There are two videos here that go into additional features:
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NewTek: What motion capture formats will JimmyRIG handle?
Oliver Hotz: JimmyRIG Lite, will only work with the included mocap library (which is the CMU library), JimmyRIG Pro will load pretty much any flavor of BVH.
NewTek: Will it require specific graphics hardware, or processor?
Oliver Hotz: Any Windows box should work, no specific requirements.
NewTek: What version of LightWave 3D®?
Oliver Hotz: JimmyRIG should work with any version from LightWave 7.5 onwards.
NewTek: Will JimmyRIG handle more than the usual biped? What about a monster with four arms, but two legs? What about a spider or an ant?
Oliver Hotz: No, biped only – we are trying to keep the product as simple as possible – it will handle non-bipeds, but it will try to put a bipedal skeleton into the model.
NewTek: Does it create a "traditional" rig? Will you be able to hand-animate it?
Oliver Hotz: Yes.
There will be more info, including final pricing on the Origami Digital site shortly. For now, here are more images below.
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This issue's picture of the month has a special significance. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the very first manned moon landing, but shows a whole new start, this time in private hands. NewTek spoke to James about his excellent work.
NewTek: Can you tell me a bit about the image – how did you get involved?
James Willmott: OK, I was involved through work I did on a fanfilm: www.swtheforgotten.com. The director works for NASA and a friend of his needed help with imaging for his team, Omega Envoy, for the Google XPrize challenge. The director put me in touch with Omega Envoy and away I went. They had no rover designs so I had to come up with something.
NewTek: Is there any engineering rigor to your design or did it just look nice?
James Willmott: I tried to consider the parameters that the team set me. Based on the rules of the prize, the rover had to complete certain tasks and needed to fit within certain parameters. For instance, it needed to take pictures, hence the eyes mounted high off the body on a thin stalk to avoid overly shading the solar cells, and it needed to fit within a roughly 450mm cube. We exported the finished LightWave model as an obj and DXF for importing into SolidWorks for the engineers to draw up properly.
NewTek: And how did you model the impressive tires?
James Willmott: The tires... I cheated. The large ridges are modeled, the small one are cylindrical bump maps.
NewTek: Is Omega Envoy going to piggyback as a payload on an "official" NASA launch to the moon, or is there a launch vehicle planned as well?
James Willmott: No piggybacking. Omega Envoy is coming up with the funds to hire a launch vehicle, a Falcon 1 - E made by SpaceX.
NewTek: How long did the whole project take?
James Willmott: The whole project took about a week from blank slate to finished render, including all design, modeling and rendering. Omega Envoy stands a good chance of getting LightWave on the moon!
The rover in action, in an animation James produced for Omega Envoy:
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LightWave is blessed with a large range of plugins mostly free of charge, some that do amazing things, others that help out when faced with a tough situation. It is a challenge to keep track of all of them, so below are some of the latest updates, in addition to old favorites.
- DPKit updated - Denis Pontonnier, captain of free nodes presents us with an updated DPKit.
- Noisy Channel 2 - Allows for enveloping the noise you assign to a channel. An oldie but goodie created by DStorm.
- Papagayo Importer - Mike Green's new plugin to support the open source Papagayo lipsync tool, also available here
- PFNE - Denis Pontonnier creates a node-based pixel filter that allows you to change the surfaces for the objects in your scenes based on need - AO pass, etc.
- Smart IBL 2 - Version 2 of the Image-based lighting tool is released with new features, such as geotracking, multiple lights, automatic updating and more
- Terragen 2 - Get this free for personal use terrain generator.
- TrueGroup - Puts all those huge node networks into black boxes to simplify your texturing life.
- Zip-it and SmartSave - Two great tools, are updated with new versions. From Simon Coombs, a tireless coder.
- EXRTrader 1.4 - db&w have released a new version of the superb exrTrader that allows the user to take advantage of one of the best image pipelines going
NewTek spoke to Larry Vasquez about his upcoming video training for LWCAD and LightWave, targeting the archviz market.
NewTek: What made you consider creating video training?
Larry Vasquez: Many reasons. I'm a huge fan of LightWave (user since v6) and its community. I'm a huge fan of LWCAD and what Viktor Velicko, the author, has done with this amazing plug-in. I really enjoy teaching, and I had some great support from a couple of guys (pixelforce and megalodon) on the NewTek forums that finally made me seriously consider doing it.
I believe that many LightWave users get too comfortable with their current work flow to give LWCAD its proper due and realize what it offers LightWave. I read a sample chapter of an ArchViz book for a very popular 3D app in that genre, that basically said "Placing 3D tiles on a roof requires a good amount of time and until a ground-breaking plugin or script comes along, there's really no way around it." And I thought "LightWave users have that ground-breaking plugin in LWCAD!"
NewTek: Which version of LWCAD will you cover?
Larry Vasquez: I will be primarily covering v3.1 but also using tools that are also found in v2.5. With that said, Viktor will be giving a discount for LWCAD users to upgrade to v3.x and for new LWCAD users that buy the training. Essentially, the way we've worked it out is that he'll be giving a discount coupon for the training when you purchase a new license of LWCAD or upgrade from a previous version of v3.x.
NewTek: How long is the training?
Larry Vasquez: This has yet to be determined since I'm still working on it. My goal with this training is to make sure that end users are not only very familiar with what LWCAD offers, but also understand how they might practically put the tools to use and develop a solid/quicker workflow. We will be using the famous Frank Lloyd Wright - Robie residence as our project.
NewTek: Will you be sending out DVDs?
Larry Vasquez: I am opting to use the download method (with very few exceptions). I'm doing this for a couple of reasons: 1. I like the ability, as a user, to receive it much quicker then standard mail. 2. I'm able to keep the cost down for the end user by not having to pay for shipping and handling. If I was looking to produce more training on a regular basis, I probably would have considered someone like Kurv Studios as a distributor, thus giving the end user more options. But since this is not a regular occurrence for me, remaining independent and using this overall method is the best for me and my customers.
NewTek: Is there anything else that you would like to let us know about the training?
Larry Vasquez: Yes. Once I committed to doing the training, the wheels started turning in my head. I contacted Tom Bosschaert (better known as Exception on the NT boards) about doing a lighting training tutorial. Tom is fantastic at lighting and rendering, and really knows the ins-and-outs of LightWave's robust render engine. It seemed like perfect timing because he was already considering doing some video tutorials on that subject, with James Melsom (ArchiJam), who is a landscape architect, doing a landscape design portion. So though these will be distinct from the LWCAD training in regards to pricing and distribution, we'll be working together to make this a more complete training package since each of us will be using the model that (Robie residence) produced in our portion of the LWCAD training.
Lastly, I've produced a Web page specifically for information about the training.
Remember this great animation from our December 08 newsletter? It won a gold prize at the prestigious 56th annual Cannes Lions advertising festival in June, competing with about 22,000 entries from 86 countries. It took home the prize in the Film/Car category. To save you from having to access December's issue, below is a handy link to the animation.
Last month, we talked to Craig Monins about his forthcoming rigging training and this month an 18-hour course in 1280x720 screen capture is available. Instead of just letting the watcher follow blindly along, the course not only goes into every detail, but explains why things are done specific ways. To ensure that his style suits your needs, there are three hours of demo videos free to download from Craig's site.
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