Lightwave Plugins

This plugin allows you to add new points just like the LW builtin '+' except the points are placed directly on the polygons you have in your BG layers. You can place them in any viewport, including the perspective viewport, and the point will appear directly under your mouse pointer, but snapped in depth to BG polygons. Just like with the '+' builtin, you can move the points around with the left mouse button and clone more off with the right. It works best if the BG layer contains planar polys (so to be safe, triangulate everything first).

Download here (LW7.5, PC) (12k)
How to use

Possible uses:

• Make a crummy, rough general shape, perhaps by starting with a cylinder or sphere and pushing points around, and then shove it into the background and create a new mesh from scratch that clings to the old shape.
• Make a snapping plane by creating a plane and pushing it into the BG, then add points to it.
• Take a nice shape with an ugly mesh, push it into the BG and create a clean mesh with the same general shape.

This plugin lets you move points around like the LW builtin 't' except the points stay on the surface of the polygons you have in your BG layers. Again, you can move them in any viewport, and they will roughly follow your mouse pointer around, but snapped to the surfaces you have in your BG layer. The points drift a little in perspective mode, but not enough to affect performance, in my opinion. Obviously dragging points on and off of surfaces very oblique to your view angle can move them closer to or further from each other in world space, even though they may look the same in screen space. Like addPointOnBG, it works best if the BG layer contains planar polys (so to be safe, triangulate everything first).

Download here (LW7.5, PC) (13k)
How to use
Dario used my plugin in a tire modeling tutorial. He lathes out a smooth tire, throws it in the BG layer, draws the tread pattern on a plane and then snaps it to the smooth tire shape with this plugin.

Possible uses:

• Rearrange/clean up a mesh without altering the overall shape too much by making a copy of your current object in the BG layer and the moving points on your FG layer around.
• Snap a whole bunch of points generated from some other command onto a previous surface. e.g. using DStorm's EdgeTool plugin or the knife tool to add edges results in points that lie directly between previously existing points. Select the "movePointOnBG" tool and click the mouse and all of those new points will snap onto the surface you have in the BG layer.