IKBoost/Rhiggit Pro/Maestro vs MotionBuilder?

[3dWannabe]

I'm starting to learn MotionBuilder and curious on how I should focus my time.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of animating with IKBoost or other Lightwave techniques vs. animating with MotionBuilder?

I suppose Rhiggit Pro and Maestro would also enter into the picture, as they seem to be the top dog 3rd party tools for facilitating animation with Lightwave.

I understand how Rhiggit Pro seems to work well with MotionBuilder from his great videos, but I'm confused as to how one who owned both would take advantage of the best features of each?

And, I'm a bit unclear about how Maestro would work with MotionBuilder, and the advantages of each?

[Greenlaw]

Hi 3dWannabe,

Like me, I know you're using iPi Studio (http://www.ipisoft.com/) to record your own mocap performances, and that you've been looking for a best approach to getting that data onto character rigs in Lightwave. I don't have the definitive answer yet but here's an approach I'm investigating now using messiahStudio4:

How to apply motion capture in Messiah (http://www.usefulslug.com/tutorials.html) (The actual link for the video is at bottom of the page.)

And here are some interesting threads about the process at Setup Tab:

http://setuptab.com/index.php/topic,33.0.html
http://setuptab.com/index.php/topic,1166.0.html

If I understand correctly what I'm reading at SetupTab, with messiahStudio4 (http://www.projectmessiah.com/x6/index.html) you can apparently import a .bvh skeleton as a rig deformer for an already autorigged character and use the rig's normal animation controls to overide the .bvh motion when you need to. When you're done working with your mocap, messiahStudio appears to have excellent support for getting either bones animation or .mdd displacement data into Lightwave for rendering. One of the things that surprised me was how easy it seems to adapt the mocap data to a character model that's not even in the same T-Pose as the original .bvh rig. (If I'm misinterpreting the informaiton, anybody please correct me.)

I've actually owned a license of messiahStudio for some time but until recently I wasn't doing any character animation for my personal projects, and lately (for reasons detailed in other threads,) I feel like I need something more suitable for working with mocap data. (For similar reasons at work, we now use Maya there for character animation and working with mocap data, and output .mdd files to Lightwave for lighting and rendering.)

At this stage in my film project switching animation tools would mean another long delay so I'm trying to avoid making the swtich just yet, but I'll certainly be using messiahStudio for our next film, the long overdue 'RvJ', which ironically, has always been a Lightwave keyframe animation project, and not a mocap project. Half of it is already animated but, but my wife has been trying to convince me redo all the animation as mocap just so we can get the project off our plates and move on to something new. (This film has been sitting on the shelf for almost five years now, so she's probably right.) :)

Anyway, when I make my switch to messiahStudio, I'll probably continue using Animeeple (http://www.animeeple.com)for mixing and editing .bvh data, and exporting new .bvh files to use in messiaStudio, as it doesn't appear messiahStudio currently has the tools for mixing .bvh files and other mocap specific editing features found in Animeeple. (I could wrong about this, but I don't think so.)

Lightwave will, of course, continue to be my primary rendering engine; I have no complaints there. :)

I'll let you know how this works out.

G

Edit: Here's some more info of the topic, with videos: New Video Tutorial - Using BVH files with Messiah (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=92&t=614647&highlight=bvh)

[3dWannabe]

Greenlaw - always interested in a better way to do things. Thanks for the post.

But, I'm really hoping that the combination of MotionBuilder with a few hopefully low cost 3rd party tools, in addition to LW's native tools, will do the job.

MotionBuilder imports the ipi bvh perfectly and can play it. I just need to characterize it and I guess make a template for the skeleton if ipi doesn't create a MotionBuilder bvh export.

I've been looking at the Cageman tutorials on using MotionBuilder with LW, as well as RebelHill's FBX MotionBuilder tutorials.

It seems like weak link right now is Lightwave's buggy import/export of FBX. Not sure if I'm hopeful of a quick resolution to that problem, but RebelHill and Cageman certainly seem to have workarounds.

I'm just curious as to the 'best' way to tune the motions and create new ones?

Avatar relied (I think?) mostly on MotionBuilder (did they use other software to tune the motions?), so I"m hopeful that will turn out to be useful as I dig into it.

Maestro might be worth it just for their camera and lighting rigs, but as I haven't used it, I expect it has areas it excels in and areas it doesn't.

RHiggit Pro certainly seems interesting, using two different models for different purposes.

