Lazy Susan model rig

I couldn't find my old turntable (I think I binned it some time ago, having replaced the belt and finding the speed was still erratic, which meant satanic 80s thrash metal sounded great on it but everything else sub-par.)

The first thought which popped into my head was of course shopping at Bunnings for parts to build an expensive rig comprising of ball bearing lazy susan system with calibrated plates.

Common sense prevailed:

Charger test

Charger

Work in progress. Anime studio, with photo reference.

GROUNDED

Hits Youtube at last (it only took 10 years!)



My horror-comedy claymation student film shot '96
Won Best Animation St Kilda Film Festival '99

Super/UV Plug-in

These great features are all now available for FREE in Super/UV Pro:

SUVPolySnap: adjoins two polygons and snaps them together
SUVPolyMove: lets you move polygons in UV space without re-welding points
SUVPolyScale: allows polygon scaling in UV space
SUVPolyRotate: allows polygon rotation in UV space for easier texturing
SUVPolyStretch: allows polygon manipulation in UV space to distort the original scale
SUVMapExport: converts UV to Enhanced Metafile Format (*.emf) for use with 2D graphics software
SUVMapFit: scales polygons to fill UV space while maintaining their aspect ratio
SUVFitStretch: scales polygons to fill UV space by distorting their original scale

Plugins - TM Productions

Nullify
SelectKit
Select-O-Matic
KeyStrainer
PanelTools
ReplaceObjects
MIDIChannel
FrameJumper
ContentDirector
GridZoom
Mot-ify
SaveObjects
QuickParent
AssignBoneVMaps
EditCycle
UberNull
All-Keyer
FixLWS
12to24

Plasticene LW recap

Facejitter - A jitter script that trys to keep the topology of the mesh
----
Plasticene Procedural discussion thread

Procedural settings to try - from above thread
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AmbOcc shader

AmbOcc shader - tutorial thread
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2 robots
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Stop motion effect - discussion thread


Twitch - plugin
A motion plugin that enhances and replaces noisy channel by adding the ability to envelope the speed and scale of the noise. Originally developed for 3D World magazine in collaboration with Stormfront Digital Pictures this new, updated version includes the ability to save your settings and disable individual channels with a single click.

(Another) Lscript and Plugin page

I'm pretty sure I've linked this before
(Re: Shifter I think)

A lot of good plugins here
and recently:
Camera and Node Plugins for Lightwave 9

Simon Coombs Plugins

LConfig allows standardised studio config files to be personalised.

Project Tools are designed to create, backup and restore the folder structures for each project. Note that they are designed to be used with my preferred Content Directory structure as described in the Setup section.

Project-New creates folders for a new project.

Project-Backup creates a backup of a new project.

Project-Restore restores folders from a backup.

Scene-Parent was designed to produce master scenes intended to be used with LightWave's "load from scene" function. It parents all objects, lights and/or cameras in the current scene to a null and saves a copy of the scene.

Send-To-BNR is a simple, no-frills plugin that submits the current scene to Butterfly Net Render.

Smart-Save saves objects and scenes and creates automatic backups.

Zip-It is a plugin to export the files you'll need to take a scene home.

Some plugin links

The top of the page is a LW9 wish-list, but scroll down the page to the list of plugin links.

I love plugins.

Remember the day "show weights" was released, the early free version? I had been fiddling about weight mapping a face for a "backyard" mocap system for a client, using every weight map mixing/mirroring/blurring plug I could find. But the one thing I really needed was "show weights" - I couldn't get over how hard it was to get an exact value of a point's weight.

Binary Arts Plugins

- replaceBeep
- Scale2Points
- Pointsort
- Orbit

Some great plugin links

... in this thread: "we need these plugins in LW v9+" from newtek forum

Remove Points (Nitisara)

Delete Unused Surfaces

Trailer

SkelegonEditor, SkelegonReader

and Pictrix, Arts sphere, coffee...

Animation Mentor style characters and rigs

PS post tute

LW plugins

Including rendering wires

QV 4

Render Display for Lightwave

Flay Page

Edgepack LW9 Modeler tools

Papagayo

Free Audio analysis software from the makers of Moho.

Some dudes on the Kurv forum HERE are talking about working out home to import the resulting text file into an auto-morph-setting plugin for LW...

Quote KURV forum:
"Its simple to use - Load audio, type in the text, then have the software break up the words into Phoneme shapes. Drag and slide the text around on the Audio, test it with the 2D mouth shapes, and export the result out.

Now, the result is specifically developed for use with Lostmarbles awesome 2D animation tool (Moho (worth a look also, and cheap at US$99)), however just open the exported .dat file in a text editor.

