September - 2009
In this edition:
- Tutorial update
- A year of Speed modeling
- Picture of the month
- Plugin news: LW -> After Effects
- Learning LightWave special offer
- Project news: Spectrobe Origins trailer
- Dutch Skies HDRI
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One of the best things about the NewTek LightWave community is its willingness to give back - to write or video tutorials to help others. In just this month NewTek has garnered this small sampling:
- Worley Labs has tutorials on their site to make using their plugins easier. There's one on setting up WSN for FPrime, one introducing Taft's Hoser, and Nick Boughen has made more than five hours of Sasquatch training
- A video about Head modelling using a proportion grid
- A video intro to the excellent image-based lighting plugin sIBL by Matt Gorner, and one for Denis Pontonnier's Sunsky
- A technique for animated booleans using nodes
- Tobian's tutorial on accelerating reflection blur
- Lede's video about making a cartoon eye for his Little Red character
- Rigging in LightWave for ease of use in Motionbuilder by Maddox
- Akademus has made a series of videos on modeling a Mobile phone
- The NewTek forum is always a great source of collaborative threads devoted to teaching techniques. Erikal's UV mapping thread is a good example
A year ago this month we covered a new feature on the forum, a regular weekly challenge devoted to creating models in under an hour. Forum user Iain started it (see the original article here) and since then there have been more than 50 new contests with topics ranging from the cryptic "Something's Not Quite Right" to the straightforward "Fire". Nowhere Man won the 52nd challenge, "One Year On", with the model that you see on the left. NewTek asked him why he takes part and how he came up with the subject for the next challenge (the winner always has to give a topic for the next contest). The following is his response:"I've taken part in three Speed Modeling Challenges (with #50 as my first), so the entire concept of speed modeling is fairly new to me. I'm slowly getting used to it and the smarter, more time-efficient way of working that it usually involves, but I know that I still have a long way to go.
The subject for #53 ("Let there be Light") is just one of the many ideas that I had. I wanted something, that could encompass a lot of potential entries and yet be pretty specific. The topic of light actually derives from the "At night" idea, that I liked, but I wanted something less vague, so I finally ended up narrowing it down to light."
NewTek also spoke to the godfather of these challenges, Iain:
NewTek: Did you think that this would continue?
Iain: I thought it might continue for a while but I'm surprised it has lasted this long and this strongly. There is a hardcore group that participate every week.
NewTek: Do you ever find the time to participate?
Iain: For the last few months I haven't been able to participate as I've been taking a residential college course but during my three-week holiday, I took part in each topic. I still get a buzz from it.
NewTek: What has been your favorite topic so far?
Iain: My favorite topic has probably been "The 70's" as researching it involved some deep nostalgia for a 37-year-old!
NewTek: Do you have a favorite model/image?
Iain: A favorite model or image is tough to choose as there have been so many. I'm always amazed at what R.Feeney can churn out in an hour.
List of all Speed Modeling Challenges
A new user appeared on NewTek's forum at the end of August. Of course, that is nothing special, but from that new user came two of the most impressive LightWave-generated pictures seen in a long time. NewTek wanted to find out more about blam, the artist whose real name is Nicolas Crombez:
NewTek: How long have you used LightWave?
Nicolas: About 10 years, I have started to use it at the art school (Fine Arts Academy of Tournai, Belgium) using LightWave v5. I now teach LightWave at the Saint-Luc Institute (another fine art Hogwarts-like school http://www.islt.be)
NewTek: How is it that you burst on the forum with two powerful images as your first posts?
Nicolas: To tell the truth, I have been registered on the forum since 2004 to find solutions to some difficulties that I was facing at the time. I do a lot 3D for the Web (for my Web design company). But currently I have several projects in progress that I'd like to attain very high quality results on, with a high level of technical competence. That's why I've "come out of the shadows" so to speak to show my work and get feedback from the forum community.
NewTek: Tell me your inspiration behind the two images?
Nicolas: For Crash Kiss I had an idea of a kid playing with his cars, showing the tragic outcome of the game for the vehicles, and for the characters in a freeze frame. Many have told me it looks a bit like an advertisement for a famous brand of jeans.
Race Off is a one shot, a stylistic exercise that enabled me to improve my technique and to explore other worlds. Again, we find the little boy who plays with his toys: a spaceship and its crew. When I was young, I imagined piloting such aircraft. It took me 20 years of waiting to do, I finally did it virtually :) and as I always ended up destroying my toys, it seems that I still repeat this pattern here.
All of this seems conceptually and intellectually well thought out but my work is very instinctive. I have a basic idea, develop some references and let chance guide me. My technical knowledge leads me to push my limits and allows me to concentrate more on creation. (I'm still learning :)
NewTek: Did you use any other software to produce these images?
Nicolas: All of the 3D process - modeling, lighting and texturing was made in LightWave 9.6 and rendered with FPrime. I used Photoshop to paint over some details and for image enhancement.
NewTek: How long did the images take to create?
Nicolas: Crash Kiss took me about a day to achieve because I used some stock models. From the rough to the final render, Race Off took me a little over a week - there was a lot of modeling and details.
Petter Sundnes is a regular on the NewTek forum and also a user of Adobe After Effects, so it should come as no surprise that he wanted to write a script to improve workflow between the two applications. NewTek asked him more about his efforts:Petter: "The reason that I wrote these LScripts is because I needed the functionality. They do require a bit of up-front investment in time and effort, but upon completion, the workflow improvement makes it worthwhile. I wrote the script with help from the community. I was using AE for a project and saw the possibility of improving the workflow and interoperability between the two. I plan on continuing the development of LScripts like these. Some will be free, while others might be "pay-to-play" due to the time it takes to create them."
