Re: Don Showalter's Lightwave models

Can Don Showalter still be reached? This query arose because, on watching the
recent CGI movie batzanim.mpg , a feature of his UFO model seems to have
caused a difficulty for the animator. His UFO is one-piece, and to make its
gravity plates spin the whole model must spin. That is likely why we never see
a UFO firing its ?plasma beam in the movie. The first time, it fires directly
away from the camera and we only see a flash; the second time, it fires from
out-of-frame. This is likely because the plasma beam would have to be an object
parented [or whatever the word is in Lightwave] to the UFO, and it would
therefore spin with the UFO. This would be avoided if the UFO's gravity plates
were a separate part parented to the UFO's hull. Then its plates could spin,
and its hull could stay still, and its plasma beam could be parented to its
hull and would not rotate with the gravity plates.

The movie is good and dramatic.

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--- In [hidden email], "Rob Hemmings" <rkh@l...> wrote:
> ... As far as the
> UFO beam-weapon is concerned, I've only just figured out a way to
> do this realistically in Simply 3d. No doubt it would be fairly
> straight forward in LightWave, but as I cannot afford such
> professional software, I have to think of ways to do it in S3D
> (which was really only intended to create animated 3d text..) ...

Poser 4 can animate well and is quite affordable. So can Bryce 4. See
http://www.renderosity.com for information. Poser 4 outputs movies in
.AVI mode. See http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/temp/ds_tch3b.zip for
a (zipped) .AVI movie that I made with Poser 4 (although not about
anything UFO). Poser 4 can make characters walk and change their
posture etc during the movie.