Asteroids
Ok,
this is part two of the tutorial Planetary Rings in Lightwave 7. If by chance
you came to this page by way of an outside link, You can find the first part of
this Tutorial . . . . HERE
For those continuing on . . lets get right into it . . .
Step 8: Open layer 3 and put layers 1 and
2 in the background so that we can see what we are doing. Select your Spray Points
Tool: Create Tab \ Elements and in the Numeric Tablet set the
rate to 30 and the Radius to 1000'. This will ensure a nice size for your Second
Asteroid Belt.
Fig 8 
Step 9: Once again repeat the steps, circle
the planet once leaving space between your first asteroid belt, then copy- paste
and rotate as many layers as you like. Once you have a required thickness of points,
flatten the layers of the second belt and delete the points on the edges removing
all of the stragglers . . . . . . . Save object.
Fig 9 
Step 10: Keep repeating the steps until you have
as many rings you want, I made a system of 3 rings here, of course you can
make whatever you like this is totally up to you . . . . . . . this is just the
basic concept.
Fig 10 
Step 11: Ok so before we go to Layout, make
sure that you delete the planet in layer 1 and move all your rings down a layer
so that they occupy the first 3 layers, or if you have 5 ring layers, make sure
they occupy layers 1 thru 5. "You get the idea".
* Important *
. . . . Do not flatten your layers before saving the object. For more control
over each ring in layout, it is best to have all your rings on separate layers.
Fig 11 
Now
this next step is important so you have to decide here how you want to handle
this. When we look at a planet that has a ring system, from far the rings appear
to be flat, almost like a record album. But when we do close up shots we see that
the ring is actually several miles if not thousands of miles thick . . . so what
to do. . Hmmm
I am going to show you two different
methods here you decide what you want to do.
Step 12.1: If you want a thin ring system
you can select a group of points above and below your rings like in fig.12.1.
Right now what you have is way too thick, so you need to make it thinner. Just
do the following, command + right-click + drag (Mac) or Left-click
+ drag (PC) . . . . . you don't have to be accurate or make a straight
line because
. . . . . . " asteroids
are anything but uniform".
Fig 12.1 
Step 12.2 Once
you have selected all the points you need, you can cut them away and do the same
thing to all the other layers you have . . . fig 12.2.
Fig 12.2 
This second method is the one that I am going to use,
but you decide.
Step 12.3: Make all your Ring layers active,
then select all of the points. What we are going to do here is flatten all of
the points on a single y value = 0. So with all the Belt layers active and all
the points selected go Detail Tab\ Points \ Set Value. .
on the Y Axis set value to 0 ft And press ok . . . fig. 12.3
Fig 12.3 
And there it is a thing of beauty . . . .
Fig 12.4
Fig 12.4 
Continue to part 3 .... here
