Event Driven Image Maps!

[Ramon]

Hello all.
In "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa, a Maya artist that outlined in detail, a method that I have often wondered about (off and on) for quite awhile now - Event driven image maps! This is the best techinque for providing the nuances of detailing to a character's individual and specific motions.
Ex: A character's neckbone rotated down towards his chest spawns a custum bumpmap (could be any map) of neck wrinkles that were created/painted for that specific area of the character. This techinque of course could be used in all sorts of applications. Although he uses expressions, Maya's "Set Driven Key" can also be used (for those of us who are more visually inclined) to drive the image maps.
Is this possible in LW through it's Set Driven Key. I know follower doesn't allow for image maps to be "driven". If LW is capable, then is if possible to have an event drive several image maps in a particular sequence through say,an envelope? You might need a series of image maps in orde to look like there are moving in response to the deformation "driver" object. I will try somethings in LW and see if it's doable. This would be awesome - Infinite detail, minimal geometry.
Does anyone have an idea as how to do this in Lightwave (perferably without the use of expressions)?
Pre-Thanks!
PS... The "Stop Staring" book is very interesting.

[HowardM]

That sounds cool, so please do share if you figure it out!
Can Expressions do this?

[Ramon]

Yeah Howard, it's really cool! You should check out the book as he explains it in greater detail. If LW can do this - link events/morphs - to one or more imagemaps, through a graph editor for contol, that would be slickness!

Maybe someone here can elaborate on the possibilities of this technique in LW since I'm sure that it would be so beneficial to all LW users. I've just now thought of another use for this: when certain material stretch, they appear more specular in the streched area. With this technique, the specularity map (in this case) would be automated. Many more important uses for this could be utilitized.

[HowardM]

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=828365#post828365

:)

[Ramon]

Hey Howard thanks for the info for the CGTALK discussion and for your post on it. I think I'll join in on the topic. Although it's funny, because I thought that Larry Shultz would answer on that topic here first. He definitely helps out a lot here. Thanks to all LW users, it's a great community.
I have to start checking CGtalk more frequently also. However, I would still like to know about combining several images over a series of frames and if it can be done by just using set driven key or other non- manual expression setup/plugin.

[richpr]

It reminds me a bit of the Infinimap plugin... do a search here...