User Interface Overview

1. Top ToolBar

The Top Tool Bar buttons will appear no matter which Tab is selected and contains elements that are always required, such as File and Edit menus. You can completely hide (or unhide) the toolbar by pressing Alt +F2 ( or choosing Edit > Display Options > Hide Toolbar On/Off).

2. Layout Tabs

The tabs located at the top of the interface will determine which tools appear in the Tool Bar. Generally, menu group names that are verbs contain commands based on the type of action they perform. Menu group names that are nouns contain commands based on the type of object they affect. The menu tab names are all intended to be read as verbs.

• Items - Things to add to your scene, such as objects, lights or cameras

• Modify - Animating scene items

• Setup - Rigging and related tools

• FX Tools - Simulation, Flocking, and Fiber FX

• Render - Setting up, and starting scene or image renders

• View - Tools for organizing viewports

• Model - Creating quick geometry inside Layout

• I/O - Working with other applications such as After Effects, ZBrush and others

• Utilities - Plugins and scripting

Note also that when in VPR mode, there is an additional dropdown listing buffers to render.

3. Modeler Access

This command will switch to your Modeler window if it is open or opens Modeler if you do not already have it open.

4. Toolbar

The buttons presented in this toolbar will depend on which menu tab you select along the top.

5. Workspace

The Workspace consists of Viewports. By default, there is a single large viewport, but you can display multiple viewports if you desire (using the F3 and F4 keyboard shortcuts or visiting * Options* > Display). A viewport provides you with visual feedback about the virtual world you are creating.

Viewport Titlebar

You can change the View Type and Rendering Style of a viewport without going to the Display Options Panel by using the pop-up menus on the left side of each viewport titlebar. The third dropdown arrow gives more Viewport Options.

The buttons on the right side of a viewport affect centering, panning, rotating, zooming, and minimizing/maximizing your view.

6. Numeric Adjustment Controls

As we’ll see shortly, you can alter the position, orientation, and scale of items in your scene interactively; at times, though, you’ll need greater precision. Three number fields, labeled either X, Y, and Z, or H (Heading), P (Pitch), and B (Bank) according to the current edit mode, let you use direct entry to control the corresponding values.

Constraining Modifications

Whether you are moving, rotating, or stretching an item, or moving its pivot point, Layout lets you independently deactivate any of the three components used for those settings. You deactivate the components by clicking on them on the information display in the lower-left corner of the screen. This protects the deactivated component(s) from changing as you move your mouse.

The Y channel won’t be affected when moving the currently-selected item

You can also confine changes by using any of the orthogonal views (i.e. Front, Top, and Side). In these views, you can generally make changes only along the display’s horizontal and vertical axes using your mouse.

7. Grid Display

The grid serves as a visual reference when you move items around, but it will never render in a final image (no matter how much you wish it to). The grid lines are darker every tenth square for visual reference. The Origin is located at the center of the grid.

You can find the current size of the grid squares in the information field at the very lower-left corner of the screen. The size of each grid square is adjustable, as is its overall size, on the Display Options Tab of the Preferences Panel (Edit > Display Options). Note that adjusting the size of the grid squares also affects the relative size of the representative camera and light icons within the scene.

8. Start Frame

This displays the first frame of the scene. It can be raised or lowered. This number remains in frames, even if you should set the timeline to be displayed in one of the other options (SMPTE, Film Key, Seconds) in the Options window. By default, it is set to 0. If you wish to offset the default Start Frame visit the Defaults tab in Preference.

9. Timeline and Dope Track

The Timeline, located beneath the viewport area, hosts a Frame Slider that you can drag horizontally to change the current frame or shuttle through your scene. The input field left of the timeline is the scene’s first frame. The last frame is shown at right. Both first and last frames can be edited by simply typing a new value.

Another time-related feature, the Dope Track, appears just above the Timeline (if the Dope Track is not visible, make it visible by clicking the thick bar above the timeline; click again to close it). The Dope track plays a vital role in connection with animation. Until now, we’ve mostly discussed 3D space, but of course, animation involves a fourth dimension – time. Broadly speaking, animation involves changing an item’s position, orientation, or other properties over time.

The timing of the animation is governed by "Keyframes," or simply "Keys." Keys are fixed points in time where you have assigned specific values to the item’s properties. You might place a Sun object in your virtual sky at frame 1 and set a keyframe there, storing its X, Y, Z coordinates, and other properties at that point in time. Your sun will happily sit there all day long. But, if you advance the current frame to a later point in time, then move the sun some distance and set another keyframe, the Sun will now gradually move to this new position as the animation progresses.

