The db&w Tools are a free collection of small plugins for LightWave 3D.

They've been written out of personal need, due to user suggestions, as a playground or to complement our commercial plugins.

The db&w Tools are available in our download section for 32-/64-bit Windows and UB/CFM OS X. The current version is V1.5.

Material Blender (Node)

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

One 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.

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. They XYZ inputs have precedence over the Vector input.

---

Single Light Lambert(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.

Outputs

Colour: Lambert shading for the selected light. This is the raw shading, not modified by any surface values. In that respect it is equivalent to a white surface with a diffuse value of 100%

isLit: 0 if the current spot is not lit by the light, 1 if it is.

Radiosity: The lighting due to radiosity. This output does not require a light to be selected.

Caustics: The lighting due to cuastics. This output does not require a light to be selected.

Simple Colour Corrector (Node, Image Filter, Pixel Filter)

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

The simple colour corrector is also available as an image filter as well as a pixel filter.

If you use it as a pixel filter it will be applied before anti-aliasing, allowing you to modify the gamma of the image before the adaptive threshold is computed by LightWave 3D.

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.

Surface with the Cache Node

Surface without the Cache Node

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)

Colour Booster (Node)

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

Scalar Booster (Node)

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

Extended Spot Info (Node)

This node exposed some additional information about the spot being currently shaded. Some of these outputs are modified to make them more useful as inputs for other nodes.

Outputs:

Object ID: The internal object ID as used by LightWave 3D

Object Number: The number of the current object. This is derived from the Object ID, but the number always starts at 0.

Ray Source ID: The ID of the object where the current ray sampling the surface comes from. This may be the camerafor primary rays, or another object for rays due to reflections and refractions.

Polygon Number: The number of the current polygon being shaded.

Surface CRC this computes a 16-bit integer checksum using the surface name. It can be used as a unique identifier for the surface and will only change if the surface name changes.

Surface Number this assigns a number starting from 0 to every surface (name) within the scene. This number will change if the amount of surfaces changes. However, it produces nicer results than the CRC outputs in conjunction with the Sequencer.

Surface/Item CRC This is like Surface CRC, but also includes the item ID, so every item/surface combo has a different result.

Time Info (Node)

This node exposes the current frame and time as well as the frames per second of the scene.
Original idea by James Willmott

Sequencer (Node)

It takes an input integer number to output a number within the range of 0 to 1.0 (0 is not included).
This can be used to create a gradient input from a polygon number, or to create a RGB colour instead (for item or surface ID outputs using shaderMeister).

Here is a short explanation of the inner workings:

It starts off with 0.5 as the initial number

It takes the index number, looks at the lowest bit.
If the bit is odd it adds 0.25 to the number
If the bit is even then it subtracts 0.25
The index is shifted by one bit, and the value to be added/subtracted is halved.

This loops until the index is 0

The only exception is the Input 0, this is when it returns 1.0. 0 is never returned.

A sequence would thus be: 1.0, 0.5, 0.75, 0.25, 0.125, 0.675, 0.375 and so on... (more or less).
The more id's there are, the smaller the difference between the output values. But they never overlap/repeat (within the limits of floating point numbers).

For the RGB output the ID is divided by three first, and the remainder determines which of the three channels it's writing into.The RGB colours will those be either Red, Green or Blue, but never a mix of them.

Basically it's a variant of the Hammersley Sequence that is used in quasi-monte carlo sampling.

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.

Revenge of the Lenscap (Image Viewer)

This is an image viewer plugin that does - nothing.
It was added to make using Matt Gorners F9 Render script posted here: http://www.newtek.com/forums/showpost.php?p=930963&postcount=10 easier to use.

Yes, it really serves no other use unless you make one up ;)

Growl (Master) OSX, Universal Binary 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.

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.

Please Note

Due to a missing key in the registry, the 32bit version of the notifier may not play back sounds on 64-bit versions of Windows.
We've included two registry files to add that missing key. If you don't hear assigned sounds on 64-bit windows from 32-bit LW, you should install either of them (or edit them to suite):
Wow64_MediaPath_C.reg : Sets the media search path to C:\WINDOWS\Media (the default for a normal Windows installation)
Wow64_MediaPath_D.reg : Sets the media search path to D:\WINDOWS\Media

These plugins are copyrighted by db&w GbR. They are provided free of charge as freeware.
These programs are provided “as is” without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.