{"id":3055,"date":"2021-05-06T16:26:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T21:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2021-09-17T23:52:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-18T04:52:24","slug":"diving-into-lightwave-2020s-lighting-cel-shading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/2021\/05\/diving-into-lightwave-2020s-lighting-cel-shading\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving Into Lightwave 2020’s Lighting\/ Cel Shading"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally got to fiddle around in Lightwave 2020, with the goal of learning the new light system and cel shading capabilities. Beforehand, I spent some time researching things online. I learned a few things, but sadly Lightwave’s community is a far cry from where it was back in its heyday. Sigh…<\/p>\n

Lightwave 2018 implemented a new lighting system (my previous version was 2015). One change was the unit of measurement for a light’s intensity. Previously it was a percentage but is now measured in ‘lux’ (or lx) – which is the SI derived unit of illuminance. This was a pretty straight forward change having found out 3.14 lx equates to 100%, and 0 lx corresponds to 0%.<\/p>\n

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The bigger change was the removal of the global Ambient Intensity setting. This was replaced with an additional default ‘light’, called the Environment Light. This light acts as a multiplier for the background and objects, which appears to have the same effect. Oddly enough, the intensity for this light is still measured in percent, not lux.<\/p>\n

For Surfacing, there are now two tabs: a Material Tab and a Shading Model Tab. The Material Tab has several Material options. While the default is Principled BDSF, I used the Standard option – which looked to have settings similar to previous versions of Lightwave.<\/p>\n

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The Shading Model tab has several options, including the Cel Shading Model; and this looks completely different from Lightwave 2015. Here is how you can create different zones of shading. I wasn’t able to get this effect, but to be honest, it’s not something I strive for in my projects. That said, I would like to learn how in order to get a better understanding of the shader.<\/p>\n

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With respect to the actual Cel Shading, I was having a tough time getting the rendered colors to match the specific HEX Numbers given in the Material Tab. The colors looked similar but weren’t exactly what I set in the Diffuse property. I eventually was able to get this by lowering the default Distant light intensity to 0Lx (equivalent to 0%), and setting the Environment light intensity to 100%.<\/p>\n

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I still need to explore these settings. I’m not sure I am doing things the correct way, perhaps just accidentally stumbling on the desired results. Plus it felt like the stability was suspect – there were times I would get different renders while not changing anything.<\/p>\n

Also, setting the distant light to 0 lx made the view in OpenGL dark, which isn’t ideal. To get a better view of things, I had to increase the light to 3.14 lx; but the colors got washed out in the render (see the middle render above, with the pastel colors). This might be a simple OpenGL setting change, but it’s a difference in workflow compared to what I’m used to nonetheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally got to fiddle around in Lightwave 2020, with the goal of learning the new light system and cel shading capabilities. Beforehand, I spent some time researching things online. I learned a few things, but sadly Lightwave’s community is a far cry from where it was back in its heyday. Sigh… Lightwave 2018 implemented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lightwave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3067,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions\/3067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pivisuals.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}