BTW - as you ( and I will hopefully next week) capture at 60 fps, how are you getting that down to 23.97 or whatever frame rate you need?

[Greenlaw]

But, I'm really hoping that the combination of MotionBuilder with a few hopefully low cost 3rd party tools, in addition to LW's native tools, will do the job.
I hear ya. But I'm trying to keep Motion Builder out of my project for a few reasons, and one of them is cost. And I think the combo of iPi Studio, Animeeple, Lightwave, and, eventually, messiahStudio will get me there.

It seems like weak link right now is Lightwave's buggy import/export of FBX. Not sure if I'm hopeful of a quick resolution to that problem, but RebelHill and Cageman certainly seem to have workarounds.
Yeah. I'm not sure why FBX exchange (Lightwave's and other app's) has caused so much trouble for me. At work, if we need to move bones animations from app to app, we use a custom tool to do this because FBX was just too much of a headache. I think the only thing we use FBX for now is moving camera data between LW and Fusion.

Anyway, I've sort of gotten things working at the moment but all the silly tricks I'm using to get it there would never fly in an actual production. It's just too much work for something that should be very simple to do.

Which is why the messiahStudio workflow interests me at the moment. They're not even bothering with FBX, just get the .bvh rig in the scene and start using it. I'm sure the actual process will be a little more complicated than what I'm currently imagining, but at least it seems simple and predictable. I think I can further streamline the process by getting my own character rigs into iPi DMC. One of the iPi programmers said LW's Collada is actually working well with their software, so I'll have to give it a try this week.

BTW - as you ( and I will hopefully next week) capture at 60 fps, how are you getting that down to 23.97 or whatever frame rate you need?
It's easy to do keyframe reduction in LW so I"m not concerned about that. I'm even toying with the idea of reducing it to 15fps or lower to get a 'stop motion' look. In theory, this will also reduce render times since I can render just every other frame at 30 fps, and hold every frame for 1 frame in Fusion. (This is what we did for the 'anime-style' car commercial we created many years ago.)

Also, getting back to messiahStudio, the .bvh importer apparently lets you do keyframe reductions as you load the data. That's nice! (Hmm. Maybe I should start using it for this project already.) :)

G.

[jasonwestmas]

Motion Builder is made for editing motion capture files and it's real time feedback so use it for that. You should be able to get your motion builder work into Lightwave using one of the FBX importers that are from Autodesk if the ones from NT don't work. I'm just guessing at this point as I haven't done this in a while.

If you just want some really nice rigging with great deforms. It takes some experimentation to get perfect but Rhiggit has a workflow that allows you to go back and fix the position of your joints easily, Rhiggit is superb. The rig you generate is fully customizable too but that takes some knowledge of how LW tools and motion modifiers work.

Maestro appears to have much more to offer in the keyframe management arena.

[RebelHill]

Ok... first off, IKboost... Great for maniplating baked motions in LW, copying, linking poses, motions etc, etc... but if you've got motion builder... why bother? It does all that and more, and does it WAY better.

Maestro, so far as I know doesnt work with fbx or motioncapture, as its purely a hand animation rig designed to work with the maestro animation interface.

As for rhiggit pro, thats just a system for getting rigs fitted into characters quicky and easily, with deformation setup, the fbx setup in there simply lets you make an fbx compatible skeleton for export, with a deformer rig that gives great deformations of your characters once you load the motions back onto the rig in LW. It does not allow you to load mocap onto the rig, and adjust, reanimate it, etc, etc.

Basically if you have MB, and are looking to work with mocap, then look no firther, you've already got the best tool there is for it, end of. Everything else has to do with how to get that mocap back into LW on a nicely deforming character that you can render out.

[ericsmith]

For the record, Maestro does include a MotionBuilder based rig that uses the same skeletal structure as a characterized rig in MB. The intention is to load your MB animation into the rig via FBX, and then you have control over all the joints additively. In other words, any animation you do in LW will be on another layer than the mocap applied on the bones themselves.

To be honest, I haven't put a ton of development into this rig, because I don't have MB, and only created the rig at the request of a user. So I just did what he requested, and never really used it myself. I can't really say how effective it is in real-world production.

Eric

[3dWannabe]

Ok... first off, IKboost... Great for maniplating baked motions in LW, copying, linking poses, motions etc, etc... but if you've got motion builder... why bother? It does all that and more, and does it WAY better.

