Truecoz
08-02-2003, 03:32 AM
Hi all LW users!
Well the exhibition part of SIGGRAPH was noticeably smaller than before - rumors that studios are waiting until next year in LA, or that it's a reflection of where the industry is right now. I don't now why it was smaller but it was. Some FX and software houses didn't bother to show up, this was disappointing. There was a notable rise in schools present that train or teach 3-D animation and visual FX.
Lightwave 8 is great! Animators with some imagination should be inspired by what NewTek has done, others will have to wait until they see what the imaginative animators do with it.
Some of the things that I witnessed while Proton and Deuce demo'd LW8 at SIGGRAPH:
Interface - no more dealing with a lot of panels or windows, things can be manipulated straight in the layout window.
Bone Dynamics - awesome can't even imagine all the useful applications this will have.
Softbody Dynamics - really well integrated, very cool, seemingly fast computing times.
Rigidbody Dynamics - as cool as softbody dynamics.
Vertices Manipulation - Animate and adjust vertices in Layout, this feature also has a sphere of influence option so you can do vertices manipulation like the magnet tool in modeler, FREAKIN' SWEET! Unwanted particles in a particle simulation can be animated and even deleted.
I was really hoping to see something on the deformation of the shoulder and armpit area, this area is very difficult to get to look right when you rotate the upper arm into any of the positions it's capable of moving to. I spoke to Deuce momentarily and mentioned what my solution in Maya was for the shoulder and armpit area, he assured me that it was coming and hopefully in LW8. I repeat "HOPEFULLY". I even spoke with the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Donetta Colboch, and told her my dilemma and why I was using Maya, she said and I quote "Don't worry, we'll get you back on Lightwave!" So we'll see, I've really been trying to push this point.
3D Software is coming to a head!
Saw the demo of MODO by Luxology and I was impressed. It switches to what ever interface you like to working in, so if you like working in Lightwave at a click of a button, boom you're in Modeler, or 3DSMax, boom you're in 3DSMax. The mouse buttons and hotkeys all change accordingly. It seams it can handle animating sub-Ds very quickly a efficiently. For studios trying to compete with the speed of modeling in LW this will absolutely help to do that. Imagine owning your own FX studio and you're looking to hire modelers, if you put Modo in the pipeline then you can hire modelers with a background in any package. Of course to the individual LW user it may not seem like that big of a deal, but to a Maya modeler working on a gig with a tight schedule, Modo might just come to the rescue.
Saw the Demo of Maya 5. It's got a new Vector render for cartoon style animation for web or other mediums. It also has a hardware render - but this is not really a big deal, it's for speeding up renders on simple geometry objects such a logos and particles, it uses the graphics card to do the rendering. The cool thing about Maya 5 was their new water simulation. You can quickly simulate water with all kinds of cool attributes like when white wash should form at the peak of a wake. It also has a wakes generator, in their demonstration they use a paddle object that actually deforms the surface of the water and generates the necessary particles that splash down and generates more wakes. I have to admit the simplicity to create these type of water FX was very cool.
Saw part of the demo for SoftImage/XSI 3.5. They've added behavioral tools for crowd simulations, I've seen better crowd simulators considers the person demonstrating a simulation could not get it to work, but I guess it's a start. I was not too impressed with it. I wish I could have gotten to their both sooner because I think I must of missed some stuff.
It's seems to me the 3D software market is getting fierce. Believe me LW has these other packages worried. Why? In 3D animation world, the end justifies the means. If you can do Gollum (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) in LW, could you imagine the savings in cost. Maya artist usually make more money then LW artist, a Lightwave artist is usually capable of handling many different positions in a production, and the difference in the cost of the software is still enormous. If you do film work in Maya your going to need the unlimited edition and then there is Lightwave that is far less as expensive. If one of the big film studios, finds out they can get FX done cheaper with the same quality, there going to go with the cheaper solution, even if it's just because they can throw more effects into a film. I know that there are small FX houses waiting to be able to do stuff in LW that big FX houses do in Maya, I can see that some of the bigger FX houses are not going to able to compete with the smaller FX houses, especially if the FX house is not supported by owning it's own content - ala ILM, PIXAR, DISNEY, and others.
My own person gratitude towards NewTek stems from the very ability to get involved in the 3D world at all. When I started in 3D there was no way I could have afforded to buy Alias/Wavefront but there was Lightwave. NewTek cared enough about me to price LW so I could afford it and has always been supportive and helpful and friendly, even though I'm not some giant FX studio. I started out using my dad's Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster and doing simple character animations using basic shapes in Lightwave. Doing compositing for cartoons at Creative Capers Entertainment, I would use a copy of Lightwave there in my spare time. Eventually I was able to get my own computer and my very own copy of Lightwave. Even at that point I could not have afforded Maya. Then I started landing gigs doing 3D stuff like Dan Dare at Foundation Imaging and lots of other projects like some of the stuff posted on my website. Finally I got an opportunity to barrow a friends license of Maya 4, even though I missed a lot of the simplicity involved with working in Lightwave, I worked through it. The main thing to me was to get a good shoulder and armpit deformation. I was able to accomplish this in Maya using vertices on a low res mesh, the vertices on a lattice, set-driven key, and the component editor. The process is laborious but the result is fabulous. The whole time though I'm missing an easy way to set these shoulder deformations up, a "NewTekian" approach to solve this problem if you will. I would like to see Lightwave win in the battle of the packages and I have a strong belief that it can do so, but please hurry-up NewTek and get the deformation thing for the shoulder area happening, I'm waiting. Until then I am willing to learn and work in any 3D package that I can get the desired look that I'm going for on a highly detailed realistic looking character.
Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Chris Manabe
www.chrismanabe.com
3D-Animator/FX-Artist
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Well the exhibition part of SIGGRAPH was noticeably smaller than before - rumors that studios are waiting until next year in LA, or that it's a reflection of where the industry is right now. I don't now why it was smaller but it was. Some FX and software houses didn't bother to show up, this was disappointing. There was a notable rise in schools present that train or teach 3-D animation and visual FX.
Lightwave 8 is great! Animators with some imagination should be inspired by what NewTek has done, others will have to wait until they see what the imaginative animators do with it.
Some of the things that I witnessed while Proton and Deuce demo'd LW8 at SIGGRAPH:
Interface - no more dealing with a lot of panels or windows, things can be manipulated straight in the layout window.
Bone Dynamics - awesome can't even imagine all the useful applications this will have.
Softbody Dynamics - really well integrated, very cool, seemingly fast computing times.
Rigidbody Dynamics - as cool as softbody dynamics.
Vertices Manipulation - Animate and adjust vertices in Layout, this feature also has a sphere of influence option so you can do vertices manipulation like the magnet tool in modeler, FREAKIN' SWEET! Unwanted particles in a particle simulation can be animated and even deleted.
I was really hoping to see something on the deformation of the shoulder and armpit area, this area is very difficult to get to look right when you rotate the upper arm into any of the positions it's capable of moving to. I spoke to Deuce momentarily and mentioned what my solution in Maya was for the shoulder and armpit area, he assured me that it was coming and hopefully in LW8. I repeat "HOPEFULLY". I even spoke with the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Donetta Colboch, and told her my dilemma and why I was using Maya, she said and I quote "Don't worry, we'll get you back on Lightwave!" So we'll see, I've really been trying to push this point.
3D Software is coming to a head!
Saw the demo of MODO by Luxology and I was impressed. It switches to what ever interface you like to working in, so if you like working in Lightwave at a click of a button, boom you're in Modeler, or 3DSMax, boom you're in 3DSMax. The mouse buttons and hotkeys all change accordingly. It seams it can handle animating sub-Ds very quickly a efficiently. For studios trying to compete with the speed of modeling in LW this will absolutely help to do that. Imagine owning your own FX studio and you're looking to hire modelers, if you put Modo in the pipeline then you can hire modelers with a background in any package. Of course to the individual LW user it may not seem like that big of a deal, but to a Maya modeler working on a gig with a tight schedule, Modo might just come to the rescue.
Saw the Demo of Maya 5. It's got a new Vector render for cartoon style animation for web or other mediums. It also has a hardware render - but this is not really a big deal, it's for speeding up renders on simple geometry objects such a logos and particles, it uses the graphics card to do the rendering. The cool thing about Maya 5 was their new water simulation. You can quickly simulate water with all kinds of cool attributes like when white wash should form at the peak of a wake. It also has a wakes generator, in their demonstration they use a paddle object that actually deforms the surface of the water and generates the necessary particles that splash down and generates more wakes. I have to admit the simplicity to create these type of water FX was very cool.
Saw part of the demo for SoftImage/XSI 3.5. They've added behavioral tools for crowd simulations, I've seen better crowd simulators considers the person demonstrating a simulation could not get it to work, but I guess it's a start. I was not too impressed with it. I wish I could have gotten to their both sooner because I think I must of missed some stuff.
It's seems to me the 3D software market is getting fierce. Believe me LW has these other packages worried. Why? In 3D animation world, the end justifies the means. If you can do Gollum (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) in LW, could you imagine the savings in cost. Maya artist usually make more money then LW artist, a Lightwave artist is usually capable of handling many different positions in a production, and the difference in the cost of the software is still enormous. If you do film work in Maya your going to need the unlimited edition and then there is Lightwave that is far less as expensive. If one of the big film studios, finds out they can get FX done cheaper with the same quality, there going to go with the cheaper solution, even if it's just because they can throw more effects into a film. I know that there are small FX houses waiting to be able to do stuff in LW that big FX houses do in Maya, I can see that some of the bigger FX houses are not going to able to compete with the smaller FX houses, especially if the FX house is not supported by owning it's own content - ala ILM, PIXAR, DISNEY, and others.
My own person gratitude towards NewTek stems from the very ability to get involved in the 3D world at all. When I started in 3D there was no way I could have afforded to buy Alias/Wavefront but there was Lightwave. NewTek cared enough about me to price LW so I could afford it and has always been supportive and helpful and friendly, even though I'm not some giant FX studio. I started out using my dad's Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster and doing simple character animations using basic shapes in Lightwave. Doing compositing for cartoons at Creative Capers Entertainment, I would use a copy of Lightwave there in my spare time. Eventually I was able to get my own computer and my very own copy of Lightwave. Even at that point I could not have afforded Maya. Then I started landing gigs doing 3D stuff like Dan Dare at Foundation Imaging and lots of other projects like some of the stuff posted on my website. Finally I got an opportunity to barrow a friends license of Maya 4, even though I missed a lot of the simplicity involved with working in Lightwave, I worked through it. The main thing to me was to get a good shoulder and armpit deformation. I was able to accomplish this in Maya using vertices on a low res mesh, the vertices on a lattice, set-driven key, and the component editor. The process is laborious but the result is fabulous. The whole time though I'm missing an easy way to set these shoulder deformations up, a "NewTekian" approach to solve this problem if you will. I would like to see Lightwave win in the battle of the packages and I have a strong belief that it can do so, but please hurry-up NewTek and get the deformation thing for the shoulder area happening, I'm waiting. Until then I am willing to learn and work in any 3D package that I can get the desired look that I'm going for on a highly detailed realistic looking character.
Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Chris Manabe
www.chrismanabe.com
3D-Animator/FX-Artist
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D