easier to do if you adjust the ones that are causing problems singly, or in groups that
have the same orientation, because the corners of the quads are assigned to the corners of the
UV Map arbitrarily. So, if you leave them all selected, you may find that you are fixing some, while
others are turning the wrong way again.

Point Map
This subgroup contains two tools to help with organizing your UV maps.

Spread UVs
This button takes the corners of a selected quad, and places them in UV space at the minimum and
maximum values you specify.

How do I use this tool?

First, select a single quad.

Click the button, and it will open this dialog which allows you to pick the Maximum value in the
U and V directions. Notice that there are no minimum values; the minimums are 0,0; the lower left
corner of the UV Map, where the U and V axes meet.
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Whatever you pick for the Maximum U will be the right side of the quad. Whatever you pick for
Maximum V will be the top. The left side and bottom will be against the axes, of course.
You will notice that, once the quad is spread, it will no longer have any points, which means that
you cannot manipulate it with the normal Modeler Modify tools. Fortunately, thats easy to fix.
Just use the Unweld command (Detail > Points > Unweld). This will put points on the poly, allowing
you to use all the Modify tools, as you normally would. If your models are simple enough, you can
Unweld selected points; if not you can effectively Unweld the entire model.
Just be sure not to move anything in X,Y,Z space, and the Merge command (M) will put it all back
together again when youre finished mapping.

Quantize UVs
This button divides the UV space into a grid of the specified size, and then snaps selected points to
the closest intersection of the grid. If no points are selected, it will snap all visible points to those
lines.

How do I use this tool?

To use this tool, select the points you want to quantize, and click the button. (Once again, if you
dont select anything, all points will be quantized.) A dialog will open that allows you to specify
the size of the Grid Snap, from 0.0 to 1.0. To find the number to enter, divide 1 by the number of
squares you want in the grid. For instance, if you want 16 squares, youd use 0.0625, If you want 5
squares, youd use 0.2, and so on.
Enter the number for both the U (horizontal) and V (vertical) axis. If you dont want any adjustment
on one axis, just leave it at zero.
Then click OK. The points will snap to the closest grid intersection.

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More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

Set UV Value
This button allows you to move selected points to a specific spot in either U or V space. If no points
are selected, it will move all visible points. The effect is to line them all up.

How do I use this tool?

To use it, choose a map from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen (click T and choose from the
drop down list.) Select the points you want to move, or leave them unselected if you want to move
all the visible points. Click the button, and the dialog will open.
Since the points are going to be lining up, you need to move them perpendicular to the axis you
want them to line up on. So, if you want a vertical line, you need to move them all to the same
point on the U (horizontal) axis. If you want a horizontal line, you need to move them all to the
same place on the V (vertical) axis. Choose the axis you prefer by clicking its name.

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The spot on the axis is expressed as a percentage of the UV space. 0% is the lower left corner,
where the two black axes lines meet. 100% is the top right corner.
So, if you want to move the points to line up one quarter of the way from the left, youd enter U
25%. If you wanted them to line up two-thirds of the way to the top, youd enter V 66%, and so on.
Its all relatively straightforward.

Polygon Normal UVs

This command will take all the selected polygons, and project them onto a UV Map according to
their normals, so they will be mapped flat on the image. Its one of the old Per-polygon tools; its
similar to mapping in Atlas mode, except the polys wind up all piled on top of each other, without
any points.

How do I use this tool?

Select all the polys you want to map, polygons that arent selected wont be mapped, and click on
the command. A dialog will open.

Vertex Map
Type the name of the map into the Vertex Map field, or choose a name from the drop down list. The
list contains all the names of all the UV Maps used during the current session, whether or not the
objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them. If you type
a new name into the field, a new map will be created, and chosen from the VMap Bar. If you use a
name from the list, that map will also be automatically selected. If you dont use any name, youll
make a Poly Map.

Automatic Size
Click the checkbox if you want the polys to be automatically sized. If you do, theyll be centerd in
the UV space, and come close to filling it. If you dont, theyll probably be tiny, and in the lower left
corner.

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Click OK, and theyll be made. Youll notice that they dont have any points, which means that you
cant manipulate them directly. Fortunately, thats easy to fix. Just use the Unweld command (Detail
> Points > Unweld). This will put points on all the polys, allowing you to use all the Modify tools, as
you normally would. If your models are simple enough, you can unweld selected points; if not, you
can effectively Unweld the entire model. Just be sure not to move anything in X,Y,Z space, and the
Merge command (M) will put it all back together again when youre finished mapping.

UV Spider
This command will crawl along a line of selected quads, no matter how much it twists and turns,
and map it flat onto a specified section of UV space. Think Bandsaw, but mapping instead of
cutting.

How do I use this tool?

This tool is really interesting. You can use it to unwrap any regular quad surface, even if you have
twisted, turned, bent and vortexed it! But it does take some planning.

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The tool works by crawling along a line of quads, and depositing them neatly onto a UV Map. But
it only crawls along one line at a time. So, in order to unwrap an object, you have to select a couple
of quads to get it started, just like you would with Bandsaw. However, it will put the first quad you
select against the edge of the map. So, if you want a usable map, you have to start with the right
quad, every time. In other words, if youre unwrapping horizontally, you need to start with the next
quad in the vertical row in order to get a good map. Now, if the piece has been twisted and turned,
thats not simple to do. (If it hasnt, you dont need this tool; there are easier ways to map straight
things.)
You should begin by selecting a line of quads running perpendicular to the direction you plan to
map. You can do that easily by selecting a couple of quads in the correct direction (vertically, in our
example) and going to View > Selection: More > Select Loop. Once you have it, change the surface
to something that will contrast nicely with the other surface. (Tap Q or click Surface at the bottom
of the screen.) Its only for mapping, and you can change it back later; but it will help you keep your
place.
Then, select two quads horizontally in the bottom row of the area you want to map, and click the
button.

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Vertex Map
Choose which UV Map to work on by typing the name into the Text field, or selecting it from the
drop down list. The list contains all the names of all the UV Maps used during the current session,
whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned
to them. If you type a new name into the field, a new map will be created. If the map you pick (or
create) isnt chosen in the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen, it will be when you click OK.

Select Edge
This option allows you to choose in which direction the Spider will run. Like similar tools in
LightWave, if youve chosen two polys, Auto will give you the correct direction. Otherwise, you can
choose Odd or Even by using the menu (but its more predictable - and therefore faster - just to
grab two polys.)

Direction
Choose the direction you want the UVs to run in. If you are mapping horizontal polys, choose the U
direction. If you are mapping vertical polys, choose V.

U Start, U End
Choose the place on the map for the polys to be laid down. You can safely leave this at 0.0 to Start
and 1.0 to End for the direction you are mapping. So, in our example, where were mapping in U,
we would leave U Start at 0.0, and U End at 1.0.

V Start, V End
Use small increments in the other direction, so the polys will be laid down row by row. In our
example, if we started with V Start at 0.0 and V End at 0.05, wed get one row of polys, the width of
the map, and one twentieth of its height. Click OK, and the row is made. Drop the polys.
Select the first two polys of the next row, and click the command again. The dialog box opens with
the last settings intact, so you can see where you are. Simply change the V Start to .05, and the V
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End to .1, and make another row. Continue in that fashion, increasing both numbers by the same
increment, until you have mapped the entire area.
When you are finished, you may notice two things. First, your map may be longer than the UV
space. Second, there arent any points on it at all. That may be fine with you; in which case youre
done.
But, if you need to further manipulate the map, its easy to do. Just use the Unweld command
(Detail > Points > Unweld). This will put points on all the polys, and allow you to use all the Modify
tools, as you normally would. If your models are simple enough, you can Unweld selected points; if
not, you can effectively Unweld the entire model. Just be sure not to move anything in X,Y,Z space,
and the Merge command (M) will put it all back together again when youre finished mapping.
(Dont merge until you finish, though, so wait until you go though the next step.)
Once you have points, you can use the Stretch tool (Modify > Transform > Stretch or H) to pull the
polys down so they fit in the UV space, and your image wont wrap.

Guess Viewport UV Image

(default keyboard shortcut Shift F9)
This command guesses what image should be used as the background in the Viewport set to UV
Texture.

How do I use this tool?

Just set one of your viewports to UV Texture, and choose a Texture Map from the VMap Bar at the
bottom of the screen. Click the button, or tap Shift F9 on your keyboard, and the image thats used
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in the texture will automatically load as the Background Image in the viewport.
If youre using more than one image in the surface that uses that UV Map, it will pick the one from
the Color Channel, if there is one.
Its just a quick, handy way of loading the Background Image. But be careful with it. If youre using
a Poly Map or a Color Vertex Map instead of an image, LightWave can grind to a halt while it tries to
guess that.

Texture Guide
This command allows you to interactively create a UV Map for selected polygons.

How do I use this tool?

To use this tool, make sure that one of your viewports is set to UV Texture, and select the polygons
you would like to map. (If there are no selected polys, this tool will map all visible polygons.)
If you would like to see the texture on your object while you make the UVs, you will need to assign
an existing UV Map to that surface in the Surface Editor. (Open the Surface Editor, Click the T next
to Color in the Basic Tab, and then choose Layer Type = Image Map, Projection = UV, UVMap = the
map you want to use, Image = the picture you want, and then Use Texture at the bottom. Close the
Surface Editor, and youre good to go.

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if you are using more than one image map in the Texture, the one with UV Projection must be on
the bottom of the layer stack in order to be visible.
Click the command, and open the Numeric Panel, if its not already open. Click on the Actions
button, and choose Activate from the drop down menu. The rest of the panel will light up, and the
selected polys will be visible in the UV Texture viewport, if you are working with an existing map.
Click Make UVs at the bottom of the Numeric Panel, and either type a new name into the UV Map
field to create a new map, or choose an existing map from the drop down menu. The list contains
all the names of all the UV Maps used during the current session, whether or not the objects
remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them.
When you do, that map will become the active map in the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen,
and youll be able to see the UVs for the selected polys in the UV Texture window. The fun is about
to start!
Choose the Surface you would like to make the UVs for. All the visible surfaces in the object will be
listed.
Then choose your Mapping method. There are five to choose from.

Planar
Planar is very similar to the Planar Mapping method you may already be familiar with. It projects
the UVs onto the UV Map using a flat plane. When you choose it, youll see that plane represented
as a cyan rectangle in the viewports. You can choose the axis using the X, Y, Z buttons below the
Mapping field. As you do, you will be able to see the results of the various orientations in the UV
Texture viewport.
You can scale the map interactively by dragging the corners of the cyan mapping rectangle, or by
using the spinners or typing numbers into the fields in the Scale Tab. As you do, you will notice
that, the larger the mapping rectangle, the smaller the map, and vice versa. This is because the
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object is occupying a smaller (or larger) percentage of the mapping rectangle. If you hold down
the Ctrl key before you begin to drag, the scaling will be constrained to the last drag direction.
You can change the position of the plane by dragging the center cross, or by using the spinners or
typing numbers into the fields in the Position Tab. Holding the Ctrl key will constrain the dragging
to vertical only. Notice as you drag that when you drag right, the mapped object moves left in the
UV Texture viewport, and vice versa. This is because its occupying the left (or right) side of the
mapping rectangle.
You can rotate the mapping rectangle in the direction perpendicular to the rectangle by clicking
and dragging on the dotted cyan handles that extend from the center square. However, you can
only interactively rotate on the axis perpendicular to the rectangle. If you want to rotate it in all
three directions, you will have to use the numbers or spinners on the Rotate Tab. The tab uses
Heading, Pitch, and Bank; controls that you should be familiar with from Layout.
Heading, of course, controls movement around the Y axis, Pitch around the X axis, and Bank around
the Z axis. So, if you have chosen the Z axis for mapping, you can drag to change the Bank, but
Heading and Pitch can only be changed in the Numeric Panel.
Notice, once again, that the object appears to move in the opposite direction to your movement
when you drag, because you are changing the corner of the mapping rectangle that it occupies.

Cylinder
Cylinder is the same as the Cylindrical Mapping mode you have seen in other places. It projects the
vertices onto a cylinder, and then unwraps that flat onto the UV Map. The cylinder is visible as a
simple cyan wireframe cylinder in your viewports.
Choose the axis you would like to use as the length of the cylinder by clicking on the appropriate
button (X, Y, or Z.) You can also choose the Width Wrap, which determines how far the polys will
spread in the U direction on the map. You can adjust it to keep the polys proportional as you
change the scale of the cylinder.

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You can change the height of the cylinder by dragging on the top or bottom line. To change the
other two directions, you must use the spinners or type the numbers into the fields in Scale Tab
of the Numeric Panel. Once again, the larger the cylinder, the less space the polys take, and the
smaller they appear on the map.
You can change the position of the cylinder by dragging the central cyan cross. If you want to be
more exact, you can use the fields in the Position Tab of the Numeric Panel.
Finally, you can rotate the cylinder; but only by using the fields in the Rotate Tab.
Its interesting to note that each mapping method inherits the Scale, Position, and Rotation that
are already present. So, if you wish to interactively rotate the cylinder, simply start with Planar
Mapping, rotate the rectangle, and then switch. If you chose the correct directions, your rotation
will be in place.

Spherical Mapping
Spherical Mapping, once again like Spherical Mapping in other parts of LightWave, projects all
the points onto a sphere, and then unwraps it onto the flat surface of the map. The sphere is
represented by a cyan wireframe sphere in your viewports.
As always, choose the axis you wish to use as the poles of the sphere. You can also adjust both the
Width Wrap and the Height Wrap, spreading the polys out in the U or V direction, to obtain the
desired result.
You cannot interactively change the Scale or Rotation of the sphere; you have to do all of that
using the tabs in the Numeric Panel. You can, however, change the position by dragging the center
blue cross, and you can watch the UVs update in real time as you do so.
The regular caveats about size and direction which seem to be backwards apply again, of course,
as does the note about the persistence of previous adjustments, as long as you havent closed the
tool.

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Cubic Mapping
Cubic Mapping corresponds to the Cubic Mapping you may know from the Surface Editor.
The projection space is represented by a cyan cube in your viewports.
You can scale the cube interactively by dragging on any of the corner handles, or you can use the
spinners or type numbers into the fields in the Scale Tab for greater accuracy. You can position it
by dragging the center cyan square, as always, or by using the Position Tab. To rotate, though, you
have to use the Rotate Tab, and type or spin. The usual caveats apply here, too.

Camera Mapping
Camera Mapping is an extremely flexible planar map that uses perspective. Its represented by a
cyan pyramid in the viewports. You can think of the flat, rectangular part of the pyramid as the
picture that will be used for the map, and the point as the camera lens.
You can scale the rectangle by dragging on its corners, or by using the Scale Tab of the Numeric
Panel. You can change the position by dragging the center cyan across in any viewport, or by using
the Position Tab. You can change the rotation by dragging the point of the pyramid in any viewport
or by using the Rotate Tab.
You can change the perspective amount by moving the point towards or away from the object.
This changes the Camera field of View. As is normal with cameras, the wider the field of view,
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the more perspective you have. (You can do a kind of fisheye UV Map, if you are so inclined.) The
narrower the FOV, the less perspective.
All the usual caveats apply here, as well.
As you do all of this, no matter which Mapping type you are using, you may find that the UVs have
moved out of the UV space. Its not at all uncommon for them to do so. If you cant find them, zoom
out. (and if all else fails, close and reopen it, they will show up again)
When you are pleased with your results, tap the Return key or the Spacebar to drop the tool and
make the UVs.
You will notice that there are no points in them anywhere; which means that you cant perform any
direct manipulations on them. They might be exactly what you want, in which case, youre finished.
But, if you would like to do more, its easy to turn this map into a normal one, with points. Just
use the Unweld command (Detail > Points > Unweld). This will put points on all the polys, allowing
you to use all the Modify tools, as you normally would. If your models are simple enough, you can
Unweld selected points; if not, you can effectively Unweld the entire model. Just be sure not to
move anything in X,Y,Z space, and the Merge command (M) will put it all back together again when
youre finished mapping.

UV Map Jitter
This button allows you to add a random UV value to all selected points. If no points are selected, it
will act on all visible points.

How do I use this tool?

To use it, choose a map from the VMap Bar at the bottom of the screen (click T and choose from the
drop down list.) Select the points you want to jitter, or leave them unselected if you want to jitter
all the visible points. Click the button, and the dialog will open.

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VMap
Choose the VMap you want to use from the drop down list. The list contains all the names of all
the VMaps used during the current session, whether or not they are UV Maps, whether or not the
objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them. (But if you
try to use anything but the UV Map selected in the VMap Bar, youll get an error message.)

Minimum/Maximum Jitter Amount

Set the Minimum and Maximum Jitter amount. But remember, when you do, that the entire map
is only 1.0 big. So set tiny, tiny values unless you want the map to jitter right off the UV Square, and
out into the wrap area. You can also use negative values, of course, to keep it more or less around
the map, if you are so inclined.
Click OK, and youll see the jitter effect.

Free Move
When in UV Texture mode in the viewports and Free Move is active, selected polygons will separate
when modified.

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Free Move on and off

Weld UV
Weld UV will check that points are on top of each other and then will weld the points in place in
the UV map.

Heal UV
In addition, the Heal UV command, will calculate the average of all VMap entries of a point
and will set one continuous entry at that average position, deleting all discontinuous entries.
Discontinuous vertices are marked in red, which gives immediate feedback if the commands are
working correctly.

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Morph
This group contains tools for manipulating LightWaves endomorphs.

What is an Endomorph?
Sometimes, when you are changing the shape of your objects in Layout, youll find that the
deformations you can get with bones just arent accurate enough. Fortunately, you can also force
an object to change its shape into the shape of another object. This is called morphing. Morphing
gives you total control, since you can manually place all the points exactly where you want them.
You can use morphing to help create character facial expressions, to make a flower bloom, to
transform a boat into a car, and then into a rocket; anything you want to do, as long as both objects
have the same point count and order.
The different states, or poses, of a morph are generally referred to as morph targets. They are made
using morph maps, which are a form of Vertex Maps that define the different positions for the
points. The original state of the object is known as the Base. The map is known as an Endomorph,
and is incorporated right into the Object file, like any other VMap. If you copy and paste the object,
all its morphs are copied and pasted right along with it.
When you make a morph, you can push and pull the points around, and place them anywhere
you like. However, although its possible to add or subtract geometry within a morph, its strongly
recommended that you refrain from doing so, and make all such modifications to the Base object
instead. Otherwise, you can end up with incorrect point orders.

New Endomorph
This command allows you to create a new Endomorph, or Morph Target.

How do I use this tool?

When you click on the command, a dialog box will open thats not unlike the dialog you get when
you click on W in the VMap Bar and choose (new) from the drop down menu.

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Name
Enter a name for your new morph in the Name field, or choose an existing name from the drop
down menu. The menu contains all the names of all the Morph Maps used during the current
session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any points
assigned to them.
Its suggested that you name your morph using the group.pose format; like Eyes.Open or Mouth.
Smile. That will cause the morph to appear on the same tab with all the other poses in that group
when you use Morph Mixer in Layout.

Type
Choose the Type for the new morph. Relative targets record point displacement relative to the
base object, so they are affected when the base object moves. Absolute targets are not affected by
positional changes to the base object, although they do reflect changes to the number of points in
the object.
Click OK to create the new Endomorph, and start to move the points around. (If you dont, and you
change the map shown in the VMap Bar, the new Endomorph will vanish. )

Bkg to Morph
This command allows you to turn a background layer into a new Endomorph.

How do I use this tool?

Assuming that the background layer has the same number of points and point order as the
foreground layer, you click the button to open the dialog.
Enter a name for your new morph in the EndoMorph Name field, or choose an existing name from
the drop down menu. The menu contains all the names of all the Morph Maps used during the
current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and whether or not the maps have any
points assigned to them. If you choose the name of an existing morph for this object, the new one
will replace the old one, which is similar to overwriting any other kind of file.
Its suggested that you name your morph using the group.pose format; like Eyes.Open or Mouth.
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Smile. That will cause the morph to appear on the same tab with all the other poses in that group
when you use Morph Mixer in Layout.
Tap Enter or click OK, and youll have another morph!
This tool is best used for changes made to the base geometry in other places; for instance, when
you have saved an object with deformations using Save Transformed Object in Layout (File > Save
> Save Transformed Object.). It can also be useful when you need to see the object while making
the morph. Simply copy the object into a new layer, make the changes, then use this command
to create the morph. (Dont worry about any other morphs on the copy, they wont affect the final
outcome.)

Apply Morph
This command allows you to add a specified percentage of a morph to any other morph target or
to the Base object.

How do I use this tool?

Choose the morph target you would like to modify from the VMap Bar, or create a new one, and
click the command. A dialog box will open.
Choose the morph you want to copy from the drop down list. The list contains all the names of all
the Morph Maps used during the current session, whether or not the objects remain open, and
whether or not the maps have any points assigned to them. (But you wont get anything if you
dont choose a valid morph, of course.)
You can decide how much to blend the morph with the geometry thats already there by entering
a percentage in the Strength field.
Be aware that if you choose to apply a morph to the Base object, that displacement will appear in
all the morphs associated with that base, including the one you used to change it.
You can also use this command to increase a morph by applying it to itself.

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Create Joint Morph
This tool moves the mesh as if you were rotating Skelegons, but without actually moving them at
all. This allows you to easily make an Endomorph that you can use to smooth mesh deformation
as you animate. (Morphing is another way to move your objects, by forcing them to conform
to a different shape. The point placement for that shape is stored in a Vertex Map, called an
Endomorph.)
This is something you will want to do after you already have your figures geometry, Skelegons and
Weight Maps in place.
Begin by creating an Endomorph. You can either do this by using the M button in the VMap Bar
and choosing (new), or by clicking on the Map > Endomorph: New Endomorph button. In either
case, a dialog will appear that allows you to name the new morph. Its recommended that you give
it a name that will allow you to easily identify it in Layout. Something like LeftArm.M_90 is good;
that will put the morph into the LeftArm group, and identify it as the morph that makes a bend of
90 look good.
Once you have the morph created, youre ready to move the mesh. (Its a good idea to open the
Numeric Panel for the next steps.)

Click the CreateJointMorph command. If you have a Skelegon selected, youll see an active panel. If
you dont, then simply select a Skelegon.
You need to start in Before Mode, so make sure that button is the one thats highlighted.
Select the bone you want to work with from the Bone drop down menu, if its not already selected.
The Weight Map that is used by the bone will automatically show in the Weight Map field. (The field
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is for informational purposes only; you cannot change it.)

When you do this, you will notice that cyan rotation handles have appeared at the joint. They are
labelled H, P and B, for Heading, Pitch and Bank. (Heading is rotation around the Y axis, Pitch is
rotation around the X axis, and Bank is rotation around the Z axis. These terms should be familiar to
you from Layout.)
You can move the arm by dragging these handles, or you can enter the values you want directly
into the Rotation Heading, Rotation Pitch, and Rotation Bank fields in the Numeric Panel.

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Adjust the joint by the desired amount and direction. For instance, in our example, bend the arm
so the pitch is 90. As you do, you will notice two things. First, there are the usual problems that
occur in the elbow area . Secondly, although the mesh has moved, the Skelegon has not!
Drop the CreateJointMorph tool, either by tapping the spacebar, or simply getting the first of the
Modify tools you plan to use for the Endomorph.
Go ahead and manipulate the mesh, reworking the area until the elbow looks more like a bent
elbow, and less like a piece of folded foam rubber. (You can even make the bicep bulge, if you are
so inclined.)

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Its often easier to select the points in the crease if you flip back and forth between the Base and
the Endomorph. Any points you select in the base will remain selected in the Endomorph. (But move at
least one point before you switch, or LightWave will think you didnt want the morph, and it will vanish.)
Its probably a good idea to hide the Skelegons, so you dont accidently move one of the points on them.
(Select them in the Polygon Statistics and tap the - key to hide them.) You might want to hide everything
else, too, except the arm youre working on. When you are finished, show everything thats been hidden
by tapping the \ key.
When you are pleased with the results, click on CreateJointMorph again. Select the same bone, but
this time, bend it by the same amount in the opposite direction. In our example, that would be a
pitch of -90. The arm will now be in the same orientation that it was when you started.

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Click the After Edit button; you will probably see a bulge where you worked on the joint; but thats
alright. The Joint Morph is finished, and ready to take into Layout. Drop the tool, and save the
object.

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Setup Tab
Setup Tab

Skelegons
Create Skelegons
One way to create a bone hierarchy is to use LightWaves Skelegon feature in Modeler. Skelegons
are a polygon type that can be added to your object in Modeler; they look like bones. You can
create a complete skeletal structure out of polygons, hence the name Skelegons. Skelegons set
up only placeholders for the bones. When you load an object with Skelegons into Layout, the
Skelegons must first be converted to bones before you can use them for skeletal deformation.

There are several advantages to this system. First, you can use existing points in a character to
create the Skelegons, if you wish, or you can draw your own Skelegons manually. Having this
function as a Modeling tool makes the creation process much easier, as building a skeleton is
inherently a Modeling task. Since the Skelegons are considered polygons, you can use any of the
Modeling tools to create and modify the skeleton.
Another benefit is that the Skelegons are saved in the object file itself. This means that you no
longer need to create a separate scene file to hold bone positions.
One of the most beneficial features of this system is that when you modify the shape of the model,
the bone structure can be modified at the same time, so you do not need to make secondary
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modifications to that skeleton.
Imagine that you build a character and spend a lot of time creating the bone structure. The client
then decides he/she would rather have the character with shorter legs and really long arms.
Typically, the Modeling changes would be simple but recreating the skeletal system would be an
arduous task at best. With Skelegons, the process becomes one simple step which only involves
modifying the geometry.
With Skelegons, a series of base skeletons can also be stored and used as templates. The rubber
band editing style of the Skelegons makes it very simple to modify an existing skeleton to fit all
types of characters.

Remember that Skelegons are only placeholders for bones.

Creating Skelegons
Like drawing bones in Layout, you can use the Create Skelegons tool to draw Skelegons directly into
a Modeler layer. Just choose Setup > Skelegons > Create Skelegons, Left Click and drag your mouse.
When you release the mouse button a Skelegon is created. With the tool still active, you can drag
your mouse again to create yet another Skelegon attached to the first. Select the tool again to turn
it off.

You can customize the Name used for each Skelegon, as well as the Weight Map name, on the
Numeric Panel. When Digits is active on the Numeric Panel, bone names are incremented, like
Bone01, Bone02, and so on. You can specify the initial number in the Start At field.
If the Part Tag option is active, the bone name will also be used as a Part name automatically. Click
the Delete Last button to delete the last Skelegon being created.

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The lower portion of the dialog combines the functions of the Bone Weights plugin (Map > Bone
Weights). Activate Fill Weight Map to gain access to these functions. Remember that Weight Maps
are part of geometry, not Skelegons. Thus, you need some geometry in the foreground to use this
feature. The Weight Maps will be automatically created for the geometry.
Note that you can also activate the Fill Weight Map option after you have finished drawing your
Skelegons or even toggle it on and off. This, however, must be done prior to making the Skelegons,
by dropping or switching the tool.

Define the base Weight Map name in the Weight Map field. The maps will be named sequentially
(e.g., Bone01, Bone02, and so on). The Falloff setting corresponds to the falloff that you can
normally use on bones when you are not using Weight Maps.
The resulting Weight Maps will give you a nice starting point for modifying bone influences.
The Threshold Value is a distance from the bone that defines a capsule-shaped region.
The Use Threshold pop-up has several settings. This will take the Weight value at the Threshold
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Value distance and either: ignore it (Off ); set all weights outside the distance to 0 (Clip); subtract
the threshold weight from all weights, so the weights go smoothly to 0 at the threshold, then start
to become negative (Subtract); or subtract the Threshold Weight value as above, then clip the
negative weights to 0 (Blend).

Bank Rotation Handle

When you edit Skelegons, a bank rotation handle will appear. The default angle for the handle is
perpendicular to the viewport the Skelegon is first drawn in. Drag it to change the bank rotation to
apply when its converted into a bone.

Converting Skelegons to Bones

Skelegons cannot be used directly in Layout. They must be converted into bones first.
To convert Skelegons into bones:
1) In Layout, select the Skelegon object.
2) Choose (Setup > Add > Cvt Skelegons). This converts the Skelegons, which are
only placeholders, into actual bones. Note that the bones are immediately ready
for action. Rest positions are set automatically and bones are activated.
3) If your Skelegons were in a Modeler layer by themselves, you need to point the regular
object to the newly created bones. Select the regular object and then open its Bone Panel.
Select the Skelegon object in the Use Bones from Object pop-up menu.

If you want, you can simplify the process by cutting and pasting the Skelegons into the same
layer as the object before saving. Then you can avoid the Use Bones from Object feature.
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Edit Skelegons
You can edit existing Skelegons (chains) by simply selecting the lowest Skelegon in the chain you
wish to edit. Then, choose Setup > Skelegons > Edit Skelegons. You can also edit Skelegons along
with an objects normal polygons by selecting them at the same time.

If you want the Skelegons to use the same points as your object, copy the points you want to
use as beginning and end points for the Skelegons to an empty layer. Use the Make Skelegons
command. Then cut and paste the Skelegons into the normal object layer. Finally, merge points.

Changing Skelegon Direction

The Flip command (Detail > Polygons > Flip or F) will flip the direction of selected Skelegons. (This
command also flips the direction of a polygons normal.)

Rotate Skelegons
Rotate Skelegons( Setup > Skelegons > Rotate Skelegons) allows you to quickly adjust the bank
handles of Skelegons as well as preview rotational deformations. This includes the deformation of
sub-patches. This is a great tool to test your Weight Maps and deformations in Modeler.

Using Rotate Skelegons

Load a model which contains Skelegons and make sure that both the Skelegons and the mesh
are in the primary layer (the primary layer is the lowest numbered active foreground layer). Make
sure that the Skelegons are not hidden, but it doesnt matter whether any points or polygons are
selected.

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Now click on Rotate Skelegons and open up the Numeric Panel (N)

The first entry of the Numeric Panel is the Mode options. Normal will allow you to rotate the
Skelegons as well as the mesh. Choosing the Skelegons Only option will move the Skelegons
without moving the mesh.
The second entry is Bone. Bone is the Skelegon that is currently active. You can select other
Skelegons by selecting from the drop down list or by clicking onto the small orange circles in the
middle of each Skelegon.

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The third entry is Weight Map. Weight Map is the name of the Weight Map assigned to the
Skelegon. The currently selected Skelegon has three lines with the letters H, P and B as well as
a bigger circle attached to its stubby end. Holding the mouse down over one of the letters and
dragging to the left or right rotates the Skelegon and its children and (if the associated Weight
Maps contain non-zero values) deforms the mesh.

While you are in Normal Mode, you can have multiple Skelegons rotated around any axes. You can
rotate the Skelegons also by changing the corresponding values in the Numeric Panel.
The Bank Handle (sometimes also the term Pitch Plane is used) determines how the rotational
axes are aligned when the model is loaded into Layout and the pivot rotation for every bone is
recorded. You can align the Bank Handle with the tool by holding the mouse down over the stubby
end of the selected bone (inside the bigger circle) and dragging to the left or right.
The Heading and Pitch axes will circle around the bone, i.e. these axes are now aligned differently.
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The Bank Handle alignment will be shown in the Numeric Panel as well.

If you click the button Reset Current Bone in the Numeric Panel, the Skelegon will be reset to its rest
position (i.e. the position it had when the tool was activated). The value of the Bank Handle will be
reset as well.
If you click Reset All Bones, all Skelegons will be reset. If you hit the Space bar or the
rotational changes will be assigned to the mesh and the tool will be deactivated.

Return

key the

If you hit Modelers Undo button or click in an inactive toolbar area all Skelegons will be reset and
the tool handles disappear, but the tool is still active. By simply clicking into one of Modelers
viewports the handles will become visible again.

Rename Skelegon
You can rename a Skelegon by selecting it in the viewport and then executing the Rename
Skelegon command. (Setup > Skelegons > Rename Skelegon)

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Split Skelegon
You can split selected Skelegons in two using the Split Skelegon command (Setup > Skelegons >
Split Skelegon).

You can apply this operation to more than one Skelegon at a time.

Skelegon Tree Panel

If you open the modal Skelegon Tree Panel (Setup > Skelegons > Skelegon Tree), you can view the
hierarchy of Skelegons. Skelegons will be automatically parented if, for example, Draw Skelegons is
used.

The Weight Map column lists associated Weight Map names. Double-click in the Weight Map
column to specify a Weight Map.

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You can also change the hierarchy by dragging and dropping individual Skelegons in the list.

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The same points will be used, but the connections will change to reflect the revised hierarchy.
You can rename a Skelegon by double-clicking its name in the list and entering the new name
in the dialog that appears. The names you assign become bone names when the Skelegons are
converted to bones in Layout.
You can also rename a Skelegon by selecting it in the viewport and then executing the Skelegon
Rename command located under the Setup Tab.

Selection
Two commands can help you select Skelegons: select Child Skelegon (Setup > Skelegons > Selection
> Select Child Skelegon), which selects the child of the currently selected Skelegon, and select
Parent Skelegon (Setup > Skelegons > Selection > Select Parent Skelegon), which selects the parent of
the currently selected Skelegon. These commands are best set to a keyboard shortcut for optimum
use. Press Alt F9 to open the Keyboard Shortcuts Editor.

More...
This group contain tools that are no longer so required, but could still prove useful in the right
circumstances.

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Skelegon Weight
Set Skelegon Weight command (Setup > Skelegons > More > Skelegon Weight) will set up the
Skelegons association to map names. You still need to create and edit the weighting values as
you would normally. The associated map names are automatically assigned to the bones and will
appear as the Bone Weight Map setting on the Bones Panel. You can use the dropdown menu to
choose an existing weight name.

The Skelegon Tree Panel will list map assignments.

Convert Skelegons
One way to create Skelegons is to create curves first. You can then convert the curves into
Skelegons, which will be placed between the curve knots (points). With Convert Skelegons, (Setup
> Skelegons > More > Convert Skelegons) you can even use points from the object to create the
curves.

To use Convert Skelegons:

1) In an open Modeler layer, create points that will correspond to the bases and tips of the
bones you want to eventually create. (Youll probably want the object to be boned in the
background for reference.)

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2) Select points, working from the (theoretical) base of the first child bone to the tip of the last
bone in the chain. Then choose Create >Make Curve > Make Open Curve to create an openended curve with your points.

3) Repeat the previous step for all chains, if you have more than
one. You can use the same point in multiple chains.
4) Choose Setup > Skelegons > More > Convert Skelegons to create the skelegon from the
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curves. You can edit the base/tip of the bones using standard modeling tools. The Skelegon
bones will stay attached to each other.

If you desire, you can select and delete the curve afterward.
5) If you want, you can optionally cut and paste the Skelegons into the layer with the normal
object geometry.

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Mocap Skelegons
LightWave provides a couple of plugins to support the BioVision (BVH) motion capture file format.
The MoCap_BVH_Setup generic Layout plugin reads a BioVision BVH file, creates bones, and
applies the motion capture data to them.
MoCap Skelegons (Setup > Skelegons > More > Mocap Skelegons) is a Modeler plugin that creates
Skelegons in Modeler that match the initial rest position of the Biovision BVH data.
Use it to determine the correct scale, position, etc. for your object mesh. This object can then be
used with the bones created using the MoCap_BVH_Setup generic plugin in Layout.

Bone Scale Factor - This option gives you control over the overall size of the Skelegons that
will be created.
Bone Name Postfix - This option will put a number after each Bone name in Layout for scenes
with multiple characters. This is a setting that only functions in Layout so there is no need to
change it in Modeler.
Biovision BVH File - This field is where you will load the BVH Mocap file that will be read to
create the Skelegons.
Steps to use Mocap Skelegons:
1) Click MoCap Skelegons (Setup >Skelegons > Mocap Skelegons).
2) Click OK.

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3) Manipulate your model to match the Skelegons.

Your model is now ready to load into Layout!

Some models will need Weight Maps applied to assign geometry to each specific bone, and
prevent distortion when using motion capture for animation.

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Layout Tools
These three tools are for creating Powergons - tags added to LightWave objects that can be used in
Layout.

Add Luxigon
Luxigons (Setup > Layout Tools > Add Luxigon ) are like Powergons (discussed later), specialized
just to add lights and set certain light properties. To use, in Modeler, select the desired polygons
and choose Add Luxigon. When the dialog appears, select the type of light you wish to add and set
its properties. In image 01 below you will see that the polygons of the dome are flipped inwards.
Lights placed with Luxigons point in the direction of their polygons normal.

If you wish to use an existing lights properties, set the default scene lights properties and they can
be used when you Convert Luxigons. Load the object into Layout and choose Utilities > Additional
> Convert Luxigons. Select the existing light in the Clone Item pop-up menu if you wish to use the
settings you have chosen. If you choose to Clone you will have set the Luxigon lights names from
the name of the light you are cloning. Otherwise, enter the desired name of the new lights in the
Light Name field. After you click OK, the defined lights will be created, positioned at the center of
the appropriate polygons, aligned with the polygons normals, and parented to the object.

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You can clear Luxigons from selected polygons using the Setup >Layout Tools: Clear Powergons
command.

Add/Edit PGons
Before we discuss Powergons, it is important to understand Layout commands. If you have ever
customized keyboard shortcuts or menus, you have touched on Layouts underlying command
structure. Nearly all of your actions in Layout are executed by sending discrete commands.
The commands listed in the keyboard shortcut and menu configuration panels only show the
command name, but not any parameters the command might support. For example, the Render
Options command causes the Render Option Panel to display. It obviously needs no additional
information to execute. The Add Spotlight command, on the other hand, can take an optional
argument that names the added light. Thus, executing Add Spotlight CoolLight would add a light
named CoolLight.
You can get a much better idea of what we are talking about here by choosing Utilities >
Commands: Cmd History (In Layout). This opens the Command History window. Leave it open and
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execute some operations in Layout. You will see commands whiz by as you click buttons and drag
scene items. Here, you can see not only the command names, but also any parameters. Youll also
see some commands that are not listed in the keyboard shortcut and menu configuration panels,
like Position and Rotation.

What are Powergons?

Powergons allow you to execute a short Layout command script, which is attached to selected
polygons in Modeler. You can use this feature to quickly add, say, lights using polygons for
positioning. Moreover, all of the lights properties can be defined as well.

Once the script is executed in Layout, you can clear the object if it is not needed otherwise.
However, the Default command parents the lights to the object, so be careful since you dont want to
delete the children.

To Attach Commands
To attach a Powergon command script to polygons, first select the target polygons in Modeler.

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Then choose Setup > Layout Tools > Add/Edit PGons. This brings up a dialog where you can enter
the command script.

There are certain special escape characters you can use:

\a - Returns the area of the polygon.
\c - Returns the position of the polygons center in the form x y z.
\d - Returns the polygons normal vector as nx ny nz.
\i - Returns the item ID of the object containing the polygon.
\n - Returns the polygons normal converted into heading, pitch and bank angles (bank is
always 0) in the form h p b.
\r - Creates a line return to signify the end of the current command and the start of the next.
Note that it is not needed at the very end of the last command.
The default command is AddSpotlight LGON\rPosition \c\rRotation \n\r
UpdateMotion\r ParentItem \i\rCreateKey 0. This adds a spotlight named LGON,
positions it at the center of the polygon, rotates it to match the polygons normal, parents the light
to the object, and creates a keyframe at frame 0.
Once you click OK, the command script is attached to the selected polygons. (Technically, this
action adds a PWRG type polygon tag to the polygons.)

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To Clear Commands
To clear Powergon commands from polygons, simply select the polygons and choose Setup >
Layout Tools > Clear Powergons. Activate the General Powergon option and click OK.

Executing the Commands

Once the Powergon commands are attached, load the object into Layout. Then choose Items> Cvt
Powergons. This executes any command scripts attached to the selected object.

Clear Powergons
Clear Powergons (Setup > Layout Tools > Clear Powergons) will clear Powergon commands from
polygons, simply select the polygons and choose Setup>Clear Powergons. Activate the General
Powergon option and click OK. You can clear Luxigons from selected polygons using the
Setup>Layout Tools > Clear Powergons command.

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FiberFX
This group is dedicated to Modeler tools for Layouts FiberFX hair and fur system.

FiberFX Strand Modeler

There are a number of tools available in LightWave 3D Modeler for FiberFX. These tools not only
allow you to build 2-point poly chain fiber guides for use with the FiberFX Pixel Filter plugin in
Layout, but the creation of full 3D fiber geometry, Vertex Bias maps for controlling fiber direction
and auto-creation of UV maps for 3D fibers.
The Strand Modeler is the main part of FiberFX inside LightWave Modeler. When opened the Strand
Modeler interface looks like this:

Viewport Hotkeys
The OpenGL viewport window supports many of the same hotkeys as LightWave 3D. Holding
down the Alt key while dragging in the viewport rotates the view, Alt + Ctrl zooms and Alt +
Shift pans the view.
The a key auto fits and centers the object in view. The numerical keys 1 - 6 changes the viewport
to show front, back, top, bottom, right and left views respectively.

Global Controls
Surface Selection & Controls
In the lower left hand corner, you can select which surface on your model to grow your fibers on
using the popup menu. You are not limited to just one surface, selecting a different surface name
allows you to grow fibers with different settings on each surface in one fiber modelling session.
Once you have selected your surface, click the Grow button, this will then add fibers to the
selected surface using the current settings. Switching between surfaces allows you to edit the
fibers parameters for that particular surface.
You can also click the Hide button should you need to clean up the view while working on a
particular part of your model.

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FiberFX Strand Modeler showing fibers with different parameters grown on an object.

Load / Save
If you want to save your fiber editing session for later, you can save and load using these controls
(you will need to save each surface setting if you have more than one). Note, any guides youve
added will not be saved. To store guides you must click the Okay button to complete the session.
Fibers will be created along with the guides (each in different layers). To recall your session you
must first load the settings, then load the guides using the Add Guides popup menu found under
the Guides tab.

Fiber Tab
Fiber Distribution
There are two methods for distributing fibers over your models surface, By Area and 1 Per
Polygon. Both of these methods also have a Scaled option whereby the size of the underlying
polygon is taken into consideration, you can adjust this compensation by adjusting the Area Scale
property. This gives a total of four actual distribution methods.
By Area - The number are fibers in the Fiber Qty setting are scattered across the whole
surface randomly.

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Fiber Distribution By Area

By Area Scaled - The number are fibers in the Fiber Qty setting are scattered across the whole
surface randomly but scales the length of the fibers according to the underlying polygon
area size. This scaling can be adjusted by the Area Scale control.

Fiber Distribution By Area Scaled

Per Polygon - Places one fiber at the center of each polygon on your surface, this creates
a very ordered appearance. If you use these fibers as guides in the FiberFX Pixel Filter in
LightWave 3D Layout, you can create many more virtual fibers clustered about the centre of
these guides, giving the appearance of more fibers.
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Fiber Distribution 1 Per Polygon

Per Polygon Scaled - Places one fiber at the center of each polygon on your surface, but scales
the length of the fibers according to the underlying polygon area size. This scaling can be
adjusted by the Area Scale control.

Fiber Distribution 1 Per Polygon Scaled

Area Scale - This setting becomes available when the fiber distribution method is set to By
Area Scaled or 1 Per Polygon Scaled. It adjusts the percentage of scaling from the largest to
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the smallest polygons.
Fiber Qty (Quantity) - Determines the number of fibers to be used in By Area distribution
mode.
Fiber Length - Set the length of the fibers. If Area Scale is active this would be the length of
the polygons with the largest area. Length is measured from root to tip with the fiber in an
absolutely straight position.
Effects such as Curl, Kink, and Gravity change the shape of the fiber, and may cause the
overall length to appear shorter.
Edge Qty (Quantity) - The number of edges on each fiber strand. The more edges the
smoother the strand. If you render your fibers using the FiberFX Pixel Filter in LightWave
3D Layout, fiber strands can be further subdivided by using the Fiber Smooth setting. If
required, you can cover an object with single point polygons by setting the Fiber Sides
setting to 0. The maximum edges per fiber is 127.

Left - Edges: 1; Middle - Edges: 3; Right - Edges: 6.

Fiber Sides - Fibers can more sides if you intent to use FiberFX for creating fully 3D fibers. 1
side will create 2-point polygon strands which can be used as guide strands. 2 sides creates
flat polygon blades, and any number above 2 will create full 3D fiber objects.

Sides 1: 2-point poly chains

Sides 2: Flat 2D blades

Sides 3+: Full 3D geometry

Fiber Radius - The setting controls the thickness of the fiber at the base. It only becomes
available when the Fiber Sides setting is 1 or above.
Angle - Multi-sided fibers can be rotated around their axis using this control.
Taper % - Multi-sided fibers can be set to taper along their length, from root to tip. Higher
percentages will create sharper pointier looking fibers. If set to a negative value, fibers can
be made to have blunt flat tips. It only becomes available when the Fiber Sides setting is 1
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Setup Tab
or above.

Guides Tab
Spline Type - Changes the spline calculation method for all splines (you can toggle between
them).
Interpolating splines pass through each knot of the guide. Whereas Approximating splines
act more like Bezier splines. Interpolating splines can be bent tighter, Approximating
splines are smoother.

Left: Interpolating Splines; Right: Approximating Splines

Add Guide
To place a guide on your model to control the fibers, click this button (or press the hotkey G) then
select a polygon on your model that will serve as the place holder for your guide. You can only
place one guide per polygon.
To add many guides in one go, use the Grow button to add fibers to your model and set the Fiber
Qty setting to the number of guides you require. Then click the Okay button to commit your
settings. Run the Strand Modeler again and use the Add Guides popup menu selecting the layer
that contains the fibers you just created. These will then load up as guides and not fibers. Or you
can select Current Fibers option which is a much quicker way of doing the same operation.
Scale (Guides) - Scales the length of the selected guides, this will also scale the length of any
fibers they are controlling as a result.
Del Guide (Delete Guide) - To delete a guide hold down the Shift key and drag a box selection
using your mouse over the guide you wish to delete (normal left mouse clicking doesnt
select a guide as this is how you move guide knots, not select them). You can continue
to use this same method to select multiple guides. When a guide is selected the last knot
will be highlighted white. You can now click the Del Guide button to remove the selected
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Setup Tab
guides.
Add Node (Guide Knot) - To add a new node (or knot) click this button, It will add a node /
knot to ALL guides. Currently all guides must have a uniform node / knot count.
Del Node (Guide Knot) - Clicking this button will delete the last node or knot from ALL guides.
Add Guides (Load Guides) - You can add or load guides in a number of ways using this popup
menu. You can load guides previously saved on layers in your object. 2-point polygon fiber
chains can also be loaded back in as guides, and not fibers.
Guides can be created from fibers currently growing on the surface. Note: guides created
using this method take on the exact shape of your current fibers, so any styling done to
them will be reflected in the shape of the guides.
You can also create guides based every polygon on the currently selected surface - guides
will be created matching each polygons normal vector. Or you can create guides based on
every single point on the currently selected surface, again these will be created using the
point normal vector.

Save Guides
Saves the current guide set to the next available layer in Modeler.

Select Node (Knot)

This popup allows you to select either the First / Last node or knot on every guide (it selects all
knots on every guide because any deletion of knots must be equal on all guides). You can also use
Previous / Next to step through intermediate knots, or use the None option to deselect.

Clear Guides
Clear all guides on the surface.

IK Guides
By default, when manipulating guides using the mouse, they use an IK (Inverse Kinematic) method
of handling the guide chains which keeps all knots at an equal distance apart. If you wish to
override this method, uncheck the IK option. You will now be able to move knots anywhere you
desire.

Interpolation
Guides have several Interpolation methods available to them to further refine their area of
influence on the fibers. Clicking the root knot on a guide changes its interpolation method (the
color also changes to show which mode youre in) and if applicable the radius of influence the
interpolation has.

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Setup Tab

Left: Sharp Wide; Right: Interpolate Wide

Left: Radius Sharp; Right: Radius Sharp w/fx

Left: Radius Interpolated; Right: Radius Interpolated w/fx

Bundled
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Setup Tab
Radius - Sets the radius of influence for interpolation modes that support it.
Bundle % - The bundle percentage pulls all fibers in the radius of influence together forming
a ponytail.
Bundle Bias - Sets how far along the fibers length they start to bundle together. At 0% the
bundling starts nearer the tip of the fibers, at 100% bundling starts nearer the root.

Random Tab
This tab contains controls for randomizing the appearance of the fibers to create a shaggier look.

Length - Randomizes the lengths of the fibers.

Jitter X - Randomizes the X axis direction the fiber as it leave the objects surface.
Jitter Y - Randomizes the Y axis direction the fiber as it leave the objects surface.
Jitter Z - Randomizes the Z axis direction the fiber as it leave the objects surface.

Gravity Tab
Contains controls for simulating gravity affecting the fibers to create a more natural appearance.
Strength - The percentage of gravity affecting the fibers. Gravity bends the fibers in the
direction of the arrow in the gravity direction control box.
Use Normals - Percentage of force pulling fibers into the direction of the surface normal.
Useful for creation of surface hugging fibers instead of being pulled only in the direction of
gravity.
Gravity Direction - The gadget allows you to change the direction you want the gravity force
to be directed. To modify the click and drag the arrow using the mouse.
Reset - Reset the gravity direction arrow to point down.
Slope - Changes the force of the gravity effect according to the slope of the surface. Fibers
on upward and horizontal facing surfaces receive more of the gravity strength, whereas
fibers on downward and vertical surfaces receive less of the gravity force.

Tools1 Tab
Tools for fiber styling can be found on this tab.
Curl % - Percentage of curl. Use in combination with curl turns to create various curl types.
These require many edges for the smoothest effect.
Curl Turns - The quantity of curl revolutions. Set to 1 a curl would make a single 360 degree
curl.
Randomize Curling - Randomize the phase of the curl start.
Kink - Sets the percentage of back and forth kinking like pleats or accordion fold.
Slope Shorten - Shorten the fibers according to the slope of the surface. At 100% the fibers
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Setup Tab
facing down are scaled to 0 and fibers in between are scaled accordingly.
UV Bias - Set the directional bias to be applied over each polygon laying down according to
the direction chosen. Think of this like a joystick at the North Pole. Setting this to have a
specified direction lays all the fibers over into this direction. Handy for creation of parts and
the whorl at the top of the head.
Bias works by laying a fiber up or down against its underlying polygon. It can be used
to create sleek lay-down types of hair. To illustrate, say you are doing a Wolfman. In the
normal UV position, the hair part would be at the top of the head when contoured. All
the hair would be flowing down over the face. If you changed the UV contouring setting
appropriately, the same operation would produce the part at the nose. Then the hair will
flow from the nose back across the face, more like animal fur.
Reset - Reset the UV bias and directional bias back to default.
Dir Bias - Use this to tip the UV bias joystick at the North Pole into a different orientation.

Tools2 Tab
Tools for fiber styling can be found on this tab.
Clip Object - Select another modeler layer as a clipper object to cut the hair that intersects
it. The clipper object is shown in wireframe. For instance you can use a box in another layer
to clip hair into a flat top style. Imagine hair growing into a form and stopping where it
intersects.
Clip Transformation - The clip object can be moved by selecting the transform and using the
Ctrl key to manipulate it.
Reset - Resets the clip object back to origin.
Hide - Hides the clip object.
Collision - Set the fiber collision with the surface. These are subject to effects and be
aware that guides plus effects can drive fibers into the surface since by nature those are
predetermined and subject to interpolation.

Guide knots themselves are subject to collisions and can be place down on a surface.
Axis Mirror - Only available when using guides and is handy for creating a symmetrical hair
part. Place the guides on one side and fibers on the other side with use them in a mirrored
fashion.
Length Vmap - Choose an existing weight map to alter the length according to the weight
map values from 0 to 1.
Density Vmap - Choose an existing weight map to alter the local fiber density according to
the weight map values from 0 to 1.
Make UVs - UV coordinates are created for the fibers, 0 at the base and 1 at the tip. Useful for
weighting animated fibers using clothFX.

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Setup Tab
Options Tab
Contains preferences for the FiberFX Strand Modeler.
Fiber Color - Sets the color of the fibers within the Interface. This does not affect the fibers
color when rendered.
Bkg Color (Background) - Sets the color of the viewport background within the Interface.
Grid - Draws a X-Z grid in the viewport.
Reset Current Surface - Reset current surface to default settings, any styling will be lost.
Guides will not be deleted.
Surface Offset - Push points off the polygon by set amount. Useful to offset single point
polygons from the surface.
Knots Only - Show only the guide knots, turning off the spline drawing.
Ends Only - Show only the root and tip knots, hiding any knots inbetween.
Fat Lines - Thickens up the fibers and guides within the interface to make them more visible.

Strand Tool
This is a Modeler tool for adjusting fiber strands using IK after creating them in Strand Modeler.
When launched the Strand Tool scans the selected layer and builds a list of fiber strands. A handle
is drawn at the end of each strand and inverse kinematics is used to calculate the new position
when moved.
Pressing the n key brings up the numeric panel allowing you to set the IK strength. The numeric
panel also lets you toggle all knots to adjust interior knots in a strand.

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Setup Tab
Strand Maker
This Modeler tool allows you to create fiber strands using standard LightWave Modeler tools.
When Strand Maker is run, it scans the polygons in the current layer then moves to a new layer and
builds fiber strands based off the geometry.
You can also use LightWave Modelers curve drawing tools like Sketch and Spline Draw to create
fiber strands by hand, or convert whole objects into fibers. Any objects with edge loops will create
fibers that are continuous, whereas open ended curves will create strands exactly matching them.
Once these strands have been creating, you can either use them back inside the Strand Modeler
as fiber guides for further controlling your fibers, or take them into LightWave Layout for use as
guides for the FiberFX Pixel Filter plugin.
In the quick example below, creating a ball object, delete one half to create a hemisphere.
Flattening it in the Y-Axis and finally converting the geometry to fibers using Strand Maker could
be the beginnings of a spiders web.

Converting Existing Geometry to Fiber Strands Using the Strand Maker

Strand Maker
This tool has no interface and is a one click way to create two-point poly chains from polygons for
use with FiberFX. Since FiberFX now works with curves directly, this tool is less needed.

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Setup Tab
Strand Tool
An interactive tool to edit two-point polygon chains and curve polygons by dragging handles.
Start with a two-point polygon and use the tools on the numeric panel for this tool.
The LMB is used for dragging your control points around and the RMB for scaling the distance
between control points.

All knots - Show handles for all knots for dragging. When off only the end handle on a chain
will be shown.
Fixed base - When off the chains base knot is not selectable for editing.
IK - Switch for inverse kinematic chain edit handling. With this on, chains will move in a
sinuous fashion, with it off only the control point you are moving will be displaced.
Add knot - Add knot to end of chains.
Remove Knot - Removes last knot on chains.
Weightmap - Create weightmap containing 0<>1 values, prompts for name.

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Genoma

LightWave 2015

Genoma

Modeling by Khalid Al Muharraqi, rig by Lino Grandi with Genoma

Introduction
Genoma introduces a new way to rig your characters that is fast, flexible and intuitive. With its
system of preset rigs and rig parts, people new to rigging can avoid the hours and even days
it can take to get a usable result and users who are already expert riggers can benefit from
the time saved by quickly creating the base rig to expand on and being able to save to the
Genoma preset library for future use.
In contrast with traditional autorigging systems, Genoma is fully extensible. If the built-in biped
isnt enough for your multi-armed warrior priest, you can start with the basic biped and add
all the extra arms you require. Genoma takes advantage of all of Modelers tools to shape and
reshape the rig to suit your needs and has none of the limitations associated with Skelegons of
old - such as orientation. Associating weight maps has been made easier and the controls for
Genoma rigs in Layout make animation easier too.
Genoma is a system that embeds additional information into skelegons to allow them to be
converted to more than just a set of FK-controlled bones in Layout. Rig information is stored
in the object file and custom rigs can be created, modified and saved in the proper folder as
Presets, so they can be recalled any time they are needed.
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Genoma
Genoma is designed to remove the need to deal with the complexity that rigging normally entails
while permitting extension and exploration. For the first time, the user doesnt need to delve into
the bones of their creation. The aim with Genoma is to give the user the power to create intuitive
controls for their characters and let Genoma worry about how to perform the actions requested of
the rig.
In short, Genoma could be the starting point for an expert rigger who wishes to add more control
to their rig and a destination for a user keen to animate without having to learn rigging first.

Genoma 1 and Genoma 2

Genoma is in two versions, one doesnt replace the other. Genoma 1 is great for rapidly applying
preset rigs to characters for quick animation, whereas Genoma 2 is more of a rigging development
kit. It has considerably more power and can even handle changes to rigs that are already animated,
but with great power comes more complexity and so Genoma 2 might be overkill for simple
rigging, however once rigged and saved as a preset the Genoma 2 presets need no more expertise
to use than Genoma 1 presets. Both will be described in the documentation of course and there
will obviously be the possibility for overlap between both rigging systems.
Genoma 1 documentation is carried across from the 11 addendum and Genoma 2 documentation
commences on page 1769.

Genoma 1 Presets
Presets are the heart of Genoma. They can be added to so you can build up a library of reusable rig
parts or even complete rigs to suit your needs. Opening the Genoma Presets window presents you
with two main groups: Complex Rigs and Rig Parts. Complex Rigs are complete rig setups for bipeds,
quadrupeds and insects. Rig Parts are where things get interesting since their Atomic structure
allows you to mix and match elements to build your own rigs, or expand on those that already
provided.

Atomic Element (SubRigs)

Unlike normal skelegons where every skelegon is an independent entity that can be detached or
removed, Genoma subrigs can consist of multiple skelegons dependent on each other. Each one
is required to correctly convert the subrig, and removing any skelegon in that subrig carries the
risk of breaking the rig. As a result, while individual skelegons not used for Genoma are normally
atomic elements, a Genoma atom can consist of multiple, inseparable skelegons.

Connectors
Connectors are special types of Genoma skelegon that serve as weld targets. They can be thought
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Genoma
of as an input port to which things can be attached. Any time two or more subrigs are attached
(welded) to one another, a connector must be used between them.

The two orange connectors in this picture of the wrist part of a rig should never be deleted. The four Magenta connectors can all be safely
deleted to separate parts of a rig from each other.

Orange connectors should never be detached or removed.

Connectors added by the user are generally colored Magenta.
Use the Color Wireframe viewport display mode to be able to see the different colors of the
Genoma items.

Root

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Genoma
If you want to start your rig from scratch, begin with a Root. This will be your characters Center
of Gravity (CoG). When converted in Layout, the roots green box will be converted to provide a
controller to enable you to position your character.

Active and Passive Connectors

In Modeler there are two types of Connector that can be added to rigs. The Active button creates
connectors that have a bone strength of 100% and will deform your mesh while the Passive button
creates connectors with a bone strength of 0%.

FK Controls

All controllers with the same number but a different suffix are identical in use, just with a different
appearance to better suit different parts of your model.

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Genoma
Pitch Alignment and Control Size Elements

The Pitch Alignment Element and the Control Size Element. Their respective control points are selected.

The green arrow-shaped elements let the user define the Pitch direction of the bone once the rig is
created in Layout.
Not every Subrig needs this kind of control. For example IK Chain alignment is automatically
calculated by Genoma. Forward Kinematics subrigs with a Green element may need orientation by
the user.
Some Subrigs present a Green box, that can be used to define the size of the controls that will be
created in Layout by Genoma. When the Box is not present, it means that the size of any control for
that SubRig will be automatically calculated.

Parenters

A Parenter is seen as a red line coming from a rig part. Here in the left image we can see the
human_head_02 subrig and in the right a close up on the eye part of the rig showing the red line
marking a Parenter. The single point at the end of the Parenter is selected for better visibility. To
parent the eye control to another element on the rig, you just need to weld this point to the tip of
another connector so that moving that connector will also control the eyes in this case. Parenters
are available on other subrigs for a variety of different purposes.
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Spines

There are several different spine rigs in this category, the only difference between them is the
number of bones in each.

Spline Control

In LightWave 11.6 a subrig Spline Control part was added to go with the Spline Control feature. It
can be found in the Genoma Presets under Rig Parts/04_Spines. There are two versions.
Spline Control 01 - independent controls, no rotation apart from bank. Great for individually
animating the controls, not so good if you wish to animated multiple controls at once, such
as rolling up a tentacle for instance.
Spline Control 02 - The controls are in a hierarchy, with rotation controls in addition to the
move controls present in the first version.

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By default, both rig parts present four controls and 12 bones. By selecting just the Settings section
of the subrig and choosing Rename Skelegons from the Setup tab you can adjust these numbers as
you choose.
For animating along a spline you should select Spline_bone_1 and only change its Z position. You
can also select all the bones in the spline and change them from Linear Distance to Fit to Spline in
the Bones Motion Options panel if youd rather have a spline-based object to animate.

Example: Animating a rollercoaster train

1) Weve made a subdivided box and beveled the top to make a simple
rollercoaster train. We added a Genoma SplineControl_1 subrig and
sent the object to Layout, where we created the Genoma rig.
2) Stretching out the four control nodes, we use the Bank control
(RMB) to tip some into the curves we have created.
3) Going to a frame at the end of the scene, selecting Spline_bone_1 and moving along
the Z axis will animate the passage of the rollercoaster train along the spline.

Example: Animating an Octopus tentacle

1) Kept the same box, but removed the bevels and added tentacle suckers.
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Genoma
Used the Genoma SplineControl_2 subrig and elected the Settings part
of the Genoma subrig and hit Rename Skelegon. Changed the quantity
for controls from 4 to 6, and the number of bones from 12 to 24.
2) Sent to Layout and Created rig on the Setup tab in the Genoma section.
3) Selected all the Genoma Rotate controls and gave them a twist to curl our tentacle nicely.

Arms, Legs and Hands

Arm_02 has a controller that can be sized and placed. Leg_Foot_01 is a bipedal leg suitable for a human character and Right_Hand_01
has one control for each finger. Using the Right mouse button will curl the fingers.

They are several choices for each of these elements.

Arms:
Arm_01 - The user cannot choose the size or position of the controls and the Pole Vector
follows the IK Controllers movement.
Arm_02 - The user can choose a size and placement of the controller and the Pole Vector is
independent from IK Controller movement.
Arm_simple_01 - The simplest Genoma arm rig. No control sizing, no shoulder or wrist twist.
Arm_simple_02 - Like Arm_simple_01 but with its Pole Vector reacting to IK controller
movement.
Legs:
Insect_Leg_01 - Simple insect leg subrig. The user cannot choose the size or position of the
controls and the Pole Vector follows the IK Controllers movement.
Insect_Leg_02 - Additional segment and Pitch Alignment and Control size are available. It
also has an additional FK control.
Leg_Foot_01 - A humanoid leg with reverse foot.
Quadruped_leg_01 - Creates the hind leg of a quadruped animal.
Three_part_leg_01 - A generic three-segment IK element that can be used for many
purposes.
Hands:
Finger_01 - An additional finger to add to a hand subrig or act as a horn or similar for your
character. This finger has one control to curl or uncurl the finger. Finger_02 has a control per
joint.
Left_hand_01 - Creates a five-fingered hand with one control per finger for curling and
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Genoma
uncurling (using the right mouse button). There is a matching right hand.
Left_hand_02 - Creates a five-fingered hand with three controls per finger for curling and
uncurling. There is a matching right hand.

Heads

There are two head rigs included in the Genoma Presets in 11.5. The first (human_head_01) has the
green Pitch Alignment and Control Size elements for several parts of the subrig. The second subrig
(pictured) also has a Parenter for the eyes.

Muscles and Targets

This group contains muscles, targets and tendons. Muscles and Tendons are related so well
describe those first.

Muscles
There are two Muscle subrigs. Muscle_01 creates a single bone in Layout where Muscle_02 creates
two bones. The effect they have is best shown by this simple example.

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Genoma

We have modeled a simple subdivided cylinder (01). To that we add a connector_01 to each end
(02). Next we add Muscle_01, as can be seen it needs scaling up (03) . When scaled appropriately,
weld the points shown to attach the connectors to the muscle (04). 05 and 06 show the muscle
stretching and squashing the cylinder. As can be seen in image 04, there is a parenter that can
drive the muscle through another are of the rig.

Tendons
Again there are two tendon subrigs, once with a single bone and one with two. The two-bone
tendon makes even more sense than the two-bone muscle since it can have its two Parenters
aligned to separate parts of the rig giving a nice twist to the tendon.

The steps for adding a Tendon to this cylinder are identical to the muscle placement, but the
difference is that a tendon doesnt have the bulge or stretch of a muscle as shown by images 05
and 06.

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Genoma
Target Controls

A variety of single eyeball or eyeball pair subrigs, with and without Parenters.

Overview
There are two short sections in the Setup menu in Modeler and Layout for Genoma. For Modeler
there are three menu items:

Genoma Presets - This opens a window with a set of premade rigs and rig parts to enable you to
swiftly create your own customized rig. There are two buttons at the top of the window that are
available if you open the Genoma Presets window with a connector already selected:
Align - This will align the new connector with your existing rig. If you untick it the Genoma
Presets window will show you what you will get instead.
Merge Results - If you untick this option, the new subrig element you add from the Genoma
Presets window will not be attache to your existing rig.
Connector Group - There are two commands in this group, Passive and Active. Both create
connectors to extend your rig, but before you create a connector you need to select two points
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Genoma
on your geometry - the base of one part of the rig with the top of another part. Clicking Active
will now place a Genoma Connector between the two points you selected with a bone strength
of 100%. Clicking Passive will create a connector not designed to affect the mesh that has a bone
strength of 0%.
In Layout there are two commands for Genoma in the Setup tab..
Create Rig - This takes the rig you have created in Modeler and converts it into an IK/FK skeleton.
Your OpenGL viewport should be switched to Bounding Box before you click this button.
Update Rig - If you realise that some deformation is ugly or you need more flexibility in a body part,
you can edit your rig in Modeler and then update it here. Existing animation will be lost.

Editing
In general any Modeler tool can be used to edit the Genoma Rigs. That makes adapting a preexisting Genoma Preset to any character mesh fast and easy using tools that are familiar to the
LightWave user such as Move, Rotate, Drag, Mirror and so on. It is possible to Copy and Paste
Subrigs without problem. Select a subrig starting with the magenta connector to ensure that you
are selecting the atomic elements that make up the subrig.
Some general rules that have to be followed:
1) Never break a SubRig. None of its parts can be deleted or detached.
2) Connectors attach different SubRigs. All SubRig elements have a Connector just for this.
3) You can weld the tip of any Connector to the Base of any SubRig. Or the tip of any Connector to the
base of a new Connector.
4) You can attach more than one Connector to the tip of another Connector.
5) You can attach more than one SubRig to the tip of any Connector, just use the Base of the SubRigs.
6) You can tell the Base of any SubRig from its color (normally Blue).

Creating Presets
Building your own Genoma presets is a simple operation. Build your rig as you need and save the
object. Move the resulting LWO file into the LightWave/support/Genoma/rigs folder structure.

To hide everything except your mesh in Layout, create a selection set of all the items in the scene
apart from the mesh and then you can hide or show that selection set easily. Selection sets will stop
working if you update your rig, so do not create a selection set until the rig is finished and you start
animating.

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Genoma

Example: Rigging the Cube

Darkside Animation has provided a cute little character for this example. As you can see it wont
exactly fit one of the preset rigs - it has no spine or separate head and the limbs are somewhat
outsized. The only solution is to build a new Genoma rig from scratch. To avoid that this tutorial
spans 100 pages on its own you will need to pay careful attention to the images accompanying it.
The eyes and brows are using Endomorphs for their animation so we wont be covering how to do
those.
This character is provided in the content in both rigged and unrigged versions for you to play with.
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Genoma
Step 1: Starting the rig
We have the geometry in Layer 1 and well rig on Layer 2. To begin any rig with Genoma you need
a root to indicate the center of gravity (CoG) of your character. Add Genoma Presets > Rig Parts >
02_Roots > Root_01. Put it in the center of your cube as shown (01).

With the Root still selected, return to the Genoma Presets window and choose Genoma Presets >
Rig Parts > 01_connectors > connector_05. This will be welded to the end of your Root (02).

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The four arms of this quad connector are going to serve as head, shoulders and pelvis. Were
going to take a moment to shift all those components into place. To do so, make sure Symmetry is
engaged and use Drag to pull the end of the right shoulder into place. The pelvis needs to be at
the bottom of the cube between the legs and the head can be moved upwards a little (we arent
going to use it in this example) (03).

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We also want the Root to be more easily accessible, so select the points shown and pull them out
of the back of the character (04).

To scale the green box, which will be the controller itself, just deselect the arrow point and pull to
make the box bigger (05).

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Step 2: The arms and hands
Switch to Polygon mode and select the magenta shoulder connectors. Now choose Genoma
Presets > Rig Parts > 05_arms > arm_02. This should bring in an arm on each shoulder (06).

Now you need to switch between Point and Polygon modes and move and drag the parts of the
arm rig into place so that it matches the geometry (07).

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When in Point mode get used to using the right mouse button lasso to select the general area you
wish to work on since Genoma will have several parts that should all be moved/rotated together.
Switch back to Polygon mode, turn off Symmetry and select the connector that comes out of the
right wrist. Choose Genoma Presets > Rig Parts > 07_hands > right_hand_01. This will weld a hand to
the wrist but there are two problems with the preset hand for this character. The first is orientation,
the second is two fingers too many. Re-orient the hand until it looks like (08).

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Now we need to ditch two fingers so select the outer two down to their magenta connectors (09).

Then you need to reshape the remaining fingers so they fit the geometry nicely (10).

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Thats fitted the right hand now. Because of the way Genoma works, all we need do is select the
right hand up to the pink connector and mirror. Just weld the left-hand magenta connector to the
end of the left arm and were good to go.

Step 3: The Legs and Feet

To add legs and feet to our character we add a connector to our pelvis. Select the pelvis
connector and choose Genoma Presets > Rig Parts > 01_connectors > connector_02 (11).

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Using Symmetry move the ends of the connectors into place over the middle of the legs and go
to the Genoma Presets window again. This time, choose Genoma Presets > Rig Parts > 06_legs >
leg_foot_01. The legs will come in horizontally, but make sure Symmetry is still on and rotate them
into position. You will need to do some massaging to get the joints into position and fill out the
foot (12).

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Step 4: Moving to Layout
The rig is now done and almost ready to send to Layout. There are a couple of steps to perform
first in Modeler to make sure everything works. First weighting. Weight maps have already been
created for the model, so assign the parts of the rig that make up each arm, each leg and each
finger using the updated Set Skelegon Weight tool. You should then select the parts of the rig that
are in the cube itself and assign them the ROOT weight map. Lastly, Genoma requires that your
model only contains one layer and that the bones-to-be are in it with the geometry so cut the rig
from the layer its on and paste it into the same layer as the geometry.
Now we send our object to Layout. Normally it is recommended to change the display mode to
Bounding Box to speed up the conversion of a rig to bones, but because our sugar cube is very
simple you can go ahead as it is. Go into the Setup tab and hit Create Rig in the Genoma section.
After a moment, during which messages about cyclic dependencies will appear that are nothing to
worry about, you will get the following message:

You can now test how your character deforms and moves. Use the controllers that appear on your
character, dont try to use individual bones. If you need to change something, revisit Modeler and
make your changes. When you are satisfied return to Layout and use Update Rig. Any animation
you have applied to the rig will be lost as the rig is remade, so deformation should be thoroughly
checked before you start animating in earnest. Once the rig is to your satisfaction, a suggestion is
to use the object picker to filter out everything that isnt the model.

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2015

Genoma 2

The Genoma 2 RDK (Rigging Development Kit) is a system for advanced users who already know
how to rig in LightWave, but want more control and speed for the whole range of rigging needs,
from simple to complex.
New to Genoma 2 over the previous iteration are:
Full customization for any rig or rig part
No need for Connector Rig elements
Animation is now preserved when making changes.

The components of Genoma 2 will be described in this documentation, but for full workflow
you will need to watch the Genoma 2 workflow videos on lightwave3d.com if these descriptions dont
suffice.

Presets...
The Presets window is the same for Genoma 1 and Genoma 2 and presets are kept in separate
Genoma 1 and Genoma 2 folders.

Properties
To access the Genoma 2 Properties panel from a new launch of Modeler:
1) Make a skelegon;
2) Use Default Tags from the Set dropdown menu on the Setup tab;
3) Now you will be able to use the Genoma Preferences
You will have access to eight different tabs.