Maestro, so far as I know doesnt work with fbx or motioncapture, as its purely a hand animation rig designed to work with the maestro animation interface.

As for rhiggit pro, thats just a system for getting rigs fitted into characters quicky and easily, with deformation setup, the fbx setup in there simply lets you make an fbx compatible skeleton for export, with a deformer rig that gives great deformations of your characters once you load the motions back onto the rig in LW. It does not allow you to load mocap onto the rig, and adjust, reanimate it, etc, etc.

Basically if you have MB, and are looking to work with mocap, then look no firther, you've already got the best tool there is for it, end of. Everything else has to do with how to get that mocap back into LW on a nicely deforming character that you can render out.

Ok, I understand rhiggit pro works well with MotionBuilder for mocap data, your videos were very impressive. So, MotionBuilder would be preferred not just for getting the motion onto a rig.

But, for non-mocap work creating motions from scratch (or for massaging mocap data), , would you use MotionBuilder for this also instead of the Lightwave tools when using your rhiggit pro rigs?

For the record, Maestro does include a MotionBuilder based rig that uses the same skeletal structure as a characterized rig in MB. The intention is to load your MB animation into the rig via FBX, and then you have control over all the joints additively. In other words, any animation you do in LW will be on another layer than the mocap applied on the bones themselves.

To be honest, I haven't put a ton of development into this rig, because I don't have MB, and only created the rig at the request of a user. So I just did what he requested, and never really used it myself. I can't really say how effective it is in real-world production.

Eric
I'd love to hear from Maestro users who also have MotionBuilder. Possibly Maestro would be one solution if you didn't have MotionBuilder and wanted to work totally in Lightwave.

I'm just trying to figure how to focus my time. If MotionBuilder is the end-all and be-all for motions, I could just go with that? Or, if Maestro provides other advantages, find a way to work with both?

However, besides getting the characters moving properly, there's the camera and also the lights. Getting the camera movements 'right' is probably equally important to the character movements.

I like your boom setup in your video, but ... I find that being able to move the camera in an equidistant arc around the target (camera always pointed at the target) is also very elegant.

Or, in an arc while the camera is moving closer/farther or up/down (not equidistant, but a very smooth natural movement).

Other than with a motion-control robot, we don't see this often in practical shots, but the effect is very pleasing.

I didn't see this capability in your video?

BTW - I'd expect that lights would benefit from being able to move in an equidistant arc, as the lighting could stay at a more consistent level?

[RebelHill]

you can use motionbuilder for creating motions from scratch... ie, hand animating... but its not really what its designed for, and I dont know of many who use it for such. However for editing, massaging, or working with mocap in any shape or form, yep, its pretty much the be all and end all.

as for rhiggit, the fbx rig doesnt allow for animating ontop of the mocap (ok, you could animate additvely, much as I would expect you can with maestro from erics description, but thats a very poor way to work with mocap in truth).

Otherwise, for hand animating, you'd use the standard rhiggit hand animation rig and jsut work straight in LW.

[jasonwestmas]

"But, for non-mocap work creating motions from scratch (or for massaging mocap data), , would you use MotionBuilder for this also instead of the Lightwave tools when using your rhiggit pro rigs?"

Mobu keyframing has it's own system as you may have already seen in action. Making hands and feet model stick to other objects is done through locking down the rotations and translations. This method is similar to using IKB on its own but the mobu implementation is tons better, it's what I hoped IKB would turn into some day but never did. So if you are more comfortable with LW IK and manipulators I would stick to that, especially if you need customization in your rig. Unless Mobu has changed quite a bit it's really just designed for Symmetrical biped characters. Which has its uses but again, the customization to the rig just isn't there like it is with a LW rig.

[ericsmith]

I like your boom setup in your video, but ... I find that being able to move the camera in an equidistant arc around the target (camera always pointed at the target) is also very elegant.

Or, in an arc while the camera is moving closer/farther or up/down (not equidistant, but a very smooth natural movement).

Other than with a motion-control robot, we don't see this often in practical shots, but the effect is very pleasing.

I didn't see this capability in your video?


Yeah, it's all there. The default mode is to be able to rotate the camera around a center point (equidistant arc). Now for example, if you wanted to rotate around an object while pushing in closer, you'd just animate one rotation channel, and another completely independant z motion channel. Because they're independent, you can get very smooth and elegant motions.

Regarding lights, yes, if you wanted to animate them, you'd get the same benefits. But even without animation being part of the picture, just being able to rotate them around a target makes life much simpler when setting them up.

