LK Lightning 2.0 is out!

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It has been a long time coming, but now version 2 is finally out.

The video walks through some of the Sample Scenes and should give you a good overview about LK Lightning 2.0's capabilities.

There are a ton of new features and improvements that will make new things possible and already possible tasks easier.

The video is also available on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/63808713

The change-log goes into more detail about new features and improvements.

If you have any questions or thoughts feel free to post a comment or send me an email at LKPlugins@gmail.com

Thank you for your continued interest!

New Tutorial: Growing a Forest

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In this tutorial I show you how to grow a forest with LK Lightning 2.0.

00:00 - Introduction.
01:20 -  Creating and examining the nodes in the basic strand setup.
03:47 - Setting up the emitter options.
05:39 - Adding the branches aka setting Splitter properties.
08:15 - Changing the trunk thickness.
09:13 - Using thickness propagation for thinner and thinner branches. 
09:54 - Using Modulate Size over Length to make the branches thin out at the end.
11:27 - Adding more branches & Split Limits explanation.
16:35 - Examining the tree and adding a direction controller.
18:48 - Using the controller to make the trees sway in the wind.
20:00 - Adding the leaves.
23:00 - Designing the look of the leaves.
25:07 - Using a gradient to design the summer look for the trees. (With brief tree-design on acid moment.)
26:27 - Pulling the color from ICE into the render tree.
28:15 - Fixing the trunk&branch color.
29:08 - Adjusting the growth of the leaves.
30:14 - Designing the fall look for the trees.
31:41 - Creating the transition from summer to fall.
36:35 - Examining the result.
37:40 - Playing with the wind and final thoughts.

The tutorial is also up on Vimeo.

LK Lightning 2.0 will be available very soon. I hope you enjoy this tutorial.

New Tutorial: SwirlingSeven & LKL 2.0 Sneak Peek

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In this tutorial I show you how to create the effect of a solid mesh transforming into organic strands using LK Lightning 2.0 

00:00 - Introduction
01:25 -  Setting up the grid generator.
05:18 - Creating the strands with LK Lightning.
06:28 - Setting up the emitter options.
09:03 - Making the strands break apart using the Proximity controller.
11:50 - Using a null to control where the strands break apart
14:00 - Animating the null.
17:13 - Meshing the strands using the LKL Mesher
20:38 - Using booleans to cut the curvature of the 7 into a copy of the mesh.
25:03 - A prayer to the gracious gods of the boolean.
25:23 - Using LK Skinner to skin the frozen and booleaned mesh to the dynamic mesh generated from the strands.
27:52 - Caching the final product.
29:56 - Taking a look at the final result and some thoughts on LK Lightning 2.0

This effect was requested on the Softimage mailing list because of a recent brand package for channel 4seven from the UK which you can watch here: http://vimeo.com/45190657

LK Lightning 2.0 will be available very soon. I hope you enjoy this tutorial and sneak peek.

LK Lightning 1.5.1 released

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Hi guys,

today I have a new version of LK Lightning for you.
SI 2013
SI 2012 SAP
It has a few really minor bug fixes that address some corner-cases in which issues came up, but it is definitely worth the upgrade, you won’t regret it.

In other news, LKL is now in use for two webseries, a British television show and a feature film which makes me very happy.

Thanks for choosing this little thing I built as a daily tool guys, I feel very honored.

LK Lightning 1.5.0 now available!

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Hi List!

So today the beta of the new version comes out... Which you can get here:

SI 2013
Si 2012 SAP

Below I put together a little video demonstrating some of the new features like Motionblur and the possibilities for Particles.

It's been a lot of work to make motionblur and all the other improvements work as well as they do now, but I'm very happy with how it has turned out.

It's just such an intuitive and fun way to work with particles and strands, it almost feels like you are sculpting with dynamics.

Now this is a beta so there might be minor bugs, but I employ you to play around with it and use it in Production.

If you need support you can contact me over email(me@leonardkoch.com) or on Twitter.

You can upload scene-files or whatever you might need to send me on the support-page.

I hope you have fun with it and I'm very much looking forward to your feedback!

Changelog:

  • New Features
    • Motionblur
      With this you can now render LKL with motionblur in all renderers like MentalRay, Arnold and Vray and not just in 3delight.
    • Particle mode
      LK Lightning now also supports a pure particle mode, for effects where you want LKLs control and responsiveness but no strands.
      Particles are even faster than strands and there are some new nodes to support this additional aspect of LKL.
    • Local control over Split-Limits
      This allows you to control the number of times a particle can split and how many levels deep this can occur for every emitter individually.
    • Local control over the Animation Time
      This allows you to control the animation along the particle’s path for every emitter individually.
    • Stop after split functionality
      You can now make particles stop at a controllable time after they split. You can control this for every Splitter individually.
  • New Nodes
    • LKL Create Filler Particles
      This is a really fast node that gives you the option to turn the particles you used to control the look of the effect,
      into millions upon millions of particles for rendering.

    • LKL Control Animation Time
      This node gives you detailed control over the Animation Time of your particles and plugs into individual emitters.

    • LKL Split Combiner
      With this node you have the possibility of having your particles only split
      when the conditions of two or more Splitters are met.

    • LKL Stop Combiner
      With this node you have the possibility of having your particles only stop
      when the conditions of two or more Stoppers are met.

    • LKL Configure Strands for 3Delight
      This simple node sets all values required for rendering strands in 3Delight.

    • LKL Set Particle Attributes
      Just the simplest of nodes that allows you to set some particle attributes like, Shape or Color in a convenient way.