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The options in the upper and common part of the tabs allows the user to rename the current item,
to assign a Parent, a Target, a Pole or a Spline control.
If Parent is set to CURRENT, the item will respect the current skelegon hierarchy defined in Modeler
(skelegons merged vertices).
Parent can also be set to MASTER if we want the item to be parented to the master null
automatically generated by Genoma.
If we want no control to be assigned in Layout, we need to set the controller name (Target, Pole
and/or Spline) to NONE (which is the default status).

CURRENT, current, Current, MASTER, master, Master, NONE, none, None can all be used. Leaving
the field blank will also set the controller name to NONE.

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Item tab

Item Type - You can decide if the Genoma item will be a Bone, a Null or a Joint once the rig is
created/updated in Layout.
Leave Modeler Shape Intact - When off, the Skelegon Shape will automatically be assigned
when the Genoma Properties Panel is closed (according to the Item Type setting defined).
If we want to keep the current Skelegon shape (we can define the Skelegon shape using the
SetAppearance tool) we need to set this option On.

Item Color - Sets a Layout item color.

Visible - Sets Layout item visibility on or off.
Locked - Sets Layout item lock state on or off.
Record Pivot Rotation - When checked, it make so the item initial rotation values will be set to
0,0,0 (Record Pivot Rotation will be used on the item).

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Record Pivot Position - When checked, it sets the item current position as the Reset Position
Active Gizmo Channels - User can enable/disable animation gizmos for the item. This is
something very important to do since items not working as animation controllers should
have all Gizmo channels set to off. Rotation only controllers should have HPB on and XYZ/
SXSYSZ off.
Is it very important to activate the proper gizmos on the controller, since doing so Genoma2
will recognize them as such and correctly store the animation of any controller in the scene,
so it can be applied again when Update Rig is used.

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Shape Tab

From this tab is possible to define any ItemShape attribute, as long as the Genoma Item Type is set
to Null.
Item Shape - Shape can be either Standard, Box, Ball, Pyramid, Diamond, Tetra, Ring, Grid, or
None.
If Leave Modeler Shape Intact is set to off, then the Skelegon Shape will be updated to the
selected shape.
Axis - Let the user define the itemshape axis.
Filled - Defines if the shape should be filled or not. Notice some shapes (like Ball) cant be
filled.
Xray - Defines if the item shape should be always visible, eben when hidden inside an
object geometry.

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Label - Defines a text label for the itemshape/control.
Justification - Defines the text justification.
Draw Line To - Draws a graphic line between the current Genoma item and any other item
specifying its name.
Selected Color - Defines the color of the Item while is selected.
Unselected Color - Defines the color of the Item while is not selected.
Text Color - Defines the color of the Text Label.

Bone Tab

From this tab is possible to set all the option normally found in the Layout Bone Panel.
The Weight map is assigned using the Set Skelegon Weight Map command.

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Bone Active - Defines if a Bone should be set to Active (influencing mesh deformation) or not.
Maya Style Joints - Makes a Bone look like a Maya Joint (it only affects its shape).
Rest Length - Defines the Rest Length of a bone. When set to CURRENT (or current or Current)
the rest length will match the one of the Skelegon.
Is it possible to specify a multiplier so the Rest Length will be set to the Current Skelegon
Rest Length * Multiplier.
For example if we want the Rest of the bone in Layout to be set to half the Rest of the
Current Skelegon Rest Length, well specify 0.5.
This also works as a multiplier for any ItemShape size.

Weight Map Only - Sets Weight Map Only on or off.

Weight Normalization - Sets Weight Normalization on or off.
Strength - Sets the Bone Strength.
Multiply By Rest Length - Sets Multiply By Rest Length on or off.
Limited Range - Sets Limited Range on or off.
Min/Max - Sets the Limited Range Min/Max limits.
Joint Compensation - Set Joint Compensation on or off.
Joint Compensation For Parent - Set Joint Compensation For Parent on or off.
Muscle Flexing - Set Muscle Flexing on or off.
Parental Muscle Flexing - Set Parental Muscle Flexing on or off.
Muscle Bulge - Set Muscle Bulge on or off.
Parental Muscle Bulge - Set Parental Muscle Bulgeon or off.
Twist - Set Twist on or off. Only available for Joints.

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IK Tab

This Tab presents the same IK options that can be found in Layout (IK and Modifiers).

Spline Fit - Sets the Spline Control Fit option.

Unaffected By IK - Sets Unaffected By IK option on or off.
Goal Object - Sets the IK Goal name.
Objective - Sets the Objective Type.
Initial IK State - Sets from which frame the IK should consider as initial state.
Frame - Sets the Frame for Initial IK State when Base On Frame is selected.
Chain - Defines the Chain option for IK/FK Blending.
IK/FK Blending - Defines the IKFK Blending value.
Goal Strength - Defines the Goal Strength for the IK.
Soft IK Options (NoSoft IK, Chain Chord) - Defines the Soft IK type, and Chain options.
Min/Max - Define min/max percentage for Soft IK.

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Match Goal Orientation - Sets the Match Goal Orientation on or off.
Keep Goal in Reach - Sets the Keep Goal in Reach option on or off.
Full-TIme IK - Sets the Full-TIme IK option on or off.

Pos/Rot/Sca Tabs

These 3 tabs are the exact reproduction of Layout Controllers and Limits panel. If you need to know
how these options work, refer to Controllers and Limits Tab on page 595.

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Expression Tab

In Genoma2 we can create and assign Math Expressions to any Items channel.
All you need to do is to specify the expession name in the channel field you want to assign the
Expression to.
First thing to do, is to create a Skelegon and use the Set Expression Tag command.
The Genoma Expression panel will open. Here it is possible to specify the Expression Name and the
math expression.
After hitting ok, the panel will close and the Skelegon shape will change to a box with a E. That
makes identifying expression skelegons easy.
To change the Expression name or the Math Expression, we can select the Expression Skelegon
again and use Set Expression Tag.
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When the expression will be created in Layout, the name of the current mesh will be added as a
Prefix. That makes easy to have different characters sharing the same rig working correctly in the
same scene.
NEVER USE SPACE IN THE EXPRESSION NAME. USE _ INSTEAD.

Scripts Tab

Among the most advanced features of Genoma2, the Scripts Tab lets the user request the
execution of an LScript, a Python script, or a Custom Genoma2 function.
LScript and Python - LScript and Python Scripts should be added to LightWave as plugins.
Then all is needed is to specify the name of the scripts.

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If an item has the execution of a script (LScript or Python) assigned, the item will be selected
and the script executed.
Of course this requires scripting skills from the user. In complex pipelines, especially for
production demanding a lot of characters to be rigged, user scripts can really play a very
important role speeding up the whole process.
Custom - Custom scripts are Genoma2 internal procedures that can be called for each item.
User can specify only one Custom Script per item.

Set...
A lot of these options are intended to be used to mass change Skelegons, rather than having to
edit one Skelegon at a time in the Genoma Properties window.
All the entries in this list require explicit selection.

Default Tags
The first entry on this dropdown is the command you will use to prepare skelegons for use with
Genoma. You can also use this item to clear bones you have already set up with other options to
bring them back to a default state. However, bone color and size will not be changed.

Expression Tag

This converts your Skelegon into a receptacle for an expression (and changes the Skelegon shape,
as shown). Syntax for these expressions is explained starting on page 1783.

Position, Rotation, Scale, Target, Parent, Goal, Pole and Spline

These entries perform the same function as the tabs in the Genoma Properties window, but will be
applied to however many Skelegons you have selected, rather than having to perform the changes
on each bones individually in the Genoma Properties window.

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Controller

This allows you to change controller settings for multiple bones at once. Select the Leave
Unchanged entry to keep existing settings.

Skelegon Weight Map

Similar to Genoma 1, this allows you to assign weight maps to multiple bones at once.

Clear...
This dropdown will clear all tags from selected Skelegons. It does not follow the normal Modeler
rule of Nothing selected, all selected.

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Clear looks like it can be undone in case of error, but it will result in unusable bones that need their
tags re-applied.

Add Prefix

This creates a prefix for selected Genoma bones. Replace the word Prefix with the name of your
chosen prefix. If you uncheck the Reassign Selected Only box, all Genoma bones on a layer will be
renamed.

Add Suffix

This creates a suffix for selected Genoma bones. Replace the word Suffix with the name of your
chosen suffix. If you uncheck the Reassign Selected Only box, all Genoma bones on a layer will be
renamed.

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Indexed Rename

When a Skelegon has been assigned Genoma 2 tags, you must use this function rather than the
Normal Rename Skelegons tool.

Custom Procedure Names and Functions

CreateControl
Create Control will create a Same As Item Null controlling the current Genoma Skelegon or the
current Genoma Skelegon and a defined number of its children.
All parameters needs to be defined and separated by the @ symbol.
Syntax:
CreateControl@PositionState@RotationState@ScaleState@ScaleMultiplier@
ItemShape@AxisDirection@Filled@Color@NumberOfItems
positionState can be:
p1 (Same As Item will be assigned to Position)
p0 (Same As Item will not be assigned to Position)
rotationState can be:
r1 (Same As Item will be assigned to Rotation)
r0 (Same As Item will not be assigned to Rotation)

scaleState can be:

s1 (Same As Item will be assigned to Scale)
s0 (Same As Item will not be assigned to Scale)
scaleMultiplier:

This is defining the multiplier for the ItemShape control scale, based on the rest length defined for
the current skelegon.
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So if the Skelegon Rest Length is 2 and 0.5 is specified as scaleMultiplier, the size of the control will
be 1 (2*0.5).
itemshape:
Defines the control shape:
Standard
Box
Ball
Pyramid
Diamond
Tetra
Ring
Grid
axis:

Defines the alignment axis for the shape (same as for itemshape!)
Can be 1,2 or 3, where:
1 = X axis
2 = Y axis
3 = Z axis
Filled:
Defines if the shape should be filled or not (noticed that this option doesnt apply to all shapes)

Can be:
f1 (shape will be filled)
f2 (shape will not be filled)
Color:

Defines the control Color.

Can be a number from 1 to 15
1 = Black
2 = Dark Blue
3 = Dark Green
4 = Dark Cyan
5 = Dark Red
6 = Purple
7 = Brown
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Genoma 2

8 = Gray
9 = Blue
10 = Green
11 = Cyan
12 = Red
13 = Magenta
14 = Orange
15 = White

NumberOfItems

Defines how many items in the same hierarchy will be affected by the control.
It can be set to:
1 (only one item, the basic one)
or any number....
Item names are very important here, since the additional item names need to respect this format:
ItemName_progressiveIndex
So if were applying the item to:
Spine_2
and we want the control to affect he following 2 bones, we need them to be named like this:
Spine_3
Spine_4
Of course in this case well specify 3 for NumberOfItems
Examples:
CreateControl@p0@r1@[email protected]@Pyramid@3@f1@10@1
Creates a rotation and scale control for the selected Genoma Item. The itemshape size will be
set to half the rest length of the Genoma Item.
Shape will be a Pyramid and alignment axis will be Z. It will be filled, and colored in Green.
CreateControl@p0@r1@[email protected]@Box@2@f0@14@3
Creates a Position and Rotation control for the selected Genoma Item and other 2 additional
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Genoma 2
items sharing the same base name and progressive indexes.
The itemshape size will be set to 0.25*the rest length of the Genoma Item.
Shape will be a Box and alignment axis will be Y. It will not be filled, and colored in Orange.

IKFK@ARM
This command creates an IKFK blending setup for the standard Genoma2 human arm rig.
In the future the IKFK command will be expanded to be used with any kind of legs and arms
currently available as Genoma2 presets.
The command needs to be assigned to the upperarm skelegon, and can operate on items
respecting the following name conventions:

upperarm
Prefix_upperarm
upperarm_suffix
Prefix_upperarm_suffix

If aPrefix is present, it needs to be one of those:

Right
RIGHT
right
Left
LEFT
left

Suffix can be any two digits (normally 01, 02, 05, 10....)
Valid names:

Right_upperarm_05
Left_upperarm_LW
right_upperarm
upperarm_sx
RIGHT_upperarm_02

Not valid:
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LightWave 2015

Genoma 2
leftupperarm
upperarm02
upperarm_right
Syntax:
IKFK@ARM

CreateZeroMatch
Creates a parent for the item, whose position, rotation and size perfectly matches the item the
command is assigned to.
Useful to easily reset controls just setting the position/rotation to (zero,zero,zero).
The Zero item will be parented to the same item defined as a parent for the item the command is
assigned to.
Syntax:
CreateZeroMatch

CreateZeroWorld
Creates a parent for the item (in the same position), aligned to the world axis.
Useful to easily reset controls just setting the position/rotation to (zero, zero, zero).
It allows for better corresponding movements when the animator is using the mouse to rotate or
translate an item.
The Zero item will be parented to the same item defined as a parent for the item the command is
assigned to.
Syntax:
CreateZeroWorld

DeleteMe
When DeleteMe is specified, the current item will be deleted at the end of the rigging process.
It can be useful if were using aligner items in the scene only serving that purpose (theyre only
needed during the rigging process, and can be deleted once the rig is ready).
Syntax:
DeleteMe

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Parent
The Parent command will load the specified object in Layout and parent it to the current Genoma
item. The current content path will be used.
The Object will be moved and rotated to the Genoma Item pivot (as when Parent In Place is off in
Layout).
Example:
[email protected]
Will load the CarWheel.lwo object from the current Objects folder and center/align the
object pivot to the parent item.
Syntax:
Parent@ObjectName

ParentInPlace
The ParentInPlace command will load the specified object in Layout and parent it in place to the
current Genoma item. The current content path will be used.
Example:
[email protected]
Will load the CarBody.lwo object from the current Objects folder.
Syntax:
ParentInPlace@ObjectName

ParentLayer
The ParentLayer command will load the specified object layer in Layout and parent it to the current
Genoma item. The current content path will be used.
The Object Layer will be moved and rotated to the Genoma Item pivot (as when Parent In Place is
off in Layout).
Example:
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[email protected]@2
Will load layer 2 of the CarWheel.lwo object from the current Objects folder and center/align
the object pivot to the parent item.
Syntax:
ParentLayer@ObjectName@LayerNumber

ParentLayerInPlace
The ParentLayerInPlace command will load the specified object layer in Layout and parent it in
place to the current Genoma item. The current content path will be used.
Example:
[email protected]@3
Will load layer 3 of the CarBody.lwo object from the current Objects folder.
Syntax:
ParentLayerInPlace@ObjectName@LayerNumber

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Chapter 22 Selection Tab

LightWave 2015

Selection Tab
Introduction
This tab contains tools to make sure your selections are as precise as you need them for modelling.
You can select Points, Edges, Polygons, Volumes, Connected, Loops, Rings, Maps, Surfaces, Paths
and more. The more frequently-used tools are actually in a Select dropdown menu in the top menu
group. You will also find having the Statistics window (W) open a benefit while working.

Volume Selection Mode

(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl J)
You may select a portion of an object using a definable bounding box (i.e., a volume).

Polygons/points selected in this manner do not become highlighted.

To use Volume Selection:

1) Choose Volume mode from the list at the top left of the Modeler screen.
2) The initial state of the Volume Select is usually Exclude. This means that polygons touching
the bounding box are excluded. Clicking the Volume button again will toggle to the Include
state where polygons touching the bounding box are included in the selection. You can also
judge the state by looking at the small text field right above the Points button.

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Selection Tab

3) Drag out a bounding box in a viewport with your LMB. If one already exists, you
can drag it around from the center or drag the edges and corners to re-size. You
can reset the bounding box by clicking in an inactive part of the interface.
The selection is infinite along the axis perpendicular to the viewport you dragged the bounding
box in.
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Selection Tab
If you open the Volume Statistics Panel (Open/Close by using the Statistics button located at the
bottom of the interface), you can also use the + and - buttons to formally select/unselect the listed
points/polygons.

The Stats window (W) is vital for using Volume selection mode. 01 shows a state after the volume box has been drawn out. 02 shows
having clicked the + on Polygons Inside. If you switch to Poly mode you will see the selected polygons. 03 shows having returned to Volume
mode when theres already a polygon selection and 04 shows having selected in Volume mode, but the Polygons Outside figure doesnt
agree with the polygon selection.

Lasso Volume Select

You can also lasso-select a volume by dragging your RMB in a viewport. A big difference
between this and normal volume selection is that in a Perspective viewport, the lassoed area is
perpendicular to the viewport. Moreover, the angle will be retained even when the viewport is
subsequently rotated.

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Selection Tab
If you are selecting from among many items within a cluttered space, its probably easier to use
the Lasso tool for Polygon Selection Mode (i.e., RMB).

Modify Selection
A series of tools that work in the three main selection modes.

Connected
(default keyboard shortcut ])
The Select Connected command (Selection > Modify Selection > Connected) automatically selects all
points or polygons that are connected to the currently highlighted points or polygons.
This is a powerful tool and one you should add to your memory banks. An object that is
surrounded by others may not be easily selected using a volume, and may have several surface
names (making name selection tedious).

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Selection Tab
Polygons that have overlapping points, but dont share any of those points, will not be affected.
Use the Merge Points command (Detail > Points > Merge Points) to make the edge shared.

Invert
(default keyboard shortcut )
To reverse the state of selected and unselected points or polygons, simply choose Invert Selection
(Selection > Modify Selection > Invert).

Invert Connected
(default keyboard shortcut ?)
The Select Invert Connected command (Selection > Modify Selection > Invert Connected)
automatically selects all points or polygons that are connected to the currently highlighted points
or polygons and deselects the current selection. Think of this command as a mix between Select
Connected and Invert Selection.

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Selection Tab

This is a powerful tool and one you should add to your memory banks. An object that is
surrounded by others may not be easily selected using a volume, and may have several surface
names (making name selection tedious).

Expand
(default keyboard shortcut })
The Expand command (View > Selection > Expand) is a single-step version of the Select Connected
command. All points/polygons that are adjacent to selected elements are themselves selected.

Selection

Expand Applied

Expand Applied Again

Expand Applied Again

Contract
(default keyboard shortcut {)
The Contract command (Selection > Modify Selection > Contract) is the exact opposite of the Expand
command, except that any elements that are adjacent to unselected elements are deselected.
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Selection Tab

Select Loop
(default keyboard shortcut RIGHT)
Select Loop (Selection > Modify Selection > Select Loop) is a point loop-detecting tool that works
in both Point, Edge and Polygon Selection Mode. Simply select two or more points or polygons
and choose Select Loop. You only need to select one edge to show the loop needed. This tool will
automatically select any edge loop which includes the current selection.

Point Mode

Edge Mode

Polygon Mode

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Selection Tab
Select Next / Prev Loop

(default keyboard shortcut DOWN / UP)

Once a loop has been selected you can change your selection, moving it to the next or previous
loop using these buttons or cursor keys.

Select Next / Prev

Select Outline
This button converts polygon selections into points selection or will convert a large point selection
into just the outlying points, deselecting the inner points. Although its grouped with the Loop
tools, you can convert any point or polygon selection into an outline point selection.
Select Outline

Select Ring
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl RIGHT)
This tool has no effect in Polygon mode. You need to be in Point or Edge. Where a loop goes in the
direction of your selection, a ring goes in the opposite direction.

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Select Ring

Selection Switch
Choose the Selection Switch command (Selection > Modify Selection > Sel Switch) to convert your
selection between selection by retrieving all the points making up the selected polygons or
convert your point selection to polygons by retrieving all the polygons enclosed by the selected
points. Repeatedly pressing this button will exchange between points, edges and polygons.
Selection Switch

Select Cycle
(default keyboard shortcut SPACE)
This is perhaps the first keyboard shortcut youll learn in Modeler. It switches between Point, Edge
and Polygon selection modes and cycles around in that order (to get to Point mode from Edge
mode, press Space twice).

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Drop Selection
(default keyboard shortcut /)
Choose Drop Selection (Selection > Modify Selection > Drop Selection) to deselect the currently
selected points or polygons in the Active Mode.

This is a good keyboard shortcut to add to a mouse button if you have a mouse with more than
three buttons.

Points
Point-related selection tools.

Sel Points
With an Edge or Poly selection active, clicking this button will transform the selection to a Point
equivalent - a selected quad poly will become four points, a single selected edge will become two
points.

Sel Outline Points

Performs the same function as

Edges
This group contains selection commands for edges.

Select Edges
Converts a point or polygon selection into the edges that make it. A selected polygon becomes
four edges, two points become and edge.

Loop Contract / Expand

This pair of commands will take an edge selection and expand it until it locks as a loop. Until its a
complete loop it can be expanded and contracted as desired.
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Selection Tab

Sel Edge Border

When polygons are selected, running EdgeBorder will select the outer edges of the selected
polygons. This will deselect the polygons in the process but will add to any edges already selected.

Sel Open Edges

When activated, OpenEdges will select any edge on a polygon that does not have another polygon
associated with that edge. On a closed object with holes -- perhaps generated in 3D scanning a
real object, you can use this command, then use Sel Points and hit P to create polygons to close
holes.

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Selection Tab
Polygons
This group contains selection tools for polygons.

Sel Polygons
Converts a point or edge selection into polygon selections. Selecting a single edge will not select
a polygon, you would need to select the four edges surrounding the quad to select it. Likewise the
points at all corners of the polygon need to be selected.

Sel Outline Edges

Changes a polygon selection into just the edges on the outside of the polygon selection.

Select Entire Part

Based on a polygon selection, this tool will select a part that the initial selection is a member of.
Select Entire Part

Select Entire Surf

Similar to the previous tool, this will select any polygons with the same surface name as the initial
selection.

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Selection Tab
Select Entire Surface

Pick Surface
This tool needs no initial selection. As you hover over your geometry it will show the surface names
and clicking will bring up the Surface Editor with the chosen surface.

VMap Poly Select

Allows you to select polygons from a selection set, replacing the current selection if you use the
command as is, if you use Keep Current Selection then the current selection is preserved and added
to. The Exclusive option will only select polygons all of whose points are in the selection set.
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Selection Tab
Maps
There are several VMap Selection commands that can be found in the Selection Tab under Maps.

Select by Map
The Select by Map command (Selection > Maps > Select by Map) selects or deselects points that have
entries in the chosen Vertex Map.
Select by Map

You can convert this point selection into Polygons using Sel Switch, discussed before.

By Vertex Map Value

This tool offers more precision over Select by Map. Not only can it select or deselect by map name,
you can also base a selection on a range of weights. If you only want to select the points in a map
that have a weight of between 40-60 %. To top it off, this tool will also make a polygon selection
automatically.
Select by Map Influence

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Selection Tab
Select by Polygon Map
You can select polygons using per-poly UVs by choosing the Select by Poly Map command
(Selection > Maps > Select by Polygon Map).

Select UV Seam
The Select UV Seam command (Selection > Maps > Select UV Seam) automatically selects polygons
where the UV values span more than half the image - thus assuming that they are seam polygons.
If you activate Patch with Poly Map, it will automatically turn these into per-polygon UVs.
Select UV Seam is limited, because it will not set UV values past 1.0 or less than 0. Thus, it is possible
that some important portion of your image will get missed (e.g., you really needed a 1.2 U or V
value).

Specialty
Various selection tools.

Select by Normal

This tool is also available in the Select Menu in the Top Menu group. If you use this tool with no
selection, you will be presented with a reduced range of options - the ones that need no selection.
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If however, you select one or more polygons on an object and then choose Select by Normal you
will be presented with a window containing the following options:
Angle Tolerance - Polygons whose normals are at no more than this value in difference to
your original selection will be selected.
Distance Tolerance - This will be ghosted unless you enable the following item.
Use Distance Threshold - This enables the above item where you can specify a maximum
distance for Select by Normal to work.
Same Surface - Only selects polygons with the same surface.
Select Connected Only - Only selects polygons that are directly connected. If you unweld a
group of polygons they wont be selected.
Update - Shows the modifications you made to the selection.
Select by Axis - Will select polygons based on the axis chosen and the Angle Tolerance.

Selecting a single polygon on two,

unconnected spheres.

Opening Select by Normal we can

see that additional polys are already
selected because of the default angle.

Ticking Same Surface removes the

polygons on the red surface.

Checking Use Distance will open the

Distance field.

Increasing the Angle Tolerance selects

more polygons.

Select Path
This tool will trace a path between two polygons on the same mesh. Start by selecting a pair of
polygons:

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Now choose Select Path. There is no interface:

Select Nth Pattern

This tool provides an interface where you can choose the number n and offset.

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Radial Select
The Radial Selection command (Selection > Specialty > Radial Select) will select points that fall within
a defined radius of the origin, which is either defined in this panel or by selecting a point on your
object. Points will be selected if they fall within the Inner radius and Outer radius.

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Selection Tab

Select Powergons
The Select Powergon command (Selection > Select Powergons) will give you the ability to select
Powergons and Luxigons in an object.

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Selection Tab
Selection Sets
Selection Sets
Selection Sets (Selection > Selection Sets > Selection Sets) will save groups of points that can be
reselected by a user-defined name.

A point can be a member of multiple sets.

To create a point selection set:
1) Select a group of points.

2) Click Selection > Selection Sets > Selection Sets. Enter the desired name in the Name field and
click OK.

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Selection Tab

You can add to an existing set by selecting the additional points and then selecting the sets
name from the pop-up menu.
You can also create and manage your Selection Sets in the VMap area of the interface.

To select points in a selection set:

1) In Points Selection Mode, open the Point Statistics Panel
located at the bottom of Modelers interface.
2) Click on the pop-up menu triangle on the last line in the panel. Select the desired selection
set.

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3) The selected sets name will appear on the line. Click the
plus sign (+) to select all of the points in the set.

To remove points from a selection set:

1) Select the points you wish to remove.
2) Click Selection > Selection Sets > Selection Sets. Select the set from the pop-up menu.

3) Activate the Remove Points option and click OK.

You can delete the entire set reference by selecting it and then clicking the Delete button.

Neither deleting operation will delete the actual points, just their VMap.

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Chapter 23 Layers Tab

LightWave 2015

Layers Tab
Layers
Tools for managing your layers, moving them around, switching between them and more.

Layers Panel

(default keyboard shortcut F7)

You can also use the Layers Browser window (Layers > Layers Panel) to do the following:

Access more than ten layers at a time

Set foreground/background state, even between objects
Navigate between objects
Name layers
Set layer visibility flag
Parent object layers

Layers panel has a pop-up menu that lets you switch between List and Hierarchy views.

The List view lists the layers. In the Hierarchy view, the layers of an object are shown in their
parental relationship, and that can be altered by dragging and dropping layers. Layers cannot be
moved between objects and all children at the same level are shown in numeric order.
When in Hierarchy view, the layer list shows layers with nothing in them leftmost in the list, and
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lists two more than are currently being used. This makes it match list mode behavior more closely.
The Alt +NO. (1 through 0) keyboard shortcut will place a layer into the background. Note that if
only one layer is active, it cannot be placed into the background.

All of the currently loaded objects will be listed. Click on the white triangle to expand or contract
the layer listing for a particular object. Layers in the foreground will have a checkmark in the
corresponding F column. Clicking in the F column for a different layer will place that layer by itself
in the foreground. To add to the current selection, hold the Shift key as you click. The B column
works similarly on background layers.
The Visibility flag can be toggled on/off for each layer by clicking in the column. A layer is invisible
to Layout when the (Visibility flag) dot does not appear. You may want to use this on scratch layers
and cutting objects used for booleans. This setting has no effect on Modeler.

A pair of empty layers are always listed after the last occupied layer.
Double-click on a layer name (unnamed by default) or choose Layers > Layers > Layer Settings to
bring up the dialog to set the layer name and parent.

Layer Settings

You can edit a layers name and its parenting from this requester. It can also be presented by
double clicking on a layer name in the Layers panel.

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Layers Tab
Naming layers is a great way to stay organized in Modeler and will be very important for Multilayered objects in Layout. Each layer in Modeler opens as a separate object in Layout, so unique names
will improve workflow.

Delete Layer
(default keyboard shortcut HOME)
Delete Layer (Layers > Layers > Delete Layer) deletes the selected layer and shifts the following layers
up the layer list.
Steps for using Delete Layer:
1) Select Layer.

2) Choose Delete Layer. All layers are then shifted up the list.

Insert Layer
(default keyboard shortcut INS)
Insert Layer (Layers > Layers > Insert Layer) inserts a layer in between two layers, shifting the layers
down the layer list.
Steps to Insert Layer:
1) Select the layer above which you would like to have a new layer inserted.

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Layers Tab
2) Choose Insert Layer and the selected layer and all following layers will be shifted down.

Swap Front and Back Layers

(default keyboard shortcut )
Choose Layers > Layers > Swap Layers to swap the foreground and background layers. This is a
handy command to use with tools that require background objects like Boolean and Drill.

Left: Before Swap, Right: After Swap

Next / Prev Lyr Bank

(default keyboard shortcuts PGUP PGDN)
Choosing Layers > Layers > Next Lyr Bank or Prev Lyr Bank will change the bank of layers. The Bank
Selection buttons are mapped to the PageUp and PAGEDN keys by default. The highest bank
number is 99, but you can access higher layers using the Layer Browser Panel.

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Layers Tab
Pivot
If a mesh is already in Layout, the tools in this group will intentionally not alter the existing pivot
position in Layout. Otherwise any mesh edit would destroy your setup in Layout. To gain the pivot point
edits made either delete and reload the object or use Layout Modify > General > Reset.

Pivot Point Tool

Generally, the pivot point is the positional focal point of the layers geometry when animated in
Layout. By default, it is located at the Origin. Use the Pivot Point tool (Layers > Layers > Pivot) to
move the pivot point.

Once you have placed the Pivot in the new location for the object, press the Enter key. Your objects
pivot will be ready to go when you load it into Layout.

Center Pivot / Center Pivot Lyrs

Both tools works on multiple layers to center the pivot point to the geometry on the layer. The
reason there are two tools is the Center Pivot will center on selections if there are any but is a script
and so slower, while Center Pivot Layers is much faster, being compiled code, but ignores selections.

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Layers Tab
Layer Utilities
These little tools are for swapping layers around and either splitting an object over several layers,
or collapsing it down to fewer.

Cut Swap Paste

With a foreground and background layer selected, this tool cuts the object from the foreground
layer, pastes it into the background layer and makes that layer the new foreground.

Copy Swap Paste

Similar to the previous command, but there are duplicates in both layers.

Copy Undo Paste

Connected to Lyrs
If you have multiple unconnected objects on a single layer, for ease of setup perhaps, but you want
each to be on its own layer, this script will select a polygon, select connected polys, paste them to a
new layer and come back and try again. The result is that the separate objects are now on separate
layers.

Flatten Sel Layers

Choose Flatten Selected Layers to flatten multiple foreground layers into a single layer in one step.
Essentially, this tool performs the reverse of Connected to Layers.

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Layers Tab

Collapse Obj
(default keyboard shortcut END)
Object Collapser allows for several different ways to manipulate the Layers of an object or series of
objects.

If Current Object is selected as the Collapse Mode, the current object will have all of its layers
combined into the first layer of a new object. That layer will then be named after the object with a
_Collapsed assigned to the name.

If All Loaded is selected as the Collapse Mode, all of the objects loaded into Modeler will be
collapsed down to one-layered objects and then combined into a single New Collapse Object. You
can also set Object Collapser to From Dir, at which point all the objects in the given directory will
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be loaded and collapsed as for a All Loaded setting.

You can give the new object that will be created a name using the New Collapse Object name field.
The New Collapse Object can be created in two different styles.
If Collapse to is set to Single Layer, the newly created Collapse Object will be a single layered object
with all of the objects placed in that one layer.
If Collapse to is set to Multilayer, the newly created Collapse Object will be a multi-layered object
with each object in Modeler placed in its own layer. Each layer of the new Collapse Object will be
named after the object it represents.

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Chapter 24 View Tab

LightWave 2015

View Tab
Viewports
Pan
You may pan a viewport by holding the Alt and Shift keys down and dragging a viewport. This
feature is also activated with the Pan tool (View > Viewports > Pan). If the title bars are visible, you
can drag the Move drag buttonto pan.

Each viewport is a window to a larger world. You can also pan the viewport beneath your mouse
by using the cursor keys one grid square for each press. Holding the Shift key will move the view
four grid squares. Holding the Alt key will nudge by one-tenth of a grid square or the (Fixed) Snap
Value amount on the Units Tab of the Display Options Panel (Edit > Display Options), if that option is
active. Alt + Shift will nudge ten times this amount.

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View Tab

It may help you to think of this as moving a window around as opposed to moving the object.
Pressing the G key will center your view around the mouse pointer. This is a very quick way to
manoeuvre around. Remember this shortcut!

Other viewports will also change to stay in sync with the window you are changing (unless they
are Center/Zoom independent).

Magnify Tool
The Magnify tool (View > Viewports > Magnify) provides a way to interactively zoom in and out.
This feature lets you smoothly zoom in or out of your pointer position by dragging your mouse left
and right.
If the title bars are visible, you can drag the zoom drag button to zoom.

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View Tab

OpenGL Display Clipping

In some cases, if you zoom in too far, OpenGL will clip out points and polygons essentially
causing them to disappear. Unfortunately, this is a feature of OpenGL. (Actually, anything that
is not in the exact center of the viewport gets clipped. If you center your viewport on an item, it
continues to be visible.)

Zoom Tool
(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl Q)
One way to adjust magnification of a viewport is to use the Zoom tool (View > Viewports > Zoom).
You can drag out a rectangular box using the mouse and the view will automatically zoom in so
that the rectangular box fills the view window.

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View Tab

Toggle Background Display

A new command for turning on/off the background image display.

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View Tab
Fit All
(default keyboard shortcut A)
Fit All Items in Views Items in Views - Automatic Pan and Zoom
This command will automatically fit objects into the viewport. To fit the object in all viewports,
use the A key, a shortcut for View > Viewports > Fit All. Youll often want to use this to center-up an
object when it is first loaded.

Before Fit All

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View Tab

After Fit All

The Fit One View command ( Ctrl + A) will fit the object in the viewport under the mouse pointer
into that viewport.

Other viewports will also change to stay in sync with the window you are changing (unless they
are Center/Zoom independent).

Fit Selected
(default keyboard shortcut Shift A)
Choose View > Viewports > Fit Selected (or Press
into all viewports.

Shift

+ A) to fit only the selected parts of an object

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View Tab

Before Fit Selected

After Fit Selected

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View Tab
Zoom In/Zoom Out
(default keyboard shortcuts < , . >)
Modeler provides many ways to zoom in and out of your viewports. First, you can adjust viewport
magnification by pressing the period key (.) to zoom in or the comma key (,) to zoom out. (These
are shortcuts for View > Viewports > More > Zoom In / Zoom Out.) Holding the Shift key while
pressing either key (i.e., the > and < keys, on a US keyboard) will double the zoom amount.
These tools are located under the View Tab in Modeler if you choose not to use the shortcut keys.

Single View
(default keyboard shortcut Numeric keypad 0)
Choose View > Viewports > Single View to toggle between single and multiple viewports.

Single View Off

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View Tab

Single View On, 0 clicked while mouse over the Perspective viewport

The shortcut key for this function is 0 on the numeric keys. This shortcut allows you to choose
the viewport you would like to have in single view. Do this by placing your cursor over the viewport you
would like to use and press the 0 key on the numeric keypad.

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View Tab
View
Hide Selected
(default keyboard shortcut - )
View > View > Hide Selected will hide selected polygons that you dont want edited. This makes it
easier to work on parts of a complex object without splitting it up between layers.
The polygons are still there, but any editing operations will not directly affect the hidden polygons
unless they share points that are edited.

Hide Unselected
(default keyboard shortcut =)
View > View > Hide Unselected will hide all unselected polygons. Select all of the polygons that you
dont want to hide and then Hide Unselected to hide all the unselected polygons and keep the
selected ones visible.

Although you cannot directly affect hidden polygons, you can affect them if you modify visible
polygons that share points.

Hide Invert
(default keyboard shortcut | )
View > View > Hide Invert will swap the polygons presently visible with polygons that have had Hide
Selected applied to them.

Although you cannot directly affect hidden polygons, you can affect them if you modify visible
polygons that share points.

Unhide
(default keyboard shortcut \ )
Selecting Unhide All (View > View > Unhide) will reveal all hidden geometry.

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Chapter 25 Interchange Tab

LightWave 2015

Interchange Tab
GoZ
GoZ
GoZ support is available in both Modeler and Layout. As with any data interchange there are
certain ideal workflow practices to be aware of to achieve the best results. You should prepare
geometry with tri and quad polygons only. ZBrush also expects one surface name and a single UV
map on the object.

Our GoZ implementation is flexible enough to allow you to work in a variety of different ways.
You can begin your model in LightWave Modeler and send to ZBrush to create the UV map and
paint your color texture map and generate your displacement and normal maps for the object.
Then with a press of the GoZ button in ZBrush you can load the changed model back into Modeler
and your shaders will be automatically applied to the object containing all color, displacement,
and normal map information. Our LightWave Modeler GoZ implementation allows you to send an
Endomorph on your object for further sculpting to ZBrush and back to Modeler. Imagine the facial
targets and other effects you can create with this technique.
Alternatively, you could begin the model in ZBrush and use GoZ to send your sculpt to Modeler for
more detail, then go back to ZBrush to continue sculpting. You could then send your final result
directly to LightWave Layout, again with all the texture, displacement, and normal map shader
information automatically set up. In Layout, even your bump displacement will be automatically
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Interchange Tab
set up on the object with the bump distance supplied by ZBrush to make it easier for you to get to
the render quickly.

There will be duplication of information as we detail GoZ for Modeler here, but also in the Layout
manual

Setting Up GoZ for LightWave

For our purposes here we will assume you have already installed and are using ZBrush and now
you would like to add LightWave to your sculpting pipeline.
For Windows users, normally the installation of LightWave sets up the necessary links with ZBrush,
but just in case and also for OS X users, here are the steps to ensure communication between the
packages:

LightWave support of GoZ by ZBrush.

ZBrush out of the box doesnt have built-in support of LightWave. LightWave itself supports GoZ.
You, the end user, needs to copy a few files into the right location to activate this support inside of
ZBrush.
LightWave GoZ support files are located here:
Windows: C:\Program Files\NewTek\LightWave2015\support\3rdparty_support\GoZ
OS X: ~Applications/Lightwave2015/support/3rdparty_support/GoZ
1) With LightWave and ZBrush NOT RUNNING, Copy both the LightWaveLayout and
LightWaveModeler directories from that folder to:
Windows: C:\Users\Public\Pixologic\GoZApps\
OS X: MacHD:/Users/Shared/Pixologic/GoZApps/
2) Now launch ZBrush and open Preferences and choose GoZ at the bottom.
You will then find LightWave Layout and LightWave Modeler
3) From there, you can have ZBrush find the install - or you can point it there yourself.

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Load the model you wish to sculpt in either Layout or Modeler. In Modeler it is the current
foreground layer (or the selected endomorph) that will be sent while in Layout it is the currently
selected object. Now go to the I/O tab in either application and choose GoZ. The first time you do
so there will be a slight pause as LightWave copies the necessary files to your ZBrush installation
and then you will be in the ZBrush interface waiting to draw your object onscreen as a tool. Once
done and modified to your satisfaction, pressing the GoZ button at the top right of ZBrushs
interface will send your object back to LightWave, now with the additional sculpting.
Here is an overview of what GoZ offers in both LightWave Modeler and Layout:

GoZ for Modeler

Geometry (tris and quad polys required)

Color Map
Displacement Map
Normal Map
Endomorphs
UV maps can be created in Modeler or ZBrush. ZBrush only supports one UV map per object.
The shader nodes are set up on the object but are not all present in Modeler. You need to
open the object in Layout to access or edit all the nodes.
Sub Tools are separate objects and that is how you should think of them in Modeler, not
additional layers.

GoZ for Layout

Geometry (tri and quad polys required)

Color Map
Displacement Map
Normal Map
Bump Displacement (with bump distance automatically supplied by ZBrush)
When you send your ZBrush Item with Color, Displacement, and Normal map to Layout
nodes are automatically set up on the object and bump displacement in the object
properties is activated.
There is a continuous update of texture maps as long as you are painting to actual texture
maps in ZBrush and not just poly painting.
You can see your displacement and normal maps with VPR.

If you select an endomorph in Modeler to send to ZBrush via GoZ, sculpt that endomorph
and then send back to Layout instead of Modeler the base mesh will be overwritten. Always select the
endomorph that you want to send and then make sure that same endomorph is selected on the object
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in Modeler before exporting back from ZBrush.
Finally, note that if you change the geometry or polygon count in the middle of your process then
vertex maps could be lost when exporting back to Modeler or Layout. This means you should get
your geometry up to a certain level where it has enough points and polys to hold the sculpted
detail when you res up in ZBrush. Do your sculpting and painting at that higher resolution level
then when you hit GoZ in ZBrush to send back to LightWave the resolution automatically gets
lowered back down to the base mesh. This is the typical workflow most often used with ZBrush
and other applications.

Example: Using ZBrush to Edit Morph Maps

One of the most exciting uses for the new GoZ functionality is to sculpt morphs for your characters.
The process is very simple and straightforward, but illustrating it should set minds at rest. We will
use the Mangalore warrior head for this example, found in the LightWave content (characters\
Mangalore).

1) Well add a morph map to our Mangalore head. Weve called it Morph.Mouth_Open. Make
sure its selected in your Morphs list and hit the GoZ button on the Modeler I/O tab.

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2) ZBrush will load or open and you can draw your warrior onscreen. Use ZBrushs Move Brush
to spread the lips apart and hit the GoZ button in ZBrush.

3) The Mangalore head will reappear in Modeler and youll notice that you are still in the Morph.
Mouth_open morph.

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4) Now you can create a new morph to sculpt. This time we are typing Morph.Frown. Once
added, hit the GoZ button again.

5) In ZBrush we brush in the frown for the model and send back. You can
carry on adding new morphs and sculpting them like this.

Example: Converting ZBrush Fibermeshes to FiberFX guides

ZBrush v4R3 adds the ability to export the fibers supported by ZBrush into LightWave to be used
as guides for LightWaves own fiber solution FiberFX. To do this is very simple:

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1) Start with a project inside ZBrush and comb the hair as youd like it. Since the hair from
ZBrush will only be guides for FiberFX you will not need a large amount of fibers.

Reduce the Preview Fiber Visibility down to a low figure. ZBrush

will give you the total number of fibers that will be saved.

2) Save your guides out of ZBrush as an LWO file and load it into Modeler.

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3) The fibers need to be converted into guides for FiberFX using the StrandMaker tool on the
Setup Tab, in the FiberFX group.
4) The new polychains will be created on a separate layer, so they need to be saved to a new
object (you can replace the existing curves on Layer 1 and save over your original object if
you prefer).

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5) Send this object to Layout and add FiberFX to it. Turn on Draw to see your newly-added
fibers. Youll see that the fibers arent exactly following your guides. This is because of the
Random Length and Gravity settings. Set them both to 0%.

6) If you wish to increase the quantity of fur on your object, increase the
number of fibers per guide using the Fiber Quantity setting in FiberFX.

Additional GoZ Notes

Surfaces and UV Maps - Dont forget that ZBrush only expects one of each and will discard
any others you have in your object. Make sure that if you have several of either you reduce
them before sending to avoid losing your work.
Saving your objects - It is a good idea to save your sculpt as a ZBrush tool. In case of any
problems or wanting to continue work started before, saving the LWO from Modeler alone
will not keep your sculpting information.
Object assemblies - If you want to sculpt an object assembly as one piece in ZBrush, make
sure the parts are separate objects (not just layers) and tick Import as SubTool in ZBrush GoZ
Preferences.
Cache - to perform the task of shifting data between ZBrush and LightWave, ZBrush has
a directory of intermediate files. These are normally kept in C:\Users\Public\Pixologic\
GoZProjects\Default on a Windows system and /Users/Shared/Pixologic/GoZProjects/Default
on a Mac. These temporary files are not automatically deleted and can take lots of room. If
you see messages asking if you would like to use the object from disk, it is almost certainly
because your ZBrush cache already has an object by the same name in it. You can clear this
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directory safely (when no GoZ process is running). Alternatively in ZBrush GoZ preferences
there is an option to clear cache files.
Layout or Modeler? - When you first start sending your object between LightWave and
ZBrush, you will possibly begin using GoZ with Modeler to initially prepare your object for
sculpting and texturing. Once you are happy with this first stage, you can tell ZBrush to start
sending to Layout instead. To do this, can click the R icon on the ZBrush interface near the
GoZ button to change which application GoZ communicates with. In this case, change it
over to use Layout rather than Modeler.

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Import
Various objects formats (*.lwo; *.obj; *.dxf; *.3ds; *.dae; *.fbx; *.stl; *.ply) can be loaded into Modeler
without needing to import them. This section is for those that cant.

EPS
The EPSF_Loader command (File > Import > EPSF Loader) converts Illustrator (.ai) and encapsulated
PostScript (.eps) files into two-dimensional LightWave objects, by converting bezier curves into
tessellated polygons.

If the EPS uses a gradient fill, you will need to convert it to a solid fill (e.g., using Illustrator) before
using this loader.
The Curve Division Level option sets the desired level of detail.

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Curve Level - Rough, Standard, Fine, Super Fine

The Convert to pop-up menu sets the type of object that will be created.

Closed Polygons & Poly Lines - Will create a 2-point polygon chain and Polygons where vector
lines are in the file.
Closed Polygons - Will create closed polygons where vector lines are in the file.
PolyLines (Line Polygons) - Will create a 2-point polygon chain where vector lines are in the
file.
Spline Curves - Will create splines where vector lines are in the file.
The EPS file is defined by either typing the full path in the EPSF File input field or using the
requester button to bring up a file requester.
Auto Axis Drill will attempt to automatically drill holes in faces, where appropriate. (e.g., the two
holes in the number 8).

If this option is not checked, the geometry will be created and you will have to manually create
the hole.
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Auto Centering will center the resulting geometry.

Due to the inherent differences between 2D structured drawings and 3D objects, there will
usually be some amount of cleanup required.

This command has been tested with Illustrator files up to version 8.

Vertex Loader
Use Vertex Loader in order to edit Weight Maps for bones that were created from scratch in Layout,
or bones that were converted from Skelegons.
To use Vertex Loader, choose File > Import > Vertex Loader. First the Load Scene requester opens;
select a scene file that has object(s) with bones. After you select a scene file, the following dialog
box appears. There you select an object that you want to edit and click OK.

The selected object is automatically loaded into Modeler and displayed in Vertex Paint with its
bones. If the object is already loaded, only the bones are loaded from the scene file. Weight Maps
set on the Bone Properties Panel in Layout are used for each corresponding bone.

Before launching Vertex Loader, please make sure Layouts Content Directory setting matches
Modelers.

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PDB Loader
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is an archive of experimentally determined three-dimensional
structures of biological macromolecules, serving a global community of researchers, educators,
and students. The archives contain atomic coordinates, bibliographic citations, primary
and secondary structure information, as well as crystallographic structure factors and NMR
experimental data.

This importer will read the PDB data and convert it to a LightWave Object. More information about
the PDB can be found here: http://www.rcsb.org/pdb.

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Export
When you save an object, it will always be as LWO. If you wish to export a different format this
group contains all.

OBJ
Export an object as OBJ. No limitations but surfacing doesnt carry across though UV maps do. OBJs
textured with image maps or numeric values in other packages will come in textured but Nodal
or procedural textures will not translate in either direction. Autodesks Maya and Max reverse
diffuse and ambient, so the default behavior of LightWave now is to Reverse Ka & Kd for OBJ
export. If you find that textures are being transferred incorrectly, try switching this off on the OBJ
tab of Options.

FBX
Export an object as FBX. No limitations but surfacing doesnt carry across though UV maps do.

COLLADA
Export an object as DAE. No limitations but surfacing doesnt carry across though UV maps do.

EPS
Export an object as an EPS document. This will give you a Top, Side and Front flat wireframe view of
your object along with UV map, if any.

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3DS
Exports an object in the .3DS format. This has a maximum of 64k triangular polygons.

3D Printing Support
LightWave has always been a good tool for 3D printing with its measurement system based on
real-world quantities rather than the mysterious units used by some other software. This means
that if you model the Empire State Building to scale in LightWave, it would print out at 1,454 ft
(443.2 m) high - presuming you had a printer capable of such dimensions, the time to wait for the
printout and the money to pay for all the material youd need.
STL, PLY importers and exporters are included and for full-color 3D printing we support objectoriented VRML export.

Introduction to 3D printing with LightWave

Modeling for 3D printing is a new discipline for many with LightWave and requires a certain rigor.
Models need to be watertight, otherwise known as manifold. This means that they are a solid
continuous surface with no holes. You cant use any of LightWaves tricks, like subpatching or
double-sided polygons, everything needs to be present in the model but equally you do not need
to worry about polygon topology.

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The first ring is manifold, there are no holes. The second is manifold too. The ring is hollow but the polygons are thickened. Our third ring is
not acceptable as an object for 3D printing. Because LightWaves polygons are single-sided, the inside of the ring counts as a big hole, even
if it has been surfaced as double sided.

The next important factor is that there can be no intersecting polygons - thats to say polygons that
pierce others without being connected.

The green fold on the left will print well. It has at least 2mm thickness and the fold in the center is contiguous. The red object on the right
wont. The two polygons share nothing and have no thickness.

Upresing
When you print a model with too few polygons, it can look facetted in print. If this isnt the look you
are going for, you can subpatch your object and then freeze it. However, this will reduce the size of
finer details as they respond to the subpatching algorithm. A better way to reduce facetting can be
achieved by using the Subdivide tool set to Smooth. Subdivide needed three iterations to get to an
acceptable level of smoothness across this mesh, going from 7,380 polygons to 472,320.

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Example: Preparing the Alien Emissary for 3D Printing

We wanted to test LightWaves capabilities for 3D printing by sending our Alien Emissary model
straight out of LightWave to Shapeways (http://www.shapeways.com/) 3D printing service for a
full-color 3D print.
1) We started with the Alien Emissary from the LightWave 10 Content Directory. The scene file
came complete with a character object, TIF texture maps, and a rig that could be used to
pose the mesh (01). The mesh was 2.6 meters tall. This is an appropriate height for an alien
character, but too tall for a small statue meant to fit on a shelf. The model would have to be
scaled at a later point (02).

2) A bust statue does not require arms or a lower body, so we chopped off the arms and all
geometry below the lower torso (03). The mesh was not scaled at this point, because we
wanted the option of posing the character with the existing rig.

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We also created an endomorph that could close the mouth and reduced the size and
number of polygons in the mouth cavity to make it more suitable for a print (04-06).

3) A shell with no thickness cannot print (07). The arm holes needed patching. We patched the
arm holes using Make Poly. Then used Bevel to give these n-gons a bit of an inset, then the
Spikey Tool with a 0% Spike Factor to convert the n-gons into triangles. The results spackled
over the arm holes nicely (08).

Although the arm holes were now sealed, the alien was still a shell with no thickness. It had a
large, open hole at the bottom.

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One solution might have been to patch over this lower torso hole, sealing it off and fulfilling
the watertight mesh requirements for 3D printing. However, a solid torso would have used
a lot more material and cost a small fortune. In 3D printing, the less material used, the less
costly the print. A hollow torso would not only make for a lighter statue, but also a cheaper
print.
We used the Thicken tool to create an inner surface and a reasonably thick wall. Mindful that
this alien would be scaled down to about 25% of its original size for printing, we thickened
the alien by 10mm. This way, when the alien was scaled down to a quarter of its size later, the
wall thickness would not be too thin for printing (10). We also turned on the checkboxes for
Create New Surface and Create Side Surface to make the new geometry easier to select and
manipulate and gave the Thickened surface a different wireframe color. This made it easy to
see intersections in the geometry, for example the eye and chin areas (11).

4) The interior sides of the eye socket, chin and mouth cavity geometry were simplified and
smoothed out so that they would not intersect the outer geometry. The endomorph to close
the mouth also needed some tweaking on the chin geometry (12-14).

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5) The alien now had a watertight mesh that could be printed if scaled down to fit the printing
bed. There was just one problem: gravity. This mesh had nothing to hold it upright after
printing. At best, it could rest on its back if printed (16).

It would need a pedestal. It would also need a structure inside it that could connect it to that
pedestal. We built a structure by placing 2x2 subpatch cubes inside of the model and using
Bridge to connect the sides of these cubes to the inner wall and to each other (17-20). This
structure could later work with pedestal geometry to support the bust.

6) We also created a weight map vmap called Thickened to mark the inner wall geometry with
values of 100%. This weight map would be later used to invert the ZBrush displacement on
the inside of the mesh (21).

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7) Because the mesh matched that of the original alien, the original rig in Layout could have
its mesh swapped out for the bust mesh. The alien could then be posed in Layout instead of
Modeler. One advantage of posing in Layout is that many poses can be tried in one scene by
keying different poses on different frames. (22-24) Morph Mixer was used to close the mouth.

The final pose chosen was not too different from the original pose. The mouth was closed
and the head raised slightly (25-26).

8) The original node network in the Displacement Node Editor was modified to invert the
ZBrush displacement on the interior geometry. That way, if the displacement map made an
indent on the outer wall, the same spot on the inner wall would be raised instead of similarly
indented. This helped preserve the wall thickness (27-28).

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9) When saving a subpatch object, Save Transformed respects the Subpatch Display Level. If
the Subpatch Display Level is set to 0, Save Transformed will save out a subpatch model.
If the Subpatch Display Level is set to 1 or higher, Save Transformed will save out a frozen,
tripled mesh of polygons. The higher the Subpatch Display Level, the higher the number of
polygons.
We set the Display Subpatch Level to 6, which meant that the bust (not including the
pedestal or the eyes) would have 321,120 polygons when frozen. The more polygons used to
describe details, the smoother the 3D print would be. We then used Save Transformed to save
out a copy of the mesh in its posed, frozen position (29). A different filename was used for
this copy so as not to overwrite the original subpatch object.

Although the exported mesh contained the bust geometry, it did not include the eyes. We
selected the eyes object, set the Display Subpatch Level to 3 and used Save Transformed to
export a frozen copy of the eyes in the same posed position as the bust (30).

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10) We now had two objects representing the posed and frozen geometry of the bust and eyes,
respectively. These objects into Modeler and placed into a single layer.
As spheres, the eyes did not need any special treatment. However, the bust needed one last
inspection to make sure that its ZBrush displacement did not cause any intersection errors
between the exterior of the skin and the interior of the skin. Making sure that the interior
had a different wireframe color than the exterior of the geometry was about to pay off (31).

11) Spinning the model around revealed an intersection between the interior and exterior
geometry of the head in the rear (32). This intersection had to be resolved to ensure a good
quality print.

Selecting the offending geometry and using a combination of Magnet and Dragnet to push
the geometry back into the skull fixed the problem (33).
12) At this point, the bust had a pose and good geometry. Now it needed to be scaled to print
size. Scale was used to bring this mesh down to 25% of its original size. It was now about 200
mm in height (34).

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13) It could be printed, but it would not stand up on its own. This bust still needed a pedestal to
support it after printing. Like the bust, the pedestal required high enough resolution not to
appear faceted and a minimum thickness of 2 mm in order to be printable. It also required
UV mapping for any texture maps.
The pedestal was built to scale, using Lathe on a spline to create the shell of the pedestal
(35) and mapping it with cylindrical UVs (36). We then used Thicken to give it a minimum
wall thickness of 2 mm, and (as before) gave the Thickened surface a different wireframe
color. Color Wireframe and Textured Wire display modes were used to detect any intersecting
geometry, and the inner geometry was cleaned up by deleting unecessary loops with the
Edit Edges tool.

14) A 3D printer can handle intersecting geometry up to a point. We took advantage of this and
attached the pedestal with intersecting geometry. We lowered the bust onto the pedestal
until the support structure within the bust intersected the top of the pedestal. There was no
Boolean involved, just the intersection of two separate meshes (37).

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15) The bust now had a pedestal. It now needed to meet Shapeways standards. All polygons
need to be planar for 3D printing. The bust was already made up entirely of triangles. As a
precaution, we tripled the mesh of the pedestal (38).
16) Shapeways accepts GIF, JPG and PNG files for texture maps. GIF images are restricted to 256
colors, while the lossy nature of JPG files can result in compression artifacts. We opted to
convert all of the original color TIF image maps to PNG files and save the model using them
instead of the TIFs. For the statues surfacing, all non-color maps were removed, since the 3D
printer was only concerned with geometry and color data (39).

17) LightWaves VRML exporter will export the first layer of the object, so we pasted the pedestal
geometry, the bust and eye geometry into the first layer of the object. This was then
exported as a *.wrl file using the VRML exporter.
18) Lastly, Shapeways expects a ZIP file that contains only the *.wrl and associated texture maps
in PNG, JPG or GIF format. This ZIP file cannot contain any folder structure whatsoever.
Only files can exist inside this ZIP file. Shapeways is also case-sensitive, so the texture maps
should have the exact same capital and lower case letters as the original texture maps.

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The end result surveys our office

For 3D printing there is no polygon budget and there are no tricks like smoothing or normal
mapping. Your geometry needs to capture all the detail of your model; you are not going to use it for
animating with.

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STL Import/Export Format
STL is the grandaddy of 3D printing file formats and is in regular use today. It is the lowest common
denominator that misses out on some of the bells and whistles of more recent formats but can be
guaranteed to be understood by all software dealing with 3D printing.

Import
STL files can be dragged and dropped onto LightWave to load or they can be loaded using the
Load Object file requester. When loading in either fashion you will be presented with an Options
box like so:

Weld - welds the points of the mesh so that using Select Connected will select the whole
mesh
Up Axis - For LightWave its Y, but bringing in an STL created with other software might have
a different Up Axis. This merely rotates the object so it stands upright.
Import Units - Since STL objects have no inherent unit system, one needs to be determined
from the number field and the dropdown next to it. If you are bringing in an STL made in
LightWave, the default of 1 m is good.

Export
When you export in STL format, the first thing to consider is that the format only supports
triangles. If your object has any polygons of a different number of sides you will see this message:

Any polygons in your object with more sides will be tripled. Polygons with fewer sides (1-point,
2-point) will be deleted. Once you have clicked OK you will get this options window:

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In it, you can choose whether your STL file will be saved in ASCII or Binary, what the Up Axis is and
Unit Scale for the destination environment. There is also the Positive Quadrant setting, which moves
the object into the +X, +Y, +Z space for printing software that prefers it.

PLY Import/Export Format

PLY is Stanford Universitys evolution of the STL format and doesnt specifically require triangles. It
can keep also additional data about an object, such as Vertex Normal maps, UV maps and Vertex
Color maps.

Import
When you bring in a PLY file through the file requester or using drag and drop you will be
presented with this Options window:

It is essentially the same as its STL counterpart only now you can choose to import the UVs, Vertex
Colors and Vertex Normals with the object if you wish.

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Export

As for STL with the Up Axis and Export Units, but Normals, Vertex Colors and UV Coordinates are
only available if your object has them. For the File Type, if you choose Binary you have the option
of Big or Little Endian encoding. Since most processors on the market today use Little Endian
encoding you will probably be safest using it for your exports.

VRML Support
VRML .wrl files can be saved from Layout or Modeler. VRML is important, not so much for its use on
the web these days, but for color 3D printing. It is the only format that supports image-mapped
polygons right now. The advantage to being able to save a VRML object from Layout is that said
object can be posed and deformed by modifiers like IK in LightWave allowing you to set your
model up comfortably. LightWave cannot currently load VRML files.

Please note that when exporting as STL, PLY or VRML only the current object layer is
considered. None of these formats support multi-layered objects.
For objects formats supporting UV maps, these are not preserved in Export unless you follow these
steps:
1) Load the object
2) Give it a UV texture map.;
3) Hit F5 and open the Surface Editor and hit the T next to the Color channel. In
the Texture Editor, leave the texture type as Image Map, select UV as Projection
and the UV map you created. You do not need to load an image;
4) Export as the object format of your choice and then reload the object. You will see that the
UV texture map is preserved, albeit renamed..

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Curve to Motion
Takes a spline from Modeler and makes it into a motion path for Layout.

Motion Throw
Calculates trajectory and bounce on given item and inputs - output is a motion file for Layout.

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Layout
Layout
The two buttons in this group duplicate those found at the upper right corner of Modeler and can
be assigned keyboard shortcuts.

Send to Layout - This button is only available once you have saved the object you are working
on. Before then it is ghosted.
Sync with Layout - this button resends an object if changes have not automatically been
noticed by Layout

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Commands
Edit Commands
User Commands are user-defined names that are associated with a particular tool/plugin. You can
also provide arguments for the plugin. Once defined, they can be used as standard commands and
assigned to a menu and/or key.

You can set up multiple User Commands using the same plugin with different arguments.
To add a user command:
1) Choose Utilities > Edit Commands. This will display the Edit User Commands dialog.

2) Enter the name you want to use. We suggest you also use the prefix cmd (e.g.,
cmdStretchPrOTON). This will keep all of your defined User Commands together
when they appear in a list together with standard commands.

3) Select the command you want to use on the Action pop-up menu.

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4) If the plugin requires arguments, enter them in the Argument field.

You can save a list of commands to a file by choosing Utilities > Save Cmd List. This file will list
every action that is available as well as any arguments for the actions when applicable.
5) Click the Add button. Your command will appear on the User Command pop-up list, along
with any other User Commands you have created.

Click Delete to delete the selected User Command. Selecting the Clear All
button will delete all defined User Commands, but dont click this unless you
really mean it! There is no implicit undo for this. You will have to either re-add
commands manually or use Edit > Preferences > Revert to Startup Preferences.
6) Click OK to close the dialog. The User Command will now appear in any command lists.

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If you need to change the plugin associated with a User Command, you must delete it and then
re-add it.

Maintaining User Command Sets

Although the User Commands are a part of the main preferences, the Load and Save buttons let
you retrieve and store User Command Sets that you develop.

Edit Startup
You may define any tool/plugin (with arguments) to run automatically when you first run Modeler.
Simply choose Utilities >Edit Startup and define the command and argument, if applicable.

Steps to Defining a Startup Command:

1) Choose Utilities >Edit Startup and select an actio

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2) Click OK and close Modeler.

3) Launch Modeler and your action should take place.

To remove a Startup Command, select (none) from the Action drop-down menu.

You can save a list of commands to a file by choosing Utilities > Save Cmd List. This file will list
every action that is available as well as any arguments for the actions when applicable.

Save Cmd List

You can save a list of commands to a file by choosing Utilities > Commands > Save Cmd List. This file
will list every action that is available as well as any arguments for the actions when applicable.

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The un-compiled LScript file format is (*.ls).

LScript
LScript
LScript is a high-level wrapper for the LightWave plugin Application Programming Interface (API).
It encapsulates the complex underpinnings of the API away from the plug- in developer, allowing
them to concentrate more fully on the task to be accomplished. LScript also provides added
features not available in the plugin API, making plugin development faster.
Because LScript has its roots in the C language, the transition between scripting and nativelanguage (binary) plugin development is eased a great deal. Scripts written in LScript can often be
ported into C with far less effort. This makes it possible to use LScript as a rapid prototyping tool for
plugin development.
Nearly all of the LightWave plugin architectures have scripting capabilities through LScript.
LScripts can be installed in the same way plugins are. The LScripts then become commands that
can be added to menus or assigned to keyboard shortcuts.
LScript also provides a run-time system, allowing scripts to be compiled into an encrypted binary
form that prevents modification or reverse engineering. Facilities for timed or counted execution
are also provided by the run-time system.
Most important, LScript is a virtual machine system. Scripts written on one platform should
work directly and immediately on any other platform supported by LightWave. This differs from
traditional plugin development in that each platform must have its own compiler, and each plugin
must be compiled and maintained on that platform. LScripts are platform-independent.

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LScript/RT (Run Time)
Executes a compiled Lscript.

The compiled Lscript file format is (*.lsc).

LSCompiler
This command will translate an un-compiled LScript to a Binary Compiled LScript.

Execute Command
This command will allow an LScript command to be typed into the field and executed.

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Python
Open Console
Opens LightWaves own Python console.

Python
This open a requester to load a Python script.

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Plugins
Add Plugins Command
(default keyboard shortcut F11)
To add plugins from Modeler, choose Utilities > Plugins > Add Plugins. Navigate to the location of
the plugins you want to add. Select the plugins, hold the Shift key to select an entire range or hold
Ctrl to select multiple non-contiguous files. In Modeler, the Add Plugins Panel appears after you
select the .p file(s).

The number of individual plugins found will appear in an informational dialog. The added plugins,
their type and related .p filenames are then listed in the window.

Re-adding a plugin that is already added will not do any harm.

To add additional plugins from the Add Plugins Panel:
Click the Add Plugins button and select one or more .p plugin files from a directory.

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A single plugin file can have many functions, some internal and not directly accessible by you.
Thus, when you add one, it may report back that it has
added more than one plugin. This is normal.
To add a directory of plugins:
You can quickly add all of the plugins in a directory (including subdirectories) using the Scan
Directory button. (It may take a few seconds to scan all of your plugin files. Be patient!)

: You can access the Scan Directory feature from the Edit Plugins Panel.

Edit Plugins Command

(default keyboard shortcut Alt F11)
Use the Edit Plugins command to review and delete plugins that have been added. In Modeler,
choose Utilities> Plugins > Edit Plugins.

To delete a plugin command:

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You can delete a plugin command by selecting it and clicking the Delete button. (Other commands
from the plugin will continue to exist.) Click Clear to delete all plugins listed. These operations have
no effect on the actual files stored on your hard drives.
To rename a plugin command:
You can rename a plugin commands name by selecting it, clicking the Rename button and
entering a new name.

You can also add plugins on this panel. The Add Plugins and Scan Directory buttons operate the
same as they do for the Add Plugins Panel, discussed earlier.

File Grouping Method

If desired, you can list the Plugin commands by their .p plugin filenames. Just select the File
Grouping Method button at the bottom of the Edit Plugins Panel.

Edit Modeler Tools

This button duplicates the one in the Edit Menu at the top left of Modeler.
This Options Panel gives you the ability to set new default settings on Cut, Divide, and Make Poly.
Also, this is where you will need to set the settings for the three Quick Cut tools. By default the
Quick Cut tools all have the same setting and you will need to define them in this panel.

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Additional
The Additional drop down menu (Utilities> Additional) will contain any tools added to Modeler that
havent been assigned places in the menu.

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Chapter 27 -

Introduction to
Surface and Render

LightWave 2015

Introduction to Surfacing and Rendering

This third volume of the manual for LightWave 2015 will introduce you in more depth to
techniques for surfacing. Starting with the simplicity and rapidity of LightWaves Surface Editor and
proceeding to an in-depth guide to all that is nodal, from the ease of the Material nodes to more
complex networks of nodes performing surfacing tasks that would be impossible in the Surface
Editor.

You will find out all about VPR, LightWaves interactive renderer and its many abilities and uses.
VPR can be used for a simple look at texturing, to animated previews of the scene and even final
screen-sized renders. For larger renders LightWaves F9 is a better choice and for sequences there
is F10 that has a wide variety of sequence creation options. Most importantly of all, rendering can
be sped up by taking place on multiple machines at once. LightWave offers unlimited render node
licenses so you can send scenes to your render farm and watch the frames roll in.

Color Spaces
An increasingly important part of graphics workflow today is making sure you have the correct
color workspace set for your target support for your graphics. Rendering for print is different to
rendering for the screen, and even there, rendering for the web is different to rendering for the
cinema screen. LightWave supports loading and saving color space information to work within
pipelines requiring it. This is called Linear Workflow.

What is Linear Workflow?

Color is not just the simple triplet of 0-255 RGB values weve always known. When you view work
on a computer screen it has a gamut, thats to say a range, of colors the screen can present.
Images are displayed with a value called Gamma to match the initial colors with what the monitor
can show. A Gamma value is an exponent of the curve that is created from the input voltage to
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your monitor to the output light intensity. Ideally, this would be linear but in reality follows what is
called a powerlaw function. Gamma compensates for this curve by applying a reverse curve that
flattens our output line.

LightWaves render engine is linear internally, meaning there is a 1:1 relationship between Input
Signal and Light Intensity, but images that you will use for textures and colors you pick in the color
picker will have gamma applied so that they display correctly onscreen. What LightWaves Color
Space settings do is to bring everything to a linear state so that you are comparing like with like. It
also prevents the problem where images, that already normally have Gamma applied, dont have it
applied again needlessly washing out textures. It does this by stripping the gamma correction from
an image (purely the image loaded in LightWave, not the one on disk) to make it linear and then
only applying Gamma correction to the rendered image.
The Gamma correction applied differs depending on the final destination of the image. For a
computer screen, the color space used is called sRGB; for images destined for HDTV you will want
to use Rec. 709. The Cineon color space is most often used for cinema, while ciexyz is the complete
gamut of visual light. In addition you can load custom LookUp Tables (LUTs) in order to suit a
custom pipeline. These settings can also be saved as presets making reuse simple.

Materials rendered in Linear and with sRGB color space applied - no changes were made to lighting

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Kitchen rendered in Linear and with sRGB color space applied - no changes were made to lighting

The linear workflow

2015

Color Space Improvements

LightWave 2015 adds the ability to load *.csp files in addition to *.3dl and *.cube files all of which
can be loaded from the CS tab of the Layout Options window

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Using LightWaves CS Settings
Since LightWave 10, LightWave has been able to use Color Space information to give better results,
above all with images used for texturing. Color space conversion is performed in four places in
LightWave.
1) On loading, an image can be converted from its native color space format to linear.
2) When sent to the Image Viewer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
3) When saved from the Renderer, an image can be converted
from linear to another color space.
4) When picked from the Color Picker, a color can be converted
from and then to linear color space.
By default, LightWave is set not to do any conversion - the Linear setting, but to better suit work for
the monitor, switch to sRGB. For better work for cinema choose Cineon and for widescreen highdefinition TV choose Rec.709. These choices will help convert images that may already have color
space definitions and keep their colors pure.
LightWave provides presets for sRGB and rec.709 but a personalized mix can be set up with the
dropdown choices for each of the different elements and saved as a preset for future use. You can
also load in color space definitions to exactly match existing setups. A color table can be loaded by
using Load Table from the pop-up. The color tables are stored in the project directory, in a directory
called ColorTables.
The options are as follows:

Convert Color Space to Linear

Picked Colors - Colors chosen from the LightWave or other color picker
Light Color - The color chosen for lights
Palette Files - Palettes loaded into LightWave
8-bit Files - 8-bit here refers to images that are 8 bits per channel such as JPGs, PNGs or TGAs,
previously known as 24-bit or 32-bit. These benefit the most from color space conversion.
Float files - Images using floating point colors schemes dont benefit from color space
conversion, indeed it would cause severe banding and thus this should always be left on
Linear
Alpha - Again, alpha images need to be preserved exactly as they are since the level of gray
indicates distance. As such they dont require or want color space conversion

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Apply Color Space
Display Color Space - What Layout looks like. Normally, this should be left at sRGB unless you
are working on a cinema screen or loom or something
Output Color Space - This is the color space for your renders. Again, if they are for the
monitor choose sRGB
Output Alpha Color Space - This should be left at Linear as for the conversion settings

Other Options
Auto Sense on Load - when you load a scene LightWave detects what CS setting were already
in use and changes to them automatically when this option is activated
Color Correct OpenGL - to better match the colors of polygons and lights when not viewig in
VPR or a render
Affect Color Picker - Best left checked since otherwise the colors you choose in the color
picker wont be those you get in the render
Convert 8-bit to Float - Converts 8-bit per channel files, otherwise known as 24-bit, to floating
point files. This increases the memory overhead a lot for textured images. It will increase the
fidelity of the results but is not always needed

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LightWave 2015

Surface Editor
Introduction
With only a few exceptions, LightWave objects are composed of one or more polygons. What each
polygon looks like is defined by its surface attributes or usually just surface for short. Groups of
polygons can share the same surface and the polygons need not be contiguous. The polygons can
even be in different objects.

Surfacing Objects
Lets take a simple cube. It has six sides and, therefore, at least six polygons. Each side could have
its own individual surface, all six sides could use the same surface, or any combination in between.

