LightWave 10 Review: A New Beginning
A few of my co-workers have been having mechanical issues with their vehicles recently, and it got me thinking about how reliable my truck has been over the years. In 1999, I purchased my very first brand new vehicle, a Chevrolet Silverado Z71 Sportside pickup truck. I've had zero issues, and the truck just keeps on performing. I jokingly tell people that I'll be buried in it. I know... spoken like a true Texan!
The thing is, it's rare these days to be able to rely on anything for any real length of time. The only other purchase I've made that has been equally as reliable has been NewTek's LightWave 3D. Back in 1995, picked up my first copy of LightWave (version 5.0) and have been producing content with LightWave ever since. Throughout the years, NewTek has released updates to the software that has allowed it to remain key player in broadcast television production, film visual effects, video game development, print graphics and visualization. The latest discovery was the character modeling work of Ten 24 "Dead Island."
NewTek's latest update, LightWave 10, was released late last year, and it's been a great production boost to the work I've been doing recently. I'd like to share with you some of the tools and enhancements that are now available.
What's New?
When you launch LightWave 10, you immediately experience the updated user interface, which has undergone subtle changes that deliver more dynamic user experience via features like interactive channel sliders, added control for custom colors, and numerous workflow enhancements. This is the handiwork of Matt Gorner, a familiar name in the LightWave community and a new member of the LightWave development team.
All of the character assets in the world are modeled, textured, rigged and animated with LightWave 3D, which is a proven tool in our production pipeline. The project faced a massive challenge when we were tasked with generating the hundreds of thousands of sprite sheets needed to bring the characters to life in the world. With LightWave 10's Sprite-Gen feature, our rendering department was able to shave days off each week's rendering workload. For FunGoPlay, SpriteGen alone has saved the project's production schedule and has freed the render wranglers' time allowing them to focus on other areas of production. If you need to generate sprite sheets, LightWave 10 becomes your one stop shop.
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I've used LW since 5.0 and to call it competitive with other apps is ludicrous. LW has never had decent cloth, fiber or particle effects. There was even a time when third-party support for LW was helpful, but now try to find a decent fire or water plugin. Forget it. Unless you have multi-thousand dollar budgets for things like Real Flow, you're not getting any.
What blows me away is the tutorials made by NT employees often don't work since patches or updates break the features needed by these.
I still like LW, but it's usefulness is growing dimmer by the day. Autodesk may wear the devil's horns, but its software just bloody works.
Very interesting to read you, as always...
Extremely helpful article, pelsae write more.
Here's the problem Eric: this article claims to be a "review".
Someone might actually use this "review" to base their software purchase on. That would be unfair to the potential buyer, as this "review" is not balanced, fair and objective. It is a form of press release pointing out new features. Nothing more.
Hmm...
LWs charactertools are pretty OK for a lot of situations, but lacks the deeper things when you need extreme control. Search for rebelhillfilms on Youtube to get the idea.
UVMapping in LW is old and outdated, but thankfully, there are some third party free tools that helps getting things done. Use Google and search for PLG UV Lightwave and you should get some download links.
LWs particle system is old and has a bunch of limitations. It needs updates regarding fields and the 1 million particle limit / emitter. The most notable thing though is that Hypervoxels is even more in a need for an update regarding the usage of particle information. That said, some good artists are making it work for them, rather than against them. Search for Xurgonic on Youtube and take a look at the examples he has posted.
To add to this, Turbulence 4D (fluids) by Jawset is being developed for LW. Search for Jawset Visual Computing on Google.
Dynamics (cloth/soft/hardbody) are long overdue and is in a desperate need for updating. But since the release of LW10.0, there has been a movement in this area. NT themselves have hinted that Bullet most likely will be implemented in LW in a future release, but allready now, there is a third party developer who is working on integrating Bullet, PhysX and Newton into LW. Search for IBounce on Newteks user forums and you should find the thread. It is a long thread, but the interresting thing is that the author of the plugin, hurley, is showing a lot of progress (the first videos shows the Bounce! as an external app, and later on it becomes iBonce! becuase it got integrated). He is currently implementing shattering.
I just rendered a pretty simple scene in 10000x10000 with photoreal mblur. It finished without problems. Not sure what you are getting at here. More complex scenes will take a lot of time, but any renderengine will do that in such resolutions.
Keep frame 0 your bindpose, and you will be able to go back and adjust things.
Undo in Layout is sadly very lacking, but I've also discovered that a lot of what I do in Layout doesn't need undos per see, unlike a tool like Maya where I tend to work very differently and the workflows in Maya do require Undos on a much greater level compared to LW Layout.
Cheers!
Forgot the missing retarget tool!
2004 maya and xsi versions were more modern than the present lightwave.
just check out:
character tools
uv maps
particle system
dynamic system
nowdays lightwave "revolutionary amazing render system" isnt capable even to finish a big render, just try to make a 10000 x 10000 render of anything....
if you notice that your rig is working in a wrong way because of a not well done bone you cannot return to the modeling stage to fix it... If you do, you will mess everything.
undo feature in layout? Joke!
What's with all the anonymous weasels?
The article points out new features of 10. Deal.
The "no app is perfect" canard. Spare me, and spare me the claim that any mention of less than perfection is a "negative" review. That's called an OBJECTIVE review. Also, saying it's better than 9.x is pretty meaningless.
For the record, the author of this "review" was a long time employee of Newtek, as their evangelist. Just sayin'. Nice way to plug his work, too. ;)
Well, I didn't suggest it needs to be a *negative review*, simply that it should, to be considered a balanced and fair review, point out its shortcomings as well as its highlights. Otherwise it is not really a review is it?
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