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- Hi all!
-
- I've just spent the last two days creating a couple of simple
- space combat sequences. Just a couple of ships moving, lasers
- firing, and an explosion or three.
- Actually, it's anything but simple. A nice laser cannon
- firing effect requires a nightmare of lights, flares and evelopes
- (see Mojo's current Lightwave Pro article for some keen ideas on
- the subject). An explosion is similar, with the addition of
- fading out the original object and fading in the various debris
- objects. And if you're not methotical about what you're doing,
- it'd be real easy to leave something out. (I respect those B-5
- guys more and more as I learn Lightwave...)
-
- So, it occurred to me that things would be a lot simpler if
- we had "Temporal Parenting". By this I mean, the ability for
- envelopes to be triggered by other envelopes. For instance, one
- set of laser cannons has a "pre-fire" light and flare for a
- couple of frames, then as the laser fires the beam object appears
- (well, sizes up) and the light and flare flash much brighter. And
- I have to set up matching envelopes for each, EACH TIME. It'd be
- great to have a "null temporal object" called "laser cannon-1"
- that I could trigger anytime I wanted and have the other
- envelopes work off of it.
-
- Lloyd Eldred, Ph.D.
- Galtham Films, Dayton, OH
- Dedicated to film excellence for two or three weeks now.
- (established 1989)
-
-