If all the components lived on the same
layer, you??™d have a tough time applying
effects to any individual element.
LightWave Modeler works in much the
same way. Each item that you need to
control individually, for purposes of
modeling or animation, should be in its
own layer.
This means that if your car model has four wheels (and I hope it does), and you want each
wheel to be able to roll separately, each wheel must live on its own layer. If a wheel were
placed in the same layer as the rest of the car, you??™d have to animate the entire layer to
make the wheel turn. You will also learn later in the book how layers are used to perform
Figure 1.8 Using the File drop-down menu in
Modeler, you can load, save, and perform similar
operations.
various modeling actions. For now, take a look at the top right of the Modeler interface,
and you??™ll find a set of 10 buttons (Figure 1.9), each representing a layer within a model.
Figure 1.9 At the top right of the Modeler interface are the layer buttons.
Note
At first glance, if you start clicking on the layer buttons, they look like they do nothing.
However, they are crucial to properly setting up and building certain types of models.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69