Lightwave 7

After the "delights" of last class I made a return to the lab the following day to have another try at the 3D kitchen assignment.

For the most part it was easy I had to remember to save often and check my point counter ever so often.

The danger of working in demo mode is that you are only allowed 200 points. This restricted some of the possibilities and complexities of my creations, but through the restriction I found creative freedom.

I found thinking in simple shapes to be the best solution and I am most pleased with how my sink turned out. The taps I originally thought were going to be the biggest challenge but with my exceptional mind I was able to make a representation of a sink with taps and it looked convincing. Brendan was very impressed when I showed him.

For today’s class I had a spoon, knife and a grater to finish off. The spoon I thought of as a strangely shaped tiny frypan. the greater resembles something I seen on TV once but could just as easily be mistaken for a flyswatter. The knife was my surprise for the day. I impressed myself with my big mean looking cleaver it may have been a little cartoon-ish but I liked it, in fact I liked it so much I stuck it in the wall.

I surprised Stuart when I asked how to use Lightwave. The Lightwave program comes in 2 sections, the first part Modeller where as the name suggests the models are shaped, next is Lightwave where the animation happens. So what I was really asking was how do I use the animation section of the program suite?

The big change to the other half of the program is that when moving the objects that the coloured arrows have special meanings too. Red is left and right, blue back and forth and lastly green which is up and down. Each relates to a particular axis X,Y and Z.

I found dressing the set to be fairly simple once I got used to adjusting the sizes and figured out how to move everything properly.

As this is an arts course the presentation of the finished work is also important. Handing the works up to be graded in a standard CD or DVD case will earn a pass. I decided to try something a little different. I got some graph paper and wrote out the appropriate information on it like name and the project name and on the back cover reversed what I wrote. Writing backwards is hard I don’t know how I managed to do it so well when I was younger. I finished by decorating the spine with a series of black lines to represent an object in the side view.

When I handed it in I got a laugh which is a good sign especially when there are dozens of other expressions and gestures that could have been used instead.

Next week I need to bring in a picture of a landscape with a lot of flat space because we move on to assignment 2.