Subject: Temporal parenting
From: <[email-masked]> (Lloyd B. Eldred )
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Oct 6 10:10:08 1994

Hi all!

    I've just spent the last two days creating a couple of simple
space combat sequences. Just a couple of ships moving, lasers
firing, and an explosion or three. 
    Actually, it's anything but simple. A nice laser cannon
firing effect requires a nightmare of lights, flares and evelopes
(see Mojo's current Lightwave Pro article for some keen ideas on
the subject). An explosion is similar, with the addition of
fading out the original object and fading in the various debris
objects. And if you're not methotical about what you're doing,
it'd be real easy to leave something out. (I respect those B-5
guys more and more as I learn Lightwave...)
 
     So, it occurred to me that things would be a lot simpler if
we had "Temporal Parenting". By this I mean, the ability for
envelopes to be triggered by other envelopes. For instance, one
set of laser cannons has a "pre-fire" light and flare for a
couple of frames, then as the laser fires the beam object appears
(well, sizes up) and the light and flare flash much brighter. And
I have to set up matching envelopes for each, EACH TIME. It'd be
great to have a "null temporal object" called "laser cannon-1"
that I could trigger anytime I wanted and have the other
envelopes work off of it.

Lloyd Eldred, Ph.D.
Galtham Films, Dayton, OH
Dedicated to film excellence for two or three weeks now.
(established 1989)