#Stars in LW
20 messages in this thread
I am a recent convert from Impulse's Imagine to LightWave and I have
been having a difficulty or two with my T4000.
When you want to render with stars is there an option similar to
Imagines set Star Field Density or any Star tool?
When recording is there any way to output your framestores in a
format which can be played back as an animation without dumping to
tape. For example in Imagine you can make a full trace animation and
play it back after rendering or look at individual frames.
Sorry if I talk in Imagine terms, I still rely on Imagine for a good
deal of work. You know what they say about people using what they
are comfortable with (especially if you are a pre TurboSilver
user….ooooo that dates me 🙂 ).
Stars are done differently in Lightwave than Imagine. Imagine's stars
are a background that may be altered with the Start Field Density
etc. Lightwave's stars are really objects – single poing polygons,
actually. To get different stars in Lightwave, load the ActualStars
or RandomStars objects into Modeler, create or delete some stars, and
save the new object under a different name.
Probably the best way for you is to generate the stars you want in
Imagine with nothing else in the scene, save the frame as an IFF file
and load that file into Lightwave as a background.
To play back your animations, if you have an Amiga 4000, look at the
Lightwave Layout manual page 53. If you don't, there is a cheap way,
a not very expensive way and an expensive way.
Cheap Way – Download the program Rend24 (REND10.LHA) from the
AmigaArts forum. This program will take the frames that are created
by Lightwave and compile an animation that may be played back using a
viewer program (such as ViewTek (VTEK20.LHA), also available in the
AmigaArts forum).
Not Very Expensive Way – Do the same thing as the cheap way but using
one of the commercial image processing packages available, Art
Department Professional, Imagemaster or Image F/X.
Expensive Way – Get the DPS Personal Animation Recorder. This device
allows you to record your frames to a dedicated hard disk and play
them back at full speed in full color. Great gizmo, but it'll cost
you lots of dollars.
Hi Shawn,
Nice to see a coupel of easy questions here. Yes you can have stars
but they're not built into LightWave. You should have a couple of
star objects in your objects directory. These are large groups of
single point polygons that are luminous. (bright) These stars will
give you the proper parallax effect when you move the camera.
Tips: When you load the stars and you have a spaceship in the same
scene you may have to reset the grid size smaller in the options
menu. This will make camera movements easier to control when you zoom
into the scene far enough to see the ship.
To find the ship use the edit object setting and select the ship.
Then use the "center" button to put the ship in the center of the
screen.
You may want to load the nullobject into the scene and make that
the cameras target. This is just like using the 'track' object in the
stage editor of Imagine.
For more realism don't forget to turn on particle blur in the
options menu.
As for animation, if you're using a 4000 you can record an anim
directly in LW. It's NewTek's own format though and it's not as
efficient as anim 5,7, or 8. If you want to make a standard
animation I recommend you get Rend 24. It'll take 24 bit RGB images
that LW writes to the disk and pack them into an Amiga displayable
anim. It supports HAM, HAM8, DCTV and Amiga low-color modes. It cna
also wait for each frame to be rendered, pack them into the anim, and
delete the original for people who are short on hard drive space.
How do you like LW? You finding the Modeler a little confusing after
Imagine?
Thanks all for the speedy replies,
Eh gads, Imagine has become another part of my body and it seems
effortless to make what I "Imagine" <g>. However there were still
some things that I wanted so I bought a T 2.0 for my small business.
I recently had been adjusting to the T 2.0 when WHAM the T 4000 came
out. I feel like I am in physical therapy, trying to walk again
with Lightwave. I don't think it's bad just new.
I keep trying to use Imagine Quick Keys with the Toaster and have
to look back to the reference sheet…..oh boy.
I am currently working on an "easy" idea. I am trying to make
a star explode (realistically). Imagine was tough to accomplish
this and the results looked mostly fakey. When I saw my first
Toaster 2.0 Demo I drooled (oops) at the possibilities.
I noticed the earlier thread about a light bulb but applying it
in this case is different. Here is the story board :
Scene 1 : Star to East side of Camera's view with Stars in back
and side.
Scene 2 : Long shot – Star grows then shrinks rapidly throwing
off stellar material.
