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 By R. Shamms Mortier |
After a few years of exploration with a Commodore 64 and a 128, I purchased my first Amiga 1000. This was way back when they were the hottest item on the market, and I got all of the software and peripherals for it that I could(n't) afford. My work has always involved graphics, animation, and music, so it was truly an amazing tool. I spent days and nights getting accustomed to it, mastering some stuff and exploring everything. When the A-2000's hit, I jumped on board immediately, having pushed the 1000 to the literal breaking point. The Video Toaster was released soon after that, so that was added as a matter of course. In my work at the time for the state university, the Toaster and the 2000 came in quite handy. All of this helped me to pick up a fair amount of work, for ABC regional TV among other clients. Then the 4000 hit, and I went further out on an equipment binge.
I'm not going to bother to repeat the sad story of Commodore and its arrogant brutish administrators here. It's enough to say that my continuing engagement with the technology has necessitated incorporating other platforms. That being the case, my studio now contains four Amigas (fully loaded in every sense of the word), a PowerMac 100 MHz system, and a 75Mhz Pentium (that will become a 200 MHz Pentium sometime in 1997). I run LightWave on the Pentium, as well as the Toaster on an Amiga, and also stand-alone LightWaves on the other Amigas (two 2000's, and a 3000 Tower). When LightWave is released in 1997 for the Mac, I will find a way to invest in its use. The Amigas are networked together, and if I find the time and energy, I'll hook everything together in one network for rendering and file transfer.
So that's where I'm coming from, which tells you a little bit about where the column might go,.. definitely multi-platform orientated comments, referencing all of the software on each platform and how you can integrate everything into a LightWave environment, and even some stuff that doesn't pay attention to NewTek applications at all. Everything will be centered around graphics, animation, and some audio (music, sampling, etc.) creativity however, so you won't find much in my column about spreadsheets or such. I will also be offering readers/browsers some texture collections and animations from time to time, which can be purchased directly from me via snail mail and e-mail, things that ARE LightWave oriented and useful, either for study or use in your projects. These items will be offered ONLY through the Visual Inspirations Webazine and nowhere else, so stay tuned for details.
elcome to the first column in a continuing series for Visual Inspirations' new Webazine. Having spent about ten years involved in making comments upon the state of computer graphics and all of the tools and toys, I am happy to be involved in this new enterprise. So allow me to give you some indication about what I think this column will be concerned with, though time has a way of altering all preconceived plans. In order to do that, I'll have to give you a modicum of history, so that you can appreciate that my previous and ongoing involvements will indeed influence my future writing.
Unlike some of the magazines that have tackled Toaster/LightWave topics in the past, I believe that creative individuals use a lot of tools to achieve their desired results. No matter what NewTek or anyone else says, no one tool does everything. Consequently, I will be telling you about a superlative non-NewTek animation Amiga program either next time or soon, and how it relates directly to LightWave work (it transfers LightWave files back and forth). This is the new Aladdin-4D from Nova Design, known for their ImageFX, something no Amiga animator can afford to be without. They will be releasing Aladdin version 5 in the first quarter of 1997. This is a definite "gotta-have" for any serious Amiga animator, LightWave experienced or not. Expect to see-read my comments on it.
And...
Expect to see pieces on other non-Amiga apps, like Photoshop, effects packages, Web stuff, and a load of other Mac and Windows apps. If you're a serious (or playful) LightWave user, you won't want to shy away from any of this. It's all important, useful, and a lot of fun to explore. I'll try to tie everything back to LightWave projects when I can, but if I don't, the tie-back will be left to your imagination.
In my experience, some of the most-well known and high-end developers sometimes close their ears to their community of users. In that regard, I'd like to complain loudly about the inability of LightWave 5 to address PC picture and animation files correctly. You may/might/will find that LightWave AVI animation files do not load into other AVI editing software correctly. This is a big pain, and I wonder why it's so. Did NewTek think that LightWave would be the only application on a Windows platform that users would access to complete projects?! LightWave's AVI and PIC(T) format writes stink. There are some workarounds (other plug-ins, etc.), but NewTek has to be a lot more responsive to doing simple things correctly. It charges professional money for product, and professionals should not have to worry about neglected results in such a simple area.
OK. Having prepared this meal with a lot of grease and breadcrumbs, let's get to the beef (or Tofu if you like). Metro-GrafX has released a whole library of exquisite plug-ins for LightWave. We'll get to all of them in time (Fiber Factory, Sparks, etc.). For now, I want to tell you about the latest one, which perhaps has escaped your attention: DAB. DAB (Digital Art Brush) accomplishes what other software calls "media effects" or "ray painting", transforming objects into artwork that looks as if it were rendered with non-computer media. In some sense, DAB is a wonderful partner to the Penello-Lite plug-in from Xaos Tools that ships with LightWave. This effect can also be accomplished by applying Photoshop plug-ins (which LightWave allows you to incorporate), but the result is often too flat for a video animation. Ray Painting takes the shadowing and texturing/surface of the objects in account before applying its effects.
DAB is the first real Ray Painter to be released for LightWave, and it features useful high-end options. Among these are: randomized brush strokes, "paint" applied in a back-to-front order, randomized color and transparency possibilities, any size brushes and infinite styles, customized creation of brushes in a paint program, raised strokes, configurable surface effects, and alpha control over application. The DAB interface is easy to understand and master, though the options are truly limitless.
Figure 1. The Shader Plug-Ins button in the Surfaces dialog panel.
DAB is loaded as expected into LightWave's plug-in folder. METRO_DAB is then chosen from the Shader plug-in options, and METRO_DABfilter is selected from the pixel filter plug-ins list in the Effects dialog. If you desire your own customized brushes, just use a paint program (Photoshop or Painter on a Windows system, or Brilliance/TrueBrilliance on the Amiga) to create a 320 x 320 8 bit grayscale image map. Save or translate the file into a BMP format image. DAB brushes are read by the system as Luma maps, so the comparable brilliance of the palette is all that is used, nut Hue information. The 320 x 320 pixel sized graphic contains a library of 100 separate brushes, each 31 x 31 pixels in size (with a one pixel border added).
Figure 2. The DAB interface screen, accessed from the Shaders Plug-Ins button
in the LightWave Surfaces panel.
DAB surface effects are really convolution matrices. If you've had any experience creating convolution matrices (say in ImageFX on the Amiga), you can carry your expertise over here. DAB has a separate slider that effects how much the Surface Convolution will effect the rendered outcome. The documentation details some convolution setups.
Figure 3. The strength of surface ray painting in DAB is adjusted
in the Effects Plug-Ins DAB dialog.
Where would you use DAB? DAB is useful in transforming any animation to a softer and/or more "painterly" look. It's also a great way to get a customized RotoScoping look from a sequence of captured frames. DAB can also allow you to create artistic backgrounds for character generation, or even style-contrasted backgrounds for more detailed and hard-edged animations. For cost and more information, contact Jon Tindall at:
MetroGrafX
PO Box 568
Florissant, CO 80816-0568
ph/fax 719-748-3972
jont@pcisys.net
See you next time in the threads of the Visual Inspired Web. Enjoy!
R. Shamms Mortier, PhD is the owner of Eyeful Tower Communications, a graphics/animation design house in Bristol, Vermont. He is an accompished jazz musician, recording artist and composer.He has written over 500 articles on computer graphics and animation over the last ten years for over twenty major international magazines, and has written books on related topics (Amiga DeskTop Videography, the graphics section of the Hayden Maclopedia, Pagemaker 6.5 for Hayden-Macmillan, and BackStage Pass on Web design for Ventana Books). He can be reached at rshamms@together.net.
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