LIGHTWAVE 3D MODELER NETWORK THING HOW TO
LIGHTWAVE 3D MODELER NETWORK THING GENERATOR
LIGHTWAVE 3D MODELER NETWORK THING FULL

The following short clip shows the relevant portion of the video that is detailed in this post about how to use instances in LightWave 3D.NewTek, the developer of LightWave 3D, must have quite a bit of marketing know-how.

This way different crystals and fibers would form at different depths to create a thicker layer rather than having them all at the same Z depth.ģD Animation Clips of How to Use Instances in LightWave 3D The Z was set to 0 – -10mm for the first fiber, 0 – -15mm for the second fiber and 0 – -20mm for the third fiber. The Offset tab was set to 0 – 0 for X and Y while Z was set to 0 – -5mm for the first crystal, 0 – -10mm for the second crystal and 0 – -15mm for the third crystal. The Scale tab was set to 12.5% – 50% and the Rotation tab was set to 0° – 360° for each of H, P, and B. In order to provide a nice random coverage a minimum and maximum were set for each Scale, Offset and Rotation tab which were all set to Random Mode.

The three crystal instance generators were set to 1500 instances while the three fiber instance generators were set to 3000 instances. It doesn’t matter what the seed is, just that each is different, so I just drag the widget on each so they are all different.

LIGHTWAVE 3D MODELER NETWORK THING GENERATOR

One important thing to remember when using instances in LightWave 3D with and instance generators to cover the same surface with different objects is to have each instance generator use a different Random Seed, otherwise each object will be created in the same place as the others. While you can apply multiple object instances within one instance generator using weights to have different objects cover different areas I ran into a bug that caused problems during my animation so I had to use a separate instance generator for each animated instance object instead. You’ll notice that there are six instance generators rather than just one in the list on the screenshot. I then selected the inside surface of the cutout pipe where I wanted to rouge crystals to grow and applied an instance generator. Once all the objects were in the scene I then used the Graph Editor to scale the parent layer of the crystal/fiber group so that all the crystals/fibers would grow over time. Because the inserted model would be used to generate instances rather than as direct objects I turned the object layers off and set them to invisible in the scene editor. Due to a bug I encountered when using instances in LightWave 3D I was unable to animate the scale of the instances so as a workaround I animated the scale of the original objects instead. This way I could control the overall scale to have the crystals grow by scaling the first layer only. I then added the crystal model to LightWave 3D Layout with all the layers parented to the first layer. These base models would then be randomly duplicated, rotated and placed by instance generators in LightWave 3D.

I generally do all my modeling in modo due to my preference for its highly interactive modeling GUI, but you could model these crystals right in LightWave 3D Modeler just as easily. So I started by modeling three sets of crystals and fibers of varying sizes/shapes in different layers in modo. When using instances in LightWave 3D you need a model to be instanced. Rouge or rust is typically formed as microscopic crystals, varying from a roughly cubic shape to a more elongated fiber like shape.

LIGHTWAVE 3D MODELER NETWORK THING FULL

The full project that this behind the scenes post is from may be seen in the project’s online portfolio page. Our client, Astro Pak, wanted to show how their product/process can dissolve and remove rouge from stainless steel processing equipment. We used the following technique to create a 3D animation of rouge (rust/corrosion) crystal growth in stainless steel pharmaceutical or food processing equipment. This blog post gives a behind the scenes peek of how to use instances in LightWave 3D.

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