ResPower Education Center: Lightwave, Part I - Rendering a Simple Scene

Figure 1: Creating a box.

Figure 2: Loading an object.

Figure 3: The scene.

Overview

ResPower seeks to be an active member of the community of artists and programmers that develops and uses 3d software. To this end, we have decided to start a sort of journal through the process of learning each 3d application. These journals are intended to be a complete step-by-step record of the learning process for a person with no prior experience in the 3d computer graphics world. Each journal will build on the knowledge and experience gained in the previous journals, and will thus increase in complexity as time passes. This first journal will take you through the process of opening Lightwave, and modeling and rendering a very simple scene.

A Simple Scene

The first step is to start up Lightwave. I'll be using version 8.5 until further notice, and unless otherwise noted, all information here is pertinent to running Lightwave on Windows. Lightwave has two main programs: Modeler and Layout. We want to open the Modeler.

Lightwave opens up with the "classic" four views: top, back, right, and perspective. We are going to create a simple box.

It is worth taking a moment here to explain the Lightwave mindset. In Lightwave, a scene consists of any number of objects. This separates the modeling process from the scene compositing and animating processes. It can be a little disorienting if you are looking for a "Render" button the Lightwave Modeler program, because it doesn't exist! But if you take a step back, it's actually rather intuitive. Each object in your scene is a separate entity and should handled as such. So when you are making something like, say, a bathroom, you should not think of the process as "I'm going to open Lightwave, model all of my stuff, put it where I want, and render." Instead, the process is more like "I'm going to open the Lightwave Modeler, create each of my objects, then open the Layout program, import my objects, place them, and render." This difference may seem small, but it helps to see it in writing.

A Box

In the Modeler, there is a menu group on the left with the heading "Primitives". It is pictured in figure 1. Under primitives, select the button that says "Box". Now, pick a view in which to start drawing your box. I picked the top view. Click and drag to define one side of your box. Now move to one of the other views (right or back) and click again to define the height of the box. Once your box is defined, you can click and drag the sides and corners of the box in any view to resize it.

With your box defined, it is time to save it as an object and put it into a scene. Still in Modeler, select "File" and "Save Object As..." to save your object. Give it a descriptive name and possibly a version number such as "simple_box_v01.lwo". There, you've created a Lightwave Object.

Now open the Layout program and you will see a default camera and light source. In the menu, select File->Load->Load object, or just hit the '+' key. The menu is pictured in figure 2. Select the object you just created in the dialog and your simple box will be imported into the scene. Now, just hit F9 to render and watch the magic happen. It probably took well under 1 second to render such a simple scene, and it's probably just a gray rectangle on your screen, (like figure 3) but don't be disappointed. The default camera is set up so that it points directly at one face of the cube you just created so that all you get is a rectangle. The cube is there, it just doesn't look very "cube-ish". Fortunately, you can play around with things to get something more interesting. Move the camera, rotate the box, move the light, or do whatever else you feel like, and see what happens.

Conclusion

This has been an admittedly simple introduction to Lightwave's Modeler and Layout Programs. There is nothing in this journal entry that your average individual could not figure out with a few minutes of experimentation with Lightwave, but this provides a base on which to build with future entries. Thanks for reading, and check back for new entries very soon.

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