Keying effects to object motion? (Lightwave)

SebastianP

I was planning on starting to animate one of my ships soon, and given that a lot of the animation is supposed to be repeating (gunfire, etc), I'm hoping to figure out a way to key the components of it to the rotation of a dummy object rather than to the frame number, the idea being that it's easier to just turn the rotation on and off than having to cut-and-paste all the components of the animation over and over. Also, I can rig the animations in advance and just key them "on" at the appropriate moments.

How do I go about doing something like this, does anyone have a tutorial link that I could use (preferably text, as I've got problems with video tutorials being too slow for my patience...) I'm using Lightwave 9.6 at the moment.

Any help at all would be much appreciated.


Cheers,

SP

Brickhead

Hours of Free LightWave Training (24 Hours+) - NewTek Discussions
Probably the best tutorial page for LW.

IRML

animation is not my strongest point, but I once set up a cannon to fire a particle and recoil, all on a single keyframe - whenever you added a keyframe the cannon would automatically fire and the recoil animation would play, it was a proper hack job but it worked

also theres motion mixer I think, which could allow you to set up animations and replay them when you want, but I've never used it

it would really help if you posted some screenshots and demonstrations of what you're after, it's a little hard trying to piece it together in my head just from reading your post

Pic-A-Card

This is pretty simple to do with expressions; I made a rig that used a bunch of null objects to turn on and off animation sequences (blinking lights, cockpit spill light, etc) it facilitated easy rendering of passes. You basically say something like "Light1.intensity = Null.Y" so when you move the null object up or down, it controls the intensity of the rig. In my case, to turn on or off a preexisting animation, the expressino would be "Light1.intensity * Null.Y" where if the null was at a height of 1, the animation would play, but if it were at 0, it would not play, since it's being multiplied by 0.

Look for some tutorials regarding expressions, they can be a bit mind boggling at first. If you need specifics, I can probably dig up the file.

IRML

Pic-A-Card wrote: »

This is pretty simple to do with expressions; I made a rig that used a bunch of null objects to turn on and off animation sequences (blinking lights, cockpit spill light, etc) it facilitated easy rendering of passes. You basically say something like "Light1.intensity = Null.Y" so when you move the null object up or down, it controls the intensity of the rig. In my case, to turn on or off a preexisting animation, the expressino would be "Light1.intensity * Null.Y" where if the null was at a height of 1, the animation would play, but if it were at 0, it would not play, since it's being multiplied by 0.

Look for some tutorials regarding expressions, they can be a bit mind boggling at first. If you need specifics, I can probably dig up the file.

someone needs to introduce you to sliders, you'll love them

tobian

You can often get by without expressions, and just use channel follower modifier, which is easier than writing stuff like that

You will want to look at Proton's 'cyclist' tutorial in that lot, because it shows how to do a sequence of complex movements instead of just one, using the cyclist motion modifier. Neat stuff!

Pic-A-Card

IRML wrote: »

someone needs to introduce you to sliders, you'll love them

Haha, the last time I used sliders in Lightwave I remember it being a horrendously complex procedure. Is it more straightforward now?

IRML

yeah it's easy, basically add the sliders plugin to a null, then just do what you were saying with nulls and expressions but use each slider in place of each null

mattc

You probably want to use motion mixer for this.....

Then you can just drop you motion clips wherever you like....or use Tracer.