Help with star field and spaceship animation
 

I need help with star field and spaceship animation on some Star trek ships. I'm using lightwave 9.0 and it gives me problems combining the star fields with my ship scenes. Mainly,,I load up the star scene and the ships disappear,,if I load the ships first,,its the same thing.
On the starships,I want to make the beacon light blink and the warp bussards in front glow and appear to be turning. A picture is included. Any help would be appreciated as I am still learning these things
Lee

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/649...tis2jp1.th.jpg

the models do not dissappear, but the stars object is so big that you don't see your model anymore.
press 'd' to get your display panel and reset the grid options to about 10 meters or so, if you still don't see your ship move the camera around a little ( or reset it first ).
then you should find your model. If you don't, check the size of your model in modeler, if it's true size, then it should be a few hundred meters I guess, so adjust the grid to that....

a blinking light : you have to make an envelope in your surface options panel for the light surface, in luminosity.
basically, make a key for maybe 100% and 0% and then set it to loop ( I dunno by head where this button is,sorry, look around a bit )
to add glow to your light, in surface options, advanced tab you'll find a button 'glow effect', check this on.
to set the glow however you have to go to the image processing tab ( F7 or something ?, click enable glow and set radius and intensity ).

! this is only for a light object surface, it won't spread light !
For this you have to add a pointlight and make an envelope in similar matter ( with same keyframes offcourse ).

for the warp bussards ( whatever that is ?! I'm not a trekkie :) )
you can use the glow effect too.
Turning : put these objects in a separate layer, set their pivotpoint to the center of the object, slave them to the shipmodel and then rotate them using keyframes.
Naturally, if these are perfectly round and turn around their axle, you'll need some texture on it to make the rotation visible.

hope that helps....

reply
 

the bussards are the things that are orange in the picture. Not exactly sure how to pull that one off right off my head but I will play with it as you instructed.

The star field straighthened out just like you said,,and I am working on the blinking lights now. Thanks so much AND,, if you get any better idea (or I should say; a better way to explain it to me,,lol) how to make the bussard turn,,let me know

Thank you very, very much for your help

Lee:attn: :D

ehm, I'll try again...:p

first go to modeler and select all your polygons that make up the orange bussard.
( you can do this easily by first setting modeler in polygon modus and then going to the polygon statistics panel which you should find at the bottom of your screen ( I'm using 8.0 so I'm not completely sure about the exact location )
In this panel go to surface and select the surface that makes up your orange polygons ( called orange or bussard or something similar ), click '+' at the left and then you have all your poly's selected.

ok, next step : cut the poly's, go to another layer and paste them again, then select the poly's of just one of the bussards by dragging a circle around them with your mouse, cut them and paste them in another layer.

so you now have 3 layers : ship, left bussard, right bussard.

save and go to lightwave. load your model, select one of the bussards, and then click 'motion options' ( I believe it's at the bottom panel ) select a parent item for the object, which is your ship. Do the same for the second bussard.

select one of the bussards and then click 'move pivot point' ( I think it's in the modify tab ). drag the pivot point which will be in the middle of the ship to the dead center of the bussard. Save, and then do the same for the second bussard.

To illustrate what this does : try to rotate the bussard before moving the pivot, and then try again after moving it, you'll see that the center of rotation is changed.

Now this is done, you can set keyframes for the rotation of the bussards. When you move the ship around, the bussards will follow these movements, while their own rotation is still perfect.

in the pic the bussards are just orange, so their rotation will not be visible if you render, unless you set a texture on it.
This could be anithing from bump to dirt to whatever really....

hope this helps...;)

Great!!
 

Thank you for your patience and help,,It work Great!

Your help has greatly helped me in my knowlegde of lightwave plus helped me correct a problem that has plagued me for a while. All that I have learned so far has been pretty much taught by video tutorials and help from a few people kind enough to help such as yourself. I still have much to learn but this is a great start.
Again,

Thank You Very,Very Much

Lee:attn: :beer:

no problem, glad to be of help:p