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.

It’s a more elegant symmetry correction solution than my SymmXMirror tool as it’s non-destructive, but they both have their time and place when appropriate to use.

Fix Symmetry offers three different functions to help taking care of symmetry problems in objects while modeling. Symmetry Check, Quick Fix and the interactive Tolerance Fix.

Check out my Fix Symmetry page for more details and to download the tool.

Have fun and enjoy!

LightWave 3D was once known as the fastest polygon and subdivision modeler on the market. The modeling workflow was considered one of LightWave’s strongest features and this held true up until v7.x (2001). Then the years passed and because of different reasons the modeler became neglected, in the v8.x (2004) update the modeler was pretty much ignored and when 9.x (2006) was released the modeler still didn’t receive any significant changes. So what we have here is a former state of the art modeler that hasn’t received much love in 7 years except for a few minor updates, acquired 3rd party tools and some halfbaked additions. This has lead to that the competition has caught up and even surpassed LightWave in this time.

Do we have to wait until LW10, which supposedly will get the long awaited modeling updates? Or can the current release be tweaked to still be a top modeler for a speedy workflow? According to me the latter holds true.

My LightWave modeling experience goes back to LW v3.5, so I know it pretty much inside and out, and my recent experience with other modeling packages comes to using Modo quite regularly and also to some extent I model in 3ds max when I do on location work. Even though Modo is the most elegant modeler I’ve ever worked with, it do still lack a few operations (which I guess might be added when 401 comes) and 3ds max has also grown a lot as a modeler in the last couple of years, and is very competent by now.

Still though, when it comes down to it, I do model with an incredible speed in LightWave compared to the other apps I am comfortable modeling in.

The “secret” to unlock the current LightWave’s modeler to a compentent speed modeling package consist of four important steps to learn and change in LightWave:

• Learn the keyboard shortcuts.
• Get some brilliant plugins.
• Customize your modeling menus.
• Use your extra mouse buttons.

Learn The Shortcuts

I can’t stress this enough! If you keep spending time switching between tabs and menus in modeler each time you change the active tool, you’ll never get a speedy modeling flow. Spend all the time needed to learn the keyboard shortcuts. Force yourself to use them as much as possible until they become second nature. Print a shortcut reference card if needed. The time spent learning these will save you so much time in the end it’s worth every second. I always keep one hand on my mouse and the other hand on the keyboard while modeling, to jump between the common tools I use in a split second. The less time spent digging through menus for tools, the more time spent pushing vertices around.

The must have LightWave 3D plugins

Fortunately the LightWave community is blessed with having many brilliant 3rd party developers, which have created additions that fills up about any gap lacking in the out-of-the-box modeler, bringing the modeling experience up to par with other packages. Some plugins are commercial but many are free.

Since the release of LightWave 9.5, where FFX and FBX are available native in LightWave and most plugin developers have by now compiled 64-bits versions, I made the decision to completely switch  to 64-bit LightWave. Still, as not all plugins I relied on in the 32-bit era are available as 64-bit compiles, I had to sacrifice some or find replacements.
Here is my current must have modeler plugin list, all available in 64-bit versions:

Modeling:

EasyMesh, DEdgeSlide, EasySplit, Swift Edge Loop, SpMove 3, Fix Symmetry, SymmXMirror, Polygon Coloring

Texturing:

PLG UV tools, Select UV Island

Rigging:

Skelegon Editor, Normalize Bone Weights, Show Weights

Missed babies:

Pictrix brilliant modeling plugins (PX_Clone, C_Worm etc…) is still 32-bit only. Pictrix just released SP_Move as 64-bit, and have promised that the others will follow soon though. RopeEditor, TrueHair and Pawel Olas plugins (TreeDesigner, Leaves Generator…) would be cool to have as well, but they are no show stoppers.

Also if you do any kind of hard surface modeling, LWCad is the best investment you can ever make (64-bit version available).

Customizing Menus

The default menu configuration, even when using the Studio Production Style layout, doesn’t do it for me. As it’s not feasible to have every tool mapped to a key (and remember it) and the mouse just have so many buttons, one still have to rely on selecting tools in the menus now and then. To avoid having to look for tools and break my modeling flow, I have designed five new tabs that are more logical to me.

Custom Tabs in Modeler

Depending on what I do in modeler, I have a tab for each task. If I model, I have my modeling tab selected, where I have all the tools that I use which is not mapped to a key, available right next to my modeling area so I never need to switch tab while modeling. And the same for all other tasks, tabs for texturing, rigging, hair and the fifth for the 3rd party tools which I only use occasionally.

The Modeling Menu

This is my customized tab I use when modeling. Combined with my mouse configuration and assigned shortcuts, I almost never ever leave this menu during a modeling session. I primarily model organic shapes, so the tools I switch between is pretty much aimed in that direction, but there is a few for hard surface modeling as well, which is more or less what I need in that area most of the time.