The polygons that make up a surface are given a name, usually in Modeler. The name can be
changed, however, in the Surface Editor.
The surfacing information associated with the surface name is stored in the object file. When an
object is later loaded, the surfaces used in it are also loaded, including any image files referenced in
the surface attributes.
WARNING: Surface settings are saved as part of the associated object file(s), not in the Scene file.
To save Surface settings, save the object.
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Assigning Surface Names
1) In Modeler, select the polygons that you would like to surface.

When you rename all of the polygons that already have a surface name, use the Statistics Panel
(open/close with the Statistics button at the bottom of the interface - or press w) to select them. Also, if
you are naming all polygons, you dont need to select any.
2) Choose Surface (located at the bottom of the interface, or press Q) to open the Change
Surface dialog.
Enter the surface name for the selected polygons and click OK. You can also select an
existing surface name from the pop-up menu.

You should strive to give your surfaces meaningful names. For example, say you had a car
object. One surface might be called chrome, which you apply to the bumper, door handles,
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antenna, etc. BlackRubber might be another surface, which you apply to the tires, rubber
gaskets, etc. You might use RedMetal for all of the exterior painted metal parts of the car.
To set some basic Surface settings, activate Set Initial Color and adjust the available settings
as desired. You can perform more advanced surface editing using the Surface Editor.
The Make Default option automatically updates the Surface option on Modelers General
Options Panel (Edit > General Options). This controls the default surface name used when you
create new geometry.
3) Click OK to confirm.

Surfacing Ideas
By no means should you restrict yourself to using, say, a procedural texture for what its name
implies. The unlimited combination of settings, layers, and different surface attributes yields an
infinite number of visual possibilities.
You are encouraged to load and render the various objects that come with LightWave. Study their
surfacing techniques. Change them if you want. However, do not fall into the trap of thinking the
surfaces are perfect. Many of them are far from it. Surfacing is an art form and 3D artists each have
their own opinions on the best approaches. You need to develop your own.

Surface Management
You can save surface attributes in a special surface file that you can re-use later. (Your Surfaces
subdirectory should contain a multitude of pre-defined surface files.) Use the Load and Save
buttons to do this. Use the Rename button to rename the surface.

When you load a surface file, remember that the surface texture Scale, Position, and so on are
also loaded. Thus, if the object you apply the surface to is a different scale, you may need to tweak
texture positioning data.

Surface Editor Panel

The Surface Editor Panel will list the characteristics of your named surfaces; you can access this
panel from both the Layout and Modeler modules.

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You can collapse/un-collapse the surface list by clicking the arrow button. When collapsed, a popup menu is added near the top to allow you to display and change the current surface.

Compatibility Menu
Scenes created before LightWave v9.0 had Surface Editor features which did not work as intended.
The features have been updated. The Compatibility menu allows you to use older scenes created
before LightWave v9.2 and match those scenes rendered in older versions of LightWave. The
Compatability menu is found in the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor.

Surface Edit Modes

LightWave offers two Edit Modes when you work in the Surface Editor: Object and Scene, which
are discrete and global Edit Modes, respectively. These are selected using the Edit by pop-up menu.
While surfaces are always saved within the object file itself, there are times when many objects
share the same surface name. In Object Mode, each objects surfaces are protected from changes
made on other objects with the same name. When in Scene Mode, all surfaces are flattened, so that
any item in the scene that uses the current surface name receives the same changes to the surface
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attributes.
The Edit Mode is saved from session to session and affects how LightWave handles objects loaded
with identical surface names. If the Scene Edit Mode is active, the last loaded objects surfaces will
control.
When working in Scene Mode, you will notice that the Surface list shows only a raw list of surface
names. While working in Object Edit Mode, you will see a complete list of the loaded objects with
their surfaces listed beneath the object names.

Left: Object Mode, Right: Scene Mode

Object Edit Mode

The default mode, Object, gives you many items in a scene with discrete Surface settings. For
example, you may have two goblins, HobGoblin and BobGoblin loaded into a scene and each
may have a surface called Skin. In Object Mode, LightWave internally holds an object composite
library for each item. So, while they both have a surface called Skin, LightWave sees them as
HobGoblin/Skin and BobGoblin/Skin so that you can make changes to either one without any risk
of interfering with the other.
When you change from Object to Scene Mode, the last-loaded item determines the attributes for
shared surface names.
Just as a little workflow aid, you can right-click on a scene element and Expand all Surfaces.

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Scene Edit Mode

The Scene Mode is very handy if you want many objects to share a surface. With this mode
enabled, you can quickly make changes to a group of objects by changing their common surfaces.
Internally, LightWave just drops the object composite library mentioned above, so that surfaces are
referenced by their raw surface name, without object listing.
For example, you may have a troop of soldiers that all share a common uniform surface Jungle_
Camo_Jacket. Internally, LightWave simply manages the surface name Jungle_Camo_Jacket rather
than Soldier.01/Jungle_Camo_Jacket, Soldier.02/Jungle_Camo_Jacket, etc. If you want to change
the base color of all soldier jackets, you can work in Scene Mode and make a single change that
propagates throughout all items with a surface named Jungle_Camo_Jacket.

Surface List
The large text window on the left lists the surfaces available for edit. The Filter by pop-up menu lets
you filter elements shown in the surface list window. Objects shows all objects and their related
surfaces. Name shows all surface names. Texture shows all surfaces that use procedural textures.
Shader shows all surfaces that use surface shaders. Preview lists all surfaces that are visible in the
image currently in the render buffer (you need to render a frame first). This is determined on a
pixel-by-pixel basis. (Note that the Preview setting is only available if the Surface Editor is accessed
from Layout.)

Filter by works in conjunction with the Pattern input field, which is a simple include filter. Any item
that includes any of the text you enter will appear in the list window. You dont need to specify
wildcards, just the text you want to include; when you leave the input field blank, you include all
surfaces in the Filter by category. Once you have entered or cleared the text in the filter field, hit
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Tab to activate the filter.
Select a surface to edit by clicking on its name in the list. If the object name is listed, you can
expand or collapse the displayed surfaces by clicking on the arrow to the left of the object name.
When you right-click over the surface list window, a pop-up menu appears. You can copy the
selected surface to a memory buffer. Then, select a different surface and aste the contents of the
buffer or individual Surface Editor tabs or nodes over the settings of the selected surface.

VPR Surface Picking

Even while VPR is still resolving, you can Shift CLICK on part of the image and the Surface Editor will
open with the selected surface, or switch to that surface if the editor is already open.

Mass Surface Changes

You can select multiple surfaces in the Surface Name list and make mass surface changes.
Hold the Shift key to select a range of surfaces or hold the Ctrl key to select/unselect surfaces
independently.

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Parameters with input fields that have different settings for the selected surfaces will show (mixed)
in the field. If textures are different, the T button will appear in an intermediate state. Changing a
surface attribute changes it for all selected surfaces, including mixed states. Shift -clicking on the T
or E button removes the texture or envelope for all selected surfaces.

Currently, you cannot make mass changes to surface shaders.

Preset Shelf and VIPER

If you would like to use VIPER (Layout only) or the Preset Shelf, click their respective buttons on the
interface.

Preview Window
The preview window shows you surface samples for the active surface. You can access several
Preview options by clicking the Options button.

Sample Size is the diameter of the sampled area on the surface. To obtain the most accurate
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preview, set this option to the approximate surface size to which you are applying the current
attributes. Preview Type sets the shape of your sample surface.

You have several options for the preview Background. Checkerboard is a good option for surfaces
with some level of transparency. If you select Layout, it uses Layouts Backdrop settings. You can
reduce jaggies in the preview by using the Antialiasing option.
If Use Scene Lights is active, the lights from your scene will be used instead of the default preview
light. This option is applied as if the preview object was at the Origin and also affects VIPER.
Obviously, this is only available if the Scene Editor is open from Layout.
The Refresh Rate setting determines how the preview is refreshed when you make changes to
Surface settings. If you set the rate to Realtime, the preview updates as you change interactive
controls; for example, if you adjusted a mini-slider. When it is set to Automatic, the preview updates
when you release the control. Manual requires you to click on the preview window to update.
You can further tailor the preview to reflect only certain internal channels (buffers) instead of the
normal Rendered Output with the Display Mode pop-up menu. This is very useful when you want
to determine the effects on a specific channel. For example, if you apply a diffuse texture, you may
want to see the effects of your settings on the actual diffuse channel.

You can quickly set options by using the pop-up menu that appears when you hold the RMB over
the preview window.

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Using the Preview Options pop-up menu gives you the added ability to view individual channels.
Simply select Display, and the Channel you would like to preview.

Basic Surface Parameters

The surface attributes on the Basic Tab are fundamental for virtually all objects. Each represents a
certain characteristic of a surfaces appearance. You may never have thought about it before, but if
you look at the surface of objects around you, they differ by much more than their color.
Are they shiny? Dull? Do they reflect other items in the room? Can you see through the material?
These characteristics help you determine what materials objects are made of.

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LightWave attempts to divide the different surface characteristics into controllable parameters.

Edit Nodes
Activates the Node Editor. See the Node Editor documentation in page 1996 for more information.

Numerical Settings
All of the Numerical settings have mini-sliders. You can enter a numerical value into the input field
or use the slider. The range of the slider is based on realistic settings; however, the input field will
accept values beyond the maximum and minimum possible with the slider, including positive and
negative values. Keep in mind that, except for maybe Luminosity, values outside the normal range
of 0 to 100 percent will be unrealistic.

Color
Color is probably the most obvious surface parameter. It doesnt take much experience to know
that if we want something to look like a banana, we need to make it yellow, right? However, since
you are dealing with a 24-bit color palette and, thus, over 16 million colors, there are probably
thousands of shades of yellow. Moreover, other settings, such as Diffuse, can have a dramatic effect
on the final rendered color.

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Color Picker

LightWaves default color picker has been renewed and given powerful new features.
1) This main area will change depending on which of the buttons below it (Red, Green, Blue,
Hue, Sat., Value, Kelvin, Wave) is selected. Here we have Hue.
2) This area will also change dependant on which button below is chosen. Here we can see the
Hue wheel of colors, but if Sat is chosen below there will be an increase in saturation of the
color chosen from bottom to top.
3) This color wheel is either based on the RGB or RYB method chosen with the small swatch
in the upper left corner. The two systems are based on light for RGB and the primary colors
of pigment for RYB. The RYB color wheel contains a second wheel inside and holding down
Shift will constrain movement around the wheel to 15 jumps.
4) This dropdown shows different kinds of complements on the color wheel. By default it is set
to Complementary, which shows the color and its opposite, but it can also show Analogous,
Triadic, Tetradic and Tints and Shades as shown in the image above. There is a Custom setting
too that allows the user to pick and choose colors.

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5) Usually a single byte is used to represent the values of a color and is therefore limited to a
range of 0-255 for red, green and blue. However the LightWave Color Picker internally uses
floating point numbers to store and handle colors (where 1.0 in a Floating Point numeration
would be the same as 255). This allows you to use bright colors, those with values above
255 (1.0), by either entering a high number into the Red, Green or Blue numerical inputs
or by using the X multiplier. The multiplier can also be used to reduce a color by entering a
number less than one. Thus 0.5 would return a color half as bright as the current color.
6) This section of the Color Picker compares the color chosen with the color that was previously
attributed. The user can revert to the previous color by clicking the large swatch under the
current color (the white in our example). You can also set the color as part of the permanent
swatches in the lower center of the Color Picker by clicking on the Set button. If you wish to
set a different swatch as the current color, Ctrl clicking on the swatch will set it. Shift clicking
on a swatch will switch to that swatch without choosing its color.
The M and P buttons represent a Color Mixer or the Palette swatches. By default the Color
Picker is set to the Palette swatches. If you click the M button you will see four color sliders
by default, showing an approximation of your chosen color in CMYK or Subtractive values.
You can Ctrl click on a mixer bar to set it to the currently-chosen color.
7) These two buttons will replace the area shown in 1 with a magnified zone of the screen or a
separate window with the image chosen. If you are picking from screen, S will swap between
different sample sizes and holding down Shift will slow mouse movement to 1/20 to make
precise picking more easy. If you are picking from an image, the image will be shrunk to fit
the window, but you have alternate sizes available in the top right corner. You can change
the Sample Size and the number of clicks a Sampling will be made of above the image.
8) Clicking the Open Library button with expand the Color Picker sideways and offer a history
of colors chosen and a set of collections that can be added to or exported in the lcl format.
When the Library is open an additional button becomes available, Live Matching. This looks
at what you are choosing in the Color Picker and shows the library with the closest matches.
If you know roughly the color you are after this is a good way of matching the exact color
from a library swatch.
9) The Settings button offers a choice of Integer or Float for RGB Display Mode (0-255 or 0.01.0) and can set the Kelvin range, the Wavelength direction and clipping of high colors.
You also have settings for the color library including how much History to keep, how color
names are formatted and how close a color needs to be to be matched in the library.

Converting from RGB to Kelvin requires expensive processing, too much to do for every color
change. Instead, RGB->Kelvin processing is done when loading the panel or when switching to Kelvin
mode. This RGB->Kelvin process can also be inaccurate, for example theres no green in the Kelvin scale.
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Luminosity
Luminosity refers to how much a surface appears to glow of its own light. However, unless you
use Radiosity, Luminosity does not have any actual light emitting properties - you need to add an
actual light for that. A value of 0% is most common for this setting, unless a special need arises
such as the surface of a modelled light bulb. This surface property is not the same as Glow on the
Advanced Tab.

Left: Luminosity 0%, Right: Luminosity 100%

Diffuse
Diffuse (sometimes called diffusion) is the amount of light scattered by a surface. A high level
scatters a lot of light, and therefore, the surface appears bright. A low level absorbs most of the
light, and therefore, the surface appears dark and dull. Metal and dirt surfaces are good candidates
for a low Diffuse level. Common values are 40% to 80%. Surfaces must have some diffusion for
shadows cast on them to be visible.

Left: Diffuse 100%, Right: Diffuse 50%

Specularity
Specularity is a kind of reflection or highlight that occurs on the surface of smooth or shiny objects.
This highlight is really the reflection of the light source. High Specular levels are commonly used on
glass spheres, chrome bumpers, and so on. How the surface reflects this highlight tells the observer
if the surface is dull, smooth, shiny, hard, or even metallic. Generally, the highlight assumes the
color of the light source that causes it, but you may change this with the Color Highlights settings
in the Advanced Tab.

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Left: Specularity 50%, Right: Specularity 100%

Glossiness
When some level of Specularity exists, Glossiness determines how a highlight spreads out. A low
setting creates a large highlight, whereas a higher setting creates a smaller highlight.

Left: Glossiness 5%, Right: Glossiness 50%

Reflection
Reflection determines how much a surface shows a reflection of its surroundings. A mirror is an
example of a highly reflective surface. LightWave will ray trace reflections or you may use options
that fake them, which can substantially reduce rendering time.

Reflection 25%

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Reflection 100%

Transparency
Transparency lets you make a surface see-through; it is the opposite of Opacity. Whenever light
passes through a transparent object, the light will bend. An example of this can be seen when
you look through a glass of water or down through a clear pool of water. The amount of this light
bending is controlled by the Refraction Index.

Image by Christophe Desse

To control the amount of Edge Transparency, you must add the shader of the same name.

Translucency
Translucency allows back lighting. The effect can be seen when someone stands behind a curtain
and you see their silhouette through the material. Other examples include seeing bones in your
hand with a flashlight in your palm, or bugs crawling on the underside of leaves.

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Translucency is similar to Transparency in that all lighting properties, like color and luminosity, will
show through. The obvious difference is that translucency doesnt add a see-through effect.
If you want to make a silhouette visible, something must cast a shadow on the back side. Note that
you do not need rear-facing polygons for the back side, nor must you use a double-sided surface
to catch the shadow.
2015

Clip Mapping

The Clip Mapping function, located on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel, offers
a way to quickly alter an object. Basically, it allows you to cut away portions of an object using
a texture. This is a great way of creating 2D pop-ups, as well as holes, tears, or grids in objects
without having to model them.

In LightWave 2015, Clip Maps are still available in Object Properties as before, but they can now
be saved as a Surface Editor property meaning that clips now become part of surfacing and thus
saved with the object rather than only being a Scene property. This means that there is no longer a
need to use Load from Scene to load an object with clip maps - as long as said clip maps have been
assigned using the Surface Editor.
This change also means that you can have multiple clip maps that are surface-limited rather than
having to juggle different layers in the Texture Editor to create the clip map arrangement you want.
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Bump Map
Nearly all real world surfaces have some amount of texture or bumpiness. Such bumps are
apparent due to the way light falls across the surface. A Bump Map is applied to a surface to give
the appearance of a texture. However, no real geometry is added and if you looked across the
surface from the side, the illusion could be ruined. Shadows and edges can also reveal this lack of
geometry in certain circumstances. The default setting is 100%.

Left: No Bump, Right: Bump at 500%. Note the silhouette is still perfectly round

If you want your bumps to actually displace geometry, try a Displacement Map in Object Properties
> Deform.

Envelopes and Textures

Very few things in the real world have constant surface properties. Color patterns, discoloration,
nicks, scratches can all subtly contribute to an objects appearance. The real world is anything but
consistent, but that is what makes things look real. The E and T buttons let you use envelopes and
textures, respectively, instead of a static numerical value. The proper use of these features often
results in a much more realistic surface.

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Envelopes let you vary a value over time. For example, instead of Luminosity having the same
value throughout your animation, it can differ on each frame. However, in any particular frame, it
will have that value over the entire surface. To vary the value over the surface area, you must use a
Texture.
Envelopes use the Graph Editor, which is discussed in depth on page 255

Envelopes are not limited to surface values, so you will find Envelope E buttons throughout
LightWave.

Surface Smoothing
Smoothing causes objects to appear to have smoothly rounded surfaces even though the object
is composed of flat-faced polygons. To do this, LightWave uses a technique known as phong
shading. If the edges of two smooth-shaded polygons share vertices (points), they appear as one
continuous, curved surface. The shared edge between them is no longer visible.

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Left: No Smoothing, Right: Smoothing

Smooth Threshold
By default, LightWave will not smooth across two polygons if the angle between them is 90
degrees or sharper, unless you adjust the Smooth Threshold. This value adjusts the range of the
smoothing function; it defines the angle beyond which LightWave will not smooth over the seam
between adjoining polygons. The angle is measured using the surface normals of the adjoining
polygons. If this angle is less than the Smooth Threshold, the surfaces are rendered smoothly.
The default of 89.5 assures that any surfaces at right angles (90) or greater to each other are not
smoothed.
Sometimes, due to the way an object is modelled, you may get unexplained rendering errors on
smoothed surfaces. Try increasing the Smoothing Threshold to correct such errors. We recommend
using smaller increases first, although for extreme displacement-mapped objects, you may try
fairly high values if rendering produces a mixture of jagged and smoothed results.

As with Bump Mapping, Smoothing does not actually change the surfaces geometry. As such,
the edges of a ball can still expose the straight polygon nature of the object. If this becomes a problem,
make the actual geometry smoother. You can use Modeling tools like Metaform, for example.

Sharing Points
The concept of sharing points is important in surface smoothing. Unlike the real world, objects,
and their points, can occupy the exact same space. A simple cube has eight points and six sides.
Any one point is shared by three sides. However, you can create a seemingly identical cube that
doesnt share any points or sides. Each side would be a totally independent polygon, thus there
would be 24 points (six sides times four points).
The obvious reason for using shared points and sides is that it creates a more compact object.
Remember, the simpler the object, the faster it renders and the lower the amount of resources
used (i.e., RAM). However, sometimes you will find that the polygons need to be separated.

Using Separation
Surface Smoothing can occur only where two polygons share all of the points along an edge.
However, sometimes this smoothing is not what you want. For example, if you were Modeling
something where you wanted a visible physical break, like a seam, youd want to cut the polygons
away and then paste them right back in. You may also find that when you have a flat surface that
rounds over a corner, separating the flat polygons from the initial rounded polygons gives a more
realistic look.

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Left: Surface Smoothing, Right: Surface Smoothing with Separated Polygons

If you examine objects around you, you should notice that they all have seams. Very few objects
in the real world are perfectly smooth with edges that align. Separating polygons can add subtle
detail to objects and give them a real world look.

Separating polygons will double the points along the previously shared edge since each polygon
now has its own set of those points.

Using the shortcut keys,

Ctrl

X and

Ctrl

V, to cut and paste, is a quick way to separate polygons.

This technique lets you control smoothing by using a single surface name. Although you could
create independent surfaces with identical settings - except one has smoothing on and the other
does not - you may prefer to have one with smoothing on and use this separation technique to
create the seam.

Double Sided
Sometimes its necessary to see both sides of a polygon, such as when you want to go inside a
model (and wall thickness is not a concern). Also, if you import objects from other 3D modeling
programs, either directly or through a conversion utility, some polygons may end up facing the
wrong direction, which causes the object to render improperly. Click Double Sided to treat all
polygons on the selected surface as two-sided.

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Left: Single-Sided Polygons, Right: Double-Sided Polygons

As a consequence of using Double Sided, rendering time will increase because LightWave must
calculate more polygons. Note also that Double Sided is only a surface attribute. The object, when
loaded into Modeler, will show the true single-sided polygons.

Volume Stacking
Surfaces with single-sided surfaces will now be treated as a solid mass, as in no air inside. Doublesided surfaces will work as before. This will be true of all SSS and refractive surfaces from now on.
When using Volume Stacking, the geometry must be closed, meaning no holes in the mesh. The
enclosed volume can have holes however, which is usefull for things like air bubbles. These
geometric air bubbles could be created by inversing the normals on the bubbles and using the
same surface properties as the enclosing volume.
When a surface is single sided and transparent, it will be added to the volume stack. The problem
when a single sided surface is not a closed volume, so the volume stack is confused because in
some areas of the image the ray never leaves the volume because there is no backside to hit.
The problem goes away when the surface is made double sided, which in effect will not put the
surface into the volume stack.Now as to why the classic camera renders differently, this is because
how it sorts the transparent polygons before rendering and it does not cast any rays because the
surfaces are not refractive.
The perspective camera is a ray tracing camera, so all transparency is raytraced. You can make the
surface double sided to turn off the volume stack for a surface.
A feature called Exclude From VStack for surfaces has been implemented. This way when you use
polygons to replicate things like fire or space ship engine flames, these polygons are excluded from
being included with the volume stack.

Comment
You can add a comment to the surface in the Comment field.

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Texture Editor
While you can vary a parameter over time with an envelope, the parameter is not dynamic over
the surface: the value for a particular frame is the value for the entire surface. Textures, on the
other hand, essentially let you vary the value dynamically over the surface (as well as in time). A
Color texture is probably the easiest illustration. Instead of using the same color on a surface, you
can map a picture (a color texture image map) onto the surface that lets the color differ over the
surface area.

You can use Image Maps for more than just color. On other surface parameters, the color element
is ignored and only the brightness of each pixel varies the value over the surface. For example, you
can use an Image Map with Specularity to suggest scratches on a surface. Textures let you divide a
surface into thousands of smaller areas and apply a different level of the surface attribute to each
individual area.
In addition to Image Map textures, you can also use Procedural Textures and Gradients. Procedurals
are more or less mathematically computed images. Gradients act as a type of envelope, except that
the value can change over a condition other than time. Select these options by using the Layer
Type pop-up menu.

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Texture Layers
LightWave can layer surfaces infinitely; once you set the original texture, you can add another layer
by using the Add Layer pop-up menu. You can choose to add any of the layer types - the type can
be changed later if necessary.

The layer list window shows you all of the layers. The first column indicates whether the layer
is active (checked) or not (blank). You can toggle the status by clicking in the column. The next
column shows the layer name, which indicates the type of layer. Next is the opacity percentage,
followed by the Blending Mode (e.g., + for Additive).
You can choose which layer to work on by simply clicking on it in the window. To remove a layer,
select it and then click Remove Layer.

Copy and Paste

You can copy the currently selected layer or all of the layers in the Surface list to a memory buffer
by using the Copy pop-up menu. For the Paste operations, Replace Current Layer will replace the
selected layer with the buffer contents, even if the buffer contains more than one layer. Replace all
Layers will clear all existing layers and then add the buffer contents. Add to Layers simply appends
the buffer contents to the end of the list.

The buffer contents will remain until you quit LightWave.

Layer Order
Texture layers are always listed in order from top to bottom. New layers are added on top of
existing layers. Keep this in mind when you set up multiple layers. For example, if you want an
Image Map with fractal noise across the entire surface including the image, you must map the
image first and add the fractal noise afterwards. Of course, you can reorder layers by dragging
them with your mouse.

The base Surface settings - those set on the Surface Editors Basic Tab - always sit beneath all
layers.

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Blending Layers
To set the opacity of a texture, use the Layer Opacity field. Reducing the value from 100% makes
the overall texture more and more transparent. Setting it above 100% can force a texture layer to
unnatural values.
The Blending Mode determines how the layer is blended with other layers. With Normal,
underlying layers will be totally covered (i.e., replaced) by the texture, assuming Layer Opacity is
100%. The texture acts like an alpha matte; thinner areas of the texture allow the underlying layers
to show through. If Layer Opacity is 50%, you get 50% of the layer and 50% of the underlying
layers. Additive, adds the texture (times the Layer Opacity) to underlying layers.
To achieve an even blend between multiple texture layers, use Normal. Then divide the number of
the layers into 100% and use the resulting value as your Texture Opacity value. For example, the
first (bottom-most) layer would be set to 100% (100/1), the second layer will be set to 50% (100/2),
the third layer will be set to 33% (100/3) and the fourth layer will be set to 25% (100/4).
Subtractive subtracts the layer from the underlying layers. Difference is similar to Subtractive
but takes the absolute value of the difference. Multiply factors the layer by the underlying layers.
Multiplying by darker colors will darken the image, while brighter colors will brighten. Divide
multiplies the underlying layers by inverse of the layer. This generally has the opposite effect of
Multiply.

The Alpha Blending Mode makes the layer an alpha channel on the preceding layer. In other words,
it cuts out parts of the preceding layer and makes those areas transparent. White in the alpha
image creates opaque areas and black creates transparent areas. Shades in between will do a little
of both. If the image, procedural, or gradient has color, the alpha image is based on the brightness
of the areas.
Each layers Blending Mode is indicated in the right-most column of the layer list.

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Texture Displacement displaces (distorts) layers above it, similar in effect to a Bump Map.

PShop Filters
Photoshop-style filters have been added to the Blending Mode menu in the Texture Editor. They
are designed to work like the blending modes found in Photoshop. While the names may be
similar in some instances, such as LightWaves native Multiply and the Pshop Multiply mode, the
Photoshop modes are mathematically different from the native LightWave blending options, and
therefore produce different results.
PShop Multiply - Blends the base color with the blend color, making the image darker by
multiplying the color values together. A black color will make the final blend black. A pure
white color will change nothing. Working with colors other than black or white will produce
a darker color.
PShop Screen - The opposite of PShop Multiply, the color values are inverted, multiplied
together, then inverted again. A black value will change nothing, while a white color will
produce a white result.
PShop Overlay - A combination of PShop Multiply and PShop Screen, the formula is
dependent on the base color. A lighter base color will produce a lighter result, while a darker
base will result in a darker color.
PShop Softlight - Similar to PShop Overlay, except the blend color is the determining factor.
A lighter blend color will produce a lighter result and a darker blend color will produce a
darker color. Colors are mixed, so a pure white or pure black blend color does not produce a
result of pure white or pure black.
PShop Hardlight - The opposite of PShop Overlay (not PShop Softlight!) and is dependent on
the blend color. Multiplies the blend and base colors, with a lighter blend color resulting in a
lighter result and dark blends producing darker results.
PShop Colordodge - The base color is brightened to reflect the blend color by reducing the
contrast. A blend color of black changes nothing.
PShop Darken - The base and blend colors are compared and the darker color is the one used.
PShop Lighten - The base and blend colors are compared and the lighter color is selected.
PShop Exclusion - Subtracts the blend color from the base color, or base from blend,
whichever has the brighter color value. A pure white blend value will invert the base color
value.

Image Properties
After you select one of the Projection settings, use the Image pop-up menu to select or load an
image/sequence. Clicking the Edit Image button launches the Image Editor Panel. Here you can
adjust certain aspects of the image(s).
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The available Image settings on the Texture Editor Panel vary depending on the Projection setting.
Two settings always appear, however. Pixel Blending smoothes out the pixelisation that can occur
when a camera gets close to the mapped surface.

OpenGL MipMap
Mip-mapping is used in LightWave and todays games to avoid texture graininess at a distance or
at a low angle. Basically, lower-res versions of the texture are generated in real time to save time
processing the original image to map onto a polygon. Please note that due to the nature of this
filtering method, low-res textures may appear somewhat blurry. Mip-mapping is very useful in
animation projects because it ensures that the same image is used no matter where the imagebearing object is in the scene, however, the total memory cost for mip-mapping tends to average
out at 1.5 times the image size in memory. On still renders, you can turn off mip-mapping to save
memory.

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The antialiasing Strength value determines the amount of antialiasing. The default setting of 1
should be used in most cases; however, the level may need to be raised or lowered slightly to
better match the particular image. This value can be set to higher levels to add blurring effects to
the image.
Planar, Cubic, and Cylindrical Image Map projection have Tiling (i.e., repeating) options, which you
can set independently for the horizontal and vertical repeating directions.

Image used for the following examples

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Reset
Reset is the no-repeat mode. The underlying surface will be visible if the image is smaller than the
surface area.

Repeat
Repeat tiles the image until it fills the surface.

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Mirror
Mirror tiles the image, but flips the image horizontally or vertically.

Edge
Edge extends the edges of the image to cover the surface. This setting works best when the outer
edges are a solid color.

The repeating options are relevant only if the Scale, Position, and Rotation settings (at the
bottom) are set in such a way that the image will not fill the surface area.
Cylindrical and Spherical have Wrapping options that set how many times the image appears
horizontally, Width Wrap Amount, and vertically, Height Wrap Amount (not applicable to
Cylindrical). This sets how many times you want the image wrapped for the given Scale values.
Generally, youll want this set at 1.

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Wrap amounts can be negative, which will reverse the image as it is wrapped around in the
opposite direction.

Texture Placement
Once you set the image properties, you must now scale and position the image. Textures are
initially positioned referenced to the X, Y, or Z Texture Axis. For Planar projection, think of the axis
as a nail used to hold a photograph to a wall. For Cylindrical, think of the axis as the cardboard
center of a roll of paper towels. Spherical is very similar. However, you cannot select an axis for a
Cubic map.

For example, a soda can would use a Y Texture Axis because it sits vertically. The fuselage of an
airplane, on the other hand, would probably use the Z Texture Axis.

You should generally model objects so that they face the positive Z axis.
If the Texture Axis is perpendicular to a surface (such as the sides of a box using the same surface
name as the projected side, the image will run through the surface.

Surface Size, Position, and Rotation

Scale defines the size of the surface to which the texture is applied. Position defines the
coordinates of the center of the texture on the surface. Rotation defines how much the texture
rotates around the center Position.

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Different combinations of Texture Axis and Rotation can achieve the same results.
Generally, you want to match these settings with the actual surface. Automatic Sizing causes
LightWave to calculate the Scale and Position of a selected surface and input those values. It
computes an imaginary bounding box around all areas using the current surface. This will fit an
Image Map perfectly onto the surface.

Use Automatic Sizing for starting values when using procedural textures.
If the Scale is smaller than the surface size, an Image Map will tile across the surface (assuming that
one of the Repeat options is active). You might also see the tiling effect if the Position is not set to
the actual surface center.

Because LightWaves textures are three-dimensional, there is no rule stating that the center of a
texture must be located somewhere within the bounds of the surface. You can place the texture
center outside of the surface and still get a texture to appear across the surface. Textures extend in
all directions throughout the virtual space in Layout, but appear only on the surfaces that are set to
display them.
There are definitely times where you dont want the texture sized exactly to match the surface.
Such is the case with Procedural Textures, which usually look better when the Scale is smaller than
the Surface Size because it adds more detail. Another example is when you use only part of an
image that is texture mapped.

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Falloff
The Falloff values specify the apparent falloff for every unit of distance moving away from the
texture center, defined by the Position settings. (The unit of distance is defined by the Default Unit
setting on the General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel.) When you animate the Position with
an envelope, the position at frame 0 is used as the center for falloff purposes.
The Type pop-up menu determines the shape of the Falloff. (In previous versions, the Falloff was
always cubic.) Linear Falloff types (i.e., LinearX, LinearY, and LinearZ) operate only in one direction.
If you use 100% LinearX, for example, the texture will fall off only in the positive X direction from
the texture center. To fall off towards negative X, use -100%.

With Cubic, the Falloff occurs on both the positive and negative sides. You can achieve a linear-type
falloff in both directions by using Cubic and setting the two axes you do not wish to fall off to 0%.

Using the Reference Object

Although you can explicitly set the Position, Size, and Rotation of a texture, you can also assign
a Reference Object - normally a Null object - and get similar results. The Reference Object makes
all of these settings operate relative to itself. You can better control the texture animation by
animating the Reference Object. Moreover, you can use different Reference Objects for different
Surface Textures (e.g., surface color, diffusion, specular, and so on).

An objects pivot point does not affect surfacing.

Freezing Reference Object/Camera

If you set a Reference Object (or Reference Camera used with Front Projection Mapping) and then
select (none) from the related pop-up menu, a dialog appears that asks, Do you want to keep
items parameters?.
If you click Yes, you will store the reference items state at the current frame in the object. (Dont
forget to save it.)

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World Coordinates
Normally, textures are locked to a surface and travel with it, as the object is moved, stretched,
rotated, or deformed. Selecting World Coordinates will lock the texture to LightWaves Origin
instead of those of the surface. Moving the object now will result in the object traveling
through the texture. All Texture settings continue to be valid, but now are relevant to the World
Coordinates.
World Coordinates can create the look of light beams moving through a fog. You create this effect
by using transparent light beams with a fractal noise texture for Color and/or Luminosity activated.
As the light beam is moved about, it will move through the fog created by the fractal noise. Using
World Coordinates on a Transparency Map with Falloff can make a spaceship cloak (turn invisible).

Layer Type: Image Mapping

Except for the Color surface attribute, when you use image maps the brighter the data, the higher
the setting, and the darker the data, the lower the setting. A totally white image is the same as a
100 attribute value and a totally black picture is the same as a 0 attribute value. As such, if you use
a standard RGB picture, you cannot get values higher than 100 or less than 0, but it will usually
contain a wide array of brightness values. However, if you use a high dynamic range image, you
can exceed this limit.

To see image maps in the Layout view, make sure the viewport is set to Textured Shaded Solid.
You can change this on a viewports titlebar.

Image Map Projection

Since images are usually rectangular and surfaces may or may not be, you must tell LightWave how
you want the image map projected onto the surface. The common projection types settings are
Planar, Cylindrical, Spherical, Cubic, Front and UV.
Generally, you should pick the shape that best describes the surface shape. (Note that this is not
necessarily the objects overall shape since that may be made up of many surfaces.) For example,
if you were mapping a label image on the sides of a soda can, youd use Cylindrical. For a planet,
youd use Spherical. For a wall, Planar would do the trick. For a brick, Cubic might be best.
What about a die? Cubic? This may be a trick question. Since a die has a different number of dots
on each side, youd use a different Planarmap on each one.
Standard Image Mapping tools (i.e., planar, cylindrical, and spherical mapping) may be somewhat
limiting when the surface is irregular in shape. These techniques usually work well only in cases
where the entire texture image can be globally mapped using a linear interpolation along two
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axes. The object geometry essentially has no influence on how the texture is applied.
However, what if you could assign areas of a texture image to points on the surface, essentially
tacking it down at key points? This is what UV Mapping in Modeler allows you to do. Between the
tacks, the image is stretched smoothly.

Planar Projection
Planar projection will project an image onto a surface as if you were projecting the image through
a slide projector onto a wall. Planar Image Maps are best used on flat, or nearly flat surfaces like the
sides of buildings and the screens of video monitors.

For the X and Y axes, Planar images are projected from the positive axis side of a surface towards
the negative axis side. This means that the image appears correct when viewed from the positive
side and it appears reversed if you view it from the negative side. For the Z axis, Planar images are
projected from the negative side.

If you encounter this reversing effect and it isnt what you want, you can reverse an image back
by making the Scale value negative for the axis that needs to be reversed.

Cylindrical Projection
Cylindrical projection wraps an image around the selected axis like a paper towel wrapped about
a cardboard tube. By default, an image is wrapped so it covers the surface once, allowing the side
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edges of the image to meet on the back of the surface. A soda can and a tree trunk are both good
examples of surfaces that would use Cylindrical projection.

Cylindrical projection is always wrapped around a surface so that the top of the image appears
towards the positive axis side of the Texture Axis.

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Spherical Projection
Spherical projection wraps an image around a surface as if you were stretching a flat piece
of rubber around a ball, but without having to worry about the edges all meeting. Planets,
basketballs, and marbles could all use Spherical projection.

Spherical projection does not use Scale parameters. Images are wrapped completely around the
surface (using the Wrap values, discussed later). Spherical projection is always oriented so that the
top of the image appears toward the positive side of the Texture Axis.

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Cubic Projection
Cubic projection is essentially the same as Planar, except that you cannot select a Texture Axis.
Cubic projects the image from all three axes at the same time. The image is projected like Planar,
except simultaneously along all three axes. Use Cubic when you wish to apply the same image to
all sides of a rectangular shape, such as an image of tiling bricks wrapped around the sides of a
building, or wallpaper on the walls of a room.

Note that Cubic Projection projects along the X, Y and Z axes and objects merely intersect these
projections. This means that images like text will only be correct on three sides, the others will be
reversed as shown here with the images that have the arrow coming out of them rather than going in.
Creating an item like a dice needs six planar projections to be correct.

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Front Projection
The concept of Front projection is very simple and quite similar to a chroma-key effect. However,
instead of applying an image where a color screen is, it replaces the selected surface(s) with a
selected image.

In most cases, the image you select for a Front Projection Map is the same image you use for the
Background Image on Layouts Compositing Tab of the Effects Panel (Windows > Compositing
Options).

Scale, Position, and so on, are not relevant with Front projection. It is always the size (and frame/
pixel aspect) it would be if loaded as a Background Image. As such, changing the Resolution or
Pixel Aspect Ratio on the Camera Properties Panel will also affect the Front projection.
Front projection is used primarily for comp (compositing) work where you combine LightWave
objects with a live-action background image or sequence. A common example occurs when you
want a LightWave object to cast a shadow (believably) onto the image or behind a portion of the
background image.
The image used in the surface and the background will pin-register the surface to the background,
letting you go in front or behind. Your object then appears to interact with the environment.
You can cast shadows or cause reflections from a regular 3D object onto the surface that is front
projection mapped.

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Front-Projection mapped Ground surface catches the characters shadow.

The ground object is just a flat box with Front Projection Image Mapping that uses the same image
as the background. Its job is merely to catch the objects shadow.
Another example is to use an image of trees as your background image and fly a UFO between
them so the UFO appears to go in front of some trees and behind others. All you need to do is
model some rough shapes that match the trees you wish to fly behind (they could even be flat
planes).
Another good example for Front projection is to create a flat plane and align it to an image of an
ocean or a lake. Front projecting the water surface onto it lets you place an object beneath the
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water and push it through the surface. Submarines and sea creatures will appear to break the
surface this way.
The hardest part of Front projection is aligning the objects, matching lighting, and getting the
right camera angle. Using Background Image as the Camera View Background on Layouts Display
Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options) will allow you to do all that. You also
must search for the right balance of Luminosity and Diffuse for the Front projection surface so that
the objects true shape is not revealed by shading.

NOTE: Dont use the Soft Filter (Camera Properties Panel) with Front projection. It will soften only
the image used on the object surfaces, not the background.

Fixed Projection
Front projection surfaces will always look the same no matter where you move the object or which
way you rotate it. The image does not normally stick to the surface. However, if you activate the
Fixed Projection option (previously Sticky Projection), it fixes (i.e., locks) the projection from the
cameras perspective at the specified Time.
The default unit of measure for Time depends on the Frame Slider Label setting on the General
Options Tab of the Preferences Panel in Layout or the Time Format setting on the Display Options
Panel, Units Tab in Modeler. You may specify the unit of measure by appending f for frames or s
for seconds to the entered number (e.g., 22f for frame 22, 31s for 31 seconds). You may also enter
SMPTE time code, like 00:00:01:16 for one second, frame 16. The entry is converted to the default
unit of measure.
Use Fixed Projection to create parallax with two-dimensional images by using a technique called
Camera Mapping. (Use the Reference Camera setting to select the camera, if you have multiple
cameras in your scene.)

Essentially, you set the frame where the texture will be pin-registered to the background (like
normal Front Projection Mapping). On all other frames, the texture is stretched to compensate for
more or less of the texture being visible, which is caused by factors like the camera being moved.
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For example, in a picture of some buildings, you could place the LightWave camera in the same
place as the original camera in relation to some simple 3D buildings; then, you could project the
picture onto the buildings and lock it at frame 0. Youll need a doctored background image/object
- with Fixed projection - to reveal whats behind the buildings. If you move the camera forward, it
will appear to fly into or around the buildings.

Use your paint programs rubber stamp function to erase areas where background Fixed
projection surfaces will be revealed.

Obviously, there are great limitations in getting three-dimensional data out of a twodimensional picture. However, short slow-moving sequences can be quite realistic.

UV Texture Maps
The U and V refer to Texture Map coordinates and are really not very different from the XYZ
coordinates you are familiar with. In fact, UV Mapping is the process of setting up a relationship
between the two dimensions of an image, U and V, with the three dimensions of an object
surface, XYZ.
Once this relationship is set up, changing any parameter (i.e., U, V, X, Y, or Z) will also relatively
change the appearance of the Texture Mapping. With UV Mapping, the object provides additional
information for Texture Mapping, which can be different for any given point on the surface.
The texture is more or less stuck to points on the surface using a relationship that you define.

UVs and Projection

UVs have to come from somewhere. For existing polygonal models, the choices are limited to
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setting the UV coordinates for each point in the object manually, or applying some projection,
which automatically generates the 2D Texture coordinates from the given 3D point positions. In
LightWave, you can create UVs by using projections, which also happen to be the same as the
standard projections for Texture Mapping (i.e., Planar, Cylindrical, and Spherical).
Usually, the projection for the UV Map is not suitable for the whole model. The projected UV
Map must be tweaked - eyes and nostrils moved over the right parts of a face, or texture features
matched to geometry features.

Keep in mind that standard Projection Mapping is more accurate because it has some exact,
continuous value over the entire surface. UV Mapping, on the other hand, is technically accurate only
at small sample points. The surface for the large areas in between the sample points is interpolated.
Adjusting the sample points so that the interpolated areas look right is difficult and the reason why UVs
are more difficult to use.
For illustration purposes, lets say you had your texture image printed on a piece of very flexible
rubber and wanted to fit it on a toy car made of wood. You could conform the rubber material to
contours of the car by tacking it down with thumbtacks. That is more or less what UV Mapping
does. However, it is slightly reversed: what you do is tack the UV points down onto the image.

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2015

UV Aspect

New to LightWave 2015 is the UV Aspect plugin. Designed for occasion where you have created a
UV map for a specific shape of image and need to use an image with a different aspect ratio.

Example - Different Image Aspect Ratios

Weve loaded a simple box that is 16:9 in aspect. It goes nicely with the lighthouse picture weve
used. The picture uses a UV map for placement.

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We get told we need to change the image for a square logo! If I put it in my UV, itll get stretched
out as shown

Turning on the new UV Aspect tool means that our square logo regains its normal shape, even
though our UV map is 16:9.
There is an options panel just to the right of the dropdown for UV Aspect:

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The Aspect Type choice is:

Borders - The image will be shrunk to fit into the space allowed (note that the type of repeat
for the image - Height Tile, Width Tile - plays a role here)
Best Fit - The image will maintain its aspect but fill the UV space as best as possible. In our
example, the width will fill the polygon but the top and bottom will be cut off.
Fit Height and Fit Width are used for the aspect ratio of the image. You can enter something lie 16
and 9 if you like, or the actual pixel dimensions of the image (1920x1080).

Layer Type: Procedural Texture

An alternative to using an image as a Texture is to use built-in mathematical computations called
Procedural Textures. These serve the same purpose as Image Maps; however, since they are
mathematically computed, they are applied seamlessly on a surface. Thus, you do not need to
worry about a projection method.

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All surfaces in the images above were created with procedurals.

All Procedural Textures are available for use on each surface attribute.

To add a procedural texture layer:

Click on the Add Layer button and select Procedural from the pop-up menu. You can also change
an existing layers type by changing its Layer Type to Procedural Texture.

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Texture Color and Texture Value

Unless you are adding a texture to surface Color, you must specify a Texture Value, which is the
value for the texture pattern at its most intense points. This can even be a negative value.
If you are adding a texture to surface Color, you do not define a value but a Texture Color. The color
chosen here will be the color of the texture at its most intense points.
Unless the texture pattern fills all of the surface area, there will be transparent and semitransparent areas, revealing underlying layers. In areas where the texture is below 100%, the
texture will blend with underlying layers.
You can change the background color used in the thumbnail window by right-clicking on it - a
Color Selection dialog will appear. You can also drag the texture around with your LMB.

Texture Scale
Generally, you want your scale to be a fraction of the surface size to properly see the texture on the
surface. Unless you know the exact dimension of your surface, it may be handy to click Automatic
Sizing first and then modify the resulting Scale values.

Use LightWaves maths feature and append, say, /4 to the automatic-sizing values. This divides
the value by four. For example, adding /4 to a value of 24 m would look like 24 m/4 (dont enter
quotes). When you move to the next field, the result is calculated automatically!

Procedural Texture Settings

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The following is a list of the Procedural Textures. Remember that although they are described in
essentially surface color terms, they can also be used for Diffuse, Specularity, Transparency, and so
on.
Brick

Brick produces an array of symmetrically spaced bricks. The Texture Color is the color of the mortar.
Mortar Thickness determines the width of the mortar. At 1.0, no brick is visible. Fuzzy Edge Width
makes the outer brick edges soft and faded. Since Procedural Textures are three-dimensional, you
may need to tweak Size and Position values if a surface cuts through mortar and that is all you see
on an edge.

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Bump Array

Bump Array produces an array of symmetrically spaced circular dots that appear to have depth.
You can use this texture to create a golf ball surface.
Radius sets the radius of each bump used in the bump array pattern. Spacing sets the spacing
between each bump.
Checkerboard

Checkerboard generates a tiled appearance on an objects surface, like that of a checkerboard or

chessboard. Your XYZ Scale values set the size of each square in the pattern. For example, to see
ten checkerboard squares on the surface of an object, divide its length by ten. A 50-meter cube
would yield a Scale of 5 (for X, Y, and Z) to achieve ten squares.

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Crumple

Crumple is a very detailed texture that gives the appearance of a surface that was crumpled under
pressure. You can use it to simulate crumpled paper, hammered metal, ice cubes, stucco, and even
cauliflower.
Frequencies refers to the number of different scales of detail added to the pattern. A value of 1
makes a surface appear partially crumpled so that it has only a few large dents. A value of 5 makes
a surface appear very crumpled so that it has many smaller dents.
Small Power affects the appearance of the large and small features added to a surface. The Default
values create the appearance of a surface with large and small dents. A higher Small Power (1.0 or
above) causes the smaller dents to be shaded with the same degree of intensity as the larger dents
so that the surface becomes busier and the larger dents lose some of their distinction. A lower
Small Power (under .50) makes for less distinction between the large and small features.
Crust

Crust is one of the more complex textures. It produces raised circular splotches on a surface. This is
good for barnacles, warts, or moon craters.
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Coverage determines how much of the crusty pattern covers the surface. A low value (0.0 to
0.5) makes many small islands of crust across the surface, whereas if you use a high value (0.6 or
higher), the crust pattern begins to cover the surface color underneath.
The patterns that display Ledge Level are shaded so that the surface appears to have raised edges.
Ledge Level shifts the position of the ledge that defines the edges of the pattern further outward
from the pattern itself, into the surface color. The values that make visible changes in these
patterns are subtle, so change them in small increments until you understand their effects well (on
the order of 0.1 at a time).
Ledge Width alters the apparent depth of the valleys formed by the ridges in the pattern. The
values that make visible changes in these patterns are subtle, so change them in small increments
until you understand their effects well (on the order of 0.1 at a time). Ledge Width will affect the
sharpness of the slope falling off of the discoloration pattern. The Default values create a ridge just
along the outside of the pattern discoloration. Higher values move the ridge further outward from
the pattern, lower values move it inward. The most useful values will fall between 0.3 and 1.0.
Dots

Dots produces an array of evenly spaced dots. The dots can optionally have a soft edge. Dot
Diameter determines the size of the dots in the dot pattern. At 1.0, the edges of dots will touch.
Fuzzy Edge Width makes the outer dot edges soft and faded.

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FBM

FBM is another fractal pattern that uses the same settings as Fractal Noise.

Fractional Brownian Motion (FBM) is named after botanist Robert Brown, who observed the
random movement of pollen grains. Einstein later explained that the movement was due to surrounding
molecules moving in random directions.
Fractal Noise

Fractal Noise produces a random fractal pattern. It is undoubtedly the most commonly used
texture, since it can quickly mask somewhat the computerised look of 3D imagery. Use this as a
Bump Map for terrains and brushed metal (use an exaggerated value along the grain direction).
As a Transparency Map, Fractal Noise can generate realistic-looking clouds. As a surface Color
(or diffuse) Map, it can give a weathered look to surfaces, such as grass or dirt ground. Youll find
numerous possibilities for this texture. (Also see the Turbulence texture.)
Frequencies affects the level of detail produced in the noise pattern. Increasing this level will
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increase the variation in the pattern. Values above 6 are not useful (the level of detail is so small
that it may not be noticeable, and it will increase rendering time unnecessarily). Contrast adjusts
the blending of the texture. The higher the level (above 1.0), the greater the contrast, and the more
pronounced the pattern. Values lower than 1.0 (between 0 and 1.0) produce a less stark, more
softly blended pattern. Small Power refers to the amount of intensity applied to both large and
small details. It changes the intensity of the smaller details. A higher Small Power (1.0 or above)
causes the smaller dents to be shaded with the same degree of intensity as the larger dents so
that the surface becomes busier and the larger dents lose some of their distinction. A lower Small
Power (under .50) makes for less distinction between the large and small features.
Use very small XYZ Scale values in a Bump Map to add random pits to surfaces.

The Fractal Bumps option in previous versions of LightWave - only available for Bump Maps - was
really Fractal Noise with Contrast and Small Power set to .5.
Grid

Grid generates a grid across an objects surface. The grid is a three-dimensional grid. Therefore,
lines project into all three dimensions. Often, you want a 2D grid superimposed on an objects
surface, like graph paper. In such cases where you use the Grid texture and see unwanted portions
of the grid, try expanding the size of the Grid texture along that axis (this expands it off the surface
of the object). For example, if you map a grid onto a one-meter ball, the Texture scale of the Z axis
can cause the appearance of ripples that break up the nice graph paper look of the X and Y Texture
scale. Using a Texture scale of 0.25m, 0.25m, 1m will get the proper look.
The Line Thickness value determines the thickness of the lines in the grid pattern.

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HoneyComb

HoneyComb produces a hive of activity in the form of a honeycomb. The Texture Color is the color
of the lines. Line Thickness determines the width of the lines. Fuzzy Edge Width makes the outer
dot edges soft and faded. Unlike Grid, Honeycomb is a two-dimensional texture where axis is
important.
Marble

Marble produces fractal-like patterns that imitate marble veins. The pattern is calculated in veins
that wrap around a selected axis, just like rings wrap around the center of a tree.
Frequencies sets the level of detail produced in the pattern. The higher the value, the betterlooking the pattern becomes, but the longer it takes to render as well. (A value above 6 is not
useful here, because the variance is microscopic in size and virtually invisible.) The Turbulence
value should be a fraction (often one-half ) of the Vein Spacing value. It determines how close a
vein may come to a neighbouring vein. Vein Spacing sets the distance between veins in the marble
pattern. Vein Sharpness sets the level of blending/contrast of the pattern. The lower the value, the
more blending will occur. Higher values will produce very sharp, distinct veins.

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First select a Vein Spacing and Texture Axis that you like, then set Frequencies, Turbulence, and
Scale.
Ripples

Ripples and Ripples2 produce the appearance of fluid waves or ripples to a surface. Use small
ripples to simulate water, or large ripples to put a wave in a flag.
Wave Sources determines the number of ripple sources. The higher the value, the greater the
number of areas rippling with waves. A value of 1 will create a single ripple pattern, like that of
a solitary water droplet falling into a pond. Values higher than 16 are not recommended; they
require longer rendering time and may not add to the appearance of the texture.
Wavelength controls the distance between the ripples. The lower the value, the closer the waves
will appear to each other. Wave Speed sets the speed of the ripples.

Looping Wave Ripples

In order to loop the movement of ripples throughout the course of the animation, use this formula
to determine the proper Wave Speed: Wavelength divided by the number of frames over which
the pattern should loop equals the Wave Speed (i.e., Wavelength/number of frames to loop = Wave
Speed).

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Smoky 1, 2, and 3

Smoky 1, Smoky 2

Smoky 3

The Smoky textures use the same settings as Fractal Noise with the addition of a Turbulence
control, which lets you adjust the pattern disturbance.

Node Editor
LightWave makes accessing nodes through any Texture Editor (T button) simple by choosing Node
Editor as the type of Procedural texture.

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Gradient and slopes may be limited since there are no normals for procedural textures.

Turbulence

Turbulence combines Fractal Noise layers, each at a different scale (or frequency). It produces an
effect very similar to Fractal Noise, but will normally yield more eye-pleasing results. It also gives
better control over the range of frequencies found in the noise, from smooth to detailed, grainy
textures, due to the small scale noise that is added in. The settings are the same as those for Fractal
Noise.

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Underwater

Underwater produces the rippling pattern effect of refracted light which you would see for
instance on the bottom of a swimming pool. You can also use this texture to simulate nighttime sky
effects such as the Aurora Borealis, changes in cloud patterns, or even electrical shocks.

You can generate actual real world effects by using Layouts Caustics feature (Lights > Properties
> Global Illumination > Enable Caustics), but rendering times will be significantly greater.
Wave Sources determines the number of ripple sources. The higher the value, the greater the
number of areas rippling with waves. A value of 1 would create one ripple. Values higher than
16 are not useful. Wavelength controls the distance between the ripples. The lower the value,
the closer the waves will appear to each other. Wave Speed sets the speed of the ripples. Band
Sharpness sets the level of blending/contrast of the pattern. The lower the value, the more
blending will occur. Higher values will produce very sharp, distinct bands.

Looping Wave Ripples

In order to loop the movement of ripples throughout the course of the animation, use this formula
to determine the proper Wave Speed: Wavelength divided by the number of frames over which
the pattern should loop equals the Wave Speed (i.e., Wavelength/number of frames to loop = Wave
Speed).
Value
The Value procedural lets you create a layer of uniform value or color. You can use this to composite
layers with Alpha Channels.

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Veins

Veins produces a series of raised areas separated by canals or veins. This is great for cracked mud,
leaded glass, stone walls, leaves, and so on.
Coverage determines how much of the vein pattern covers the surface. A low value (0.0 to 0.4)
applies the vein color only to veins themselves, whereas a high value (0.5 or higher) causes the vein
color to fill in between the veins, overtaking the surface color underneath.
The patterns that display Ledge Level are shaded so that the surface appears to have raised edges.
Ledge Level shifts the position of the ledge that defines the edges of the pattern further outward
from the pattern itself, into the surface color. The values that make visible changes in these
patterns are subtle, so change them in small increments until you understand their effects well (on
the order of 0.1 at a time).
Ledge Width alters the apparent depth of the valleys formed by the ridges in the pattern. The
values that make visible changes in these patterns are subtle, so change them in small increments
until you understand their effects well (on the order of 0.1 at a time). Ledge Width affects the depth
of the veined ridges. Values just above the default setting have the most visible effect. The default
values create a ridge just along the outside of the pattern. Higher values shift the ridge further
outward from the pattern, lower values move it inward. Most useful values fall between 0.2 and 1.0.

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Wood

Wood is similar to Marble, but produces a pattern imitating the rings in a piece of wood.
Frequencies sets the level of detail produced in the pattern. The higher the value, the betterlooking the pattern becomes, but the longer it takes to render as well. (A value above 6 is not
useful here, as the variance is microscopic in size and virtually invisible.) The Turbulence value
should be a fraction (often one-half ) of the Ring Spacing value. It determines how close a wood
ring may come to a neighboring ring. Ring Spacing sets the distance between rings in the pattern.
Ring Sharpness sets the level of blending/contrast of the pattern. The lower the value, the more
blending will occur. Higher values will produce very sharp, distinct rings.

First start by selecting a Ring Spacing and Texture Axis that you like, then set Frequencies,
Turbulence, and Scale.

Additional Procedural Textures

A number of additional Procedural Textures are available; these textures are based on the noise
and fractal routines presented in the textbook Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach
by David Ebert, F. Kenton Musgrave, Darwyn Peachey, Ken Perlin, and Steve Worley (Morgan
KaufmannPublishers, 2nd Ed., July 1998, ISBN 0122287304).
Fractals are the most commonly used tool in computer graphics for adding visual complexity to
3D surfaces. Fractals create this complexity by repeating a common underlying noise pattern at
various scale sizes, and accumulating those scaled patterns into a final surface texture.
The following parameters are common to most of the following Procedural Textures:
Increment - controls the fractal dimension of the texture. When set to zero, the fractal
function looks like white noise. As the value gets larger, the fractal will become smoother.
Lacunarity - is the amount of change in the frequency of noise that occurs between each
successive iteration of the fractal calculation. As this parameter increases, the average size of
the gaps between the scaled patterns will also increase.
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Octaves - are the number of times the texture is scaled down to a smaller pattern, and added
back again to the larger pattern. Larger values add more small details to the final texture, but
also increase rendering times.
Offset - exists in all the multi-fractal procedurals (where the fractal dimension varies
throughout the texture). When set to zero, the fractal dimension will change greatly
throughout the texture. This causes the roughness of the texture to vary greatly across
the surface of the texture. Larger values cause the roughness (or smoothness) to be more
consistent across the entire surface of the texture.
Threshold - specifies a Threshold value that is used to determine whether the texture should
be displayed or not. If the Procedural Texture value is higher than Threshold, that value
modifies the surface. If the Procedural Texture value is lower than Threshold, that value does
not alter the existing surface attribute at all.
Noise Type - uses Perlin Noise as the most common and fastest noise function available in
these procedurals. The other options (Value, Gradient, Value-Gradient, Lattice Convolution
and Sparse Convolution) are different implementations of noise written by Darwyn Peachey
and described in chapter 2 of Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach, referenced
above. While these implementations may provide better quality noise, they are definitely
slower than Perlin Noise.
Coriolis

Coriolis is a texture used to simulate the shearing effect of the atmospheric flow on
earth caused by the earth spinning faster at the equator, and slower towards the north
and south poles.
Coriolis Scale scales the value calculated by the Coriolis texture. Its effect is to vary the
contrast between the clouds and the underlying surface. Smaller values create less
contrast, and larger values display a high contrast between the clouds and the surface.
Coriolis Twist is the amount of twist or rotation of the clouds from the poles to the
equator.

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Coriolis Offset is added to the value calculated by the Coriolis texture. Larger values
create denser clouds and smaller values result in fewer, thinner clouds.
Cyclone

Cyclone is a Turbulence texture with a single vortex, used to simulate cyclones and
hurricanes.
Cyclone Radius is the maximum radius of the cyclone. Outside of this radius, the clouds
will not appear twisted.
Cyclone Twist is the amount of twist or rotation of the clouds within the Cyclone Radius.
Cyclone Offset is added to the value calculated by the Cyclone texture. Larger values
create denser clouds and smaller values result in fewer, thinner clouds.
Dented

Dented is a turbulent noise function that creates crumpled dent patterns. Scale adjusts
the magnitude of the texture output.
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Power is the fractal dimension of the Dent texture. A value of 1.0 looks like crumpled
paper. 3.0 makes smaller, isolated dents on the surface.
Frequency is the frequency of the dents, affecting the detail of the pattern.
FBM Noise

FBM Noise is a typical homogeneous fractal noise function since the fractal dimension
does not vary.
Hetero Terrain

Hetero Terrain is a multi-fractal texture that is smoother at lower elevations and

progressively gets rougher as the altitude increases.

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Hybrid Multi-fractal

Hybrid Multi-fractal is another multi-fractal texture that smoothes the valleys of the
texture at all altitudes, not just at lower elevations.
Multi-fractal

A Multi-fractal is a function whose fractal dimension varies depending on the location

of the point being shaded or displaced. This is similar to FBM, except that it uses
multiplication in its inner loop computation rather than addition.

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Puffy Clouds

Puffy Clouds is a thresholded FBM noise function that creates soft, puffy cloud patterns.
Ridged Multi-fractal

Ridged Multi-fractal is a hybrid multi-fractal texture that uses a Threshold value to

create ridges in the terrain.

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Turbulent Noise

Turbulent Noise is a modified FBM texture that uses an absolute value function, adding
a turbulent effect to the texture.

Layer Type: Gradient

While Envelopes let you vary a setting based on time, a Gradient lets you vary a setting (Color,
Luminosity, etc.) based on features like height of surface bumps, or distance to another object. So,
for example, with an Envelope, you can make the Diffuse level 20% at frame 23. With a Gradient,
you can make the Diffuse level 20% if a surface is 3.23 meters from the Cow object or the slope
angle of the surface is 26.2 degrees.

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The Input Parameter determines what feature the setting varies over. Think of Gradients as filters
for the selected Input Parameter. For example, if the surface is bumpy, colors can be different
based on the height of the surface being colored if the Bump option is used. You can even use the
preceding texture layer.
Gradients use gradient ramps (the colored bar) to depict the value change. You define different
values along the bar. LightWave automatically determines the in-between values. Essentially,
the different colors along the gradient correspond to texture color/values for the related Input
Parameter. The gradient is just a colorful (and clever) way to create a graph.
The Input Parameter defines what item will dynamically control the parameter.

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Previous Layer - uses the brightness data from the immediately underlying layer.
Bump - uses the height of a surface using Layouts Default Unit on the General Options Tab of
the Preferences Panel.
Slope - changes the parameter based on the angle (in degrees) of the surface relative to the
ground (flat on Y axis).
Incidence Angle - uses the angle (in degrees) of the surface relative to the Camera.
Light Incidence - is similar to Incidence Angle, but the angle is relative to the selected light.
Use the Light pop-up menu that appears.
Local Density (HyperVoxels only) - uses the density of the HyperVoxel.
Distance to- settings change the parameter independently based on the distance from
the surface to the selected camera or object. The X, Y, and Z Distance settings measure the
distance only along the respective axis. If you select the distance to an object, an Object
Selection pop-up menu will appear.
Weight Map - uses the Weight Map selected on the Weight Map pop-up menu.
Surface Thickness - is a method of faking sub-surface scattering. IMPORTANT: The surface
must be set to double-sided and Trace Transparency needs to be activated.

Other Input Parameter options may be available depending on what feature the Gradient texture
controls.

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The Gradient Bar
Once you have determined your Input Parameter, you need to set the value of the new
texture color/value. The Gradient Bar allows you topographically set your Key values. (A Key
is characterised by three numbers: its Value, Parameter, and Alpha.) As with Envelopes, you
can create, edit, and delete keys. The Keys change the color of the Gradient and ultimately the
Parameter values.

If the parameter is a color, the bar is in color and color transitions appear from one key to the next.
If the parameter relates to numeric values, the bar appears in greyscale. The lowest set Key value is
black and the highest is white.
The Start and End fields, at the top and bottom of the Gradient Bar, respectively, set the beginning
and end of the visible area of the gradient. Whether or not these values are editable, depends on
the Input Parameter you selected; however, their default values should work for most situations.
Also, you can set keys outside this range.

To add a key:
1) Click on the Gradient Bar and hold down your LMB. A key marker that looks like an arrow will
appear. If you continue to hold the mouse button down, you can drag to refine the position
of your key.
The Parameter field will change as you drag your mouse. Note
that this value is not limited to whole numbers.

To prevent accidentally adding a new key, you can drag the key using the arrowhead.

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2) Release the mouse button to create the key.

To delete an existing key:

Click on the end of the arrow with the square.

The Current Key

The Value/Color, Alpha, and Parameter fields show the corresponding settings for the current key.
This is the key that is highlighted in the Gradient Bar. Click on a keys arrowhead to select it as the
current key. When the panel is active, you can also use your Up and Down Cursor keys to select
the preceding or next key as the current key. (Make sure that you do not also have an input field
active.)

When you edit a surface Color, the value is a color selector. All other types of textures have a
numeric input field for value.
The Parameter setting determines the current keys numerical position on the bar. Note that this
setting can have decimals. The Value/Color is the texture value or color for the current key.
The Alpha setting is the amount of opacity. Higher values are more opaque: 100% is fully opaque
and 0% is fully transparent. You can see a background checkerboard when you use Alpha settings
below 100%.

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Changing Key Values
You can change the current keys Color or Value, as the case may be, by adjusting that setting. You
see the Gradient Bar change as you adjust the setting.

To prevent a key from being changed:

Right-click on the arrowhead. It will invert, indicating the key is fixed and cannot be altered.

Right: Unlocked / Left: Locked

Changing Key Positions

You can move a key - but not past a neighbouring key - by dragging the keys arrowhead with your
mouse.

Although you can also drag the middle of the arrow, its not recommended because you can
accidentally add a new key.
You can also numerically move a key by entering a value (including a decimal if needed) into the
Parameter field. Note that you still cannot move the key past a neighbouring key.

Smoothing Between Keys

By default, the values between a key and the preceding key (next one above it on bar) are
transitions in a Spline fashion with an ease-in/ease-out transition to the preceding key. Setting the
Smoothing pop-up menu to Linear will apply a straight-line transition. The Step setting will hold
the preceding key value until the next key.

Scale and Shift

You can scale and shift the key positions by dragging up and down on the Scale Keys and Shift
Keys buttons. Similarly, you can scale and shift the key values by dragging on the Scale Values and
Shift Values buttons. Invert Keys reverses the values of the keys. This will not affect the position of
keys on the bar, however.

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Advanced Tab
The Alpha Channel option affects the contents of LightWaves Alpha Buffer. Thus, the alpha image
is saved when Saving Alpha Images is active on the Render Options Panel (Rendering > Render
Options). This option is applied on a surface-by-surface basis; each surface can have a different
setting.

Surface Opacity, the default, uses the opacity of a surface to create the corresponding alpha area.
Thus, if a surface has some level of transparency, the alpha channel information will be somewhere
between 0 and 255. If you select Unaffected by Surface, the surface has no effect on the alpha
image. When you select Constant Value, the Alpha Value field can be set to a specific number from
0 to 255. Shadow Density uses the density of shadows in creating the alpha image.
The Special Buffers function works in conjunction with certain image or pixel filters and lets you
make surface-by-surface adjustments. Essentially, the settings are arbitrary values associated with
a surface and can be used any way the filter wants. For example, the Corona image filter can use
special buffers for its Threshold Mask setting.
When you click the Special Buffers button, a dialog will appear with four input fields. The values
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you enter depend on what the filter seeks.

Use values from 0 to 1 for older filters requiring 0 to 255 integer values.
The Special Buffer 1 field relates to the first filter in the image or pixel filter list on the Processing
Tab of the Effects Panel. Special Buffer 2 relates to the second image filter, and so on. The Special
Buffer 4 field works on the fourth filter and all that follows it.
Adding a Glow Intensity amount will render a glow around the selected surface. The overall
amount and intensity of the glow are determined by the settings entered for (glow) Intensity and
Glow Radius on the Processing Tab of the Effects Panel (Window > Image Processing). The glow will
appear in the color of the surface, even if it is texture mapped.

Compatibility Menu
Scenes created before LightWave v9.0 had Surface Editor features which did not work as intended.
The features have been updated. The Compatibility menu allows you to use older scenes created
before LightWave v9.2 and match those scenes rendered in older versions of LightWave. The
Compatability menu is found in the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor.

Enable Glow must be active on the Effects Panel in order for LightWave to calculate glows around
surfaces.

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Render Outlines renders the outline of a polygon rather than its face. All of the polygons
belonging to the current surface will render with their edges appearing in the surface color.
If you apply an Image or Texture Map to the surface, the outlines will show portions of this
mapping. Use this option to surface open frameworks or the gaps around hatches. Line Size
is outline line size in pixels. Lines are drawn with the current surface color.
The Vertex Color Map pop-up sets the Vertex Color Map you wish to use. This feature colors
the object vertices.
Color Highlights - causes a surfaces own color to show through a specular highlight.
Normally, a specular highlight shows in the color of the light striking the object. For example,
a white light illuminating a red ball leaves a white specular highlight on the surface of
the ball. But with Color Highlights, the highlight appears red. A color highlight blends
the objects surface color with the color of the light source, which causes a more metallic
appearance. Reflection maps are also tinted by the surface color.
Color Filter - available when a surface has some degree of transparency. It allows the surface
color of an object to tint all of the objects seen through it. A good example is a green wine
bottle. Light shining through the bottle tints all objects seen behind it with green.
Additive Transparency - the color of an object is added to the colors of the objects visible
behind it. (Obviously, the surface must be somewhat transparent.) The surface therefore
appears brighter in color and intensity, as if it was overexposed. The brighter color will tend
ultimately toward white (255, 255, 255), because this is the brightest it can reach. Use this
control to enhance the glow of rocket flames, jet exhausts, and the like.
Diffuse Sharpness - causes a more severe shadow cutoff zone on objects rather than the
gradual falloff of light. It enhances the appearance of contrast between the lit and unlit sides
of the object. Diffuse Sharpness is usually used for very large-scale objects, like planets.
Bump Dropoff - If you have an extreme Bump or Normal map on a surface, setting Bump
Dropoff to 100% cleans up the raycast shadows on the surface. Sometimes you can have a
bump so extreme that the bump normal points opposite of the surface normal, causing it to
light up when it should be in shadow.

Left: 0 %, Right: 100%

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In production, a Bump Dropoff of 100% works well mixing displacement maps with bump/
normal maps, so the terminator wouldnt be as harsh as shown in this bump-only sphere.

Environment Tab
Reflection Options - determines what you want reflected onto the surface. You can choose
between different combinations of the backdrop (Background Image), actual ray tracing, and
an Image Map. Spherical Reflection Map causes the reflective surface to reflect the image
selected as the Reflection Map. This reflection is a spherical image that is mapped onto the
inside of an all-encompassing sphere that surrounds the scene at an infinite distance.

Image Seam Angle - determines where LightWave places the seam of the reflected image.
The 3D universe is considered a mathematical sphere, with all rendering occurring inside
this sphere. LightWave uses the Reflection Map image to wallpaper the inside surface. In this
manner, the image can be reflected off the different surfaces on objects within the scene, no
matter which angle they face.

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Unless the image you choose is seamless (i.e., it has matched edges), a visible seam appears
where its edges meet. You may or may not see this seam in the reflection, depending on
where you point the camera. If the seam is visible, you can adjust where it falls by changing
the Image Seam Angle. This setting corresponds with Heading in Layout - as if you were
standing at the center of the Layout Grid (0, 0, 0), and looking straight ahead into the
positive Z axis.
Reflection Blurring - this value allows you to add soft ray-traced reflections. The value controls
the spread of the semi-random reflection rays. This is a sensitive setting and small values are
recommended.
Refraction Options - have the same available settings but affect what is refracted through
the surface. Note that if you select Spherical Refraction Map, you will not see any objects
through transparent surfaces. If you select Ray Tracing + Spherical Map, you should see other
objects being refracted, with the Spherical Map behind them. The rays will bend and go off
until they either hit an object or the map.

If you use Ray Tracing options, you must activate the Ray Trace Reflection and/or Ray Trace
Refraction options on the Render Globals Panel (Render > Render Options). These will also take much
longer to render.

Shaders Tab
LightWave lets you use surface shaders to change surface attributes. Here you can add, remove,
and reorder shaders, as well as change their settings. To add the shader, select it from the Add
Shader pop-up menu. To access its settings, double-click on the shader in the list. Depending on
the shader, the options, if any, will either appear in their own dialog or below the shader list.

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If a shader does not appear in the pop-up menu and you think it should, you may need to add the
plugin.

BESM
BESM or Big Eyes Small Mouth is a cartoon shader. This expanded control lets you turn a surface
into the look of a cel-shaded animation, like a traditional cartoon.

