Preserved Topic: Quick! Teach me everything about LightWave!

I just bought LW 6.0. I've already downloaded and installed the 6.5 patch.

Any tips on getting up to speed quickly? I'm not having as easy a time learning it as I did other packages for some reason. Everything is always the last place I'd expect :/

BTW, how long does it take them to mail the license? The countdown is down to 10 days (from 14, I think), and still no email.

I would just call the number, I got my key the same day I bought it. But you should get it within a week via e-mail I think.

Ok, so you wanna learn it quickly eh? The first thing I would do is go get Dan Ablan's Inside Lightwave 6 book. The layout has changed from 6.0 to 6.5/b but you can revert to the 6.0 layout through the interface/edit menu panel.

Learn the hotkeys. For true. It's going to be a pain since you're used to Max' hot keys probably but it will save you SO much time. I normally only use a handfull of tools:

SHIFT+= and use the right mousebutton to place points. use the left mouse button to select the points in order and press P to make a polygon.

t = translate, or move
y= rotate
b= bevel
F= smooth shift (this lets you select multiple polygons and extrude them as a group)

The tools are interactive so you can either use the numeric requester (what I use, press n to pop it up) or use the mouse buttons in the viewports. To turn a tool off and apply the effect, either turn the tool off (press space) or sometimes a right-click will do it.

(notice the lack of capitalizations, be careful of pressing the caps lock by accident and not knowing

If you want to deselect something, click on the empty grey area to the left side of the screen, under the nav buttons.

Tab is your friend! If you want to make an object a subdivision surface mesh always use 4 point polygons. You can get away with a few 3 point polys but in general try to always use 4 point polys. Press tab to toggle beterrn poly mode and sub-d mode.

If you have sub d on an object and modeler seems to run slow, press o to bring up the options panel and check your division settings. usually 3 is a good subdivision lavel, more than that will sub-divide it more and will slow your display down.

Jesus there is so much

To name parts of a model for surfacing select the polys and press q.
To change the name and parameters click on the surface editor button.

In layout you can switch between camera and light and ortho views by using the keypad. 6 is camera, 5 is lights, and the others I don't remember, but I press htem until I get where I need to be.

To turn on shadows and stuff go to the rendering/rendering options panel and click on things there.

F9 will render the current frame, F10 will render the animation or # of frames you set in the render options panel

Is there any specific tool or effect you want to play with? Just ask and if I know I'll tyr to help, it's like any other 3d package, it's huge. I still have only used probably 30% of the program, but once you get used to the workflow it is so amazing.


-Electro www.badsun.com

Cool, that's a good start

Just the 6.0 revert will help; I think I'll learn from the book (and Inside Lightwave - I bought it a few days ago ), then 'unrevert' to the 6.5 controls. That should help a lot.

Would you recommend just importing models into Layout until I get the hang of it, then learn Modeller after?

I also found that re-mapping the hot keys for each program you use to similar values always helps. At my job we switch between XSI, Maya, MAX, and lightwave often...so in order to keep the level of confusion down, we pretty much have re-configed each program to be as similar as possible.

The cool thing about lightwave is....once you get used to it...its great!! As I have said many times before, each program has strong points, and lightwave is no exception. The only "issue" i still have with it, and its minor...i cant stand the 2 sepreat program scheme for the modeler and layout. Its the only program that has that layout (i know its been around since the amiga days), and it is probobly the one "thing" that makes it more difficult for a new user to switch from another application.

Good luck! It took me almost 2 years to get to a "acceptable" Level in Lightwave..but I also was learning from tutorials and my friends limited knoledge of it. I should of invested in a book.

--now inc

www.now-incorporated.com

Good recommendations so far, I would recommend the "LightWave Applied" book as well but it hasn't been updated for 6.0/6.5 as far as I know. With modeller vs. layout I could go either way, all depends what you're needing to do I guess. Modeler is one of the strengths of LW tho so it's definitely something you'll want to get your hands dirty with when you've got the time. With learning where things are, it's very intuitive once you learn to think like LW. Start with "what does the operation I want to do to this object actually do to it? modify, multiply, etc." then work your way more specific from there. Once you get the hang of it you may become addicted to the workflow

Please keep us updated on your thoughts and any tests you do, I'd love to hear/see 'em...

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

But at least the newer versions of 6.0 onwards have a third program 'Hub' which makes up for that. It connects Layout and Modeller so that changes you make in one are automatically updated in the other.