Lightwave Questions and Answers
 

LightWave Questions and Answers Thread

This thread is supposed to address the common questions someone might have when starting with Lightwave.
The idea is to post general questions about the tools without being too proyect-specific (In which case you should post your question in the LWBasics Lounge)
This in hopes of achieving a better understanding of the tools and basics that comprise Lightwave.

Try to keep the thread clean, and if a question get´s answered properly I´ll update the first post accordingly.
Respecting each one´s credits though.

At the time of creating this thread I had a question, but Phillip just answered it in the HotKeys thread

What are Splines?
 

Q: "... what are splines? and spline modeling?"
Originally posted by twisteddragon

"Websters dictionary has spline down as:
'a flexible strip (wood or rubber) used in drawing curved lines'

In the context of Lightwave, a spline is a mathematical curve that fits smoothly through a set of control points. The points control the overall shape of the curve, and also how tight any 'corners' are in the curve.

Spline modelling is the process of creating a 3D model by making a cage from a series of connected spline curves to get the overall shape of the model. These splines are then used as the 'anchors' for guiding the polygons you will create in the voids between them."
Answer by Mark

Original Thread

Thx. One more:

How do you do spline cages? i was fooling aroun dwith it for about an hour and coudlnt figure out it form a few online tutorials they werent specific enough and assumed you knew how to do them.

OK, spline cages in a nutshell (no it's not an O'Reilly computer book...)


First, ensure you've got some good background reference images loaded into Modeller. This makes life so much easier...

Next, start to draw your outlines in your orthographic views using a combination of: Bezier, Spline Draw or by adding points along the major outlines, selecting them in order and pressing Ctrl-p to make an open curve.

Keep on doing this for all the major curves/lines in the model (from your reference images). Where curves cross, try to aim to get points from each near to each other (keeping them nice and smooth) then weld them. If modelling point by point, simply select a point on the way when adding it to your curve (this is important - curves must be joined at the corners of the patch otherwise you won't be able to poly patch later). If, when making your splines, you need to increase the curvature in a section, then simply select the spline in polygon selection mode and add points to it using the add points tool.

Once finished, you need to select the curves within each patch area in a clockwise fashion and apply the 'Make Spline Patch' tool (Ctrl-f). From here, select the number of polygons to add in both parallel (to the first spline you selected) and perpendicular (to the first spline you selected) directions and whether to space them evenly along the length of the spline or at each curve 'knot' (point).

Repeat until done... :)

You'll also need to perform a merge points between the patches to sew them together either once the model is complete, or as you go along. Note that if you adjust your cage after you've created patches, you'll probably also need to resort to manual point welding to get some of them.

That's a quick, dirty, and probably not too fantastic method of doing this. I strongly urge you to get some points and start working through the McLaren tutorial to get some more insight. There's also a good spline modelling tutorial available here:


http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/ (look for the 'Build your own Whitestar' tutorial at the bottom).

One other point to note is try to plan your model before starting. You really want to aim to get as many four spline patches as possible, and for the polys in each adjacent patch to marry up as much as possible. (i.e.: if Patch X bunts up to Patch Y with 5 polygons, you want patch Y to also have 5 polygons in the same direction).

Hope this helps...

There is an excellent introduction to spline patching on Larry Shultz website.

Follow this link http://www.splinegod.com/onlinetraining.htm.

At the bottom of the page in the Free Tutorials section, there's a quicktime movie "Spline Patching Tutorial"

Wow thanks guys. Mark that helpes a lot:) i owe you one.

I'm kinda confused, what are subpatches used for and what do they do?

Read this its a good beginers guide/Tutorial on Sub-Division Surfaces.

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutori...l.asp?id=27488

Here is a little more advanced tutorial.

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutori...l.asp?id=27973

thanks

how can I cut down on rendering time? I have a fairly complex scene that I'm rendering and this is my first lightwave experience...
http://www.indigames.com/scene.jpg
this is an early render of it... I've become much more fluent and the scene has become bigger since but It takes a very long time to render...