Mitch's LW Tips

A Gaggle of LW Tips in no Particular Order of Importance
(Notes to remind me how things work in LW)
Mitch Rosefelt

Animating
Use Curve Constraint to use a curve object for a motion path. The first curve in a object will be used.

Set display subdivision low or make a low poly standing so the scene can playback as fast as possible.

Open the graph editor, dope sheet, and hit play. Now edit keyframes and curves while watching the animation. Motion between keyframes can be edited by dragging existing keyframes and adjusting curves. Bezier curves are very useful for adjusting data between keyframes. Remember that using “alt” when dragging on a Bezier handle will allow only that handle to be adjusted. Zoom in to see the curves accurately. If you have 2 monitors, move the dope sheet and graph editor to a separate monitor than the main Layout window. Maximize the graph editor when necessary by double clicking its title bar. Note that you can also adjust the frame range in the graph editor during playback by moving the handles above the frame numbers, or by dragging the frame slider past the current limits. Note that dragging the frame slider in the graph editor does not update the scene as quickly as dragging the frame slider in the Layout Window. Get used to quickly resetting the frame range, then get used to animating in realtime. You’ll do better work more quickly.

Animating a Walk
First place the steps on the ground (XZ). Then add the height. Consider the shape of the curves. The foot will decelerate at the top of the lift, then accelerate on the way down. The toe will will bend before the foot lifts from the ground. It will straighten out soon after the foot leaves the ground, but then the ankle will bend to prevent the toe from dragging on the ground. The ankle will straighten out as the foot rests back on the ground. Animate the foot-bend and ankle bend with the curve for foot height in the background. In general there will be a shape to each curve for each step, and a rythm which will be visible in the relationship between the shape of the steps on each of the curves. Obviously, you don't want to see the ankle unbending more than a frame or two (if at all) after the foot is back on the ground. Problems like this can be quickly fixed in the graph editor or dopesheet.

Saving/Loading Motion Data
File/Save/MotionFile
This will save the all the motion for the selected object.
Keyframer (Plugin included in LW)
Offers a variety of motion saving options (ie. for more than one object, heirarchies). Saves each data channel individually and WILL OVERWRITE ALL DATA IN THE DESTINATION DIRECTORY. Note that these individual channels can be loaded (one at a time) in the graph editor.
Graph Editor - See Below

Bones Setup
If your having trouble w/a rig, use Loadbones to load an object and its bones into modeler (bones will be skelegons). Choose the “use rest position” option. This will allow you to see the exact setup w/out the influence of expressions, match goal orientation, etc.
Watch for non-bone items in any hierarchies which will be deleted and then replaced through mirroring. With Parent in Place on, move them out of the hierarchy, then move them back in after mirroring.
Drag w/middle mouse button to select multiple bones. Adust selection w/Cntrol or Shift LMB.
If you use null bones, set their strength to 0. This way when “bones off” or “Record Rest Posn” is used, and the bones are all toggled on, you don’t have to worry about turning null bones off.
When mirroring, the L_ can then be replaced with R_. Also, by using IK and keeping the controls outside the hierarchy, it will be less of a hassle to modify and mirror a part of the hierarchy.
When setting up bones which are following other items, the rest posn of the bone should be set first, then position the follower object (Parent In Place maybe helpful). Then turn on the follower and adjust the control object.
If the model is deforming incorrectly, turn off the follower functions and the "match goal orientation function and see if the bone jumps.

What's the deal w/Skelegon Handles?
Sgons w/Handles

Using a clock as measure, the Skelegon Bank handles in the top pic are set at 12, 9, 6, 3 and 10:30. In the bottom picture we see a few things:
1) The Pitch and Heading of the top bone in a given heirachy are not affected by the placement of the Sgon Handle. The bank angle of the bones is affected.
2) In the child bones, we see that the Pitch axis lines up with the bank handle of the Sgon.
3) The angles shown are for the bones at the top of each heirarchy. Heading is 180 because the they are 180 deg relative to the default heading of a bone in layout. The angles of the child bones are all pretty much at zero.

