Some out of the box questions

[DiedonD]

Hi does anybody know anything about these issues?

1) Can Lightwave 8 open AutoCad files, and edit and play aorund with'em

2) Does Lightwave 8 work with the old Digital Puppeteering Armature named MONKEY2. If you dont know what it is, its like a Waldo machine that would speed up character animation. Im in between negociations in buying one, thus I want to know weather Ligtwave 8 still supports it, like it use to. Also Im interested in buying one if anyone from you guys has MONKEY2

3) "There's danger from the edge of town" - Jimmy Morison (The End). Id ont know weather you've heard about this. But Maya, the other competitive software has Voice Works software on its side now. They say its a software that would automatically make the characters lips move the moment you input voice in it. Thats fascinating, as it would speed up lip movement animation and leave you with the more juicy stuff. Beiing such a great product, what does Lightwave have that would match such an "aggresive" product as they say. DO you know weather LIghtwave already has such a programme, or weather it may one day have something like that?

[mattclary]

1. LW can't open ACAD dwg files, but you can save the ACAD files as dxf and (I think) 3ds files that will open in LW.

2. No idea.

3. I don't think so, but try searching here and at flay.com for "lip sync"

[Dodgy]

http://www.daz3d.com/program/mimic/

I have this and it's amazing for lip syncing. It's a plugin for LW, and you load your wav file, write what the wav says in a rough kind of phonetic text (this can be loaded from a txt file) and hit analyse and it'll do the work for you. You can use multiple morph targets mixed together for the phonemes or model individual phoneme shapes. It's completely non-linear so you can go back and edit any part of the process and it'll update the animation to suit, and if you have blinks, or emotions it'll put those in too.

[Kurtis]

I am not familiar with the Monkey2 product personally. However, according to their site, they support LightWave.

http://www.didi.com/www/areas/products/monkey2/MK3/index.html

As to whether it will work with 9, you would need to check with them to be sure. I have asked our dev team, and they are not aware of any changes that would affect this specific product, but as with all 3rd-party products, it is up to the individual developer to maintain product compatability. They can work with our dev team on keeping their drivers up to date with changes in the software even before it is released.

[spec24]

$22,000! For that I'll but a real monkey and teach him LW! :D

[ercaxus]

$22,000! For that I'll but a real monkey and teach him LW! :D

$22000 !! Need a monkey? I'll do walkcycles for that kinda money all day :lol:

[SplineGod]

Last time I saw drivers for LW that worked was back in LW5.5 days. On their website they say that they support LW on SGI and NT which is a good sign that the drivers havent been updated in a long time. I would be surprised if they still work.