Alternative Lightwave workflow

sign me up!

 

will watch this!

 

Finally great news ! Cant wait to try this !

 

ready!

 

This sounds really interesting. I just started playing around with unity the other day and I was thrilled to see LightWave listed with the the supported apps, but I can't get it working. So if there's something that will make it work I'm in!

 

You need to save your Lightwave object to FBX.
Then you use the FBX in Unity.

When Rom's project is done we will have a new method.

 

phil, i also go LW->Blender->Unity. blender's fbx is pretty solid. i've only done this with static geo to get a second uv set for lightmapping. LW's fbx doesn't support a second uv but animations come in ok from it iirc. haven't animated in a while so mileage may vary.

 

Sounds Great! I would like to sign-up!

 

It seems that LightWave's FBX is working perfectly for me, now that I've figured it all out (with some help from this forum).

 

philnolan3d, could you please post what exactly you found. I am having a heck of a time and I have tried everything I could fine on the forum, maybe I am doing things in wrong order or something.

ROM, PLEASE HURRY!!!!!!!!!!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD, PLEASE HURRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'm not sure what part you have trouble with. for a static mesh I just export it from Layout and re-apply the textures in Unity. For a rigged character I used weight maps only, with Z-bones, make sure the bones are active (selecting them all and hitting R is the easiest way) exported FBX from Layout (of course). after bringing it into unity the only problem i had with the rigged character was that the lighting was acting funny. This was solved by checking the Calculate normals box in the FBX Importer.

 

yeah, you can do this in LW by messing with the smoothing angle but it's much easier to adjust in Unity's import settings.

fineartist - be more clear what you're having trouble with because fbx from LW works correctly within its constraints.

 

No this wasn't just the smoothing angle, The lighting was effecting the model in reverse. Like this: http://bit.ly/sNBPp

 

sorry didn't read your other post right. yeah have had some oddities with lights that recalc corrects. never sussed it but just had one similar to yours on static geo. recalc and/or rotating 180 fixed it, so never really tried to suss. iirc it looked like which direction the z was pointing was the culprit (don't quote me). not right in any case but it's not just animated that it affects.

 

If this helps, I have this character (see attached) that when I view it in Lightwave, it works like what I need it to, when it comes into Unity, the arms go real weird, the body looks more like part of him is jello, and things in general just aren't matching up right. I exported him in 9.6 with fbx 200611. if anyone could look and see if I have missed something or approached it wrong, I would greatly appreciate it!!

 

There's no object there, just the scene file.

 

Opps, sorry about that, was running out the door for work. Here is the character....

 

Well first you probably don't need all of those joint compensation, muscle flexing, etc, even for the LightWave scene. They might even be messing things up in Unity. Secondly, you'll have to create weight maps for the character and apply them. I used the "use weight map only" checkbox.

BTW if those bones are too thin for you you can adjust them by hitting D for Display Options, then the Handles Icons tab at the bottom will let you thicken the bones.

You might also want to work on your modeling to be honest. A joint like the elbow or shoulder needs at least two rows of polygons bend believably. See the attached image

 

Hi phil,

Oh, believe me, I wanted to put way more detail into the character, but my partners concerns were that we have 7 characters in the scene with numerous animations that all may be moving and doing stuff at the same time which would bog down the Iphone's processor. I don't know what the actual threshold for models are for the Iphone poly wise, but I had a 3000 poly model of Wiley Coyote that we had duplicated 7 times in a scene...was a big no un-uh.

I dropped the poly count for our current models to around 500 to 600 polys each which totally changed what the models looked like,(unfortunately...) but they are in agreement that the next app will have more polys I can model with. Really not concerned with the joint topography for the models for this app because the app we are making is with zombies (yep, how original lol) so there is purposely some bad joint movement in arms and what not, but I do want to have it be my own bad joint movements, not a weird interpretation.

I am concerned the file is showing joint compensation and other settings. I don't have that turned on at all in Lightwave, not sure why it's showing up that way when you opened it????

As a help to anyone that needs it, I have found that going into the graph editor and changing all keyframes to linear then to hermite reduces ALOT of issues with bones overshooting their needed poses, unfortunately you have to really get in there and tweak by hand ALOT of keyframes which almost induces a mental breakdown. Uggh

I am interested in how you set up your characters with z bones. Any suggestion of a tutorial site to show a proper setup??

