CGTalk - LightWave [8] Feature Update

peteb

01-18-2005, 07:10 PM

Yipeee. I think they're really workig hard with this. I mean some of tese upgrades are as good as what you'd expect in a major release. Lets hope we get SSS and some other major features when 9 is released. That's not saying I'm not grateful for this release though :)

ArtisticVisions

01-18-2005, 07:11 PM

Damn you beat me to it
You aren't the only one!

:applause:

NanoGator

01-18-2005, 07:17 PM

Damn you beat me to it

He had an unfair advantage. ;)

BeeVee

01-18-2005, 07:26 PM

NewTek Europe customers should go here to get it:
http://www.newtek-europe.com/uk/support/download.html

B

Para

01-18-2005, 07:26 PM

1,59k/s, ETA 5h50mins...you need more bandwidth for Europeans :)

Lewis3D

01-18-2005, 07:55 PM

1,59k/s, ETA 5h50mins...you need more bandwidth for Europeans :)

Hehe you are lucky i get 478 bytes/second :)

C'mon NTE give us a chance to download ;).

Thanks to all NT guys for hard work, I'm looking forward to 8.2

Limbus

01-18-2005, 08:04 PM

Im getting a faboulous 9 kb/sec.

Whohoooo. All that speed makes me dizzy...

Phil Lawson

01-18-2005, 08:09 PM

19% @ 1.56kb/s - only 4 hrs to go hehe.

colkai

01-18-2005, 08:16 PM

Heheh .. reminds me of my old 14.4K modem days, a staggering 1.2K/s

Patience, they say, is a virtue ;)

bkn

01-18-2005, 08:17 PM

1,59k/s, ETA 5h50mins...you need more bandwidth for Europeans :)
That's ultra high speed compared to mine! After about 30min at 0.5 it dumped down to ? (not measureable?), with an estimated TA at 2d13h:56:39 !

Phil Lawson

01-18-2005, 08:20 PM

Heheh .. reminds me of my old 14.4K modem days, a staggering 1.2K/s

Patience, they say, is a virtue ;)

It looks as if it will be well worth the wait.

-NG-

01-18-2005, 08:30 PM

6kb here :p seems like it's busy at newtek europe ;)

ArtisticVisions

01-18-2005, 08:34 PM

Finally done downloading....
Now I can finally start playing around with subpatch UV Maps. :thumbsup:

Limbus

01-18-2005, 09:00 PM

A Downloadmanager like FreshDownload really helps. I have it set to 999 retrys so it never stops to load. Speed varies between 4 and 10 kb/sec and im 56% done. Cant wait to play with it.

Florian

-NG-

01-18-2005, 09:08 PM

Dam firefox always nags 1 out of 3x with the download window :( and exactly when i'm d/l the update is starts nagging.

js33

01-18-2005, 09:23 PM

Not to brag or anything but I downloaded the update from NT US in about 15 seconds on a 4 mbit cable connection. :buttrock:

Thanks Newtek and keep up the good work. :thumbsup:

Cheers,
JS

jorust

01-18-2005, 09:27 PM

Downloading... 5 h and 36 min to go!

modo 102 (40 mb) : 10 min... :rolleyes:

uncon

01-18-2005, 10:24 PM

This is pretty cool. I really like the new anti-aliasing modes (tons of options, oh yeah) and the UV map stuff is killer. At least those are the big things, it seems like they are nice improvements the "Free Move" UV option alone is worth it.

Joviex

01-18-2005, 10:30 PM

zuzzabuzz

01-18-2005, 10:52 PM

Just curious to know what "SDK" improvements are implemented, if anyone is so inclided to have a looksee.

I will be waiting to Download it :) as it seems the tube is quite stuffed up with eager anticipating users already.

This describes them pretty well. Not sure if there are/will be lscript equivalencies.

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/downloads/updates/lw82/support/features.html#sdk

ArtisticVisions

01-18-2005, 11:44 PM

Been spending the last half hour playing around with the new additions.
The new UV updates (particulary Free Move).... OMG, these updates are amazing! Now I can work with UV without pulling my hair out! :applause:
Before, I always stuck with procedural textures, because I found creating UVs to be a pain in the ass; now I finally will be capable to working with them and getting good results.
(makes that UV Edit Pro plugin obsolete, but then again I never used it, cause it would always crash LW)

policarpo

01-18-2005, 11:51 PM

Anyone have any luck with the .PSD exporter working?

It still seems broken to me.http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/sad.gif

I guess fixing it was outside this versions scope.

Oh well.

The new AA features seem nice though. Having access to these will definitely speed things up. I've love tweaking my AA settings since my 3dsmax days.

