Time Bender is a powerful motion plug-in for LightWave.

Maybe it's TOO powerful.

I can hear you scoff. I assure you, you are scoffing at your own peril. Once you start to use its awesome power, TimeBender is sure to give you hours and hours of excitement and fun.

You'll see.

TimeBender has two main functions

• It can act like the 'scale' function for keyframes - allowing you to make a motion happen in half the time, for example - while still maintaining the original keyframe positions.
• It can allow one item to act as a 'control item' for another item's motion.

Let's start by using it as a scale function. First, we'll look at a simple animation of a cow mysteriously floating forward.

Here's the default scene, without TimeBender applied.
	Frame 0	Frame 15	Frame 30

Easy enough. Now, let's apply TimeBender to the Cow's motion path. We're only going to use the top few lines of the interface to do this - namely, the Source and Destination settings.

With no control item selected, the Source begin and end points represent the section of time we will be effecting. The Destination begin and end points determine how we want to alter time.

So, let's say we want to make the Cow get where it's going in half the time.

The Source has a begin at 0 seconds and an end at 1 second. (30 Frames)

The Destination has been changed so the begin is at 0 seconds and the end is at the .5 seconds (15 frames)

'Scaling' a motion by half	Frame 0	Frame 15	Frame 30

Okay - that was simple. You can further alter the motion by using the Before and After settings to make the animation loop or continue on. Also, we could pick any part of an animation as the source, not just the beginning. But don't get cocky so quickly...

Let's use a simple example - say we wanted a spaceship with 'thrusters' on its wings. As the ship banks, the thrusters should ramp up or down, depending on the angle of bank. (Okay...really it should be based on the speed of the rotation - and you CAN do that with Timebender...but the angle is easier to see, so cut me some slack.)

When we pick an item as a control item, it changes the way the TimeBender interface works - specifically the destination settings. Let's talk about the source first.

To create our thrusters, we first will set the 'thruster on' and 'thruster off' positions by scaling the thruster object. To make this really clear, we'll only work with one thruster for now.

We're setting the 'extreme' positions for the thruster. You could also consider this a range of motion for the thruster.
	Thruster Key - frame 0	Thruster Key - frame 30

So, at frame 0 (0 seconds) our thruster is blasting away and is at its tallest height. At frame 30 (1 second) the thruster is off.

What do we WANT to happen automatically? We'd like this thruster to be on when that wing is 'down', and a quick test shows that that would be when the ship is banked at -90 degrees. When the ship is level (a 0 degree bank), the thruster should be off. Let's see how we can use TimeBender to do that.

First, we set the control item as the spaceship's bank. Timebender gives you a HUGE amount of options, including position, velocity, size, and rotation. We want our setting to replace whatever motion was there before, so we'll keep Replace Motion, too.

The key thing to understand here is how the Source and Destination now work.

Source - this picks the extreme position of the currently selected item, based on time. So in our example, a Source Begin of 0 means that the keyframe of the thruster at frame 0 (full on) is one of our extremes. The Source End of 1.0 means that the frame 30 (again, one second) position (full off) is the other extreme.

Destination - Since we have a control item selected, this now means "What value should the selected control item be to show the Begin or End keyframe of the currently selected item"

Huh?

Let's get very practical - look at the interface.... our Destination Begin is set to -90. This means, "When the control item (the simpleship's Bank) is the Destination Begin (-90 degrees of bank), then Replace the motion of the Selected Item (the thruster) with whatever is keyframed at the Source Begin (frame 0) - in this case, the thruster in full on position.)

One more, simpler way of saying the same thing. "When the ship is banked at -90 degrees, the thruster will be on....because that's what the thruster is doing at frame 0."

How's your brain? Good....

The Destination End of 0 means that when the Bank of the ship is 0, the thruster will be in the position it was in at frame 30 (1.0 seconds) - in this case, thruster off position.

Let's look at the effect of this...

The Ship at various angles between 0 and -90. The thruster scaling is automatic, thanks to TImeBender.

Setting the other thrusters is a matter of doing two things...

1) Setting the extremes for each thruster - you can just use the same "On at frame 0, off at frame 30" setting we used for this thruster.

2) Going to TimeBender and determining the Bank value that causes that Thruster to go on or off.

The objects are included in the folder, so try this on your own. (Remember to parent the thrusters to the ship.) For bonus points, experiment with using the bank delta to move the thruster.