Joint Move and Tip Move
Joint Move and Tip Move are very powerful tools for setting up bones. Create a practice scene with a bone heirarchy and play with them until you are totally familiar with their functions (there aren’t that many). Note that these tools have no undo, and in fact you can’t even cancel out of them once you start using them, so you might want to save very often when using them. Also, these tools can add undesirable changes (unpredictable rotations) to some of the bones, but they're still useful.
Joint Move moves the tip of the selected bones, along with the tail of the parent bone. Note that this will change the rest length of the child bone(s). The bone selection must be a single bone or a parent and its direct children (ie. only 2 levels of heirarchy). If a single bone is selected, the tail can be moved and the head will remain in place and the tip of children will not be moved (which is often NOT what you want, so be careful) - in this mode you are setting the rest length interactively in 3d. For multiple bones, they need to all be on the same level below the parent bone. Note how Joint Move works with multiple selected bones – very useful for resting bones that fan out, such as the bones between the wrist and the fingers. So if you want to adjust bones in a bone chain where each bone has a single child, you will want to select pairs of bones (middle mouse is useful for this, also, you might want to lock the mesh to prevent selection), then use Joint Move.
Tip Move will operate on a single bone or all bones in a skeleton if none are selected when it is invoked. Note that this will change the rest length of the parent bone. In order to use it on an entire skeleton, (to deselect all bones) select the parent mesh of the skeleton, then invoke Tip Move. Tip Move might more accurately be called "Tail Move", since it will move the tail end of the selected bone and all child bones of the tail being moved. Or to put it differently, it will move the entire branch of all heirarchies, beginning with the child(ren) of the selected bone. When used on an entire skeleton. any/all bone tips can be moved.

Notes:
"Show Handles" must be on in the display options in order see the interface for these tools when using them.
All bones modified will need to have "Record Bone Rest Position" reset after using these plugins (the bones will be deactivated automatically).
The scene must be at F0 to use these tools. So if there is some animation of the bones, or if you have their first keyframes set to a frame other than 0, keep the dope sheet open to copy/move the new keyframes from F0 to wherever necessary. Also, by careful coping/moving of keyframes, these tools could be used to animate a skeleton as well, though you'd probably end up scaling the bones.
If adjusting the bone setup on a scene where the bones are being used as a deformation path (see the famous "wavy slug" tutorial at MD Arts, click the Tuturials link), the rest rotations of the bones will need to be reset to 0. Again, you can keep the scene editor's property tab open and even keep the "Rest Rotation" cells selected AND the "Adjust Properties" window open and set to 0, so all you have to do is hit "apply" each time you finish adjusting the bones and want to test your new bone layout - very efficient.
Finally, if you forget which to use when, which I usually do, if you want to move a heirarchy of bones, but don't want to change the rest length of the child bones being modified, use Tip Move, but think of it as "Tail Move". So to move a bone and its children, select it's parent and use Tip Move. The rest length of the parent will change.
If you don't want to move an entire heirarchy of bones, use Joint Move, but be careful about selecting only one bone.

Notes on setting up fingers
The finger has 3 joints, but the bottom joint doesn’t coincide with the crease at the base of the finger. Look at your hand and bend a finger at the bottom joint. In fact the bottom finger bone is longer than the next two combined and extends beyond the bottom finger joint into the hand. If you don’t setup your hand this way, it will look pretty bad when your character makes a fist.
The thumb on the other hand, does have a bone which corresponds with the bottom crease, however it is the second bone., the first bone of the thumb, which is very influential in the movement of the fingers, connects the second bone to the wrist, so it deforms much of the hand.
When modeling fingers, consider how they will bend into a fist when all the bones are setup – the pitch of the bones will be at a right angle to the fingernails (the top side of the fingers). When the fingers bend, they move closer together and head toward a central point – this is the direction they should be modeled in. The fingers should not be modeled as if they were sitting on a copy machine (i.e. flat and facing parallel in the same direction as the palm). We have opposable thumbs, and therefore the thumb should be angled toward the fingers to a certain degree. Imagine a basketball balance on the fingertips.
Consider also how the thumb will bend once the hand is fully rigged. It should be easy to get a nice fist with the fingers folding into the fleshy part of the thumb and the thumb crossing over the index and middle fingers.

Notes on IK:
If a bone has a goal assigned, it is the parent of that bone which will point at the goal. If "match orientation" is set, the bone (not the parent), will match the orientation of the goal. Even if IK is globally switched off, "match orientation" will not be switched off.

