Introduction
Usage
History
Requirements
Installation

Plane is LightWave ® Modeler interactive and working in the real-time tool to create special optimized plane which could be nicely divided by static tools in Modeler, or dynamically sub-patched in Layout.

It is especially useful to create a nice looking landscapes with vertex map air brush tool and divide and displace it in TrueBump.

If you don't see control panel after running plugin you should press 'n' key to open Numeric options window.

On the left image you can see the plugin control panel.

Low X, Low Y and Low Z define the lower, and High X, High Y and High Z define the upper boundary of the newly generated object. You can also adjust these parameters by dragging and moving handle points in the view ports.

Segments define the number of segments into which the newly generated object will be divided. The more segments, the slower generation will be, but the resulting object will have better resolution.

Default Segments is set to 1. Let's divide it more...

Segments 2 is still not enough for our's job...

Segments set to 5.

Segments set to 10. It's enough resolution for the next step...

Geometry with weight map painted by air-brush tool. It's ready to running TrueBump.

Red vertices will be moved up and blue vertices will be moved down.

Geometry generated by TrueBump.

It's additionally divided by 3 because it'll give better result after using Smooth tool.

Exactly the same geometry with smoothing turned on in Surface Editor.

Geometry after using Smooth tool (Strength 1.0, Iterations 10.0).

Another landscape generated by trio:

Plane (original plane, divided and displaced later)

TrueBump (used to convert hand made, air-brush painted Weight Map to true geometry)

VMapManager (used to save original Weight Map (used by TrueBump) to picture on disk, and imported after diving and displacing as Vertex Color Map)

Look from different angle.

Download Plane v1.0 for Windows (35926 bytes).

Changes made in the 1.0 (21-Feb-2005)

  • The first official Windows release.

Minimum Windows Requirements

  • LightWave v6+
  • Pentium or better
  • Windows 32 bit

Recommended Windows Requirements

  • x86 compatible CPU 1.0 GHz or better

Installing the product

In order to install the program, please extract the archive to some location on your hard disk.

On Windows ®, the archive is in the ZIP format. You will need 3rd party software such as WinZIP, which you can download from http://www.winzip.com (it's not included in the package), or other compatible software to decompress the archive.

Windows XP ® has built-in ZIP support (simply right click on the archive�s icon, and choose �Extract all files...�).

On Macintosh ®, the archive is in the SIT format. You will need 3rd party software such as StuffIt, which you can download from http://www.stuffit.com (it's not included in the package), or compatible software to decompress the archive.

The LightWave ® plugin does not require files to be in specific locations, which is a very nice feature. But for easier file management it is recommended that the plugin files (i.e. those with .p extension) be copied to your LightWave ® plugins folder (f.e. LightWave\Plugins\).

Installing LightWave ® Modeler Plugins

Run the LightWave ® Modeler executable. Select pop-down menu Modeler > Utilities > Add Plugins..., then choose the folder containing the new plugins and select them. You should see a message from LightWave that the plugins have been added successfully. The changes will be saved to your configuration file when you quit the program.

Click on the image to see it at full resolution.

Uninstalling the product

Uninstalling LightWave ® Modeler Plugins

Run the LightWave ® Modeler executable. Select pop-down menu Modeler > Utilities > Edit Plugins..., then select the plugin files and press the Delete button. The changes will be saved to your configuration file when you quit the program. Now you can safely remove the files from your hard disk.

Click on the image to see it at full resolution.