Eric

[MaDDoX]

Basically if you have MB, and are looking to work with mocap, then look no firther, you've already got the best tool there is for it, end of.
What the man said! Although I'd like to add that, if you want to push out some really quick job (maybe pre-vis) and your animation is not too complex, say, no intricate walk cycles or interaction with other objects, I'd give a chance to ikBooster. Why? In a word - skinning, the process of setting your bone influence weights.

As a matter of fact, Mobu does have bone weight settings, but it's all too manual and stiff to be of any production value. The great advantage of going down the IKbooster path is not having to go through the *very* painful weight painting process. Even in Maya 2011 - which has probably got the best toolset out of the main 3D apps for such endeavors - it'll take you ages to get things as right as you get with Lightwave 3D's dynamic bone influence system. That's not even considering the bunch of interface inconsistencies, bugs and crashes that will punish you thoroughly in Maya 2011. Cinema4D has a nice weight painting system, but its weird FBX conversions plus lack of support for joints (last time I've checked) is quite a bummer, if you won't do it all inside C4D I wouldn't recommend it tbh.

You can try going the LW->Mobu->LW route, it's probably the best path if you can master it, just know that in 9.6 things were so hairy and complicated that I've quit that pipeline just for the import/export mayhem. From a few test I've done in a friends' studio things have improved 10x in LW 10, but I'd need to do more tests to tell you for sure that that's now an as simple pipeline as it should have always been.

you can use motionbuilder for creating motions from scratch... ie, hand animating... but its not really what its designed for, and I dont know of many who use it for such.
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more here. MB is the animation tool of choice in our studio for bipedes and quadrupedes, we've used it in real-world production for a full year now and it's not only rock-solid and consistent, it also gives you outstanding control of every part of animation - from the basics to the very fine tuning. Maya doesn't get CLOSE to its animation power, especially if you're into the amazing FBIK (full-body IK) rig, the Maya one is so buggy and flimsy that it shouldn't be there in the first place. That said, many animators say they hate FBIK, but in my understanding that's just a result of ignorance or lack of time/patience to master it, since I don't know of *any* biped or quadrupede animation that I can't animate better/faster/easier with Mobu. For the record, it did take me some time to understand custom rigging in Mobu, but it's not just "workable", it really excels in the amount of features it presents you. You can pretty much build graphical logic flow networks to "code in" your rig instead of scratching your head trying to make a .mel script work. A real joy.

For most simpler examples where you won't need to fiddle with Mocap I'd recommend a simpler custom (like Rhiggit) or IKB+IK rig all inside Lightwave. One last word of advice: don't overstretch yourself trying to master a flawless Mocap pipeline. Your mileage may vary according to the style and complexity of the animations you're working on, sure, but in my experience I've found that Mocap cleanup and optimization is very very time-expensive no matter what tool you use, and ends up being only really good for pose extraction and reference, and that's something which most modern CA tools will give you anyways.

[erikals]

wonder, ...who here uses Pose Saver plugins for hands?
and why / why not... ?

(except Eric... who uses Maestro)

[jasonwestmas]

wonder, ...who here uses Pose Saver plugins for hands?
and why / why not... ?

(except Eric... who uses Maestro)

I would if I had to switch between 4 extreme hand poses quite frequently. For subtle, more complicated poses I wouldn't use that unless I could still key on top of the pose for minor adjustments.

[Kevbarnes]

wonder, ...who here uses Pose Saver plugins for hands?
and why / why not... ?

(except Eric... who uses Maestro)

I would love to use the 'PoseSaver' Plug-In, but it broken? - Jacobo has very kindly made the source code available, for anyone to fix it.

Here is a link to my original request,

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113705


Bug:
The Current Version (Pose Saver 0.96) will work first time then cause LW 9.6 to crash and Corrupt the scene file. Next time you use the plug-in it doesn’t work properly ie, it will save bone pose info to file correctly but won't past it.


The source code is available from the Authors Site or the original Thread above.

httpwww.jacobobarreiro.comjwebscripts.

are there any Kind Script/progammers out there who might like to try.

[erikals]

link,
http://www.jacobobarreiro.com/jweb/scripts/

too bad, looked good...

[erikals]

maybe TAposeworks is the solution?
http://loupguru.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=50

[Greenlaw]

I bought TA Poseworks to help me with some rig symmetry editing a couple of months ago, but I've played a little bit with its pose saving and pasting features (which is what it's really designed for,) and it seems to work well. The plug-in is a 'steal' at $5.

