As it was something I already had in mind, and it wasn’t that much work to change a few things to copy vertex maps instead of conforming the geometry after the matching has been processed, the transfer version was alive in a few hours. Sunday fun! This first iteration can transfer Weights, Morphs and Selection Sets by matching the UV layout. Feel free to get the tool if this is something you’d find useful.

Read more and download Transfer By UV »

Lee talks about the different modes, showing how and when to use it and runs through some practical examples with a few character models.

Lots of good information if you’re interested in using this tool.

Visit the plugin page and check the video out »

The concept behind this LightWave 3D modeler addition is to be able to use a base mesh and conform it to other variations, even if the variations have gone through major changes. Like chopping off and replacing body parts, dramatically altering the look, size and proportions. The plugin uses the UV layout as a point of reference to find which points to match between the source and destination mesh to perform the conform. The only requirement is that the UV map layout is basically kept identical between the different meshes to be used.

By using the UV layout to make the conform, point order and point count becomes irrelevant. This is especially useful when working with sculpting applications and then bringing back variations to be used for morphs or new meshes.

Read more and download the plugin here »

Render Presets for LightWave 3D

I continued to find it useful and over time I’ve included additional settings that I’ve had use for. I finally decided to clean up the user interface to be more generic and add more of LightWave’s common render settings so I could release it in public. In this release presets can be setup for Global Illumination, Render Flags, Camera Antialiasing, Backdrop and Processing Effects. I might add a few more options in the future when time permits.

Read more and download the plugin here »

Today NewTek revealed the feature list of LightWave CORE publicly that will be released in Q1 2010. I’m very happy that I joined the beta program of CORE back in march/april and have had the privilege to play, have input, and see this new application develop and take shape during the course of 2009. Very cool move of NewTek to take this route when developing.

One of my most anticipated features is the integration of the Bullet Physics Library in CORE (Most recently noticed for it’s usage in the movie 2012). I am excited about many things Core though, and it’s awesome to see all these great features coming already in a v1 release.

A PDF can be downloaded from NewTek which lines out all the features publicly announced so far. If you aren’t on the CORE beta but are curious and/or interested in this upcoming application I believe it will be an interesting read to spend a few minutes with.

Considering that CORE has only been under actual development for about a year I think the LightWave development team has made a tremendous effort and awesome job building such a flexible framework that CORE is, with so much possibilities for the future.
With modeling, rendering, animation, and dynamics already implemented – I can only imagine where CORE will be when v2 is about to ship and there is one more year of development invested, now when the foundation is in place. Woohoo!

So I thought it would be a nice idea to make a video tutorial on some useful concepts where the tools can speed up the daily workflow. So below you’ll find an EasySplit usage tutorial.

I start the tutorial by going through some basic concepts with the tool, and then I show a shorter modeling session for a few minutes – making a simple pouch and using the plugin to draw in a wrinkle in the geometry, one of  many typical cases where it can save some decent amount of time.

This video also gave me the opportunity to try out the new HD support on YouTube to ditch YouTube and start using Vimeo for my HD videos instead, so I recorded it in High Definition 720p, and the HD mode is selected by default in the player, so the video should look nice and crisp even in fullscreen. If you’re on a slower connection, you might want to uncheck the HD button in the player.

Okay, let’s see how this works out, as it was my first attempt to create a video tutorial (except a few quick ones for my own plugins). Well, I hope some of you will find this tutorial useful, and if so I could probably record a few more on different subjects – time permitting.

Fifth WIP of Elly (Click to enlarge)

Here’s another update of  this CG model, I spent some time with her last night. I modeled a new earpiece for her, fixed the clothing to make them a bit more fitting for her and also did some final tweaks to the skin texture and shading, which I am pretty happy with now.

But the major part of the time I spent with her last night went into the hair. Or hair guides to be more specific. The hair in the render to the left is still very temporary, the shading is not correct yet and looks way to shiny, and the shadow has low quality.

I dedicated my efforts towards finding an effecient workflow for styling hair guides. Guide styling can be quite tedious, and I’ve decided that I will take all time necessary for this one to find as good flow as possible for that part of the process, as I’ll have so much use for having a speedy workflow in the hair styling department for all my other characters.

I’ll continue this process tonight and hopefully get were I want to go with her hair, and when the styling is in place, and I have documented a good workflow for it, I’ll fix the hair shading in FiberFX.

If nothing unexpected happens, I’ll have the final image ready by tomorrow, and hopefully be able to post a small breakdown of the process of this character.

You know your Star Wars, right?

LightWave 9.6 has barely left the building (released just 2 days ago), when NewTek drops the next bomb. The excitement builds up at NewTek Core. Guess we’ll soon know more about the next major leap for LightWave. They sure are busy bees over at NewTek these days, and it has never been more interesting and fun being a LightWave user. Things sure have changed to the enormously better how LightWave is handled since Jay took over the operation. Woohoo, I’m excited!

12 days to go…

Improved Shading and Textures (Click to enlarge)

Here’s a quick update to the character I worked with last week. I have been really busy, with work and also updating artstorm.net with some improved design and new features (like the turntable function), so I haven’t had time to pick her up for work again until yesterday, where I got some more things done to her.

The image to the right is the latest render of Elly with a few changes since the last post. I haven’t worked anything with the hair yet, so it’s still the same as in the last image, but I did work quite a bit with the skin shading and also tweaked the textures a bit more. The deeper I dig into the simple skin material in LightWave 9.6, the more I like it, it’s pretty capable. Other than the skin and textures I have also updated the eye shading and eye lashes as well.

I can’t get over how amazingly fast the updated render engine is in LightWave 9.6. This character renders in just a few minutes with quite high anti-aliasing in 1K resolution on a now aging Quad Core Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz. the same render takes almost over 15 minutes in 9.5, which was pretty fast anyway. Rendering in 9.6 is incredible. I love it! And has saved my bacon on many tight deadlines already during the autumn of 2008.

I’ll continue working with her tonight, and hopefully wrap this character up to final state. I will do some further tweaking to the texturing and shading, fix the clothing and do a major update to the hair.

I’m so happy with this release, as about every quirk I had with 9.5 is gone. Actually there is over 600 fixes and feature requests implemented in 9.6. It’s been a long beta cycle for this version, but it’s been worth it. Being a longtime LightWave user myself (since version 3.5) this is without a doubt the most impressive and stable LightWave version released, ever! It’s indeed exciting times for LightWave users these days. Well, all info about 9.6 is available at NewTek’s site, so no point in posting them here. LightWave 9.6 is already doing an excellent job for me producing wonderful renders in a fraction of a time of what 9.5 did (together with all the other new goodies), and it’ll keep me more than satisfied until they bring on version 10.

Just wanted to share some nerdy application joy. Now it’s back to work, in the shiny new release build of 9.6.