Petter's plugins (make sure you check out the "Transform Polygon Islands" LScript as well): MentalFish
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European readers will be interested to know that Elephorm's LightWave 9 training DVD "Learning LightWave 9", created by amazing LightWave artist Olivier Michon and translated into English by Ben "BeeVee" Vost is on special offer at the moment from 3D Storm. Instead of being 69€, it is available for only 55€ until the end of October. Olivier gives a really good insight to using Modeler and Layout and helps users understand basic LightWave concepts. NewTek Europe |
NewTek spoke to Dave Codeglia from DigiSynd, whom we first encountered in the September newsletter last year, about the LightWave work on the trailer for Spectrobes: Origins, a game for the Nintendo Wii:
I served as VFX Supervisor and co-directed the spot with Christopher Cantwell. The Director of Photography, my brother James, shot it on the RED camera.
Komanoto was modeled, surfaced, rigged, animated, and rendered entirely in LightWave 3D v9.6. Chris Maness modeled using Sub-D surfaces, rigged and did initial animation. The footage was tracked in SynthEyes and composited in Nuke.
On the set, we used a styrofoam Komanoto costume for practical sheet interaction when Nick reveals the creature. The costume was painted out in post, and replaced with the digital character. The character was lit by an HDRI probe photograph, which was mapped onto a 3D model built to scale from on-set measurements. Except for the sunlight, Komanoto is lit entirely with Monte Carlo Radiosity.
We rendered out separate passes: one for Komanoto and several for set interaction including his shadow, reflection, and radiosity for the sunlight bouncing off his back and onto the wall behind him. I opted to render Komanoto in only one pass, as opposed to a color and occlusion pass, because LightWave's Radiosity looked so good with the sunlight and HDRI all bouncing around and interacting with one another.
For his fire breath, I used LightWave particles and Hypervoxels sweetened with a practical fire element. I also rendered a pass of the Hypervoxels illuminating Komanoto using Radiosity.
All together it was about two weeks of pre-production, in which we began modeling and rigging Komanoto. We filmed in one day and then we had two weeks of post-production. I was very satisfied with LightWave on this project, because we treated it much like a feature-sized pipeline. Since it was shot on the RED, we finished the project in 2K, the resolution at which most films complete their VFX. LightWave performed well, even when rendering 2K images using Radiosity, blurred reflections, and motion blur. Thanks to everyone involved on the project! It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
Komanoto was modeled, surfaced, rigged, animated, and rendered entirely in LightWave 3D v9.6. Chris Maness modeled using Sub-D surfaces, rigged and did initial animation. The footage was tracked in SynthEyes and composited in Nuke.
On the set, we used a styrofoam Komanoto costume for practical sheet interaction when Nick reveals the creature. The costume was painted out in post, and replaced with the digital character. The character was lit by an HDRI probe photograph, which was mapped onto a 3D model built to scale from on-set measurements. Except for the sunlight, Komanoto is lit entirely with Monte Carlo Radiosity.
We rendered out separate passes: one for Komanoto and several for set interaction including his shadow, reflection, and radiosity for the sunlight bouncing off his back and onto the wall behind him. I opted to render Komanoto in only one pass, as opposed to a color and occlusion pass, because LightWave's Radiosity looked so good with the sunlight and HDRI all bouncing around and interacting with one another.
For his fire breath, I used LightWave particles and Hypervoxels sweetened with a practical fire element. I also rendered a pass of the Hypervoxels illuminating Komanoto using Radiosity.
All together it was about two weeks of pre-production, in which we began modeling and rigging Komanoto. We filmed in one day and then we had two weeks of post-production. I was very satisfied with LightWave on this project, because we treated it much like a feature-sized pipeline. Since it was shot on the RED, we finished the project in 2K, the resolution at which most films complete their VFX. LightWave performed well, even when rendering 2K images using Radiosity, blurred reflections, and motion blur. Thanks to everyone involved on the project! It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
NewTek spoke to Bob Groothuis about his new set of HDR images for use with LightWave and other applications. The image sets are designed with Christian Bloch's brilliant sIBL set of plugins in mind. All are of Dutch scenes.
Bob: When customers buy my images they get a complete sIBL set with something special and I think pretty unique: the full renders (8 or 9) at 11k so the customers can be VERY flexible in post production. Besides the sIBL set, these renders can also be used in visual effects pipelines, or archviz, etc. I already had a big archive of Dutch Skies (and still shooting a lot) and so it was logical step to put them into an online store. I was looking for something special and found the sIBL format because it works with most 3D applications. I then contacted Christian to ask if I was allowed to use that format. He's a nice fellow so he said yes and we then came up with the Dutch Skies promo on the HDRlabs site.
NewTek: When did you start with panoramic photography?
Bob: I started about five years ago and quickly got hooked on that stuff. I rapidly wanted more, so started with HDRI.
Bob: I started about five years ago and quickly got hooked on that stuff. I rapidly wanted more, so started with HDRI.
Bob: There are several steps. It starts with taking the original images with my Nikon D300 with a 10.5 lens and a 360 precision panorama head, then:
- Stitching the spherical panoramas with PTGUI Pro
- Tonemapping & generating the HDRI 360 spherical panorama with Photomatix
- Finetuning the images with Photoshop
NewTek: Did you make the HDRIs because you work in 3D or was it the other way around?
Bob: The funny thing is that I'm not a 3D guy at all (at least not yet) but my brother Hans Groothuis is so he helped me with the 3D model - the Analog panorama viewer that you can see here.
Here is just one of the HDRI sets for you to play with. It works best with Blochi's Smart IBL although the HDR image can be used on its own with LightWave's built-in image-based lighting tool ImageWorld. The image set is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-
Discussion thread for this edition of the newsletter on the NewTek forum
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