LIGHTWAVE 6.0BHYPERVOXELSA new "sprite" mode has been added to HyperVoxels which renders a hypervoxel in a fraction of the time of a full "volume" or "surface" mode render. The sprite mode is a two-dimensional slice of the hypervoxel, so it can quickly produce results to give the user a fast sketch of the hypervoxel’s rendered appearance. To try out a sprite, open up Layout and add a Null. Click on the Settings tab and then select Volumetrics. From the newly opened Effects panel, click and hold Add Volumetric and select HyperVoxelsFilter. A panel will pop-up that says "HyperVoxels 3.0." Now select the Null by double-clicking on its name in the panel. Then click on HyperTexture, select the texture of your choice from the Texture pull-down menu, and then find the Object Type pull-down menu and select Sprite. Now you are ready to see what a preview render of a sprite looks like and how fast it can appear. Click on Open VIPER to see the results of using a sprite. 
It is easy to quickly get impressive results when rendering hypervoxels in sprite mode. Fire effects can be made quickly with a high degree of quality. The following tutorial will demonstrate how to get realistic fire effects quickly. HyperVoxel Fire TutorialTo quickly create a batch of fire using the new sprite mode of hypervoxels, simply perform the following steps.
NEW MAPPING MODES IN SURFACE EDITORWhen applying a texture image
map, there are now several new options for handling the "tiling"
of images when projected on an object. To have a look at this in action, create a flat plane in Modeler (a box without a third dimension) and load it into layout. Open up Surface Editor and click on the T button next to Color to open up the Texture Editor. With the Layer Type set to Image Map and the Projection set to Planar, choose an image that you would like tiled onto the planar object. You may then select from the four types of tiling listed above. Note that you can do this under Width Tile or Height Tile.
The following are images of the Lightwave 6.0 logo. The first image is the regular image mapped onto a plane, the second image is a height and width mirror-tiled image of the same logo.
TEXTURE ENVIRONMENTWhen you go to the Backdrop panel in Layout, a new feature awaits: LW_TextureEnvironment. It is available in the Backdrop panel under the Add Environment pull-down menu. Once selected, a set of controls appear which allow you to place a customized texture as the backdrop to a render. Images, procedural textures, and gradients are all available for customization. For example, if one uses a gradient backdrop, you can select an input parameter such as heading or pitch of the camera. Thus, you may create a glorious sunset sky that varies in color as you move the heading or the pitch of your camera, producing a varied sky. You can also create turbulent multi-colored skies with procedural textures, or manipulate an image to your desires. To create a turbulent red Martian sky as a backdrop, go to the Backdrop button under Settings. Click on Add Environment and select LW_TextureEnvironment. A new set of controls appears in the bottom portion of the panel which includes a path to the Texture Editor. Click on the Texture button and select Procedural Texture from the Layer Type pull-down menu. From here you may simply create the texture you like and see how it looks by doing a quick render (F9). You can create a wide array of environments such as the outer space environment pictured below.
BACKDROP IMAGE SETTINGSIn Modeler, you may now save a configuration of backdrop images for any number of views. This configuration can be saved into its own config file and loaded at any time. The save and load options have been placed into a Presets popup which gives the user the option of saving an individual backdrop image or saving the entire layout of backdrop images.
AUDIO START TIME OPTIONA start time has been added to the Audio popup menu, which affects when sound playback begins and shifts the entire waveform display accordingly. To access this function, open up Scene Editor and click on the Audio pull-down menu. You will need to load an audio file with a ".wav" extension by selecting Load Audio. When the audio is loaded, you should see the waveform of the sound within the frame slider bar near the bottom of the Layout screen, and by playing the scene the audio will be heard as the frame slider bar passes over it. Once the audio is loaded, you may shift its start time by selecting Audio Start Time... from the Audio pull-down menu in the Scene Editor. A panel will pop up that allows the user to enter in what time the audio should start. (If your frames per second is set at 30 fps, then entering "1.0" into the field starts your audio at frame 30).
ADDED OPTIONS IN LAYOUTThe general options panel now has several new controls. The first is a choice of file browsers ("File Dialog") from which you select the default file browser of your computer’s operating system or LightWave’s Visual Browser system. A "Color Picker" option allows the user to select between the default color range representation or use LW_ColrPikr which is a color selector with more features, such as a wavelength and temperature-guided layout of color. There is also a "Color Format" option which lets the user choose the method by which colors are represented numerically, either in integer numbers, floating point (i.e., real numbers with fractions) or percentages. Another useful addition is the new Play at Exact Rate button on the general options panel. If you select this option, playback of an animation proceeds at the precise frame rate specified, no matter how complex the scene. Thus, if a scene is too hard for the computer to keep up with the frame rate, Layout will drop or skip frames in order to keep up the frames per second. This ensures that one second of animation plays for a time of one second.