We explain this here because, while the regular Timeline lets you see where keys exist, the Dope Track enables you to set, move, and define keys. In addition, it lets you add (passive) markers to help you navigate quickly in a scene, and also 'bake' ranges of keys to make your animation concrete.

10. Tooltip

This line of the interface shows information about tool actions or potential actions, and the render time for VPR as shown.

11. Current Item

The various items you can edit in LightWave all fall into one of four categories: Objects (including dynamics), Lights, Cameras, and Bones (which are contained within objects; choose the object first, then switch to Bone edit mode). You can only select one type of item to edit at a time; you cannot, for example, select a camera and an object together.

There are several ways to designate which type of item with which you wish to work. You might simply click an item in a viewport to select it; the Current Item and Edit Mode will update accordingly. Or you can choose an Edit Mode button directly (13), then select the desired entry in the Current Item dropdown menu.

tip

The Current Item dropdown menu only lists items in the same category as your current Edit Mode.

12. Item Picker

The Item Picker window allows you to select one or more objects quickly and to set up selection sets of objects for faster use.

13. Edit Mode

As mentioned above you can only choose items from one of LightWave’s four groups at the same time. You can switch between the groups with these four buttons.

14. Properties

This button brings up a Properties window for the four item types. There’s a window for Objects, one for Bones and Lights and Cameras share a window.

15. Selection Info

The Selection Info displays how many items are selected.

16. Keyframe options

We discussed the role of keys (keyframes) earlier. The Create Key and Delete Key commands create or delete a key at the current frame (note that the button labels also show shortcut keystrokes, which will make your work much faster as you become familiar with them).

The Auto Key options just above can automate key creation, by automatically generating a key whenever you change an item’s animatable properties. The associated menu provides several alternative automation methods, discussed in detail later.

To automatically create or modify keys, you must activate the Auto Key option on the main interface. This is the global on/off switch for automatically creating keyframes. It works in conjunction with the Auto Key Create setting (General Options Tab of the Preferences Panel).

Use the Create Key and Delete Key commands to add and remove keyframes.

17. End Frame

This displays the last frame of the scene. You can raise or lower the end frame. This number remains in frames, even if you should set the timeline to be displayed in one of the other options (SMPTE, Film Key, Seconds) in the Options window.

18. Transport Controls

Besides dragging the frame slider to navigate through your scene, you can also use the transport controls described here.

19. Preview

You can render a previsualization of your scene for when playback in Layout is not fast enough. A rendered preview will play at full speed regardless of how complicated your scene gets.

20. Undo/Redo

The Undo and Redo functions were completely overhauled in 2019. They will now not only reverse motion changes (Move, Rotate, Size, or Stretch tool) that you have made but you can revert changes made in Dopetrack, the Scene Editors, the Graph Editor and server panes throughout LightWave. The Redo function will re-execute a sequence of actions that have been undone, beginning with the action most recently undone. You can set the number of undo levels that you wish to have available in the General Options tab of the Preferences Panel, discussed later, in the Edit Menu section. If there are no actions available to undo, the Undo button will be ghosted. The Redo button is ghosted if there are no actions available to redo.

If you are not using the Auto Key feature, you can quickly reset all aspects of a frame (i.e., position, rotation, etc.) if you haven’t created the key yet. Just press the Right cursor key and then the Left cursor key. This advances the current frame and then goes back to the original frame. The frame will return to the last keyframed state, or if the frame is not a keyframe, to its in-between state.

21. Rate/Step

This value sets the speed of playback. If you have the option Play at Exact Rate checked in Options, then this field will be labeled Rate. If not, it will be labeled Step. Rate is a percentage of real time, while Step is what frames will play - 1 indicates every frame, 2 means every other frame, 3 indicates every third frame, and so on.

22. Viewport Menus

At the top left of all viewports in Layout, whether the single large viewport or the set of four, there are three or four dropdown menus.

