Anybody want to help a newbie?

[PCWilliams]

Hi All,

Total newbie here! My background is movie editing, i've just purchased my first copy of lightwave. I want to focus on architecture ... constructing homes and doing walk throughs.

I've just purchased 3 books on lightwave ("Inside LighWave 8", "Killer Tips: The hottest collection of tips and hidden secrets for LightWave" and "Essential LightWave 3D 8") and i'm looking for good resources to help me get moving in the architecural direction.

Any and all recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Paul :D

[nthused]

PC. A few things I've picked up over the years - some I struggle with to this day...

1. Join cgarchitect.com forum. A lot of great information and honest architecturally focused critiques.

2. Get away from your monitor and look around for examples of the way things should look.

3. There's no such thing as "real" lighting in 3d computer programs - it's all faked to an extent. Therefore the goal is to get the right look and to use whatever tools at your disposal to get that look. Don't be too concerned that you need lights in places that physically shouldn't go - Get the look you want.

4. You'll likely spend as much time lighting your scenes as surfacing and modeling.

5. Just because it looks real - doesn't necessarily make it pretty.

6. What is your client's purpose for your rendering? How does that affect your scene?

7. Keep models - you'll likely use them in another job. (pictures, signs, people, trees, furniture, etc.)

8. HAVE FUN.

[PCWilliams]

PC. A few things I've picked up over the years - some I struggle with to this day...

1. Join cgarchitect.com forum. A lot of great information and honest architecturally focused critiques.

2. Get away from your monitor and look around for examples of the way things should look.

3. There's no such thing as "real" lighting in 3d computer programs - it's all faked to an extent. Therefore the goal is to get the right look and to use whatever tools at your disposal to get that look. Don't be too concerned that you need lights in places that physically shouldn't go - Get the look you want.

4. You'll likely spend as much time lighting your scenes as surfacing and modeling.

5. Just because it looks real - doesn't necessarily make it pretty.

6. What is your client's purpose for your rendering? How does that affect your scene?

7. Keep models - you'll likely use them in another job. (pictures, signs, people, trees, furniture, etc.)

8. HAVE FUN.

Allen,

Thanks so much for the info. I'll definitely join cgarchitect.com, i'm going to need all the input i can get my hands on.

Everything you say here makes sense to me in context of my current work. I'm in the business of movie editing ... i take silent films and add the sound back in so the film plays back as if the original camera actually had a sound track recorded. So i know what you mean about getting out there and observing the real world ... i've been having to do that for years to really learn what the "real world" sounds like ... now i'll need to go out and observe how the real world "looks" :D

This is great, thank you.

paul

[Lude]

Hi PCWilliams, good to have u on board!

Just a couple of notes:

I haven't done this, but who takes there own advice lol - get a litle black book and keep writing down the scale of things (doors, window sills, a planter, the width of a path or road) u will need to know this sizes before you can build anything that looks right.

When lighting i set every thing to a very light gray colour and then set up my lights. this way i can see when i have a nice even setup with the shadows etc the way i want them.

Beveling - you will read in this forum and others about adding micro bevels to make things look real. Ok it will help but if u add bevel's that are to big it will start to make your houses etc look like miniture models, lego land springs to mind.

Good textures are like gold dust.

[PCWilliams]

Hi PCWilliams, good to have u on board!

Just a couple of notes:

I haven't done this, but who takes there own advice lol - get a litle black book and keep writing down the scale of things (doors, window sills, a planter, the width of a path or road) u will need to know this sizes before you can build anything that looks right.

When lighting i set every thing to a very light gray colour and then set up my lights. this way i can see when i have a nice even setup with the shadows etc the way i want them.

Beveling - you will read in this forum and others about adding micro bevels to make things look real. Ok it will help but if u add bevel's that are to big it will start to make your houses etc look like miniture models, lego land springs to mind.

Good textures are like gold dust.

This is all great advice, thanks! What i normally do on forums like this is, i print the pages out and add them to my little "tips" book for each of my monster programs. This way, i can refer back to discussion forums such as this to help me with the little things.

Speaking of textures, being new to lightwave, is there a certain collection of textures everybody considers to be the best to get? I know in my movie editing work, there are certain professional sound collections that are "must haves" ... anything like that in the texture world?


:)

[Tiger]

Hi PCWilliams!

Here is an outstanding collection:
http://www.the-worms-of-art.com/Pshelf/

This book is also very useful:
http://www.wordware.com/texturing/

Good luck!