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41.3 Layout (LightWave.exe) - 3 |
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Layout, STRAGGLER VERTICE POINTS There's one more thing to do before you start animating. You need to check that there aren't stray vertice points which haven't been included in your weight maps. The Layout program can help you determine whether there are straggler points. They appear when you move your object. If you have stragglers, parts of the object will remain behind when you move it. You'll be creating what is called a 'Transformed Object'. To do it, you'll need to turn subsurface mode OFF on your model. If you don't, LightWave will save too many polygons as it converts from subsurface mode to hundreds of thousands of polygons. If LightWave did that, vertice points on the transformed object wouldn't match up with vertice points on the original object. Load the Modeler program, and from Layout click on the 
button at the top right (or press 'F12') while the Deinon object is selected. This will pass the current Deinon object to Modeler.Turn off Subsurface mode by pressing TAB, then click on the Layout program's title bar to bring it back to the front. If the Hub is running, the Deinon object should refresh in Layout without the subsurface mode being ON. You check for stragglers by selecting every bone from the object. In the case of Deinon, that would be selecting his two heel bones and the 'Deinon_Root'. The first thing I do is ensure that the Deinon object has been set to 'Smooth Shade' mode so I'll be able to see stragglers better. I press 'F1' to bring up the 'Scene Editor', then select the Deinon object. In the column which has the eye at the top of the column click on that box. A menu will appear that will let you select which view type the object is set at. 
You then go to the 'Schematic View', select the 'Deinon_Root' bone, hold down the SHIFT key and select 'Deinon_RightHeel' and 'Deinon_LeftHeel'. A yellow line will be drawn around all three boxes in the 'Schematic View', and the three bones will highlight in the viewports to indicate the three bones have been selected. Select the  button from the 'Tools' section of the 'Items' tab or press the 't' key.In the right viewport drag on the blue 'Z axis' arrow and drag the entire body to the right. If the whole body moves to the right then it means you've properly set up (most) bone weight maps. If I left any points out of the weight maps, they'll remain fixed at the original position they were in before I moved the bones which are connected to the root bone, and his feet. I've substituted a very old version of Deinon using 'Replace->Replace with Object Layer...') so I can show you what it looks like when a lot of vertice points are not included in weight maps. 
From this I can instantly see that the tail hasn't yet been given a weight map, and stray points in his hand haven't properly been included in some weight map. However, you don't just have to guess which points are the ones which are causing the problem. LightWave can help you find them. In Layout I Press SHIFT-o to switch to the object menu and select the Deinon object or the menu choice would be ghosted. I Choose 'File->Save->Save Transformed Object'. It warns me to save it under a different name unless I want it overwritten. 
It's always safest to save it with a new name, anyway. I use the name 'Deinon_Shifted.lwo'. WARNING - If you have ever used 'Move Pivot Point' to move your object's pivot point the resulting object file will be offset from the location where your object was created so make sure that you check for stragglers in this manner BEFORE you do 'Move Pivot Point'. If you never moved the pivot point then go to your original file, load it into Modeler, then load the transformed image. Both objects will now be available from the upper-right drop-down menu. 
In my case it's very easy because my object resides in only one layer. Therefore I copy the transformed object from layer 1 of the shifted file with a 'c', move to the old unshifted object file and paste it into layer 2 with a 'v'. In the end I have the unshifted object in layer 1 of the old object file and the shifted object in layer 2 of the old object file. You'll be interested in seeing vertice points so make sure 'Wireframe' is the view type. I select the shifted layer as my foreground layer by clicking on the top half of the Layer 1 button and the unshifted layer (Layer 1) as the background layer by clicking on the bottom half of the Layer 1 button. 
The one vertice point that doesn't seem to line up is the end vertice point of the backbone skelegon so just ignore that point. And, thus you can follow back each point which isn't included in weight maps. Generally you'll find that a point you thought you'd defined wasn't defined or you failed to create a weight map that you thought you created. And, it is finally time to show you how to animate your objects. | ||
