Here's something funny.
     So, I've been using LightWave for about ten years now. Or so. It's hard to remember anymore; I've been doing CG in some form or other for twenty, dating back to a sort of 8bit prototype of Flash back on the Commodore64. Which isn't entirely accurate; it was more of an animated bitmap compiler which keyframed in soundfiles. It wasn't too bad, back in 1983.
     Anyway: the last time I really bothered to look at anything new in LightWave was when Version5.6 was released in 1998 or so. I caught a couple of neat shortcuts built into the newer versions, but not everything.
     Then, a few months ago, I impulsebought a copy of Inside LightWave Seven, which covers approximately everything not exclusive to LW7.5 and the forthcoming LW8. Including a bunch of stuff I've been hoping to see for years, which apparently already exists. Who knew.
     So this is kinda good news. Amd good timing. Since my laptop, currently in enemy territory at JestBuy, has been blanked, deleting a bunch of the Deadache files I'd constructed to date, I'm in the generally lamentable position of starting the hell over anyway. So I'm putting some thought into a few new ideas here.
     Technically speaking, all the new stuff in LightWave is just a sort of shortcut over what was always a possibility. But shortcuts have some purpose. Like getting something done in seconds instead of years. Stuff equal to or better than the stuff done with Maya, SoftImage, SquareSoft, Cinema4D, Poser, and Real3D, in simpler and faster ways.
     The irony here is that I'd put off really reading this book until now because I was too busy actually doing things on the laptop to waste time reading about new developments. Now it turns out that I was wasting far more time doing a number of things manually, instead of letting the computer do them for me. Which is always a bothersome revelation.
     In any case, things have just become a lot simpler for me. With the obvious exception of surviving the inopportune downtime until I have useful computers again. The Amiga is still pretty useful, of course; but it kinda lacks a DVBurner, and it's not thrilled about connecting to the LAN, for some reason. I'd ask what that reason is, but the Techtards at comcast.net seem to assume that 'Amiga' is a typo for 'Aptiva' in their supportchats. So that's a dead end.
     The one thing I'm not sure about, and can't test without a computer running LightWave, is whether the option still exists to call objects bones. If that doesn't make sense, understand that a CG wireframe typically moves and bends because a bunch of interlinked two-point polygons inside the mesh are moving, which bend the visible mesh in a sort of object collision. Once upon a time, you could build a whole skeleton in LightWave, and call each bone in the skeleton a bone in the wireframe. But that was before LightWave evolved to include true object collision, which now exists. If I can, in fact, designate a CG bone as a functional bone, I can use a femur to control the muscles around it, and the skin around that. I've seen that work in SoftImage, which is one of two things I like about it, outweighed by hundreds of things I hate. If LightWave will let me do that, I'll be pretty happy about it. And I think it might, one way or the other.
     Worst case, I should be able to use skelegonal bones to move CG bones, which ObjectCollide muscles, which ObjectCollide skin. It adds a layer of annoyingness, but it works in theory. Meaning that I could conceivably build the skeleton of, say, a tyrannosaur, add the muscles we're able to extroplate from the bones, shrinkwrap some skin over the muscles, add feathers and fat to taste, and create a pretty good approximation of a real animal, walking and breathing and jiggling each time seven tonnes hits the ground. I shouldn't have to mention how cool that could be. Moreso than the arbitrarily morphtargeted B.altithorax was in Jurassic Park, at least. And slightly better than the ?SoftImaged S.aegypticus was in the third film.
     And yes, I'm aware that the same basic process has been used to ascertain whether diplodocids could lift their heads above their scapulae; I was doing that ten years ago, before this sort of software even worked on Wintel machines.
     This is really upsetting. I seriously need a computer here.
     As far as I know, the laptop is still with JestBuy. I'll probably start calling them tomorrow, since it's so unreasonable to expect them to call me with any news, like the thing being ready to go pick up again. And the new tower, insofar as it currently exists, should be in the mail, in several pieces. Unless I'm forgetting something critical, the only thing I truly need to buy for it is an optical trackball. I nearly bought one tonight, but CompUSA had run out of the kind I want. Which doesn't surprise me much anymore.
     Oh well. I guess I'll go back to playing videogames until I'm able to do anything more productive. More later....
--Gremlin

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