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BRDF
BRDF (Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function) is really a multi-function shader. First, by
un-checking the light in the list, you can totally exclude specified lights from affecting the surface. .
BRDFs second function is to let you stack up to three specular highlights with different settings.
Multiple specular layers are important for surfaces like the car paint on a shiny red 1996 Mazda
MX-5 named Seiko, where the first layer of paint is the color red and has a less glossy specular
highlight and the top layer of paint is actually a sealer that is clear and high gloss. This will allow
you to have a low-gloss colored specular under a high-gloss white specular.
Real world surfaces like machined metals reflect light unevenly, yielding what is often called
a brushed-metal look. This is called Anisotropic Distortion, and its the shaders third function.
Compared to a smooth surface, these surfaces will have a softer and broader specular highlight.

On the left, you select which lights to affect. On the rest of the panel you set up multiple specular
highlights, and make the shape of the highlight different by applying Anisotropic Distortion. The
BRDF Specular settings work with the normal Specular surface attribute, so you must have some
Specular on the surface to see any change.
For Anisotropic Shading, you must know two directions lying in the surface. The specular reflection
will be stronger along one direction. An example is a surface that has long highlights along fine
grooves and short ones across them. With the Anisotropy and AnisotropicII reflection types, you
can set Alpha and Beta settings, which essentially determine two different angles of disturbance.
These effectively add tiny grooves to the surface that make the specular highlight imperfect - like
a micro bump.
With AnisotropicII uniquely, you can specify a UV Map to define these directions. The Alpha
parameter is essentially an angle for groove sharpness and blends the plain reflection with the
Anisotropic Reflection - 90 degrees is 0% anisotropic. Beta is the angle between the the U direction
and the maximum reflection, and so it rotates the grooves in relation to the UVs.

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There are many models for Anisotropy and two are featured in this shader. Basically, these differ in
the pitch and bank variance on a surface of the grooves.

Blotch
This shader adds blotchy color to a surface. Choose the RGB value, Center of the blotch, Radius,
and Softness. This LScript is documented in the LScript documentation as a Shader Object Agents
example.

Bumprgb
This shader converts surface normals to RGB levels which is useful for baking Bump Maps for dot3
real-time bump map pixel shading.

CCTV
In short, CCTV is a shader that paints a view of the scene on a surface. With CCTV you can:
Create a closed-circuit TV display
Simulate digital camera displays
Render a view through binoculars and magnifying scopes
Create holographic instances

CCTV usage
When CCTV is used to shade a point on a surface, it traces a ray from a given camera (which need
not be the current render camera) into the scene. Well call this camera the CCTV camera. The exact
starting position and direction of the ray relative to the CCTV camera is determined by the settings
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for the CCTV shader.
The CCTV settings should be set in Layout. CCTV may be added and set up in Modeler, but as there
are no cameras in Modeler the CCTV camera can only be set in Layout.
Once added to a surface, parameters specifying the CCTV camera to use, how to map the CCTV
view onto the surface, and how to manipulate the color are given.
Camera - The Camera settings has a drop-down list of all the cameras in the scene. Select
the camera which you wish to become the CCTV camera. Note that only camera objects are
listed. When set to none, CCTV is effectively disabled.

Type - Sets the CCTV type to use. Select one of:

TV
Teleport
Holo
The following two options are only available when the type is set to TV. Fit to:
None
Object Y-Scale
Object X-Scale
Scales the CCTV image to fix the scale of the given object axis. If set to None, the scaling
is determined only by the Scale setting.
Scale - Sets a manual scale factor in conjunction with Fit to. If Fit to is set to Object Y- or
X-scale, this scale multiplies the scaling determined by that setting.

TV

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The TV type paints the view from the CCTV camera onto the XY plane of the object to which the
surface is applied.
For the TV type the mapping from a spot on the surface to a CCTV camera ray is as follows. The X
and Y coordinates of the spot are computed relative to the objects (possibly scaled) coordinate
system. These coordinates are then reinterpreted to mean a point on the CCTV cameras image
plane. A ray is then shot from the CCTV camera through that point on the CCTV camera image
plane.

Teleport

With Teleport, the ray from the render camera to point on the surface being shaded is teleported
to come from the CCTV camera. The effect is as if the view from the CCTV camera is projected
through the render camera.
Teleport is done by finding the direction of the ray from the spot being shaded on the surface to
the render camera, relative to the render camera coordinate system. The ray from the CCTV camera
will then be set to have the same direction relative to the CCTV camera.

Holo

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Using the Holo type causes the scene around the CCTV camera to appear like a hologram on the
surface. This could be used for instancing.
The Holo type figures out the direction of the ray hitting the surface and the position of the spot
being hit, relative to the objects coordinate system. This direction and position is then taken to be
a direction and position relative to the CCTV camera. It is from this position and direction that a ray
is shot into the scene.

CCTV scaling and fitting

CCTV is sensitive to the scale of the object being shaded. Double the size of the object by a Size or
Stretch command in Layout, and the image that CCTV draws on the surface will double in size as
well.
For the TV type it is additionally possible to set whether to scale the image to be as large as the
objects X or Y scale.
CCTV coloring - CCTV can apply color to the surface in two ways. First, it can make the new
color the base color of the surface. This is the color of the surface before lighting is applied.
The second way is to replace the color after lighting. Lighting does not affect this color. It can
be used to give the impression of an image being emitted like from a television, as opposed
to looking like a photo stuck on the surface.
Televisions usually have brightness, contrast, and saturation controls. So does CCTV. To make
a black & white TV, just turn down the saturation.
Color application - What to do with the color that the CCTV camera applies to the surface is
controlled by these settings.
Background coloring - This affects what happens when a ray from the CCTV camera does not
hit anything in the scene. When set to Surface color, the surface color remains unchanged
from what youd get if CCTV was turned off. When Transparent background is used, the
surface is set to be completely transparent. This is particularly useful in combination with
Holo. The Background color setting uses the color that the ray from the CCTV camera sees.
Color method - When set to Base, CCTV will affect the base color of the surface. This is the
color before other shadings and lighting. When set to Replace, the color set by CCTV is the
final color of the surface.
Color percent - Specifies how much CCTV contributes to the surface color.
Color controls - CCTV can alter the colors it applies to the surface using controls similar to a
regular television set.
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Brightness - Controls the brightness. 100% is normal, less moves the color towards
black, more towards white.
Contrast - Controls the color contrast. 100% is normal, less washes out the colors, more
makes the differences in color sharper.
Saturation - Controls the color saturation. 100% is normal, less changes the colors
towards black & white, more makes the colors appear brighter.

Setting CCTV such that it views the polygon it is shading does not show the polygon. This is a
known limitation in LightWave3D where shaders cant see themselves when raytracing.

Edge_Transparency
The Edge Transparency shader affects the degree of clarity and definition for the polygon edges
belonging to a transparent object. Opaque creates an adjustable edge. Normal creates a solid
edge. Transparent causes the edges of the object to blend into its surroundings.

Edge Threshold is available for Opaque or Transparent Transparency settings only. It determines
the amount of blending between the surface color and the transparent edge of the object surface.
This transition zone may be wide and softly blended over the face of the surface, or it may be sharp
and seen as a thinner line. Edge_Threshold is normally set at 1.0. Use lower values for a sharper
transition. Use higher values for a softer transition.

When you fine-tune for glass-like objects, we recommend you use Limited Region (Camera
Properties) to render a small portion of the image at full resolution. Test rendering at lower resolutions
may cause jaggy edges that wont be visible at your higher final resolution.

Fast Fresnel
In the real world, the angle between the viewer and a surface affects the amount of light that
is reflected and refracted. For example, a lake is often nearly clear close to the viewer and gets
gradually more reflective as the viewer moves farther away.
The Fast Fresnel shader works in combination with the Basic Surface parameters that you set and
then modifies those settings based on viewing angles and the Fast Fresnel parameters.

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The glancing angle is measured from the surface normal, thus 0 degrees is any surface normal
that points directly at the camera and 90 degrees refers to any normal that is perpendicular to the
camera.

The regular surface value always occurs looking directly at the surface. However, you can adjust
the point when the value begins to migrate towards the Fast Fresnel settings using the Minimum
Glancing Angle. At a 90-degree angle, the attribute becomes equal to the value set on the Fast
Fresnel Panel. Essentially, the regular Surface settings change to the Fast Fresnel settings as the
angle of incidence goes from the Minimum Glancing Angle to 90 degrees. (Although, the Minimum
Glancing Angle can be 0 to 89 degrees, youll usually want this at or near 0 to create a wide range
for the effect.)
Higher glancing angles cause parameters that default to 100, like Reflectivity, to gain intensity
while they cause parameters that default to 0, like Transparency, to naturally lose intensity.

Halftone
In print, halftone screens are made up of dots that control how much ink is deposited at a specific
location. Varying their size and proximities creates the illusion of variations of continuous color.

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The Spacing and Variation settings set the spacing of the pattern and a percentage that you can
use to vary it (for randomness), respectively. You can choose different pattern shapes with the Spot
Type pop-up menu. The Screen Angle value lets you change the angle of the pattern from
the true horizontal.
If you specify a UV Map, the shader determines a direction in the surface to align the lines or the
crosshatching. Halftone Shader is calculated like a Cubic texture, if no UV Map is specified.

LW_HyperVoxels_Shader
This surface shader allows object surfaces to receive shadows from HyperVoxels, as well as reflect
and refract them. If you elect to have the surface receive HyperVoxel shadows, you have the option
of using the objects Shadow settings (i.e., Self-, Cast-, Receive Shadow (Object Panel)).
Shadow Strength makes shadows more or less opaque. The Fast Shadows Render Mode does not
account for hypertextures in the shadows. Accurate renders the shadows including the effect of
hypertextures. To use the Reflect and Refract options, the surface must be reflective or transparent;
however, the Reflection Option (Surface Panel) setting is not considered.

Interference
The Interference shader adds the sort of distortion seen on an oil slick. This interference pattern
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is caused by the light reflecting between two layers of various thickness. In the case of an oil slick,
light reflects between the water and the oil. This often appears rainbow-like, where you can see all
spectral colors swirling about. This shader adds all spectral colors in a banding fashion and uses
incidence angles to vary which colors are visible.

Spectrum Scale determines how far through the color spectrum the shader will travel across the
slope of the surface. This is dependent on the Min and Max Angle Range settings. For example, the
default settings of Spectrum Scale=100%, Min=42, and Max=50 tell the shader to travel through
the entire spectrum (100%) as the angle of incidence changes from 42 degrees to 50 degrees, or a
delta of 8 degrees. The spectral range colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
If you change only the Spectrum Scale to 50%, the surface travels only through red, orange, yellow,
and green, across the same angle.
Activating the Single Band option restricts the spectral change to a single ring between the Min
and Max angles. In effect, this keeps the texture from repeating across the entire surface.
The Add Color Mode adds the Color values of the interference pattern to the original surface
colors. If a pixel was originally shaded at 100, 100, 100, and the interference color for that pixel
was to be 0, 0, 100, the resulting pixel value will be 100, 100, 200. The Multiply option multiplies
the original pixel values by a number between 0 and 1. If the original pixel value was 255, it is
multiplied by one. If it was 0, the new pixel value is multiplied by zero. Intermediate values are
altered on a sliding scale.
The Blend Color Mode blends the pattern with the original surface attributes using the percentage
field. At 50%, the default, the interference pattern is seen on top of the original surface with a
strength 50% of its own Color values.

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RealFresnel
The RealFresnel shader is similar to Fast Fresnel, but based on real physics and thus features few
user-definable controls. It is essentially set up to create a transparent item by calculating Falloff for
the Transparency value with the Fresnel equation.

Specular Polarization and Reflective Polarization are the values for those surface attributes that will
be used when the camera is perpendicular to the surface.
RealFresnel is more accurate than FastFresnel, but will probably require more time and effort to
find settings that will work for your scene.

LScript
This shader allows you to add an lscript to a surface.

LScript/RT
This shader allows you to add a compiled lscript to a surface.

LW_Rust
LW_Rust is a legacy shader that evaluates the accessibility of polygons to be shaded.
This is accomplished by determining when a defined polygon axis intersects (i.e., hits) another
polygon within a defined radius. The direction is set by the mode you use. You can use this plugin
to add rust as well as dust to objects.

This function can be created with the use of Gradients in the Texture Editor. This shader is here to
give you the ability to render old LightWave scenes.

LW_Snow
LW_Snow is a legacy surface shader which controls the surface and shading based on the slope of
the geometry. This provides the ability to have a white color on areas creating a snow effect.
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This function can be created with the use of Gradients in the Texture Editor. This shader is here to
give you the ability to render old LightWave scenes.

LW_Water
LW_Water is a legacy shader that lets you quickly add realistic water surfacing.

This function can be created with the use of Gradients in the Texture Editor. This shader is here to
give you the ability to render old LightWave scenes.

Stress Map

Stress Map makes more realistic, dynamic wrinkles. It does this by altering the degree of
bumpmapping used based on the amount of local polygon distortion. So for example, when an
arm is bent, wrinkles applied as a bumpmap become more pronounced around the joint, where
the mesh is being squeezed. Or, if the mesh is stretched the wrinkles will disappear.

Stress Map can also be used to alter the color of a surface based on how much a polygon has
expanded or shrunk due to some distortion. This could be used to simulate the whitening of the
skin as it is stretched, or to indicate areas where the mesh is being stressed.
Stress Map works by modifying the degree of bumpmapping or surface color based on how much
the mesh is stretched or shrunk around the point being shaded. The distortions may be due to
scaling in Layout, the action of Bones, or the application of a morph map for example.
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Stress Map works in combination with the surfaces bump mapping setting. Think of the bump
map as indicating the potential for wrinkles to form. Stress Map then realises that potential to
varying degrees based on how much polygons of the mesh around the point being shaded have
grown or shrunk. The distortion is computed by comparing the undistorted mesh with the mesh
after the application of scaling, bones, morph maps, etc.
Skin Area - The skin area is the assumed area of the skin when wrinkles are included. This is
generally set no smaller than the area of the undistorted mesh. The skin area is a measure of
local skin surface area. It may vary over the mesh.
The value set for Skin Area should be considered in combination with the Skin Area Scale
setting.
Base polygon area - Sets the Skin Area equal to the area of the polygons of the undistorted
mesh.
Custom... - Some constant value, envelope, or texture can be used.
Skin Area Scale - The value obtained from the Skin Area setting is multiplied by the Skin Area
Scale to get the skin area that is used in the computations.
By setting the Skin Area to Base polygon area, Skin Area Scale can be used to easily make the
skin slightly larger than the polygon mesh area. Skin Area Scale can also be used to quickly
tweak the skin area to give a satisfactory amount of apparent skin.
Stress Map Scale - Scales how deep wrinkles appear to be. This is usually kept at 1.0, but
other values can be used to make wrinkles more or less pronounced.
Wrinkle Factor - When bumpmapping, the surface normal is perturbed by a small bump
vector to give the appearance of bumps. The Wrinkle Factor scales this bump vector. It is this
setting that causes wrinkles and bumps to become more or less pronounced as a function of
surface distortion.
When set to 0, you wont see any bump mapping. When set to 1, the result is the same as the
original bump mapping. Wrinkle Factor is typically set to be a function of Stress Map, either
directly or through a texture gradient.
Stress Map - Stress Map is a value that represents by how much bumps should be
scaled. Mathematically it is defined as:
If the scaled skin area is equal to the distorted polygon area, Stress Map is equal to zero
(the skin is perfectly taut). It increases as the skin area increases or the polygons are
made smaller.
Clipped Stress Map - The Stress Map value can become less than zero when the distorted
polygon area is larger than the scaled skin area. This is somewhat unrealistic as it
implies that the skin is stretched beyond breaking point.

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Clipped Stress Map is equal to Stress Map, but limited to a value no smaller than zero.
No Wrinkles - Sets the wrinkle factor equal to zero. Handy if you want to use Stress Map
only to change the skin color.
Stress Color - The color of the skin. It it mixed with the surface color according to the
Stress Opacity setting.
Stress Opacity - Skin Opacity determines how much of the color obtained from the Skin
Color setting to use in the mix with the surface color.
When set to 0, none of the stress color is used. When set to 100%, the stress color is
used exclusively. 50% would result in an even mix of surface and skin color.

Super Cel Shader

Super Cel Shader alters the shading algorithm to make large bands of solid color across a surface
- like a cartoon - rather than a smooth gradient between light and dark areas. This shader should
be used with Silhouette Edges, Unshared Edges, Sharp Creases, and Surface Borders (Object
Properties Panel, Edges Tab).

Defining Color Zones

Super Cel Shader has four possible color zones (1 through 4). An areas amount of diffuseness
(i.e., brightness) determines how many zones the surface is broken down into. The zones go from
darker to lighter, from 1 to 4, respectively. Essentially the Min and Max settings define the color
zones.
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Min and Max values should range from 0 to 100% and must increase progressively. For example,
the Zone 3 Diffuse: Min must be higher than or equal to the Zone 2 Diffuse: Max. If the Min value is
the same as the lower zones Max, a hard edge is created between the zones. Separating the values
will smooth the color transition.
The default settings for the panel disable Zone 1 by making the Zone 1 Diffuse: Max value equal
to zero. Note that the Zone 1s diffuse minimum is always zero and Zone 4s diffuse maximum is
always 100% - there are no input fields for these.
Notice the 5% difference between the Zone 2 Diffuse: Max and the Zone 3 Diffuse: Min values,
creating a slight smoothing between the color transition.

Brightness
The Brightness settings control how bright the corresponding zone will be. These settings are
totally independent; however, in most cases, you want them to increase progressively. Values
should range from 0 (black) to 100% (brightest), although higher settings are possible.

Colored Lights
Activating the Use Light Colors option will tint the surface with the light color. Normally, the
normal Surface Color attribute determines the surfaces color.

Specular Highlights
If Specular Highlights is not active, the Specular Highlights of the surface appear normal (i.e., as
without SuperCelShader). Activating this option results in cartoony-looking Specular Highlights.
The Min and Max Specular settings define which part of the Specular Highlight to show. A value
of 0% equates to its darkest part and 100% equates to its brightest part - this range can often be
hard to see in a normal Specular Highlight because they are naturally bright. Making the Min and
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Max values the same creates a hard edge to the highlight, while separating the values creates a
smoother transition. The higher the Min value, the smaller the Specular Highlight will be.
Brightness controls how bright you want the overall highlight to be. Saturation determines how
much of the surface color you want to saturate the highlight.
In some cases, you want to soften the edges of cel-shaded surfaces to avoid the harshness that can
sometimes occur. Activating the Bumped Edges option makes the edges soft and fuzzy. This has
no direct effect on the shading of the zones, other than near the edges where the surface normal is
angled toward 90 degrees from the camera - like the edges of the ball in the preview window.
Limit basically defines the minimum angle - of the surface normal relative to the camera - to be
affected. 100% is a surface normal pointing at the camera and 0% is perpendicular to the camera.
As Limit is set towards 100%, more edges are affected. Strength determines how much to affect the
edges. Values greater than 100% begin to eat away the edges.

Surface Baker
The Surface Baker surface shader allows the baking of lights, shadows, textures, and so on. You
can save this information to an image to UV Map back onto the object, or you can apply the
information directly to the objects vertices. After you use Baker, you can see complex textures in
real-time in your viewports!

If the surface has sharp creases or is not smooth, you may not want to interpolate across polygon
boundaries. Uncheck Continuous Map: this essentially turns off polygon Smoothing and the map
will change sharply at each vertex. You might, for example, keep this option off if you were baking
a room and did not want to smooth between the walls.
Bake Entire Object is a time-saving option that lets you add Baker to a single surface and create its
results for all of the objects surfaces.
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You can independently choose to bake in color, diffuse shading (e.g., bumps and diffuse textures),
illumination (all the lighting from the scene, including shadows, projection images, even radiosity
and caustics), as well as other shaders in the surface baking computation.
Baking the illumination takes the lighting environment into consideration for the diffuse reflection.
If Bake Illumination is off, the surface is calculated in an environment without lights and 100%
white ambient color. If it is the only option on, then you bake only the light intensities that reach
the surface and discard the Surface settings.

When baking surface shaders, Baker can be anywhere in the shader list. It does not need to be at
the top or bottom.

Baking Tips
Due to the complexity of the computations, only polygon faces with three or four vertices can be
baked. Other faces are ignored (tripling your polygons will ensure you meet this requirement).
Moreover, some portion of the surface you are baking must be visible to the camera at the time of
rendering. Only some portion of the surface needs to be visible. (If the surface is not visible, the
plugin does not get executed during the render.)
You cannot bake elements that depend on the relative position of the camera and the lights, like
incidence angle gradients, transparency, refractions, and reflections. These will not bake correctly.
However, you may use the incidence angle from a light as the Input Parameter for gradients (but
not the incidence angle from the camera).

Image Mode
With the Image Mode (Bake To pop-up menu), each polygon is painted onto the final image based
on its UV coordinates. Once Baker creates the full image, you simply UV Map it onto the surface, as
you would normally. With the proper UV Map, the surface is seamless.
The key to pulling off this effect is starting with a good UV Map. If the map cannot acceptably line
up the UVs with the appropriate parts of the image, you will get unacceptable results.
The Image Resolution (Image Mode) sets the pixel width and height of the image to be created.
Use the Image Base Name button to navigate to a directory to save your image files. Enter a base
filename. A frame counter and format extension will be added automatically. Because the frame
counter will be incremented, you can save an image sequence of your surface.
If you choose an Image Type that supports alpha channel, the Wireframe view of the mesh is saved
to the alpha channel.

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There are options at the bottom of the panel to toggle Antialiasing and Shading Noise Reduction
algorithms on or off. If View Image is checked, baked images will be displayed after rendering.

Object Mode
With the Object Mode (Bake To pop-up menu), the surface is sampled at each vertex and assigned
to a vertex-shading V Map called a Vertex Color Map. Essentially, color information is stored
with the points and thus becomes part of the object. To use this map on the surface, go to the
Advanced Tab and select it from the Vertex Color Map pop-up menu. Set the blending percentage
in the Vertex Coloring field.
The surface area between each vertex is interpolated, which obviously means the result can be
only an approximation of the original surface. A higher density of points (i.e., vertices) in the
surface will increase accuracy.

Since the Object Mode samples only at each vertex, it computes much faster than the Image
Mode.

Baking to a Vertex Color Map saves RGBA data, using floating point values for RGB, not limited
to 1. The Alpha value is 1.0. Baking to an image can also save RGBA data, using floating point values
for RGB, not limited to 1. However, the Alpha Channel is saved only if the file format supports it and the
Wireframe is saved in the Alpha Channel.

To use Baker:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)

If you plan to use the Image Mode, you must first create a UV Map in Modeler.
In Layout, add the Baker surface shader to the target surface.
Select the surface attributes you want to bake in.
Select the Bake To mode.
Set the Vertex Color Map name (VMap Name) or Image File name, depending on mode used.
Close the panel.
Render a frame (F9).
Remove the Baker shader from the surface or deactivate it.

Instant Radiosity
You can use Baker and radiosity to compute an Accessibility Map. An Accessibility Map shows how
accessible a point is on the surface, which lets you create dirt, weathering, or radiosity lighting
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effects. Surfaces are normally darker in grooves and creases, not only because less light reaches
these areas, but also because dirt has a tendency to accumulate there.

Surf Mixer
Surf Mixer is a shader that allows you to take the surface that you have applied this shader to, and
mix another surface in the scene with that surface.

Thin Film
Similar in effect to Interference, the Thin Film shader also changes the color spectrum based
on the surfaces angle to the camera. It can be used for effects like an oil film on water. Primary
Wavelength is the color in the spectrum that the shader will use as its base color. You may either
enter the wavelength value or simply click on a color in the spectrum. Angle Variation is the angle
at which the colors will start to shift.

When Color Mixing is set to Add, it adds the color values of the interference pattern to the original
surface colors. If a pixel was originally shaded at 100, 100, 100, and the interference color for
that pixel was to be 0, 0, 100, the resulting pixel value will be 100, 100, 200. The Multiply option
multiplies the original pixel values by a number between 0 and 1. If the original pixel value was
255, it is multiplied by one. If it was 0, the new pixel value is multiplied by zero. Intermediate values
are altered on a sliding scale.
When Color Mixing is set to Blend, it blends the pattern with the original surface attributes using
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the percentage field. At 50%, the default, the interference pattern is seen on top of the original
surface with a strength of 50% of its own color values.

Z Shader
Z Shader lets you vary the values of certain surface attributes over a specified distance from the
camera.

Define the distance from the camera range using the Min and Max fields. Activate the attribute you
want to vary by selecting its button. Enter the values for the minimum and maximum distances in
the fields provided. In-between values will be interpolated.

Normal Color
This shader varies the surface color according to the angle of the polygons surface normal.

Pulse
This shader is an lscript application that cycles the luminosity and diffusion (inversely) of a surface
so that the surface appears to pulse.

Steamy_Shader
This surface shader will allow the surface to which it is applied to reflect and refract selected
Steamer items. You can also make the surface receive shadows from Steamer objects. The Accurate
Render Mode will yield better looking results at the expense of rendering time.

Hypervoxels replaced Steamer in newer versions of LightWave. This shader is needed for older
scene files that have Steamer applied to them.

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Weave
This shader puts a Bump Map on the surface. The Options Panel has input for the Width, Level, and
Size of the map.

Zor
This shader varies the opacity of your surface on the Z-axis. To use Zor, add two Null objects and
name the Zmin and Zmax. Activate the Zor plugin for the surface of some object in the scene.
Place Zmin at the edge of the surface nearest the camera and Zmax at the furthest edge. When
the frame is rendered, the edge nearest the camera is completely transparent; the furthest edge is
completely opaque.

You can place Zmin and Zmax anywhere in the scene and even animate them; however, Zmin
should always be closer to the camera than Zmax. Zor surfaces closer to the camera than Zmin will
be transparent, everything further than Zmax will be opaque.

gMIL
This is a surface shader for LightWave that simulates global illumination, based on the backdrop
on a surface by surface basis. It adds color or illumination to the surfaces normal shading received
by scene lights. The shadow it receives from other objects is calculated by sampling an imaginary
lighting sphere around your scene, either random or ordered. Objects that cast shadow on the
(gMil) surface can optionally occlude Diffuse and/or Specular lighting and reflection, this either in a
additive (ON) or negative (INV) fashion.

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By using gMil in combination with BRDF you can put up a relation between your scene lighting
(also put some ambient lighting) and global illumination to change the shadow appearance.

gMil Settings:

Color Add - Adds color from the backdrop.

Luminous Add - Adds some luminosity (brightness).
Falloff - Doubles the shading for the diffusion/darkens the shadows.
Sample Rate - Quality level (impacts render times).
Sample Style - Changes the type of shadow from dithered noise to a smooth smudge-like
noise.
Occlusion - Lets you turn on/off each attribute affected by gMil.

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Chapter 29 Image Editor

LightWave 2015

Image Editor
Image Editor
LightWaves Image Editor is far more than a simple location to load up images or sequences
of images to apply to your models. Of course, you can use it for that, but you can also edit the
attributes for those images directly in the Image Editor without altering the original file, and you
can set image sequence start and end frames within it.

Getting to Image Editor

Although you can hit F6 to call up the Image Editor any time you like, sometimes its nice to call it
up with an image you are currently using, so that you can tweak for your particular needs. Any time
that a window needs an image - particularly the Texture Editor - you will find an Edit Image button
beneath the thumbnail of the image youve chosen.

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2015

Image Editor Sorting and Filtering

The Image Editor now has the ability to filter images from a list. This operation is live in the sense
that as you type the filtering is carried out immediately. You can also choose to sort your image list
in a variety of ways to best suit your needs (Alphabetical, Date, Type, Size, Bit Depth, etc.).

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You can Collapse and Expand the Image Editor so that it takes up less screen real estate when you dont need it by clicking on the arrow
that weve highlighted.

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Using the Image Editor

To load a new image or animation, or image sequence, press the Load button. To replace an
image youve loaded, perhaps in error, press the Replace button. The Clone button is a drop down,
because it has two different abilities. The first - Instance - copies the image, but allows you to work
on with different settings in the Editing and Processing Tabs, almost as though it were a new image.
Any changes you make to the Instance will not be reflected in the original image, however changes
you make to the Original image will be reflected in all instances. If you are using an animation or an
image sequence, any instances will have the same in and out points.
The second - Duplicate - can only be used on image sequences and simply copies the images. Each
is treated as a completely separate sequence and changes made to the original sequence will not
affect a duplicated sequence.
To delete an image, image sequence or animation, simply select it in the list on the left-hand side
of the window and hit the Del key on the keyboard. You can also do it by clicking the right mouse
button over the image in the list that you wish to remove.

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The image preview window acts as a reference for you to see the effects you are having on your
pictures when using the editing or processing functions. All edits are carried out on this 24-bit
preview so that they can be done as close to real-time as possible, rather than working on the
full image, scaling it down to the preview size and redisplaying it. Double clicking on the preview
image will open the Image Viewer containing the image or frame with all processing and editing
done. A large image and a great number of operations to perform on it may cause a delay in
opening the Image Viewer.
The three buttons under the Information Panel give you options on how frequently you wish the
preview image to update when a change is made. Auto updates the image when any change is
finished and the mouse button released. Real updates the preview image in real-time, while you
are making changes and Man means that any image changes are only performed manually, by
clicking the left mouse button on the preview image.
The Use Layout Time button and the slider underneath the preview image are intimately linked.
If you are using an image sequence or an animation you can use this slider to scrub through it.
Alternatively, click the Use Layout Time button and you can use Layouts own timeline to scrub
through your animation.

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MIP maps are only used to soften maps. You can control the exact amount of softening by editing
the MIP Strength for the map: 1.0 is fully sharp, 2.0 is 2x filtering, 3.0 is 3x, and so on. This change
presumes that all texture map anti-aliasing will be performed with pixel sampling. One major
benefit of this change is that maps can now be softened when seen by reflection and refraction
rays.
A toggle for using Classic mipmap handling or the new Soft mipmap option has been added to
the Image Editor. For new scenes the default is Soft. Loading any scene that does not have Soft
specified in the scene will use the Classic mode.

2015

Mipmapping Improvements

Mipmapping is an automated way of create image maps at varying resolutions optimized to suit
the size of an object in a rendered image. In LightWave 2015 you can now globally enable or
disable mipmapping in Render Globals. Turning it on means that textures, especially ones with a
lot of detail, will be better resized to suit the render. Turning it off usually means sharper texture
images, but with an increased risk of sizzling during animation unless additional samples are used
in Camera Properties.

Source Tab
The Image Type pop-up menu displays the type for the currently selected image. Generally, this
setting is auto-detected when you load the file. However, you can specify a single image in a
sequence of images by leaving its Image Type to Still and when you load a frame in a sequence
that you want to use, dont forget to change the Image Type from Still to Sequence. Animation
is used if you load an animation into the Image Editor and Reference is a clone of an image, as
discussed above.

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To be able to load a single image and tell LightWave that it is a sequence, you need to have a series
of numbered files with the same filename. For instance, this is a valid sequence:
Ayslinn0001.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0003.flx and so on.
A sequence can be missing some individual frames, like so:
Ayslinn0001.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0007.flx, Ayslinn0008.flx
This sequence has frames 0003-0006 missing. When this is the case, LightWave will use the last
frame it can to fill the gap. In other words, the sequence will be like so:
Ayslinn0001.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx, Ayslinn0002.flx,
Ayslinn0007.flx, Ayslinn0008.flx

Alpha Channel
If you are using images with embedded Alpha Channels, like some TIFFs, TGAs and Photoshop
format images, you may wish to disable the Alpha Channel, otherwise, you may get unwanted
effects since LightWaves OpenGL doesnt take embedded Alpha Channels into account. If you only
wish to use the Alpha element of a picture, for a Transparency Map for instance, use the
Alpha Only setting.

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Interlace
If you are using video grabs as still images, or a sequence, you may wish to use a field interlace.
You have two choices, Even First or Odd First and which one you choose depends on your source
material, but you will certainly know when you render if youve chosen the wrong one. If you are
using images from almost any other source, you can leave Interlace to Off.

Sequence Digits
When you load a sequence of images, LightWave automatically tries to ascertain the way the
sequence is numbered by comparing files. You can override the number of digits used for a
sequence if LightWave is getting confused.

Frame Rate
Frame Rate controls the incrementing of an image sequence with respect to the scenes Frame Per
Second setting on Layouts General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel. So, if you set this to, say,
15 and your scene Frame Per Second is 30, the image sequence will increment every two frames.

Image Sequence Settings

The First Frame and Last Frame settings display which files (or frames for an animation file) are
treated as an image sequence in LightWave. This is computed when you load an animation
file or switch the Image Type pop-up menu to Sequence (after loading a single image from
the sequence), but can be set manually. However, its best not to use these fields to trim your
animation to fit your needs. Instead use the In and Out points discussed next.
The Start Frame entry determines on which frame in Layout your sequence will start. Use the In
and Out sliders to determine how much of your animation you want to play back in Layout. The
Pre Behavior and Post Behavior drop down menus determine what Layout should do when an
animation is not as long as the frame count in your scene.

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Editing Tab
You can independently adjust (and envelope) various image parameters for the selected image on
the Editing Tab if you want the images altered before LightWave uses them.

These image operations do not affect the actual file on your hard drive, only the image used
inside LightWave itself. If you wish to save your changes to an image, double click on the preview to
open the Image Viewer and save the transformed image there in the format of your choice.

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Processing Tab
Access this tab to add image-processing filters. You may use any of the non-post-processing filters
in the filter list. Ones that can only be used in the rendering process will inform you of the fact.
Image filters added here will not update the preview window interactively unless the Animate
Filters option is activated.

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Chapter 30 Node Editor

LightWave 2015

Node Editor Interface and Usage

Introduction
This chapter is divided into two sections. First an overview of the Graphical User Interface (GUI)
and some of the conventions used when working with nodes in the Node Editor. In the second
section we will discuss each node individually and in detail in reference guide format for easy lookup of any nodes function, purpose and the various inputs and outputs associated with each.
The node editor is an alternative and superior way of shading and texturing the geometry created
in the modeling process. Node based editing systems such as commonly found in many high end
3D computer graphic applications, have established themselves as an industry standard tool for
shading and texturing. The Node Editor in LightWave 3D is superior to many others combining
the ease of use associated with LightWave 3D with the power and flexibility required by high
end industry professionals. As we will see, it is easy enough for a beginner to begin shading and
texturing objects within just a few minutes and powerful enough for advanced users to design
their own custom shaders and textures either by constructing special purpose node networks in
the user workspace area or by using the LightWave 3D SDK that is offered free from NewTek Inc.
The Node Editor currently exists in three different places throughout the LightWave 3D working
environment. Each environmental instance of the Node Editor is identical in operation and
technique except for one key aspect - the Destination node, sometimes also referred to as the
Root node.
There is always only one destination node for any attribute (volumetric lighting, vertex
deformation, or shading and texturing) that nodes are applied to. Here are the three locations and
an example of what each of the Destination nodes look like.
Displacement Destination Node

This will be the Destination node if the Node Editor is opened via the Edit Nodes button
found in the Object Properties panel under the Deform tab (Accessed by pressing [O], [p] ).

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Light Destination Node

This Destination node will be present if the Node Editor is opened by clicking the Edit Nodes
button located in the Volumetric Options panel contained in the Light Properties panels
Basic tab (Accessed by pressing [L], [P] ).

2015

Surface Destination Node

This is the Destination node you will be using if you open the Node Editor by clicking on the
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Edit Nodes button found in the Surface Editor panel [F5]. New to 2015 is the Clip Map scalar
input that can be used with a monochrome image or procedural in the same way that clip
maps can be used in the Surface Editor or Object Properties panels.
Input Node

The Input Node is always present in a node editor, much like the Surface output node is in
the Surface Editors Node Editor. It does not have to be used, but contains many frequentlyrequired nodal inputs, much like the Spot Info node. There is an Input node in many of
LightWaves node editors, shown are Surfacing, Nodal Motion, Volumetric Light, Texture Editor
and Object Displacement. The Surface Editor Input node contains four new outputs over
Spot Info - ScreenX, ScreenY, Polygon Index and Thread Index. The first two report screen coordinates, Polygon Index and Thread Index
The Surface Editors Input node consists of the following outputs:
Screen X (Integer) - The spots X pixel number.
Screen Y (integer) - The spots Y pixel number.
Object Spot (Vector) - The Object Spot is the spot being evaluated in object coordinates
X, Y, Z.
World Spot (Vector) - World Spot is the spot being evaluated in world coordinates X, Y, Z.
Geometric Normal (Vector) - The Geometric Normal is the normal for the flat-shaded
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polygon under the current spot of evaluation.

Normal (Vector) - The Normal is the normal for smooth, bump-mapped, shaded
polygons under the current spot of evaluation.
Smoothed Normal (Vector) - The Smoothed Normal is the normal information for a
smooth-shaded polygon under the current spot of evaluation.
Ray source (Vector) - Ray source is the X, Y, Z coordinate position of the ray source being
evaluated.
Ray Direction (Vector) - A vector showing in what direction the ray is tracing.
Ray length (Scalar) - Ray length is the length of the ray from the source to the spot
under evaluation.
Spot size (Scalar) - Spot size is the size of the spot currently being evaluated output as a
scalar.
Incidence (Type: Scalar) - Incidence is the angle between the source evaluation ray and
the normal.
Bounces (Integer) - Refers to the number of ray bounces so far.
Polygon Index (Integer) - returns the polygon number as reported by Modeler for nonsubD objects
Incoming Eta (Scalar) - Incoming ETA or Incoming Refraction Index. ETA is the name of
the Greek letter commonly used in 3D graphics to specify refraction Index. When the
Greek character eta is unavailable, the letter n is often used to represent the refractive
index in many online discussions and examples.
Thread Index (Integer) - returns the processor thread number used for a particular spot.
In an 8-core processor this would be a number between 0-7.
Polygon Side (Integer) Preview (Integer) - A test for whether the node flow is being evaluated in any of the
preview contexts in LightWave, for example the Node Editor / Surface Editor preview
spheres and VIPER (not to be confused with VPR).
If the output is true (1) the node flow is being evaluated in a preview context
somewhere in LightWaves interface. If its false (0) it is being used by regular
rendering.

This output has a very specific use, most users probably wont ever need this. However,
one good example of where you might use this output is when you have a particularly
complex node flow that can slow down the generation of previews. You could test
for this case and use the Logic node to lower the quality of any settings in nodes that
might be slower to calculate.
Shadow Ray (Integer) - Shadow Ray means the surface is being evaluated by a shadow
ray. Although this output is an integer it only provides the integers 1 or 0.
Sampled Ray (Integer) - Sampled Ray means the ray originates from a sampled function,
like soft reflections, subsurface scattering, etc. Although this output is an integer it only
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provides the integers 1 or 0.
Radiosity Ray (Integer) - Radiosity Ray means the surface is being evaluated by a
radiosity ray. Although this output is an integer it only provides the integers 1 or 0.
Preprocess (Integer) - Means the surface is being evaluated by a preprocess ray; for
example an interpolated GI ray. Although this output is an integer it only provides the
integers 1 or 0.
For the purpose of explanation we will be focusing almost exclusively on the Node Editor as it
appears when opened from the Surface Editor panel. Both the Surface Destination node and the
other Destination nodes will be covered in detail in the Destinations section later in this chapter.

GUI Anatomy
Lets take a look at the graphical user interface (GUI) for the Node Editor. Use the numerical lookup call-outs to identify each element and read its description in the corresponding text below.

The title bar for our Node Editor window has been removed to make things clearer, but normally
you will see that it contains the current surface name or the property if you are working with
displacements, volumetric lights, motions or other node editor types.
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1) Add Nodes - You can either use this menu to add nodes to your
Workspace, or the list below (16). The menu is here in case you are in
Node Flow (13) view where the nodes list is not available.
2) Edit Menu - Contained in this menu are all of the edit functions for working in the Node
Editor GUI. From copying and pasting to importing and exporting the GUI manipulation
tools youll be using most will be found in here. The specifics are detailed on page 2013.
This menu is also available by right clicking on top of any node
in the Workspace Area or listed in the Node Flow tab.
3) Undo - Click on this button or press Ctrl -Z, to undo the
last Node Editor operation you performed.
4) Redo - Click on this button or press Z, to redo the last undo operation you performed.
5) Purge - Click on the purge button to discard all of the undo
history currently in memory for the node editor.
6) Update - Click on the update button to force a manual refresh of
any preview spheres displayed in the Node Editor panel.
7) Options - Clicking on the options button will display the
option settings panel for the Node Editor.
8) Node Probe - this will show you the outputs of the nodes in your network. This
value is evaluated without knowledge of any ray trace environment
9) Workspace Pan Gadget - Using the Pan Gadget (or widget) or by alt-dragging
in the Workspace area, will allow you to scroll the Workspace area.
10) Workspace Zoom Gadget - Use this gadget to zoom in or out of the workspace area.
This is useful when working with or constructing large networks and will allow you
to quickly locate nodes and network segments that may be scrolled out of view.
11) Embedded Edit Panel Gadget - Use this gadget to pop open the embedded edit panel which
can be used in place of floating edit panels when editing node properties. To edit node
properties with the extension area closed simply double click on the node you want to edit.
12) Embedded Edit Panel Extension Area - With this area extended any selected nodes
properties that has an edit panel can be edited in this embedded panel area.
13) Nodes or Flow - These two tabs either show the complete
node list or the nodes currently in your network.
14) Search - Start typing the name of the node you are looking for and the list will reduce
until your node is found. The dropdown icon to the right will allow you to make the
search Case Sensitive, display results as a hierarchy or Flat and to Clear a search that has
been made to reveal the full node list again (you can also just delete the search text).
15) Add Selected - If you know you are going to need a bunch of nodes for
your network you can select them all using Ctrl and Shift modifiers and
hit this button to add them all at once to your workspace.
16) Node List - In this area you will either find a list of all the nodes available, or those currently
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added to your Workspace area depending on the tab chosen at the top of the window (13).
17) Input - This node is permanently available and contains different outputs depending
on what sort of Node Editor you are using. It contains outputs that are often needed.
18) Workspace - Use the workspace area to construct networks
by adding nodes and connecting them together.
19) Selected - This is an example of a selected node.
20) Unselected - This is an example of an unselected node.
21) Surface Destination - This is the Surface Destination node. Making connections to
this node from other nodes in the Workspace area define a surfaces properties.
22) Node Comment Entry Area - Add comments to any node by selecting the
node and typing in the Comment Entry Area. Take care to press ENTER
when finished or your comments will not be saved with the node.

19, 20, and 21 together form what is called a Network. You can think of node networks as being
very much like computer networks - with connections, input, output and the most important bit: results!

Menus and Hot Keys

The menus and hot keys described here apply only when the Node Editor window is active. To
activate the Node Editor window if it is not active simply click anywhere on its interface. To display
the Node Editor window if it is not displayed simply click on the Edit Nodes button on the options
panel youre working with. Remember, the Node Editor lives in several places throughout the
LightWave 3D application.
Edit - Pressing ENTER or selecting Edit from the Edit menu, with any node selected and the
embedded edit panel closed will open that nodes floating Edit Panel. In ancient times the
Enter key was also referred to as the Return key.
Rename - Pressing the R key or selecting Rename from the Edit Menu with any one node
selected will open a Rename Node requester that will allow you to rename the node. The
name of a node appears in its title bar area.
Preview - Preview options are context sensitive. Depending upon what types of output the
selected node offers, any of several preview options will be available. The preview option
that is selected will determine what the preview sphere displays if the Disable Previews
checkbox is unchecked in the Node Editors Options panel. The various possible types are:
Color - Color Channel
Alpha - Alpha Channel
Luma - Luminance Channel
Bump - Bump Direction in three colors
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Result - Line Graph Display
Normal - Normal Direction in three colors
Copy - Pressing Ctrl -C or selecting Copy from the Edit Menu will copy any selected nodes
into the copy buffer. If text is selected in the Note Comment Entry Area, numerical input
areas or etc then the selected alphanumeric string will be copied into the copy buffer.
Cut - Pressing Ctrl -X or selecting Cut from the Edit Menu will cut any selected nodes into
the copy buffer. If alphanumeric string data is selected in the Node Comment Entry Area,
numerical input areas, or etc then the selected alphanumeric string will be cut into the copy
buffer.
Paste - Pressing Ctrl -X or selecting Paste from the Edit menu, will paste any selected nodes
into the Workspace area that are currently contained in the copy buffer. A separate copy
buffer is simultaneously available for both nodes and for text so that you could for example,
copy some text, copy a node, and then paste the text or the node in their attributed areas
without losing the information in either of the two copy buffers.
Delete - Pressing the DEL key or selecting Delete from the Edit menu, will delete any nodes
or alphanumeric data that you may have selected. This delete operation only removes the
item from the graphical user interface. No menu entries or disk based items will be affected.
Delete operations do not place the deleted items into the copy buffer.
Select All - Pressing the A key or choosing Select All from the Edit menu, will select all the
nodes currently in the Workspace area.
Clear Selection - With the Node Editor window active, pressing the D key or selecting Clear
Selection from the Edit menu, will deselect any selected nodes in the Workspace area.
Invert Selection - Pressing the I key or choosing Invert Selection from the Edit menu, will
invert the current selections. If no nodes are selected when I is pressed then all nodes will
become selected.
Fit All - Pressing Shift -F or selecting Fit All from the Edit menu, will fit and center all of
the nodes currently in the Workspace area. If all of the nodes cannot be displayed in the
Workspace area at 100 percent zoom then the workspace area will be automatically zoomed
out in order to fit all the nodes currently in the Workspace area.
Fit Selected - Pressing the F key or selecting Fit Selected from the Edit menu, will fit and
center any node or nodes currently selected in the Workspace area. If all selected nodes
cannot be displayed in the Workspace area at 100 percent zoom ratio then the Workspace
area will automatically be zoomed out in order to fit all of the nodes currently selected into
the Workspace area.
Disconnect Inputs - Selecting one or more nodes in the Workspace area and pressing Shift
-D or selecting Disconnect Inputs from the Edit menu, will disconnect any inputs that are
connected to the selected nodes. Output connections from a selected node will not be
disconnected. You can think of this as disconnecting all connections made to the left hand
side of the node.
Expand - Pressing Shift -E or selecting Expand from the Edit menu, will expand any selected
nodes that are currently collapsed.
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Collapse - Pressing Shift -C or selecting Collapse from the Edit menu, will collapse any
selected nodes that are currently expanded.
Export Selected - Choosing Export Selected from the Edit menu will open a Save file requester
that will allow you to save the node or group of nodes you have selected as a .nodes file. A
.nodes file is a structured text file containing the names of all the nodes you had selected
when you saved the file, any comments that you had entered for each of the nodes selected,
and any of the connections that existed between the selected nodes. It basically exports a
complete snapshot of the nodes you had selected when you exported.
It is important to note that the Destination node will not be exported nor any of the
connections that existed to the Destination node when the file was saved.
This is a very useful feature allowing you to create and maintain directory based libraries
of various network segments or entire networks. .node files can be loaded and saved
interchangeably between any of the three Node Editor windows for Displacements,
Volumetric Lights, and Surfaces.
Import Nodes - Selecting Import Nodes from the edit menu will open a Load File requester
allowing you to load any saved .nodes file. When imported the node group will appear in
the dimensional center of the Node Editors Workspace area. Position offsets, connections,
collapsed or expanded states and any node comments that existed when the nodes were
exported will import back into your working environment.
This is an extremely useful feature allowing you to choose and load from maintained
directory based libraries of various network segments or entire networks. .node files can
be loaded and saved interchangeably between any of the three Node Editor windows for
Displacements, Volumetric Lights, and Surfaces.
It is important to note that Destination node connections are not imported nor exported to
or from a .nodes file.

General Usage
Lets begin our exploration of the Node Editor, its interface and general use by performing some of
the common tasks it was designed for. Pay close attention as we step through some of the simple
operations used in common node based texturing. There will be a few hints and tips not covered
elsewhere in this manual.
The object of this tutorial style instruction that we are about to undertake is primarily to familiarize
you with the process of working with nodes so we will be focusing more on mouse and keyboard
operations and the way the Node Editor handles itself under use rather than the actual texturing
techniques involved in the steps were about to perform.

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1) Open Layout hit Ctrl -F5 to open Backdrop Options and check the Gradient Backdrop. Then
add a Ground Plane using the Modeler Tools tab. You dont need to make any changes to the
settings so click OK. Next, start VPR by choosing it from the Viewport Display menu or hitting
Ctrl -F9, then hold down Shift and click on the ground plane you made in the rendered view.

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2) Next, click on Edit Nodes to open the Node Editor. Take a little time to arrange the opened
windows/panels in a configuration so that you can still see the VPR render in progress. Dont
forget you can always hit Tab to hide all windows and just show the Layout screen.
Just two more things to do to complete the environment setup and were ready to start our
first texture. The first thing is to make sure that the check box next to the Edit Nodes button
is indeed checked. Its state will determine whether or not nodes are applied to the surface.
It is called the Enable Nodes Check Box and can be used to turn on or off the entire node
network for any particular surface.
The second thing we need to do and is a good idea to perform any time you start a new
surface is to create a new Preset Shelf Library. Open the Presets Shelf by hitting F8 and create
a Library by right clicking in the main area of the Surface Preset window and selecting Create
Library from the Library submenu. Also, turn off VPR draft mode by visiting the Viewport
Options menu and unchecking Draft Mode.

3) Add Grid2D from the 2D Textures group on the left side of the Node Editor by double clicking
on its name. If you are working with the Embedded Edit Panel Extension Area open the
properties for the Grid2D node will be displayed on the right hand side of the Node Editor
window. If it is not, simply press enter or double click the node to open its floating edit
panel. The only thing we want to change in this panel is the Mortar Sharp value which we
will set to 99.0% and the Axis which we will set to Y by clicking on the Y button in the same
panel.

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By clicking Undo at the top of the Node Editor window, we will notice that the Grid2D node
is removed from the Workspace area - meaning that the Undo and Redo functions respect
only Workspace area actions. This will be good to know as we work with the Node Editor
interface.
Press Redo to get back the Grid2D node noticing that the 99% and the Y axis settings we
entered prior to the undo operation are still intact.

4) The Node Editor is setup with a logical flow construction from left to right. The colored
dots and labels on the left hand side of any node are that nodes inputs. Any dots and labels
located on the right hand side of a node are that nodes outputs. Inputs receive information
from other nodes in the network while outputs send information.
Lets see how this works by connecting the Grid2Ds Color output to the Surface destination
nodes Color input.

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Place your mouse cursor over the red dot labeled Color on the right hand side of the Grid2D
node. Now perform a click and drag operation toward the Surface destination Nodes Color
input dot. As you drag, an arrowheaded line will extend and follow your mouse cursor
movements.

Notice that as your mouse moves into the body area of the Surface node that the arrowhead
remains snapped to the input at the same latitude as your mouse cursor and not until
your mouse cursor moves past the Surface node and emerges on the other side does the
connection arrow unsnap and again begin following the mouse cursor. Position your mouse
so that the arrow connects to the Surface nodes Color input and release the mouse button to
complete the drag operation.

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As you release your mouse button with the arrow connected to the Color input of the Surface
destination node you will notice that the VPR display automatically renders the view of the
floor object with the newly applied Grid2D procedural texture applied.
Double click on the Surface Editor preview display area to add a preset to your new surface
library.

5) Click on the Grid2D node to select it and press R. Enter the name Mixer Mask into the
Rename Node requester that appears and press Enter . Renaming a node has no affect on
its function but is useful for keeping track of what nodes are doing and the role they play in
a network. The Node Comment Entry Area at the bottom of the Node Editor panel can also
be used in this way. Whether either or both are used is a simple matter of user preference.
With the node still selected click in the text entry area and enter some descriptive text such
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as: Grid2D - Main Mask Mixer node defining the basic floor pattern and press
finished.
Collapse the newly named Mixer Mask node either by selecting it and pressing
clicking on the collapse toggle button in the nodes title bar.

Enter

Shift

when
-C or by

6) Add the Parquet2D node from the 2D Textures group. Open its floating Edit Panel ( Enter or
Double Click) or use the embedded edit panel area to modify the following values:
Change U Tiles to 10, V Tiles to 10, and change the Axis to Y.
Now drag the Color output from the Parquet2D node to anywhere over the top of the Mixer
Mask node and release the mouse button to finalize the drag operation.
Notice that dragging over the top of a collapsed node pops up an input selection menu.
Select BgColor from the menu and then expand the node either by pressing
clicking on the nodes collapse toggle button.

Shift

-E or by

You will also notice that VPR has again automatically updated with the new surface
information.
Again double click on the Surface Editor preview display area to add a second preset to the
preset library we created earlier. You can come back to this point in the texture creation
anytime you may need to simply by double clicking on the icon in the surface preset
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window.
Lets try that now by double clicking on the first icon you created, answer yes to the
requested that appears, and look at the Node Editor Workspace area. Now click on the
second preset you made, answer yes to the requester that appears, and we should be exactly
back were we started prior to double clicking on any of the preset icons.

7) Next, hold down the control key while right clicking anywhere in the Node Editor Workspace
area. You should see a popup menu that looks exactly like the Add Nodes menu at the top
left of the Node Editor window.
Select Planks2D from the 2D Textures submenu to add that node to the Workspace area.
Connect the Color output from the Planks2D node to the Fg Color input of the Mixer Mask
node and then edit the Planks2D node as we did the others before modifying the following
values:
Set Mortar Width to 10%.
Set Mortar Sharp to 80%.
Set both U Tiles and V Tiles to 40.
Set the Axis to Y

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Set the Rotation Heading to 45 in the Rotation tab.

8) Taking it one step further, lets add bump to the Parquet and Planks parts of the node
network. Here you will see that node outputs dont always have to go to the same colored
inputs. Add a Tools > Mixer node to your network. Take the Bump output from the Parquet2D
node and put it into the Bg Color input of the Mixer node. Youll notice that the Bump output
is blue, but the Bg Color input is red. The two connect all the same. Do the same with the
Planks2D node to the Fg Color input on the Mixer. Lastly, add the Alpha output from the
Grid2D node (now called Mixer Mask, remember) as the Opacity and take the Mixers Color
output into the Surface nodes Bump input. You should now see that the planks and parquet
are nicely bumped.
How does this work? A vector-type output supplies three channels of data (vertical, inout and lateral). In the same way a Color output also supplies three channels of data (Red,
Green, Blue) and all we are doing here is translating one to the other. The other potential
connections are explained in detail a little further on.
9) You should be seeing the lines of an uncolored wooden planks and parquet floor. The
technique that is involved here is simple. The procedurally-generated Alpha channel of
the Grid2D texture is being used to mask and contain each of the two patterns added to its
foreground and background color layers respectively.
Go ahead and double click on the Surface Editor preview area to add another preset to the
preset shelf.

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On your own go ahead and try to add some wood grain and color the surfaces appropriately.
In conclusion, we saw the most common user operations for working with nodes in the Node
Editor and explored several ways to achieve each one. Additionally users new to node-based
texture editing should have been able to glimpse some of the underlying power that node-based
systems offer and how much easier they are to use.

Connection Types
There are six kinds of connections in the Node Editor. Each type (listed below) is color coded for
your convenience. Color type connections are red, Scalar types are green, Vector types are blue,
Integer types are purple, Functions are yellow and finally Materials are cyan. Normally you will want
to keep the connections limited to only similar types but the Node Editor is very flexible and
allows dissimilar types to be connected. This can be used to your advantage if you apply logic
while constructing your networks.
Its useful and sometimes necessary to mind which types you are connecting when creating a
network. There are a few rules of behavior that you may count on from the Node Editor and like
all rules there are a few exception to mind as well. One very advantageous rule is that when
connecting dissimilar types the output type will be automatically converted to the input type that
you are connecting it to, in the most intelligent way possible. There are only three exceptions to
this and they are 1) T he Normal and Bump input in the destination Surface node prefer the incoming
type to be a Vector, but you can equally add a Color or even a Scalar.
2) Connecting another type of output to a Function input will not convert it to a function
type. The connection will be made and some of the information from the non-function
output may be used but the results will be unpredictable. Functions are the only type of
connection that are actually bidirectional. This bidirectionality is transparent to the user but
Function nodes receive information from the node they are modifying, alter the information
in some way and then send the results back to the node they are connecting to. A good
general rule of thumb to remember about function-type nodes is just to not intermix
them with dissimilar types. Keep your Functions in the yellow and all will be mellow.
3) Material inputs and outputs can only be attached to Materials.
Here is a matrix of the automatic conversion between same and dissimilar connection types of
node inputs and outputs. It is repeated at the end of this chapter for quick reference.
Here is a description of the five kinds of connections found in the Node Editor and some more of
the rules that apply to each one in greater detail.

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To Color

To Integer

To Scalar

To Vector

To
Function

To
Material

From
Color

Color in
RGB format
unmodified.

CCIR 601
Luminance
values as
Integer.
Usually 0 or
1 only.

CCIR 601
Luminance
values as
float.

RGB values
copied
to vector
components
respectively.

N/A

N/A

From
Integer

Integer
value is
duplicated
to all 3 RGB
channels.

Integer
value
unmodified.

Integer value
unmodified.

Integer value
copied to
all 3 vector
components.

N/A

N/A

From
Scalar

Scalar value
copied to
all 3 RGB
channels

Rounded to
the nearest
Integer
value.

Scalar values
unmodified.

Scalar value
copied to
all 3 vector
components.

N/A

N/A

From
Vector

Vector
components
are copied
to RGB
respectively.

1st
component
ONLY is
rounded to
nearest
Integer.

1st
component
ONLY is used.

Vector
components
unmodified.

N/A

N/A

From
Function

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Receive,
transform,
return.

N/A

From
Material

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Material
properties
passed.

Color Type Connections

Color outputs and inputs are designated by a red dot next to the connection name. Color is a
composite type connection containing three channels of information.

Input:
Color inputs receive incoming color connections as three channels red (R), green (G), and blue
(B) from other nodes in the network you are currently working with. Most of the time youll
want to connect colors to colors unless you have a very specific task in mind and have read this
documentation thoroughly fully understanding the consequences and conversions that take place
when making connections between dissimilar connection types.
Connecting non-color output from other nodes to a Color input will automatically copy the
incoming values to each color channel red, green, and blue. The color of the line connecting the
two dissimilar types will change over the lines length from whatever color designates the output
selected to red.

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If the incoming connection is a vector type output then XYZ or HPB etc., will supply the values for
the RGB respectively. This means that if the incoming vector type is a Position for example, then
the X value of that vector will be used to define the red channel of the color. Y to green, and Z to
blue and so on in a similar way for HPB if the vector being used is a rotation and so on.
The vast majority (almost all) of connections in the Node Editor are evaluated per spot therefore
if the incoming color connection has a variance in the shader or texture values that is affecting
the color channel (i.e. a pattern of some kind) then that varied color value will be supplied to the
color input it is connecting to. Simply put, if you connect the color output of a red and green
marble texture to a color input then that input will receive a red and green colored marble pattern
- evaluated on a spot by spot basis.

Output:
Color outputs always supply three channel data evaluated per spot, in the format red, green, and
blue (RGB) regardless of what other inputs are connected to the node or what other settings you
may have set for your scene. Even if the incoming data for the nodes colors are scalar values and/
or you have selected grey values via the color picker panel, the color output will still be outputting
three channels of data.
See the Connection Table at the end of this chapter for a complete list of connections and
conversions.

Scalar Type Connections

Scalar outputs and inputs are designated by a green dot next to the connection name. In
LightWave 3Ds Node Editor, a scalar is a floating point number or quantity usually characterized by
a single value which doesnt involve the concept of direction. The term scalar is used in contrast to
entities that are composites of many values, like vector (XYZ, HPB, etc.), color (RGB), etc.
Some examples of scalar values are: 3.14159265, 13, 0.00001, -5.5, 2, and 69.666

Input:
Primarily, connections to a scalar input will be scalar outputs from other nodes in the network
youre working with. Most of the time youll want to connect scalars to scalars unless you have a
very specific task in mind and have read this documentation thoroughly fully understanding the
consequences and conversions that take place when making dissimilar connections.
Connecting non-scalar output values to a scalar input will automatically convert it to scalar type.
The color of the line connecting the two dissimilar types will change over the lines length from
whatever color designates the output selected to green.
If a component (vector or color) type output is being connected to the scalar input then one of
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several things may happen as follows:
If it is a color type output that is being connected to the scalar input then the CCIR 601 luminance
values for that color are derived from the RGB values and used as the scalar input.
If it is a vector type output that is being connected to the scalar input then only the first
component of the vector is used as the scalar value. For example if the vector being used is a
position then only X will be supplied to the scalar input and Y and Z will be ignored. Likewise if
the vector being used is a rotation then only the H (heading) will be used and the P (pitch) and B
(bank) channels will be ignored.
Again however, these conversion processes are automatic and transparent to the user.

Output:
Scalar outputs from any given node will always supply scalar values regardless of what other
inputs are connected to the node. Please see above for examples of scalar values.
See the Connection Table at the end of this chapter for a complete list of connections and
conversions.

Integer Type Connections

Integer outputs and inputs are designated by a purple dot next to the connection name.
Integers in the Node Editor can be used for many things but most often they are designated for the
purpose of specifying predefined list member items such as any of the Blending modes described
below in the next section on Blending Modes (see the Blending Modes table further down).
An integer is a non-floating point natural number. Some examples of integers are: 3, 13, 0, -5, 69
and 666.

Input:
Primarily connections to an integer input will be integer outputs from other nodes in the network
youre working with. Most of the time youll want to connect integers to integers unless you have
a very specific task in mind and have read this documentation thoroughly thus fully understanding
the consequences and conversions that take place when making dissimilar connections.
Connecting non-integer outputs to an integer input will automatically convert it to integer type
using standard rounding. The color of the line connecting the two dissimilar types will change over
the lines length from whatever color designates the output selected to purple.
If a component type output is being connected to the integer input then one of several things may
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happen as follows:
If it is a color type output that is being connected to the integer input then the CCIR 601 luminance
values for that color are derived from the RGB values. Those luminance values are then rounded
and used as the integer input. Since internal luminance values in the Node Editor are floating point
values which most often range from 0.0 (black) to 1.0 (white) the rounding that takes place during
this conversion would have the effect of reducing the luminance information to either a value
of zero or one with no grey tones in between. Consider that the luminance value 0.5 (50% grey)
when rounded to an integer value would become a value of 1 (white) and a grey tone just slightly
below 50% grey (0.4) when rounded to an integer value would be 0 (black).
If it is a vector type output that is being connected to the integer input then only the first
component of the vector is used after rounding it, as the integer value. For example if the vector
being used is a rotation then only the rounded H (heading) value will be supplied as the integer
input and P (pitch) and B (bank) will be ignored. Likewise if the vector being used is a scale or
position then only the rounded X value will be used and the Y and Z channels will be ignored.
These conversion processes however, are automatic and transparent to the user.

Output:
Integer outputs from any given node will always supply integer values regardless of what other
inputs are connected to the node. Please see above for examples of integer values.
See the Connection Table at the end of this chapter for a complete list of connections and
conversions.

Vector Type Connections

Vector inputs and outputs are designated by a blue dot next to the connection name.
Vectors are composite type values meaning they are comprised of more than one component or
channel. Some examples of vectors in the Node Editor are Position, Scale, and Rotation. Notice
that each one of these attributes contain more than one value. For example position is comprised
of X, Y and Z. Scale is also comprised of X, Y, and Z and rotation is comprised of H, P and B Heading, Pitch, and Bank respectively.

Input:
Generally, connections to vector type inputs will be vector type outputs from other nodes in
the network youre working with. Most of the time youll want to connect vectors to vectors
unless you have a very specific task in mind and have read this documentation thoroughly thus
fully understanding the consequences and conversions that take place when making dissimilar
connections. You will never want to connect anything other than a vector type output to a vector
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type input that is labeled Normal next to the blue dot designation unless you know ahead of
time why. The case for needing to make such kinds of connections to a Normal input is so rare that
in fact the destination Surface node disallows non-vector connections to its Bump and Normal
vector inputs. The general rule of thumb here is that all Normal inputs should only be receiving
their data from other Normal type outputs. You may remember it by learning: Normals in like only
Normals out. where the inverse of that phrase may not always be true.
Connecting non-vector output types to a vector input will automatically convert it to vector type
with various limitations. The connection will be made except where noted, and the color of the
line connecting the two dissimilar types will change over the lines length from whatever color
designates the output selected, to blue.
Color type outputs are a kind of vector although undesignated as such and for good reason. It can
be quite confusing to discuss colors as vectors. However there are times when the relationships are
straightforward enough to be immediately useful.
When connecting a color output to a vector input each channel of the color output (R, G, and B)
will be used to define the first, second, and third components of the vector respectively.
If a non-component type (scalar or integer) output is being connected to the vector input then
the value of the scalar or integer is copied into all of the components of the vector that it is being
connected to. For example connecting an Alpha output from any of the texture nodes to any of
the texture nodes input connections labeled Scale would copy the Alpha value to all three of the
components of the Scale vector. If for example, the Alpha value was 1.0 the recipient textures
Scale value would be 1.0 for X, Y, and Z.
Once again these conversion processes are automatic and transparent to the user.

Output:
Vector outputs from any given node will always supply vector component values regardless of
what other inputs are connected to the node.
See the Connection Table at the end of this chapter for a complete list of connections and
conversions.

Function Type Connections

Function type connections are special two-way connections. Functions offer a way of transforming
a texture or shader value based on the functions graph.

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Input:
Function inputs should only be connected to from other Function type nodes in the network you
are working with.
Always connect function to functions.
Connecting non-function outputs to Function inputs will make the connection and the color of
the line connecting the two dissimilar types will change over the lines length from whatever color
designates the output selected, to yellow. However the results of dissimilar connections with
function nodes are not guaranteed to produce any predictable results.
When a function output is connected to a function input data (usually texture value data) from
the node being connected to is sent to the connecting node where it is then transformed and
sent back to the recipient node. The transformations that occur depend entirely upon the kind of
Function node that is being used and the settings entered for its graph.

Output:
Function nodes specifically utilize the function connection to transform values of the nodes they
are connecting to. Typically this will be shaders and textures and in these cases the shader or
texture sends the shader or texture value to the connected function node. The connected function
node then transforms these values based of the function graph, and returns the transformed
values to the recipient node.
Function connections are specialized in this way allowing for bidirectional communication
between nodes.
Once again, the output of a Function type connection should always be connected to the input of
another Function type connection.
See the Connection Table at the end of this chapter for a complete list of connections and
conversions.

Node Editor Probe

Item #8 in the initial guide to the Node Editor, this is a node probe that will show you the outputs
of the nodes in your network.

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When enabled, you can hover the mouse cursor over any nodes output connections or preview
area. If the preview area has a standard preview sphere, the hover location is displayed in the
preview data type (color, scalar, vector, integer, etc.) When hovering over an output connection,
the displayed data uses the data type of that connection; however, the value is evaluated without
the knowledge of any ray trace environment. Therefore, the output connection evaluation is really
only useful for those nodes that do not use preview spheres. The data display is shown in a floating
popup that follows the mouse.

The data display will update a few times per second to account for live input from a Device node
or if the user updates the preview spheres manually via the space bar. In other words, the mouse
pointer can continue to hover over the same screen position and whatever happens to be beneath
it will be displayed automatically.

The preview sphere has traditionally been a gamma-corrected appearance of the actual
evaluation. The probe will display the source data for the preview sphere, not the altered visual
representation. The probe then shows the value of that output not the color-adjusted greyscale
representation of that value.
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Blending Modes
Value

Blending Mode

Normal

Additive

Subtractive

Multiply

Screen

Darken

Lighten

Difference

Negative

Color Dodge

10

Color Burn

11

Red

12

Green

13

Blue

Please see the chapter on the Texture Editor on page 1907 for a detailed description of blending
types. Types unique to the Node Editor are Darken, Lighten, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Red, Green,
and Blue. The Blending type determines how the FG and BG colors are blended.
All of the blending modes in the Node Editor are based on their Photoshop equivalents. Here is a
description of each one not defined elsewhere in the LightWave 3D manual:

Darken:
Darken looks at the foreground and background colors and chooses the darker one, whichever it is.
Whichever is darker wins. Which of the two is used will vary across the image depending on which
is darker at each spot as it is evaluated.

Lighten:
Lighten is the reverse of darken. It evaluates the foreground and background colors and replaces
the darker ones with the lighter ones.

Color Dodge:
Color Dodge is a kind of inverted multiply mode. Dodging is a dark room technique commonly
used by photographers and photo developers. This analog equivalent technique is achieved by
holding a small piece of cut paper taped to the end of a thin wire or stick, in between the projected
light and the photo paper causing some areas of the photograph to be underexposed. The same
thing is going on here but the foreground pattern is being used as the dodge mask instead of a
cut to shape piece of paper, to underexpose those areas. Remember that the more underexposed
an area is the lighter it is and a completely unexposed sheet of photo paper is all white.
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Color Burn:
Color Burn is basically the same thing in reverse. Burning is also a darkroom technique where (in
its simplest form) a large piece of paper with holes cut in the middle is held between the projected
light and the photo paper after exposing the image initially on to the paper. This has the effect
of overexposing or burning in some areas of the image. Again it is the background color values
and patterns that are being used in place of that cut sheet of paper just mentioned, to burn in
the image. Remember that the more overexposed an area is the darker it is and a completely
overexposed sheet of photo paper is all black.

Red:
Colors as seen on your monitor are comprised of three components red, green and blue. Each of
these primary colors can be talked about or represented by considering them as separate channels.
Usually to form any specific color these three channels are mixed additivly.
In these next three blending modes we are able to use each unique channel individually.
Selecting Red as the blending mode replaces the blue and green of the FG color channels with
the blue and green channels contained in the BG Color. Only the foregrounds red channel will
be considered but the green and blue channels will be taken from the background color only. If
for example, your background color was 100% blue and your foreground color was 100% red selecting Red as the blending mode would result in purple output.

Green:
Selecting Green as the blending mode replaces the blue and red channels of the FG color with the
blue and red channels from the BG Color. Only the foregrounds green channel will be considered
but the red and blue channels will be taken from the background color only.

Blue:
Selecting Blue as the blending mode replaces the red and green channels of the FG color with
the red and green channels contained in the BG Color. Only the foregrounds blue channel will be
considered but the red and green channels will be taken from the background color only.

Opacity:
Opacity is the amount that each of these blending modes mentioned above, is applied. You can
think of opacity as the strength of the blend effect.

Invert:
The Invert toggle button inverts the scalar Alpha values used to blend the two colors; background
and foreground. Where applicable it will also invert the bump gradient so that not only are the
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background and foreground colors are swapped but the bump and alpha outputs as well are
inserted.

About Using Nodes

All the nodes and textures included in LightWave 3D are multipurpose. Some textures are useful
for things that you would not immediately recognize them as being useful for. For example,
Bricks2D can be used to make strange-looking spider webs and a various assortment of other
similar patterns.
Its good practice to work with VPR ( Ctrl -P) active at all times while creating networks with the
Node Editor. It is also very beneficial to have the Surface Presets shelf (F8) open during any
surfacing work. VPR and the Presets shelf work together to offer the user a convenient interactive
work history during the process of constructing texturing or shading Networks. Double clicking
on the preview display area in the Surface Editor will add an entry in the Presets shelf with a scale
version of that image as the icon for that preset.
Conversely, double-clicking on an icon in the Presets shelf will load and apply all of the surface
settings saved when you double clicked on the Surface Editor preview display area.

Common Inputs and Outputs

Rather than repeating the same information all the time it makes more sense to only detail unique
Inputs and Outputs and refer to a single place for the documentation of items shared between
nodes. Herewith the Inputs and Outputs common to all nodes, starting with Inputs:

Inputs
Bg Color (type: color) - Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network.
Users may also specify a background color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this
node.
Fg Color (type: color) - Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network.
Users may also specify a foreground color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this
node.
Blending (type: integer) - Specifies one of the blending types (0~13) found in the blending
type list at the beginning of this chapter.
Can receive input from other nodes in the network or can be specified to by selecting a
blending mode from the Blending pull-down menu in the Edit Panel for the node.

