Lines

[vivekd]

Hi,

I have imported x,y,z coordinate data into lightwave and attached a curve to them. How can I make these line renderable in lightwave without having to rail clone or reail extrude I just want the lines to show up.

Also is there a tutorial available for animating an aurora?


-thanks

Vivek

[mattclary]

Hmmmm, that is kinda odd. two point polys render OK, not sure why a curve won't....

[Matt]

splines don't render, freezing it doesn't help either as it creates a polygon (be nice if it didn't)

the only way I know of (other than Rail Extrude, which is your best/fastest solution here) is to freeze the curve, kill the poly (but keep the points) then select two points at a time and create a 2-point poly, do this until you re-create your entire curve. this is of course the LONG way of doing it!!!!

[vivekd]

Is lightwave the only package which doesn't allow spline rendering?

It seems quite odd that a simple thing like a line can't be rendered.

[evenflcw]

There are free plugins that will do what Matt mentioned automatically. Make a search in the plugin database at FLAY.com

Like this one for example:
http://www.flay.com/GetDetail.cfm?ID=1167

LW renders polygons, most other programs do aswell. It's likely that these other freeze splines at rendertime or let you work with a polygonal version of a spline at all times.

[faulknermano]

Originally posted by vivekd
Is lightwave the only package which doesn't allow spline rendering?

maya's one. why do ask? :D

[vivekd]

I ask why only lightwave because it seems odd that a simple thing like rendering a spline is not part of the program. Don't get me wrong I have been a LW user for many years and i love the program but i still don't understand why we just can't render splines.

the work i do is based on generating field lines and spline or curve rendering would be so much easier to work with.


-Vivek

[WCameron]

you can get the spline to show up in Layout by using the Show Curv plugin on the object layer - but it wont render.

an alternative might by a plugin called Curves2Lines. which automatically turns splines into rows of 2 point polygon lines.
A high enough length/knot number will give you a poly line that curves as smoothly as the original spline.

since theres no info on the pannel I suspect it must come with
Lightwave nativly (I dont recall getting it elsewhere now that I think about it. but if I did more than likely through Flay).

- Will.

[faulknermano]

Originally posted by vivekd
I ask why only lightwave because it seems odd that a simple thing like rendering a spline is not part of the program. Don't get me wrong I have been a LW user for many years and i love the program but i still don't understand why we just can't render splines.

-Vivek

i dont mean to get on your case like this: but i'm not defending lw (or maya for that matter). your question seemed like rhetorical question, but it did have an answer (based on my knowledge).

it's a classic case of "you cannot expect your app to do everything you predestined for it to do" even if it was simple. in a couple of apps i use, including photoshop, there are a lot of 'simple' features that 'ought' to be there but isnt. (like a simple transform node deformer! cmon, it's already photoshop 7 and it doesnt have a good deformer!) :D

this isnt the feature request section so i'm feeling free to respond to these complaints. (whereas i steer clear of suggesting anything in the feature requests area). if this is a tips and tricks section, i'm thinking you want a solution. mattlclary's post offered you two solutions which, imo, were good. to begin with i dont quite understand why you dont want to rail extrude.

let me see what i can dig up in my closet:



// will turn the polygon into a series of two point polys.

main
{
selmode(DIRECT);
polyc = polycount();
if(polyc[1] != 1)
error("Select one poly only.");

selmode(USER);
freezecurves();
pc = editbegin();
thePoly = polygons[1];

// get polypoints
pi = polyinfo(thePoly);
pi[1] = nil;
pi.pack(); pi.trunc();

for(i=1;i<pi.size();i++)
{
p[1] = pi[i];
p[2] = pi[i+1];
addpolygon(p);
}
p[1] = pi[pi.size()];
p[2] = pi[1];
addpolygon(p);
editend();
delete(); // delete orig poly

}


but then again, will's curve2line reference would probably be your thing. or maybe it's the same code. i dunno. whatever..... you can suggest this in the feature request area. i wont bug you there. :D

[vivekd]

The curve to poly works great for rendering the splines...thanks all for your help.....

On to creating an Aurora. What I have been doing is using a bezier curve and applying sprites to it to simulate an aurora but the aurora doesn't seem realistic enough.....Should I work the aurora like a waving flag or is hypervoxels the best way for simulating it....


-Vivek

[riki]

Why you need to render a spline and what kind of result are you trying to achieve?

[Red_Oddity]

Railextruding the first point of that Curve does the trick aswell, no plugins needed for something as simple as this...

[Bayaron]

http://www.lightwave3d.ru/files/97_1033401403.jpg

1 select
2 bevel
3 move
4 delete points

[Matt]

bayaron - how does that work with a spline exactly?

red_oddity - rail extruding the point along a spline gives you points along the spline path (which gives more control than freezing) but it still doesn't create a chain of 2 point polys which will show up in a render, so a plugin is still needed.

[JulianW]

To tidy up some of those questions.. (feel free to answer yourselves if I mess up)

A1
Freeze the spline, bevel (no offset), move the points way off, delete the new points (you then need to delete a 2 point poly if you wanted an open curve).

A2
Instead of a point use a single point polygon. You can either select the point and use the "Make Pol" tool, or use the "Points to Polys" tool which will turn all points (whether already part of a spline or polygon or not) into single point polygons.


JW.