Posted on November 2, 1999

• Sorry I’ve been sort of incommunicado the past few days. My copy of Lightwave 3D arrives last Friday and, like any good monk, I’ve been cloistered away attempting to unlock it’s powers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Lightwave, here’s the deal:

  Lightwave is really two programs, a layout/render engine and a modeler, that work together. You’ve already seen some of my dabblings with the modeler (“Rogue Element” and “Fluorescence”). Now I am working to master the Layout portion of the program. It is far more complex a creature than the modeler, but the results can be truly stunning (you’ve all seen Lightwave generated graphics on TV and in the movies). Trust me on this: You are going to be seeing some cool stuff in the weeks to come (though it won’t be that long before I have some new images for you to download). Once again, I ask your patience while I learn the ropes. It will be worth it.

• Thanks to all of you who wrote me with your thoughts on “Fluorescence” (see below). As promised, I’ve collected some of my favorites for your review, along with my own personal comments on the image. You’ll also find my first animation done using the Lightwave renderer. Hope you like it, I think it’s a decent first effort.

Posted on October 28, 1999

• Fluorescence is new today in the Abstracts gallery and the WIP, another image from my exploration of the Inspire modeler. You may look at this one and think “what the **** is that?”. I sat looking at it for about an hour wondering the same thing and I have my own ideas. I just thought it looked nice on my desktop so I posted it for you. You are free to interpret it any way you like. In fact, feel free to send me your ideas and I’ll put together a list of the best ones for your review.
• Here’s a another little movie showing off a few robot poses and his new retractable claws (zipped AVI, [an error occurred while processing this directive]).

Posted on October 25, 1999

• Some people might try to learn new 3D software by modeling something simple, like an apple or a bar of soap. I chose something a little more ambitious for my first Inspire 3D project. The result, “Rogue Element”, is now available for your review in the Posers gallery and the WIP.

  The battlebot in R.E. was modeled entirely “by hand” in Inspire 3D, using no prefab parts. My first attempt (thumbnail/hi-res) was completed Saturday, but it couldn’t be saved in Inspire due to my ignorance of “point econmics” (i.e., the mesh was too complex). I managed to export that first robot as a OBJ file but he was still too complex for Bryce to handle. Luckily for me, Vue d’Esprit handles hi-res meshes with great applomb so I was able to at least render him once to show you.

  My second attempt involved my old standby, Metacreations Poser 4. Basically, I opened up the default skeleton (as you’ve seen before in “Don’t Look into the Light“), and then replaced all of his bones with the robot parts I had designed in Inspire. This took quite a few hours to get right, but eventually I had my own custom robot which could take advantage of all of Poser’s cool features. You can check out, for example, this animation of the robot running (zipped AVI, [an error occurred while processing this directive]) or this “character sketch” showing a few different poses.

  He’s not perfect, but I think he’s a good first effort. You’ll note that he is a far cry from my very first robot attempt (using Amorphium and Bryce). Hope you like “Rogue Element”, and don’t be surprised if you see him again in another wallpaper somewhere down the road. Comments definitely welcome.

• My new workstation arrives tomorrow. Actually it arrived today but since I stayed up all night working on the battlebot, I was asleep when the delivery guy came knocking. Grrr…
• E-on software released a new verison (3) of Vue d’Esprit today. It looked like a good upgrade to me so I ordered it. It should ship from France in a couple of weeks or so, then maybe I’ll take you on a fly-through of “Equatorial” or a boatride around the Tropic of Capricorn“. I can’t wait!

Posted on October 23, 1999

• Last night I attended a fascinating lecture given by Doug Chiang, the Design Director for ILM and one of the main brains behind Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It was a real eye-opener in terms of how much I have yet to learn in this field. The lecture consisted mainly of Doug showing slides and commenting on the different designs he created for Episode I. There was also a lengthy Q&A afterwards, but I really couldn’t think of anything intelligent to ask (though that didn’t stop others).

  Most of the lecture was very inspiring, especially the parts about how different animals influenced the design of certain vehicles in the movie (for example the Federation battle-tanks were designed to look like pouncing lions and the troop transports to look like charging elephants). It was really kind of scary to hear him talk about the creative meetings with “George” where sometimes only 10% of the designs presented were actually approved. I don’t know how long I would last under that kind of attrition (understandably, it was Doug’s love of Star Wars which saw him through).

  One of Doug’s comments stuck a dagger into my heart though. He said that people today rely too heavily on computer aided design, and are sorely lacking in the artistic “fundamentals” of free-hand drawing. Of course he was describing me perfectly; I can barely write my own name so people can read it. I won’t let that keep me from trying to improve though 🙂

  Doug was pretty careful not to let out too much about Episode II or III. He did say, tantalizingly, that the designs would become more “familiar” as the story progressed. My heart, as you can imagine, started beating the “Imperial March” at the thought of massive computer-animated fleets of Star Destroyers hunting down the Jedi. I can’t wait.

  All in all it was a wonderful evening. I know all this is kind of “off-topic”, but I thought some of you might be interested.

• I got my copy of Inspire yesterday and I’ve been having a lot of fun learning how to use it. I’ll definitely be upgrading to Lightwave 6 when it comes out. You’ll be seeing some interesting stuff in the months to come.
• I’m going to start saving these updates so you can go back and browse through them. The link, for now, is at the bottom of the page.

Posted on October 20, 1999

• “Modern Prometheus”, sort of a Halloween pic I guess, is new today in the Posers gallery and the WIP. For those of you who use Poser 4, the “Monster” is a Poser figure deformed by the Magnet tool.

  Almost ashamed to tell you all this, but I bought myself a new computer yesterday. My original plan was to pick up a decent sub $1000 box to help me render the print versions of my images (these are taking a week or more on my P333). Lately, however, Windows 98 has been acting up on me (more than usual) to the point where I’ve been losing files and the hours of work that went into them. Win98 simply can’t go where I want to go today.

  So instead of buying some cheapo Celeron to act as my renderbox, I’ve decided to demote my current machine to that position. Taking it’s place will be a Dell Precision 410 workstation with dual PIII 600 processors, 1 GB ECC SDRAM, and a 36 GB SCSI disk. The machine will be running Windows NT, which I’ve heard is a great deal more stable and powerful than 98. I didn’t feel like messing with Athlon processors right now, even though they’re supposedly much faster than the Intel chips. Xeon processors were a little pricey for my blood, and I’m not sure what benefit they provide for the extra money.

  I’ve purchased a copy of Inspire 3D, the “Learning Edition” of Lightwave 3D. Inspire, so I’ve read, has about 80% of Lightwave’s features for only 25% the price. I plan on using Inspire to cut my teeth on the Lightwave interface before I get the full edition.

  Why’d I chose Lightwave? Probably because 3DS MAX doesn’t have a $400 “Light” edition and I don’t want to be overwhelmed by features when I’m trying to learn. I’ve seen some really cool work done with Lightwave (ever seen “Titanic” or “Babylon 5”?). It’s also what my idol, the Digital Knight, uses 🙂

  Why do I need all this horsepower? The simplistic answer is that the more CPU you have, the closer you get to that mythical “instant feedback” which all 3D designers (myself included) crave. The more memory you have, the more detailed your world can be. The two are inversely proportional, so more of one means less of the other. Somewhere in the middle is 3D nirvana, and that’s where I want to go today.

  Hopefully all this will mean cooler graphics for you in Y2K. After all, you paid for the machine with your membership fee. All I ask from you is a little patience while I climb the learning curve.