#LW3D-World Animation
32 messages in this thread
I am volunteering on a project for The Salvation Army that requires an
animations of a spinning world in space. We then need to zoom in to a close up
of the North American continent.
I have a star field framestore for the background but I have spent little time
using Lightwave 3D so I need help to create the animation. I know how to load
objects, move the objects and create simple animations, however, I am not sure
of what is the best way to get an image of the earth on a ball object. Do I use
an image map or a bump map? Can I framestore a map of the earth and then
apply that image to the ball? What do I do?
As you can see I'm not quite sure how to do this and any help to guide me in
the right direction will be appreciated. Please help anyone!
Use an Image Map. A map of the earth (I believe its Earth.LZH) already
available in Compuserves Amiga Library. That is an IFF image, and I just
dl'd it myself – looks great wrapped around a globe – very realistic
because the author (who I can't remember right now) was concerned about
the detail work when he zoomed in on it. Good Luck and Good Toasting!
-Rodney Massman * On AutoPilot in Beantown, The Buckeye State *
Thanks I'll give it a try.
Does the .LZH mean that this file is compressed? If so how do I uncompress it?
.LZH on the filename means that the file has been compressed with LHARC.
You need LHA138.RUN from Library 16 of AmigaUser to unpack it. This one
is a self-dissolving archive- just type its name to unpack it. Then, put
LHA in your c: directory or into one that is in your 'path' so that it
will always be ready for use. There will be a doc file to tell you how to
use it, but do ask if you need help.
—Betty
You said that so much better than me 🙂
-Rodney Massman * On AutoPilot in Beantown, The Buckeye State *
Thanks Betty for the information. I will be able to get lots of files now.
Yes, almost all files you find on Compuserve are compressed. In order to
extract the file you need to go into the Archivers section of the Library
and get LHARC – and I think it's called LHARC.EXE – Just say 'Browse' and
use LHARC as the Keyword to search for. After you have LHARC you can then
decompress any .LZH file by going to the cli and typing LHARC (It'll give
you a selection of commands to use) and how to use them.
-Rodney Massman * On AutoPilot in Beantown, The Buckeye State *
Check Lib 10 of Amigaarts, I'm pretty Sure someone(maybe Erik Flom)
uploaded a EXCELLENT Globe with a Brushmap all set up already.
This is for Lightwave 3D of course. That anim you described sounds like it
should be a cinch to set up and do relatively quickly once you get yer
hands on that Globe object.
Thanks for the information.
No problem, let us know how the project comes out and how the Client likes
it.
Texture map the earth image to the ball. Just make sure you use enough
segments in the ball object ot make the surface outline smooth. Construct
another ball just a little bigger than earth, make it almost completely
tranparent with tranparent edges set concentric with earth. That is your
atmosphere.
I'd also use the ActualStars object from the LW object set. That way as
you zoom to the earth you get relative motion in the stars as well.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Thanks, this gives me some good ideas on how to construct this scene. I didn't
know lightwave had ActualStars objects.
Please do feel free to DL the Earth object I modified for Lightwave
(I believe John Foust originally uploaded the object that got me started
:^). Sorry I can't remember the name of the upload, but it includes
everything you need to get a pretty cool looking Earth object complete
with custom bitmaps for surface color, reflection, & bumpiness.
My only recommendation is that you also DL the 24bit Earth image that was
uploaded after I created my object. If you are planning on getting real
close to the planet, you'll need this higher resolution bitmap.
Better yet, if you want, I'll throw it on a disk and send you the object
(I've created a much higher resolution version since uploading the last
one to CIS) ready to install. (Just E-Mail me.)
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
I saw that one of the small spaceship models from Babylon 5 is included
with VT 2.0. Are all of these objects free to use in commercial projects?
Vance
I would assume that you could use these objects in your own productions,
though I'd recommend checking with NewTek BEFORE you make any money using
them.
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
P.S. Though that spaceship was designed by Ron Thornton, I don't think I
saw it in B5, or did I just miss something?
Just me again…
I think it was when B5 slipped off of its axis and all of the ships started to
beat feet to get out of the way, you can see several of the toaster space ships
zipping by the camera.
Alan Henry
I saw an extremely brief scene that showed 3 or 4 small spaceships leaving
B5. Two of them looked familiar and when I ran through that scene a frame
at a time, I was able to make the ID.
