The Lightwave 7.0 Primer

Patrik Beck is the founder of Electric Crayon Studios, and is a full-time animator, instructor, and an original LightWave user. He is also the author of the popular LightWave 6.5/7.0 Project Handbook.

What is 3D Animation?; Basic Concepts of Geometry, The Virtual Camera, Staging and Lights, Keyframing as Choreography, Rendering, The Final Output, Software and System Specific Issues: What is so Special About LightWave, Mac, PC, and The Rest, Course Material Provided on the CD, Frame Storage and Playback, Animation Uses and Formats, Video and Multimedia Considerations, Animation for the Web, Images for Print, Rendering Elements for Design and Compositing, LightWave Course Lesson Plan: Learning the Basics; Basic LightWave Layout, Brief Tour of Layout and Modeler, Load and Save Functions, How to Render Frames, Display and Preview Options, The Basic Object, Creating a Box in Modeler, Using the Mouse to Create Objects, Using Numerical Input Commands, Naming the Box Surface, Modifying the Box Geometry, Saving the Box Object, Keyframing Objects in Layout; Load the Box Object, Keyframing the Box into Position, Keyframing Camera and Lights, Rendering a Frame, Texture Attributes; Introducing Basic Surface Attributes, Altering the Polygon Surfaces, Using the Viper Preview, Working with Lights; How the Lights Work, Types of Lights and Their Properties, Light Attributes, Shadows, Raytrace and Shadow Map, Exercises and Self-Tests