| What's
the fascination with Dragon's Lair?
:) Don't forget Space Ace
too! I remember walking into my local arcade a
very long time ago when I heard this game speaking,
I went over and was totally blown away by the
fact that you 'played' a cartoon! The animation
and characters were so full of life (Don Bluth,
ex-Disney what more can you say!) I fell in love
with it!
Totally ahead of its time,
I shudder to think how much money I must have
poured into those machines, probably enough to
buy one! It was always difficult finding machines
that worked though, people not used to the 'set
moves' concept thought you could move anywhere
on screen, when it didn't work, the joystick took
a hammering!
When I have some free time
I'm thinking of attempting a CG 'Dirk the Daring'
as my first character model, it would make a great
project in LightWave, especially with its cel
shading capabilities.
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| Do
you do the design work in SolidWorks as well as
the visualisation in LightWave?
Depends on the project, most
design work is a team effort, but the modelling
and rendering is done by me. The only exception
is when models are handed over for rendering by
the engineering department. The 'deskwalker' task
light is one of my designs, it was done for a
lighting competition, I was short listed for the
final, but didn't win! I'd like to do more conceptual
work, I have a few ideas lurking around!
I understand you do DJing
as well. Who's your current pick of the pops?
:)
Yes, I have been known to
take to the 'ones and twos' in my time! It's
mainly
a hobby, although I have DJed in a few local
bars and clubs, as well as weddings and parties.
Weddings
are actually very difficult, lots of people to
please with many music tastes! Hmmm, current
pick
of the pops! I haven't bought much 'new' stuff
lately, the last record I bought was a compilation
of early work done by a DJ/Producer called AIM
on Grand Central Records, very nice breakbeat
stuff! Before that it was the new Plump
DJs album "Eargasm" -
great title!
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You started
a trend in new interface designs for LightWave.
What was the inspiration behind your vX
interface?
The impetus was born out of
my frustration with certain parts of LightWave's
interface. I felt that as it matured over the
years more and more features have been added in,
and the workflow has not improved as a result.
I find that some options are in the wrong place
for me (or not their logical place) or they are
simply buried too deep in the interface, basically
I find it a little messy in there! This might
not be a problem for seasoned pros, but new users
may find it confusing at first. This is where
the irony is, when you get to know LightWave,
it is easy to use!
Before I touched Photoshop,
I sat down with a pen and paper first; trying
to distil the essence of what made LightWave LightWave.
What worked for me, what didn't, what could be
changed without alienating the core user base
yet helped new users, it wasn't just a designer
fantasy, and it's not an easy task either!
There's still a lot to do,
I wanted to show how Modeler would look right
from the beginning. I'm a little miffed now that
another modelling package has appeared because
it has a lot of the functionality I imagined Modeler
would have but I never found the time to mock
it up!
The visual look behind vX
was meant to be neutral, clean and un-obtrusive,
but not bland either! It's also neither Mac nor
Windows, not having to write platform specific
interface code aids cross-platform development,
this is why LightWave has a custom interface now.
The look might not be to everyone's taste which
is why almost every aspect would be user-configurable,
saying that I've had quite a few emails from people
asking when I was going to release the plug-in
that changed LightWave's interface to vX so I
guess some people liked it! I only wish I was
that good at coding! :)
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| Most
of your work is created for print, I take it.
Do you create animations as well?
Most are stills, but we have
animated some projects. They are usually either
fly-throughs or exploded animations, nothing earth
shattering! I'm quite looking forward to the hard
body stuff in v8, I'm hoping it will allow me
to create more mechanical simulations of products,
that would be really help take my animations to
a new whole new level.
I really like the tea in the
cup holder. You've got just the right amount of
translucency...
Yeah I tried to get that
weak cheap coffee look you find on trains! ;)
but I
suppose it could be tea also. I used the surface
thickness gradient for the first time.
That cup holder is in production
and running around on trains as we speak.
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What
goodies do you have for the readers Matt?
While doing all this interface
stuff I also created some icons for LightWave's
filetypes, seeing as it has never had any. Some
users might like them so here they are! The other
thing I have to offer is an in-depth tutorial
on how to use Screamernet properly on the PC.
I'm going to put a note at the start saying that
this tutorial assumes you know very little about
network rendering/setting up LightWave and stuff,
not meant to be condescending, just easy to follow
for anyone!
Wow! Thanks Matt. Readers
interested in Creactive Design's work can visit
their
website.
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