db&w Support Forum

We have just released version 1.4 of db&w tools, our free collection of plugins for LightWave3D available for all platforms.

You can grab them in our downloads section.

Changes
Version 1.4:
- added two small nodes, TimeInfo and Extended Spot Info

Version 1.3:
- Further speed improvements to the material blender node
- Four new nodes: Cache, Material Booster, Colour Booster and Scalar Booster

Version 1.2 (not released to the public):
- Speed ups to the material blender if the opacity is 0%
- Added Channel Blender and Single Light Illumination Nodes.

Version 1.1b:
- fixes a bug that made the Material Blender unuseable for ... materials :( *sigh*
- fixes a bug that caused the 32bit version of the Notifier to crash on Vista x64

Version 1.1a:
- fixes a bug that only affects the Material Blender for OSX-CFM, the other plugins have not changed.

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Version 1.3 includes the following plugins:

Material Blender (Node)

This node allows you to split up materials into shading components, merge shaders into materials or blend different materials together.

On thing worth noting is the fact that the shading input always overrides the respective material, so if you connect a material to the "fg Material" input, the "fg Specular" will override the specular component of the material.

Kudos to Mike Stetson for coming up with the initial idea.

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Channel Blender (Node)

A node that allows you to split a vector/colour into the three components or merge them together.
You can also selectively overwrite a single component.

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Single Light Illumination (Node)

Computes the lighting due to a single light and returns the shading as well as a value that is either 1 or 0 depending on whether the currently shaded spot is lit or not.

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Simple Colour Corrector (Node)

A node that offers the same colour correction options as the image panel, including gamma correction.

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Cache (Node)

This node basically passes through the inputs to the matching output. However, if a value is requested from the output for a second time at the current spot (and recursion level) the last value will be returned.
This caches the value and prevents duplicate evaluations of the value connected to the input.
This node can be used for all computationally heavy nodes (such as material and shaders) if multiple inputs are connected to their output.

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Material Booster (Node)

This node allows you to tweak the output of a material. The colour computed by the material can be boosted (multiplied) to enhance the effect.
Every material component has a Boost percentage setting (this is just a multiplier for the component).
If a scalar is connected to the respective Curve input, the Range parameter will be available as well.
This will use the values supplied by the Curve input to modify the final boost from the Boost value to the Maximum value.
If the Curve value is zero, Boost will be used, if the Curve value is 1, Maximum will be used. Other values will be interpolated.
Mathematically speaking: final = Boost + Curve * (Maximum - Boost)

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Colour Booster (Node)

The same as the Material Booster but for a colour channel. You can of course also connect a Vector to it.

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Scalar Booster (Node)

The same as the Material Booster but for a scalar channel.

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Time Info (Node)

Based on the idea and initial implementation by James Willmot.
This exposes the current time, frame and the frames per second.

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Extended Spot Info (Node)

This exposes three values related to the current spot being shaded: The current Object ID, the ID of the object where the current ray has been fired from and the number of the current polygon.

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Command Statistics (Master)

This Master plugin records all commands fired by Layout and sorts them by how many times they are accessed.
The idea is to record all actions, allowing you to decide which commands are used more often to streamline your configs and keyboard shorcuts. You can let it run while you work and after a few sessions it should become clear which parts of Layout you use more.
This plugin is a Layout Master, which means that it is launched with LightWave 3D.
The list of commands is stored between layout sessions.
You can export the list of commands to a text file (tab delimited) or clear it.

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Growl (Master) - OSX, UB only.

This master handler plugin sends notifications to Growl (http://growl.info/) on OSX.
Supported events are:
- Starting Frame Render
- Frame Rendered
- Starting Render
- Render Done
- Scene Loaded
- Scene Saved
You can use the Growl preferences to customize these.

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Render Audio Notifier (Master) Windows only.

This master handler plugin allows you to assign sounds to specific events.
Supported events are:
- Starting Frame Render
- Frame Rendered
- Starting Render
- Render Done
- Scene Loaded
- Scene Saved
You can use "Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices" in Windows to assign sounds to these events.

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You can download the plugins from our downloads (http://www.db-w.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,84/func,fileinfo/id,62/) section (no registration required).

If you find any issues, don't hesitate to contact us.

We hope you enjoy working with the plugins.

Cheers,
Dagmar and Mike

Hi,

Quick question...Should I be able to use the objectID from Extended-Spot-Info to be able to vary something across object clones?  I thought I should be able to, but i'm not getting very far.  I get very high values (far greater than what I think is the objectid listed in the scene file), and even if I try to normalise them they seem to all come out the same (but maybe that's not surprising considering I scaled it down by a huge amount).

Thanks for any tips

Rob

You should, and you can. I did a quick check recently and it seems that object IDs start with 100,000 in LW (you can verify that in the new scene editor which can display them).
If you just subtract that number you should have more meaningful numbers to work with.

I might add an "object number" output in the next release that subtracts automatically.

Cheers
Mike

As an alternative you can use the Scalar Mod function/node.
It basically outputs the remainder of a division.
I.e. if the A input is the id, and B is 10, you'll get the remainder of "objectID / 10" which is always a number between 0 and 9

Cheers
Mike

hi Mike,

Yeah I'd look in the scene file and seen the objectIDs starting at 10000000...got no where with mods or subtractions (starting feeding the number straight into the diffuse-shading to see the value in the imageviewer).  Then following your handy tip, I looked in the scene editor and noticed it was all in hex. That explains some of the numbers I was getting.  Mod'd by 10000000hex converted to dec (the handy number of 268435456) and now it works.  Which is super cool.  The problem I've been having with other objectID plugins is they've gone mad when rendering with >1 thread...but this seems to work.

thanks for the tips.

cheers
rob

:o The scene editor provides no clue at it being hex, does it? Even I thought it was decimal and had changed, as the 10000000 makes a lot of sense in hex:
10 00 00 00 - the same value grouped as bytes, as it's a 32 bit value (4 bytes)
This means that only one bit is set (number 29 if I counted correctly), and this has always been used to differentiate an item from a light, camera or bone.

Just for fun, the same number as a proper binary: 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

D'oh (<- me) - I should've remembered that.

Cheers,
Mike

The scene editor does show As and Bs etc on them itemID, but I only noticed as I happened to have more than 10 clones...I never spotted it in the text editor but that'll teach me for not going deep down in side the file and instead just looking at the first couple of copies.

Quick question..when copying/pasting materials on a single object, the new material's Extended Spot Info stops working unless you delete & replace it with a new Extended Spot Info...Is it just me who gets that?

What happens if you:
a) scrub the timeline or
b) save/load the object?

I might need to update a cached value in the case of save and load. However, I don't think this node actually uses any. How odd.

Cheers,
Mike

Ahha, yes, a save-and-reload fixes it.

And now to make it work on the 3000-objects city-shot...

I just checked the node and found no reason for it not to work - it's so dead simple... but that's just by glancing at it.

I'll hopefully find the reason for it.

Allright, the next release will have an "Object Number" output as well.

Cheers
Mike

P.S. You won't see the effect of it in a preview sphere, but I suppose that's obvious as it's always the same "object" as far as LW is concerned.