Modeling Tab

Add & Reduce

• EasyMesh - An excellent tool, that works like XSI’s tweak tool or Modo’s element move. Drags points, edges or polygons depending on what you click on when dragging, no need to switch mode. And with the RMB it extends geometry. A really fast tool to tweak geometry and quickly build up new shapes.
• Multishift - Bevel on steroids. Bevels in several steps and polygons can be grouped. And best of all, advanced bevels can be stored, either to disk or to memory. I use store to memory for instance when I have made a nice nail bevel on a character to quickly reuse it on the other 4 fingers.
• BandSaw Pro – Cuts a loop of polygon in as many rows as needed.
• Rounder - Create rounded edges or use it on a single vertex and it works as a chamfer tool.
• Dissolve - Removes an vertices, edges or polygons from the mesh.
• Collapse Polys - For those occasions where I quickly just wanna rearrange the flow of a group of quads.
• Bridge - Connect polygons with new geometry created in between.
• BandGlue - Glues together two rows of looping polygons to one band.

Edges

• Edge Slide - Slides Edges on the mesh while preserving the shape.
• Easy Split - An excellent tool to cut in new topology directly on the mesh, almost like drawing.
• Swift Edge Loop - Slides edge loops with the LMB and adds new edge loops with the RMB. A great boost for the edgeloop workflow.
• Add Edges – Adds new edges between polygons. It doesn’t support symmetry so since I got EasySplit I have more or less stopped using this one.
• Edge Bevel - Bevels an edge interactively.
• Divide - Splits an edge in two segments.
• Spin Edge - Spins an edge to adjust the flow of the topology.
• Sharpness - Drop down menu which contains Set Sharpness, Decrease Sharpness and Increase Sharpness. To be used on edges when working with Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces.

Curves

• Spline Draw - Draw a new spline.
• Add Points - To add more points to existing splines.
• Patch - Create solid geometry from splines by patching them together.

Detail

• Untangle - Adjusts the selected polygon’s vertices into a circular shape.
• Flatten - Quickly flattens the selected geometry on the axis of choice.
• Drill - Perfect for making details by stenciling shapes in the background layer onto the geometry.

Modify

• SpMove 3 - The ultimate move tool. There is no move operation this one can’t perform, including all kinds of snapping.
• Translate - Great when used with RMB, as it then translates the geometry along their normal axis.
• Translate Plus - Moves geometry in a controlled fashion. Lot’s of options, but I mostly use the segment translation, where you can select an edge and have your geometry move in that exact direction. Very handy when extending polygons on a mesh that’s not laying perfect on the XYZ axis.
• Pnt Normal Move - This is the closest you come to an interactive smooth scale. It moves vertices or polugons along the normal axis. I use this quite a bit now. With some cleanup afterward I get the results I am looking for pretty fast.
• Magnet - Move with a fall off, great for organic tweaking. Like pushing cheaks or moving an ear and things like that.
• DragNet - Pretty similar to Magnet but the drag tool with fall off instead of the move tool.
• Weights - Set weights for Subpatch Subdivision surfaces.
• Create Pole - Collapses n-gons into tris.
• Fix Poles - Fix a poled part of the object into quads with a small sections of tris in the middle, which helps to create clean subpatches.
• Absolute Size - Let’s you numerically enter a defined size for your object when scaling.

Tools

• Fix Symmetry - Select a point of each side of the X axis and this tool makes them symmetrical.
• SymmXMirror - Corrects the entire mesh for symmetry errors if such should occur. It does it the hard way by cutting, mirroring and merging the mesh.
• Toggle Backdrop - Toggles the backdrop images on/off, when reference images is used in the background.
• Polygon Coloring - Prepares a new version of the mesh to be rendered with a subdivision wireframe for a pretty presentation of the object.
• Subdivision - The subdivision tools in a drop down menu; G-Toggle Subpatch, Set CC, Set Face, Set Subpatch.

Organize

• Create Part - Creates a new part of the selected polygons.
• Sketch Color - Changes the sketch color of the selected polygons.

Selection

- All these tools are selection related and needs no explantion me thinks?

• Sel Points
• Sel Polys
• Sel Edges
• Loop Expand
• Loop Contract

Texturing, Rigging and Hair Menus

Click for fullsize

As this post is dedicated towards a fast modeling workflow in modeler, I won’t go into any great details about my other customized menu tabs other than a brief overview.

Just like my modeling tab, these live their own lives and tools gets added or removed as I update my workflow or adapt new techniques or tools. So they are never final.