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For general use specifying the blending mode by using the Blending pull-down menu in the
Edit Panel will probably be the most desirable method of use. However, for larger networks
where control of the blending modes of many texture nodes simultaneously is needed or
when conditional blending is desired then using a node connection to control this value
may be advantageous.
Opacity (type: scalar) - Opacity is the amount that the selected blending mode is applied.
You can think of opacity as the strength of the blend effect between the BG Color and the FG
Color.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.
U Tiles (type: integer) - Specifies the number of tiles in the U dimension.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.
V Tiles (type: integer) - Specifies the number of tiles in the V dimension .
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.

Fractal Inputs
Small Scale (type: scalar) - Like Lacunarity, Small Scale is a counterpart to the fractal
dimension that describes the texture of a fractal. It has to do with the size distribution of
the gaps between detail levels. The Small Scale value sets the amount of change in scale
between successive levels of detail.
If you are seeing repeating patterns in the texture it might be a good idea to alter the Small
Scale value for the texture.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify values for this attribute using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this
node.
Contrast (type: scalar) - Sets the contrast of the texture value gradient. Higher values
produce less gradient information between texture value extremes and therefore less noise
is produced. The lower values spread the gradient more evenly between the extremes of the
texture values and thus allow for more overall noise in the final output from this node.

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Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify the values for this attribute using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this
node.
Frequencies (type: scalar) - Frequencies as used in this node is really just another name for
octaves as defined in some of the descriptions of fractal type textures within this document.
You can think of Frequencies as the number of levels of detail mentioned in the discussion
just above for Small Scale. At one Frequency, only the basic pattern is used. At 2
Frequencies given a Small Scale value of 2, a one half scale pattern is overlaid on top of the
basic pattern. And at three Frequencies, the overlays are one quarter scale over the one half
scale over the basic and so on.
If Small Scale were 3 in this example, it would mean that each new iteration would be one
third the scale of the previous layer.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify the values for this attribute using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this
node.
Increment (type: scalar) - Since this texture is a fractal or a fractalized noise pattern, it means
that we can overlay smaller and smaller copies of the same pattern functions over previous
layers in order to add detail. Technically, this is called Spectral Synthesis. These are not
surface layers, but layers considered within the algorithm of the texture node itself.
Increment is the amplitude or intensity between successive levels of detail.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.
Lacunarity (type: scalar) - Lacunarity is a counterpart to the fractal dimension that describes
the texture of a fractal. It has to do with the size distribution of the holes. Roughly speaking,
if a fractal has large gaps or holes, it has high lacunarity; on the other hand, if a fractal is
almost translationally invariant, it has low lacunarity. The lacunarity value sets the amount of
change in scale between successive levels of detail.
If youre seeing repeating patterns in the texture it might be a good idea to lower the
lacunarity level of the texture.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.
Octaves (type: scalar) - You can think of octaves as the number of levels of detail mentioned
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in the discussion just above for lacunarity. At one octave, only the basic pattern is used. At 2
octaves given a Lacunarity value of 2, a one half scale noise pattern is overlaid on top of the
basic pattern. And at three octaves, the overlays are one quarter scale over the one half scale
over the basic and so on.
If Lacunarity were 3 in this example, it would mean that each new layer would one third the
scale of the previous layer.
Considering these three Increment, Lacunarity, and Octaves then if Lacunarity were set to 2,
Increment were set to 0.5, and Octaves were 4, it would mean that each successive iteration
for 4 iterations, was twice the frequency and half the amplitude.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.
Offset (type: scalar) - Defines an offset into the texture value range where the minute details
produced by the combined effects of Lacunarity, Increment, and the number of Octaves,
begin to ramp sharply.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this node.

Function Inputs
Frequency (Type: Scalar) - The Frequency input controls the time taken to complete one
function cycle. By increasing the frequency, the cycle period of the function is reduced.
Likewise, decreasing the frequency means the function takes longer to complete one whole
cycle. The mode (described below) determines the behavior of the function once it has
completed a full cycle.
Amplitude (Type: Scalar) - The Amplitude input controls the size of the function from peak to
peak.
Phase (Type: Scalar) - The Phase input allows the function waveform to be shifted in time.
Increasing the phase shifts the function to the left, while decreasing it shifts the function to
the right.
Mode (Type: Constant, Repeat or Oscillate) - Three modes are available that determine how
the function behaves after one complete cycle has been performed. The possible choices
are:
Constant mode - in which the function remains as its last value when one cycle
completes.
Repeat mode - in which the function restarts from the beginning when one cycle
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completes, giving a repeating oscillation based on a saw tooth waveform.
Oscillate mode - in which the function completes one cycle and then returns to its start
point over the next cycle. This provides a repeating oscillation based on a triangular
waveform.
Clamp Low (Type: Scalar) - The Clamp Low input defines a point at which, if the function is
less than, the output is clipped. In other words the output of the function can be no lower
than this value.
Clamp High (Type: Scalar) - The Clamp High input defines a point at which, if the function
is greater then, the output is clipped. In other words the output of the function can be no
higher than this value.
Begin (Type: Scalar) - The Begin input specifies the start of the step. That is, the position for
the start point of the ramp up.
End (Type: Scalar) - The End input specifies the finish of the step. That is, the position for the
end point of the ramp up.

Material Inputs
Specular/Specularity (Scalar) - The term specular or specularity here refers to the optical
property referred to in LightWave surface terms as reflection. The difference with standard
Surface Editor Reflection where you can have as much as you like while also keeping
the Diffuse level high, in a Material raising one will lower the other keeping the balance
physically correct between the two.
Roughness (Scalar) - This value does nothing on its own. It is designed to be used with
Reflection and Refraction Blur on the Advanced tab. Likewise, without some degree of
Roughness, those settings do nothing except slow the render slightly.
Absorption (Scalar) - How quickly light passing inside an object is extinguished. A low value
here with indicate greater transparency. Based on Beers law of absorption, to give a more
realistic and non-linear result.
Refraction Index (Scalar) - This value is for the Index of Refraction of your material. Often used
- 1.33 for water, 1.5 for glass, 2.4 for diamond.
Dispersion (Scalar) - Controls the amount of light dispersion. Dispersion is a phenomenon
that causes the separation of a wave into spectral components with different wavelengths,
due to a dependence of the waves speed on its wavelength. This will cause the surface to
render more slowly as it renders each spectral component separately (red, green and blue).
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Dispersion as used in this shading model simulates real light dispersion. The higher the value
the greater the amount of dispersion that will be simulated and applied.
Normal (Vector) - Specifies a vector direction for modifying the surface normal and only
Tangent Normal maps should be used. This is surface normal direction information and
affects the way the surface is shaded. Care should be taken when connecting to this input.
Connecting dissimilar types or non directional vectors may cause the surface to shade
wrongly.
Bump (Vector) - Specifies a vector direction for modifying the surface bump. This is surface
normal direction information and affects the way the surface is shaded. Care should be taken
when connecting to this input. Connecting dissimilar types or non directional vectors may
cause the surface to shade wrongly.
Bump Height (Scalar) - Specifies the bump height or amplitude of the Bump directional
vectors.
Bump Dropoff (Scalar) - How fast the visibility of the bump falls away.

Material Advanced Inputs

The Advanced tab contains controls common to all Materials namely Reflection and/or Refraction
Blurring and environment settings similar to the standard Surface Editors E nvironment tab.
Reflection Blur - Controls the amount of blur of the surface reflections. Some amount of blur
is required in order to have the Dispersion amount (when available) affect the surface.
Mode / Reflection Image
Mode and Image are features exclusive to the Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these
items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.
Image Seam Angle - allows the user to rotate the seam line of a wrapped image around the
Axis that has been selected for the projection method.
Interpolated - Switch between standard unified sampling and using a defined Sample and
Blend Size to tailor your surface.

Outputs
Color (type: color) - Outputs three channel color information in R, G, B format, evaluated on a
per spot basis.
Alpha (type: scalar) - Outputs single channel alpha (grey) information evaluated on a per
spot basis.
Luma (type: scalar) - Outputs CCIR 601 luminance values derived from the RGB values
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contained in the image being used.
Bump (type: vector) - Outputs component vector direction information the length of which
are the product of the bump amplitude value.
Normal (type: vector) - Outputs component vector direction information the length of which
are the product of the bump amplitude value.
If used as an input to another normal type connection the destinations normal will be
completely replaced with this information.
Nearly all Inputs can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The
user may also specify this parameter value using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this
node.

Edit Panel
Radiosity and Caustics check boxes are not offered as node connections in the Workspace area and
are features exclusive to the Edit Panel of the node.
When checked this shading model will evaluate shading information for the surface channel it
is being applied including any Radiosity or Caustics computations as defined by those system
attributes applied to the scene.
Unchecked, radiosity and/or caustics calculations will not be evaluated by this shading model as it
is applied to the object surface being edited.
This can be used to omit both entire surfaces or per channel surface attributes from radiosity or
caustics calculations thus offering more diversity in the rendered output as well as reducing the
time needed to calculate these surfaces in scenes where either radiosity or caustics are used.

Noise Type
You can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like in the fractal-based Node edit
panel by following these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
4) Set Octaves to zero.
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.
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2D Textures
2D Textures
2D textures consist of images or procedurals that can be mapped to the object surface during the
shading computation. An algorithm is used for wrapping the texture around the objects surface
so that the pattern curves and distorts realistically. The advantage of using 2D textures is that in
using the projection methods available to them the texture patterns can conform easily to basic
geometrical shapes. Additionally textures in general add apparent detail and so do not have to be
modeled in geometry. A common use of a 2D texture might be to apply an image as a decal or
label on a three-dimensional bottle or other object. 2D textures can also be used as transparency,
reflection, refraction, normal, and displacement maps, etc.

Bricks2D
Bricks2D is a simple brick like 2D texture useful for very many patterns and effects that one would
not normally expect just by considering its name. From broken glass and strange spider webs to
more in line with what its name implies; such as roughly shaped cobblestone roads and brick walls.
The Bricks2D texture has axial projection methods available such as spherical, cubic, planar, front,
cylindrical and UV.

Unique Inputs
Mortar Width (scalar) - Specifies the width of the mortar between the brick faces. Increasing
this value will also reduce the face of the bricks in such a way that the pattern will repeat
correctly the number of U and V tiles within the defined scale of the texture.
Mortar Sharp (scalar) - Defiance how steep the falloff angle is between the brick faces and
the bottom trough of the mortar area.
Mortar Shift (scalar) - Mortar shift specifies the offset of the U directional mortar areas. When
creating a standard red brick surface you can think of this value as determining the stagger
amount of the bricks rows.

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Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection types and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

CheckerBoard2D
Procedurally generated checkerboard pattern with axial projection methods such as spherical,
cubic, planar, front, cylindrical and UV.

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2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

Grid2D
Procedurally generated grid pattern. This grid pattern can vary the thickness of the lines that form
the grid as well as define a soft edge falloff from line to center in user specified amounts. It has
axial projection methods available such as spherical, cubic, planar, front, cylindrical and UV.
Grid2D is also extremely useful for visualizing results from the output of other nodes and network
segments.

Unique Inputs
Mortar Width (scalar) - Specifies the width of the mortar between the grid squares or faces.
Increasing this value will also reduce the size of the face area of the grid in such a way that
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the pattern will repeat correctly the number of U and V tiles within the defined scale of the
texture.
Mortar Sharp (scalar) - Defiance how steep the falloff angle is between the grid faces and the
bottom trough of the mortar area.

Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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2D Textures
2015

Image

The description for this particular node could fill volumes and in fact the use of images as applied
to shading, texturing and lighting, has! This node is probably the single most useful and versatile
node. The image node will allow you to load images with or without Alpha channels, map them
directly onto polygons, and use various derived values from the image itself to control other nodes
in the network.
The Image node has axial projection methods available such as spherical, cubic, planar, front,
cylindrical and UV.

It is worth mentioning here that while either images or procedurals by themselves can create
stunning results, it is extremely advantageous to use procedurals and images together! You may find
that when creating textures for photo realistic or semi photo realistic rendering, that procedurals can
complement images and vice versa, in a way that far outweighs the use of either alone by themselves.
New to 2015.2, the Invert Color and Invert Alpha buttons replace the single Invert button previously
available. The two new buttons should make clearer the function.
Invert Color - creates a negative of the image. Particularly useful for clip maps where the area
being clipped is the wrong part of the image.
Invert Alpha - In an image with an alpha channel switches between the area that is solid and
that which is transparent.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.
Also please see the related sections elsewhere in this manual for descriptions of Pixel Blending,
MipMap Quality, and MipMap Strength.
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The explanation of the Image Map Layer Type in the Texture Editor found elsewhere in this manual
differ concerning tiling methods, only in that the labels describing the menus are different.
Width Tile in the Texture Editor is U Tiling in the Node Editors Image node.
Height Tile in the Texture Editor is V Tiling in the Node Editors Image node.
The behavior described for Reset, Repeat, Mirror and Edge are the same as described for the
Texture Editor.

NormalMap
Purpose
To make use of loaded Normal Map images within a network or as freestanding connections
directly connected to the destination node.
Also see the Transform and Transform2 nodes.
The normal map node allows you to load and utilize normal maps created from any of the various
software packages that produce them such as ZBrush, Genetica Pro, or Marvin Landiss free
NormalMapCreate plug in for LightWave3D.
With descriptions of normal mapping technology being commonplace we will highlight just a
few of the main points you may want to consider when applying normal maps in LightWave3D.
Namely what normals are in general, what happens when you apply a normal map, and a few of
the differences between normal mapping and bump mapping.
It is easy to understand what normals are if we consider polygon normal or geometric normals.
Polygon normals are simply just the direction in which a given polygon is facing - its facing or
normal direction. Smoothed normals also consider smoothing interpolation. Whats happening
when you apply a normal map is the replacement of that information with a set of directions
contained in a map. The recorded directions are color encoded (RGB = the directions XYZ). This
is different than standard bump mapping in that standard bump mapping does not replace the
normal direction but rather modifies the existing directions. This is an important distinction
because youre replacing the direction the smooth shaded faces are facing when you apply a
normal map and the necessary cautions need to be taken in order to produce correct results.

Unique Inputs
Amplitude (scalar) - Specifies the normal height or amplitude of the Normal directional
vectors.
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Using Alpha or luminance (connecting Color) values from other textures in the network
along with their respective bumps can have the effect of blending the bump textures
together.
Can receive patterns or numerical values from other nodes in the network. This value can
additionally be specified by user input by entering values into the Edit Panel of this node.
Since Bump Amplitude is a shading feature and not a displacement coordinate system value
it is specified as a percentage. Specifically as a percentage of the texture value.

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2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.
Also please see the relative sections elsewhere in this manual for descriptions of Pixel Blending,
MipMap Quality, and MipMap Strength.
Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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2D Textures
Parquet2D

Parquetry is the inlay of wood, often of different colors, that is worked into a geometric pattern
or mosaic and is used especially for floors. The Parquet2D procedural texture offers the ability
to create these geometric patterns. While a very common use would be for floor designs, the
Parquet2D texture like other procedural textures, affords a great deal of creativity limited only by
the imagination of the user. Parquet2D has axial projection methods available such as Spherical,
Cubic, Planar, Front, Cylindrical and UV.

Unique Inputs
Tiles (integer) - This specifies the number of parallel planks or sections that each parquet tile
is comprised of.
Values below one will be evaluated as one.
Mortar Width (scalar) - Specifies the width of the mortar (or gaps) between the parquet
faces. Increasing this value will also reduce the the size of the face area in such a way that
the pattern will repeat correctly the number of U and V tiles within the defined scale of the
texture.
Mortar Sharp (scalar) - Defines how steep the falloff angle is between the parquet faces and
the bottom trough of the mortar (or gap) area.

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2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

Planks2D
The Planks2D procedural texture creates the gaps and faces of flush or staggered planks. Like
Parquet2D, Bricks2D, Bricks3D and other procedurals of this type a separate texture either
procedural or image based, can be used where face and grout (mortar, gaps, etc.) materials are
desired. Planks2D has axial projection methods available such as spherical, cubic, planar, front,
cylindrical and UV.

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2D Textures
Inputs
Mortar Width (scalar) - Specifies the width of the mortar (or gaps) between the plank faces.
Increasing this value will also reduce the size of the face area in such a way that the pattern
will repeat correctly the number of U and V tiles within the defined Scale of the texture.
Mortar Sharp (scalar) - Defines how steep the falloff angle is between the plank faces and the
bottom trough of the mortar (or gap) area.
Stagger (scalar) - Stagger specifies the offset of the U directional gap (or mortar) areas. A
value of 0% will cause all of the planks to line up flush on both ends forming a straight row of
planks.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. Additionally
user input values may be entered in the Edit Panel for the node.
Plank Length (scalar) - Specifies the length of the planks as a percentage to the overall size of
the texture.

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2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

Turbulence2D
A multipurpose noise texture with axial projection methods such as spherical cubic planar front
cylindrical and UV.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

2D Textures
Edit Panel

Here the Mapping projection type and Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace
area. Likewise Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive
to this nodes Edit Panel . Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers
texturing with the Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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3D Textures
3D Textures
A 3D texture is computer generated via procedural algorithms with a set of parameters. The
generated pattern follows logically inside the procedural volume and wherever polygonal surfaces
exist in relation to that volume the procedural pattern information is applied. 3D textures can exist
in world space coordinates or tied to an objects center point when world coordinates is unchecked
in the nodes Edit Panel. 3D textures avoid many of the difficulties attributed to the mapping of
a bitmap around the surface of an irregular object. These textures have no edges and provide a
continuous-looking appearance.

Bricks
Bricks is a brick-like 3D texture useful in producing many patterns and effects. Modified, many
elaborate variations divagating from conventionally recognizable brick patterns can be achieved.

Unique Inputs
Thickness (scalar) - Is the thickness of the mortar areas of the brick pattern. As the thickness
value increases the size of the brick faces decrease within a given texture scale creating the
appearance of smaller bricks spaced farther apart.
This value is in ratio to the texture scale. For example a value of 1.0 would produce a surface
that was nothing but mortar with no visible brick faces. A value of zero would produce a
surface of continuous brick faces with no mortar gaps and only hairline cracks that might be
seen in very high precision stonework.
Edge Width (scalar) - Is the width of the beveled edges which create a rounded or beveled
look to the four sides of the brick face.
This setting in ratio to the size of the brick face and is calculated as an offset along each side
of each brick face.
For example a value of 0.5 would produce a pyramid shape that would occupy the entire
face area of each and every brick because 0.5 or halfway in from each edge of the brick is
the entire brick face.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Edit Panel

Axis is not offered as a node connection in the Workspace area. Likewise Reference Object, World
Coordinates and Automatic Sizing our features exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel. Please see the
explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Checkerboard
Procedurally generated checkerboard pattern.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing our features exclusive to this nodes Edit
Panel.

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3D Textures
Crackle

Cellular type texture good for amphibian type skin, scabs, rocks, gravel, asphalt, and etc.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Pane. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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3D Textures
Crumple
A cellular type texture good for a wide variety of uses including oceans, windy lake surfaces, to
various types of rock, certain types of window glass, and etc.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Crust
A cellular type texture that produces intersecting circular patterns and provides controls for
transition gradients between the circular foreground and background colors.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Dots
Procedurally generated three dimensional grid of ball-like texture elements.

Unique Inputs
Diameter (scalar): - The Diameter value specified as a percentage, controls the width or
diameter of the ball shapes that produce a circular look where an object surface intersects
with the texture.
Since the sphere-like texture elements are aligned and spaced on a cubic grid by default it is
Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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3D Textures
entirely possible to apply this texture to a box or flat surface and see no results at all. Whats
happening in this circumstance is that the balls are aligning on either side of the polygon
surface. The surface plane essentially is passing through a part of the texture that contains
no variant values - the space between the balls - and thus no visual results are produced.
In this situation increasing the Diameter parameter to between 120% and 150% will allow
you to see the results of the texture in the VIPER preview in order to interactively Position the
texture at the optimal offset values.
Can receive patterns and numerical inputs from other nodes in the network. The user may
also specify this value as a percentage using the controls available in the Edit Panel for this
node.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

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3D Textures

A simple offset Litho effect made by piping an images Luma into the Diameter value of Dots giving a halftone effect. The Scal value of Dots
needs to be reduced and the Fg and Bg Colors should be reversed.

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3D Textures
FBM
A fractional Brownian motion (FBM) fractal texture. The results of several scientific studies have
shown that many real world natural textures have the same kind of spectra as produced by FBM
making it a natural choice for various kinds of naturally occurring textures and patterns.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

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fBm Noise
A fractional Brownian motion (fBm) fractal noise texture. The results of several scientific studies
have shown that many real world textures have the same kind of spectra noise as produced by
fBm making it a natural choice for various kinds of naturally occurring texture noises and patterns.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of this manual for
these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like by following
these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
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3D Textures
3)
4)
5)
6)

Set Lacunarity to zero.

Set Octaves to zero.
Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Flakes
Flakes is a procedurally-generated texture that simulates chips of glass or plastic.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

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3D Textures
Grid
Procedurally generated grid pattern. This grid pattern can vary the thickness of the lines that
form the grid and has the ability to define a soft edge falloff from line to center in user specified
amounts.
Width (scalar) - Defines the width of the grid square faces. If you think of this texture in terms
of a tile pattern the width parameter defines the size of the tile plates in ratio to the mortar
areas or grid lines.
A value of 100 % would be all title plates (squares) and a value of 0% would be all mortar
areas (grid lines) in a mutually exclusive manner.
Contrast (scalar) - Controls the contrast amount between the foreground and background.
Essentially this acts as a cubic bland or falloff between the background (grid squares) and
the foreground (grid lines).
Values near 100% will produce very sharp transitions between grid squares and grid lines.
Values near 0% will produce very soft linear gradient transitions between grid squares and
grid lines.

Edit Panel

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3D Textures
Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

HeteroTerrain
An experimental prototype texture developed by Dr. Forest Kenton Ken Musgrave, Hetero Terrain
is a fractal type texture that controls the amount of details added by successive overlays (called
fractalizing) according to an Offset value.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of the LightWave 3D
manual for these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like
Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
by following these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
4) Set Octaves to zero.
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Honeycomb
A procedurally generated hexagonal honeycomb pattern. The Honeycomb texture node can be
applied on an axial basis X, Y, or Z.

Unique Inputs
Thickness (scalar) - Defines the thickness of the lines that form the hexagonal honeycomb
pattern. This is in ratio to the size of the inner hexagons formed by the pattern. This means
that increasing the thickness of the lines (Fg Color) will decrease the size of the inner
hexagons (Bg Color).
Values approaching or above 0.25 will begin to distort the hexagonal shapes. Values
between 1.0 and 2.0 will produce a staggered square grid pattern. A value of 2.0 or higher
will cover the surface 100 percent solid in the foreground color with absolutely no pattern.
Edge Width (scalar) - Is the gradient falloff size of the pattern lines (foreground) into the
hexagonal inner shapes. Increasing this value will have the apparent effect of decreasing the
size of the inner hexagonal shapes.
The recommended value range for this parameter is 0.0 to 0.5. Higher or lower values may
produce unexpected results. Values above 1.0 are not meaningful.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Edit Panel

Axis is not offered as a node connection in the Workspace area. Likewise Reference Object, World
Coordinates and Automatic Sizing our features exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel. please see the
explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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3D Textures
Hybrid-MultiFractal
An experimental fractal prototype texture developed by Dr. Forest Kenton Ken Musgrave, Hybrid
Multifractal attempts to control the amount of details according to the slope of the underlying
overlays. Hybrid Multifractal is conventionally used to generate terrains with smooth valley
areas and rough peaked mountains. With high Lacunarity values, it tends to produce embedded
plateaus.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of this manual for
these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like by following
these few simple steps:

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
4) Set Octaves to zero.
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Marble
A texture that produces a three dimensional grid of columns of marbly vein-like patterns. The
Marble texture can be applied on an axial basis X, Y, or Z.

Unique Inputs
Vein Spacing (scalar) - Defines the number and size of the veins within the given Scale value.
For example, given a uniform scale of 1m a Vein Spacing value of 1.0 would produce one
vein per meter. A vein spacing value of 0.5 would produce two veins per meter, 0.25 four
veins and so on.
Distortion (scalar) - Controls the amount of distortion or noise that is applied to the veins.
This property is in direct correlation with Noise Scale.
Noise Scale (scalar) - Controls the scale of the noise that is applied to the vein columns. This
property is in direct correlation with the Distortion value.
Contrast (scalar) - Sets the contrast of the texture value gradient. Higher values produce less
gradient information between texture value extremes and therefore less noise is produced.
The lower values spread the gradient more evenly between the extremes of the texture
values and thus allow for more overall noise in the final output from this node.
Frequencies (scalar) - Frequencies as used in this node is really just another name for octaves
as defined in some of the descriptions of the fractal type textures within this document.
You can think of Frequencies as the number of levels of detail. At one Frequency, only the
basic pattern is used.

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3D Textures
Edit Panel

Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace area. Likewise Reference Object, World
Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel. Please see the
explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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3D Textures
MultiFractal
A multipurpose fractal type texture node.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of this manual for
these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like by following
these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
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3D Textures
4) Set Octaves to zero.
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Ridged MultiFractal
An experimental fractal prototype texture developed by Dr. Forest Kenton Ken Musgrave, Ridged
Multifractal is one of the best Fractal texture patterns to produce mountains, and mountainous
terrain. It introduces highly detailed peaks and ridges often in similar shapes as naturally occurring
mountain ranges. Control over the sharpness of the ridges can be achieved by adjusting the
Threshold value. The Noise Types used are fairly critical in determining how mountainous the
terrain should or should not be.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of this manual for
these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like by following
these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
4) Set Octaves to zero.
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Ripples

A procedural texture that produces a three dimensional ripple pattern.

Unique Inputs
Wave Sources (scalar) - Defines the number of wave sources that interact with each other in
order to create the overall Ripple texture effect.
Each wave source is a spherical ripple pattern. When a flat object surface for example, passes
through the center of a wave source it appears very much alike to the effect one sees by
throwing a stone into a body of very still water.
Wavelength (scalar) - Defines the wave length of the wave sources. This is the length or
distance between the waves as measured peak to peak. This value is in ratio to the texture
scale value meaning that if the texture scale was set to 1m for X, Y, and Z then a wavelength
value of 1 would produce waves from each source exactly 1m apart. With the same scale if
the wavelength value were set to 0.25 the results would be four waves per meter from each
source as defined by the Wave Sources parameter.
Wave Speed (scalar) - Defines the speed of the wave in terms of distance from peak to peak
per frame. For example given a Wave Length of 0.25 if the desired cycle point was at 60
frames into the animation the Wave Speed value would be 0.004166666667. This is the
resulting number from dividing 0.25 by 60 (0.25/60).

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3D Textures
Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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LightWave 2015

3D Textures
Turbulence
The general purpose fractalized noise texture, Turbulence is good for various aspects of naturally
occurring phenomena such as fire, water, wind, smoke, clouds, or adding dirt, grime, and age to
otherwise clean it computer graphic looking surfaces.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

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3D Textures
Turbulent Noise
A multipurpose turbulent noise texture good for a wide variety of applications.

Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.
The Noise Type selection popup menu also remains a feature exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel.
Without going beyond the descriptions offered in the Surface Editor section of this manual for
these related features, you can get a very good idea of what each Noise Type looks like by following
these few simple steps:
1) Set the texture Scale values small enough that you can see the full
pattern of the texture on the geometry youre working with.
2) Set Increment to zero.
3) Set Lacunarity to zero.
4) Set Octaves to zero.
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3D Textures
5) Set the Offset value anywhere between 0.25 and 0.75
6) And select the various Noise Types one at a time while watching the VPR preview update.

Underwater
A procedural texture that produces double interlocking rebel patterns per wave source in order to
approximate wavy water refraction patterns.

Unique Inputs
Wave Sources (scalar) - Defines the number of wave sources that interact with each other in
order to create the overall Ripple texture effect.
Each wave source is a spherical double ripple pattern. When a flat object surface for
example, passes through the center of a wave source it appears very much alike to the effect
one sees by throwing a stone into a body of very still water.
Wavelength (scalar) - Defines the wave length of the wave sources. This is the length or
distance between the double wave pattern. This value is in ratio to the texture scale value
meaning that if the texture scale was set to 1m for X, Y, and Z then a wavelength value of
1 would produce waves from each source exactly 0.5m apart. The reason we arrive at the
value of 0.5 is because as mentioned this is a double wave pattern - meaning two concentric
waves.
Wave Speed (scalar) - Defines the speed of the waves in terms of distance from peak to
peak per frame. For example given a wave length of 0.25 if the desired cycle point was at
60 frames into the animation the Wave Speed value would be 0.004166666667. This is the
resulting number from dividing 0.25 by 60 (0.25/60).
Band Sharpness (scalar) - Controls the sharpness of the gradient between wave peaks and
valleys.

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3D Textures
Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Veins
A three dimensional cellular type texture that produces vein-like texture patterns.

Unique Inputs
Width (scalar) - Controls the width in percentage, of the veins. Smaller values produce
narrower sharper veins.
Contrast (scalar) - Defines the amount of contrast in percentage values, between the vein
areas and the spaces in between the veins.

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3D Textures
Edit Panel

Reference Object, World Coordinates and Automatic Sizing are features exclusive to this nodes
Edit Panel. Please see the explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the
Surface Editor.

Wood
A three dimensional procedural texture that produces wood like ring patterns. This texture is not
intended to produce a photo-real wood texture by itself alone but rather supply the user with the
basic framework of a wood texture allowing users the freedom to add the kind of grain patterns
and other details needed to produce the desired results.
Wood offers the ability to scale the transition gradient ramp of the rings.

Unique Inputs
Frequencies (scalar) - Defines the number of noise frequencies (0~31) used to affect the basic
ring pattern. Each frequency introduces compound affecting noise patterns.
Turbulence (scalar) - Defines the amount of influence each frequency will have on the basic
ring pattern. This setting is in ratio of to texture Scale value.
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3D Textures
Ring Spacing (scalar) - Defines the spacing value between rings in terms of layout units
usually meters. As opposed to some other seemingly similar textures the Wood texture
Scale value has no affect on ring spacing.

Ring Sharpness (scalar) - Controls the position of the end of the gradient ramp from the
foreground color or ring start, to the background color also offset from the ring start edge.
You can think of each concentric ring as having a highly defined leading edge or start
position and the Ring Sharpness as defining the thickness of each ring where the thickness is
always a gradient from the foreground to the background color.
Higher values produce narrower rings while lower values produce wider rings. A value of
about 4 will produce a gradient ramp length that ends in about the middle of the ring before
the affecting Turbulence is applied.

Edit Panel

Axis are not offered as node connections in the Workspace area. Likewise Reference Object, World
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3D Textures
Coordinates and Automatic Sizing our features exclusive to this nodes Edit Panel. please see the
explanation for these items in the chapter that covers texturing with the Surface Editor.

Wood 2
A three dimensional texture that produces a would like pattern of concentric rings. Wood2 offers
the ability to phase the transition gradient ramp of the rings.

Unique Inputs
Ring Spacing (scalar) - Defiance the ring spacing in relationship to the texture Scale value. For
example with a scale value of 1m for X, Y, and Z , a Ring Spacing value of 0.5 would result in a
ring every 50cm or 2 rings per meter.
Phase (scalar) - The Phase value phases or moves the gradient transition in respect to the
ring inner (start) and outer (end) edges.
Smaller values place the background to foreground gradient ramp start nearer the inner
edge of the ring. Larger values place the gradient start nearer the outer edge of the ring.
A Phase value of 0.5 will center the gradient peak between the beginning and end of the
ring width.
The length of the gradient ramp is equal to the span of a single ring.
Distortion (scalar) - Defines the amount of influence that Noise Scale may introduce to the
shape of the rings.
Depending on the value of the noise scale this has the effect of distorting the otherwise
concentric circular shape of the rings.
Noise Scale (scalar) - Defines the scale of the single noise pattern.
Smaller values result in a smaller noise scale.

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3D Textures
Edit Panel

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Additional
FiberNode
This node is for use with FiberFX and not the Surface Editor normally, and is covered in the FiberFX
chapter of the manual.

Python
Adding this gives you a node with no inputs or outputs initially. Double clicking on the node will
open a file requester to allow you to choose the python script of your choice.

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Constant
Introduction

The nodes in this group are all single use nodes that contain a single value - a constant. They are
used to represent Colors and various numbers in order to pipe into inputs. For example, you have
a particular shade of red you wish to communicate to a bunch of nodes. You could either go into
each nodes Fg Color field and put the red value in, or you could add a Color Constant node and
pipe its output into the Fg Color inputs on all your nodes. That way you can also swiftly change the
color if your director decides that black is the new red.
Its also useful to use a Scalar constant as an input on the Scale vector input on procedural textures.
That way you can change the scale for the X, Y, and Z values all in one go, rather than one by one.
Constants have no inputs.

Angle
This is a standalone node capable of outputting a single angular value as defined by the user. This
can be used to drive any number of angular inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from
a single node.

Edit Panel

Output Scalar.

Color
This is a standalone node capable of outputting a single color as defined by the user. This can be
used to drive any number of color inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a single
node.

Edit Panel

Output Color.

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Constant
Direction

This is a standalone node capable of outputting a direction vector as defined by the user. This can
be used to drive any number of direction inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a
single node.

Edit Panel

Output Vector

Integer
This is a standalone node capable of outputting an integer as defined by the user. This can be used
to drive any number of integer inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a single
node.

Edit Panel

Output Integer

A good use for this node would be to add two integer constant nodes and connect them to the
U Tile and V Tile inputs of all 2D nodes. This would allow the tiling of the entire texture to be controlled
from two simple controls.

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Constant
Pi
A standalone node with a constant Scalar output of the value Pi. This can be used to drive any
number of inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a single node. There is no Edit
panel. This node outputs a high precision value of Pi - this number: 3.141592653589793238462643
38327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214
80865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446
22948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460
34861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817488152092096282925409171
5364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609433057270365759591953092
18611738193261179310511854807446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912 to
be precise.

Scalar
This is a standalone node capable of outputting a scalar as defined by the user. This can be used to
drive any number of scalar inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a single node.

Edit Panel

Output Scalar.

Vector
This is a standalone node capable of outputting a vector as defined by the user. This can be used to
drive any number of vector inputs, allowing them to be set up and controlled from a single node.

Edit Panel

Output Vector.
These two nodes are for managing object displacement in Layout and are covered in their
appropriate chapters.
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Displacement
These nodes might not have any function in surfacing per se. They both offer vector outputs that
will change with every frame based on the movement of the vertices of the objects they reference. It is
up to you, the user to determine if they can fit into your surfacing pipeline and how.

MDD Displacement

The MDD Displacement node offers a single Vector output that is the result of the loaded
VertCache file. There are several controls for playback:
Frame Offset - Allows delaying or bringing forward the start frame of the animation
contained in the VertCache file
Replay Speed - Slows down or accelerates playback of the VertCache.
End Behavior - You can choose what happens when the end of the VertCache frame range if it
is not the same as your scene frame range. The choices are
Stop - Animation playback stops on the last frame of the VertCache
Loop - Animation recommences playback from the first frame
PingPong - Animation reverses direction playing back last frame to first, then bak again
Scale - This value sizes the object to which the VertCache is applied and uses the Units
measurement below
Match By - The choice is between Coordinates and Nodes. Coordinates will be used for MDD
files, but other sorts of VertCache can also use nodally-based systems.

MetaLink

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Displacement

Metalink is a very powerful tool that allows you to use the dynamic motion from one object
and apply it to another. In most cases the dynamic object contains very few polygons (2-point
polygons) while the MetaLink object has a higher polygon count.

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Functions
Introduction

The nodes in this section are mathematical functions to control other inputs. They are noted by
their yellow input and output icons.

Bias
The Bias function allows the brightness of the connected node to be controlled. This function
node provides a standard bias function. Bias is a specific function that can be used to control the
brightness on any texture with a function input. This function acts much like the brightness control
on a television.

Edit Panel

Connect the result output to the function input on any texture node (3D or 2D). By adjusting the
Bias control you can then control the brightness of the attached node.

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Functions
BoxStep
The Box Step function allows a connected node to be clamped between two specified values.
This function node provides a box step function. A box step is a ramped step between two user
specified values. This function effectively clips the connected texture, allowing flats and plateaus to
be created.

Edit Panel

Connect the result output to the function input on any texture node (3D or 2D). By adjusting the
Begin and End points, the valleys and peaks of the connected texture can be flattened.

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Functions
Gain
The Gain function allows the contrast of the connected node to be controlled. This function node
provides a standard gain function. Gain is a specific function that can be used to control the
contrast on any texture with a function input. This function acts much like the contrast control on a
television.

Edit Panel

Connect the result output to the function input on any texture node (3D or 2D). By adjusting the
Gain control you can then control the contrast of the attached node.

Gamma
The Gamma function allows the connected node to be gamma corrected. This function node
provides a standard gamma correction function. Gamma correction is a function that adjusts the
brightness and contrast simultaneously.

Edit Panel

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Functions
Connect the result output to the function input on any texture node (3D or 2D). By adjusting the
Gamma control you can then control the brightness and contrast of the attached node.

Modulate
The Modulate node allows two functions to be combined in a variety of ways. This function node
provides a method that allows two other functions to be combined. The combination may be Add,
Subtract, Multiply, Maximum, or Minimum. This node extends the tools available for creating new
functions by combining two others.

Edit Panel

Noise

The Noise function allows the connected nodes texture blending to be disturbed. This function
node provides a standard noise function. The noise function is a standard Perlin noise function,
which can be used disturb the blending or transition of the attached texture.

Edit Panel

Connect the result output to the function input on any texture node (3D or 2D). You can now
disturb and add noise to the transition of the attached texture.
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Functions
Sine

The Sine function allows the connected nodes texture blending to be sine modulated. This
function node provides a standard sine function. This can then be used to modulate the blending
of the attached texture. The sine function may also be shifted to provide a cosine as required.

Edit Panel

SmoothStep
The Smooth Step function allows a connected node to be clamped and then smoothed between
to user specified values. This function node provides a smooth step function. A smooth step is a
ramped step between two user specified values that has been smoothed so that the transition is
more rounded. This function effectively clips the connected texture allowing flats and plateaus to
be created, much like box step except the transitions are rounded.

This may be used in preference to the BoxStep function, as it provides automatic antialiasing.

Edit Panel

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Functions
Wrap
The Wrap node allows a scalar output to be post-processed using a function. This node allows the
scalar output from a texture to be modified by a function. Effectively, this allows the output from a
texture to be transformed by a function without the need to use the dedicated function input. This
makes it ideal for use when the final output is the result of a mathematical node.

Unique Inputs
Input Low (Scalar) - A link only input. The scalar to be modified by the function should be
connected to this input.
Function (Function) - The function input. The function required to modify the scalar should
be connected to this input.

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Gradient
Introduction
The nodes in this group are all related to the gradient in the normal Surface Editor and present two
different ways of creating gradients.

Curve
The Curve gradient node uses a graph editor to create a color gradient. Using red, blue and green
color channels, as well as an alpha channel, limitless color gradients are available. The Curve Editor
works much like the Graph Editor, you can add/subtract and edit keys and change the type of
curve. The Curve Editor has the advantage of being able to tie into the Graph Editor via envelopes
to have animated curves.

Inputs
Bg Color - Can receive colors and patterns from other nodes in the network. Users may also
specify a color using the controls found in the Edit Panel for this node.
Specifies the color of the background color layer.
Blending - Can receive input from other nodes in the network or can be specified to by
selecting a blending mode from the Blending pull-down menu in the Edit Panel for the
node.
For general use specifying the blending mode by using the Blending pull-down menu in the
Edit Panel will probably be the most desirable method of use. However, for larger networks
where control of the blending modes of many texture nodes simultaneously is needed or
when conditional blending is desired then using a node connection to control this value
may be advantageous.
Input - The output color and alpha are derived using the gradient based on this input.

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Gradient
Edit Panel

1) Bg Color
2) Blending Menu
3) Input Menu - If nothing is attached to the Input for the
Curve node, five choices are presented:
X Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects
X coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Y Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects
Y coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Z Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects
Z coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Slope - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle between
the current hit point and the objects up direction as the input.
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Gradient
Incidence - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle
between the current hit point and the cameras viewing direction as the input.
4) Edit Menu - presents these options:
Delete Selected Keys - This function deletes any selected keys.
Undo/Redo - This function will undo or redo a function performed in the curve editor.
Purge Undos - Removes the Undo stack
Select All - Selects all selectable keys in the curve editor
Clear Selection - Clears all selected keys
Invert Selection - Keys that are selected will no longer be selected and keys that are not
selected will now be selected
Copy/Cut/Paste - These functions will copy, cut or paste keys in the curve editor
Fit All - The function will fit all keys into the view
Fit Selected - This function will fit the selected keys into the view
Line Antialiasing - This toggle will antialias curves
High Quality Lines - This toggle will change between a quickly-drawn curve and a more
accurate one
Show Control Points- Toggles the control handles for the keys
5) Add Keys will add additional keys to the Curve Editor when the button is activated and you
click the LMB on the curve window. Stretch mode will move the keys when activated and you
click the LMB. LMB stretches the values (Y), and holding down Ctrl stretches the positions (X).
6) Pan and Zoom buttons.
7) Value and Position - Specifies the value and position for the
selected key. The values can be enveloped.
8) Curve Menu - Selects the specific curve type to be used for the selected key.
9) Lock CP - Locks the curve control point. Unlocking allows each
side of the control point to be edited individually.
10) Channels - Selected channels will be highlighted. Multiple channels can be selected
at once and the selected channels will receive any editing done by the user.

Gradient
This node allows for either a color or an alpha gradient to be created. This gradient is then
interpolated based on the input. The input may come from an external connected source such as a
texture node or from one of the user selectable internal sources (e.g. Slope).

Unique Inputs
Key(n) Color (Color), Key(n) Pos (Scalar), Key(n) Alpha (Scalar) - When the Show Output toggle
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Gradient
is engaged for a key, these inputs will appear on the node so you can hook up other nodes
to them.

Edit Panel

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Gradient
Basic Gradient Creation
In its simplest form, the gradient node allows a color gradient to be created. In the bottom of the
edit panel you can see a vertically aligned gradient. The range of the gradient is defined by the
start and end values at the top and bottom of the gradient. These can be changed as required for
different input ranges. For example, with the thickness you may wish to define a range from 0.0 to
10.0 meters. This can be achieved by editing these boxes.
You can add keys by clicking at the required insertion point on the gradient. Keys may be moved
by clicking and dragging its associated square (on the left of each key). A single click on a keys
square will select it. The currently selected key will have its bar turn white.
Keys may be deleted by clicking the X on the right of the bar.

Previous Key and Next Key - These are for cycling through the keys in a gradient
Invert Values - inverts (top to bottom) the values on all the keys in the gradient
Distribute Keys - spreads the keys out evenly between the top and bottom of the gradient
Fit All - Resizes the gradient so that all keys are visible by changing the End value
appropriately

Individual Key Editing

Once the range has been set and keys added, these can be edited individually using the control in
the section above the gradient.
The Key text box will display the name of the currently selected key.
Show Output - this check box allows the currently selected key to be added to the nodal
inputs (i.e. the inputs will appear on the node and may then be connected to). When
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Gradient
this is enabled Color, Position, and Alpha inputs are added for that key. This allows these
parameters to be driven from other nodes so you could, for example, have the color for a key
driven by the color output from a texture node.
Color - allows the color for that key to be defined. The output of the gradient is defined by
the color of each key. Each key color can be enveloped and changed over time.
Alpha - allows the alpha value for that key to be defined. The alpha values primarily define
how the current gradient is blended with the Bg Color. The blending is defined by the user
controlled Blending input. The different blending modes are covered in the Reference
Section on Blending Modes. Again, the alpha values may be enveloped and change over
time.
Position - defines the position of the key on the gradient. For the key to appear on the
gradient, the value must be between the start and end values (or equal to one of them). The
key positions can be enveloped and changed over time. It is possible to provide a position
outside the range of the gradient. This means that the key will not appear on the gradient
and may only be selected using the Previous and Next Key selection buttons.
Smoothing - defines the transition from the current key to the next. By default, this is a blend
based on a Hermite curve. However, this also can be Linear for a straight blend, Step for a
discrete step, or Bezier for a blend based on a Bezier curve.

Driving the Gradient

The color output is defined by the gradient and some input. The input may be from an external
node driving the Input node or from an internally-selected gradient type. Essentially, the gradient
provides a look-up table of colors. The input (internal or external) provides a position on the
gradient. This gradient then uses the keys to interpolate an output color and alpha based on the
input.
With nothing connected to external Input the gradient type may be selected using the Input drop
down list. The choices are:
X Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects X
coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Y Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects Y
coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Z Coordinate - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the objects Z
coordinate for the current hit point as the input.
Slope - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle between the
current hit point and the cameras up direction as the input.
Incidence - where the output is interpolated based on the gradient using the angle between
the current hit point and the cameras viewing direction as the input.
When the external Input is connected to another node, these options become unavailable,
and then the output is based on the gradient using the connected node as the input.
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Item Info
Introduction
This group contains nodes to control or be controlled by scene items. Those items could be
Objects, Lights, Cameras or control surfaces like 3D mice. If you need to base your surface on the
position or rotation of one of these items youll need these nodes.

Camera
This is a standalone node that provides access to a cameras current settings. Any of the cameras in
the current scene may be selected by double clicking on the node. The outputs are then derived
from the settings for the selected camera.

Outputs
Zoom Factor (Scalar) - The Zoom Factor output is taken from the zoom factor as defined for
the selected camera.
Focal Length (Scalar) - The Focal Length output is taken from the lens focal length as defined
for the selected camera.
Focal Distance (Scalar) - This value is taken from the DOF tab Focal Distance value for the
current frame.
Lens F-Stop (Scalar) - This value is taken from the DOF tab Focal Distance value for the current
frame.
Blur Length (Scalar) - The Blur Length output is taken from the blur length as defined for the
selected camera.
Horizontal FOV (Scalar) - The Horizontal FOV output is taken from the horizontal FOV as
defined for the selected camera.
Vertical FOV (Scalar) - The Vertical FOV output is taken from the vertical FOV as defined for
the selected camera.
Width (Integer) - The Width output is taken from the image width as defined for the selected
camera.
Height (Integer) - The Height output is taken from the image height as defined for the
selected camera.
Pixel Width (Scalar) - The Pixel Width output is taken from the pixel width ratio as defined for
the selected camera.
Eye Separation (Scalar) - The Eye Separation output is taken from the eye separation as
defined for the selected camera when stereoscopic rendering is enabled.

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Item Info
Edit Panel

The Render Camera is the one used on a specific frame for rendering but you can also choose other
scene cameras if you want to base the surface on a camera positioned differently.

Device
The Device node initially appears with no connections at all. You will need to double click on it to
open this requester:

You can either type over the (enter name) text or select from the dropdown menu. If your devices
are not found you may need to visit the Virtual Studio > Device Manager window and make sure the
device type you wish to use is enabled. Manager Names choices are:
HID - The Microsoft Human Interface Device standard is home to many mice and other
devices and is your first port of call
Intersense - A manufacturer of high-end virtual cameras
Kinect for Windows - to use the Kinect device for motion capture or surfacing
PS3 Move.Me - A system to use the PlayStation 3 Eye Toy camera
Device Name can be a vast list of devices if HID is chosen as the Manager type. Once you have
chosen a Manager and Device, the Device icon will look like this:

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Item Info

You can now connect the outputs from this device into your network. Most devices arent very
useful for creating a surface, this one is more useful for the Virtual Studio part of Layout, however
they are still available since The Control Booth panel part of Virtual Studio does have access to the
button presses for Virtual Studio devices. An LScript or Python script or Generic plugin can be
assigned to the button press. Arguments to pass to the command can be specified in the Control
Booth as well.

Item Info
This node can report on an item in a scene: Object, Light or Camera. It gives details the items
position, rotation and other vector information.

Edit Panel

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Item Info
Light Info
This is a standalone node that provides access to a lights current settings. Any of the lights in the
current scene may be selected by double clicking on the node. The outputs are then derived from
the settings for the selected light.

Outputs
Color (Color) - The Color output is taken from the color selected for the light.
Range (Scalar) - This is the value set when Falloff is engaged. If no falloff has been used, the
value is 1.0.
Intensity (Scalar) - Based on the Intensity set in Light Properties.
Shadow Color (Color) - Taken from the setting on the Shadow tab.
Direction (Vector) - In the case of a directional light, like the Dome or Area, this is the vector
for the direction. For a Point or Spherical light this is 0, 0, 0.

Studio Trait
This node is intended for use with LightWaves Virtual Studio. It can be made use of in the Surface
Editor, but similar outputs are available without the setup needed to use a Studio Trait node. If you
would still like to use it, you will need to choose your scene item, go into its Motion Options and
add the Virtual Studio Trait modifier. At that point it becomes visible to the Studio Trait node and
can be selected. You will get vector outputs of Position, Rotation and Scale.

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Layers
Introduction
These nodes allow access to the standard layered procedural textures within LightWave. The
primary role of this component is to allow the integration of LightWaves layered procedural
texture and gradient scheme into the nodal domain.

Bump Layer
The interface for the Bump Layer node is the same as that for a standard Lightwave texture layer.
For more information on this, see reference LW Layer Texture Documentation. The only difference
here is that the background for the texture is available as a connectable Bump input and an Alpha
output is available as a scalar, based on the last texture layers result.

Edit Panel

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Layers
Color Layer

The interface for the Color Layer mode is the same as that for a standard LightWave texture layer.
For more information on this, see reference LW Layer Texture Documentation. The only difference
here is that the background for the texture is available as a connectable Color input and an Alpha
output is available as a scalar, based on the last texture layers result.

Edit Panel

Scalar Layer
All the other types of Surface Channels in the Surface Editor are based on Scalars - values
of 0-100% for the most part. The interface for the Scalar Layer node is the same as that for a
standard LightWave texture layer. For more information on this, see reference LW Layer Texture
Documentation. The only difference here is that the background for the texture is available as a
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connectable Scalar input and an Alpha output is available, based on the last texture layers result.

Edit Panel

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Materials
Introduction
The Material nodes combine features of existing nodes into a more convenient and easier to use
node system. The Material nodes duplicate specific surfaces, but can still access the power of
the node system. Several types of material nodes are available. They have a cyan-colored output
that can only be linked to the cyan-colored input on the destination Surface node. Unlike the
normal Nodal connections where linking a Color node to the Surface Color input will gray out the
equivalent setting in the Surface Editor, Materials dont override the Surface Editor channels in the
sense that they can no longer be touched however changing values in the Surface Editor wont
override Material settings in the Node Editor.
Some material nodes are preprocessed meaning they will not work with VPR. They can still be
rendered with F9 so testing will need to be done the old-fashioned way without immediate feedback.

Carpaint

The Carpaint node is designed to simulate modern car painting styles including metallic paints,
Iridescence and multiple layers of lacquer. It is a complex node to make such a complex texturing
task more simple.

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Materials
Unique Inputs
Paint Color (Color)- The color of the paint layer for your Carpaint.
Specular Color (Color)- The color shining off the car when lit or reflecting.
Paint <-> Specular (Scalar)- The mix between the Paint and Specular colors can be forced
using this value.
Paint Specularity (Scalar) - The amount of shine from the paint itself, before the Clearcoat
layer is taken into aacount.
Paint Roughness (Scalar) - This value diffuses the sharp reflections in the paint layer.
Paint Normal (Vector) - This input offers the possibility to add a normal map to the paint.
Paint Bump (Vector) - And this will add a more simple bump map.
Paint Bump Height (Scalar) - The amplitude assigned to the Paint Bump Map.
Iridescence (Scalar) - Also known as goniochromism, this describes how some surfaces
change color with the viewing angle such as is seen with soap bubbles and sea shells. It is a
percentage value dictating how much light will be reflected from your surface and has some
specific parameters:
Thickness (Scalar) - This is the distance, measured in nanometers, between the surface of your
car paint and the paint layer itself. Varying it will cause interesting effects as the wavelengths
from the following three fields complement and interfere with each other.
Wavelength (Vector) - The three Wavelength fields labelled X, Y and Z each representing the
visible portion of the light spectrum where numbers near the low of 380 nm will be blue and
those near the upper level of 750 nm red.
Paint <-> Clearcoat (Scalar) - This input is available if the Real Fresnel function is not activated
in the node panel and allows you to manually decide the proportion of paint color to
clearcost layer.
RefractionIndex (Scalar) - Since the Clearcoat has a depth, it needs an Index of Refraction. The
default 1.5 should be good for most instances, but for those times when you need diamond
Clearcoat put it up to 2.4.
Clearcoat Color (Color) - The Clearcoat can have a color applied that is different from the
underlying paint color.
Clearcoat Roughness (Scalar) - This value diffuses the sharp reflections in the Clearcoat layer.
Clearcoat Normal (Vector) - This input offers the possibility to add a normal map to the
Clearcoat layer.
Clearcoat Bump (Vector) - And this will add a more simple bump map.
Clearcoat Bump Height (Scalar) - The amplitude assigned to the Paint Bump Map.
Flake Color (Color) - The color associated with flakes in the paintwork.
Flake Opacity (Scalar) - How visible they are against the normal paintwork.
Flake Height (Scalar) - How far they stand out from the paint layer.
Flake Density (Scalar) - How much of the surface is covered by flakes. at 0 %, no flakes are
visible and at 100 % no paint is (unless Opacity is set to less than 100 %).
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Flake Distance Falloff (Scalar) - Because the flakes could play havoc with anti-aliasing when
they are far away, the FallOff is for the flakes to become invisible when the camera is the
defined distance away.
With Iridescence

Without Iridescence

The two scenes are identically surfaced with the Carpaint material, except the scene on the right has no Iridescence, the one on the left has
Iridescecence at 100% with a thickness of 2.0nm and a Wavelength of X: 425 Y: 380 Z: 750.

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Materials
Edit Panel

The standard Scale, Position, Rotation and Falloff tabs at the bottom of the panel are for adjusting
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the flakes in your Carpaint. The settings here have no effect on the paint or Clearcoat.

Conductor

Appropriate for simulating metallic surface finishes accurately. The appropriate values for various
conductors (metals) can be obtained from published data in handbooks of optical constants.

Edit Panel

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Materials
Specularity needs to be raised from its default of 0 % for a metallic, shiny look. Adding Roughness
will break up reflections.

Delta

Delta is an energy conserving material. What this means is that it has realistic properties like when
specularity is 100% the diffuse in turn will drop to 0%. Faster than Dielectric while offering less
control, it is an excellent node for background glass or metal objects.

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Materials
Edit Panel

Dielectric

Dielectric is a physically accurate node for simulating glass-like materials. Use this state-of-the-art
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Materials
node when you want to create realistic glass. Dielectric uses Beers Law, which is about energy
absorption, occurring when light passes through a surface. The more light that is absorbed by the
material, the darker it will look.

Edit Panel
Toggle Partial Internal Reflections on for full accuracy with internal reflections, or off to allow for
faster rendering when full-on accuracy is not required.

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Materials
Skin

Chris Jones amazing Eye Piece, using Simple Skin for the skin and Sigma 2 for the eyeball

The Node Editor has three Skin nodes available. Skin, the one we will mainly cover, Fast Skin and
Simple Skin. Fast Skin, despite its name, is probably the most complex of the three and offers more
inputs to better tweak your skin surface. However, the fact that it requires a pre-processing step
means it is unusable in VPR; both Simple Skin and Skin can be used in VPR. Of the three Skin is
probably the most synthetic in the sense that its controls are more grouped and simplified than
the other two, so if you need separate Subdermis and Epidermis texturing and you also want to
use VPR then Simple Skin is the one for you. If youd like to get a good approximation of skin but
dont care about the minutiae, Skin is the one you should use. If you need absolute control and are
happy using F9 to test, then Fast Skin is the one you should use.

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Materials
Unique Inputs
These are the inputs for the node with the largest number (Fast Skin). Simple Skin and Skin share
similar inputs.
Diffuse Color (Color) - Specifies the color used for the diffuse translucent channel.
Diffuse (Scalar) - Specifies the amount of Diffuse reflectivity that will be applied.
Diffuse Roughness (Scalar) - Specifies the amount of roughness that will be applied.
Roughness is the result of microfacet evaluation in lighting conditions. Higher values
produce rougher surface properties while lower values produce smoother looking surfaces.
This kind of roughness is more easily seen on objects with many sharp edges or where high
contrast bump or normal maps are applied.
Specular Color (Color) - Define the Color of the specularity
Specularity (Scalar) - Defines the amount of specularity that is applied to the surface by this
node.
Glossiness (Scalar) - Defines the amount of glossiness that is applied to the surface by this
node.
Fresnel (Scalar) - Defines the amount light reflection on a surface.
Refraction Index (Scalar) - Index Of Refraction or IOR, is a charted index of the different
amounts of refraction associated with real world materials. Refraction is the bending of light
as it passes through transparent materials or substances of different density.
Dense substances bend light more than materials that are not dense.
Epidermis Visiblity (Scalar) - Determines the visiblity of the outer-layer of the skin shader.
Epidermis Back Scatter (Scalar) - Controls the relative amount of backwards scattering for the
Subdermis layer. This parameter is relative to the Visibility parameter for the Epidermis layers.
Epidermis Color (Color) - SSpecifies the color used for the outer-layer of skin.
Epidermis Distance (Scalar) - The depth into how far light is absorbed into a surface.
Epidermis Gamma (Scalar) - This function provides a standard gamma correction function.
Gamma correction is a function that adjusts the brightness and contrast simultaneously.
Quality (Scalar) - Controls the quality of the subsurface scattering. Increased quality produces
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less noise but increases render times.
Subdermis Visiblity (Scalar) - Determines the visiblity of the sub-layer of the skin shader.
Subdermis Back Scatter (Scalar) - Controls the relative amount of backwards scattering for
the subdermis layer. This parameter is relative to the Visibility parameter for the Subdermis
layers.
Subdermis Color (Color) - Specifies the color used for the sub-layer of skin.
Subdermis Distance (Scalar) - The depth into how far light is absorbed into a surface
Subdermis Gamma (Scalar) - This function provides a standard gamma correction function.
Gamma correction is a function that adjusts the brightness and contrast simultaneously.
Quality (Scalar) - Controls the quality of the subsurface scattering. Increased quality produces
less noise but increases render times.
Normal (Vector) - , Bump (Vector) - Specifies a vector direction for modifying the surface
normal. This is surface normal direction information and affects the way the surface is
shaded. Care should be taken when connecting to this input. Connecting dissimilar types or
non directional vectors may cause the surface to shade wrongly.
Bump Height (Scalar) - Specifies the bump height or amplitude of the Bump directional
vectors.
Bump Dropoff (Scalar) - How fast the visibility of the bump falls away.
Skin has some specific inputs:
Fresnel Perpendicular (Scalar) - Specular amount at perpendicular angles.
Fresnel Parallel (Scalar) - Specular amount at parallel angles.
Skin Diffuse Weight (Scalar) - Is the weight between the diffuse and Scattering. 100%, and all
you see is SSS; 0 % and all you see is diffuse.
Scattering Weight (Scalar) - Multiplies the Scattering.
Scattering Color (Color) - The color of the Scattering.
Scattering Distance (Scalar) - Distance multiplier for the absorption.
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Scattering Cutoff (Scalar) - At what distance the subsurface scattering effect disappears.

Edit Panel

Left to right: Skin, Simple Skin, Fast Skin

Images applied to the inputs for Subdermis and Epidermis inputs will always give a better result.

Make Material

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Materials
This node has no edit panel. It is a tool to combine multiple normal nodes into a Material for use
with the Material Mixer, Multi Switch or Switch nodes.

Material Mixer

The Material Mixer node serves to combine two materials with an alpha switch. Using the edit
panel will blend between the two attached materials, but more interesting is to add a scalar input
that can definitely switch between the two materials.

Edit Panel

Multi Switch
This node can add as many Material inputs as you like and switch between them using an integer
switch (you can also use a scalar).

Edit Panel

Add Input adds a new Input to the node and the dropdown list in the panel can be used to select
an input that can be removed with the Remove Input button.

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Materials
Shadow Catcher

A node that allows a background image to be better integrated into a scene by catching shadows
from geometry.

Unique Nodes
Shadow Color - You have control over the color of the shadows cast to better match them
with the original photo.
Reflection - Sets the amount of reflection to show up in the catcher objects.
Color - Allows tinting of the reflection color
Roughness - Shadows arent really affected by rough surfaces, but reflections are, they
become broken up or blurred on diffuse (or rough) surfaces. This setting allows you better
match the roughness of the surface youre compositing onto; increasing this value will
cause reflection blurring, or if you input a procedural texture into the Roughness input, allow
breaking up of the resulting reflection.

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Materials
Edit Panel

Example: Beach Camaro

Lets take a look at setting up a relatively simple compositing exercise. This beach photograph will
provide a useful background plate to composite the car model onto, the sand is wet and provides a
perfect example to illustrate the reflection catching aspect of the Shadow Catcher node.

Setting Up the Background Plate

We first need to bring in the background plate we want to composite over, well be using the
Background Image method. Open up the Effects panel > Compositing tab ( Ctrl F7) select (load
image) from the Background Image dropdown menu and choose our image.

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Materials

To help align items with the plate when we start placing objects into our scene, we need to see the
background image in the camera view. Open the Options panel > Display tab (D key) and set the
Camera View Background to Background Image. Youll need to set the viewport type to Camera to
see the effect of this.

Setting Up the Camera

We now need to match the LightWave camera to that of the background photo. The easy way to
do this is to use the Real Lens Camera. Select the Camera and bring up the Properties panel (P key).
Choose Real Lens Camera from the camera type dropdown (1), then choose (from image) in the
camera type dropdown (2), select the image from the Image dropdown (3) and finally change Use
fstop to Do not use fstop from the focal distance dropdown (4) as we dont want to use Depth of
Field (DOF) because this will also blur the background image which already has DOF in the image.

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Materials

Matching the Background Image Perspective

Once the background plate and camera settings have been setup, we need to position the
LightWave camera in approximately the same location as the camera used to take the photograph
so that our 3D objects match the same perspective as the background. Lets start by adding the
ground plane object that we will be using to catch the shadows and reflections.
Go to the Modeler Tools tab > Create group > Geometry dropdown > Ground Plane.
Set a size that will encompass the object and any shadows being cast from it, then name the
Surface Shadow_Catcher for easy reference in the Surface Editor. You can also choose to save the
object to disk during creation - this is important if you want to reload the scene.

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Materials

LightWave Scenes and Objects are separate files on disk, which means whenever you save in
Layout, you need to save the Scene and Objects separately. Saving the Scene will not automatically
save objects, or any Layout-created geometry. If you save a Scene and quit LightWave without saving
objects too, you will lose any changes to object surfaces or any Layout-created geometry you generated.
Now we have the ground plane created, lets load the object we want to feature in the composite
scene. Moving and rotating the camera into the original photos camera position will match the
perspective. This part is very much a matter of eyeballing until it looks right.

When taking a photo for use in compositing, you should also note details that will help at the
camera matching stage, such as camera settings, height, position from any key items in the photo, time
of day, lighting conditions. Additional photos from different directions can also be used for reflection
maps.

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Materials
Our scene now looks like this:

Camaro model by Elvis Lewis Blazencic

Setting Up the Shadow Catcher Material

The Shadow Catcher works by only shading shadows and reflections from other objects in the
scene onto surfaces the Shadow Catcher is applied to. Other material properties such as diffuse are
simply ignored, which is why it gives the illusion of objects being part of the background image.
To apply the Shadow Catcher to the ground plane we created, open the Surface Editor (F5) and
select the Shadow_Catcher surface we named earlier.

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Materials

Make sure the checkbox next to Edit Nodes is checked to enable the Node Editor. Click Edit Nodes
to open the Node Editor. Navigate to the Materials group in the Nodes list, and double click the
Shadow Catcher material to add it to the node workspace. Connect the Material output on the
Shadow Catcher node to the Material input on the Surface node.
Once connected, open the Shadow Catcher nodes options. If the background image where
your object will be placed has a reflective surface, here you can set the amount of reflection that
matches, along with any roughness you judge the ground may have.
Were now done setting the ground plane material.

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Materials

Matching the Lighting

The last stage is to match the lighting and direction of the original background photo in your
LightWave Scene. For outdoor scenes like our example, you may want to use a Dome Light rotated
to match the direction of the shadows in your photo (the lights position doesnt matter).
For sharper shadows use a low Angle for the Dome Light, higher angles result in softer shadows,
For very diffuse overcast lighting, angles up to 90 may be required.
Enabling Radiosity - Render Globals panel > Global Illum tab ( Ctrl P) also helps photorealism greatly.
When rendered, your object should now look as though it was part of the original photo, as the
shadows and reflections appear to interact with any shadow catcher objects (ground plane in this
example). Note the reflection in the wet sand as well as the shadow.

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Materials
Sigma

A material node which uses subsurface scattering, which occurs when light partially passes
through a surface, and is scattered within the object, then exits through a different location.
Subsurface scattering is an important addition to 3D computer graphics for the realistic rendering
of such materials as marble, skin, and milk and other real-world semi-transparent substances. The
image above shows the LightWave logo with an additional Spherical light behind it.

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Materials
Edit Panel

This is the edit panel for the above render showing the Pass Light Inside switch active.
Pass Light Inside - If on, light is passed inside the surface. Which means all surfaces inside the
Sigma surface receive illumination. If it is off, no light passes inside the surface.
Advanced Shading - If this is on the SSS rays will hit any other surfaces inside the SSS surface,
otherwise the rays will only hit the SSS surface.
Subsurface Radiosity - When checked, Sigma will calculate the radiosity for the subsurface of
the surface.

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Sigma2

This is a node with pre-processing so wont work well with VPR. Similar to Sigma, this adds true
Transparency to Sigmas abilities. It doesnt use switches like Sigma to create SSS or passing light inside.

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Materials
Edit Panel

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Materials
Standard

Standard is similar to the Make Material node with more control. Where Make Material only have
five inputs, Standard has 20.

Edit Panel

Switch
This node has no Edit Panel. It simply allows you to switch between two Materials when surfacing
using an Integer input as a Switch, like Material Mixer and Multi Switch.

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Math
Introduction
These are all helper nodes to deal specifically with Scalar, Trigonometry and Vector mathematics.
Most have no edit panel and are just designed to modify data passed through their in and outs.

Scalar
The functions here all have green Scalar inputs and outputs.

Abs
In mathematics, the modulus or absolute value (abbreviated Abs) of a real number is its numerical
value without regard to its sign. So, for example, 5 is the absolute value of both 5 and 5 and
3.14159 is the absolute value of both 3.14159 and 3.14159.
In a general frame of reference you can think of this nodes function as changing negative values
into positive values or in other words inverting only the numbers that exist on the negative side of
a number line. The absolute value of a number is always either positive or zero, never negative.

Add
The Add node adds the incoming or user specified value B to the incoming or user specified value
A and supplies their sum as the Result output.
It is important to note the order of the values in all the math nodes as inverse operations do not
always produce the same result. Addition and multiplication are exceptions but if you keep this
rule throughout all of the math nodes you will run into fewer problems.

BoxStep
A box step is a ramped step function. Two limits are set by the Begin and End inputs or through the
edit panel. If the input is less than the Begin input, then the output will be 0.0. Conversely, if the
Begin input is greater than the End input, the output will be 1.0. If the input is between Begin and
End, then the output will vary between 0.0 and 1.0 proportionally.
Effectively, the Box Step clamps between the Begin and End values and normalizes the output
between 0.0 and 1.0.

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Math
Ceil
Ceil is the abbreviation for ceiling. This node receives scalar data from an arbitrary data item such
as the luminance values of an image, the Alpha channel of a procedural or the output from another
math node. It evaluates the incoming value and rounds that value up (hence the name ceiling) to
the nearest whole number which is then output as the result.
This can be very useful for extracting stepped data from smooth gradations among many other
things. See the I/O graph below to get an idea of what is going on under the hood:
Input:
Result:

0.2
1

0.6
1

1.0
1

1.4
2

1.8
2

2.2
3

2.6
3

3.0
3

Clamp
This node will clamp incoming values to a user specified cap or limiter value. There is a cap for the
high limit (or top of the range) and one for the low. Values that are greater than the specified high
limit will be set to the high limit value. Values that are lower than the low limit will be set to the
low limit. Incoming values that are between the specified high and low limits will not be modified
or scaled.

Divide
The Divide node simply divides one scalar number by another.

A computer finds it easier to multiply than divide. Consider multiplying instead of dividing. 4 x 0.5
gives the same result as 4/2.

Floor
The Floor node finds the largest integer less than or equal to the In input. A few examples:
In :
Out :

-2.9
-3

-2.0
-2

-1.5
-2

0.0
0

0.5
0

1.5
1

2.0
2

2.9
2

The floor function can be considered as a round function much like Ceil, with the exception that it
is derived from the lowest integer (the floor) rather than the highest integer (the ceiling).

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Fresnel
The Fresnel equations involve the amount of reflected light based on the incidence angle. You can
input a Refraction index by double-clicking on the node and you should input a normal to base the
math on from the Input nodes Normal outputs. The Result or Inverse can be chosen as output.

Invert
The invert node simply inverts the input. The is done by subtracting the In input from 1.0, so 0.0
will become 1.0 and 1.0 will become 0.0. The inversion will occur for intermediate values also, so 0.2
inverted is 0.8, 0.7 inverted is 0.3 and so on.

Logic
This node does have an edit panel. The Logic node can be used for typical If, then, else logic
flow within a network. There are two inputs that can be compared in various ways. If the given
comparison evaluates true then the value entered or connected to the true input is passed to the
Out output. If the comparison evaluates as false then the value entered or connected to the False
input is passed to the Out output.

Edit Panel

The Out output from this node is either a pass-through of the True or False connections or the
value entered into those variables via the Logic nodes Edit panel. Which input True or False is
passed through depends on the result of the selected Operation. The available Operations are
shown here:

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So for example if A Equal To B were selected the True value would be output if the vales for A and B
were the same. If they were different then the value entered or connected to False would be passed
to the Out output.

Max
The Max node simply takes the A and B inputs and outputs the largest. A and B may be connected
to other nodes or controlled manually. This means that the node can be used to clamp the
maximum value of a scalar.

Min
The Min node simply takes the A and B inputs and outputs the smallest. A and B may be connected
to other nodes or controlled manually. This means that the node can be used to clamp the
minimum value of a scalar.

Mod
The Mod node derives the modulus of the A input in the form Result=A mod B. The modulus is
effectively the remainder leftover when A is divided by B, as in 7 divided by 2 is 3 with a remainder
1. So a few examples would be:
Input A:
Input B:
Result:

0.0
2.0
0.0

1.0
2.0
1.0

2.0
2.0
0.0

3.0
2.0
1.0

4.0
2.0
0.0

5.0
2.0
1.0

6.0
2.0
0.0

This function is useful because it can be used to repeat a regular function over a shorter period.
Take, for example, a linear gradient that varies from 0.0 at the top of an object to 6.0 at the bottom.
By using this gradient as the A input and making B 2.0, you can see from the above table that the
gradient would ramp from 0.0 to 1.0 three times.

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Multiply
The Multiply node allows one scalar to be multiplied by another.

Pow
The Pow node allows one scalar to be raised to the power of another (A Pow B or AB). For example,
23 is 2 x 2 x 2 = 8. Interestingly, you can also raise a scalar to the power of 0.5 if you wish to
calculate the square root.

Sign
The Sign node simply changes the sign of the input so that positive scalars become negative and
negative scalars positive.
In:
Out:

-2.0
2.0

-1.0
1.0

-0.5
0.5

0.0
0.0

0.5
-0.5

1.0
-1.0

2.0
-2.0

Smooth Step
A smooth step is a rounded, ramped step function. Two limits are set by the Begin and End inputs.
If the In input is less than the Begin input, then the output will be 0.0. Conversely, if the In input
is greater than the End input, then the output will be 1.0. If the input is between Begin and End,
then the output will vary between 0.0 and 1.0 proportionally as a smoothed ramp. Effectively the
Smooth Step clamps between the begin and end values and normalizes the output between 0.0
and 1.0 with a smoothed transition.

Subtract
The Subtract node allows one scalar to be subtracted from another.

Trigonometry

The nodes in this section are all concerned with angular values.

