[Cryptor69]

Heya, I have lightwave 8, my goal is to start making models but I just can't grip this modeler ;(

Can anyone tell me where I could donwload some pdfs, tutorials that cover modeling for lightwave 8 ?

There seems to be a real shortage of basic modeling tutorials for the v. 8, almost as if everyone assumed that since you have v8 you must have learned everything from the earlier versions.

Any help you be VERY appreciated.

QUESTION #2 - When making a model, at the very beginning. when I make polys by joining points into polys, how do I choose/activate a point that is a part of an existing poly to make it one of the corners in a poly thay I'a, about to create ? ie to have the two polys share that point.

[R4s1n]

The only reason that there is a shortage of Lightwave 8 tutes is because it only came out like a month ago. But give it a month or two and you should see many many tutes start surfacing in the Lightwave communities.

I'm not totaly sure about your second question but i'll try my best at explaining it.
If you have four points that need to be activated and made into a quad poly than select them in a clockwise fasion. and hit the hotkey 'p'. This will create a quad poly with the existing points that are shared by other polys.
I seriously hope this is what you were looking If anything that write away and ask it again.

[Cryptor69]

Excellent. Thnx. Now... This will sound really dumb..

How do you delete points ? Often I make points that I end up not using.

And....How do you "select a point" ? This is one of those typical things I find in tutorials. They assume that how to select a point is obvious I ask 'couse it seems much easier to create a whole bunch of outline points ( for ex. when making an eye ) to have the shape down, before starting to make the outside polys.

ANy of this makes sence ?

[Fallenswordsman]

Okay at the bottom of the screen - there are various buttons to select the mode you are working in. Click on "Points" and you'll be in point selection mode. Then you can select a point by clicking on it and delete it by using the delete key. To deselect all points, click on a blank space in the menus.

[R4s1n]

Just a side note: Play around with all the tool that are there for you. I tend to stay away from ones that are RAM thirsty.

[Cryptor69]

Thnx alot for your answers

O.K. I have another question for you guys, this is another ( last unexplained ) problem that I have encountered right from the start :

http://www.tube-puppy.com/LW/lw_oko.htm

This looks pretty weird and I was thinking that it's 'couse the polys are not connected at few points & therefore it is not being shown as a single surface.

Am I right ?
How do I fix this ?

PS: When I try to choose an existing point on an existing poly I can only choose one and it won;t let me choose any more , am I doing something wrong ?

[ozwolf]

Hello Cryptor69,

the picture looks as if some polygons need to be flipped, sometimes different tools cause this. Get the polygon tool (ctrl+h)
select the polygon and press the f key.

But if the points are not connected you can weld them by getting the point tool (crtl+g) select the points that you wish weld and press crtl+w. this will weld the 2 points together. the first point selected will move to the position of the second point, and the 2 points will become one.

question2: now to select multiple points you can hold down shift whilst selecting points or you can use the lasso tool if the points are in a line or grouped together closely. press and hold the right mouse button and move the cursor around the points, this will select them.

these methods are from my experience using ver 7 , but i am sure the basics will remain the same.

Hope this helps mate.
OzWOlf

[rich_is_bored]

Go crazy and download the tutorials here...

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...html?cat_id=23

They were made in Lightwave 7.5 but they should still apply to version 8.

First and foremost download the Lightwave UI tutorial.

All the tutorials in that section are free.

[R4s1n]

Seems also that some points are exactly on top of each so before welding hit 'm' to merge those points together. For the merge to work don't select any points just hit 'm' and click 'ok'.

After merging, if you still have any more of those weird subpatching errors then weld the rest like ozwolf has mentioned.

[Fallenswordsman]

Actually, one thing I really like about this forum is that people can ask questions and we don't get people just telling them to read the manual. I've been trying to read the manual myself throught this evening and sometimes things are better explained by others rewording things or just explaining them differently. Kudos to everyone!

[R4s1n]

That's a good point I've been to many forums where their favorite phrase is 'read the manual'. I think this discourages some Lightwavers because the manual is like 700+ pages.

[Cryptor69]

Thank you so much for your help, your suggestions are invaluable !

IMHO it is especially important for lightwave community to produce quality tutorial due to the simple fact that lightwave interface has a totally different setup then most programs, ie: no icons. Personally I'am so used to icons on all buttons that it is still very hard for me to figure things out after 2 weeks of playing with it. You would figure that it should be easier as each button specifically says what it is, but nop.

Another thing that I find incredibly frustrating is the lack of tutorials for current version of lightwave. The menu looks different on ver 8 then it does on other versions, this makes the older tutorials extremelly confusing. Not to mention the lack of tutorials for complete newbies ( by complete newbies I mean people like myself who aquired lightwave recently and need to be told exactly what to press to do things, and not just being told to do something.

Hope thisd makes sence. I have been downloading the tutorials from this site, they should help

BTW this site has been the most help to me from all of the popular 3D sites, keep up the excellent work guys !