[jasonwestmas]

I bought TA Poseworks to help me with some rig symmetry editing a couple of months ago, but I've played a little bit with its pose saving and pasting features (which is what it's really designed for,) and it seems to work well. The plug-in is a 'steal' at $5.

So I take it that the plugin works with scale,position,rotation for null object manipulators and not just bone poses?

[Greenlaw]

So I take it that the plugin works with scale,position,rotation for null object manipulators and not just bone poses?
You know, I only used it for bones/joints, and that was a while ago. From what I recall, it just saved keyframe data of item selections, so I'm guessing it will work with pos, rot, and scale of any LW object. The plug-in was designed to facilitate walk cycle creatation, and at the time I was mainly interested in its ability to mirror rig poses from one side to the other to help me with rig modifications. In the end, I decided that for this purpose, it was just as easy to delete half my rig and just use mirror hierarchy.

I could take another look at it after lunch. I'm actually interested in TA Poseworks again since we started this discussion. It could help me with in a shot I have coming up that is a closeup of a hand/paw on the fret board of a ukelele which involves quick, repeating changes to the finger positions.

G.

Edit: If I remember correctly, the plug-in is shareware, so you can try before you buy.

[erikals]

(small correction, not shareware)

[jasonwestmas]

You know, I only used it for bones/joints, and that was a while ago. From what I recall, it just saved keyframe data of item selections, so I'm guessing it will work with pos, rot, and scale of any LW object. The plug-in was designed to facilitate walk cycle creatation, and at the time I was mainly interested in its ability to mirror rig poses from one side to the other to help me with rig modifications. In the end, I decided that for this purpose, it was just as easy to delete half my rig and just use mirror hierarchy.

I could take another look at it after lunch. I'm actually interested in TA Poseworks again since we started this discussion. It could help me with in a shot I have coming up that is a closeup of a hand/paw on the fret board of a ukelele which involves quick, repeating changes to the finger positions.

G.

Edit: If I remember correctly, the plug-in is shareware, so you can try before you buy.

Ahh, well I'll give it a shot and report my findings with Rhiggit Lite. I'm about to do a bunch of walk and run cycles for characters moving around rooms and hallways. This plug looks appealing for that. I remember using the max plugin character studio and very much liking the "copy and paste-opposite-pose" functionality that had, it was great actually. I think this is one of the many reasons why studios still like max for games, the cyclic animation tools for example. I'm still wondering if LW will be practical for this kind of project where a lot of cycling is involved, otherwise I'll have to import mdd files from xsi or something. I'm still in pre-production mode here.

[Greenlaw]

(small correction, not shareware)
My bad. Thanks for correcting.

The included documentation describes it as 'Donationware' and says you can freely distribute it but I have to assume this is old information that TA forgot to remove because he is obviously now selling the Poseworks suite on his website.

Still...$5...almost cheap as free. :)

G.

[jasonwestmas]

Yeah, that $5 doesn't bother me too much, lol. . . I'll buy to try anyway.

[Greenlaw]

Ooh! I just looked at what else he has for sale, and Rig Ripper/Stitcher caught my attention. Ripper unparents all you bones/joints and parents them to the root. Stitcher reverse the process.

I needed to do just this for three mocap character ris last week while I made sure all my joints were exactly zeroed out in rotation. Unparenting and then zeroing all the rotations was easy, but putting the rigs back together was tedious. If this works, it's worth a lot more than $5 to me. :)

G.

[jasonwestmas]

I tested out Poseworks and the thing kicks total fanny with Rhiggit. :D A must have imo. If anyone needs help with it let me know, it is pretty easy to use after playing with it. Essentially you just select both "R" and "L" manipulators you want to mirror; Copy the frame; Then scrub to your new frame and click the Paste Mirror option. Really really nice and easy, plus comes with a nice undo and reselect feature.

[RebelHill]

Well, Ive used the TA poseworks for quite a while now, and have always found it a most useful tool to have.

In truth in 9.6, it seems to have gotten a lil buggy, with poses not always pasting correctly all the time... sometimes it seems to work, and other times seems to go screwy.

Or it could just be me, Im sure I remember something about a temp file/buffer where it stores the info to paste back, so could be my bad luck.

