cavalos
05-29-2003, 08:23 PM
So...what´s going on here???
Best
Christian
-------------------------------------
When we started out on Sierra's "Arcanum" opening cinematic, it became quickly apparent that we had quite a lot of work to do in a very short time. One of the big problems we had was there were several shots that required complex particle and volumetric animation that was either not possible or time prohibitive in Lightwave. We determined that these shots that included Lightwave and MAX elements required some kind of scene level integration.
We hired Next Limit to write a suite of tools that would allow our Lightwave animations to be brought into MAX quick and easily. We couldn't just translate the camera information as we needed characters that were animated and rendered in Messiah and Lightwave respectively to interact with MAX particle and volumetrics in real 3d space - not just 2d layers. For example, one shot called for a character to fight off several attackers, raising a wall of rock to defend himself. The character was animated in Messiah/Lightwave and using Lw2Max the animator was able to export the character geometry/motion and camera data selectively. This included full bone and expression deformation. At that point I was able to bring in the data to MAX and use it to build my effects.
Lw2Max cut my production time in half. I didn't have to guess about anything, just import the data and go to work. As the animation was refined and updated, I reimported the data and made adjustments. For the final output I set the imported geometry as a matte object allowing the character to realistically interact with the volumetric effects. The result was very sucessful and helped us get the job done on time and on budget.
__________________
Brandon Davis
Computer Cafe
Best
Christian
-------------------------------------
When we started out on Sierra's "Arcanum" opening cinematic, it became quickly apparent that we had quite a lot of work to do in a very short time. One of the big problems we had was there were several shots that required complex particle and volumetric animation that was either not possible or time prohibitive in Lightwave. We determined that these shots that included Lightwave and MAX elements required some kind of scene level integration.
We hired Next Limit to write a suite of tools that would allow our Lightwave animations to be brought into MAX quick and easily. We couldn't just translate the camera information as we needed characters that were animated and rendered in Messiah and Lightwave respectively to interact with MAX particle and volumetrics in real 3d space - not just 2d layers. For example, one shot called for a character to fight off several attackers, raising a wall of rock to defend himself. The character was animated in Messiah/Lightwave and using Lw2Max the animator was able to export the character geometry/motion and camera data selectively. This included full bone and expression deformation. At that point I was able to bring in the data to MAX and use it to build my effects.
Lw2Max cut my production time in half. I didn't have to guess about anything, just import the data and go to work. As the animation was refined and updated, I reimported the data and made adjustments. For the final output I set the imported geometry as a matte object allowing the character to realistically interact with the volumetric effects. The result was very sucessful and helped us get the job done on time and on budget.
__________________
Brandon Davis
Computer Cafe