I haven't messed with the new UV tools since I use Body Paint...but they seem cool.

Chuck Baker

01-19-2005, 01:36 AM

policarpo

01-19-2005, 01:55 AM

Hi, Policarpo!

As Elmar has mentioned on our forums, one of the issues with our PSD export is that the direct output of LightWave's renderbuffers, as used in our current PSD-exporter, is not very well-suited for the purpose since LW combines its renderbuffers with different math than PhotoShop offers in its Layer-blending modes. Work is in progress to add some additional processing to the buffer-output to make this work well, and the team will address the other issues as well.

Oh...ok. Good to know.

Just make Worley include this export feature in fPrime while you are at it since it's still an open issue.
http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Cheers.

leigh

01-19-2005, 02:25 AM

I really had to laugh at this bug fix:

F9 render causes crash

:D

Signal2Noise

01-19-2005, 02:57 AM

Uh-oh. I read the fix list and there's no mention of Cycler. It's been broke since ver. 7.5x. I've emailed NT and posted in their forum. I will be giving 8.2 a whirl anyway and see if it indeed does work or I just need to give up on this issue.

BTW, download took only about 45 seconds first try.

Celshader

01-19-2005, 09:33 AM

Uh-oh. I read the fix list and there's no mention of Cycler. It's been broke since ver. 7.5x.

What's wrong with Cycler? It's been a long, long time since I've used it, but I'd like to know what to watch out for if I try using it in the future.

Para

01-19-2005, 09:44 AM

What's wrong with Cycler? It's been a long, long time since I've used it, but I'd like to know what to watch out for if I try using it in the future.

It just doesn't work. Simple as that.

colkai

01-19-2005, 10:04 AM

That's ultra high speed compared to mine! After about 30min at 0.5 it dumped down to ? (not measureable?), with an estimated TA at 2d13h:56:39 !

Right now i'm up to 6 days and counting .. oops - make that 17 days hehe

threedeworks

01-19-2005, 10:22 AM

Hi, Policarpo!

As Elmar has mentioned on our forums, one of the issues with our PSD export is that the direct output of LightWave's renderbuffers, as used in our current PSD-exporter, is not very well-suited for the purpose since LW combines its renderbuffers with different math than PhotoShop offers in its Layer-blending modes. Work is in progress to add some additional processing to the buffer-output to make this work well, and the team will address the other issues as well.

chuck, that's *very* good news, looking forward for this fix! would it be possible to get layer groups for single lights like in Cinema 4D? another extremely useful addition to this filter would be an extra radiosity layer.

best regards

markus groeteke

Celshader

01-19-2005, 11:05 AM

It just doesn't work. Simple as that.

Heh...not so simple for me. Remember, I haven't used it in years, so I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking at, here.

I'm guessing that you mean the Graph Editor version of Cyclist, since you called it "Cycler." I'm messing with that plug-in now in an attempt to (re)learn it.

UPDATE -- interesting. Cycler precisely matches Cyclist when Cyclist's End Behavior is set to Stop. The difference between Cycler and Cyclist is that Cyclist has a drop-down list to set End Behavior to Stop, Repeat and Ping-Pong, while Cycler only has Stop.

Did Cycler ever have an End Behavior drop-down list, or has it always been this way?

telamon

01-19-2005, 11:46 AM

I spent my night playing with the various AA settings and results seem much better with an obvious speed increasing (P4C +1 Gig RAM DDR 400 doubled).

Concerning the UV distortion.... It works well.

Just one positive comment. In order to implement these new features or fixes, NT has added options to the existing panes. Progressively, they will become as complex as those of other professionnal packages. I hope that we will get soon the same tweaking possibilities as Max, Maya, XSI users :D

I am now asking questions that, I think, a lot of people have in mind :D

What's next? Which are the items that NT plans to modify for the next update :drool: What will be the next update ? 8.3, 8.5, 9 ? :D

Do not be offended, it is just for my record :D

Exper

01-19-2005, 01:40 PM

Everyone in Europe... take a look here... http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
I'm able to download (currently downloading) using "Free Download Manager".
You can find it here: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

- Configure FDM to "Broweser monitoring"
- start your Browser
- go to NewTek Europe site
- compile the download Form
- Click or Alt+click on confirmation button
the download will be managed by FDM... and... voilà... you're downloading the precious LW 8.2 Update! http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/cool.gif http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://vbulletin.newtek.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

P.S. FDM supports: Internet Explorer 4.0 - 6.x, Netscape 6.x - 7.x, Mozilla Firefox and Opera 6.x - 7.x

Dennik

01-19-2005, 02:14 PM

So whats the best AA algorithm you found so far?

peteb

01-19-2005, 04:16 PM

I tried twice last nice and after about half an hour it gave up and said lost connection :( Thanks for the advice Exper I'll try that tonight.Peter

telamon

01-19-2005, 06:57 PM

There seems to be bugs in R8.2 I have experienced crashes during renders, now cycler does not work and there is a thread around here where people say that the bone split tool does not work anymore...

