Chapter 18
Enveloping Basics
Enveloping is the simplest form of animating numerical values in LightWave. If you look at the Surface Editor panel or nodes in the Node Editor, you’ll notice that each surface attribute has a little button labeled “E” next to it.
Figure 18-1
This button allows you to envelope its value over time. Enveloping simply means that the value no longer remains static.
Clicking on an envelope button opens up LightWave’s Graph Editor, as shown in Figure 18-2. The Graph Editor can appear rather frightening at first, but it is actually very simple to use.
LightWave’s manual has an entire section devoted to the Graph Editor, so no detailed investigation is required here, but I’ll run through the basics.
Basically, the way the Graph Editor works is that you simply create points (keys) on the graphs, and then alter the values of those keys.
Figure 18-2
At the bottom of the graph window are displayed the frame numbers in your scene. So if you want to create a new key at frame 40, simply hover your cursor in line with the number 40 and create a key on the graph.
Figure 18-3
Below, on the Curves panel, the Frame field shows the frame number at which you have just created the key, so you can fine-tune things there.
Below the Frame field is a Value field. You can manually enter new values to change the current value, or you can click and drag the key around on the graph itself to adjust the value.
You can adjust the way that the keys are interpolated between one another by changing the Incoming Curve value.
For more information regarding the options for keys on the Graph Editor, refer to the LightWave manual.
Animatable Surface Parameters in LightWave
When animating surfaces, the only attributes that you can animate in the Graph Editor are:
• The RGB color value of a surface
• The overall values of each of the basic surface attributes (Reflection, Specularity, etc.)
• The Color Highlights, Color Filter, Additive Transparency, and Diffuse Sharpness values under the Advanced tab of the Surface Editor
• The Image Seam Angle, Reflection Blurring, and Refraction Blurring values under the Environment tab
• The Blend Opacity value in the Surface Mixer shader
• The Layer Opacity value of all texture layers in the Texture Editors of all surface attributes
• The Scale, Position, Rotation, and Falloff values of all layers in the Texture Editors of all surface attributes
• U and V coordinates on surfaces that have UV maps applied to them. To animate UVs using the Node Editor you need to use Layer nodes.
Note that gradient keys and most node attributes can be animated using the Node Editor. To gain even more control over your texture animation, use the Node Editor to create your shaders. The Node Editor offer options for animating texture nodes that are not available in the “classic” Texture Editor. Now you have control over settings like Frequency, Contrast, and Small Scale. This is a very welcome addition to LightWave.