VideoTutorial: Building a "floater" rig with Nodes...

Cageman · 03-23-2009, 09:02 PM

Hi Gang!

This is a quick and dirty videotutorial, but may be usefull to some...

Part1, 19.3MB, 06m 34s
Part2, 47.2MB, 13 minutes
Part3, 35.5MB, 09m 21s
Content (17.6KB)

Have fun!

EDIT: You need DPKit and Node Item Motion in order to get it to work!

Hopper · 03-23-2009, 11:16 PM

Watching it now .. 1/2 way though the first part. Looking cool so far You work pretty fast man. I like it.

Oedo 808 · 03-24-2009, 09:17 AM

I think it's time I started exploring the Layout side of LightWave a little more. This looks very interesting Cageman, I've just watched the first vid, and I'm looking forward to watching to other two, which is always a good sign.

I'm sure I saw one other tutorial that was done by you, I think to simulate the inertia for an ariel? That was good too, how many tutorials have you done? Do you have a site for them?

Anyway, great stuff, thanks Cageman.

littlewaves · 03-24-2009, 06:20 PM

oh boy i wish node item motion was available on the mac. (along with the image filter nodes).

hint hint

faulknermano · 03-25-2009, 02:02 AM

Regarding the jittering: maybe separate 'animation reference' object for the Item Motion? I think reducing Small Power to the texture might give a smoother animation.

serge · 03-25-2009, 09:16 AM

Thanks Cageman. It's nice to see this kind of creativity.

As for filtering out small waves, maybe there's a way to compare the position/rotation of the current frame to the previous frame (with a time function), and use a "logic node" which says: if the difference is smaller than a certain amount the position/rotation is equal to the previous frame.

But, I wonder though if the small waves are the problem of the jittering. Not sure, but I think the problem might be the changing in 'nearest point'. For example, at one frame the nearest point is #36 and the next frame it's #37. If this is the case you'll always see bad jittering.

So, the solution would be not to move the nulls based on "Nearest Point", but based on chosen points and "Point Info". The only problem here is 'subdivision': when subdividing a surface in Layout the whole point-order will be changed, and I don't think there's a way to be able to see the point numbers on subdivided surfaces in Layout. So, you would have to do the animation on a non-subdivided surface (and find the point numbers in Modeler).

Cageman · 03-25-2009, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by serge

Thanks Cageman. It's nice to see this kind of creativity.

As for filtering out small waves, maybe there's a way to compare the position/rotation of the current frame to the previous frame (with a time function), and use a "logic node" which says: if the difference is smaller than a certain amount the position/rotation is equal to the previous frame.

Hmm...sounds like a good idea.

Quote:

But, I wonder though if the small waves are the problem of the jittering. Not sure, but I think the problem might be the changing in 'nearest point'. For example, at one frame the nearest point is #36 and the next frame it's #37. If this is the case you'll always see bad jittering.

So, the solution would be not to move the nulls based on "Nearest Point", but based on chosen points and "Point Info". The only problem here is 'subdivision': when subdividing a surface in Layout the whole point-order will be changed, and I don't think there's a way to be able to see the point numbers on subdivided surfaces in Layout. So, you would have to do the animation on a non-subdivided surface (and find the point numbers in Modeler).

Well.. this would be a very good solution if the object is going to be static in X and Z. However, the rig is designed so that you can animate Floater_GRP in X and Z as well. This is something I didn't do in the video, but I think I do mention it as an animation controller.

Ohh...and about that... in the Motions directory (the content) there is a motionfile that you can load to the Floater_GRP null and see what happens in Setup_ANI.lws.

I realise that I should have dedicated some time on the initial post and breif you guys about the content.

bjornkn · 03-26-2009, 09:39 AM

Very interesting, and it certainly makes more realistic boats/waves than my small tests with Sticky/surface, which looks like bark boats.

But I have problems understanding why you go through all that trouble to get Nulls created at precisely the location of the 4 lower corners? Why does this have to be so precise that eyeballing it isn't good enough?

Cageman · 03-26-2009, 02:38 PM

Well, first of all I don't see that as trouble.... I think it is fun (and also it was a way for me to once again remind people of how to get precise if they need to).

You can of course eyeball it if you want. There are a bunch of other techniques to do this type of rig (not using nodes) as well....

belanagy · 03-28-2009, 07:49 AM

do i have to download any codecs to see the movies?
i have qt 7.1.5 and all i can see is a black thing with audio....

Cageman · 03-28-2009, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by belanagy

do i have to download any codecs to see the movies?
i have qt 7.1.5 and all i can see is a black thing with audio....

No... it should work with QuickTime Player... you can try VLC mediaplayer.

bjornkn · 03-28-2009, 04:50 PM

They are a bit tricky. They did not play in Opera or IE7, but fine in FireFox. When using download linkf rom Opera it would not play the video, but only sound.
But after loading into FF it worked to use SavePageAs, and it would play just fine offline. Wonder if it is because it was a ftp-link, or with password?

Cageman · 03-28-2009, 05:54 PM

Hmm...

I always assumed that people right-click and saved.

Next time, I'll be sure to include that info next to the links.

zapper1998 · 03-28-2009, 05:56 PM

Thanks
prt 1 was great

Cageman · 03-28-2009, 06:02 PM

About Jitter:

There is a very interresting solution to this that I found out about. It's 3d4me over at SpinQuad who suggested how it could be done, which should give much better results. I highly recommend his videos to everyone who are interrested to see Nodal displacement/Node Item workflows. There are a boatload of videos HERE!

Anyhow... when I get some time, I'll investigate more into 3d4me's suggestion and hopefully also record an additional video that goes with this "floater" video-series.