Newbie Animation
 

Hello,

Ive been working on a project for a long time now and am just about ready to start animating... but im still having problems in creating: clouds, smoke, fire, tracers and explosions.


My project is going to be a WW2 video about a flight of bombers over Europe. it takes them from start up at the airfield (smoke) to getting attacked by a Bf109s (tracers, smoke, explosions, fire) then dropping bombs and landing back at home. ive got LightWave 9.3.

Im looking for a good tutorial that would help get the basic idea of how these things would be created and animated.


Thanks for the help!

Not knowing everything about it, I'd still say with my limited knowledge that what you're asking for is a lot. There might be a dozen or so tutorials in just this one request.

As far as particles and explosions, etc., there are some tutorials and even scripts and plugins you could find to help you. One such plugin is here - http://jawset.com/gallery_tfd.php There is a Lightwave plugin.

:(

thnx, ill keep looking around

Smoke, Fire and Explosions
 

I can show you the basics of setting up smoke and fire in the air.

The basics of it: You will need to setup two particle emitters. This takes about 10 minutes of setup and about 20 minutes of tweaking to fit your scene size.

The two emitters are a Fire Emitter and a Smoke Emitter.

The Fire Emitter will need to have more of a setup than the Smoke Emitter. The Fire Emitter will be the Parent and the Smoke Emitter will be the child of the Fire Emitter. Basically -> Parent the Smoke Emitter to the Fire Emitter.

You will then control the Fire Emitter with Gradients in the Geometry and Shading Tab. These will be setup within the Texture Channels.

I will post up some basics on how to create basic fire and smoke. Once you learn the basics of what each channel does and what it controls you can then setup your own effects. I will try and type it out tonight or this week.

I created military simulations for some years with Lightwave and all I did was Smoke, Explosions, Fire, Tracers (Do it in post) and other assorted war stuff.
Just let us know what you are actually looking for.
Glen :ninja:

*Edit - I forgot to mention that I will be releasing a podcast on iTunes soon for Lightwave training. Our first topic is actually creating a campfire without any plug-ins. We will then be going into creating fire with the Jawset Plugin Turblence and the Fire and Smoke generator plug-in from Pawel Olas as well. I will post up when it is available and most of all it is free.

@juniordebo - Please let us know how to see this, once you're finished.

great news! i really appreciate it.

what im looking to do is some what like this.
YouTube - ‪TheLongGoodnight.avi‬‏

but everything will be my own doing, the models and the animation.

Smoke: Engine Starts, Cannon Hits, Engine Fires, Post Bombing
Fire: Cannon Hits, Engine Fires, Explosions
Tracers: From Tail Guns, from Aircraft


thanks!

Tall Order
 

As soon as I finish up this tutorial on Lightwave to UV Layout back to Lightwave tonight, I can help you out. Remember, I am not going to show you how to do an explosion, cannon fire, smoke coming out of an engine. The reason behind that is then the only thing your doing is copying what I am doing and recreating it in Lightwave. What I will show you is what the Emitters do and how they work inside Lightwave. I will show you the basics behind the particles. We will create a basic scene with a Fire Emitter and a Smoke Emitter mixing together.

This information will help you better than learning something specific. Once you learn the foundations behind it you will create things better. Just basic videos and then later on more advanced videos. Some people believe that learning how to create an explosion from a building they then know how to use particles. IMHO that isn't true. You understand what particles do for that scene and how they interact with each other.

Apologies for the long speech but I have been asked a lot on how to do stuff from beginners and they expect a step by step presentation on how to create something in Lightwave. Once you understand the tools and what they do then you can create an enormous amount of stuff. Thanks for listening.

Glen :ninja:

agree with "sniper62" replay well replay dude. very nice sharing.

bump after a long while :P

Where are you at so far sniper? Any objects modeled out for your animation? Maybe some experiments...

just started to learn how to use hypervoxels and partical emitters this week. im basing the engine start off of: (4:27-4:51)The Restorers - Episode Sample - YouTube
and heres what i have so far:engine smoke - YouTube


im by no means a pro, im just a n00b that likes to do this stuff for fun so its nothing spectacular, but heres what is modeled so far:
Spitfire
http://snipets.myvnc.com/imgs/LWSpitIX.jpg
109
http://snipets.myvnc.com/imgs/LW109E.jpg
Hangar
http://snipets.myvnc.com/imgs/LWHangar.jpg
Control Tower
http://snipets.myvnc.com/imgs/LWTower.jpg