LightWave™ NEWSLETTER
ONLINE EDITION
April - 2010
In this edition:
- Update from Jay Roth
- Project news: Lunar rover
- Picture of the Month
- Animation Alchemy
- LWCAD preset pack
- Project news: Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short
April 21, 2010
Dear LightWave® Community:
NewTek celebrated numerous awards from TV Technology, Videography, and DV magazines at NAB 2010, with the launch of its new 22-channel TriCaster™ TCXD850, HD portable live production system. TriCaster's network-style, HD virtual set environments are created in LightWave 3D®. These new HD virtual sets were real show stoppers, proving that LightWave is a dominant weapon in production pipelines - including live HD production.
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| A TriCaster virtual set in full HD, made in LightWave. | Taking advantage of the multiple views that virtual sets provide, is one of TriCaster's many strengths. |
Following the success of NAB, development achievements continue to be revealed as we introduce new and improved features and functionality for LightWave 3D with CORE Technology. This month, the development team and I are pleased to share information about our latest accomplishments, which include:
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| An example of real-time screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) in LightWave 3D with CORE Technology. |
A huge investment is being made to improve OpenGL and Cg shaders performance in LightWave with CORE Technology. We exceeded an 8x performance improvement in the testing of standard and subD meshes and wireframe drawings from earlier CORE builds, which is a very significant performance increase. While results will vary based on your system configuration, we anticipate users will experience a significant performance boost.
We are also enhancing our viewport shaders with additional options, such as real-time screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and bloom effects.
Bullet
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| The new Bullet feature in LightWave 3D with CORE Technology. Image courtesy Mikko Kunnari and Steven Cleland. |
The latest advancements in Bullet are profound. This month, we introduce hard-body support with gravity in three separate object test states (additional forces are currently in development):
- Dynamic: A fully reactive state that takes "input" from some sources, and provides "output" to other dynamic sources.
- Static: A stationary state (not reactive), that adds input to the overall solution.
- Kinematic: Similar to static, in that it does not react to a solution. It can be used to add input and animate position, rotation and scale.
- To test Bullet you can use meshes or stand-in proxies, which can be faster. A variety of forces and constraints are also available.
- Pressing play allows you to view the results of a Dynamics simulation in real-time. The final results will have the ability to be exported into Layout or other applications like Maya, XSI, Houdini, 3DS Max and many others.
Get HardCORE Now
Want to be in the know, in real-time? Join the LightWave HardCORE Community today. Members receive substantial savings on software and get the most up-to-the-minute news about LightWave development - well in advance of the general LightWave population. Members also have access to an entire community, completely immersed in the development of LightWave with CORE Technology. Additionally, as a HardCORE member, you will have a voice in the community as a key influence in the development of LightWave technology, both now and in the future.
Don’t wait. Get onboard at the NewTek shop.
As we move towards the launch of next-generation LightWave technology, we remain committed to delivering a feature-rich, proven new version of LightWave to our loyal community of artists. In the meantime, we hope you will keep sending us your feedback. It helps us stay in touch with your needs as we evolve LightWave's Emmy® Award-winning features and functionality to all new extremes.
Jay Roth
President, 3D Division
NewTek, Inc.
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How were you getting LightWave assets into Unity?
For the iPhone game, we used Unity with LightWave's FBX exporter. This required a little work to get 'right', but I've found it to work more reliably than any of the other 3D packages out there, with regard to the pipeline. I don't know why, but a few of the other 3D apps I tried would export FBX at different scales. LightWave exported things at a 1:1 ratio to Unity's scale.
The hard part for the iPhone version was creating low poly objects to keep things smooth inside Unity, that were still aesthetically pleasing. For that, we would load the objects in Modeler, export to FBX, flip over to Unity, run a test scene with its built-in profiler, and then hop back to Modeler to tweak it if necessary. It was a very efficient procedure.
How did you get involved with the project?
I met Jack Frassanito and his team while I was working at NewTek. Frassanito and Associates uses LightWave to make those awesome movies for NASA that show how a particular mission will play out. Around September of last year, I showed him the first level of a game I've been working on. What caught Jack's attention was that I was using LightWave assets for the game.