Compositing
When compositing, I've often wondered if LW uses straight or premultiplied alphas. I've found that sometimes using "Straight Alpha Interpretation" works better than premultiplied.
Here's a reply from Kevman3d on spinquad:
"LightWave tends to generate premultiplied alphas - That is, the AA'd edges get blended with the BG colour, so you end up with that fringe effect if your software doesn't understand or work with Premult alphas.
That's what the Photoshop 'remove matte' options tend to do for anything rendered on black or white backgrounds. Comp software like AfterEffects, etc usually have the option to work with premultiplied alpha.
If you really don't like this effect - In LightWave, you can try using the image filter script 'SpriteEdger' but that usually tends to completely alias the edges which is great for small game graphics, etc... But not so much for comp work."

...and a discussion on compositing at theNewtek forum here:

Dope Sheet/Scene Editor
Learn to use selection sets, the filter function, and locking in order to setup the scene editor so all keyframable items can be filtered and visible. Then you can use the dopesheet for editing in realtime. Useful functions:
Select a whole column and add or delete frames. But you don’t want to delete keyframes which is why they all need to be visible.
You can "time scale" selected keyframes during playback.
Adjust secondary motions and followthru.

Dynamics
Approaches to animating more than one cloth object.
1. Animate one object at a time. Save the mdd file for each one.

Even though clothFX has built in collision detection, if cloth objects are intersecting other objects, assign collisionFX to any object that are causing problems. Note that self collision takes a long time to calculate.
It appears that if an object is hidden, it will not included in dynamics calculations unless it is selected

Expressions
Examples:
Calculate the average position of two items using world coordinates:
(Left_Ankle_Goal.wpos(Time).z + Right_Ankle_Goal.wpos(Time).z)/2.0

Expression Self Reference & Inheritance
Say we have RedSquare, GreenSquare, BlueSquare.
We want GreenSquare to add Pitch from RedSquare to itself, and BlueSquare to add Pitch from both GreenSquare and RedSquare to itself.
If Green is child of Red, and Blue uses an expression to get Pitch from Green, it won't work.
Answer:
GreenPitchExpression: Value + [3Squares:RedSquare.Rotation.P]
BluePitchExpression: Value + [3Squares:GreenSquare.Rotation.P]

Graph Editor/Expressions
You can zoom in and scale the graph editor display w/keyboard modifiers. For example, select several keyframes and use “Shift-A” to fit the selected kf to the window.

Note that when you hit “enter” in the Layout Window, you make KF on selected channels, when you hit “enter” in the graph editor, you make a keyframe on all selected channels, and the kf ALL HAVE THE SAME VALUE. Get used to it and use it to your advantage.

Change the default keyboard shortcuts so that you can advance to next FF or KF, toggle playback on/off using the same keys in both Layout and the Graph Editor.

You can adjust the active playback area with the little triangles at the bottom of the graph. Control dragging will shift the whole active area (same as alt-dragging the timeline).

Learn to use a text editor for some tasks, like editing expressions.

Curves can be selected directly in the curve editing window using alt RMB and alt+shift RMB.

Note that the Save/Load expressions can be used to quickly add, remove, and modify the expressions in a scene. If the expressions in a library are edited and reloaded, they will replace the expressions of the same name in the scene. Editing an expression library in a text editor and then importing into the scene is advantageous over editing the scene file in several ways, including:
Less chance of screwing up the file. (THIS NO LONGER WORKS AS OF LW 8.3. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE RESTORED).
You can put empty lines between sets of related expressions to organize them.
If you edit the scene file directly, you have to reload it into Layout, which closes the scene editor and empties the graph editor, greatly interrupting workflow.
You can also use a text editor to search the scene file for other items, like plugins, to see how they are structured in the scene file. Obviously this must be done with care or the file can be corrupted.

Favorites
Use the favorites function extensively. Create favorite sets in the graph editor for hips, hands, feet, head. Note that sets can (probably will) include channels from more than one item. Include all channels necessary to edit a given item. You might have sets for animating, other sets for setup. IE. Put all the channels of the fingers of a hand in a favorite set in order to adjust the expressions which control them. In some cases (perhaps most), you will have channels from several items in a set. For example, for a arm/hand a selection set might contain the XYZ of the IK target and the rotation channels for various bones or other controllers. With these channels loaded in the graph editor, you can play the animation and adjust it in realtime (turn off “Track Layout Time” in the graph editor to prevent auto scrolling).
Also, double click the menu bar of the graph editor to make it full screen and double click again so reveal the dope sheet underneath. There are also keys to close the Left and Bottom panels of the graph editor to make more room for the graph. Make it nice and big when your animating so you can see the subtleties in the curves!!!