Simple - Its a text file with "Frame#, Phoneme" list... Ideal for making up dopesheets for lipsync, etc.

Well worth a download..."

LWCAD tutorials

LightWiki

Free auto UV unwrapping plugin (Japanese)

Translated to English using GOOGLE

BETTER ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Newtek forum thread (relevant)

Also some rigging/IK plugs on that site, check out the Newtek thread for people doing backflips about it.

Also checkout UVRoad

SOME POSE SAVERS

T4D's neg frame pose saver

Pose Saver

Pose Library

Babelfish

LScripts by Chris Peterson

CGtutorials.com - LW tutes

Ground That Model - plugin

Simply CG animation challenges

Principles of Animation for 3D

Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D animation - John Lasseter

Lighting Tutes

Spinquad thread raises the question

And the responses:
Basic daylight video tute

Itchy animation detailed lighting tute
(Plugged by the spud previously I think)

A LW -> Zbrush tute

Root site

Procedural Textures

Awesome procedurals for Lightwave, updates like a maniac.

Some Animation Links

10 second club

Animation Corner

Animation Meat

Plastic Animation Paper

2D animation software

Animation Mentor blog (Paul Sinclair)

Lofting in Lightwave Tutorial

Tutorial dealing with lofting.
I haven't had a chance to read it through yet but apparently deals with a technique similar to spline patching but easier/less exacting in some ways.

Used in the tute to get good control modeling eye socket.

Volumetrics tute

BG render

Render in the background while you continue to work in LW.

NOTE: There is an issue with LW configs being lost. (LW bug, not the plugin.)

The only work around is to leave LW running.

Particle Paint Texture

Jimiclay's Rig

Karmatoons

Drawing lessons and other stuff here

Generi Rig for Lightwave

Lightwave to Zbrush and back again

Tute name might sound familiar, but this one's from Dodgy

FaceJitter - lscript

A jitter script that tries to keep the topology of the mesh

LW-CAD Beginners Manual Compilation

CGtalk discussion thread

Toonrod

Motion Capture Yahoo Group

Yahoo group -

This group is a meeting place for people who wish to design, develop and use new motion capture systems using cheaper off the shelf technology. These technologies include cheaper cameras, computers, and software. There will be an emphasis on developing new techniques that aren't addressed by mainstream motion capture. The goal is to make motion capture available to more independent filmmakers. We also promote free use software and open source software for motion capture, but will pursue a zero tolerance policy on software piracy.

Some UV tools

Samuel Kvaalen's page

Terry Ford's page

Animated boolean texture discussion

SubD Modeling .com - Glen Southern's new site

Fertiliser plugin tutorial (quicktime)

In the tutorials section of this site

Scene and obj files for the tute

Fertiliser plugin

Cgtalk thread on this subject

Soft shadows discussion

DIscussion of technique to render shadows seperately, blur in PS and bake onto texture - boosting render time phenomenally

Motion trails

Shift AfterImageFilter - flay entry

- website

Spinquad discussion of this and other techniques

Show Weights - new plugin

Spinquad thread here

Video Tutorial: Importing EPS to LightWave

Video Tutorial: Importing EPS to LightWave (Quicktime | 7MB)

Facial Animation article w/Tutorial

"1) A review of the book Stop Staring, by Jason Osipa
2) A review of Timothy Albee's Facial Animation (TAFA) software by Mac Reiter
3) A tutorial using the principles espoused in the book to animate a characters face"

Spinquad thread

His example

Cloth FX tutorial page

Zmapper

Spinquad thread here

2 robots

Great image, textured with procedurals and weight maps.
- I want to know how to do that!

Alien1452

Beautiful 2d artwork on this site - inspirational

UV pelting options for LW - discussion

- where they suggest using wings 3d, which is free

Wings3D UV mapping workflow and solutions CGtalk thread

Alternative Incremental Save

Original file keeps same name, older versions get numbered

Zbrush tute by Dodgy

- how to get multi displacement maps working with Lightwave

Newtek thread

Brushes for PS

Ultra VNC

How-to thread

Normal maps from High Poly Mesh

Predator invisibility effect

Moving water texture discussion

Softdistortion's thread on Spinquad

Gorillaz 3D live performance

Article about how they did it

3D Photo Browser Light

Freeware tool: Browse your LightWave scenes and meshes

Home page: http://www.mootools.com/plugins/3dphotobrowserlight.asp
Download page: http://www.mootools.com/plugins/download.asp
Free serial number: http://www.mootools.com/plugins/lightregister.asp

Newtek forum discussion

Hair guides

- a way of generating hair guides using clothFX
- quick, easy. The result isn't too tidy but
it's quick and will do for a lot of cases.