Frassanito and Associates had tons of LightWave assets that they had created for renders, which had no real life outside of the rendered environments they were using them in. Here was a way to take an existing group of assets, and create something new and interesting. One of the big guns there at JF&A is Bob Sauls, and I knew Ben Schweighart from the Mac section of NewTek's forums. Between the two, they poured a ton of time into the initial Lunar Electric Rover simulator tests, while Petter Sundnes, Rommany Allen and I labored on making things 'work right' in the game engine.
We decided to start on an iPhone version in December of last year. The iPhone is a very capable device for its size, but the poly count for the rover in our original version would have killed it. So Bob redid all of the models for the iPhone game, and then the models for everything else.
They do everything to scale there at JF&A, and the LightWave3D->FBX->Unity3D pipeline is very good at preserving that. So Bob would create something on his end, send me the LWO file, and I could be almost certain it would 'snap in place' in the environment created in Unity. Overall, it was a pretty straightforward process. We probably spent 10% of our time building the initial version, and then 90% of the time tweaking; addressing gameplay issues and such, to make it more fun.
We shipped the full Lunar Electric Rover simulator about three months after we started, and the iPhone version nearly two months after that. In fact, we shipped the iPhone version almost exactly on the day the entire project was cancelled.
What will happen now that the NASA project has been cancelled?
I'm not happy that Constellation was cancelled, but since NASA refuses to listen to my angry emails, I suppose we're going to have to find something else to do. In the interim, we're still having fun with it. We just released a new version, with a few new things in it, and we'll probably release at least one more. There was an Easter Egg in the original version, for sci-fi junkies out there, and I think we should add that to the iPhone version. Since a lot of the technology behind the Constellation program will be reused for the Mars missions, that might be the next frontier for us.
But for now, our iRover Game is the closest anyone will get to riding the LER around on the moon, at least in the near future.
This image by Gennady was recently posted to the NewTek forum. The extremely lifelike quality of the portrait guaranteed the image's status as picture of the month for the newsletter's editor, and is even more amazing when you consider that Gennady had no advanced tools from recent versions of LightWave to play with. We asked him how he did it.
Gennady: "This is one of my first works from 2007 using G2's sub-surface scattering (SSS) and Sasquatch with different lighting to the base mesh. It took more than 100 test renders over three months to achieve the final look, and the finished render took my 1 GHz single-core processor roughly six hours at this resolution. All modelling and rendering was produced with LightWave 7.5. Her hair was made with flat polygons with transparency maps.
The only use of Photoshop on the final image was color correction, no retouching.
At the moment I'm doing game design in little non-commercial MMORPG projects, but not using LightWave. In fact, I don't have a newer version. Portraits like this are my hobby, I make them only for myself, with inspiration from Dan Ablan's book."
NewTek spoke to Steve "HRGiger" White about his new preset pack for owners of LWCAD 2 and up.