Copying Curves in the Channel Bin
If RightMouseMenu/Save is used on a channel in the bin (and it will only work on the top channel if more than one is selected), the resulting motion file can be loaded into any channel, it is in no way channel specific. Also, RightMouseMenu/Copy will copy the keys from a curve. The data can then be pasted into any other channel using RightMouseMenu/Paste

Keyboard Shortcuts
Use them as much as possible.
When using numeric entry, remember that using the enter key on the keypad will advance the cursor to the next text field and select the data in that field. Using the regular “enter” key will enter the data in the text field and exit numeric entry mode.

There are several sets of KBS out there, and, personally, I think each person should develop a set which reflects the way they work. I have found a number of KBS that I like. Here's one for Modeler which I have found particularly useful:
I set "Points Mode" to the ; key and "Polygon Mode" to the ' key. This allows me to quickly deselect the points by hitting the ; with the middle finger followed by / with the index finger. Similarly, deselect all polys w/ index finger and thumb (or something like that). Also quick to switch modes with those 2 fingers. While were at it, I also assign the [ key to the drag tool, which I use often and seems to go well with the other two. They also work well w/ ], which is the default for select connected.

I have some templates for putting your KBS in Word Docs. There are links here.

Lights
Use lights set to OpenGL only to illuminate the scene while animating (and not affect rendering).

Misc

Addtional Menu vs. Pulldown
When new Modeler plugins are added, they show up in the "additional" pulldown. If you change the "additional" pulldown to a tab in the interface, the new plugins will show up as a button which you can then move to its appropriate place (once you figure out where that is).

Caps Lock
Tired of hitting the caps lock key and screwing up your KBS? There are a number of utilities out there for turning it off or remapping to shift or control. Check the web.

Config Files
Always save changes to keyboard shortcuts (KS) and Menu Layouts (ML) as config files using the save button in the KS and ML panels. Keep multiple files if you need to.

"Enter" vs. "Keypad Enter"
Note the difference between using the main “enter” key and using the “enter” key on the keypad. The main enter key will confirm an entry in a numeric box and then exit the box and/or close it (ie. When setting a keyframe). The enter key on the keypad will confirm a numeric entry and then advance to the next numeric box if there is one and select the text in that box. After advancing through all the numeric boxes in a given dialogue (or even setting numeric values of keyframes or the frame range), the entry button on the keypad will close the dialogue with and “ok” (or in the case of keyframe values, it will visit each box once and then exit numeric entry mode.)

Hypervoxels
In order to turn off Hypervoxels for an object, it must be set to “Unseen by Camera”. Nothing happes if hypervoxels is switched on/off in the properties/deformation panel. Also, setting the object dissolve to 100% will prevent the geometry from rendering!!!

Item Picker
When using the Item Picker (Master Plugins), which is very useful, you can add an item by first selecting it, and then opening the Item Picker. To add multiple items, select the item(s) in the scene editor then double click the Item Picker in the Master Plug-ins panel. The item picker may need to be closed and reopened to display the last item which has been added. You can re-order the Item Picker List using a text editor. Tedious because the items are identified by their ID number, but useful.

Restarting Layout/Revert Scene
Sometimes when things don’t seem to be working correctly in Layout, Layout needs to be re-started (or at least the scene should be reloaded). I find this happens often when modifying Collision objects and cages for Dynamics and then updating in Layout. Not sure why, but try it if things don’t seem to be working like they should as you modify your scene. If you find yourself doing this often, you might want to add “Revert Scene” to the LMouse Menu. When I’m in the zone and working on dynamics, I automatically save and then revert the scene (to reload it) before running each calculation

Running Multiple Instances of Layout or Modeler
It is often useful run more than one instance of Layout or Modeler. If you do this, note that the last version you close will overwrite the config files, so if you edit KBS or Menu Layout in one instance, and close that instance first, the changes will be lost when you close any other instances. This is a good reason to save config files as suggested in the previous tip. Note also that you can load a config into any open instances.
Running multiple instances of Modeler can be useful if you are using a model for reference. This way you can setup the layers and windows independently and just switch back to that instance when you need to. Even point/poly selections remain in place. You can load more than one model into Modeler, but it retains only 1 set of viewport and layer settings, so switching between models can be time consuming. And of course you know that you can use "Alt" plus "Tab" to switch between open applications...