I really appreciate your comments and trying to help me out. Just wanted to thank you and everyone else that is being gracious with their time

 

I'm afraid don't really know of any tutorials. I learned it in school back in 2002 and then picked up stuff here and there over the years. I'm not even the best at it, I just put together something simple to see if it worked in Unity.

One thing that speeds it up is to draw one long bone, for the whole area, like one arm or from the hip to the top of the head. Then count how many bones are in there like "spine 1, spine 2, neck, head" is 4 bones so use the Bone Split tool to break that one into 4. The spine should be drawn from the side, arms from the top, fingers from the front, legs from the side, that way you'll end up with the Pitch facing the right way.

 

Hi!

While we're working on the pipeline, I thought I'd give you something to do...

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=36404

(done with Rommany's LW pipeline)

-Chilton

 

I having trouble with the skinned animation coming in reverse in Unity when I export FBX(lw9.6). I've done the export with old FBX Export and the new one. I'm using use zbones, weight map only, but the animation comes in backwards on the test leg, or the bones are really messed up(skinning wise)? It looks nothing like I have in layout. Can anyone who has luck with skinned animations please explain your process step by step.

Thanks!

 

Yeah I had a big thread on this. It's actually a pretty simple fix. Look at the FBX Importor in the Inspector and check a box called Calculate Normals. That should do it.

 

Hi,

Usually I build a skelegon in Modeler, convert that into bones in LightWave, rig it with IKBooster, and export to FBX. I've never had any problems with this setup. Can you post a screenshot of what you're seeing?

Thanks!
-Chilton

 

Thanks I will give that a try, if I still have issues I will post some screens.

 

It should 'just work'. So if it doesn't, lemme know!

-Chilton

 

Thanks, I'll try when I get home, I just tried with Max, and I can't get the skinning to work at all. The parenting/linking works to the bones, but the skin...forget about it! :roll:

 

Oh, any update on the custom LW exporters?

 

hi there,
any news for the exporter?
screenshots?? release date?

cheers

 

Is the exporter still in development?

 

Hi guys,

It's still in development. I got sidetracked on a game, and Rommany is waiting for me to finish tinkering with something. It'll be back on track shortly, and hopefully this weekend I'll have finished the stuff he's waiting for.

-Chilton

 

Thanks Chilton, good to hear it's on track.

 

Yeah, I am also very excited to see how well this workflow has been both integrated and automated.

 

Hi,

I'm new to Unity, really like the sound of your Lightwave import tool. I'm guessing this can work both ways as in Lightwave would be able to see imported FBX (F##ked Beyond Xtreme!) files in Unity?

Any way I would love to beta test this if possible. In fact I'm desperate to use this tool to save working time.

If your planing on selling this product, I know as a pro Lightwave user I would be happy to buy. If not maybe get it out as part of Unity if they'd let you. Anything would be better than that FBX format!!

Regards,

Shaun Lee Bishop.

Nemesis CGI Ltd.

 

So, whats up with it ? Is it coming ? And for how much ?

 

Any update yet?

 

If you would like to see this solution finished by NewTek, I invite you to come over to this thread in the NewTek forum to let your voice be heard: http://bit.ly/lw2unity

There is of course no guarantee that this will be picked up by NewTek, but its worth a try.

 

stand by for Keystone.Unity

 

Cant wait

 

Update, I created a sneak peek for you guys to check out here: http://vimeo.com/10034871

 

javascript:emoticon('') That's Promising !! Excatly what's i've been waiting for a while !

 

Amazing! It looks completely seamless, just what I would imagine Lightwave support should be.

 

Directly loading of LWO files? this is good. Support for multiple UVs? even better!

 

I would love to try this out as well, I have LW 8.3

 

Amazing video! Morphs???? I was at GDC and the Unity folks said it doesn't support morphs? Yr LW exporter will? Amazing! Keystone! Can't wait! Lightwave seems to have alot of life with tools like this. Great stuff! How much longer?

 

Any updates?????

 

yes please..

 

Any chance of a basic as is release?

 

Since this is a complete framework, not just an importer/exporter solution, there is still work needed for it to be ready in a production (even if just for importing models). Think of it as a set of iron cast tools, still in their mold, glowing hot. It's there, but if you pick it up, you would get burnt and wouldn't get much work done. :wink:

We have another demo video of it in use coming up, and will tell you guys about it here as soon it is live on vimeo.

 

Looks great!

On question, would this work with existing Unity demo scenes constructed with FBX files. Would they get ported back to LW?

I have a project starting soon that will require morphs lots of them. It's for a major clothing firm.

Shaun.