CHANGE TOOLS COMMANDA command has been added in Layout for cycling among the major tools such as Move, Rotate, Size, etc. so that the space bar may be reassigned by the user if desired. The new command is called Change Tool and can be assigned to a shortcut key or placed on a menu. The space bar formerly acted as a tool changer, thus it is now free to pursue other careers. EXPRESSIONS UPDATESExpressions now accepts multi-layered object names such as "Object:Layer1" and cloned item references ("Null (1)") in the Channel Express interface. Previously, these two cases could not be used. The Channel Express interface now features four new buttons: Copy, Paste, Load and Save. The Copy and Paste functions work on a per-screen basis—if you type in your full expression, you may click on copy, open another channel up, and then click on paste and the entire expression will be pasted in, scratch variables and all. Load and save work predictably enough—click on Save if you have made an expression that you would like to use again in the future, and then you may load it in to other channels at your convenience. In addition, the expressions engine has changed the way it handles bones. Bones are now addressed as an item of their parent object in expressions, which opens up the ability to have bones with the same name in different objects. Thus, the new syntax for controlling bones would be "Null2.Bone1.wpos(Time).x". IMAGEWORLDThis feature adds the ability to apply an image using a spherical warp technique used by high dynamic range images as an environment wrap. It is accessible under Backdrop in Layout under Add Environment. It is called LW_ImageWorld, and you can offset the heading or pitch of the image as well as adjust its brightness to achieve just the right look.
QUICKTIME OPTIONSA QuickTime Virtual Reality object saver has been added as an animation saver. QTVR adds the ability to pan and tilt the camera inside the animation itself. To use this option, open up the Render Options panel and select QuickTimeVR_Object(.mov) under the type pull-down menu.
NEW PLUG-IN OPTIONS BUTTONA new button has been added called Plug-in Options in Layout. It contains the controls for generic and master plug-ins that used to be on the General Options panel, as well as an Add Plug-ins button. MASTERCHANNELThis new function allows the user to define a channel and use any of the channel modifiers to set your dependencies to it. It generates a new subsection in the channel bin inside graph editor named "MC.(user defined channel name)". To add a master channel, click on Plug-in Options and select the Add Layout or Scene Master pull-down menu and select LW_MasterChannel. You then define your channel’s name and type.
ENHANCED VIEWPORT NAVIGATIONIt is now possible to navigate numerically in each viewport through the use of pop-up menus. These are located at the top of each viewport under the single arrow pull-down menu. The options are called Set View Position, Set View Rotation and Set View Zoom. You can then enter your position, rotation or zoom numerically for added precision. VECTOR BLURIn the past, high-quality motion blur was achieved by high antialiasing settings and long render times. With the addition of VectorBlur, however, great-looking motion blurs are possible in a fraction of the render time. There are two components to the VectorBlur. Each uses motion data stored in a buffer that records each pixel’s immediate motion in the X and Y directions. The Vector mode smears the pixel out based on the motion buffer, while the Blur mode uses the X and Y data to integrate or "smush" together the surrounding pixels with that pixel. Simply select your Mode of choice and change the settings accordingly. Vector motion blur has options to control the Vector Length of the vector as well as the Vector Opacity, and these are envelopeable as indicated by the E next to their controls. The Blur option has settings to control the Blur Strength as well as the range it extends to other pixels around itself. Remember, Blur affects the pixels around it including backgrounds whereas Vector only alters the pixels of the object in question. LightWave already has a motion blur which is accessible in the Camera properties panel. It requires that you turn on antialiasing. The Blur mode above works in tandem with the regular motion blur, whereas the Vector mode can work by itself, without the need to apply either the regular motion blur or any antialiasing! This has the effect of reducing rendering time drastically. To quickly familiarize yourself with these options, open Layout and add an object. Create a couple of keyframes of the object zipping past the camera. Choose a frame where the camera can see the entire object and go to Settings > Image Process and select LW_VectorBlur from the Add Image Filter pull-down menu. The interface shown above should appear. The Vector mode may be used right away, but if you wish to use the Blur mode you must go to the Camera properties panel and turn on Motion Blur (you don’t HAVE to, but if you don’t your object won’t be very blurry when you render). From there, you can set antialiasing to whatever level you desire depending on how fast you want your object to render. MULTIPLE CAMERA SUPPORTLayout now fully supports additional cameras, including the ability to independently set pixel aspect ratios and resolutions for each camera. In the camera properties panel, you simply select the camera from the Current Camera pull-down menu at the top of the panel and then set the pixel aspect ratio and resolution. To set a second camera, simply select it and set it at whatever ratio and resolution you like. OTHER LAYOUT ENHANCEMENTS• Morfmixer now has load and save options in its user interface. • StealthNet now has LightWave 6.0 