Make Human

- a free 3D humanoid character modeling program.


Deathfall article

Spinquad forum discussion thread

Great renders

- and how to get them

Blood

Ground Shatter

Like Dragonball Z and Kung Fu Hustle

Using ZAppLink during texturing in Zbrush

Tutorial

Awesome Zbrush character work

Artists in Action - Zbrush

- above link is to main "Artists in Action"

Artists In Action - Anh Nguyen: Ear, Eyes, Nose, Mouth
- this thread contains a link to Anh's Free Ztools,
and further discussion

xtrm3d 69 super deformed camaro

New Dodgy plugins

New simple to setup Parent Follower, visibilty, and children selection plugins

NEWTEK FORUM THREAD

"Quick ParentFollower.
This is for use for items which you wish to have follow their parent's rotation, such as joints of a finger.
Select your objects which you wish to follow their parents. Apply the Generic MGMakeItemsFollowTheirParents and each item will have the MGParentFollower.ls added to them, and will use the item's own channel locks to determine how much they can follow their parent's rotation. I use this for fingers where they want to rotate around their Pitch and the joints all curl at once. I apply it to the bottom two digits, with H and B locked, and use the rotation of the top joint of each finger to control them. It also has a delay setting, and a setup setting. The delay setting is for tail swishes etc. For bones, the rotation is AUTOMATICALLY offset from the rest position, so joints which are slightly bent in their rest state work correctly. For objects, their rotation at the Setup time is used instead. There is also Scaling and Offset vectors for complete control.

Visibility
Use this with hotkeys to quickly change the selected item's visibility to invisible, bounding box, frontface wireframe, polygons and textured.

Select Children(Recursive)
These allow you to select the children of the selected objects by type, either just their immediate children, or all their descendants."

Facial animation discussion

phonemes, expressions etc

Various UV methods

A Newtek forum thread discussing several UVing methods.
I linked it here just because the I'd read about the Menithings a long time ago, but that was before I'd tackled UVing. Now the idea of using the modeler tools to get a good UV rip seems so obvious.

Gungirl Returns

More info in this Spinquad thread showing the earlier gungirl work

Seamless texture tutorial

Dogbite's Procedural Motion Tutorial

Proton posted these video tutes on Spinquad:

"This 2 part video tutorials shows building a rig that has slider based animation.
making a fish swim on command. 10 MB in total and well worth the download!"

Colin Cohen

Apparently his site is down, but he's sharing some of his plugins in this thread if you're looking for them

Halloween ghost tutorial

Cheesy VHS look in after effects

Rigging tutorial by Kevman3d

On the newtek europe site.

Discussion of the tutorial in THIS newtek forum thread

New Match Perspective plugin

This one by Nitisara

probably much like THIS ONE (older)

Remove points plugin

Anatomy Ref links

http://www.fineart.sk/

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?p=294634

Xtrm3d's morback thread on spinquad

Page 2 has some awesome surfacing and render tips for great shiny sculpy-looking skin.

xtrm3d's 69 super deformed charger

New Copy/Paste UV plugin

Quoting Nitisara from this Newtek forum post:

"I made Copy/Paste UV plugin, as an alternative for standard Copy/Paste UV commands.

Advantages of new plugin:
- supports continuous and discontinuous UVs;
- does not depent on the object creation history (i.e. points numbers and their topological order);
- does not depend on the order of polygons selection;
- can paste UVs onto mirrored geometry (ex. you make UVs for right hand, copy them and paste onto left hand). "

Link to the plugin is in the original thread

Steve Warner's website

Compiling all his tutes here
including the "There and Back Again" Zbrush primer for Lightwave users

Zbrush 2 learning kit

- video tutes to get you up to speed with ZBrush2 fast

ZBrush2 demo download

Spinquad forum news post - possible future discussion here?

Morph and bone combo

- Newtek forum discussion with some tips

Deforming ribbon along path

- Spinquad forum discussion

ALSO
Mucking around with Bridge Tool with cool results

ClothFX collision using nulls - calculates fast

- results may vary

Also referred to in THIS newtek forum thread

Dodgy's plugin's website has AddCollisionNulls plugin to help with this process/method

*(Note that Dodgy has a lot of other INSANELY cool plugs insluding updated springy plug and many more)

"Automation" plugin

Spinquad discussion

English version of Automation page

(English) TUTORIAL on how to use it

Anatomy of an explosion