reference
materialCreating Growing Vines through the use of Hypervoxels and Object Vertices Emmitters
by Colby Jennings |
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(Figure a)- Begin by using the Spline Draw tool under the Create Tab in Modeler. Be sure and work from the bottom up. Be creative and you may even consider using an actual vine and or tree as reference footage.
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figure a |
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Your Next step is to hit the “N” key on the keyboard, this will bring up your numeric function panel. Next to the words “Curve Points” you will see a number, this number is the number of the points or “clicks” that you used to create your spline. (Figure b) Go ahead and enter the largest number you can in that field (At the time of Lightwave 8.3 the highest number possible was 200) after you have done this, hit “enter” and then exit out of that numeric panel, the hit “spacebar” to let go of the tool. You now have a spline and what may be the beginnings of a trunk for you vine/tree. (Figure c)
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figure b |
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figure c |
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Then you should go back to your original Layer and choose layer properties again, this time, under the dynamics tab, add dynamic “Emitter” to the object, this will allow you to make your objects GROW. (Figure f)
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figure f |
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Double click on the Line that now says FX Emitter 0 particles, this will bring up the menu for particles, either in the bottom part of this window, or will create a new window for those options. From here, you should click on the drop down box for “Nozzle” and select “Object-Vertices”, this allows you to create Particles along the spline object that you have drawn. (Figure g)
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figure g |
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You should repeat this step for each layer you have, paying close attention to the life of the particles in respect to the timeline of your particular scene. Also, to be sure that your branches don't start growing at the same time that your trunk does, be sure and check “fixed” on the dynamic/particle menu and then choose the frame that you want that particular branch to start growing, (if you have done this right so far, you should be able to scrub the time line and see the particles being created along the axis of the splines enough to determine the proper start frame for each branch) Once you have all of your settings done properly, you may now go to window/volumetrics and fog options.
There you will have the option of adding the HyperVoxels 3.0 volumetric preset. You may do that now and then double click the line with the text “HyperVoxels 3.0” to bring up the options display for hypervoxels. (Figure h) |
figure h |
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When the options window comes up, you will see your layers on the left that you have declared as “Emitters”, they should be grayed out by default, but double clicking them activates that layer as an emitter. (as a shortcut, if you know that your surface setting will be the same for each layer, you can set your setting for one layer and then activate the other layers by copying and pasting the settings from one layer to the next) (Figure i)
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figure i |
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For your first layer (and without activating any other layers) click on the “T” button to the right of the window for particle size under the tab Geometry, this will bring up another options panel. This should look familiar as this is the standard texture editor with one or two more options. (Figure j)
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figure j |
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(go ahead and enable Viper for this part so that you may see the changes you make in some what of a real time setting)Now you will notice that as you change the values of you top and bottom of the gradient that the size and taper of your vine will also change If you will make 2 value points on the gradient, one at the very top, and one at the very bottom, then change the value point at the top to something around a value of 20 or 25 and make sure that the bottom one is 100, then set your timeline to something other than 0, hit F9 to render a preview, then go to Viper and update your display, you should see something like this.(Figure l)
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figure l |
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If you repeat these steps for your other layers and be sure to pay attention to their sized relative to the main trunk, you could have something like what is shown in the final picture.(Figure m)
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figure m |
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