Author: Urban Exile

LightWave 3D Clay Render Tutorial

October 16, 2013
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A “clay render” is a simple lighting and surfacing combination for an object or scene that causes the objects to look like they are made out of clay. Clay renders are often used to view or show off the geometry of an object without the distractions of the various surface colors.

Directions (for a single object — if you already setup your own scene, skip to step 3):

  1. Add a “floor” object to your scene. If you don’t already have one created, use Modeler and create a large flat square named “Floor”.
  2. Add your object and arrange the object so it is resting on the floor. Continue reading “LightWave 3D Clay Render Tutorial”

Goals

October 14, 2013
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I mentioned a while back that I was working on creating long-term goals for myself. I still haven’t decided on any specific LightWave projects or concepts, but that doesn’t mean that I should procrastinate working on improving my artistic skills. To help stoke my creativity, I have created goals that provide simple structure to my day/week.

Write in a Logbook (every day)

I got this idea from a book I recently read (more on that in a future post). Basically, I plan on adding a new entry every day to log what I did. It doesn’t have to be long or detailed, it’s strictly a log book. I can write as much or as little as I want, as long as I at least cover the main points of what I did that day. This is a quick and easy way to reflect on the day, hopefully to revel in the positives or, if necessary, to help work out any negatives.

Continue reading “Goals”

Editing and Compositing Software

October 7, 2013
2 Comments on Editing and Compositing Software

My goal for the week was to evaluate several compositing/editing software packages and decide which would best fit my needs. I looked at Sony Vegas, Blender 3D, and Lightworks. (I ignored Adobe Premiere because I do not want to pay $20-$50 per month to rent software).

If you do not care about the individual results for each software package, feel free to skip to the results in the last section below.

How I Tested The Software

Full Lightwave test render
An example render from the test scene after compositing all layers together.

I created a simple 1 second (24 frames) scene in LightWave at 720p and rendered out a series of PNG files. For each frame, I rendered out 2 layers — one for a foreground object and another for the midground objects. I also had a simple static background image to composite behind the scene. Finally, I also included additional channel renders, such as depth, specular, and transparency, to use for additional compositing testing.

Continue reading “Editing and Compositing Software”

Goals for the week

September 27, 2013
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Life has settled down a bit for me and I can focus on my LightWave hobby again. I played around with the software a bit this past week and re-familiarized myself with the modeling and basic layout tools.

One of the main reasons for starting this site is to document and track my goals related to LightWave. Now that I feel comfortable using the software again, I want to start setting some short-term and long-term goals for myself.

In the very short-term, my goals are simple:

  • Figure out my long-term goals and deadlines and post them to this site (deadline: Oct 6)
  • Evaluate different compositing and non-linear editing (NLE) software to find a pipeline that works best for me (deadline: Oct 6)

I have used Sony Vegas in the past for both compositing and NLE, but it’s been so long that the last version I used was 6.0 (the current version is 12). After doing some initial research, I have found three different products to evaluate:

I am going to evaluate each product separately as a compositor and an editor, which means I may decide to use a different program for each function. However, my goal is to only spend money on one product (which ultimately means that I will not use Vegas as a compositor and Lightworks as an editor, which I believe is the only combination that would force me to pay for two products).

Still setting up house…

September 18, 2013
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I’m still setting up the site and unable to focus much time LightWave yet, so I thought I’d share a little more about myself.

You already have an idea where I live.  I also grew up in the suburbs, so I already knew what to expect after we moved.  I went to college at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, where I majored in Computer Engineering.  I now work as a software engineer.  But, since I already spend a lot of my life focusing on software, I don’t plan on posting about programming on this site.

The best part of my current job is that I work from home every day.  I’m often asked how I stay focused enough to work from home successfully; my usual answer is, “Because I want to keep receiving a paycheck.”  A lot of my company’s employees work from home, and we are equipped well to perform our jobs regardless of our actual location.  Working from home gives me a lot of freedom in my personal life, because I can easily schedule small breaks into my work day for running errands and personal tasks.

Working from home also makes it easier to spend time with my wife.  She has a pretty demanding job, so it works out well for her and our relationship that I can take care of a lot of the little details in our household.  And since I have such a flexible schedule, it’s easier to spend time together despite her tough schedule.

Welcome

September 9, 2013
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After living in the heart of Chicago for over ten years, I recently moved out to the quiet suburbs. That move was a drastic change for me: Chicago has an amazing amount of things to do reachable by walking, public transportation, or cab. Every day, I walked around a beautiful part of the city, sometimes for mundane reasons like getting lunch, buying groceries, or running errands, but other times for comedy shows, concerts, or to hang out at one of the many bars.

Now that I’ve moved to the suburbs, it’s more difficult to fill my time with those same activities. I can’t just walk to a nearby comedy club or concert venue; I have to plan in advance for traffic and parking. Getting lunch no longer involves a nice walk to a neighborhood restaurant, I need to actually drive somewhere (probably to a fast food place), so I eat at home a lot more often. Meeting friends at a bar means making sure that no drivers drink too much before leaving. (Everything in the suburbs involves driving, something I rarely dealt with while living in Chicago).

On the bright side, I have more free time. But that means I need to find new interests to fill that time, because I don’t like being unproductive. So I have decided to pursue an old hobby of mine: 3D modeling and animation. I still own LightWave 9.6, a production-quality 3D animation software suite that I have used on-and-off for the past eight years. I intend to use LightWave to create 3D models, images, and animations for my own entertainment (and hopefully it manages to entertain other people, too).

My goals for creating this blog are primarily as a sounding board for some of my thoughts/ideas, a place to post my 3D creations, and as a way to hold myself accountable so I can stick with my newly rediscovered hobby. I expect I’ll also post works in progress, tutorials on different techniques I’ve tried, and random posts on completely unrelated topics. I’ve also been trying to come up with concrete goals, so once I nail those down I’ll share them here.