news : pivisuals : New (Long Term) Lightwave Goals

September 9, 2015 : New (Long Term) Lightwave Goals

I have been using Lightwave for over 11 years (!?). Most of my projects are in a particular style; and while I try to learn a new technique with each one, they still fit within a certain genre and thus are somewhat limited. Since Lightwave has so much capability that I pretty much ignore, I’ve set two goals to add to my arsenal:

Occlusion Rendering and Compositing
Understanding/ Utilizing DP Kit

Most of my projects tend to be cel-shaded, and so I have had little need for realistic renders. However, cartoon-like shows can’t still have refined renders (see just about any 3D animated movie or TV show these days). Being able to create a solid Ambient Occlusion render and compositing it (via After Effects) would be a cool technique to possess.

As for DP Kit, I stumbled across this free plug-in a few weeks back (although I have yet to install it on my machine). It is a collection of additional nodes for the Node Editor; and from the videos I’ve seen, it can help in creating some cool animated effects and motion graphics in Layout. Below is an example of some of its power:

Understanding and utilizing DP Kit will actually help me in two ways. First, it can allow me to create some cool effects and animations, but it will also force me to get a better understanding of the Node Editor – which is something I don’t know nearly as well as I should.

Both of these goals are longer term, and neither of them are for any specific upcoming projects. My hope is to improve and expand my abilities in Lightwave. This means work on them might take a back seat at times, but I’m okay with that.

posted by Pi Visuals at 11:55 pm