Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage

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by Dylan R. McIsaac

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Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage Tutface_Pose1

This tutorial requires a base
knowledge of LW character setup and some steps
will be left out.

Making a 100% weight map for the area that you
want to have control of the points/polys to animate
in layout. Mine was named "Face". Make two copies
of this area in separate layers. second layer
for the colored wire frame you see on mine.

Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage Tutface_mesh

Deform

Now take the first copy and kill the polys
so you have just the points.
Turn the points into one point poly's with "Points
to polys" function in modeler.
Use Extrude to pull the one point poly's
into two point poly's pointing in the Z axes
and make them small so it dose not clutter
up later in layout.
Convert the two point poly's into bones with
Make Skelegons.
You can now delete the two point poly's
on that layer so your just left with the bones.
Paste the bones into the layer with the mesh.

Later in Layout you can use
Spreadsheet Editor assign the all the bones to
the one weight map. Take a look at the scene
to see how all the small bones of the face are
parented to an under lying rig of Head/jaw/tongue/eyelids...
Remember to use Spreadsheet Editor if you have
any batch parenting or renaming to do.

Cage

For the Colored Wire frame that
will act as a cage for a visual reference for
those tiny bones you just made. Take that second
copy of the weight map area that was made.

Make a VERY small bevel.
"Merge Point" with
the "fixed set" at a size that will merge
all the new points made from that small bevel.
Remove all 4point polys
so you are just left with two point poly's
at this point it should look like a wire
frame.
Unify Polygons.
This will act like the "Show
Subpach Cage" in layout Display Options but
with this you can break it up with surface
colors.

Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage Tutface_Wire

Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage Tutface_WireBones

Now you are ready to go to layout.
You can use it as the main means of deformation
or as a tool. At any time a "Saved Endomorph" in
layout to send the face shape to the Morph Mixer
so you can start using sliders.

Keeping wire frame object in
a separate layer later in layout you can set
its bone Options to "Use Bones From Object" and
setting the rendering options that object dose
not show up in the final render. Also I'v given
my bones the same color as the mesh that they
are under for selection purposes.

Note: LightWave's
limit is 4,096 bones per object.

Motion Mixer Tip:
To use Motion Mixer Make sure that no bones have
periods or brackets in the name. If you have
not already given all the bones unique names
in modeler you can use Spreadsheet in Layout
it has a cool function called Enumerate for
renaming all the small bones of the face.

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1 Tutorials LightWave 3D How to Make an Animation Deform Cage Qua Jan 26, 2011 2:59 am

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