Click here for the most recent article.
JANUARY 19, 2004
LightWave to After Effects
RPF and RLA explored
by Stephen Schleicher
It is no surprise when I say 3D animation is everywhere. Nearly every show, commercial, and movie you see has some type of 3D work in it. While processor speeds have increased our productivity, those speeds also cause us to want to do more, which just so happens to increase render times. One of the more render intensive aspects of 3D animation is applying Depth of Field. This greatly increases render times and if done wrong guarantees you’ll be going back to re-render again. What would be better is to take a single frame (or series of frames) and apply DOF in a compositing application. In order to do this, you need to save it in a RPF or RLA format. In the first of this three part tutorial, we’ll create an animation in NewTek’s LightWave 3D (v. 7.5) so we can then take those frames into After Effects for 3D depth work (part 2), and even add some 3D text using Invigorator (part 3).
Read More
August 4, 2005
L[8] to AE6.5
Moving camera data to After Effects via RPF
By Stephen Schleicher
In addition to the slew of new features and tools in NewTek’s LightWave 8, improvements to the type of information exported with a file also received a boost. With L[8] you now have the ability to export camera data with your RPF file and have that information interpreted by Adobe After Effects 6.5.
Read More
May 11, 2005
HyperVoxels Update
Relative Particle Age Gradient
by Stephen Schleicher
NewTek released the latest update to LightWave this week that included a small update to the HyperVoxels engine that allows you to vary the shading of particles relative to the particle age.
Read More
May 12, 2005
Text Layers
Create beveled extruded text in LW8.3
by Stephen Schleicher
NewTek’s LightWave has had the ability to create text for a number of years. The only problem with previous text creation tools in LightWave was the inability to automatically extrude and bevel the text in one step. With the new Text Layers tool in Modeler, creating dynamic text is a snap.
Read More
August 5, 2005
HyperVoxels Meteors
Using NewTek LightWave 3D to create meteors
By Stephen Schleicher
Ever since writing the Fire in the Eyes tutorial on how to do a heat vision effect ala Smallville, I have been flooded with requests for more Smallville-esque tutorials. In this LightWave 3D tutorial, we’ll create a meteor falling from the sky.
Read More
December 20, 2005
Blowing Things Up
Hard body dynamics in LightWave 8.5
Is there an action movie out there that doesn’t have at least one dynamic explosion with the world crumbling down around our hero? Real life demolition is a scary and dangerous thing. Thanks to worlds generated in 3D applications, blowing things up is a piece of cake. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to blow apart an object and have it react realistically with the environment.
Read More
July 13, 2006
LightWave 9.0 First Look Part 1
Modeling and Rendering improvements score big
In April, I got a behind the scenes look at NewTek’s latest release of LightWave v9, and was impressed by the improvements made in the then early beta version of the software. Now several months later, more improvements and features have been added that make this a rock solid animation program for film, video, games, websites, and more.
Read More
July 13, 2006
LightWave v9 First Look Part 2
In which we find sufacing the big thing
In Part 1, Digital Media Net’s Stephen Schleicher gave us a glimpse of some of the new features in NewTek’s LightWave v9. In this installment, he talks all about surfacing, and put’s LightWave v9 to its paces.
Read More