support. • Enhanced integration between StealthNet and ScreamerNet. • Render speed has been optimized despite the higher quantities of data now moving through the pipeline. • Expressions can now react to interactively moved items even if Auto Key is turned off. • It is now possible to set SubPatch levels to zero. This is similar to a level of one, except that the patches are not continually re-meshed even if Subdivision Order is other than First. In other words, it makes patches act like normal polygons, allowing faster interaction. LW_TEXTUREVMAPThis new feature can be found in the Additional pull-down menu in Modeler. When selected, a panel comes up that asks you to select your previously named VMap (vertex map, either a Morph Target or a Weight Map) and then open up Texture Editor to create a texture which becomes the weight map. Instead of applying a texture, the program applies the values of the texture into a weight map (based on luminosity), which can then be manipulated. In the case of Morph Targets, the texture creates a displacement map that is saved as a morph target with your object. By leaving the texture editor window open, you can experiment with different textures and manipulate them in real-time. To "freeze" the texture you want, simply close the texture editor window. For example, make a subpatched sphere and then create a weight map called "FBM". Open up LW_TextureVMap, select that weight map, click on the Texture button and select the procedural texture named FBM. Then, making sure the scale is correct for the size of the object, select the Size command, open up its numeric panel, and set the Falloff to Weight Map. Scale the object to see the power of this tool as a modeling device—the results are dramatic. The user may change the type of texture at will, using procedural textures, image maps or gradients. You can also use this new feature with multi-layered objects, as the end result texture made from many layers will be the one used to create the VMap. The possibilities are endless.
UNWELD COMMANDModeler now has a new command available called Unweld. This feature allows you to create multiple copies of the selected points so that none are shared by two polygons at once, which can have the effect of reversing an executed Weld command. This option is stored in the Additional pull-down menu in Modeler, but you may want to move it to a place more convenient if you intend to use it often. PATH EXTRUDE AND PATH CLONEThe Path Extrude and Path Clone commands can now read new-style (LightWave 6.0 and higher) enveloped motions as saved from Layout. Thus, when you select Path Extrude or Path Clone in Modeler, you are given a file selector popup from which you can select your previously saved motion file. Motion files are saved in Layout by selecting Ctrl-Shift-Left Mouse Button and going to the "Motion" options. PER-POLYGON UV MAPPINGPer-polygon UV mapping is now supported, allowing UV mapping on the scale of one polygon at a time, which adds a new level of modeling detail for the animator, and is of particular interest to game developers. There are a number of new features for dealing with UV texture maps that are now accessible via the Additional list of features in Modeler. The new additions consist of the following: SelectByMapThis selects points which have entries in the vertex map chosen by the user, or by the name and optional type as the command arguments. This works for UV’s, Morph Maps or Weight maps. CullMapThis selects points which have entries in the vertex map chosen by the user, or by the name and optional type as the command arguments. The points are selected if the magnitude of the VMap at that point is below the threshold value. Alternatively, these points may instead be cleared from the VMap. The magnitude in UV space is given by the square root of U squared plus V squared. Since UV’s are on a scale from 0 to 1, the greatest magnitude possible would be the square root of 2, or 1.414. Thus, if you wanted to select or clear out all of the points from the UV map that were all in a certain region of your texture, you would use this function.
LockUVsToPolyThis plug-in locks the specified VMap's UV values onto the selected polygons. This is where you can truly perform some per-polygon manipulations. For example, if you had a few polygons that you wanted to keep covered with your texture while still wanting to alter the rest of your UV map, you simply select the polygons you want to remain stationary and select this option from the Additional pull-down menu. You can do this as many times as you like for a single named UV map without creating new UV maps each time. ClearPolyMapThis is the companion to LockUVsToPoly. Simply select this to clear out the poly map created with LockUVsToPoly. SelectByPolyMapThe third partner in the PolyMap game, this function selects all the polygons that were created with LockUVsToPoly. SelectUVSeamSelect polygons where the chosen UVs span more than half the image. This is common in the case of a UV map created by spherical or cylindrical projection, where the value of the U coordinate is 0 on the vertex at 0 degrees, and the same vertex needs to be interpreted as 1.0 at 360 degrees, for the final polygon in the map. This creates a UV that tries to scrunch the entire image onto one polygon length. A solution to this problem is to use this plug-in, and apply a new surface to these polys, which uses a different UV map, but the same image. Thus, the ugly "seam" that appears on spherically or cylindrically wrapped image (such as a split in the otherwise contiguous image) will be fixed by "patching" the aberrant polygons with its more appropriate neighbor polygons. Be sure to have UV projection activated in the texture editor and have your UV map selected.
