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I personally don't
do much rigging or use bones for much so I was
looking forward to learning more about
bones. This is a set of only 8 videos each
approximately 25 minutes long. Being new to
bones I didn't really have very many preconceived
ideas of how bones should work and this set is
aimed for not only the beginner like myself but
also for people wanting to know more about the
latest bone tools in LightWave 8.0. In
Layout there is a tab called
"Setup". These videos will take
you through each of the tools in this menu and
describe them.
The first video
explores the various ways to add bones to an
object. Larry, the author, takes us through
the creation of skelegons and the conversion of
skelegons into bones in layout as well as the
standard method of creating bones in Layout. In Layout the
tools covered are the add bone, add child bone,
draw bones, draw child bones and adjust rest
length tools. In Modeller, again under the
Setup tab, the creation of Skelegons and how to
convert them in Layout is also covered.
Larry takes the time to go over the pitfalls of
each systems of adding and modifying bones.
He gives an excellent description of how to
correctly build skelegons so that all rotational
values will make sense for animating properly once
brought into Layout.
The second
video covers gimble lock and how to fix the
problem. Larry also discusses coordinate
systems and their affect on bones. The
Record Pivot Rotation tool is covered and how the
latest version in 8.0 is different from previous
versions of the tool. Larry shows us how to
edit bones using the Joint Move and Tip Move tools
as well.
In the Twist and
Align video, the video concentrates on how to fix
rotations of a set of bones that don't lay in the
same plane, making the pitches all
different. By changing the coordinate system
and adjusting the rotations of each bone using the
Bone Twist tool the set of bones becomes much
easier to handle. The Align Pitch tool is
also covered to basically do the same thing but
for bones in roughly the same plane.
The Detail and Edit
video gets a little more in-depth into how to edit
bones. The various options in the Split Bone
and Fuse Bone tools are explained. In the
Bone Connect Tool there are several options which
Larry goes through one by one and shows how useful
this can be. The Mirror, Copy and Rename
Heirarchy Tools are also discussed in this
video. The Delete Bone and Scale Heirarchy
tools are also discussed. Larry also shows
us how easy it is to export and import rigs.
This can be a real time saver if you do a lot of
character rigs, just import a rig from another
character and edit to taste - Cool!
The next three
videos (each about 27 mintues) takes you through
the process of rigging a character paying
attention to how the joints actually move.
All the information from the previous tutorials
are brought together in this project.
The videos are
clear, concise and the sound tracks with the video
fairly well
(as long as you don't have a bunch of other
programs running in the background). Larry is
easy to listen to and obviously knows his
stuff. Watching these was enjoyable and I
learned a lot about the new bone tools in
LightWave 8.0.
The bones
properties panel is really not discussed much in
this set of videos which was a bit of a
dissapointment. I wanted to know more about
all aspects of bones in LightWave but really only
got the portions from 8.0 that are different
from 7.5. The last three videos go through
rigging a full character and helps to put the
information from the previous videos into actual
use which is very good. Unfortunately
we don't get to do any actual animation other than
creating a fist with the fingers. I would
have also like to have seen other uses for bones
other than just setting up a rig for a character,
such as using them for deforming other objects in
creative ways.
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