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Math
ArcCos
The ArcCos node takes the inverse cosine of the input scalar. The input can be in the range -1.0 to
1.0 for a real result. The result will be in the range PI to 0. If the input is not in range, the result will
be an invalid floating point value.
Example: cos(x) = y implies arccos(y) = x

ArcSin
The ArcSin node takes the inverse sine of the input scalar. The input can be in the range -1.0 to 1.0
for a real result. The result will be in the range -PI/2 to PI/2. If the input is not in range, the result will
be an invalid floating point value.
Example: sin(x) = y implies arcsin(y) = x

ArcTan
The ArcTan node takes the inverse tangent of the input scalar. The input can be any scalar value.
The result will be in the range -PI/2 to PI/2.
Example: tan(x) = y implies arctan(y) = x

Cos
The Cos node takes the cosine of the input scalar.

Sin
The Cos node takes the sine of the input scalar.

Tan
The Cos node takes the tangent of the input scalar.

Vector
Nodes here are for more complex vectorial math.

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Math
Add
The Add node simply adds two vectors. Vectors are assumed to contain three elements X, Y and Z.
This node adds the vectors so that:
ResultX = AX + BX
ResultY = AY + BY
ResultZ = AZ + BZ

Add4
The Add4 node simply adds together four vectors. Vectors are assumed to contain three elements
X, Y and Z. This node adds the four input vectors together so that:
ResultX = Vec 1X + Vec 2X + Vec 3X + Vec 4X
ResultY = Vec 1Y + Vec 2Y + Vec 3Y + Vec 4Y
ResultZ = Vec 1Z + Vec 2Z + Vec 3Z + Vec 4Z

Add Scaled
The Add Scale node adds two vectors and then scales the result. The scale works based on a
percent, which means a scale of 100% is the same as multiplying by 1.0. A scale of 50% is the same
as multiplying by 0.5, and a scale of 0% is the same as multiplying by 0.0. Vectors are assumed to
contain three elements X, Y, and Z. This node adds the A and B vectors together and scales the
result so that:
ResultX = ( AX + BX ) x Scale
ResultY = ( AY + BY ) x Scale
ResultZ = ( AZ + BZ ) x Scale

Cross
A vector cross product calculates the result as being the product vector orthogonal to both input
vectors. Imagine two vectors X and Y on a plane where Y points up the plane and X across it. The
cross product would be a vector that points directly out of the plane, which is otherwise referred to
as the Z vector (this can also be considered the normal to the plane).

Distance
The distance node derives the distance between the two input points To and From.
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Math

Divide
The Divide node simply divides one vector by another. Vectors are assumed to contain three
elements X, Y and Z. This node divides the vectors so that:
ResultX = AX / BX
ResultY = AY / BY
ResultZ = AZ / BZ

A computer finds it easier to multiply than divide. Consider multiplying instead of dividing. 4 x 0.5
gives the same result as 4/2.

Dot
A vector dot product calculates the cosine of the angle between two vectors. The dot product
ranges from -1.0 to 1.0. Taking the inverse cosine of this output yields the angle between the two
input vectors.

HPBAdd, HPBMatrix, MatrixHPB, Tanspose Matrix 3x3

These nodes are intended for the Virtual Studio rather than the Surface Editor and are described in
that section of the manual.

Length
The Length node determines the length of any vector.

Multiply
The Multiply node simply multiplies one vector by another. Vectors are assumed to contain three
elements X, Y and Z. This node multiplies the vectors so that:
ResultX = AX x BX
ResultY = AY x BY
ResultZ = AZ x BZ
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Math

Normalize
Vector normalization involves taking a vector and finding its length. All three elements of the
vector are then divided by this length. This has the effect of creating a normalized vector, that is, a
vector with the same direction as the input vector but with a unit length.

Scale
The scale function simply scales the size of the vector. The scale works based on a percent, which
means a scale of 100% is the same as multiplying by 1.0. A scale of 50% is the same as multiplying
by 0.5, and a scale of 0% is the same as multiplying by 0.0. Vectors are assumed to contain three
elements X, Y, and Z. This node adds the A and B vectors together and scales the result so that:
ResultX = VectorX x Scale
ResultY = VectorY x Scale
ResultZ = VectorZ x Scale

Subtract
The Subtract node simply subtracts one vector from another. Vectors are assumed to contain three
elements X, Y and Z. This node subtracts the vectors so that:
ResultX = AX - BX
ResultY = AY - BY
ResultZ = AZ - BZ

Subtract Scaled
The Subtract Scale node subtracts two vectors, and then scales the result. The scale works based
on a percent, which means a scale of 100% is the same as multiplying by 1.0. A scale of 50% is
the same as multiplying by 0.5, and a scale of 0% is the same as multiplying by 0.0. Vectors are
assumed to contain three elements X, Y, and Z. This node adds the A and B vectors together and
scales the result so that:
ResultX = ( AX - BX ) x Scale
ResultY = ( AY - BY ) x Scale
ResultZ = ( AZ - BZ ) x Scale

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Math
Transform
The Transform node allows a vector in object space to be transformed into the same vector
in world space. This may also be applied in reverse, so that a vector in world space can be
transformed into object space.

Transform2
The Transform2 node allows a vector to be translated using a 3x3 transformation matrix as defined
by the user. Here, the Right input defines the top row of the transformation matrix, the Up vector
the middle row, and the Forward vector the bottom row. A switch is provided so that the inverse
transform can be performed using the same transformation matrix.

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RayTrace
RayTrace
The RayCast Geometry node in this group is detailed in the RayCast section of the documentation.

RayCast
The RayCast node allows rays to be cast into the scene. The rays are fired from the Position input
vector and will travel in the direction of the Direction input vector. This is the fastest way of tracing
rays through the scene, as the ray casting only returns the length the ray traveled before it hits
another surface (on any object including the objects whose hit point is currently being evaluated).
Both the Position and Direction inputs must be specified in world coordinates (the Transform and
Transform2 nodes can be used as required). If the ray fired does not hit another object, then the
Length is returned as being -1.0.

RayTrace
The RayTrace node allows rays to be traced through the scene. The rays are fired from the Position
input vector and will travel in the direction of the Direction input vector. As with the RayCast node,
the ray trace function returns the length the ray traveled before it hit another surface. However,
with RayTrace, the surface which the ray hits is also evaluated, and the result is returned as the
Color output. This means that it may be used to trace reflection and refraction. Both the Position
and Direction inputs must be specified in world coordinates (the Transform and Transform2 nodes
can be used as required). It the ray fired does not hit another object, then the length is returned as
being -1.0 and the color black.

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Python
Python Nodes
The node in this section is a demonstration of how you can use Python to create nodes for
LightWave. The source for the Specular Node here is available from the \support\plugins\scripts\
Python\Layout\Shader folder.

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Shaders
Shaders
This group is subdivided into a further five groups dealing with specific types of shading. Almost
all nodes have a red Color output but they are not designed to be applied to the Color input
on the destination Surface node (though they can be). They are designed to be attached to the
appropriate Diffuse Shading, Specular Shading, Reflection Shading or Refraction Shading input on the
Surface node.

Diffuse
Diffuse means to pour out and cause to spread freely. To spread about or scatter; disseminate. In
the case of diffuse shaders within LightWave 3D, it is the reflection of light that is being scattered
or spread out.
Various shading models are offered and each achieves this dissemination of light in a slightly
different way resulting in a different overall surface look especially when animated. Some use
trigonometric functions to scatter the rays while others may incorporate such technology as
microgeometry - a virtual layer of infinitesimally small geometric shapes used to calculate and vary
the direction of reflected light rays.
Some of the diffuse shading models offered here are classic staples in the Computer Graphic
Industry (CGI) while others are more unique. Several were designed specifically for LightWave3D
by Antti Jrvel, a renowned Finnish scientist and are exclusive to NewTeks LightWave 3D
application.
The shading models offered in this section can additionally be mixed and modified in order to
create a huge variety of different surface shading. Each significant shading model can shade to
an individual set of normals thereby allowing true layered shading per surface. For example one
normal map can be connected to the Lambertian diffuse shader, an entirely different normal map
connected to the Phong specular shader and then an additional third normal map for the surface
globally by connecting it to the Surface destination nodes Normal input. Theres no implied limit to
the number of shaded Normal layers that can be added to a surface in this way.
This is extremely useful for creating the illusion of depth within a surface be it car paint, very deep
lacquer finishes, or more elaborate uses such as a freshly waxed surfboard, resin cup coasters,
transparent signal cable jackets as seen below, and other photorealistic and non-photorealistic
surfaces.
Multiple Normal mapped shading layers can be applied for each attribute; Diffuse, Reflection,
Specular, Subsurface Scattering, and Transparent, besides the usual per Surface global normal
mapping.

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Lambert
In LightWave3Ds shading model prior to version 9.0 as well as in this node, Lambertian Reflection
is used as a model for diffuse reflection. Lambertian Reflection as used here, is calculated by taking
the dot product of the surfaces normalized normal vector and a normalized vector pointing from
the surface to the light source. This number is then multiplied by the color of the surface and the
intensity of the light hitting the surface.
Unchecking Radiosity and/or Caustics calculations in the Edit Panel means they will not be
evaluated by this shading model as it is applied to the object surface being edited.
This can be used to omit both entire surfaces or per channel surface attributes from radiosity or
caustics calculations thus offering more diversity in the rendered output as well as reducing the
time needed to calculate these surfaces in scenes where either radiosity or caustics are used.

Minnaert
Developed from the mathematical models of Marcel Gilles Jozef Minnaert (February 12, 1893
~ October 26, 1970), a Belgian astronomer, for describing lunar or non-atmospherical terrain
surfaces.
The air in our atmosphere affects what things look like. This is a shading model designed to render
surfaces as they would appear without the atmosphere.
As a byproduct it is also commonly used for velvet-like surfaces. The darkening lobes are in this
model are very well suited for rendering fabrics and soft materials as viewed from a distance.

Unique Inputs
Darkening (scalar) - Shadows the micro-geometry by increasing its virtual height. High values
produce can inverted shading.

Occlusion
Occlusion or ambient occlusion is a shading method used to help add realism by taking into
account attenuation of light caused by obstructive geometry.
Local shading methods like Lambertian shading or the OrenNayar model do not take into account
such global information; by contrast ambient occlusion is a global method even though it is a very
crude approximation to full global illumination, considering only a visibility function and cosine
application.
The appearance achieved by ambient occlusion is similar to the way an object appears on an
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Shaders
overcast day.
This shader requires that Ray Trace Shadows be turned on in the Render Globals Render tab.
It was intended to be used as input to a wide variety of connections within any given network.
For example as direct input to any number of channels (connections) on the Surface destination
node, as input to the Opacity connection of any of the 2D or 3D Texture nodes or even as input to
another Shaders properties.
Opening the Edit Panel will allow you to choose between Infinite and Ranged modes. When using
Ranged, you can use the Max input connection to replace the field in the Edit Panel.

Occlusion II
Similar to Occlusion, this node provides Ambient Occlusion and it designed to be piped into the
Diffuse Shading input on the destination Surface node. Occlusion II has a few more settings to
better control your output.

Unique Nodes
Spread - The overall cone angle of the sampling rays.
Heading - The rotation angle of the map for the spherical mapping mode, and also for the
light probe mode.
Pitch - The pitch rotation angle of the map, but is only applied for the light probe mode.

Edit Panel

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To tint the unoccluded areas based on an image, the Color Mapping Dropdown offers a choice of
Image Type to use for the Occlusion II node. The choices are:

Off - No image required

Image (Spherical Map) - A spherical map-type image is to be used
Image (Light Probe) - A light probe image is to be used.
Backdrop - Uses the settings in the Effects > Backdrop tab.

OrenNayar
OrenNayar is a diffuse shading model proposed by Michael Oren and Shree Nayar of Columbia
University in 1994, specifically as an improvement to the Lambertian model and especially good
for simulating rough surfaces like clay where the darker areas tend to reflect light causing the
surface to appear rougher. It is also particularly well suited to simulate cloth surfaces.
The CookTorrance specular model uses a similar method of distributing light by the distribution of
a microfacet description.

Unique Nodes
Normal (vector) - Normal maps connected to this input will replace the normals that this
shader applies shading to in a mutually exclusive manner. This means that more than one
set of normals can be utilized by any shaders exclusively or shared between any of the
various shaders and/or the global normals for an individual surface.
The per-surface global normals are defined by either the interpolated geometry itself or by
whatever is connected to the Normal input on the Surface destination node.
By using a different set of normals either from different normal maps or from any of various
nodes that may offer normal outputs themselves, it becomes possible to create truly layered
surface shading and texturing.

Edit Panel

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Theta

Theta is a superior Lightwave3D exclusive translucency shading model developed by Antti Jrvel,
a Finnish scientist and one of LightWaves developers. It has many of the same properties that
people associate with Subsurface Scattering but without the intense rendering computations.
Theta was especially designed for the translucent shading of thin walled objects. Such items as
ping-pong balls, thin material lamp shades, sheets of paper, and so on.
Translucency is the material quality of allowing light to pass diffusely through semitransparent
substances.
Since translucency is in consideration of light rays in specific, it is considered and classified as a
diffuse shading model.
Translucent shaded surfaces will not reveal the surface colors and properties of other object
surfaces that exist on the other side of the translucent object away from the observer. Lights
however will show through translucent surfaces and are needed in order to for translucency
shaders to affect the surface at all.
Light and observer (usually the LightWave camera) positioning are critical to the way translucency
affects the final rendered result.

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Shaders
Edit Panel

Translucency
Another LightWave3D exclusive translucency shading model developed by Antti Jrvel, a Finnish
scientist and one of LightWaves developers.
Translucency is the material quality of allowing light to pass diffusely through semitransparent
substances.
Since translucency is in consideration of light rays in specific, it is considered and classified as a
diffuse shading model.
Translucent shaded surfaces will not reveal the surface colors and properties of other object
surfaces that exist on the other side of the translucent object away from the observer. Lights
however will show through translucent surfaces and are needed in order to for translucency
shaders to affect the surface at all.
Light and observer (usually the LightWave camera) positioning are critical to the way translucency
affects the final rendered result.

Edit Panel
Range - The Range pull down menu is also a control exclusive to the edit panel of this node.
The options are 90 and 180 and control the maximum angle that the light is allowed to
diffuse.

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Reflection
Reflection shaders require that the amount of overall surface reflection be set either in the Surface
Editor panels Reflection percentage or by connecting outputs from other nodes in the network to
the Reflection input of the surface destination node. Reflection Shading is not the same thing as
Reflection amount.
The shading models offered in this category were intended to be used as input to the Reflection
Shading connection in the Surface destination node.
The shading models offered in this section can additionally be mixed and modified in order to
create a huge variety of different surface shading. Each significant shading model can shade to an
individual set of normals thereby allowing true layered shading per surface.
For example one normal map can be connected to the Lambertian diffuse shader, an entirely
different normal map connected to the Phong specular shader and then an additional third unique
normal map for the surface globally by connecting it to the Surface destination nodes Normal
input. Theres no implied limit to the number of shaded Normal layers that can be added to a
surface in this way.
This is extremely useful for creating the illusion of depth within a surface. Multiple Normal
mapped shading layers can be applied for each attribute; Diffuse, Reflection, Specular, Subsurface
Scattering, and Transparent, besides the usual per-Surface global normal mapping.

Ani-Reflections
Ani-Reflections is a NewTek original adaptation of the Gregory J. Ward anisotropic reflection
shading model.
Anisotropy simply put is the property of not being isotropic. An isotropic surface has the property
that for any given point on the surface, the light or reflection does not change when the surface it
rotated about its normal.
Picture a perfect mirror shaped like a 33.3 rpm record album. Placed on the turntable one would
not be able to tell if it were rotating or not by focusing their gaze on any portion of the mirror
platter surface. This is isotropic.
Etch a checker pattern of extremely small grooves into the surface however and the same rotation
becomes extremely obvious. Depending on what is being reflected the surface may even appear
to flash or strobe as the platter rotates. This is anisotropic reflections.
This shading model is very well suited for simulating the multicolored reflections one sees on the
surface of a Compact Disc (CD) or similar.
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Unique Inputs
Dispersion (Scalar) - Controls the amount of light dispersion. Dispersion is a phenomenon
that causes the separation of a wave into spectral components with different wavelengths,
due to a dependence of the waves speed on its wavelength.
Dispersion as used in this shading model simulates real light dispersion. The higher the
value the greater the amount of dispersion that will be simulated and applied.
U, V (Scalar) - Scales the base of the microfacet pyramids in the U or V direction.
When a high ratio exists between the U and V scale microfacet pyramids are defined that are
much longer than they are wide for example.
Each spot is evaluated with the reflectance of a virtual pyramid pointing up from the surface.
The U and V values define the scale of the base of that pyramid.
When U and V are equal the surface reflections will be isotropic. When U and V are unequal
anisotropic reflections result.
Smaller U and V values create smoother surface properties. Larger values create rougher
looking surfaces.
Center (Vector) - Center receives its X, Y, Z coordinate information either by entering it into
the Center tab in the Edit Panel or by connecting an input to the Center connection on the
node in the Workspace Area.
Center defines the center coordinate of the generation point. These are offset values of the
objects coordinates also sometimes referred to as the objects pivot point.
Values entered into the edit panel via user input will be overridden by any connections made
to the node in the workspace area.
Rotation (vector) - Rotation receives H (Heading), P (Pitch), and B (Bank) rotational
information either by entering degrees into the Rotation tab in the Edit Panel or as radians
by connecting an input to the Rotation connection on the node in the Workspace Area.
Rotation defines the axial rotation around the generation center point . These are offset
values of the objects rotational settings.
Values entered into the edit panel via user input will be overridden by any connections made
to the node in the workspace area.

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Shaders
Edit Panel

Reflections
Reflections is an advanced reflection shading model created by Antti Jrvel, a Finnish scientist
and one of LightWaves developers.
It offers a number of improvements and original features such as wavelength-based dispersion and
an intelligent blurring algorithm.

Edit Panel

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Shaders
Specular

The nodes in this section were designed to apply various kinds of shading to the specular channel
of a given named surface. It is useful to keep in mind that Specular shading is not the same thing
as the specular amount. Each of the nodes in this section have a Specularity percentage value
available in either the node Edit Panel or as a connection input to the node as it appears in the
workspace area. It is this percentage value that is responsible for determining the amount
of specular shading these shaders will apply to a Surface when connected to the Specular Shading
input of the Surface destination node.
The shading models offered in this category were intended to be used as input to the Specular
Shading connection in the Surface destination node.
The shading models covered in this section can additionally be mixed and modified in order to
create a huge variety of different surface shading. Each significant shading model can shade to an
individual set of normals thereby allowing true layered shading per surface.
For example one normal map can be connected to the Lambertian diffuse shader, an entirely
different normal map connected to the Phong specular shader and then an additional third unique
normal map for the surface globally by connecting it to the Surface destination nodes Normal
input. Theres no implied limit to the number of shaded Normal layers that can be added to a
surface in this way.
This is extremely useful for creating the illusion of depth within a surface. Multiple Normal
mapped shading layers can be applied for each attribute; Diffuse, Reflection, Specular, Subsurface
Scattering, and Transparent, besides the usual per Surface global normal mapping.

Anisotropic
The Anisotropic specular shading model is a NewTek original adaptation of the Gregory J. Ward
anisotropic shading model; adapted by the Finnish scientist Antti Jrvel.
Anisotropy simply put is the property of not being isotropic. An isotropic surface has the property
that for any given point on the surface, the reflection of light sources does not change when the
surface it rotated about its normal.
Picture a perfect mirror shaped like a 33.3 rpm record album. Placed on the turntable one would
not be able to tell if it were rotating or not by focusing their gaze on any portion of the mirror
platter surface. This is isotropic.
Etch a checker pattern of extremely small grooves into the surface however and the same rotation
becomes extremely obvious. Depending on what is being reflected the surface may even appear
to flash or strobe as the platter rotates. This is the affects of an anisotropic surface.

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Shaders
This shader is specifically intended for simulating the specular properties of brushed metals such
as magnesium automobile rims (mags), various kinds of cookware, and etc. As with most shaders
the actual application of the Anisotropic node is limited only by your imagination.

Blinn
The Blinn shading model simulates specular reflection. Blinn takes into account changes in
specularity due to the angle you are viewing the surface at.
This model produces shading with larger highlights than those occurring in the phong model,
especially when illumination strikes the surface at a grazing angle. This also produces soft
highlights that tend to be more realistic than the phong model.
Both Phong and Blinn are very commonly found and used in the CG industry. Blinn is the specular
model used as default by most OpenGL-capable display adapters.

CookTorrance
K. E. Torrance and Sparrow designed a physically-based BRDF (Bidirectional reflectance distribution
function - a four-dimensional function that defines how light is reflected at an opaque surface).
in 1967, that produced a rough surface as a base. The surface used microfacets and the angle of
those facets were used to describe surface roughness. It used real world parameters to describe
the reflection distribution of wavelength dependent light and therefor a specific point on a given
surface could have different colors from different views.
In 1982 R. L. Cook and K. E. Torrance came up with a mixture of the previous shading model and
Jim Blinns model and additionally included more distribution functions for the distribution of the
microfacets. The Torrance-Sparrow model used the well known Gauss distribution, Cook-Torrance
sometimes also called the Blinn-Cook-Torrance, also included functions for the Phong distribution,
the Trowbridge-Reitz distribution and the Beckmann distribution.
Together Cook and Torrance also added IOR and angle-dependant reflections as well as an
geometrical attenuation factor by adding self shadowing and masking calculations to the
microfacet idea.
The Cook-Torrance model is a very common BRDF, good for simulating a wide variety of materials
from metal to some types of cloth.
The OrenNayar (diffuse) model is very common variant of this microfacet usage and model. Cook
Torrance specular shading in combination with the OrenNayar diffuse shader can be a much
more realistic alternative to the Lambert and Blinn of past LightWave3D versions and have many
advantages for both photoreal and NPR rendering.
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Shaders
Phong

The Phong shading model was invented by Phong Bui Tong in 1975, and because of its simplicity
and speed it is one of the most popular models to describe glossy reflections of rendered surfaces.
You can set the parameters so that it reflects more light than it receives, and therefore is not a
physically accurate model but because CGI is the art of creating illusions this fact can be very
useful.
Some of the Phong shaders tell-tale earmarks are its silky soft hot-spot highlights and its wraparound rim specular hits gathered from light sources located behind the geometry. This makes it
exceptionally useful for backlit subjects and characters.

Subsurface Scattering

The nodes in this section are designed to apply various kinds of shading to the diffuse channel of a
given named surface. It is useful to keep in mind that shading is not the same thing as the amount
of SSS that is applied. Each of the nodes in this section has an Amount percentage value available
in either the nodes Edit Panel or as a connection input to the node as it appears in the workspace
area. It is this percentage value that is responsible for determining the amount of Subsurface
Scatter shading these shaders will apply to a surface when connected to the Diffuse Shading input
of the Surface destination node.
The shading models offered in this category were intended to be used as input to the Diffuse
Shading connection in the Surface destination node.
There are three nodes in a Legacy subfolder - Kappa, Kappa II and Omega - that are purely there to
support existing projects already using them. They should not be used for new projects. If you do
need to use them, they are described in the LightWave v9 documentation.

SSS
A simple subsurface scattering shader. This shader requires a pre-processing stage, so it is not
suitable for use with VPR where it will render black.

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SSS2
A slightly more complex subsurface scattering shader. This shader requires a pre-processing stage,
so it is not suitable for use with VPR where it will render black.

Unique Inputs
Forward Color (Color) - Specifies the color used for the diffuse translucent channel.
Backward Color (Color) - Specifies the color used for the diffuse translucent channel.
Forward Amount (Scalar) - Scales the result of the effect which is the output, You can think of
this as scaling the amount of SSS that is being applied to the surface.
Backward Amount (Scalar) - Scales the result of the effect which is the output, You can think
of this as scaling the amount of SSS that is being applied to the surface.

Transparency

The nodes in this section were designed to apply various kinds of shading to the Transparency
channel of a given named surface. It is useful to keep in mind that shading is not the same thing as
the amount of transparency that is applied.
These nodes depend on the Transparency amount set in the Surface Editor panels Basic tab. It is
this percentage value that is responsible for determining the amount of Transparency shading
these shaders will apply to a surface when connected to the Refraction Shading input of the
Surface destination node.
The shading models offered in this category were intended to be used as input to the
Refraction Shading connection in the Surface destination node.

Ani-Refractions
The Ani-Refractions shading model is a NewTek original adaptation of the Gregory J. Ward
anisotropic shading model; adapted by the Finnish scientist and LightWave developer Antti
Jrvel.
Anisotropy simply put is the property of not being isotropic. An isotropic surface has the property
that for any given point on a surface, the reflection or in this case refraction, of light sources does
not change when the surface it rotated about its normal.
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Shaders
Picture a perfect mirror shaped like a 33.3 rpm record album. Placed on the turntable one would
not be able to tell if it were rotating or not by focusing their gaze on any portion of the mirror
platter surface. This is isotropic.
Etch a checker pattern of extremely small grooves into the surface however and the same rotation
becomes extremely obvious. Depending on what is being reflected the surface may even appear
to flash or strobe as the platter rotates. This is the affects of an anisotropic surface.
This shader is specifically intended for simulating the refractive properties of anisotropic
transparent materials such as some types of cut glass, Calcite Crystal, and etc.

Refractions
Refractions is an advanced transparency shading model created by the Finnish scientist Antti
Jrvel exclusively for NewTeks LightWave 3D application. It offers a number of improvements
and original features such as wavelength-based dispersion, definable sampling, and an intelligent
blurring algorithm.

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Spot
Spot
This group contains two nodes - Instance Info and Spot Info. The Spot Info node allows access to
all information regarding the current hit point and Instance Info performs a similar function for
instances.
First lets define what a spot is. A spot is just a spot - a fleck, a pinpoint. You can think of a spot as
a single element area that is calculated or evaluated, on a surface and that it is arbitrary in size. Any
given spot contains several types of data including color, normal angle, the direction that a ray is
coming or going from relative to that spot, and so on. Remember Node Editor is a surface texture
and shading editor so the word spot here pertains to the spots of an objects surface. Spots are a
useful primitive type for texture design, because, in general, the relations between features of the
spot and features of the texture are straightforward.

Instance Info
This node gives control over instances - virtual polygons. I can be used to gain an ID Index for a
particular instance, or get a Fixed Random index number for a non-specific instance.

Spot Info
The Spot Info is a stand-alone node that provides access to information regarding the current hit
point being evaluated. It has now been superseded by the Input node in every node editor. Input
offers more outputs than Spot Info has.

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Tools
Tools
A set of nodal tools for creating your node network.

Color Scalar
The Color Scalar node allows a color to be converted into a scalar. Double clicking the node will
present a dropdown list of modes that determine how the conversion occurs. These are:
Average - this outputs a scalar as the mean of the three color components.
Scalar = (Red + Green + Blue) / 3.0
Maximum - outputs the scalar as the largest of the three color components.
Scalar = Max(Red, Green, Blue)
Minimum - outputs the scalar as the smallest of the three color components.
Scalar = Min(Red, Green, Blue)
Red Channel - outputs the scalar as the value of the red component.
Scalar = Red
Green Channel - outputs the scalar as the value of the green component.
Scalar = Green
Blue Channel - outputs the scalar as the value of the blue component.
Scalar = Blue
Luma - outputs the scalar as the luminance of the input color.
Scalar = CCIR 601 luminance values formula Y = 0.299 R + 0.587 G + 0.114 B so (Red x 0.299 )
+ (Green x 0.587 ) + (Blue x 0.114 )

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Tools
ColorTool
The Color Tool node takes the input color and provides a set of controls that allow it to be
manipulated or processed and then output. The available manipulations are:
Hue - allows the hue of the input color to be shifted by any number of degrees. The HSV color
model specifies H as Hue being an angle with red at zero degrees, green at 120 degrees, blue
at 240 degrees, and so on. The input color is converted to HSV and the derived hue shifted
by the specified amount.
Saturation - works in much the same manner as Hue. Again, as with the HSV color model,
S is the saturation where 0% is the absence of any hue (grey scale) and 100% is full color
saturation. The input color is then converted to HSV. This control is used to specify the
saturation. This has the effect of being able to fade colors to grey.
Brightness - allows the overall brightness of the color to be controlled. Again, this is based on
the HSV color model and here it is the V, or value, that is specified by this control. This control
works in the same way of the brightness control on a television.
Contrast - allows the contrast of the input color to be altered. This control works in the same
way of the contrast control on a television.

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Compound
A Compound node is a container for other nodes, or networks of nodes, simplifying complex
networks and making for easy reuse. The easiest way to understand it is with a quick example.

Example: Simplifying the Benchmark Marble nodes

Weve loaded the Benchmark Marble scene included with the 11.5 content. Its a deliberately
complex scene designed to torture your processor to find out how fast it is. Most of the surfaces
are fairly simple, based around the Dielectric Material node, but the floor is a bit more abstruse.

My Node Editor has to be at 61% magnification to see all those nodes. Lets simplify.
1) Select all the nodes apart from the Scalar node at the start and
the Surface node at the end and Copy them ( Ctrl C).
2) Add a Compound node from the Tools group. Double click on the new Compound node
and you will enter a new Node Editor for that Compound. Here you can paste the nodes
you copied. Select the Material output from the CarPaint material at the end of the node
network and plug it into the Output node in the Compound node editor, where it says New.
3) Double click on the output node in the Compound node editor to return
to the main node editor. The original nodes are still there because
we want to have a control for this compound, that of Scale.
4) Drag the output from that first Scalar node to the New input on the Compound node. You
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Tools
will see it changes to Scalar and a second New node is added. Take note of where scaling
is applied in the network, it is Input A on the Divide node, Scale on the Checkerboard
node and Scale on the Grid 2D node. If you double click on the Compound node you
will see the Input node now says Scalar and you can make the same connections.
5) Finally, you can delete all the nodes in the main node editor
with the exception of Surface, Compound and Scalar.

The image on the left is inside the Compound node. Note the lack of a Surface node and the title bar saying Compound. The image on the
right is back in the main Surface for the Ground and you can instantly see how much simpler it is than originally.

Overview of Controls
Double-clicking on the Compound node will enter a new Node editor with Compound as its title.
You will see two nodes, an Input and an Output. If you have dragged an output to the Compound
already, the Input node inside the Compound Node editor will show it as an output. A nodal
network can be built inside the Compound Node editor and when either the Compounds Input or
Output nodes are double clicked you will be returned to the main Node editor.
Inputs to the Compound node can be renamed by right clicking on the entry. Renamed entries are
also renamed inside the Compound node window.

You can rename the Compound node and also use the notes function to make its function
more understandable. Double clicking to enter the Compound will still put Compound in the title bar.
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Tools
Limiter

The Limiter node clamps each channel of the input color between the user-specified low and high
limits. Therefore, none of the Red, Green, or Blue components of the input color will be output as
being lower than the value specified by the Low input. Conversely, none of the Red, Green, or Blue
components of the input color will be output as being higher than the value specified by the High
input. Imagine three Clamp nodes each with the same limits placed on the red, green, and blue
components of the color.

Make Color
The Make Color node allows a color to be constructed using three scalars. The scalars used are
input on the Red, Green, and Blue inputs, respectively, and must each vary between 0.0 and 1.0.

Make Vector
The Make Vector node allows a vector to be constructed using three scalars. The scalars are input
on the X, Y, and Z inputs, respectively.

Mixer
The Mixer node allows two colors to be mixed based on a scalar using the standard nodal blending
modes. In other words, it can be used to composite two colors. The Fg Color is mixed with the Bg
Color using the Opacity as the alpha component for the mix. The two colors will be mixed based
on the selected Blending mode. For more information about the blending modes see the Common
Input and Outputs section. The mixed, or blended, color will be output on the Color output, while
the Alpha output is driven with the value used for the opacity input.

Random Integer
Creates a random integer based on the Seed value input either in the Edit Panel or from an integer
input connection.

Random Scalar
Creates a random scalar value based between the Min and Max Range in the Edit Panel. These
ranges can also be enveloped and the Edit panel offers switches to include the Min and Max values.

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Vector Scalar
The Vector Scalar node allows a vector to be converted into a scalar. Double clicking the node will
present a dropdown list of modes that determine how the conversion occurs. These are:
Maximum - outputs the scalar as the largest of the three vector input components.
Scalar = Max(X, Y, Z)
Minimum - outputs the scalar as the smallest of the three vector input components.
Scalar = Min(X, Y, Z)
X Channel - outputs the value of the X component of the input vector.
Scalar = X
Y Channel - outputs the value of the Y component of the input vector.
Scalar = Y
Z Channel - outputs the value of the Z component of the input vector.
Scalar = Z
Length - outputs the length of the input vector.
Scalar =Length(X, Y, Z)

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Vertex Map
Vertex Map
These nodes give access to vertex maps stored in objects.

Morph Map
The Morph Map node allows access to any morph maps assigned to an object (relative or absolute).
Once selected, the Position output will be driven with the morph amount derived for the current
hit point and the selected morph map. This allows the amount of morphing to be considered in
any shading or texture networks such as making the surface color change proportionally.

UV Map
Once a specific UV Map is selected in the Edit panel, the two scalar outputs will give the U and V
values.

Vertex Color
The Vertex Map node allows access to any color maps assigned to an object. Once selected, the
Color output will be driven with the color of the selected vertex map. As with all color-based
nodes, the vertex map color can be mixed with the Bg Color. This mixing is based on the currently
selected blending mode and the alpha channel derived for the color map. For more information on
how the vertex map color and Bg Color are mixed based on the blending modes see the Common
Input and Outputs section.

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Vertex Map
Weight Map
The Weight Map node allows access to any weight maps assigned to the object being shaded.
Once selected, the Value output will be driven with the morph amount derived for the current hit
point and the selected weight map.

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Chapter 31 Preset Shelf

LightWave 2015

Preset Shelf
Preset Shelf
The Preset Shelf is a resizeable floating window that holds a list of previews along with all of the
associated settings in Modeler and Layout. It can be used for settings with surfaces, volumetric
lights, HyperVoxels, Bullet Dynamics, Flocking, Navigation devices and more. It is accessed using
the Presets button (Windows > Presets) or from some plugin panels. You add to the shelf by doubleclicking on the preview, if one exists on the panel (e.g., Surface Editor), or by using the Save Preset
button found on panels supporting Presets. The shelf survives from session to session.

Third Party tools can take advantage of the Preset Shelf as seen in Bevel ++ for example.
The window is context sensitive, so if you are working on surfaces, surface presets are displayed, if
you are working on HyperVoxels, those presets are shown, and so on. If you have no windows that
accomodate Presets, the Presets Shelf will still open, but will appear to be empty.
Each editor has a default library named Workspace - a library is a grouping of presets for a
particular editor. You can create a custom library by right-clicking over a preview and choosing
Library > Create. For example, using the Surface Editor, you might make a library of Wood presets, a
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Preset Shelf
library of Stone, etc. The Library > Discard Presets menu clears all of the presets from the displayed
library.

To apply one of the presets:

Double-click on a preview or select Preset > Open from the RMB pop-up menu.
Click the Yes button on the confirmation dialog.

Preset > Open w/Parameters works with certain preset groups, like HyperVoxels, and allows you
to pick which part of the settings you want to use.

From the Presets menu choose Set Name to open a dialog box where you can set a Name to be
used for the sample, it appears underneath the sample image. You can add a longer string of text
in the Description field, which appears at the bottom of the panel when your mouse pointer
is over a preview.

There are also options to Move/Copy presets between libraries. The Delete option removes the
sample from the shelf.
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Preset Shelf
Keeping your Presets organized will pay off in the end. After a while you may find that you have
quite a large collection.
The Presets Panel has been updated with all available menus listed. Each library is listed in a
separate category. The light colored lines indicate available library containers and their lock state,
which depends upon design decisions and folder permissions.
The Bundled container refers to presets stored inside the Layout application (inside the
application bundle); these would be specific to that application and provided solely by NewTek.
The Built-In container refers to presets stored in the SharedSupport folder, which is shared
among all the LightWave applications; these would be provided solely by NewTek and is not
modified by the user or third party installers. There is a This Network container (not shown here)
that would refer to presets shared among members of a Mac network The This Machine container
refers to presets stored on the local machine and shared among all users that can log into this
machine. This is where third party presets would normally go (so that they can be shared among all
users on the machine). The This User container refers to presets stored specific to current logged
in user and are not shared with any other users. The Custom container (not shown here) refers to
the user define preset folder that can be specified within Layout. The lock symbol means there is
no write access allowed to the container. For the current library, you will also see the lock state if
that particular library has not write access.
Double-clicking on the preset image (like before) will activate that preset. One difference now is
that double-clicking on the name will open up the editing dialog to set the name and description
of that preset.
Changes to the preset folder made outside of LightWave are ok and will be realized when the
preset shelf is brought to the foreground.
This new capability removes a restriction and allows LightWave to be operated from a read-only
device such as a DVD, a network application server (educational environments), a mounted DMG
file. In many environments, users do not have write access to the previous single preset folder, so
having these other locations is useful. Also, third party UB installers now have a reliable location
to place their preset updates. Also, when updates to the Universal Binary version of LightWave are
made via the intended drag-drop install, the previous Applications/LightWave3D folder will be
totally replaced; so it is important not to make third party or user modifications to that follder.

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Preset Shelf
2015

Presets path de-referencing

In 2015 there is a quick way to remove paths for presets in Options if you had chosen a path here.
Presets normally reside in three locations as shown in this image:

Hitting the Cross will remove access to this third set of presets. The first two locations (Built-in and
This User) remain unaffected.

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Chapter 32 VPR

LightWave 2015

VPR
VPR (Viewport Preview Renderer)
VPR is Layouts native Interactive Render. Essentially, VPR is the LightWave renderer in a next gen
interactive form. The VPR Interactive Renderer handles Radiosity, Ray-Tracing, Reflections,
Refractions, and Transparencies - pretty much anything in short - to provide stunning LightWave
renders as quickly as possible.

VPR is activated in the Viewport Display menu by selecting VPR instead of one of the standard
OpenGL view types. Once activated the viewport will begin rendering using the settings in the
Render Globals panel. VPR will continually update when changes are made.
2015

VPR Render Controls

The render settings for VPR are located in the top-right section of each viewport. Look for the
highlighted button.

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VPR

Draft Mode - the default way for VPR to start, is an optimized setting for VPR which has
limitations but results in faster image iterations. Using this mode does not affect any of your
F9 renders. This setting is also available in the Viewport Options menu.
Render Alpha - Available only when not in Draft mode and checked by default. See below
Half Resolution - will cause VPR to render only at half-resolution.
2015 Pixel Smoothing - Affecting the initial drawing of the VPR image, Pixel Smoothing
interpolates between the power of two pixel sizes resulting in a more readable image
earlier.
2015 Render Outside Camera - Unchecked by default. This renders only the view seen by the
camera. If you want the whole viewport rendered you can check this option.
Volume Shadows - will render shadows resulting from volumetrics in the scene. This includes
fibers generated from Fiber FX.
Interactive FPS - is the frames per second VPR will attempt to update the render. A Render FPS
setting of 30 will attempt 30 redraws per second, while a Render FPS setting of 1 will attempt
only one redraw per second.

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VPR
2015

Alpha Channel Support for VPR

VPR now supports the saving of images with Alpha channels. This functionality is limited to Final
quality VPR images, not Draft, and can be turned on in VPR Options at the top right of the viewport.
With it activated, images will take a very small amount more time to render to completion, which is
why this is still an option, but now all image savers listed as 32 in the Image Saver list will save with
an Alpha Channel. Savers that only have 24 listed will still not have Alpha Channels.

VPR Save and View Controls

These settings are applied to the Save button in the viewport that will save an image with the
settings here without dialog. Images will not have OpenGL overlays and will be saved at the
moment you hit the button, which means that they might not be in a final state.

Type - is the image file type.

RGB Files - is the location where an image saved with the viewport button will go and with
what base name, by default Image.
Color Space - sets the color space options for the saved image.
Alpha Color Space - The Color Space for the Alpha channel. Normally, this should be left at
Linear.

Add Display
You can send the VPR viewport to an external display. Provided is 3D Vision Pro for use with NVidia
graphics cards and suitable 3D viewing hardware.

Additional VPR Controls

More options are available in the Viewport Options menu:
OpenGL Wireframe will display the wireframe of the mesh over the VPR rendering.
OpenGL Overlay will display the OpenGL components such as the grid and transform widgets
over the VPR render.
When VPR finishes rendering, information about the Render Duration and the number of Rays per
Second fired is shown in the Tool TIps.

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VPR
VPR Draft Mode Limitations
VPRs default Draft Mode is designed to show you renders as quickly as possible, however it doesnt
support everything that VPR is capable of. Heres a list of VPR Draft mode limitations:

Photoreal Motion Blur is disabled

Depth of Field is disabled
Advanced/custom cameras are disabled
Stereo rendering is disabled
The adaptive threshold is set to 0.1
Minimum Samples is set to 1 and Maximum Samples is 9
Oversampling is set to 0.5
Undersampling is set to 4 pixels max (disabled in full rendering)
Adaptive Sampling uses a 2.2 gamma function rather than the output color space to
determine the brightness difference.
Shading Samples are limited to 4.
Ray Recursion Limit is set to 4 but the maximum reflection rays is set to 2.
The max GI ray bounces is set to 1
The GI Use Transparency, Directional Rays and Use Bumps setting are disabled.
The GI Rays Per Evaluation setting is limited to 32/16 when interpolating and 4/4 when
sampled.

As you can see, to get a true view of your render, better to get out of Draft mode as you are nearing
project completion, especially if you are going to require an F10 render sequence and want no
surprises because your rendered images dont look the same as your VPR previews.

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VPR
VPR Examples
Some pictures of the Layout interface showing VPRs different modes. We havent shown
Stereoscopic or Depth of Field but both require VPR to be in Final mode.

OpenGL Textured Shaded Solid

OpenGL Textured Shaded Solid Wireframe

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LightWave 11
2015
Features

VPR

VPR Draft

VPR Final

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VPR

VPR Final with OpenGL Wireframe

VPR Final with OpenGL Overlay

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VPR

VPR Final with limited region. Useful for when you just need to verify a detail but dont want to wait for a complete render.

VPR Final with all the overlays

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VPR

VPR Final with Depth of Field and Stereoscopy

Creating a VPR Preview

While VPR is running, you can create previews just as with any other viewport display mode. You
also have the choice of either making the preview in a viewport or as a separate window. To do
so, visit the Display Options tab of the Preferences window (D) and check Undock Preview Win. You
can also choose to use the Camera Resolution, but beware with this that your camera resolution
isnt bigger than your screen resolution (you can hit ESC to leave the window). This setting is only
kept for the scene you are in, so when you create a new scene you will need to Undock the preview
window again if you so desire.
The last option is to set the Preview Scale Level. This setting applies whether you undock the
Preview window or create a preview in a viewport and offers a dropdown with a choice of
Antialiased at the top down to Every 32 pixels at the bottom. Obviously, the lower the resolution,
the faster the preview will render. Its up to you to determine what level of detail you require from
your preview.

With a Preview Scale Level of Antialiased, Every 4 pixels and Every 32 pixels.
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Chapter 33 -

Rendering and Compositing

LightWave 2015

Rendering and Compositing

Rendering and Compositing
A render is the image created by what the camera sees. A composite is a blending of two or more
image layers. This chapter covers the details of creating the final image, sequence of images, video,
and, any post-rendering effects you might add to the image.

In addition to pressing F9 or F10 for final renders, you can create images using LightWaves VPR
system that uses your OpenGL viewport to perform a full render of your image. Obviously, if you
require a single image larger than your screen resolution, an image with a lot of post-processing
or a sequence of images, then you will need to use the F9 and F10 shortcuts, but for a rapid fullquality render VPR is ideal. There are additional benefits to using VPR, for instance you can render
any view, not just the camera; you can select surfaces directly from the screen simply by Shift
-clicking on the rendering image; optionally see and move your scene items; quick save images
directly from the screen and more. Additionally, you can create a high-quality preview of your
animation.

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Rendering and Compositing

Render Globals
(Default keyboard shortcut: Ctrl -P)
This is the heart of how you render your creation. In this window there are buttons, drop down
menus and tabs to control how long your render will take, what format your individual frames or
animation will be in.

General Tab

The General tab covers overall settings for your rendering. Here is where youll set a render range
and choose what portion of the scene you wish to render.
Render Type - There are three options to choose from this menu:

Single - this allows you to set a range of frames to render the way existing users of
LightWave will be familiar with. You set a first frame to render, a last frame to render and
you can set a Frame Step. If you decide that you only want to render every other frame,
set this to 2, every third frame? Set it to 3, and so on.

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Arbitrary - parses the frames you choose to render. You can set a frame range, a
disparate single frame or two and a range again. To mark non-contiguous frames, put
the frame number followed by a comma. To mark a range put the first frame number, a
dash and then the last frame number in your range.
If you wish to you can render frames one to ten of your sequence, jump to frame 18,
then render frame 25 and finish up by rendering frames 40 to 50 of your scene.

Keyframe - is very useful for creating storyboards. You have access to any object, light
or camera in your scene and you can use the channels for movement, rotation or sizing
for the item in question (you cant choose channels that dont exist - for instance, there
are no size options for the camera). Every time that a keyframe for the item and channel
appears in the scene, LightWave will render the frame.
The render range you choose is set independently from the scene frame range. If you
use the Single range - the range thats always been available in LightWave - you will be
asked to confirm if the range youve selected does not match the number of frames in
the scene.
Auto Frame Advance - If this is unchecked you will need to hit the Continue button on the
Render Progress window at the end of each frame. This option is checked by default.
Frame End Beep - A beep will sound once a frame has finished rendering.
Animation End Beep - A beep will sound once all frames in a render range have finished
rendering.
Preview - This dropdown menu offers three choices:
None - There will be no render preview image, but the scene stats and progress bar will
be retained.
320 x 240 - A preview at this size will be displayed while the render is in progress. White
on this preview indicates areas where Adaptive Sampling is taking place.
640 x 480 - A larger preview image. LightWave scales the rendered scene to fit inside
this 640 x 480 window (or the 320 x 240 version), so turning off the preview does make
rendering slightly faster.

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Previews: None, 320 x 240 and 640 x 480

Render Display - This sets the destination for your F9 renders. It can be set to:
(none) - Renders will finish and be thrown away. Not useful for F9 renders, but
indispensable when using F10 to render.
DVView - Renders will be sent to a DV device. Only NTSC DV devices are supported.
Image Viewer - The entry you will normally choose. Renders will be displayed in
LightWaves Image Viewer window.
Python Frame Buffer - Renders will be sent to a demonstration Python script that will
display them.
Python - Selecting this will open a file requester for you to choose a Python script that
will be called once your render finishes.
Render2Image - Uses an Object custom object called Visor to present renders. Visor is
explained starting page 419.
Enable VIPER - To use LightWaves previous surface help, tick this. One frame needs to be
rendered for VIPER to work and thats what this is for. You probably wont need this because
VPR completely replaces VIPER for this functionality.
Limited Region - This dropdown presents three choices - Off, Borders and No Borders. They can
be switched between with the default keyboard shortcut of L.
This command allows you to limit the area of your screen that is rendered. Hitting L a single
time will give you Limited Region Borders - that is to say an area of your scene renders inside
an image at complete size. If you press L again, you get Limited Region No Border, which will
render just the segment of your image at whatever size you chose. Pressing L a third time
will remove the Limited Region.
Segment Memory Limit - Not needed very much in these memory-rich days, this button
allows you to set the maximum amount of memory you wish to assign to a render. If the
Segments total below this button rises above 1 you will find your render being created in
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multiple passes.

Reducing the segment memory limit from its default of 1024 to 32 MB increases the number
of segments to 3.

Be aware that if you need to render in segments you need to make sure there are no post
processes applied to your image. These will leave seams since they will be applied to each
segment rather than the finished image.
Overlay - This brings up a dropdown menu with five options:
Off - The default option
Frame Number - The frame number being rendered.
SMPTE Time Code, Film Key Code, Time in Seconds - Appropriate to the frame being
rendered.

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Set Limited Region
On Layouts Render tab, you can find the Set Limited Region command. This allows you to be precise
about the size you wish to set, instead of just dragging the handles in the viewport.

Here are the settings:

Left (X) - The offset for your limited region from the left side of the screen.
Top (Y) - The offset for your limited region from the top of the screen.
Right (X2), Bottom (Y2) - These values are ghosted while Maintain Width and Height is checked.
Width, Height - These values are ghosted while Maintain Width and Height is unchecked.
Constrain - Only available while Maintain Width and Height is checked. This keeps the
proportion of Width and Height proportional.
Center - this centers the Limited Region. The Left (X) and Top (Y) values will change to show
revised settings, but if you already have a Limited Region displayed it wont be updated until
you hit OK in this window.
Borders - You can choose to turn Borders On or Off. If you already have a Limited Region
displayed it wont be updated until you hit OK in this window.

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Render Tab

The Render tab covers general options for rendering. Here is where youll choose what options you
want to use. Most of the defaults wont need to be changed except for special purposes.

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Render Modes
LightWaves render engine has three modes to choose from on the Render Tab of Render Globals.
Almost all of the time you will be in Realistic, but QuickShade and Wireframe have their uses.

Wireframe mode: 13.2 seconds

Quickshade mode: 10.2 seconds

Realistic mode: 52.3 seconds

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As you can see from the Render settings available, the selection is severely restricted once you are
in either Wireframe or Quickshade modes. Quickshade only uses the basic colors for your objects
and ignores any Image Maps or other types of surface properties (including smoothing, textures,
transparency settings or object dissolve levels) Node surfaces are included. In this instance-heavy
scene, turning off Render Instances in Wireframe mode would render a pretty empty scene apart
from the logo and field. Bear in mind also that antialiasing settings, Motion Effects, Stereoscopy,
depth of field and post-processes (like lens flares) are maintained, no matter the render mode.

To produce a solid wireframe animation, Use the Unshared Edges, Surface Borders, and Other
Edges options on the Object Properties Panels Edges Tab, and render in Quickshade Mode.
The last option Realistic will be the one you use most often. Some options are switched on by
default for a realistic render, but you can change them as you like. These options are global to the
render. Objects have their own individual settings if you need to get more atomic.

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Ray Trace Shadows
When you enable Ray Trace Shadows, any lights that have ray-traced shadows enabled will now
calculate ray-traced shadows.

To optimize your rendering times, you should carefully consider which shadow options you wish
to have active for each object for instance, objects that are in the background can probably have their
shadows turned off completely.

Ray Trace Reflection

Enabling this feature will cause LightWave to calculate ray trace reflections between objects and
the background depending on the settings for the surfaces in the Environment Tab in the Surface
Editor. Again, you can optimise your rendering times by using images as Reflection Maps instead of
raytraced reflections or by turning off reflections altogether for objects with lower importance.

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Ray Trace Transparency

Enabling this feature causes all transparent surfaces in your scene to be ray traced, not just ones
with an index of refraction different to 1.0. This allows volumetric effects like HyperVoxels to be
seen behind transparent surfaces without having to make the surface refractive as well.

Ray Trace Refraction

You can get LightWave to ray trace only transparent surfaces with refraction using this feature,
allowing you to further optimize only those surfaces that have to undergo the ray tracing
procedure. It works for surfaces that have some degree of transparency and a refractive index
other than 1.0.
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Selecting Unseen by Rays for an object tells LightWave to ignore the object in its ray-tracing
calculations when reflection and refraction are involved. This means that the object that is unseen by
rays will not appear in the reflections or refraction of another object. It will, however, render normally
in the scene. This is especially handy for objects that are front projection-mapped; you probably do not
wish them to show up in the reflections within other objects. Unseen by Rays will not affect the shadow
options of a given object.

RayTrace Occlusion
Allows you to enable occlusion when the ray recursion level is reached. If the ray is occluded, the
background will not be seen by the ray. This should work for all reflection, refraction, transparency
and dissolve rays regardless of their origin (LightWave, plug-ins or Node Editor). Rays can be
partially occluded when they pass through partially transparent or dissolved surfaces. Occlusion
also considers clip maps. Ray Trace Occlusion will save users from having to create reflection masks
to remove the background from areas where it should be blocked by other objects.

Depth Buffer AA
This needs to be on for the Compositing Buffer antialiased buffers workflow, detailed starting page
2257.

Render Lines
This needs to be enabled to render the edges of your geometry using the control on the Edges tab
of Object Properties, or for single points or two-point poly chains.
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Render Instances
Turns on and off instance rendering immediately.

Ray Recursion Limit

Ray Recursion is the maximum number of times you want ray-traced reflections reflected off
reflective surfaces. In the real world, things can be reflected a seemingly infinite number of times.
For instance, if you stand between two mirrors facing each other you will see a seemingly countless
number of reflections, repeating until the imperfect transmission of light due to the density of the
glass and air causes them to fade into blackness. In the world of 3D animation, you must set a limit
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for the number of reflections. The default value is 6, but you can set this field from 0 to 24. Lower
numbers will yield faster rendering times.

With 1 bounce of recursion we get a very empty scene, but a render time of only 46.4 seconds. The second image has recursion set to 2 and
renders in 74.9 seconds.

Now were up to the default of 5 for recursion and a render time of 157.5 seconds. With 8, we get 221.7 seconds.

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Moving up to 16 and 24 levels of recursion and we no longer see the difference apart from render times. At 16 we get a frame in 237.4 and
24 is 244.4 seconds. Using Difference mode in Photoshop shows that the only pixel changes are in rendering time and window border.

Going below 3 for Ray Recursion can cause problems with things such as Clip Maps, so its always
a good idea to have some Ray Recursion in the Render Globals.

Ray Precision
Is the mathematical digits of precision used for intersection tests. Typically it is 6 (or 1.0e-6) which
works well in most scenes. It may need to be decreased for very rough objects with non-planar
faces and this can be used to figure out problems with a model. If reducing the number fixes a
rendering issue, the model is probably not well constructed. It determines if two slightly different
intersection points are really the same intersection point with a precision error. Most users should
not need to edit this value. If changed, they should plan on changing it back to 6 again when they
are done fixing their models. You can also increase it past 6 but I have not found this to be helpful.

Ray Cutoff
Ray Cutoff on the Render Globals panel looks at the effect of the ray on the final pixel color. The
more times a ray bounces the less it contributes to the final pixel color. The cut off is a way to save
computation by eliminating rays that have no real effect on the final pixel.

Shading Samples
The Shading Samples setting is a multiplier to determine how many samples are taken for each
final pixel of an image. Antialiasing also contributes samples, but starting the render with samples
set higher can speed a better result, depending on the type of surface being shaded. Something
complex like Materials such as Skin or Carpaint will benefit from raised shading samples more than
simple Surface Editor channels.
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Light Samples
The Lighting Samples setting is a multiplier to determine how many samples are taken for each
final pixel of an image. Antialiasing also contributes samples, but starting the render with samples
set higher can speed a better result, depending on the type of light being used. Area, Linear, Dome,
Spherical, Photometric and NGon are all sampled lights. Spot, Point and Distant lights dont benefit
from changing this value.

Use ZBuffer Min Max

You can set a minimum and maximum distance to consider for depth buffers (also known as Z
buffers). If you are using 8-bit per channel output for your buffers you only have 255 different
values that can be assigned. Using this switch will enable you to concentrate the different depths
to a smaller overall zone.

Light Intensity
Determines the Global strength of all lights in the scene. A setting of 100 uses the same setting, a
setting of 50 would cut the strength in half, while a setting of 200 would double the strength.

Flare Intensity
Determines the Global strength of all Lens Flares in the scene. A setting of 100 uses the same
setting, a setting of 50 would cut the strength in half, while a setting of 200 would double the
strength.
Lens Flares, Shadow Maps, 2 Sided Area Lights, Volumetric Lights, Mip-Mapping - Checked, these items
will activate all active items of that type, while unchecked will turn off all items of that type.

Limit Dynamic Range

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Limits LightWave to using 0-255 range (8-bit per channel) for colors internally to the render engine,
rather than full HDR.

HDR Filtering
You can choose between None, Gaussian and Bilinear to filter HDR images used in the scene.

Multithreading
The Multithreading setting is used for systems with multiple CPUs or CPUs with multiple cores.
Normally, you should set this to the number of processors on your system; however, there are
times when you will get faster rendering with this set at a greater or lower number. For scenes
that are very simple and render in seconds, you may find that setting multiple processors to the
task will actually slow down renders because of the overhead of the communication between
the processors. For such scenes, it is better to set up batch rendering so that each processor can
render its own frames. In the case of long frame renders, you will sometimes find that setting the
multithreading to a number greater than the number of real or virtual processors in your computer
may help. In either case, you may want to test a few frames before beginning your final render.
A potential for problems exists with some plugins that were not designed with multithreading in
mind. If problems occur, try using the 1 Thread setting.

Renderer Dropdown
If you choose to add a third-party render engine to your LightWave, this menu allows you to
choose which you will use when pressing F9. The Renderer Options button will open settings
specific to that engine if necessary.

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Global Illumination Tab

Without using LightWaves radiosity option, all surfaces are lit directly, with lights or ambient
light. Radiosity, the scattering (reflection) of light off diffuse surfaces, causes surfaces to become
(indirect) light sources - like in the real world - generally resulting in far more realistic images.

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In LightWave, the scattered light includes surfaces that generate their own light through use of
the Luminosity surface attribute. The images that result from a radiosity renderer are characterized
by soft gradual shadows. Radiosity is typically used to render images of the interior of rooms, due
to the high amount of bounced light, and can achieve extremely photo-realistic results for scenes
that comprise diffuse reflecting surfaces.

Image byAndrew Bradbury - Copyright Andrew Bradbury

LightWave can calculate secondary rays bouncing from surfaces or coming from the atmosphere.
This adds a very subtle, but photo-realistic effect. When combined with the high dynamic range
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calculations, the renderings become astoundingly realistic.

Copyright Philip Meyer

How Radiosity Is Calculated

LightWave approximates radiosity using projection hemispheres. These basically sit on surfaces,
each projecting out multiple radiosity rays at various angles using the theoretical normals of each
polygon in the hemisphere. This is called an irradiance evaluation.

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An Illustration of a Projection Hemisphere

If a radiosity ray strikes a surface that scatters light, some amount of that light illuminates the
surface where the ray originated - colors are determined in the usual (non-radiosity) way, which
can include the effects of luminosity, mirror reflections, caustics, and so on. The light-scattering
surfaces are essentially extra little light sources, used instead of ambient lighting, that affect the
diffuse shading of the current surface. Evaluated and non-evaluated areas are blended to compute
the final effect.

If you activate the Unseen by Rays option on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel,
that objects luminous surface is not considered a source of light for radiosity purposes.
Performing a full irradiance evaluation (tracing hundreds of rays) every time a point must be
shaded is too time-consuming. Fortunately, unlike direct lighting, with its concentrated sources
that can cause sudden changes across a surface (e.g., shadow boundaries), the indirect lighting
that radiosity is meant to handle tends to change gradually over a surface. LightWave can use
the results of each previous evaluation and smoothly interpolate between them. Only when no
previous evaluations are close enough to the point being shaded, is it necessary to fire a new set of
rays.
What is close enough? Each time LightWave performs a full evaluation, it estimates the size of the
area that can produce valid results. This depends on factors like how far the rays travelled. If all rays
went a great distance before hitting anything, then the indirect light must be fairly constant and
the calculated irradiance should be good for a large area. But if several rays hit nearby objects, then
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the indirect light might be varying more rapidly across the surface and the irradiance evaluations
should be more closely spaced.
Once you have checked Enable Radiosity you can choose the type you wish to use. In order of
increasing complexity, the choices are: Backdrop Only, Monte Carlo, and Final Gather. Interpolated
allows you to control how your radiosity is calculated by setting how many Rays Per Evaluation
(RPE) are sent out, how many Secondary Bounce Rays (SBR) (if you are using multi-bounce), what
Angular Tolerance (AT) is used and a Minimum and Maximum Pixel Spacing.
Backdrop Only evaluates only the rays that hit the backdrop. It is faster than Monte Carlo for
environmental illumination, especially in scenes with expensive textures or lighting. However, it
does not account for diffuse inter-reflection, luminous surfaces, and so on.
Final Gather calculates the rays cast from the illuminated points on a surface, from which a
hemisphere created with a specific radius and calculates the direct and indirect illumination.
Final Gather stores shaded samples in world space but only for secondary rays. Final Gather only
shades the surface if there are no other Final Gather samples near the point that was it (within
the Minimum Pixel Spacing and Angular Tolerance). When the Final Gather does shade the point, it
also adds it to the Final Gather samples so that if a point near it gets hit again, it wont need to be
re-shaded. This is why Final Gather can be faster than Monte Carlo but takes more memory. Final
Gather can be slower than Monte Carlo or even run out of memory if the Minimum Pixel Spacing is
too small.

If you have your Minimum Pixel Spacing set too small, the preprocess of Interpolated Final Gather
can be slower than brute force Final Gather. Try making the Minimum Pixel Spacing larger. Also, if
Interpolated Angular Tolerance is set too low the same thing can happen.
All radiosity types have an Interpolated mode as an option. Interpolated only works with the
primary rays (surfaces seen directly from the camera). It can use either Monte Carlo or Final Gather
rays to generate a radiosity illumination value at the point hit. It generates a hemisphere of these
rays, which are evenly distributed but randomized to some extent.
Enable Radiosity - Three choices are available, Backdrop Only, Monte Carlo and Final Gather.
They are detailed after the run-through of settings. The other settings on this tab are only
available if one is chosen and Backdrop Only radiosity does not allow multiple bounces.
Interpolated - All radiosity types have had an Interpolated mode added as an option.
Interpolated only works with the primary rays (surfaces seen directly from the camera). It
can use either Monte Carlo or Final Gather rays to generate a radiosity illumination value
at the point hit. It generates a hemisphere of these rays, which are evenly distributed but
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randomized to some extent.
Importance Sampled BG - provides you with a way to use GI settings that provide a quicker
render, but still have a smooth background in the image. The Importance Sampling
algorithm new to LightWave 2015 should ensure you get no unwanted hot spots in your
radiosity renders.
Use Transparency - The purpose of is to disable transparency calculation, including clip
maps, for backdrop radiosity rays. Backdrop radiosity is supposed to be a fast and simple
form of global illumination. Having it do a lot of transparency calculations makes the image
slightly higher quality but if you want higher quality you will probably be using one of the
other modes anyway. This option is only available for Backdrop type radiosity. When Use
Transparency is disabled for Final Gather, all transparent surfaces are ignored by rays. This
acts the same as putting all the transparent surfaces into an object and setting it to be
unseen by radiosity.
Volumetric Radiosity - This takes scene volumetrics, such as HyperVoxels or Volumetric lights
into account when calculating radiosity
Ambient Occlusion - Uses the scenes ambient light level and adds it to the Importance
Sampled backdrop to use for radiosity purposes.
Directional Rays - When the Directional Rays option is enabled, the radiosity will include
illumination from directional sources such as lights, reflections, refractions, transparency
and fog. When the option is disabled, the only illumination will come from non-directional
sources such as diffuse. This can slow radiosity renders dramatically, so use with caution.
Use Gradients - will evaluate ray samples and weigh them in order of importance creating a
tighter blend of rays.
Use Behind Test - checks the ray samples determining whether or not the rays should be
blended. Important for things like pieces of paper on a desk, but this feature will rapidly slow
down scenes that have a lot of thin overlapping geometry, such as plant leaves.
Use Bumps - will use bump maps to generate ray samples. This can create vastly longer
render times so only use it if absolutely necessary.

Intensity - determines the overall brightness of radiosity, with a default of 100%. Intensity
can be raised or lowered to change the overall lighting of a scene.

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ISBG Samples - New to LightWave 2015, the Blur Background radiosity setting has been
replaced with Importance Sampled BG. It concentrates rays towards bright areas in the
backdrop in order to ensure that hotspots, that require many more passes of antialiasing, will
clear up normally.

Normally this can be safely left at the default of 1024, but improvements to the quality and
speed of preprocessing can be gained by increasing or decreasing it with care.
Indirect Bounces - determines the number of times an indirect ray from a light source on a
surface will be calculated. Up to 64 bounces are available.
Ray Recursion is the upper limit on the number of Indirect Bounces you are allowed. For
example, if you have Ray Recursion set to 1 and Indirect Bounces set to 8, only one radiosity
bounce will be calculated. However, if you have Ray Recursion set to 8 and Indirect Bounces
set to 4, you will still get four bounces of radiosity.
Rays per Evaluation (RPE) - represents the number of sides and segments of the projection
hemisphere (as when you model a ball), which determine the number of radiosity rays sent
out for evaluation. As you might expect, the higher the density, the more accurate, but the
longer rendering will take.
Secondary Bounce Rays (SBR) - This is the number of rays cast per primary ray when Indirect
Bounces is set to more than 1. Exterior scenes dont always even need secondary bounces,
but where used keep this value low, single digits will often suffice. Interiors will want more
but probably still less than 100.
Angular Tolerance (AT) - is set in degrees. Angular Tolerance is the amount +/- in degrees
in which the rays are allowed to vary after hitting a surface. This should be easier for you
to control and is more compatible with other rendering programs (such as K-Ray) that use
degrees to control this value. The minimum angular tolerance is 10 degrees, to allow for
better sample blending. When the Angular Tolerance is set to more than 45 degrees, the
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behind test will be disabled. For highly uneven surfaces (such as trees or asteroids) this will
greatly cut down on the number of radiosity samples in the scene and improve rendering
performance. The behind test is used to prevent samples on steps from blending with
samples on other steps.

Minimum Pixel Spacing (MinPS) - A setting of 0 in the Minimum Pixel Spacing (MinPS) control
means that pixel size will not be factored into sampling. In internal testing, Minimum Pixel
Spacing of 1 or less eliminates light leaks and produces sharper shadows. For larger renders
this will probably cause slowdowns so the MinPS setting should be raised.
Maximum Pixel Spacing (MaxPS) - or MaxPS, controls the maximum distance in pixels
between interpolated radiosity samples. The value should be balanced with your MinPS.
If you have left MinPS at 0 or 1, then MaxPS should probably be around 100. For a larger
renders, this will probably want to be increased to not slow down rendering. Large values
can also cut down on visible noise in large flat areas of the scene.
Multiplier - You can render the radiosity solution for your scene at a higher or lower
resolution than the final image. Rendering at a lower resolution will speed up the radiosity
portion of the render but will leave contact shadows less defined. When using animated
radiosity, leave this at 100%.

Caching saves radiosity data for subsequent render passes and frames, which can significantly
reduce rendering time. The results can be inaccurate if objects or lights are animated, but this
option works particularly well with scenes like a walk-through in which only the camera moves.
The radiosity cache gets loaded before baking begins if it exists. This will allow you to continue
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baking an existing radiosity cache. You could, for example, extend an animation by setting your
start and stop frames beyond those you have already baked and clicking Bake Radiosity Scene. You
could add just a single frame to the cache by selecting a frame and clicking Bake Radiosity Frame.
The down side to this change is that if you want LightWave to bake the radiosity from scratch, you
must first click the Clear Radiosity Cache button before baking.
If your chosen Radiosity mode set has Interpolated checked, the Cache Radiosity option is
available.
Cache Radiosity - Turns on the ability to cache radiosity.
PreProcess - This dropdown menu has four choices:
Automatic - The default. LightWave checks the disk cache to see if frames are contained
and if their settings need refreshing. If a frame is not contained in the cache and should
be, this mode will add it.
Always - Use this mode to force LightWave to add a frame to the cache, useful if you
have multiple cameras or want to add a particularly troublesome frame.
Never - This will never preprocess your render. If however, samples are needed that are
not in the cache already because of moved geometry or the camera taking a different
path, Never will still save new samples.
Locked - Like Never only new samples will not be added to the cache. This is the mode
used by LWSN when rendering on a network.
Animation - Only works when Monte Carlo or Backdrop Radiosity is used. Animated GI is
designed to reduce temporal aliasing (flicker) in animations. Animation has two modes: The
first is animated samples. In that mode the samples stick to the objects as they move and
get recalculated every frame. It has the side effect of generating a lot of samples in some
situations like a ball rolling across a ground plane leaving a trail of densely packed samples
along its entire path. It can be quicker to pre-process than to render since each sample must
be recalculated for every frame. It may work better with a larger minimum sample spacing.
The second mode is frame interpolation. You enable this mode by setting the Frame Step
to more than 1 when Animation is enabled. It renders just the animation step frames
during preprocessing. During rendering it interpolates each in-between frame using the
neighboring step frames. With a frame step of 5, frame 3 would be 50% of frame 1 and 50%
of frame 5 for example.
Frame Step - The value used when baking a scene to determine how frequently the frames
should be baked. If your scene has slow moves its quite likely that the frame step number
can be set quite high.
Cache File - Saves the cache to disk in the specified directory.

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Save After Every Frame - Particularly of use for people without a good, permanent connection
to where caches are saved. This option will add to the cache file at more regular intervals.
Cache Directory - The cache file name is based on the scene name. If your scene is Test.lws,
the cache file will be named Test.cache and placed in the folder you specify. When you click
the Clear Radiosity Cache button, only the cache file associated with the open scene will get
deleted. This will allow you to use the same radiosity cache folder for multiple scenes.
Reset Cache File Path - Set the cached directory back to the default, if the user changed it to
something else.
Clear Radiosity Cache - Deletes all files in cache directory.
Bake Radiosity Frame - Bakes a single frame.
Bake Radiosity Scene - Bakes a scene file.

Generally, a caustic occurs in the real world when light reflects off a curved surface or refracts
through a transparent surface so that it is focused on a small area. Light through a wine glass is a
good example. With a more complex surface, the caustic can create a random pattern like those
seen on the floor and sides of a swimming pool.
Enable Caustics - Turn on caustics in your renders.
Cache Caustics - saves caustics data for subsequent render passes and frames, which can
significantly reduce rendering time. The results can be inaccurate if objects or lights are
animated, but this option works particularly well with scenes like a walk-through in which
only the camera moves.
Intensity - is a scaling factor on the brightness of the caustics. If a light shines on a disco ball,
casting dots of light around a room, and you want to halve the intensity of the light source
without affecting the brightness of the dots, you can just double the caustic Intensity to
compensate. This parameter does not affect rendering time nor interact with the other two
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caustics settings.
Accuracy - (1-10000) determines how many caustic rays are fired to compute the caustics. The
time needed for the initial rendering pass is directly proportional to the Accuracy setting, so
you can reduce the setting to speed up rendering. However, if you need to accurately render
sharp-edged or intricate caustic patterns, you may need to increase the value. You may also
need to increase it if the reflecting or refracting objects in the scene are small compared to
their distances from the light source - they are a harder target for the rays to hit.
Softness - (1 to 100) determines how many nearby caustic rays to take into account when
rendering. It affects the speed of the polygon rendering pass (as opposed to the caustics
preprocessing).
The more rays are averaged together, the more blurry the effect. If the caustics are too noisy,
this setting can be increased. Reducing it will produce sharper caustics, which may require a
higher Accuracy setting.

Image courtesy Chris Wells who says I used an image probe with some interesting details to cause the caustics, limited dynamic range at
between 10-50, set GI samples really low, i.e. 1, and then do lots of AA. The example shown was 256 AA samples. Its not completely correct
and should technically be brighter, but with LDR on at really high levels 10 or above, the noise can be cleaned up without waiting forever,
and that is what its looking like other renderers do, so its just a balance of definition vs time with the threshold being LDR. 1 will give you
extremely subtle caustics, but as you can see 10 works pretty well. At 50 they would be more defined but the renders would take longer.
The image above took just 27 seconds.

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Camera Tab

Camera Settings are covered in full in Chapter 2 - Camera starting page 104.
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Lights Tab

Light Settings are covered in full in Chapter 3 - Light starting page 162.

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Output Tab

This is where you decide just how you want to save your renders when you hit F10 to render your
scene. You can save multiple image types - animations, still frames, alpha images - all at the same
time at no extra cost in rendering time.

If you are network rendering, you will not be able to save an animation, only still frames.
To choose a save type, just click on the tick box associated with it. This will open a file requester
where you can choose a base filename and location. The file extension will be added according to
your setting in the Output Filename Format drop down menu.
If you wish to change the base filename, just click on the File Type button (Animation, Image,
Alpha) again. This will open the File Requester again and you can change the base name.
You can turn on and turn off any of the save types without losing their settings.

