We know that you have LightWave training alternatives to the Washburn Workshops taught by Bob Anderson so we provide you with the topics covered in this two-day class so you know what you are learning when you commit the time and money required for these classes. Class runs from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with optional evening lab practice time from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. If you have taken Advanced LightWave 3D Techniques from Bob, you should be ready for all the skills covered in this class. All participants in this workshop or in "Intermediate Organic Modeling & Character Animation "receive a copy of "LightWave 3D 5 Character Animation f/x" by Doug Kelly.

Topics covered include but are not limited to:

Organic Modeling

• What is organic modeling?
• Moving beyond the primitives
• Basics of building a character
• MetaNURBs modeling
• What are NURBS?
• Basics of working with NURBS
• Where do you begin?
• Laying out the basic shape
• Starting with a box
• Determining segmentation
• Starting with a MetaFormed box
• How many subdivisions?
• Dragging points to modify NURBs
• Beveling NURBs
• Must all NURB objects be round?
• Making a hard edge
• Using polygon manipulation when working on NURBS
• The OpenGL view sees into the future
• Freezing NURBs into polygons
• MetaFormPlus
• Intro to MetaMation

MetaBall Modeling

• What are MetaBalls
• Adding MetaBallsAssigning the MetaBall tools to user keys
• Adjusting the strength
• Modifying MetaBalls
• Fine tuning the object
• Adding detail MetaBalls
• Creating a polygonal model from MetaBalls
• Moving the source MetaBalls to another layer

Advanced spline modeling

• Creating a spline cage
• Modifying the cage
• Test viewing the patches
• Defining the patch characteristics
• Sewing together a series of patches
• LightWave's spline plug-ins
• Auto spline cage creation
• AutoPatcher
• Spline-polygon Hybrids
• Using splines to create filets

Character animation modeling basics

• What does MetaForm do?
• Creating objects for LightWave's character animation tools
• Hierarchy and IK vs. solid object and bones
• Articulating hierarchichal objects
• The importance of the center of the universe
• Orientation of objects
• Saving the object for use as a hierarchy
• Joining separate elements into a solid object

Character animation in LightWave

• Morphing, bones, and IK can all be used at the same time
• Limitations of each method
• Creating object motions with keys, morphs, bones, and IK
• When to use each method

Simple hierarchical objects

• Modeling and saving hierarchical objects
• Loading elements of an object
• Parenting the elements
• Moving elements into position
• Saving and loading from scene
• Creating object motions in hierarchical objects
• When can you use parenting and not IK?
• Creating a solar system with parenting
• What do you do if you want to switch parents mid-animation?

Simple inverse kinematics with hierarchical objects

• Setting up objects
• Using multiple parent / child chains in a single object
• Loading goal objects
• Setting up IK
• Creating goal motions (posing the object)
• Creating keys for the object
• Create key for all objects
• Create key for current object and descendants

Advanced IK options

• Using rotation constraints
• Setting rotation limits
• Hot keys for rotation limits
• Joint stiffness
• How the object chain "reaches for" the goal
• Adding extra null objects for more realistic object movements
• Creating realistic eye movements
• Adding extra nulls as focal point

Bone basics

• How bones work
• Designing an object to work with bones
• Where bones don't work
• Object orientation and how it affects bones
• Adding extra thumbtacks
• Laying out object skeletons
• Activating the bones
• Using bones to pose the object
• Creating keys for bones and bone motions

Advanced skeletal deformation tips

• Proper use of joint compensation
• Using muscle flexing to really flex muscles
• Using rotation constraints to work around gimbal lock
• Additional methods for avoiding gimbal lock
• Creating the illusion of breathing
• Subtle things go a long way

Using IK on bone hierarchies

• Adding goals for bones
• Posing bones,that then pose the object
• Using advanced IK tools to tweak IK movement

Morphing

• Creating object movement using morphing
• Morphing for facial expressions
• Morphing to create mouth movement
• Emotions and phonemes
• Your most useful tool...
• Creating a morphing sequence
• Keeping from going insne during long morph sequences

Using bones, IK, and morphing at the same time

• Project organization
• Using a dope sheet
• Keeping track of all of the different object modifiers

Object replacement animation

• Using the replace object sequence plug-in
• Creating an object sequence
• Using non-sequential sequences

Please remember that Organic Modeling & Character Animation Essentials is a two-day workshop with two hours of optional evening lab practice time each evening and eight hours of hands-on instruction each day.

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