Selecting multiple items in Layout
Use the middle mouse button for selecting multiple item, like bones. Note that any item partially in the selection region will be selected, which is good.

Speeding up Test Renders (a lot)
To speed up test renders try this:
1. Turn on the Image Viewer for viewing the renders.
2. Render a full size image.
3. Set the limited region to an area you want to test (small as possible) or use "render the selected objects" feature
4. Render again.
5. Open the Controls Window for the Image Viewer ("p" key).
6. In the Controls Window, set the 'bg" check mark for the first render (full screen render).
7. Set the blend mode to alpha.
8. Each successive render will be comped on the bg. A huge time saver in many situations.

Modeler
Take advantage of the very useful feature of “Control + keypad numbers” to create viewport presets. For example, with the mouse over a viewport, press “Control + keypad-1” and save the preset. Then when keypad-1 is pressed, the settings will be applied to whichever viewport the mouse is over. There are a number of options for the presets so play around to see what works. Here are some suggestions. (Keypad-0 is unavailable):
Keypad-1: Top View (set view only)
Keypad-2: Back View (set view only)
Keypad-3: Right View (set view only)
Keypad-4: Left View (set view only)
Keypad-5: Perspective View (set view only)
Keypad-6: Wireframe (set mapping type only)
Keypad-7: Smoothshade (set mapping type only)
Keypad-8: Wireframe Shade (set mapping type only)
Keypad-9: The sky is the limit J

Learn the Keyboard shortcuts for scrolling around the modeler windows.
F3 Toggle Top/Bottom View
F4 Toggle Front/Back View
F5 Toggle Left/Right View
F6 Toggle Perspective/UV View
Use the alt and the alt, cntl-alt, and shift-alt. Also, “g” will center the area under the cursor in the viewport. This is very useful when you want a part of the model centered in a perspective window so you can rotate the viewport around it – similar to the “Center” feature in Layout, though not quite as accurate.

Parts
To remove all the parts (Polygon Sets) in a model, invoke the "Change Part Name" funciton with no Pgons selected. If you want to preserve some parts and remove the rest, select the parts you want to preserve and hide them first.

Sketch Color
Using sketch color is an excellent way to see and select groups of polygons. When there is a bunch of stuff visible and you just want to move a certain group, assigning them a sketch color makes it a snap. Pgons can be selected based on sketch color in the PGon statistics panel . If you don't use it, try it out, then assign it to a KBS. The default sketch color (which is applied to all geometry when created) can be set in the display options.

Symmetry Trick
So you want to symmetrize a mesh without mirroring?
1) With symmetry on select polys on one side of the model (the “Source” side that has the polys that you want to mirror across.
2) On the other (“Target”) side of the model, use the lasso to deselect all the polys which are selected. Now only the polys you want to copy remain selected. Note the area of the model where they reside, you will need to delete this section of the model on the other side.
3) Turn Symmetry off. Select the entire portion of the model which includes the area where the new polys will be copied to. This can include as much of the model as is necessary-it doesn’t matter how much (as long as the whole model is symmetrical). This would be on the target side of the model only. Delete them.
4) Turn Symmetry back on. On the Source side of the model, lasso select an area larger than the new polys. The selection must be large enough to pick up some of the polys on the target side (because symmetry is on).
5) Now go to the target side and lasso deselect all the selected polys. This will leave only the unique polys selected on the source side.
6) Use your favorite mirroring tool to mirror the polys. I like Sam Kvaalen’s MirrorX – no muss no fuss.
7) Once you get the hang of it, or if you understand what’s going on right off the bat, you can skip steps 1-3 by just selecting a large enough area on the target side and deleting the polys.
8) If your just missing a few polys, you can use the abbreviated version of this technique: with symmetry on, just select a few polys on the source side, deselect all the corresponding polys on the target side, then mirror the remaining polys.
Check for 1 and 2 pt polys after doing this. Also, you may need to run Merge points (with no polys selected).

