Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
11. Now, just to add some “nifty-ness” to
the ship, use Smooth Shift on the tips
of the wings again. Leaving the front of
the new polys very close to where they
were, use Stretch to pull the back of
the polys away from the ship to get an
avian effect (Figure 8-10).
12. Move and stretch the points of the
ship's nose, as shown in Figure 8-11,
and you're done!
Figure 8-12: Not bad for a spaceship you can build in under a minute!
...
What we did here isn't earth-shattering or
ground-breaking, but it
does
get you started
thinking about how you can use sub-
patches to build whatever you desire. You
can see how quickly you can rough in a
shape that you can work back into, using
BandSaw, Smooth Shift, and Bevel to con-
tinue to layer in detail — honing …
refining … perfecting.
A suggestion from my own experience is
to use LightWave 8's Save Incremental to
save multiple revisions of your work as you
go. For example, if I've got my “whatsit” to
a point where I'm pretty happy with the
“doohickey” section of it, before starting
work on the “snarf-blat” section, I'll save
“Whatsit_ w22.lwo” and then save as
“Whatsit_w23.lwo.” This way if I totally
botch the “snarf-blat” section, I can always
go back to the way the “whatsit” was before
I started (unintentionally) mangling my
masterpiece!
Don't be afraid to cut your losses when
you're modeling, reverting to an earlier
state. When you tackle a troublesome sec
-
tion again, you'll be coming at it from the
experience of having been there before. Not
only will you finish that section
more quickly
than if you had stuck it out, you'll finish it
markedly better
almost 100% of the time!