| Explain what you've done for people that don't have LWCAD? LWCAD is a suite of modeling tools for LightWave Modeler which offer a lot of functionality you would normally find in CAD software. One of the many benefits of using LWCAD is that it uses a library of ready-made shapes and 3D objects called presets which make quick work of adding and detailing architectural elements. With a click and drag you can bevel out a detailed baseboard or moulding, or you can add a door or window to a wall with a single click. You can change and adjust your elements interactively by scrolling through the preset library and changing object attributes. LWCAD comes with a moderate selection of shapes and object presets to choose from. I've created new libraries and added many more presets for users to select from. |
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| What stirred you to start creating the presets? The nice thing about presets in LWCAD is that Viktor (developer of LWCAD) has made it easy to create your own libraries of custom-made presets. For some time I have wanted to create a library of presets that I use most often, but other than the stray preset, I never got around to building a collection. I found myself in between personal projects a few months ago, and was playing with the newest release of LWCAD. I finally decided to put it together. I started a thread on the NewTek forums and asked other users if they would be interested in such a pack. I was surprised by the enthusiastic response. But I know for those of us who use LWCAD, it's easy to be enthusiastic with these great tools that Viktor provides for us. |
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| Are you going to differentiate between metric and standard imperial sizes for doors and windows? I considered the size of the presets before I started, but came up with many different standard sizes on all items. There are typical sizes but not a set standard, so I went with an average. I considered size of typical windows and doors and also looked at wall depth for the depth of presets. A typical door size I came up with was around 3 by 7 feet (0.91 x 2.13 m). Windows have even less of a standard size and so I tried to make window presets appropriate to door size (so the window wouldn't look out of place next to the typical door). Wall depths seem to range from 4" to 7" (10 - 18 cm) depending on whether it is an inside or outside wall, and if it has plumbing in it. So, I went with a preset depth of 6" to be safe. I also applied a guide to all window and door presets so that it would overhang the wall slightly in front; although LWCAD allows you to control the depth at which a preset sets into wall. I did look at manufacturers' Web sites, but to be honest I did not consider between metric and imperial systems. I use the English unit system when I work in LightWave. |
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| How many have you made so far and when will the pack be ready? Well originally, I told other users that I hoped to have around 200 presets when I was done, but the final count will be close to 400. My sister-in-law is a great web designer and she's now putting the finishing touches on the site where I'll be selling the preset pack. As a taster for LightWave newsletter readers, I've put together a little pack showing just a small sampling of the presets I've made. There are 19 presets, with three of each type (1D, 2D, 3D, Doors and Windows) and two each of fences and columns. HR_LWCAD Sample Pack  The full LWCAD preset pack is now available here. |
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Tom Roth is a traditional animator with 38 years of experience in films such as, "All Dogs Go to Heaven" and "The Rescuers Down Under." Since 2000, when he worked on Disney's "Dinosaur", he has branched into computer animation. Now, he's starting a distance-learning course to share his knowledge with a new generation of animators: "I launched this course because there seems to be a lot of young animators who have excellent technical skills but have not had much exposure to the art of character animation", said Tom. "What little instruction there is, is often very pricey, too. So this is a cost-effective alternative for students who can't afford animation school tuition," he continued.
The course is software-agnostic, but Tom demonstrates techniques using LightWave. "I was introduced to LightWave years ago by Tim Albee. He's doing the modeling/rigging for this course," he explained. "I've used many 3D packages before, Softiimage, Maya, various proprietorial software but I prefer the relatively simple LightWave." Click on the image below to watch the intro of the upcoming course:
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Tom Roth's Animation Alchemy is due to start by the end of May. Visit the Animation Alchemy site for more details.
"Many 3D artists may have dreamed of creating their own CGI short films as I had, and some of them may have even started such a project, only to abandon it," says Michael Scaramozzino, founder of DreamLight®, an award-winning interactive multimedia studio. "I wrote Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short to show other 3D artists how to bring their dream of creating a CGI short to light, and help them actually get it done."As an early computer graphics pioneer with a dual background in both the art and science of computer graphics, Michael Scaramozzino’s work has won awards in a wide range of computer graphics fields including digital design, interactive multimedia, 3D illustration and animation; and has been widely published in books, magazines, international exhibits and film festivals.
His new book, Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short: The Making of The Autiton Archives Fault Effect – Pilot Webisode, presents a behind-the-scenes tour of the entire production process for 3D artists, animators, independent filmmakers as well as fans and enthusiasts of CGI films who are interested in creating their own CGI shorts.
Using off-the-shelf software such as LightWave 3D, iMovie, GarageBand and more, the book describes how to produce a complete 3D animated CGI short. Where other filmmaking manuals typically outline complex methodologies that are effective for larger-scale productions, this book condenses those processes down to the essential elements that will enable a single artist/filmmaker to complete a CGI short on their own. The book presents detailed examples of every step of the production process, from initial concept all the way through to film festival submissions and online web distribution.
More information about the book, Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short: The Making of The Autiton Archives Fault Effect – Pilot Webisode, is available through The Autiton Archives series Web site.
Discussion thread for this edition of the newsletter on the NewTek forum
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