The hair tab has a few empty sections as can be seen in the screenshot, TrueHair and Hair Blade is missing. They are leftovers since I was running a 32-bit install and these plugins are not yet available for 64-bit. I’ve kept them around though, as I hope 64-bit versions of them will arrive in the future.

Other than that, the menus are pretty self explanatory, check them out, dissect them and see if you like the mix of tools and how I’ve grouped them. As I have been mainly into modeling and rendering with LightWave the last year, these menus have not got as much attention as they should have probably.

If you are interested in using my menus, or use them as a starting point to create your own, feel free to download the attached zip file where I’ve exported the four menu branches. To use them go to Modeler’s “Configure Menus” window, where you can right click on the “Main Menu” entry and select “Import Branch” to add my menus as new menu tabs.

Download my LightWave 3D 9.5 Custom Modeling Menus

Setup your mouse

I have come to understand that many people doesn’t use the power of their mouse when working with LightWave 3D. A customizable multibutton mouse is definitely the way to go, by assigning a couple of convenient keyboard shortcuts to the extra buttons.

Personally I use the Logitech MX Revolution at the moment, a mouse I’m very happy with and which has so many extra buttons thanks to the thumb wheel, that I haven’t decided what to map to the last buttons yet. If anyone have any suggestions for what would be nice to add to the scrollwheel’s tilt function, feel free to send it my way.

Modeler Mouse Setup

I have a huge difference in my modeling speed compared to when I model without my mouse shortcuts, it shaves of a great deal of time each day, and as the days go by those saved minutes adds up.

Conclusion

Take the advice that works for you, adjust and tweak the rest to your liking, and I am sure you’ll find that LightWave’s modeler still contains tons of power for a fast modeling workflow.

Happy speed modeling!

This section won’t be linked from the main menu of my site, but feel free to bookmark it or link to it from any other site, as the section will be there permanently.

I recently published the SymmXMirror tool that’s available there, and also the SaveIncBak modeler script the other day, which was born from a thread on the NewTek OB forum where Miguel Méndez Menéndez posted the idea for the tool. Also many thanks to Miguel for tracking down the differences between the Windows and Mac file system through LScript to get it working on the Mac platform as well.

I do have a few other modeler tools that are more or less working as they should which I’ll upload quite soon. I also have some scripts I’ve developed while working with my film projects for basic render pass management. As I’ve made them for me, the GUI is lacking big time, so I have to spend some time cleaning that up before I can release them in a state useful for others. So it might be while before I can spare the time for that.

Well, over and out for tonight.

Symmetry Plugin for LightWave 3D

Long time, no post. Things are cooking though. Busy busy.

Anyway, I thought I should post a little freebie I coded recently. I’ve acquired a few new computers (Workstation, rendering slaves) and have made the switch to Vista x64 as well as LightWave x64 for 64-bit Windows. Fortunately most of the plugins I rely on are available for x64 or will soon be as it seems. Fiber Factory, TrueHair and Pictrix are the plugins I miss most for x64 at the moment.

Then there is the situation with smaller free plugins that probably will never be updated to x64 versions. One of my most used ones is pmirror.p by Pixel Potential that automates a technique by William ‘Proton’ Vaughan to correct symmetry. Pmirror.p is unfortunately only compiled for Win32 and OSX.

I really missed it in my Win64 environment so I wrote my own version using LScript, so other than working with Win64 (and of course Win32 and OSX) it should also work with LightWave for Intel Macs.

Basically the plugin selects the -X side of the mesh, flattens it, deletes it, mirrors the +X side and merges the points, which is really useful to quickly restore symmetry in an object if it gets broken. I added an extra method that tries to intelligently find the center through the object if it or some points has moved away from the 0 position. (Which is pretty common for instance in situations where the object has been brought to ZBrush and back.)

Check out the SymmXMirror page

Enjoy and have fun modeling!

Untextured render of The Innkeeper

Since the last post, I’ve made tweaks all over the character, but I’ve mainly focused on the face to make him look a bit more interesting. Also for these renders I added a quick and dirty rig, so I could pose him and not have another boring T-pose render. The rig is far from finished, so he doesn’t deform perfect yet, but it was okay enough for these renders.

A bonus render with some quick and dirty hair

Alright, time to start texturing and create the shading for this guy. This is what I have been looking forward to the most this time, so I can’t wait to grab my Wacom pen and start painting. I will also fix the hair during this process. Stay tuned for another update coming soon!

Working Music: Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man – Out of Season

I’ve got rid of the strange pointy belly and added some more volume to it as well as some fat around the waist where the apron runs. Also I modeled a dagger for him and added some more details to the face, arms, hands and robe. The symmetry from the first modeling session is now about to run into the history land and I have started to get some more randomness to the different sides.