• View - This menu controls what you are looking at in the viewport. The choices are:

  • (none) - An empty viewport

  • Top (XZ) - This shows the scene from the top. Default keyboard shortcut Numpad 2

  • Bottom (XZ) - This shows the scene from the underside. Default keyboard shortcut with a second hit on Numpad 2

  • Back (XY) - Looking towards the front of the scene. Default keyboard shortcut Numpad 1

  • Front (XY) - The scene is shown looking from the front toward the back. Default keyboard shortcut with a second hit on Numpad 1

  • Right (ZY) - Scene is shown looking at the right side. Default keyboard shortcut Numpad 3

  • Left (XY) - Scene is shown looking at the left side. Default keyboard shortcut with a second hit on Numpad 3

  • Perspective - A rapidly-navigated view of the scene in perspective from any angle. Default keyboard shortcut Numpad 4

  • Light View - View through the current active light. A specific light can equally be chosen from the menu. Default keyboard shortcut numpad 5

  • Camera View - View through the currently active camera. A specific camera can be selected from the menu. Default keyboard shortcut Numpad 6

  • Schematic - presents a nodal view of scene make-up

• Type - The type of OpenGL display:

  • Bounding Box - Only shows the bounding boxes of scene objects

  • Vertices - Only the points of scene objects are shown

  • Wireframe - Scene objects are shown as wireframes

  • Front Face Wireframe - When the scene is heavy, showing only the front faces of objects can lighten the load

  • Shaded Solid - Polygons are solid but untextured. Only the basic color is shown

  • Textured Shaded Solid - The most realistic OpenGL mode. Some texturing will be visible

  • Textured Shaded Solid Wireframe - As above, but wireframes are visible too

  • VPR - The interactive renderer

  • Surface Preview - The view of an individual surface for editing

• Render - An interactive view of the different render buffers. The full list is available here.

• Options - Viewport options for OpenGL and VPR:

• The items on the Viewport Options menu are as follows. Not all are available at the same time.

  • Bone Weight Shade - shows the selected bone’s influence range in any shaded viewport. The influence coloring is based on each bone’s color, which can be changed in the Scene Editor. A bright yellow is used for the currently selected bone. Note that the bone must be active to see this effect. This mode will override the normal texture display.

  • Bone X-Ray - By default Bone X-Ray is on to show bones inside geometry. Note that bones may still be invisible if the object surface is similarly colored/shaded. Change the bone colors using the Scene Editor, if this becomes a problem. If you wish to switch off Bone X-Ray you can uncheck the item in the Viewport Options menu.

  • DOF/MBlur Preview - Only available in Camera view mode. Gives a preview of scene motion blur and Depth of Field. The number of passes can be set at the bottom of Display Options.

  • Headlight - Provides an OpenGL-only, nondirectional light to illuminate dark scenes for easier work.

  • Center Current Item - For an object, the centering is based on its pivot point. This is not always the center of an object. If you deactivate this mode, either through the menu or the viewport icon, the existing POV position will remain until changed. As such, you can use this feature to establish a starting point if the need arises.

  • Set View Position, Rotation, Zoom... - Opens a requester for setting the viewport numerically.

  • Reset View Position, Rotation, Zoom - Resets to the default values when opening Layout.

  • Viewport Layout - Opens a sub-menu containing the 12 different view types. If a type with multiple viewports is chosen, each individual viewport will contain a viewport options menu. Choosing a different layout changes all the Layout viewports, not just the one in which you are choosing a new viewport layout. The layouts can also be chosen from the Options panel or by stepping through them with F3 and F4.

  • Match Viewport Perspective - Only works in Camera or Light mode. Opens a sub-menu with four options:

    • Selected Camera

    • New Camera

    • Selected Light

    • New Light

  • Store View - Stores the current Layout viewport orientation. Only one viewport can be stored if in a multi-viewport display. Stores the view in the scene file so the view will be available after a reload of the scene

  • Recall View - Retrieves the stored viewport orientation. This only works with the same viewport that was stored

  • OpenGL Wireframe - This and the OpenGL Overlay item below are only available when VPR is engaged. OpenGL Wireframe presents a wireframe over the rendered object.

  • OpenGL Overlay - This and the OpenGL Wireframe item below are only available when VPR is engaged. OpenGL Overlay presents a wireframe view of your scene elements, like lights, the grid and transform widgets, laid over the rendered view.

  • Show OpenGL UI - Shows or hides non-renderable interface elements.

    

When the viewport is showing VPR, two additional options become available:

• Draft Mode - disabled by default, Draft mode applies a specific set of values

• Mouse Refinement - On by default, this centers VPR refinement on the mouse position. This option can slow rendering slightly, if your scene is complex, try switching it off.

note

Contributed by Richard Feeney