Save Animation
Once you have chosen a base name for your animation you can choose a type. Its a good idea to
save an animation only in addition to, not instead of a file sequence. The reason for this is that in
the case of a crash during a render you will have to re-render an animation from the start again,
but with an image sequence you will be able to resume from the last frame rendered.

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A file sequence is easily made into an animation using LightWave. Simply use the sequence as a
background image sequence in an empty scene. If you set the resolution the same as the original frame
size and save an animation, you will rapidly convert your still frames into an animation.

2015

Quicktime Windows 64-bit Support

Apple has never provided a 64-bit version of QuickTime for Windows systems, however for
LightWave 2015 we have implemented a passthrough that will make saving to QuickTime possible
again on such systems. When saving a QuickTime animation you will note that a new icon appears
in your taskbar labelled QT32_Server.

Its not likely youll need to do anything with this application and it will quietly shut itself down
when no longer needed. If you do need to you can open the window with a double-click on the
taskbar icon, or a right click and choosing Open from the menu. Youll get this window:

In which you can change the Shutdown time and see how ongoing jobs are proceeding.

Special Animation Types

Although most of the animation file types are self-explanatory, there are some that may require
some explanation.

Storyboard
There are two storyboards in the list a 4x one and the standard. They are unusual in the sense that
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they dont make an animation, but rather a series of images as a storyboard. LightWave renders
out each frame and pastes them together in grids of either 4 x 4 or 6 x 5 images, skipping every
fifth frame. The standard storyboard makes a grid of 6 x 5 images with each image of 30 frames no
bigger than the full individual image size (so a 640 x 480 storyboard frame will contain a grid of 30
images that would normally be 640 x 480). The 4X Storyboard will composite the images together
at the size you render at, making for large images if you render at video resolution.

If you are using either storyboard function in realistic render mode, its a good idea to turn off
antialiasing and any shaders like Digital Confusion you may have activated, just so
you can make the storyboards quickly.

FilmExpand

This converts an animation from 24 fps (film speed) to 30 fps (NTSC video speed) by rendering 30
frames for every 24 of the original animation. The interpolation works best when you use Field
Rendering (Camera Properties Panel). When you select Field Rendering, an Options Panel appears
where you can select the type of image to save and set the field dominance. It only works for NTSC
video, not PAL.

QuickTime_Stereo
This is used with the AnaglyphStereoCompose filter for creating animations in the red-blue glasses
style.

QuickTime Virtual Reality Object Saver

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QuickTimeVR_Object is a QuickTime Virtual Reality object saver, which adds the ability to pan and
tilt the camera inside the animation itself.

What is a QuickTime VR Object?

QuickTime VR Objects are QuickTime movies that display an object from multiple views. Special
data embedded in an otherwise ordinary movie tells QuickTime how to play through the frames of
a movie as a viewer moves the mouse across the image. When the viewer moves the mouse down,
the player skips a large number of frames to find one that corresponds to a view of the same side
of the object, from a lower position. This can simulate rotating the object in space, if the views are
right.
Once a scene with the appropriate camera and/or object movement is created, open up the
Render Globals Panel and select QuickTimeVR_Object (.mov) under the Type pop-up menu. Click
the Options button to set the critical parameters for your animation.

Object Settings Tab

Columns (Pan Frames) is the number of frames of horizontal views in the animation. If your view
is from 0 degrees at frame 0 to a full 360 degrees at frame 20 (the same view as 0), then you will
have 20 columns (frames 000 to 019). In a typical movie, the row angle will step up after this many
frames.
The Start Pan and End Pan values set the angle range of the horizontal views.
Flip Horizontal Control reverses the objects direction of rotation with regard to horizontal mouse
movement. In other words, if you drag the object left and it turns to the right, you need to change
this setting (or reverse your entire animation!).
Rows (Tilt Frames) is the number of frames of vertical views in the animation. In a QTVR Object
Movie, the animation moves through all the pan frames in a row before moving to the next tilt
frame, and does all the pan views again with that tilt.
If there are 20 pan frames (000 to 019, as above), the tilt angle will change every 20 frames, so
sequential tilt values will be at frames 000, 020, 040, 060, etc. This means that your entire animation
must be (tilt frames)*(pan frames) long.

The default Columns and Rows settings (20 x 20 = 400 frames) are more than enough for most
uses and you may be able to use lower values to reduce the size of the file.
The Start Tilt and End Tilt values set the angle range of the vertical views.

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The Start and End settings may not seem to change simple viewing of the objects, but may be
critical if the object is embedded in a larger QTVR world.
Flip Vertical Control reverses the direction of rotation of the object with regard to vertical mouse
movement. If you drag the object up, and it rotates down, you need to change this setting.

Animation Settings Tab

This tab sets some advanced QTVR options.
Frames Per View sets the animation loop size that will run from each view. If this value is greater
than one, then your animation should hold each pan view for this many frames, as the loop
happens. This also means that your animation length must be multiplied by this number. You
should not alter the pan or tilt frame counts; QTVR will handle that.
The QTVR object format features an alternate state that can be displayed based on some user
input, for example, when you click the mouse. The View States value supports this alternate state,
but will also multiply your animation frame count. These extra frames take the form of an entire
identical animation of the object in an alternate state, appended onto the first. Currently, the
QuickTime player appears to support only two usable states, not clicked and clicked. In theory,
higher values could be used.
The Compression Options button will invoke the standard QuickTime Compressor selection dialog.
The choices are many and the differences subtle. The only relevant warning for QTVR is that you
should set the compression to use keyframes at every frame, since these movies are not played in a
linear fashion.

To set up a basic QTVR scene:

1)
2)
3)
4)

Add three null objects to an empty scene, named Pan, Tilt, and Target.
Parent Tilt to Pan and parent the camera and light to Tilt.
Set the cameras position to 0m, 0m, -2m.
Unselect the X and Y motion channels, as well as all the rotation channels. Moving the
camera on Z will determine its distance from the actual object necessary for proper framing.
All other camera motion is done with the Pan and Tilt nulls.
5) Parent Pan to Target, for future convenience.
At this point, you should decide how many rows, columns, view states, and animation loop
frames you want. Here, we will use the defaults.
It is best to start on the innermost loop first. Since were using defaults, with no extra
animation loop frames (Frames Per View is 1), the inner loop is the pan motion.

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6) Create a keyframe for the Pan object at frame 20, with the Heading at -360 degrees.
7) In the Graph Editor, select both keys and set their Incoming Curve, Pre Behavior and Post
Behavior to Linear. This should give a constant heading rotation of one cycle every twenty
frames.
If we had chosen to use only one Tilt Frame, our work would be done. We chose, however, to
create twenty Tilt Frames, ranging over 180 degrees. This means that each tilt frame should
increase enough that the last row is at -90 degrees.
If we simply used, 180 degrees/20 or 9 degrees, the Tilts pitch would reach -90 degrees at
precisely 400, the first frame after our render! Using 180 degrees/19 = 9.47 degrees will get
the tilt to -90 degrees at the end of the 19th row, so our animation will include a pan from
directly below as well as directly above. Since there are 20 Pan frames, we must hold each tilt
angle for that many frames.
In short, our motion curve should look more like stairsteps than the perfect
line of the Pan Heading curve. To be more specific, Tilts Pitch Angle curve
should be stairs of a height of 9.47 degrees, and a width of 20 frames, going
from 90 to -90 degrees. Fortunately for us, this is easily achieved.
8) In the Graph Editor, set the key at frame 0 in Tilts Pitch channel to a value
of 90 degrees and create a key at frame 20, with a value of 80.53 degrees
(90-9.47). Set the Incoming Curve to Stepped, and the Post Behavior to
Offset Repeat. The camera motion should now be complete.
9) You can save the scene as a basic QTVR template.
In order to create an interesting QTVR Object, you need something to render. If you load an object
that is too large or too small you can move the camera along the Z axis (use the Local Coordinate
System).
If the object is off-center, it should be moved. The object should fit in the frame of all the views, so
it is important to check the ends and middle of the animation, but only set the Z keyframe position
at frame 0.
Try loading the cow object and follow the preceding steps to create your own QTVR animation.

There are many ways to set up a LightWave scene to render a QTVR Object Movie. The above
procedure is only one method of many.

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Saving Individual Images
You have several choices for saving images, you can either save them at 32-bits to have an included
alpha, for those formats that support it; in 24-bit with no alpha or with a separate alpha file (by
turning on the Save Alpha image) or if you are working with HDR images, you have the choice
some formats support built-in alphas, some dont (LightWaves native FLX and the SGI 64-bit do;
Cineon, Radiance and TIFF LogLuv dont). If you choose to save a separate alpha, make sure it has a
different name than your color image!

Selecting a Filename Format

When you save an RGB or alpha image, LightWave will append a numbered extension to the base
name, based upon the frame rendered. The file naming convention is determined by the Output
Filename Format pop-up menu setting. Name will be replaced with the base name. The number
one with the leading zeros (e.g., 0001) indicates the number of digits used for the numerical
sequence. The standard PC file extension will replace .xxx.
For example, with Name001, frame 34 of an animation using the base name Explode would save
out as Explode034. Using Name001.xxx, Explode as the base name, and a Targa file format, the 56th
frame would save an image named Explode056.tga.

The .xxx formats are recommended for general use, since most applications require that you use
the proper filename extension.
A filename example appears to the right of the Save buttons. The last used Output Filename
Format is saved as the default for the next time you start LightWave.
If the images may be used on a platform that supports only 8+3 filenames, make sure to keep
your base names to a maximum of four or five characters (depending on whether you select a Name001
or Name0001 Output Filename Format).

Fader Alpha
If you plan to use an alpha channel generated by LightWave along with an external video fader
or linear keyer, or a different compositing program, you may need to activate Fader Alpha Mode
in the Compositing Tab of the Effects Panel. Certain switchers can use an alpha image as a fade
control. When you select this mode, LightWave computes the saved RGB images and alpha images
a bit differently. Transparent items in an RGB image render in a more intensified manner, with
rough, aliased edges. Lens flares appear overblown. In alpha images, however, the transparency
levels render properly so that the appropriate transparency levels are used when you combine the
RGB images with the alpha channel.
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Do not use this mode if you plan to digitally composite images in LightWave or another digital
compositing package that allows for additive compositioning.

Monitoring Progress

Frame progress is complex to estimate from the start, so dont be discouraged when you see a
Frame Time Remaining that seems like your frame sequence is going to take months to complete.
As LightWave understands more about what you are asking of it, the estimated render time will
become more accurate. If you are rendering still frames using F9, then LightWave has to start from
scratch every time it renders so you will always start with a high estimate that comes down over
the course of rendering. If you are rendering a sequence with F10, LightWave can use the previous
frames render time to better estimate how long the current frame will take (although obviously if
you have something that causes a render time spike like motion blur or entering into a HyperVoxel
field, that will throw off subsequent frames).

The frame finally rendered in 11 minutes 39 seconds. The render time estimate came down with each antialiasing pass and within five
minutes the estimate was already down to an hour from 22.

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The Render Status Panel that appears when you render can have a window added at two different
resolutions to give you some indication of what is going on. However, if you are rendering an
image that is bigger than the maximum size of 640 x 480, LightWave will not scale the render down
to fit the preview window, for the sake of saving rendering time. This means that some parts of
your image being rendered outside the window wont be visible.
At any time you can cancel a render by hitting the Abort button or the ESC key. It may take a while
for LightWave to respond depending on the speed of your machine and the complexity of the
scene being rendered.

Viewing the Finished Image

Before you start rendering, make sure you have the viewing option you want for the end of
the render enabled. For rendering a sequence of images using F10, its certain that you will
already have seen all your images and thus you can happily switch the Render Display to (none).
Otherwise, you will want to see what youve done. Be warned that if you have no render display
set, you wont be able to change that once you start rendering. You will not be able to change
Viewing choices during the render or after it has been completed without requiring a new render.

Image Viewer
LightWave can render your image to a precision far greater than your monitor will show. This
is useful for print or film work. If you do a lot of post-processing on your images, having a full
precision render is vital to preserve color gradients. LightWave has an image viewing tool: Image
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Viewer. It can be used to show the whole 192-bit range that LightWave renders to. With careful use
of the Image Controls > Expose tools you can change the amount of light and darkness in an image
without merely brightening or darkening it, preserving and even revealing detail.

Render Time in Image Viewer

When you hit F9 to test your render, one of the most important values is how long it takes, but
once youve closed that Render Status window youve lost it. Weve added the render time to the
title bar of the Image Viewer to make it easier to keep track of, a small but useful addition.

DV View
Before we move onto the next section, we need to look at another viewing option on the drop
down: DV View. Choosing this allows you to display your renders directly on a DV device attached
through a Firewire port on your computer. You can output to a DV video camera that is connected
to a video monitor to allow you to see your work directly on a TV screen. This viewing option only
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works on NTSC systems, not PAL ones.

Resolution

The Resolution Preset drop down menu will present you with a series of pre-defined resolutions to
choose from for your render. It will automatically set the Width, Height and Pixel Aspect ratio fields.

You can add your own presets to this list, but it requires you to delve into the LW2015.cfg file. If
this thought doesnt scare you, then well proceed.
If you look in your LW2015-64.cfg (or LW2015.cfg for 32-bit LightWave) file you see that near the
top there are several lines that look like this:
ResolutionPreset 1920 1080 1 0 0 1920 1080 HDTV (1920 x 1080)

The first two numbers are the size of the frame, the next one is the pixel aspect ratio and then the
next four are the default Limited Region frame. The last bit of text is the title of the preset that will
appear in the drop down menu.
Feel free to make your own lines. For instance heres one you may wish to add to get the ball
rolling:
ResolutionPreset 2480 3508 1 0 0 2480 3508 A4 page (300dpi)

As you can tell from the title, this Resolution Preset gives you a full A4 page at 300dpi, but you
no longer need to add this and other page sizes specially to the LW2015.CFG since they are all
contained in the Print Camera tool, discussed on page 2059.
The width and height fields can be set to anything between 16 and 100,000 pixels in 64-bit
versions of LightWave (32-bit versions are limited to 16,000). Be aware that larger resolutions can
make serious demands on the memory of your machine.
The Resolution Multiplier gives you a much more consistent way of quickly checking a scene rather
than changing the width and height fields when you want a small test render. It takes into account
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the scaling of things such as particle, line, and edge thickness, as well as the glow radius.
If you have selected a resolution preset and you alter the width or height fields, it will override
any preset and the menu will then show the word Custom. If you have already set a resolution
multiplier, it will then operate on the Width and Height settings you have chosen.

Pixel Aspect Ratio

Once youve been using a computer for a while you forget that pixels actually come in different
shapes. Ones for NTSC TV are tall and thin; ones for PAL TV tend to be a bit fatter, while ones for
print are the same as those for computer screens square as square can be.
The Pixel Aspect Ratio setting in LightWave is calculated by dividing the width of a pixel by its
height. A pixel intended for print or a computer screen is square, as we said, so its aspect ratio is
1.0. Because NTSC pixels are taller than they are wide, the aspect ratio tends to be between 0.86
and 0.9. PAL ones, on the other hand, tend to vary between 1.01 and 1.06. Values for widescreen
displays are considerably wider in both NTSC and PAL.
Why worry about the pixel aspect ratio? After all a pixel is a pixel, right? Well yes, but if you look
at a perfectly round ball that has a radius of 50cm and you are using an NTSC resolution preset,
the ball will look squashed on a computer monitor, whereas it will look perfectly round on your
NTSC monitor. When selecting one of the resolution presets you will notice that the pixel aspect
ratio changes along with the resolutions for width and height. As for things looking squashed or
stretched on your computer monitor, Im afraid its either something youll have to get used to, or
you will need an output to a proper broadcast monitor to reassure yourself.

NTSC (0.9), Computer monitor (1.0), PAL (1.0667) - Same ball, different monitors.

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Frame Aspect Ratio

Before we move on, dont confuse the pixel aspect ratio with the frame aspect ratio figure,
often referred to simply as the aspect ratio. The way to work this out is to take the pixel width
of a picture, divide it by the pixel height and multiply the result by the pixel aspect ratio. As an
example, a standard VGA screen is 640 x 480. This equates to a frame aspect ratio of 1.333, which
is the result of the following sum (640/480)*1 and converting it to a ratio. You will often see this
figure quoted on the back of DVD cases to indicate the width of the display compared to its height
(which indicates how much of your TV screen will be covered by black bars - a 1.77:1 ratio is usually
the best for filling a modern 16:9 TV screen).

Rendering a limited region

You can render a limited rectangular region of your scene if you only wish to test your work, rather
than taking the time to render a full image. Simply hit the L key and you will see that a dotted line
will surround the renderable area of the frame. You can change the size and shape of this area by
clicking and dragging the left mouse button on one of the dotted lines that surround the area.

Above: What Layout looks like, Middle: Render Limited Region Borders, Right: Render Limited Region No Borders

There are two different types of limited region that you can use, either with or without borders
and you cycle through these choices by repeatedly hitting the L key or by choosing the drop down
menu in the Camera Properties window. The difference between a limited region with a border
and one without it is the fact that a limited region with a border puts your limited region on a black
page the size of a full render, whereas a limited region without borders will just render the shape
you desire as the full image. The frame aspect ratio in Camera Properties will remain at the aspect
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ratio for a full frame, but all other options, such as antialiasing and Masks still apply.
The limited region with border allows you to patch only a segment of a frame, rather than having
to re-render the whole frame for re-compositing. This can be a major time-saver.

Memory Considerations
Limited Region allocates only enough memory to render the horizontal limited region area. If you
stitch parts of an image together, you can effectively render images that are much larger than
those you could render one pass. This is especially useful for high-resolution print images or in
low memory situations. However, note that some post-processing filters require a full-sized image.
In such cases, you may be able to apply those filters to the stitched image in an additional step.
The way to do this is to take your final rendered image and save it to disk. Then clear your scene
or better yet, quit and restart LightWave and load this image into an empty scene. Make it the
camera backdrop and add whichever post-process filter you wish to use, and then render again.
Since you arent rendering all the objects, textures, Image Maps, etc., the memory requirements
will be a lot lower.

Segment memory limit

When rendering an image you can dictate the amount of memory that LightWave should devote
to rendering - this is apart from whatever memory LightWave uses for Shadow Maps, image
mip-mapping or geometry memory costs. The default value for Segment Memory Limit is 64 MB,
but changing it will result in a question of whether the new value should be set as the default. A
value of 18MB is enough to render a full frame at video resolution (either NTSC or PAL) in a single
segment. Setting it higher than this will not result in LightWave devoting more memory to render
the image, the limit is just that. If additional memory is assigned and not needed it will not be used.
The Segment Memory Limit can be set as low as 1 MB, useful for rendering scenes with particularly
stringent memory requirements.

There are other reasons for setting a memory limit to be enough to render a frame in a single
segment. The first is that an image rendered in a single segment renders faster than one with
multiple segments. The second is that some image filters require an image to be rendered in a
single segment, otherwise unsightly borders can occur. For instance this is the case when blurring
occurs right up against the edge of a part of an image that becomes visible when the image is
assembled.

On platforms that support virtual memory, you may get better results using smaller segments
that fit within available RAM. (Using one segment that may not fit entirely in RAM forces you to page
to the hard disk and slow down rendering). You may need to experiment with segment values to find a
useful setting.
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When you turn off Adaptive Sampling, images take longer to render, but you will achieve better
antialiasing results. If using Adaptive Sampling does not give you the results you wish or fine lines are
being missed (even at a low or zero sampling Threshold level), disable Adaptive Sampling.

Data Overlay
The Data Overlay option lets you place a descriptive title (of up to 20 characters) along with a
frame reference in the lower portion of the rendered image. This is useful when you generate
large numbers of animations for others to review and approve before final rendering. It can serve
to identify the scene being rendered, and the specific frames you may wish to change. The Data
Overlay pop-up menu setting determines the format for the frame reference. Enter the text in the
Label field. If Data Overlay is not set to Off and the Label field is blank, the scene name will be used
automatically.

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Motion Blur Effects
When using a camera to film fast-moving objects, these objects are often blurry. This is because
they continue moving while the shutter of the camera is open. It is this feature that LightWave aims
to replicate with Motion Blur.

Motion blur becomes essential when animating, especially for use with live action. It prevents
the crisp quality that normally pervades computer-generated animation and helps an animation
appear more fluid.

You can view Motion Blur and/or Depth of Field in OpenGL by selecting the appropriate item in the Viewport Options dropdown menu.

LightWaves motion blur system takes everything that can change over time into account. From
shadows, to surfaces, from light intensities to object or camera movement. It accounts for curved
motion and does not blur in a linear fashion, but rather following the path that the motion is
taking.
For motion blur to work, some level of antialiasing needs to be enabled. LightWave uses these
antialiasing passes to generate the additional images used by motion blur. You will be able to see
the process working if you are rendering in a render view. For each antialiasing pass, LightWave
seems to move the objects a little and then composites them all together to get the motion
blurred image. Because only five steps (a low level of antialiasing) can give a stepped effect, higher
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levels of antialiasing are recommended. There are three types of motion blur - normal, dithered
and Photoreal. Dithered provides a better quality result with double the number of images to
dither in between, and doesnt take as long as using the next level of antialiasing, but provides
results just as good if not better. Introduced in LightWave v9.2, Phtoreal provides the best quality
blur. Instead of rendering a new pass for each motion blur sample, Photoreal Motion Blur allows for
multiple samples within each render pass.

Photoreal Motion Blur will not work with the Classic Camera. You must use one of the Advanced
Cameras, such as the Perspective Camera

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Global Illumination Tab
You access the Global Illumination Tab by choosing the Global Illumination tab on the Render
Globals Panel. Here you can adjust some of the global lighting controls, including radiosity and
caustics.

The Global Light Intensity value is an overriding volume control for all lights. 100% is the normal
setting. However, you can ramp all of your lights up or down, or even create an envelope. The
Global Lens Flare Intensity is a similar control for lens flares.
You must activate Enable Lens Flares, Enable Volumetric Lights, and Enable Shadow Maps when
you are using any of these features. (You may find it quick to toggle these settings from the Render
Globals > Render Tab menu.) These switches are quick ways to turn these options off globally for
test purposes, without losing any of your settings. However, note that they do not turn off the light
sources themselves.

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Radiosity
Without using LightWaves radiosity option, all surfaces are lit directly, with lights or ambient
light. Radiosity, the scattering (reflection) of light off diffuse surfaces, causes surfaces to become
(indirect) light sources - like in the real world - generally resulting in much more realistic images.

In LightWave, the scattered light includes surfaces that generate their own light through use of
the Luminosity surface attribute. The images that result from a radiosity renderer are characterized
by soft gradual shadows. Radiosity is typically used to render images of the interior of rooms, due
to the high amount of bounced light, and can achieve extremely photo-realistic results for scenes
that comprise diffuse reflecting surfaces.

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Image byAndrew Bradbury - Copyright Andrew Bradbury

LightWave can calculate secondary rays bouncing from surfaces or coming from the atmosphere.
This adds a very subtle, but photo-realistic effect. When combined with the high dynamic range
calculations, the renderings become astoundingly realistic.

Copyright Philip Meyer

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How Radiosity Is Calculated
LightWave approximates radiosity using projection hemispheres. These basically sit on surfaces,
each projecting out multiple radiosity rays at various angles using the theoretical normals of each
polygon in the hemisphere. This is called an irradiance evaluation.

An Illustration of a Projection Hemisphere

If a radiosity ray strikes a surface that scatters light, some amount of that light illuminates the
surface where the ray originated - colors are determined in the usual (non-radiosity) way, which
can include the effects of luminosity, mirror reflections, caustics, and so on. The light-scattering
surfaces are essentially extra little light sources, used instead of ambient lighting, that affect the
diffuse shading of the current surface. Evaluated and non-evaluated areas are blended to compute
the final effect.

If you activate the Unseen by Rays option on the Rendering Tab of the Object Properties Panel,
that objects luminous surface is not considered a source of light for radiosity purposes.
Performing a full irradiance evaluation (tracing hundreds of rays) every time a point must be
shaded is too time-consuming. Fortunately, unlike direct lighting, with its concentrated sources
that can cause sudden changes across a surface (e.g., shadow boundaries), the indirect lighting
that radiosity is meant to handle tends to change gradually over a surface. LightWave can use
the results of each previous evaluation and smoothly interpolate between them. Only when no
previous evaluations are close enough to the point being shaded, is it necessary to fire a new set of
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rays.
What is close enough? Each time LightWave performs a full evaluation, it estimates the size of the
area that can produce valid results. This depends on factors like how far the rays travelled. If all rays
went a great distance before hitting anything, then the indirect light must be fairly constant and
the calculated irradiance should be good for a large area. But if several rays hit nearby objects, then
the indirect light might be varying more rapidly across the surface and the irradiance evaluations
should be more closely spaced.
The Tolerance setting is a scale factor on these valid area estimates. With a large Tolerance, the
renderer reuses previous irradiance values more often rather than computing new ones, and
rendering time is reduced at the expense of accuracy (i.e., in some areas, small local changes in
indirect lighting might be missed). With lower Tolerance values, full hemispherical evaluations
are performed more frequently - a zero value wont interpolate at all (always do a complete new
evaluation). As such, Tolerance acts as a limit on the amount of error allowed in the radiosity
calculations, although there will always be some errors due to the use of a finite number of rays.
Several Global Illumination default values have been changed. This should make it easier to get
started with radiosity.

The mode will now default to Monte Carlo.

Interpolated is enabled.
Importance Sampled BG is enabled.
Use Transparency is disabled.
Volumetric Radiosity is disabled.
Directional Rays is disabled.

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Lighting Considerations
Radiosity must consider global illumination, which means accounting for all lighting, whether
direct or indirect. This includes indirect light provided by the backdrop, sometimes referred to as
sky lighting.
When the radiosity rays are fired, the color and brightness of the closest element hit by each ray
(other than direct light sources, which are accounted for separately) are added into the global
illumination for that point. It doesnt matter if a ray hits another diffuse shaded polygon, a
luminous polygon, or the backdrop - whatever is hit will be taken into account.
Of course, if the backdrop is blocked by objects, it wont affect shading. For example, in a scene
with an infinite ground plane object, the lower half of the backdrop gradient wont matter since no
rays will ever reach it. Similarly, when shading the floor of an enclosed room, only the areas of the
backdrop seen through open doors, windows or skylights will contribute.
Moreover, with gradient backdrops, orientation matters. If the sky is dark blue at the zenith, but
bright at the horizon, then the sides of an outdoor object may get more sky lighting than the
top. This is because radiosity rays are fired more densely near the direction of the surface normal
than around the base of the sampling hemisphere for each shaded point. Thus, light coming in
perpendicularly is more important than light coming in at a glancing angle.

Radiosity and High Dynamic Range Images

High dynamic range images (HDRI) contain color and brightness information beyond what is
possible in standard 24-bit image formats. One of the most obvious uses for them is with radiosity.

Images Courtesy Darkside Animation

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A neat trick is to enclose your scene in luminous polygons mapped with HDRI. In this manner, you
can actually light a scene without any conventional lights! You can simulate environments by using
photographs with HDRI data and illuminate 3D worlds. You can also do this by applying the HDR
image as a backdrop using Textured Environment or Image World.

Ambient Light
Ambient light, controlled by Ambient Intensity on the Global Illumination Tab (Render Globals
> Global Illuminosity Tab), is not directly added to surface points that are shaded with radiosity
- where radiosity rays originate. However, it is added to points that are shaded without radiosity where radiosity rays hit a surface. If not for this, a new evaluation point would be spawned at the
hit points and render time would explode.
Ambient light will still brighten every surface, but only indirectly, after bouncing off other surfaces.
Thus it can simulate light that would have come from further radiosity bounces.
As a result, the same exact polygon can be lit in two different ways during the rendering of the
same image! The reason for this is that shading is computed on the fly while rendering. Just
because a polygon is shaded with ambient light when hit by a radiosity ray doesnt preclude it
from being shaded without ambient light in the part of the frame where its seen directly by the
camera - polygons are forgetful and dont remember being hit by those rays.
For example, lets say we have a white floor polygon and a red ceiling polygon, 25% ambient light
and no direct lights or other objects. If you render this without radiosity, ambient light will show
the floor and ceiling as dark gray and dark red polygons. However, with radiosity active, the floor
will appear red too.
The floor is red because it no longer gets direct ambient light. Instead, it is lit by radiosity rays that
reach out and find the red ceiling - which is shaded with ambient light when hit by these rays - and
that red indirect light illuminates the white surface, resulting in red. When the ceiling is rendered, it
too is now lit only by radiosity rays that are hitting the white floor (which now gets ambient light as
far as those rays are concerned) and that white indirect light illuminates its red surface, so it ends
up red too.

Using Radiosity
Blotchiness in areas lit by radiosity occurs when different evaluations come up with different
results. If the lighting environment is complex and there are not enough rays to properly sample it,
then two or more nearby evaluations can be different enough to cause blotchiness. This can occur,
for example, when Tolerance is set too high.
Consider a scene lit only by a single luminous polygon. The smaller that polygon is (as seen from
the surface being shaded), the larger the number of rays necessary to ensure that at least one of
them hits it. If only one of two adjacent radiosity evaluations contains a ray that hits that polygon,
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then the other evaluation will result in a dark patch on the surface. You can minimise this effect
by increasing the evenness of the environment - that is, making the luminous polygon bigger or
dimmer or using more rays to increase the density of the sampling pattern.
The same principle applies to indirect lighting. A brightly lit area is very much like a luminous
polygon as far as radiosity is concerned. For example, when shading a ceiling, more rays are
required if the adjacent wall has a few tight spotlights shining on it than if the wall is lit by a broad
floodlight. Specular highlights or caustics can also act as tiny indirect light sources that can require
a higher sampling density.
Without radiosity, lighting is relatively simple. Basically, it amounts to a small range of light
intensities and a linear mapping of the resulting surface brightness into image pixel values.
Radiosity, however, is essentially a physically-based simulation, with all of the complications that
go with it. In the real world, light intensities vary over a huge range, and so it is with radiosity.
Radiosity by its very nature tends to be dim. Ambient light will still be a factor and can help
brighten the scene. You may want to process rendered images with a gamma correction filter for
radiosity renderings viewed on a computer monitor. This boosts pixel values in shadowy areas,
and makes radiosity effects more noticeable. Playing with Image Viewer FPs exposure controls can
often reveal detail hidden in an HDRI image such as LightWave produces when rendering.

Radiosity Flags

When troubleshooting an interpolated radiosity scene it is often useful to find out exactly where
samples are being taken from.

Show Nodes - Displays Octree nodes in random colors.

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Show Cells - Shows Sample Cells

Show Color Cells - As above but randomly colored

Show Samples - Green dots mark the center of each sample taken.

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Show Missing Preprocess Samples - Shows cyan dots representing cells not sampled during
preprocessing.

Show Missing Render Samples - Shows purple dots representing samples not taken during
rendering.

Show Second Bounce - Shows cells for the second, and further, bounces.

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Show Behind - Shows the Behind Test operation with a red overlay demonstrating where the
Behind test was needed.

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Output Tab

Rendering a Limited Region

(default keyboard shortcut L)
You can use a limited region to mark off a specific rectangular area to be rendered. This is a great
feature when you wish to test render an area of the frame without rendering the entire image.

The Limited Region setting is available both on the Render tab and on the Camera Properties
panel, and can be called up with the l key. Using the keyboard shortcut will switch between three
different modes - Limited Region with Borders, Limited Region No Border and no Limited Region.
When you have Limited Region on, you will see yellow dotted bounding box surrounding your
camera view, dragging the lines allows you to resize the limited region you wish to set, while
clicking and dragging the LMB inside the bounding box allows you to move the Limited Region
area around your camera view. To stop editing the Limited Region, choose Limited Region with
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Borders.This renders the area you have selected but puts it onto a black background at the image
size you have chosen in the Camera Properties Panel.

Limited Region No Border

This creates a render at the size you set in the Limited Region setting.
The Limited Region Bounding Box has been updated to have handles. They can be enabled/
disabled in the Preferences Panel. The handles are represented as small rectangles.

Memory Considerations
Limited Region allocates only enough memory to render the horizontal limited region area. If you
stitch parts of an image together, you can effectively render images that are much larger than
those you could render one pass. This is especially useful for high resolution print images or in low
memory situations. However, note that some post-processing filters require a full-sized image. In
such cases, you may be able to apply those filters to the stitched image in an additional step.

Render Frame
(default keyboard shortcut F9)
To render the current frame, determined by the position of the frame slider, choose Render >
Render Current Frame or press F9.

The Render Status window is a modal window. You may not be able to access options on other
windows until it is closed.

Render Scene
(default keyboard shortcut F10)
Select Render > Render Scene to render the entire scene using the defined range of frames on the
Render Globals Panel, or press F10. Make sure Auto Frame Advance is set as desired!

The Render Status window is a modal window. You may not be able to access options on other
windows until it is closed.

Render Selected Object

(default keyboard shortcut F11)
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You can render only the selected object(s) at the current frame by choosing Render > Render
Selected Objects. Unselected objects can still cast shadows or be seen in reflections on the rendered
objects.

The Render Status window is a modal window. You may not be able to access options on other
windows until it is closed.

If you are using LightWave on a Mac using OSX 10.3.5 or higher, Apples Expos might interfere
with LightWaves default rendering keyboard shortcuts.

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Utilities
Network Render

LightWave allows you to use the processing power of other computers on a network to render
scenes. This is called distributed rendering or sometimes a rendering farm. There are a few basic
approaches to distributed rendering with LightWave.
ScreamerNet uses Layouts Network Rendering Panel (Render > Network Rendering) to control
submitting scenes to networked computers running the ScreamerNet process. ScreamerNet
can control up to 1,000 CPUs (Note: A single machine can have more than one CPU. Each CPU is
counted as one). Each will render a frame from the animation until the scene is rendered.

See Chapter 27 - Distributed Rendering section for more information.

Print Camera
To aid those working in print, LightWave has a utility to help work out the camera frame size (in
pixels) that would be an equivalent size in print. This replaces the previous Print Assistant utility
and features more settings, as well as international standard paper presets. It is accessed through
the Print Camera button on the Render tab in the default and Studio Production Style menus.

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Use Template - Leaving this ticked gives you the dropdown list just underneath with a long
list of standard page sizes.
Template - If Use Template is not checked, this dropdown list will be ghosted. If Use Template
is checked you will be presented with 47 different standard sizes of paper.
Size Unit - Whether you use any of the standard templates or create your own measurements,
you can choose to display the page size in the units of your choice: Decimal Inches,
Centimeters, Millimeters or PostScript Picas.
Constrain Proportions - This option is ghosted if you are using Templates but if you are
rendering to a custom sheet size, checking this option will keep the proportions the same
between width and height values you set.
Width and Height - These values are only available if Use Template is unchecked. The
dimensions will be in the Size Unit you have chosen.
Bleed - Adds the amount of bleed to the resulting camera frame size. The value is specified
by the Size Unit setting and is added to all sides.
DPI/PPI - This is the target resolution when printed. Images on screen have no DPI since that
is a print concept. PPI (or Pixels Per Inch) is perhaps more appropriate here, but the label DPI
has been cited on the interface for those who are more familiar with that term.
Format - You can quickly choose between Landscape and Portrait here.
Set Camera Frame Size - Checking this option will set the selected cameras frame size to the
new size when you click OK to close the window. It will also set the camera Pixel Aspect
Ratio to 1.0, as any other value would make little sense for print.
Information regarding the size your image will be in pixels is shown underneath the controls, along
with a graphical representation that displays any bleed specified. The percentage value marked
in the upper left-hand corner shows an approximate scale value compared to the real size of the
page.

When you open your render in a package such as Photoshop, then look at the Image Size, it
will probably say the image DPI is 72. This does not mean that the 300 DPI/PPI image size you set in
the Print Camera settings is wrong. It simply means you need to set the image DPI that will be stored
with the document in Photoshop. When you set your print size and DPI in the Print Camera utility, it
calculates how many pixels need to be in your resulting image, so that when printed at the target DPI
you specified, it will print with the correct quality.
To change the DPI of a document in Photoshop, go to the Image Size window, uncheck Resample
Image and enter the DPI you want the document to be set to. Notice how the size of the image on
screen did not change. There are still the same number of pixels in the document, all you are adjusting is
how many of those pixels to use per inch when printed, which is why the Document Size changes.

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Batch Render on One Computer
You do not actually need a network in order to use ScreamerNet. Just follow the network
instructions as if the computer was the node and control machine. Its a little easier since you wont
have to worry about shared directories and volume names. ScreamerNet is useful for rendering a
series of scene files unattended, and it is most beneficial if you are using a dual-processor system each processor could be treated as a separate CPU for rendering.

Troubleshooting
If clicking the Screamer Init button doesnt find the other CPUs, go back and start at the Host
Machine Setup section.
If images seem to render unrealistically fast and no images are saved:
Check to make sure that you have full sharing access across the network. You can check this
by copying a file at random back and forth across the network.
If the scene and/or objects were created without taking into consideration the new drive
path names, rendering may occur on only the host machine.
The most common cause of ScreamerNet crashing is when too many computers try to write or read
their information to/from the Host computers while the host renders.
Do not use ScreamerNet to render on the host machine, but rather use it only as a server where the
hard drives are found.
Map a drive from a different computer as drive Y:, for example, and set your scene to save the
animations to that drive. The computers dont know that drive Y: is not on the host, just that its
present.
Another problem occurs when the hard drive where you save the images or animation is full.
This problem creates an error in LightWave and on each ScreamerNet node.

Rendering Without LightWave

The LWSN program has a third option that lets you render a scene without running LightWave.
There is no control machine and thus it is not a distributed rendering situation. You must tell the
program specifically what to render. The method is run from a DOS prompt using the following
syntax (one line):
LWSN -3 [-c<config dir>] [-d<content dir>] <scene file> <first frame> <last frame> [<frame
step>]

As you can see, you supply the program with the basic information needed to render a scene.
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An example would be:
LWSN -3 -cD:\Lightwave\Configs -dM:\Newtek Spicegirls.lws 1 900 1

In the example, the program would render frames 1 through 900 of the Spicegirls.lws scene using
the Lw.cfg file stored in the D:\Lightwave and using M:\Newtek as the Content Directory.
The configuration file specification is optional, if the Lw.cfg file is in the current directory. Likewise,
if the Content Directory is correctly specified in the configuration file, you do not need to give that
parameter.

You can get the syntax for ScreamerNet by simply typing LWSN with no arguments.

See Chapter 28 - Distributed Rendering section for more information.

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Image Viewer
The Image Viewer is used throughout LightWave (Render Display, Image Editor, etc.) to show an
image using colors up to the capabilities of your computers display. Once open, you do not need
to close the Image Viewer window. In fact, if you do, any unsaved images will be lost.

The Image Viewer can sometimes hold multiple images, depending on how it is used by
LightWave. In such a case, you can select those images using the Layer pop-up menu.

You can choose to see the regular image or the alpha image, if applicable, using the Image pop-up
menu in the upper-right corner.

If you drag your mouse pointer over the image, information about the pixel beneath the pointer
will appear in the titlebar. The first set of values is the X and Y position. This is followed by RGBA
color information where 100% equals 255 for non-floating-point images. For floating-point images,
100% equals 1.

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Titlebar Pixel Information
You can adjust the size of the window by dragging the lower-right corner. Any time the entire
image is not fully visible in the viewer window, hold the Alt key to scroll around.
The Metadata panel will open when you click on the Metadata button. Metadata is information
about the image and can be stored with the image.

The File Menu

Using the File pop-up menu, you can save the current image to a file. Once you select the format
type, a file dialog will appear. Make sure you add the appropriate filename extension, if necessary
(e.g., Picture.tga). The commands to clear layers are accessed from this menu.

2015

Copy to Clipboard

Now, when you have an image displayed in the Image Viewer you no longer need to save it to disk
to be able to load it in another application for further work. Now you can use the standard CTRL/
CMD-C shortcut to copy the current layer to the clipboard so it can be pasted anywhere.

Image Control Panel

An Image Controls menu item also appears on the File menu.
On the Controls dialog, you can select a foreground image by clicking in the FG column. You can
also blend a foreground and background image in real-time using the Blend Mode pop-up menu
and then dragging the Blend slider.

Most of the modes are self-explanatory. The Difference mode shows the difference between the
foreground and background pixels (i.e., foreground minus background). If the Blend slider is all
the way to the left, the actual difference is shown. Increasing the Blend scales up the difference to
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make it more noticeable. If the foreground and background pixels are very close, the result looks
black.

The Blend slider will have no effect when using the Alpha blend mode.
If you are displaying a high dynamic range image, you can access special parameters if you activate
the Exposure option. This allows you to adjust HDR data much like the HDRExpose image filter, but
in real-time.
The White Point is the input intensity considered to be the hottest white. Anything above this
will be the same white in the output. The Black Point, expressed as a percentage of the nominal
black point (1/255), is the darkest non-black pixel level in the input image that will be preserved.
Anything darker will come out black. This control is overridden by the Auto option, which uses the
image data to compute a black point.

When the Image Viewer is the active window, pressing the P key will display/hide the Control
Panel.

File Saving
If you are viewing a high-dynamic-range image, and you use the previously described exposure
controls to adjust the appearance of the 24-bit display, choosing a file format from the Save
Exposed sub-menu saves the adjusted image as a 24/32-bit image. The normal save RGBA submenu preserves all the color information without any adjustments. The full precision of the image
(i.e., 24/32-bit, floating-point) is saved (up to the capabilities of the file format).
The Save Resampled submenu allows you to save a 24/32-bit scaled version of the image. You
can set the Width and Height independently or if Lock Aspect is checked, changing either setting
automatically adjusts the other to maintain the same image aspect ratio.

The Magnify Menu

The Magnify menu has several settings that will affect the magnification level of the image. You
may also press the plus (+) or minus (-) key to increase or decrease the level of magnification. If the
entire image is not visible in the window, holding the Alt key down as you drag on the window
will scroll the image around.

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Compositing Options
(default keyboard shortcut
2015

Ctrl

F7)

Effects > Compositing Updated

The Compositing tab of the Effects window has had a small but significant change. You can now set
a background color that can be enveloped to be animated over time. The significant detail here is
that it means there is no longer a need to use a small image to hide an HDRI used for reflections
and lighting a scene. If you dont check the Use Background Color box, then the old behavior is still
available using a background image. Another benefit is that the Perspective viewport is affected in
addition to the Camera viewport.

In addition, when you set an image as a background for the camera, the Display Preferences
for LightWave automatically updates to set Camera View Background to Background Image.

Background Image
The Background Image is similar to the gradient backdrop; however, it is always registered to
the camera. That is, it will always appear in exactly the same position/location no matter which
way you tilt or move the camera. You set this option on the Compositing Tab of the Effects Panel.
Background images are considered infinitely distant from the camera. You can never have an
object behind a background image, nor can you light a background image or cast shadows upon it.

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Background images stretch to fit the Camera resolution and frame aspect that you are using. Make
sure to use similar-sized background images if you wish them to match.
You often use background images to merge live action and 3D elements, like creating the illusion
that a UFO crashed into the Empire State building. An image of the New York skyline would be the
background image and the UFO would be a LightWave object.

Background images are visible only through the Camera View.

If you actually need your background image to interact with objects, use the image as a surface
color texture-mapped on a flat plane object and place the plane at the back of your scene.
If you set Camera View Background on the Display Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Display >
Display Options) to Background Image, you will see the set Background Image in Layouts Camera
View. Of course, actually seeing the background in the Layout window is optional. The background
image will always appear in the rendered frame.

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Displaying background in the Layout window, particularly a color one, is processor intensive, so
use this feature sparingly.
The whole idea behind traditional image compositing is quite simple: take two or more images,
and merge them into a new composite image. LightWave lets you do this, but also takes it one step
further by letting you throw objects into the mix.
The images can also be a sequence of pictures, so you may use captured video footage as a
background for your objects. A simple example would be a modelled UFO moving against a real
sky and trees. Images can appear behind all objects, in front of all objects, or a combination of the
two with objects showing in-between.
Compositing can be a render time-saver. If you set up a scene with many objects, but only a few are
moving, you could render one frame with only the inanimate objects, and then remove all of those
objects and render the animated objects against the single frame saved earlier. This is especially
useful when the still objects are complicated or involve radiosity, refraction and/or reflection.

Foreground Images
Placing an image in front of everything may seem like a silly thing to do. However, some options let
you cut parts of the image away so you can see through it. You can also make the image partially
dissolved or even envelope the dissolve. Dissolving in a black image in the foreground will produce
the common fade-to-black effect, or reverse the dissolve to fade in from black.
You can make holes in the foreground image based on a defined color range in the image.
However, the biggest drawback to simply clipping out portions of the foreground image is that
you will have hard edges. A color is either clipped or it isnt, so you see either the foreground image
or the background image.
Use the Foreground Image pop-up to set the foreground image.

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Alpha Images
You may also use a special alpha image to merge the background and foreground images. This
type of alpha image is very different from the type you use to set up a transparency surface
texture. LightWave composites the foreground image over any objects or background by adding
their colors to the foreground image. How much background is added is determined by the alpha
image. The darker the area of an alpha image, the more background is added to the foreground.
The pseudo-mathematical equation might look like:
Foreground + (1 - Alpha) * Background
If you used the same exact image for both the background and foreground images, plus a solid
black image as the alpha image, you will receive a final rendered image where every pixel is twice
the color value it was. This results from the background image being completely added to the
foreground image.

Creating Alpha Images

Generally, alpha images will be generated when you render a scene to create the foreground
images. When you select Save Alpha on the Render Globals Panels Output Files Tab (Render >
Render Globals), LightWave will generate and save an alpha image in addition to the normal RGB
output. The alpha image will be composed of grayscale values representing the opacity of any
objects that were rendered in the scene.

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An object that contains no transparent surfaces will be rendered as solid white. Transparent
surfaces will render in some shade of grey depending on how transparent they are. One hundred
percent transparent surfaces render as black. A 50-percent transparent surface will render as
50-percent grey. Using object dissolve, antialiasing, motion blur, and so on. will also give you values
other than white in an alpha image. Any background (image or colors) will be black in the alpha
image, as will any additive effects such as glow or lens flare.

Image and Alpha

Since glows and lens flares are additive effects and are assigned a value of black in an alpha image,
glows and lens flares in the actual foreground image will simply have the background values
added, so they will appear brighter where the background is a value other than black.

Generally, due to LightWaves additive compositing method, foreground images are created
using a solid black backdrop. This allows the composited background to show through unaltered when
it is mixed 100 percent with the foreground.
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Foreground Fader Alpha
What happens if you want to composite a foreground element on top of objects or a background,
but the foreground image was not rendered over black? In this case, LightWave provides a
Foreground Fader Alpha button that can be selected. In this mode, LightWave will ignore any
areas of the foreground image corresponding to black areas in the alpha Image. These areas of
the foreground image will be faded away to nothing so you see 100 percent of the background
instead.
When using Foreground Fader Alpha, glows and lens flares will not be added to the final rendered
image (their corresponding alpha is black) unless you are using a different alpha image containing
non-black areas in those locations. Additionally, antialiased object edges most likely will stand out
because they contain bits of color from the original non-black background.

Foreground Key
Activate Foreground Key when you want to key out (i.e., not render or see) a color (or range of
colors) from the foreground image. Use the same color value for both Low Clip Color and High Clip
Color if you wish to key out one color only. Use different values to key out the Low Clip Color and
High Clip Color values, and all those in between.

The Low Clip Color is the color value for the darkest color value that will be keyed out. High Clip
Color is the brightest color value that will be keyed out.

If you want to create a giant space battle and lack the RAM to hold all of the objects and image
files, you could composite layers of ships and achieve the same results. This is, in fact, how some
broadcast TV shots were done using machines with only 32MB of RAM in the early days of LightWave.

Image Processing Options

(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl F8)
The Processing Tab on the Effects Panel contains functions that apply effects to the rendered
image. Choose Window > Image Processing Options to directly bring up the Processing Tab of the
Effects Panel.

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Limit Dynamic Range

Limit Dynamic Range clips the pixel color components of each rendering pass at 1.0, improving the
antialiasing of extremely bright areas. This option should not be used with filters or image savers
that expect high dynamic range data.

Dither Intensity
Dithering blends two colors to simulate a third color between them, forming a more realistic blend.
Dither Intensity lets you set the amount of color blending used by LightWave when rendering
an image. Even with 24-bits of color data, it is possible to perceive color banding where distinct
changes in color or brightness occur within otherwise smoothly ramped colors. Off removes all
dithering, and you will probably experience some color banding. Normal, the default setting,
reduces banding to the point where it nearly disappears. 2x Normal increases the dithering even
further, which may be useful for high-end systems that still retain some appearance of banding in
the final image. 4x Normal boosts dithering so that the resulting image looks more grainy, like film,
which may be a desirable effect (especially when used with Animated Dither, below).

Animated Dither
Select Animated Dither to change the dithering pattern used from one frame to the next. This
ensures that dithering is randomly placed, so there is no apparent pattern to the dither blend. With
a 2x Normal or 4x Normal Dither Intensity, this can be used to approximate the randomness of film
grain moving through an image.

Color Saturation
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Color Saturation lets you control the amount of color in a scene (or in an animation, if using an
envelope). Saturation at 100% is a normal, full-color setting, while saturation at 0% is a black and
white setting.

Glow Settings
When Enable Glow is turned active, LightWave can add a glow around surfaces with a (surface)
Glow Intensity above 0%. Use the controls below to set up the amount of glow you wish to add to
all such surfaces.

Glow Intensity sets the brightness of the glow, starting from the edge of the surface itself and
fading away from there. Glow Radius sets the distance (in pixels) that the glow extends from the
edge of a glowing surface. Note that different Resolution settings will cause dramatically different
results.

Normal Buffers
The Image Filter and Pixel Filters now can access the normal buffer.
There are 3 new buffer values:
LWBUF_NORMAL_X
LWBUF_NORMAL_Y
LWBUF_NORMAL_Z
From the Effects Panel/ Processing Tab in Layout, the image filters:
Render Buffer View
Render Buffer Export
...now have the option to view or save the normal buffers.
To select the buffers to view or export, load Render Buffer View, make sure it is selected, and from
the Edit dropdown select Properties
To select a file type and set the filename for export, load Render Buffer Export, make sure it is
selected, and from the Edit dropdown select Properties.
On the Source dropdown menu, select Normal, and set the desired output settings.

Pixel Filters
Pixel filters let external applications affect LightWaves rendering engine. Filters in this class can be
affected by motion blur and other sub-frame operations during the render rather than as a post
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process, as image filters are.

FiberFilter (FiberFX)
FiberFX allows you to create a variety of fibers, hair, and fur effects. For more information on
FIberFX, see Chapter 30.

Halftone
In print, halftone screens are made up of dots that control how much ink is deposited at a specific
location. Varying the resulting dots size and proximities creates the illusion of variations of grey or
continuous color.

The X Tiles and Y Tiles values determine the number of possible horizontal and vertical dots.
If you would like to randomise either of these settings (throughout your animation), use the
corresponding Jitter fields.
In the photography world, this type of effect is achieved with a (physical) screen that breaks up
the image into dots. Think of the Screen Angle setting as the rotation of that screen. It controls the
angle of the dots.
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You can control the overall amount of effect by adjusting the Effect Strength setting. Settings
below and above the default of 100% are allowed.
You can change the pattern by changing the Spot Type. Specify and animate a Screen Tack Object
to animate the pattern position.

Left: With Halftone, Right: Without Halftone

LW_Hypervoxels and LW_Hypervoxels_Doubler

These two image pixel filters are Legacy tools for rendering older LightWave Scene files that use
older versions of HyperVoxels.

Steamer and Steamer_Doubler

These two image pixel filters are Legacy tools for rendering older LightWave scene files that use
Steamer.

Image Filters
Image filters, unlike Pixel filters in the previous section, act on an image as a whole. They can be
used for a variety of things, from saving out a layered Photoshop file to achieving a light bloom
effect on your render, or making it into a sepia or monochrome image. Some of the filters can be
applied directly to images you use within LightWave - for instance, full precision blur can be used
to soften black and white images intended for a Bump Map.
Image filters are a post-process effect. This means that they get applied only once all rendering has
been performed. Some of them, such as Digital Confusion, by their very nature need your picture
to be rendered as one segment otherwise nasty banding effects can occur.
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Aura 2.5 Export

The Aura 2.5 Export image filter has access to all the different internal render buffers and can
export them to Aura. Aura 2.5 can then take this information and manipulate it with its many
features and options.

Black & White

Creates a Black and White version of your render. Double clicking on the item in the list will bring
up the Black and White panel where you can alter the gamma correction for the contrast levels.

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Left: Black and White Image Filter Applied, Right: Normal Render

Deluxe RLA
This image filter allows you to set the format for the color, matte and depth channels for the RLA
format.

Flare2Alpha
This image filter will add lens flares and certain other volumetrics to the alpha of your rendered
image as opaque objects so that they get composited in. Normally lens flares are a post processing
addition to the render and therefore they dont get figured into the alpha channel.

Anaglyph Stereo: Compose

This filter allows you to recreate the kinds of stereo images used with glasses with red and blue
lens. By choosing this image filter and also setting up stereoscopic rendering in the Camera
Properties Panel in the Stereo and DOF Tab at the bottom of the window, your render will have the
two channels, one for each eye, combined into a single red/blue image.
Using the Quicktime Stereo animation type in Render Globals will allow you to save a stereoscopic
animation. You need to render at least two images to see the stereoscopic ones.

Anaglyph Stereo: Simulate

For cases where you want the look of stereoscopy, but dont want to render two images, or you just
want to see what the stereoscopic camera in LightWave is capable of, theres the Simulate filter.
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Bloom
This filter imitates the way that sometimes too much light is reflected back into the camera from a
brightly lit scene. The effect is often seen when photographing or filming shiny metal surfaces or
water.
Sometimes light reflections in the real world are so bright that too much light will enter a camera
lens, over-saturate areas, and create a glare or a glowing halo. Shiny metallic objects like cars and
water often exhibit this phenomenon. Bloom will mimic this effect.

The setting for this filter allows you to set a Threshold for the effect how bright a pixel has to be
before it blooms. Strength is how bright the bloom effect is compared to the pixel it is overwriting
and Size is the size of the bloom brush that is used to replace a pixel rendered at a 640 x 480
resolution. If you use a size that looks correct on your 320 x 240 test render, it will still look the right
size on your 2000 x 1200 final print-resolution render.

Chroma Depth
The Chroma Depth filter makes a stereo image for use with Chroma Depth glasses (see www.
chromatek.com). Basically, color determines the apparent depth in the image.

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Render with Chroma Depth Applied
This filter recolors the scene based on the Z-depth; it spreads the spectrum of colors from the
Near Z Distance to the Far Z Distance. Blend dissolves the Chroma Depth image in with the regular
colors to make the depth effect subtler.

Auto-Scale finds the actual near and far for you when it renders - you can render once with this
option on and the calculated values will appear in the fields.

Use the Bloom filter for a simple over-exposure effect. Use Corona if you need more control over
your bloom.

Compositing Buffer Export

Compositing Buffer Export allows you to set up all the buffers you wish to export in a single window,
including a feature where individual buffers can be saved to their own subfolders and with the
ability to invert specific channels and render to multilayer EXR files with editable layer naming to
suit your workflow.
The Compositing Buffer Export supports anti-aliased buffers. This means that requests for Antialiased surface ID, Object ID or even Depth buffers can now be met. In order to anti-alias a depth
buffer, Depth Buffer AA needs to be checked in the Render Globals > Render tab and Max Samples
needs to be above 1 in Camera Properties.

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The Compositing Buffer Export is found in the Image Filters panel called by using Ctrl F8 or visiting
the Windows > Image Processing menu item. It can be added to your scene by selecting it from the
Add Image Filter dropdown menu. When added and double-clicked it presents a window like the
above.
Buffer Set - This field allows you to type in a descriptive name for your buffer set. This does
not have to be the same as the Preset name. If you type a name in here, it will be the default
name presented when you save a Preset.
Destination - This is a dropdown of four options for where to send the resulting buffers:
Image Viewer - This will give you your final render but also the buffers you selected as
additional layers in the image viewer, the same as with the alpha thats there by default.
Image Files - Saves images with the base name you set, at the location you set, for every
buffer you selected. If you choose the new LW_OpenEXR_MultiFP or LW_OpenEXR_
MultiHalf filetypes, all the buffers you choose will be stored inside the single EXR file.
You will also be able to develop the channels you select and rename them as necessary.
Rendered RGB - Saves a single buffer out as the RGB output from Render Globals.
Rendered Alpha - Saves a single buffer out as the Alpha output from Render Globals.
Use RGB Render Path - This will use the path you assigned in the Render Globals window and
ghost out the File Output and File Name fields.
Save on F9/F10 Renders - Allows the user to choose when Compositing Buffer Export will be
fired, to save filling the hard disk with test renders.
Save to Subfolders - This allows you to save each buffer into a separate folder for use with
pipelines that prefer that. Folder names can be modified on the Subfolders tab by clicking on
them in the right column and editing the text field at the bottom of this window.
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Normalize Motion - Takes the values in the Motion buffer and ensures that they fit a normal
definition. For example, you are dealing with grayscale levels and your render is generating
levels between 40-783. Normalize will make sure that the values are remapped to fit within
a 0-255 range. Other buffers that can be normalized including Depth have separate options
panels.
Buffers - There are 31 different render buffer types that you can include.
Objects - This tab allows the user to only select the parts of the scene they are interested
in exporting the buffers of. By default everything is ticked, so everything in the scene is
included. You do not need to uncheck non-geometric objects since they leave no trace on
buffers.
Select All, Select None, Invert Selection - Allow you to quickly select/deselect all, or invert your
current selection.
Presets...
Open Presets Shelf - This option opens the Presets Shelf. You can also use the keyboard
shortcut F8.
Save Buffer Set Preset - If you have typed a Buffer Set name in the field at the top of the
window it will be presented here, highlighted so that you may edit it. If you have typed
no name, then whatever you enter here will also be entered in the Buffer Set name.
Ambient Occlusion Options - Ambient Occlusion requires radiosity in your render. If you
choose Ambient Occlusion as one of the buffers you wish to export, this button will become
available to you, with additional settings as follows:

These options are similar to the options presented in the Surface Node Editors Shaders >
Diffuse > Occlusion Node and work in the same way. If you choose Infinite from the Mode
dropdown, Range is ghosted and the full extent of the scene will be used as the basis for the
effect. If you switch to Range then the Range field becomes available and you can set the
distance the Ambient Occlusion looks for Occlusion. In addition, there is an option for using
transparent shadows that shows the shadows for transparent items in your scene.
Depth Options - If you choose Depth as one of the buffers you wish to export, this button will
become available to set further options relating to the Depth Buffer.

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Normalize Depth to 8-bit - If you are saving 8-bit per channel images this toggle should
be checked. You should uncheck it if you are saving your files as floating point/high
dynamic range images.
Limit Buffer Depth - Normally this is ghosted and only becomes available if Normalize
Depth to 8-bit is unchecked. It allows you to define an absolute depth to your scene.
Buffer Depth - This option is ghosted unless you have checked Limit Buffer Depth.
It determines the depth you wish your scene to have. This value can be animated
over time, or be based on a texture.
Bilinear Filter - If you have unchecked Normalize Depth to 8-bit you can also
determine the Bilinear filter that should be used on your depth buffer. There are
four levels of sharpness available.
Normal Options - If you choose Normal as one of the buffers you wish to export, this button
will become available to set further options relating to the Normal Buffer.

Flip Normal X, Y and Z - matches orientation for a target application or game engine.
Create Alpha Map - This places a 1-bit alpha channel into the normal pass that clips off
all areas that are not filled with geometry. This can be handy for games work where this
channel is used as a clip map in-game.
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Edge Padding - This creates a user-defined padding so that there are no seams when the
size of the map is reduced.
Use Background Color - This is for choosing a neutral background color. By default
ticking this option will use 128, 128, 255 to the normal map rather than going to black.
Normalize - This corrects the magnitude of the normals in the map to fit within the
normal range.
Adjust 8-bit Color - There are three options in the presented Dropdown:
None - This leaves the normals as they are, with a range between -1 to +1. Suitable
for High Dynamic Range image output
Normalized 8-bit - This takes that range of -1 to +1 and converts it to values
between 0-255 for an 8-bit image, like a JPEG.
No Negative - If the map consists of a range of values between -1 and +1, this
option clips everything below 0 so that only positive values are retained..

If you are using scenes created in a previous version of LightWave that used the Render Buffer
Export Image Filter, you will need to take note of the buffers you are exporting with those Image Filters
and then add the Compositing Buffer Export filter to your scene and recreate the list of buffers there. The
Render Buffer Export filters interface no longer opens in LightWave.

2015

New Buffers for Compositing Buffer Export

LightWave 2015 adds three new buffer exports. There is an Edge buffer that can be exported. This
purely exports the rendered edges of the scene on an alpha background. No other parts of the
geometry are visible. The other two buffers are a straight RGBA output, or a color-corrected output
based on the color space settings chosen on the Render Globals > Output tab.

When using Ambient Occlusion in the Compositing Buffer Export Image Filter, be aware that
render times will increase. The render engine will need to first create the ambient occlusion buffer and
then use the KD Tree created in this render for the following color render for the rest of the buffers. The
re-use the of the KD Tree means that the second render will not take as much time as the first Ambient
Occlusion render, but it will still be significant.

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Corona
This is a more fully featured version of Bloom. With it you have a lot more control over what causes
blooming. In essence, control is broken down into which input channels cause blooming, how the
bloom takes place and some additional abilities not found in Bloom.

Input Settings
Input Channel lets you choose which internal buffer to read for the bloom effect, so you can bloom
on specularity, bloom on diffuse, and so on. The Input Channel acts like a trigger: when its value
exceeds the Input Threshold, the effect is applied to that pixel.
Color uses raw pixel values - essentially any pixel on screen that is bright enough gets
bloomed.
Alpha uses alphas pixel values - 0 to 100% for the image.
Specular Shading uses 0 to 100% of surface specularity as shaded during the rendering.
This varies over a given surface and is different from the Specular surface channel, which is
uniform over a surface. Diffuse Shading is similar, but uses the diffuse surface property.
Geometry uses the normal of object surfaces, where 100% indicates that the normal points at
the camera.
Inverse Geometry is similar, but 100% indicates that the normal points perpendicular to the
camera. These are easily demonstrated using a sphere. For Geometry, the center of the ball
would trigger Corona, while Inverse Geometry would result in the effect along the edges.
Special uses the surface Special Buffer feature on the Surface Editor. The value of the Special
Buffer is compared against the threshold and when it exceeds that value, the Corona filter is
applied.
The input can also be masked to skip areas of the input altogether. Threshold Mask is basically an
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alpha channel. Brighter areas will be susceptible to the mask, while darker areas will not.

Effect Settings
The Effect pop-up menu selects your blending mode. Additive yields very hot (white) results where
triggering pixels are closely grouped. This is useful for, say, obtaining the look of metal being
heated. The center of a block of metal will become super hot while the edges do not. Normal is
similar to Additive, except in the case of heated metal, the effect at the center and the edges tends
to grow more evenly. Maximum takes the maximum of contributive pixels. This yields an effect like
applying balls of cotton to brightly colored particles, whose effects start to merge as the particles
become closer to each other.

Falloff Settings
The Falloff pop-up menu lets you select how the bloom brush falls off. The preview window will
give you an idea of what the falloff will look like.
Strength is the strength of the brush compared to the source pixel. Size is the radius in pixels of the
brush at a 640 by 480 resolution. If the resolution is different, the brush will be adjusted so that the
effect always looks the same at different resolutions.
The Edit Texture button can modulate the color of the bloom brush with a texture.
When Texture Only is inactive and Edit Texture is off, the effect uses the color of the original image.
If texture color is available, the effect uses the color of the original image plus the contribution of
the texture. When Texture Only is active and there is also a texture color, the effect uses the value of
the texture only.

Other Settings
The Corona filter will affect your alpha channel if you activate the Contribute to Alpha option.
Use the Save Effect to File option to save just the corona effect to an image file when rendering.
Note you must also choose a file format and set a filename.
When you use gradients with Corona, you will have additional options for the Input Parameter.
These options let you customise how the corona effect is applied. For example, the size or intensity
of the effect can grow or diminish based on an objects proximity to another object, center of the
image, and so on.
You can use the standard Preset Shelf if you want to save and recall settings.

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Digital Confusion (Post-processing only)

LightWaves built-in Depth of Field effect (Camera Properties Panel) adjusts which pixels the
rendering camera considers in and out of focus. The Digital Confusion image filter creates the same
effect using similar controls, but offers several extra features. Adjusting the Focal Distance and Lens
F-Stop still easily controls the range of focus, but added options include camera lens parameters,
auto-focusing, and ways to fine-tune surface properties.

Since Digital Confusion is added during the antialiasing rendering pass, it will respect and can
actually improve oversampling methods like motion blur and Depth of Field effects. However,
Adaptive Sampling (Camera Properties Panel) may not function correctly with this filter. In this
case, you should use an Enhanced Antialiasing setting (Camera Properties Panel).
The four Diaphragm Shape settings, Hexagon, Octagon, Disc, and Cut Disc, determine which
pattern Digital Confusion will use when defocusing the rendered image. These settings
correspond to the actual shape of the camera lens used during this effect. The Aspect Ratio and
Rotation angle of the camera lens can also be adjusted to create even more specialised effects.
When using LightWaves built-in Depth of Field controls, it is sometimes difficult to keep a moving
object in focus. Now, instead of using envelopes to animate the focal distance, with Digital
Confusion you can simply select a reference object from the Autofocus pop-up menu and the
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proper focal distance will be computed automatically. This reference object can be either the
(target) geometry in the scene, or a null object used to dynamically adjust the focus. When an
object is selected, the Focal Distance field becomes disabled.
The Focal Distance setting represents the distance from the camera to the point in space that is in
focus. Objects that fall either in front of or behind this area will be rendered out of focus. Just how
far out of focus is determined by adjusting Digital Confusions Lens F-Stop setting. By changing this
value, you are adjusting the radius of the area that is in focus. For this value, the smaller the Lens
F-Stop size, the smaller the in-focus area will be.

For more information on using the Depth of Field controls, refer to the Depth of Field section of
the manual, in Chapter 16: Camera Basics.
The Blur Size setting acts as a multiplier to Digital Confusions defocusing effect. Adjusting this
control is similar to adjusting the Lens F-Stop setting, but instead of changing the size of the infocus area, it determines the amount of blur these pixels will receive. By entering a Blur Size value
of 50%, the area out of focus, defined by the Focal Distance and Lens F-Stop setting, will receive
only half the computed blur.
If a background image is used in your scene, you may want to activate Blur Background to blur
it. However, because the background image is at an infinite distance from the camera, it will
always receive the maximum blur amount and will result in much longer rendering times. A more
efficient solution is to simply blur the background image in a paint program, or use a blur filter in
LightWaves Image Editor processing tab.
The Render Hidden Geometry feature forces LightWave to ray trace any geometry behind objects
in case they go transparent when being blurred. This is a much more accurate representation of the
depth of field effect, but can increase rendering times. In multi-pass rendering and compositing, it
may be acceptable to not activate this feature, but normally it should be activated.

Double-sided geometry will not work correctly with the Render Hidden Geometry activated.
Sometimes defocusing the rendered image can cause the effect of surface specularity or
luminosity to diminish unacceptably. To offset this effect you can adjust the Luminosity Boost
or Specular Boost multipliers located at the bottom of the panel. Any pixels rendered with these
surface properties will have their intensity adjusted accordingly.

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Depth-Of-Field Blur (Post-processing only)
This filter lets you add a depth of field effect that is based on a fast image filter, without requiring
multi-pass antialiasing like normal depth of field does (Camera Panel). You can adjust the overall
strength of the blur, as well as independently choose whether to blur the alpha channel
and background.

See the discussion on normal Depth of field (DOF) for information on the Focal Distance and Lens
F-Stop settings. You can also activate the Use Layout Lens option to use the Camera Properties DOF
settings.

Exposer
This filter normalises high dynamic range (HDR) images for using as Image Maps and HDR output
for displaying in applications that are not HDR-savvy. The intensity mapping is non-linear, similar to
the light response process in the human eye.

This filter processes the HDR output created by radiosity and renders into better-looking, brighter
pictures. It does this without impacting the accuracy of the lighting simulation, which can happen
if you add ambient light or crank up lights unrealistically. It is really an essential part of the camera
simulation, for a perfect digital camera. (The Virtual Darkroom filter is similar, but more complex.
It simulates the two-stage process of film response to light, and print emulsion response to
projection through the film negative.)

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Although you can add this filter on the Image Editor, it is of limited use there and more useful as an
Image filter on the Processing Tab of the Effects Panel. This is mainly because most images you load
are not HDR images, so pre-processing is not necessary and normal gamma should probably be
used, if necessary. Moreover, if you do load an HDR image, its probably because you want the extra
data. (Using the HDR Exposure filter will eliminate some, if not all, of the extra data.)
The Input Dynamic Range is an informational display showing the High and Low pixel-intensity
values encountered in the last processed image. Note that when the panel first appears, this
information is not yet known.
If you do not want the filter applied to the Full Image, set the Exposure Apply pop-up menu to
Foreground to apply it only to scene items or Background to affect only the background (i.e., where
your alpha would be black).
The White Point is the input intensity considered to be the hottest white. Anything above this will
be the same white in the output. This control is overridden by the Auto-Iris option, which sets the
white point based on the actual input image data. Adjusting the white point is similar to cranking
down an iris on a film camera to limit how bright parts blow out in a photograph.
The Black Point, expressed as a percentage of the nominal black point (1/255), is the darkest nonblack pixel level in the input image that will be preserved. Anything darker will come out black.
The Auto-Exposure option overrides Black Point by using the actual image data to determine a
black point in the incoming data. Lowering the black point is similar to increasing the exposure
time for a photograph.
Once these values are set, the filter translates the incoming image intensity - in a process very
similar to gamma correction - so that the darker colors get more of the output range than the
brighter colors. In other words, the filter changes the spacing of intensity levels so more levels are
devoted to low intensity, darker details.

Extended RLA Export (Post-processing only)

This filter saves images in the Extended RLA format, popular for 2D/3D compositing work. The
image includes optional depth buffers, as well as masks for which object or surface (material) a
pixel came from. Enter the Image Base Name in the field or use the File Requester button.

Extended RPF Export (Post-processing only)

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This filter saves images in the Extended RPF format, popular for 2D/3D compositing work. The
image includes a few more options than the Extended RLA. Enter the Image Base Name in the field
or use the File Requester button.

Full Precision Blur

This filter will soften an image by blurring it. Change the Size values to increase the amount of blur
horizontally or vertically. The Strength settings determine the amount of the effect. You can also
choose whether to affect the RGB (color) and/or alpha data.
You can use the Rendered Alpha (channel) or a Special Buffer as a mask using the Use Mask popup menu. If you want the mask computed prior to the blurring, check the Pre-Blur Mask option,
otherwise the mask accounts for any blurring. To reverse the mask, check Invert Mask.
The Special Buffer setting on the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor can have a value from 0 to 1,
with 0 meaning no blur and 1 meaning full blur.

Full Precision Gamma

Display devices have a non-linear relationship between pixel values and physical light intensity they do not excite the display phosphors linearly. This non-linearity must be compensated for to
correctly reproduce intensity. The Gamma Correction value is the exponent value in the correction
formula and determines how to convert pixel values to light intensity. The default, 2.2, is a common
value used on images bound for video, but is not necessarily the optimum value.

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Field Stereo
Rather than using red/blue glasses to create a stereoscopic animation, you can use LCD shutter
glasses that work with the fielded nature of TV screens to work their magic. Field Stereo allows
you to render separate images for each field so that you get an effect of depth from the separation
between the fields. Dont forget to turn on Stereoscopic rendering and Field Rendering in the
Camera Properties Panel.

HDR Exposure
This filter normalises high dynamic range (HDR) images for using as Image Maps and HDR output
for displaying in applications that are not HDR-savvy. The intensity mapping is non-linear, similar to
the light response process in the human eye.
This filter processes the HDR output created by radiosity renders into better-looking, brighter
pictures. It does this without impacting the accuracy of the lighting simulation, which can happen
if you add ambient light or crank up lights unrealistically. It is really an essential part of the camera
simulation, for a perfect digital camera. (The Virtual Darkroom filter is similar, but more complex.
It simulates the two-stage process of film response to light, and print emulsion response to
projection through the film negative.)
Although you can add this filter on the Image Editor, it is of limited use there and more useful as an
Image filter on the Processing Tab of the Effects Panel. This is mainly because most images you load
are not HDR images, so pre-processing is not necessary and normal gamma should probably be
used, if necessary. Moreover, if you do load an HDR image, its probably because you want the extra
data. (Using the HDR Exposure filter will eliminate some, if not all, of the extra data.)

