Posted on February 8, 2000

• I know, sometimes I don’t know when to leave well enough alone. One of the things, though, that bothered me about my last post was that lacked any sort of “atmosphere”. Lightwave, of course, was never designed to be “world building” software. Most of the images you’ll see done with it are either simple still life renders (one object) or are interior scenes. Well, I wanted to add clouds to the sky in “Two Ships Passing” but I just couldn’t find a good way of doing it. The water/haze plugin I used to create that nifty ocean environment is very picky about what objects can cast/receive shadows and reflections. I doesn’t allow you to add clouds to the sky (like in Bryce for example), so you need to use another plugin for that. The problem is, plugins don’t always get along with each other. I think I managed to find a happy medium though.

  Anyway, many crashes and failed attempts later, I’ve posted two new versions of my “Ships”. The version I am happiest with is posted on my New Images page, and all three are available in the Pickle Jar. I’ve love to hear your ideas on which one you like best

  I’ve also added another animation featuring the new ocean environment and you are welcome to download it. It’s a 480 x 360 animation and is [an error occurred while processing this directive] to download. Hope you like!

• Some of you have written asking how you can use the animations on your destkop. Right now the only way I can think of is by downloading a screensaver which will your animation files full screen. There is a nice free one available for downloading at http://www.stanford.edu/~bfcarter/aviss/index.html