Adjust PolyMapOnce you have Locked down a polygon or two using Lock UVsTo Poly or another feature, you may adjust that per-polygon map with this handy tool. With AdjustPolyMap, it is possible to rotate and scale an image as you see fit.
NewQuadPolyMapIf you have a four point polygon (a quad poly) that is part of a larger UV map, the intrepid animator would occasionally like to apply the texture in a different orientation than that already selected for the UV map as a whole. Well, if your polygon is a quad, then this feature will reapply the same image that was selected for your UV map to the single quad poly in any of four new orientations (0, 90, 180 and 270 degree offsets of the corners of the texture). This is good for doing some fine-tuning. To use this feature, simply select NewQuadPolyMap from the Additional pull-down menu in Modeler and select the new orientation of the map. This creates a per-poly UV for that polygon with the image oriented in a new manner.
LW_XCOMMAND
This new function can be selected from the Additional pull-down menu in Modeler. When activated, it allows the user to enter any of the user commands available in LightWave, such as Flip, Triple, Load, Save, Undo, Symmetrize, Change surface, etc.
FINE-TUNED SPHERE TESSELATIONTesselated spheres can now be made with more fine-grained control over the number of points and polygons. The previous Level parameter, which set the number of iterations of the old subdivision algorithm has been replaced by a Segments parameter which directly sets the number of segments along the edges between the 12 polyhedral vertices. The segments are related to the old level parameter by powers of two: 2 raised to the old level equals the number of segments, so a level of 5 corresponds to 2 raised to the fifth power, or 32. In other words, you have a finer range of increments with which to control the tesselation of your sphere. CHANGE SURFACE ADDITIONSThe Change Surface command ("q" key) previously allowed users to name their specified surfaces for later modification in the surface editor. Now, however, there are options for setting the color, diffuse and specular levels on the popup. This saves the modeler from having to open up surface editor to perform those changes, allowing workflow to speed up during initial modeling.
NEW LAYOUT-RELATED COMMANDSModeler now has a command popup in the upper- right corner of the main window (just to the right of the layer buttons) which provides quick access to three Layout-related commands: Switch to Layout, Synchronize Layout, and Send Object to Layout. Switch to Layout (also mapped by default to the F12 key) does just what you might think—it switches to your Layout window if it is open, and opens up Layout if you do not already have it open. Send Object to Layout also works like it says—if you are working on an object in Modeler and would like to put it in Layout, this handy button takes care of it for you. Synchronize Layout updates the information that Layout has concerning your real-time changes to the object in Modeler. Thus, if you modify the object in Modeler and would like to see the changes in Layout, you would select this option. 
OTHER MODELER ENHANCEMENTS• The backdrop images for the current default layout for each view configuration are now cached as long as possible. Backdrops are not saved in config files, and they are not saved as part of view presets. • The TextureGuide tool now can handle UV’s, expanding its range of use. • Some modeling selection operations have been optimized to improve their display performance. In particular select-all, select-connected, select-invert, and drop will try to do the minimum amount of drawing to show the new selected state. • The drawing of wireframe points in OpenGL has been optimized using a technique that dramatically improves performance. • The surface and parts pop-ups within the statistics panel now have 'Surf:' and 'Part:' labels, respectively. • There are two new Display Options on the Interface tab for optimizing OpenGL performance. The Simple Wireframe Points setting uses OpenGL's own points for wireframe points and selected points at a user-specified size. These points can draw orders of magnitude faster than the standard points. The Simple Wireframe Edges option turns off polygon offsetting for the sketch-like modes, fixing display problems on some cards. • Background layers drawing as wireframe now only include points if the view style is itself wireframe. Solid views draw no points. • Two new plug-ins have been added called RotateMorph and ScaleMorph. A problem with transforming the entire base object of a morph setup (as opposed to points and areas once the base is established) turns out to be difficult to repair in the short term. these plug-ins are used to compensate for some of the basic post-setup transformations you may need to do once your base and morfs are built.
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