Simple but proving difficult. For example, do the object stars
with the Toaster, are they a globe you are within with the camera?
If so is the Star treated like any object or is it a bizarre light
source that must be a sphere within a sphere?
The Saturn tutorial is interesting but I wish there was a Lightwave
for dummies book. Maybe I will write one when I crack up to speed.
Maybe I will also publish and index for the T 4000 manual <g>.
Thanks again all.
Shawn
Silent Paw Productions
Something else you might try: generate a starmap from a program such
as DISTANT SUNS and use it as a surface map for the interior of a
globe surrounding your action. That should yeild a not of
authenticity to you scene.
the problem with mapping stars onto a sphere is the rendering time
penalty. I am running a 2000 with LW3.0 and a 33 '040 but I prefer
the following method for realistic stars.
Load the actual stars and leave them exactly as they are. Then, load
the random stars and pull the color values back to about 40,40,50.
Then, load the random star object AGAIN, rotate the second random
stars to offset them from the first set and set colors to 15,15,12 or
so. You'll end up with density and a set of faint stars that really
add to the realism. Try it. If memory is no problem, heck – load up
a third set and make them almost invisible. They will render
much,much faster than a globe taking up the entire screen (each star
is only one pixel).
>Load the actual stars and leave them exactly as they are.
You could also scale down one of the Star object a little bit and
this will give the appearance of 3D space as you move around inside
it.
I wrote a CanDo deck that generates a 3d starfield object. One of
it's options is to either restrict the stars to the surface of a
spherical shell, or to spread them out into a volume. Basically a
clone of the starfield part of the Videoscape EGG program. If there's
any interest, I could compile & UL it. I haven't done it till now,
because the compile process makes a huge file – over 100K!
Jim
By all means PLEASE upload this prg. Does it REQUIRE a Toaster to be
running to work? If not I can use it Via Interchange Plus since IC+ will
convert the Lightwave objects nicely. Thanx
No, it's a standalone program that outputs in the ancient Videoscape
ASC formatt. Lightwave will read the format directly. Interchange
will convert to whatever format you need. You will have to set the
surface attributes in whatever renderer you use. This program just
names the surfaces with arbitrary VSCAPE surface colors.
Look for it in DL10 of Amiga Arts… that seems the most appropriate
spot.
Thank you kindly good sir. Is this a PD prg or Shareware BTW?
It's Freeware, the thing is too simple to ask for money. 🙂 The
hardest part was digging out my old college calculus text for the
polar to cartesian formulas. Let me know what you think. It should be
merged soon, I see that Steve has already posted the 'new file'
message over in Amiga Arts.
>I wrote a CanDo deck that generates a 3d starfield object.
And why may I ask have you not u/l'ed it? :^)
If you would like to u/l it I am sure there will be those who would like
to play around with it, like me.
<<< Tony D. Tracer >>>
Tony, Jim HAS Uploaded the Starfield generator and it works quite well.
Check Area 10 of Amigaarts.
I did upload it- or at least the compiled version. It's in DL10 of Amiga
Arts. The size of the thing kept me from sending it up before. 80k is a
lot of space to waste with stars. 🙂
-Jim
Howdy Jim, I grabbed yer Starfield generator prg. VERY NICE.
Unfortunately when I convert the Model from LW to Imagine format
Imagine doesn't get any faces. Works GREAT in Lightwave tho. Perhaps
Imagine 3.0 will be able to digest it better since it is supposed to
have Particle animation abilities
Glad you liked the Starfield generator, Peter… I don't know much
about Imagine. We have it on the store's system, but I have't been
able to give it the attention it deserves. Anyway, the problem may be
that the program generates single point polygons. Kind of hard to
have a face with only one point. 🙂 I guess I shouldn't have just
assumed the translation to imagine format would work… I had a
couple other ideas in mind long the same lines. Maybe a fractal
landscape generator.. and an asteroid maker. -Jim
>I did upload it-
Thanks. I am d/l'ing it and will definately play with it.
<<< Tony D. Tracer >>>
You're welcome… have fun.
Shawn, you might try contacting Brent Malnack. I ***BELIEVE*** his
Dynamic Motion Module may be of use to you for yer Exploding STAR