Endomorph Notes
Each layer in a model has its own set of endomorphs.
If you copy a file w/endos in it into a different file w/endos in it, the pasted model's endos will be added to the file. If there are duplicate endo names, the name will only show up once, but it will be different for each layer with which it is associated. If a base layer is is deleted, its endomorphs are deleted.
The hub will not transfer newly created endomorphs between Layout and Modeler. They can be created in either application, but require vigilant saving and reloading if both apps are being used.
It can be very useful to use Layout to create endomorphs. Advantages include using bones and other deformation tools. Weightmaps can be useful to isolate the effects of Layout's tools to parts of the model. Also, you can use the existing endomorphs to make it easier to access parts of the model which would be hard to get to in Modeler, or to see how morphs work in combo. For example, you can open the mouth and then use bones to create tongue postions. Just make sure you close the mouth when adding endomorphs, which can be done directly in Layout. NOTE: Layout will not save over a morph of the same name, nor will it warn you that it won't, so if you are modifying an existing morph, you need to use Modeler to delete it (Vertex Maps Panel), and then reload the model into Layout (or revert the scene).
If a group of polygons loses symmetry, you can delete 1/2 of them from the base layer, then mirror, and they will be mirrored in all endomorphs. Obviously, verify that this has worked correctly before saving over your object. Backup first.

To copy an endomorph between meshes:
1) Back everything up until you see how this works - what you keep and what you lose.
2) Put both meshes on different layers in the same object file
3) Make the source mesh the current layer, choose the endo that you want to copy. Then do step 4 or 5.
4) If the endo in the source mesh has a name which exists in the target mesh, you can change it and go to step 5, or use "Apply Morph" to apply the source morph to the base. (Note that this is additive and so it can be done multiple times to create interesting shapes or REALLY distort your model)
Or
5) If the endo in the source mesh has a name which does not exist in the target mesh, or if you meshes have different point couts (I don't know if there is a situation where this would produce useful results), you can skip step 4, and just set the endomorph layer of the source as the background.
6) Put the target mesh in the foreground and the source morph in the background. Run "Bkg to Morph". You will be asked for which layer you want the new morph to appear in or you can type in the name for a new morph. Bkg to Morph is not additive, it will replace a layer of the same name.

Increasing Efficiency when animating w/Endomorphs:
When animating w/endomorphs, obviously, the more points there are in the model, the more work the computer has to do to morph the model. This is true whether animating in LW or working w/another program like TAFA. So here's a technique for lowering the point count while animating. It can definitely increase the playback speed of your animation and probably has many applications.
Let's say we have a full body character and we are going to do some facial animation so we don't need the body pgons while we're animating. Cut the body pgons from the model and put them in a separate layer. Save this model as modelname_split.lwo. Now delete the body from the model and save it as model_HeadOnly.lwo (or you might be able to just load the layer containing the head, depending on which app you are working with). Now do your morph-based animating. If you are working w/Morphmixer, you can actually just apply the morph mixer files to the original model, since they are just text files which reference the morph names. If you need the full model for final output of the animation files (ie. for motion designer output), after animating and testing with the head-only model, you can replace the head with the whole body model and then export the .mdd data. But that's not all! If you need to add or modify morphs in the model, you can make the changes to the head only model, then open modelname_split.lwo, delete the layer with the head, then copy and paste the new head into the layer with the rest of the body. merge points, and the new morph targets will come with it. This is an advanced technique, so be aware that you can easily make modifications to the head-only model, (for example, move the points that will later merge back into the body mesh), that can cause big problems. Suggested rule of thumb: if you make changes to the main model (like adjusting it for skelegons), trash the old split models and make new ones.
Note, this example was tested on a model in which all of the morphs are on the head pgons of the model. If you have morphs for things like the fingers, you will need to test this further than I have (though I think it will still work).

Texture

Mirroring UVs
After spending way too much time trying to figure out how to mirror a UV map, I found this solution at the Newtek Discussion Board:

Mirror your object in 3D view.
Unweld your model.
Select halph of your mirrored object in polygon mode in 3D view.
Use "flip UVs" on U axes.
Move the selected UV with "Snap Drag" on "All Points mode" (numeric pannel).
This will snap your selected part to the other.
Merge Points.