The Innkeeper - Front View

The Innkeeper - Right View

The Innkeeper - Left View

I fixed some edgeloops as well this time which I was not that pleased with earlier, and it’s still pretty low poly for the amount of details. I have been thinking of using ZBrush displacements for him, but I’ll pass on that this time, and stick with normal maps in the end for the finer details.

I am not completely happy with him yet, so I’ll take him for one more modeling session for the final touches before I get into texturing this guy. Really looking forward to that part, as that’s my main purpose with this project.

Working Music: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

I have two more accessories left to model for him and some additional details to add to his body. I hope to be able to have that session this evening.

Update of the Innkeeper - A small pouch is added

The Innkeeper - More details added to the clothes

I make this project to improve my texturing skills, so I wanna spend the most time in that area. But I have also dedicated quite some time now to explore a new flow for my detailed modeling. I have experimented with a new method that I kinda am starting to like a lot.

LightWave 3D -> ZBrush -> Modo -> LightWave 3D.

My flow goes like this, I rough out the overall shapes I am looking for in LightWave, his body and his different pieces of clothing. Then I bring the meshes into ZBrush, one at a time, and start sketching and sculpting out the details, like wrinkles in the clothing. When I have something I am happy with, I export them out in hires into Modo. And there I rebuild the clothing from scratch again, using the hires mesh from ZBrush in the background. The Pen Tool in Modo in quad mode with a background constraint is just wonderful for this work of creating new topology on an existing mesh. So by doing it like this I get a pretty low polygon mesh, with an excellent flow of edgeloops with as much details as I can preserve modeled in, carefully laid out in Modo where I need them. And when I am done in Modo, the model goes back to LightWave to replace the first rough draft version.

Working Music: Beirut – Lon Gisland

So here is the first quick draft of a character called The Innkeeper.

First rough draft of the Innkeeper

This is mostly a rough draft of this character. I’ve modeled the actual body and head in LightWave to get the overall look and proportions where I want them, as well as blocking in his clothing. His robe is where I have started doing some more work.

I have got quite some details modeled into the robe, while still maintaining a very low polygon count, so I am relying on a very nice topology carefully placed where needed for the details while still having good edgeloops so it’s animation friendly.

I am using ZBrush to sketch out the details I want in his clothing to then bring the model into Modo to redo the topology exactly how I want it. Retopologizing can be a pain, but I find Modo’s tools quite quick and intuitive for this kind of work.

I’ll continue modeling this guy all day, so a new post will follow shortly with more details.

Working Music: My Spy vs Spy Remix Album (Around from an old project)

To get my juices flowing and get back in the groove I started a new project today (again… hehe). Well, this will not be a long project, just me playing around with a new character, or creature really, of mine.

As I’ve been spending quite some time getting up to speed with ZBrush 3 lately, I wanted to make a project from start to finish using ZBrush so I get some reward for all the hours I’ve put into that application so far. I do think all my hours will pay off and that I can get an image through all the steps required in quite a short time. Or so I hope.

I have to admit, back in the 1980’s I was an addicted Role Player. Playing games like Dungeons and Dragons (and the Swedish version Drakar & Demoner), as well as other RPG’s like Mutant, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Kult and Chock. Well, even though I haven’t been into that for almost 20 years now, it’s an enormous well to collect inspiration from. So I dug up my old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and started hunting for a nice creature to sculpt in 3D. I had a hard time to decide, so many ultra cool creatures in that universe, but finally I went with a destrachan.

A short extract from the destrachan description in the Monster Manual to give you a clue what this creature is all about:

The dungeon-dwelling destrachan looks like some bizarre, non-intelligent beast, but it’s an incredibly evil and crafty sadist. The creature shambles forward on thick, taloned legs. Vaguely reptilian in form, its large, stooped frame ends in a mostly featureless head dominated by large ear structures and a gaping, toothless mouth.

Alright, so I took a good look on the illustration in the Monster Manual and started up Photoshop and sketched out a quick modeling sheet with my Wacom, tried my best to draw an orthographic side view so I would have something to work from when starting to build the polygon mesh. And this concept sketch is what I came up with.

Destrachan - Modeling Sheet

Nothing fancy really, but it fills its purpose for this stage. Anyway, after I had finished this sketch, I started up LightWave 3D, loaded my sketch into the background and started modeling out a base mesh. And after about half an hour I had something I was happy with. Not very detailed, but I got the basic shapes down and the edgeloops located where I wanted them. Here is a wireframe and a render of my base mesh of my destrachan model.

The wireframe of the Destrachan basemesh

A quick render of the basemesh

As can be seen, this base mesh is very low resolution, but it contains all the details and shapes I need to have a very good and fun mesh to start sculpting from. So time to bring this guy into ZBrush and bring out all the lovely details to make this creature come alive. This base mesh is just around 1400 polygons, which is a good starting point for ZBrush work.

Working Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium