Noob with a problem....

[Antiquitas]

So I'm a rampaging Noobasaurus, and I apologize if my noob beams will become too intense, but I ask thee, to be long suffering in my most uncooth dolting of intellects.

I'z got me a shiney new Lightwave 9.5 with all them bells and whistles. Turns out I'm actually a cheap skate and went the horrible horrible route of downloading makehuman instead of learning to model via Lightwave. This being said, Makehuman exports in Collada, happy pants are now on, and Lightwave doth indeed reads thine buggery. Yet, with the Skelegon (not Skeletor) loaded with the jazz hands and model, how do I get the model to move with the skeleton? How do I utilize that fancy tab key of smoothiness in the layout window? How do I change the freaky eyebrows of Sasquatch on my female models? How do you build a flux capacitor? And how can I utilize collada with Lightwave?

It frustrates me so much sometimes I look to the heavens and say, "KHAAAAAAAN!!!!" Then I realize the Heavens can't really hear me, so now I turn to thee oh yee Gods of Render. Thine immortal host of Lightwave Controllers and Manipulators, yee Valkyries of Polygons and Einherjar of Subsurface, I beseech thee, oh merciful NewTek warriors.

Help me, Oh Renderer, you're my only hope.

P.S. A cookie to the man who understands my post...and maybe a slice of cheesecake for the lady.

[Traveler]

Soo, ehh about that flux capacitor,... you already have the required 1.21 gigawatts of power for that thing to work properly?

[Antiquitas]

What? NO! Are you mad? I'm sure where you come from you may be able to just stroll into a convenient store and pick up plutonium off the shelf, but around here it's a little hard to come by. The only thing that would reach that is a bolt of lightning.

[adamredwoods]

I'm guessing your skelegons are in a separate layer in your model, or they are in a separate object. I'm also assuming you have already done the "Convert skelegons to bones".

- Select model to deform.
- Press SHIFT-B
- Press P
- in the PROPERTIES MENU, at the top, USE BONES FROM should be the object/layer that contains your bones.

[Antiquitas]

Ah, Voltron, come to save me yet again. So the short of it is, yes all the various attributes of the collada file are in separate layers. Regretfully my skelegons are not converted over, because I am a monkey with a computer and all that implies. No I have not written War and Peace...yet.

Well, you know what? Let me tell you what I am doing so you can laugh at me later.

I click on file --> Load Object --> find my .dae file and double click on that --> greeted by "Load all objects in separate layers" --> I check the box --> wait as my laptop tries to give birth, and viola, model in all his polygonal glory --> looking in the upper right hand I only see one layer, yet when I go to wire frame I can even see the skeleton underneath the skin. What am I doing wrong?

[adamredwoods]

Oh, are you in Modeler? Lightwave is broken up into two parts: Modeler and Layout.
Modeler is for making, Layout is for animating and rendering.

After you've loaded in Modeler, save out your file to a .lwo file, then SEND TO LAYOUT, -or- just go to Layout press "+" in Layout and add the LWO file.

At this point I have to recommend a beginners video or tutorial or book so you can properly understand Lightwave and get the best benefit from it.

[Antiquitas]

Hhmm....beginner, eh? Yes, I shall do such. Proceed, handsomely now.

[Antiquitas]

Ah poop. I'm trying to mess around with Eki's PlugPak, the unregistered version, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego keeping my Sun_Preview.lwo files and such? The only thing that really works is the ambience, and I can't even adjust camera angles or nothing. KHAAAAAAN!

[adamredwoods]

You may also be able to learn quickly with William Vaughn's *free* tutorials.
They are available through NewTek, on this site:

http://newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77002

[adamredwoods]

Here's one:
Introduction to Character Rigging

ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Bones.mov