Some Basic Stuff From L-wave

[Maximius]

Here are some examples of cups I was finally able to fix up. They are still toonish as you can see. I made them with beveling as I couldnt figure out any of the other methods , I hope there aren't hidden problems somewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments/criticisms are welcome of course. Now I have to figure out how to UV and texture these babies.

[oDDity]

For a start, you can turn on smoothing to get rid of the chisled look - or maybe it's because you're viewing in flat shaded view. Set it to textured view.

You can also try using less polygons and hitting tab to us subpatches

An 8 point disc should be enough, Inever use more than that for anything, it's just wasting polys.

They look something like 32 sided discs you started with.

[oDDity]

Made a quick video tut on the best way to make goblets in lightwave. I use this for lots of thngs though.

I don't mention some hotkeys, because I've changed a lot of them and I dont' remeber what the defaultds are.

The good thidng about this is you can make your objects using subpatches and in a smooth textured view.

[Domarius]

(I don't think this should be in the off topic forum myself)

 

That's interesting to watch. That final is a high poly version though, right? Would you then make a normal map from that and make a low poly version?

[Renzatic]

Kinda. I dunno if you can normalmap subpatches (I'm sure you can within LW, though I haven't tried yet), but to use map them in something like ORB or D3Renderbump you'll have to freeze it to polys.

[Darkness_Falls]

Cool video. I wonder why you have to 'poly' and 'create pole' on the bottom; why can't you just weld them like you did on the interior of the goblet?

 

Also, are you using "Extender," or "Extender Plus" (or maybe Extrude?)? Neither seem to be cooperating with me very well, but it will help me if I can narrow it down to just one to try and tinker with. Looks like I can use Smooth Shift as a workaround for now.

[Renzatic]

When I'm playing around with it, I just use extender plus (e key shortcut). Besides it and occasionally bevel, I rarely ever use smooth shift or anything else...it pretty much fills any role you need it to play quite easily.

[Darkness_Falls]

Well, I finally weasled my way to an end result of some sort. Still couldn't 'Extend' (e) or anything on the initial 2-D disc (had to Smooth Shift it), but the 'e' worked after that.

 

 

And I especially like the bottom where it looks polygonal and nasty. (I couldn't get the create pole thing to work, so just used weld.) It's a masterpiece :

 

Sorry to hop on your thread here, Maximus. But I figured we could learn from oDDity's video together ...

[Renzatic]

Ooh, that is kinda nice. Did you do the texture with procedurals or UV's?

[Darkness_Falls]

Procedurals. Is that good or bad?

[Renzatic]

If it looks good then it's good.

 

I'd say the reason the bottom of your cup still looks jagged and polygonal is probably because it isn't made up of tris or quads and doesn't want to convert to a subpatch. It's hard to tell what the problem is without looking at the mesh.

[Darkness_Falls]

Well, I meant for video game usage So, for video games, it doesn't matter if you use UVs or Procedurals, just as long as the end product looks good?

[Renzatic]

I only know a tiny bit about procedurals. I've read enough to see that they could be put to good use within LW itself, when used in conjunction with the gradient tools you can get some spectacular results. But I'm not sure if it's feisable for games since I don't know if you can unwrap the surfaces and export it as an actual texture file to use elsewhere.

[oDDity]

THEre's liitle point in normal mapping most cups, unless there is engraved details on the surface or something.

You're either looking at it from the side, where poly count can't be seen or from the top where no amount of normal mapping will make a polgonal cup appear smooth and round.

Just start the disc wiht a few more points, 10 say, and use 180 smoothing.

You can bake procedurals to an image using the surface baker int he shaders tab.

I use create pole instead of weld becasue it gives a cleaner result. Welding can sometimes make ugly star shaped pincihng in subpathed meshes. What I didnt show there was after you create the pole you should select the triangles in pairs and hit shift+z to merge them into quads.

[Renzatic]

There's your answer.

[OrbWeaver]

What is bevelling? Is it like a surface of revolution?

[Maximius]

Sorry to hop on your thread here, Maximus. But I figured we could learn from oDDity's video together ...

 

 

No problem DF, the more input the better. You pieces look really good, I hope I can pull my stuff up to your level. Im going to check out oDDs video after work tonight, Ill try to post any advances I make. BTW, where did you get that texturing and color, did that come with LW or did you create it yourself? I cant find any textures at all in LW. Its such a complicated program!

