This page is a part of continuing efforts to make the LightWave documentation complete. If a link takes you back to the main page, it leads to a page that hasn't yet been created. Let us know if you find one!
Animation means giving life to something inanimate. When you open LightWave Layout you will be doing exactly that, whether just making a light flicker, rolling a ball, or full character animation. At animation's simplest, changing an object's position, rotation, and/or scale over time will be enough. As you gain confidence, you will learn about Parenting, Following, Kinematics, Simulation, and many other things you can achieve with LightWave.
Some definitions for you:
Parenting - Linking one item to another. Where the parent moves, rotates, or scales; the child will follow. There is a button labeled Parent in Place. If this is engaged, the child item will stay where it is. When switched off and the child has no keyframes of its own, the child will move to the same location as the parent.
note
If you select multiple objects in Layout and hit the E key, the objects selected will be parented to the last object selected.
The E key is pressed after each lasso selection to parent one null to the other selected
Following - Using the Motion Modifier Follower you can have one item follow another, with a delay and various other user-definable options.
Kinematics - Forward and Inverse Kinematics are ways to control character motion. There's too much for a simple illustration, visit Rigging.