However, when it comes to co-ordinate layout, and naming conventions, you do have to have things setup correctly in a rig to be able to use the plugin properly, and with RHiggit, I made sure that the way co-ords translated between left and right sides were setup in such a way as to give proper functionality with TA poseworks.

[jasonwestmas]

Well, Ive used the TA poseworks for quite a while now, and have always found it a most useful tool to have.

In truth in 9.6, it seems to have gotten a lil buggy, with poses not always pasting correctly all the time... sometimes it seems to work, and other times seems to go screwy.

Or it could just be me, Im sure I remember something about a temp file/buffer where it stores the info to paste back, so could be my bad luck.

However, when it comes to co-ordinate layout, and naming conventions, you do have to have things setup correctly in a rig to be able to use the plugin properly, and with RHiggit, I made sure that the way co-ords translated between left and right sides were setup in such a way as to give proper functionality with TA poseworks.

Ive just been goofing around with a walk cycle. Rhiggit uses R_and L_ so all I do is paste-mirror to R and L inside the TA paste panel instead of using the default "Left" and "Right" names. So I think your rig names appear to work fine in the case of a walk cycle.

[jasonwestmas]

It's also good to point out that the FK Null/Manipulators can be easily mixed with the IK Null/Manipulators when using TA_Pose maker. I doubt bones and nulls can be somehow selected at the same time. In the past I would have to add a null to every manipulated bone in order to do complete selection sets.

[RebelHill]

It's also good to point out that the FK Null/Manipulators can be easily mixed with the IK Null/Manipulators when using TA_Pose maker. I doubt bones and nulls can be somehow selected at the same time. In the past I would have to add a null to every manipulated bone in order to do complete selection sets.

Yup... I should suspect that this whole null/bone selection mode thing is also one of the reasons Lino builds his rigs using bones for everything, Ik manipulators, the lot, so all the controls are of the same type and be selected together so there's less messing.

For my own part I like nulls as the shapes are more malleable, and make the controls easier to read whats what in viewport, but still its the same basic idea.

[jasonwestmas]

For my own part I like nulls as the shapes are more malleable, and make the controls easier to read whats what in viewport, but still its the same basic idea.

Yeah I think I like the null shapes better too, it helps me recognize where I am in 3D space when selecting. However I find them to be distracting when previewing the animation playback. I'm not good at filtering things out like that so I created a favorite set for all the manipulators and then use the hide selected items in the classic scene editor. When I want them back I just select the favorite set again and then go to Show selected items as=>solid.

It would be nice to have a visibility filter like in maya. I could then just check the geometry visiblity filter and be done with it.

[erikals]

maybe, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fcn3xZnJSA

[jasonwestmas]

nice erikals, I'll have to check that out.

[Greenlaw]

When I need to do this a lot, I like to set up Selection Sets in the new scene editor and then, after picking my preferred set, I just click and pick the visibility in any selected line. This changes the visibility for all selected items. It's a very nice feature if you need to work with different sets of selections in your scene.

The drawback is that you need to create unique Selection Sets for each new scene because there is no way I know of to share settings between Lightwave scene. This small hassle factor makes me use the Selection Sets feature less than I otherwise would. (Or maybe I'm missing something. Anybody know of an easy way to transfer Selection Set settings from scene to scene?)

What would be great is a way to combine the user defined Selection Sets with a one-click 'hide selection' button like Erikalis' plug-in, and of course the ability to save and load sets from scene to scene.

Yes, I want it all...it's all about the little things with me! :)

I like Lightwave 10, but I wish more attention had been paid to basic workflow improvements instead. For example, there's been a need for Load and Save settings everywhere in Lightwave (Schematic View layouts for example,) but it just never happens.

G.

[jasonwestmas]

Yes, I want it all...it's all about the little things with me! :)

I like Lightwave 10, but I wish more attention had been paid to basic workflow improvements instead. For example, there's been a need for Load and Save settings everywhere in Lightwave (Schematic View layouts for example,) but it just never happens.

G.

For me as well, I wish the small foundational things would get fixed/improved first.

Actually I believe Faulknermano (The Spread) has a set of scripts to transfer selection sets. The script-set is called Quick Select. I haven't fully played with it though.

http://thespread.faulknermano.com/_theoldspread/index.htm

He has a nice "character key set" script in there as well, channelsetsMC. Much cleaner way to lay down keys, helps ogl performance for larger projects.

[erikals]

...must check that one out :]

[Greenlaw]

Hey, thanks for the tips guys! Downloading both tools now. :)