Edited July 25, 2006 by Maximius

[Renzatic]

What is bevelling? Is it like a surface of revolution?

 

This is a good example of what the bevel tool does.

 

It's handy for doing architecture work from simple polygons. The advantage of it over the stretch tool is that it keeps your edges equal distance from each other, so if you were to make a chalice from bevels it'd maintain it's shape on both X and Z (or X and Y if you're not using LW coordinates) automatically. The disadvantage is you can only bevel polygons, not points like what Oddity was doing, and if you have a surface with a number of subpolys on it, it'll bevel all the seperate smaller surfaces instead of modifying it as a whole.

 

...if that makes sense.

[oDDity]

Bevel is next to usless, when you have the extender option. Bevel is one of those ancient commands that have ben in 3d apps forever. It's only advantage as Renz says is when you have a complex and awkward multi-sided polygon and you want the shape of the beveled poly to remain the same as the original, and scaling won't work. The downside of that, is as you bevel smaller, the points will converge and overlap and become a complete mess. THe other disadvantages renz has alrady mentioned. So it only has one advantage and many disadvantages.

Extender is much more versatile, it can be used on polygons and verts, and now in LW 9 you can extend edges with it as well. I just find it much easier to control the shape I want when using it with scale and move, and point extending in general is much superior to poly beveling.

[Darkness_Falls]

BTW, where did you get that texturing and color, did that come with LW or did you create it yourself? I cant find any textures at all in LW.

In Lightwave, under the Surface Editor. I've pointed to the areas I worked in this screenshot. I'll try to post another screen in a few minutes to show you thie procedurals added...

I don't know if that gold colored box that I point to next to "Color" does anything. I think the Texture (T) procedural settings actually over-write whatever color setting I have there in my example. So it being a gold'ish color in my screenshot is probably a moot point.

 

Its such a complicated program!

I know!!! It drives me nuts sometimes.

 

EDIT: Okay, here is the Texture (T) area next to the Color listing. I have two procedurals. One is Crumple (Normal) with 100% opacity, the other is Veins (Additive) with a low opacity...

 

And then also the Bump mapping. I don't have a screenshot for that, but I used 'Turbulence' @ 54% opacity and 15% 'Texture Value'. I probably adjusted some of the other numbers there, too... but just tweak things around until they look okay to you.

[Renzatic]

Bevel is next to usless, when you have the extender option. Bevel is one of those ancient commands that have ben in 3d apps forever. It's only advantage as Renz says is when you have a complex and awkward multi-sided polygon and you want the shape of the beveled poly to remain the same as the original, and scaling won't work. The downside of that, is as you bevel smaller, the points will converge and overlap and become a complete mess. THe other disadvantages renz has alrady mentioned. So it only has one advantage and many disadvantages.

Extender is much more versatile, it can be used on polygons and verts, and now in LW 9 you can extend edges with it as well. I just find it much easier to control the shape I want when using it with scale and move, and point extending in general is much superior to poly beveling.

 

I wouldn't say it's next to useless. It's great when you want to mock up a quick windowframe or do hardwood floors. But I've noticed that the more complex a model becomes, the less I tend to use it.

[Renzatic]

I goofed around with procedurals a bit, and came up with a fairly decent rusted metal texture.

 

 

Not bad for 5 minutes worth of work. If I actually knew what I was doing, I bet I could come up with something astounding.

[Maximius]

oDDity what prog opens up that tutorial you put up? Nothing I have recognizes it. Does it work in LW directly, if so how please?

[oDDity]

It's encoded with divx, you might need to install the codecs.

[Maximius]

It's encoded with divx, you might need to install the codecs.

 

 

Ok its stupid question time people...

 

 

oDDity, I downloaded the Divx codec/player/converter bundle, nothing has changed with the tutorial. Its a zipped file right? Thats what the windows web service told me but my WinZip doesnt recognize it.

 

Darkness Falls: I found all of the functions you described but I cannot make my texture choices transfer to the modeler window. I have "textured" the little circular sample window in the surface editor so I know Im on the right path but I have to be missing some step. Ive tried to select all polys, not select, if that even means anything.

 

Im definitely buying a manual for this thing. Any recommendations?

 

thanks in advance