Unless a B5 series makes a more visible showing of those fighters, I don't
think it would be too hard to use it. Also, the objects included with
Imagine 2.0 appeared in some cases to be slightly altered versions of some
that were included with the VT. They never mentioned a word about reserved
rights on the object's usage. If the VT manual doesn't mention any
reserved rights to their objects, I should be legally entitled to use
them.
I prefer to make my own models, but those models were really well
detailed! *8>
Vance
The models that look similar between Imagine and LightWave were objects
donated by ViewPoint. They make expensive models for almost any
platform.
JG
If the ships were distributed with the software, then you can't resell them.
Generating images and selling them is legal, and recommended, that's why
objects were included with the toaster in the first place. The only problem is
that everyone will say "look he used Ron's space fighter". I'd stretch it or
something, so it didn't look too much like everyone elses work.
You bought 'em. You can use 'em. You just can't sell them by
themeselves.
JG
I can use 'em, eh? Sounds great to me!
One thing I didn't check into… Does VT 2.0 come with a util to convert
Imagine and other format objects to Lightwave objects??
I thought it did. Now I'm not sure.
Vance
I'm pretty sure LW3D 2.0 has Syndesis TIO loaders to allow you to load a
myriad of 3D modles into LW. Still Toasterless so I can't say for sure
100% tho.
Yes it does come with the TIO loaders, which you can add more of later,
but doesn't come with the Imagine loader, that you must buy seperately.
<<< Tony D. Tracer >>>
TIO (Toaster In/out) converts many object formats but Imagine isn't one of
them. It works by trying to load an object into LightWave and if
LightWave doesn't recognize it, the TIO requester will pop up asking you
what type of object it is.
To convert Imagine objects to LW format I would recommend using either
Pixel3D Pro or Interchange Plus.
JG
If I'm not mistaken Syndesis sells an Imagine TIO loader. I don't think it
handles grouped objects as well as Interchange Plus but it's a more direct
system if you use a lot of Imagine objects with your Toaster.
I use plain Interchange and have pretty good luck converting it to a
Sculpt object as a .scene file.
There's only been one .iob I'm having trouble converting -a huey cobra I
believe.
All the others have converted fine.
-Rodney Massman * On AutoPilot in Beantown, The Buckeye State *
If you're having trouble with a conversion, please report it! If you can point
me to the object, or can upload it here in DL 7, I'd be glad to examine it for
you.
John –
Could you see if you can do a "Point Reduce Tool" on Carmens Enterprise
object AFTER it is converted to a lightwave object? Could you also time it
if possible, roughly, plus or minus 10 minutes.
It would be greatly appreciated.
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
It's really not too important. I've got a couple Heli's anyhow. It just
seemed funny, that being the only .iob file that wouldn't convert to any
or all formats (VideoScape/Sculpt/Turbosilver/stats)
-Rodney Massman * On AutoPilot in Beantown, The Buckeye State *
Gee, thanks for the half-baked plug. 🙂 Pixel does a terrible job of
converting from Imagine to LightWave. It screws up the hierarchy completely,
meaning Motion Man, for example, becomes entirely unlinked and relinked.
InterChange Plus supports both LightWave objects and scenes, read-write,
meaning you can take a hierarchical Imagine object and convert it to a
LightWave scene file plus separate LightWave objects for each Imagine
sub-object. This happens in a single conversion. The opposite works, too –
read a LightWave scene and convert it to a working Imagine scene, complete with
sub-objects, centers of rotation, parent-child hierarchy, and Imagine
sub-groups for each set of differently-colored faces within each sub-object.
Pixel doesn't come close to doing these things, and it's twice the price at
least: street, upgrade or retail.
For conversions, you should not recommend Pixel. Maybe you read Duberman's
suck-up review in VTU. He knew about all these things, called us to confirm
them in fact, yet didn't print a bad word about either ICP or Pixel, and
managed to forget to mention the price differentials, too.
As for direct loading of Imagine objects into LightWave, we do have a product
for that, too. The TIO Imagine Converter can load Imagine objects as single
LightWave object, direct within LightWave. It doesn't handle the hierarchy as
described above, but that's only a limitation of the interface in LightWave. It
is most useful for people who like to create single objects in Imagine, then
bop quickly back to LightWave for modeling.
What's new on Seaquest? We've got the 3D Studio Converter shipping, Topas is
almost done, and Softimage is on the way, and Wavefront is undergoing a few
tweaks.
There's alot of neat stuff in the objects that came with 2.0 It would be
worth the time to just set up a scene into whicch you can load all the
objects and just render them out in Lo-res for a quick look at them.
wmc – via Autopilot!