Perhaps one of the best things about LightWave??™s Surface Editor is that it puts everything
you need to set up simple-to-complex surfaces in one location. The Surface Editor gives
you control over everything you need to create a blue ball, an old man, or a modern city. If
you are familiar with the Surface Editor in previous versions of LightWave, you??™ll find the
updated Surface Editor works in much the same way but is definitely improved. Most
notably, LightWave v9 brings a completely new way of texturing to the table with the Node
Editor. Figure 3.1 shows the Surface Editor interface at startup,with the Node Editor open.
Figure 3.1 LightWave??™s Surface Editor at startup.
You??™ll get a brief introduction to the Node Editor in this chapter. Later, in Chapter 11 you??™ll
be guided through node-based projects.
It??™s important to understand how basic texturing works, and the Surface Editor is the place
to start. In early versions of LightWave, the process of setting up a model??™s surfaces began
during construction, in Modeler.However, you could make only basic surface changes in
Modeler??”essentially, you could only select a group of polygons and name them as a surface.
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