I hope that these are the only ones....

Dresse

01-19-2005, 07:12 PM

to bad.
i hoped this ( http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=199333 ) problem would have been fixed in the update, but i just tested and apparantly they didn't fix it

BeeVee

01-19-2005, 08:39 PM

You don't need any kind of download manager. I've just downloaded the update at home and was getting speeds in excess of 150 k/s.

B

Signal2Noise

01-19-2005, 09:37 PM

What's wrong with Cycler? It's been a long, long time since I've used it, but I'd like to know what to watch out for if I try using it in the future.

Here's the link (http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?t=24527&highlight=cycler) to my original post about Cycler on the NewTek forums. It is a reproducable bug. I still haven't got around to testing things out with 8.2 but will do so tonight.

jasonfox

02-11-2005, 04:06 PM

Celshader

02-11-2005, 08:36 PM

does anyone know if Cycler is fixed in 8.2 ?

Still on 8.01 here, but just loaded up a scene I created in v7 that used cycler extensively, and it doesn't work !

I need to tweak and render it this weekend, so if cycler isn't fixed in 8.2 I'm buggered !

I successfully used 8.2's Cycler to link a spaceship's landing gear animation to one control null. I made the animation happen from frames -60 to -30, and then I used Cycler to link that section of each animation graph in the Graph Editor to the null's movement from 0 to 10 on the Z axis. I keyframed the null at Z=0 on frame 0 and Z=60 on frame 60. I scrubbed the time slider. The animation only occured between the keyframes of the control null. The landing gear animation "disappeared" on the original -60 to -30 frame range, but then the control null was not moving at all on that frame range. I could still tweak the animation by moving keys around in the Graph Editor, though.

So Cycler worked perfectly fine for what I needed it to do. However, this was the very first time I used Cycler, EVER. I don't know what I'm missing, other than real-time updating when I move the control null.

What is the "Cycler bug?" :curious: All that NewTek forum post says is: "Cycler doesn't work."

Or are you talking about Cyclist, the Motion Modifier plug-in?

Para

02-12-2005, 08:17 AM

What is the "Cycler bug?" :curious: All that NewTek forum post says is: "Cycler doesn't work."

It's basically a bug which prevents user from making a similar setup as seen in Inside Lightwave 7's expression tutorial.

Celshader

02-12-2005, 06:41 PM

It's basically a bug which prevents user from making a similar setup as seen in Inside Lightwave 7's expression tutorial.

I still have no clue what that setup is, but I'll look it up in a few days if I get the chance.

8.2's Cycler worked fine for my landing gear setup, though.

Signal2Noise

02-12-2005, 09:22 PM

I still have no clue what that setup is, but I'll look it up in a few days if I get the chance...

Here's a thread (http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?t=24527&highlight=cycler)I started @ Newtek's forum for some background info.

The tutorial to try to replicate is in chapters 15.4 thru 15.7 of Inside [7]. I still haven't got around to testing it in 8.2 but hopefully can this weekend.

tburbage3

02-13-2005, 07:56 AM

Out of curiousity, I dug out my old Inside LW7 CD and worked through Chapter 15 through 15.4 (setting up the rear landing gear), then jumped to 15.7: Animating the Control Null.

There are several key errors in the text:

15.3.18, 15.3.24: Scale for the pitch channels should be set at 100%, not -100% (the pitch/x is the same for both sides -- not negated like the bank/z rotation).

15.4.3 The start and end frames should be 0 to 30, not 0 to -1. The keyframed motion sequence for the left side landing gear/door spans frames 0 to 30. That is the sequence you want to define as the cycle (think of it as an animation clip). After setting the y position keyframes for the controller null per section 15.7.3 to define the timing of the clip playback, it seems to be working. Maybe the problem is just the unfortunate errors in the text? (I'm trying this with 8.2, Windows, Dynamic Update=Interactive, Autokey ON, AutoKeyCreate=Modified Channels, ParentInPlace=TRUE).

Did notice, however, a very annoying update bug in Graph Editor, at least when set to "Track (Layout) Item Selections". The Modifiers panel does not properly update when the selected item is changed in a viewport or Scene Editor -- which can be pretty visually confusing. Will report that tomorrow...