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The Input Dynamic Range is an informational display showing the High and Low pixel-intensity
values encountered in the last processed image. Note that when the panel first appears, this
information is not yet known.
If you do not want the filter applied to the Full Image, set the Exposure Apply pop-up menu to
Foreground to apply it only to scene items or Background to affect only the background (i.e., where
your alpha would be black).
The White Point is the input intensity considered to be the hottest white. Anything above this will
be the same white in the output. This control is overridden by the Auto-Iris option, which sets the
white point based on the actual input image data. Adjusting the white point is similar to cranking
down an iris on a film camera to limit how bright parts blow out in a photograph.
The Black Point, expressed as a percentage of the nominal black point (1/255), is the darkest nonblack pixel level in the input image that will be preserved. Anything darker will come out black. The
Auto-Exposure option overrides Black Point by using the actual image data to determine a black
point in the incoming data. Lowering the black point is similar to increasing the exposure time for
a photograph.
Once these values are set, the filter translates the incoming image intensity - in a process very
similar to gamma correction - so that the darker colors get more of the output range than the
brighter colors. In other words, the filter changes the spacing of intensity levels so more levels are
devoted to low intensity, darker details.

Lscript and LScript/RT

Both allow you to run an LScript on a finished image.

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Photoshop PSD Export
The Photoshop PSD Export image filter is an image saver masquerading around as an image filter.
Being a filter allows it to have access to all the different internal render buffers. When you render a
frame, a sequentially numbered PSD file is saved with each of the selected buffers placed into their
own layers.

Basic Tab
Final Render - Represents the final output from the LightWave render.

Final Render is actually several filters in one, all of which will be activated when you look at the
PSD file. The following additional filters will be available in the PSD file: Effect (-), Effect (+), Surface,
Diffuse Lighting, and Refraction.

Pre-effect Render - Represents the render before effects, such as lens flare, are applied.
Specular Color - Represents the specular color options of a surface.
Reflection - Represents the reflection channel for a surface.
Diffuse Shading - A single channel buffer, indicates the amount of light reflected toward the
camera from a surface, including the effects of shadows cast onto the surfaces.
Shading - A single channel buffer, represents the lighting effects for shadows, as well as
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specular and diffuse.
Specular - A single channel buffer, indicates the value of the specular attribute of a surface.
Background - Represents the channel buffer when options in the Backdrop panel are
activated, such as Gradient Backdrop or Image World.
Examples of various filters (Render from the Night.lws scene, included with the LightWave
content.):

Final Render

Specular Color

Diffuse Shading

Pre-effect Render

Reflection

Shading

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Additional Shading Tab

Diffuse Color - A three channel buffer, providing color options, and accounts for the part of
the render for diffuse lighting, surfacing, and shadowing.
Shadow - A single channel buffer, indicates the location and intensity of shadows, but not
shadow color. The brighter areas indicate more intense shadows.
Specular Color - A single channel buffer, indicates the intensity of specular highlights on a
surface due to all lights, though this does not include color information.

Diffuse Color

Shadow

Specular Shading

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Material Tab

Raw Color - A three channel buffer, represents the value of the Color attribute of a surface
Mirror - A single channel buffer, directly indicates the value of the Reflection value of a
surface.
Luminosity - A single channel buffer, indicates the intensity of luminosity on a surface.
Transparency - A single channel buffer, indicates the value of the transparency attribute of a
surface
Diffuse - A single channel buffer, indicates the value of the diffuse attribute of a surface.
Special - A single channel buffer, indicates the special buffer values specified for a surface in
the Surface Editor. Uses only the first special buffer value.

Raw Color

Transparency

Mirror

Diffuse

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Motion Tab

Motion X - A single channel buffer, indicates the direction of the geometry along the
horizontal axis in relation to the camera. Negative values indicate movement towards
the left, while positive values indicate movement towards the right. If the geometry is
represented with a gradient, meaning parts are moving in different directions, a mid-range
grey value will be used for the background.
Motion Y -A single channel buffer, indicates the direction of the geometry along the vertical
axis in relation to the camera. A positive value indicates a downward movement, while
a negative value indicates an upward movement. If the geometry is represented with a
gradient, meaning parts are moving in different directions, a mid-range grey value will be
used for the background.

Geometry Tab

Depth - A single channel buffer, indicates the relative distance of items from the camera. The
further away an item is the brighter it is represented.
Surface ID - A single channel buffer, indicates the internal surface identifier in Layout for each
surface element in the final render, giving the ability to single-out specific surfaces in the
rendered image.
Object ID - A single channel buffer, indicates the object identifier for each surface element in
the final render. The more items in a scene, the larger the values.
Geometry - A single channel buffer, indicates the relation of the angle of the polygons
surface normal and the direction of the camera. The brighter the surface, the more it faces
the camera directly.

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Depth

Geometry

The Max field determines the maximum value allowed in a buffer. So the acceptable buffer values
are always zero to the Max. All values in the buffer are divided by Max to normalize them to the
range zero to one.
The Sliding min/max range option will dynamically compute the minimum and maximum values
of each buffer. The values are computed for every frame so the output buffers will have the widest
possible range of values. This is great for still images, but animations should not use this setting,
due to the lack of temporal coherence (i.e., the images may pop from frame to frame).
The 16-bit component output option will save out 16 bits per channel/buffer. Normally, only eight
bits are used.

Soften Reflections (Post-processing only)

This filter will blur reflections. The Blend control will Replace the reflection with a blurred version,
Average them together, which is more subtle, or use the Maximum of the replace result and the
original, which avoids a dark halo, at the cost of a lighter image. You can also blend based on the
Alpha channel or the intensity of the reflection (LumaBlend).

Soften Reflections can scale the blur based on the surfaces value in Special Buffer 1 (Advanced
Tab of the Surface Editor), if you check the Scale By Surface Buffer option. (A value of 1 means 100
percent.)

Textured Filter
Use Textured Filter to add the selected texture to the image before use. You could use this filter
to add, say, an animated Fractal Noise pattern to a simple black image. Since textures are threedimensional, particularly procedurals, use the Axis setting to use the X, Y, or Z of the texture.

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The differences between the Axis selection can be subtle.

To see procedurals in viewports:

You can use Textured Filter to see procedural textures in your Layout viewport! Basically, you apply
the procedural texture(s) to the image using Textured Filter and then map the image to the surface.
Heres how you do it:
1) Load an image into the Image Editor. It really doesnt matter what
image you use since it will be obscured by the textures.
2) On the Image Editors Processing Tab, add Textured Filter. Double-click it in the list
window to access its options. Click the Texture button to access the Texture Editor.
3) Change the default initial Layer Type to Gradient. This provides the
underlying color. You can leave it white or change it.
4) Add one or more procedural texture layers and set as you would normally.
5) Load your object and open the Surface Editor.
6) Click the Color attributes Texture button. Leave Layer Type set
to Image Map on the Texture Editor that appears.
7) Set Projection as you would normally and select your image from the Image
pop-up menu. The procedural will now appear in your viewport.
This operation requires a lot of computations and Layout may seem sluggish as it computes the
texture.

The image preview window on the Image Editor will show the texture as well. Thus, you can
double-click the window to bring up the Image Viewer, from which you can save this compiled image.
This can then be image mapped back onto the surface without all of the calculations required with
Texture Filter.
If you use an image sequence instead of a still image, you can even see an animated texture!
Note that if an animated texture is applied to a still image, it will not appear animated.

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Vector Blur (Post-processing only)
LightWaves normal motion blur (Camera properties) may need long render times because of
multi-pass antialiasing. Vector Blur, on the other hand, can achieve great-looking motion blur in a
fraction of the render time.

The two modes, Vector and Blur, use motion data that identifies each pixels immediate motion in
the horizontal and vertical directions. The Vector mode smears the pixel out based on the motion
information, while the Blur mode uses the horizontal and vertical data to blend together the
surrounding pixels with that pixel. Blur affects the pixels around it including backgrounds, while
Vector alters only the pixels of the moving object.
The Blur mode should be used in conjunction with the normal motion blur; however, the Vector
mode can be used by itself - you dont even need to use antialiasing! The result can be drastically
reduced rendering time.
Below is a comparison between regular motion blur and the two modes of Vector Blur.

Normal Motion Blur

Left: Vector Blur: Blur

Right: Vector Blur: Vector

Overlapping Objects
Since objects become transparent with motion blur, the filter needs something in the background
of the blur. When Compensate Background is active, the filter does not use the backdrop and
attempts to compensate for this absence. This works in most cases, but may not give a very realistic
motion blur.
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When Compensate Background is not active, the filter uses the backdrop. However, it will not show
an object behind another object.
If you have overlapping objects, you may want to do some test renders to see if Vector Blur will
provide acceptable results. If not, use LightWaves normal motion blur.

High Quality Blur

If you uncheck Compensate Background, you can activate the High Quality Blur setting. This
provides better quality, but takes longer to render. In this mode, you will only be able to set the
Vector Length setting.

Limits
The important thing to understand about using Vector Blur is that it is a post process. As such,
hidden geometry cant be blurred and you may see problems with motion blur on shadows and
moving textures. However, it can be a great help when used in conjunction with normal motion
blur, by giving you better quality with lower Antialiasing settings (Camera Panel).

Video Legalize
The Video Legalize filter might be more appropriately named Hot Video, since it assumes that pure
black, RGB 0, 0, 0, is mapped to the proper pedestal by the encoding device (e.g., 7.5 IRE for NTSC).
The encoding device may not, however, correct hot pixels - that is, colors that exceed certain video
specifications. This is where VideoLegalize steps in.
Pixel values are generally scaled into IRE units using the Black Point, White Point and Pedestal
settings as follows: Level = Pedestal + (100 - Pedestal) * (pixel - Black) / (White - Black). White
is always 100 IRE and PAL Black is 0 IRE. NTSC black is 7.5 IRE, thus for NTSC, the level would be
computed: Level = 7.5 + 92.5 * (pixel - Black) / (White Black).

Normally, an RGB level of 0.0 is black and 1.0 is white. If those are used for the Black Point and
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White Point settings, the NTSC level will be 7.5 + 92.5 * (pixel - 0.0) / (1.0 - 0.0) or just 7.5 + 92.5 *
pixel. When the pixel is 1.0, the level is 100 IRE, and when the pixel is 0.0, the NTSC level is 7.5 IRE.

The actual computation is more complex than the above since other operations, like gamma
correction, can happen.
The settings default to NTSC encoding, but you may also select PAL from the Encoding pop-up
menu. (Note that you also need to click the Default button after selecting a new Encoding item.)
You may change the individual settings from their defaults, if desired.
The Correct pop-up menu determines how the image is corrected to fall within the specified limits.

It is highly recommended that you use VideoLegalize (as a post-process image filter) if you plan
to use your images for video.

Video Tap (Post-processing only)

The Video Tap filter will save a second image using different Camera and Render Option settings.
This is perfect for times when you render a film resolution scene, but you want to preview a video
resolution version on your TriCaster or other digital disk recorder.

Movie-makers often attach a video camera to a film camera, so they can watch dailies without
developing the film - saving time and money. This filters namesake is the video tap on the film camera.

Virtual Darkroom

The Virtual Darkroom filter simulates the photographic capture of images. It is based on A Model
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for Simulating the Photographic Development Process on Digital Images, by Joe Geigel and F.
Kenton Musgrave in the SIGGRAPH 97 conference proceedings.

Global settings are the four controls located at the top. Output Type specifies whether the output
image is Black and White (single-plane greyscale) or Color (three-plane RGB).

Basic Settings
Basic Settings control everything except for those settings on other tabs. Negative LUX is the
illumination value for the negative pass - analogous to scene capture with a camera - which will
affect overall brightness. Negative Time is the exposure time for negative pass, essentially the
Exposure setting on the virtual camera. Positive LUX is the illumination value for the positive
(printing) pass. Think of this as the brightness of the bulb in the enlarger or printing mechanism.
Positive Time is the exposure time during the printing pass of virtual enlarger.
Enable Scattering will activate the internal scattering effect. Negative Width and Negative Height
are the width and height, respectively, in millimeters, of the virtual negative. These values are used
in scattering and grain calculations. Enable Grain will activate the grain effect. Selwyn Granularity
controls the intensity of the grain. Increasing this value increases grain, decreasing it will decrease
grain.

Advanced Settings: Spectral Sensitivity Tab

If Output Type is set to Color, there will be six sets of RGB percentage controls. Each RGB trio
specifies the percentage of the black and white output plane that is contributed by the input
image plane named in the control. For example, the RGB trio in the upper-middle defines how the
output from the negative passes on the spectral sensitivity module creates the green plane.
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If Output Type is set to Black & White, you specify what percentage of the red, green, and blue
planes of the input image are used when they are combined into a single black and white image.
This transition takes place in the negative (first) pass. During the printing (second) pass, there is
only a single input plane, so spectral sensitivity is not used.

Film, Paper, and MTF Curve Tabs

You can enter up to 21 pairs that define the characteristic curve of the film and paper, and the
function for modulation transfer used for scattering calculations. For each pair, the first value
represents log (exposure) and the second value represents the density.

For all Curve tab entries, points should be entered in order starting with Pt. 01. If Output Type is set
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to Color, curves must be set for each output plane by selecting the appropriate Red Plane, Green
Plane, or Blue Plane sub-tab.

Sketch

Controls:
Open Preset Shelf & Add Preset: Sketch settings can be added to and taken from the presets shelf.
When creating a preset, the thumbnail image is taken to be the preview image currently being
shown (see below).

Preview
The preview image shows the effect of this Sketch plugin instance to the last image processed.
The image will update as the Sketch settings are changed. Click on the preview image to force an
update if needed.

Because the preview image is usually much smaller than the actual image, the preview is only an
approximation of the effect.

Sketching
Sets whether sketching is enabled or disabled. This does not affect the hue, saturation, and
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luminosity modifiers.
On - enable computation of sketch outlines
Off - disables computation of sketch outlines. This effectively sets the sketch value to 0.

Sketch Power
Larger numbers makes the edges sharper. Typical values are between 0.5 and 3.

Sketch Modifier
Modifies the sketch value. 0 means no edge here, 1 means a very strong edge.
None - leaves the value alone
Scale - scales the value by the given factor
Remap - arbitrarily change the sketch value, usually through an expression or texture

Sketch Color
The color to use for the sketch edges.

Hue Modifier
Changes the base colors of the image.
None - does nothing to the hue values
Rotate - moves the colors through the spectrum
Scale - scales the colors towards the start/end of the spectrum
Remap - arbitrarily change the hue values

Saturation Modifier
Changes the color saturation of the image.
None - does nothing to the saturation values
Steps - quantizes the saturation values in the given number of steps
Scale - scales the saturation values
Scale around mid - scales the saturation values around the mid point
Remap - arbitrarily change the saturation values

Luminance Modifier
Changes the color intensities of the image.
None - does nothing to the luminance values
Steps - quantizes the luminance values in the given number of steps
Scale - scales the luminance values
Scale around mid - scales the luminance values around the mid point
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Remap - arbitrarily change the luminance values, usually through an expression or texture

Gradient Parameters
For textures used as Sketch settings, a number of custom gradient parameters are available:
Sketch - the sketch value, between 0 (no edge here), and 1 (very strong edge here)
SketchDir - the direction of the sketch edge
Luminance - the luminance value at the current pixel
Hue - the hue value at the current pixel
Saturation - the saturation value at the current pixel

Sketch Channels
For envelopes and expressions used as Sketch settings, a number of custom channels are available
in the Sketch group. Note that these channels are read-only (they are prefixed with an r as a
reminder), and will only contain valid values during the evaluation of the Sketch plugin.
rSketch - the sketch value
rSketchDir - the sketch direction
rLuminance - the luminance value at the current pixel
rHue - the hue value at the current pixel
rSaturation - the saturation value at the current pixel

SpriteEdger
The Sprite Edger image filter unmixes anti-aliased object edges from the background. It can
remove background color fringing if the object is not rendered over black. It can also clip the
alpha channel to form a 1-bit (0 or 1) mask. It can even use this mask to clip the RGB imaged edges,
setting the pixels to the background color if they are outside the mask.

WaterMark
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The WaterMark filter embosses an image in the lower-right quarter of your render. You can select
any loaded image; however, grayscale images using a black background work best. The Light Angle
field determines the direction of the implied light source.

Other filters, like Pixel filters, may appear on the Image Editor in the list of image filters.

Wave Filter Image

The Wave Filter Image filter allows you to apply and adjust image filters, color filters, grain and
matte filters to the entire image, the background, objects only, shadows only, a special buffer, or a
user-definable color range. A powerful interface with color preview provides the control you need
to tweak your image to perfection.
Image filters include blur, sharpen, edge blend, saturation, negative, high/low limit, palette, film
grain, and flip frame. The edge blend filter provides additional and faster antialiasing control,
allowing a possible 30% to 50% savings on rendering times.
Color filters control RGB values, as well as the contrast, midtone, gamma, luminosity and brightness
of the image. The filters work on a percentage scale, but values above 100% can be entered to
create all sorts of interesting effects.
Matte filters are used to create images for compositing. Portions of your images can be set to black
or white for matte creation. If you do a lot of image compositing, you will find Matte filter to be an
invaluable tool.
For even more control, Wave Filter Image can be added more than once to allow for multiple
passes over an image, with each pass applying different settings to different parts of an image and
creating different effects.
Wave Filter Image allows you to move many pre- and post-rendering operations directly into
LightWave. It fully supports network rendering, animated settings and has batch processing
capabilities.
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Special thanks to Mike Reed for his work on this plugin.

Image Filters
Image Filters can be used individually or in combination with other filters to apply interesting
effects. These filters use simple mathematical formulas for faster image rendering. Several
adjustable presets are included for quick effects.

Blur Image - Blur Image simulates out-of-focus effect and is applied equally across your
image. This filter is commonly used on the background to help contrast your sharply-focused
objects in the foreground.
Sharpen - Sharpen is an edge-seeking (low-pass) detail-enhancing filter that will increase the
sharpness between surface colors by exaggerating the difference in color between the two
edges.
Edge Blend - Edge Blend is a softening tool that will smooth the edges between sharply
contrasting surfaces. This helps to tone down the stair-step edges or jaggies found in
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computer graphics.
You may control the Number of Passes this filter makes. Higher values provide finer detailed
blending of the edges. Tolerance allows you to control the amount of edge affected. You may
also limit the edge detection to Object Edges Only.

Multi-Pass Edge Blend - Some images with single-pixel details, like stars or highly detailed
objects, lose desired details when the Edge Blend filter is set to a strong enough value to
remove unwanted jaggies. Increasing the Number of Passes can help to minimise this loss of
detail. (Note that normally only a single pass is needed.)
When you select more than one pass, the filter searches for edges and applies the blend at a
power equal to the percent you select divided by the Number of Passes. For example, if are
using four passes at 100%, the filter will apply a blend of only 25% on each pass.
Once the first pass is completed, the edges are detected again, but this time fewer edges will
be found - edges that needed only the light 25% blend will not be selected. This process is
repeated for all passes. This results in the pixels that needed the least blending only getting
a 25% blend, while those that needed a bit more get 50%, and so on. Only the worst jaggies
get the full 100% blend.
Adding WaveFilter Image plugin multiple times can also help in removing really bad jaggies.
Just like using multiple Number of Passes, each instance of the filter will only select the
jaggies that remain after processing in any previous instance. However, remember that the
blend percentage will be applied fully for each instance, so you may want to keep the value
as low as possible to avoid overly blurring the edges.
Using on Rendered images
If you render a large number of frames and find you should have used a higher Antialiasing
setting, you can simply apply the Edge Blend filter to them - WaveFilter Image does not
require geometry to work. This could save you from re-rendering the original scene.
To do this, simply load the images as an image sequence and set the sequence as the
background image. Then, set the camera to exactly the same resolution as used for the
original images and turn off any normal antialiasing. Set the images to render to a new
filename and youre ready to
post process.
Saturation - Saturation allows you to control the saturation of the images color.
Negative - Negative gives control of the amount of negative applied to an image. 50%
negative is equivalent to RGB 128/128/128 if the initial color is 255, 255, 255.
Limit High/Low Color - The Limit High Color and Limit Low Color settings limit the colors in
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your image to levels which are PAL/NTSC compliant. Only highlights are affected.
Posterize - The Posterize filter reduces the colors used causing a poster-like effect. Lower
values allow more colors.
Palette Reduce - The Palette Reduce filter limits the colors in your image to smaller, evenly
distributed, color palettes. Palette reduction method can be specified as a preference by
choosing either Average (the default), NTSC/PAL Luminance, HDTV Luminance, Nearest Red,
Nearest Green, or Nearest Blue.
Several palettes are available on the Use Palette pop-up menu. If Custom is selected, the
Palette button and input field will be available. Here you can specify a Photoshop *.act file or
an ASCII file that defines each color in the desired palette.
Film Grain - Check Add Film Grain to add a random noise effect of selectable density to your
image. The Color setting defines the grain color. Checking Grayscale Grain causes the grain
to be various levels of grey.
Flip Frame - Flip Frame provides a quick method to vertically and/or horizontally flip the
image.

Color Filters
Color filters allow global control of general color attributes.

Contrast - The Contrast value sets the mid-tones of the selected part of the image either
towards the highlight or shadow range. The Center setting controls the contrast tonal range.
MidPoint - The MidPoint value is similar to the Brightness setting, except that it affects only
the mid-tones within the selected part of the image. Use in conjunction with Brightness for a
good overall lighting effect. The Center setting controls the MidPoint tonal range.
Gamma - Gamma allows control of the range between the darkest and lightest areas of your
image.
Luminance - Luminance adds overall brightness or darkness to the frame. Shadows, mid Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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tones, and highlights will all be affected.

Brightness - Brightness multiplies the amount of light within the selected part of the image.
Mid-tones and highlights are affected, while dark shadows are not affected. Use Brightness
to adjust the lighting within your image without resetting the scenes lights or raising the
ambient light level.
Adjust Color - The Adjust Color options provide different options for adjusting colors.
Mult: Pixel x Percentage - looks at the color information in each RGB channel and
multiplies the base color by the selected Color.
Add: Pixel + Color - adjusts the color information by increasing the amount of R, G and B
color in the image.
Sub: Pixel - Color - adjusts the color information by decreasing the amount of R, G and B
color in the image.
Replace: Pixel = Color - replace will change the RGB color from the current base color to
the new selected Color.

Matte Filters

Choosing Custom will set the alpha channel for the affected area to a grayscale value defined in the
Custom Value input field.
Choosing All Black sets the alpha channel for the affected area to black. Choosing All White sets
the alpha channel for the affected area to white. Generally, with these, you will want Affected Areas
(Affect Tab) set to something other than Full Frame.
Invert reverses the alpha channel for the affected area.

The Affect Tab

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Affected Areas
WaveFilter can apply most filters to a scenes images, surfaces, channels or objects. Often, when
multiple WaveFilter passes are installed, you will select a different portion of the image to affect in
each pass.

Objects - applies the effect to all objects, including an image mapped polygon background.
Background - applies the effect to the background only.
Shadows - applies the effect to the shadow channel only.
Full Frame - applies the effect to the entire frame.
High/Low Color Range - applies the effect to a selected color range in all three color channels
(RGB). The range is defined by the Lower Bound and Upper Bound colors.
Selected Surfaces - applies the effect to selected surfaces. Surfaces are considered selected if
they have a Special Buffer value greater than zero. To access, click the Special Buffers button
on the Advanced Tab of the Surface Editor.

Preset Shelf
Click Use Shelf to access the standard Preset shelf to save and load presets. You can save WaveFilter
settings to the shelf by double-clicking on the preview image.

Enable/Disable
You can quickly enable and disable all filters by clicking the Enable All Filters and Disable All Filters
buttons.

Preview Window
The preview window will give you an idea of what the current settings will do. This can take a little
time to compute so you can disable the preview. You may also use the last rendered image instead
of the default image.

TimeWarp (Camera Motion Options)

Timewarp manipulates time. Previously time has just been a steady clock ticking away at a certain
number of frames per second. Now with Timewarp you can slow the clock down, speed it up, even
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wind it back, all during an animation.

Timewarp can warp the time in a scene while keeping the camera unwarped. Effects like bullettime can be created in this way. Timewarp can also manipulate motion blur in new ways for special
effects. You can now fly through a motion blur.

Timewarp basics
The Timewarp plugin is implemented as a motion modifier plugin that needs to be attached to the
camera. There is also a generic layout plugin that is used to preview timewarping in layout.
It is highly recommended that fractional frames be enabled in layout when using Timewarp.

Render frame versus Scene frame

From within the Timewarp interface, a mapping from Render Frame to Scene Frame is set through
the Frame warp expression or graph.
Render Frame - The sequence number of a frame in a rendered animation.
Scene Frame - The frame number given by the frame slider.
Understanding the distinction between render frame and scene frame is crucial for effectively
using Timewarp. The scene frame number is what is shown by the frame slider in LightWave. The
render frame number is given by the position within a rendered animation.
Normally the render frame number and scene frame number are always the same. The 14th frame
in an animation matches the 14th frame in the LightWave scene. With Timewarp however, an
arbitrary mapping from render frame number to scene frame number can be established.
When rendering frames, Timewarp makes the scene frame number a function of the render frame
number. By default the mapping is simply an identity function, where the render frame number is
equal to the slider frame number.
As the scene frame number is now an arbitrary function of the render frame number, multiple
render frame numbers may map to the same scene frame number. While the render frame number
always increases, the scene frame number may increase, stay the same, decrease, or jump around.

Motion blur and camera warping

Motion blur warping - Motion blur is done by LightWave by rendering the scene at slightly
different times and then combining the results. The times are computed by adding small
amounts to the current frame time, up to the value given by the blur length. Timewarp can
warp the blur length as well. This can keep the motion blur as it looks like without Timewarp
applied, or modify it to take into account the fact that the scene is Timewarped.
Camera warping - When mapping render frame to scene frame, Timewarp can either keep
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the camera as it is in the scene frame, or set it to be the same as it is at the render frame time.
In the former case, the effect is similar to changing the speed of a video playback. The latter
case gives effects such as bullet-time and time freeze. It disconnects the cameras timeline
from the rest of the scene.
Fixing the camera - When motion blur is enabled, the camera settings used for each pass
are the settings at the motion blurred time. With Timewarp it is possible to optionally keep
the camera at the unblurred time. The effect is that there is motion blur in the scene due to
movement of objects, but no blur because of camera movement.

Plugin usage
The Timewarp plugin needs to be added to the camera as a motion modifier. There can be only one
instance of the Timewarp plugin in a scene.
The first step in using Timewarp is to plan your scene carefully. Plan how objects in the scene
should move as a function of scene frame time (i.e. without any timewarping). If you intend to
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warp the camera as well, set out the camera motion as a function of scene frame time, like the
other objects in the scene.
The most difficult aspect of Timewarp is if the camera is not timewarped. The camera motion is
then a function of render frame time, while the rest of the scene is in scene frame time. When
working with the camera, the frame set with the layout frame slider should be considered to be the
render frame. When working with any other items in the scene, the layout frame slider should be
interpreted as indicating the scene frame number.
To help with working with Timewarp, there is a preview mode. This presents a preview slider, which
acts like the layout frame slider. When the preview is enabled, the preview slider is used to set the
render frame. In layout the scene frame for that render frame will be shown. In the preview mode,
it is possible to set keyframes for the camera as a function of render frame number instead of scene
frame number.

Timewarp interface

The timewarp interface is used to set the timewarp function and the various camera and motion
blur warping options. The timewarp preview mode can also be launched from this interface.

Frame warp
The frame warp defines the mapping from render frame to scene frame. This uses frame numbers,
rather than time. The frame numbers do not need to be integers, but can be fractional.
Although you can just set a constant here, it is more typical to use the envelope to set a graph or
expression. A constant would mean that the given scene frame will be used for all render frames.
When set to a graph, the horizontal axis indicates the render frame number, while the vertical axis
is the scene frame number.

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Warp blur
Sets whether or not to warp the motion blur. This will only have effect if motion blur has been
enabled for the scene.

Warp camera
Enables and disables applying the timewarping to the camera.

When adding a key manually using Create Key with Cam Rekey turned on, the frame number
given will be ignored for the camera, and the current Render frame slider value in the Timewarp Preview
used instead.

Fix camera
When set, fixes the camera in place when doing motion blur. This option is not available for some
combinations of options.
Warp blur

Warp
camera

Fix camera
available
Yes
Yes
No (camera
always fixed)

Yes
If the scene does not have motion blur enabled, this option will have no effect.
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Sub frames
When doing a timewarp, the computed scene frame number is very likely to be a fractional frame
number. However, LightWave can only render the scene at whole frame numbers. If the fractional
scene frame number were to be rounded to the nearest integer, the resulting timewarp animation
will appear to stutter, especially when time is slowed down. The Timewarp plugin can overcome
this by manipulating the frames per second setting for the scene.
The Sub frames setting tells Timewarp the desired sub-frame resolution. The default of 10 means
that the time of the rendered frame will be accurate to within 1/10th of a frame. A value of 30
would mean an accuracy of 1/30th of a frame.
What Sub frames does is multiply the frame per second setting with the given value. For example,
say the FPS is 30, and the fractional scene frame number that needs to be rendered is 1.53. Without
the use of the Sub frame setting, this would be rounded to scene frame 2, an error of almost half a
frame or 0.5 / 30 = 1/60th of a second. With Sub frames set to 10, the FPS is modified to 30 * 10 =
300, the fractional frame number becomes 1.53 * 10 = 15.3, which is rounded for rendering to 15.
That results in an error of only 0.3 frames or 0.3 / 300 = 1/1000th of a second.
Put in another way, without Sub frames, the scene frame number would have to change by 1/30th
of a second before a different frame is rendered. If the timewarp slows down time by a factor of 5,
this would mean youll only get 30 / 5 = 6 unique frames per second in the final animation. With
Sub frames set to 10 you have up to 300 / 5 = 60 unique frames per second available.
This disadvantage of setting Sub frames very large is that the number of frames in the scene
becomes very large, which may have implications with memory usage. Also keep in mind that
Sub frames will multiply the scene frame number. This will affect the results of any setting which is
dependent on scene frame number rather than scene frame time. For example, animated images
which are animated as a function of frame number.

Preview
The Preview button activates the Timewarp Preview interface, which is explained in the next
section. Note that the preview interface can also be opened by activating the TimewarpPreview
generic plugin.

Timewarp Preview
The Timewarp Preview can be used to preview the effect of the timewarp in layout. It presents a
simple slider and animation controls. The slider sets the render frame. When changed, the frame
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shown in layout is the scene frame that would be rendered for the given render frame number.
When the Timewarp Preview is active, it is possible to set camera keyframes as a function of render
frame number instead of scene frame number. This is very useful when the Warp camera option is
switched off.

If the camera type is anything other than Classic or Perspective, anytime-varying camera type
parameters may not be correct if the camera is left unwarped. It may end up using the warped time for
those parameters.

Timewarp preview interface

The Timewarp Preview interface can be activated in two ways. The first is to use the Preview button
on the Timewarp interface. The second is to start the TimewarpPreview generic plugin.
6.1.1. First frame, Last frame - The first and last render frame specify the range over which the
preview is done. These are initially equal to the rendering options first and last frame.
6.1.2. Render frame - The slider is used to set the render frame. The view in the layout and the
layout frame slider will be adjusted to show the matching scene frame.
6.1.3. Play > - Toggling the Play button on starts playing the timewarped animation. The
animation is looped from First frame to Last frame. Toggle the Play button off to stop the
animation.
During the playing of the animation, interactions with Layout other than with the Timewarp
Preview panel is blocked.
6.1.4. +<< >>+ - When Warp camera is off, the +<< and >>+ buttons change the render
frame to the previous and next camera keyframes respectively in render frame time.
6.1.5. Cam Rekey - In the case where the camera is not warped (Warp camera is turned
off ), the camera properties change as a function of render frame number instead of scene
frame number. The layout frame slider controls the scene frame number. Normally, when a
keyframe is created for the camera it will be set at the current scene frame. With Cam Rekey
turned on, keyframes for the camera will be created at the render frame number indicated
by the Timewarp Preview slider.
In combination with the +<< and >>+ buttons this allows you to easily edit the camera in
render frame time and the rest of the scene in scene frame time.
The Cam Rekey toggle is only available if the Warp camera option is off. Cam Rekey will only
be applied when the toggle is turned on and (to avoid confusion) the Timewarp Preview
interface is open.

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Distributed Rendering An Introduction

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Distributed Rendering: Introduction

Introduction
The distributed rendering program that is packaged with LightWave is called ScreamerNet. It
uses Layouts Network Rendering Panel (Render > Network Render) to control submitting scenes
to networked computers running the ScreamerNet process. ScreamerNet can control up to
1,000 CPUs. Each CPU takes a frame, renders it, and then grabs the next available frame in the
animation until the scene is complete.

Are You Talking to Me?

Before ScreamerNet is discussed, your computers must be talking to each other, which means
they need to be networked together. Setting up a network is beyond the scope of these
instructions, though the experience can be quite rewarding.

Since ScreamerNet communicates by writing files, NetBEUI and TCP/IP are not required. As
long as each machine can see each other and write files across the network, ScreamerNet should
function properly.

If you are network-deprived, you still can use ScreamerNet to batch-render multiple scenes
on a single computer. See the Batch Rendering on One Computer information near the end of this
chapter.

Share and Share Alike

Once you have created your network and the computers are talking to each other, youre ready
for the next step. On our render farm, lets say that we have four computers (Pig, Horse, Cow,
and Chicken) networked together. (For now, imagine that they are all single CPU machines.)

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In a ScreamerNet setup, you designate one of the computers as the control or host machine. It
hands out the rendering assignments, (called jobs), to the nodes (the CPUs on the network used for
rendering). The host must have LightWave installed on it.
In this scenario, Pig will be the control machine. Node machines do not need any NewTek software
or hardware on them.

For ScreamerNet to work, all the nodes need to access specific files. Of course, all the nodes need
to share the scene file and all its accompanying data including object and image files. If youre
organized, all these will be tucked away in your LightWave Content directory. Also, the nodes
need to save the rendered frames to a shared directory. Each node must be able to load a plugin
configuration file (LWEXT2015.CFG) that has the plugin files mapped with a path that the node
can access. Finally, the ScreamerNet command program, (LWSN.EXE), needs to be visible to all the
nodes.
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Perhaps some of the confusion about setting up a ScreamerNet system arises because there is
more than one way to organize a sharing scheme and you may have read tutorials that herald one
method over another. If set up properly, all the schemes will work. So depending on your situation
and disposition, you should choose the most suitable one for you.

Windows Setup
Drive Mapping
To share, data must be at a unique address that all the nodes on the network can access. Normally,
your scene file is sitting in your LightWave Content directory, which is typically on your C drive. In
our case, the scene, oldmacdonald.lws, would be in Pig, the host computer. Now in our animal farm
network, Pig, as the host, would distribute out a rendering job that said, Render oldmacdonald.lws
that is on the C drive. The problem is that when Horse gets that instruction, it looks on its C drive
and cant find the scene. So Horse says, neigh. It cannot render a scene that it cant find.
The solution is to map a unique network drive (or drives) that contains all the necessary LightWave
files. Normally, these files will be on the host computer. If that is your case, go to your host
computer and from your Start menu Open your computer. You should see your drives and the Map
Network Drive icon above.

In the panel, when you specify a drive letter, make sure that it is unused by any of the computers
on your network. For example, Pig might only use five drive letters, A to E, so letters F to Z are
available. But Chicken may have a dozen hard drives on its computer, which means it is using drive
letters A to L. If you mapped a drive on Pig with the letter G, Chicken could still be confused. In our
situation, well pick S for the drive letter.

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Next, you specify the folder that you want to connect to this drive letter. There are two schools
of thought about the folder. The orderly and efficient approach makes a folder with only the
necessary files in it and attaches it to the mapped drive letter. The kitchen sink method simply
picks the hard drive LightWave is in and selects that as the folder. For example, on Pig, LightWave is
on the C drive. In the Map Network Drive panel, you would click Browse next to the Folder entry
box. Under Microsoft Windows Network, go to Pig and highlight the C drive. Click OK. The Folder
box would read \\Pig\C.

Now if you want to be more elegant about your mapped drive, you can just map your LightWave
folder. The process is the same, right click on the Network Places icon, choose Map Network Drive
and specify a unique drive letter. This time when you browse for a folder to attach, select your
LightWave folder.
Both of the above methods assume that all the necessary files are in your mapped drive. If youre
organized, then all of your objects and images will be in your Content folder. Back in the old days
of the 20th Century when humongous hard drives were nine gigabytes and drive space was scarce,
often you would store your rendered frames on another drive. If your scene accesses any data
from other drives or stores frames elsewhere, then those folders must be accessible to the network
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nodes. That means that you will need to map more drives.
For another way of sharing folders, Matt Gorner, in an exhaustive, informative ScreamerNet tutorial
available here, shuns the drive mapping technique. In his method, (which you should read about
directly), he simply sets up network sharing access of his LightWave folder. Matt goes into great
detail about the whole process.
Since all the computers on your network need to share files with this mapped drive, you will need
to map that drive on all your computers. After you have, you can test the connection by copying
files into that drive from the node computers.

Organizing Configuration Files

Unfortunately, we are not finished with this job. But before we move on, lets discuss alternatives
for content directories. Often you will read about ScreamerNet setups that construct two file
directories, one specifically for ScreamerNet and another for when you dont use ScreamerNet. This
is a great deal of extra trouble to go to, given that youll see no difference in running LightWave
on your workstation under a setup for ScreamerNet, and when you decide to render across your
network, youll be ready to go without having to relocate a set of files for the scene in question.
Of course, if you prefer that approach, then Matt Gorner explains a nifty way of organizing a dual
setup.
The next steps involve changing certain LightWave configuration files so that they are
ScreamerNet-friendly. Before you do, you should get those files where you can see them. Start by
creating a new folder in your LightWave directory called Config. Now, click on the My Computer
icon and do a search for LWEXT2015.CFG, (the plugin configuration file), and move it to the Config
folder. It will be in the %USERPROFILE%\.NewTek\LightWave\2015 folder if you just want to go
directly there. Do the same for the LW2015.cfg file.

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Next, you need to point LightWave to that Config folder when you start the program.
On your Windows desktop or in your Start menu, right-click on the Layout icon and select
Properties.
Depending on your setup, in the Target box, it will say something like:
C:\LightWave\bin\Layout.exe
This points to Layouts program file.
If you have set up the Config folder, change this line to read:
C:\LightWave\bin\Layout.exe -cc:\LightWave\config
The first part is unchanged. The second part, ( -cc:\LightWave\config), tells LightWave where to look
for the configuration files. The -c is the config cue. The rest (c:\LightWave\config) is simply the path.

This is a command between you and your host computer so the path does not need to reflect
the network mapped drive letters. Though if you want to remain consistent, than you would write this
Target command in ScreamerNet terms. In our case, it would then read:
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S:\LightWave\Programs\lightwav.exe -cS:\LightWave\config
Please notice that there is no space between the -c and path name.

Command Directory
When you run ScreamerNet, the host sends out Job files to the nodes and receives Ack
(Acknowledgement) files back. You need to set up a Command directory to store these files. So, in
your LightWave directory, create a new folder titled Command.

Now open up Layout on your host computer. Click on the Render Tab and under Utilities, click on
Network Render. In the Network Rendering Panel, click on Command Directory and locate the
newly created Command folder on your mapped drive. In our case, S:\LightWave\Command.
A message pops up that says, ScreamerNet must be reinitialized whenever the
command directory is changed. Initialize now? Click Yes. You can then close the
Network Render Panel.

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Next, click Edit > Set Content Directory. Choose the content directory on your mapped drive, in our
case, S:\LightWave\Content.
Finally, you need to remap your plugins. And again, there are two methods. The search and replace
technique involves opening the LWEXT2015.cfg file in a text editor. The lines would originally look
like this:
{ Entry

Class AnimLoaderHandler
Name AVI(.avi)

Module C:\\lightwave\\plugins\\input-output\\avi.p}

{ Entry

Class AnimLoaderHandler

Name DirectShow(.avi)

Module C:\\\\lightwave\\plugins\\utility\\dvview.p}

You would search for C: and replace it with your mapped drive letter. In our case, it would be S:.
Save your changes and youre done. This method is great if you like to dig in there, get your hands
dirty and see exactly what you are doing.
In Matt Gorners solution, you click on the Utilities Tab in Layout and select Edit Plugins. Clear all
your existing plugins and in the panel, choose Scan Directory. Browse to your mapped drive and
highlight the support\Plugins folder. Hit OK and an Add Plugins window will pop up. Now, if you
open the LWEXT2015.cfg file in a text editor, you should see that all of the plugins have been
remapped to the network drive.
To save the changes to the configuration files, you need to quit LightWave. When you start it up
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again, the new configurations will be loaded.

Setting up ScreamerNet
All right, now that you have all the necessary files configured and in folders that can be accessed
by all the nodes, it is time to set up ScreamerNet itself. In our example, we have four computers in
our ScreamerNet render farm. Pig is the host and will be handing out directions to the other three
rendering nodes. To keep organized, you will assign a unique number to each node.

Since being the Host computer is not too taxing, you probably also will want to use it as a
rendering node.
To initialise a node for ScreamerNet, you need to create a separate file that you will store and run
on each node. It should be a text document called startlwsn_node.bat. Open it up in a text editor
and set it to read:
cd S:\Lightwave\Programs

LWSN.exe -2 -cS:\Lightwave\Config S:\Lightwave\Command\job1 S:\Lightwave\Command\ack1

You can use this example as a guide. It consists of two lines (everything from LWSN.exe to ack1 is
the second line). Edit it to fit your specific setup and save it with a new name. Each computer that is
a rendering node needs this file on it. You can call it whatever you want, just remember to keep the
.bat extension. Be creative - YouScreamIScream.bat or SpeedKills.bat.
The first line indicates where to find the lwsn.exe program. The second line begins by running the
ScreamerNet program in 2 mode. (There are 3 and -5 modes that are explained later.) Simply,
leave this part of the line as it is.
Next is a c command, which indicates where to find the configuration files. If you have been
following along, you will have set up a Config folder and moved your LW2015.cfg and LWEXT2015.
cfg files there. If it is located elsewhere, change this path.
The next path tells ScreamerNet where to find the job commands. Again, if you have been
following along, you have created a Command folder and changed the Command Directory path
in Layout. The last path simply indicates where the acknowledgement (ack) files are located.
The numbers after job and ack indicate the node that is running this batch file. Each node has
a unique number. Usually, if you are using the host computer as a rendering node, you assign it
number 1. So, its batch file would read job1 and ack1. In our case, Pig would be node 1. You then
number the other nodes. For example, Horse would be 2, Cow would be 3, and Chicken would be
4.

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Each of the computers on your network needs a copy of this node initialization batch file
customized to it. For example Horses file would read:
cd S:\Lightwave\Programs

LWSN.exe -2 -cS:\Lightwave\Config S:\Lightwave\Command\job2 S:\Lightwave\Command\ack2

Cows would say:

cd S:\Lightwave\Programs

LWSN.exe -2 -cS:\Lightwave\Config S:\Lightwave\Command\job3 S:\Lightwave\Command\ack3

If any of the computers have more than one processor, or a processor with multiple cores, then
you could use multiple batch files and set each computer to rendering multiple frames. Lets say
Chicken is a dual processor machine. You might create one file for each processor. The first might
read:
cd S:\Lightwave\Programs

LWSN.exe -2 -cS:\Lightwave\Config S:\Lightwave\Command\job4 S:\Lightwave\Command\ack4

The other would say:

cd S:\Lightwave\Programs

LWSN.exe -2 -cS:\Lightwave\Config S:\Lightwave\Command\job5 S:\Lightwave\Command\ack5

Obviously, you would have to name the batch files differently, such as StartNode4.bat and
StartNode5.bat.
The main issue with dividing up your computers in this way is that they may have multiple
processors but only one stock of RAM. If your scene is light you can get benefit from making
multiple batch files per computer, otherwise its probably better not to these days.
When you have all the batch files placed on the node computers, create a shortcut for them on the
desktop of the host computer.

Show Time
You are about ready to make the magic happen. Go back to your host computer, open Layout and
load the scene that you want to render over the network. Make sure that the Content directory is
set to the mapped drive.
Under the Render Tab, open up the Render Globals Panel. Sometimes, you may not want to render
all the frames in the scene. What you can do is set the Render First Frame and Render Last Frame
fields to the desired range of frames. Make sure that you have Auto Frame Advance checked.
Also, check Save RGB. Remember, ScreamerNet only renders individual frames. It will not render
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animation files. In the RGB Files field, indicate the network-mapped path of where you are saving
files. For example, S:\LightWave\Frames.
Save the scene.

You can batch render scenes in ScreamerNet. So you could save a scene and then go back and
change it (for example, to render a different range of frames) and then save the scene with another
name.
Once the scene(s) are saved, click on the Render Tab and Network Render. The number that you
enter in the Maximum CPU Number field should be the highest number node that you will be using.
For example, if we would be using just node 1 (Pig) and node 2 (Horse), you would enter 2. But lets
say that Horse wasnt available but Cow was. Even though, you are still using only two nodes, you
would enter 3 so that ScreamerNet would look for node number 3, which is Cow.
Now go to the node computers and click on the batch file icons that you created. A black MS-DOS
window will open up and before you can start reading what it says, a continuous flow of repeating
messages will probably begin. Depending on your exact setup, the message will read like:

Cant open S:\Lightwave\Command\job1

This will be normal until LightWave initializes ScreamerNet. Once you have started all your nodes,
return to Layout and click on the Screamer Init button.

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After a brief pause, you will receive a confirmation of the number of CPUs detected and the
Screamer Init field will say Ready.

Now, if you look back at the nodes MS-DOS window, the message will say Init and then Wait. The
nodes are waiting for their job commands.

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In the Network Rendering Panel, click on Add Scene to List and find the scene or scenes. They will
be displayed in the Scene List in the order they were selected. Notice that the List indicates the
First and Last Frame to render, the frame advance Step, and the % of those frames that have been
rendered.
If you added a scene by mistake, highlight it and click Remove Scene. If you want to remove all the
scenes, click Clear List.
When the list is complete, click on Screamer Render. The job commands will be sent to the nodes,
which are waiting in line. Node 1 receives the first frame, node 2 will take the second, and so on
down the queue. If you look back at the nodes window, you will see it document its progress in the
render.
As soon as a node finishes a frame, it receives the job to render the next available frame in the
scene. When the scene is completed, ScreamerNet jumps to the next scene in the list.

You may wish to check some of the first frames in a photo editing program to see if they are what
you expect. If you are having problems, please read the Troubleshooting section below.
When you are finished rendering all the scenes and are ready to close ScreamerNet, click the
Screamer Shutdown button. A panel will pop up that says, Are you sure you want to shut down the
ScreamerNet CPUs? If you choose Yes, the nodes are closed and their MS-DOS windows disappear.
Now, if you wish to start a new session, you must restart ScreamerNet on each CPU and re-initialize
the CPUs from the host machine.
If you want to stop rendering before ScreamerNet is finished, press the Esc key to abort the session.
A message will appear in the Screamer Init window saying, Waiting for CPUs to finish rendering. If
the scene is complex or one of your nodes is slow, waiting could take a quite a while.
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If you are impatient, there is no elegant way to force the nodes to quit in mid render. If you
cant wait, you can close LightWave by hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del , clicking the Task Manager button,
highlighting LightWave and selecting End Task. Then, you can stop each node by closing its MS-DOS
window. Its brutal, but it works.

If you close the MS-DOS window on any of the render nodes, you may have to restart all nodes
and re-initialize them.

Screamernet Time Flag

A new flag has been added to Screamernet with different operation in the main two modes. In
-2 mode, the -t value indicates the polling time for the job file (how often it should be checked
for new commands). In -3 mode, theres no concept of a job file, so -t is used to indicate the
frequency of diagnostic output during a render.

Installing Nodes
When installing Screamernet nodes for LightWave 2015, make sure that the Microsoft Visual
C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package is installed on each render machine running LWSN.exe.
Normally, this package gets installed along with LightWave when using the LightWave installer.
However, not everyone uses the installer when setting up LWSN.exe on a render node.
For a LightWave 2015 render machine running a 64-bit version of Windows, install the Microsoft
Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64). For a LightWave 2015 render machine running
a 32-bit version of Windows, install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package
(x86).

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Batch Rendering with Render-Q

If you only have one computer, Render-Q (Render > Render-Q > Launch/Open) is the tool you should
use to batch render. You can choose scenes from different content directories, change their priority
and Bake Radiosity for a selection of scenes if needed. Remember, the scenes will render as you
have set them so make sure all the details are right by first loading each scene, checking paths
and save options to be sure that your computer will be able to chain the scenes together for
continuous rendering.

Rendering Without LightWave

The LWSN program has a third option that lets you render a scene without running LightWave. There is no
control machine and thus it is not a distributed rendering situation. You must tell the program specifically
what to render. The method is run from a DOS prompt using the following syntax (one line):

LWSN -3 [-c<config dir>] [-d<content dir>] <scene file> <first frame> <last frame> [<frame step>]

As you can see, you supply the program with the basic information needed to render a scene. An
example would be:

LWSN -3 -cS:\Lightwave\Config -dS:\Lightwave\Content oldmacdonald.lws 1 900 1

In the example, the program would render frames 1 through 900 of the oldmacdonald.lws scene
using the config files stored in the S:\Lightwave\Config and using S:\Lightwave\Content as the
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Content Directory.

You can get the syntax for ScreamerNet by simply typing LWSN with no arguments.

Preparing Scenes for Screamernet

Since Screamernet is designed to function without interaction it is important that you prepare
scenes completely before submitting them to your farm. This means making sure all your objects
and images load correctly and that all your rendering and saving options are set before you go.
Heres a simple checklist:
1) Are you using LightWaves content directory for your scene? If you are
unsure, use the File > Package Scene tool to create a new content directory
and populate it with the scene you currently have loaded.
2) Have you set your cameras properties correctly? Do you want Depth of Field or
Stereo? Now is the time to decide because once you send your scene to the
farm, the only way to make that Oh, I forgot such and such change is to stop
the farm and start it again. Make sure your anti-aliasing is sufficient.
3) Have you set your output options? Screamernet cant save animations, so make
sure that each frames images are being saved in a suitable format.
4) Are you using any third-party plugins? Make sure that your nodes
have the plugins too, otherwise the renders will fail.
5) Have you locked your configs? To be sure they dont get overwritten while rendering, making
sure your config files are read-only. Also, turn off Autoscanning plugins in Options.
6) Have you baked? Things like flocking, dynamics and even deformations are best baked to
MDD files to ensure they are exactly the same across your render nodes. It also means that
those nodes only need to render final images and not mess with dynamics calculations.
7) Have you set a frame range? This one is last since its not something you will always
do, but Screamernet renders whatever range has been set up in the scene. If
youd like some nodes to render the scene backwards and some forwards to
meet in the middle, set a frame range for it and save a different scene file.

Troubleshooting and Limitations

The most common cause of ScreamerNet crashing is when too many nodes try to write or read
their information to or from the host computer while the host renders. If that seems to be the case,
try saving the frames to a mapped network drive on another computer. You will have to go back
to your scene and redirect the path for saving frames. Of course, make sure that the new drive has
enough space to store the frames.

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If that doesnt solve your crashing problems, do not use the host machine as a render node. Use it
only as a server where the hard drives are found.
ScreamerNet can be finicky about how filenames and directories are composed. Putting spaces
in a name, for example, old macdonald.lws, might cause a problem. Try using a dash, -, or an
underscore, _, instead of spaces, old_macdonald.lws. You should also never use accented
characters such as , or since there is no guarantee that these characters will all be rendered
correctly through your farm.
Some plugins dont like running with more than one thread. For ScreamerNet scenes, go to the
Render Globals Panel, (Render > Options > Render Globals). In the Multithreading drop down
menu, change to 1 Thread, and save the scene. Quit LightWave and start it again. This will update
the configuration files. You then will need to restart all the nodes so they will read the updated
configuration files.
Hopefully everything is running smoothly, but problems can occur, usually because something is
setup wrong. Some of the main problems that arise are listed here along with possible remedies.
The biggest limitation to ScreamerNet are plugins that are not written to take advantage of it.
Im not aware of a definitive list of all the ones which do and dont work. If in doubt read the
documentation that came with the plugin, it should say whether it has problems or not. If it doesnt
say but the plugin still doesnt seem to work, re-scan your plugins to update the LWEXT2015.cfg
file. If it still doesnt work then chances are its not compatible with ScreamerNet.
If your scene uses procedural textures (fractal noise etc.) you may experience differences in the
pattern if you render on machines with different processors. Mixing old and new processors; AMD
and Intel; could lead to problems. This is really only a problem with animations as textures could
suddenly change from frame to frame, if in doubt run a test or use all computers with the same
processor type.
Problem - My nodes cant find the job files.
Possible solution - They cant find the job files because they cant see the Command folder,
which holds them. So open up the node batch file and check the script lines that end in job
and ack. Make sure that pathname before these words point to your Command folder.
Also check that all the render node computers have access to read and write to the folder.

Problem - My nodes seem fine but when I press Screamer Init it cant find any CPUs.
Possible solution - Again this is a command folder problem, check that the Network Render
Panel has the same Command Directory path as the nodes batch file. Also check that the
host computer has access to read and write to the folder.

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Problem - Rendering seems to be working but no files are saved.
Possible solution - The messages output in the nodes MS-DOS window will often give you a
clue to the problem. For example, it might say that it could not find an object or image that
was in the scene. This can be caused when the Content directory that the rendering node is
accessing does not contain all the scenes data. Check that the render batch files are looking
in the correct place for the config files, and that they can access the folder on the network.
Next, make sure your scene file is saving RGB files and not an animation (.MOV / .AVI etc.) in
the Output Tab of the Render Globals Panel. ScreamerNet can ONLY save individual frames.
Finally, check that your plugins (LWEXT2015.cfg) file is up-to-date by re-scanning the plugins
using the pathname all the nodes will be using to find them on the network.

Problem - Rendering seems to work okay but all my saved files are in .FLX format.
Possible solution - There are two possible reasons. The first is that ScreamerNet cant find the
plugin to save in the format youve specified, so check that your plugins (LWEXT2015.cfg) file
is up to date by re-scanning the plugins using the pathname all the nodes will be using to
find them on the network. Also check that the render batch files are looking in the correct
place for the config files, and that they can access the folder on the network.
The second reason is that the render node that saved the file ran out of memory to load the
saver plugin so, as a last resort, it used the built-in FLX saver.
If you have a whole scenes worth of FLX images, you can use LightWave to convert them
into your desired format. Simply load the series as a sequence of images for the Backdrop in
a blank scene and render in the proper format. If you only need to convert a few FLX images,
load them into the Image Editor Panel. Highlight the name of an image and double-click on
the preview, (or just double-click on the name), to open it up in the Image Viewer. Now, click
on File > Save RGBA, and pick your format.

Problem - My particles arent working.

Possible solution - Particles are a mathematical simulation. Therefore, each computer would
start calculating the particles at the start of each frame rendered. The way to fix this is to
bake the motion of the particles. You need to save the particle FX calculation to disk (as a
.PFX file) in the folder with the scene file, or to a mapped drive that can be seen by all the
networked computers.

Problem - Motion designer isnt working.

Possible solution - Same as particles, this is a mathematical issue. The way to handle this is
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to bake the motion, and save the motion designer calculation to disk (as a .MDD file) in the
folder with the scene file.

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Mac OS X Setup
Foreword
LightWaves LWSN (LightWave ScreamerNet) allows standalone, batch and network rendering
across multiple platforms including Mac OS X.
LightWaves Config Files are plain text files that store basic configuration information for LightWave
and LWSN. Its very important that you know where these config files are located so that both
LightWave and LWSN can access them. Its also important to understand which LWSN relevant
settings are stored in the config file, and how to use them.
The explanation in these docs is mainly written by Mike Scaramozzino from DreamLight Interactive
and are published here with his kind permission. Mike has spent many years rendering using
Screamernet and has created a tool to make it all much easier with no use of Terminal required.
Visit his site at dreamlight.com and check out the DLI_SNUB-Launcher.

Updating LightWaves Config Files

LightWave only updates the config file when you quit the program. Therefore anytime you make
changes to any of the config settings you must be sure to quit LightWave to ensure that the
changes are written to the config file itself. LWSN only reads the config file when first launched.
Therefore, if you wish to make changes to the config file for LWSN and you are using a single config
file for both Lightwave and LWSN, you should perform the following steps:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

Quit LWSN.
Launch LightWave.
Make changes to the desired config settings in LightWave, as discussed later.
Quit LightWave to write the changes out to the config file.
Launch LWSN again so it reads the updated config file.
Launch LightWave again if you are using the built-in network controller to manage LWSN.

LightWaves Config File Path on Mac OS X

On Mac OS X the default location of the config files is:
YourHD/Users/username/Library/Preferences
Replace YourHD with the name of your hard drive where your home directory is located and
replace username with your user name.
Keep in mind that, by default, the config files are stored in the Library:Preferences folder thats inside
your home folder, not in the Library:Preferences folder at the top level your system hard drive.
The config files for LightWave 2015 on Mac OS X are named as follows:
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Extensions 2015 - Complete list of file paths to all available plugins

Hub 2015 - Basic Hub Settings
Layout 2015 - Basic Layout Settings
Modeler 2015 - Basic Modeler Settings

You dont need to specify any of these config files by name, only the path to the directory where
they are stored, and thats only if you decide to keep your config files in a location other than the
default. If you leave the config files in their default location, you do not need to specify their path
for LightWave, Modeler, the Hub, or for LWSN. In this case each individual Mac OS X user would also
have their own configs, since they would be stored in each users home folder.
You may wish to store your configs in different locations in some advanced situations, such as:
When running different versions of LightWave on the same machine.
When different users use the same Mac and you all wish to use a single set of configs.
When running ScreamerNet over a network with a common set of configs for all nodes.
When running ScreamerNet over a network and using separate configs for machines with
varying resources, such as available RAM or number of processors.

Creating a New Set of Config Files

The following steps will show you how you can easily create a fresh new set of config files in a new
location if desired.
1) Locate your LightWave installation, typically: YourHD:Applications:NewTek:LightWave2015
2) Inside the LightWave2015 directory, create a new directory named Preferences.
3) Start Layout and Modeler and quit them. You will find your
Preferences folder contains config files for LightWave.
If you run into various problems with LightWave and suspect corrupted config files, you can delete
them and use the above steps to recreate a fresh new set of config files in their current location.

Config Settings for LWSN

The following settings are stored in the LightWave Config file named: LightWave Layout 2015 Prefs
and are used by LWSN: Content Directory, Command Directory, Default Segment Memory, and
Multithreading.

Content Directory
ContentDirectory YourHD:Applications:LightWave10:Content:
Along with a full complement of paths to the Content Directorys special subdirectories, such as
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:Images, :Objects, :Scenes, etc. If you wish to use LWSN successfully you must learn to properly use
LightWaves Content Directory structure to package your projects correctly.
A Content Directory in LightWave is very similar to a Web sites root directory. When used properly,
all necessary file paths are specified relative to the root directory, and all files are located in
subdirectories of the root directory. This means the root directory is a self contained unit that
may be moved as desired, including to other machines, without breaking all the dependent file/
directory links.
In LightWave, the Content Directory itself may be named whatever you like, but there are some
specific subdirectories that LightWave expects to find inside the Content Directory that you should
not rename or move. These special subdirectories are named Images, Scenes & Objects. They are
where you should store all your image, scene and object files respectively, for a project. You may
name your files anything you wish (being sure to use proper file extensions), as long as you place
them in the proper subdirectories.

Command Directory
CommandDirectory YourHD:Applications:LightWave2015:bin:
The Command Directory is the directory that contains the job command file and the
acknowledgement file. These are two plain text files that the network controller uses to
communicate with an instance of LWSN during batch or network rendering.
The communication goes like this:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)

The network controller creates a job file.

The network controller writes a command into the job file.
LWSN reads the command from the job file.
LWSN attempts to perform the command.
LWSN creates an acknowledgment file.
LWSN writes a reply to the acknowledgement file.
The controller reads the reply from the acknowledgement file to decide what to do next.

These files are named: job# and ack# where # is replaced with the number of the LWSN node to
control. If only one instance of LWSN is being used these files would be named job1 and ack1. For
a second instance of LWSN, they would be named job2 and ack2, and so on. As in config files, no
.txt extension is used. Also note that there is no leading zero, space or anything else between the
number and the words job or ack.
LightWave defaults the Command Directory to the LightWave bin Directory. LWSN on Mac OS X
however uses the Content directory as the default Command Directory. This means it will not run
as configured with the defaults, you must at least change one of these two settings.
Both the user running the network controller (typically LightWave or a third party controller) and
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the user running LWSN (if different) must have read/write access to the same Command Directory.
Non-administrator users dont typically have write access to the Applications directories on Mac OS
X. Therefore, it is suggested to use a shared Content Directory, with read/write access for all users,
and keep everything relative to this shared Content Directory, including my Command Directory.
A typical Content Directory , with its own Commands directory may look like this:
Heres a step-by-step example of how to configure such a simple self contained Content Directory
with its own Command Directory.
1) Launch LightWave.
2) Set LightWaves Content Directory with: Edit >Set Content Directory to your
desired Content directory, or by loading the scene you want to render.
3) Select Utilities > Network Render.
4) Click the Command Directory button.
5) Navigate to the same Content Directory you set in step 2.
6) Create a new folder named Commands inside the Content Directory.
7) Click the Choose button to close the dialog and accept the changes.
8) If asked to initialize the ScreamerNet, click No.
9) Quit LightWave to save your changes to the config file.
10) When using the Terminal to launch Screamernet (fully explained later) use the following
Content relative command file paths, replacing # with the number of the LWSN node:
:Commands:job# :Commands:ack#

Starting an LWSN Session

ScreamerNet lwsn is a Unix executable that runs in the Mac OS X Terminal. You can use a variety of
command line parameters to manually configure and launch lwsn in Terminal.
There are a few common command line parameters that are used to tell ScreamerNet lwsn what to
do. The following general command line parameters may be used when running ScreamerNet lwsn
in any mode. Additional mode specific command line parameters are discussed later.
The general command line syntax is as follows, all on one line.
-<mode#> [-c<config directory>] [-d<content directory>] [-l<log file>]
[-q] [-t]

Rendering Mode
-<mode#> : The mode number parameter specifies which rendering mode to use.

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-2 - Signifies batch or network rendering mode which may render multiple scenes on
multiple nodes.
-3 - Signifies standalone rendering mode which renders a single scene on a single node.

-c Config Directory
-c - Optional: Path to the folder that contains the config file.
An example of this parameter with the initially searched Config Directory path is as follows:
-c/Applications/NewTek/LightWave3D2015/Preferences

-d Content Directory
-d - Optional: Path to the folder that contains your content.
An example of this parameter with a sample Content Directory path could be as follows:
-d/Users/username/Documents/LWContent

Where username should be replaced with the current user name. This example would be
to use a folder named LWContent in your Documents folder as your content folder. If this
option is not specified, the content directory defaults to the content directory specified in
the config file through LightWave. Therefore, if you set your content directory in LightWave
itself, and you have ScreamerNet lwsn on the same machine using the same config file
as LightWave (which it does by default), you do not need to specify this option in the
ScreamerNet lwsn terminal command line, unless you wish to use a content directory that is
different than the one currently set in LightWave. You would also need to specify this path if
you were running ScreamerNet lwsn on a different machine than you are running LightWave.
Please review Config Files: Content Directory, for important information about using LightWaves
Content Directory properly.

-l Log File
-l - Optional: Path to a text file to write the ScreamerNet lwsn output into.
An example of this parameter with a sample Log File path could be as follows:
-l/Users/username/Documents/LWContent/ScreamerNetLog.txt

Where username should be replaced with the current user name. This example would use a
Log File named ScreamerNetLog.txt in a LWContent folder in the current users Documents
folder. If this option is not specified then the text messages generated as output would
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appear in the Mac OS X terminal window that is running ScreamerNet lwsn. The current user
must have read/write permissions for this file.

-q Quiet Mode
-q - Optional: Suppresses terminal output during frame rendering, still reports as each frame
finishes.
Normally while ScreamerNet lwsn is busy rendering it outputs quite a bit of text information
to the terminal interface. This can be useful for monitoring progress and troubleshooting
problems such as missing plug-ins, etc. Once everything is up and running however, all this
text writing to the terminal may be unnecessary. The -q parameter turns off all the output
during the rendering of an individual frame. Youll still get text output during the scene
loading and between rendered frames, but not during frame rendering.
Heres an example of what the output for one frame normally looks like, without the -q
parameter:
Scene loaded.
Allocating frame buffers.
Allocating segment buffers.
Frame: 1.
Segment: 1/1.
Pass: 1/1.
Updating geometry.
Moving DLI_Floor_01F (1).
Moving DLI_SuperBall_01H.
Moving DLI_Floor_01F (2).
Preprocessing Frame....
Computing preliminary radiosity solution....
Rendering frame 1, segment 1/1, pass 1/1.
Image Reconstruction.
Image Reconstruction : 0%.
Image Reconstruction : 4%.
Image Reconstruction : 8%.
Image Reconstruction : 13%.
Image Reconstruction : 17%.
Image Reconstruction : 22%.
Image Reconstruction : 26%.
Image Reconstruction : 31%.
Image Reconstruction : 35%.
Image Reconstruction : 40%.
Image Reconstruction : 44%.
Image Reconstruction : 49%.
Image Reconstruction : 53%.
Image Reconstruction : 58%.
Image Reconstruction : 62%.
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Image Reconstruction : 67%.
Image Reconstruction : 71%.
Image Reconstruction : 75%.
Image Reconstruction : 80%.
Image Reconstruction : 84%.
Image Reconstruction : 89%.
Image Reconstruction : 93%.
Image Reconstruction : 98%.
Freeing segment buffers.
Allocating filter buffer.
Freeing filter buffer.
Allocating segment buffers.
Writing RGB image to /Users/user/Documents/DLI_SuperBalls/Renders/
DLI_LW11-SuperBalls-Anim_001.jpg.
Frame completed.
Last Frame Rendered: 1.
Rendering Time: 1m 9s (69.3 seconds).
Freeing segment buffers.
Freeing frame buffers.

Heres what the the same output looks like with the -q parameter included:
Scene loaded.
Last Frame Rendered: 1.

-t Time Check Interval

-t - Optional: Time check interval in seconds.
An example of this parameter with a sample Time Check Interval could be as follows:
-t60

This sample would have ScreamerNet lwsn attempt to check the job file every 60 seconds for
status or abort commands when rendering in batch/network mode -2. Other commands in
mode -2 are ignored. When rendering in standalone mode-3 ScreamerNet lwsn would report
its current status every 60 seconds.
Normally, once ScreamerNet lwsn begins rendering a frame, it does not check the job
file for any further instructions until the frame finishes rendering. During the initial setup
and testing of your render farm or when testing a new scene, it may be useful to allow
ScreamerNet to check the job file for abort or status commands. Particularly if individual
frames take a long time to render. This way, if you notice a problem at the beginning of
rendering (a missing plug-in for instance), you can abort the rendering without having to
wait for all your nodes to finish rendering an entire frame each or force quitting each node.

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For instance, if your frames use ray tracing, area lights, radiosity, caustics, high antialiasing
levels, motion blur and/or depth of field, they may take a long time to render. In this case you
could set -t to 60 seconds, then ScreamerNet would try to check the job file every 60 seconds
to see if the job should be aborted or if status information should be written to the output.
During certain processing, ScreamerNet may still take longer than 60 seconds before it can
check, but it doesnt have to wait for an entire frame to render before being able to stop or
report status. Once you are sure everything is running smoothly, it is best to remove this
option, so that no extra time is taken checking the job file or reporting status unnecessarily,
especially if you are network rendering many frames.

Batch/Network Mode (-2) Command Line Syntax

The batch & network mode (-2) specific command line syntax is as follows, all on one line.
-2 [-c<config directory>] [-d<content directory>] [-l<log file>] [-q]
[-t<check interval>] <job file> <ack file>

The first five parameters are explained above under General ScreamerNet Command Line Syntax.

Job File
<job file> - job# File path & node number for lwsn to read commands from.
A sample job file path could be as follows:
/Users/username/Documents/DLI_SuperBalls/Commands/job1

This example reads the job1 text file in a Commands folder in a DLI_SuperBalls folder in the
users Documents folder, where username should be replaced with the current user name.
The number should immediately follow the word job without any spaces and there must be
no file extension, such as .txt added to the end of the path.
Make sure that your job# and ack# both use the same number. This number is what actually
determines the CPU number of the ScreamerNet node so that the ScreamerNet network
controller may communicate with this lwsn render node.

Ack File
<ack file> - ack# (acknowledgment) File path & node number for lwsn to write replies to.
A sample ack file path could be as follows:
/Users/username/Documents/DLI_SuperBalls/Commands/ack1
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This example writes to the ack1 file in a Commands folder in a DLI_Superballs folder in the
users Documents folder, where username should be replaced with the current user name.
The current user must have read/write permissions for this file.

Standalone Mode (-3) Command Line Syntax

The standalone mode (-3) specific command line syntax is as follows, all on one line.
-3 [-c<config directory>] [-d<content directory>] [-l<log file>] [-q]
<scene file> <first frame> <last frame> [<frame step>]

The first five parameters are explained above under General ScreamerNet Command Line Syntax.

Scene File
<scene file> - Full path to the scene file.
A sample of a full scene path could be as follows:
/Users/username/Documents/DLI_SuperBalls/Scenes/SuperBalls-Anim.lws

Where username is replaced with the current user name. Be sure to use a full path to the
scene file rather than a Content Directory relative path because Content Directory relative
paths may not work on some versions of ScreamerNet UB lwsn on the Mac. Also be sure to
enclose the entire path in double quotes, especially if it contains spaces or other special
characters.

Frames to Render
<first frame> - First frame to render. Normally less than last frame but may be greater than
last frame if frame step is negative.
<last frame> - Last frame to render. Normally greater than or equal to first frame but may be
less than first frame if frame step is negative.
[<frame step>] - Optional: defaults to 1, may be positive or negative.
Frame step specifies which frames to render between the first and last frame, and in what
order. When set to 1, ScreamerNet would render every frame from the first frame, up to the
last frame. When set to 2, ScreamerNet would render every other frame from the first frame
up to the last frame. If set to -1, ScreamerNet would render every frame from the first frame,
down to the last frame and in this case the first frame should be greater than the last frame
to render in reverse order.

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Mac Alternatives
For using Screamernet on the Macintosh, Dreamlight Interactives DLI_DSNUB Launcher is a simple
drag and drop configurator for Screamernet, removing the need to use the Terminal. It is available
from www.dreamlight.com.

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Information
For More Information and Updates
For updates to LightWave, this manual and all the latest LightWave news including a gallery,
tutorials, articles about LightWave artists and new third-party plugins visit:
http://www.lightwave3d.com

Learning Resources
For help learning LightWave visit:
http://www.lightwave3d.com/learn/
http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialLightWave3D

Sales Inquiries and General LightWave Support

For questions related to Pre-Sales, Licensing, Installation, or General LightWave software support:
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.lightwave3d.com/support/

LightWave Bugs & Feature Requests

Bug Reports: [email protected]
with the subject heading: BUG: Description
Feature Requests: [email protected]
with the subject heading: FEATURE: Description
Bug report emails should have attached Zip-archived content (scenes, objects, images) simplified
down to just show the problem. The file size for any attachments should not exceed 10MB.

LightWave Community
To connect with other LightWave artists for tips, tricks and tutorials, visit our online community:
http://forums.newtek.com

Copyright and Trademarks

LightWave and LightWave 3D are registered trademarks of NewTek, Inc.
Copyright 1990-2014 NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.
ZBrush and GoZ are registered trademarks of Pixologic, Inc.
Maya, MotionBuilder and FBX are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.

All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Copyright 1990-2014 LightWave 3D Group, a division of NewTek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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