52 The General Options tab
within the Preferences panel contains key
settings for LightWave Layout.
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C h a p t e r 3
Understanding
Basic Textures
The realism of 3D animation can be very eye-catching, and a good part of this realism
comes from two key factors: lighting and surfacing. In your 3D career, professional or otherwise,
you??™ll find that achieving this realism is a never-ending battle.Note, however, that
this struggle is a blessing in disguise. You see, your mission, should you choose to accept
it, is to continually better your work. Once you create a fantastic piece of 3D art, it??™s time
to make a better one! Without forgetting that lighting setups play a big role in determining
the realism of your scenes (we??™ll get to that in Chapter 4), this chapter will introduce
you to LightWave??™s texturing capabilities. This chapter helps you take the next step with
LightWave by introducing you to the powerful Texture Editor and teaching you how to
navigate and use its interface. You??™ll learn about these topics:
?—? Using the Surface Editor
?—? Organizing surfaces
?—? Setting up surfaces
?—? Understanding the Node Editor
Note
The word surface is used three different but related ways in this chapter??”to denote
a specific group of polygons on the skin of a 3D object; to describe a collection of
attributes (color, reflectivity, bumpiness, and so on) applied to a region to determine
its appearance and behavior in a 3D scene; and as a verb (???to surface???), meaning the
process of applying those attributes to polygon regions.
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