The other day I searched the Internet for a basic LightWave ClothFX tutorial and had a hard time finding anything. Eventually, I gave up and decided to try to get a basic setup working: draping a flat cloth over a simple sphere. After spending a fair amount of time guessing at settings, I finally got it to work.
And now to hopefully prevent other people from experiencing this frustration, I wrote up a quick tutorial describing my setup. Enjoy!
Tutorial link: http://www.moridin.com/tutorials/clothfx/basic/
The rigging of my model is taking longer than expected, mainly because I hit a speed bump this week while trying to weight map my character. Based on someone’s advice, I added a plug-in to LightWave that is supposed to make the mirroring of weight maps extremely easy. Of course it worked when I initially tried it, but subsequent tries failed by crashing Modeler! After trying different config options and tests, I still can’t figure out why it fails so miserably on my model.
So, I took a different approach. The crashing plug-in is written in the C/C++ SDK, which makes it difficult to debug. But there is another alternative for writing plug-ins: LScript. LScript is a C-like scripting language that gives you programmatic access to many of the features of LightWave. Armed with the Reference Manual, User Guide, and someone else’s code as a base example of how to create a plug-in, I actually wrote a working version of the plug-in, although it doesn’t have all of the flexibility of the original. However, it works and satisfies my needs.
I’m excited because I use scripting all the time for other tasks on the computer (in fact, my day job involves writing and maintaining a large collection of scripts that do a ton of work automatically). Extending those skills to LightWave has the possibility to be extremely beneficial down the road. I look forward to building a nice library of scripts to automate those tedious, repetitive tasks that computers are soooo good at finishing in seconds.
A few days ago, I upgraded my version of Firefox on my home computer because it was running an older version (it was running the last released version of the Mozilla Suite, which I think is no longer kept up-to-date with the latest Firefox versions). Anyway, after the upgrade I checked out the different plug-ins available and found some really nice utilities available for the browser. Some of the more useful: ForecastFox (keeps local weather info and forecasts in the status bar, very clean looking and useful) and Sage. Sage is a RSS feed reader, which allows you to organize different supported blogs and information sources without actually visiting all of the sites you usually watch. If you use Blogger, you probably already have a RSS feed for your blog. Sage is the client piece to this technology.
Today, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7.0 to the masses, including it in the automatic updates. I installed it and it’s pretty nice, although it seems that right now they are playing catch-up to Mozilla. However, built into the browser is an integrated RSS feed reader, with your favorites organized and categorized in a separate tab of the “Favorites” sidebar. There is even a button that you can press for sites that have a feed available from the page.
The point? I’ve begun using the feed reader in Mozilla, which I’ll keep using until there is a compelling reason to switch back to IE. Also, I made sure that my “Posts” and “Gallery” sections have working feeds, so you should be able to add them to your favorite feed reader. If you run into any problems, drop me a line!
The month of weddings is finally over. After three weddings this month (one out of town and another I was in), I’m looking forward to doing nothing for a while. Of course, “doing nothing” isn’t literal; I already have tentative plans for next weekend and the 18th, plus Thanksgiving is around the corner. And since November hasn’t actually started, who knows what other plans will show up on my calendar before the month is over. But at least now I can try to have some free time on the weekends.
I also caught up on all of my recorded TV shows (well, except for this weekend’s taping) and finished the fiction book I was reading (The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, which is good if you like science-fiction — it has a Dune feel to it, although you should read the first three books starting with Hyperion first). Anyway, now I can turn my focus back to Lightwave with little distractions.
I just started reading “Lightwave 3D 8 Character Animation” by Timothy Albee, which will teach me the basics of rigging a model (rigging sets up a modeled character for animation, so that the limbs and appendages can be moved effectively and believably without distorting the shape). I plan on applying this knowledge to the model I created earlier, so that will keep me busy for a while. When all is said and done, the character may even make a guest appearance on University State, although probably not for quite a while because of the long production cycles.
Don’t forget: you can see the first two episodes of University State online! The third is still in production, but coming along nicely.
Take a peek at this extensive archive of classic animation: The Hollywood Animation Archive Project.
My favorite section on the site is an animation course that steps through a book by a legendary animator, Preston Blair. His book provides simple, fundamental instructions for animation. The “course” is lead by John Kricfalusi, aka John K., the creator and animator of Ren and Stimpy (among other shows). The lessons seem simplistic, but they are actually very informative and helpful.
