LightWave continues to offer unique capabilities such as Linear Color Workspace, which allows you to achieve photorealism much faster with the LightWave render engine. LightWave's Linear Color Workspace supports consistent gamma, color space and custom Look Up Tables (LUTs) for more realistic lighting and to maximize compositing flexibility in a professional pipeline.

I don't recall NewTek announcing how many bugs/issues got squashed in this upgrade, but it must have been quite a few as this has been the most stable version of the software to date. LightWave 10 shows a new level of maturity that makes it more reliable in production than ever.

On Deck: LightWave 10.1
Following the impressive LightWave 10 update in late in 2010, NewTek is ready to release a much anticipated free 10.1 update with many significant enhancements. Most notably, the new stereoscopic camera rig system introduced in LightWave 10 has been expanded to include an Off-Axis Camera rig, which corrects for render distortions associated with Toe-in rigs. LightWave now supports all three major stereoscopic camera rig types, Parallel, Toe-in and Off-Axis used in production. Additionally, the OpenGL stereoscopic rig gizmos have been enhanced to give real-time feedback for left and right camera projection planes and to allow corrections for Toe-in distortions interactively. Users can also interactively drag the convergence point directly in the viewport.

With the numerous other additions that have been made throughout the software in this free update, artists are getting a powerful bonus to add to the already robust new version of LightWave. If you haven't gotten your hands on the latest version of the software, be sure to download the free trial version that is fully functional for 30 days from the NewTek site (www.newtek.com).

William "Proton" Vaughn is creative director, Applehead Factory.