LOCATION:
Auckland University of Technology (AUT)
State Building (corner of Wakefield and Queen streets)
13th floor (room 1307)
Auckland

DATE:
Wednesday, 20th Mar 2002
5:45 to 10:00pm.

WHAT HAPPENED:
We started off with a slide show of LW artwork that I'd collected from some LightWave forums and lists to show what people had been up to around the world - It was great to be able to show some of the new users some classic examples of just what was possible with LightWave, and I was pleased that people were asking questions...

We also looked at a few (just a few (like 6)) videos, this time all created with LightWave - From short animations to demo reels by companies like Eden FX. Again, it was great to get some conversation and chat this time around.

SHOW AND TELL:
I was pleased to have a presentation of an animation (just completed that day!) by three very talented people I had the privelege to assist both with the project, and as students last year.

FEED YOUR URGE!
'Urge', a youth information campaign on the risks of drugs, alcohol, smoking and more. The campaign mascot was 'urge', a dog who took all kinds of nasty things and partied like crazy! This was all presented in a 30+ second cool celshaded, character animated short. They even created the original music backing track - Overall fantastic project done in around 3 weeks! Check out www.urge.co.nz to check out what it's all about (the campaign that is!).

Kudos must go to Anna Greve who did a nice job creating a CGI version of the Urge dog - You can check out more of Anna's work on her new web site.

AUTO-MAN LIVES
I also updated everyone with a small Expression to add auto-camera shake to the gunfire expressions I introduced last meeting! My previous version used Jolt and had hand-set keys. I wanted to get the complete effect automated if I could...

TUTORIALS
ARMAGEDDON OUTTA HERE!
The first tutorial was an introduction to both LightWave's particle system and how to generate cool smoke trails with Hypervoxels. Click the image of the smoke to download a small mpeg video file showing how the whole tutorial started. I was inspired by a question posted on the Newtek discussion forum asking how to create a burning meteor flying over the ocean.

This particular example has two emitters - One for the meteor, and another one that generates some spray on the water itself (Tip - I used Sprite mode on the water to get a misty look)

The tutorial started by looking at the HVparticle emitter and how its parameters worked. Adding the HV particles and using generic 'volumetric' settings got us started, firing up Viper we were ready to make smoke.

After adding a gradient to simulate the colour of the smoke from white hot,to red, to black soot and out the grey, and then playing with lens flares we managed to loosely re-create the video I had created...

SCI-FLY!
Someone requested that I cover some basic texturing and surfacing stuff - The night before the meeting, I purpose-built a simple flying-wing ship to demonstrate the basics of creating texture maps, and some thoughts of how to best approach the texture design of such a vehicle.

I covered grabbing a snapshot of the model as a template for painting, then used Photoshop 6 (I got so lost being a user of the older 4) to generate a base colour map, then the diffuse and specular maps to control the way light affected the surface. I explained how you should plan the design and layout of panels, how to 'dirty up' the surface quickly, and then how to apply extra image maps to further enhance the overall look of the objects. In this case, we used the 'genericpanel' image map as a small tile pattern in the diffuse/specular layers to create small hilights and effects... I think by the time we'd finished, it was starting to feel a little 'Babylon 5'-ish! (thanks to that panel map!)

FINALLY...
It was a long one this meeting - But I hope people got plenty of information out of the tutorials and it was nice to get people chatting and talking this meeting...

Til next time - Get those images, models, problems and questions together and we'll see you on the 17th April!




Kevman