One last thing — in case you missed my post below, check out the new University State section and videos on PiVisuals.com.
Last week I stumbled upon a theory/method of sleeping called “polyphasic sleeping”. For Seinfeld fans, this was the sleep pattern that Kramer claimed Leonardo Da Vinci used. Basically, you take 30 minute naps every 4 hours, so you end up only sleeping about 3 hours or so a day. To me, the nap regimen sounds too strict plus it sounds very stressful on the body, so it’s not something I would try. Users online tend to be either heavily biased towards the system or they sound miserable with the experience.
However, while looking up information on polyphasic sleep, I found discussions on other types of sleep patterns. The one that most people are familiar with is called “monophasic”: you get one long block of sleep per day. Polyphasic sleepers get many blocks of sleep in the day. There is a middle ground, however: biphasic sleep. As you might have guessed, this involves two blocks of sleep per day. This is exactly what I do right now! I finally gave in to my napping tendencies a while ago, so I plan my day so I get a long block of “core” sleep at night and a short block of sleep after work to recharge for the rest of the day.
There is another interesting theory that works in tandem with biphasic sleeping: the body has a set sleep cycle that runs approximately 90 minutes (actually, it ranges from 75 to 110 minutes, depending on the person). Natural sleep occurs in multiples of your sleep cycle time. When you wake up naturally, it is right after a sleep cycle. Using alarms to wake yourself up in the morning breaks you out of a sleep cycle, which has a disruptive effect on the rest of your day. If you actually manage to just sleep in increments of your sleep cycle, you can get away with less sleep! Or so the theory goes….
Since I already have a biphasic sleep pattern, I’m going to try out this theory and see how it goes. I figure that if I sleep 4.5 hours a night and take a 1.5 hour nap, I’ll get in 4 cycles of sleep a day, which should be pretty good for me. For comparison, I found one strong advocate of this method that only gets 4.5 hours of sleep a day. Another regularly gets either 4.5 or 6, depending on the day.
If you’re curious, here are a couple of links to people that have been using this method:
Check out the latest additions to Pi Visuals. An entirely new section was added for a new animation series, University State. Two episodes are already up and available to watch for free!
I helped a little with the writing of the episodes, did some voice work, and aided with the production here and there. There will be more to come (episode 3 is in production), so keep checking back at Pi Visuals for more!
The Massive Attack show was worth the wait – it was great! If you’re lucky enough that they are coming to your town, buy tickets to the show. The price is worth it just to see “Angel” and “Future Proof”. If you don’t know who Massive Attack is, look into them – they have a great, distinctive sound.
The show ended earlier than I expected, so I finished up the work on my first model. You’ll recognize the head from a previous post – I’ve added a body! Take a look: both links are to short movies that show a 360 view of the rendered, cel-shaded model.
(click on the images to the left to view the two short clips)
The past few weeks have been pretty busy. I had to make a trip to Detroit for work, plus I’ve been spending a lot of time on my day job. Two weekends ago it was my mom’s birthday, plus I hung out with some out-of-town guests. This past weekend was my birthday, plus it was also my sister’s and her fiance’s bachelor/bachelorette parties.
When you start adding up all the time that you spend on things you need to get done, you start to realize that there is very little actual free time left. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, an hour to eat all the meals throughout the day (if you’re lucky – double that if you go to a restaurant for one of those meals), exercise, hygiene, etc. Once all is said and done, you end up with a few scant hours to yourself on weekdays. And it seems like there is always something going on during the weekends. In October, I have three weddings to attend (I’m standing up in one of them).
Anyway, I’m almost done with the body for my model. I’m just finishing up some tweaks and then I’ll post this draft. But that probably won’t happen today because I’m going to a concert after work: Massive Attack at the Riviera Theatre! It was postponed for two weeks because of visa problems for the band. I hope it was worth the wait.
I’ve finally reached a point with my new model where I will stop working on the head and move on to the body. I added hair, tweaked the cel-shading settings, adjusted the lighting, and created more permanent eyes.
Click on the image to see a rotating movie of the current model (a floating head).
Next I’ll try creating the body, something I’ve never tried before. I think I’ll end up going through several scratch versions before I get the poly flow down and end up with a workable version.
