Scene Info: Usage

Applying a motion plug-in to Individual objects:

1. Load a scene that has already been saved, or create a new scene with a few null objects and save the scene. You MUST have a saved scene in order to use Scene Info. Select any item in the Layout Items list (this can be an object, light, bone or camera).

2. Now select Item Motion Plug-in from the Plug-ins area.

3. Right click on the text and select Add Plug-in. This will now associate an Item Motion plug-in to the object(s). You will now notice that only Item Motion Plug-ins is listed in the Plug-ins area, and a drop down list has been created. Select Particle Storm from the dropdown.

4. You will now notice that the parameters for the item motion plug-in is displayed in the Property page. For more information about the item motion parameters, consult the item motion reference.

If for example, you had a thousand items you wanted to serve as particles, it would be tedious to go through each of those thousand objects and repeat steps 1-4 for each one!

Fear not! You can apply the plug-in to a group of selected objects. For example, you can select two or more objects (by shift clicking). Now by repeating step 3. the item motion plug-in will be added to both objects.

Similarly, if two or more items are selected, and an effect file base is selected, the effect file bases are duplicated for all the selected items. (If the items are selected individually, you’ll see that they have the same effect file base).

5. How can you have the benifit of multiple selection yet keep some values for each of the items random? For example, you might want to apply the same effect file for 20 different items, but perhapse you want each of those items to have a random spin speed. You do this by clicking on the Randomize button next to the parameter. This will insure that each item has a random spin speed.

Saving the settings:

Since we’re actually assigning plug-ins to object using Scene Info, we’ll need to save changes we make to the objects. When you select the Save Changes to Scene button after doing the operation outlined in the above steps, you’ll notice that the In File is checked but Layout its not. This is because you’ve just saved the scene and so the Item Motion plug-in information is stored in the scene file, but not in the current state of lightwave. You need to reload the scene for the changes to show up in layout. Once the scene is reloaded you’ll see that both fields are checked off.

Note: If you do not re-load the scene after adding an item motion plug-in to an object, Scene Info will not allow you to load an effect file base. You also need to make sure that the scene you are currently working on has been saved to a scene file. If you do not, Particle Storm will not have any scene file to write to.

Applying the displacement map plug-in:

The displacement map plug-in can be applied in the same way that the item motion plug-in in the above steps was applied. There other interfaces through which you can assign the plug-in to particle objects. You can assign the displacement map plug-in manually on an object per object basis by going to the Objects plug-in and loading assigning the displacement map plug-in as outlined in the section titled Importing Particles and using the Displacement Map plug-in.